This post is brought to you by Swords of Fire 4, an upcoming anthology of Sword & Sorcery novellas. Like the three previous collections, this one will feature four longer Sword & Sorcery adventures with one being a Sirtago & Poet tale set in a country much like Japan. This is by Jack Mackenzie, of course. There is also the next adventure of Bradik the Slayer by M. D. Jackson. The other two tales are a surprise for now. Look forward to this volume sometime in November. For the previous anthologies, go here.
Whenever I met real live authors I almost always disappoint them because I haven’t read their work. It’s not personal. I just read dead people. With at least a couple of hundred years of great storytellers (and that’s ignoring all those old myths and legends and there is so much!), I tend to read the people my grandparents and parents would have read if they had been fanboys and girls (They weren’t.) John Creasey, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, L. P. Holmes, T. T. Flynn, Louis L’Amour, Peter Dawson, the list just goes on and on…
But that stops with “Sword & Sorcery Focus”. This is a series of posts for real living people, who happen to write heroic fantasy. Dark Worlds Quarterly has been neglecting these good folks for too long. For one thing, they write what I like: action-oriented Fantasy. They are still around so I can actually ask them questions and get real-time clarification. Try that with H. P. Lovecraft! Best of all, I might be able to give a tip-of-the-cap to some really good reading that you may have missed.
And if you haven’t read Steve Goble, that’s exactly what you’ve done. Now I’m not going to try and be encyclopedic about this. I’m not going to list everything Steve’s ever wrote from his hideaway in Ohio, where he currently is writing some great Mystery fiction with his Ed Runyon series and enjoying his multitudinous collection of ales. His website is Swords Against Boredom. (Was a truer name ever spoke?) Fortunately for us all, he hasn’t completely given up on Sword & Sorcery. His latest Sword & Sorcery story appeared in Rogue Blades Entertainment’s Neither Beg Nor Yield (2024).
I first came across Steve’s name while doing illustrations for Flashing Swords, back in the early 2000s. That long-gone, much-missed zine featured the first three tales of Steve’s redemption-seeking Calthus, a warrior torn from the fires of Hell to wander the Earth and make up for his own heinous acts, the killing of a man to sleep with his widow. In “The Redemption of Calthus” (Flashing Swords #4, Fall 2005) Calthus is resurrected by a cult of godless priests who have placed his soul in the body of an idiot, a strong body that he uses to fulfill their task. The priests want the Slaughter Lord of Thaal to slay a monster that torments a nearby village. The monster doesn’t threaten the abbey but the villagers do. Calthus accepts, knowing he will keep the body and avoid more time in hell.
On his way to the hills where the elder thing lives, the warrior is attacked by two rogues, wanting his pouch of coin that the priests gave him to buy weapons. Calthus smacks one of them with the pouch then drives the other down a hillside. Spooking the first man’s horse, he traps the attacker under the wounded animal. Taking a dropped sword, he kills the horse but not the man. The man is bait for the monster that flies overhead every night.
The cries of the trapped thief draw the monster. It is a Lovecraftian beast, a snaky thing with giant, bat wings and feet that end in poisonous tentacles. After it eats the thief, Calthus engages it, struggling to find a way to kill the monster. Poisonous tentacles grab him but he drives his sword into its heart in the end. He has completed his quest, hoping that his gods who damned him to hell, are watching.
It is a simple enough warrior-versus-monster tale but this first Calthus story intrigues me. Why are the monks who use magic to draw him from hell atheists? A man drawn from hell should be a learned witness to the existence of dark gods. Why do they not even ask Calthus about hell? Goble never tells us but that’s okay. It lets us speculate. For other’s criticism, go here.
“The Grey Mother” (Flashing Swords #6, Spring 2006) has Calthus just left Cosyrus in the last story, coming to the Bleeding Plains. This flatland was the site of a terrible battle six hundred years ago where Calthus had led the troops of Thaal against the Tarnsmen. The ghosts of the slain foe haunt him. The Plains are also home to the dread prairie wolves.
Later Calthus meets Shan, a multi-colored warrior with a fun spirit. Shan is dressed in bright colors so the gods will see his deeds. The two men encounter wolves, which kill Shan’s horse, then the warrior. The wolf that kills him is a large grey. Calthus slays the grey beast. The ghosts tell Calthus that the dead pack leader is the mate of the Grey Mother. She will want vengeance. The ghosts say they will tell her where Calthus is.
Calthus takes Shan’s body to the village of his tribesmen. He tells the tale of Shan’s bravery, eats and is given medical aid. A pyre ceremony is set for the night but Calthus will not stay. He is after the Grey Mother. He does ask his new friends if they will color him the way Shan had been marked so that his judgmental gods will see what he is about to do.
The Grey Mother comes, and the warrior fights for his life. She is called “the wind with claws” for she can strike before even being seen. Calthus takes many wounds including strikes to his back. He fights on, having no real choice, finally hitting her with his sword. She dies on top of him, the sword cut taking its toll. Calthus spits dust at the ghosts, then heads back to the village for Shan’s funeral.
For others’ criticism, go here. This reviewer says that the story reads like a chapter of a novel, as does the first tale. We can only wish that Steve would collect all the Calthus tales and make a novel out of them. (Hint hint.)
