Beyond the Black River

BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER

THE WEIRD WORKS OF ROBERT E. HOWARD, VOLUME 7

ROBERT E. HOWARD

EDITED BY PAUL HERMAN

INTRODUCTION BY DAMON C. SASSER

Copyright © 2007 by Paul Herman.

Cover art copyright © 2007 by Stephen Fabian.

All rights reserved.

Published by Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

Barbarians and Indians: The American Frontier Meets the Hyborian Frontier

Robert E. Howard was born and raised in Texas during the early 1900s, a time not too far removed from the days of the Old Frontier. While growing up, Howard talked to many old timers who still recalled the days when Indians were a threat to the frontiersmen and danger lurked at every turn of the road. Howard’s bookshelf was also well stocked with books on the West and the colorful characters that populated it. So it’s not surprising that he wrote so convincingly of it, particularly during the later years of his short writing career.

This seventh volume of
Weird Works
contains “Beyond the Black River,” universally recognized as one of the best Conan stories Howard wrote. This tale was a departure from Howard’s other stories of the Cimmerian in that it takes place in the lush forests and the winding rivers of the far-flung Pictish Wilderness. The buckskin-clad Aquilonian settlers and log structures are strangely out of place in “Black River;” a big departure from the exotic settings of other Conan stories. But this is just what Howard was trying to do — break the mold and expand the possibilities by bringing the American frontier to his imaginary Hyborian world. Further, this Conan story has no sexy females in it, either as heroine or villainess, but neither did it skimp on the other elements of a good Conan yarn — sorcery, intrigue and mayhem.

Here is a statement made by Howard to girlfriend Novalyne Price in 1935 shortly after selling “Beyond the Black River” to
Weird Tales
that reflects his fervent desire to write a definitive novel of the American Frontier:

“I wouldn’t say this to anybody but you, but, by God, I know what I can do. I love this country, and I know damn well I can write about it. I know damn well I can write a novel that will move, be about people facing real odds.” He became exuberant. “I tried that yarn out to see what Wright would do about it. I was afraid he wouldn’t take it, but he did! By God, he took it!”

The plot of “Black River” is a classic one, a story of a modern civilization pushing deep into the frontier, infringing on the territory of the local inhabitants and their way of life. While there are some parallels with James Fenimore Cooper’s
The Last of the Mohicans
, Howard, did not own a copy of the book. However, it is certainly possible he read it in school or “borrowed” it during one of his many late night forays to public libraries in the surrounding towns. It’s easy to see where Fort Tuscelan and the Picts could be substituted for Cooper’s Fort Will Henry and the French and the Hurons, with the Pictish Wilderness taking the place of Colonial New York state. Howard did own copies of several books by Robert W. Chambers, another writer of frontier fiction. He even derives a few names from Chambers’ books for “Beyond the Black River.”

The story is fast-paced with Conan and the settlers fighting an evil Pictish wizard named Zogar Sag, as well as the united tribes of Picts who are intent on driving the settlers out of their territory. It’s a violent death-race as Conan and his fighting companion Balthus cut and slash their way to the settlement in an effort to warn the settlers and get them to safety. Of particular interest here are the characters of Balthus and Slasher, who appear to be Hyborian döppelgangers for Howard and his dog Patches. By the end of the story, the conflict between the settlers and the Picts has cost many lives and nearly wiped out the Aquilonian frontiersmen. One of the few wounded surviving foresters speaks these words that are usually attributed to Conan:

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarism must ultimately triumph.”

It’s a reference on the outcome of this tale as well as Howard’s own beliefs that modern civilization was a decadent and dying venture, and that it would be purged by barbarism, just as civilizations of the past had fallen under the sandaled feet of various barbarian hordes.

