Just as we wake from the strangeness of Tolbert’s vision, newcomer Ben Stewart’s “Two Suns over Zululand” starts off at a gallop and never slows down, as Zulu warriors struggle to repel a deadly invasion — and not the one they’ve been expecting. With breakneck pacing and mounting dread, Stewart’s breathless story balances brutal action with keen characterization and cosmic horror.
After the heat and intensity of Stewart’s tale, you’ll want to join us in a strangely familiar tavern to quench your thirst, catch your breath, and relax with a game of chance: Orrin Grey’s “A Circle That Ever Returneth In.” At first, it seems like a cheeky diversion, but like all sport to be found out here in the outer dark, this game is rigged, time and space distorting along with the pages to deny us even the solace of death.
As we stumble in a daze from Grey’s story, we find ourselves back in the world we know, outside a tranquil abbey in medieval Germany. Here, Wendy Wagner welcomes us home with “Ordo Virtutum,” which introduces the famous abbess and visionary Hildegard of Bingen to another mystic — one who may seem familiar to certain pilgrims. Wagner’s tale is siege horror at its finest, and as is so often the case when survivors try to insulate themselves from what lurks outside, the chilling question is... how long can they hold out?
No compendium of Lovecraftian fantasy would be complete without a voyage to the Dreamlands, and Andrew S. Fuller’s swashbuckling “Black Moon, Red Sails” layers its sinister escapism with real-world terrors that eclipse any cosmic threats. Afterward, M. K. Sauer’s “The Thief in the Sand” similarly provides Mythos comfort food, while blazing its own path through the trackless dunes, as it spins its yarn of greed with an unconventional protagonist holding the distaff. From these distant sands we then journey to northern England, where Jonathan L. Howard drags us deep into the bowels of the earth for his “Without Within,” set during the English Civil War.
From this known place we travel to unknown stars. Set in an environment yet more treacherous, Jason Heller’s “Daughter of the Drifting” takes us to a realm mercifully undreamed… at least, prior to this tome. Melding crisp narration with an unreliable landscape, Heller forges a piece as haunting as it is downright weird.
Bouncing us back to Earth and back in time, Natania Barron’s “The Matter of Aude’” submerges us in the Song of Roland, that classic chanson de geste set during the reign of Charlemagne. No mere pastiche, Barron’s piece captures the romanticism of the original while subtly contrasting the hopelessness of a mortal in the Mythos with the lot of women in such antique tales, and indeed, history itself.
This somber reality is flipped on its ear in “The Living, Vengeant Stars” by E. Catherine Tobler, which gloriously breaks all the supposed thou-shalt-nots of Mythos fiction as it delivers epic battles, doomed heroism, and a conflict older than our solar system. Then, from the blackness of space to the blue of the open sea, we set sail with Carlos Orsi’s “The Argonaut,” which might have been called “Errol Flynn Goes to Hell.”
Out of these waters teeming with violence we crawl back to shore, only to find ourselves in the past — specifically, to Eneasz Brodski’s version of ancient Rome, in “Of All Possible Worlds,” a place very different from what we’ve seen in history books. There are gladiators and barbarians here, priests and legionnaires, but not of the sort we expect, and the dangerous atmosphere thickens with every page, like the pungent incense used in some unspeakable rite.
Much of Mythos fiction focuses on the unwinnable nature of the struggle against the outer dark, where victory is only ever temporary, and meaningless on the cosmic scale. Yet without some glimmer of hope, there cannot be much tension, something demonstrated by Laurie Tom’s Three Kingdoms-set epic “The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang.” Instead of ending with the death of hope, hers is a tale that opens in that dark territory, and builds from there into an action-packed tale of friendship standing up in the face of inhuman foes. Complementing Tom’s piece is “The King of Lapland’s Daughter,” a wildly different meditation on the nature of camaraderie and hope by Nathan Carson. His alt-history Lapland is a land at once familiar and alien, and offers no false promise of a better tomorrow for we who are doomed by birth and damned by the fates.
Finally, our journey ends (or does it?) with Caleb Wilson’s spectacular “Bow Down Before the Snail King!” When our curtain descends, it is over a scene of desperate battles and subtle wit, bizarre adversaries, and equally strange heroes. This sly yet melancholic elegy for our anthology has style to burn and a structure that will make all lovers of non-Euclidean storytelling sit up and take notice.
So, grab your humble cutlass, your iklwa spear, or one of legend’s greatest swords, and journey with us from ancient Rome to feudal Japan, from the Dreamlands to lands there are no names for in the tongues of men. Prepare to confront the horrors that lurk on the edge of our world, always watching, always hungry, and whatever you do, don’t forget your cold steel…
The Savage Angela in: The Beast in the Tunnels
John Langan
Her sword in a high guard (what the old woman who taught her to fight called the Horn of the Bull), Angela advances deeper into the tunnel. She steps lightly, but does not worry overly much about remaining silent. For one thing, the iron scales sewed to her leather tunic clink and rattle with her every movement. For another, the beast she is hunting appears able to hear the slightest sound. For a third, she wants the creature to know she is coming.
At least, she thinks she does. Magda, who began her training with a pair of hardwood sticks, used to ask her, “When are you most vulnerable in a fight?” It did not take long for her to demonstrate the answer: when you are attacking. Then you’ve committed yourself to whatever strike you are going to use against your opponent, and in so doing, exposed yourself to her counter — provided, that is, she is possessed of sufficient speed and knowledge. The lesson has served Angela well in more than one confrontation, and she has hopes it will once again. If she can provoke the beast to a charge, she will sidestep and bring her sword down on its skull.
As it so often does, her sword, Deus ex Machina, has an opinion on the matter. Wouldn’t a trap be a more sensible plan? She doesn’t hear its low, pleasant tones so much as she feels them, a tremor that starts in the weapon’s hilt and travels through the network of her bones to finish within her skull. Aside from its voice, and the intelligence behind it, there is nothing remarkable about the blade. It is a longsword, much as she trained with, its guard simple, its hilt wound in leather to improve the grip.
“A trap would be a fine idea,” she says. “What do you propose?”
A regiment of the King’s finest cavalry, the sword says, armed with their longest and sharpest lances. They lie in wait while the beast is lured from hiding. Once it’s in the open, they surround and skewer it.
“That might work. However, the process of organizing and implementing it would almost certainly expose Brum’s joyweed enterprise, and the money it provides him, so I’d put the chances of his majesty embracing such a plan at zero.”
Should you fail, he may have no choice.