Rebel Dead Revenge #2: Satan’s Army

The Devil is raising an army!

To the horror of his loyal servant, Jim, Confederate general Stonewall Jackson has been summoned back from the grave to lead Satan’s army of ravenous undead. But the great general’s arm is missing, and only Jim knows where it might be. He doesn’t know why Satan needs it, but he knows that he has to do everything he can to prevent the Devil from finding it.

The South rises again in REBEL DEAD REVENGE!

Written and illustrated by Savage Sword of Conan and The Punisher artist Gary Kwapisz, Rebel Dead Revenge #2: Satan’s Army is 30 pages and $2.99. Available on Kindle and KU, it is the second Dark Legion Comics release but it will not be the only one in March, as we plan to release Chicago Typewriter: The Red Ribbon later this month. Check out the Look Inside on Amazon, it’s as intense as its predecessor. And, apparently, as well-received.

#1 in Kindle Store > Comics & Graphic Novels > Historical Fiction
#1 in Kindle Store > Comics & Graphic Novels > Zombies
#1 in Kindle Store > Comics & Graphic Novels > Military

In Arkhaven news, we’ve had some trouble getting our first two print editions to show up in stock on Amazon due to an internal issue at our distributor that was inadvertently created by our very low retail prices of $2.99. That is in the process of being resolved, but in the meantime, you can order both Right Ho, Jeeves #1 and QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1 from Castalia Books Direct. Note that we do considerably better if you order print editions there than from Amazon, and that the shipping cost is the same from one to five comics. That doesn’t matter much when we’ve only got two in print, but we will have more available soon, starting with Steve Keen’s eCONcomics.

And on the Alt★Hero front, backers who are Site Heroes should check their email later today, as Markku and I will be holding an online meeting tonight at 7 PM Eastern with all 68 of them to introduce the Alt★Hero forums. This is an independent site that is hosting discussion forums for all of the comics, including both Arkhaven and Dark Legion series. There are special Backer’s Only forums, including one just for the Site Heroes to discuss how the site should be structured and run. Everyone will be able to read the forums, but only approved and registered users will be permitted to post there. The fact that Freestartr had to recently remove the ability to comment on all three campaigns there due to pornographic graffiti being posted by SJWs should suffice to explain why open registration and posting will not be the site policy.


It’s really not that hard

Keep in mind, all of this is after many repeated warnings, bannings, and finally, spammings.

Hi,  I was a chatter on your blog,  Mature-Craig, citizen Pepe

I want to apologize for not staying away as you asked

There was a couple topics you brought up that gave me a chance to get some things off my chest publicly that I needed to get off my chest.

I am going to stay away from now on.

I sincerely wish you all the best
– Craig Joseph, 4/3/2017 5:56 PM

OK sir I will leave and not come back.  My wife doesnt liike me spending too much time on this anyway.

I wanted to apologize to you one more time.  I wanted to apologize to both you are and your wife as well for my gamma behavior ten years ago.  I want both you and your wife to know I think very highly of both of you.  I think back at some of the things I was saying 2004-05 and I am disgusted with myself.     Best to you and your family.

Its not a good spot for me.
– Craig Joseph, 2/25/2018 4:41 PM

American Christianity has generally had a deeper love for the Old Testament than European Christianity. And the vast majority of religious American Christians see the Jews as the root of the tree of Christ.

fair enough I guess

The fact that America is Judeo-Christian and not merely Christian is a reflection of those facts.

kind of an antagonistic thing to say,

its also fact that America has a lot of Anglo Saxon Christians, its a fact that America is also Anglo-Christian, Italo-Christian, Afrikana-Christian, Latino-Christian, Oriento-Christian etc

The roots of the Jewish people are more closely tied to Jesus Christ than those other groups that is true, but I say its a fact that America is Anglo-Christian, there are many many Anglo Christians in this country
– Craig Joseph aka The Pepe report 3/1/2018 10:40 AM

it wont happen again,
– Craig Joseph 3/1/2018 5:04 PM

Seriously, what is the problem? Look, it’s really NOT THAT HARD to not visit a blog, let alone not comment on it. For example, John Scalzi asked me to stop commenting on his blog back in 2008. I haven’t commented on it since and I’ve barely even visited it except to occasionally copy a post that someone else has pointed out to me for subsequent quoting here.

