There was substance to the Gilgamesh stories, of course, especially the parts about him and Enkidu; but the poet had salted the story with a lot of pretentious arty nonsense too, as poets always will, and in any case you got very tired of having everybody boil your long and complex life down into the same twelve chapters and the same little turns of phrase. It got so that Gilgamesh found himself quoting the main Gilgamesh poem too, the one about his quest for eternal life—well, that one wasn’t too far from the essence of the truth, though they had mucked up a lot of the details with precious little “imaginative” touches—by way of making introduction for himself: “I am the man to whom all things were made known, the secret things, the truths of life and death.” Straight out of the poet’s mouth, those lines. Tiresome. Tiresome. Angrily he jabbed his dagger beneath the dead monster’s hide, and set about his task of flaying, while the two little men behind him went on muttering and mumbling to one another in astonishment at having run into Gilgamesh of Uruk in this bleak and lonely corner of Hell.
There were strange emotions stirring in Robert Howard’s soul, and he did not care for them at all. He could forgive himself for believing for that one giddy moment that this Gilgamesh was his Conan. That was nothing more than the artistic temperament at work, sweeping him up in a fit of rash feverish enthusiasm. To come suddenly upon a great muscular giant of a man in a loincloth who was hacking away at some fiendish monster with a little bronze dagger, and to think that he must surely be the mighty Cimmerian—well, that was a pardonable enough thing. Here in Hell you learned very quickly that you might run into anybody at all. You could find yourself playing at dice with Lord Byron or sharing a mug of mulled wine with Menelaus or arguing with Plato about the ideas of Nietzsche, who was standing right there making faces, and after a time you came to take most such things for granted, more or less.
So why not think that this fellow was Conan? No matter that Conan’s eyes had been of a different color. That was a trifle. He looked like Conan in all the important ways. He was of Conan’s size and strength. And he was kingly in more than physique. He seemed to have Conan’s cool intelligence and complexity of soul, Conan’s regal courage and Conan’s indomitable spirit.
The trouble was that Conan, the wondrous Cimmerian warrior from 19,000 B.C., had never existed except in Howard’s own imagination. And there were no fictional characters in Hell. You might meet Richard Wagner, but you weren’t likely to encounter Siegfried. William the Conqueror, yes; William Tell, no.
That was all right, Howard told himself. His little fantasy of meeting Conan here in Hell was nothing but a bit of mawkish narcissism: he was better off without it. Coming across the authentic Gilgamesh—ah, how much more interesting that was! A genuine Sumerian king—an actual titan out of history’s dawn, not some trumped-up figure fashioned from cardboard and hard-breathing wish-fulfilling dreams; a flesh-and-blood mortal who had lived a lusty life and had fought great battles and had walked eye to eye with the ancient gods and had struggled against the inevitability of death, and who in dying had taken on the immortality of mythic archetype—ah, now there was someone worth getting to know! Whereas Howard had to admit that he would have no more to learn from a conversation with Conan than he could discover by interrogating his own image in the mirror. Or else a meeting with the “real” Conan, if it was in any way possible, would surely cast him into terrible confusions and contradictions of soul from which there would be no recovering. No, Howard thought, better that this man be Gilgamesh than Conan, by all means. He was reconciled to that.
But this other business—this sudden bewildering urge to throw himself at the giant’s feet, to be swept up in his arms, to be crushed in a fierce embrace—
What was that? Where had that come from? By the blazing Heart of Ahriman, what could it mean?
Howard remembered a time in his former life when he had gone down to the Cisco Dam and watched the construction men strip and dive in: well-built men, confident, graceful, at ease in their bodies. For a short while he had looked at them and had reveled in their physical perfection. They could have been naked Greek statues come alive, a band of lusty Apollos and Zeuses. And then as he listened to them shouting and laughing and crying out in their foul-mouthed way he began to grow angry, suddenly seeing them as mere thoughtless animals who were the natural enemies of dreamers like himself. He hated them as the weak always must hate the strong, those splendid swine who could trample the dreamers and their dreams as they wished. But then he had reminded himself that he was no weakling himself, that he who once had been spindly and frail had by hard effort made himself big and strong and burly. Not beautiful of body as these men were—too fleshy for that, too husky—but nevertheless, he had told himself, there was no man there whose ribs he could not crush if it came to a struggle. And he had gone away from that place full of rage and thoughts of bloody violence.