A Western-like setting was also used for the Conan story “Jewels of Gwahlur.” It takes place in an underground natural cavern setting filled with fantastic caves and subterranean rivers, much like Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, which Howard visited shortly before writing this story. Howard, still excited from his visit to the caverns, writes to H. P. Lovecraft:

“God what a story you could write after such an exploration! . . . Anything seemed possible in that monstrous twilight underworld, seven hundred and fifty feet below the earth. If some animate monster had risen horrifically from among the dimness of the columns and spread his taloned anthropomorphic hands above the throng, I do not believe that anyone would have been particularly surprised.”

The plot of this tale involves Conan scheming to outwit a rival, Thutmekri, and steal the treasure of an evil priest named Bit Yakin, who has a gang of violent gray semi-intelligent apes as his servants. Of course there is a pretty slave girl named Muriela involved, which complicates things somewhat for Conan. Howard channels his enthusiasm from his trip out west into “Jewels” and again brings a bit of the American Frontier to his Hyborian world.

With “Shadows in Zamboula” Howard abandons his Western locales and returns to more conventional Hyborian terrain — a god-forsaken desert town named Zamboula located in an area comparable to the present day Middle East. But even here one can easily imagine Conan as a down-on-his-luck gunfighter, with little more to his name than his weapon, being taken advantage of by the evil saloon/hotel owner. Unlike a typical western story, “Shadows” features bad men of a difference sort, with Conan facing men more barbaric than he in the form of blood-thirsty cannibals, an assassin who strangles women and children and a sorcerer who delights in tormenting a girl with four deadly cobras. Needless to say, all are meted out justice in Conan’s own unique way by the end of the story.

In addition to these three Conan stories, two more offerings from Howard round out this collection: “The Grisly Horror,” a tale of shuddering terror in the piney woods and slimy marshes of the Old South, and the round robin weird fantasy story “The Challenge from Beyond.” All of these stories will send you to far away frontiers where men struggle with the ages old conflict between good and evil and leave you wanting more.

Weird Tales, February 1935

1. The Horror in the Pines

The silence of the pine woods lay like a brooding cloak about the soul of Bristol McGrath. The black shadows seemed fixed, immovable as the weight of superstition that overhung this forgotten back country. Vague ancestral dreads stirred at the back of McGrath’s mind; for he was born in the pine woods, and sixteen years of roaming about the world had not erased their shadows. The fearsome tales at which he had shuddered as a child whispered again in his consciousness; tales of black shapes stalking the midnight glades. . . .

Cursing these childish memories, McGrath quickened his pace. The dim trail wound tortuously between dense walls of giant trees. No wonder he had been unable to hire anyone in the distant river village to drive him to the Ballville estate. The road was impassable for a vehicle, choked with rotting stumps and new growth. Ahead of him it bent sharply.

McGrath halted short, frozen to immobility. The silence had been broken at last, in such a way as to bring a chill tingling to the backs of his hands. For the sound had been the unmistakable groan of a human being in agony. Only for an instant was McGrath motionless. Then he was gliding about the bend of the trail with the noiseless slouch of a hunting panther.

A blue snub-nosed revolver had appeared as if by magic in his right hand. His left involuntarily clenched in his pocket on the bit of paper that was responsible for his presence in that grim forest. That paper was a frantic and mysterious appeal for aid; it was signed by McGrath’s worst enemy, and contained the name of a woman long dead.

McGrath rounded the bend in the trail, every nerve tense and alert, expecting anything — except what he actually saw. His startled eyes hung on the grisly object for an instant, and then swept the forest walls. Nothing stirred there. A dozen feet back from the trail visibility vanished in a ghoulish twilight, where
anything
might lurk unseen. McGrath dropped to his knee beside the figure that lay in the trail before him.

It was a man, spread-eagled, hands and feet bound to four pegs driven deeply in the hard-packed earth; a black-bearded, hook-nosed, swarthy man. “Ahmed!” muttered McGrath. “Ballville’s Arab servant! God!”

