‘From Death’s Gray Lands’

James LaFond's impressions of Dying Embers, Chapter 8 of Robert E. Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon

Reading from pages 141-147 of the Del Rey edition

A thematic illustration of a dragon crushing and harrying common men sets the mood for Howard’s tale of a populist king overthrown by manipulative forces.
“It is an ill thing to meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk.”

So begins Conan’s audience with a loyal supporter, who informs him that his many premonitions [hinted at in the text and subtext] of mockery are true, that his efforts at ruling justly have been cast aside by masses of slave-minded folk who yearn for an oppressor and that those free-thinkers among the elite and lower orders are hopelessly hounded by informants.

The tale of the overthrow of a populist king [as unlikely a concept as it seems through our own clouded world view] by a police state with informers and spies everywhere struck this writer, laboring under a privatized censorship media hierarchy in the midst of a militarized police state of unparalleled efficiency, with a chill, as Howard’s view of kingship throughout the Kull, Mak Morn and Conan cycles is incisively populist, reflecting conditions of rule closer to the presidency of Andrew Jackson and now Donald Trump than in any historical monarchy which comes to mind.

Likewise, Howard’s depiction of the vast sweep of Western European history in the following statement reflects that he was well aware of the trials and travails of his plantation ancestors as well as the ongoing white slavery in the modern Middle East, which was a well-worn trope in his lifetime:

“…white men sell white men and white women, as it was in the feudal days.”

It is no surprise that Howard knew that chattel slavery was rampant in Feudal Christendom. The revisionist history which has ill-informed our fool nation since 1945 had not yet taken hold of the infantile American mind.

Finally, Conan is informed that his staunchest supported, a young countess Albiona, was to have her head cleaved off that very night, and well, he’s Conan, so some civilized dogs were going to have to die:

“I’d be a dog to leave Albiona to die because of her loyalty to me. I may be a king without a kingdom, but I’m not a man without honor.”

Diction of Note:
Avaunt, adv. Hence; away.
n.  A boast; a vaunt.
To advance.

(c) 2020 James LaFond