Sword & Sorcery stories by women are under-represented on this blog. That was never my intent. The field was dominated by men from 1920s to the 1970s. But that’s forty years ago! The last four decades have done much to rectify this bias and I am as much a fan of Joanna Russ, C. J. Cherryh, Andre Norton, Susan Petry, Marion Zimmer Bradley as I am of Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Lin Carter or any of the boys. Good heroic fantasy belongs to us all. So to even things a bit, here are five Sword & Sorcery stories worth your time, written by women.
“Lady of the Forest End” by Gael Baudino (Amazons II, 1982) was Gael’s first published story and a good one. Avdoyta is a warrior woman with a sense of humor and honor. After killing a band of rapist bandits, she promises one who is dying, named Lorr, to return a necklace to his fiancee as an apology.
To find the lady, Avdoyta goes to an inn and commandeers the priest, Monmouth of Elleigh. The poor magician serves as Sancho to the warrior’s Don Quixote. Monmouth knows the owner of the necklace, the sorceress, Cynthia of the Shining Mountains. He fears the sorceress will be angry to find her lover dead.
The duo journey to the land of the Shining Mountains. Their first barrier is a wall of carnivorous jungle. Monmouth’s spells fail to move the plants until he causes a chain reaction that sets the trees falling like dominoes. The two newcomers approach Cynthia’s castle, are met by magical men-at-arms and a floating usher. Finally, they met Cynthia in her greenhouse.
Upon news of Lorr’s death, Cynthia imprisons Avdoyta. Eventually the warrior learns that Monmouth has taken Lorr’s place, growing thin and weary from Cynthia’s constant need for sex. It takes awhile, but he ties Cynthia up (pretending it is a sex thing) and smuggles the warrior’s sword to her. He also wants to take a coffin that contains the bones of Fergus, the head of his order.
The two manage to get out of the castle, but as Monmouth explains that the Sarcophagus of Fergus can work as a transporter, Cynthia shows up in the coffin. (The magician places the coffin in a far location where he or she wants to go.) Cynthia thinks she has won but Avdoyta realizes since the sorceress is still tied up, they have won. Sword to throat, Avdoyta makes Cynthia choose between being married to Monmouth forever or being Avdoyta’s squire. Cynthia chooses being a squire.
I dislike most humorous Fantasy, but as the editor Jessica Amanda Salmonson says:
A rare few authors — Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber among them — have been able to balance the dramatic with the comic in a richly entertaining manner: not too whimsical for the reader to take a work seriously, not so dead-pan that the characters seem artificial. Avdoyta of the Forest End is a swordswoman with a sense of humor, in a world at once eager to threaten and to tickle.
Gail Baudino does have the skill to navigate both humor and story. This tale reminds me mostly of L. Sprague de Camp when he hits the mark.
Sword & Sorceress V (1988) was edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It gave us Janet Fox’s second tale of Scorpia, the sword woman. (Her other popular character is Arcana.) The first, “Gate of the Damned” appeared in Sword & Sorceress I, four years earlier. “Eyes of the Laemi” begins with Scorpia down on her luck. She has resorted to robbing graves. The stewards of the burial ground catch her and give punishment. She is stripped naked, tied and left for the flocks of vultures to eat.
Scorpia manages to escape the birds but falls victim to Zaer, a mysterious man who takes her to a cave. She embraces him but can’t recall anything of their love-making. She wakes to find herself captured by a band of men. One of them is carrying her own sword. These are the men of Lord Peri, whose wife has recently died at the hands of the Laemi, a vampire-like monster.
Taken prisoner, Scorpia is the bait to lure the monster. Since he has fed on Scorpia, he will return until she is dead. From her balcony she can see Lord Peri having trysts with a woman in his garden. Only when Zaer comes for Scorpia does the truth unfold. The Laemi is feeding on Peri as much as it is on Scorpia. The creature can appear male or female. It falls to Scorpia to reclaim her sword and cut the head off the tentacular horror without looking at it. “…The one that held him was chalk-white of skin, the hands elongated and ending in dark clawlike nails, the head a bulging white hairless dome. The lower part of the face, below the beautiful dark eyes, bore no mouth but a bristling tangle of fine translucent tentacles….”
