The goddess of Chance gambles with a bar­ barian swordsman - for his life ... The Empire of Rome is threatened with disaster by a barbaric sorcerer who raises mind­ less killers for the earth itself ... The last survivor of Atlantis is called upon to do battle against a human-eating creature only he c·an brave - to save a race of giants ... Robert E. Howard provides weird surprises in a tale'of a Spanish opportunist, a "lost" Aztec city, and a· centuries-old mage - in what may be the last story REH ever wrote . .. The sexiest woman on the planet has never lost in her sadistic duels with men ... and other all-new tales of menace, high adven­ ture and derring-do, written especially for this volume! BEST SELLERS FROM ZEBRA BY ROBERT E. HOWARD ... THE CREATOR OF CONAN! - ·· _113, $1.75 THE SOWERS OF THE THUNDER _ 119, $1.50 TIGERS OF THE SEA _._126, $1.50 WORMS OF THE EARTH _132, $1.50 A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK _144, $1.50 THE VULTURES OF WHAPETON _149, $1.50 THE INCREDIBLE ADVEN- TURES OF DENNIS DORGAN _157, $1.50 THE LOST VALLEY OF ISKANDER _163, $1.95 THE BOOK OF ROBERT E. HOWARD _ 171, $1.50 THE IRON MAN _ 183, $1.95 THE SECOND BOOK OF ROBERT E. HOWARD __ 189, $1.95 PIGEONS FROM HELL Cormac mac Art by Andrew]. Offutt _138, $1.50 CORMAC MAC ART: SWORD OF THE GAEL ___.197, $1.50 CORMAC MAC ART: THE UNDYING WIZARD Bran Mak Morn by Karl Edward Wagner _177, $1.50 BRAN MAK MORN: LEGION FROM THE SHADOWS Available wherever paperbacks are sold, or sencl co·ver price plus 2.5¢ per copy for mailing and hanclling to Zebra Books, .521 Fifth Avenue, New Yurk, N.Y. 10017. DO NOT SEND CASH I SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS edited by andrew j. offutt ....... .,.............. ~ ZEBRA BOOKS JCBNSINGTON PtJBI ..JSHJNG CORP~ ZEBRA BOOKS are published by KENSINGTON PUBLISRIN(l OORP. s21 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017 Copyright © 1977 by Andrew J; Offutt All rights reserved. No part of this book m~ be. ~p.-oduced in any fonn or by any means without the ·prior. written con­ sent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews First Printing: February, 1977 Second Printing: June,l977 Printed in the United States of America Contents Foreword 7 Nekht Semerkeht Robert E. Howard & Andrew Offutt 12 The Tale of Hauk Poul Anderson 49 The Smile of Oisia Geo. W. Proctor 80 Pride of the Fleet Bruce jones 118 Straggler From Atlantis Manly Wade Wellman 135 The Ring of Set Richard L. Tierney 170 Largarut's Bane Raul Garcia Capella 206 Dragons' Teeth David Drake 220 The Sustenance of Hoak Ramsey Campbell 250 5 FOREWORD They tell me a Texican named Robert Ervin Howard started it. I disagree; I think an Achaean named Homer did. Howard, nearly 2800 years later, reduced it, raised it, brought it into the twentieth century - and created a new sub-genre of fantasy. Some of us call it heroic fantasy. Some call it epic fantasy, although the two aren't always synonymous. Some call it sword and sorcery, a phrase invented by a practitioner named Fritz Leiber. There is usually a fantasy element, and there is usually a hero (bearing in mind that "hero" isn't a sexist word - only "heroine" is!). So - heroic fantasy: hf. 7 It can be said to appeal to all ages, though thou­ sands and thousands of people above age twenty are closet fans of hf. Either you're crazy about it, can't resist it, or think it's nonsense - or pretend to. It hardly ever gets good reviews, because high adven­ ture fiction in which the mood is not existential futilism and the good guy usually prevails (without federal aid) isn't lit'rature. You know, Literature: like ... Homer, or The Three Musketeers, which has outlived all the parasites who, as "critics," sneered at that novel and its creator, Dumas. I was a closet hf fan for years, before I Came Out. I'm doing penance for all those years. Hopefully this book of new stories is also a good deed for the genre and its lovers, both readers and writers. Whatever it's called, some of us are hopelessly in love with it, ·even when it's done in manner rotten, as it too frequently is. All of us who love to read it (and watch old Errol Flynn movies and think what a shame that Basil Rathbone never played a Howard sorcerous villain) and those of us who can't help writing it are the very people Conan Doyle was referring to when he wrote I have