What had that been all about? That barely suppressed fury—was it some sort of dark hidden lust, some craving for the most bestial sort of sinfulness? Was the anger that had arisen in him masking an anger he should have directed at himself, for looking upon those naked men and taking pleasure in it?
No. No. No. No. He wasn’t any kind of degenerate. He was certain of that.
The desire of men for men was a mark of decadence, of the decline of civilization. He was a man of the frontier, not some feeble limp-wristed sodomite who reveled in filth and wanton evil. If he had never in his short life known a woman’s love, it was for lack of opportunity, not out of a preference for that other shameful kind. Living out his days in that small and remote prairie town, devoting himself to his mother and to his writing, he had chosen not to avail himself of prostitutes or shallow women, but he was sure that if he had lived a few years longer and the woman who was his true mate had ever made herself known to him, he would certainly have reached toward her in passion and high abandon.
And yet—and yet—that moment when he first spied the giant Gilgamesh, and thought he was Conan—
That surge of electricity through his entire body, and most intensely through his loins—what else could it have been but desire, instant and intense and overwhelming? For a man? Unthinkable! Even this glorious hero—even this magnificent kingly creature—
No. No. No. No.
I am in Hell, and this is my torment, Howard told himself.
He paced furiously up and down alongside the Land Rover. Desperately he fought off the black anguish that threatened to settle over him now, as it had done so many times in his former life and in this life after life. These sudden corrupt and depraved feelings, Howard thought: they are nothing but diabolical perversions of my natural spirit, intended to cast me into despair and self-loathing! By Crom, I will resist! By the breasts of Ishtar, I will not yield to this foulness!
All the same he found his eyes straying to the edge of the nearby thicket, where Gilgamesh still knelt over the animal he had killed.
What extraordinary muscles rippling in that broad back, in those iron-hard thighs! What careless abandon in the way he was peeling back the creature’s shaggy hide, though he had to wallow in dark gore to do it! That cascade of lustrous black hair lightly bound by a jeweled circlet, that dense black beard curling in tight ringlets.
Howard’s throat went dry. Something at the base of his belly was tightening into a terrible knot.
Lovecraft said, “You want a chance to talk with him, don’t you?”
Howard swung around. He felt his cheeks go scarlet. He was utterly certain that his guilt must be emblazoned incontrovertibly on his face.
“What the hell do you mean?” he growled. His hands knotted of their own accord into fists. There seemed to be a band of fire across his forehead. “What would I want to talk with him about, anyway?”
Lovecraft looked startled by the ferocity of Howard’s tone and posture. He took a step backward and threw up his hand almost as though to protect himself. “What a strange thing to say! You, of all people, with your love of antique tim
es, your deep and abiding passion for the lost mysteries of those steamy Oriental empires that perished so long ago! Why, man, is there nothing you want to know about the kingdoms of Sumer? Uruk, Nippur, Ur of the Chaldees? The secret rites of the goddess Inanna in the dark passageways beneath the ziggurat? The incantations that opened the gates of the Underworld, the libations that loosed and bound the demons of the worlds beyond the stars? Who knows what he could tell us? There stands a man six thousand years old, a hero from the dawn of time, Bob!”
Howard snorted. “I don’t reckon that oversized son of a bitch would want to tell us a damned thing. All that interests him is getting the hide off that bloody critter of his.”
“He’s nearly done with that. Why not wait, Bob? And invite him to sit with us a little while. And draw him out, lure him into telling us tales of life beside the Euphrates!” Now Lovecraft’s dark eyes were gleaming as though he too felt some strange lust, and his forehead was surprisingly bright with uncharacteristic perspiration; but Howard knew that in Lovecraft’s case what had taken possession of him was only the lust for knowledge, the hunger for the arcane lore of high antiquity that Lovecraft imagined would spill from the lips of this Mesopotamian hero. That same lust ached in him as well. To speak with this man who had lived before Babylon was, who had walked the streets of Ur when Abraham was yet unborn—
But there were other lusts besides that hunger for knowledge, sinister lusts that must be denied at any cost—
“No,” said Howard brusquely. “Let’s get the hell out of here right now, H.P. This damned foul bleak countryside is getting on my nerves.”
