Cimmerian sightings: London calling

"I have carefully gone over, in my mind, the most powerful men – that is, in my opinion – in all of the world’s literature and here is my list: Jack London, Leonid Andreyev, Omar Khayyam, Eugene O’Neill, William Shakespeare. All these men, and especially London and Khayyam, to my mind stand out so far above the rest of the world that comparison is futile, a waste of time. Reading these men and appreciating them makes a man feel life is not altogether useless.” —Robert E. Howard, letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, 20 February 1928 

 It’s no secret that Robert E. Howard was a devotee of Jack London. In fact, Howard once referred to London, a spinner of rugged tales of the Klondike and the Yukon, as “this Texan’s favorite writer” (for more examples of the glowing praise Howard heaped on London, head on over as I did to the REHupa Web site). And yet, I hadn’t fully appreciated the extent of London’s influence on the greatest swords-and-sorcery writer who ever lived until this week, when on my commute to work I listened to the audio version of my favorite London story, The Call of the Wild (1903). It was a startling reminder that Howard’s sensibilities are splashed across every page of this wonderful book. If you are a Howard fan frustrated by fruitless searches for like-minded literature, I recommend you turn your gaze backwards, to Howard’s influences, and London in particular. Don’t be turned off by the lack of traditional fantasy trappings in London; while you (unfortunately) won’t find swords, man-eating apes, and giant snakes in The Call of the Wild, there’s plenty here to satisfy lovers of pulp action and adventure, including epic dog duels, murdering Indians, and high-stakes wagers placed on improbable feats of strength. More to the point, there’s more of Howard—the dark philosophy that makes Howard uniquely and greatly Howard—to be found in The Call of the Wild than in most other sword-and-sorcery tales published since Howard’s death. London’s work certainly puts most of the pastiches to shame in this regard. 

The Call of the Wild is a hymn to the law of club and fang. The rule of might-makes-right is pounded into the reader in literal fashion by the unforgettable Man in the Red Sweater, who delivers a brutal lesson at the outset of the story. London’s disdain of civilized, city-bred types is readily apparent in his depiction of Hal, Charles, and Mercedes, a pathetic trio who are swallowed up by the unforgiving wilderness, a fate reserved for all the decadent cities and peoples of Howard’s Hyborian Age.

London’s book even features a Howard-like treasure-hunt, a perilous search for a lost mine rumored to be shrouded by some ancient, evil fear: “Many men had sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who had never returned from the quest . . . no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead were dead,” London writes.

Even more than its Howardian themes and storylines, shades of Howard’s most famous creation stalk through the pages of The Call of the Wild. While some may find a comparison between Conan and a member of the canine species less than flattering, Howard appears to have derived at least some of his inspiration for the Cimmerian from Buck, the great St. Bernard/Scotch shepherd crossbreed and undisputed leader of the pack. Though he may lack the square-cut mane of black hair and sullen blue eyes, Buck is a testament to the superiority of the wild-hardened beast over the soft, civilized races.

Although Conan is a barbarian born, and Buck, at the outset of the story, is introduced as domesticated and city-bred, this civilized veneer is purely illusory. For within Buck’s powerful breast dwells “the dominant primordial beast,” the barbarian spirit. It was always there, lying dormant until the stark, unforgiving Yukon country brings it out:

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill — all this was Buck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

Like Conan, Buck has no physical equal among his own species. He’s a massive, powerful animal with lightning-quick reflexes who exhibits a terrible ferocity in combat. And like Conan, Buck is also smarter than his foes: On the few occasions when his might isn’t enough, Buck uses war-tricks and cunning to prevail over huskies, timber wolves, and occasional larger prey.

Buck even shares ancestral memories of a time very similar to Howard’s Hyborian Age. The subject of Howard’s poem “Cimmeria” reflects on an age of axes and flint-tipped spears, a heritage which leaves him wrapped “in the grey apparel of ghosts”; Buck’s dreams are haunted by a Neanderthal man from a remote and yet very real past, a barbaric time in which the law, down from the depths of time, was kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. Like Buck, Conan possesses a brooding savagery in every fiber of his being, an ancient trait passed down by generations of barbaric ancestors.

