Swords From the Sea Read online

  Foreword vii

  Acknowledgments xi

  Introduction xiii

  Longsword i

  Wolf Meat 15

  The Snow Driver 27

  Flower Girl 141

  Passage to Cathay 154

  The Bear's Head 166

  Forward! 18o

  The Sword of Honor 236

  The Corsair's Raid 334

  Elf Woman 348

  The Night Bird Flies 362

  The Drub-Devil March 375

  Berzerk 455

  Among the Missing 469

  The Lady and the Pirate 482

  St. Olaf's Day 495

  The Golden Empress 5o8

  His Excellency the Vulture 521

  Appendix 543

  About the Author 551

  Source Acknowledgments 553

  This volume of Harold Lamb stories collects his historical magazine tales of seafarers, wanderers, marines, and Vikings. There are even some Cossacks here because there wasn't room for them in the final volume of Lamb's Cossack collections. Truth be told, they would have been an odd fit, as the Cossacks themselves are secondary characters to John Paul Jones, commander of Catherine the Great's navy, and the political double-dealing that proves more treacherous to Jones than the enemies on the water in two short novels of naval action upon the Crimean.

  Here too is the exciting tale of a doomed search for the northeast passage by an English expedition, challenged by both the elements and a traitor in their ranks, and Lamb's last long historical, a compelling novel of the American expedition against the Barbary pirates. "The Drub-Devil March" shows that Lamb could well have kept spinning historical yarns of the quality from his Adventure days, if he'd had the time or inclination.

  I became a Lamb fan by stages. I enjoyed his Hannibal biography so much in high school that I sought out more by him, hoping that The Curved Saber would contain more tales of the great Carthaginian J didn't have a clue then that sabers weren't remotely Carthaginian. It proved instead to be a collection of Khlit the Cossack stories, which I read and loved. I didn't discover for many more years that there was a sequel volume, or that White Falcon featured many of the same characters, or, later still, that there were dozens of other Harold Lamb historicals that had never been collected. I was naive enough to assume that if a story hadn't been collected it must not be as good, a notion quickly dispelled when I purchased Dr. John Drury Clark's Harold Lamb Adventure collection from his widow. These stories were just as good-and some of them were better-than those already between book covers.

  I enjoyed myself so thoroughly with those Lamb tales that I went looking for more. The earlier fiction from the more obscure pulps proved disappointing, as I've discussed elsewhere. But the first tale I read in Collier's impressed me mightily, a 5,ooo-word adventure of a Cossack, an allegedly haunted tower, a lovely princess, and a scheming noble ... all in all, pretty grand stuff. I thought I'd found another treasure trove until I read the next Collier's story, which was a pretty similar tale with different stage dressing. So too was the next, and the next, and the next ...

  Maybe that's how the Collier's editors wanted things. Perhaps they didn't think their readers would care for historical adventure unless it was a romance. Maybe Lamb's own outlook had changed and he wanted to write stories with dependably happy endings. Collier's, Pictorial Review, and the Saturday Evening Post published him regularly, and all of his work began to read the same. Not everything was formula, though-from this period came "Lionheart" and "Protection," both found in Swords from the West (Bison Books, 2009, powerful pieces with romance as a driving theme but simply head and shoulders above the others, and one of my very favorite Lamb shorts, the moving "Devil's Song," found in Swords of the Steppes Bison Books, 2007). On reading these it becomes clear that Lamb could still surprise with those characteristic twists and turns, and I can't help wondering if the change in tone was the fault of editors who were saying, "We'll take these, but try not to be so bleak next time-can you give us more happy endings?" How else then to explain away forgettable fare like "The Lady and the Pirate" and several others included here only in the interest of completeness?

  Every good critic knows that you should judge a body of work by its most outstanding successes first. Lamb had many more successes than most writers, and it must be said that when viewed singly, most of these later stories are fine writing. Even if the endings are reminiscent of each other, the path to that conclusion varies. It must be remembered, too, that they originally appeared in magazines over a span of years; they were never intended to be read one after the other. Like Lord Dunsany's tales of Jorkens or Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin stories, they are better when they're not read back to back.

