Featured Short Story

Each month I’ll share one of my new short stories with you.  Here’s one I think you’ll enjoy.

The Killing Floor – A Rider Universe Story

The pit was his home and Trif practically vibrated from anticipation as he watched the action.  He loved the noise of the crowd pressed against the rim of the wall, the sounds of mayhem streaming from below and echoing from the rock above their heads, and the smell.  It was the smell of sweat and fear and also blood.  The smell made it real.

In the pit the lighting was bright, so bright, you never wanted to find yourself looking up at an opponent for fear of being disoriented by the harsh circles of light dangling from above.  They were the leftover lights of what had once been a killing floor.  The new killing floor was even more brightly lit.  Butchering required that kind of light.  That the whole complex, Trif’s whole world, was underground, suggested that at least some of those who consumed the meat produced here, had no interest in seeing its origins.  Now the lights above shined on a different kind of killing floor.  Here the meat fought back.

The spectator area around the pit was out of the glare of the lights.  From his vantage point, Trif could see the mix of onlookers.  They were focused on the mayhem so he was free to focus on them.  Most were Gartu, but each spectacle drew a handful of Mord out from behind the inner walls of the city, or at least Trif supposed they were all from the city.  It was always the same, a collection of useless functionaries.

No one from the Owner class would risk such a visit, at least not without disguise.  There were always rumors of Owners visiting the facility to taste the meat at its freshest, moments after being peeled from the bone.  Trif had no doubt this happened, but, of course, such visits would have to be well concealed.

The bureaucrats in attendance tonight had likely heard the same rumors about the grisly tastes of their superiors.  Trif wondered whether they believed the rumors about their supposed betters.  He was forbidden to find out directly, not that he would want to talk to any of them.  Any interaction at all would be the end of him unless, of course, it was requested.  Visitors from the city sometimes wanted contact with the victors from the pit.  Those with the right coin or influence could get what they wanted.  They might even be able to afford an opportunity for a “taste” of the combatants left standing.  Trif found such encounters pleasurable but far more dangerous than the action in the pit.  Fortunately, his friend Hovig was always the intermediary in such transactions and Hovig looked out for Trif.  There was no point in surviving a night in the pit only to be torn apart by the Gartu for offending the ego of some twisted voyeur with station and coin.

Not all the Mord visitors were there simply to experience the thrill of a violence surely unknown to them in their placid daily existence.  Some came to wager.  They were the regulars and Trif recognized their faces.  A few likely considered themselves friendly faces.  Those that backed him with their wagers won when he survived and, so far, he had always survived.  They were the ones cheering loudest when he entered the pit.  He hated them just as he hated all of the Mord who came to see the blood of their own kind spill by the bucket in the pit.

The rest of the spectators pressed to the rim of the pit were Gartu.  He hated them too.  They were the reason this place existed and they were his direct overlords.  It gave him only slight pleasure to know they also served the Mord elite, suffering equally from the whims of the Owners.  Were they not such horrible beasts, Trif could almost manage pity for them, particularly for these Gartu.

Long ago the Mord found the Gartu on another world and brought them to Urr as warriors.  Eventually, warfare evolved to rely on weapons unsuited to the terrifying brute strength of the Gartu.  That happened long before Trif.  He had only known them as rough enforcers in the factories where real work happened, and in the vast slums beyond the walls of the inner city, where the workers survived in squalor.

Like Trif, the Gartu did not ask for the life the Mord ordained for them.  But they sat one rung up in the hierarchy from Trif and took full advantage of their position in dealing with him and the other workers in their underground meatpacking factory.  What killed all possible empathy for the Gartu, what put him irretrievably at odds with all of them, was the purpose of what was ordained to be his life’s work on the killing floor.  Except for the small bits possibly finding their way to the secret tables of the Owners, every scrap of meat produced in this place fed the Gartu.  The killing was required only because of them, justified only by their presence on Urr.

So he had no choice but to hate them, and every time he entered the pit presented the opportunity to release some measure of pent up rage.  That was the secret of his success.  Well, that was one of his secrets, anyway.

Unleashing his rage against the Gartu, in the pit or otherwise, would be more satisfying than the current arrangement.  It would also be a one-time event.  Mord only went in the pit with a Gartu for one purpose — to die horribly.  There was a reason the Mord elite brought the Gartu to Urr.  Trif imagined that at one time simply seeing a line of them across the field ended battles before they began.

