Northern dreaming

I think I might want to say a bit about the main characters in the novels I have published so far, and the one I’m rewriting right now (it was originally written as a novel which would have been too short for any of the traditional publishers, and since this was before the ebook/self-publishing revolution I chopped it down to novella length and tried a couple of magazine markets with it. Didn’t sell, and frankly, it had not been all that well shortened so no miracle. But I remember liking the original. Which I have lost. So I’m rewriting the thing now as, again, a short novel.).

Mostly all of these longer works have been born out of musings about heroes, and love interests, and sidekicks, and some of the other character… should I say stereotypes?

Laura, the hero of Fourth Sword, does become a traditional hero, although it is not easy for her and does not happen fast. She was the one born from speculating what it might really be like, for somebody relatively normal and not well prepared, to be forced into that role.

As for the other two main characters –

Well, I think Tikka from The Demons of Khemas is very much the traditional love interest. The whole story started when I thought what a Conan the Cimmerian story might look like from the point of view of the girl. Except Conan, and his ilk, of course pretty much always left the girl behind after the adventure. Good enough for a princess, I suppose, but less so for a tavern wench, especially one who has no close family or other such strong support network. The kind of worlds most of the barbarian heroes live in might be interesting for a big, strong and well trained guy as a place to be adventuring in, and somewhere between quite pleasant and tolerable for a gorgeous princess or noble born lady who could count, most times, on a large group of big, strong men willing to protect her, but could easily turn into a living hell for people who are not rich, not well endowed in the muscles department and do not have large support groups, like a big family or clan or a closely knit village or anything else like that. A lone, pretty girl would probably be toast sooner or later. Unless she found a protector, and a permanent one, not somebody who just saves her once and then beds her, possibly leaving her as a future unwed mom, before riding off into the sunset. So Tikka gets something of an actual love story with her barbarian.

And since the story is from her POV she also had to have a bit more to do than most of the normal barbarian love interests or it might have become a rather boring story in which the girl pines, maybe has a few tantrums, looks nice, is threatened, gets rescued, has sex, and waits a lot while most of the action happens to the guy (also, I do not write sex scenes. I don’t think I could write good ones, based on the unfortunate fact that I almost invariably find the ones I read boring. Visual presentations can work for me, if I like the actors and the scene is well done, or sometimes if I find the art pleasing when it’s a comic, but written just doesn’t. So I really have no idea what would be a good, well written sex scene.)

But yes, The Demons of Khemas has the love interest as the main character.

And the one I’m working on now has the sidekick.

Again, I got curious when contemplating the role of sidekicks, or other supporting characters for the hero in fiction. Why would somebody settle for being the permanent number two? What would it be like? Okay, one alternative is of course the scenario where the helper has a bad case of hero worship, and is also permanently in awe of the hero, and because of that is willing to devote his life to the hero, probably considering himself lucky because he’s the one who has managed to get so close to this wonderful being. But what if he was more normal, and ambitious? What if he also was somebody who actually could perhaps be a hero in his own right if he left and settled among more normal people? Somebody who also is actually pretty awesome himself, or at least smart and competent, but can’t really shine as long as he stays with the hero because the hero happens to be somebody truly extraordinary, somebody who can outperform almost anybody merely human? Would there actually be some rewards for being just the helper in that case?

So I got this young man who is working with a member of an advanced separate species of humans turned into superhumans, and is not exactly completely happy with the situation. And of course things will go south, and the kid gets his chance to be the hero for a little while.

I like stories with somewhat less used character types. While I was writing one of the early scenes in Fourth Sword, about Laura working as a cleaner, well, that came partly because I have sometimes played with the idea of a mystery story where the sleuth is the cleaner. What would be more natural job for an aspiring amateur sleuth to stumble on something suspicious than that? Lots of stories where the heroes look for clues while pretending to be cleaners, not so many – I may have read about one or two, but I don’t think I ever managed to locate the actual book or books, just read some mention about it, or them, somewhere – starting with a real cleaner finding something suspicious and starting to dig into it. Well, unless we are talking about crime scene cleaners, there has been at least one movie and one television series with that scenario. But yes, character types who usually are just in supporting roles, or main characters who have some less glamorous occupation than the usual ones, or maybe characters who are older or in some other ways a bit less typical – I like those stories so I also like to write them. Not to complete exclusion of the usual characters types, I also happen to be rather fond of some cliches, but also with those I do like them even more if there is some sort of twist included. 😉

Okay, this might be of interest to some of you. The novel was downloaded about 400 times, of those a bit over 300 from the main site Amazon.com, over fifty from Amazon uk and a few times from others, exceptions being Amazon br, it. and es. I have no idea whether that is good or bad for a beginner. From what I have seen some of the better established writers, especially those who can also get on the Amazon bestseller lists with actual sales, can get several thousand downloads when they put their books on the free promos, but I haven’t been able to find any figures for first timers like myself (the short stories have been available since last fall, but Fourth Sword and The Demons of Khemas are my first novels, I have never had anything published through any of the traditional channels and I haven’t done anything like write for any fan fiction sites. All I have written have, until now, stayed in the drawer and hard drive. So nobody knows I exist.).

I got, so far, two four star reviews, very nice ones except one complained that I don’t know how to use commas (true enough, I have no bloody idea what would be the correct grammatical way to use them in this language so I mostly just place them on those spots where it feels, or would feel natural to pause if I were to speak the sentence) and the other that there had been a couple of grammatical errors which had momentarily dropped him/her out of the story. Well, considering I am not a native speaker I suppose that’s not too bad.

