If you missed the last one…
Sword & Sorcery stories you might have missed can be found in many different places. Last time it was in a role-playing game magazine. This time we look to the Fantasy anthologies of the 1980s. Sometimes these are pretty obvious, like Thieves World or another Conan volume from ACE Books. But there are less obvious but equally fruitful places to look. All of these anthologies appeal to the Fantasy fan who is not necessarily a Sword & Sorcery fan. The realm of fairy tale and legend mark these books, with writers of a more literary bent than your average Gardner F. Fox or John Jakes Conan clone. You will find the likes of the amazing Jane Yolen, R. A. Lafferty, Nicholas Stuart Gray, Diana Jones, Peter Dickinson, Phyllis Ann Karr, John M. Ford, Nancy Springer and Marvin Kaye. Standing beside these crafters are the more heroically-oriented writers, three women and two men, you will find below. Equally skilled but perhaps having a little more Robert E. Howard in their blood.
The first is “The Lamia and Lord Cromis” by M. John Harrison in Basilisk (1980) edited by Ellen Kushner. Harrison is known for his literary style in the Viriconium series. For S&S fans, the primary novel is The Pastel City (1971). I found him Dunsany-esque, then Clark Ashton Smith-like in his precise descriptions and at last more Moorcockian. This tale has Lord teus-Cromis (who looks a bit like Elric and enjoys cocaine with a Sherlock Holmesian habit) waiting at an inn in Duirinish. He meets a lady in a purple cloak, has a conversation around why he is in Duirinish, then goes to bed with her. She warns him to go home and not hunt the baan, one of the Eight Beasts of Viriconium. Cromis admits he has personal reasons for hunting the creature.
In the morning we meet his companions: Rotgob is a dwarf assassin with terrible teeth and breath (thus his name). The other is the Dissolution Kahn, a giant of a warrior. Together they go into the swamp to find the baan. They lose two horses and get lost. The hunters become the hunted when later that night Rotgob is killed on sentry duty. Cromis tells Kahn to go home but he refuses.
They come out of the swamp to find an old tower, sinking into the mud. Here, Cromis finds the beast’s lair, enters it alone, slipping and falling in the muck inside. He injures his hand. Exiting, he finds Kahn and the horses gone. Back in the swamp he finds his horse, bloated and dead, then Kahn and the baan fighting. The creature flies and changes size as it fights Kahn. The giant warrior stabs it in the stomach.
Cromis is upset with his friend for slaying the beast that was his to kill. Kahn tells him he should have killed her back at the inn when he was sleeping with her. The baan is the woman in the purple cloak. For this betrayal, Cromis stabs the injured Kahn. Only the thin white man leaves the swamp alive. Riding away, he hides his face from the Name Stars that judge him above.
David Wingrove describes Harrison’s plots in The Science Fiction Sourcebook, 1984:
“Making use of forms from sword-and-sorcery, space opera and horror fiction, Harrison pursues an idiosyncratic vision: often grim, but with a strong vein of sardonic humour and sensual detail. Typically, his characters make ill-assorted alliances to engage in manic and often ritualistic quests for obscure objectives. Out of the struggle, unacknowledged motives emerge, often to bring about a frightful conclusion, which, it is suggested, was secretly desired all along. Harrison’s vivid, highly finished prose convinces the reader of everything.”
This pretty much summarizes “The Lamia and Lord Cromis”. The characters are not very relatable, cold anti-heroes. We aren’t supposed to cheer for Cromis like you would Conan or even Elric to some degree. Harrison chooses to show us what is good in humanity not by example but by counter-example. It is a very New Wave SF way of writing a Sword & Sorcery story. I quite enjoyed it.
“The Harmonious Battle” by Jessica Amanda Salmonson in Hecate’s Cauldron (1982) was edited Susan M. Shwartz. Azo Hono-o is a warrior woman, an onna-bushi, who has lost an arm in battle. She has sunken into self-pity at the Emurja hot-springs while she heals. There she meets the witch of Awayama, who sends her to Lake Miwa and her two sisters.
At Lake Miwa, Azo finds the two witch women in a magical boat. She goes with them to the Secret Land. They demand a story of her so she tells the story of Nichirien, a Buddhist saint. An illusionist tricks him into seeing the Amida Buddha. When he learns it is an illusion he kills the magic-user. This tale is meant as a warning to the witches. Seeing that Azo despises illusion, they disappear to be replaced by a small boy who leads her on a long journey. He too proves to be illusion, turning into the demon king of the Secret Land, Hidadite.
Azo finds a drum temple. Inside it is a box that she desires to open but forces herself not to. Azo sleeps and is then attacked by three warriors, Koji Nakashima, Bunzo Nomotashi and Rentaro Shimoda. They fight and lose, then re-appear and fight better but lose. Each time Azo defeats them but they improve. She knows ultimately she will lose. She defeats them by surrendering to them. They are illusion too.
She comes to Hidadite and fights him. He is a left-handed fighter, while she is a right-handed one. She fights until she cuts the demon king across the belly. He escapes by releasing fire demons. She chases them, colliding into the temple wall and knocking herself out.
