People of the Dark

PEOPLE OF THE DARK

ROBERT E. HOWARD

EDITED BY PAUL HERMAN

INTRODUCTION BY JOE R. LANSDALE

Copyright © 2005 by Paul Herman.

Introduction copyright © 2005 by Joe R. Lansdale.

Cover art copyright © 2005 by Stephen Fabian.

All rights reserved.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

www.wildsidebooks.com

HOWARD—THE TEXAS PHOENIX FLAMES IN DARKNESS

It’s easy for me to relate to Robert E. Howard. At least in many ways. Because I too grew up in a small Texas town, East instead of West, and in that respect, less bleak, but still, a small town. A town populated by good, solid people, but a small corner of the earth cursed with a kind of raw wound of ignorance, a black hole void of the possibilities of a bigger universe.

In spite of all the bad things said about television, it must be said that it brought to the small back waters of civilization a broader view of the world and opinions and beliefs other than those held by the residents of those stagnant back waters.

But in Howard’s time there was more darkness than light, and without interference, these wounds were left to fester in a cultural vacuum that must have sucked the very air out of Howard’s lungs.

At least it felt that way if you were born with a creative fire in your belly, a razor-eye, a vision that looked not only at what it saw, but around corners, and saw backwards into the past and dressed it up in a manner that fit no past at all, except that which existed in the head, and was, as all spirited imagineers will tell you, far more real than any past that had been or any future that might be.

I suspect that this kind of thinking is not subject only to Texas, but to any area where culture is thought to be a ornament, or something sissy, and that in such places a fist fight is of more importance than a poem. But whatever the case, Howard’s cross to bear, his hole in the world, was a bleak little spot of West Texas dirt that to this day is little more than a hole in the road with a Dairy Queen, a library, and finally, his home, now a museum dedicated to the imaginings of its most prominent and well known citizen, who during his life time was thought, at best, eccentric, and at the extreme, just plain old nuts.

* * * *

I discovered Howard in 1970. It was my first marriage, and my first year of college. I was going to Tyler Junior College, wanting to write, wondering if it would ever happen, and not thinking my wife understood this at all.

Or maybe I understood her not at all.

But the point was this. I was feeling high and dry and lonely and bleak as Howard must have felt when he sat down to type many of his stories. And during the time this feeling was on me, hanging around my shoulders like some heavy poison-laced cloak, I found a paperback called Wolfshead. It was a collection of stories, and the first thing that struck me was the introduction (and if the introduction was, in fact, part of some other Howard book, don’t tell me, let me have my lie of memory). In this introduction he talked about the fact that he had made his living from his wits, from work of his own choosing, and he didn’t have some sonofabitch standing over him, telling him what to do.

As a young man who had worked every odd job imaginable so that I could go to college and not end up a permanent ditch digger, or aluminum chair factory worker, or field worker, or handyman who was not so handy, this struck a chord.

Deep down inside of me a string throbbed, and there was a kind of high note hit, and I felt a sudden kinship to this man. I knew of what he spoke.

Then there was the fiction. It was on fire, and full of sparks and smoke, lightning and thunder, primary colors cranked up bright.

I hadn’t had this much pure fun as a reader since Edgar Rice Burroughs kicked my ass as a kid.

This man was pulpy and raw and powerful, and it was obvious that, like Burroughs, he believed in what he wrote. In the next couple of years, I discovered Conan, which I still believe to be his best work, and many other stories by Howard, but the thing that sticks with me, Conan aside, are the non-series stories. The ones that thrilled me and made my skin crawl, and yet somehow tied me to the Texas world I grew up in. Because no matter how wild the story, how bizarre the idea, or what location he claimed for it, I assure you, Howard was always writing about Texas and Texans.

These stories are full of Howard’s piss and vinegar, Howard’s heart and soul.

This collection contains many fine tales. One of my favorites is “The Horror from the Mound.” I’ve read it many times, but when I first read “The Horror from the Mound,” I was certain I had never read a horror story quite like it. It wasn’t the usual tale of a monster and a hapless protagonist, but that of a Western hero confronted with a problem, and like all true Western heroes, he had to just go out and do what he had to do, which was face off with the thing and try to defeat it.

