Sword & Sorcery Stories You May Have Missed VI

All the stories I selected this time came from magazines first, ones that occasionally published good Sword & Sorcery. You can find them if you look…

Poul Anderson Begins a Series

“The Valor of Cappen Vara” (Fantastic Universe, January 1957) by Poul Anderson may surprise some that it is an old magazine story. Cappen Vara is a famous character from Thieves’ World (1979). Before he appeared in “The Gate of the Flying Knives” he had an adventure twenty-two years earlier in Fantastic Universe. He would appear again outside the Thieves’ World franchise in “The Lady of the Wind” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 2001).

Fantastic Universe was a 1950s Science Fiction magazine that was edited by Hans Stefan Santesson by 1957. The magazine was considered a lesser tome because it used Fantasy aswell, in fact, publishing some of the L. Sprague de Camp Conan rewrites. Santesson also published Harry Harrison’s War of the Robots stories, giving him a start to his career as a writer. (He had been a comic book artist before that at EC.) It isn’t surprising that Poul Anderson could sell one of his all-too rare Sword & Sorcery tales here. That he wanted to return to the character decades later isn’t hard to see either.

Cappen Vara is sailing on a ship with a group of warriors lead by King Svearek. Vara ended up with the Northern barbarians hoping to ply his trade as a minstrel. The ship lands on an island that no one wants to explore. Torbek of Norren and Beorna the Bold and the other warriors discuss the terrors of trolls, even a smaller she-troll. The king’s own daughter had been taken by a troll. Cappen Vara gets volunteered to go in search of dry wood for a fire. He is thrown into a smaller boat when he resists.

Cappen Vara lands at the rocky and lifeless island. He clutches the silver amulet a Southern wizard gave him, promising it would ward off all supernatural beings. The Northmen claimed a troll could not harm a man who wasn’t afraid. Vara stepped out of the boat, confident in his charm.

It doesn’t take him long before he discovers a grimy cave with a nice fire burning. Beside the fire is the she-troll:

The troll-wife crouched on the floor, snarling at him. She was quite the most hideous thing Cappen had ever seen: nearly as tall as he, she was twice as broad and thick, and the knotted arms hung down past bowed knees till their clawed fingers brushed the ground. Hr head was beast-like, almost split in half by the tusked mouth, the eyes wells of darkness, the nose an ell long; her hairless skin was green and cold, moving on her bones. A tattered shift covered some of her monstrousness, but she was still a nightmare.

The troll woman invites Cappen to sit by the fire. He sees the young woman, Hildigund then. The troll bosses her around like a slave. Vara compliments the troll on her beauty and grace while she tells him he is to be tortured then eaten. The minstrel tells the troll of his silver charm. The troll cares nothing about silver. Varra offers to play music for her on his harp. The music sends the troll to the floor in pain. Cappen talks to the girl, Hildigund. She is King Svearek’s daughter as he suspected.

Cappen Vara and the troll enter into a riddle contest. The man is to tell three true things about the troll. Vara says her nose is the ugliest he has seen, her house is the least he has ever wanted to visit, and among the trolls she is little liked and a failure. Vara has won and may take a firebrand back to the king. He wants Hildigund too but the troll refuses. She is her thrall and may leave when a man has slept with her and is eaten for breakfast the next morning. Vara accepts.

The two go into the cave. Vara does not take advantage of her, despite her willingness. He lets her think he is being magnanimous but in truth he is simply too hungry and exhausted to  service her. The next morning the troll comes for her meal. Cappen defies her, tweaks her nose and stuffs a firebrand in her mouth. He chases into a tunnel and makes her promise that she will not harm the locals. The two depart.

Back at the ship, Cappen and Hildigund discuss his silver charm. Vara insists the silver is protection from magic. Hildigund explains that trolls are not magic. They are powerful in a brutish way but not magical. Vara realizes he foolishly survived the whole affair on bluff and luck. As a reward, Svearek promises Hildigund’s hand to Vara, and his kingship after he dies. He will live his life in the north. Vara quietly slips away three days later.

This story shows me again how wonderfully talented Poul Anderson was with Fantasy material. His comedy is impeccable, ironic without being sarcastic. He uses of traditional folklore motifs like the riddle contest. This story, as much as the tales of Keith Taylor’s Bard, created the Bard character class for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The minstrel who can sing his enemies down, win by small magic and cunning, is forever part of fantasy role-playing.

Gardner F. Fox Takes Off the Gloves

Ted White’s Fantastic did an incredible job of finding good Fantasy material on a very small budget. One such tale is Gardner F. Fox’s “The Holding of Kolymar” (October 1972), which appeared at the same time as Avram Davidson’s S&S novel “The Forges of Nainland Are Cold” (Ursus of Ultima Thule in book form). Fox’s tale begins with the old general, Conmoral, knowing he must fulfill a prophecy. (I hate stories with prophecies but Fox wisely doesn’t tell us what it is until the story is over.) He gathers a gem from the witch Sylthia so he can open the enchanted tomb of the sorceress Kyrce. Reviving the immortal sorceress, the two go to the king’s high house. The king has died and Kyrce and Conmoral will make themselves the new rulers.

