A Cruel Wind Read online

  A Cruel Wind

  A Chronicle Of The Dread Empire

  Glen Cook

  Night Shade Books

  San Francisco & Portland

  Other books by Glen Cook

  The Heirs of Babylon

  The Swordbearer

  A Matter of Time

  The Dragon Never Sleeps

  The Tower of Fear

  Sung in Blood

  Dread Empire

  A Fortres in Shadow:

  The Fire In His Hands

  With Mercy Toward None

  The Wrath of Kings:

  Reap the East Wind

  An Ill Fate Marshalling

  An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat

  Starfishers

  Shadowline

  Starfishers

  Stars’ End

  Passage at Arms

  Darkwar

  Doomstalker

  Warlock

  Ceremony

  The Black Company

  The Black Company

  Shadows Linger

  The White Rose

  The Silver Spike

  Shadow Games

  Dreams of Steel

  Bleak Seasons

  She Is the Darkness

  Water Sleeps

  Soldiers Live

  The Garrett Files

  Sweet Silver Blues

  Bitter Gold Hearts

  Cold Copper Tears

  Old Tin Sorrows

  Dread Brass Shadows

  Red Iron Nights

  Deadly Quicksilver Lies

  Petty Pewter Gods

  Faded Steel Heat

  Angry Lead Skies

  Whispering Nickel Idols

  Instrumentalities of the Night

  The Tyranny of the Night

  Lord of the Silent Kingdom

  A Cruel Wind

  © 2006 by Glen Cook

  This edition of

  A Cruel Wind

  © 2006 by Night Shade Books

  Jacket art © 2006 by Raymond Swanland

  Jacket design by Claudia Noble

  Interior layout and design by Jeremy Lassen

  All rights reserved

  “Introduction” © 2006 by Jeff VanderMeer

  A Shadow of All Night Falling

  © 1979 by Glen Cook

  October’s Baby

  © 1980 by Glen Cook

  All Darkness Met

  © 1980 by Glen Cook

  Printed In Canada

  ISBN-10: 1-59780-055-4 Trade Hardcover

  ISBN-10: 1-59780-054-6 Limited Hardcover

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59780-104-1

  E-ISBN: 978-1-59780-372-4

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

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  Glen Cook doesn’t suffer fools easily. I mean this as a compliment, not a slam. It’s an attitude that permeates his fiction as well: this sense of no-bullshit, no-compromise. Despite having written innumerable series, Cook still writes for himself first and foremost, and isn’t willing to compromise his vision. As Cook himself has said, “I work in series because I can’t tell a story in one book, usually. There’s always more to tell. A series allows you to tell a larger story, usually. I enjoy world building.”

  Over the past twenty-five years, Cook has carved out a place for himself among the preeminent fantasy writers of his generation, with classics such as the Dread Empire novels, The Black Company novels, and the Starfishers series. His work is unrelentingly real, complex, and honest. The sense of place that permeates his narrative and characters gives his “fantasies” more gravitas and grit than most fictions set in the here-and-now. The people in his novels tend to be deeply flawed—struggling to do what’s right but not always able to stick with it due to circumstances or simply human nature. As Cook says, “That’s life. We all face it every day. And most of us don’t live up to the talk we talk. How much more so when the stakes are life or death?”

  If Cook is sometimes overlooked on the roll call of great fantasists, it may be because the genre is currently overshadowed by the over-emphasis on cross-genre work and new literary movements. But Cook has always created cross-genre fiction, if on his own terms. The Black Company novels, for example, combine the intensity of Viet Nam-era war fiction with the classic quest of heroic fantasy, while his Garrett detective series combines magic and noir mystery to excellent comic effect. He has also written the ultimate submarine novel in space,

  Passage at Arms

  . (Although long out of print, it is well worth seeking out. The claustrophobic evocation of what it might be like in close quarters on a spaceship remains one of Cook’s great achievements.)

  As the excellent fantasist Steven Erikson has written, “The thing about Glen Cook is that he single-handedly changed the field of fantasy—something a lot of people didn’t notice and maybe still don’t. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the clichés and archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff was like reading Viet Nam war fiction on peyote.”

  But well before Cook’s Black Company series, there was the Dread Empire trilogy, Cook’s first major work.

  I still remember the first time I read

  A Shadow of All Night Falling

  , the first in the Dread Empire trilogy. I had long since read the Tolkien books, the McKillip Riddlemaster series, and, earlier, the Narnia books. Then I’d tried reading Terry Brooks and David Eddings and a few others, and had been turned off of heroic and quest fantasy as a result.

