EDITOR’S NOTE
Between CLIFFHANGER! and the release of HONOR AMONG ROGUES, I’ve gotten a little attention and been blessed to get involved with a few different authors and publishers. Recently, I was gifted an ARC of author R.K. Olson’s COLD STEEL AND BLACK HEARTS, a collection of his Sword & Sorcery tales featuring the hero Dar the Spear Slayer.
Readers may recall R.K. Olson’s superb DEVIL OR RED ROCK CANYON, and I can attest that Olson brings the same energy to his S&S tales. Dar is reminescent of The Unsullied in that he is part of a sect of warriors that uphold a fighting tradition as closely as cults might follow religion. Likewise, he is seemingly the last of his sect, which reminds me of Mathyus in the orginal SCORPION KING film (which is wonderful and you can’t tell me otherwise). This is all very classic Sword & Sorcery stuff, blending thrilling adventure and chilling horror in a recognizable, yet unique package that is infinitely readable for genre fans and Pulp fans alike.
DISTRUB NOT THE OLD GODS: Part 1
by R.K. Olson
The Spearslayer Sect was annihilated at the Battle of the Golga River by the treachery of the Three-Nation Alliance. A thousand years of knowledge and the perfection of the warrior arts lost in a single afternoon. A handful survived to join the Spearslayer diaspora. Here is one SpearSlayer’s story.
THE VASE DESERT darkness swallowed the feeble campfire light; its weak circle of light smothered by the inky blackness of the starless night. Cool night breezes carried vague unholy murmurings of the old, long-forgotten Gods.
A lean figure wrapped in a cloak remained motionless in the fading light of the dying campfire. The guttering fire revealed a dark, narrow face half hidden by shadow with close-cropped black hair. He carried a staff and wore a leather jerkin over a linen shirt.
Two men lay still near the fire with sightless eyes wide open to the night sky. They looked like two piles of twisted, rumpled garments in the dying light. Only the iron tang of fresh blood hinted at the recent swift death delivered by cold steel.
Thieves? Bounty hunters? Assassins? He’d never know. He had shared his fire and food. Their sudden attack was clumsy and over in seconds.
He knew they must not find him near here in the morning light. A night journey was an unpleasant thought to the man.
The glowing green eyes of a desert wolf danced around the fading circle of campfire light, drawn by the scent of blood.
He slung a canteen over his shoulder, turned and left the dying circle of light.
The night was thick with a weight that seemed to press down on him. The crunch of his sandals on the hard, rocky desert ground was the only sound in the Stygian darkness. He kept a steady, rhythmic pace, like someone used to walking.
He knew he had gone in the right direction when the sharp salt smell of the sea replaced the cold pinch of the desert’s night air. A welcome breeze swept in off the unseen ocean, and the clouds parted like a curtain, exposing a riot of stars, and illuminating his path. The stars appeared pinned in place on a giant black curtain.
It was still dark, but the stars heralded the coming dawn, banishing the muttering old Gods back to their desert fastness.
He climbed to the top of a swale and found a trail showing like a dull bed of silver under the night sky. He swung onto the trail and walked with the loose-limbed smoothness of a panther.
*****
THICK CITY WALLS loomed up beyond a campfire, which was a mere orange smudge in the distance. The fire threw up vague, flickering, grotesque shapes and shadows on the stone city walls. Dawn was still an hour away.
He waited in the darkness, observing two uniformed soldiers, each carrying a short sword on their hips, open the heavy wooden city gate. Grumbling, the soldiers chivvied the farmers’ carts loaded with produce and groups of tradesmen and priests into a line at the gate. The lean man joined the line and entered under the broad, arched gateway.
A burly, whiskered soldier at the gate, with a capable look about him, waved for the man to come into the light of the fire. The man walked to the edge of the murky light cast off from the smoldering fire with his cloak in one hand and staff in the other.
In the firelight, the traveler appeared middle-aged with a powerful neck, muscular shoulders, and chest, and narrow hips. His arms were long and sinewy. He had the lean, angular, clean-shaven face of a Thessite. His weatherworn face was the color of burnished leather.
“Welcome to the City of Usmau, traveler. It’s rare to see someone walking alone out of the night desert,” said the soldier. Squinting his eyes into a shrewd look, he added, “Alive anyway. There are many wolves around here, both the four and two-legged kinds.”
He snorted a laugh at his own joke and waved the staff-carrying Thessite through the gate.
Carts, camels, and horseback riders materialized from the desert out of the last gray traces of night into the brightening light of dawn. Farmers and tradesmen passed through the open city gate like a sluggish river, multicolored and serpentine. People and animals crowded the open gate, saturating the entryway with a damp, musky smell, and idle banter.
The burly soldier pulled another soldier aside, saying, “Go find Brune and describe the man I just spoke with. Brune will want to know. Anyone walking across the desert at night alone carrying only a dagger and a stick for weapons is crazy or dangerous.”
