Wings in the Night – The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 4

Posted By on Sep 14, 2015 | 0 comments

Wings in the Night

The Weird Works of Robert E.  Howard, Volume 4

Edited by

Paul Herman

Part Two

 

These ongoing pieces are overviews rather than reviews and therefore contain spoilers galore.

robert_howard_wings_in_the_night

 

In July and November of 1932 respectively, Weird Tales published what would be the last outings in his lifetime for two of Robert E. Howard’s most famous characters:  Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn.

However, beginning with December, 1932 and January, 1933 WT began to chronicle the madly exuberant life and times of the adventurer who would dominate Howard’s remaining three years and which would ultimately lead to his literary endurance:  Conan of Cimmeria.

Those two tales – The Phoenix on the Sword and The Scarlet Citadel — read almost as companion pieces.  And since it is next to impossible for the modern Conan reader to look at them as they were published, I’ll point out that both of these took place later in the Cimmerian’s life, when he was probably in his mid-to-late forties and was reigning as king of Aquilonia.  Indeed, it undoubtedly seemed to Weird Tales readers of the day that they were witnessing the start of a new series of stories featuring a character called King Conan, just as The Shadow Kingdom in 1929 kicked off the somewhat truncated saga of King Kull.

Although it’s not included in this volume (for the simple reason that it wasn’t to appear until in The Fantasy Fan for 1936) I would suggest that before beginning these tales you check out Howard’s magnificent essay, The Hyborian Age.  He had written it in order to keep his fantasy background consistent.  And it may be one of the reasons that, despite the supernatural elements and the pseudo history against which he moves, Conan is a very real and believable character.  And the essay itself reads like an exceptionally exciting piece of ‘docu-fiction’.

However, this is just a suggestion and is certainly not necessary.  If you want to experience Conan as those thirties readers did, then just dive into The Phoenix on the Sword.  It opens with the now-famous ‘quote’ from ‘The Nemedian Chronicles’, which is an outstanding piece of prose that deftly paints Conan’s world in only a few lines:

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold.  But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.  Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”

Brilliant.  And it should quickly become clear that Conan exists in the same fictional universe in which Kull of Atlantis did – and by extension most of his other heroes as well.

 

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A King Comes Riding…

It is a deceptively slight tale:  there is a plot to assassinate the barbarian king of Aquilonia.  And in one of the finest battle scenes you will ever read, Conan overcomes his assailants.  He is very unwittingly helped in this by Thoth-Amon, an outcast Stygian wizard who has recently regained his Serpent Ring of Power.  And I must hasten to add, not for the first time, that it is astonishingly cinematic.

Despite how sparse this makes the plot sound, there is a richness and a texture that must have taken readers by storm when they first opened their copy of ‘the Unique Magazine’.  In only a couple of dozen pages we come away with the feeling of having entered a very real world and with a vivid impression of the massive, battle-scarred figure who dominates it.

Howard prefaces each short chapter with a verse from an old song, an epigraph or a few lines from a ballad called The Road of Kings.  When he also uses this technique (and the same minstrel’s song) in The Scarlet Citadel it gives both stories a marvelous coherence and feeling of solidity.  We know without a doubt that we are in the safe hands of a master story teller.

Whilst the first tale is almost intimate in scale, taking place over one 24-hour period and with a relatively small cast of characters, the sequel is a mini-epic, with the clashing armies of tens of thousands and a story that takes in several Hyborian countries.

Again, it feature an evil wizard – Tsotha-lanti –and a plot to oust Conan from his throne; and here we get to see what a fine and decent ruler he is:

“How did you come to your crown, you and that black-faced pig beside you?  Your fathers did the fighting and the suffering, and handed their crowns to you on golden platters.  What you inherited without lifting a finger – except to poison a few brothers – I fought for. “You sit on satin and guzzle wine the people sweat for, and talk of divine rights of sovereignty – bah!  I climbed out of the abyss of naked barbarism to the throne and in that climb I spilt my blood as freely as I spilt that of others.  If either of us has the right to rule men, by Crom, it is I!  How have you proved yourselves my superior? “I found Aquilonia in the grip of a pig like you – one who traced his genealogy for a thousand years.  The land was torn with the wars of the barons, and the people cried out under the suppression and taxation.  Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, ands the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world. The people of both your kingdoms are crushed into the earth by tyrannous taxes and levies.  And you would loot mine – ha!  Free my hands and I’ll varnish this floor with your brains!”

By Hades, I feel like sending this speech to Ireland’s own puppet-despot, Dame Edna Kenny!

Whereas The Phoenix on the Sword is…ah, relatively restrained, The Scarlet Citadel is gleefully over-the-top.  If Spinal Tap did Sword-and-Sorcery, this is how it would come out – everything is ramped up to eleven out of a possible ten.  Perhaps my favourite example is when Conan lets loose a blistering oath that would have actually ruptured the eardrums of an ordinary man!

Blimey.  Even his vocal chords have bloody great big muscles on them.  Heroes don’t come much tougher than that.

I had forgotten how much both stories played with Howard’s fascination with serpent-imagery — something that of course goes right back to the early days of his work.  In the first story in particular though, quite a lot could be written about it, even pertaining to modern-day Christian Eden imagery.  However, suffice to say that if this is your introduction to Conan then you are in for a hell of a treat.

