Most of the novel is pretty much just people sitting in taverns and talking in this really cool story world. Just kidding! There are some fuckin’ epic battles and fights that take place in Son of the Black Sword (‘cause if there weren’t, I’m pretty much fired at this point). Corriea obviously loves a good fight and has taken great pains to make the timing and details of the fight scenes in Son of the Black Sword just right to kick your arse. There are a great variety of frays here. At first I worried that Ashok would be fighting faceless demons for 400+ pages, but not so, my friend—the many fights and battles are staged between well-motivated characters and factions from all walks of life, giving the story world a spectrum of violence that can stand up with the best grimdark. Prepare for a shower of skull shards, broken teeth, and bloody clots of brain. Bring an umbrella.
Underlying the brutality of Son of the Black Sword, however, is a reasonably interesting theme that pits the Law against what’s morally right. Should we do what we do because it’s the law or because it’s right? It’s not earth-shatteringly original but it provides a nice depth to the story’s conflicts. Similarly, moments that pit the Law against religion nicely complement the conflict of Law and justice. It’s complex enough to form the background for a many-threaded story.
The wow factor, though, in Son of the Black Sword comes from a faction of wizards who seek to emerge from secrecy by possessing Angruvadal, Ashok’s sword. Luckily for the reader, they are not wizards with pointy hats who clumsily summon something-or-other by waving plastic wands. Wizards in Lok are mercenary assassins and shapeshifters whose magic is both mysterious and illegal. More importantly, when they walk out a window into thin air or fly down like a cluster of vultures, a sense of wonder, the true measure of good SFF, is conjured. Again, not necessarily su generis, but vivid and entertaining.
There are just a few nagging hangnails in Son of the Black Sword that keep me from recommending it without reservations. First, there’s Ashok. When I began reading I hoped the entire novel would be in his (third-person-close) point of view. He’s a sympathetic hero and a total badarse. By halfway through, however, I realized that might not be a good idea because at times he is so inflexible that I wondered if he’s an idiot. Additionally, there are moments when Correia’s overall pretty good writing could have been better. For example, when Ashok, simmering for vengeance, returns to House Vadal after many years away, he says, of all things, ‘I have returned!’ Well, duh? Also there is some cheesy hyperbolic nonsense like ‘The world turned to blood’ and ‘he dragged his meat shield [a dead body]…’ and ‘the morning filled once more with flying death [arrows]’. This kind of purple prose always diminishes my enjoyment of a story and makes me wonder if I should just go have a beer instead.
Nevertheless, Son of the Black Sword is an engrossing read that should entertain fans of grimdark with its main character caught in a crucible between justice and the Law; its gruesome and well-choreographed fights; its wide array of complicated, well-motivated bad guys and diverse viewpoint characters; and its pitiless and complex story world. I recommend reading this one, book one in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series.
Son of the Black Sword was published by Baen Books on 15 October, 2015.[GdM]
Excerpt: Blood of Innocents
By Mitchell Hogan
Caldan placed Bells on the ground as gently as he could. Her head lolled to the side, and she stirred a fraction before going quiet. They were a few hours from Anasoma, and she’d remained unconscious throughout the journey.
He stretched his back and suppressed a curse. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon, and he didn’t like the thought of walking far in the rain.
Ahead of him, Amerdan was leading Elpidia and Miranda along a dirt track between newly sown fields. Behind them, Rennen was standing still, facing back the way they had come. Amerdan looked back and gave a short wave before jogging toward a farmhouse. Caldan didn’t know if they could trust a strange homestead, but they needed supplies, and this was an opportunity to lay their hands on some.
Stifling a groan, Caldan picked Bells up again and resumed trudging along. She wriggled in his grasp, so much so that he could barely hold on to her. She mumbled something unintelligible, and then her eyes opened.
Caldan clamped a hand over her mouth. “Shh,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Apparently she made no such promises.
Bells clawed at his eyes, and Caldan jerked his face away. He dropped her and grasped her arm, twisting it behind her back, managing to keep his hand covering her mouth. Bells whimpered and went limp, sinking to her knees. Caldan let himself follow her down as the nails of her free hand dug into his arm. He bared his teeth at the pain but didn’t let her go. Instead, he shoved her face into the dirt and forced his knee into the small of her back.
He wanted to throttle her for what she’d done to Miranda. So great was the desire, his hand was on the back of her neck before he realized what he was doing.
Bells breathed heavily, and air whistled through her nostrils. She squirmed, trying to free herself, but Caldan held on tight. Choking back a sob, he released her neck. He couldn’t kill her, not yet, not before he’d found out how to cure Miranda. After that, though . . .
“Listen!” Caldan said to Bells. “You’re not getting away. We’ve taken all your craftings. There are five of us and one of you. It will go easier for you if you calm down.”
Bells’s struggles ceased.
“Good,” he said. “Now, you’re going to stand up, and we’re going to keep walking. Nod if you agree.”
For a moment, Caldan thought Bells was going to fight him again, but eventually she nodded.
“I’m going to take my hand from your mouth. There’s no one around, so no point in yelling.”
