"Hills of the Dead"
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I like the way Robert E Howard presented vampires. As in his story, "The Horror From the Mound", they were NOT sexy, seductive Goth idols that negative-minded teenagers could admire (one of my favorite rants). Howard's vampires were gruesome, silent, single-minded and dangerous; they were walking corpses out to steal the life from the living and this gives them a raw potency that Kate Beckinsale's decadent UNDERWORLD cronies can't match.
In "The Hills of the Dead" (from WEIRD TALES, August 1930), it's clear from early on that the sour Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane is going up against an entire colony of the Undead. He's in Africa again, drawn back by a powerful fatalistic lure in the Old Land that he can't explain ("... over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her."). Kane is cursed with wanderlust and crusading ideals, never to settle down and enjoy a peaceful life. (But considering all the pirates and monsters he destroys, his burden is to our benefit.)
We start with Kane meeting his old chum N'Longa. This character is a withered, dried-up ju-ju man, a witch doctor of great age and forbidden knowledge. Although he usually likes to speak to Kane in a pidgin dialect that makes him seem a bit backward, when he switches to his own language, his speech is subtle and impressive. N'Longa can send his "ghost" out of his own body to wander hundreds of miles in a single breath, to speak with Kane in dreams, to possess the body of another (temporarily driving out that person's own spirit). The witch doctor seems sinister (and Kane has grave misgivings about consorting with one of Satan's minions), but he does good work. (Still, a guy that wears a necklace made of human finger bones.. you have to keep a wary eye on the likes of him.)
Here is where N'Longa first presents Kane with the ju-ju staff. It's a steel-hard wooden stave, tapering to a point at one end and with a cat's hard carved on the hilt. The staff is one of a kind, ancient and proof against evil magic or creatures. (In "The Footfalls Within", we learn the story behind the staff.)
Roaming far and wide, Kane eventually leaves the jungle itself to come upon some rocky hill territory. In his stoic fashion, he rescues a young African woman named Zunna from a charging lion (one musket shot, that's all it takes if your aim is guided by Providence.) He escorts her back to her village but they have to spend the night in a cave, and as he sits by the fire he has built, the Puritan receives two strange visitors. These are tall, lanky natives whose skin has a greyish tone to it, whose eyes seem to have a red glint and who regard him hungrily. Yep, it's the Undead and Kane has a few tense moments wrestling with the monsters until he discovers that the ju-ju staff is the best weapon he could have. ("His face set in grim lines as he raised it; then he drove it through the black breast. And before his eyes, the giant body crumbled, dissolving to dust as he watched horror-struck..."
Even Solomon Kane is a bit taken aback at all this, and Zunna doesn't help ease his state of mind. She explains that there are hundreds of these Things swarming in the nearby hills. They don't drink blood but suck up the actual life force itself. These creatures are hundreds of years old, the remnants of a great race which once ruled the area from a great stone city. Now the city is falling into ruin, its silent inhabitants these walking dead who stalk out at night to prey on nearby tribes.
Frankly, this seems like a bit much for even Kane to tackle singlehanded. He lies down with the ju-ju staff on his chest and meets N'Longa in the dreamtime. Then the voodoo master has Kane send the girl to bring back her lover, a good-looking man from her village. As Kane looks on aghast, N'Longa takes over the dude's healthy young body and goes with him on the mission to wipe out the city of the vampires. And it won't be easy...
Howard puts his usual zest and enthusiasm into this story. It's packed with creative details, vivid images and sudden violence. The uneasy friendship between a God-fearing Puritan and an African witch doctor is intriguing, as Kane comes to trust and like N'Longa despite all his misgivings. As the voodoo man points out, if he were evil, wouldn't he just keep the youth's strapping healthy body instead of voluntarily surrendering it? N'Longa is one of Howard's more ambiguous and subtle creations and teaming him up with the fanatic Kane has all sort of possibilities. Kane has innate conflict between his violent adventures and his stern religious code, and N'Longa seems to be an ominous magician but he turns out to be a force for good. I would have liked to see another story or two featuring these two men working together.