Incidentally, The Frost Giant’s Daughter was supposed to have appeared between these two yarns.  As a tale of the unpleasant younger Cimmerian (possibly around the age of sixteen), I believe that editor Farnsworth Wright was correct in rejecting it.  That’s for discussion later, though.

And one more thing:  Robert Howard claimed that the character of the mighty Cimmerian warrior grew up in his mind practically fully-formed; but that is quite frankly a little disingenuous.  The Phoenix on the Sword was in reality a rewrite of a rejected King Kull story called By this Axe I Rule!  I doubt that he was intentionally lying, though:  it’s just that he was a natural storyteller and this simply sounded better.  He may even have believed it.

Anyway, there’s no question but that he already had a rough outline of Conan’s career all mapped out.  From The Scarlet Citadel:

“His saga, which had led him to the throne of Aquilonia, was the basis of a whole cycle of hero-tales… In swift-moving scenes the pageant of his life passed fleetingly before his mental eye – a panorama wherein moved shadowy figures which were himself, in many guises and conditions – a skin-clad barbarian; a mercenary swordsman in horned helmet and scale-mail corselet; a corsair in a dragon-prowed galley that trailed a crimson wake of blood and pillage along the southern coasts; a captain of hosts in burnished steel, on a rearing black charger; a king on a golden throne with the lion- banner flowing above…”

Much of the remainder of Howard’s writing life would be devoted to filling in the blanks.

 

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The One-eyed God

First though, and in the same month of January, he gave us a contemporary fantasy in the magazine Strange Tales that contains one of his by-now familiar reincarnation flashbacks – this time to the real-life Irish battle at Clontarf in 1014.

Howard’s Celtomania is in full blistering, butt-them-in-the-face, kick-them-in-the-nuts flight here.  Not for him the nuances of the real, historical battle – this is an idealistic take on it that makes you wish it had really occurred this way.  And of course it gives the Texan master a chance to really let fly with some terrific, overheated writing:

“We of North Europe had gods and demons before which the pallid mythologies of the South fade to childishness.  At a time when your ancestors were lolling on silken cushions among the crumbling marble pillars of a decaying civilization, my ancestors were building their own civilization in hardships and gigantic battles against foes human and inhuman. “Here, on this very plain, the Dark Ages came to an end and the light of a new era dawned faintly on a world of hate and anarchy.  Here, as even you know, in the year 1014, Brian Boru and his Dalcassian ax-wielders broke the power of the heathen Norsemen forever –those grim anarchistic plunderers who had held back the progress of civilization for centuries. “It was more than a struggle between Gael and Dane for the crown of Ireland.  It was a war between the White Christ and Odin, between Christian and pagan.  It was the last stand of the heathen – of the people of the old, grim ways.  For three hundred years the world had writhed beneath the heel of the Viking, and here on Clontarf that scourge was lifted forever. “Then, as now, the importance of that battle was underestimated by polite Latin and Latinized writers and historians.  The polished sophisticates of the civilized cities in the South were not interested in the battles of the barbarians in the remote northwestern corner of the world – a place and peoples of whose very names they were only vaguely aware.  They only knew that suddenly the terrible raids of the sea kings ceased to sweep along their coasts, and in another century the wild age of plunder and slaughter had almost been forgotten – because a rude, half-civilized people who scantily covered their nakedness with wolf hides rose up against the conquerors.”

In the cairn that is discovered by the Irish-American James O’Brien and his blackmailer, a slimy Howardian Italian type, is nothing less than the spirit of Odin the All-Father of Asgard himself.

It is all rather wonderful, sweep-you-along, full-blooded stuff.  And I have to say this again:  imagine a kid having Robert Howard as his history teacher!

 

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Heart of the Elephant

The third published Conan story appeared in Weird Tales of March, 1933; and readers who were expecting another episode in the turbulent life of the Aquilonian king must have been surprised to discover that without warning they were seeing a far younger, more naïve Cimmerian adventurer.

As I’ve intimated, this time around I’m simply reading them as they appeared and won’t go into the shape or outline of his career.  That might be necessary later but at the moment it’s just pleasant to imagine the reaction of those lucky readers of long ago when it dawned on them that they were being treated to something rather special.

After the full-blooded, rip-roaring adventure of his second outing, The Tower of the Elephant is a much quieter piece.  It also showcases just how descriptive Howard’s writing had become in a few short years. Look at this very vivid introduction to a world that is word-painted beautifully in the very first paragraph:

“Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night.  In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarter, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport.  Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring.  Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scuffling and struggling.  Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, stale smell of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.”
“…watchmen, well paid with stained coins…”
; this is the kind of detail that Howard now threw in almost as a matter of course.

Conan is a young thief, apparently having drifted into the eastern country of Zamora; and in the fledgling pursuit of his calling has attempted to steal the fabled Heart of the Elephant from the very stronghold of the wizard, Yara.  In doing so, he comes in contact with the strange and tragic transcosmic being called Yag-kosha of Yag.

As well as being one of Howard’s most memorable creations, through this desperately tormented creature Howard takes the opportunity to fill in some Hyborian history and to tie the Conan series explicitly with that of the era of King Kull, although without actually naming that character.

The Tower of the Elephant is one of the writer’s finest pieces.

Next:  Volume 5:  Valley of the Worm.

Author: Charley Brady

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