The Mammoth Book Of Warriors and Wizardry (The Mammoth Book Series) Read online

  SEAN WALLACE is the founder, publisher and managing editor of Prime Books. In his spare time he has edited or co-edited a number of projects including three magazines Clarkesworld Magazine, The Dark and Fantasy Magazine, and a number of anthologies including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A. I. and War and Space: Recent Combat. He has been nominated a number of times for Hugo Awards and World Fantasy Awards, won three Hugo Awards and one World Fantasy Award, and has served as a World Fantasy Award Judge. He lives in Germantown, MD, with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.

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  The Mammoth Book of

  Warriors and

  Wizardry

  Sean Wallace

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55-56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Robinson

  Copyright © Sean Wallace, 2014 (unless otherwise stated)

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-47211-062-6 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-47211-076-3 (ebook)

  Typeset in Plantin Light by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Mackays

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the United States in 2014 by Running Press Book Publishers,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  US ISBN: 978-0-7624-5466-2

  US Library of Congress Control Number: 2014939682

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  Running Press Book Publishers

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

  Visit us on the web!

  www.runningpress.com

  Printed and bound in the UK

  CONTENTS

  Introduction Scott H. Andrews

  SMALL MAGIC Jay Lake

  KING RAINJOY’S TEARS Chris Willrich

  A RICH FULL WEEK K. J. Parker

  THE WOMAN IN SCARLET Tanith Lee

  FLOTSAM Bradley P. Beaulieu

  A WARRIOR’S DEATH Aliette de Bodard

  A SIEGE OF CRANES Benjamin Rosenbaum

  FOX BONES. MANY USES. Alex Dally MacFarlane

  WHERE VIRTUE LIVES Saladin Ahmed

  THE EFFIGY ENGINE:

  A TALE OF THE RED HATS Scott Lynch

  STRIFE LINGERS IN MEMORY Carrie Vaughn

  A SWEET CALLING Tony Pi

  THE NARCOMANCER N. K. Jemisin

  GOLDEN DAUGHTER, STONE WIFE Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  EFFIGY NIGHTS Yoon Ha Lee

  WEARAWAY AND FLAMBEAU Matthew Hughes

  AT THE EDGE OF DYING Mary Robinette Kowal

  VICI Naomi Novik

  ABJURE THE REALM Elizabeth Bear

  THE WORD OF AZRAEL Matthew David Surridge

  LADY OF THE GHOST WILLOW Richard Parks

  THE SINGING SPEAR James Enge

  SO DEEP THAT THE BOTTOM COULD NOT BE SEEN Genevieve Valentine

  WARRIOR DREAMS Cinda Williams Chima

  THE MAGICIAN AND THE MAID AND OTHER STORIES Christie Yant

  About the Contributors

  Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  Warriors and wizardry: two of the most enduring and resonant archetypes in fantasy.

  The warrior – tracing back to ancient heroes such as Gilgamesh, Arjuna, Beowulf and Gesar, through mid-era institutions like knights, steppe horsemen and samurai, to the modern Western fantasy warrior, in its variants “high” and “low”, Aragorn and Conan. Perhaps it’s a facet of human nature to admire strength and steadfastness. But the warrior archetype also includes everyday figures rising to meet warrior challenges, such as David, Marjuna and Joan of Arc; an earning of the warrior strength and steadfastness through grit and courage.

  The wizard seems to represent an opposite: not brawn but brains; not physical strength but mental acumen; knowledge, manifested as corporeal power and often – but not always – wisdom. Perhaps the wizard arises as a synthesis of the supernatural transformations performed by gods in myth and the venerable societal presence of institutions such as shamans, elders and early thinkers, inventors and alchemists; evolving from human figures of myth such as Daedalus, Väinämöinen and Xuanzang as well as sorcerous semi-divine figures such as Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the djinn and Sun Wukong, through Merlin and Morgan le Fay to the modern Western fantasy wizard Gandalf. Perhaps the wizard arises from the facet of human nature to admire knowledge and ability to perform the supernatural, but also to mistrust or fear it.

  But as fantasy fiction developed into its own genre, the modern Western forms of warrior and wizard have come to dominate the depiction of these archetypes. Although well known and popular, these narrow representations fail to span the universal variety of these archetypes; the range of cultures an
d variations in which tales of warriors and wizards have been told – ancient epics of India, China, Mongolia, mid-era sagas of the Mayans, Norse, Finns and Arabia, to name a mere few.

