Alt Hist Issue 10 Published – and some news!
April 6, 2017 by Mark
Alt Hist Issue 10 has now been published!
You can purchase eBook and Print copies from:
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Barnes & Noble
And eBook copies from:
Smashwords | Kobo | iBooks
Welcome to Alt Hist Issue 10. I am sad to say that this will be the last regular Alt Hist. It is possible that I may do the occasional special issue Alt Hist in the future—perhaps an anthology around a particular theme, but for now that's it I'm afraid. I have enjoyed editing and publishing Alt Hist over the last six years. The experience has taught me a lot about publishing short fiction and also given me the opportunity to work with some great authors. However, my time is limited and I am not finding enough of it to spend on my own writing. So with a heavy heart I decided that enough was enough for Alt Hist—for now at least.
So, onto the stories in this final issue of Alt Hist.
We start off with "The Thirty-Fourth Man" by Martin Roy Hill. Paul Klee, former cop and OSS spy, now reluctantly serves the SS in a Nazi-occupied America. His latest assignment: Hunt down the Thirty-Fourth Man, a double agent who destroyed a German spy ring. A story inspired by true events.
"Raven Child" by Morgan Read Davidson is set during the time of Julius Caesar, and is about the migration of the great Helvetii tribe through the land that would one day be Switzerland—a migration that would bring them into conflict with the might of Rome's legions.
The Battalion 202 stories by Jonathan Doering have been running in Alt Hist since Issue 4. They give an imaginative view of some of the pressures and reactions to Nazi Occupation had Operation "Sea Lion" been activated successfully in late 1940. "Operation Solar", the concluding story in the cycle, brings together the narratives of the key characters, centering on the AU plans to attack and liberate the Nazis' transit prison at Pontefract Castle.
"Occupation" by Adam Kotlarczyk follows the life of Maryse, a Norman French farm girl who, on the eve of the D-Day invasion, rides a train to rendezvous with her boyfriend, who has been conscripted into the German Wehrmacht.
The last story in Alt Hist Issue 10 is one of my own: "Chivalry: A Jake Savage Adventure". I have resisted the self-indulgence of publishing one of my own stories in Alt Hist until the very final issue—although sometimes it has been tempting when I have struggled to find a final story for an issue. But I thought it was appropriate for this last one—and this story in particular fits well as it's the reason that promoted me to start up Alt Hist in the first place. When I was submitting it to magazine six years ago, I received good feedback from beta readers and others, but I couldn't find anywhere that would accept it—and I realised that part of the reason was probably there was no publication interested much in historical fiction, or a fantasy variant thereof. So Alt Hist began.
I hope that Alt Hist has performed its role to some extent in being an outlet for historical fiction. And I hope that its readers have enjoyed the stories that it has published. As always your comments and views are welcome. I can still be reached via the Alt Hist website, Twitter, Faceboook and email.
Categories Alt Hist Issue 10 Tags 20th Century Fox, Adolf Hitler, Alex Comfort, Animation, Barack Obama, Blue Sky Studios, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Nazism, short story, The Holocaust 6 Comments
First Kill by Megan Jones – Free Extract
November 4, 2016 by Mark
Even for a Viking a first kill can be a traumatic experience. Find out more in Megan Jones's "First Kill", recently published in Alt Hist Issue 9.
First Kill
by Megan Jones
Iceland, c. 920 A.D.
My brother is going to die.
This thought drummed itself into Asmund's head as he knelt at his younger brother's sickbed. Vali had always been pale and lean beside Asmund's brawn, but now his skin was chalky and glistening with sweat. A healer had already visited and given Vali a potion for his fever, but he seemed to have grown more delirious by the hour.
Now that the harvest was over, Father had sailed away a fortnight ago with many of the grown men in their village, to raid the coast of Britannia, leaving his firstborn to look after the farm—and his thirteen-year-old brother. Asmund had resented being left behind, yearned for the chance to prove his mettle.
If you want to prove yourself a man, look after things back home, his Father had charged him when he had complained. And now he was failing even at that.
Asmund brushed Vali's ginger hair off his forehead, the only thing he had inherited from Father. His angular chin and narrow, elfin nose he had gotten from Mother.
"Brother? Can you hear me?" he croaked.
Vali's eyelids fluttered restlessly, as if struggling to understand the words. The elder brother took the water jug from the bedside table and, supporting Vali's shoulders, tried to coax him to swallow a few sips—but the boy seemed too spent even for that.
"Brother, please, you must drink," Asmund whispered. "You must get well."
At that moment, Vali finally opened his eyes a fraction. His gaze was resigned, almost pitying, and spoke clearly: It's no use.
In some ways, illness for Vali was nothing new. Asmund had vague memories of his brother as a sickly infant. Some of their neighbors had asked why they hadn't just exposed the child—it was kinder, they said, than to prolong a frail infant's suffering—but Mother had refused to do it. He is not unsalvageable, she had insisted. Just give him a little time.
