| The Night of the Wolf |
| Tigers of the Sea |
| Swords of the Northern Sea |
| The Temple of Abomination |
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[apart from reformatting, and a few comments styled like this, the entire article is taken from a website; I absolutely detest the popup hell that is Angelfire and lycos.com, but this guy has put a lot of effort in his site, so look around for more on Robert E. Howard’s various stories there.]
Living about 125 years after Bran Mak Morn and Cormac of Connaught, we find Cormac Mac Art and Wulfhere the Skull-splitter. Despite the inordinate amount of pastiches that Cormac’s saga has spawned, this really is a very minor series.
There are two extant complete stories, of only medium length, “The Night of the Wolf” and “Swords of the Northern Sea”; one lengthy fragment that has some promise to it, “Tigers of the Sea”; and, a fragment and outline that show that, as with the saga of Agnes de la Fere, Howard was seeking to convert an adventure series to a fantasy series in hopes of marketing it. This last item is, of course, “The Temple of Abomination”.
As far as I can tell, the accompanying map is what northwestern Europe looked like during the time of Cormac and Wulfhere. According to Howard, the stories take place after Alaric and his Goths (Visigoths) sacked Rome; well, that was in 410 a.d. (according to my historical atlas), but the eastern one-third of the lands pictured had been conquered by Attila the Hun, and were part of his empire by 450 a.d. So I’m guessing that Howard’s four Cormac Mac Art stories take place in-between 420 and 435 a.d. I think that if Wulfhere’s homeland, Denmark, had been under Attila’s control during the time of these stories, there would have been some mention of it, especially by Wulfhere.
There were so many barbarian migrations going on at this time that it’s really hard to produce a “snapshot” of what Europe looked like at any one time. The Vandals, Goths, Burgundians and others were all on the move.
Note: although Howard had Gaelic settlements in Pictland (Caledonia, or the future Scotland) as early as “Kings of the Night” (about 290 a.d.), the Gaelic migration there began in earnest about 350 a.d., but the Picts were not completely absorbed (or slaughtered) until the 900s. So it’s safe to assume that in Cormac’s time, the western one-third of Pictland was under Gaelic control. The eastern two-thirds, however, would have remained in Pictish hands.
There is a striking problem with chronology: that is the existence of Nordic raiders as early as “Kings of the Night”, as well as the whole Cormac/Wulfhere saga. The great Viking raids of history happened 800-1000 a.d. Jutes, Angles and Saxons had migrated, by sea, to England from the area now known as Denmark and northern Germany, but I doubt that the Jutes of that time, or any of the other races he mentions, were the Vikings that Howard made them out to be.
[The gracious Morgan Holmes has pointed out to me that, at the very least, there were Saxon and Jute pirates in the North Sea at this time. So I guess at least there were some sort of pre-Viking raiders.]
An odd thought occurred to me in regards to Howard as a historical writer. We all know that Howard was a history buff, right? Plus we know he did do research for his stories (well, for some of them anyway). And yet the Howard fan is bothered by the historical inaccuracies, and by what others, non-fans, say about his historical writing when we’re trying to turn them on to the drama and excitement of REH’s invigorating prose. Well, as I was quandaring over this point, an interesting idea occurred to me, and caused me to turn to Howard scholar Rusty Burke and his “Afterword” to The Ballad of King Geraint. In that essay Rusty notes that the poem was influenced both by G.K. Chesterton’s “The Ballad of the White Horse” and by the attitude toward historical writing that Chesterton took in the writing of that poem: In short, if you telescope history, bring in elements from both before and after the events you are describing, you can make your yarn more exciting and give it a timeless mythic sort of quality. I maintain that not only did Howard do this with “The Ballad of King Geraint”, but that he applied that approach to the bulk of his historical writing (both historical fantasy and historical adventure) as a new way to interpret events. It’s a shame this approach never caught on.
The unsatisfying alternative to this is to say that Howard’s stories seem to happen in an alternate dimension where not only magic works, but that the Viking expansion began sooner.
In Richard L. Tierney’s introduction to Tigers of the Sea, he offers the fanciful proposition that we look at Howard’s Gaelic heroes as previous incarnations of Robert E. Howard, and discusses them in the order of when they would have lived. That provides us with the following list (keeping in mind that the Gaels were descended from Howard’s Cimmerians, and the Cimmerians from the Atlantians):
More importantly, Tierney discusses two chronological problems that exist in Howard’s text.