  Enter the current fantasy short-fiction movement, with its nuanced focus on character and its eye for diverse takes on archetypes and portrayal of traditionally under-represented cultures and perspectives. The short-fiction format provides the current fantasist with a compact and intensified space in which to present, explore, deconstruct or subvert. The prevalence of these archetypes across human culture provides a rich panoply of warrior and wizard traditions to examine; to use to recast the predominant forms or offer under-represented ones, while at once reveling in the enduring allure that makes these archetypes yet resonant.

  The stories in this volume represent the best of this current fantasy short-fiction exploration of universal warriors and wizardry. They are inspired by cultures from around the globe, including medieval Arabia, dynastic Egypt, Imperial China, tribal Europe and feudal Japan, as well as other fantastical worlds that defy categorization. They feature characters of traditionally and non-traditionally represented gender, orientation, origin, society and class. They focus not on these characters’ exploits or might but on their human condition, what it means to be who they are: Yoon Ha Lee’s surgeon who must cut free legendary warriors trapped in the paper of manuscripts, to defend his conquered moon; Benjamin Rosenbaum’s bereaved villager who summons the courage to combat bizarre necromancies in pursuit of the abomination that razed his home; Mary Robinette Kowal’s shaman whose magical power manifests from having his wife strangle him near to death; N. K. Jemisin’s narcomancer, who slips into a land of dreams in order to free the dying from their souls.

  Or the stories pair a warrior and a wizard together: Saladin Ahmed’s duo of grumpy old ghost-hunter and earnest young swordsman ascetic; Richard Parks’s duo of world-weary insightful samurai and reprobate priest; Chris Willrich’s duo of thief (a “low” warrior) and poet (what is a poet if not a wizard of words?); Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s dual protagonists not in concert but at odds: an expatriate sorcerer clashing with the warrior sent to arrest her and seize the bones of her dead golem daughter.

  All these stories not only offer examinations of varied cultures, nuanced characters, and perspectives both traditionally represented and not, but do it while telling a great tale; entertaining, captivating, moving. They use the warrior and wizard archetypes as a starting point to delve into human culture and investigate the human condition. And, in showing us varied characters and diverse cultures and worlds, also teach us something about ourselves and our own. Which may be the greatest wizardry of all.

  Scott H. Andrews

  Editor-in-Chief, Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  SMALL MAGIC

  Jay Lake

  The power of an oath, thought Alain, is a terrible thing. Here he was freezing on the northern frontier, a dozen summers from the last days of his youth, bound by two silver pennies pressed into his fist the day he took the Duke of Bourne’s service.

  Unlike most soldiers, he still had the pennies, somewhere, as yet unspent on whores or wine.

  Alain would probably die here. Everybody had to die somewhere. Alain just wished he had been smart enough to die at home in bed. Where it was warm. Instead of standing brevet corporal to a pair of drunken serjeants, wondering what he would eat during the coming winter. All because he’d sworn by his name, over silver.

  “Last supply caravan was, what, eleven months ago?” Serjeant Odilo, who chewed a local weed he claimed granted him visions of paradise, hawked a clustered wad into the dust. His lips were stained deep blue, as if he were a berry farmer forever sampling his crop. Odilo reminded Alain of some ape from the deepest south, cringing with unspoken pain, captive forever in invisible chains of duty.

  “Been all four seasons,” said Alain, staring at the clotted indigo wad of spit and leaves. Autumn was drawing to a close. Supply was on the minds of every trooper in the First Century.

  Once, the army had seemed better than a narrow life on a little farm with some girl he’d known since childhood. Now, still not even thirty summers old, he felt broken-backed in the Duke’s service. His life had washed him upon this northern shore guarding only seabirds and seals and whatever lurked bright-eyed in the night outside the flickering, fading circle of their watch fires.

  The long, narrow harbor below the cliffs on which the soldiers dwelt was beautiful, winter and summer. It never quite froze, because of the warm waters flowing from the smoking flanks of Mount Abaia to the north and east. In winter, snow blanketed the rocky shores and highlighted the struggling firs along the steep cliffs. Summer brought wildflowers like a shattered rainbow, smeared across the earth with a smell of honey and grass so strong as to make the mules mad.

  The captain’s theory was that the Duke of Bourne had once meant to keep ships in the harbor, to guard these northern waters, and they, First Century of the Fourth Battle of the IV Legion, were sent to guard the landing from the Ice Tribes in their northern fastness. The subaltern had been silent on the matter since long before Alain arrived, preferring to live alone in the foothills to the east. Odilo and his brother serjeant Severus argued about everything from horses to women to the weather, but they wouldn’t discuss First Century’s years-long deployment either.