Best place on the free downloads lists (that I noticed, I checked about three or four times each day) was 1881, and at that point it was the 31 most downloaded in the category ‘Sword and Sorcery’ and 38 in ‘Epic Fantasy’. It got on higher spots on those two fantasy lists two days earlier, 29 for ‘Sword and Sorcery’ and 34 for ‘Epic Fantasy, but then it was a bit lower on the general list, number 1962. Again, no idea if that is good or bad or average performance.

Okay, interesting. From what I have read I might start getting some noticeable sales once I either have several more novels out, or with time, of course providing my writing is entertaining enough that enough of those people who do read them like them enough to recommend them, or mention them from time to time to others. At this point I have no exposure so no matter what the quality of my stories, even if they are good people won’t come to buy because they simply don’t know that I exist, and pretty much the only way they will find me is if they stumble on my stories accidentally. More material might remedy that, or time, and it probably will need both lots more material and a lot more time. Or, if I’m unlucky, it may not happen no matter what I do. This whole thing does seem to be something of a lottery, only with the provision that if your material actually is good – or entertaining, which is not necessarily the same thing, and with this entertaining is presumably the more important quality – your chances are a lot better. 🙂

So, time will tell.

I got impatient and published a bit earlier than originally intended. So I’m probably not going to put up the 5th and 6th chapter now, mainly because I’m a tad worried about Amazon’s attitude. All my stories and novels are in the KDP Select program which means they should not be available anywhere else, and as long as Amazon Kindle is the only platform for them I will keep them in Select.  About four chapters is what is available with the peek in function on Amazon so maybe it’s better to stick to that.

Now the more widely the stories are available the better it is is the general recommendation which I agree with and I have every intention to get mine on other ebook platforms, and as PODs and audiobooks, but I’m in no hurry and I think it will probably be a bit easier to do more at a time. I have learned the imobi conversion, but even with that things seem to change a little bit every time I do it so it always takes some time, so I’d rather spend the time to learn the others at a time when I can then spread wider at one stroke. Maybe when I have about five novels or so. Which I might get to even by the end of this summer if I stay busy. I have been writing for a while, and while ‘Fourth Sword’ was the only whole novel I had ready and so took only some heavy editing, I have several of these part done ones, three about half written, of which one is almost written but with some connecting scenes and the end missing, and a few more where I have written some key scenes and have a pretty good idea of the plot. Two of them are science fiction, of the space opera type, one is a sequel to ‘Fourth Sword’, other a sequel to ‘The Demons of Khemas’, and the third a novel length story of the Wampyrs (but that has to wait until I have written the two short stories which should come before it). And there are also a few almost done short stories. So yes, I think that for the immediate future I will concentrate on writing more stories and leave the published ones just to KDP, and during that time they will stay on the Select program. And then starting either next winter, or some time during the year after that, I will for a little while use my time to learning those other conversions and doing them.

But, for now, may I present: Fourth Sword, a portal fantasy novel about a down on her luck Finnish-American woman who gets yanked into a world where everything she ever dreamed of is real, and finds she’d much rather had kept on just watching all that on the silver screen or reading about them in books since when monsters and enemy soldiers who have never even heard of the Geneva Conventions exist having just swords to fight them is not much fun – even less for somebody who has never learned how to use a sword, and is just an out of shape woman (I do have a few very good female warriors here, but lets face it, when it comes to physical fighting women are at a disadvantage, and while there are always outliers in a pre-gunpowder society they would have to be something of a rarity. And since I have always rather disliked the miraculous upgrades unless they really are magic Laura gets none. She will, however, learn some magic and get in shape – running around and existing mostly on travel rations for several months would be liable to do that  ;)).

http://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Sword-ebook/dp/B00DCCYMG6/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371039006&sr=1-7

And yep, I’m not particularly good with the picture  manipulation programs, only decent addition to the picture I managed with that were those light splotches. They do, however, fit the world of the novel. Well, one more thing I should learn better.

Oh dear, this self publishing hobby is full time work, especially when you are trying to do all of it yourself – writing, painting, learning how to use all these damn computer programs… 😀 If this ever starts to get where I might be tempted to give up my day job, well, that would have to be good enough money that I can both live on it comfortably and be able to hire pros to do about everything else but the writing part, and maybe the painting although I would probably then keep that as a separate hobby. I’m decent but there are lots better cover artists around so I would probably rather use their work if I could afford to pay for that.

And the 4th chapter. I may post a couple of more, but once again I will probably take them off once I publish the novel. We’ll see. Right now I’m not quite sure how long it will take before I can publish it, although the main thing missing now is just the cover, I think everything else is starting to be in fairly good shape.

Oh yes, I’m still thinking I’ll use Fourth Sword as the name.
Chapter 4

Laura froze. She stared at the chained boy, waiting for him to yell and alert everybody to her presence. But he didn’t. He just stared back at her for a second or two, swallowed and shook his head, then stole a quick look down the hall, looked back at her and made a few frantic gestures with his hands, like he was trying to push her away.

No mistaking what that meant, not really.

Laura withdrew back, then put her back against the wall and leaned on it, panting.

He’s telling me to leave… instead of asking me for help he’s telling me to leave.

That kid was one of the prisoners, the last in a chained line of sacrificial victims. Somebody in a very bad situation. She was a total stranger to him. Yet he seemed to worry about her safety.