wrought my simple plan If I give one hour of joy To the boy who's half a man, Or the man who's half a boy. I am ... one of the above. So is Manly Wade Wellman, a great huge bear of a man a hundred and eighty-leben· years old who looks fifty. Change the sexes in Doyle's poem and realize that Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton are women who are half girls, 8 lovers of hf or s&s: high adventure with a touch of the outre. Poul Anderson is one of us boy-men too, and he summed it up darned well in his reply to the letter I sent him, asking for a story: ''Well, I'd pretty much sworn off ... especially with all the work to do there is lying on this desk. However you hit me in a weak spot; there are so few opportunities to do any sword and sorcery these days. So, all right ... " That's it. His weak spot. We can't help it. Writing heroic fantasy is fun - though not so easy as too many people think. We love to write it, as we love to read it. Yet though Howard the Master is reprinted again and again, few markets exist for new tales of barbarians and Atlanteans, Romans and Parthians, Egyptians and Conquistadors, swordsmen and sorcerers. That's why Anderson set aside the science fiction he was working on and wrote a Viking tale for this book, for us ... for himself! That's why Wellman, one of my boyhood favorites, took time out from those totally different stories of the hill country he's been doing, to write one of the sort that thrilled me long ago - and still does. It is about the very last survivor of sunken Atlantis - and some giants who are not inimical, for a pleasant change. Imagine my thrill at being able to tell these guys that a market existed and they were wanted and needed! Imagine my delight at writing out checks to them and to the others whose stories fill this book (with more words than the publis};ler asked for, meaning I overspent). Imagine my thrill at getting to read never-before published stories in this genre, fresh off the typewriter - free! 9 You know and I know that I didn't really bring Poul out of hf retirement - but I'm going to claim I did. In Manly's case it's true. In Proctor's case, I became his first s&s sale - from a Texan who should e'en now be measuring his shoulders for the mantle of Howard. Andre Norton had been sick and was behind in everything, and said no, and I asked three times. This overworked silver tongue prevailed: there will be a long Norton novelet in the second volume of this series. When we were in Providence, Rhode Island for the first World Fantasy Convention at which he won his overdue award, Manly asked me, twice, if he could do another story for Volume Two. "Yessir," I said, and probably genuflected. After all, the man was writing fiction before I was hatched and is two hundred and ninety-leben years old. There are nine stories in ·this book, most of them novelets, a favorite length. You can get your teeth into the tale, live with it, and unlike all too many novels, it ends while your interest is still high. Two are definitely what I'd call "Howardesque"; two are sort-of; four are ... dzfferent. Let it be known that I asked four - no, five - women for tales of heroic fantasy with a female protagonist. None could or would. I think it can be done; I also think 999 out of a thousand male writers couldn't. (Though Anderson's novel The Winter of the World must have blown the minds of a lot of female chauvinist sows who thought they had him pegged!) Contributor Bruce Jones, who's scripted and drawn Red Sonja (among a lot of other things) for the Marvel line of magazines, has done all right, I think ... for a male .... 10 Lord, I hope you like these stories; this book. I love 'em all; I even like the ones I turned down. If you do, talk it up, go back and buy another copy (frame the magnificent cover painting by another man who can't help himself; you don't want to deface th£s copy); we '11 need the business in order for there to be a Volume Three. Thanks, you nine writers. Thanks, readers. Thanks, Zebra Books. Thanks, Homeros of Chios - or Smyrna. Thanks, Robert Howard. And thanks, Roberta. 11 Jntroduct£on to uNekht Semerkeht" by Robert E. Howard & Andrew]. Offutt It £s all too well known that after ten or so years of creat£ng such marvelously endur£ng characters as Conan and K ull and Solomon Kane and Cormac mac Art and Franc£s X.