The average Gartu resembled the Mord only in basic shape.  Both races had two arms, two legs, hands, feet, and a head with similar accessories atop a torso.  Even with the shared features, no one could mistake one for the other.  Trif admired them; or rather he admired the match between their attributes and the role they played in his world.  He was tall compared to most of the Mord he encountered and still he looked straight across into the hairy gray chest of even the smallest Gartu.  Trif also wasn’t slight compared to the average Mord.  Years of work on the killing floor and in the pit had made him thick and powerful.  Next to a Gartu, he felt puny.  His muscles were forged and tempered by daily toil.  The Gartu were lazy taskmasters and still were more powerful than any Mord could imagine being.

They were bigger in every dimension than Trif.  The combined effect made the Mord look like small children scurrying below their gaze.  Size alone would be more than adequate to establish their domination in his world, but it wasn’t only size that made them terrifying.  Each enormous Gartu head was shaped around a thick, wide jaw providing foundation for rows of interlocking teeth, top and bottom, each coming to a point.  They were the kind of teeth designed only for tearing flesh.  If you could focus your eyes on something other than teeth, you would also see two deep-set eyes peering from under a thick, protruding brow.  Trif imagined he could strike a Gartu full on the forehead with his hammer and barely see it register in those dark eyes.

Trif could find nothing about the Gartu that failed to intimidate.  In the average Mord, the combined effect of their attributes predictably triggered the most primal fear.  Those in the pit seemed most terrified of the teeth and the hands.  Gartu had a thumb and fingers like the Mord but in place of the smallest finger on each hand, the Gartu had something like a finger but more like a claw.  It could move just enough to be a weapon and Trif had seen many Mord opened at the neck or across the belly by the otherwise useless appendage.

Other Mord made the mistake of assuming their size and general laziness meant the Gartu moved ponderously.  Trif imagined he was only a shade quicker than the average Gartu.  When they wanted to, they could move quickly and with surprising grace.  It was a lesson the fiercest of the Gartu fighters was currently teaching six new Mord in the pit below him.  Their screams would end soon and then it would be Trif’s turn in the pit.

Having had their fill of the predictable one-sided carnage inherent in pitting Gartu against any number of Mord, the spectators were ready for a contest likely to provide more drama and also one better suited to wagering.  Tonight he would begin by facing three newly arrived Mord.  They would be heavily armed.  He would have only the hammer he used on the killing floor.  His continuing success meant such long odds were the only way to entice at least some of the visitors to bet against him.

Tonight he would use his hammer ruthlessly on these three poor souls.  In the morning he would use the same hammer on any number of unarmed Mord unfortunate enough to end up on his killing floor.  The ones in the pit at least had a chance.  Even the ones being torn apart by the Gartu right now had more chance than the ones on the killing floor.

Trif had long since stopped thinking about them as anything but meat.  The ones he would kill tonight were his meat.  That was the only difference.  Beyond survival, his only prize for victory tonight, or any night, would be as much meat as he wanted to cut from the Mord he killed.

There was a time when he resisted this last horror.  And then one day he looked into the bowl of stew placed before him and realized his only real choice was between holding the fork or being stuck on the pointy end of it.  That was the system.  The Gartu needed meat.  There were far too many Mord living in the slums around the city.  The Owners regarded culling them as a kindness to all involved.  Most of the functionaries knew little or nothing about the system.  As far as they knew, petty criminals and debtors were sent in large numbers to work on farms outside the city.  Violent criminals were imprisoned or put to death after a fair accounting for their crimes.

There was a sliver of truth in the public story.  Petty criminals, debtors, and anyone else deemed surplus, were gathered at regular intervals and sent to a self-sufficient farming operation.  There they would eat well and gain weight.  After being fattened they would be given the good news that their sentences had been commuted.  They would board the same underground tram on which they arrived.  This time the trip would be short.  Their next stop would be Trif’s killing floor.

Once they met Trif, it was over for them, but at least they had experienced a few months of relative peace.  The ones he would kill tonight came straight from the slums.  They were the hard criminals who preyed on weaker Mord.  Ridding the slums of their kind was indeed a public service and Trif would feel no remorse carrying out their sentences.  But again, to him they were all just meat.  He hated them for being meat.  He hated the Gartu for driving the cycle that required some Mord to treat others as meat.  He hated the Owners for bringing the Gartu and perpetuating the system that valued some lives and not others.  Most of all he hated himself for choosing to play his role and stay alive.

