THE FLAME KNIFE

The Flame Knife is the last of four Conanless Robert E. Howard stories in our chronology that L. Sprague de Camp took from the trunk and recast to the Hyborian Age following Howard's death. The Kirby O'Donnell story The Curse of the Crimson God became "The Blood-Stained God," the Ivan Sablianka story (later) known as "The Way of the Swords" became "The Road of the Eagles," and the Diego de Guzman story "Hawks Over Egypt" became "Hawks Over Shem."

One of Robert E. Howard's other adventure characters was an adventurous Texan named Francis Xavier Gordon who went by the nickname of El Borak ("The Swift" in Arabic). There were five El Borak stories published in adventure magazines between 1934 and 1936, but Three-Bladed Doom, which Howard wrote some time in 1934, was not one of them.

According to REH World, there are two versions of Three-Bladed Doom (plus a lost 12-page treatment), one's about twice as long as the other, and between the two of them, this story was rejected by the magazines Adventure, Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, New Mystery Adventures, Top-Notch, Dime Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, Short Stories, Sun, and Adventure Novels. Sitting unpublished in the 1950s, de Camp turned the story into a Conan tale and it was published in Tales of Conan in 1955.

I'm not sure if it's a knock against Howard or just the genre conventions of the time, but I do find it a little funny that Howard's stories were so similar that you can change some names and slot a fantasy element in and BAM, new Conan story. Though El Borak is described as a slight, skinny guy rather than the hulking mass that Conan is (I can't tell you how many times I've read the phrase "corded muscles"). El Borak has been showing up in the current Conan comic event "Battle of the Black Stone," so I've actually been getting to see some unedited El Borak recently.

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I really love reading Gary Romeo's writing about Conan over on Sprague de Camp Fan, and it seems like I like these posthumous de Camp edits of Conan stories a lot better than he does. He classifies "Blood-Stained God," "Hawks Over Shem," and "Road of the Eagles" as "serviceable but mediocre" and says that The Flame Knife is "almost good." I completely agree with him that "Hawks Over Shem" is pretty mediocre, but I really dig the rest, and I'd probably say "Blood-Stained God" is the best of them, followed by "Eagles" and Flame Knife. Those who have been reading this chronology know that I'm a huge sucker for things like haunted canyons and abandoned ruins. Luckily, The Flame Knife has both in spades.

This novella is by far the longest Conan story I've read for the chronology, sitting at whopping 100 pages when they usually comprise about 35 or 40 pages each. I can't tell if The Flame Knife feels more epic in scope than other stories or if it's just that I've been completely inundated with back-to-school stuff and I had to stretch my reading of the story over four different nights. It's probably the latter, because there are tons of great action scenes in this story, even if it only takes place over the course of a few days.

Conan begins in Anshan, Iranistan but quickly flees the king's court while an assassination attempt is made by a uniquely-shaped flame knife. This sends Conan and his compatriot Tubal into the Ilbars Mountains and on into the country of Drujistan, which I don't think we've ever spent time in. Our adventure takes us to bandit hideouts, haunted canyons, the ancient ruins of Yanaidar, and has lots of solid fight scenes, which really buoy its extended length. We see the return of Conan's old foe Olgerd Vladislav, having recovered after the events of "A Witch Shall Be Born." Fun fact: we get to see Vladislav's next moves in the Savage Sword story "Mirror of the Manticore" in issue 58.

Olgerd Vladislav is an excellent foil to Conan- described similarly as very strong and with steely gray eyes to contrast Conan's firey blue ones. He, like Conan, leads bands of loyal outlaws, and his major downfall is that he feels like he's always just a little more evil than Conan. While Conan is fair, can have a laugh, and recognizes game when he sees it, Olgerd is more selfish and will happily lay down the lives of others to save his own. It works to have him as this story's antagonist and it anchors it in Conan's larger mythos as well. Additionally, the "desert man of Pathenia:" the man-like ferocious ape creature that Conan fights in a canyon is implied to be a genetic cousin of the mountain apes further west in the mountains that we encountered in "The People of the Summit."

The setting of The Flame Knife is particularly good. I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but there's something oddly, I don't know- cozy- about a fortress tucked away in the mountains where our story takes place. As I didn't pick up Three-Bladed Doom to read alongside this one (and I can't find it on the web- copyright probably hasn't lapsed like many Conan stories) I'm not sure how much credit to dole out to Howard or de Camp for crafting the excellent settings of the mountains of Iranistan and Drujistan. I loved spending time around the endless webs of canyons and gulches, made ever-more-dangerous through modification by mountain-dwellers through the centuries, hidden rock wall passages, and secret grappling hook latches.

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Three-Bladed Doom would eventually see publication in 1976 and would get its own paperback the following year, complete with a cover painting of El Borak standing there is just his panties.

I've quite enjoyed the kozak stories of late, as you can see on the "Progress" page where I'm consistently giving stories 4 out of 5 stars. Next time, we're off to Vendhya, Howard's analogue for India, for "The People of the Black Circle."

★★★★☆