Swords From the West (98 page)

In Lamb's story "The Grand Cham" is something that I'd like to know more about. Either friend Harold made a slip or he brought up a new bit of information. He speaks of the Arabs using magic-lanterns on the streets of the Turkish capital in the time of the crusades. Is this one time when he nodded or is it just another proof that "there is no new thing under the sun?" Understand, I'm not knocking. Just wanted to find out. I know about Chinese printing and other things but thought the magic-lantern belonged to the last century.

Somebody, I can't remember who, brought up the question of the wolf-dogs of fiction and asked if anybody knew about them. I don't know a thing about wolf-dogs but I do know that wherever you keep dogs in a coyote country away from settlements you get an occasional mixed litter. I've had five such litters come under my observation here in California andArizona. And if wolf-dogs are anything like coyotedogs, then certainly the fiction writers haven't overdrawn them, for I never sawa coyote-dog in my life that wasn't a pesky nuisance. You can't teach them a thing except by breaking their spirit, and they fight and steal at every opportunity. As to numbers, I can easily conceive that in a country where they abound and dogs run free, there would be lots of crosses, and if coyotes, why not wolves?

Joseph Gray

The above letter was sent to Mr. Lamb and here is his reply. But why didn't he give us a good long list of "modern" inventions that date back to the Asia of a thousand years ago? Gunpowder, compass, spectacles-these I know date 'way back or are said to, but there my knowledge runs out.

Cresskill, New Jersey

Glad to get Gray's letter. No, speaking of magic-lanterns in "The Grand Cham" was not a case of nodding. Gray, in mentioning the crusades, evidently has associated "The Grand Cham" with an earlier date than 1400, the date of the story.

One of the Arabian story-tellers mentions the magic-lantern; and Sir Henry Howorth alludes to it in Asia Minor, a little before the time of my story, I think. Haven't my notes here, so can't be exact; but as I recall it the magic-lantern was mentioned in a Latin treatise on the miracles of light, published about 16oo by Athanasius Somebody-or-other-not, not Ananias. The Ency. Brit. remarks that it is probably of earlier origin.

What the early instrument was like I confess I don't know. It was used at times by wizards, apparently, to materialize ghosts -also for low comedy. Naturally the use of the phrase "magic-lantern" by the two translators above is not real evidence and if I've turned the clock ahead two centuries or more for the invention, I plead guilty.

However, we don't half guess how many inventions and impulses to the sciences that are trotting around the world today labeled "modern" can trace their parentage back to Asia a thousand years or so ago.

It would be really delightful, to me at all events, to learn for a fact that the newest and most vociferous child of the fine arts-our cinema-had a shabby and forgotten father in the person of an Arabian mountebank; just as our no less vociferous spirit-medium has a prototype in the ancient Mongol shaman with his rattling iron images, his darkened tent, his cultivated frenzies and expert ventriloquism.

"The Bells of the Mountains"

Harold Lamb says this story was suggested by one of the standard tricks of medieval warfare-the use of a stand-in to take the place of the king in battle. He goes on to point out that the Swiss mountaineers he is writing about were poor people. They couldn't afford the elaborate getup of the mailed horsemen who then ruled the battlefields. Armored regiments of horse formed the mainstay of the imperial German armies then as now extending outward in a thrust to dominate the Continent, from the hub at Frankfurt, instead of Berlin.

The Swiss had notions about their personal liberty. They presumed to put up a fight for it-on foot in the narrow valleys. They relied on their quickness; they used a long pike (a spearhead on a heavy staff) and a halberd (a long ax). Such weapons any man could make and own. The Swiss villagers, like the Greek hoplites, made up a fighting citizenry, standing on their own feet, using their own weapons. And they started democracy to functioning in the world again. For the citizens who did the fighting cast the votes. It so happened again at the end of the eighteenth century when the Americans and French fought on foot in the field and cast the votes at home.

Harold Lamb (1892-1962) was born in Alpine, New Jersey, the son of Eliza Rollinson and Frederick Lamb, a renowned stained-glass designer, painter, and writer. Lamb later described himself as having been born with damaged eyes, ears, and speech, adding that by adulthood these problems had mostly righted themselves. He was never very comfortable in crowds or cities and found school "a torment." He had two main refuges when growing up-his grandfather's library and the outdoors. Lamb loved tennis and played the game well into his later years.

Lamb attended Columbia, where he first dug into the histories of Eastern civilizations, ever after his lifelong fascination. He served briefly in World War I as an infantryman but saw no action. In 1917 he married Ruth Barbour, and by all accounts their marriage was a long and happy one. They had two children, Frederick and Cary. Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, the chief editor of Adventure magazine, recognized Lamb's storytelling skills and encouraged him to write about the subjects he most loved. For the next twenty years or so, historical fiction set in the remote East flowed from Lamb's pen, and he quickly became one of Adventure's most popular writers. Lamb did not stop with fiction, however, and soon began to draft biographies and screenplays. By the time the pulp magazine market dried up, Lamb was an established and recognized historian, and for the rest of his life he produced respected biographies and histories, earning numerous awards, including one from the Persian government for his two-volume history of the Crusades.

