Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  It seems clear, though, that Howard was a follower of the second, shorter cycle of Cossack stories that Lamb penned, featuring characters named Ayub and Demid. Howard wrote a poem titled with the twain’s name, although the poem is unfortunately lost. Demid is lean, hawkish, quiet, thoughtful; a talented swordsman, he is also a natural leader. Ayub is not as bright – he’d rather act first and then think – but he’s a seasoned veteran and loyal friend, a mighty man who wields a massive two-handed sword and who can drink any fellow under the table.

  Readers of the Conan tales can find references to Howard’s Kozaks and it is tempting to credit this influence, and the manner in which certain terms are used, to Lamb. But we should not assume too much. While Lamb’s shadow likely lies over these stories, he wasn’t the only pulp writer to pen Cossack tales.

  What we do know is that Howard once sat down with a large stack of Lamb stories and transcribed all of the foreign words for equipment and clothing he found within them. Howard scholar Patrice Louinet found a list of these words in among Howard’s papers and, suspecting they might be from Lamb stories, conferred with me. By searching the texts we discovered that the terms were listed in the same order that they had appeared in several Lamb stories: “The Shield,” “The Sea of Ravens,” “Kirdy,” “The Witch of Aleppo,” “White Falcon,” and “The Wolf Chaser.” Clearly Howard must have found inspiration in these stories, or the stack would not have been so deep. For further evidence that Lamb’s tales struck some primal chord, we need look no further than Lamb’s “The Wolf Chaser.” Howard wrote a five-hundred-word recap of the story, then wrote nearly a thousand words of his own take on the events, reusing the place names and some of the characters.

  Preserved in Howard’s body of letters are two that he wrote to Adventure. In February of 1924 he wrote the editors to ask more than a dozen questions about Mongolia; Howard wanted to know Mongol names for objects and creatures like swords and tigers, whether or not Mongolians worshipped Erlik, Bon, Buddha, or all three, where exactly the Khirgiz lived, and many other questions besides. He almost certainly had encountered these terms in Lamb’s Adventure tales. In July of 1924, Howard again wrote to Adventure, though this time he asked questions about Europe, wondering what exactly the rights of a Feudal Baron were, how long the Feudal system flourished in central Europe, and other related matters.

  Howard had been drawn to history from a very young age, so we should not think that he found all his desire for writing historical adventure from perusing the pages of Adventure magazine. He was keenly interested in Irish history, about which Lamb seems rarely to have concerned himself, and as is well known, wrote widely of a certain Puritan who spent a great deal of time in Africa, another area that never seems to have much interested Lamb.

  In Lamb, though, he found a kindred spirit. It is not that the themes Howard so often dealt with in his fiction came first from Lamb, it is that Lamb’s themes resonated so strongly with Howard because the outlook of both men was quite similar. They were drawn to write tales of outsiders and veteran warriors. Both were suspicious of civilization’s strengths and often portrayed rulers and merchants as decadent, greedy, and immoral. Many of Lamb’s heroes were barbarians, or one step removed, just as Howard’s were. And both gloried in bloody action and adventure. Lamb never comes right out and says that barbarism is the natural state of mankind, but in many of his stories it is made clear that civilization will destroy a way of life that Lamb thinks more honorable – that of the folk who protect the borders, who are continually pushed back from the civilization over which they themselves stand sentinel. Overall Lamb was a better plotter (though Howard’s finest stories stand at least shoulder to shoulder with Lamb’s) but Howard was the more gifted storyteller. Lamb’s style is spare and strong, and quite effective, but it rarely rises to the poetic and dreamy heights of Howard’s greatest work.

  Howard himself tried Adventure magazine as a market, but never managed to get in. By the time he was writing his finest historical fiction, he’d given up on ever appearing in the magazine – more is the pity – but did have a regular market of his own.

