Pulp Fantasy Library: Rogues in the House

Robert E. Howard completed twenty-one tales of Conan the Cimmerian, only seventeen of which were published during his lifetime. Many of these stories are reasonably well known, even by those who haven't read them, while others remain obscure. A good example of the latter is "Rogues in the House," though, as we shall see, there are elements of and images derived from it that have passed into popular consciousness.

The short story first appeared in the January 1934 issue of Weird Tales, featuring a cover illustration (of another story) by Margaret Brundage. At its start, Conan is in prison for having slain a priest who was "at once a fence for stolen goods and a spy for the police." These details are important to the story, which, like many Conan yarns, dwells on the hypocrisy and corruption of supposedly civilized societies. The fact that the tale contains not one but two different venal priests makes this quite plain. It's little wonder that Con – and Howard – had so little use for religion or its purveyors.

A man, "masked and wrapped in a wide black cloak," comes to Conan in his cell. Named Murilo, he is not the executioner the Cimmerian thought him to be but rather a nobleman with a proposition for him.

"Would you like to live?" asked Murilo. The barbarian grunted, new interest glinting in his eyes.

"If I arrange for your escape will you do a favor for me?" the aristocrat asked.

The Cimmerian did not speak, but the intentness of his gaze answered for him. 

"I want you to kill a man for me."

"Whom?"

Murilo's voice sank to a whisper. "Nabonidus, the king's priest!"

Nabonidus is a political enemy of Murilo, which is why he wishes him killed. In exchange for his help, the nobleman unlocks Conan's chains, provides him with food, and tells him to wait one hour for a guard (named Athicus) to unlock his cell so that he can escape and then kill Nabonidus in his home. Once he has slain the Red Priest (as he is known for the color of his robes), Murilo will provide Conan with gold, a horse, and the means to flee the city to freedom.

Unfortunately, Murilo's plan doesn't go quite as expected. The guard who was supposed to open Conan's cell is arrested for corruption – graft seems rampant in this city – leaving another guard who does not know the plan. Conan has no choice but to slay this second guard and escape on his own. At this point, the barbarian is unsure of his next course of action.

It occurred to him that since he had escaped through his own actions, he owed nothing to Murilo; yet it had been the young nobleman who had removed the chains and had food sent to him, without either of which his escape would have been impossible. Conan decided that he was indebted to Murilo, and, since he was a man who discharged his obligations eventually, he determined to carry out his promise to the young aristocrat.

This is one of the key passages in the entire story, since it shows Conan to be a man of his word, in contrast to the behavior of the supposedly civilized inhabitants of the unnamed city. Conan then sets off to enter the home of the Red Priest and do as he had agreed. Once there, he discovers that Murilo is already there, attempting to do what he had hired Conan to do, since he learned about the arrest of Athicus and thought Conan still in prison. Since this is not the case, Conan suggests the two of them work together to slay the priest. Murilo replies with fear.

Murilo shuddered. "Conan, we are in the house of the archfiend! I came seeking a human enemy; I found a hairy devil out of hell!"

Conan grunted uncertainly; fearless as a wounded tiger as far as human foes were concerned, he had all the superstitious dreads of the primitive.

"I gained access to the house," whispered Murilo, as if the darkness were full of listening ears. "In the outer gardens I found Nabonidus' dog mauled to death. Within the house I came upon Joka, the servant. His neck had been broken. Then I saw Nabonidus himself seated in his chair, clad in his accustomed garb. At first I thought he too was dead. I stole up to stab him. He rose and faced me. Gods!" The memory of that horror struck the young nobleman momentarily speechless as he relived that awful moment.

"Conan," he whispered, "it was no man that stood before me! In body and posture it was not unlike a man, but from the scarlet hood of the priest grinned a face of madness and nightmare! It was covered in black hair, from which small pig-like eyes glared redly; its nose was flat, with great flaring nostrils; its loose lips writhed back, disclosing huge yellow fangs, like the teeth of a dog. The hands that hung from the scarlet sleeves were misshapen and likewise covered with black hair. All this I saw in one glance, and then I was overcome with horror; my senses left me and I swooned."

Fearful that Nabonidus is in fact a demon, Murilo suggests that they flee the house by any means possible. However, the house of the Red Priest is filled with traps – and the beast Murilo saw – making this course a potentially hazardous one. Nevertheless, the two set off together, eager to escape with their lives and sanity intact.