When she wakes she finds herself with the two witches. They tell her that they can not dispel the demon because they did not create it. They point out the name Hidadite means “left hand”. They bring her the box from the temple. She opens it and sees her mummified arm inside. She no longer mourns its loss, knowing she can survive without it. Azo decides she will pray and then burn the box, releasing her from her self pity at last.
Azo returns to the Emurja hot-springs. She has shrines built for the three warriors who fought her in the Secret Land. She becomes an immortal and can be seen hanging out with the first witch. A happy ending for a story that takes place largely in a nether world of the mind.
In the introduction to the story, the editor, Shwartz points out her pleasure to receive a Fantasy tale set in another culture besides Medieval Europe. She also tells how Salmonson’s Amazons! and Gerald W. Page and Hank Reinhardt’s Heroic Fantasy DAW anthologies inspired this one. Shwartz points out that Azo is a minor character in Salmonson’s The Golden Naginata, the second in her Tomoe Gozen trilogy.
“To Trap a Demon” by Ardath Mayhar in Magic in Ithkar 4 was edited by Andre Norton & Robert Adams. This is Mayhar’s second tale in the series. From the fourth volume of tales set around the fair at Ithkar, a shared world after the Thieves’ World model, this tale features the giant Belkor. He is a trapper from beyond the Galzar Pass. He comes to the fair with a bale of the finest furs to trade. With the money, he can quit trapping and marry Hulla, his girl and have a dozen kids. There is only one problem. Belkor can feel that a demon is dogging his steps. When he gets to the fair, he still feels the presence that began to follow him in the Pass.
He barters with a wizard for a trap, having left all of his back at his cabin. He trades a muff of silver fox for the device, which is a live-trap that will not harm the prey. Belkor sets it up outside his booth. Later he finds a dirty little form in the trap. It is a boy without a name. Belkor washes him and gives him his dead brother’s name, Haral.Haral lived in the pass and made noises when travelers came near. Belkor asks him if the demons of the pass are all fake. Haral says no, there is something terrible that comes there in winter.
Now what to do with the child? He seeks the advice of a priestess who takes him to another priestess, who offers to buy all his furs for a thousand silver pieces. The priestess gives the trapper some good advice: Hulla won’t mind if they start their family with an adopted child. The boy agrees and all ends happily.
This tale surprised me a little. Ardath Mayhar is known for some pretty adventure-filled books along with continuing H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy series. The character of Belkor could have faced off against a brute demon and filled the valleys with the roar of battle. But the Ithkar books aren’t really of that sort. And this story fits right in with its adorable characters and its ultimate happy ending.
“The Banner of Kaviyan” by Harry Turtledove in Arabaesques: More Tales of the Arabian Nights (1988) was edited by Susan M. Shwartz. Harry, who wrote one of the least S&S Conan novels, takes us to Gomishan, the last free territory of the Persians. The rest of their kingdom has fallen to the Arabs. Prince Shahin takes up the quest to find the lost Banner of Kaviyan, under which the army who bears it is invincible. He wanders through the lands now occupied by his Muslim conquerors. He meets commoners who find their lot under the new masters better. A lady sold off to an Arab king helps the prince to find his way to the destroyed city of Ctesiphon and the hiding place of the banner. Taking the magical cloth he tries to sneak back to Gomishan but Bedouin thieves take the banner and cut it up. Shahin returns home in shame, realizing his glorious empire, like the butchered banner, is only fragments of what it once was.
“Sword Singer” by Laura J. Underwood in Sword & Sorceress V (1988) was edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The hero of this story is Marta, a sword singer. This is a repairer of weapons by singing magic. Her latest client is a tall, brisk man, none other than Brak Wolfson, Warlord of the North Hall. He brings her a sword with a flaw in its creation. Once the rude man leaves her to the job she discovers the supposedly ordinary blade is, in fact, magical. The sword has a curse it in to destroy the High King. Brak realizes Marta knows the deceit and must kill her too, like the last sword singer to whom he brought the weapon. Marta ducks his blow then using her magic voice shatters the blade. A large chunk of it skewers Brak. Underwood’s choice of name Brak is a fun poke at the older school of S&S characters.
Conclusion
Even in the 1980s, paperback fantasy was beginning the rift that would be far more obvious by the 1990s. Where were the Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness and Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords type books of the 1970s? By the 1990s, Sword & Sorcery was limited to Conan pastiches by Leonard Carpenter et al. and Xena, Warrior Princess novelizations. The S&S short story was becoming a form of fan fiction.
A fairly good barometer of the 1980s was DAW’s Year’s Best Fantasy anthologies. The last of the Lin Carter edited books appeared in 1980. After that they were compiled by Arthur Saha and contained far less S&S. There were other anthologies of different kinds of Fantasy, but much of it in the Tolkien-influenced side of publishing. In these you could find the occasional heroic fantasy (if you squint a little) but far more often the tales were not. I suppose we can be glad for more literary storytelling but equally sad at the fading of the children of Howard.
