Bards and Sages Quarterly (April 2022)

By Julie Ann Dawson, AJ Cunder, Joseph Vasicek and 6 more

Now in our 14th year of publication, the Bards and Sages Quarterly strives to bring fans of speculative fiction a variety of new and established voices to enjoy. Each issue features an eclectic range of styles and voices to delight audiences. This issue features work by César Barroso, AJ Cunder, Scott Harper, Andrew Knighton, Sandy Parson, Heather Sabel Preston,  H. A. Titus, and Joe Vasicek.

 

Some of the stories in this issue:

 

When a new serum provides people with the chance to relive their memories, one man attempts to relive a dream instead and faces unintended consequences in Nostalgen.

 

An Uber driver becomes the unwitting rideshare of choice for the undead community in Uber for the Undead.

 

A king crosses into the realm of death to save his realm from an immortal sorceress in In the Company of Corpses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201686970

Julie Ann Dawson

Julie Ann Dawson is an author, editor, publisher, RPG designer, and advocate for writers who may occasionally require the services of someone with access to Force Lightning (and in case it was not obvious, a bit of a geek). Her work has appeared in a variety of print and digital media, including such diverse publications as the New Jersey Review of Literature, Lucidity, Black Bough, Poetry Magazine, Gareth Blackmore’s Unusual Tales, Demonground, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. In 2002 she started her own publishing company, Bards and Sages. The company has gone from having two titles to over one hundred titles between their print and digital products. In 2009, she launched the Bards and Sages Quarterly, a literary journal of speculative fiction. Since 2012, she has served as a judge for the IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Book preview

In the Company of Corpses

By Scott Harper

IT WAS DEAD, AN UNBREATHING Corpse, as it lurched forward on withered limbs with an unsteady but surprisingly rapid gait, one leg dragging in the mud as it reached out with bony claws. It marched with its fellow dead, carrion brothers as they made their way inexorably on the trail through the dark woods toward the ebony castle perched atop a hill on the horizon. They marched in tireless unison, invulnerable to fatigue or discomfort or fear, mile after mile under the stormy sky, their armor grey and rusted and broken, their sallow skin rotting and torn. Many a swollen purple tongue lolled from gaping, broken-toothed maws, shriveled eyeballs dangling from black sockets. A rancid trail of squirming maggots lay on the ground, giving mute testament to their passing. They were determined to make it to the castle, their only goal, for the Master commanded it. 

And the Corpse hazarded a glance back, its stiff neck audibly cracking, and saw the Master walking just behind it, tall and regal, pale and beautiful and dead, but not dead like the Corpse and its brothers. Where their skin was putrid and decaying, the Master’s was smooth and unlined, like white marble carefully sculpted by a superlative artist. She moved with swiftness and precision and uncanny agility, appearing to float over the ground while the brothers shuffled and staggered without grace. Brilliant emerald energy blazed from her eyes as she channeled the charnel winds of death magic to her command. The Master grinned with confidence, revealing sharp teeth. Light reflected from her impeccably polished crimson armor and the massive broadsword she carried in her tiny hands.

A vast swarm of ravens flew overhead, summoned by the Master to provide an enormous shadow under which the dead army found shelter from the scorching rays of the hot sun, light which hastened decay in the dead. The carrion brothers surged forward at the Master’s behest, always forward with relentless unthinking determination, toward the castle and the ashlar stone wall surrounding it. The Corpse realized that it was the Master’s will that fueled it, that her Undead power animated the steps it and the others took—that without the Master, it was dead and useless and belonged in the ground. There was no sense of self or hint of emotion, any trace of the man it had once been. It lived merely to serve another, and that other’s purpose was wrath and conquest.

Walking beside the Master was an old woman in a sable robe. Her disheveled white hair bounced around her thin shoulders as she tried to keep up with the breakneck pace of the Master. The woman regarded the Corpse with a probing look, the set of her mouth making her appear to be pleading for its attention; for a moment, the Corpse thought he recognized her, that there was something amicably familiar about her face. And then the sensation was gone almost as quickly as it had arisen, as the Corpse’s addled brain lost focus and it resumed its steady march with the other dead.

And as the Corpse looked forward, it began to recognize familiar landmarks and trails—the spires that crested from the castle top, thrusting in defiance toward the turbulent heavens; the hawthorn trees that lined the roadway, leading up to the ominous iron gate that barred entrance to the Kingdom.

The Kingdom...the Corpse became confused at the notion. At one time in the not-so-distant past, the Kingdom had meant something to it, a sense of obligation and duty; but concentrating was hard now, more challenging than it could ever recall, its deliberations scattered and disordered and subsumed to the Master’s commands. The thought of the Kingdom had momentarily distracted it, but the Corpse could not fathom why.

And now the Corpse saw the other army moving towards them, living men with ruddy skins and heavy armor and silvered swords and flaming torches. They bore a crest that further sidetracked the Corpse from the Master’s wishes—a red crest bearing the insignia of a sword and serpent, the serpent’s body intertwined around the blade. Again the Corpse felt a twinge of dim recognition and nagging curiosity but could not come to clarity.

As the ground shook under the hooves of scores of armored cavalry, the Master cursed the brothers, the harsh set of her jawline juxtaposed with the pale beauty of her face.

Damn your dead eyes! Make haste, you putrescent curs!

The Corpse again noticed the old woman in black regarding him. She chanted in a guttural voice, harnessing dark magic to support and maintain the Master’s resurrection spell. Still, her eyes were focused on the Corpse, with the same expression of expectation and pleading. The Corpse looked away toward the looming battle.

Grim-faced archers lined the stone battlements of the wall. Upon a shouted command, they loosed their arrows into the carrion army, metal broadheads puncturing unliving tissue and organs, slowing the dead’s march but causing only minor damage. In response, the Master howled and snarled, her sharp teeth champing, as she summoned dire wolves from the surrounding dark forest. The vicious attackers harried the quick army’s flanks, avoiding lance thrusts as they savaged the horses’ legs. When the horses collapsed, the wolf packs swarmed in and tore the fallen knights to bloody pieces.

The two armies collided with the sound of a thunderclap. Having never encountered the living dead before, the horses reared and neighed in fright before tossing their riders. The Corpse listened to the screams of the living as the dead tore into them, skewering them on rusted blades or ripping at them with claws and blackened, rancid teeth. The vestigial flickers of awareness granted to the carrion brothers by the Master extended only to the impetus to kill.

The knights fought back, their armor and cuirasses affording them some protection as they drove their blades deep into rotting flesh. But the dead were resilient, invulnerable to pain, and ignored blows that would kill a living man. The knights soon realized the only way to stop the walking dead was to dismember and burn them.

A knight confronted the Corpse, shouting a battle cry with sword held high in gauntleted hands. He swung down, smashing through the Corpse’s discolored armor and biting deep into its shoulder.

It felt no pain as it seized the sword and cast it far away. The Corpse’s skeletal claws raked across the knight’s iron breastplate, scouring the metal and knocking him off his feet. The knight landed hard on his helmeted head and lost consciousness.

The Corpse scrabbled forward like a huge spider, straddling the senseless man and ripping off his gorget as it prepared to deliver the killing blow. It paused for a moment, taking in the vast scope of the battle. Both sides had suffered significant casualties. Knights and their horses lay unmoving on the ground, their bodies covered in blood and gore, some being fed upon by wolves and ravens. Many of the carrion brothers had become true dead again as well, cut into pieces by swords and axes, the still-moving parts splashed with oil before being set on fire and reduced to ashes that blew away