  Aside from the aforementioned, my favorites from this period are Lamb's seven Viking yarns. Lamb always presents the Viking mind-set ably and gets a lot of play out of the honorable barbarian facing off against civilized schemers. His Vikings may be uneducated in the ways of civilization, but they're no fools, and they're stout warriors with flashes of grim humor.

  Lamb's ability to slide into the viewpoint of other cultures seems almost effortless. Having been schooled in rationality ourselves, we sometimes forget how cultures in other times viewed the workings of the world around them. Thus, in "Elf Woman" the Icelander Rang believes without question that there is a god slumbering in his volcano, and in "Forward!" the Cossack Ivak realizes, not with surprise but with understanding, why the men he chances upon react in astonishment to his reappearance, for they had assumed him dead. Their natural conclusion isn't that he has survived his wounds and come galloping after them:

  By their bearing they were outlaws of the band, and their jaws dropped when they saw my face. Afterward Iremembered that they must have thought me dead, and when the big black rushed on them in the eye of the rising sun they believed a bloody specter had come up out of Father Dnieper to settle their hash.

  Magic and the supernatural are woven throughout the belief systems of these cultures; through the eyes of Lamb's characters, commonplace events can take on supernatural significance-the sight, for instance, in "Wolf Meat," of a man on skis who seems to his observer to be flying across the face of the snow. Showing us magical thinking in this way is a technique Lamb used sparingly but well throughout his historicals, and it is a technique seldom applied by other writers.

  This collection concludes with Lamb's first printed story for the magazine that published his very best historical fiction, Adventure. "His Excellency the Vulture" might be simpler work than some of the other material included here, but it was a leap forward for Lamb, and contains what would soon become his trademarks: clever plotting, driving action, and wily lead characters. The appendix contains an added treat. In addition to the usual letters is an essay by Adventure editor Arthur Sullivan Hoffman that provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Lamb's drafting practices and the challenges he faced in writing and publishing.

  For those in search of other Lamb stories, I hope it hardly needs to be pointed out that there are eight Bison Books collections brimming with Harold Lamb's work, and three novels of Sir Hugh and the sword of Roland ~Durandal, The Sea of Ravens, and Rusudan) from Donald M. Grant. But if you're still wanting more Harold Lamb adventure stories, Omar Khayyam and Nur-Mahal are historical novels even though they're of ten located in the biography section of your local library. There may yet be some stirring historical work in other pulp magazines from Lamb's early days; Jan Van Heinegen and other fans still search diligently. And lest we forget, there is a whole shelf full of histories and biographies that brought Lamb fame and recognition.

  It is almost criminal that the work of such an accomplished writer has been neglected for so long, and I am grateful that Bi
son Books stepped forward to give this fiction the treatment it warranted. Now that all of these tales are so readily accessible, I hope it is time at last for Lamb to be recognized as a master of adventure and for his fiction to take its place upon the shelves beside Dumas and Stevenson and Lamb's contemporary, Sabatini. We Americans have waited too long to acknowledge the worth of adventure fiction and even now look askance at it more regularly than we value it. We should be proud that men like Jack London and Robert E. Howard and Harold Lamb lived and worked here and spun new fables for us.

  Any educated person can write, but storytelling is a gift that must be honed and crafted. Harold Lamb had that gift, and he practiced his skill until his prose shone with a high gloss. He took his readers to new lands through the eyes of fascinating characters, and he told wonderful tales with a precision and a depth of knowledge and understanding that only a small number of writers can match. Few if any have surpassed him in his chosen field, and none has ever matched his particular voice. We should treasure these stories and his skill in telling them, but, more particularly, we should read and savor them.

  Enjoy!