Self-reliance.

Courage.

Confidence.

These are all hallmarks of Howard’s fiction, and of Texans, and they are its main appeal. It’s especially powerful to readers below the age of twenty-five, because from adolescence to the mid-twenties, we may feign these feelings, but if we are truthful, it is hard for us to embrace them with the fullness we would like. Therefore, we experience them through others, or through the beautiful lies of fiction.

It’s good to have heroes.

Or at least heroics. Howard’s characters were not always heroes. Not in the classic sense. Conan was really quite a turd, if you think about it. But, somehow Howard was able to give him such a sheen of power and verisimilitude and energy that, on some level, we all wished to be him.

I know that his introduction, his words, eventually led me to drop out of college and write. Just go for it. Because, I too, like Howard, did not want to end up with some sonofabitch standing over me telling me what to do, and also like Howard, I wanted to make my own way by my wits, doing work of my choosing.

I thank his shade for that.

And readers should thank his shade for all the work that exists. Including the fine hot-pulp stories in this volume. And maybe, just maybe, we should be angry with that same shade for taking himself from us so soon. Killed not, in my view, by his inability to accept his mothers expected death, but, by a series of events.

The loss of a woman he really cared about, Novalyne Price, someone who was an intellectual stimulant, as well as possibly his one true love. Add to this, the soon to be loss of his mother, who never judged him and always encouraged him, and finally add in this certain knowledge: Now he would be sitting alone dangling his feet over the rim of a lonesome abyss.

If he had had the courage to stand up to that, how much more of his fiction would we have seen?

How much greater would his mind have developed, and how much greater would his writer skills have become in time?

As it were, trapped in a sort of permanent adolescence, fueled primarily by his own energies, intelligence, and creativity, he gave us much. And even now, long gone, the echo of his voice, and ultimately of the .38 he used to take his life, resound forever.

Read these stories and enjoy. Dip into the exciting horrors and adventures of Robert E. Howard.

Do not come to them with an academic mind.

Come to them with an eager heart. That way they will give you much. Because they know little of logic, and much of desire — and desire drives us.

Howard knew that. Let him share this knowledge with you.

* * * *

And finally, if you’re someone sitting in some bleak place with nothing but the hungry sounds of the inner gnawings of creative desire chewing at your head, here is something to feed the beast within until you too can rise up Phoenix-like and leave it all behind in your wing-flapping wake, minus the suicidal gun fire, of course.

Weird Tales, November 1930

The Caesar lolled on his ivory throne —

His iron legions came

To break a king in a land unknown,

And a race without a name.

— The Song of Bran

*

The dagger flashed downward. A sharp cry broke in a gasp. The form on the rough altar twitched convulsively and lay still. The jagged flint edge sawed at the crimsoned breast, and thin bony fingers, ghastly dyed, tore out the still-twitching heart. Under matted white brows, sharp eyes gleamed with a ferocious intensity.

Besides the slayer, four men stood about the crude pile of stones that formed the altar of the God of Shadows. One was of medium height, lithely built, scantily clad, whose black hair was confined by a narrow iron band in the center of which gleamed a single red jewel. Of the others, two were dark like the first. But where he was lithe, they were stocky and misshapen, with knotted limbs, and tangled hair falling over sloping brows. His face denoted intelligence and implacable will; theirs merely a beast-like ferocity. The fourth man had little in common with the rest. Nearly a head taller, though his hair was black as theirs, his skin was comparatively light and he was gray-eyed. He eyed the proceedings with little favor.

And, in truth, Cormac of Connacht was little at ease. The Druids of his own isle of Erin had strange dark rites of worship, but nothing like this. Dark trees shut in this grim scene, lit by a single torch. Through the branches moaned an eerie night-wind. Cormac was alone among men of a strange race and he had just seen the heart of a man ripped from his still pulsing body. Now the ancient priest, who looked scarcely human, was glaring at the throbbing thing. Cormac shuddered, glancing at him who wore the jewel. Did Bran Mak Morn, king of the Picts, believe that this white-bearded old butcher could foretell events by scanning a bleeding human heart? The dark eyes of the king were inscrutable. There were strange depths to the man that Cormac could not fathom, nor any other man.

