"Black Colossus," "Rogues in the House," and "The People of the Black Circle" by Robert E. Howard

I felt like reading some Conan stories and started digging through the boxes here in MPorcius Fiction Log's new HQ.  By the third box I'd found my Ballantine Books/Del Rey editions of The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (2003) and The Bloody Crown of Conan (2004) edited by Patrice Louinet and Rusty Burke.  Let's check out three tales from their "lavishly illustrated" pages, stories of giant snakes, beautiful princesses and diabolical wizards and the barbarian who masters them all by Robert E. Howard that first appeared in Weird Tales, stories I read years ago, long before I started this crazy website of mine.

"Black Colossus" (1933)

This cover, I believe, depicts Yasmela
in a shrine of Mitra, imploring
the god for aid

"Black Colossus" first appeared in the same issue of Weird Tales as Hugh B. Cave's "The Crawling Curse" and Clark Ashton Smith's "Genius Loci" and was illustrated by Margaret Brundage, who provided a nude young lady for the cover, and Jayem Wilcox, who contributed a kinetic battle scene inside (trigger warning: horse in distress!)  

"Black Colossus" is made up of four chapters.  Chapter I is great D&D stuff: three thousand years ago northern barbarians sacked the city of Kuthchemes, a colony of Stygians on the river known as Styx where was worshipped Set, the serpent god.  The ruler of Kuthchemes was an evil wizard, Thugra Khotan, and he had himself sealed in an impregnable tomb right before the invaders got to him.  Today, when the river has long since dried up and Kuthchemes has been abandoned for thirty centuries, one of the world's best thieves, Shevatas, comes to the sinister ruin, having learned through long research how to unseal it and how to outfight its ophidian guardian.  

In Chapter II an army of nomads and disaffected Stygians is marching north, an army assembled and led by some mysterious desert prophet whose face is always covered.  We readers know who this mystery man, known as Natohk the Veiled One, must be.  In the path of the Veiled One's army lies the small kingdom of Khoraja, a nation of Kothians who won independence from neighboring Koth some time ago.  Khoraja's king is imprisoned in some other kingdom, so the king's beautiful sister, Princess Yasmela, is acting as regent.  (The politics in these Conan stories can be a little complicated.)  Night after night the Veiled One casts his soul forth from his body to appear above the reclining Yasmela as a phantom that tells her all the things he will do to her luscious body after he has conquered her little country and become Khoraja's sexual harasser in chief!  

"Black Colossus" is of course an adventure story full of sex and violence, but it is also about cultural clashes and cross-cultural pollinations.  "Kothian culture and religion," Howard tells us, "suffered from a subtle admixture of Shemite and Stygian strains...[t]he simple ways of the Hyborians had become modified to a large extent by the sensual, luxurious, yet despotic habits of the East."  Here we see history buff Howard echoing the kind of judgments made of the Greeks by conservative Romans like Cato the Elder, of the Byzantines by the crusaders, and by Victorians of "the Orient."

Howard portrays the Kothians as Westerners who have fallen into decadence from contact with the decadent East and abandoned their sober and sturdy traditions, but offers the possibility that reconnecting with their Western values can rejuvenate them.  One of Yasmela's ladies-in-waiting is a political exile from some other country, one where they have stuck closer to their Hyborian roots.  She has contempt for the cruel gods worshipped by the Kothians, and exhorts Yasmela to call for succor from Mitra, a Hyborian god long neglected by the people of Khoraja.  Mitra, with oracular subtlety, guides the princess of Kharaja to seek the aid of Conan, currently an officer in a mercenary company serving Yasmela.  Trusting in Mitra, and excited to find Conan such a handsome hunk of man-meat, she promotes the Cimmerian to commander of all her armies.  (Yasmela has never seen a Cimmerian before, and if Hyborians are less decadent than Sytgians and Shemites and other Eastern and Southern creeps, the Cimmerians, being from even further north than the Hyborians, are even more capable and competent.)