The screaming was done.  The Gartu was gone and his mess in the pit was being cleaned.  There would be a brief interval before three new Mord were forced into the pit.  Trif would enter.  The crowd would cheer and boo.  Wagers would be made.  And then he would go to work.  It would last longer than necessary.  Hovig taught him early to reveal only as much strength as necessary to win the night.  The fighting lasted longer that way, which was good for the show and the wagering.  More importantly, the Gartu would be less likely to consider him a threat.  As a threat, he would be a liability despite his prowess in killing his own kind.  Gartu were not clever but their instincts would compel them to eliminate any perceived threat.

Soon Trif was in the pit.  The crowd noise increased.  The three Mord before him stared and grinned, each sure they would emerge victorious.  The rules were simple enough.  There were only certain weapons suitable for Mord in the pit.  They were the tools of his trade, a hammer, a long, slightly curved knife, a thinner, shorter filleting knife, and a bone-hacking cleaver.  For this fight Trif would be allowed only his hammer.  Each opponent could choose any combination of the slaughterhouse weapons.

Trif stared back at the three men.  One had a hammer in one hand and the long knife in the other.  The second chose two of the long knives.  The third was the most inventive.  He had a cleaver in one hand, the long knife in the other and a hammer tucked in his belt.  Clever but also easy to read.  He would wait for Trif to be distracted by the other two Mord before throwing the cleaver, preferably into Trif’s back.

Trif waited for the signal.  When he heard the huge Gartu hammer clang against one of the thick metal pillars of the pit structure, he launched his attack.  His three foes instinctively separated from each other on the sandy floor of the pit, which had been made large enough to accommodate several Gartu but also small enough to force them to fight continuously.  The result was a circle large enough for Trif and the three Mord to move freely, angling for tactical advantage before the mayhem began in earnest.

The Mord on his left was the largest and appeared most at ease with the weapons in his hands.  More important were his eyes.  All three were chosen for this fate based on demonstrated success in the criminal food chain from which they had been plucked.  All three would believe themselves more than able to emerge from the pit.  But there was usually one with just the hint of a question in his eyes.  The question was a sign of recognition.  That one was always the most dangerous.

The one on his left had the glimmer of recognition and so Trif would deal with him first.  He had chosen the hammer in his right hand and the long knife in his left.  The speed of Trif’s approach caused the Mord to take a half step back before offering the knife up as a defense for his face.  He drew his other hand back to prepare a blow with the hammer.

As he approached, Trif lowered his hammer, exposing his face momentarily, before swinging the hammer up from knee level in an outward arc.  It passed close to the Mord’s face, which caused him to stretch his neck back and away, and continued so that the hammer’s head passed behind the outstretched knife and the handle blocked the knife and the arm holding it, up and out of the way.

His victim was off-balance now and could muster only the meekest counter blow with his hammer.  Trif was nearly chest-to-chest with him before the hammer was half through its intended arc.  Trif let the momentum take him all the way into the Mord, using his forehead to strike the Mord’s nose from a slight angle.  The hammer flailed harmlessly over Trif’s back as he angled his left should under the Mord’s arm.  The combination left Trif standing over him, hammer ready to strike.

From the ground the Mord swung at Trif’s leg with the knife.  It was a feeble effort.  The Mord’s eyes were filled with tears, which was the natural result of a sharp blow to the nose bone, and he was disoriented.  Trif stopped the blow with his foot and pinned the offending hand under his boot.  The Mord next swung his hammer in the general direction of Trif’s crotch.  Trif met the hammer sharply with his.  The concussion of hard metal on hard metal ripped the hammer from his victim’s hand and sent it harmlessly to the sand.

Trif paused briefly before dispatching the Mord.  He needed to give his friend with the cleaver ample time to move into position.  The best time to launch an attack would be just after Trif brought the hammer down on the head of the first Mord.  Trif played his part and raised his hammer.  He aimed the blow not at the head but at the side of the neck and delivered it with enough force to dislocate the Mord’s head from the top of his spine.  It was a killing blow and one which kept the head intact.  As victor, Trif would have first claim on the choicest parts of the victims.  He enjoyed fresh brain.