For it was not the binding cords that brought the glaze to the Arab’s eyes. A weaker man than McGrath might have sickened at the mutilations which keen knives had wrought on the man’s body. McGrath recognized the work of an expert in the art of torture. Yet a spark of life still throbbed in the tough frame of the Arab. McGrath’s gray eyes grew bleaker as he noted the position of the victim’s body, and his mind flew back to another, grimmer jungle, and a half-flayed black man pegged out on a path as a warning to the white man who dared invade a forbidden land.

He cut the cords, shifted the dying man to a more comfortable position. It was all he could do. He saw the delirium ebb momentarily in the bloodshot eyes, saw recognition glimmer there. Clots of bloody foam splashed the matted beard. The lips writhed soundlessly, and McGrath glimpsed the bloody stump of a severed tongue.

The black-nailed fingers began scrabbling in the dust. They shook, clawing erratically, but with purpose. McGrath bent close, tense with interest, and saw crooked lines grow under the quivering fingers. With the last effort of an iron will, the Arab was tracing a message in the characters of his own language. McGrath recognized the name: “Richard Ballville”; it was followed by “danger,” and the hand waved weakly up the trail; then — and McGrath stiffened convulsively — “
Constance”.
One final effort of the dragging finger traced “John De Al —” Suddenly the bloody frame was convulsed by one last sharp agony; the lean, sinewy hand knotted spasmodically and then fell limp. Ahmed ibn Suleyman was beyond vengeance or mercy.

McGrath rose, dusting his hands, aware of the tense stillness of the grim woods around him; aware of a faint rustling in their depths that was not caused by any breeze. He looked down at the mangled figure with involuntary pity, though he knew well the foulness of the Arab’s heart, a black evil that had matched that of Ahmed’s master, Richard Ballville. Well, it seemed that master and man had at last met their match in human fiendishness. But who, or
what
?
For a hundred years the Ballvilles had ruled supreme over this back country, first over their wide plantations and hundreds of slaves, and later over the submissive descendants of those slaves. Richard, the last of the Ballvilles, had exercised as much authority over the pinelands as any of his autocratic ancestors. Yet from this country where men had bowed to the Ballvilles for a century, had come that frenzied cry of fear, a telegram that McGrath clenched in his coat pocket.

Stillness succeeded the rustling, more sinister than any sound. McGrath knew he was watched; knew that the spot where Ahmed’s body lay was the invisible deadline that had been drawn for him. He believed that he would be allowed to turn and retrace his steps unmolested to the distant village. He knew that if he continued on his way, death would strike him suddenly and unseen. Turning, he strode back the way he had come.

He made the turn and kept straight on until he had passed another crook in the trail. Then he halted, listened. All was silent. Quickly he drew the paper from his pocket, smoothed out the wrinkles and read, again, in the cramped scrawl of the man he hated most on earth:

~~~

Bristol:

If you still love Constance Brand, for God’s sake forget your hate and come to Ballville Manor as quickly as the devil can drive you.

RICHARD BALLVILLE.

~~~

That was all. It reached him by telegraph in that Far Western city where McGrath had resided since his return from Africa. He would have ignored it, but for the mention of Constance Brand. That name had sent a choking, agonizing pulse of amazement through his soul, had sent him racing toward the land of his birth by train and plane, as if, indeed, the devil were on his heels. It was the name of one he thought dead for three years; the name of the only woman Bristol McGrath had ever loved.

Replacing the telegram, he left the trail and headed westward, pushing his powerful frame between the thick-set trees. His feet made little sound on the matted pine needles. His progress was all but noiseless. Not for nothing had he spent his boyhood in the country of the big pines.

Three hundred yards from the old road he came upon that which he sought — an ancient trail paralleling the road. Choked with young growth, it was little more than a trace through the thick pines. He knew that it ran to the back of the Ballville mansion; did not believe the secret watchers would be guarding it. For how could they know he remembered it?