She couldn’t just leave him there. She couldn’t. Maybe if it had been a grown man… but not a kid.

Late teens, maybe, oh god, he’s only a boy.

But what could she do?

Think, girl, think!

Oh, Conan… I wish you were real. And here.

There had to be something

Okay, those collars the prisoners were wearing – she’d have to take another look. Maybe if the system was what she had thought it was…

She looked into the hall again. The boy looked back at her, grimaced and waved his hands at her again. Laura attempted a smile, gave it up and looked at his collar, then pulled back to the other side of the doorway and sighed in relief.

This was going to be easy. For her anyway. The collars weren’t solid, consisting of two halves with holes on the ends, and joined together on both sides by a circular piece of metal . On one side the joining piece was bigger and the chain had been threaded through it. Then the chain went through a ring bolted to the wall, and then to the next prisoner’s collar.

All she had to do was to free the end from her side of the wall. If the prisoners would be able to get rid of the chain, well, they’d still have the collars but they would be otherwise free.

She didn’t know how much that would help. And probably only a few would be able to thread the chain through all those rings before the bad guys would notice. But it might still give the boy and maybe at least a few of his companions some sort of a chance.

That might also lead to the bad guys noticing her.

Or it might help me. Confusion could be good for me too.

She hoped.

She stuffed the big dagger she had been gripping in her hand the whole time back into her bag, turned to the pin holding the chain and withdrew it, then, taking the end of the chain out with her other hand, put the pin back.

Then she looked at the weapons on the wall in front of her and took down one of the swords before going back to the doorway. And smiled grimly.

She supposed that the boy and the few others at the end of the line would most probably just try to sneak away. But if they didn’t, if they chose to fight – then this would be one, rather final way to find out whether the people in the big hall were playing some sort of a game. If the prisoners attacked the priests and the worshippers with these weapons, made of steel, very real and more than sharp enough, they wouldn’t be playacting.

Not that she really believed in that alternative anymore. The screams she had been hearing were too real. Besides, mixed in the smells of smoke and incense was that stink of burning flesh, and she had seen the priests throwing something into the big fire in the center of their stage. Something taken from the body of a man.

Laura looked again into the hall. The kid was still looking towards the doorway, as were two of the men behind him now, having felt the chain slacken. She offered the boy first the end of the chain, then the sword. He looked at her face, then down to the sword and the chain for the time of a heartbeat, drew in a deep breath, nodded and took them. He forwarded the sword to the next man in line and then, while Laura still looked, slid the chain, in slow motion, through the ring on the wall on her side, then through the ring on his collar.

None in the crowd of  gray-clad worshippers seemed to have so far noticed what was going on. Their chanting was loud enough to hide the sounds, their attention was keen on what was happening on the stage, and the boy and several of the men ahead of him were behind their backs anyway. The – priests or whatever – on the stage hadn’t raised any alarm yet either. Laura prayed it would stay that way as long as possible.

As the boy turned to take the chain trough the ring between him and the burly giant next to him Laura went back for more weapons. She wasn’t quite sure why, she had not really planned to do more than what she had already done.

But she did it anyway. Who knew, maybe all those ‘you’re the hero’ thoughts during the last couple of hours – or however long it had been – were taking effect.

She nearly dropped the sword she took down next for her hands had started to shake, but got hold of herself and next took something that looked a bit like a scythe, only with the blade not at a 90 degree angle from the handle, but straight, into her other hand and took them back to the doorway. The boy was a bit closer to her this time, already reaching his hand into the weapons room to get what she had brought him.

Laura swallowed. Maybe the prisoners were going to fight.

She thought it might be a good time for her to start sneaking away. Yet again she surprised herself by going instead to get more weapons for the prisoners.

Dumb…

Maybe it was only because she really had no idea what else to do. Getting out of there would have been a better idea, if she had had any idea about which way to go to accomplish that. But she didn’t. Knowing nothing she was as liable to run straight into the hands of the bad guys as away from them.

A rather large part of one of the walls was empty before the alarm came. Laura rushed to the doorway holding a halberd, well, at least she thought the thing was called that, and a sword and was nearly run over by three of the prisoners, two of whom stopped and took the weapons from her while the third went to the wall and took down a two-bladed battle ax which would have made Conan proud. She jumped out of his  way, then stood against the wall as several more of his fellows came in for weapons.

There were sounds of fighting close to the doorway, but after a while it sounded as if the fray was moving more towards the middle of the hall.

Now was definitely the time to start making herself a priority again.

There were now no more prisoners coming for weapons. Either they all had one or they were cut off.

Laura realized she was starting to panic. She didn’t want to go into that hall but understood suddenly that neither did she want to be left behind if those men were successful in fighting their way to freedom. She didn’t like the thought of being left here alone at all. She didn’t think the robed characters would be friendly towards her if they found her and figured she had had something to do with what had happened.

Probably they wouldn’t be nice to her even if they didn’t find that out. Somehow they hadn’t given the impression of being that type of people.

Okay. Think.

So she wanted to hook up with those prisoners. So she’d had to find out what was going on in the great hall. Right now. This was likely to be the only chance she’d get, if she didn’t go with them now she would probably not find them again.

Laura took a deep breath, then once again looked into the hall and lost her last hope that it might be some sort of an act right then and there.

Those men were killing each other for real.

