The Last King, page 23
“Go back to Hell and take your idol with you!” he yelled, brandishing his clenched fists to the skies, “Gonar was right – there are shapes too foul to use against even Rome!”
He sprang from the Ring as a man flees the touch of a coiling snake, and tore the stallion free, wheeling the great horse about. At his elbow Atla was shrieking with fearful laughter.
“Kings of Pictland!” she cried, “King of fools! You blench at a little thing – stay and let me show you the real fruit of the pits! Ha! ha! ha! Run, fool, run! But you are stained with the taint – you have called them forth and they will remember! And in their own time they will come to you again!”
“The curse of R’lyeh on you, witch!” he yelled, and struck her savagely in the mouth with his open hand. She staggered, blood starting from her lips, but her fiendish laughter only rose higher.
Bran leaped into the saddle, wild for the clean heather and the cold blue hills of the north where he could plunge his sword into clean slaughter and his sickened soul into forgetfullness in the red storm of forthright battle. And forget the horror which lurked below the fens of the west. He gave the frantic stallion the rein, and rode through the night like a hunted ghost until the hellish laughter of the howling were-woman died out in the darkness behind him.
Fragment
A grey sky arched over the dreary waste. The dry tall grass rippled in the cold wind; but for this no hint of movement stirred the primeval quietude of the level land, which ran to the low mountains rearing bleak and barren. In the center of this waste and desolation one lonely figure moved – a tall gaunt man who partook of the wildness of his surroundings. The wolfishness of his appearance was increased by his horned helmet and rusty mail-shirt. His lank hair was yellow, his scarred face sinister. Now he wheeled suddenly, his lean hand on his sword, as another man stepped suddenly from behind a clump of leafless trees. The two faced each other, tensed for anything. The new-comer fitted into the desolate scene even more perfectly than the other. Every line of his lean hard body betokened the wild savagery that had molded it. He was of medium height, but his shoulders were broad, and he was built with the savage economy of a wolf. His face was dark and inscrutable, his eyes gleaming like black ice. Like the first man he wore helmet and mail-shirt. And he was the first to speak.
“I give you greetings, stranger. I am Partha Mac Othna. I am on a mission for my leige – I bear words of friendship from Bran Mak Morn, king of Pictdom, to the chiefs of the Red-beards.”
The tall man relaxed and a grin twisted his bearded lips.
“I hail you, good sir. I am called Thorvald the Smiter, and until a day agone I was chief of a long-serpent and a goodly band of Vikings. But the storms cast my ship upon a reef and all my crew went to glut Fafnir except myself. I am seeking to reach the settlements on Caithness.”
Each smiled and nodded curteously, and each knew the other lied.
“Well it would be might we travel together,” said the Pict, “but my way lies to the west; and your’s to the east.”
Thorvald assented and stood, leaning on his sheathed sword, as the Pict strode away. Just out of sight the Pict glanced back and lifted his hand in salute and the impassive Norseman returned the gesture. Then as the other vanished over a slight rise, Thorvald grinned savagely and went swiftly in a course that slanted slowly eastward, swinging along with tireless strides of his long legs.
The man who had called himself Partha Mac Othna did not go far before he turned suddenly aside and slid silently into a brown leafless copse. There he waited grimly, his sword ready. But the grey clouds rolled and drifted overhead, the cold wind blew across the rattling grass, and no stealthy shape came gliding on his trail. He rose at last and swept the bleak landscape with his keen black eyes. Far away to the east he saw a tiny figure momentarily etched against the grey clouds on the crest of a hill. And the black-haired wanderer shrugged his shoulders and took up his journey.
The land grew wilder and more rugged. His way lay among low sloping hills bare except for the brown dead grass. To the left the grey sea boomed along the cliffs and the grey stone promontories. To his right the mountains rose dark and grim. Now as the day drew to a close, a strong wind from the sea rolled the clouds in flying grey scrolls and drove them torn and scattered over the world-rim. The sinking sun blazed in a cold crimson glow over the reddening ocean, and the wanderer came up upon a high promontory that jutted high above the sea, and saw a woman sitting on a grey boulder, her red hair blown in the wind.
She drew his eyes as a magnet draws steel. Indifferent to the chill of the wind she sat there, her only garments a scant kirtle which left her arms bare and came barely to her knees, and leather sandals on her feet. A short sword hung at her girdle.
She was almost as tall as the man who watched her, and she was broadly built and deep-bosomed. Her hair was red as the sunset and her eyes were cold and strange and magnetic. The Romans who represented the world’s civilization would not have called her beautiful, but there was a wild something about her which held the eyes of the Pict. Her own eyes gave back his stare boldly.
“What evil wind brings you into this land, feeder of ravens?” she asked in no friendly tone.
The Pict scowled, antagonized by her manner.
“What is that to you, wench?” he retorted.
“This is my land,” she answered, sweeping the bleak magnificence with a bold sweep of her strong white arm, “my people claim this land and own no master. It is my right to ask of any intruder, ‘What do you here?’”
“Its not my custom to give an account of myself to every hussy I happen to meet,” growled the warrior, nettled.
“Who are you?” how her hair glinted in the dying glow of the sun.