He hurried south along it, his ears whetted for any sound. Sight alone could not be trusted in that forest. The mansion, he knew, was not far away, now. He was passing through what had once been fields, in the days of Richard’s grandfather, running almost up to the spacious lawns that girdled the Manor. But for half a century they had been abandoned to the advance of the forest.

But now he glimpsed the Manor, a hint of solid bulk among the pine tops ahead of him. And almost simultaneously his heart shot into his throat as a scream of human anguish knifed the stillness. He could not tell whether it was a man or a woman who screamed, and his thought that it might be a woman winged his feet in his reckless dash toward the building that loomed starkly up just beyond the straggling fringe of trees.

The young pines had even invaded the once generous lawns. The whole place wore an aspect of decay. Behind the Manor, the barns and outhouses which once housed slave families were crumbling in ruin. The mansion itself seemed to totter above the litter, a creaky giant, rat-gnawed and rotting, ready to collapse at any untoward event. With the stealthy tread of a tiger Bristol McGrath approached a window on the side of the house. From that window sounds were issuing that were an affront to the tree-filtered sunlight and a crawling horror to the brain.

Nerving himself for what he might see, he peered within.

2. Black Torture

He was looking into a great dusty chamber which might have served as a ballroom in antebellum days; its lofty ceiling was hung with cobwebs, its rich oak panels showed dark and stained. But there was a fire in the great fireplace — a small fire, just large enough to heat to a white glow the slender steel rods thrust into it.

But it was only later that Bristol McGrath saw the fire and the things that glowed on the hearth. His eyes were gripped like a spell on the master of the Manor; and once again he looked on a dying man.

A heavy beam had been nailed to the paneled wall, and from it jutted a rude crosspiece. From this cross-piece Richard Ballville hung by cords about his wrists. His toes barely touched the floor, tantalizingly, inviting him to stretch his frame continually in an effort to relieve the agonizing strain on his arms. The cords had cut deeply into his wrists; blood trickled down his arms; his hands were black and swollen almost to bursting. He was naked except for his trousers, and McGrath saw that already the white-hot irons had been horribly employed. There was reason enough for the deathly pallor of the man, the cold beads of agony upon his skin. Only his fierce vitality had allowed him thus long to survive the ghastly burns on his limbs and body.

On his breast had been burned a curious symbol — a cold hand laid itself on McGrath’s spine. For he recognized that symbol, and once again his memory raced away across the world and the years to a black, grim, hideous jungle where drums bellowed in fire-shot darkness and naked priests of an abhorred cult traced a frightful symbol in quivering human flesh.

Between the fireplace and the dying man squatted a thick-set black man, clad only in ragged, muddy trousers. His back was toward the window, presenting an impressive pair of shoulders. His bullet-head was set squarely between those gigantic shoulders, like that of a frog, and he appeared to be avidly watching the face of the man on the crosspiece.

Richard Ballville’s bloodshot eyes were like those of a tortured animal, but they were fully sane and conscious; they blazed with desperate vitality. He lifted his head painfully and his gaze swept the room. Outside the window McGrath instinctively shrank back. He did not know whether Ballville saw him or not. The man showed no sign to betray the presence of the watcher to the bestial black who scrutinized him. Then the brute turned his head toward the fire, reaching a long ape-like arm toward a glowing iron — and Ballville’s eyes blazed with a fierce and urgent meaning the watcher could not mistake. McGrath did not need the agonized motion of the tortured head that accompanied the look. With a tigerish bound he was over the windowsill and in the room, even as the startled black shot erect, whirling with apish agility.

McGrath had not drawn his gun. He dared not risk a shot that might bring other foes upon him. There was a butcher-knife in the belt that held up the ragged, muddy trousers. It seemed to leap like a living thing into the hand of the black as he turned. But in McGrath’s hand gleamed a curved Afghan dagger that had served him well in many a bygone battle.

Knowing the advantage of instant and relentless attack, he did not pause. His feet scarcely touched the floor inside before they were hurling him at the astounded black man.

