"The Children of the Night," "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth," "The Dark Man" and "People of the Dark" by Robert E. Howard

I was thinking of buying Brian Aldiss's trilogy of semi-autobiographical Horatio Stubbs books, which are, I hear, about two of my favorite topics, fighting in a war and difficult sexual relationships, but what is this I see here in my snail mail receptacle?  Multiple speeding tickets from Montgomery County, land of the robotic speed trap?  I don't live in Montgomery County, but sometimes I have to drive through it, and America's 17th most affluent county is a veritable gauntlet of cameras which photograph you if you are going a measly 42 miles-an-hour and send you a $40.00 ticket.  I have learned to my pain that these electronic robber barons are all too willing to ticket you multiple times in a single day, and then, like some kind of Chinese water torturer, send the tickets one at a time over a series of days, so, even though you earned the tickets a few hours apart, a week might pass between the first and last of the tickets that will be arriving in your mail box.  Maybe Barry N. Malzberg is right, maybe machines are consuming us!

Anyway, let's look on the bright side and use modern technology to read something for free, the e-copy of Wildside Press's People of the Dark: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 3, which I borrowed from the public library of Grandview Heights, Ohio, using the hoopla software.  I talked about Joe R. Lansdale's intro to this volume in our last episode; now let's grapple with some Howard stories that haven't yet passed before our eyes.

(More technology: at his great website Stephen Fabian explains that he created the cover for People of the Dark by using his computer to combine two earlier works of his, one an illustration for a William Hope Hodgson book and the other a private commission.)

"The Children of the Night" (1931)

Six smart guys are hanging around in their host's study, where he has various strange artifacts and lots of old books on history and witchcraft.  These brainiacs talk about disputes and controversies related to European history and ethnicity, like whether it was some Mongoloids or some Mediterraneans who first colonized the British Isles and gave rise to later legends about goblins and trolls, whether people ever really did worship Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth, and why the Lombards in just a few centuries "changed from a long-headed to a round-headed race."  One of these guys, Ketrick, a guy whose eyes the narrator says have an oddly Chinese appearance in the middle of his otherwise ordinary British face, starts swinging around a Neolithic flint mallet and accidentally hits our narrator in the head, knocking him out.  

The narrator wakes up in ancient times, clad in a loin cloth, bearing a bronze axe, his consciousness having been shifted back in time to ancient Britain, to the body of one of the blonde Sword People, Aryara.  The narrator hasn't joined Aryara during a happy time in that long forgotten dude's life--in fact, he is the sole survivor of a hunting party of six that has been overwhelmed by short hideous men whose voices are like those of snakes!  These creeps, known to the Sword People as The Children of the Night, left Aryara for dead after knocking him out, and then mutilated his friends.  Aryara jumps up and takes the evildoers by surprise and beats the hell out of them.

From Aryara's mind the narrator learns all about the relationship of the Sword People to the dark Picts and these squat evil Children.  When Aryara is finally killed by a throng of the Children the narrator wakes up back in the 20th century an expert on migrations from Continental Europe to the British Isles and the true sources of those legends of goblins and trolls.  He also has achieved race consciousness, inspired by the direct knowledge that he is an Aryan, a descendent of Aryara's people, people who thrive while living as nomads and conquerors, and fall into weakness if they become farmers or city-dwellers.  More chillingly, he now realizes that among Ketrick's many English and Celtic ancestors there must be one ancestor who was one of the Children of the Night, and it is the narrator's duty to his race to kill Ketrick!  As the story ends the narrator is plotting Ketrick's murder; he doesn't care if he is hanged for this crime, because his duty to his people means more to him than his own life!

All the anthropology material can be a little tedious, but the idea of guys' subconscious or paranormally revived racial memories leading them to try to murder their friends is good horror fiction stuff.  This story is not bad.  Obviously any discussion of ethnic solidarity and race consciousness among white people that is the least bit sympathetic to the idea would be a big no-no today, but if you're looking for the conventional wisdom of the educated establishment of 2021 in a 90-year-old issue of Weird Tales, you are looking in the wrong place.      

Besides mentioning Lovecraft and Cthulhu by name, "The Children of the Night" also references Bran Mak Morn, and it has appeared in collections of Howard's Bran Mak Morn stories as well as anthologies of Cthulhu Mythos tales. 

"The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" (1931)

Turlogh O'Brien is an Irish adventurer, a Gael cast out by his people to wander the world.  He was a passenger on a French merchant ship when it was taken by Vikings and as the story begins he is the Norsemen's prisoner.  All the Frenchies were killed, but among the Norsemen is a Saxon from Wessex, Athelstane, who knows Turlogh and insists the Vikings spare him.