Tierney also states that “The Temple of Abomination” was written first. Unless there is concrete evidence to support that hypothesis, I would suggest that it was the last written tale, that Howard was trying to convert an adventure series into a fantasy series in order to make a sale with it.
There is an interesting observation in David A. Drake’s introduction to Cormac Mac Art. He says that, besides Howard’s bleak viewpoint, there is a kind of truth to Howard’s work. That is true, and it comes from him putting himself so deeply into his work that reading a Robert E. Howard story becomes a very personal experience.
These stories take place when the Vikings were only raiders, and not the conquerors and colonizers of later times.
A word or two about Cormac’s biography: there is enough evidence bandied about throughout this series to put together a picture of Cormac’s life. At quite a young age Cormac put to sea. He spent time in the service of the king of Dalriadia, during which time he had occasion to battle the Picts. Shortly thereafter he lead a band of Gaelic sea-faring raiders, and harried Dalriadia, Briton, and many more exotic climes, perhaps adventuring quite extensively. A civil war in his homeland cost him his crew and outlawed him. It was some time after this, now a seasoned fighter, that he threw in with Wulfhere.
This entire story takes place in the Shetland Islands (which are to the extreme northeast of modern day Scotland), specifically on the island known as Golara. The piece begins as the Pictish chieftain, Brulla (chief of all the Shetland Island Picts), orders some Norwegian Vikings to leave the island and return to their homeland. It seems these Vikings had come to the island pretending to be friends, and after their steading was built they showed themselves as being the utter rogues they actually were. They refuse the chief’s command, of course, beat him up and throw him outside into the dust. Among them is Cormac Mac Art, pretending to be the Irish chieftain Partha Mac Othna (note that Bran Mak Morn used the same pseudonym). The Vikings recognize him and throw him in a jail-house. Brulla did not die of his beating and masses all the Picts of the Shetlands to wipe out the Vikings. This they do. Cormac escapes, rendezvous with Wulfhere, rescues a Danish king that the Norwegian Vikings had as a prisoner (though they didn’t realize that he was a king, as he went by the name of Hrut). They steal a new ship (The Raven), as theirs was burnt by the Picts, and make good their escape, aiming to place this king back on the Danish throne—which action would remove Wulfhere and his men from outlawry and open Danish ports to them.
Cormac Mac Art an Cliuin (the wolf) is described: He has dark, scarred, inscrutable features and narrow, cold, grey, icy eyes, and appears sinister. He is tall and powerfully made. He is black-haired and clean-shaven, and his mail is of the chain-mesh type forged by Irish armor-makers instead of the scale-mail of the Norse. His helmet is crested with flowing horse-hair. He had achieved fame as an Irish pirate (he was a chief of Irish raiders) before joining Wulfhere. He had also fought the Caledonian Picts.
The Gaelic pirate’s faculties are as much keener than the average man’s as a wolf’s are keener than a hog’s; his eyes are like a cat’s in the dark. He has the wolfish instincts of the Gael, a wild beast vitality, and is inured to wounds, and gives them hardly a thought. He is an iron man in an iron age.
An interesting aspect to Cormac’s personality is his morality, and the value he puts on human life. This aspect of his personality gets stronger in each story. In this tale there is a reference to “a corpse he had been loathe to make”. And although the Norwegian Vikings are his enemies throughout the story, he admits to Hrut (now revealed as King Thorfinn) that he would go to the aid of these Vikings against the attacking Picts if there was a way to do it without getting killed in the process. This emphasis on the value of human life grows in later stories. (There may be an influence here from Talbot Mundy’s Tros of Samothrace, but I can’t tell for sure.)
Wulfhere Hausakliufr, the Skull-splitter, leads “red bearded giants, whose chief [Wulfhere himself], look[s] like a very god of war.” Wulfhere never talks in normal speech. Howard is always saying that he bellowed this or roared that, he even has a great laugh. He must have had a big booming voice! At the beginning of this story, Wulfhere and his crew are “outlawed even among [his] own people.”
The Danes are the best bowmen among the Viking races.