  ORIENTAL STORIES

  Unfortunately for all lovers of swashbucklers, Oriental Stories, later briefly retitled Magic Carpet Magazine, had a short lifespan. In four years, only fourteen issues were produced. Howard seems to have been made aware of the publication by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, who was readying to launch the new historical magazine. Wright wrote to Howard that “I especially want historical tales – tales of the Crusades, of Genghis Khan, of Tamerlane, and the wars between Islam and Hindooism. Each story will be complete in one issue, and we will use no serials. The longer lengths are preferred – that is about 15,000 words.”

  To all appearances, Howard seems to have leapt at the chance to write this kind of fiction. He said in a 1930 letter to Lovecraft that:

  I think Wright’s “Oriental Stories” bids fair to show more originality than the average magazine dealing with the East, though the initial issue, was, to me, slightly dissappointing – not in the appearance of the magazine but in the contents. However, with such writers as Hoffman-Price, Owens and Kline, I look for better things … For my part the mystic phase of the East has always interested me less than the material side – the red and royal panorama of war, rapine and conquest. What I write for “Oriental Stories” will be purely action, and romance – mainly historical tales. And I greatly fear that my Turks and Mongols are merely Irishmen and Englishmen in turbans and sandals!

  Howard was worried that he wouldn’t be able to accurately portray people of other cultures and times, but after his initial forays he showed the humanity of his characters, regardless of their point of origin. Far from sounding like Irishmen and Englishmen with turbans, they walk onto the stage as fully realized people, bearing their courage and their flaws regardless of their nationality. The sainted and knightly are few and far between in these stories. Instead Howard drafted fiction of hard men and hard deeds.

  The first historical Howard sent Wright’s way shared a byline with Howard’s old friend Tevis Clyde Smith. In a letter to Smith penned in July or August of 1930, Howard directly quoted what Farnsworth Wright had said about the story, relaying Wright was “very well pleased with Red Blades of Black Cathay, and may use this as the cover design story for our third issue of Oriental Stories.”

  It’s easy to see why Wright would be pleased with the tale. A greater mystery is why the already accomplished Howard wrote it with his friend. Smith once said that he’d handled the research while Howard did the writing, which still seems odd, for Howard was not only capable of solid research but enjoyed the process. Howard scholars speculate that the story might simply have been a case of Howard trying to help his friend Smith get into print in the pulps.

  “Red Blades” is an engaging tale, and a solid enough sounding blow, though it can only hint at what will shortly follow. It is the only Howard historical that can truly be said to read like a Harold Lamb pastiche. It may be that Howard leaned heavily upon a genre master as he was finding his bearings. Howard is too accomplished to mimic plots, but he borrows and remixes concepts he came across in Lamb’s writing, most particularly within “The Three Palladins.” There is the same search for Prester John – though Howard’s character comes from the west rather than the east – and the discovery of the Keraits (Christians) that Prester John rules only a short time before Genghis Khan invades the region. Just as Sir Hugo sides with natives against the invasion of a Mongol tribe in Lamb’s “The Wolf Chaser,” Howard’s Godric advises the Black Cathayans to hold a narrow pass, though instead of facing off a tribe and antagonists unknown to westerns, he fights against the forces and champions of Genghis Khan, and even meets the mighty conqueror himself. Anyone who has read Lamb’s “The Three Palladins” or “The Making of the Morning Star” or the second and third novels of his Durandal trilogy will be familiar with the portrayal of Subotai, Chepe Noyon, and Genghis Khan, who sound and behave in “
Red Blades” very much the way they do when scripted by Lamb. So similar are they in tone and behavior that “Red Blades” can almost be seen as a companion piece in the same fictional universe: nothing within Howard’s tale precludes any of the events within Lamb’s stories, and may even follow naturally from some of them. Howard is no slavish imitator, and goes so far as to invent additional characters and moments, but the influence is unmistakable.