The prisoners were doing well, but they were moving away from her. Their goal seemed to be two big open doors she had not noticed before, on account that they were on that side of the hall where the opening from where she had first looked down here was, right above the doors.

There didn’t seem to be many of the prisoners near her anymore.

Laura felt her panic raising again. No way was she going to be left here on her own!

What she did next probably wasn’t smart and Laura knew it, but she was fast getting past the point of being able to act smart. She wasn’t able to think clearly at all, even near clearly, anymore. Things had started to move too fast. It was fear which drove her into the hall, running towards the main group of the prisoners and trying her best to avoid the fighting going on all around her. She managed to get almost to the middle of the hall before she found her way towards the doors cut off by a group of three of the prisoners fighting five of the gray-robes and stopped, undecided which way to go as every direction seemed to be full of men swinging weapons, making her feel like she was that proverbial deer caught by the headlights of a truck on a highway.

That was when the smells of the fight finally got to her. Freshly spilled blood, shit and piss. She had seen too many war and horror movies for what she had been seeing and hearing to have affected her that much so far, even while she had known it was all real that knowledge had been sort of academic. She had been shocked but it had still felt like it was some distance away. Like none of what was happening was really relevant to her, however horrible in itself.

It was the stink which finally made it all hit home.

People were dying all around her. She herself might die here, any moment.

And Laura froze. Completely.

For what felt like an eternity she just stood there, staring around herself with wide eyes. Then her eyes met and locked with those of one of the gray-robes. He was standing over a dead prisoner, holding a sword, with blood on his robe and on his face. To her he looked absurdly young and soft. Had she seen him in almost any other circumstances she would have thought him harmless. Unless she had noticed those eyes. So cold, they would have made her fear him even without the bloody sword.

He stared at her for a moment, then his eyes widened, as if in recognition. He screamed and attacked, running towards Laura, but she still couldn’t move.

She felt weird.

She was about to die, killed by a man she had never seen before, a priest, or a worshipper, of some absurd devil-worshipping cult she knew nothing about, in a place she didn’t recognize, not even knowing how she had ended here. And for some reason she got the impression that the reason why he was going to kill her was something personal…

“Oh shit…”

For an endless moment she stood there, staring at the man running at her and feeling like a prize idiot, for she still couldn’t move, not even while some part of her mind was yelling at her to do something, anything, but still she just stood there.

Then there was a yell from behind her, somebody yanked on her arm and sent her reeling against one of the pillars. She almost fell but regained her feet just in time to turn and see her rescuer lock swords with the young gray-robe.

What followed was probably a rather spectacular show of swordsmanship. Unfortunately Laura was not in a suitable state of mind to appreciate what she was seeing. She clung to the pillar, feeling numb and trying to get a grip of herself. And stared at the man who had just saved her life.

After a moment the ex-prisoner defending her was joined by two of his companions and the gray-robe took off. Her three defenders let him go.

Laura was still staring at the man who had saved her, just barely noticing the two others.

One of the newcomers was the young blond boy she had seen first, and Laura felt a faint relief to find him still alive. Her defender turned to exchange a few words with the boy, then nodded at him and turned towards her, gave her a glare and strode off. The young blond and his companion, an older man – on second thought, maybe just old – with silver white beard and hair the same color, walked the few steps to Laura. She tore her eyes away from the third man now striding into the melee around them and focused at the two now in front of her.

It dawned to her, the first clear thought after the bald guy had attacked her, that she hadn’t understood one word of what those men had been saying to each other, even if she had heard their short discussion clearly. What was worse, the language hadn’t sounded even remotely familiar.

The older man said something to her. She shook her head. When she didn’t react in any other way he simply took her by the hand and started to drag her towards those open doors.

Laura followed him, feeling numb.

Oh my god he was handsome…

Her savior. So maybe that bit shouldn’t have been her main priority right now. But ‘he’s handsome’ was a much more comfortable thing to concentrate on than anything else she could think about right now.

And he had saved her life.

Oh shit!

She had just been saved by a tall, dark and very handsome warrior.

Laura nearly started to giggle, then bit her mouth a bit. If she went that way she knew she’d end up screaming at some point.

But it was kind of funny.

After a few moments of stumbling after the man dragging her she mentally shook herself. Right, thinking about how handsome that man had been, or how funny the whole thing had been, in its absurd way, might be a nice substitute for thinking about the reality around her, but she couldn’t afford to try and shut out what was happening. If she wanted to stay alive she’d have to stay focused on what was going on.

She was losing it. Fast.

Correction. She had already lost it, totally. Time to try and get a grip again. She had to.

Some hero… more like the damsel in distress. Except I’m not pretty enough for that role, really. So… comic relief?

In spite of her efforts the fight after that was still more or less lost to her. There was a confusion of moving shapes and noises. The old man dragged her through it, and she followed him as best as she could, trying to stay as close to him and the boy as possible, most of the time just barely able to keep on her feet. Couple of times the man and the boy exchanged sword strokes with some of the enemies. Both of them seemed to be skilled with their swords. As far as she could tell. They stayed alive, anyway, while at least a couple of their opponents didn’t.

At one point she felt a yank as somebody grabbed the strap of her bag and pulled her towards him, and when she turned to look she saw one of the gray-robes with a big knife. While she didn’t manage to do more than to scream it was enough. The whitebeard turned and hit the gray-robe with his fist, and the slash intended for her missed its target and just severed the strap of her bag. Then the boy stepped between her and the gray-robe, and the gray-robe stepped back to avoid the boy’s sword, having only the knife, and Laura was pulled away by the whitebeard while the boy followed.

