Sweet as Blood, Biting as a Sword

In part for contrast, I have decided to post a somewhat older story that represents my writing style before I changed a fair bit of it to write Condotierri and Simon Peter. So, I give you Sweet as Blood, Biting as a Sword. The story is sword and sorcery fantasy with a kung-fu, pseudo-Chinese flavor to it. The character, Tzu Lung, uh, he started out in . . . Dungeons & Dragons. I was, and am, really, a fairly committed role-playing gamer. The character started off as the Undying Emperor, who I had envisioned as a black legend, cruelly ruling for thousands of years a vast empire, but doing so in order to stave off demonic threats.

As I started developing the character for fiction, he turned into an anti-Conan. Tzu Lung was austere, controlled, intellectual as opposed to the brooding and laughing, wild and barbaric Conan. I was also aware of Elric of Melnibone as another anti-Conan, so in some ways Tzu Lung is also the anti-Elric, who does what he is doing to better the world rather than to selfishly destroy it and is merely swept up in events beyond his control.

This is, chronologically, the first Tzu Lung story. I have several others that I could be persuaded to post. The stories are well-written, fast paced, and all the things my regular readers have come to expect, but I think people will see a different style in it than I've used in my more recent material.

As always, comments are welcome and if you think you know someone who might like the story, you should spread it around!