Scrolling Back the Years
Hop aboard our digital time machine and journey with us all the way back to our very first issue, Pulp Literature Issue 1, Winter 2014, published eight (eight!) years ago.
As the founding editors tell us in that issue’s editorial, ‘This magazine was conceived on a sunny balcony on Bowen Island … and we confess a beer or two may have been involved. It’s been a fast, wild ride since then!‘
And, thanks to you, our readers, that wild ride continues. Pulp Literature — still offering good (ahem, great!) books for the price of a beer!
Raise a glass of your favourite brew (or, rather, skip the brew and buy the book!), and enjoy the buddycop-swordplay-slapstick mash-up ‘Of Siege and Sword’ by Tyner Gillies, excerpted here from Issue 1.
Of Siege and Sword
Keld tensed as he heard the clinking footsteps and huffing breath of the enemy. It wasn’t the anticipation of the coming fight that made him tense, it was the bloody hallway. A hallway was a terrible place to try and swing a sword, and any idiot who thought otherwise should be kicked in his fruits.
“Are you ready?” he asked the shorter man beside him.
Danner looked down at his own lean body, which was clad only in his small clothes, then back up at Keld in an exaggerated fashion. “No.”
The palace, their home, was crawling with the dirty boots and fetid breath of the outlaw rebels; Keld supposed he could ask them if they’d mind stalling their invasion while he found his pants, but didn’t think they would be accommodating.
“Well, we’re bloody well going anyway.” He understood Danner’s trepidation as he looked down at his similarly clad body. The only thing worse than fighting in a hallway was fighting nearly naked.
“Aye, I know.”
“Good. Then go.”
Danner raised his slender sword in one hand and his dagger in the other, then charged around the corner and down the hallway. Keld ran after him, his broadsword gripped in both hands.
The knot of five enemy soldiers stared at them, faces frozen in mute surprise. Danner, screeching out a battle cry, flitted among them before they even had a chance to raise their weapons, his slender blade dropping two men as he went. Keld slammed into the remainder, chopping them down with his heavy sword while they were still staring at Danner. The acrid tang of blood and shit filled the air.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 1, Winter 2014!
Tyner is a storyteller, lawman, Scotch drinker, and a bit of a meathead. He lives and works in the Fraser Valley with his wife, and a cat that is mostly a pain in the ass. His story ‘The Lord of the Lawn Ornaments’ appears in Issue 24, Autumn 2019. Find out more about him at his website, tynergillies.com, on Instagram @tyner_gillies, and on Twitter @tynergillies.
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