If you’re told not to comment here, then don’t do so. You are not welcome. You are trespassing. You may even by illegally cyberstalking, depending upon the law in your jurisdiction. You’re not going to change anyone’s minds, you’re not going to get me back somehow, and you’re not going to prove anything except for the fact that you have less self-control than the average crack-addicted teenage prostitute.


Smart Trump, Dumb Trump, Sneaky Trump

Sometimes the God-Emperor can’t seem to get out of the way of his own emotions. On the other hand, it is always dangerous to assume that you know which Trump Mode happens to be operative in any given situation.

Yesterday, the President held a bipartisan meeting on school safety and gun control. It was a nightmare. Trump taunted lawmakers by telling them “you’re afraid of the NRA.” He’ll soon find out why politicians are afraid of the NRA during the 2018 elections if he doesn’t walk balk some of the insanity he was tossing about in that meeting.

Some of the ridiculous changes to firearm laws Trump seemed amenable to include outlawing private guns sales, raising the age to 21 to buy a long gun, and taking people’s guns without due process. Like I said, what a dumpster fire. Not one of those things will stop criminal maniacs from getting a firearm.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, which is a crappy, over priced place to buy anything a firearm will not sell “assault-style” weapons. Quick question: what is the difference between an “assault-style” long gun and a long gun that is not “assault-style”? Let me know in the comments. Sadly, Walmart, where I occasionally purchase Federal 12ga 8 shot but will not do so any longer, says it will not sell firearms to consumers who are under the age of 21.

President Trump mentioned in his gun control conclave that he was going to issue an executive order banning bump stocks. And in a mind-blowing move, Trump dismissed Rep. Steve Scalise when he suggested national reciprocity be included in any gun legislation.

Dumpster fire barely begins to describe it. However, as always, I counsel patience when attempting to analyze and understand Donald Trump’s words and actions. First, what has actually changed? Nothing. At the very least, wait and see whether this is strategic posturing, tactical maneuver, or simple emoting.

If nothing else, Trump is an astute observer and a fast learner. He’s not a complete idiot, and it’s hardly going to escape him that all the parties and people who are most implacably opposed to him are literally rubbing their hands over his latest outburst. And possibly Trump’s greatest political skill is his ability to a) realize he has made a mistake and b) walk it back without hesitation, regret, or apology.

The other thing to remember is that Trump is neither a savior nor is he Alt-Right. He is absolutely going to get things wrong from time to time. On those occasions, we should oppose him as steadfastly as if he were Hillary Clinton or Judeo Christ himself. But we should do so with the awareness that he can change his mind and the hope that he will do so, and the understanding that he is mistaken rather than the enemy.

The lesson, as always, is never count the God-Emperor out. That’s not an expression of loyalty, merely one of experience.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Many ideas, some good & some not so good, emerged from our bipartisan meeting on school safety yesterday at the White House. Background Checks a big part of conversation. Gun free zones are proven targets of killers. After many years, a Bill should emerge. Respect 2nd Amendment!


Denying Jesus and America

The relentlessly dishonest Ben Shapiro was quick to publicly deny both Jesus Christ and the Christian heritage of America while taking speedy exception to a rabbi telling Christians the truth about her religion. Shut it down! Unfortunately for the Littlest Chickenhawk, Twitter was well-informed and having none of it. Do not be deceived. Shapiro is a lying, parasitical snake; he is a Fake Right Fake American who has been artificially propped up in the media for nearly two decades in order to lead Christians and conservatives astray.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg@TheRaDR
This might be a good time to note that “Judeo-Christian” is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity.

Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
This is nonsense.

Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
Judaism and Christianity are deeply intertwined. American Christianity has generally had a deeper love for the Old Testament than European Christianity. And the vast majority of religious American Christians see the Jews as the root of the tree of Christ.

Ben Shapiro‏@benshapiro
The fact that America is Judeo-Christian and not merely Christian is a reflection of those facts.

Crew@CarborundumCrew
Ben, there is no Judeo-Christ!

Heather Anne@cler_morgaine
Judaism and Christianity are both *Abrahamic* faiths. The term ‘judeo-christian’ is used to to fake religious pluralism while excluding Islam, which arguably has more in common with both than they do each other.

Dr. Ramone, Esq.@melvinramone
Judaism rejects the core premise of Christianity. You’re making up facts.