Yet for all this Buck is not a mere analogue of the Cimmerian. Early on Buck embraces a form of servitude, bending his might willingly to the honest toil of the sled traces. Conan would never stoop to working for another man. Also, Buck at story’s end heeds the call of the pack and melts into the wilderness to live among the wolves, while the latter eventually becomes a king, seizing the crown of Aquilonia. Buck arguably proves to be the greater savage of the two. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that Conan is an amalgamation of Buck and his companion, John Thornton. Though he’s a self-sufficient man of action, more at home in the rough Yukon than the sun-drenched Santa Clara Valley, Thornton, like Conan, recognizes the value of gold.

One other sequence from London’s book bears mentioning: Fans of the film Conan the Barbarian may be startled upon reading this passage from The Call of the Wild:

One day the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred below . . . A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. “Jump, Buck!” he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety.

Shades of James Earl Jones/Thulsa Doom? Was this paragraph the predecessor to the “Come to me, my child” cliff-diving scene from Conan the Barbarian? Perhaps John Milius and Oliver Stone themselves drew from Howard’s source material when writing the screenplay for the film, and, like Howard, also recognized the powerful barbaric heritage of the Call.

Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: The Iliad

7. The Iliad, Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald
Book V—A Hero Strives with Gods

Many fantasy fans avoid Homer’s ancient heroic epic The Iliad, perhaps fearing that it will prove too academic and stuffy, one of the dreaded “classics” so revered in academia (and avoided outside the classroom). This is a mistake. If you’re a lover of bronze-age battles and the clash of spear and shield, The Iliad is a must-read. Who would have thought a near 3,000-year-old poem would contain some of the greatest depictions of hand-to-hand combat ever put to the printed page?

I was shocked by its scenes of carnage, which, without exaggeration, equal or surpass the gory combats of George R.R. Martin and Bernard Cornwell. For example, when the great Achaean warrior Ajax spears Archelochus, Homer describes the blow thusly: “Just at the juncture of his neck and skull the blow fell on his topmost vertebrae, and cut both tendons through. Head, mouth, and nostrils hit the earth before his shins and knees.”

Or this:

Peneleus instead brought down Ilioneus, a son of Phorbas, the sheepherder … Peneleus drove his spearhead into the eyesocket underneath the brow, thrusting the eyeball out. The spearhead ran straight through the socket and the skull behind, and throwing out both hands he sat down backward. Peneleus, drawing his longsword, chopped through the nape and set the severed helmeted head and trunk apart upon the field. The spear remained in the eyesocket. Lifting up the head by it, as one would lift a poppy, he cried out to the Trojans, gloating grimly.

Homer is not shallow in his treatment of combat and does not treat the battlefield as a glorious stage for heroes. He refers to the bloody action as “man-wasting war,” a costly harvest that leaves in its wake grieving mothers and fathers, and wives and children bereft of husbands and fathers. Tragically, Homer reminds us that many loved men with beautiful homes and far-ranging vineyards back in Greece will never return home on their long ships. Like the heroes of Normandy, their lot is to be buried in graves in far lands.

The events of The Iliad comprise 50 days in the 10-year war between the Achaeans and the Trojans. Homer’s epic poem is highlighted by various heroes who experience an aristeia, a sustained period of excellence in combat. Achilles’ wrathful aristeia is the most well-known in The Iliad, but for epic action I prefer Diomedes’.

Diomedes is arguably (along with the giant Ajax) the second-greatest of all the fighters on the field behind Achilles. Supported by the goddess Athena, in Book V of The Iliad he goes on a glorious rampage that nearly routs the Trojan army single-handed:

But as for Diomedes, you could not tell if he were with Achaeans or Trojans, for he coursed along the plain most like an April torrent, fed by snow, a river in flood that sweeps away his bank. No piled up dike will hold him, no revetment shielding the bloom of orchard land, this river suddenly at crest when heaven pours down the rain of Zeus. Many a yeoman’s field of beautiful grain is ravaged. Even so before Diomedes were the crowed ranks of Trojans broken, many as they were, and none could hold him.

