cover art by Margaret Brundage
"The Lord of Samarcand," (also published as "The Lame Man") by Robert E. Howard, was published in the Spring 1932 issue of Oriental Stories. It is, I think, one of the grimmest tales that Howard ever told. And, by golly, it works. It's a vivid example of how Howard could use descriptive prose together with strong characterizations to keep his reader engrossed from start to finish.
It's set in the late 14th and early 15th Century. A Scotsman named Donald MacDeesa is the protagonist and his life has indeed been grim. He fought in Scotland until he was forced to flee for his life. He eventually ends up in the Middle East, where the army he's a part of is wiped out by the Turks.
Anxious for revenge, he enters the service of Timour, also known as Tamarlane. This is a real-life emperor--a Turco-Mongol who founded the Timurid Dynasty that ruled much of what today is Afganistan, Iran and Central Asia.
Donald helps Timour defeat the Turks, satisfying the Scotsman's lust for revenge in that quarter. Then, with nowhere else to go, he serves Timour as the head of a sort-of Special Forces unit. Timour, a somewhat narcissitic ruler who desire only to expand his empire, recognizes Donald's usefullness, but feels no friendship or appreciation towards him:
Timour hurled Donald against his foes as a man hurls a javelin, little caring whether the weapon be broken or not. The Gael's horsemen would come back bloodstained, dusty and weary, their armor hacked to shreds, their swords notched and blunted, but always with the heads of Timour's foes swinging at their high saddle-peaks.
As the years go by, Donald's lonliness and friendlessness causes him to grow attracted to a Persian slave-girl. But the girl has a tendency to get involved in courtroom conspiracies. And if she gets on Timour's bad side, she might not live long. And if she doesn't live long, Timour might find out there can be consequences for treating people like disposable insects. It's not good to be on Timour's bad side, but it's definitely not good to be on Donald MacDeesa's bad side.
History has a different version of Timour's death in 1405 than we get here, but the story actually accounts for that. Much like "The Lion of Tiberias," which I reviewed a few weeks ago, Howard improves upon real-life in regards to the death of a tyrant.
Getting to the grim end of this tale is a wild ride. Here's a brief passage describing one of Donald's many battles. The word "vivid" doesn't really do it justice.
AND AT ORDUSHAR the siege dragged on. In the freezing winds that swept down the pass, driving snow in blinding, biting blasts, the stocky Kalmucks and the lean Vigurs strove and suffered and died in bitter anguish.
They set scaling-ladders against the walls and struggled upward, and the defenders, suffering no less, speared them, hurled down boulders that crushed the mailed figures like beetles, and thrust the ladders from the walls so that they crashed down, bearing death to men below. Ordushar was actually but a stronghold of the Jat Mongols, set sheer in the pass and flanked by towering cliffs.
Donald's wolves hacked at the frozen ground with frost-bitten raw hands which scarce could hold the picks, striving to sink a mine under the walls. They pecked at the towers while molten lead and weighted javelins fell in a rain upon them; driving their spear-points between the stones, tearing out pieces of masonry with their naked hands. With stupendous toil they had constructed makeshift siege-engines from felled trees and the leather of their harness and woven hair from the manes and tails of their warhorses.
The rams battered vainly at the massive stones, the ballistas groaned as they launched tree-trunks and boulders against the towers or over the walls. Along the parapets the attackers fought with the defenders, until their bleeding hands froze to spear-shaft and sword-hilt, and the skin came away in great raw strips. And always, with superhuman fury rising above their agony, the defenders hurled back the attack.
A storming-tower was built and rolled up to the walls, and from the battlements the men of Ordushar poured a drenching torrent of naphtha that sent it up in flame and burnt the men in it, shriveling them in their armor like beetles in a fire. Snow and sleet fell in blinding flurries, freezing to sheets of ice. Dead men froze stiffly where they fell, and wounded men died in their sleeping-furs. There was no rest, no surcease from agony. Days and nights merged into a hell of pain. Donald's men, with tears of suffering frozen on their faces, beat frenziedly against the frosty stone walls, fought with raw hands gripping broken weapons, and died cursing the gods that created them.
The misery inside the city was no less, for there was no more food. At night Donald's warriors heard the wailing of the starving people in the streets. At last in desperation the men of Ordushar cut the throats of their women and children and sallied forth, and the haggard Tatars fell on them weeping with the madness of rage and woe, and in a welter of battle that crimsoned the frozen snow, drove them back through the city gates. And the struggle went hideously on.
You can read the entire story yourself HERE.
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