The Pictish chief, Brulla, “did not look particularly impressive.” He is a short, heavily muscled man, smooth-faced and very dark. His only garments or ornaments are rude sandals on his feet, a deerskin loincloth, and a broad leather girdle from which swings a short curiously-barbed sword (the Picts of Bran Mak Morn’s time carried barbed swords too). He wears no armor and his square-cut black mane is confined only by a thin silver band about his temples. His cold black eyes glitter. He has a usually immobile face.
Of the Picts, it is said that they are as hard as cats to kill. A beating such as Brulla had received would have left the average man a crippled wreck, but the Pict would probably be fully recovered in a few hours, if no bones had been broken. These Picts move like ghosts, and are described as elves, and evil demons of the forest. These are the distorted folk that Bran ruled over, for they are short and mightily built, standing and walking in a half stoop. They have stocky figures, wear no mail, and are indifferently armed, but most carry the short barbed sword. As they go past Cormac’s cell, they march one behind the other, and pass in almost utter silence. These stunted Picts are monstrous travesties of men. They are an uncommonly quiet folk: “The skulking figures passed as they had come, soundless, leaving no trace behind, like ghosts of the night.” When they attack there is a hellish wolf-howling.
The descriptions of Cormac and Wulfhere are reinforced and expanded in latter stories.
[“Tigers of the Sea” needs a bit of a history/geography lesson to fully appreciate. I don’t mean that in any kind of deprecatory tone, as I’m sure most of you reading this know your history better than I do. Please refer back to the map as you read this paragraph. [Note: he never gave the map on his website.] The Gaels inhabit Ireland and have began to settle in western Caledonia (the future Scotland). Howard draws a distinction between the Gaels living in Ireland and the Gaels living in Dalriadia. In fact, he says that the Irish had kicked the Scottish out of Ireland. I don’t know it that’s true, or if this distinction was so strongly made back then. The rest of Caledonia is inhabited by the Picts, destined to be annihilated or absorbed by the Scots and Danes (or, if you prefer, driven literally underground, as Howard says). The Picts also inhabit most of the islands north and northwest of Caledonia. Modern day Wales, plus Lands End, Devon and Cornwall, are inhabited by the Britons, which are a later Celtic migration than the Gaels. What we think of as modern day England (minus Lands End, Devon and Cornwall) is inhabited by the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons; who have migrated by sea from where modern day Denmark and northern Germany are.]
For the sake of this story Howard has Briton divided into three main kingdoms, there may be lesser kingdoms, but he doesn’t mention these, though he does say that there are areas not under the control of these three kings. The wild King Garth rules in northern Briton, and the famous Uther Pendragon rules southern Briton. This story begins in Briton (Wales) and centers on King Gerinth, ruler of central Briton; Donal, the minstral; Princess Helen, the king’s sister; and her fiancee, Marcus, a very Romanized Briton who has quite a bit of Roman blood in him. There has been constant westward pressure on the Britons from the expanding Saxons and Angles. In fact, the king believes Helen has been captured by the Angles, even though the Angles, Jutes and Saxons are warring among themselves.
However, it was the Picts who kidnapped Helen; and the still-living Gonar sends her to the Isle of Altars, in the Shetlands (islands to the extreme northeast of Caledonia), to be sacrificed to Golka of the Moon. “The Picts worship strange and abhorrent gods,” says Cormac.
They find out that Helen has been kidnapped from the Picts by some Jutish Vikings, and taken to the Hebrides (islands northwest of Caledonia). While doing a bit of spying, again under the name of Partha Mac Othna, Cormac discovers that the princess is using the name “Atalanta” so that her captors don’t realize who she is. This fragment ends with our heroes planning to rescue her.
Cormac and Wulfhere’s ship is still The Raven, and Cormac again uses the pseudonym of Partha Mac Othna; and it is revealed that Cormac had fought on the side of the Dalriadians some 15 years previous, and that his wandering had been extensive enough for him to have seen cities of considerable size.
As if we didn’t have all the proof from “The Temple of Abomination” that we needed to show that Cormac Mac Art was pagan, Howard has him swear “what in the name of the gods—!”
The Danes proficiency with the bow is again stressed, as Howard states the Dalriadians (Scots) had no skill in archery.
In this story it is stated that Rome had fallen 80 years previous. Cormac describes politics in Briton by say, “. . . Rome has fallen and the lesser demons are battling among themselves for mastery!”
An important snippet about their adventurings is revealed by the phrase, “. . . the arms of many nations were part of The Raven’s cargo.”
