Harvey K. Schreiber’s The Eagle and the Sword

Ted White, when he was the editor of Fantastic (April 1969-January 1979), did big things with very little money. This meant he grabbed Sword & Sorcery stories wherever he could find them. He published the L. Sprague de Camp/Lin Carter Conans that would form Conan of Aquilonia, later Elric tales by Michael Moorcock, the odd Gardner F. Fox or Avram Davidson story that worked. In and among those famous authors there were less known writers like a very young  Juanita Coulsen and Keith Taylor. But if you dig even farther you find obscure Dean R. Koontz and the author I am writing about today: Harvey Keith Schreiber. I know so little about HKS that even finding his middle name is a feat. (Thanks ISFDB.) Schreiber appeared only once with “Death From the Sea” (Fantastic, August 1975) and then nothing more until 1979.

“Death From the Sea” is a Sword & Sorcery tale about Attila the Hun when he and his faithful servant, Edeco, were hostaged to the Romans. The Roman ship they are sailing on is attacked by essentially Deep Ones because an evil dwarf sorcerer who wants Attila dead, summons them. There is a long, gruesome battle that ends with the fish-men about to kill the teen Hun when a secret scroll under his shirt is revealed. The runes dispel the sorcery that allows the Deep Ones to breath air and the humans win.

The story is mostly a fight with a poor ending. The readers responded to this in the letter column:

“Death From the Sea” was ok, but the whole story got a little slippery. Imagine a story about a young Attila the Hun?! He lived up to history’s verdict more violently in reality than even in this hack-and-slash episode. The deux ex machina ending was a little bit much also. I enjoyed the story as pure swordplay fun, but page after page of the same battle soon dulls… (Dave Hulvey)

I don’t know who Harvey F. Schreiber is, but you can throw him back into the sea with my blessings. You say “Attila the Hun makes his first appearance in these pages” and I say that I hope it’s his last as well. The story was poorly written and the resolution was a rabbit from the author’s hat. (Michael X. Milhaus)

It isn’t surprising that Ted chose not to publish more Schreiber. I see what these readers mean, they are not wrong, but I think there was more to this Attila fiction.

And I was right. “Death From the Sea” was the adapted Chapters 8 and 9 from Schreiber’s The Eagle and the Sword, a novel which appeared in a paperback from Popular Library in 1979. (Not to be confused with A. A. Attanasio’s 1997 Arthurian book.) The novel has an introduction that sheds some light on what is going on:

…As these facts [about Attila’s youth] became known to me, I realized that the Hun was the closest personage in history to a real-life sword-and-sorcery hero. I have tried to infuse into this tale a healthy dose of historical fact coupled with the swashbuckling tradition of the Robert E. Howard variety…

This tells us much. Robert E. Howard loved to write historical adventure in the Talbot Mundy or Harold Lamb vein and Schreiber is doing the same. The book should have had a banner saying IN THE TRADITION OF TALBOT MUNDY or IN THE TRADITION OF ROBERT E. HOWARD across the top. Many books did, but this publisher seems unsure to do this.

The fact that “Death From the Sea” was an excerpt explains most of the faults of that story. The ending is not truncated if there are chapters to follow. The earlier chapters build up the scroll that Attila has hidden in his vest and Edeco’s curiosity to know what it says. Ted White could have prefaced the piece with an acknowledgement that this was a novel if he knew, which I suspect he did. I say this because of the long preamble at the beginning of the chapter and an addition that appears oddly during the fight. Attila and Edeco go below decks to fetch fire to fight the sea creatures, knowing that the other element will hurt them. In the short story version we jump to Clovis the Gaul and his fight with the Deep Ones. The novel version does not have this so Schreiber must have added it to sell it as a story or removed it later when he revised the manuscript. There are four years between the Fantastic appearance and the novel publication. I have to wonder if Ted White was going to use other chapters in a similar way (“his first appearance in these pages”) but chose not to after the negative letters of comment.

The novel is a fun read despite what Michael X. Milhaus thought. Schreiber does a descent job of writing Howardesque history/fantasy. We meet Eagle, as he is nicknamed, as a fourteen year old boy. His father, Andovar the great chieftain, has died by sorcery. Attila has a half-brother named Bledar, who along with his father Uldis, plot to steal the chieftancy from the boy who was prophesied to lead the Huns out of Roman rule. To do this, Attila is hostaged off to the Romans along with Edeco as guardian. On their way to Rome, their real enemy, the black dwarf magician Zerco sends two giant bat demons to kill them. Attila kills one with his bow by standing on Edeco’s shoulders. There are hints of this first S&S encounter in “Death From the Sea” when Attila recalls their encounter with “winged things”. White could have used that section of the book for the first Attila story though it is shorter.

Attila also gets to open that scroll he has been carrying. It retells the story of Nimrod the hunter, the legendary Hun hero. Attila learns of his destiny as ruler of his tribe. After this he arrives in Rome, meets Emperor Theodosius and Pope Leo before embarrassing his rival, the eunuch Chrysuvius. The second half of the book has the duo flee Rome, evade assassins, fight vampires and Picts before defeating Zerco and his allies and reclaiming his throne. There were a few other supernatural fights that might have made good excerpt for Fantastic but the fish fight was the longest and best.

Conclusion

With absolutely no  information of Harvey K. Schreiber it is hard to know if he might have written more books, won a small corner of the historical or Fantasy market. He may have felt one book was enough and went onto some other career. Or he may have been an older man, possibly writing in retirement, thus passing away without further adventures in Sword & Sorcery or any other kind of publishing. I have no answers at this time. Perhaps one of our good readers can fill us in? Maybe Harvey is alive and kicking. Maybe Ted White knows something? I will let you know when I know. The eagle and Sword is a worthy Sword & Sorcery mystery and copies are cheap in second-hand stores.

Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books