Willy called. “Ehtá a punto de morir, Sorcerer. I seen his leg, and it look about rotted off already. How he come this far on it, I don’t even know. Tell you this, though. If you don’t work some kind of sorcery on him quick, Faedou will be stone dead fore the night come.”
Demane looked out onto the Road. Someone lay there stretched out on blankets just where the brothers had knelt. It was like peering down into deep running water, trying to see across the veil between the Road and Wildeeps. From here, he couldn’t make out who lay there, or whether that brother stirred, or his chest still rose and fell.
Demane stood and wiped either eye with a wrist. “Let me see what I could do. Y’all carry him to me. The Wildeeps won’t hurt none of you. This whole place is my house now.” Afraid, the brothers dithered. Demane spoke again, in tones to get them jumping. “All right! Don’t just stand there stupid! Bring him here.” As they moved to obey Demane gave Xho Xho a little push back towards the others. “Help em carry, little man. You and Walead can lift one corner of the blankets together.”
Like a son too often told before, Be patient, your father’s coming back soon, Xho Xho clung to the Sorcerer’s hand. “Wait. Tell me something, though,” the boy said. “What happen to the captain?”
Demane might have answered, but a fit of palsy took his face. His mouth worked soundlessly. He shook his head.
• • • •
The shroud of leaves frays and a brightness ahead dapples the jungle. There are glimpses of the jagged stump rising into sunlight. He can hear but not yet see the jook-toothed tiger growling, the captain and his harsh, controlled pants. All while Demane runs, he shouts too, I’m coming. Hang on. There was another one. I killed it. He bursts out into hot glare. Captain and the tiger are a hundred long paces up, tangling where other trees overshadow the compost of leaf and woodrot remaining of the felled tree’s canopy. Captain has lost his spear and fights with a sword. It’s always been sheathed across his back, although he but rarely draws it. A sword’s very much the wrong weapon, requiring far too close quarters, for the power and claws of a jukiere. Captain’s spear must have broken. He wouldn’t just throw it aside, he wouldn’t.
First one paw and then the other bats at him. As sails of a ship belly in the wind, when tacking hard off one course to another, Captain bows deeply over the claws, and as fast again, bows at a slightly altered angle. His robe’s much slashed but person still unscathed. As if down some abyss in freefall, Captain drops. The tiger leaps over and misses pinning him flat. He’s up off the ground, afoot when she wheels on him with chops snapping. He skips back blindly from the fangs and bringing around his sword twohanded, all his might in the blow, arrests the jukiere’s whirling lunge. This lays another thin red stripe through the cat’s darkbrindled fur. She flinches, though not much. That cut and the others are weirdly shallow. The wizard won’t be killed without a better weapon than the one Captain holds . . . Demane should have been at his side all along. Isa. Hang on, Isa. Captain’s attention splits for an instant. He must see Demane coming through the light and hear his shouts. That much he’s almost sure of.
Demane turns an ankle in foul grease: Some meatstuff or slick runoff, once a pig or man. He springs up and hobbles on. If delayed at all, it’s half an instant, if hurt he’s hardly slower than before: still, these charges will figure among those he tenders against himself on nights hereafter, when once more sitting up in sleepless reverie. The man you could have saved if you’d gotten him sooner under your care lies struggling in his agonies. And now, only at the very end, he turns to your voice and chooses to trust. There you kneel and whisper, urging him toward the one choice life still offers. He takes it. There’s a look to that, as grace suffuses a wracked visage. Let go, Faedou. It’s all right now. Let go. Even the best of healers come to learn this look. It steals then over the captain’s face. He quits his brilliant efforts and stops moving within easy reach of teeth and claws. The sword slips from his hand. Demane shouts. The distance is chancy, his throwing arm badly wounded, but still he hurls the spear.
¹ Tiefer alt. A voice to sing the pale sour out of lemons, sing them luscious orange; as much the sensations of eros on the body as mere sound in the ears.
* * *
Kai Ashante Wilson’s stories, “Super Bass” and “The Devil in America,” can be read for free online at Tor.com; and his story, “Kaiju maximus®,” at Fantasy-magazine.com. His novella A Taste of Honey is available for purchase from all fine e-book purveyors. His novelette, «Légendaire.», can be read in theanthology Stories for Chip. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Nebula, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards, with his novella The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps winning the Crawford Award for best debut novel of 2015. Kai Ashante Wilson lives in New York City.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all of the backers and readers of the first volume last year and this year. This is all for you, and I hope you enjoy the book.
Thank you to all the writers who allowed me to reprint their amazing work for this anthology. Thank you to Galen Dara for creating the incredible original art for the cover of the book—a good cover is a powerful thing to draw the reader’s eye. Thank you to Polgarus Studios for the interior layout and Pat R. Steiner for the cover layout.
Thank you to Skyboat Media for putting together another excellent audiobook.
My friends in the Dire Turtle writing group, thank you as ever for your support and enthusiasm. (And thanks for letting me stay in the group even though I’ve barely found the time to write!)
Thank you for those who offered rewards for the Kickstarter: Erica L. Satifka, Martin L. Shoemaker, Sunil Patel, and Naomi Kritzer.
Many people helped spread the word, including Mike Glyer at File770, Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, and the good folks at Escape Artists.
Thank you all, so much.
—David Steffen—
Backer Appreciation
This is a partial list of those who backed the Kickstarter campaign. There were many others, and they all made this project possible.
Abital and Daryl
Kate Baker
Steve Barnett
Jonathan D. Beer
The Bradley-Ryder Family
Stephen Burridge
CJ Cabourne
Caeoltoiri
Neil Campbell
Ian Chung
Rich Coker
Crazy Lady Used Books
Dani Daly
Peter Derdeyn
Doire
Eboni Dunbar
Awn Elming
Doug Engstrom
Lynne Everett
Bryan Feir
Ken Finlayson
Maurice Forrester
Alain Fournier
D. Franklin
Rob Funk
Mr. Glass
Steve Gold
Sara Chatfield Gordon
Jim Gotaas
Elyse M Grasso
Arthur Green
Cathy Green
Andrew Hatchell
Benjamin Hausman
Hannah Hunter
Jaciad2
K.G. Jewell
Madelyn Jirasek
Fred W. Johnson
Luke Johnson
Heather Rose Jones
Rachael K. Jones
Ken Josenhans
Michelle Kurrle
Michael Lehrman
Lennhoff Family
Jay Lofstead
Ted Logan
Alberto Lopez-Espinosa
Janice Mars
Robert McCoy
E.M. Middel
Simon Monk
Frankie Mundens
R.K. Nickel
Emilie Nouveau
Aimee Ogden
Fred Paffhausen
Akshal S. Patel
David Perlmutter
Ruth Sochard Pitt
Aaron Pound
Salvatore L. Puma
RBC
Loren Rhoads
Nadyne Richmond
Robot Bob
Hiroshi M. Sasaki
Michael Scholl
Michael Scott Shappe
Jeff Soesbe
Brian Vander Veen
Bonnie Warford
Izaak Weiss
Jon White
Shara S. White
John Winkelman
Peter Y. Wong
About the Editor
David Steffen is an editor, writer, publisher, and software engineer. He has edited and written for the Diabolical Plots zine since its launch in 2008, and which started publishing new fiction in 2015. He is most well-known for co-founding and administering The Submission Grinder, a free web tool that helps writers find markets for their fiction and to find response time statistics about those markets, as well as for last year’s first Long List Anthology. His fiction has been published in many great venues, including Escape Pod, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Drabblecast, Podcastle, AE, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders.