Star Fire

Druan rode the border in the twilight gray at the edge of winter. It was the deep, cold abyss before the faint spring that crept into the northlands, when the sun rose to the horizon and cast a glow over the hillsides and turned the snow to silver. The sky was endless overhead, filled with stars like scattered shards of ice, and always the fitful glow of the sky fires gleamed and shimmered at the far north. There, in the darkness that ebbed but never faded, dwelled their enemy.

Two years gone, since the slaughter at the Pass of Bones, and Druan was grown into a warrior. Now he knew how to ride a horse and wield a sword and a spear. He wore his own iron scale armor and bore a shield of oaken planks and dark hide. He was harder as well, his long limbs filled in with muscle and his face drawn into grim lines. He was no boy any longer; his cold gray eyes had seen too much death.

He rode to the top of a hill and looked north, always north. Soon he would turn south and ride for home, for even the weak day was enough to keep the enemy at bay. Only in the dark they came, the wind always with them to snuff out the flames they feared. Now the race of men had been driven out of their homes by the scourge of the winter wraiths, and they lived in fortified villages, protected by earthworks and by wooden palisades, but most of all by men. Riders ever patrolled the highlands, into the hills, seeking the signs of an attack.

Six times they had come, on the coldest nights. Six times the walls had flamed with fire and cold steel, leaving death in the wake of war. Each time the enemy took away their slain, and the people of the valleys had learned bitterly to guard their own dead. The dead, as well as the living who were dragged screaming into the dark, were never seen again.

Blood & Steel

Obviously, the subject of violence is kind of a big one in Sword & Sorcery fiction. The very roots of the genre are set it adventure fiction, with its swordfights, gun battles, narrow escapes, and chases, and the mold of the genre were set early by Howard and his rough-hewn, quintessentially violent heroes. S&S characters don’t solve their problems by talking them out, they solve them by hacking them up with axes and swords.

Howard was a product of the Texas borderlands, only a generation removed from the frontier days when men habitually went armed and real violence was a fact of everyday life. He also grew up during the oil boom, and saw up close how rough, lawless men handled disputes. As the son of a doctor he probably saw his share of blood and wounds, and he maintained a fascination with boxing and personal combat all his life. Violence was definitely in his blood, so to speak, and it found its way into the stories he told.

All subsequent S&S authors have included violence as an element in their stories, and it’s not like you can get away from it. Creators differ in how much they include, and in how they treat it. Leiber’s swordfights are much more in the tradition of theatrical duels, with a lot of technique and not a lot of blood. He often pitted his heroes against inhuman opponents, so their deaths would not be as gruesome. Several of his tales, feature very little express violence at all.

Moorcock was more liberal with his swordplay, but he always highlighted the essentially tragic nature of his worlds with it. The greatest incidents of violence in the Elric stories are always leavened with some kind of regret. Either this was violence the hero did not want to engage in, or it had some unintended effect that was only apparent afterward. Violence is never cathartic in a Moorcock story.

If you study Howard’s works, you often see how he employed violence with a deliberate precision at odds with his reputation. For a lot of his narratives, the violence is implied. It is spoken of, or the evidence of it is seen, but we don’t see it ourselves. But when he finally gets to it, he really goes after it with a zeal very few modern writers have ever matched. He didn’t candy-coat his fight scenes, and heads fly and entrails are spilled with no flinch from the author.

Some of the luridness of his approach was because he wrote characters that did not fear violence, but sought it out. Howard’s heroes are never reluctant combatants. They are barbarians, wanderers, outlaws, berserkers, and pirates, who all lust for action and never flinch from the clash of steel. It is, in part, this distinctly primitive attitude that makes his stories so vital and so vivid.

This invitation to violence in the genre has led to a lot of second-rate authors misunderstanding the place of violence and gore in their imitations of the masters. I have read plenty of stories that are eager to spill blood or engage in sometimes uncomfortable levels of torture or mutilation without considering what purpose the elements serve in the narrative. Like any other tool, violence must be used for a reason, and for a specific effect. Adding excitement is a perfectly valid reason to use it, but too often, this fails as well.

Because a fight scene has to have its own narrative, pacing, and story beats. You are telling, in effect, a smaller story inside the larger one. There has to be threat, rising action, escalating stakes, climax – all of it. A good fight scene does not just stop the story dead while we wait to see who won, it tells us more about the characters as they do battle. The label “Sword & Sorcery” is not a free pass to engage in pornographic gore and violence. Because you are dealing with such strong elements, they have to be handled with care, and ironically a very fine sense of taste, otherwise works are produced with bring down the entire genre.

The Pass of Bones

In the night of the year, by torchlight and the cold glare of the skyfires, men gathered for war. They came from many villages and hollows, from vales and riverside camps. They left their earthen longhouses, and they bore with them what weapons they had. Many carried the long bows of the northland hunters; others bore spears with iron heads etched with killing runes. The few true warriors among them wore their scaled armor and their iron swords. Shaggy horses bore them through the night under the burning stars to where the army gathered.

Druan was among them, here in the ancient meeting place called the Hada, where the fire of the goddess Ajahe was kindled and sacrifices made. The valley was strewn with the stone monuments of a vanished age of giants, and here stood the pillars that marked the turning of the year. The great chieftain Kaldun had set his tent here, and sent forth the call for men of war to come for a great purging, for the purpose of striking into the dark valley and destroying the heart of the evil that came from it.

Druan camped there among the few men of his old village who remained. Only six of them were unwounded and fit for battle; the others were too old or too young, or they still lay crippled from the attack. Bagan was one of them, and he was near death. Druan remained with him, tended his fire and kept him warm against the cold. It was plain he would not live much longer, as his wound was angry and eating him from within. He lay wrapped in furs, trying not to touch the hole in his belly packed with moss.

“How many have gathered?” the old man said, his voice weak. He could not eat any longer, only sip a little broth from a copper bowl.

“More than three hundred,” Druan said. He added more wood to the fire, wishing it was seasoned. The green wood gave off so much bitter smoke. “Perhaps fifty true warriors with armor and with swords. The rest are men like us.”

“I was a warrior, in my youth,” Bagan said. “I fought in blood feuds and for gold in raids. Those were the old times, not peaceful, when all men were against one another. I went south, into warmer lands, and fought wars for pay. It is a bitter life, to kill as a trade. I do not regret giving it up.” He took a heavy breath, put his hand down and touched the old bronze sword sheathed at his side. “You are a warrior as well, Druan. You fought and killed and took your wounds. You carry a weapon taken from the hand of a slain enemy. That is no small thing.”