There they begin their planning, for a horde of Rharm are coming. The barbarians are ravaging across the country but Kyrce waits for them, brewing great magic to destroy them. This takes two forms: first, renewed youth for Conmoral, and second, a magical army to march behind him. The Conqueror battles the enemy and sends them running.

Now that the war is won, Kyrce has to pay the price of her magic. Demons and terrors ravage the people of Kolymar City in sacrifice. Conmoral, knowing the prophecy, takes a knife and kills Kyrce (in a scene right out of the reviled last season of Game of Thrones). He knows that if he allowed Kyrce to live, she would devastate the country for an eon. Conmoral’s magic youth flees with the witch who created it. He doesn’t mind. He looks forward to death when he can join Kyrce.

This story surprised me on several levels. I have read Fox’s comics and his Kothar and Niall of the Far Journeys stories. His Sword & Sorcery tends to be very lean verbally and plot-oriented. This story has a poetic quality and sadness to it worthy of Dunsany. Conmoral is doomed from the beginning. There will be no sequels. I wish more of Fox’s work had this level of quality. I see why Ted White purchased it.

The Shadow of Moorcock Rises

Witchcraft & Sorcery began as Coven 13 but the title confused buyers. Gerald W. Page changed the title when he bought it from Arthur H. Landis who used it to serialize his SF-Fantasy novel, A World Called Camelot. Page published horror by writers like Manly Wade Wellman, Emil Petaja and Lin Carter but also a few Sword & Sorcery pieces like E. C. Tubb’s “Death God’s Doom”.

“Castle at the World’s Edge” (Witchcraft & Sorcery #8, December 1972) was accredited to Carleton Grindle but that was really the editor, Gerald W. Page. (That title sounds like a Hawkwind album.) This novella feels like a combination of Clark Ashton Smith and Michael Moorcock. It is a Gothic-flavored heroic fantasy with plenty of atmosphere and action. It also have plenty of wonderful Stephen Fabian art.

The presence of Chaos is slowly eating away at the world. Egon and Darane, the last two wizards in an ever-shrinking realm which sits on the very edge of Chaos, live in the last fortress. Egon has found The Greatbook of Kohl, an ancient sorcerer. In this book, he would find a spell to repel the Chaos.

While returning with the library of Kohl, Egon hears mistgaunts attacking a victim. He rides to the rescue, fighting the terrible creatures, flabby of body with long sharp teeth and claws. (Jerry Burge did his version for the cover of the issue.) After a desperate battle, in which Egon breaks his sword and almost falls over the edge into Chaos, he sees the prey of the monsters is a beautiful peasant woman. She is taken to the castle.

Later, after many busy nights of translating the Greatbook, Egon meets the girl. Her name is Mera. Darane, Egon’s lover, tells him to throw her out. Egon is reluctant to do so. He finds this spirited and largely uncouth woman, easy to talk to.

The spell is translated but Egon doesn’t cast it. The mistgaunts break into the castle and attack the soldiers. It is a first charge of an army that lurks in the forest. The monsters attack, and Hathor and the other soldiers fight with arrow and boiling oil. When Egon casts a spell that dispels the Cloud of Chaos, the evil army retreats. It is followed by an attack from changelings, half human, half bird, that strike from the air. The ancient guns are brought out to shoot them. The bird-demons are repelled. Darane impels Egon to cast the spell, which requires a human sacrifice. She suggests the very healthy and virginal, Mera.

A last attack of Chaos is brewing. Darane and Mera disappear. Egon hurries to the catacombs as the combined army of mistgaunts and changelings attack. In the old temple, he finds Darane ready to kill Mera. Darane doesn’t have the skill to cast the spell that will defeat Chaos. Instead, she plans to sacrifice Mera to Chaos. The world of order will fall but Darane will have Egon has her plaything.

Egon jumps the sorceress, knocking her out. He must cast the anti-Chaos spell but who will he sacrifice? His choice becomes clear when a gigantic ball of light grows in the chamber. He carries Mera out. Back outside, he joins his men to fight the monsters that have breached the walls. A new sun appears, destroying all the forces of Chaos. Order has been restored. Egon and Mera will see the new world born. Egon can’t wait to see the stars for the first time.

Page is heavily influenced by Michael Moorcock here. Egon blathers on about Order and Chaos in a way familiar to Elric readers. His mistgaunts are a nice Lovecraftian touch from “nightgaunts”. The battle scenes are a little bit of Tolkien, I suppose. Hi influences are obvious but it really is a fun read for a fan of dark fantasy.

Welcome to the Dark Underworld

The Dragon Magazine was a Fantasy Role-playing gamer’s publication with adventures and articles on monsters, etc. For the first 350 or so issues, fiction was also included, giving young writers like Nancy Varien Berberick, Adam Troy-Castro, Troy Denning, J. Gregory Keyes, Harry Turtledove and Margaret Weis a place to start. Old timers like Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, L. Sprague de Camp, and Gardner F. Fox also appeared.

