First published in Golden Fleece in November, 1938. Reading from the 1979 Berkley Edition, pages 1-86. Strangely enough, the Conan story, The Black Stranger, of which Swords of the Red Brotherhood is a rewrite, would not be published under its original title until it appeared in Tor’s 1987 Echoes of Valor. The Black Stranger did appear as a pastiche in the Ace series two decades earlier as The Treasure of Tranicos, a pirate captain who also appears—if only by name—in Black Vulmea’s Vengeance. The title Swords of the Red Brotherhood, probably owes its origin to the back story of the Valeria character in the last Conan story sold by Howard, Red Nails.
I am reviewing this story, which is not easy for readers to come by, with more than the usual quotations, chapter by chapter, not worrying too much about giving the plot away but not attempting to either. I am most concerned with how expertly Howard rewrote a fantasy novella set in Pre-Historic times as a pirate yarn set in the early 1600s, about 90 years after the fall of the Aztecs.
In the Conan story the hero plunges into the wooded western seaboard of what would have been the ancient British Isles, finding himself on a barren forested coast where an exiled nobleman has built a castle of wood and is beset by two sets of pirates hunting a lost treasure, as well as by the grim horror that stalks the nobleman from his past and the savages that do not care for civilized men making a mess of their primal beach.
To make this a pirate yarn Howard wove the story of an Italian navigator in French employ, who, as far as I can tell, was the first European to map the east coast of the United States, and the first to kidnap a native baby, which he did on Cape Fear, with the ill-fated naval adventure of Drake and Hawkins, whose squadron was cut to pieces by the Spanish off of Vera Cruz. The survivors of this battle dropped 100 men off at the mouth of the Rio Grande as they were overloaded. Three of these sailors, including a man named Davy who was later questioned about his experiences, walked across Texas, crossed the Mississippi, transited Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia and then walked up the East Coast of North America to Cape Breton, Canada. Howard simply reversed directions for his hero and had him end up in San Francisco Bay, after living among the natives as Davy had.
As an action figure—especially viewed from the vantage of an innocent young woman caught up in a conclave of pirates with her insane uncle—Black Vulmea works even better than Conan as the alienated hero. Vulmea’s hatreds are more palpable, his swagger seemingly more arrogant, his Irish heritage not simply exotic and frightening –as is Conan’s Cimmerian back story—but conducive to criticism and bigotry on the part of his English and French enemies.
But the crux of the story is that they are all white men in a savage land and the redskin savages of the hinterland see them as one in the same—trespassers.
Howard’s knowledge of the lives of early American explorers and of later day pirates looms large in his diction, the Solomon Kane saga, and in some of his poetry, such as Recompense. By finding the oddball Italian navigator that seems to have done so much less than he should have and making him the basis for a treasure hunt beyond the edge of the known world, was brilliant and nicely done.
Each of the seven chapters shall be reviewed in this volume of A Well of Heroes, under the REH Race tag.
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This Howard yarn wasn't published until 1976:
howardworks.com/storysm.htm
REH mentioned the Red Brotherhood in the early Conan tale, "Iron Shadows in the Moon", among others. Howard likely was inspired by the moniker, "Brotherhood of the Coast" used among Caribbean pirates. "The Black Stranger" was written right before "Red Nails".
I prefer this tale, overall, to TBS. I felt that story had some clunky plot elements when it came to the occult. OTOH, this tale shows it was adapted from TBS (as opposed to vice versa) for various reasons. Some of that required a bit of unlikely shoehorning. BTW, one of the pirates has my surname, which fact I always liked.
When Conan/Vulmea discovers "the hill" in the first chapter, what follows is very reminiscent of the first chapter of A PRINCESS OF MARS. Howard was a big ERB fan and it's too close for coincidence, IMO.
If anyone has a better knowledge of California Injun tribes and geography than myself, it would be cool to speculate on the location of the Spanish fort. IMO, it would have to be farther north than Frisco.
Deuce, I'm in total agreement with you here. Despite the obvious shoehorning I do think that Howard wrote an improvement on Conan, and absolutely love what he did in Black Vulmea's Vengeance.
Speaking of coastal piracy—and Howard seems to have understood how much these guys did not want to meet a national warships on the high seas—I think he reached into Black Beard's life with Vulmea.
Thanks so much for the information.