As they were dragging her away she looked back and could see the man and her bag hanging from his hand. Laura was sure she’d miss that bag and all that had been inside it, sometime later. Now she was only glad she still had her life.

She continued her stumbling half-walk, half-run after her guardians.

All around her there were men lying on the floor, some dead, some wounded. Most of them wore gray robes. All the prisoners she saw who were down seemed to be dead. Laura thought that probably they had taken their wounded with them. That seemed like a comforting thought.

They came to the big doors. A few of the ex-prisoners were defending them against an equally small group of gray-robes.

Laura wondered where all the head-priests, the ones in black and red, had disappeared. Actually, most of those in gray robes were gone now too. There had been a long line of the chained prisoners when she had looked into the hall from the upper passageway, but there had been at least something like three to five times as many gray robed men in the worshipping crowd. There weren’t many to be seen now. There were also too few corpses, she felt sure, to account for all of them. The rest were just gone.

As they went through the doors she decided that whatever had happened, as long as the missing priests and their congregation stayed missing she wouldn’t worry about it.

Come to think of it, she didn’t remember seeing any of the gray-robes wearing anything like swords. Maybe most of them had been unarmed. That would explain why they had ran.

After the doors came a short corridor and her protectors started running. Fortunately they ran only the length of that passage, as Laura was feeling barely able to walk, much less run.

It was night outside. The other end opened into a moonlit yard, which seemed to her to be overflowing with men and horses.

To her dismay she was taken to one of the animals and thrown on its back. It shied. She grabbed for its neck and nearly fell off. Did they expect her to ride it?

The damn thing doesn’t even have a saddle!

“Hey!” she yelled to the whitebeard who had already turned his back, “Wait a minute! I can’t ride!”

While the men’s language was strange to her Laura still hoped that maybe at least some of them would understand English. Of course right then they wouldn’t need to understand her words to see what the problem was. As the old man turned the horse obliged and shied again as she frantically embraced its neck.

The whitebeard came back and took hold of the horse’s head, looked for a moment at the way she was hanging onto it, about half off by now actually, said something that sounded like a curse, pushed her back up and then turned his head and yelled something. After a few seconds a dark-haired youth came running to him. They exchanged a few words, the boy grinned at her and then vaulted effortlessly up behind her, took a strong grip of her waist and said something. Laura hoped it was something comforting, not something like ‘dolt’. She also hoped he would be able to keep her on the horse, as well as himself. The arrangement didn’t seem very practical to her, not on an unsaddled horse.

She was very glad the men hadn’t decided just to dump her.

Trying not to move more than her head she took a new look around her. A few of the horses did have saddles, most didn’t, many didn’t even have bridles on them, a fact which didn’t seem to bother the men already astride, or in the process of mounting, much. She yearned for one of the saddled animals, then realized that those few seemed to be reserved for the wounded. Why only a few saddles? Except that maybe these horses belonged to the congregation, and maybe the men she was with hadn’t found all the saddles.

Or worse, they didn’t think they had the time to saddle all of the horses.

Almost immediately after that they took off, all of them. The yard was enclosed by a low, broken wall, with forest behind it. There were no doors barring the gate and they rode through it, to a road going through the forest. The moonlight was bright, but the road was narrow and well shadowed by trees. Yet they rode fast, the horses kept to a full canter most of the time.

Laura guessed there might be pursuit coming after them.

She didn’t have much time to worry about that right then though, she had trouble enough as things were. The kid behind her was surprisingly strong, quite able to keep them both astride, but that didn’t stop her from holding on to the horse with a death grip. She strained her legs on its sides and her hands on its mane and felt every one of its strides on her behind. Soon her whole body was hurting, and her ass was killing her.

The ride went on, and on, and on. When Laura was able to think at all she just hoped that the whole thing was a nightmare, for nightmares do end. Their ride didn’t, not for what felt like an eternity. Sometimes they would leave the road and ride on some smaller paths through the forest, their speed reduced, and more and more reduced to a walk, then they’d come to the road, or a road, and canter for a while. Sometimes there was the splash of water from under them, once they crossed a stream big enough that she not only noticed it before they went wading but also got her feet wet as the water came up well to the belly of the horse.

When they finally stopped the moon was close to setting, having disappeared some time ago behind the trees. They had ridden the last moments in an almost total darkness, the horses slowly picking their way on the narrow track they had been on.

Laura dimly wondered what the time was. She had had a wristwatch, but had put it into the bag for work so now it was lost with all the other things which had been in her bag.

She wondered whether they were safe yet, or had stopped only because now it was too dark to ride on.

There were no preparations for a camp, they simply got off their horses and more or less lay down on the spot. Her co-rider helped her down, nearly falling under her as she dropped ungracefully from the horse’s back, then helped her to walk beneath a big tree, where they found a deep layer of dry leaves. Somebody threw her something, which, when she felt it in the dark, turned out to be either a thick cape or a blanket, smelling strongly of horse. She drew it tightly around herself, then lay down on the leaves. They seemed to be freshly fallen.

It’s spring. This should be spring.

She lay there, for a moment unable to sleep, looking unthinking towards the only direction where she could see something. The moon was there, behind trees, their boles showing dark against the light. After some moments she could see it moving into a gap between them.

Laura stared at the moon for several minutes before she realized that there was something very wrong. She had spent enough nights staring at the moon.