We find out a bit more information about the Picts of Cormac’s time: King Brogar rules all of Pictdom. Grothga is a place in Pictland, most likely a village. The existence of the Isle of the Altars is re-confirmed, as is the fact that one of the their gods is Golka of the moon. The setting on the Isle of Altars is described: “. . . a grim black altar, surrounded by columns of stone.”
Descriptions of Cormac, Wulfhere and their band:
“Tigers of the sea! Men with the hearts of wolves and thews of fire and steel! Feeders of ravens whose only joy lies in slaying and dying! Giants to whom the death-song of the sword is sweeter than the love-song of a girl!”
“Wulfhere the Skull-splitter, the chieftain, is a red-bearded giant like all his race. He is crafty in his way, but leads his Vikings mainly because of his fury in battle. He handles his heavy, long-shafted axe as lightly as if it were a toy, and with it he shatters the swords, shields, helmets and skulls of all who oppose him. When Wulfhere crashes through the ranks, stained with blood, his crimson beard bristling and his terrible eyes blazing and his great axe clotted with blood and brains, few there are who dare face him.
“But it is on his righthand man that Wulfhere depends for advise and council. That one is crafty as a serpent and is known to us Britons of old—for he is no Viking at all by birth, but a Gael of Erin, by name Cormac Mac Art, called an Cliuin, or the Wolf. Of old he led a band of Irish reivers and harried the coasts of the British Isles and Gaul and Spain—aye, and he preyed also on the Vikings themselves. But civil war broke up his band and he joined the forces of Wulfhere—they are Danes and dwell in a land south of the people who are called Norsemen.
“Cormac Mac Art has all the guile and reckless valor of his race. He is tall and rangy, a tiger where Wulfhere is a wild bull. His weapon is the sword, and his skill is incredible. The Vikings rely little on the art of fencing; their manner of fighting is to deliver mighty blows with the full sweep of their arms. Well, the Gael can deal a full arm blow with the best of them, but he favors the point. In a world where the old-time skill of the Roman swordsman is almost forgotten, Cormac Mac Art is well-nigh invincible. He is cool and deadly as the wolf for which he is named, yet at times, in the fury of battle, a madness comes upon him that transcends the frenzy of the Berserk. At such times he is more terrible than Wulfhere, and men who would face the Dane flee before the blood-lust of the Gael.”
“Wulfhere is no sea-king; he has but one ship—but so swiftly he moves and so fierce is his crew that the Angles, Jutes and Saxons fear him more than any of their other foes. He revels in battle. He will do as you wish him, if the reward is great enough.”
“He [Wulfhere] was a giant; his breast muscles bulged like twin shields under his scale mail corselet. The horned helmit on his head added to his great height, and with his huge hand knotted about the long shaft of a great axe he made a picture of rampant barbarism not easily forgotten. But for all his evident savagery. . . .”
This man [Cormac Mac Art] was tall and rangy. He was big and powerful, and though he lacked the massive bulk of the Dane, he more than made up for it by the tigerish lithness that was apparent in his every move. He was dark, with a smooth-shaven face and square-cut black hair. He wore none of the golden armlets or ornaments of which the Vikings were so fond. His mail was of chain mail and his helmet [. . .] was crested with flowing horse-hair.
[Cormac’s] cold, narrow, grey eyes. . . .
. . . sinister, scarred features of the Gael.
These wild rovers of the sea acknowledged the rule of no king.
. . . possessing the true Gaelic antipathy for his Cymric kin. . . .
. . . all the isles of the western sea had been his stamping ground since the day he had been able to lift his first sword.
There are a couple of interesting statements in regards to the value that Cormac puts on human life (which is an interesting dichotomy for a pirate and raider to have):
. . . concerns every member of our crew. It is my duty to them to require every proof.
“Drive a brass nail into the main mast,” snarled the Gael. “Gerenth owes us ten pounds already.”
The bitterness of his eyes belied the harsh callousness of his words.
There is a Pict on-stage in this story, and his description coincides with what we already know about them:
. . . short and strongly made. He was dark . . . a face as immobile as an idol’s, two black eyes glittered reptile-like. His square cut black hair was caught back and confined by a narrow silver band about his temples, and he wore only a loin cloth and a broad leather girdle from which hung a short, barbed sword.