There's one new detail Howard adds to vampire lore, and it seems so obvious and right that I wonder why no writers thought of it before. Vultures regard the Undead as prey and go after them as the carrion they are. ("No fool vulture!" explains N'Longa. "He know death when he see it! He pounce on one fellow dead man and tear and eat if he be lying or walking!") I haven't read many vampire stories since Anne Rice glamorized them, but I wonder if other writers have picked up on this idea that vultures are the natural enemies of vampires.
Howard developed Solomon Kane in daydreams as a teenager, and he wrote the stories early in his brief career. LIke Francis X. Gordon (El Borak), Kane is more of a traditional adventure figure than Howard's later barbarians would be. This gives the Kane stories a slightly more noble tone; after he shifted to Conan and Turlogh O'Brien and that crew, Howard's stories didn't have heroes and villains so much as they had gangs of cut-throats circling each other, with the reader cheering for the least vicious. This is undoubtedly the sort riff-raff "soldiers of fortune" you would find fighting over treasure and loot in real life, but to be honest, I still like to read about a little nobility and idealism in characters. (So I'm old-fashioned.)
_______
*In "Red Shadows", Kane is pursuing a pirate chief in Africa and N'longa introduces himself with an offer to help the white stranger. The fetish man is doing this because Kane can help rid him of a hated rival.
In "The Hills of the Dead," N'Longa is shown as much wiser and more altruistic. He freely gives Kane the valuable mystic staff (which once belonged to KIng Solomon himself and is said to date back to the sorceror-kings of Atlantis) so that the Puritan can use it to combat the supernatural creatures he will face. N'Longa also sends his spirit to possess the young African man so he can accompany Kane to wipe out the vampire colony. So Howard shows N'Longa in the wise mentor role. ("To Kane it seemed almost as if he looked into the far-seeing and mystic eyes of a prophet of old.")
The broken pidgin makes the African wizard sound simple, but when he drops it and speaks in the river dialect Kane understands, he suddenly is much more solemn. ("My brother, shall I span all these years in a moment and make you understand with a word, what has taken me so long to learn?")
I don't want to try to force too much into Howard's African themes; he wrote a lot of material which is bluntly offfensive. But characters like N'Longa and Saul Stark show there is more to him than first meets the eye.
I like the way Robert E Howard presented vampires. As in his story, "The Horror From the Mound", they were NOT sexy, seductive Goth idols that negative-minded teenagers could admire (one of my favorite rants). Howard's vampires were gruesome, silent, single-minded and dangerous; they were walking corpses out to steal the life from the living and this gives them a raw potency that Kate Beckinsale's decadent UNDERWORLD cronies can't match.
In "The Hills of the Dead" (from WEIRD TALES, August 1930), it's clear from early on that the sour Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane is going up against an entire colony of the Undead. He's in Africa again, drawn back by a powerful fatalistic lure in the Old Land that he can't explain ("... over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her."). Kane is cursed with wanderlust and crusading ideals, never to settle down and enjoy a peaceful life. (But considering all the pirates and monsters he destroys, his burden is to our benefit.)
We start with Kane meeting his old chum N'Longa. This character is a withered, dried-up ju-ju man, a witch doctor of great age and forbidden knowledge. Although he usually likes to speak to Kane in a pidgin dialect that makes him seem a bit backward, when he switches to his own language, his speech is subtle and impressive. N'Longa can send his "ghost" out of his own body to wander hundreds of miles in a single breath, to speak with Kane in dreams, to possess the body of another (temporarily driving out that person's own spirit). The witch doctor seems sinister (and Kane has grave misgivings about consorting with one of Satan's minions), but he does good work. (Still, a guy that wears a necklace made of human finger bones.. you have to keep a wary eye on the likes of him.)
Here is where N'Longa first presents Kane with the ju-ju staff. It's a steel-hard wooden stave, tapering to a point at one end and with a cat's hard carved on the hilt. The staff is one of a kind, ancient and proof against evil magic or creatures. (In "The Footfalls Within", we learn the story behind the staff.)