Diomedes suffers an arrow-wound in the right shoulder, though his armored cuirass prevents a fatal or crippling wound. After his chariot-driver pulls the shaft free, spattering Diomedes’ bronze armor with blood, he returns to battle in a fury. Homer uses metaphors like no one’s business in The Iliad, and Diomedes-as-lion is one of my favorites:

And once more he made his way into the line. If he had burned before to fight with Trojans, now indeed blood-lust three times as furious took hold of him. Think of a lion that some shepherd wounds, but lightly as he leaps into a fold. The man who roused his might cannot repel him, but dives into his shelter, while his flocks, abandoned, are all driven wild. In heaps, huddled they are to lie, torn carcasses, before the escaping lion at one bound surmounts the palisade. So, lion-like, Diomedes plunged on Trojans.

Diomedes quickly slays eight Trojans, including two sons of King Priam (Echemmon and Chromius). Observing the slaughter, the mighty Trojan warrior Aeneas, son of the goddess Aphrodite, and fellow Trojan Pandarus spur their chariot at Diomedes. Pandarus hurls his long spear, punching through Diomedes’ shield and glancing off his chest armor. Diomedes responds with a mighty cast to “cleave Pandarus’ nose beside the eye and shatter his white teeth. His tongue the brazen spearhead severed, tip from root, then plowing on came out beneath his chin. He toppled from the car, and all his armor clanged on him, shimmering.”

Aeneas attacks Diomedes on foot, moving in with spear and shield. Weaponless, Diomedes lifts up a boulder that “no two men alive could lift,” hurls it, and smashes Aeneas’ hip joint. Aeneas would have died there if not for the intervention of Aphrodite, his mother, who whisks him away from harm. Diomedes wounds the goddess’ hand with a lance thrust as she flees back to the heavens. Diomedes later becomes the only mortal to wound two gods in a single day, spearing the god of war himself, Ares, and driving him from the field.

I can’t leave The Iliad without quoting one of my favorite combat descriptions. Roused by the death of his good friend and companion Patroclus, Achilles finally joins the battle and wreaks awful vengeance on the Trojans. Homer compares his wrath on the battlefield to an unchecked wildfire:

A forest fire will rage through deep glens of a mountain, crackling dry from summer heat, and coppices blaze up in every quarter as wind whips the flame. So Achilles flashed to right and left like a wild god, trampling the men he killed. And black earth ran with blood.

The Grail? I've already got one

Joseph of Arimathea used it to collect Christ's blood. King Arthur's knights spent decades questing for it, scouring Britain from end to end in a fruitless search. Launcelot, the greatest knight of all, had it within his grasp but proved unworthy.

Me? I bought the Holy Grail two weeks ago in Epping, NH. It cost me all of $5.25, plus tax and tip. Best of all I didn't have to kill any of Mordred's knights to get it, or spend decades wandering in the wasteland. Historians should take note it holds exactly 20 ounces of liquid.

The waitress seemed puzzled when I suggested in astonishment that her establishment was committing a grievous mistake by selling the Sacred Vessel at such a low price. After a raised eyebrow she completed the transaction, whereupon I feel to my knees in praise. And a 2,000-year-old quest was ended.

I didn't know how empty was my soul... until it was filled... with beer.

Cimmerian sightings: A line drawn in blood

In anticipation of the release of the remake of Friday the 13th, which hits the theatres tomorrow (on Friday the 13th—imagine that!), the Boston Globe ran a prominent feature story this past Sunday on slasher flicks, “The Genre That Wouldn’t Die”. In this piece the Globe’s film critic, Ty Burr, pulls no punches in expressing his antipathy for slasher films: “I hate the nasty little things," he writes.

Hates slasher films? That got my hackles up immediately. I’m a big fan of the horror genre, both on the printed page and in cinema. While I prefer the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Stephen King to the films of Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and Sean S. Cunningham (the latter directed the original Friday the 13th), I still enjoy a good horror flick. Even the badly-made ones have some merit as harmless fun.