This story’s outline would read very similarly to that of “The Night of the Wolf“—there are only a few differences.
This story begins in the skalli of Rognor the Red, and takes place on an island that will later be known to the Scots as Ladbhan, but for now is called “Golmera” by the Picts and “Valgard” by the Norse. Although Howard doesn’t reveal what island chain Ladbhan is part of, he does say that a stable on that island was built to withstand a Baltic winter.
Cormac again sits at the board of the sea-king as a spy, but for the first time in these stories he does not use the pseudonym of Partha Mac Othna. Instead he uses his own name.
The sea-king again has a kidnapped individual as a prisoner, this time this prisoner is a woman—a Briton known as Tarala, which may or may not be a British name.
As an added twist this sea-king’s steading is the home to one Anzace, a twisted, deformed Greek, who, while he may have been intended as a sort of court jester, is actually so filled with bile and hate, that he is quite likely one of the most disagreeable characters in the whole series. Anzace may be a substitute for this being the first story with no Picts in it.
One of Rognor’s chief leutenents is Hakon, a young Viking who is in love with Tarala, and is planning to run away with her. Anzace finds Hakon out and turns him in. Rognor has Hakon thrown in a cell, where he will watch Rognor marry his sweetheart before being murdered by Rognor himself.
While Hakon is being dragged off to prison, he lets Cormac know that he recognizes him as an Cliuin. Cormac later comes to Hakon’s cell and agrees to free him in return for a dragon ship, as Wulfhere’s had been dashed against a reef and sunk.
Hakon is freed. They free Tarala, and she and Hakon go to rendezvous with some Jutish Vikings who are loyal to him, while Cormac (as in “The Night of the Wolf”) rendezvous with Wulfhere. All return to the steading while Rognor is off searching for Hakon.
It is at this point that Tarala is revealed as a sword woman. She takes on armor and weapon to fight at Hakon’s side. Although Cormac makes some derogatory remarks about who will rule in their household, the number of sword women we find in Howard’s fiction is ever increasing. It is almost as through they were an archetype for him. Nevertheless, by adding this detail to the story, it becomes even more interesting.
Hakon takes refuge in the stable, which, on his return, Rognor dare not burn because of the valuable horses within. While Rognor is assaulting the stable from without, he and his Norsemen are attacked by Cormac, Wulfhere and the other Danes. Wulfhere slays Rognor in an impressively brutal, but brief, battle.
The surviving Norse flee to the skalli, but are convinced to swear fealty to the well-respected Hakon, who swears to marry Tarala. He keeps his bargain with Cormac, and gives the Danes a ship of their choosing.
The story ends with Cormac and Wulfhere returning to the Viking path.
It is finally revealed here, though it has been seriously hinted at before, that Cormac and Wulfhere, when bare-headed, are indeed the same height (Wulfhere is “as tall as Cormac”—p. 142); but, between the Dane’s horned Viking helmet, and Cormac’s headgear with its impressive horse-hair crest, it’s anybody’s guess who would look taller in battle. It is said that Cormac’s horsehair crest makes him look inhumanely tall.
Cormac’s morality is even more developed in this story. When he comes upon the chained Hakon in Rognor’s prison hut, Hakon says, “It is not in you to slay a defenseless man.” So, perhaps Cormac’s high standards have become legendary by this time. “Never kill . . . save when it is necessary. Wait!” says Cormac on p. 145; three pages later he says “Never kill except when necessary.”
Cormac’s other attributes are again described: he has a “wild beast instinct, that comes to men who live by their wits.” (p. 139)
It is again revealed that the Danes are the best archers among the Vikings—how convenient!
It is also revealed in this story that Wulfhere recruits his crews from the Isle of Swords, wherever the hell that is!
“What do these Christians?” asked Wulfhere curiously.
“They eat babies during their ceremonies, it is said.”
“But ’tis also said the Druids burn men in cages of green wood.”
“A lie spread by Caesar and believed by fools!” rasped Cormac impatiently. “I laud not the Druids especially, but wisdom of the elements and ages is not denied to them. These Christians teach meekness and the bowing of the neck to the blow.”
“What say you?” The great Viking was sincerely amazed. “Is it truly their creed to take blows like slaves?”
“Aye—to return good for evil and to forgive their opressors.”