Their efforts to escape bring them face to face with multiple surprises and mysteries, one of which is quite famous in Conan lore, so famous that it inspired one of Frazetta's Lancer paperback covers and a scene in the execrable 1984 film Conan the Destroyer. From the vantage point of the present, I don't think it's unfair to say the surprise in question is a little bit silly, but, at the time, I imagine it was fairly effective. Even so, "Rogues in the House" is an enjoyable romp, one that presents Conan's younger days as a thief, when he is nevertheless more honorable than the men from whom he is stealing, precisely the kind of story that whets my appetite for refereeing that all-thief campaign of which I've dreamed for many years.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Necromancy in Naat

To atone for the fact that I allowed the birthday of Clark Ashton Smith (January 13) to pass by without comment, I turn again to one of his short stories for this week's installment of Pulp Fantasy Library. "Necromancy in Naat" first appeared in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales. If its cover illustration, by Margaret Brundage, looks familiar to you, it should, since this issue's headline story was the first part of Robert E. Howard's masterpiece, "Red Nails." The issue is also notable for featuring stories by Edmond Hamilton, C.L. Moore, August Derleth, and Manly Wade Wellman – a veritable who's who of the golden age of the pulps.

"Necromancy in Naat" owes its existence to a "benign, maleficent daemon," as Smith called his muse in a letter to fellow writer, Donald Wandrei. Prior to penning it, CAS had thought himself done with tales of Earth's last continent. Yet, what he produced rivaled Howard's "Red Nails" in the opinions of the readers of Weird Tales. The story concerns Yadar "prince of a nomad people in the half-desert region known as Zyra" who seeks to rescue

Dalili, his betrothed, whom the slave traders of Sha-Karag, swift and cunning as desert falcons, had reft from the tribal encampment with nine other maidens while Yadar and his men were hunting the black gazelles of Zyra.

Grieved and angered, Yadar swears an oath to find his beloved, "whether in slave-mart or brothel or harem, whether dead or living, whether tomorrow or after the lapse of grey years." Long-time readers of Smith will not be surprised to learn that that oath and its wording are central to the narrative and conclusion of "Necromancy in Naat." 

Yadar then sets off in the company of four of his men for "the iron gates of Sha-Karag … where women were the chief merchandise." Unfortunately, he quickly learns that Dalili has already been purchased by slavers who hoped to sell her "to some opulent king or emperor who would pay a city's ransom from the wild, rare beauty of the outland princess." Yadar is undeterred and sets off along the same route as the slavers, hoping to learn what became of Dalili. Over the course of months, he visits multiple cities, seeking the girl, before he learns that she "had been bought by the emperor of Xylac and sent to the ruler of the far southern kingdom of Yoros as a gift concluding a treaty between these realms." Upon learning this, Yadar books passage aboard a ship headed for Yoros (his men having died of a "strange fever" sometime beforehand).

The ship wrecks onto the island of Naat, called the Isle of Necromancers. Yadar barely survives and, when he comes to on the beach of the island, he beholds his rescuer, a young woman who "walked in the fashion of a somnambulist" and took him to her masters, three of Naat's fabled necromancers, chanting beside a fire.

Gaunt as starved herons they were, and great of stature, with a common likeness, as of brothers; and sharply ridged were their faces, where shadows inhabited their hollow cheeks, and their sunk eyes were visible only by red sparks reflected within them from the blaze. And their eyes, as they chanted, seemed to glare afar on the darkling sea and on things hidden by dusk and distance. 

In the light of the fire, Yadar comes to realize that the woman who had saved him was "none other than his lost love, Dalili!" Strangely, she does not react to his kisses or entreaties and Yadar turns to the trio of necromancers, who identify themselves as a father (Vacharn) and his two sons (Vokal and Uldulla), asking what they have done to her. They explain that Dalili is dead, like all their servants, her body washed up on the beaches of Naat after another shipwreck like his own. Vacharn further explains that Yadar's survival was no accident but rather the result of his sorcery and that he had in mind "a certain purpose" for the nomad prince, one he would fulfill in time. Needless to say, Yadar is none too pleased by these revelations and his attempts to come grips with them – and thwart them – propels "Necromancy in Naat" toward its gruesome conclusion. 