  Howard flew solo for his next historical outing, the first of two finished tales of Cormac FitzGeoffrey. Titled “Hawks of Outremer,” it would eventually appear in Oriental Stories. Howard named FitzGeoffrey “the most somber character I have yet attempted” and sent him “into the East on a Crusade to escape his enemies.” In an October 1930 letter to Harold Preece, Howard wrote that he was considering writing a series based around the character. Howard did so, but it was short lived, consisting of only two completed tales and one unfinished draft of another, possibly because FitzGeoffrey was better in conception than in execution. Howard developed a complex background for his character, then frontloaded it into the first FitzGeoffrey story through direct narration and a long, forced conversation between FitzGeoffrey and an old friend, Sir Rupert. The depth of information is impressive, but the means of transmission is not; it is a contrived information dump.

  The next chapter reveals FitzGeoffrey’s personality and mission through showing him in action, a marked improvement, but the tale lurches forward without ever really convincing the reader we should care about FitzGeoffrey or his adventure. In all it’s a weaker tale than “Red Blades.” A sequel story starts more strongly, but never really rises to great heights. Howard himself seemed to think he sold it merely on his reputation, “if I can be said to have one. The title, ‘The Blood of Bel-Shazzer,’ referring to a jewel, was the only interesting thing about it. The plot was hackneyed and sketchy, the action labored and artificial. Only once in the entire story did I evoke a slight spark of the fire that has smoldered out in me.” Howard frequently undervalued his writing and his intelligence when he discussed them in his letters, but his criticism this time is somewhat accurate. “The Blood of Belshazzar” is a murder mystery featuring a blizzard of characters who are introduced in passing as FitzGeoffrey surveys them in a feasting-hall. They are difficult to remember and harder to care about. FitzGeoffrey passively moves though the action, striving only to survive as he comes first upon the murdered victim and then the rogues responsible. The problems in the story look forward somewhat to one of the central issues of Howard’s “The God in the Bowl” in that the mystery itself just isn’t very compelling.

  When FitzGeoffrey is saved at the end by a Mongolian borrowed from a Lamb story (one who calls FitzGeoffrey Bogatyr, a Russian term from Lamb’s Cossack stories unlikely to be used by a tenth-century Mongol) he rides off for further adventures, although after two stumbles it is hard to imagine too many people would be eager for another helping.

  It is only with the third tale that we can finally glimpse what Howard must have been striving for with FitzGeoffrey in the first stories. It’s never seemed sporting to me to spend too much time criticizing the characters, prose, and plot elements of fragments and unpolished works – after all, they’re unfinished. They weren’t taken from the workshed for presentation because the writer didn’t think they were ready to share. What fragments can show us is the writer’s process and reveal the means that the writer employed in the act of creation. What we have of “The Slave Princess” would make any other writer shake his head a little in wonder. In first draft form it’s as polished as most finished pieces by other authors. There are occasional moments where an adjustment would have been called for – FitzGeoffrey’s retelling of his early battles goes on for far too long near the fragment’s conclusion – but it’s a rough draft, and an impressive one. It starts with a bang and flows smoothly from scene to scene. FitzGeoffrey may not be likable, but he fascinates, which is more than he did in the first two stories. He’s a shrewd schemer, a mighty warrior who has been shaped by his tumultuous past and genetics into more a force of nature than a normal human. In his physical description, with his volcanic blue eyes and square cut mane of black hair, he physically resembles Conan. His fighting prowess and cleverness look forward to the Cimmerian as well, although there the similarities end, for he lacks Conan’s humor, and it is hard to picture Conan so completely losing his cool that he launches into a berserk frenzy, as FitzGeoffrey does, nearly choking his host to death.

  Judging from the surviving plot synopsis, Howard abandoned the story with only a few thousand words to go; most of the key scenes were composed, and he had to have known that the story was working. Writers have a sense about such things. It would have been a good story, had he completed it. But perhaps he abandoned a potentially good story because he had in mind one that would be great.

  FROM JOURNEYMAN TO MASTER

  If Howard had stopped with the FitzGeoffrey tales his historical work would only be an interesting sideline in the adventure writer’s career. Instead, he found his comfort level and sat down to write masterpieces.