The influence of the myth of Medusa and C. L. Moore’s “Shambleau” (Weird Tales, November 1933) are evident here but not overpowering. The tentacles are a nice Lovecraftian touch.
The Dragon Magazine is a publication for players of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The original scope of the magazine was to offer new adventures, creatures and advice for Dungeon Masters and players. For a few years it became a market for fiction that appealed to RPGers, Sword & Sorcery and other forms of heroic fantasy. From Issue #1 with “The Search for the Forbidden Chamber” by Jake Jaquet (June 1976) until Issue #344 with “The Return of Gord” by Gary Gygax (June 2006), The Dragon Magazine was at times virtually the only place to sell a traditional S&S tale.
“The Ulfjarl’s Stone” by Mickey Zucker Reichert in Issue #141 (January 1989) is the story of Anrad, son of the chief of a Viking community. Partly due to his mother’s kindness and partly because of Christian missionaries, Snorri Hardhand thinks his son too weak to become chieftain after him. He send Anrad on a quest to read the Ulfjarl Stone of the title. The magic spell on that stone can cure his father of his illness and save him from Hel, where warriors go if they do not get to Valhalla.
At first it looks like Anrad will fail because of the intense cold. Later because of a polar bear that attacks his tent. Anrad, armed only with an ax, kills the bear and solves his temperature problem. He is trapped under the dead animal. (And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!) But he endures that too and reads the stone. Only to realize that the whole thing has been a fraud. There is no spell. He has been sent out to die.
Anrad returns to the village, angry, calling himself Anrad Bearslayer. He learns his father has died, and as his son he must tie his Hel shoes, a damned soul’s only protection from the bitter cold of the nether world. Only the son of the dead can tie these. If Anrad had died, Snorri would have joined his son in Hel. Anrad ties these, and becomes chieftain, Anrad Icewalker.
Mickey Zucker Reichert is a best-selling author today. This story was her second sale. She moved on from The Dragon Magazine to novels like the Bifrost Guardians, Dragonlance, The Books of Barakhai, Thieves World, Valdemar and many others.
This may come as a surprise to you, but here is my first Mercedes Lackey story. For long time fans, this will be a big “Duh!” but I just haven’t read any of her many novels before. There are so many writers, so many books you can’t read them all. Up to now I found the idea of tackling so many a bit daunting. (When you discover a new, big series you can have one of two reactions: you have praise the gods for all the new treasures, or you can step back and say, I haven’t time for all of that…) Lackey and her Valdemar have fallen into the second category for me, until now.
“Wings of Fire” (Sword & Sorceress VIII, 1991) features the return of Tarma and Kethry, who had appeared in other volumes as well as their own novels. The story starts with a macguffin, the body of a dying shaman. The duo, who are camping out with their children and others, decide they must go and investigate. They camp in the a dark forest, but leave their horses when a magic owl-eagle comes to lead them through the darkness. The bird unwittingly leads them into a trap.
When they awaken from the spell that paralyzed and crushed them, the warrior and the sorceress find themselves in a pair of cages. Kethry is not alone in hers. A Hawkbrother, a kind of bird wizard, is with her. His name is Stormwing. Both are locked in a cage with an ordinary non-magical lock. Tarma is in a cage that is fastened by magic. The mage Keyjon appears to explain this and to taunt them.
Later Stormwing explains everything. He sent the owl-eagle but did not mean for them to be captured. Keyjon is a mage with one special ability. She can steal the spells of other magic-users. She has the Hawkbrother captive because she wants his spell for controlling firebirds, powerful and dangerous creatures. The shaman had been thrown in the cage with the firebirds, as a way to force Stormwing to reveal his spell. He refused and the shaman willingly died.