He knew the Mord behind him would expect Trif to raise his body and the hammer immediately after the decisive blow landed.  Instead, Trif feigned upward motion but left the hammer head nestled next to the Mord’s suddenly limp body and then rolled forward.  He could hear the cleaver whistling through the air just above him.  It struck one of the timbers lining the pit.  The tip buried deep into wood.

Trif was back on his feet quickly.  The last Mord to enter the fray seized the opening created by Trif’s momentary focus on avoiding the flying cleaver.  As Trif stood, the Mord was on him, flailing the two long knives in dramatic slicing strokes from high to low across his body.  Trif leaned back to avoid the first, and parried the second away with an inside to outside hammer thrust, before ducking under the third stroke as he stepped across the Mord’s body with his opposite leg.  From that position, he checked into the Mord with his shoulder, which knocked the Mord sideways and turned him slightly away.  Trif used a short backhand swing to bring his hammer to the back of the Mord’s knee.  The knee gave way, putting the Mord off-balance and precluding any immediate retaliation.  Trif used the pause to locate the remaining Mord.  In truth, he knew exactly where the Mord was and was using the pause to prepare for the dramatic performance that was about to begin.

The Mord was launching himself at Trif, who pretended to see the attack only as the Mord was in the air, swinging his hammer.  Trif parried with his hammer and locked his other arms around the Mord as their bodies met.  Trif allowed the Mord’s momentum to take them backward into a sideways roll, which he extended a full revolution more than necessary, before letting go of the Mord and springing to his feet without his hammer in hand.

Now both Mord were up and working to herd Trif into a quarter of the pit’s circle.  The one with two swords grinned at Trif’s perceived disadvantage.  He advanced again, both knives flailing predictably.  Trif stepped to the side in time with a slice aimed across his chest.  He grabbed the Mord’s wrist and allowed momentum to work against his foe.  A small twist and redirection of the arm sent the knife spinning into sand.  Trif raised his foot and pushed the Mord to a safe distance with a kicking motion to his midsection.

As Trif kicked, the other Mord closed on him.  Trif allowed him to get close enough to land a solid hammer blow to Trif’s side.  Trif winced and dropped to one knee.  The Mord pressed his momentary advantage with a downward slice of the knife in his other hand.  Trif made sure to delay catching the Mord’s hand until the blade was close enough to his neck to draw a response from the spectators.  The blade stopped.  The Mord swung the hammer again.  Trif rose and wrapped his free arm inside and over the Mord’s arm as it brought the hammer close.  He then stepped across the Mord and threw him to the ground over his hip.

The other Mord took his turn again and now Trif was content that he had met the duration requirement for this preliminary bout.  It was time to bring things to a close.  His only job now was to do it in a way that concealed his true strength.  The Mord attacked, leading with his knife.  Trif stepped to meet him before planting his lead foot hard, intercepting the knife-wielding hand at the wrist, pulling it down and toward him, and rolling backward.  The motion drew the Mord into the roll with him and, as the two tumbled, Trif worked the broad point of the long knife back into the Mord.  When the two stopped, Trif was on top of the Mord, looking down on the knife, buried to its handle in the Mord’s chest.

To add conviction to the appearance that Trif had profited from and accidental twist of the knife, he stood, sighed deeply, and appeared to wobble out of balance.  His eyes darted imperceptibly around the pit.  The remaining Mord accepted the invitation to strike his apparently stupefied foe.  Trif dove out of the way an instant before the Mord’s hammer swung down where he had been standing.  Trif stumbled to his feet and then stumbled several steps to the side, collapsing to the ground conveniently near the hammer he had discarded earlier.

The Mord now came at him decisively, leading with the hammer.  Trif watched its trajectory and dodged just to the right of the blow before grabbing his hammer from the ground and rolling away from the Mord.  He stumbled back to his feet and held the hammer at his side, as if raising it to fighting position required too much energy.

The Mord attacked again.  Trif shrugged off several swings of the knife and the hammer with labored movements of his hammer, being careful to let it fall back to his side between assaults.  The Mord was now showing real fatigue.  His efforts lacked conviction and the crowd was tipping toward impatience.  The game needed to be over and Trif knew he must end it with a flourish.