As I read Burr’s piece I mentally began preparing my counter-argument, mulling over which implement to take up in defense of the slasher genre (Machete? Fire ax? Chainsaw, perhaps)? But I soon discovered that Burr’s article wasn’t such easy prey. Instead of taking shots at the artlessness and bad taste of the slasher film genre—old, tired saws that many critics choose to employ—Burr asks some penetrating questions: Why do we like these films? What makes people want to watch explicit violence?

To read more, click here.

Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: Battle of Cynuit

8. The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell
Battle of Cynuit

He stared balefully across the encampment where men were drinking. “Do you know who wins battles, boy?”
“We do, Father.”
“The side that is least drunk,” he said, and then, after a pause, “but it helps to be drunk.”
“Why?”
“Because a shield wall is an awful place.”

—Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom

As a self-professed lover of medieval-flavored fantasy and historical fiction battles, and as someone who relishes in bloodshed on the printed page, I nevertheless must come clean: Some periods of ennui aside, I’m quite glad that I live in modern, civilized times. I especially thank the powers that be that I don’t have to strap on arms and armor and fight in the blood-soaked hell that was a viking shield wall.

Bernard Cornwell shattered any fantasies I may have had of engaging in dark ages combat in his wonderful, ongoing series The Saxon Stories. These books have something of a shield wall fetish, and are a repository for the sweet science of making one (keep that in mind should the need ever arise). For example, there’s this good-to-know factoid:

You can hear a shield wall being made. The best shields are made of lime, or else of willow, and the wood knocks together as men overlap the shields. Left side of the shield in front of your neighbor’s right side, that way the enemy, most of whom are right-handed, must try to thrust through two layers of wood.

Cornwell describes how many battles were delayed for hours as men on both sides gulped ale to build up their courage. Shield walls were simply too brutal and murderous to stand in completely sober. Picture a rugby scrum in which the participants not only push but stab one another with spears and short blades over the rims of their shields, or underneath, at exposed legs and ankles. Many fighters would strap iron plates to their boots to turn such wicked strokes, Cornwell says.

But more about shield walls later. The background of the battle of Cynuit is as follows: Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon who was captured in a raid as a youth and raised among the Danes, Ealdorman Odda, and approximately 900 Saxons square off against the raven banner of Ubba Lothbrokson and his 1,200 Danes. Odda and Uhtred have the advantage of high ground and some degree of protection from the old, eroded, earthen fort of Cynuit. But they have only a day’s worth of water and cannot withstand a siege, so they must act.

Uhtred develops a plan to sneak out at night with a small force of 100 men and burn the Danish ships, which are moored in a nearby river. Since the Danes are so protective of their longships, Uhtred predicts that they will lose their discipline when they rush back to quench the fires. Uhtred’s small force will fight them there, on the narrow strip of marsh-lined beach where Ubba cannot bring all his strength to bear. Then, in the heat of the combat when shield walls are locked, Odda will fall upon Ubba from the rear with the rest of the men from the fort.

But this plan is easier said than done. Though he’s beginning to gray Ubba is a mighty fighter, perhaps the mightiest in hand-to-hand combat of all the Danes. He wields a wicked heavy axe in combat and no man who has stood before him in battle has lived. His men are better armed than Uhtred's. But Ubba’s one weakness is his superstitious nature. He does nothing without a sign from the gods, and in this battle the runesticks have fallen against him. Thus, when Uhtred and Odda refuse his offer to surrender, Ubba feels fear.

Uhtred’s plan works. Sneaking through the pre-dawn hours on foot he manages to set fire to a few Danish ships at daybreak, rousing Ubba’s small army like a swarm of angry bees. The few Danes near the ships are confused and easily cut down. Uhtred and his 100 men form a shield wall that stretches across the narrow beach and close with the main of the Danish army. Uhtred recalls his father’s words as the shields touch close.

Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one.

The angry Danes make the mistake of charging like mad dogs and not forming a proper shield wall of their own. Uhtred’s men slaughter the first wave. “It was ax work and sword work, butchers’ work with good iron.” A battle calm comes over Uhtred and he finds killing frightfully easy with his short sword Wasp-Sting:

I lunged Wasp-Sting forward, and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle, and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield’s heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting’s tip in his throat.