  Only a few months later, in Book Gallery, a used bookstore in Gainesville, Florida, something caught my eye in the mass market paperback SF/Fantasy section: the cover of

  A Shadow of All Night Falling.

  It didn’t look like all the other heroic fantasy covers. I read the description on the back of the book:

  Across the mountains called Dragon’s Teeth, beyond the chill reach of the Werewind and the fires of the world’s beginning, above the walls of the castle Fangdred it stands: Windtower. From this lonely keep the Star Rider calls forth the war that even wizards dread, fought for a woman’s hundred-lifetime love. A woman called Nepanthe, princess to the Stormkings...

  That didn’t sound like the same-old same-old, either. So I read the prologue and it didn’t read like anything I’d read before. There were suggestions of worlds within worlds and plots within plots. It was a true prologue, not one of those fake cliffhanger-type prologues. The prose was spare and tight and not given to melodrama. The idea of the Star Rider was presented in pragmatic and yet mysterious terms. (Ironically enough, the same day in the same bookstore I picked up Edward Whittemore’s

  Jerusalem Poker

  , which would be another of my major influences—it too had a stylized cover and an amazing prologue.)

  As I read the rest of the novel, I realized Cook was a true original, creating his own unique approach—one that would increasingly be from the eye-level/foot-soldier level, one that could be blunt and bloody, but also include a very sophisticated view of societies and of people. The Western, Middle Eastern, and Far East influence worked well and made the story unique.

  In short, I loved the book and quickly bought and read the other two initial volumes:

  October’s Baby

  and

  All Darkness Met

  . I found myself drawn to characters like Nepanthe, Mocker, and so many others. These people came off the page in a fascinating way. Mocker in particular—I loved that character, his complex mot
ivation and his basic humanity.

  There was also a talent Cook had for micro- and macro-level action and plain-spoken dialogue that made the stylization of much of heroic fantasy look flat and false. Not to mention that the series grew ever more complex as it progressed, with

  All Darkness Met

  demonstrating an amazing ability to juggle storylines, characters, and subtle intrigue.

  What also struck me was just how weird and alien these books were—they didn’t evoke the twee fussiness of Tolkien or the kind of fey detail of McKillip at all. Instead, they put me in mind of the best of the

  Weird Tales

  writers, and of icons like Jack Vance or Fritz Leiber—another unique writer who knew how to get at the strangeness of the world.

  At the time, I was about eighteen or nineteen, just learning about the craft of writing, completely wet-behind-the-ears. From a writer’s perspective, the Dread Empire trilogy was a goldmine. Like the Whittemore books I found at the same time, Cook’s work explored both the complexity of history and the grim reality of its situations. Through the Dread Empire I learned how you could place characters in a historical context much larger than the individuals involved without relegating character to the background. Cook taught me that moral and immoral acts have consequences in fiction, some of them tragic. He also taught me a lot about how to inject specific detail into the fantastical. And more than anything else, Cook taught me that characters in a fantasy world have it just as tough as we do in real life. (Not to mention my excitement in reading the subsequent Dread Empire novels—

  The Fire in His Hands, With Mercy Toward None, Reap the East Wind

  , and

  An Ill Fate Marshalling

  —which share the attributes of the first three books while expanding on the characters and milieu. It’s really hard not to be reduced to a fanboy writing about all of this, to be honest.)

  Ever since that first encounter, I’ve found Cook’s novels not only entertaining and exciting, but often moving and complex. In

  Passage at Arms

  and the Black Company novels, I can see the echoes of those first Dread Empire volumes—in the ethical and moral complications, in the no-bullshit approach. And given that I’ve seen so many authors fall prey to their own success, I find it invigorating and a great example that Cook, after so many years, hasn’t budged an inch in his approach. He’s still producing great work and he’s still doing it on his own terms.

  I don’t know if anyone can imagine my delight and joy at being able to provide an introduction to a body of work that has been so inspirational to me. Or my envy for those of you for whom this is your first encounter with Mocker, with Nepanthe, with the Star Rider, and with so many other amazing characters. I hope you find as much in Cook’s work to savor as I did, picking up that first battered paperback in Gainesville so many years ago.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Tallahassee, Florida

  May 2006

  (Both quotes by Glen Cook taken from his

  Green Man Review

  interview with Robert M. Tilendis.)