Lovecraft gave him a strange look. “But weren’t you just telling me how beautiful—”
“Damnation take whatever I was telling you! King Henry’s expecting us to negotiate an alliance for him. We aren’t going to get the job done out here in the boondocks.”
“The what?”
“Boondocks. Wild uncivilized country. Term that came into use after our time, H.P. The back woods, you know? You never did pay much heed to the vernacular, did you?” He tugged at Lovecraft’s sleeve. “Come on. That big bloody ape over there isn’t going to tell us a thing about his life and times, I guarantee. Probably doesn’t remember anything worth telling, anyway. And he bores me. Pardon me, H.P., but I find him an enormous pain in the butt, all right? I don’t have any further hankering for his company. Do you mind, H.P.? Can we move along, do you think?”
“I must confess that you mystify me sometimes, Bob. But of course if you—” Suddenly Lovecraft’s eyes widened in amazement. “Get down, Bob! Behind the car! Fast!”
“What—”
An arrow came singing through the air and passed just alongside Howard’s left ear. Then another, and another. One arrow ricocheted off the flank of the Land Rover with a sickening thunking sound. Another struck straight on and stuck quivering an inch deep in the metal.
Howard whirled. He saw horsemen, a dozen, perhaps a dozen and a half, bearing down on them out of the darkness to the east, loosing shafts as they came.
They were lean compact men of some Oriental stock in crimson leather jerkins, riding like fiends. Their mounts were little flat-headed fiery-eyed gray Hell-horses that moved as if their short, fiercely pistoning legs could carry them to the far boundaries of the nether world without the need of a moment’s rest.
Chanting, howling, the yellow-skinned warriors seemed to be in a frenzy of rage. Mongols? Turks? Whoever they were, they were pounding toward the Land Rover like the emissaries of Death himself. Some brandished long, wickedly curved blades, but most wielded curious-looking small bows from which they showered one arrow after another with phenomenal rapidity.
Crouching behind the Land Rover with Lovecraft beside him, Howard gaped at the attackers in a paralysis of astonishment. How often had he written of scenes like this? Waving plumes, bristling lances, a whistling cloud of cloth-yard shafts! Thundering hooves, wild war-cries, the thunk of barbarian arrowheads against Aquilonian shields! Horses rearing and throwing their riders…Knights in bloodied armor tumbling to the ground…Steel-clad forms littering the slopes of the battlefield…
But this was no swashbuckling tale of Hyborean derring-do that was unfolding now. Those were real horsemen—as real as anything was, in this place—rampaging across this chilly wind-swept plain in the outer reaches of Hell. Those were real arrows; and they would rip their way into his flesh with real impact and inflict real agony of the most frightful kind.
He looked across the way at Gilgamesh. The giant Sumerian was hunkered down behind the overturned bulk of the animal he had slain. His mighty bow was in his hand. As Howard watched in awe, Gilgamesh aimed and let fly. The shaft struck the nearest horseman, traveling through jerkin and rib-cage and all and emerging from the man’s back. But still the onrushing warrior managed to release one last arrow before he fell. It traveled on an erratic trajectory, humming quickly toward Gilgamesh on a wild wobbly arc and skewering him through the flesh of his left forearm.
Coolly the Sumerian glanced down at the arrow jutting from his arm. He scowled and shook his head, the way he might if he had been stung by a hornet. Then—as Conan might have done; how very much like Conan!—Gilgamesh inclined his head toward his shoulder and bit the arrow in half just below the fletching. Bright blood spouted from the wound as he pulled the two pieces of the arrow from his arm.
As though nothing very significant had happened, Gilgamesh lifted his bow and reached for a second shaft. Blood was streaming in rivulets down his arm, but he seemed not even to be aware of it.