The Mord gathered himself for another attack.  Trif wobbled and raised his hammer.  The first effort was with the knife.  Trif countered with a precise strike to the Mord’s elbow, concealed as an errant swing to meet the knife itself.  The Mord yelped.  The knife fell harmlessly to the ground.  The hand holding it was now dangling from an elbow smashed and bloody beyond function.

The Mord raised the hammer with his other arms, launching it in a wild swing.  Trif allowed it to graze his shoulder as he turned away from the blow.  The Mord was now exposed badly as he struggled to maintain balance without any help from the smashed arm.  Trif swung his hammer hard at ear height.  The blow and its result were designed to appear to be the product of a lucky connection.  The aim and force were, in fact, precisely calculated and when the blow landed squarely on the side of the Mord’s head, his skull caved and then exploded.

The spectators erupted in cheers, gasps, and growls.  Trif raised both hands upward, yelled as if to celebrate his survival.  Then he dropped his head, hunched his shoulders, and walked slowly to the edge of the pit, where someone would hand him water.  The preliminaries were over.  The show had been sufficient to encourage wagers on the main event.

Trif rested while the bodies were cleared from the pit.  He pointed and gestured sufficiently to make clear to his fellow workers which parts of the freshly killed meat he intended to claim as his prize.

In the next bout, the Mord would be more dangerous and there would be more of them.  Still, it would be more straightforward.  There would be no expectation that he draw out the proceedings with the appearance of an even match.  The Mord here to wager for the first time would snap at the apparent odds against Trif.  They would calculate too late that anyone who had been here before was backing Trif.

This time there would be five Mord in the pit with him.  To begin, no one would have weapons.  As the situation developed, one of the Gartu would toss weapons into the pit, always with purpose.  If the opposition wasn’t making Trif work, the weapons would land where the Mord meat could get to them first.  If things seemed more evenly balanced, the new weapon would land exactly between Trif and the nearest Mord.  It was all part of the show.

Trif continued to play his part by appearing exhausted.  In response to the call to prepare, he moved slowly, in stages to his feet.  With the signal to start, he straightened.  Six in the pit felt awkward, particularly to the other five.  He scanned their eyes for clues.  What they should do but would not, because they never did, was rush him all five at once.  Trif was always ready for that move.  It never came.  Instead, each would calculate his own interest as best served by letting one of the others attack first.  Even then, they would fail to execute the right strategy.  Whoever attacked first would create a distraction but the moment to take advantage was immediately after the attack began.  They always waited, becoming spectators, waiting for the perfect moment, which never came.

Trif’s strategy was equally predictable.  They had just never seen it and would not get a second opportunity once they had.  He would engage the Mord one at a time whenever possible, arranging his movements to keep that victim between himself and the other Mord until it was time to move on to the next.  He would try to disable the first attacker without killing him, which would create an ongoing distraction for the others.

As the weapons arrived, Trif would engage the Mord in order of the relative danger of the weapons in their hands.  He feared the small knife most.  It was the weapon most resembling the ones these Mord would have carried through the slums.  He would not turn his back on the small knife.  The long knife was objectively the most dangerous.  Any Mord holding one would be a priority.  The hammer was his preferred weapon and any Mord holding one was just keeping the handle warm until Trif wanted to claim it.

The biggest Mord attacked first.  He was as tall as Trif and slightly wider.  Trif took a long step back for positioning and ducked into the Mord’s assault, wrapping both arms around his large torso.  The Mord drove him back another full step.  Trif used the initial collision to gauge this piece of meat’s strength.  The two grappled, their feet shuffling beneath them in search of leverage.  Trif had the lower position and used it to turn the Mord’s strength against him.  The result was a rearward body throw ending with the Mord’s back slammed against the timber wall of the pit and his feet above his head.  His landing provided at least a temporary inability to fight.  One down.

On the far side of the pit, one of the Mord bent to the ground.  Trif caught the motion as he stood.  He couldn’t immediately see what was on the ground but knew he needed to get through the other three Mord efficiently.  Trif went on the offensive, going hard to his right, where the smallest of the Mord was trying to remain at a distance from the fighting.  Trif was not surprised to see him feint in on direction and then dive the other way to distance himself from Trif.  His move to the right also put Trif past the Mord positioned directly in the middle of the pit and gave the one furthest to his left a long way to go to get in Trif’s way.