Lamb knew many languages: by his own account, French, Latin, ancient Persian, some Arabic, a smattering of Turkish, a bit of ManchuTatar, and medieval Ukrainian. He traveled throughout Asia, visiting most of the places he wrote about, and during World War II he was on covert assignment overseas for the U.S. government. He is remembered today both for his scholarly histories and for his swashbuckling tales of daring Cossacks and crusaders. "Life is good, after all," Lamb once wrote, "when a man can go where he wants to, and write about what he likes best."

The following stories were originally published in Adventure magazine: "The Village of the Ghost," May 15, 1921; "The Grand Cham," July 1, 1921; "The Making of the Morning Star," April 1o, 1924; "The Iron Man Rides," June 1, 1929; "The Faring Forth," November 15, 1929; "The Tower of the Ravens," December 15, 1929; "The Long Sword," September 1, 1930; "The Golden Horde," May 15, 1933; "Keeper of the Gate," August 1936.

The following stories were originally published in Collier's magazine: "The Red Cock Crows," June 9, 1928; "Protection," August 24, 1929; "Knights with Wings," May 1o, 1941; "The Bells of the Mountains," September 13, 1941; "The Black Road," January 23, 1943; "Lionheart," March 28, 1949.

"Doom Rides In" was originally published by Cassell's Magazine, January 1932.

"Secret of Victory" was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, March 14, 1953.

*Called the Charnomar by the Turks, and now known as the Black Sea. Tana, in the thirteenth century, the time of this story, was the chief port east of the Crimea. Its site was near present-day Azof. Sarai was the great city of the Tatar Golden Horde, and it was still impressive in the time of Tamerlane. Little trace of it remains today, but it stood on the bank of the Volga north of the Caspian. The best caravan route-although hazardous in winter-ran through it to the Far East.

*Russians.

*Christians from Europe.

`Two generations before this Genghis Khan had led his Mongols to the conquest of the greater part of Asia and the borderland of Europe. But the Mongols themselves, the warriors of the clan of the Yakka, or Great Mongols, formed only a small proportion of his armies. Tatars, Uighurs, Turks, Kipchaks, and Kitans (Cathayans) made up the mass of the armies. Like the Romans of Trajan's time, the Mongols dominated the nomad empire, in which other peoples made up the bulk of the fighting forces. Europeans, unable to distinguish between the different clans, christened them all Tatars. In this story the word is used for the warriors of Kublai Khan.

Although at this time the vast empire was nominally under the dominion of Kublai Khan, who resided in China, the two western segments, the Ilkhan Empire and the Golden Horde, were actually independent under the rule of their own khans. Barka Khan, master of the Golden Horde, had his headquarters at Sarai on the lower Volga. His dominion stretched from the steppes of mid-Asia, between Lake Balkash and the Aral Sea, westward more than forty-five degrees beyond the border of Poland and Hungary.

*The Gold Bringer. In Tamerlane's time gold was washed from its bed.

*The same glacier is still at the head of the Zarafshan.

*Constantinople, which alone had survived the ruin of the Roman Empire.

*European.

*The Akh-tagh.

*Clavijo had heard of the Central Asian yak.

*A rank equivalent to baron.

*Timur the Lame.

*Chess.

*Khar, or Kharesmia, is now known as Persia. The old name is to be found on maps as late as the end of the eighteenth century. (In the present day it is known as Iran.-HAJ)

*Owing to the almost inevitable cataract.

*The route taken by the crusader and his companions was not known to Europeans in that age. From the few landmarks observed, they must have crossed the Euphrates near Aleppo and the Tigris a little south of what is now Mosul, entering modern Persia within the next few days by the highlands of Kurdistan. The snow mountains must have been Demavend, some two days' ride northeast of Teheran. The Sialak Pass is today just as it was then-or as it was in Alexander's day, for that matter.

*Darius.

'The Arctic Circle.

tThe Himalayas.

*Proprietor.

*In the afternoon.

`Magistrate.

t"Why does pure water wax putrid? "

*Several hundred English soldiers died after leaving their quarters in ruined Indian castles, before the carbonic acid gas was discovered and the men forbidden to occupy the ruins. Rawul Singh had escaped the effect of the gas for the reason that the Rajput had slept in the great hall of the castle where the air was better, and had never come into the castle except to sleep.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Red Cock Crows

The Golden Horde

The Long Sword

Lionheart

Protection