The most boring part of these Conan stories is the fictional military history stuff, and we get some of that in Chapter III.  I'm interested in military history, but if I wanted to read orders of battle (Khoraja fields 500 knights, 5000 light cavalry, and 500 spearmen, plus 1000 mercenary cavalry and 2000 mercenary infantry) and descriptions of each unit's equipment, I'd read a real history book about the Peninsular War or the Battle of El Alamein or Sir Arthur Harris's quest to bomb Germany to rubble something like that.  I read these Conan stories for the sorcery, monsters, and the blood and guts of one extraordinarily willful man carving his way through a hostile world to pursue his heroic destiny.        

Luckily, Chapter III is mostly about Conan's relationship with Yasmela and how Conan learns the true identity of the Veiled One. 

In Chapter IV we get the order of battle of the Veiled One's army of chariot-riding Stygians and nomads and black Kushites.  Then the battle.  Thugra Khotan's army attacks up a narrow pass, and while the Khorajan foot troops hold the invaders at the top of the pass Conan's cavalry sneaks around and attacks them from behind, breaking them.  In single combat, Conan kills the rebellious Stygian prince who is leading the Stygian contingent of the Veiled One's army.  In the confusion following the rout of the wizard's army and the berserk pursuit of them by Conan's troops, Thugra Khotan, mounted on a demon who has taken the form of a chariot pulled by a monster camel and driven by a monster ape, seizes Yasmela!  (Conan stories often include some kind of ape and some kind of giant snake, and "Black Colossus" offers both.)  Conan grabs a horse and gives chase; at a nearby ruin he rescues the princess moments before she is to be ravished by the 3,000-year old sorcerer.  Yasmela then gives her body to Conan, her hero.

This is a decent Conan story, though I'd maybe rather see more stuff with Thugra Khotan and/or the disaffected Stygian prince and less battlefield stuff.  "Black Colossus" has appeared in a million Conan books, but isn't one of those Howard pieces which has been widely anthologized.  I'm sort of wondering about the title; Conan doesn't have to fight a big black statue or a giant Kushite or anything like that.  Maybe the title refers to the renegade Stygian prince--he is a "dark-skinned giant" who, having lost his weapons and armor and fights Conan with a rock while wearing no more than a loincloth, but he's a pretty minor character.    

Conan the Freebooter is one of the many volumes to feature "Black Colossus"

"Rogues in the House" (1934)

Here's another story that hasn't really been anthologized much, but was included in Christine Campbell Thomson's Not At Night series almost immediately after its appearance in Weird Tales, and again in a 1961 volume.  It's a fun story full of twists and turns I won't trouble to detail here, a story abut treachery and about humanity and civilization--who is truly human, and whom should we admire, the civilized or the primitive?

The story takes place in a city full of corrupt and treacherous people--the entire place is physically and morally rotten, even including a slum called "the Maze" whose narrow streets are obstructed by piles of garbage and deep cesspools in which the unwary may drown.  This is a monarchy, but the true ruler of the city is not the king but Nabonidus the Red Priest, an eminence gris who manipulates the monarch and every other person of influence in town.  When corrupt young aristocrat Murilo gets wind of the fact that Nabonidus is going to have him killed or exiled, Murilo decides to launch a desperate preemptive strike, and goes to the city prison to bribe a guard to release the biggest and toughest of the inmates--Conan the Cimmerian!  In return for his freedom, Conan agrees to go to Nabonidus's house, which is protected by various monstrous sentries and an array of death traps, to slay the Red Priest.

