Another Great LAST STAND Scene!

 

Francis Xavier Gordon, known as "El Borak," had numerous blood-and-thunder adventures in Afghanistan and the surrounding countries in the early years of the 20th Century. One of the seven El Borak tales is set during World War I--the others sets before the war.)

All the El Borak yarns are great--though, of course, Robert E. Howard rarely turned out anything other than great--and just occasionally merely good-stories.

The one I want to mention today is "Country of the Knife," first published in the August 1936 issue of Complete Stories. It's been reprinted--often under the title "Sons of the Hawk"--multiple times and is currently available in Del Rey's El Borak and Other Desert Adventures. 

The story awesome from start to finish, with El Borak showing off his talents for disguise, playing another part, and manipulating his enemies. There's still lots of action, of course, and--as good as the rest of the story is--I want to emphasize how good REH is at writing short action scenes that are so effectively stuffed with violence that you come away thinking it was several pages more to it than there is.

The climax has El Borak and four companions fleeing a remote city, pursued by a larger force on fresher horses. The fugitives reach a mountain pass soon after one of them tumbles off a cliff and their remaining horses die of exhausion. They take cover at the entrance to the path, determined to sell their lives dearly. They "lay behind boulders in the mouth of the pass. They had three pistols, a saber, a tulwar and a knife between them." 

The bad guys charge them on horseback. Bullets fly and the battle quickly turns into a hand-to-hand melee.

From start to finish, the action runs through only about a dozen short paragraphs. So much happens in those few paragraphs that, as I said, you think the battle might have run several pages before coming to its unexpected and satisfying end. But the prose doesn't feel crowded, over-stuffed or too long. It feels just right.

This was one of REH's talents as a writer. He did the same thing in Black Colossus, a Conan novella in which you THINK the epic battle between two armies must have been several chapters, but is only a few pages. The large-scale battles in his Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon are the same way--satisfying battle scenes that last just a few pages, but (in a good way) feel much longer. 

You can read "Country of the Knife" (aka "Sons of the Hawk") online HERE. 

"...two wild natures, thirsty for each others' life."

Last time we visited with Robert E Howard, we met Kirby O'Donnell, an Irish-American wanderer who found adventure in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

But, by golly, Kirby wasn't the only Irish-American adventure who hung out in that part of the world in the early 20th Century. Howard also wrote about Francis Xavier Gordon, better known as El Borak ("The Swift").  Gordon wasn't quite as boisterous as Kirby. Whereas Kirby traveled alone or with a single companion, Gordon was often leading local tribesmen into battle. But both men were fantastic fighters and both were prone to find trouble wherever they went.

We've been taking a look at instances in which Howard's heroes were obligated by circumstances to team up with deadly enemies. It was always a temporary alliance, with the parties involved certain to return to killing each other at the first opportunity.

It's something that happened to them a lot. Which is just fine by me--it was a plot devise that Howard used very effectively.

We've already seen it happen once to Conan (and we'll have to return to the Barbarian again for another reluctant team-up with an enemy) and once to Kirby. It happened at least twice to El Borak.

"Son of the White Wolf" was published in the December 1936 issue of Thrilling Adventure magazine. This story is set during the First World War, during which Gordon allied himself with the British and helped out Lawrence of Arabia. But this time out, he's not going up against the Germans or the Ottomans. Instead, he runs across a band of Turks who have fallen under the sway of a madman--a man who plans to carve his own kingdom out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. He rescues a beautiful German spy from their clutches and runs for help. But he finds not the allies he was hoping to find, but a tribe of Arabs who fight for the Ottomans.

To stop the renegades, he must convince the Arabs that the mad would-be emperor is a danger to everyone. Then he has to lead the Arabs into a wild battle while simultaneously remaining wary of one of his erstwhile allies putting a bullet in his back.


But that wasn't the first time Gordon had to team-up with a deadly enemy. It also happened in "Blood of the Gods," which first appeared in the July 1935 issue of Top Notch magazine.

El Borak learns that a ruthless Englishman named Hawkston (along with Hawkston's band of thugs) has discovered where a hermit named Al Wazir is living. This particular hermit is owner of priceless rubies called the Blood of the Gods. Hawkston wants those rubies and he's willing to use murder and torture to get them. (Al Wazir's back story--explaining why he's a hermit and why he owns valuable treasure--is an interesting part of the story.)

Gordon is the hermit's friend, so he rides his camel across a trackless desert to find and protect Al Wazir. But a violent encounter with a band of Arabs (members of a tribe with whom he has a blood feud) leaves him on foot.