I like this story a great deal, despite certain similarities to a previous Zothique yarn, "The Charnel God," though that's perhaps inevitable since both tales deal with weighty matters of love, death, and the connection between the two. Compared to some of Smith's other stories, "Necromancy in Naat" is far more restrained in its vocabulary, focusing more on its theme than on verbal resplendency. Consequently, it feels rather than different than other CAS efforts and that might contribute to my fondness for it. At the same time, I readily admit that it takes some getting used to and I wouldn't blame anyone who prefers the dream-like prose poetry of his other works.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Devil in Iron

I mentioned in last week's entry that I would return to the August 1934 issue of Weird Tales, whose cover image, by Margaret Brundage, depicts a scene from Robert E. Howard's "The Devil in Iron." I wish I could say that "The Devil in Iron" is an amazing, under-appreciated story, but I don't think that's the case. By most measures, it's not one of Howard's best yarns – of Conan or indeed of any of his characters. One could even call it a very "by the numbers" story, almost as if REH were mentally checking off boxes in a long list of items required for a Conan tale. 

"The Devil in Iron" is not bad by any means, but neither is it notable. In many ways, it almost reads like a pastiche by a lesser writer, something one would expect to find in the pages of a De Camp and Carter-edited collection of "Conan" stories from the 1960s. How one feels about those later stories might influence one's assessment of "The Devil in Iron," I suppose. For me, it's one of the weaker stories in the REH canon, but not wholly without merit, as we shall see.

The narrative begins unusually for a Conan story, with the initial focus character being an unnamed fisherman. He finds himself on an uninhabited island named Xapur somewhere in the Sea of Vilayet. Xapur was dotted with ruins, "remnants of some prehistoric kingdom, lost and forgotten before the conquering Hyborians had ridden southward." Exploring the island, he stumbles across a strange sight: a muscular man laying on a golden block beneath a ruined dome. Upon the man's chest lay "a curious dagger with a jeweled pommel, shagreen-bound hilt, and a broad crescent blade." The fisherman believes this to be a tomb and the dagger one of its grave goods. Nevertheless, he wishes to take it for himself, though he does ponder "by what art the ancients had preserved the body in such vivid likeness of life." Plucking up his courage, he grabs his dagger.

And as he did so, a strange and terrible thing came to pass. The muscular dark hands knotted convulsively, the lids flared open, revealing great dark magnetic eyes whose stare struck the startled fisherman like a physical blow. He recoiled, dropping the jeweled dagger in his perturbation. The man on the dais heaved up to a sitting position, and the fisherman gaped at the full extent of his size, thus revealed. His narrowed eyes held the Yuetshi and in those slitted orbs he read neither friendliness nor gratitude; he saw only a fire as alien and hostile as that which burns in the heart of a tiger. 

Now awakened, the giant man attacks the fisherman, who attempts to stab him with his knife, only to find it "splintered against the stranger's corded belly as against a steel column." The giant snaps the fisherman's neck "like a rotted twig" before Howard shifts the narrative elsewhere.

The realm of Jehungir Agha suffers under the depredations of a band of kozaks under the leadership of "that devil Conan." Consulting with his advisor, Ghaznavi, he wonders how he will be able to rid his land of this threat (and appease King Yezdigrd of Turanm who is unhappy with his handling of it up till now). Ghaznavi hatches a plan.

"For every beast and for every man there is a trap he will not escape … When we have parlayed with the kozaks for the ransom of captives, I have observed this man Conan. He has a keen relish for women and strong drink. Have your captive Octavia fetched here."

Octavia is a Nemedian princess, not long ago captured by Jehungir and now reduced to enslavement. Ghaznavi suggests that, once Conan catches sight of her, he will be so enthralled by her beauty that he will wish to acquire her, something Jehungir must refuse. Later, he will accuse Conan of stealing the girl from his seraglio, as she is missing and he knew well his desire for her. Finally, a spy will be sent to the kozak camp, telling Conan that Octavia has in fled to the isle of Xapur, where he is sure to follow. Once there, Jehungir's men will hunt him down and kill him.

If that sounds like a needlessly complicated and indeed nonsensical plan filled with absurd assumptions, you're right. Despite Jehungir's praise of Ghaznavi for his plan, it depends on far too many variables to succeed, a fact he in fact mentions offhandedly in the story itself. Yet, the plan does succeed and Conan is lured to Xapur, where not only do Jehungir's men lay in wait for him but so too do other dangers, most significantly Khosatral Khel, the giant man who slew the fisherman at the beginning of the story. Khosatral, we learn, is ancient being who had assumed the form of a man and established a mighty city on Xapur (called Dagon) over which he ruled and harried the coastal peoples before they rose up against him and seemed to slay him.