Once free, Conan first gets his revenge on the faithless girlfriend who called the cops on him and then makes his way to the house of Nabonidus.  Due to some plot twists, Conan and Murilo both end up trapped in the secret tunnels under the Red Priest's fortified house.  Down there they bump into a stunned Nabonidus himself!  It seems one of Nabonidus's weird guards is a sort of missing link, an apeman, a member of a savage tribe that is halfway through the process of evolving from apedom to humanity!  This muscular brute, Thak, was acquired by Nabonidus when he was a cub, and for years has torn intruders and other troublemakers limb from limb at Nabonidus's command.  But today Thak rebelled, killing Nabonidus's other protectors and throwing the Red Priest down into his own dungeons!  Thak is more human than the Red Priest realized--not only does Thak have human ambition and the human inclination to betray others, but has figured out how to manipulate all the death traps that ward almost every room and portal of Nabonidus's crazy house. 

Nabonidus, the clergyman who manipulates an entire kingdom for his own greed, Murilo, the noble who sells state secrets to foreign powers, and Conan, the barbaric bandit and pirate, must work together to overcome the apeman Thak and the traps at his disposal.  Maybe the fact that a bunch of patriots who seek to liberate the kingdom from his illegitimate rule chose this very night to assassinate the Red Priest will work in the three desperate men's favor?  Who will live and who will die?  And will these three rogues resist the urge to betray each other? 

This is a good story which has plenty of monsters, violence, and clever traps and devices, and puts forward Howard's idea that civilization is bad and barbarians, savages, and maybe even beasts are more honest, trustworthy and admirable than city folk, including women, priests, and politicians.  Thumbs up!

"The People of the Black Circle" (1934)

This is a longish one that was serialized over three issues of Weird Tales.  Besides the many expected Howard collections, it has been reprinted in one of those anthologies with Isaac Asimov's name on the cover, this one a bunch of stories about wizards.

The setting of "The People of the Black Circle" is transparently based on the mountainous border region where Afghanistan, Iran, and India meet (remember, kids, there was no independent nation of Pakistan when Howard was alive.)  Conan is a bandit chief, the leader of a bunch of Afghulis based in Afghulistan in the foot hills of the Himelian mountain range.  (Like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan and John Carter, Conan is a white man who goes to foreign places and quickly becomes a top leader among the natives.)

The country Conan's Afghulis are always raiding is called Vendhya.  As the story begins, the king of Vendhya is lying abed, writhing in agony, on the brink of death, the victim of the magic of a cabal of evil sorcerers.  The black magic in this story is well-written and interesting, so I have to commend Asimov, or maybe it's Martin H. Greenberg, or maybe it's Charles G. Waugh, for selecting this story for that anthology.  The king's sister, Yasmina, whom we'd probably call a princess in the West but whom in Vendhya is called "Devi," resorts to a horrible expedient--she kills His Majesty with her own dagger in order to keep his soul from being implanted by the evil wizards into the body of a night gaunt!  Yasmina, the second princess in a Conan story we are talking about today who becomes ruler of the kingdom when her brother the king gets incapacitated, vows vengeance on the wizards, known as the Black Circle, who have caused the king's death.  These bastards live way up in an isolated castle in the Himelias.  The only person she can think of who is enough of a badass to go after the Black Circle is Conan the bandit leader, so Yasmina hies up to the border to negotiate with the Cimmerian.

But beautiful Yasmina has more problems than she knows: her court has been infiltrated by a disguised member of the Black Circle, a young wizard named Khemsa, and Yasmina's favorite maid-in-waiting, Gitara, has fallen in love with him!  Gitara uses her charms to convince Khemsa to turn renegade, to divorce himself from the Black Circle and try to capture Yasmina himself as the first step to taking over Vendhya and then ruling the world!  (It's the old story: a woman falls in love with you and immediately pushes you to abandon your friends and take all kinds of risks to further your career.)

The Vendhyan border patrol has captured a bunch of Afghuli chiefs loyal to Conan and Yasmina hopes to use them as bargaining chips in her negotiations with the Cimmerian, but the second Conan sees the Devi he kidnaps her to use as a bargaining chip.  Conan is the kind of negotiator who thinks outside the box!  He carries her away to a village of Wazuli hill people friendly to him.  Little does our hero know that Khemsa and Gitara are right behind him--with his magic Khemsa can fly.  Khemsa uses hypnotism and other magics to turn the Wazulis against Conan, and our hero and Yasmina barely escape the Wazulis with their lives.     