Howard watched as if in a stupor. He could not move, he barely had the will to draw breath. A haze of nausea threatened to overwhelm him. It had been nothing at all for him to heap up great bloody mounds of severed heads and arms and legs with cheerful abandon in his stories; but in fact real bloodshed and violence of any sort had horrified him whenever he had even a glimpse of it.
“The gun, Bob!” said Lovecraft urgently beside him. “Use the gun!”
“What?”
“There. There.”
Howard looked down. Thrust through his belt was the pistol he had taken from the Land Rover when he had come out to investigate that little beast in the road. He drew it now and stared at it, glassy-eyed, as though it were a basilisk’s egg that rested on the palm of his hand.
“What are you doing?” Lovecraft asked. “Ah. Ah. Give it to me.” He snatched the gun impatiently from Howard’s frozen fingers and studied it a moment as though he had never held a weapon before. Perhaps he never had. But then, grasping the pistol with both his hands, he rose warily above the hood of the Land Rover and squeezed off a shot.
The tremendous sound of an explosion cut through the shrill cries of the horsemen. Lovecraft laughed. “Got one! Who would ever have imagined—”
He fired again. In the same moment Gilgamesh brought down one more of the attackers with his bow.
“They’re backing off!” Lovecraft cried. “By Alhazred, they didn’t expect this, I wager!” He laughed again and poked the gun up into a firing position. “Ia!” he cried, in a voice Howard had never heard out of the shy and scholarly Lovecraft before. “Shub-Niggurath!” Lovecraft fired a third time. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
Howard felt sweat rolling down his body. This inaction of his—this paralysis—this shame—what would Conan make of it? What would Gilgamesh? And Lovecraft, that timid and sheltered man, he who dreaded the fishes of the sea and the cold winds of his New England winters and so many other things, was laughing and bellowing his wondrous gibberish and blazing away like any gangster, having the time of his life—
Shame! Shame!
Heedless of the risk Howard scrambled up into the cab of the Land Rover and groped around for the second gun that was lying down there on the floor somewhere. He found it and knelt beside the window. Seven or eight of the Asiatic horsemen lay strewn about, dead or dying, within a hundred-yard radius of the car. The others ha
d withdrawn to a considerable distance and were cantering in uneasy circles. They appeared taken aback by the unexpectedly fierce resistance they had encountered on what they had probably expected to have been an easy bit of jolly slaughter in these untracked frontierlands.
What were they doing now? Drawing together, a tight little group, horses nose to nose. Conferring. And now two of them were pulling what seemed to be some sort of war-banner from a saddlebag and hoisting it between them on bamboo poles: a long yellow streamer with fluttering blood-red tips, on which bold Oriental characters were painted in shining black. Serious business, obviously. Now they were lining themselves up in a row, facing the Land Rover. Getting ready for a desperate suicide charge—that was the way things appeared.
Gilgamesh, standing erect in full view, calmly nocked yet another arrow. He took aim and waited for them to come. Lovecraft, looking flushed with excitement, wholly transformed by the alien joys of armed combat, was leaning forward, staring intently, his pistol cocked and ready.
Howard shivered. Shame rode him with burning spurs. How could he cower here while those two bore the brunt of the struggle? Though his hand was shaking, he thrust the pistol out the window and drew a bead on the closest horseman. His finger tightened on the trigger. Would it be possible to score a hit at such a distance? Yes. Yes. Go ahead. You know how to use a gun, all right. High time you put some of that skill to use. Knock that little yellow bastard off his horse with one bark of the Colt .380, yes. Send him straight to Hell—no, he’s in Hell already, send him off to the Undertaker for recycling, yes, that’s it—ready—aim—
“Wait,” Lovecraft said. “Don’t shoot.”
What was this? As Howard, with an effort, lowered his gun and let his rigid quivering hand go slack, Lovecraft, shading his eyes against the eerie glare of the motionless sun, peered closely at the enemy warriors a long silent moment. Then he turned, reached up into the rear of the Land Rover, groped around for a moment, finally pulled out the manila envelope that held their royal commission from King Henry.