“The Gods-Forsaken World” (Flashing Swords #8, Fall 2006) had a different version appeared in Grendelsong #2, 2007. It received an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow in The World’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. The plot begins with Calthus wandering in the dead city of Tabali, a place he knew six hundred years before. He is set upon by three ruffians, kills two then is surrounded by entire gang of twenty. The men are led by Kostos, a sea captain, who invites Calthus to replace the men he killed. Kostos explains that Tabali was wiped out by a plague.
Calthus sails onboard the Imza with the Shirrins, sailors but not great warriors. Another guest on the ship is the wizard, Revilin, who Calthus met in the ruined city. It was Revilin who had taken them to the dead city in search of gods or demons. The magic-user fears something is happening to the immortals. At sea, the ship is chased by another vessel with a black sail, a Tureg pirate ship.
They try to lose them but have to fight. Calthus leads a fearsome assault, armed with magical flame arrows provided by the wizard. The counter-attack fails because Sallar, the captain of the other ship, is not human but a demon. Sallar recognized Calthus and asks him why he is not in hell? With Kostos and most of his crew dead, the wizard is dragged forth. The demon demands he finish his magic and release him. Sallar is only on Earth because of Revilin’s poor spell-casting. Before the demon goes, he tells Calthus and Revilin that all the gods are gone.
With Sallar departed, Calthus stabs Revilin and curses him for hiding the truth, sacrificing so many men for no good reason. Now the provisional leader, Calthus embraces the few Shirrin and the Turegs to fix one of the ships and sail for safe harbor. The warrior revels in the new knowledge that the two gods who have sentenced him to hell are no more. He is free to live the life he wants.
This formed a nice wrap-up in the pages of Flashing Swords. There were other Calthus stories that came later but I have not been able to get my hands on all of them. These include:
“Bloodshrikes” (Sword and Sorcery Magazine, ?) is a wayward tale that appeared online but has since fled into the reaches of Limbo.
“The Sword Cult” (Azieran Adventures Presents: Artifacts and Relics: Extreme Sorcery, 2013)
Fortunately, I do have “Virgins For Khuul” (Neither Beg Nor Yield, 2024, edited by Jason M. Waltz) which takes place after the sinking of the Imza, the ship from “The Gods-Forsaken World”. The look-back also mentions that the last story involved an atheist priest named Dolth who came looking for Calthus to see what the priesthood had wrought on the world.
“Virgins For Khuul” begins with Calthus wandering along a beach when he encounters horsemen leading three women in chains. The riders say they have collected the women for the god Khuul. Calthus signals to one of the prisoners and battle ensues, with the captives escaping. A man armed with a crossbow comes for Calthus but the ladies take care of him. Calthus takes possession of the crossbow, which is new to him.
The four flee into a cave where they find the priest Dolth. The priest no longer pursues Calthus to see what terror he has wrought on the world. The group of five, which includes the women, Eraine, Shanna and Neth, decide they will go to the mountain hold of the Priests of Khuul and try to free the imprisoned virgins, as many as three hundred. Calthus and Dolth kill the first set of guards. Dolth does this using a form of priestly martial arts that uses a metal band on each arm.
The three women, led by Eraine, want to take part but the men refuse, leaving them behind. But not for long because the trio follows. Giving up on their chauvinism, the group goes on, killing guards until they find the pit where the three hundred lie. They hear Khuul beginning to stir and work as quickly as they can. But the virgins are all drugged and their hands tied. They can’t save all of them as the monster wakes and feeds.
Calthus’s friends try to save as many women as they can as Calthus takes Khuul on himself. (The image that M. D. Jackson chose for the illustration.) Calthus attempts to stab the monster in the eye but gets knocked out. Waking up with his friends, he realizes that he is powerless to stop anything as nasty as Khuul. They must be happy with having saved some of the virgins and destroying the cult that worships the beast.
The story ends with Dolth and the three virgins off to new lands to become farmers. Calthus doesn’t join them. He will continue his wandering but not before challenging Khuul, until they meet again…
I have to admit, of the four stories I read, this last one is my least favorite. It’s not because Steve has lost his touch, for I think I can safely say this new story shows superior technical skill. Decades of writing does that. It is my own prejudice against tales with a large team. The lone guy against the gods trope in the three first tales appeals to me more. Dolth and Eraine are intriguing characters but they diffuse the narrative force of the lone barbarian. If there is an issue for some, it may be the fact that Khuul is not defeated. I had no problem with this because Steve establishes early on that Khuul is a Kaiju-sized problem, not some forest goblin. We all have our preferred tropes, I guess. Steve took part in our Neither Beg Nor Yield Podcast earlier last year. Listen here.
Conclusion
When Jason M. Waltz came up with the idea for Neither Beg Nor Yield, he had a chance to ask writers he knew to bring old characters back for another go-round. Calthus was one of these, and I am glad he did. I enjoy a good fight scene but the characters who linger are the ones who have some question buried in their back story. The Elric stories by Michael Moorcock, for example, asked what are the gods beyond the gods? A philosophical question that drives the over-arching plot. Calthus is one of these, too. His quest to satisfy the gods that damned him, then to pursue a life without gods, make for a backbone to the tales that might otherwise be missing.
Coming some time soon…D. K. Latta’s Zargatha and Jamey Toner’s The Fight!
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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