The Danes regain their composure and order a shield wall of their own. Five or six hundred Danes advance with murderous intent. Uhtred encourages his small force to stand its ground. “They’re coming to die! They’re coming to bleed! They’re coming to our blades!” he shouts.

The clash of shield walls rings like a thunderclap. Uhtred experiences “the thunder of shield hitting shield, my shield knocked back against my chest, shouts of rage, a spear between my ankles, Wasp-Sting lunging forward and blocked by a shield, a scream to my left, an ax flailing overhead.” The battle degenerates into a grunting mass of men hacking and stabbing and dying and bleeding. Uhtred’s shield wall is driven back on the burning ships.

But then Odda arrives and takes the Danes from behind. The pressure is immediately relieved. Uhtred draws his battle-sword Serpent-Breath and attacks, discovering that he is in elite, deadly company:

Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one.

Danes begin to fall back, and some retreat to their ships, shoving them off into the sea. But Ubba bravely stands, ordering a last shield-wall in a rearguard action. A berserk rage overtakes him:

And then, with a roar of fury, Ubba hacked into our line with his great war axe … his huge blade was whirling again, making space, and our line went back and the Danes followed Ubba who seemed determined to win this battle on his own and make a name that would never be forgotten among the annals of the Northmen. The battle madness was upon him, the runesticks were forgotten, and Ubba Lothbrokson was making his legend.

In a mighty single duel Uhtred slays Ubba when the latter’s foot slips in the spilled guts of a corpse. Uhtred stabs him with Serpent-Breath in the arm, then hacks his neck. Uhtred shows his foe the ultimate respect due a viking, holding Ubba’s hand tight to his axe as he dies, since only a man who dies on the battlefield clutching a weapon makes it to Odin’s hall.

“Wait for me in Valhalla, lord,” Uhtred says to the dying man. And with Ubba’s death, the Danes are finished.

Cimmerian sighting: Mourning the loss of print fantasy pubs

I'm thrilled to report that I've been asked to write occasional blog posts over at one of my most frequented cyberspace stops, The Cimmerian. It's a site dedicated to the life and writings of one of my favorite authors, Robert E. Howard. Recently The Cimmerian made the decision to widen its scope to include more broad-based fantasy and horror news, reviews, and analysis.

When I post there, my plan will be to include the first few paragraphs here, and then post a link to The Cimmerian if you want to read on.

Here's my first (and hopefully not last) contribution to The Cimmerian.
_____

So far 2009 has been a lousy year for fantasy fans who like the feel of good old-fashioned print publications in their hands. For starters, we’ve lost the award-winning Robert E. Howard journal The Cimmerian. Elsewhere, long-running fantasy fiction and reviews magazine Realms of Fantasy is closing up shop, ending its 15-year run with the April 2009 issue. And, to top off the bad news, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, a well-regarded “best-of” anthology that spanned 21 years, has also been discontinued.

I’m not about to indulge in hyperbole and declare that print is dead, but there’s no doubt that the void left by these losses feels like, to quote J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, “another piece of Mordor.”

To read the rest, click here.

Zombie alert!

I'm taking a momentary diversion from fantasy battles to report an important news flash: Run, zombies are on the loose!

One of my worst fears, along with being consumed by a great white shark, is the possibility that one day the dead will walk the earth (presumably when there's no more room in hell, to steal a line from George Romero). I mean, I love zombie books and films, but when I watch or read about cannibal corpses it's with a strange mixture of revulsion, terror, and relief that I'm not one of the poor souls holed up in the shopping mall. Thus, when I clicked the link above I had a moment of panic before I realized it was a hoax.

Suffice to say that if I was driving along I-95 on the way to work and passed a sign that said "Caution!! Zombies Ahead!!", I'd be the guy you heard about on the evening news who was hospitalized after veering off into the nearest ditch. Missing the ditch, I'd be headed for home to grab canned goods, bottled water, shotgun, and axe and bee-line for my zombie-proof shelter in the basement.

(Thanks to my friend Falze for bringing this impending catastrophe to my attention).