  In its first moments, “The Sowers of the Thunder” seems to mimic “Hawks of Outremer,” for the story begins with the arrival of a mighty Frank who before long seems poised to pour out his tale in too much detail, just as FitzGeoffrey had done in “Hawks of Outremer.” But Howard has to have recognized how artificial that opening discussion from “Hawks” was, and closes the mouth of Cahal just as his tale is growing interesting. It leaves the reader wanting more rather than drowning in details, and is a sign that Howard has mastered his narrative.

  In the first chapter Howard introduces us to Cahal and Haroun, both giants of men. Howard has Haroun play cleverly with clues about his own identity without tipping his hand to readers or Cahal and presumably other listeners; the character is clearly trying to amuse himself via his own antics, be it the subtle hints as to his true identity or the broad attempts to find pleasure in a drinking contest with the grim Cahal. Haroun recognizes in Cahal a kindred spirit, a theme that runs through the story. If Cahal sees the same thing he does not show it, understanding instead that he and Haroun are evenly matched, which wakens in him a wary suspicion that the Moslem is a threat. He is right, of course, for Cahal and the readers eventually learn that Haroun is Baibars. The Moslem is more reckless than Cahal perhaps by nature or perhaps because he is more secure in his place and has unlimited resources at his disposal. Cahal is loyal to his people, Baibars is loyal to his cause – namely himself. Command and power are his, but he is lonely, a lion among sheep. In Cahal he senses a man like himself, one he would rather name friend.

  Howard presents events like a master playwright, revealing key moments on stage and discussing mighty battles that take place beyond. He shows us Cahal plotting a mad dash for treasure with the knight Renault, but not the encounter with Kharesmians which destroys all but Cahal. The conversation between the Shaykh Suleiman and Cahal is head and shoulders above the informative discussion in the tales of FitzGeoffrey: it reveals both the character of the noble Shaykh, who mourns the death of an enemy and respects the prowess of the mad Frank, and emphasizes to us again the might and endurance of Cahal himself.

  In the end, though, Baibars triumphs no matter Cahal’s great efforts. Glittering, victorious, he is in a fine mood as he looks down upon the Frank dying in the midst of the battlefield. Baibars names him king, then says “they who oppose the destiny of Baibars lie under my horses’ hoofs, and over them I ride up the gleaming stair of empire!”

  But Cahal, whose own kingdom eluded him, whose own hopes were dashed just as they were within his grasp, has no joy to share. He knows that there is no glory in the rule of men. “Welcome to the fellowship of kings!” Howard has him say: “To the glory and the witch-fire, the gold and the moon-mist, the splendor and the death! Baibars, a king hails thee!”

  The story is a long, bloody thrill ride. Kings and kingdoms have fallen and loves have been lost; it is a masterful performanc
e, and a sign of more great works to come.

  Howard next turned to the time of Tamerlane. Lamb’s excellent “The Grand Cham,” published in Adventure in 1921, is set in the same time period Howard chose to write about, and features a protagonist, Michael Beorn, who interacts with both Tamerlane and Bayazid, just as Howard’s protagonist does. Despite these similarities, Howard’s inspiration seems to have come from Wright, who, as Howard wrote in a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith in August of 1931, had been “hinting Tamerlane as a fit subject for an Oriental Story story … Now I’ve got to get hold of something on the Big Tatar and try to pound out a novelet; I’ve been thinking of writing a tale about him for a long time. And Babar the Tiger who established the Mogul rule in India – and the imperial phase in the life of Baibars the Panther, the subject of my last story – and the rise of the Ottomans – and the conquest of Constantinople by the Fifth Crusade – and the subjugation of the Turks by the Arabs in the days of Abu Bekr – and the gradual supplanting of the Arab masters by their Turkish slaves which culminated in the conquest of Asia Minor and Palestine by the Seljuks – and the rise of Saladin – and the final destruction of Christian Outremer by Al Kalawun – and the first Crusade – Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of Boulogne, Bohemund – Sigurd the Jorsala-farer – Barbarossa – Coeur de Lion. Ye gods, I could write a century and still have only tapped the reservoir of dramatic possibilities. I wish to Hell I had a dozen markets for historical fiction – I’d never write anything else.”