She drew his eyes as a magnet draws steel. Indifferent to the chill of the wind she sat there, her only garments a scant kirtle which left her arms bare and came barely to her knees, and leather sandals on her feet. A short sword hung at her girdle.
She was almost as tall as the man who watched her, and she was broadly built and deep-bosomed. Her hair was red as the sunset and her eyes were cold and strange and magnetic. The Romans who represented the world’s civilization would not have called her beautiful, but there was a wild something about her which held the eyes of the Pict. Her own eyes gave back his stare boldly.
“What evil wind brings you into this land, feeder of ravens?” she asked in no friendly tone.
The Pict scowled, antagonized by her manner.
“What is that to you, wench?” he retorted.
“This is my land,” she answered, sweeping the bleak magnificence with a bold sweep of her strong white arm, “my people claim this land and own no master. It is my right to ask of any intruder, ‘What do you here?’”
“Its not my custom to give an account of myself to every hussy I happen to meet,” growled the warrior, nettled.
“Who are you?” how her hair glinted in the dying glow of the sun.
“Partha Mac Othna.”
“You lie!” she rose lithely and came up to him, meeting his scowling black eyes unflinchingly, “You come into the land to spy.”
“My people have no quarrel with the Red Beards,” he growled.
“Who knows against whom you plot or where your next raid falls?” she retorted, then her mood changed and a vagrant gleam rose in her eyes.
“You shall wrestle with me,” she said, “Nor go from this spot unless you overcome me.”
He snorted disgustedly and turned away but she caught his girdle and detained him with surprizing strength.
“Do you fear me, my black slayer?” she taunted me, “Are Picts so cowed by the emperor that they fear to wrestle with a woman of the Red People?”
“Release me, wench,” he snarled, “before I lose patience and hurt you.”
“Hurt me if you can!” she retorted, suddenly flinging her full weight against his chest and back-heeling him at the same instant. Caught off-guard by the unexpected movement, the warrior went down ingloriously, half smothered by a flurry of white arms and legs. Cursing luridly he strove to thrust her aside, but she was like a big she-cat, and with strong and cunning wrestling tricks she more than held her own for an instant. But the superior strength of the warrior was not to be denied and casting her angrily aside, her antagonist rose. But she, springing to her knees, caught his sword-belt and almost dragged him down again, and irritated beyond control, the Pict jerked her savagely to her feet by her red locks and gave her a terrific cuff with his open hand that felled her senseless at his feet. Swearing in disgust and wrath, he turned away, brushing the dust from his garments, then glanced at the motionless form of the girl and hesitated. Then with an oath he knelt beside her and lifted her head, flinging the contents of his canteen in her face. She started, shook her head and looked up, clear-eyed and fully concious. He instantly released her and let her head bump none too gently against the frosty ground as he rose to his feet and replaced his canteen.
She sat up cross-legged and looked up at him.
“Well, you have conquered me,” she said calmly, “What will you do with me now?”
“I should rip the skin from your loins with my sword-belt,” he snapped, “It is no small shame to a warrior to be forced into striving with a woman – and no small shame to the woman who thrusts herself into a man’s game.”
“I am no common woman,” she answered, “I am one with the winds and the frosts and the grey seas of this wild land.
Poem
Previously Unpublished
There’s a bell that hangs in a hidden cave
Under the heathered hills
That knew the tramp of the Roman feet
And the clash of the Pictish bills.
It has not rung for a thousand years,
To waken the sleeping trolls,
But God defend the sons of men
When the bell of the Morni tolls.
For its rope is caught in the hinge of hell,
And its clapper is forged of doom,
And all the dead men under the sea
Await for its sullen boom.
It did not glow in an earthly fire,
Or clang to a mortal’s sledge;
The hands that cast it grope in the night
Through the reeds at the fen-pool’s edge.
It is laden with dooms of a thousand years,
It waits in the silence stark,
With grinning dwarves and the faceless things
That crawl in the working dark.
And it waits the Hand that shall wake its voice,
When the hills shall break with fright,
To call the dead men into the day,
And the living into the Night.
Untitled
INTRODUCTION
Early in 2004, Wandering Star editor Patrice Louinet, studying Robert E. Howard’s early manuscripts and typescripts in his search for clues that would help in dating the author’s work, received a package of materials he had requested from Glenn Lord. Lord owns the largest collection of original Howard manuscripts. Among these was a typescript that had been listed in the “Unpublished Fiction” section of his landmark bio-bibliography of Howard, The Last Celt, under the title “The Wheel Turns.”
As he read it, Louinet was excited to discover that this was without doubt the “novel” that Howard had referred to in a 1923 letter to his friend Clyde Smith (see page 324). While Glenn Lord had read the typescript more than thirty years ago, it was not until years later that Howard’s letters to Smith had become available, so the connection had never been made.
Howard told Smith that the novel featured Bran Mak Morn. Unfortunately, alone among the characters Howard named in the letter, Bran does not appear in the typescript that has come to us. Perhaps his section was to come later. There is a Pict featured in one segment of this story, but his name is Merak. While the Pictish element of this tale is slight, we thought readers would enjoy this glimpse at a very early work of Robert E. Howard. At the very least, the letter to Smith indicates that Howard intended to bring Bran into this story!
We have adhered closely to Howard’s typescript. No attempt has been made to correct spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. What follows here is the tale exactly as Howard wrote it.
Untitled
CHAPTER 1,
BACK THROUGH THE AGES.
Men have had visions ere now. Men have dreamed dreams. Faint glimpses of other worlds and other ages have come to us, as though for a moment the veil of Time had been rent and we had peered fearfully into the awful vistas.
Scant and fleeting those glimpses, not understood. And from them men have have shaped heaven and hell.
Little they knew that it was but the stirring of memory, memory transmitted from age to age, surviving the changing and shifting of centuries. Memory, that is as strong as the soul of man.
Time has no beginning or ending. The Wheel turns and the cycles revolve for ever. The Wheel turns and the souls of all things are bound to the spokes through all Eternity.
Form and substance fades but the Invisible Something, the ego, the Soul, swings on through the eons. It is as beginningless, as endless as Time Itself. These visions, these dreams, these instincts and inspirations, they are but memories, racial memories.