Bells nodded once. Caldan slowly removed his hand and twisted her around, grabbing both her arms. She stared at him with pure venom.
“You’re a strong one, aren’t you?” she said.
“When I have to be,” Caldan replied. With any luck, she’d think he knew what he was doing and wouldn’t try to escape again.
“It won’t matter in the end. I’m going to kill you all.”
Blood of Innocents by Mitchell Hogan is in stores now $24.99AUD (ISBN: 9781460750704 HarperCollins).
Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang
T.R. Napper
Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang was originally published in Writers of the Future Vol.31 from Galaxy Press.
The restaurant smelled of anchovies and cigarettes. Lynn hated both, but still, it reminded her of home. Comforting and familiar. The anchovies in the sauce wouldn’t be real of course, and the tobacco almost certainly illegal.
It was three in the afternoon, but the room was still pretty much full. Patrons sipped glasses of tea, shrouded in the smoke and dusk, mumbling to each other in low-pitched conversation. Blinds were down against the windows, the only light emanating from shaded red lanterns hanging from the ceiling, casting the faces around her in crimson twilight.
The only light, that is, bar a government advertisement on the far wall. The picture of a decaying wooden boat on the high seas, the inhabitants of which were anonymous splotches of yellow staring over a thin railing. The holotype glow of the deep blue ocean was overwhelmed by the intensity of the red block letters stamped over the picture:
ILLEGAL
Everyday, middle-of-the-road fascism: it just had no imagination.
A small bell above the door tinkled as it opened, spearing an unwelcome slat of white sunlight into the room. Heat, too, gusting in to swirl the smoke and swing the lanterns. A shadow filled the doorframe, pausing perhaps to adjust its eyes to the gloom within. Maybe just pausing for effect.
An ancient Vietnamese woman behind the back counter came to life, pointing a gnarled finger at the new customer. ‘Má Măy. Dóng Cưả Lai đi.’ [‘Close that door. Your Mother!’]
The silhouette shut the door, emerging
from the light into a broad-shouldered man wearing an immaculate tailored suit, deep-blue necktie, and an air of contempt for the room he’d just stepped into. He removed the black homburg from his head and ran a hand over his gleaming, jet-black hair, combed straight back. As he did so, Lynn glimpsed a tattoo snaking up under his sleeve.
The man walked to the back counter. Lynn turned to watch as he did, adjusting her silver nose ring with thumb and forefinger. He spoke in hushed tones with the old woman, glanced back at Lynn, then turned and started speaking again rapidly. The grandmother waved him away before disappearing through a beaded doorway to the kitchen beyond.
He walked back to her table, hat in hand, face set. ‘Mister Vu?’
‘Vu Thi Lynn.’ She paused. ‘And that’s a Miz, Mister Nguyen.’
He made a show of looking her over. Her hair in particular came in for close inspection, dyed, as it was, the hue of a fresh-pressed silver bar and molded into a spiked Mohawk. She sported a tiny black leather jacket and a pair of thin eyebrows that could fire withering disdain at fifty paces.
His shoulders were hunched, like a boxer’s. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘What are you having difficulty processing, Mister Nguyen? That I’m young, a woman, or,’ she waved at hand at his suit, ‘that I don’t walk around with the word “gangster” tattooed on my damn forehead?’
His eyes narrowed, lips pressed together. Then the flicker of anger was gone. ‘Perhaps you don’t know who I am.’
‘All I know is you’re late.’
Mister Nguyen placed his hat on the table and played with the large gold ring on his index finger, looking down at her with a studied grimness.
Lynn stifled a sigh at the posturing. ‘Look, we have business to attend to, and I was led to believe you were a businessman.’ She indicated the seat opposite her. ‘Let’s get to work.’
He nodded, as though to himself, scanning the room as he took his seat. Appeals to business usually worked with these people, imagining, as they did, that they were part of some traditional brand of professional criminality stretching back through time to the Binh Xuyen of Saigon or the Painters and Dockers Union of Melbourne.
‘We doing this here?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve never been here before. There are a hundred places like this in Cabramatta. Neither of us need return here again.’
He looked around the room once more and took a palmscreen out of his pocket. He mumbled into it, pressed his thumb against a pad on the front, and then pulled a thin tube from the top. It unrolled into a translucent, wafer-thin flexiscreen. Soft green icons glowed across its surface. He looked at her. ‘So, what’s the rush?’
‘No questions, Mister Nguyen.’
He clenched his jaw. He knew he couldn’t argue with this statement of professionalism either. ‘The transaction will take thirty minutes to complete.’
‘Thirty minutes?’
Nguyen drew a cigar from the inner pocket of his jacket, and set about clipping the end with a steel cigar cutter. ‘The government tracks every freewave signal going into Vietnam. Our transaction can’t be direct.’ He put the cigar in his mouth, took his time lighting it with a heavy gold lighter. He snapped it shut and puffed out a thick cloud of smoke. ‘We relay through a few different countries first before ending up at a front factory in Laos, right near the Vietnamese border. My contact there gets word across the border to a small town on the other side: Vinh Quang.’ He pointed down at the flexi-screen with the end of his cigar. ‘The money for the equipment—that’s easy, will only take a few minutes. Unofficially, the Australians don’t give a shit about private funds going to buy weapons for the Viet Minh. The money for people is tougher to get through clean. You know—the whole refugee thing.’