The giant meditated on this statement for a moment. “That is not a creed, but cowardice,” he decided finally. “These Christians be all madmen. Cormac, if you recognize one of that breed, point him out and I will try his faith.” He lifted his axe meaningfully. “For look you,” he said, “that is an insidious and dangerous teaching which may spread like rust on the wheat and undermine the manhood of men if it be not stamped out like a young serpent under heel.”
“Let me but see one of these madmen” said Cormac grimly, “and I will begin the stamping.”
One of the most interesting passages in the whole series might be located in an incomplete fragment buried at the back of this paperback collection.
In Cromlech #1, Bob Price goes to great lengths in an attempt to nail down Howard’s attitude towards religion (specifically Christianity), but he ignores this passage, which doesn’t only show Howard’s outlook, but explains the reason for that outlook.
It is not much of a stretch of the imagination to see that Christianity, as explained to Wulfhere by Cormac (and accurately Gospel-based, as far as I can tell), is a negation of the virtues of the Howardian hero.
The rugged freedom and independence of the Howardian hero, the ability to lash out finally and fataly against any foe, the heroic courage and the battle against an encroaching doom spawned in a hostile universe, is negated by Christianity, as explained to Wulfhere by Cormac Mac Art. “The bowing of the neck to the blow” which horrifies Wulfhere so much, must have sounded to him more like a religion of slaves, than a religion of free and independent human beings.
The overly-romanticized King Arthur, also gets the Howardian treatment in this story:
“. . . most of the chiefs are gathering about Arthur Pendragon for a great concerted drive. Pendragon—ha! He’s no more Uther Pendragon’s son than you [Wulfhere] are. Uther was a black-bearded madman—more Roman than Briton and more Gaul than Roman. Arthur is as fair as Eric there. And he’s pure Celt—a waif from one of the wild western tribes that never bowed to Rome. It was Lancelot who put it into his head to make himself king—else he had still been no more than a wild chief raiding the borders.”
“Has he become smooth and polished like the Romans were?”
“Arthur? Ha! One of your Danes might seem a gentlewoman beside him. He’s a shock-headed savage with a love for battle.” Cormac grinned ferociously and touched his scars. “By the blood of the gods, he has a hungry sword! It’s little gain we reivers from Erin have gotten on his coasts!”
“Would I could cross steel with him,” grunted Wulfhere, thumbing the flaring edge of his great axe. “What of Lancelot?”
“A renegade Gallo-Roman who has made an art of throat-cutting. He varies reading Petronius with plotting and intriguing. Gawaine is a pure-blooded Briton like Arthur, but he has Romanish leanings. You’d laugh to see him aping Lancelot—but he fights like a blood-hungry devil. Without those two, Arthur would have been no more than a bandit chief. He can neither read nor write.”
“What of that?” rumbled the Dane. “Neither can I. . . .”
Notice the implication here: Cormac has met Arthur, when he was adventuring with his Gaelic reavers, and that at least a few of his many scars are the result of Arthur’s sword-play. Ah! If only Howard had written a rematch.
“The Temple of Abomination” begins with Cormac Mac Art, Wulfhere Hausakliufr, and their band of Vikings heading east through a forested area. Their goal is to move against Cerdic the Saxon, who might have expected our heroes to attack by sea from the south or east, but would certainly not expect them to anchor their dragonship on the western shore and march overland to reach him. The reason for their enmity is not given.
On the way to this battle, the Vikings discover a temple in a wooded area. Cormac thinks that perhaps it is a Druidic temple, and rather embarassingly enters the temple to get the Druid’s blessing.
Instead of a Druid, Cormac encounters a satyr (yes!, really) inside the temple and slays it. Rather shocked, he staggers outside where Wulfhere and the Vikings are waiting, Wulfhere doubts what Cormac has seen, and so they all enter to find the peculiar corpse. All they find is bloodstains on the floor.
They go further down this corridor to a central chamber, whose dome lets in enough light to see. There is no altar in this chamber. Both the corridor that they have traveled, and the chamber itself are lined with statues. Here in the better light of the chamber, they can see that, while the statues are of humans, they somehow have a “hint of abnormality beyond human deformity.” (After having met Asace in the previous story, that’s saying a lot.) This central chamber has five arches, none of which have doors, Cormac and the others had entered through one of those arches.