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  A blue-lighted room hollowed from living rock. Four men waiting. A fifth entered. “I was right.” The wear and dust of a savage journey still marked him. “The Star Rider was in it up to his ears.” He tumbled into a chair.

  The others waited.

  “It cost the lives of twelve good men, but they were profitably spent. I questioned three men who accompanied the Disciple to Malik Taus. Their testimony convinced me. The Disciple’s angel was the Star Rider.”

  “Fine,” said the one who made decisions. “But where is he now? And where’s Jerrad?”

  “Two questions. One answer. Thunder Mountain.”

  Denied a response, the newcomer continued, “More of my best agents spent. But word came: a small old man and a winged horse have been seen near the Caverns of the Old Ones. Jerrad took pigeons. Birdman brought one in just when I got home. Jerrad’s found him, camped below the mountain. He’s got the Horn with him.” His final remark was almost hysterically excited.

  “We’ll leave in the morning.”

  This Horn, the Horn of the Star Rider, the Windmjirnerhorn, was reputed to be a horn of plenty. The man who could wrest it from its owner and master it would want for nothing, could create the wealth to buy anything.

  These five had fantasies of restoring an empire raped away from their ancestors.

  Time had passed that imperium by. There was no more niche it could fill. The fantasies were nothing more. And that most of these men realized. Yet they persisted, motivated by tradition, the challenge, and the fervor of the two doing the talking.

  “Down there,” said Jerrad, pointing into a dusk-filled, deep, pine-greened canyon. “Beside the waterfall.”

  The others could barely discern the distance-diminished smoke of the campfire.

  “What’s he up to?”

  Jerrad shrugged. “Just sitting there. All month. Except one night last week he flew the horse somewhere back east. He was back before dark next day.”

  “You know the way down?”

  “I haven’t been any closer. Didn’t want to spook him.”

  “Okay. We’d better start now. Make use of what light’s left.”

  “Spread out and come at him from every direction. Jerrad, whatever you do, don’t let him get to the Horn. Kill him if you have to.”

  It was past midnight when they attacked the old man, and could have been later still had there been no moon.

  The Star Rider wakened to a footfall, bolted toward the Horn with stunning speed.

  Jerrad got there first, gutting knife in hand. The old man changed course in midstride, made an astounding leap onto the back of his winged horse. The beast climbed the sky with a sound like that of beating dragon’s pinions.

  “Got away!” the leader cursed. “Damned! Damned! Damned!”

  “Lightfooted old geezer,” someone observed.

  And Jerrad, “What matter? We got what we came for.”

  The leader raised the bulky Horn. “Yes. We have it now. The keystone of the New Empire. And the Werewind will be the cornerstone.”

  With varying enthusiasm, as their ancestors had, the others said, “Hail the Empire.”

  From high above, distance-attenuated, came a sound that might have been laughter.

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  While hooded executioners lifted and set the ornately carven stake, a child wept at their feet. When they brought the woman, her eyes red from crying and her hair disheveled, he tried to run to her. Gently, an executioner scooped him up and set him in the arms of a surprised old peasant. While the hooded men piled faggots around her calves, the woman stared at child and man, seeing nothing else, her expression pleading. A priest gave her the sacraments because she had committed no sin in the eyes of his religion. Before withdrawing to his station of ceremony, he shook brightly dyed, belled horsehair flails over her tousled head, showering her with the pain-killing pollen of the dreaming lotus. He began singing a prayer for her soul. The master executioner signaled an apprentice. The youth brought a brand. The master touched
it to the faggots. The woman stared at her feet as if without comprehending what was happening. And the child kept crying.

  The farmer, with a peasant’s rough kindness, carried the boy away, comforting him, taking him where he wouldn’t hear. Soon he stopped moaning and seemed to have resigned himself to this cruel whim of Fate. The old man dropped him to the cobbled street, but didn’t release his hand. He had known his own sorrows, and knew loss must be soothed lest it become festering hatred. This child would someday be a man.

  Man and boy pushed through crowds of revelers— Execution Day was always a holiday in Ilkazar—the youngster skipping to keep pace with the farmer’s long strides. He rubbed tears away with the back of a grimy hand. Leaving the Palace district, they entered slums, followed noisome alleys running beneath jungles of laundry, to the square called Farmer’s Market. The old man led the boy to a stall where an elderly woman squatted behind melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, and braids of hanging maize.