Lynn nodded. She glanced over at the government ad on the wall, red letters glowing fierce and eternal. Yeah. She knew.
Money, of course, was always an exception. Five million dollars and you and your family would be granted a “business residency” in Australia. The government funneled the arrivals into Cabramatta and the nearby suburbs, very quietly, so the general public wouldn’t get too heated up about it.
The rest who arrived by boat were thrown into internment camps for a few months before being returned to Vietnam, where inevitably they ended up in Chinese prisoner-of-war camps.
Nguyen placed the cigar cutter and lighter on the scratched tabletop. ‘You insisted on being here when the money went through. It takes thirty minutes.’
‘You know the saying,’ she said, ‘trust everyone, but cut the cards.’
He shrugged. ‘Sure. I need to keep the line open, verify who I am, confirm we’re not a part of some Chinese sting operation. If we miss a call, I fail to enter a pass code, they burn the link.’
She nodded.
He puffed on his cigar like a man who believed he was in charge. ‘You said you wanted to move twenty million. Minus, of course, fifteen percent for my fee.’
‘You told me the fee was ten percent.’
‘That was before you criticized my clothes.’
‘You look like a cross between a pimp and a wet echidna. I think I went easy on you.’
His eyes went hard. He glanced at her hair, opened his mouth to retort, then shook his head. ‘I did some asking around. Everyone has heard about you. High profile means a higher risk.’
‘You didn’t even know whether I was a man or a woman before today.’
‘The authorities could be observing you.’
‘They’re not.’
He inhaled deeply on the cigar, blew the smoke directly into her face. She closed her eyes for a moment, felt her hand clench into a fist.
Nguyen was oblivious. ‘Your regular guy got done for tax evasion. I have the contacts. And you’re in a hurry.’ He opened his hands and smiled. ‘The fee is fifteen percent.’
Lynn glanced around the room. A couple of faces were turned in her direction. She shook her head, a small shake—one that could be mistaken for Lynn trying to get the smoke out of her eyes.
She looked back at him. ‘I want a business residency for two families. That’s ten million. The rest goes to weapons.’
‘I assume these families are on an Australian government watch list. They’ll need new identities?’
She raised an eyebrow in the universal signal for obviously.
‘You know these people?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Then why are you getting them out?’
‘You appear to be asking questions again. Now what did I say about that?’
He brought his hand down hard on the plastic tabletop, causing the condiments on the table to chatter. He took a deep breath. ‘No respect.’
Lynn sipped her tea, watching him over the lip of the glass.
He took a long drag on his cigar and returned the stare. Then he blinked away whatever he wanted to say and began manipulating the glowing symbols on the flexiscreen, whispering into it from time to time.
Unobserved, Lynn allowed herself a small smile.
Through the nanos attached to her optic nerves, the c-glyph could broadcast data and images that only she could see. Some people would have multiple freewave screens open all hours of the day. Watching the betting markets or reality television or point-of-view pornography. As a general rule, if you were in conversation with someone and their eyes glazed over, or even closed, they were finding some facile freewave feed more interesting than your company.
Lynn tended to keep her visuals uncluttered. At the moment all she had loaded up was the timestamp in glowing green numerals that appeared, to her brain, about a foot away in the top left corner of her vision.
15:33
She marked the time. Thirty minutes to Vinh Quang.
They waited. She turned and signaled the grandmother, ordered a late lunch. A soft chime sounded a few minutes later. Nguyen closed his eyes and put a finger to the c-glyph behind his left ear, listening as it whispered di
rectly into his eardrum. He murmured a response, paused, and then mumbled again.
He opened his eyes a few second later. ‘The money for the equipment is through.’
She nodded, touched her own c-glyph, fingers against the small circle of cool steel. ‘Anh Dung?’ She listened to the reply, nodded once.
‘Everything check out?’ Nguyen asked.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll know if it doesn’t.’
Nguyen slurped his tea and settled into his chair, content to watch the slow burn of his cigar. The minutes stretched out. Nguyen didn’t try to engage her in conversation; the first transaction had gone through smoothly: things were going well.
Until the bell above the door tinkled again.
Two men entered. As the blinding light returned to the dusk of the room, she could see that they weren’t from around here. White men with cheap fedoras, crumpled suits, and the empty gaze of detached professionalism. Government men. They scanned the room, their eyes stopping when they found Lynn.
She held her breath, moved her hand to her belt buckle.
They walked right up to the table, removing their hats as they approached. ‘Mister Nguyen Van Cam?’ Lynn’s hand stopped, hovering above the lip of her jeans, she breathed out slowly.
Mister Nguyen looked up. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘I’m Agent Taylor, Immigration Enforcement Agency.’ He flipped out a badge featuring an Australian crest, emu and kangaroo glinting chrome in the red haze. He pointed to the man next to him. ‘This is Agent Baker.’
Grimdark Magazine Issue #6 ePub Page 4