After Cormac almost falls through a trap in the middle of the floor, they hear a human cry down one of the other corridors. This they follow carefully; and in a light patch in the corridor ahead, they find an elderly man chained to the wall. He is near death.
Wulfhere cuts the man down and they realize that he is a Christian priest. The priest relates that the inhabitants of this temple were brought here by the Romans, and that the temple contains horrible creatures.
A group of these creatures (“a hideous horde burst from the dark opening into the comparitive light. In a flood of black madness and red horror their assailants swept upon them. Most of them were goat-like creatures, that ran upright and had human hands and faces frightfully partaking of both goat and human hands and faces frightfully partaking of both goat and human. But among their ranks were shapes even more fearful. And behind them all, luminous with an evil light in the darkness of the winding corridor from which the horder emerged, Cormac saw an unholy countenance, human, yet more and less than human.”—p. 203) than attacks the band. These creatures had been previously referred to by the priest in his delirium:
“. . . Ah, God—they hem me close! Avaunt, foul demons of the Outer Dark—creeping, creeping—crawling shapes of red chaos and howling madness—slithering, lurking blasphemies that hid like reptiles in the ships of Rome—ghastly beings spawned in the ooze of the Orient, translplanted to cleaner lands, rooting themselves deep in good British soil—oaks older than the Druids, that feed on monstrous things beneath the bloating moon—”
After these creatures are driven off, the Vikings stay to protect the priest, while Cormac pursues the beasts’ leader. Cormac slays this strange individual at the brink of the pit that he almost fell into; this leader topples into the pit as he dies.
This is where the longer version of the tale ends. The shorter version has Cormac staying outside the temple while the Vikings slaughter the creatures within, and ends with the curtain line: “On to Wessex . . . we’ll clean our steel in good Saxon blood.”
The priest only appears in the longer version of the tale, presumably to serve an expository purpose. For, in the shorter version, the priest’s explanations were part of the narration.
Howard does use the priest to temper the remarks he had earlier thrown at Chritianity: “Before it [supernatural evil], the differences of man fade so that you seem to me like a brother of the blood and of the milk . . . all men in the rightful form of man are brothers. Such is the word of the Lord—which I had not fully comprehended until I came to this place of abominations!”
Howard has Druidism get praised by the priest as a sect where “men . . . deify the cleaner forms of Nature.”
This is an unsual series, and it leaves an unusual impression. At first glance, this is just a group of stories about a bunch of guys who spend their whole lives going a-Viking, even if they do spend most of their time on-stage rescuing kidnap victims.
On closer examination we find that Cormac Mac Art has a very interesting biography: He is a Gaelic warrior, of somewhat noble birth I would guess, who took to the sea quite early in life. He served under the king of Dalriadia (the future Scotland), and at this time warred against the Picts. Later, when Cormac was captain of some Gaelic reavers, he sailed quite extensively, perhaps to the eastern ends of the Mediterranian. It was certainly during this time that he met and fought Arthur. Still later, a civil war in Erin led to his outlawry, and that led to him teaming up with Wulfhere the Skull-splitter and his Danish Vikings. I believe that they also traveled extensively. They may have been together for as long as 15 years. What Cormac did after that, who knows?
I rather fancy that when news reached Wulfhere that his homeland, Danemark, had been conquered by Attila the Hun, that Wulfhere and his Vikings left to fight the Huns. I think that perhaps Cormac went with them, at first. Somehow they got separated, and Cormac may have had some adventures on mainland Europe. He did return to Eirn though, and it’s easy to imagine that when he died his body was returned to good Erin soil in keeping with Druidic practices. Oh well, this is just all idle speculation.
This series is more intersting than it seems on the surface though. And Cormac is certainly not cut from the same cloth as Howard’s other heroes. Cormac’s morality is almost cloying at times. Few men of action have such a respect for life as Cormac has; and he can be a bit of a know-it-all at times.
Like the Conan series, the Cormac Mac Art stories carry this caveat, “Do not let the pastiches influence your appreciation of the character.”
Bibliography:
Cormac Mac Art, by Robert E. Howard, Baen, 1995
Historical Atlas Of The World, prepared by Odder Bjorklund, Haakon Holmboe and Anders Rohr, New York, Barnes & Noble Books, 1970
Tigers of the Sea, by Robert E. Howard, Donald M. Grant, 1974
. . . and thanks to Morgan for answering my questions.