“The portents are good!” exclaimed the priest wildly, speaking more to the two chieftains than to Bran. “Here from the pulsing heart of a captive Roman I read — defeat for the arms of Rome! Triumph for the sons of the heather!”

The two savages murmured beneath their breath, their fierce eyes smoldering.

“Go and prepare your clans for battle,” said the king, and they lumbered away with the ape-like gait assumed by such stunted giants. Paying no more heed to the priest who was examining the ghastly ruin on the altar, Bran beckoned to Cormac. The Gael followed him with alacrity. Once out of that grim grove, under the starlight, he breathed more freely. They stood on an eminence, looking out over long swelling undulations of gently waving heather. Near at hand a few fires twinkled, their fewness giving scant evidence of the hordes of tribesmen who lay close by. Beyond these were more fires and beyond these still more, which last marked the camp of Cormac’s own men, hard-riding, hard-fighting Gaels, who were of that band which was just beginning to get a foothold on the western coast of Caledonia — the nucleus of what was later to become the kingdom of Dalriadia. To the left of these, other fires gleamed.

And far away to the south were more fires — mere pinpoints of light. But even at that distance the Pictish king and his Celtic ally could see that these fires were laid out in regular order.

“The fires of the legions,” muttered Bran. “The fires that have lit a path around the world. The men who light those fires have trampled the races under their iron heels. And now — we of the heather have our backs at the wall. What will fall on the morrow?”

“Victory for us, says the priest,” answered Cormac.

Bran made an impatient gesture. “Moonlight on the ocean. Wind in the fir tops. Do you think that I put faith in such mummery? Or that I enjoyed the butchery of a captive legionary? I must hearten my people; it was for Gron and Bocah that I let old Gonar read the portents. The warriors will fight better.”

“And Gonar?”

Bran laughed. “Gonar is too old to believe — anything. He was high priest of the Shadows a score of years before I was born. He claims direct descent from that Gonar who was a wizard in the days of Brule the Spear-slayer who was the first of my line. No man knows how old he is — sometimes I think he is the original Gonar himself!”

“At least,” said a mocking voice, and Cormac started as a dim shape appeared at his side, “at least I have learned that in order to keep the faith and trust of the people, a wise man must appear to be a fool. I know secrets that would blast even your brain, Bran, should I speak them. But in order that the people may believe in me, I must descend to such things as they think proper magic — and prance and yell and rattle snakeskins, and dabble about in human blood and chicken livers.”

Cormac looked at the ancient with new interest. The semi-madness of his appearance had vanished. He was no longer the charlatan, the spell-mumbling shaman. The starlight lent him a dignity which seemed to increase his very height, so that he stood like a white-bearded patriarch.

“Bran, your doubt lies there.” The lean arm pointed to the fourth ring of fires.

“Aye,” the king nodded gloomily. “Cormac — you know as well as I. Tomorrow’s battle hinges upon that circle of fires. With the chariots of the Britons and your own Western horsemen, our success would be certain, but — surely the devil himself is in the heart of every Northman! You know how I trapped that band — how they swore to fight for me against Rome! And now that their chief, Rognar, is dead, they swear that they will be led only by a king of their own race! Else they will break their vow and go over to the Romans. Without them we are doomed, for we can not change our former plan.”

“Take heart, Bran,” said Gonar. “Touch the jewel in your iron crown. Mayhap it will bring you aid.”

Bran laughed bitterly. “Now you talk as the people think. I am no fool to twist with empty words. What of the gem? It is a strange one, truth, and has brought me luck ere now. But I need now no jewels, but the allegiance of three hundred fickle Northmen who are the only warriors among us who may stand the charge of the legions on foot.”

“But the jewel, Bran, the jewel!” persisted Gonar.