This one wasn’t the one she knew.

Very similar, but… there were unmistakable differences. No Mare Crisium for one thing. Some other things seemed to be wrong too. She would have needed a telescope to be sure.

It looked bigger than it should, too.

One thing she was sure of now.

She wasn’t anywhere near home.

It took her a long time to fall asleep. When she finally did the last things she sensed were that smell of a horse and the salty taste of her own tears.

Or actually first novel, I wrote this before The Demons, but I have needed to edit it a lot more.

I am pretty busy right now trying to get this novel into some sort of publishable shape, so posting is going to be somewhat slow for a while. But I am going to be posting a few sample chapters of this novel too. Ah, the nameless one… well, it doesn’t even quite have a name yet, I have been calling it On Dragon Paths so far but I think I am going to change that. Maybe.

Anyway, the first chapter. Which I am not quite happy with, it’s mostly an infodump and gives some of the background in order to make what follows understandable – the story is a portal fantasy, and the first version was written completely from the viewpoint of the protagonist, an Earth woman who ends up in some other, parallel world where magic works, and you began to understand the world at the same rate as she did, and it just didn’t work very well, so after a while I added the parts from the viewpoints of some of the other characters. But I don’t think I am going to began a complete dismantling at this point. Maybe I should, the general advice is, after all, that you should only put forth your best work.

On the other hand I have been playing with this so damn long already that starting that all over again just doesn’t feel right. It is what it is. I don’t know if polishing will make that much of a difference now. Complete rewrite might, but that I am not going to do.

But anyway, here we go:

 
Chapter 1

A few hours earlier, somewhere else:

The shackles chafed his wrists and neck, the night air froze on his bare skin. Otherwise he was in good shape. The Mershan would not hurt them, not yet. Not before the ceremony.

Prince Theran, Keeper of the Black Sword and Defender of the Realm – and with a score of other pompous titles none of which he much liked – walked on.

He tried to hope. The enemy’s custom was to give some sort of a fighting chance for their sacrificial victims. It was supposed to raise the energy – hope, anger, despair, to have them all present in a victim was much better than a victim who had already given up, so the Mershan would play with their victims. At least in theory that might give him and his men the break they needed. They would be kept well enough before that, no beatings and enough food and water. Again, for the sake of the power the enemy hoped to raise… Most of his men who had survived the capture were unhurt so if only a couple of them could break free the odds might not be completely impossible. Especially as most of the Mershan present during these ceremonies, if the knowledge their spies had given them was right, didn’t carry weapons.

Theran bent his neck to hide the fleeting, bitter smile.

Yes, and if he and his men could just sprout wings about now…

He couldn’t believe in hope. But he would not give up, not before they tore his heart out. He had beaten the odds before.

Of course the odds had never been quite this bad before.

At least the Black Sword was safe. He rarely carried it unless the mission was one where he thought he would need it. The Swords were highly visible to magic, hiding one took constant work, and he had not thought he’d have much use for magic when inspecting the Borderland Dukedoms on the far side of the Dragon Mountains as a representative of the High King, as was the custom to do once every year. Those dukedoms were in the more dangerous parts of the borderlands, sure, but there hadn’t been all that much enemy activity for generations even here, and his party had been thought to be sufficiently large and well armed. So he hadn’t taken the Sword. It was still safe.

And Lania… she had been one of the warriors who had stayed to guard the Sword. The thought that she was safe offered some comfort.

He wondered if the Mershan knew who he was. They had not implied that they did. Of course whether they knew or not didn’t matter much anymore. They knew how strong his Talent was. Like the Sword that was something hard to hide, impossible after they had gotten this close to him.

There were a few others with exceptionally strong Talent among his men. That might have been what had lured the Mershan to come after them in the first place, whether they had recognized him or not. Far more power could be taken by killing the Talented than from the more ordinary sacrifices.

What worried him the most was that the Mershan had not done anything like this for so long… there were not supposed to go that far inside the Free Lands, not in this day and age.

What was going on? Were the Free Lands as a whole at risk? Or just the Dukedoms?

He hoped there would have been some way to warn his people. But they had been too well warded. Perhaps…

The line of prisoners was brought to a halt so abruptly that Theran almost fell. An enemy soldier near him guffawed and Theran glared at him, noting absently that the boots the man was wearing were his. Had been his.

When he looked past the man he saw that they had reached a clearing in the forest, one surrounded by a broken wall. There was a low hill to one side. The rising moon was near full, its light bright enough to show the door leading into the hill clearly.

Well, it looked like they had arrived. End of the line.

He had been schooled to conceal his emotions since he was a child. He was confident nobody could have told what they were at the moment. That was good. Because he was very, very scared, and probably the only thing left for him was to die with dignity. That much he still owed to his men.

And to himself.

***

Los Angeles:

“You done yet, uh, it was Laura, right?”

Laura Thomas, down on the floor on her knees, looked up at the tired face of her coworker, an older black woman, and nodded.

“Almost. Just have to get a few more of these chewing gum stains off. You go ahead and leave if you’re done.” She reached with her left hand to push a few of the escaped strands of her long hair – sort of blond at the roots, very blond at the tips,  badly in need of some hairdresser care – away from her face, ended up wiping some sweat off too. Not that the work was all that tiring – well, it could be, but in truth her sweating might have had more to do with her weight. Which was a bit more than it should have been.

The other woman hesitated, then nodded. “You remember everything you should do when you leave?”