“Partha Mac Othna.”
“You lie!” she rose lithely and came up to him, meeting his scowling black eyes unflinchingly, “You come into the land to spy.”
“My people have no quarrel with the Red Beards,” he growled.
“Who knows against whom you plot or where your next raid falls?” she retorted, then her mood changed and a vagrant gleam rose in her eyes.
“You shall wrestle with me,” she said, “Nor go from this spot unless you overcome me.”
He snorted disgustedly and turned away but she caught his girdle and detained him with surprizing strength.
“Do you fear me, my black slayer?” she taunted me, “Are Picts so cowed by the emperor that they fear to wrestle with a woman of the Red People?”
“Release me, wench,” he snarled, “before I lose patience and hurt you.”
“Hurt me if you can!” she retorted, suddenly flinging her full weight against his chest and back-heeling him at the same instant. Caught off-guard by the unexpected movement, the warrior went down ingloriously, half smothered by a flurry of white arms and legs. Cursing luridly he strove to thrust her aside, but she was like a big she-cat, and with strong and cunning wrestling tricks she more than held her own for an instant. But the superior strength of the warrior was not to be denied and casting her angrily aside, her antagonist rose. But she, springing to her knees, caught his sword-belt and almost dragged him down again, and irritated beyond control, the Pict jerked her savagely to her feet by her red locks and gave her a terrific cuff with his open hand that felled her senseless at his feet. Swearing in disgust and wrath, he turned away, brushing the dust from his garments, then glanced at the motionless form of the girl and hesitated. Then with an oath he knelt beside her and lifted her head, flinging the contents of his canteen in her face. She started, shook her head and looked up, clear-eyed and fully concious. He instantly released her and let her head bump none too gently against the frosty ground as he rose to his feet and replaced his canteen.
She sat up cross-legged and looked up at him.
“Well, you have conquered me,” she said calmly, “What will you do with me now?”
“I should rip the skin from your loins with my sword-belt,” he snapped, “It is no small shame to a warrior to be forced into striving with a woman – and no small shame to the woman who thrusts herself into a man’s game.”
“I am no common woman,” she answered, “I am one with the winds and the frosts and the grey seas of this wild land.
Poem
Previously Unpublished
There’s a bell that hangs in a hidden cave
Under the heathered hills
That knew the tramp of the Roman feet
And the clash of the Pictish bills.
It has not rung for a thousand years,
To waken the sleeping trolls,
But God defend the sons of men
When the bell of the Morni tolls.
For its rope is caught in the hinge of hell,
And its clapper is forged of doom,
And all the dead men under the sea
Await for its sullen boom.
It did not glow in an earthly fire,
Or clang to a mortal’s sledge;
The hands that cast it grope in the night
Through the reeds at the fen-pool’s edge.
It is laden with dooms of a thousand years,
It waits in the silence stark,
With grinning dwarves and the faceless things
That crawl in the working dark.
And it waits the Hand that shall wake its voice,
When the hills shall break with fright,
To call the dead men into the day,
And the living into the Night.
Untitled
INTRODUCTION
Early in 2004, Wandering Star editor Patrice Louinet, studying Robert E. Howard’s early manuscripts and typescripts in his search for clues that would help in dating the author’s work, received a package of materials he had requested from Glenn Lord. Lord owns the largest collection of original Howard manuscripts. Among these was a typescript that had been listed in the “Unpublished Fiction” section of his landmark bio-bibliography of Howard, The Last Celt, under the title “The Wheel Turns.”
As he read it, Louinet was excited to discover that this was without doubt the “novel” that Howard had referred to in a 1923 letter to his friend Clyde Smith (see page 324). While Glenn Lord had read the typescript more than thirty years ago, it was not until years later that Howard’s letters to Smith had become available, so the connection had never been made.
Howard told Smith that the novel featured Bran Mak Morn. Unfortunately, alone among the characters Howard named in the letter, Bran does not appear in the typescript that has come to us. Perhaps his section was to come later. There is a Pict featured in one segment of this story, but his name is Merak. While the Pictish element of this tale is slight, we thought readers would enjoy this glimpse at a very early work of Robert E. Howard. At the very least, the letter to Smith indicates that Howard intended to bring Bran into this story!
We have adhered closely to Howard’s typescript. No attempt has been made to correct spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. What follows here is the tale exactly as Howard wrote it.
Untitled
CHAPTER 1,
BACK THROUGH THE AGES.
Men have had visions ere now. Men have dreamed dreams. Faint glimpses of other worlds and other ages have come to us, as though for a moment the veil of Time had been rent and we had peered fearfully into the awful vistas.
Scant and fleeting those glimpses, not understood. And from them men have have shaped heaven and hell.
Little they knew that it was but the stirring of memory, memory transmitted from age to age, surviving the changing and shifting of centuries. Memory, that is as strong as the soul of man.
Time has no beginning or ending. The Wheel turns and the cycles revolve for ever. The Wheel turns and the souls of all things are bound to the spokes through all Eternity.
Form and substance fades but the Invisible Something, the ego, the Soul, swings on through the eons. It is as beginningless, as endless as Time Itself. These visions, these dreams, these instincts and inspirations, they are but memories, racial memories.