And she had been right, mostly. After that, it seemed as if Vali had survived through sheer willpower, just to spite the world. It made Asmund wonder, why couldn't his little brother summon some of that stubbornness now? Where was this acquiescence coming from?
In the evening, when the chores were finished, Asmund checked on his brother again. He thought Vali had drifted back into his restless dreams, so he was startled by a hoarse voice.
"Asmund … Tell me about Mother," Vali croaked.
Their mother had died giving birth to the sister they never met.
"I have already told you all I remember," Asmund said in mock sternness. "At least one hundred times."
"Just once more, please?" Vali teased faintly.
"If you promise me you will try to drink some of that potion the healer left you," he said, forcing a hopeful tone. Asmund did not know what to do, besides go on acting as if his brother was going to be well in no time. After his little brother nodded once and closed his eyes again, listening, Asmund began.
"She was beautiful," he said. He was not sure why he held this conviction. All of his hazy memories of Mother seemed to recall her as a plain sort of woman, face and hands rough from work and sun and wind. But something about her smile—like the sun breaking through a dismal winter day—made him picture her with some awe.
"You were only just starting to walk when Mother died, but I was old enough to remember her," Asmund began. He smiled, though it hurt to do so. "She loved you so much, Vali. She used to sing you to sleep, about the warriors of the past, about faraway lands, about the great adventures we would embark on someday …"
In his mind, he tried not to add, adventures that now will never be. Asmund swallowed back the lump in his throat, trying not to picture himself in the future, sailing the icy seas without his brother at his side, where he ought to have been.
"Do you remember when she died?" Vali asked quietly.
"Aye. Father buried her with a spear and a shield. He told me she could defend our home as well as any man."
In truth, he mostly remembered sobbing desperately to his grandmother. I will never see her again, he had wailed over and over again. Mother died in childbirth, and I will die in battle! Even at that age, he had imagined a glorious death for himself—but he could not rid his mind of the image of his mother's shade drifting through the lonely, dark plains of Helheim. But his grandmother had chuckled, Childbirth is a battle all its own, dear heart. You may yet see her in Valhalla's golden halls.
That had consoled him, at least.
Since they were old enough to hold their wooden toy swords, their father had been teaching them combat skills. As children, between feeding the animals or scavenging driftwood from the shore, they were allowed to roam where they pleased. Then Asmund and Vali became fellow warriors, exploring barbaric territories (which were actually the meadows around the farmstead) and lopping heads off fearsome giants (which were actually sheep, slightly disgruntled at being interrupted in their placid grazing). Father encouraged the boys' make-believe because he wanted to teach them independence, and feed their desire for glory.
Once a week, however, he made time to teach them more tangible skills. Someday, their enemies would not be imaginary monsters, but flesh-and-blood Pict warriors.
Asmund had absorbed this training eagerly. Broad-shouldered and energetic as his father, he had mastered the sword, spear, and shield with ease. He had such ferocity for his age that Father affectionately called him a berserker, which made the young Asmund swell with pride.
Not so with Vali. He had neither the heart nor the hand for swordplay. Whenever his turn came, Asmund always felt a mixture of pity, worry, and secondhand embarrassment. Vali's bony hands would clutch his weapon awkwardly and too tightly.
"I don't want to hurt either of you," he would mumble, brow furrowed in distress.
Father would scoff and roll his eyes. "It's a practice sword, son. The edges are dull. Besides, you don't have the strength of arm to make a dent in us."
Indeed, Vali hardly had the strength to hold the sword steady, and Asmund always managed to disarm him in one or two moves, even with all the care he took not to deliver too damaging a blow. One day, Father took Asmund aside and rebuked him for holding back.
"I know, he's your brother, and you want to protect him," Father said in a low voice, gripping him tightly by the shoulder. "It's only natural. I've always taught you to look out for kin above all else. But you aren't helping him, Asmund. You have to let him get hurt if he is ever going to grow stronger."
Asmund understood. But he was not certain his gentle, insecure brother did. When they resumed the lesson, Father drove Vali twice as hard as before, criticized his every move and would not let the boy have supper until he lasted at least five minutes through a sparring session without being disarmed. Asmund could not watch: not only was it painful to see his brother gasping pitifully for breath and wiping his brow with hands shaking from fatigue, but his expression—hopelessness. Vali thought their father saw him as a failure. Perhaps he did, Asmund thought with a pang. But he was also convinced their father's desperation was born mostly from worry. After all, how could such a slender-framed, sensitive child survive long in this world?
END OF FREE EXTRACT
You can read the rest of this story by purchasing a copy Alt Hist Issue 9.
Megan Jones studied creative writing at Grand Valley State University. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she tends bar as her day job. She has been writing historical fiction and fantasy since elementary school, but this is her first time being published. More samples of her work can be found at https://meganjonesgr.wordpress.com.
Categories Issue 9 Tags 10th century, A-1 Pictures, Akai, Animation, Cultural heritage, DV (newspaper), Iceland, Skaftárhreppur, Viking sword, Vikings 1 Comment