Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from The Alchemist’s Revenge by Peter Cakebread, the first novel from the co-author of the role playing games Airship Pirates and Clockwork & Chivalry.

The first sign William noticed was the glowing, up on the ridge ahead.

Ralph and Belinda stared, transfixed by the bright white lights. The mules made a frightened, keening sound, seemingly ready to bolt. The lights ahead had begun to form up. To take shape.

Upon the ridge, there were ghosts. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands. They were formed up in fighting blocks, a veritable host of white translucent shape, spirits of the parliamentarian soldiers, who had lined up on that ridge, on the day of the battle. The sight was awe-inspiring, and terrifying.

On the ridge ahead, the spectral soldiers were fighting, locked together, struggling with each other. A vast white shape appeared on the horizon, crashing down through the struggling spirits, crushing and dissipating those in its path. It was an ethereal Leviathan, an opaque memory of the large metal landship. Then ghostly alchemists and riders joined the fray, sweeping in from the sides of the valley. Images of unearthly elemental forms and exploding potion flasks added to the chaos.

Peter Cakebread is the co-author and designer of various RPGs, most of which are published by Cakebread & Walton. They include the Kingdom & Commonwealth campaign; the Clockwork & Cthulhu Sourcebook; and the acclaimed Dark Streets sourcebook, which brings Lovecraftian horror to Georgian London. The Alchemist’s Revenge is the first volume in the Companie of Reluctant Heroes series.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Jon Sprunk, Tara Cardinal and Alex Bledsoe, E.E. Knight, Vaughn Heppner,  Howard Andrew Jones, David Evan Harris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, C.S.E. Cooney, and many others, is here.

The Alchemist’s Revenge was published by Delta14 Publishing on April 3, 2013. It is 224 pages and available in digital format for $4.99. Learn more at Delta14.

Read a complete sample chapter of The Alchemist’s Revenge here.