The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Read online

  The Sword & Sorcery Anthology

  © 2012 by Tachyon Publications

  This is a work of collected fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the editors and the publisher.

  Introduction © 2012 by David Drake

  Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story

  Cover art by Jean-Sébastien Rossbach

  Tachyon Publications

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  (415) 285-5615

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Jill Roberts

  Book ISBN 13: 978-1-61696-069-8; ISBN 10: 1-61696-069-8

  First Edition: 2012

  “The Tower of the Elephant” copyright © 1933 by Robert E. Howard. First appeared in Weird Tales, March 1933.

  “Black God’s Kiss” copyright © 1934 by C. L. Moore. First appeared in Weird Tales, October 1934.

  “The Unholy Grail” copyright © 1962 by Fritz Leiber. First appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, October 1962.

  “The Tale of Hauk” copyright © 1977 by Poul Anderson. First appeared in Swords Against Darkness, Vol. 1, edited by Andrew J. Offutt (Zebra Books: New York).

  “The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams” copyright © 1962 by Michael and Linda Moorcock. First appeared as “The Flame Bringers” in Science Fantasy, Issue #55, October/October 1962.

  “The Adventuress” copyright © 1967 by Joanna Russ. First appeared in Orbit 2, edited by Damon Knight (Putnam: New York).

  “Gimmile’s Songs” copyright © 1984 by Charles R. Saunders. First appeared in Sword and Sorceress #1, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley (DAW Books: New York).

  “Undertow” copyright © 1977 by Karl Edward Wagner. First appeared in Whispers #10, August 1977.

  “The Stages of the God” copyright © 1974 by Ramsey Campbell (writing as Montgomery Comfort). First appeared in Whispers #5, November 1974.

  “The Barrow Troll” copyright © 1975 by David Drake. First appeared in Whispers #8, December 1975.

  “Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat” copyright © 1980 by Glen Cook. First appeared in Berkley Showcase, Volume 2, edited by Victoria Schochet and John Silbersack (Berkley Books: New York).

  “Epistle from Lebanoi” copyright © 2012 by Michael Shea. Original appearance in this anthology.

  “Become a Warrior” copyright © 1998 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Warrior Princess, edited by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough and Martin H. Greenberg (DAW: New York). Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

  “The Red Guild” copyright © 1985 by Rachel Pollack. First appeared in Sword and Sorceress #2, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley (DAW: New York).

  “Six from Atlantis” copyright © 2006 by Gene Wolfe. First appeared in Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard, edited by Scott A. Cupp and Joe R. Lansdale (MonkeyBrain Books & Fandom Association of Central Texas: Austin, Texas). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

  “The Sea Troll’s Daughter” copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R. Kiernan. First appeared Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (EOS: New York).

  “The Coral Heart” copyright © 2009 by Jeffrey Ford. First appeared in Eclipse Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books: San Francisco).

  “Path of the Dragon” copyright © 2000 by George R. R. Martin. First appeared in Asimov’s SF, December 2000.

  “The Year of the Three Monarchs” copyright © 2012 by Michael Swanwick. Original appearance in this anthology.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: Storytellers:

  A Guided Ramble into Sword and Sorcery Fiction

  by David Drake

  The Tower of the Elephant

  by Robert E. Howard

  Black God’s Kiss

  by C. L. Moore

  The Unholy Grail

  by Fritz Leiber

  The Tale of Hauk

  by Poul Anderson

  The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams

  by Michael Moorcock

  The Adventuress

  by Joanna Russ

  Gimmile’s Songs

  by Charles R. Saunders

  Undertow

  by Karl Edward Wagner

  The Stages of the God

  by Ramsey Campbell (writing as Montgomery Comfort)

  The Barrow Troll

  by David Drake

  Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat

  by Glen Cook

  Epistle from Lebanoi

  by Michael Shea

  Become a Warrior

  by Jane Yolen

  The Red Guild

  by Rachel Pollack

  Six from Atlantis

  by Gene Wolfe

  The Sea Troll’s Daughter

  by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  The Coral Heart

  by Jeffrey Ford

  Path of the Dragon

  by George R. R. Martin

  The Year of the Three Monarchs

  by Michael Swanwick

  Storytellers:

  A Guided Ramble into Sword and Sorcery Fiction

  DAVID DRAKE

  1.

  Manly Wade Wellman, one of the finest pure storytellers I’ve ever known, was born in 1903 in Kamundongo, Angola; Manly’s father ran the clinic there for a medical charity. Except for Manly and his family, there were no white residents within fifty miles.

