PodCastle 129: Songdogs
Songdogs
by Ian McHugh
She led Carrick along the eroded bank, examining the creek bed in the moonlight. It was furrowed with flood channels and littered with rocks and small debris, but no patches of smooth sand that might indicate a jack-o-box lurking underneath.
He slipped going down the bank, despite Agnieska’s efforts to keep him upright. He knocked her off balance, too, and caught her a painful blow on the breast with his elbow as they slithered to the bottom. Carrick landed on top. He pressed the mittens onto her chest as he scrambled up, squashing the breath from her lungs. Agnieska got her arm in the way of his clumsy swing at her head, yelped as she caught the blow on the point of her elbow. Carrick staggered away, trying to run. His escape lasted only a handful of paces before the compulsion spell stopped him and he sprawled once again in the dust.
Agnieska surged to her feet, her patience shot. With a snarl, she kicked him over onto his back. From her coat pocket she took a pair of steel-bladed calf hooks.
About the Author
Ian McHugh
Ian McHugh’s first success as a speculative fiction writer was winning the short story contest at the 2004 Australian national SF convention. Since then he has sold stories to professional and semi-pro magazines, webzines and anthologies in Australia and internationally. His stories have won grand prize in the Writers of the Future contest, been shortlisted five times at Australia’s Aurealis Awards (winning Best Fantasy Short Story in 2010), reprinted in Australian year’s best anthologies, honourably mentioned for world year’s bests and appeared in the Locus and Tangent Online annual Recommended Reading Lists. He graduated from the Clarion West writers’ workshop in 2006. His first collection of short stories, Angel Dust, was shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Collection in 2015.
Ian lives in Canberra, Australia and is a member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild.
About the Narrator
A.J. Fitzwater
AJ Fitzwater is a glittery lava lamp from Christchurch, New Zealand. Their books are the World War 2 land girls shapeshifter novella “No Man’s Land” and the lesbian capybara pirate collection “The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper”. They like bow ties and soft pillows, and they tweet @AJFitzwater.
