Jirel of Joiry: "Hellsgarde"

We can argue about what the genre "sword & sorcery" is until the events of Jack Vance's Dying Earth actually come true if we want to. It's elusive, and like something being "punk" or "campy," people's definitions differ. Sure, a story populated with orcs, elves, and dragons seems to immediately move it into the "high fantasy" realm. But how much magic is too much magic? Can it be set in a fictional world, not just in an extremely young or old Earth?

I'd argue it's probably more of a feeling than anything else. But I have a pretty solid marker of what separates sword & sorcery from other types of fantasy: S&S needs some kind of element of horror. 

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Cozy worlds inhabit a lot of fantasy works, especially 2020s fantasy output. I don't know if I could tell you exhaustively what is and isn't S&S, but I know that a world where magic rings are sold in the market, where you want to live in Rivendell, where well-lit taverns are populated by friendly orcs... that's not it. Sword & sorcery needs seedy settlements, terrifying tombs, and un-behold-able black-eyed god creatures. As much as I love the Hyborian Age, I do not want to live there. I'd be dead in twenty minutes.

"Hellsgarde" debuted in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales. It had been a year and a half since the previous Jirel story, a Jirel-Northwest Smith collaboration between Moore and her future husband Henry Kuttner, and more than three years since the previous "pure" Jirel story, "The Dark Land." The first four stories had appeared over a timespan of just a year and two months, so I wonder if C.L. Moore why the long gap, and if she was having to dig deeper within herself to find ideas or gumption to finish this one. 

​Additionally, she would marry Kuttner in less than a year and sadly disappear into his byline for most of the rest of her career.

But "Hellsgarde" was a perfect Jirel story to leave us with. Not only is it by far the most horror-forward adventure of Moore's red-haired lady of Joiry, but it's also the best.

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In April 1939, horror was still coalescing into the form of the genre we know today. Frankenstein was over a hundred years old, Poe was nearing one hundred, Dracula was about fifty, and the first waves of horror had moved from silent German films into the first Universal Monster cycle, which was nearly finished. You can still see many vestiges of the Gothic genre in most of these works at the time, which was my favorite subject back in undergrad. You can see the influence especially in "Hellsgarde."

We did not yet have the clearly-defined roles and lore belonging to vampires, ghosts, werewolves, zombies, etc. Instead, things were weird, which is one huge reason I'm drawn to this genre. You and I both know about a dozen ways to either kill or slow down a vampire, so it's usually not as scary. But what if your enemy is a set of strange, seemingly welcoming but ultimately off-putting normal people? What if you swore you saw them do something out of the corner of your eye, but when you look again, nothing seems to be there? That's the space "Hellsgarde" occupies. It is, in general, way scarier.

​At the same time horror was evolving, Weird Tales was inexorably on the downswing. The publishing company had been implementing tricks to try to improve sales and its champion Farnsworth Wright was not long for this world. 

Jirel is pressured into finding Hellsgarde, a castle in a marsh that can seemingly only be approached at dusk. It is yet another controlling douchebag that Jirel- or at least the text of the story- is somewhat smitten with who sends her in that direction. In Hellsgarde is a mysterious treasure that Jirel must recover.

The story is overflowing with atmosphere and spooks, starting from Jirel's approach to the castle. It appears as though there is a line of soldiers guarding the gate, but upon closer inspection, they're corpses propped up on the lances through which their entrails have been run.

The inhabitants of the castle are no better. Alaric of Hellsgarde and his alleged family are creeps throughout. They're expecting the lady of Joiry when she arrives. This family unit is perhaps Moore's greatest Jirel antagonist because it works so well with her writing style. Every Jirel story features thoughts just entering Jirel's mind which we are privy to. There is much "Did I see...? Could it have been...? Surely not" throughout her adventures, and Moore uses that same convention to ratchet up the horror of Hellsgarde's hosts.

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"She could have sworn a look went round the semicircle before the fire, a swift, amused glance from face to face as if they shared a secret. Yet not an eye wavered from hers."

In particular, I love the two young boys who terrorize Jirel with their very existence.

"She saw the boys' features clearly for the first time, and her heart contracted a little. For naked evil was upon these two young faces. The others wore their shadow of deformity elusively, a thing more sensed than seen. It might be only a trick of her legend-fed imagination that put evil there. But the two young lads had the faces of devils, long faces with high cheekbones and slitted, lusterless eyes... What sort of company had she stumbled into, where the very children and dogs wore evil like a garment?"

I've always loved how unsure of herself Jirel is. She's hotheaded and brash and frequently very confused, second-guessing herself, and that characterization is never used better than in "Hellsgarde." 

If you read all the stories in order, I can see that Moore's habit of resolving each conflict through a somewhat abstract battle of wills might have run a little bit thin by this time (Moore was always light on the "sword" in "sword & sorcery"), but the twists in this story about the true nature of the castle's residents more than makes up for it. 

"Hellsgarde" is Moore's crowning Jirel achievement. Bobby Derie, author of the best blog in the universe, Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, agrees that this one's a banger. I suspect it will always be overshadowed by "The Black God's Kiss" as the first tale, but it's her most bone-chilling story by far. It's the perfect encapsulation of the world created in her mind, a thing more sensed than seen.

​And for the next 85 years, Jirel was gone. More on that soon.