“Well, the jewel!” cried Bran impatiently. “It is older than this world. It was old when Atlantis and Lemuria sank into the sea. It was given to Brule, the Spear-slayer, first of my line, by the Atlantean Kull, king of Valusia, in the days when the world was young. But shall that profit us now?”

“Who knows?” asked the wizard obliquely. “Time and space exist not. There was no past, and there shall be no future. NOW is all. All things that ever were, are, or ever will be, transpire now. Man is forever at the center of what we call time and space. I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today — which is like the dreams of ghosts! But let me sleep and talk with Gonar. Mayhap he shall aid us.”

“What means he?” asked Cormac, with a slight twitching of his shoulders, as the priest strode away in the shadows.

“He has ever said that the first Gonar comes to him in his dreams and talks with him,” answered Bran. “I have seen him perform deeds that seemed beyond human ken. I know not. I am but an unknown king with an iron crown, trying to lift a race of savages out of the slime into which they have sunk. Let us look to the camps.”

As they walked Cormac wondered. By what strange freak of fate had such a man risen among this race of savages, survivors of a darker, grimmer age? Surely he was an atavism, an original type of the days when the Picts ruled all Europe, before their primitive empire fell before the bronze swords of the Gauls. Cormac knew how Bran, rising by his own efforts from the negligent position of the son of a Wolf clan chief, had to an extent united the tribes of the heather and now claimed kingship over all Caledon. But his rule was loose and much remained before the Pictish clans would forget their feuds and present a solid front to foreign foes. On the battle of the morrow, the first pitched battle between the Picts under their king and the Romans, hinged the future of the rising Pictish kingdom.

Bran and his ally walked through the Pictish camp where the swart warriors lay sprawled about their small fires, sleeping or gnawing half-cooked food. Cormac was impressed by their silence. A thousand men camped here, yet the only sounds were occasional low guttural intonations. The silence of the Stone Age rested in the souls of these men.

They were all short — most of them crooked of limb. Giant dwarfs; Bran Mak Morn was a tall man among them. Only the older men were bearded and they scantily, but their black hair fell about their eyes so that they peered fiercely from under the tangle. They were barefoot and clad scantily in wolfskins. Their arms consisted in short barbed swords of iron, heavy black bows, arrows tipped with flint, iron and copper, and stone-headed mallets. Defensive armor they had none, save for a crude shield of hide-covered wood; many had worked bits of metal into their tangled manes as a slight protection against sword-cuts. Some few, sons of long lines of chiefs, were smooth-limbed and lithe like Bran, but in the eyes of all gleamed the unquenchable savagery of the primeval.

These men are fully savages, thought Cormac, worse than the Gauls, Britons and Germans. Can the old legends be true — that they reigned in a day when strange cities rose where now the sea rolls? And that they survived the flood that washed those gleaming empires under, sinking again into that savagery from which they once had risen?

Close to the encampment of the tribesmen were the fires of a group of Britons — members of fierce tribes who lived south of the Roman Wall but who dwelt in the hills and forests to the west and defied the power of Rome. Powerfully built men they were, with blazing blue eyes and shocks of tousled yellow hair, such men as had thronged the Ceanntish beaches when Caesar brought the Eagles into the Isles. These men, like the Picts, wore no armor, and were clad scantily in coarse-worked cloth and deerskin sandals. They bore small round bucklers of hard wood, braced with bronze, to be worn on the left arm, and long heavy bronze swords with blunt points. Some had bows, though the Britons were indifferent archers. Their bows were shorter than the Picts’ and effective only at close range. But ranged close by their fires were the weapons that had made the name Briton a word of terror to Pict, Roman and Norse raider alike. Within the circle of firelight stood fifty bronze chariots with long cruel blades curving out from the sides. One of these blades could dismember half a dozen men at once. Tethered close by under the vigilant eyes of their guards grazed the chariot horses — big, rangy steeds, swift and powerful.

“Would that we had more of them!” mused Bran. “With a thousand chariots and my bowmen I could drive the legions into the sea.”

