Robert E. Howard Retrospective – Solomon Kane in Red Shadows

Perhaps the biggest literary injustice of the 20th century is the fact that Robert E. Howard left this Earth at the young age of 30. But even in what little time he did have, he managed to create some very recognizable and influential characters and short stories. And while his barbarian characters – mainly Conan – are what he’s generally known for, Howard in fact was a fairly versatile writer. His output, primarily published in various pulp magazines of his time, ranges from your classic sword and sorcery tales to some more Lovecraftian weirdness and even a bunch of boxing-themed comedies. His settings are also quite varied, jumping between the lost Hyborian age, the early modern period, and even Westerns.

You might think it would be difficult to underrate one of the best authors to ever live, but with the robust frame of Conan towering over the rest of Howard’s works, his other characters like Solomon Kane and sailor Steve Costigan don’t get nearly as much recognition as they deserve. This article, perhaps the first of a series, aims to remedy that by revisiting one of Howard’s notable non-Conan works.

Straight out of the gate, we’ll be jumping into Red Shadows – the first story to feature Solomon Kane published back in 1928 in the Weird Tales magazine. While not as universally recognized as Conan, most people are likely to have at least heard of Kane – an uncompromising Englishman who hides his adventurous spirit behind the zeal and the simple garb of a Puritan. This particular story, apart from being a great introduction to the character, also happens to hit all the beats you’d expect from a Solomon Kane story, making it a great primer for the character and his adventures.

Red Shadows Retrospective

If you’d like to better understand what we’ll be talking about below, want to avoid spoilers, or revisit the story yourself, due to the fact that it’s nearly 100 years old by now, you can read it in public domain over at Project Gutenberg Australia.

The story, despite not being all that long, is separated into five chapters and covers several years, documenting Kane’s pursuit of the murderous bandit Le Loup, or The Wolf, from the French countryside all the way to the depths of the African jungle.

What makes this pursuit so notable is Kane’s personal connection to Le Loup or rather the complete lack thereof. The story begins with Kane stumbling upon a dying girl during his travels. Her village was pillaged and massacred by Le Loup’s gang. And as she dies, Kane promises to avenge her even though up until that moment he didn’t know her and had no idea Le Loup even existed. This encounter exemplifies Kane’s character as that of the ultimate hero – he does the right thing regardless of how inconvenient or perilous it might be. He needs no other reason to do good other than the fact evil exists.

“I ran. He, the Wolf, pursued me—and—caught me—” The words died away in a shuddering silence.

“I understand, child. Then—?”

“Then—he—he—stabbed me—with his dagger—oh, blessed saints!—mercy—”

Suddenly the slim form went limp. The man eased her to the earth, and touched her brow lightly.

“Dead!” he muttered.

Slowly he rose, mechanically wiping his hands upon his cloak. A dark scowl had settled on his somber brow. Yet he made no wild, reckless vow, swore no oath by saints or devils.

“Men shall die for this,” he said coldly.

Robert E. Howard – Red Shadows (1928)

The next chapter fast forwards several months and is told from the perspective of Le Loup’s gang, or what’s left of it. During that time, Kane tracked them down and wiped out so many of them and with such brutal efficiency, that the bandits believe him to be a devil. The way it’s all portrayed conveys to us that while Kane can be considered one of the earlier prototypes of the Paladin archetype (properly codified in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions), he’s not what we would call Lawful Stupid. His goals and his motives may be pure, but he can clearly see when a direct approach will simply get him killed and is never above using any trick at his disposal.

“What I wish to know, Monsieur,” said the bandit, “is why in the Devil’s name have you harassed my band as you have, and how did you destroy that last set of fools?”

“Your last question is easily answered, sir,” Kane replied. “I myself had the tale spread that the hermit possessed a store of gold, knowing that would draw your scum as carrion draws vultures. “For days and nights I have watched the hut, and tonight, when I saw your villains coming, I warned the hermit, and together we went among the trees back of the hut. Then, when the rogues were inside, I struck flint and steel to the train I had laid, and flame ran through the trees like a red snake until it reached the powder I had placed beneath the hut floor. Then the hut and thirteen sinners went to Hell in a great roar of flame and smoke. True, one escaped, but him I had slain in the forest had not I stumbled and fallen upon a broken root, which gave him time to elude me.”

Robert E. Howard – Red Shadows (1928)

The excerpt above takes place after Le Loup quite literally backstabs his last remaining compatriot and is getting ready to run with his treasure, only to be cornered by Kane. The two are well-matched physically but are direct opposites in their personalities. Le Loup is fiery and reckless, while Kane is cold and calculating. Their differences, and the fact that they both fully intend to kill each other, don’t stop them from having a fairly civilized conversation. A conversation that oozes tension and can be considered a fight in itself. A fine example of Howard’s craft.