Cornelius Rye@CorneliusRye2
It’s literally not. It’s a very recent invention by YOUR PEOPLE. Jews have very little to do with America pre-WWII.

JOHNMEYER@JOHNMEY28401489
You represent Talmudism. Different thing.

#BroniesForTrump@GWSSDelta
White evangelical Christians’ rate Jews 69 out of 100, but Jews rate evangelical Christians 34 out of 100. I look forward to the day when Christians wake up from the “Judeo-Christian” “greatest ally” con and realize that Jews hate them.

Emprah’sFinest@SamHydeShooter
Please tell me which of the Founders was a Jew.

Deplorable Unum ??@deplorable_unum
Wrong. America predates the 20th Century, when the “Judeo-Christan”  term first appeared. Stop trying to rewrite America history, little Benny.

The Forgotten Man@_ForgottenMan
As many of the presidents of the past have said, “This is a Christian nation.” The Judeo-Christian makes no sense, Judaism and Christianity are two very different religions.

And then, of course, there is the absolute, conclusive proof that America was never “Judeo-Christian” in any sense, as the term in its current form didn’t even exist prior to WWII.

However, the rabbi is not entirely correct. It isn’t so much “American Christianity” that attempts to falsely conflate Christianity and the post-Temple rabbinical talmudism that presently passes for Judaism. It is self-serving diasporans resident in the US like Ben Shapiro who have done so, in a moderately successful post-WWII propaganda campaign fueled by a poem and a play to deceive Americans about their own Christian heritage and the central importance of Christianity to both America and the West.

If you don’t get why I bother to make these historical clarifications, if you don’t realize the importance of the understanding the truth of this matter for Christians, I encourage you to contemplate the warnings from the Book of Revelation about the deception of the saints. From what nation will the Lawless One come? From what tribe will the False Messiah hail? In what city will he rule? What group of people are most central to the ongoing attempts to legally restrict the ability of badthinkers and thought criminals to make a living, to ensure that no one can buy or sell who does not have their mark of approval? On behalf of what nation have laws been passed to eliminate the right of Americans and others across the West to freely express their opinions about history and trade? What group of people and what religion relentlessly preach the New Babel and oppose nationalism in almost every nation around the world? Precisely how is the world to be “healed” and what would this healed world look like?

Make no mistake about this: Judeo Christ is another name for pseudokhristos and an ecumenical satanism that includes this anti-Christian, ahistorical, explicitly anti-Biblical “Judeochristianity” is his religion. But you need not take my word for the mythical nature of Judeo-Christianity. Even the early neocons were more honest, as Arthur Cohen attested in his 1969 Commentary article entitled “The Myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition”.

It is an apparent truism that the concept of the Judeo-Christian tradition has particular currency and significance in the United States. It is not a commonplace in Europe as it is here; rather, Europeans since the war have become habituated to speak of Jewish-Christian amity, to define the foundations and frontiers of community, to describe and, in describing, to put to rest, historic canards and libels. In Europe they are not addicted as we are here to proclaiming a tradition in which distinctions are fudged, diversities reconciled, differences overwhelmed by sloppy and sentimental approaches to falling in love after centuries of misunderstanding and estrangement. I need not speak at length here of the religion of American secularism, that uncritical Jacobinism which is neither fish nor fowl, and certainly neither Christian nor Jewish. Suffice it to say that such secular religiosity is correctly perceived by both communities to be dangerous; it is the common quicksand of Jews and Christians. And it is here that we can identify the myth. Jews and Christians have conspired together to promote a tradition of common experience and common belief, whereas in fact they have joined together to reinforce themselves in the face of a common disaster. Inundated institutions have made common cause before a world that regards them as hopelessly irrelevant, and meaningless. The myth, then, is a projection of the will to endure of both Jews and Christians, an identification of common enemies, an abandonment of millennial antagonisms in the face of threats which do not discriminate between Judaism and Christianity; and these threats, the whole of the Triple Revolution—automation, the population explosion, nuclear warfare—these are the threats which evoke the formation of the myth.

The threats are real and desperate, but patching-over will not, in the long run, help. Patching-over can only deteriorate further what it seeks to protect. The Judeo-Christian tradition is an eschatological myth for the Christian who no longer can deal with actual history and a historical myth for Jews who can no longer deal with the radical negations of eschatology.