*****
CAPTAIN BRUNE LIMPED in the predawn twilight through the fetid streets of Lower Usmau. His clean uniform, with its blue and gold tunic of an Usmaurian officer, contrasted with this squalid section of the city-state of Usmau.
He held a copper coin in his fist. The other hand rested on the hilt of his short sword at his hip.
Scanning the streets with his one good eye, he spied the ancient crones with faces like withered brown apples squatting side-by-side in lines along the dusty street. The chicken bones the old crones threw rattled against the magic users’ temple stone walls, tumbling to the ground at their hoary bare feet. Old watery eyes peered at the bones from under lank, dirty gray hair. Then bony, claw-like hands darted out from under ragged cloaks to paw through the dust and scoop up the bones. The toothless mumbling of unholy blasphemies accompanied the tossing and grabbing.
Brune limped to an old crone and flashed her the copper coin. “What say you today, Matilla? Is it to be a good day?” The stale smell of sweat, urine, and blood floated up to Brune’s nostrils in the still air.
The crone muttered and snatched the coin from his hand. She spat into grimy palms, picked up her divining bones, and tossed them against the temple wall. Three more times she tossed until the old crone turned her seamed and lined face to Brune with a puzzled look.
“The bones stopped talking.”
Other old crones squatting and tossing bones along the street became agitated and mumbled incoherently. They stood up, stretched creaky bones, and tottered off in mass to their hovels.
Brune leaned forward and peered into Matilla’s withered face, and saw fear in her pale, watery eyes. She scurried away like a spider, joining the other dozens of old crones withdrawing from the street.
Brune was alone on the narrow dirt street as dawn was peaking over the rim of the horizon to the east. The dawn light exposed the luridly painted monsters and gargoyles on the magic users’ temples that bordered the street. Minarets decorated with gold leaf sparkled in the early morning sunlight.
Red-tinged fingers of daylight stretched across the sky. Brune removed his steel bowl-shaped helmet and wiped away perspiration from his bald head. Concern etched a path across his face.
*****
THE LEAN MAN passed through the arched city gate into a jumble of narrow lanes and dirt paths. A riot of styles and materials characterized the construction of the hovels near the gate, with builders piling them one on top of the other. A hot, dank stench of too many people living together scorched his nostrils.
He lifted his head and was surprised to see, in contrast, a stunningly colorful and lush sweep of land rising up the mountainside that carried the eyes to a shining white palace overlooking the harbor. Usmau sprawled upwards in an array of colors and across the mountainside with a dense palette of bright green as a backdrop.
Someone had sited the city well for defense and trade. The desert kissed the edge of the mountain on three sides, and a crowded deep-water harbor occupied the fourth side. At the upper levels of the city, he could see cobblestoned avenues, plazas, green parks, and brightly pastel-colored houses.
*****
“THANK YOU FOR seeing me, My Lord.” The speaker was a short, squat, richly robed blond man. His pale gray eyes stared innocently from a fleshy, round face. He made a small bow in his royal blue robe.
Usmau’s King Riccu waved away with a bony hand, the two soldiers standing ramrod straight by the main entryway to the throne room.
The feeble king peered at his Grand Vizier in his luxurious blue robe, head cocked to one side, as if taking measure of the man for the first time. A long white beard hid a face lined with age and scarred from battles of long ago.
“You said it couldn’t wait until after the noontime repast?” crabbed the King. “You take too many liberties with your position.”
The Grand Vizier bowed his head but did not respond.
“As Grand Vizier, you may advise but not decide. I decide,” said King Riccu, his voice thinning with age.
The Alabaster Throne of Usmau appeared to swallow his bent and shrunken body swimming in his yellow robes of state.
“What’s this talk I hear of the Magic Users Guild?”
“My Lord, the suggestion was to disband the Magic Users Guild and assume all their land and temples for the state.”
“No,” replied the King, shaking his head with its mane of white hair from side-to-side.
“They are charlatans and fakes that contribute next to nothing to the tax roll. They worship Gods long since dead and buried,” said the Grand Vizier. His smooth voice echoed across the white marble floor and bounced off the stone columns holding up the throne room’s massive roof. Sunlight poured through high clerestory windows, inching its way across the cool marble floor. It illuminated the wide throne room and reflected off the Alabaster Throne.
“Mil El Pak, there is more to life than gold. The magic users are part of the fabric of our city – for better or worse. I will not have them cut out. They are part of what makes Usmau what it is.”
Mil El Pak bowed his thick neck, stating clearly, “As you wish, My King.”
Mil El Pak slipped a dagger from the sleeve of his royal blue robe and mounted the three steps of the dais. He grabbed the King by his white hair and pushed his head back.
A simple backhanded swipe of the double-edged blade sliced across the old King’s fleshy neck, ripping deep until its edge sawed the backbone. The King’s head lolled back, barely attached by bits of bloody sinew and muscle. A cascade of blood-soaked into the King’s robes, staining the bright yellow fabric a dark red.
Mil El Pak’s gray eyes stared at the King for a moment before he turned and walked to a side door of the throne room. He opened the door to a chamber full of blue and gold clad Usmaurian commanders and bejeweled priests. All looked up expectantly.