"The Devil in Iron" is a mess, though many of its individual elements are interesting. Somehow, though, they don't properly gel, resulting in an instance of the whole being less than the sum of its parts. I'm genuinely sorry that this is the case, but it's not at all surprising. Howard wrote a lot of stories, as any successful pulp writer did, and not all of the results were masterpieces. "The Devil in Iron" is most definitely not a masterpiece.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Dust of God

The cover to the August 1934 issue of Weird Tales is a fairly famous one. Painted by Margaret Brundage, it depicts a scene from Robert E. Howard's "The Devil in Iron," a tale of Conan the Cimmerian. I hesitate to employ the overused word iconic in describing it, but it does seem fitting in this case. Between the giant snake, the struggling barbarian, and scantily clad Octavia, its quite representative of its era, so much so that it even appears in the 1996 film, The Whole Wide World, as a visual stand-in for all of Howard's writings – action-packed, larger than life, and racy by the standards of the time.

Though "The Devil in Iron" receives top billing in this issue, it's not the story I want to talk about in this post (I'll save that for next week). Instead, I want to talk about the first name that appears below that of Robert E. Howard: C.L. Moore. Catherine Lucille Moore is an incredibly fascinating figure, one of the bright lights of the golden age of the pulps. Among her most memorable creations is Northwest Smith, an interplanetary smuggler and gunslinger who is almost certainly the ultimate ancestor of Han Solo.

Smith appeared in thirteen short stories published between 1933 and 1940, the fourth of which is "Dust of God," the subject of today's post. The story begins with Smith and his Venusian comrade, Yarol, down on their luck in a Martian saloon – so impoverished, in fact, that Yarol briefly contemplates robbing the place before Smith reminds him that he "ought to know better than to start anything here." Instead, he suggests that the Venusian look around for someone who might have a job for them. "We're open for business – any kind." 

Yarol surveys the room.

It was a motley crowd the weary black gaze scrutinized – hard-faced Earthmen in space-sailors' leather, sleek Venusians with their sidelong dangerous eyes, Martian drylanders muttering the blasphemous gutturals of their language, a sprinkling of outlanders and half-brutes from the wide-flung borders of civilization. Yarol's eyes returned to the dark, scarred face across the table. He the pallor of Smith's no-colored gaze and shrugged.

"No one who'd buy us a drink," he sighed. "I've seen one or two of 'em before, though. Take those two space-rats at the next table: the little red-faced Earthman – the one looking over his shoulder – and the drylander with an eye gone. See? I've heard they're hunters."

"What for?"

Yarol lifted his shoulders in the expressive Venusian shrug. His brows rose too, quizzically. 

"No one knows what they hunt – but they run together."

"Hm-m." Smith turned a speculative stare toward the neighboring table. "They look more hunted than hunting, if you ask me."

An Earthman seated at another table takes note of Smith and Yarol's interest in the hunters and asks if he can join them. Without any introduction, he explains that he has a job to offer, one at which "those two," referring to the hunters, had failed. The stranger then launches into a strange tale.

"There were gods who were old when Mars was a green planet and a verdant moon circled an Earth blue with steaming seas, and Venus, molten-hot, swung around a younger sun. Another world circled in space then, between Mars and Jupiter where its fragments, the planetoids, now are. You will have heard rumors of it – they persist in the legends of every planet. It was a mighty world, rich and beautiful, peopled by the ancestors of mankind. And on that world dwelt a mighty Three in a temple of crystal, served by strange slaves and worshipped by a world. They were not wholly abstract, as modern gods have become. Some say they were from beyond, and real, in their way, as flesh and blood."

I adore this bit of mythology and the additional details that follow, such as the fact that, despite the destruction of the Lost Planet, "the old gods have not died utterly," but the bodies by which they chose to make themselves visible to mankind did. But – and this is the important part – because those bodies were material, fragments of them must still exist and it's those fragments the enigmatic patron wishes to find – and he wishes to hire Northwest Smith and Yarol to help him do it.

The story only gets pulpier from there, becoming a heady stew of sword-and-planet, Indiana Jones, Lovecraft, and Von Däniken, all told in a languid, noir-ish style. It's also great fun and a terrific introduction to both Northwest Smith and C.L. Moore, if you're unacquainted with either. Though most fans tend to consider "Shambleau" the best story featuring Smith, "Dust of God" is my preferred candidate for that honor. Even if you disagree, the story is well worth your time.