  At the time, the local villagers hammered blades for their spears and knives from scrap iron which they bought from the Portuguese. In all other respects Kamundongo was a Stone Age society, culturally more similar to the first agricultural villages of Mesopotamia than to the towns of the Iron Age Greeks where Homer sang the Iliad.

  Manly’s most vivid childhood memory was of the day a ten-year-old herdboy faced the leopard that was stalking his goats and killed it with his spear. That night there was a banquet in the boy’s honor. He was seated on the high stool with the leopard’s skin, fresh and reeking, draped over his shoulders.

  From his place of honor the boy doled out a piece of the cat’s flesh to every adult male. When they had eaten the meat that would strengthen their spirits as well as their bodies, the men each in turn chanted a song of praise to the enthroned hero, recounting and embellishing his accomplishment. He has vanquished the monster which threatened our lives and our livelihoods!

  Behold the hero! Hear his mighty deeds!

  This is storytelling as the Cro-Magnons practiced it, and this is the essence of sword and sorcery fiction.

  2.

  Some people argue the definition of sword and sorcery, just as they argue the definition of Conservatism, or Christianity, or the color blue.

  The editors of this anthology have chosen to start S&S with Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore in the early ’30s and to go on from there with works which share kinship with Howard and Moore. I consider this a perfectly reasonable structure.

  Robert E. Howard had been appearing regularly in Weird Tales since July 1925, but it was Conan’s December 1932 appearance in “The Phoenix on the Sword” which made Howard a fantasy superstar. This irritated a number of people, at the time as well as since. Comments have ranged from “Howard isn’t very good,” through “One of Howard’s other series is much better than Conan,” to “I, not Howard, am responsible for Conan’s succe
ss!”

  Personally, some of the Solomon Kane stories are my Howard favorites; and most readers would agree that some of Howard’s Conan stories are better than others. As for the “I’m responsible!” claims—arrogant stupidity will always be with us.

  I won’t try to explain the phenomenon, but I will state that to the best of my knowledge and belief, Conan created S&S as a publishing category as surely as Stephen King created horror as a publishing category. There have been Conan knockoffs and Conan pastiches (which are generally worse than the knockoffs) and Anti-Conans, but virtually all of the S&S which appeared after December 1932 was written in some degree with reference to Conan.

  My first contact with S&S came when I read Conan the Conqueror as half of an Ace double when I was fourteen. I read more Howard and more S&S when I found it, but neither was readily available in Clinton, Iowa, during the early ’60s.

  That initial taste had made a huge impact on me, though. Howard understood the basics of story the way the men of Kamundongo did, and he communicated his enthusiasm to me as well as to many thousands of his other readers.

  3.

  The book on the reverse side of Conan the Conqueror was The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett. Technically Brackett’s short novel was space opera rather than fantasy, but there was little philosophical difference between the two genres—a fact underscored by the title, which pairs “sword” with the name of a goddess/queen from Celtic mythology.

  And this brings us directly to C. L. Moore, the second starting point for the present anthology. Catherine Moore’s first story, “Shambleau,” appeared in Weird Tales in January 1933—the month after Conan. It was every bit as remarkable as “The Phoenix on the Sword,” but it was a space opera.

  Moore wrote several stories in her interplanetary milieu before beginning to alternate stories about a male spaceman, Northwest Smith, with stories about a female swordswoman, Jirel of Joiry, who lived in a version of Medieval France as fantastic as the Mars of “Shambleau.” The two series are identical in tone and were intermingled in the volumes of their initial book publication.

  Smith and Jirel are a development parallel to Conan rather than Conan’s direct offspring. Much of later S&S owes a great deal to Moore—and to space opera, in particular to Leigh Brackett.

  4.

  For a period in the ’60s and ’70s, Conan was as big a thing in publishing as zombies are today. This had the genuinely good result of making room on the fringes for historical/fantasy adventures which weren’t trying to rehash Conan but which wouldn’t have been (re)published if Conan hadn’t created a category. (This includes quite a lot of Howard’s own non-Conan work, by the way.)

  On the fringe of the fringe were the S&S stories published in Whispers, the little magazine begun by Stuart David Schiff in 1973. From the second issue (credited in the third) I was Stu’s assistant editor; that is, I read the slush.

  I am very proud of the assistance which I provided Stu in keeping short-form fantasy/horror alive during a dark period. We had only 15,000 words of fiction per issue (twice that on a double issue), but we did a damned good job. Three of our picks are included in this volume.

  Ramsey Campbell began his career with stories set in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which sold to August Derleth for publication by Arkham House. Mr. Derleth died in 1971, putting Arkham House on hold.