Later, after some scenes in which Conan and Yasmina get to know each other a little better, Khemsa directly attacks Conan on a cliffside mountain track.  Four wizards of the Black Circle arrive to interrupt the showdown and dispose of their insubordinate disciple and his inamorata.  Then they flit away, bringing with them the Devi Yasmina!

Conan heads for the mountaintop castle of the Black Circle wizards to rescue Yasmina, receiving aid from unexpected quarters--a dying Khemsa gives him a magic item and some advice, and the Cimmerian is joined by yet another guy who wants to kidnap Yasmina, a spy who has been acting as a sort of liaison between the King of Turan and the Black Circle wizards; he has been hanging around the court of Vendhya masquerading as a prince from Iranistan trying to figure out a way to effect the Turanian king's policy of adding Yasmina to the royal harem and adding Vendhya to the Turanian empire.  

The eighth of "The People of the Black Circle"'s ten chapters is devoted to describing the meeting of that hot property that is in such high demand, Devi Yasmina of Vendhya, with the leader of the wizards of the Black Circle, who says he is going to break her will and make her his slave because she "is fair to look upon."  The wizard casts a spell that causes her to relive all her past lives in a brief moment, sort of an odd thing to do, I thought, but exactly the sort of thing that happens to people in Howard's stories "The Children of the Night" and "The Dark Man."  There is a sort of exploitation element to this, as in so many of her past lives Yasmina was a woman who got whipped or executed or enslaved or raped.  "She suffered all the woes and wrongs and brutalities that man has inflicted on woman throughout the eons; and she endured all the spite and malice of woman for woman."  I guess this sort of experience is meant to humble the Devi, who has spent her entire current life being waited on hand and foot. 

Meanwhile, Conan and his companions of convenience fight their way past magical tricks and traps into the castle.  One by one the soldiers accompanying the Turanian spy get killed; in the climactic battle with the wizards the spy is dramatically slain by sorcery.  Conan, with the help of Khemsa's magical device and magical advice, triumphs over the magicians (whose leader turns into a giant snake) and embraces Yasmina, who has fallen for the irresistible Cimmerian hunk.  

In the final chapter of the story Conan and Yasmina discuss the possibility of marrying their fortunes together, but Yasmina has her duty to the people of Vendhya and is accustomed to civilized life, while Conan has his duty to his Afghuli bandits and his devotion to a life of freedom and adventure.  The Cimmerian reunites with his band, and Yasmina with a unit of Vendhyan cavalry; the two forces work together to defeat a Turanian invasion force (and a final attack by the leader of Black Circle wizards, this time in the form of a vulture) and then Conan and Yasmina part ways.

A good Conan story with particularly interesting magic.  Thumbs up!          

**********

These three stories are all solid sword and sorcery capers, but I'd judge "Black Colossus" as the weakest; despite its strong opening much of it is perfunctory and obvious.  "Rogues in the House" has all those cool traps and devices and does a good job pushing Howard's themes, and is probably my favorite, though "The People of the Black Circle" is stiff competition with all that fun black magic.  

Looking at Sam Moskowitz's article "The Most Popular Stories in Weird Tales: 1924 to 1940" we see that "Black Colossus" was the most popular piece in the June '33 issue, but that "Rogues in the House" lost out to a reprint of an eight-year old A. Merritt story, while the three installments of "The People of the Black Circle" were overshadowed by stories by Seabury Quinn, C. L. Moore (cover story "The Black God's Kiss") and S. Gordon Gurwit.  

No doubt we'll be seeing more of Conan, and more Weird Tales stories, in the future.  Until then, don't put your trust in any priests, politicians or prestidigitators.