  I would like to thank Bill Prather of Thacher School for his continued support. This volume would not have been possible without the aid of Bruce Nordstrom, who long ago provided me with Lamb's Collier's texts as well as his Saturday Evening Post and Pictorial Review stories and the text of "The Drub-Devil March"; Alfred Lybeck, who provided Camp-Fire letters and additional information; and Brian Taves for the essay written by Arthur Sullivan Hoffman. I also would like to express my appreciation for the advice of Victor Dreger, Jan van Heinegen, James Pfund- stein, and Kevin Cook, gentlemen and scholars all. Lastly, I wish again to thank my father, the late Victor Jones, who helped me locate various Adventure magazines; and Dr. John Drury Clark, whose lovingly preserved collection of Lamb stories is the chief source of 75 percent of my Adventure manuscripts.

  S. M. STIRLING

  One thing we tend to forget about the pulps was how many of them there were, and how much was written for them. The science-fiction and fantasy segments and the superhero pulps remain freshest in memory, because they were at the root of traditions that have continued and flourished ever since; and the Western, if not in such condition, is not forgotten. But in fact, the adventure pulps contained dozens of distinct subgenres: Western, Oriental, Detective, South Seas, any number of historical types such as the pirate story or the tale of the Crusades. And miscegenation in plenty-tales of detectives having adventures in Chinatown, for example, or of super-science set among Tibetan mahatmas the last a specialty of Talbot Mundy, a contemporary of Lamb's, or psychic Chinese detectives involving "spicy" tales of white slavery.

  Harold Lamb specialized in Oriental/historical adventures-for a number of reasons, starting with the exceedingly rare one that he was a genuine historian of the Orient, the author of well-regarded biographies of Genghis Khan and other figures, and of a redaction of the autobiography of Babur, the first Moghul emperor of India and descendant of Tamerlane. Together with a grasp of history and character far above the average of the tribe, Lamb had a driving narrative focus and a talent for depicting action as vigorous as any, even Robert E. Howard's. But he wasn't limited to stories of Cossacks and Mongols, well known though his efforts in those fields are.

  The stories in this collection are largely crossover; pirates-plus-something-else, for example. We have Vikings on the Golden Horn in Constantinople ... which really happened, by the way. Vikings actually ruled Russia for some time-the very word Russ originally meant northman -and some of their raiders actually sailed down the Volga, took ship on the Cas pian, and pillaged Persia! The Byzantines were so impressed by Viking fighting abilities that they recruited a special "ax-bearing Guard," also known as the Varangians, which for centuries came mostly from the Viking countries.

  We also have a story of Renaissance England-in the obscure reign of Edward VI, Elizabeth's little-remembered half brother. It's a rousing story of proto-buccaneers and obscure northerners in the terrible lands beyond the White Sea, but it also illustrates how Lamb actually knew history, not just the high points that other writers instinctively reached for. Not for him the well-known exploits of the Elizabethan sea-dogs; instead he sets his story a generation earlier, when the English made their first tentative steps to break the hold the Iberian peoples had on the routes to the world beyond Europe.

  Lamb also had a taste and talent for centering his fiction upon the unusual hero. For one thing, he generally avoided the noblemen who populated so much of historical fiction-and often enough the sweet noblewomen. He was more likely to take a battered middle-aged Scot or a Venetian flower girl as his companion-or to match John Paul Jones with a Cossack and set them on the Black Sea!

  Another notable feature of Lamb's adventure stories is that they are much more like an actual adventure than most-that is, they're full of discomfort, misery, and danger. The end never feels predestined; they have a sense of brooding risk that's unusual. When the Barbary pirates swarm in, you feel the terror that caused the hill-towns all around the Mediterranean to be sited high up for the sake of defense, not aesthetics.

