Weak Links: The Many Deaths of the Company of the Chain

Author's Note

For Daisy, G, Crowe, Tiedown, Heehaw, Semi, Bootknife, and Bing. We had some times, didn't we, boys?

This is a gentle sort of madness.

I started writing the Company of the Chain books because, in a lot of ways, I think there is a criminal underrepresentation of the poor, benighted souls slogging through the mud and blood of the battlefields of fantasy land. The knights and the generals and the all-powerful wizards get all the glory, and the faceless rank and file get the shaft right between the second and third ribs. There are a lot of words spared on the magic swords and the powerful spells that turn the tide, but no one cares about the poor sods anchoring the right flank when the battle is joined. They don't get names. They don't get history. No one's telling their story.

Hell with that. I'll do it.

The only problem, is that I started telling this story and immediately fell in love with a lot of these boys (and girls!). But because of the vicissitudes of war and literary verisimilitude, a lot of them die. A lot of them have interesting stories, and I don't get to tell them, because they've already died before the major arcs kick off. 

So, because it is a gentle kind of madness, I'm going to scribble down some short-stories here and there. They'll be the same grim, gallows-humor laced war-stories you'll find in A Chain Five Ways or any of my other Chain books, only shorter. 

And probably a little meaner. It's not called "The Many Happy Endings of the Company of the Chain," after all.

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.