Swords & Dark Magic by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

attended the University of Missouri and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. His first novel , The Heirs of Babylon, appeared in 1972 and was followed by a broad range of fantasy and science fiction novels, including the humorous fantasy Garrett PI series and others. His most important work, though, is the gritty Black Company fantasy series, which follows a mercenary unit over several decades and which brought a whole new perspective to fantasy. Cook is currently retired and lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he writes full-time.
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Glen Cook
    W e were playing tonk. One-Eye was in a foul mood because he was losing. Situation normal, except nobody was trying to kill us.
    Elmo dealt. One-Eye squeaked. I peeked at my cards. “Another hand so damned bad it don’t qualify as a foot.”
    Otto said, “You’re full of shit, Croaker. You won six out of the last ten hands.”
    Elmo said, “And bitched about the deal every time.”
    “I was right every time I dealt.” I was right this time, too. I did not have a pair. I had no low cards and only one face card. The two in the same suit were the seven and knave of diamonds. I do not have years enough left to fill that straight. Anyway, we all knew One-Eye had one of his rare good hands.
    “Then we need to make you full-time dealer.”
    I pushed my ante in. I drew, discarded, and tossed my cards in when it came to me.
    One-Eye went down with ten. The biggest card he had was a three. His leathery old black face ripped in a grin lacking an adequate population of teeth. He raked the pot in.
    Elmo asked the air, “Was that legitimate?” We had a gallery of half a dozen. We had the Dark Horse to ourselves today. It was the Company watering hole in Aloe. The owner, Markeb Zhorab, had mixed feelings. We were not the kind of guys he wanted hanging around but because we did, his business was out standing.
    Nobody indicted One-Eye. Goblin, with his butt on the table next over, reminded Elmo, “You dealt.”
    “Yeah, there’s that.”
    One-Eye has been known to cheat. Hard to manage in a game as simpleminded as tonk, but there you go. He is One-Eye.
    “Lucky at cards, unlucky at love,” he said, which made no sense in context.
    Goblin cracked, “You better hire yourself some bodyguards. Women will be tearing down doors trying to get to you.”
    A wisecrack from Goblin generally fires One-Eye up. He has a hair trigger. We waited for it. One-Eye just grinned and told Otto, “Deal, loser. And make it a hand like the one Elmo just gave me.”
    Goblin said something about Missus Hand being the only lucky lady in One-Eye’s life.
    One-Eye went on ignoring the bait.
    I began to worry.
    Otto’s deal did not help.
    One-Eye said, “You know how we run into weird customs wherever we go?”
    Elmo glared holes through his cards. He grunted. Otto arranged and rearranged his five, meaning he had a hand so bad he did not know how to play it. One-Eye did not squeak but he kept grinning. We were on the brink of a new age, one in which he could win two hands in a row.
    Everybody looked at Goblin. Goblin said, “Otto dealt.”
    Somebody in the gallery suggested, “Maybe he spelled the cards.”
    That all rolled past One-Eye. “The weirdest custom they got here is, when a girl loses her cherry, from then on she’s got to keep all the hair off her body.”
    Otto rumbled, “That’s some grade-two bullshit if I ever heard some. We been here near three months and I ain’t seen a bald-headed woman yet.”
    Everything stopped, including One-Eye stacking his winnings.
    “What?” Otto asked.
    There have always been questions about Otto.
    The rest of us occasionally invest a coin in a tumble with a professional comfort lady. Though the subject never came up before, I knew I had yet to see one whisker below the neckline.
    “Do tell,” Elmo said. “And I thought it was the luck of the draw that I wasn’t seeing what ought to be there.”
    I said, “I figured it was how mine kept from getting the