  I've said that Lamb wrote historical fiction; but in a way, all his fiction was historical in another sense: he had a deep awareness of the depth of time. A tale of a "modern" American soldier in Turkey-set in the 195os, and so growing historical to us!-draws parallels with the same city in the age of Justinian and Belisarius, fourteen hundred years before. The Cathedral of Holy Wisdom plays a role in it, and the gallery above the nave. Just as an aside, there's runic graffiti scratched there, from when the Byzantine emperor's Varangian bodyguards waited out the ceremonies by scratching "Yngvi Was Here" in the marble! The sheer otherness of the past is there, and also the constants-love, hate, the intrigues and treachery of the powerful, whether emperors or Viking kings or Hansa merchants, and the rarity of honor and trust.

  With Harold Lamb, the whole bright tapestry of the past is open to you. There's never been a better guide!

  When they brought Irene before the Caesar, he looked at her in silence. He wanted to be rid of her forever.

  But Irene's hair gleamed like pallid gold; her eyes reminded him of green sea water. Her slight young body held itself erect before him. She was utterly still, in her wayward pride. The Caesar wished that she were not so lovely. People would remember her, if she disappeared.

  The Caesar, John Dukas, supreme commander of the armed hosts of the Byzantine Empire, was quite capable of making people vanish into thin air. He had at his command certain obscure assassins, Asiatic slave dealers, and eminent physicians. Not long ago he had executed in public Mikhail Comnenus, the father of Irene Comnena, who had in his veins the blood of the Emperor, and had rebelled against the Emperor, who was the cousin of John Dukas.

  Irene, the only child of the dead rebel, remained to be disposed of. Otherwise she would in all probability bear children of her own, who would nourish the death of their grandfather in their minds. The Emperor himself had ordered that she should be made away with, but he had not indicated how this was to be done.

  "What would you like, Irene Comnena?" he asked gently. "To be sent to the house of a friend? What friend?"

  The girl did not answer. She was afraid that this Caesar who sat in a chair shaped like a throne and who wore a blue mantle almost the hue of the imperial purple intended to trick her with words. Besides, she had no real friends in Constantinople.

  "You must have a protector, Irene."

  She shook her head. The only thing she wanted was to be sent back to the palace on the Pontus shore where the Judas trees were in bloom and the funny fishermen sang as they dragged the nets in. But they had told her that the estates of her father belonged to the Emperor now. She was really very frightened, and pressed her fingers tightly into her palms. She did not want the protection of this quiet bronzed man with the oiled hair.

  The Caesar reflected that even black slaves can be bribed to tell their secrets,
and the deep waters had been known to yield up weighted bodies. The Emperor did not wish the body of this girl to be found, and if it were found, he, the Caesar, might have to take the blame.

  The Caesar and the Emperor were cousins, and they hated, each one the other, like cousins. At times the Caesar wondered if that gaunt figure in pearlsewn cloth-of-gold did not possess the art of reading anoth- er's mind-even while he brooded everlastingly over books and jewels and legends of mad saints.

  "Let me go away," the girl whispered.

  "I will find someone," the Caesar assented, "to take you away."

  When the slaves led her back to the tapestried room that was her prison, she had no longer need to appear proud. She crouched down on the window seat, sobbing convulsively, because she was alone and she had no one she dared confide in any longer.

  John Dukas considered how he might find someone who could carry her beyond the borders of the empire without attracting attention. This would not be easily done, for the nobility of Constantinople was an inbred society, a few families all related more or less to the Emperor, tracing their descent back to Constantine and imperial Rome. For some seven hundred years these few families had preserved themselves and their amusements behind the triple wall of Constantinople, while barbarians overran the ruins of western Rome. Huns and Bulgars and Turks had not conquered them.

  The aristocracy of the city hired other barbarians to defend them, and their greatest dread was boredom. During the seven centuries they had achieved mastery in intrigue and enlightenment in subtle vice, quite certain that beyond the circle of their intelligence lay only the darkness of Chaos.

  The women especially treasured their secrets of refinement; for their bodies they had the sheer silks and the perfumes and cosmetics of all Asia. The galleys of Venice brought them rare glasses and silverware; the carpets of Tabriz and Kashan covered their floors, and at the end of their whispering galleries they could hear the gossip of the unchanging city.