A storm casts the Viking ship onto the reef around a mysterious island and all the Vikings perish in the shark-infested waters; Turlogh and Athelstane manage to survive.  Suddenly a gorgeous topless blonde appears!  It is Brunhild, a Norsewoman who was washed up on this beach ten years ago when she was fifteen.  The brown-skinned natives of this island, The Isle of the Gods, thought the white girl must be some kind of goddess, and the ruthless and manipulative Brunhild was soon ruling the place alongside a good-looking native.  The people of Isle live in the vast city Bal-Sagoth, a fortified town bigger than Rome or Byzantium, built by their ancient ancestors, where they worship a multitude of deities, among them a monster bird god, something like an oversized Phorusrhacos, I suppose.

Brunhild's reign came to a sudden end just recently, when she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her and she had him killed.  What can I say, life is cheap in Bal-Sagoth, where they are always sacrificing people to their various monster gods.  Brunhild had underestimated the popularity of her boyfriend among the masses; their response to her execution of this alleged philanderer is to depose her and exile her to the part of the island where that bird god lives, isolated from the city by a shark-infested swamp.  When Brunhild bursts on to the beach before Turlogh and Athelstane she is fleeing the giant bird, which our heroes dispatch handily.

Seeing Turlogh and Athelstane, who wear mail and helmets over their bulging muscles, in action inspires Brunhild.  The people of Bal-Sagoth have no armor, and are gullible and fickle, so the former queen figures that if she returns to the city with these musclemen, with the head of the bird god in hand as proof of their prowess, they can overawe the city mob, who will put Brunhild's voluptuous bottom back where it belongs, on the throne!  The fighting men agree to this scheme, and these three white people build a raft to get over that swamp and make their way to Bal-Sagoth, the city of brown people, to take over.

The current king, a puppet of the priestly class, is eliminated post haste when he accepts Brunhild's challenge that he fight Athelstane one-on-one.  The citizens proclaim Brunhild their queen once again.  But the head priest, a powerful wizard who has learned the secrets of eternal life and of breeding men with beasts to augment the islands supply of monster gods, is conspiring in the city's many subterranean chambers!  Wholesale chaos ensues when a monster god bursts into Brunhild's chamber via a secret door and Turlogh and Athelstane must battle wizardry and monsters in defense of her and of their own lives.  Can these musclemen foil the sorcery of an immortal magician?  And can the old and tired civilization of Bal-Sagoth survive when, during all this revolutionary chaos, an army of red-skinned raiders storms the city?  

"The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" is a fun adventure caper full of some of our favorite things: dangerous women, unspeakably horrible monsters, evil wizards, dark labyrinths.  Unlike the rest of the Howard stories we are talking about today, it has some interesting characters who have interesting relationships with each other.  I like it!

Nineteen years after its debut in Weird Tales, Donald Wollheim included "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" in Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12, under the sexier title "The Blonde Goddess of Bal-Sagoth."  The story has been included in many Howard collections, and was the title story of one 1977 German collection.  

"The Dark Man" (1931)

Turlogh O'Brien is back!  In "The Dark Man," which first appeared in Weird Tales just two months after the debut of "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth," our Irish buddy Turlogh is on an Irish beach, asking to borrow a fisherman's boat.  We get a long description of Turlogh and his equipment, which we didn't really get in "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth;" maybe this one, though published later, was written earlier?  It does seem to take place earlier.

Anyway, Turlogh needs a boat because a Viking raider, Thorfel, has kidnapped a princess of Turlogh's people, Moira daughter of Murtagh, and Turlogh is going to sail all by himself to Scotland to Thorfel's island in the Hebrides to rescue her.  Here we see the passionate dedication of Turlogh to his people, even though they had outlawed him.  I'm sure he's not going on this suicide mission because Moira is a striking beauty with fair skin, shiny black hair, and grey eyes!

On the way to the Hebrides Turlogh stops at a mysterious little island to get water and comes upon the site of a recent battle; Viking warriors lay dead among the dead bodies of a small dark people Turlogh has never seen before, and in the center of the carnage is a black statue of a man.  Turlogh thinks the statue must be a representation of some king or god, and that the dark people fought to defend it, and he takes up the statue, which is made of some alien material which is surprisingly light, and brings it with him to Thorfel's island.  Turlogh has the uncanny feeling that the statue is giving him luck, guiding his boat to just the best possible approach to Thorfel's lair.