“The free British tribes must eventually fall before Rome,” said Cormac. “It would seem they would rush to join you in your war.”

Bran made a helpless gesture. “The fickleness of the Celt. They can not forget old feuds. Our ancient men have told us how they would not even unite against Caesar when the Romans first came. They will not make head against a common foe together. These men came to me because of some dispute with their chief, but I can not depend on them when they are not actually fighting.”

Cormac nodded. “I know; Caesar conquered Gaul by playing one tribe against another. My own people shift and change with the waxing and waning of the tides. But of all Celts, the Cymry are the most changeable, the least stable. Not many centuries ago my own Gaelic ancestors wrested Erin from the Cymric Danaans, because though they outnumbered us, they opposed us as separate tribes, rather than as a nation.”

“And so these Cymric Britons face Rome,” said Bran. “These will aid us on the morrow. Further I can not say. But how shall I expect loyalty from alien tribes, who am not sure of my own people? Thousands lurk in the hills, holding aloof. I am king in name only. Let me win tomorrow and they will flock to my standard; if I lose, they will scatter like birds before a cold wind.”

A chorus of rough welcome greeted the two leaders as they entered the camp of Cormac’s Gaels. Five hundred in number they were, tall rangy men, black-haired and gray-eyed mainly, with the bearing of men who lived by war alone. While there was nothing like close discipline among them, there was an air of more system and practical order than existed in the lines of the Picts and Britons. These men were of the last Celtic race to invade the Isles and their barbaric civilization was of much higher order than that of their Cymric kin. The ancestors of the Gaels had learned the arts of war on the vast plains of Scythia and at the courts of the Pharaohs where they had fought as mercenaries of Egypt, and much of what they learned they brought into Ireland with them. Excelling in metal work, they were armed, not with clumsy bronze swords, but with high-grade weapons of iron.

They were clad in well-woven kilts and leathern sandals. Each wore a light shirt of chain mail and a vizorless helmet, but this was all of their defensive armor. Celts, Gaelic or Brythonic, were prone to judge a man’s valor by the amount of armor he wore. The Britons who faced Caesar deemed the Romans cowards because they cased themselves in metal, and many centuries later the Irish clans thought the same of the mail-clad Norman knights of Strongbow.

Cormac’s warriors were horsemen. They neither knew nor esteemed the use of the bow. They bore the inevitable round, metal-braced buckler, dirks, long straight swords and light single-handed axes. Their tethered horses grazed not far away — big-boned animals, not so ponderous as those raised by the Britons, but swifter.

Bran’s eyes lighted as the two strode through the camp. “These men are keen-beaked birds of war! See how they whet their axes and jest of the morrow! Would that the raiders in yon camp were as staunch as your men, Cormac! Then would I greet the legions with a laugh when they come up from the south tomorrow.”

They were entering the circle of the Northmen fires. Three hundred men sat about gambling, whetting their weapons and drinking deep of the heather ale furnished them by their Pictish allies. These gazed upon Bran and Cormac with no great friendliness. It was striking to note the difference between them and the Picts and Celts — the difference in their cold eyes, their strong moody faces, their very bearing. Here was ferocity, and savagery, but not of the wild, upbursting fury of the Celt. Here was fierceness backed by grim determination and stolid stubbornness. The charge of the British clans was terrible, overwhelming. But they had no patience; let them be balked of immediate victory and they were likely to lose heart and scatter or fall to bickering among themselves. There was the patience of the cold blue North in these seafarers — a lasting determination that would keep them steadfast to the bitter end, once their face was set toward a definite goal.

As to personal stature, they were giants; massive yet rangy. That they did not share the ideas of the Celts regarding armor was shown by the fact that they were clad in heavy scale mail shirts that reached below mid-thigh, heavy horned helmets and hardened hide leggings, reinforced, as were their shoes, with plates of iron. Their shields were huge oval affairs of hard wood, hide and brass. As to weapons, they had long iron-headed spears, heavy iron axes, and daggers. Some had long wide-bladed swords.