  “Us as takes the Duke’s coins do His Grace’s bidding,” Odilo was fond of saying over fire and wine. “No questions asked, no duties shirked.”

  Alain was hard-pressed to see what duties they might be shirking. The watchtower had been abandoned by the engineers after laying the foundation courses. One old derrick remained, that Alain and some of the other men had restored to working order the previous summer, just for something to do. A few loose blocks of dressed stone inhabited the camp, mostly tables now, that presumably the First of the Fourth were keeping safe from marauders.

  Some of the younger men – recruits from the last few waves of reinforcements, including the final squad that had brought Alain four years earlier – liked to say they were there to be trained, strengthened, until they grew to champions to be summoned back to the Duke’s Own Guard clothed in honor and glory. But Alain sometimes found eider-fletched arrows broken in the woods that told him a different story, along with soft-soled prints from shoes worn by no soldier of the Duke.

  Alain believed that the absent subaltern trafficked with the Ice Tribes who live to the north, and that the Ice Tribes watched their Century’s little camp. He had never understood what those strange men wanted.

  “I saw powerful magic,” said the captain. “Once.”

  The First Century gathered around a smoky evening fire, each man’s face flickering into a goblin mask.

  “Small magic, too,” the old man continued. “The hardest kind. Anyone with talent can call a storm or set a raging fire, but to hold the flame in your hand, or make the water dance, now that’s rare.”

  Odilo smacked his lips, then found his voice. “Begging your pardon, sir, but magic’s mostly good for tearing a man’s guts out and scaring the kiddies into their graves. Nothing but dark purpose, perfect and evil. Can’t fight it, can’t live with it.”

  “And there you’re wrong.” The captain’s teeth gleamed yellow in the firelight, shaped by his smile. “Every work of magic has a flaw, a fault, some loophole from perfection. Otherwise the gods would not permit it to be. The greater the work, the greater the flaw, if it can be found. Small magic has small flaws.”

  After a moment of fire-crackling silence, the captain con tinued. “It can be of good purpose, too. I saw a wizard on a battlefield down near Southgate, when I was a trooper in the Army of the Black. Light cavalry, my first enlistment, before I was commissioned.

  “We swept across a field just before dawn, aiming to get up in some high trees and screen the flank of that day’s advance. There this fellow was on the field below us, his face all aglow like those jellyfish our harbor gets in the spring. My serjeant sent me out of cover to s
ee what the lay was.” The captain’s smile widened. “I was disposable, you might say, in those days.”

  The men dutifully laughed.

  “Anyway, there this little wizard was, barely tall as my shoulder, in robes I wouldn’t hang on a beggar, and he had a man’s life in his hands.” The captain shook his head. “Don’t know how else to put it.

  “He had this little misty ball, no bigger than a child’s head. Though I was on a horse thirty feet away, I could see a whole world inside, a baby in its nappies, a boy plucking apples, dinners and fairs and going for a soldier and his whole life until he was struck down by a spear that previous day on our battlefield.

  “So I says to the wizard, ‘What are you about, man? There’ll be killing here soon.’ And he looks at me the way a lamb looks at the slaughterman with the hammer and says with that slippery wizard echo in his voice, ‘If I can only put one back into the world, my victory is still greater than your entire army.’”

  The fire crackled for a while, silence of the night the only response to the captain’s story, until Odilo spat again. “Did you run the little sharp-tongue through? Can’t trust them wizards.”

  The captain just looked sad, then bid the men good evening and shuffled off to his hut.

  “Alain, get up,” hissed Odilo, hitting him again.

  Until the frosts came, Alain often forsook the hut he shared with three other soldiers to sleep atop the abandoned foundation courses of the tower. It kept him closer to the stars, and slightly diminished the influence of the blackflies. He hoped.

  Alain glared at Odilo through sleep-clouded eyes, seeing dawn’s barest stain above the mountains to the east. “Wha . . . ? I don’ ha’ mornin’ watch.”

  “Captain’s dead,” Odilo said quietly. No lip-smacking this morning. “His heart, maybe. Don’t look like he been killed or nothing. But still as a stone, and not much warmer.”

  Amid a profound twinge of sadness – no father to his men, still the captain did serve as something of a befuddled uncle – Alain found his voice, and his curiosity. “I’m a brevet corporal, you’re the serjeant. Why are you waking me?”