One of the up-and-comers was Lois Tilton who gave us “The Dark Warrens” in October 1993. Unlike many of my choices, this one doesn’t feature swordsmen or dragons. It is life in the dark tunnels under the ground, where humans live like animals and are prayed upon by vampires known as “Fangs”. (Ravenloft brought the world of Gothic horror into the AD&D hold in 1983. Tilton seems to be playing in that world, where silver crosses repel the undead.) The story follows Nin, a young girl who lives on rats and scrounges in the midden where treasures can be found. She finds a cross on a necklace and believes it is silver. She hides it from her brother, Du, who takes the best of what she finds.

Nin finds something that Du would never guess: a vampire. The fang is staked to the ground. Nin tests her cross on the monster. It is silver after all. The girl feeds the vampire rats when she finds it can talk. She asks it questions about its life and how it feeds on the humans. Later Du will follow her and take her silver necklace. In the struggle, the vampire gets him and the cross. Now Nin must play a dangerous game to get it back, as she saws the stake in half…

Tilton does a great job with this story. Nin is likable and we cheer for her as she navigates her dangerous world. I don’t now if she ever wrote of Nin or her environment again but several of her novels are about vampires. I would love to see her grow into a woman, finding a sword and becoming a greater vampire hunter… I can hope and keep reading Tilton.

A New Magazine Premieres

Realms of Fantasy was a companion magazine to Science Fiction Age. Bimonthly, it ran from 1994 until 2011, producing 94 issues. The editor for most of the run was Shawna McCarthy, longtime Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine editor. Douglas Cohen took over for a short time before the magazine folded. Like so many other paper magazines, the new reality of online publishing signaled its end. This glossy full-size magazine supported itself on advertising (largely to Fantasy artists wanting to sell prints and role-playing games) but couldn’t find that revenue (or enough sales) for an online version.

During its seventeen year run, a number of Sword & Sorcery tales appeared. The contents of ROF was not exclusively heroic fantasy, but a mix of urban fantasy, quasi-SF and horror as well. There are the expected book and film reviews as well. (I prefer the “Folkroots” pieces by Terri Windling.) Covers were usually reprints of book covers.

In her first editorial (October 1994), Shawna demarks the territory that the magazine will cover. She wades into the murky waters of “what is Science Fiction/what is fantasy?” and comes out better than most. Her final criteria is this:

…at the heart of all good science fiction lies order–the explainable, the reproducible, the predictable. At the heart of all good fantasy lies chaos — the inexplicable, the irreproducible, the completely, utterly and totally unexplainable.

This measuring stick works well, I think. No matter how cosmically fascinating an alien being from a far flung dimension is, Science can always, in time, learn something about it. (For some reason it always looks like a squid.) Sword & Sorcery, Urban Fantasy and Horror all hinge on there being things we can’t explain, never understand. (I have to note that this dichtomy will be immediately evident to RPGers, who will create a grid and place every monster upon it. “Hey, this one is Neutral Evil!”)

McCarthy opens her first issue with a Sword & Sorcery tale (but not your grandfather’s Weird Tales type). “Twixt Dusk and Dawn” by L. Dean James. As with all good AD&D adventures, it begins in a bar. But there the similarities end. Corlain is drinking with her fighting companion, Thorn, when they notice the red-headed bard singing to the crowd. Thorn offers to pay for the three of them to have a night together. Thorn is quite open about his bi-sexuality, and right there we know it is 1994 not 1934.

Corlain isn’t interested. She has much more important things to do, like return to her ancestral seat, Gamehest, and kill the sorcerer Scrim, who has taken it. She rides off into the evening, only to find she has been followed by the minstrel. His name is Oren. He offers to ride with her, knowing why and where she is headed. He credits Thorn with telling him everything. Corlain allows him to stay for the night but in the morning she rides alone. Oren offers to sleep with her, but Corlain has given up sex since the death of her husband and fighting partner.

Oren comes to Corlain in the night. He has ensorcered her, breaking down her resistance. The two make love all night. In the morning, they ride off together to Gamehest. The lands look abandoned. The keep is weed-strewn and unkempt. Scrim took the land from Corlain’s family but not to grow crops and raise sheep. They find the old man seated on the familial throne. And I won’t tell you anymore because L. Dean James’ tale is filled with secrets and surprises and I won’t rob you of enjoying them. A great opener to a great magazine.

L. Dean James is a very good writer, having been nominated for a Bram Stoker award for her horror fiction, but not overly prolific. She has produced one Fantasy series (of which this tale is not part) and two horror novels. In the world of Epic fantasy and the works of R. A. Salvatore, that’s slacking off. I would love to see a novel or two set in Corlain’s world.

There you have them, five Sword & Sorcery tales worth your time. I will keep searching for the good ones. Until next time…