“It is done. All hail, King Mil El Pak,” said Mil El Pak. His eyes measured the response of each co-conspirator in the room to the new King and holder of the Alabaster Throne.
*****
A BLUE SEA sparkled and shimmered at the base of the mountain, while ship masts in the harbor jutted into the sky like a thousand spear points. The King’s palace gleamed blisteringly white in the mid-morning sun. Sunlight pierced the narrow lanes and alleys that laced the city.
The daily market bazaar was a cacophony of noise and color. Horses, camels, and people crowded the streets. Cripples begged, old crones cackled, and magic users hawked their skills and potions. The heavy scent of incense mixed with the stink of garbage, and the tang of spice mingled with the stench of animal droppings.
The jostling, bumping crowds swelled with a cosmopolitan mix of people and nations. Snatches of the harsh guttural language of the Tolten or the more tonal qualities of the Chenia tongue were heard. Men in flowing desert robes rubbed shoulders with salt-stained seafarers; fat merchants argued prices with skilled tradesmen.
The lean man gazed at the magic user temples near the Market Square, lost in thought about how to spend his copper coins.
With shouts and curses, the street erupted in pandemonium as a beefy soldier grabbed a young boy running through the market by the scruff of his neck and smashed him across the face with the back of his hand.
“Got you! Thieving bastard!” said the soldier, red-faced and breathing hard from the chase. The soldier was as big as an ox and all solid muscle. His face was round with a lantern jaw and eyes set too close together. The soldier’s tunic and pants were dirty, and matted chest hair poked out where it was unbuttoned. He slapped the boy again and ran a hand through his sweaty red hair. He looked around at the gathering crowd and grinned with yellow, chipped teeth. The young, dark-haired boy wiggled like a fish in the soldier’s meaty hand, trying to escape the heavy blows.
“Should I hit him again?” the red-haired soldier asked the crowd milling about the square. He knotted his hand into a fist as big as a ham hock.
“Hit him again, Bellis, you big horse!” shouted someone from the crowd. Most edged away from the scene, eager to get back to their stalls and not to get involved.
“No,” said the lean man quietly but clearly. The calm response rattled Bellis. He looked up, astonished at receiving a rebuke.
“Who said that?” Bellis glared at the crowd from under angry, furrowed brows.
“I did. The beating is unnecessary.” It was simply said in a voice used to command. It froze Bellis for a moment. His small, dark eyes looked confused. The crowd started floating back .
Bellis looked at the man standing across from him and saw a lean, lithe man holding a gray cloak in one hand and a long staff or walking stick in the other. His feet were shoulder-width apart and his body relaxed. He locked eyes with Bellis. Bellis sensed the danger in this brown-skinned man. However, he needed to save face in front of the crowd.
Bellis released his grip on the young thief.
“You defied a soldier of the King?” shouted Bellis, pulling his short sword with a rasping sound from its scabbard on his hip. “By all that’s unholy, I’ll carve you up like a pig for slaughter.”
In one smooth, practiced move, the man dropped his cloak, half-turned his body and assumed the spear-attack-ready position. With his left foot forward and anchored off his right foot, the staff was at chest height, pointed directly at Bellis. Bellis hesitated, then did what had always worked before and threw his thick body forward, sword outstretched.
The staff darted like a snake cracking into the space between jaw and chest where his unbuttoned tunic lay open. In the same motion, he swept the staff to the left, knocking the short sword from Bellis’ hand.
The attack stunned Bellis and knocked the wind out of him. Before the guardsman could recover, the man switched to a double overhand grip on the staff and attacked low, raking its knobby end across Bellis sandaled feet. Bellis crumbled to the hard-packed dirt of the Market Square with a howl of pain.
“Enough!” said Brune, marching forward and wearing a steel breastplate and greaves. Two archers flanked him. The archers notched arrows pointed at the staff-wielding man.
“Bring this man to my chambers. The rest of you, as you were. May your market prosper.”
They confiscated the brown-skinned man’s staff and dagger and marched him under guard to a substantial stone building nearby. The archers ushered him into a sparsely furnished room with bars over the window. Two silent Usmarian guardsmen stood on either side of the door.
Continue Dar’s epic saga in COLD STEEL AND BLACK HEARTS by R.K. Olson!
R.K. Olson, also known as Bob, is a multiple award-winning short story and novel writer in the pulp, western, horror, and sword & sorcery genres. He started writing after a successful global technology career that spanned across every continent except Antarctica. His first novel, ‘Siege at the Slash B,’ was published in 2025 by Dusty Saddle Publishing. The novel is a traditional western with plenty of bullets, bare knuckles, and bushwhackings. Olson’s writing has been recognized with several awards, including the 2023 Mystic Mind Magazine Readers’ Choice Award and the 2024 Freedom Fiction Journal Editor’s Choice, Top Adventure Story. He continues to inspire readers with his imaginative storytelling and dedication to his craft.
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