  When Whispers began in 1973, Ramsey had just become a full-time freelance writer who was looking for new markets and new genres, including S&S. He had been introduced to the genre at age sixteen by the Arkham House/Howard collection, Skull-Face.

  The stories about Ryre (under Ramsey’s own name) for the Swords Against Darkness anthologies were distinctive but within the then-accepted parameters of S&S. “Stages of the God” from Whispers is unique and I think uniquely good. It shows the influence of Howard’s friend and Weird Tales contemporary Clark Ashton Smith as well as of Howard himself. It was my pleasure to recommend “Stages of the God” to Stu, and it has been an even greater pleasure to bring the story to the attention of the present editors.

  That issue of Whispers already contained a horror story by Ramsey, so “Stages” was published under a pseudonym. Ramsey created “Montgomery Comfort” from the names of two (hack) British filmmakers, Montgomery Tully and Lance Comfort.

  Whispers ran nonfiction also. Present readers may be amused (as I was on rereading the issue) to learn that immediately following “Stages” was an article on Lovecraft by David G. Hartwell, Ph.D. Fantasy in the ’70s was a small world.

  Karl Edward Wagner began collecting pulp magazines while he was in high school and had completed his set of Weird Tales before he and I met in 1971. His Kane was not a copy of Conan but rather Karl’s own (darker) response to Conan.

  Karl (who met Stu Schiff when I did) was involved with Whispers from the first. Like Karl’s most famous story “Sticks,” “Undertow” was written for the magazine.

  Besides showing Howard’s influence, “Undertow” is effectively a S&S rewrite of “Jane Brown’s Body,” the powerful novella by Cornell Woolrich. Karl said that connection had been unconscious, but in any case it does nothing to detract from the effectiveness of Karl’s version.

  As for “The Barrow Troll”... I had sold two stories to Arkham House before I was drafted, and then two more to Mr. Derleth before he died. After that I wrote a great deal for various markets, but for years I sold very little of it.

  Whispers was for me, as for Ramsey and Karl, a place for work that was too far from the mainstream of the field to be publishable in established markets, at least by unknowns. Like most of my fantasy at the time, “The Barrow Troll” has a real-world historical setting. The fact that I was reading Icelandic sagas then is probably obvious, but the general ambiance comes also from Professor Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in particular “Clerk Colvill.”

  5.

  Good sword and sorcery generally has character and all the other elements of good fiction, but the thing S&S must have is story. The best writers of sword and sorcery are the best storytellers in the fantasy field. Read this anthology and savor it.

  And have fun!

  Dave Drake

  david-drake.com

  The Tower of the Elephant

  ROBERT E. HOWARD

  I

  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 quarters, 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 rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamour of drinking jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.

  In one of those dens merriment thundered to the low smoke-stained roof, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and tatters—furtive cutpurses, leering kidnappers, quick-fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes with their wenches, strident-voiced women clad in tawdry finery. Native rogues were the dominant element—dark-skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts. But there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well. There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame—for men wore steel openly in the Maul. There was a Shemitish counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard. There was a bold-eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-haired Gunderman—a wandering mercenary soldier, a deserter from some defeated army. And the fat gross rogue whose bawdy jests were causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper come up from distant Koth to teach woman-stealing to Zamorians who were born with more knowledge of the a
rt than he could ever attain. This man halted in his description of an intended victim’s charms and thrust his muzzle into a huge tankard of frothing ale. Then blowing the foam from his fat lips, he said, “By Bel, god of all thieves, I’ll show them how to steal wenches; I’ll have her over the Zamorian border before dawn, and there’ll be a caravan waiting to receive her. Three hundred pieces of silver, a count of Ophir promised me for a sleek young Brythunian of the better class. It took me weeks, wandering among the border cities as a beggar, to find one I knew would suit. And is she a pretty baggage!”

  He blew a slobbery kiss in the air.

  “I know lords in Shem who would trade the secret of the Elephant Tower for her,” he said, returning to his ale.

  A touch on his tunic sleeve made him turn his head, scowling at the interruption. He saw a tall, strongly made youth standing beside him. This person was as much out of place in that den as a grey wolf among mangy rats of the gutters. His cheap tunic could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist, and heavy arms. His skin was brown from outland suns, his eyes blue and smouldering; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead. From his girdle hung a sword in a worn leather scabbard.

  The Kothian involuntarily drew back; for the man was not one of any civilized race he knew.

  “You spoke of the Elephant Tower,” said the stranger, speaking Zamorian with an alien accent. “I’ve heard much of this tower; what is its secret?”