“Yes.”

“Well, all right, but remember you have to be out in half an hour.”

“Don’t worry,” Laura said and smiled.

The woman didn’t look totally convinced but smiled back anyway.

Fine job, Laura thought, cleaning up the messes of supermarket customers. Not that she hadn’t had worse ones. Cleaning cheap hotel rooms, for example. At least here she wouldn’t have to deal with things like used condoms or vomit. Not often, anyway.

On the other hand, here she wouldn’t find tips left on the table either.

Wonderful life… What the hell has my guardian angel been doing lately, probably off somewhere drinking… or that job order got misplaced years ago.

She waved goodbye to the woman. She shouldn’t actually have left Laura alone, her being the new one and not considered quite trustworthy yet. The older cleaner had family though, kids waiting at home. She was in a hurry. Laura had no pressing needs. Except for sleep.

Laura couldn’t remember the woman’s name. She had been told it on the first night, a couple of days ago, but she’d forgotten and been too ashamed of that to ask again. She’d have to figure some way to find it out if this work became permanent. Like she had been sort of promised. If she proved herself out.

Proved that I’m willing to work my ass off for pay which isn’t enough by itself to keep me in my apartment and eating, and that I’m law-abiding enough that I won’t steal even that food which is past its ‘best before’ date and will be thrown away anyway.

She took a few steps to the next gum stain and kneeled again, feeling disgusted. This one was fresh. Less easy to get off than the older, well hardened ones.

Well, this helps to pay the bills. As long as I also have that waitressing job.

At least there the pay was almost decent. An actual restaurant, at least according to the owner, but definitely on the low end of the scale. But yes, they did pay the staff fairly well, and the tips could be good. She just couldn’t get enough hours there to make a living with only that job. Even with the tips.

Her knees hurt. She decided for the umpteenth time to try and get rid of at least some of that excess weight, it was beginning to affect her freedom of movement. Not to mention her social life. Or her job prospects… at the restaurant her boss had been given hints about that lately. Her figure had been really great once, a classic hourglass, with the  muscles of a trained dancer. With that figure guys had once mostly seemed to ignore the fact that she pretty much was what usually got called ‘horse-faced’. Not really ugly, mind you, just not quite model material… but with that figure she had been a stunner, in spite of her less that beautiful face.

Now… she hadn’t danced for years. Now she was getting past the point where a polite way to describe her figure would be ‘full’ well into where the only fitting word was just fat. And men didn’t seem to be particularly interested anymore. At least not those types of men she would have liked to meet. Who’d be interested in a fat and horse-faced menial worker?

Not that she had any time for social life. And even when she worked most of the time she was awake there never seemed to be enough money. She should never have taken those loans… only back then she had thought she had a really bright future.

Laura sighed and tried to push her hair out of her eyes once again. She really wanted that visit to a hairdresser, but she wasn’t sure if she could afford it this month. Or next one, either. Her real color was blond but a rather dull and sort of dirty looking blond. As a golden blonde she looked good. Or at least she had used to look good with that color, who knew if it did fit her that well now.

Maybe she should start thinking whether she might be able to handle a third job again. A part time one, only on two or three days during the week maybe? Finding one was of course a different matter.

She had studied prelaw once. Before things had started to go to hell. Sometimes she still hoped she could get out of the hole her life had become. Other times she just hoped to endure it. Simply paying those bills she couldn’t avoid, food, rent, electricity, gas for her old car, was hard enough, and when you added trying to pay off that goddamned old student loan, and the other one, it meant working most of the time she was awake and that left very little chance for improving things. She kept trying to find better paying jobs, but while she did have enough education for at least something she never seemed to be able to give a good enough impression at the interviews she managed to get. She had tried to study, but most of the time she was simply too tired.

Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself, there are people much worse off…

Laura grinned at herself – well, she was sure that complaining, mental or vocal, was probably good for you, at least sometimes, but maybe she really had done enough of that for tonight – then bent her head and stopped the familiar mental jeremiad, concentrating again on the job.

Several chewing gum stains later Laura finally rushed out of the employees’ door, having gotten out with only a few minutes to spare. After a nervous look around the badly lit parking lot she headed towards her old Toyota, one of the few cars left there, digging for the keys as she walked.

Maybe she wouldn’t go to bed right away. There was that paperback novel she had found in the used books store… a little bit of derring-do by a well-muscled hero hunting a dragon might be exactly what she needed to unwind tonight.

Maybe just a chapter or two.

And then, with no warning, it happened.

***

Elsewhere:

The sound was high, an unbearably sweet rising and falling note. Young Prince Aran, High King Arakan’s second son and heir to the Crown, turned restlessly in his sleep, then awoke with a start. His eyes searched the room before finally setting on the large black sword on the table opposite his bed. Slowly he got up and walked to the table.

The sound was still echoing around the large bedchamber. Somebody, probably one of his bodyguards, was shouting something from the other side of the door. He paid the voice no attention.

The sound was definitely coming from the sword. He reached for it and then paused. He had never touched the Black Sword before, and it was something more than just a weapon. Yet there was supposed to be no danger.

The boy took up the sword, then drew it from its scabbard. He just barely managed to do that. He was only eleven, after all, and this was a grown man’s weapon. When the sword was out the sound got clearer, and then abruptly ended after a triumphant high note. He almost dropped it.

The pounding on the door got louder.