Or, alternatively, take the word of Dr. Jacob Klatzkin, the late editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica:

We are not hyphenated Jews; we are Jews with no qualifications or reservations. We are simply aliens; we are a foreign people in your midst, and we emphasize, we wish to stay that way. There is a wide gap between you and us, so wide that no bridge can be laid across it. Your spirit is alien to us; your myths, legends, habits, customs, traditions and national heritage, your religious and national shrines, your Sundays and holidays… They are all alien to us.

And if Marco Rubio, of all people, is selling the “Judea-Christian heritage” concept, that alone should be more than enough to confirm that it is false.

The debate after #Parkland reminds us We The People don’t really like each other very much. We smear those who refuse to agree with us. We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. & worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease 

The point is that We are not The People, we are now multiple peoples, multiple nations, and multiple religions, all caught up in conflict over who will wield the imperial power over whom. More importantly, there is no “Judeo-Christianity”. There is no “Judeo-Christian tradition” and there are no “Judeo-Christian values”. You cannot follow both Jesus Christ and Judeo Christ.


“Mistakenly”

Somehow, I tend to doubt that. Frankly, it surprises me that Google executives aren’t bragging about it… but they know their statements would almost surely end up as evidence in more than one lawsuit:

YouTube’s New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels

YouTube’s new moderators, brought in to spot fake, misleading and extreme videos, stumbled in one of their first major tests, mistakenly removing some clips and channels in the midst of a nationwide debate on gun control.

The Google division said in December it would assign more than 10,000 people to moderate content after a year of scandals over fake and inappropriate content on the world’s largest video site.

In the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, some YouTube moderators mistakenly removed several videos and some channels from right-wing, pro-gun video producers and outlets.

So, Sundararajan, my old pal, was this a “mistake” too?

After review, the following video: Immigration and War has been blocked from view on the following YouTube country site(s): Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, France, United Kingdom, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Croatia, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Martinique, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Poland, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Reunion, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, French Southern Territories, Wallis and Futuna, Mayotte
Clipgrab.

Certain features have been disabled for this video

In response to user reports, we have disabled some features, such as comments, sharing, and suggested videos, because this video contains content that may be inappropriate or offensive to some audiences. 



Convergence at the gun store

I’ll bet that Dick’s Sporting Goods will not remain one of the largest sports retailers for long in light of this utterly bone-headed move by the CEO:

One of the nation’s largest sports retailers, Dick’s Sporting Goods, said Wednesday morning it was immediately ending sales of all assault-style rifles in its stores. The retailer also said that it would no longer sell high-capacity magazines and that it would not sell any gun to anyone under 21 years of age, regardless of local laws.

The announcement, made two weeks after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 students and staff members, is one of the strongest stances taken by corporate America in the national gun debate. It also carries symbolic weight, coming from a prominent national gunseller.

Late last week, after coming under attack on social media for their ties to the National Rifle Association, a number of major companies, including Hertz car rental, MetLife insurance and Delta Air Lines, publicly ended those relationships, issuing brief, carefully phrased statements.

But Edward Stack, the 63-year-old chief executive of Dick’s whose father founded the store in 1948, is deliberately steering his company directly into the storm, making clear that the company’s new policy was a direct response to the Florida shooting. “When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset,” Mr. Stack said in an interview Tuesday evening. “We love these kids and their rallying cry, ‘enough is enough.’ It got to us.”

I look forward to the future articles denying that this decision by the CEO to steer the company “directly into the storm” has anything to do with the totally unanticipated 18-percent decline in annual sales in 2018.

“The whole hunting business is an important part of our business, and we know there is going to be backlash on this,” said Mr. Stack. “But we’re willing to accept that.”

It will be interesting to see how long it takes him to change his tune. Notice how it is almost never the founders of companies who ever do anything this stupid? It’s always heirs and infiltrators, which tends to demonstrate that those who do not create businesses may understand how to work the internal machinery and manage the processes established, but they lack an inherent understanding of why and how the business exists in the first place.


Mailvox: the BBC rebuttal

JS observes that the BBC is attempting to completely eradicate the real history of British invasions. At this rate, it won’t be long before they’re not only denying Bede, but trying to write Caesar’s Commentaries out of the historical record as well.