Turlogh spies on the big party Thorfel is throwing, where tiny black-haired Moira sits in fear among the huge blonde Vikings.  Thorfel declares he is going to marry Moira, and has even dragged a Christian priest to this pagan celebration to officiate, a sop to what he considers Moira's silly beliefs.  Moira refuses to marry the Viking, and kills herself Lucretia-style with a dagger--enraged, Turlogh leaps into the hall and tries to fight the dozens of Vikings there.  Luckily the magic of the Dark Man statue, and the statue's worshippers who appear moments later, preserve Turlogh's life and the Vikings are wiped out--even the women and children are massacred by the small dark men!

The little dark men explain that they are the last of the Picts and the statue is of their last king, Bran Mak Morn, who kicked the Romans out of North Britain; the statue was made by a wizard during Bran's reign and through it the spirit of Bran tries to look out for the remnant of his people.  In these stories we're reading today Howard tries to not only provide you the thrills of fights and killings and women in danger of being raped--he also tries to to give you a feeling of the sweep of history, and all through "The Dark Man" the characters think about or talk about how the Celts, who took Britain from the Picts, are in turn being broken by the Danes, as well as how the new religion of Christianity is displacing paganism, and how the spirit of the Dark Man statue is so ancient it considers the cultures of both the Vikings and the Christians to be young.

"The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" is similar in some ways to "The Dark Man," but the former is the superior--it has more monsters, scarier magic, and relationships among the two heroes and the female lead that add something to the caper--"The Dark Man" lacks such relationships.  "The Dark Man" is still a pretty good sword and sorcery story, however. 

"The Dark Man" has appeared in many Howard collections, for some serving as the title story.

"People of the Dark" (1932)

 

Let's read the title story of this collection, which appeared in Strange Tales and has never been anthologized, though it has appeared in numerous Howard collections. 

Howard is not afraid to reuse names, and this story includes a black-haired reaver named Conan, though he is not the famous Conan of Cimmeria but a medieval Irishman, and a 20th-century man named Richard Brent, but I don't think this is the same Richard Brent who appears in "Black Hound of Death." 

"People of the Dark" has a lot in common with "The Children of the Night," Howard using some of the same devices and themes here as in that story.  Our narrator, John O'Brien, a 20th-century American man living in England, is the kind of guy who ponders theories that a primitive race of Mongoloids inhabited the British Isles before the Picts, and he is also the kind of guy who plots the murder of one of his friends!  O'Brien is in love with Eleanor Bland, a hot blonde with grey eyes, but Bland is in love with Richard Brent.  I guess our narrator doesn't have the kind of friends or family that will impart to him the wisdom that there are a lot of fish in the sea, because he decides the way to solve his problem is to ambush and murder Brent when Brent is out exploring Dagon's Cave.  Inside the cave, before he finds Brent, O'Brien falls and hits his head; he wakes up to find himself in the body of Conan the Gael raider of centuries ago.

Conan has a wound on his head because he fell and was knocked out while chasing a gorgeous blonde, Tamera, who had fled into the infamous Cavern of the Children of the Night.  Conan knows Tamera from when he visited her village during peacetime; when he and his fellow Gaelic pirates decided to raid this village, Conan thought he'd take this opportunity to kidnap Tamera, but then her boyfriend, Vertorix, who swings a mean axe, interfered.  When it looked like Conan was about to get the upper hand over Vertorix, the two English people retreated into that haunted Cavern, where Conan got knocked out.

Having recovered, Conan ventures deeper into the cavern and finds that Tamera and her beau have been captured by the Children of the Night, short hissing men with ophidian features, and tied to an altar to await sacrifice.  He rescues them, and the three run hither and thither through winding tunnels and up and down stairs, looking for an exit, sometimes stopping to fight the pursuing hordes of savage troglodytes.  In the fighting Conan becomes separated from the two Britons; John O'Brien wakes up in the 20th century after Conan escapes the Cavern but Tamera and Vertorix jump off a cliff to their deaths rather than be recaptured.

John O'Brien follows the route Conan took to the evil temple and through various tunnels and stairways.  He spots Eleanor Bland and his rival Brent, standing just where Tamara and Vertorix died, and realizes they are just as much reincarnated souls of those medieval lovers as he is of Conan.  Centuries ago his desire for Tamara led to her and Vertorix's death, but John O'Brien gets an opportunity to redeem himself when the last of the Children of the Night appears and attacks Bland and Brent--O'Brien uses the weapon he brought to murder Brent with to instead save him and Bland.

"People of the Dark" is alright; maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't just read "The Children of the Night," which is quite similar, but more grim.

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All of these stories are entertaining, though "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth," which lacks any cumbersome framing device and which has the most interesting character--ambitious and ruthless blonde goddess Brunhild--and the only truly interesting relationships, is certainly the best.  

No doubt there is more sword and sorcery and more of the weird in our future, but in our next episode I think we'll tackle something more on the science fiction side of SF.