An inarticulate cry burst from the thick red lips. The eyes rolled wildly, the butcher-knife went back and hissed forward with the swiftness of a striking cobra that would have disemboweled a man whose thews were less steely than those of Bristol McGrath.

But the black was involuntarily stumbling backward as he struck, and that instinctive action slowed his stroke just enough for McGrath to avoid it with a lightning-like twist of his torso. The long blade hissed under his armpit, slicing cloth and skin — and simultaneously the Afghan dagger ripped through the black, bull throat.

There was no cry, but only a choking gurgle as the man fell, spouting blood. McGrath had sprung free as a wolf springs after delivering the death-stroke. Without emotion he surveyed his handiwork. The black man was already dead, his head half-severed from his body. That slicing sidewise lunge that slew in silence, severing the throat to the spinal column, was a favorite stroke of the hairy hillmen that haunt the crags overhanging the Khyber Pass. Less than a dozen white men have ever mastered it. Bristol McGrath was one.

McGrath turned to Richard Ballville. Foam dripped on the seared, naked breast, and blood trickled from the lips. McGrath feared that Ballville had suffered the same mutilation that had rendered Ahmed speechless; but it was only suffering and shock that numbed Ballville’s tongue. McGrath cut his cords and eased him down on a worn old divan near by. Ballville’s lean, muscle-corded body quivered like taut steel strings under McGrath’s hands. He gagged, finding his voice.

“I knew you’d come!” he gasped, writhing at the contact of the divan against his seared flesh. “I’ve hated you for years, but I knew —”

McGrath’s voice was harsh as the rasp of steel. “What did you mean by your mention of Constance Brand? She is dead.”

A ghastly smile twisted the thin lips.

“No, she’s not dead! But she soon will be, if you don’t hurry. Quick! Brandy! There on the table — that beast didn’t drink it all.”

McGrath held the bottle to his lips; Ballville drank avidly. McGrath wondered at the man’s iron nerve. That he was in ghastly agony was obvious. He should be screaming in a delirium of pain. Yet he held to sanity and spoke lucidly, though his voice was a laboring croak.

“I haven’t much time,” he choked. “Don’t interrupt. Save your curses till later. We both loved Constance Brand. She loved you. Three years ago she disappeared. Her garments were found on the bank of a river. Her body was never recovered. You went to Africa to drown your sorrow; I retired to the estate of my ancestors and became a recluse.

“What you didn’t know — what the world didn’t know — was that Constance Brand came with me! No, she didn’t drown. That ruse was my idea. For three years Constance Brand has lived in this house!” He achieved a ghastly laugh. “Oh, don’t look so stunned, Bristol. She didn’t come of her own free will. She loved you too much. I kidnapped her, brought her here by force — Bristol!” His voice rose to a frantic shriek. “If you kill me you’ll never learn where she is!”

The frenzied hands that had locked on his corded throat relaxed and sanity returned to the red eyes of Bristol McGrath.

“Go on,” he whispered in a voice not even he recognized.

“I couldn’t help it,” gasped the dying man. “She was the only woman I ever loved — oh, don’t sneer, Bristol. The others didn’t count. I brought her here where I was king. She couldn’t escape, couldn’t get word to the outside world. No one lives in this section except nigger descendants of the slaves owned by my family. My word is —
was
— their only law.

“I swear I didn’t harm her. I only kept her prisoner, trying to force her to marry me. I didn’t want her any other way. I was mad, but I couldn’t help it. I come of a race of autocrats who took what they wanted, recognized no law but their own desires. You know that. You understand it. You come of the same breed yourself.

“Constance hates me, if that’s any consolation to you, damn you. She’s strong, too. I thought I could break her spirit. But I couldn’t, not without the whip, and I couldn’t bear to use that.” He grinned hideously at the wild growl that rose unbidden to McGrath’s lips. The big man’s eyes were coals of fire; his hard hands knotted into iron mallets.