After watching the first Voxiversity episode (well done, btw), by chance I watched a series of BBC documentaries on “Arthurian Britain” which argued the opposite occurred in Britain: that there were no invasions, that the native British gradually accepted the multicultural influences of continental culture with no disruption to daily life and they all lived happily ever after.

King Arthur’s Britain  (Roman Britain Documentary)

I say “argued”, in fact the series is a transparent exercise in persuasive rhetoric verging at times on outright propaganda. I have been an amateur student of the period for many years and my own conclusion is that there is not enough available evidence to ever come to any conclusions. The best it can do is inspire fiction.

The well-spoken, avuncular presenter starts with a fully constructed straw-man; that current history insists Britain collapsed into the Dark Ages in 410 AD when the Roman legions left. Overnight, people fled the towns and returned to subsistence farming, forgot how to read and write while woodlands reclaimed the land. He then goes on to “prove” that this didn’t happen and that it was merely the interpretation of Victorian imperialists who saw themselves as Rome reborn and wanted to emphasise the dangers of removing imperial power.

Over the three episodes, various experts deconstruct and reinterpret the scant, available evidence to show that there was no Anglo-Saxon invasion and no population replacement. Genetic evidence showing that the indigenous people were driven west into Wales while continental people settled in the east was dismissed out of hand because one other study showed something different and the presenter himself didn’t believe it.

I’m no rhetorician but even I recognised the fallacious language used throughout e.g. “There is no evidence, but this is what must have happened,’ when it supported his thesis, “There is no evidence so it must be wrong,” when it didn’t as he insisted throughout that he was telling you the “real” story etc.

Bede’s “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” was dismissed as a complete fiction by a young, female expert who concluded that there were never any Anglo-Saxons in Britain, consequently there never were any English and that Bede made the whole thing up and reinvented history.

The projection was palpable. The fact that they were arguing their central thesis, that everything we believe is wrong because previous generations interpreted the evidence to support their political biases, by overtly manipulating the evidence to support their own political bias seems to sail right over their heads. They state that there never was a pure British race (which the presenter paradoxically argues in support of half the time) and you can guess the final conclusion, can’t you?

“The real people of Britain AD did not only survive an influx of foreign influences but actually flourished because of it.”

Diversity is our strength!

It descends into farce at the end as former socialist politician, Robin Cook explains that Chicken Tikka Masala is the English national dish as it represents the rich, diverse people that the English have always been. Literally saying at one point, “… what makes Britain great, makes Britain strong is not purity, it is our diversity…” 

I understand you might not have time to watch the series but I think it could make an interesting “compare and contrast” exercise for the Voxiversity viewership.


The equalitarian future

White people, especially conservatives, absolutely love to claim that they don’t see color or race. That’s very laudable, I’m sure, and perhaps it is even partially true, but the more relevant point is that everyone who isn’t white does. But at least he still has the constitution, right? Well, not so much:

White South African farmers will be removed from their land after a landslide vote in parliament. The country’s constitution is now likely to be amended to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation, following a motion brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema.

It passed by 241 votes for to 83 against after a vote on Tuesday, and the policy was a key factor in new president Cyril Ramaphosa’s platform after he took over from Jacob Zuma in February.

Mr Malema said the time for ‘reconciliation is over’. ‘Now is the time for justice,’ News24 reported. ‘We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.’

Mr Malema has a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without compensation. In 2016 he told his supporters he was ‘not calling for the slaughter of white people – at least for now’.

A 2017 South African government audit found white people owned 72 per cent of farmland.

Rural affairs minister for the ruling African National Congress party said ‘The ANC unequivocally supports the principle of land expropriation without compensation. There is no doubt about it, land shall be expropriated without compensation.’

Freedom Front Plus party leader Pieter Groenewald said the decision to strip white farmers of their land would cause ‘unforeseen consequences that is not in the interest of South Africa’.

That last bit cracked me up. “Unforeseen consequences!” That will show them! Conservatives will be shaking their fingers and issuing dire warnings even as they are being tossed into the cooking pot. They’re really not going to like the indigestion that they’re going to suffer if they eat you too fast! White Americans think that black South Africans failed to learn the lesson from Rhodesia, when the truth is that it is white Americans who have failed to learn the lesson of both Rhodesia and South Africa.