He still manages to reach the cliff-side caves in which Al Wazir is currently living. But the poor hermit--someone Gordon once knew as a compassionate and wise man--has degenerated into a homicidal maniac.

Then Hawkston shows up. But he's being pursued by the same Arabs who are also after Gordon. They've already killed Hawkston's followers, so the two men must team up to fight off their mutual enemy. If they survive that, then they can go back to killing each other over Al Wazir and the rubies.

"Son of the White Wolf" is a great story, but--even though it has some flaws--I really love "Blood of the Gods." Howard always does fantastic action scenes, but he outdoes himself in "Blood." There's a particularly intense hand-to-hand struggle at an oasis during Gordon's journey to the hermit's cave. The defense of the caves by Gordon and Hawkston against the attacking Arabs is equally intense and very exciting--involving both gun play and more hand-to-hand combat. And there's a sword fight at the stories climax that is nothing short of awesome.

I also like the way Gordon and Hawkston are portrayed when they are forced into a partnership. Howard makes it clear that Hawkston has no morals at all, but he's otherwise like Gordon in a lot of ways. Both men are brave, clever and experienced fighters. Hawkston is a sort of evil mirror image of Gordon. It's something that adds a lot of tension to an already tense situation.

This all makes me very forgiving of the story's flaws, which mostly relate to the plot structure. Most of the story is just fine in terms of good storytelling, but Howard relies a little too much on several unlikely contrivances at the denouement to get Gordon out of trouble and wrap up Al Wazir's story arc. And the ironic twist that ends the story is arguably predictable.

But that's okay. Awesome sword fights make everything better.

We still two more REH stories I want to look at--a Conan yarn set early in the barbarian's career and one involving the pirate Black Vulmea. Two more cases in which the protagonist must team up with a man who wants him dead. It's something that seems to be a genetic predisposition in Howard's adventurous heroes.

Pulp Era Story Reviews, Episode One

This is a video version of a past post. Since I'm apparently unable to do narration without stumbling over a sentence or two no matter how many takes I do, I'm not certain this is a successful enough experiment to repeat. But if I'm gonna go to all the effort to make the darn thing, SOMEONE is going to have to suffer through it.

FINALLY back in print

Pulp writer Robert E. Howard churned out a lot of stuff that never saw print in his lifetime--most of which were great stories that really deserved to be read.


Howard never achieved much popular success during his short life (though he certainly did have his fans) and it wasn't until a couple of decades went by that his work began to be re-discovered and build up a following.


And he appears to be as popular today as he ever was. A lot of his stuff is coming back into print, most notably through a superb series of anthologies being put out by Del Ray. All his Conan stuff is there, as well as Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and  many of his non-series stories.


In fact, this past February saw the publication of El Borak and Other Desert Adventures. El Borak is the nick-name of Francis Xavier Gordon, a Texan who wanders around Afganistan and the Mid-East during the early 20th Century, getting into one violent adventure after another.All the short stories involving Gordon (and a few non-Gordon stories set in the same milieu) are here.


All the stories in this volume are slam-bang adventures, but one in particular is a favorite of mine. "Three-Bladed Doom" plops El Borak smack into a whole danged city of assassins, ruled by a man planning on using assassination and terror to set himself up as a behind-the-scenes ruler of much of Asia. There's political intrigue, treachery, escapes and captures, sword duels, a damsel in distress, a fight with a yeti (the closest thing to an overt fantasy element in any of these stories) and a full-scale battle at the climax.

It's amazing storytelling from start to finish--one of these "can't put it down" yarns that are a joy to read, combining compelling action sequences with clever plot construction and vivid characterizations.

The new Del Ray anthology actually contains two versions of the story. Howard originally wrote it as a 42,000-word novela. When that didn't sell, he re-wrote it as a 24,000-word short story.

Neither version found a market at the time. It wasn't until 1977 that the longer (and better) version saw print in a paperback. (It had, in the meantime, been re-written by L. Sprague de Camp into a Conan story, but this was a awkward and unsatisfying effort.)

That's where I first encountered this story. I've still got that paperback, in fact. But I'm glad that "Three-Bladed Doom" has found a back-in-print home. (Especially since it was offered in an electronic version as well--bringing my Kindle one step closer to being my perfect personal library.)  And it is interesting to compare both versions of the tale. I also appreciate the inclusion of "The Trail of the Blood-Stained God," another story that had been altered by de Camp into a Conan story. It was nice to finally read the original version of that one.



By the way, some of the El Borak stories have become public domain and are available online. Here's one that gives you a good idea of how much fun these stories are:  BLOOD OF THE GODS


Man, I only just re-read "Three-Bladed Doom," but now I want to read it again.