As Trif arrived at the now armed Mord, he could see the small, curved blade in the Mord’s hand.  The others could see it too and were momentarily content to spectate.  The Mord was comfortable with the weapon and seemed to have a plan.  Trif’s only counter was to not be where the knife was while still staying close enough to take advantage if the Mord left his arm extended too far for too long.  That Trif would win this encounter was not in doubt.  The danger was only that in his total concentration on the knife, the Gartu would drop another weapon in the pit and he would be caught off guard by a second attacker.

This Mord was fast and patient.  His inevitable mistake was taking too long to come.  The second weapon would be in the pit soon.  Trif’s only remaining advantage was the crowd.  They would react separately to the new weapon and he would be able to discern that reaction even as he watched the little knife slither back and forth in front of him.

Trif’s moment came just as the crowd reaction told him a new weapon was in play.  The Mord made the mistake of watching only one of Trif’s hands and as he used that hand to slap away a knife thrust, Trif stepped in with the opposite foot and thrust his other hand like a knife into the Mord’s throat.  The blow itself was likely to kill and the reflexive reaction was nearly always bringing both hands up to the damaged area.  The Mord obliged and also dropped to his knees as he struggled for air as the knife fell to the sand.

Trif turned in time to see the smallest Mord running at him with a hammer.  In one motion he dodged the blow, disarmed the Mord with a wristlock, and threw the Mord by the arm into the next closest attacker.  Hammer in hand, Trif proceeded to dispatch the two Mord he had not yet touched.  He turned to see that his throat blow had, as he suspected, crushed the Mord’s windpipe.  That meant three dead and only two more to kill.

The largest Mord was now armed with a long knife.  He and Trif circled each other cautiously.  Trif was content to allow the Mord to move first and used the time to decide if this one would make a good dinner.  He was big and thick.  Most of the Mord sent to the pit were undernourished, with wiry limbs and no fat.  This one had been eating well.  The thick slabs of back and leg muscle might be nearly the same quality as the meat from the farm.  He would definitely claim this one, which meant he would take care with the kill.

His dinner finally lost patience and attacked.  Trif engaged, avoiding a long slicing move from the Mord and countering by thrusting the end of his hammer hard into Mord’s nose.  The Mord stepped back before swinging the knife again, this time wildly.  Trif caught the Mord’s arm at the wrist with his left hand dropping the hammer from his right at the same time.  He then reached across and twisted the knife from the Mord’s hand.  Now Trif had the knife and he swung it in a backhand motion across his body and across the Mord’s throat.  This time there was no disguising intent or precision.  The Mord’s head separated from his neck, popped up in the air slightly from the force of the blow, rotated a half turn, and dropped to the ground, leaving his body to slowly tip forward.  Trif stepped out of the way.

Four down.  Only the smallest Mord remained.  He picked up the hammer and circled slowly away from Trif, terrified.  Trif dropped the long knife and invited the Mord to attack.  Still, he circled.  The crowd noise rose.  Trif could see the Gartu becoming agitated.  He picked up the knife by the blade and tossed it across the pit to land in front of the Mord, who bent slowly to pick it up.

That provided the necessary encouragement.  This Mord was small and quick.  Trif had to focus intently to avoid being clipped with the knife or hammer.  The longer the little one survived, the less fear Trif could see in his eyes.  That was good.  Trif could think of no reason this one’s last moments should be marked by the stench of fear.  After all, he had survived longer than the other four.  In the end, Trif grew weary of the exercise.  This Mord, like all the countless others, eventually made a mistake too big for Trif to ignore.

A wild swing of the hammer from an unbalanced position invited Trif to take possession and brush the Mord past.  As he did, Trif cocked back the hammer slightly and loosed a short swing to the base of the Mord’s skull.  It was a target Trif hit so many times in a day, he could scarcely count.  He knew exactly how much force was required to bring a merciful end.

As the Mord dropped, lifeless, to the sand, Trif turned and let the hammer fall to his side and then casually from his hand.  Without looking back, he walked slowly out the now open door of the pit, raising one hand above his head to acknowledge the howl of noise from the crowd.  He was hungry and needed to go and claim his prizes before any others thought to poach the choice cuts.  Predictably, he had lived to hate himself for one more day.

 Text Copyright 2015 © James Grant Fiero

All Rights Reserved

For more about Trif and Hovig, look for Prisoners of the Mountain, Book 4 in the “Rider” series.   To read my other short stories, or books, click on my Short Stories tab.