Maybe they’ll starve when the whites are gone and maybe they won’t. Either way, there is only one way to find out and that’s clearly a risk they are observably more than willing to take.


EXCERPT: The Missionaries

Of all the novels we have published to date, The Missionaries by Owen Stanley is without question one of the best. It is almost disturbingly funny. It’s also available in both hardcover and paperback from Castalia Direct.

Laripa was distinguished among the settlements of the Moroks by the presence of the greatest orator, Malek; the greatest sorcerer, Macardit; and the greatest philosopher, Garang, a twisted, hairless little man with a squint. It was thus a kind of Florence or Paris, a cultural centre where the aspiring young intellectuals of the Moroks came to learn the secrets of their fathers, and, more hidden still, the dark revelations of the Before-Men who, led by Tikame himself, had roamed the mountains when Time itself was not.

As befitted its status as the cultural capital of the Moroks, its men’s house was the largest, the best-ornamented, and the most smoke-blackened in all the island. Raised on piles, its rear was low, but the roof-ridge rose into the sky, so that, being more than a hundred feet long, the top of its front end, the formal end, was nearly forty feet above the ground. The boards covering the front of the house were brilliantly painted in the form of a great face, whose mouth was also the entrance. The teeth of this mouth were provided by two rows of bleached skulls, as the boiling and preparation of skulls was one of the arts for which Laripa was celebrated.

Below the men’s house, the hovels of the women formed two parallel lines for a couple of hundred yards down the crest of the spur. At the end of these two lines, a second, smaller, men’s house faced up the yard between the huts of the women, looking directly at the great face of the principal men’s house. The yard was steep and slippery, of shiny red clay, and all around the village ran a high stockade of timbers, whose tops were carved into replicas of simian faces, or barbed to resemble spear points, or hacked and pruned into stranger, even more lethal shapes, curved and twisted like instruments of torture.

The interior of the great men’s house was lit only by those rays that penetrated the narrow entrance, and its natural obscurity was rendered the more impenetrable by the smoke which filled it, rising from the smouldering logs on the hearth of ashes running the entire length of the building. Inside the entrance, in the ashes, smoking his bamboo pipe, sat Nyikang, once the most renowned of the Laripa warriors, now little more than an old bag of bones looking out over his beloved mountains, waiting to die.

Smoking was the last of this world’s pleasures left to him; the government had stopped most of the axe murders at which he had been so proficient, and he had never been much good at sorcery. He’d always muddled the spells at the critical moment. Sex, well, that had been fun, and at least the government hadn’t stopped that yet, but it was a long time since he had felt up to it. The last time, that had been a long time ago, when the great landslide swept away some of his pandanus trees, but all he got for his trouble was a splitting headache, and he had given it up as a bad job ever since. Not that he was missing much as far as Teopo, his last surviving wife, was concerned. She was almost as decrepit as him and never bothered to wash anymore; she was usually covered in dust, like an old gourd abandoned in the corner of a hut.

It was ages, too, since he had led the killing of the pigs at a great dance. His teeth had mostly gone now, and he couldn’t even chew a pig, let alone kill one. Soon he would be a spirit, roaming the forests of the high ranges with his ancestors, without fire, or food, or hope. He still clung to life, not out of love of this world, or fear of that to come, but from habit.

His attention wandered back to Macardit and Malek, who were sitting outside on the verandah, talking.

“A bat’s wing without fresh dog’s blood will blight naught,” said Macardit. “Some say that a frog’s head, crushed with ginger root, giveth more power than the blood of any creature, but that is folly.”

Malek nodded wisely.

“Dog’s blood, thou sayest. I will mind it well.” His fourth and most recent wife had been seduced by his cousin, so he had come to Macardit for a little private tuition in sorcery. The receipt for smiting an enemy’s genitals with gonorrhea cost only a small pig; a larger one, of course, was required if the Master himself recited the spells. Since this enemy was a cousin, the handier and cheaper remedy of the axe was denied him, but a good dose of the clap would suffice to put the fellow in his place.

“Fresh blood, fresh blood,” reiterated Macardit. “If thou but usest fresh blood, the bat’s wing, and the words of power which I have given thee, and well besmear his codpiece with the remedy, there will be one pig that will not root in thy garden for a while.” Macardit drew on his bamboo pipe, but found that in the long interval of conversation it had died.