Tarma and Kenthry go into action, using what they call “The Thanlkarsh gambit”. Kethry’s sword, Need, hangs just out of arm’s length. Using a bit of acrobatics, she uses her leg and foot to secure the sword, passing it to Tarma. Need has the power of disarming magic against its foes. As soon as Tarma has the sword, the magic cage opens. Unfortunately, she only has enough time to pass the blade to Kethry before Keyjon and two animated suits of armor appear.
Tarma is busy dodging broadswords as Kethry retrieves the lock pick from the sword’s scabbard. Stormwing blocks Keyjon’s view as Kethry works on the lock. Door now open, Keyjon is thrust inside and her ability to steal spells is blocked by the magic cage. The trio must decide what to do with her? Should death be the verdict?
Stormwing, now free of the cage, uses his powerful magic to turn her into a spider. He grants her her greatest wish, “to be master of all she sees”. Since spider’s are near-sighted, this isn’t much. She will feed on the evil creatures that wander into her magic grove. As the women follow a witch-light back to their horses, they see the firebirds fly, free at last.
I have to admit this was a good story though two things made it hard for me. One, the references to many things from other stories made me feel lost at times. As I read more Lackey or Valdemar stories by others, this will go away. The second is a bigger deal for me. It all felt very Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, at times. Spells have names, mention of levels in magic, etc. did not suit me. I prefer to think these things are not systematized in a secondary world. It wasn’t as bad as reading actual AD&D fiction, which can be a hard go sometimes.
“The Sea Troll’s Daughter” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (Swords & Dark Magic, 2010) is the tale of Malmury, a woman hired to destroy the sea troll, who has to wait around the village to get paid. The villagers are reluctant to pay without proof. Three days later, filled with drinking, the body of the creature washes ashore. Malmury figures things will improve but they don’t. The village elders are still slow to pay.
To make matters worse, the priestess of the Old Ways, Grimhildr, accosts the warrior woman in the bar. The witch tells everyone that worse things will come because the troll kept the creatures of the dark world at bay. A kind of status has been broken.
The troll’s revenge comes in a way not expected. The body of the monster is dragged to the center of town. The body begins to rot and attract animals. Peat banks are placed around it to stop the fluids from polluting the water.
Grimhildr contacts the troll’s daughter, Sahildr. The half human girl is a monstrous being who lives near the glacier. Grimhildr warns her that the warrior woman may be forced to kill her to gather her original bounty. The witch is wrong because things don’t follow that rather Beowulfian plot at all.
Later, the flesh of the troll becomes flammable, until it explodes. The village of Verigo burns and everyone runs. Malmury and her lover, the servant girl from the bar, Dota, flee toward the glacier. Dota brings the drunken Malmury on a mule. Sahildr has a conversation with Dota as the hero sleeps off her brandy. The troll’s daughter bears no ill-will for Malmury as her father never had anything to do with her. Instead she houses and feeds the two and helps them to cross the mountains.
Kiernan stands the heroic tale on its head without using satire. (Who needs another Conan parody?) All the daring-do in killing the troll happens off-stage. (Those listening to the tale of the fight ask logical questions like how did you hold your breath that long? And how could you see in the dark waters at night?) The expected second battle with the troll-daughter never happens. Malmury is no goddess-like Red Sonja but a selfish, self-serving drunk. In other words, all the cliches of Beowulf and Grettir are stripped off and the real people under them are revealed. Not since Emma Bull’s “The Rending Dark” have I been this impressed.
“The Sea Troll’s Daughter” appears in an anthology that is sub-titled “The New Sword and Sorcery”. The editors, Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders, give a pretty convincing argument of how the original Conan style tale was improved by J. R. R. Tolkien, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, Charles R. Saunders, George R. R. Martin and others. The point of it all was simply, we have grown as storytellers in the last eight decades. It is possible to write an S&S tale in the 21 Century that is both fresh and traditional. Kiernan and all the other authors mentioned here can claim such a maturity.