To some comes clearness of vision, of memory. Shall I say I have dreamed? No, for they were not dreams, the glimpses I had of Eternity.
For Eternity I have seen, the Ages of long ago and the future Ages. For as sure as I have lived before and as sure as I shall live again, I have drawn back the veil of Time and gazed clear-eyed into the Centuries. Glimpses I had in my youth, in child-hood, in infancy. Fleet snatches I caught, in dreams, in the Mystic Bowl of the Orient, in the Crystal.
But in manhood my clearest sight was reached, in manhood, when I purchased, for ten times its weight in gold, the Mystic Plant of the Orient.
In the waste place of the Orient it grows scantily, and from a wandering Hindu faquir I purchased a small quantity.
“Taduka,” I shall call it, although it is not Taduka nor is it anything known to or by, white men.
It is not an opiate, nor is its effect harmful in the least. It is to be smoked and when smoked, the world of today fades from about me and I travel back into the Ages or forward into the Future. Years, space, distance, time, are nothing. I have covered a million miles with the speed of light and a thousand years in as many seconds.
I have traversed empty space, from world to world. I have passed from Age to Age.
I have lived Centuries and Centuries on Centuries.
Sights I have seen and leagues on leagues have I traversed, in seconds time, for the effects of Taduka does not last many minutes, an hour at the utmost. A boon to humanity it would be, greater than the greatest inventions, greater than the written annals of history, and withal, absolutely harmless. Indeed, beneficient is Taduka.
So I have lived again the by-gone Ages of other lands.
And so it is that I, Stephen Hegen, knowing that the average human mind does not believe what it cannot conceive, and knowing that the conception of Mystery lies beyond the average human mind, yet I set down these, shall I call them adventures ? of mine.
I was a man in the Younger World. I lived in the trees and my only clothing was the thick, shaggy hair that grew on my body. I was not a large man but I was terrificly powerful.
I travelled through the trees, leaping and swinging from bough to bough like any ape.
I lived on fruit and nuts and such birds as I could snare and I crept, silently and fearful, to the river for water, glancing swiftly from side to side, ready to flee.
I was Swift-Foot the Tree-man, in those early days and my name did not lie. Swift of foot, men had to be in those days. Many a time have I footed it to the trees or the cliffs with the Mighty One, the lion, or old saber-tooth, the tiger, bounding behind me, shaking the earth with roars.
Once among the trees, nothing could catch me, not even the leopard nor the Hairy Fierce One, the ape.
The Hairy People, we called them, we of the Trees, for they were but savage apes. Powerful they were, and terrible, and possessed of a nasty temper. We of the trees were much higher in the scale of evolution. We had a sense of humor, childish and grotesque, I grant you, yet still, a sense of humor. The Hairy People had no sense of humor, and since they were morose and savage and of a hermit nature, we of the Trees let them alone.
Mighty fighters they were; a full grown male of the Hairy People was ten times as strong as a man of today, and nearly twice as strong as a man of the Trees.
If they had had union, they might have wiped out the Tree People, but when they came to steal the women of the Tree People, as they sometimes did, they came singly or only in twos and threes.
We of the Trees had feuds and fights with one another but we always united against a common enemy. And not one or three or ten Hairy Men could overcome the whole tribe of Tree People.
When a Tree Man was matched singly a Hairy Man, the Hairy Man almost invaribly came off victor.
Yet when a savage and powerful Hairy Man sought to carry off a girl of the Tree People whom I desired for a mate, I proved I was strong of arm as well as swift of foot.
For I saw red rage and there in the swaying tree-tops, a hundred feet from the ground, we fought, hand to hand, the Hairy Man and I, and bare-handed and unaided I slew him, there in tree-tops, when the world was young.
I was a slave in Egypt when Menes built the first pyramid. By day I toiled unceasingly with thousands of other slaves, working on the erection of the pyramids and at night I shared a squalid mud hut with other slaves.
I was tall and fair skinned and fair haired. One of the tribe of fair haired people who lived in caves on the coast of the Mediterranean. The ancestors of the Berbers of today.
I toiled without pause or rest and many a time I felt the slave-driver’s lash, until I remembered that I had been a chief in mine own land. Then, laying hands on the slave-driver, I slew him and broke away, regaining my freedom with one bold stroke.
To Ethiopia I fled, and there I became a chief of fighting men. From power to power I rose, until the Karoon, the king of Ethiopia, jealous of my rising power, sought my life.
Again I fled, across the desert, until I came to a tribe of black men.
Fierce fighters they were, and they took me into their tribe. I led them to victory against other tribes and I was made a chief among them.
When we had conquered the tribes’ enemies, I led an army of some two thousand out of the jungle, across the desert and into Ethiopia.
The black tribesmen were spearmen. They knew nothing of the bow and the Ethiopians were all skilled archers, and they greatly outnumbered us. But I led them skillfully and we fell upon the Ethiopians, surprizing them and closing in so swiftly that they had scant time to use their bows. In hand-to-hand fighting the Ethiopians could not stand before the fierce speamen and they broke and fled.