Roaming far and wide, Kane eventually leaves the jungle itself to come upon some rocky hill territory. In his stoic fashion, he rescues a young African woman named Zunna from a charging lion (one musket shot, that's all it takes if your aim is guided by Providence.) He escorts her back to her village but they have to spend the night in a cave, and as he sits by the fire he has built, the Puritan receives two strange visitors. These are tall, lanky natives whose skin has a greyish tone to it, whose eyes seem to have a red glint and who regard him hungrily. Yep, it's the Undead and Kane has a few tense moments wrestling with the monsters until he discovers that the ju-ju staff is the best weapon he could have. ("His face set in grim lines as he raised it; then he drove it through the black breast. And before his eyes, the giant body crumbled, dissolving to dust as he watched horror-struck..."
Even Solomon Kane is a bit taken aback at all this, and Zunna doesn't help ease his state of mind. She explains that there are hundreds of these Things swarming in the nearby hills. They don't drink blood but suck up the actual life force itself. These creatures are hundreds of years old, the remnants of a great race which once ruled the area from a great stone city. Now the city is falling into ruin, its silent inhabitants these walking dead who stalk out at night to prey on nearby tribes.
Frankly, this seems like a bit much for even Kane to tackle singlehanded. He lies down with the ju-ju staff on his chest and meets N'Longa in the dreamtime. Then the voodoo master has Kane send the girl to bring back her lover, a good-looking man from her village. As Kane looks on aghast, N'Longa takes over the dude's healthy young body and goes with him on the mission to wipe out the city of the vampires. And it won't be easy...
Howard puts his usual zest and enthusiasm into this story. It's packed with creative details, vivid images and sudden violence. The uneasy friendship between a God-fearing Puritan and an African witch doctor is intriguing, as Kane comes to trust and like N'Longa despite all his misgivings. As the voodoo man points out, if he were evil, wouldn't he just keep the youth's strapping healthy body instead of voluntarily surrendering it? N'Longa is one of Howard's more ambiguous and subtle creations and teaming him up with the fanatic Kane has all sort of possibilities. Kane has innate conflict between his violent adventures and his stern religious code, and N'Longa seems to be an ominous magician but he turns out to be a force for good. I would have liked to see another story or two featuring these two men working together.
There's one new detail Howard adds to vampire lore, and it seems so obvious and right that I wonder why no writers thought of it before. Vultures regard the Undead as prey and go after them as the carrion they are. ("No fool vulture!" explains N'Longa. "He know death when he see it! He pounce on one fellow dead man and tear and eat if he be lying or walking!") I haven't read many vampire stories since Anne Rice glamorized them, but I wonder if other writers have picked up on this idea that vultures are the natural enemies of vampires.
Howard developed Solomon Kane in daydreams as a teenager, and he wrote the stories early in his brief career. LIke Francis X. Gordon (El Borak), Kane is more of a traditional adventure figure than Howard's later barbarians would be. This gives the Kane stories a slightly more noble tone; after he shifted to Conan and Turlogh O'Brien and that crew, Howard's stories didn't have heroes and villains so much as they had gangs of cut-throats circling each other, with the reader cheering for the least vicious. This is undoubtedly the sort riff-raff "soldiers of fortune" you would find fighting over treasure and loot in real life, but to be honest, I still like to read about a little nobility and idealism in characters. (So I'm old-fashioned.)
_______
*In "Red Shadows", Kane is pursuing a pirate chief in Africa and N'longa introduces himself with an offer to help the white stranger. The fetish man is doing this because Kane can help rid him of a hated rival.
In "The Hills of the Dead," N'Longa is shown as much wiser and more altruistic. He freely gives Kane the valuable mystic staff (which once belonged to KIng Solomon himself and is said to date back to the sorceror-kings of Atlantis) so that the Puritan can use it to combat the supernatural creatures he will face. N'Longa also sends his spirit to possess the young African man so he can accompany Kane to wipe out the vampire colony. So Howard shows N'Longa in the wise mentor role. ("To Kane it seemed almost as if he looked into the far-seeing and mystic eyes of a prophet of old.")
The broken pidgin makes the African wizard sound simple, but when he drops it and speaks in the river dialect Kane understands, he suddenly is much more solemn. ("My brother, shall I span all these years in a moment and make you understand with a word, what has taken me so long to learn?")
I don't want to try to force too much into Howard's African themes; he wrote a lot of material which is bluntly offfensive. But characters like N'Longa and Saul Stark show there is more to him than first meets the eye.
statistics: Posted by doctorhermes428 — 8:31 PM - 2 days ago — Replies 9 — Views 534