“I’m fine,” he shouted, then carefully lowered the sword back on the silk-covered table. “Wait just a moment, I’m coming!”

There were several anxious faces on the other side, all his nightshift bodyguards and several of the other guardsmen working on the same floor. Even one of the servant girls, holding a broom she had probably grabbed from one of the closets for a weapon. Nobody would be cleaning the floors at this hour of the night. The boy almost laughed at the fierce look on her face. Well, she was well trained, but ayway… it just looked funny. It took an effort to keep his face serious.

“Your Highness…”

“I’m fine, as I said before. But something probably very important has happened. Go and wake the king. I think his presence is required here.” He thought he was sounding quite grown-up and felt a fleeting sense of satisfaction before something occurred to him.

“Jemar,” he pointed at a guard who had often worked as his valet when he was traveling. “Come inside and help me get dressed.”

Okay, I think I may finally be able to start getting back to art, slowly. Strength exercises and stretching and work positioning and all that stuff seems to be taking effect. Arm and shoulder still gets sore on some mornings, but at least it’s not sore the whole time and I can keep my hand steady when I hold a pen or a brush, at least for a while. I still have some problems with shaking, but I’m not sure how much is caused by physical problems at this point, or if just being nervous that it might happen will sometimes cause that now.

But until I have something to show might as well talk about something. Like names. Interesting question when you are writing, and one of the more difficult ones for me. Frankly, I have to confess that I think I mostly suck when it comes to thinking up names for fantasy characters.

Or places. Like Khemas.

Confession: I used a fantasy name generator. Actually, several. I don’t have them bookmarked, I just use some search engine when I get stuck looking for a name for something. Occasionally a name does just pop into my mind, and then I usually do use it, after a bit of searching – looks like almost any random string of letters can be found as a name, or a word, in some language, and I would be embarrassed if I found I had named some big strapping hero something which means, say, ‘poop’ in some language somewhere, even if that happened to be one spoken by less than half a million people in the back of beyond and not likely to be known by anybody else but the native speakers (and that can’t actually be counted on any more, while most readers will probably just accept an unknown name as the name of the character and not think about it, there are some – like me – who occasionally get the itch to start playing with those search engines, and if it’s on the internet you will probably stumble across it sooner or later). Or the heroine who gets described as the most beautiful thing ever and desired by all will be given a name which is supposed to be mysterious and alluring and exotic and is the equivalent of Daisy in some language spoken by several million people. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but still, it does, doesn’t it?

But yes, I use those name generators fairly often. And when I do I don’t always do the internet search for any unfortunate meanings or associations the name which comes up might have. I guess I’m counting on the ‘but it came from a name generator’ defense if something will at some point come up. Well, khemas seems to actually exist as a verb, maybe meaning ‘silent’ in Hindi, and Khamis is an Arabic boy’s name, meaning something like ‘armed forces’. Neither which quite hits what the city is supposed to be like. But at least they are not that far off either.

One other way of naming I have is to use Finnish words, or sometimes less used Finnish names, usually with slight distortions. Finnish is a small language, there are about five million speakers, so I’d presume names based on it should sound suitably alien to most people.

So, tikka is the Finnish word for woodpecker. I thought it suited a woman with notably bright red hair pretty well. Grath, on the other hand, is one of those name generator alternatives. Anya is of course a name in use, also in Finland if slightly differently written, Anja, which I thought about using first but then ended with the more often used Russian spelling, she just didn’t quite feel like an Anja to me (no offense to Russians, the character may be a bit dumb but that doesn’t mean I think Russians are that, it has more to do with her sex appeal, I have known a few Anjas and they were all a bit more motherly types – hm, actually, that fits too, she is motherly). And Mambi, again the name generator.

One good point about names in The Demons of Khemas is that the cast are supposed to be a rather mixed bunch. I thought of something like one of the hubs of commerce on the Silk Road, a place where lots of different nationalities came for trade, and many also stayed. So the names are a mixed lot too. I have most of the story of what happens to Tikka, Grath and Para next (para is also a Finnish word, an old one meaning the helper of a witch, a familiar spirit) already, but this story will take them somewhere with a much less diverse population, so I may have some problems as now we are entering a place where the names should kind of sound like they are all of the same language, or at the most there may be a character or two who belong to some other group, and their names should then stand out a bit as different. Much harder to do that. Linguistics is not among my strong points. I guess I will go for Finnish with those names, considering this is going to be the place Tikka is originally from.

Or maybe I will just go for the name generators again… well, I have some time to think about this, first I am going to edit a finished novel, and then finish the one I started writing a few months ago – both featuring people and places where several different ethnicities with different languages mix, so if the names are all over the place that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.

I think I may try to fit a few short stories in there somewhere too. I have about five to six months left before the dark comes and SAD will start to bother me again.

And chapter 6.

Editing has been going well, I may be able to put this for sale in a couple of days. I’ll have a post then.

14.5. Okay, as said, I’m removing a couple of these, this and the 5th chapter now that the novel is on sale. And yep, I do know they can undoubtedly be found somewhere on the net if you look for them. 🙂 I still think I may publish at least one short novel at some point here before I put it up for sale, even with the risk I may then at some point find it, or parts of it, plagiarized somewhere. That is, by the way, the one thing which does make me pissed – piracy not so much, you could look at that as advertizing as long as the pirates also have the real author’s name attached, but plagiarists, that is something I really, really don’t like (trying to stay polite here. My real feelings can not be expressed in a ladylike manner).