Just as things come to blows, Le Loup escapes through a secret passage, leaving Kane in the dark and kicking off a years-long pursuit. The two men, an adventurer who thinks himself a Puritan and a bandit who thinks himself an adventurer both willingly play their part in this game of cat and mouse. Le Loup runs and Kane follows him wherever he goes. As Le Loup admits later, when both men are older and Kane finally catches up with him, he wasn’t so much afraid of Kane as he wanted to taste what it was like to be hounded for a change. During that lead-up to their final confrontation, Le Loup can’t understand why Kane would bother chasing him instead of taking his treasure for himself, while Kane understands it all too well – Le Loup personifies everything Kane opposes, and as such, the world isn’t large enough for the two of them.

KANE was silent, his still fury overcoming him. Though he did not realize it, the Wolf was more than merely an enemy to him; the bandit symbolized, to Kane, all the things against which the Puritan had fought all his life: cruelty, outrage, oppression and tyranny.

Le Loup broke in on his vengeful meditations. “What did you do with the treasure, which—gods of Hades!—took me years to accumulate? Devil take it, I had time only to snatch a handful of coins and trinkets as I ran.”

“I took such as I needed to hunt you down. The rest I gave to the villages which you had looted.”

“Saints and the devil!” swore Le Loup. “Monsieur, you are the greatest fool I have yet met. To throw that vast treasure—by Satan, I rage to think of it in the hands of base peasants, vile villagers! Yet, ho! ho! ho! ho! they will steal, and kill each other for it! That is human nature.”

“Yes, damn you!” flamed Kane suddenly, showing that his conscience had not been at rest. “Doubtless they will, being fools. Yet what could I do? Had I left it there, people might have starved and gone naked for lack of it. More, it would have been found, and theft and slaughter would have followed anyway. You are to blame, for had this treasure been left with its rightful owners, no such trouble would have ensued.”

Robert E. Howard – Red Shadows (1928)

Kane chases Le Loup into the African jungle, where the story transforms from a simple tale of revenge and a more violent take on The Three Musketeers, into a proper sword and sorcery tale dipped in the fantastic and the weird. When Kane finds him, Le Loup has installed himself as an advisor to a local chieftain of a tribe paying tribute to the Black God, a formless thing that could easily be conceived by Lovecraft’s own imagination. Not at all subtle, the Black God is not some legend or faint whisper in the night, it’s right there, in physical form observing the village and welcoming any and all sacrifices. What’s even more interesting, the thing isn’t described as inherently malicious, merely alien and impossible for an Englishman like Kane to truly understand, but still an inherent part of the dark corners of Africa.

This is easily one of the most intriguing things about the Solomon Kane stories. They treat Africa as this mysterious continent, an untamed, and more importantly untamable land. Even as recently as 100 years ago, that place had this air of unexplored mystery about it, allowing Howard to pack it to the brim with supernatural entities, vampires, demons, and remnants of Atlantis – all pulp fiction staples. And there’s just something so exciting about reading a story where a literal eldritch god and acts of effortless necromancy are treated as equally strange and inexplicable as a mere gorilla. Although if you subscribe to the theory that everything that went wrong with the world in recent years can be traced back to a single point – the untimely death of Harambe, you could say that gorillas still have plenty of mystery associated with them even to this day.

When Kane and Le Loup leave the village and their big fight finally happens, it’s portrayed as a moonlit rapier duel. A scene like this can be seen as cliched today, but that’s precisely because of stories like Red Shadows that popularized that trope in the first place. And when the two men finally cross their swords after years of pursuit and mutual hatred, the action is simply exhilarating. Howard is adept at descriptive writing and some of his big-picture passages are an absolute joy to read, but when it comes to pure adrenaline-fueled action, he’s the master without equal. As you can imagine, Kane triumphs in the end, allowing him to continue his adventures and become a sword and sorcery hero of legend.

“Because you are a rogue whom it is my destiny to kill,” answered Kane coldly. He did not understand. All his life he had roamed about the world aiding the weak and fighting oppression, he neither knew nor questioned why. That was his obsession, his driving force of life. Cruelty and tyranny to the weak sent a red blaze of fury, fierce and lasting, through his soul. When the full flame of his hatred was wakened and loosed, there was no rest for him until his vengeance had been fulfilled to the uttermost. If he thought of it at all, he considered himself a fulfiller of God’s judgment, a vessel of wrath to be emptied upon the souls of the unrighteous. Yet in the full sense of the word Solomon Kane was not wholly a Puritan, though he thought of himself as such.

Robert E. Howard – Red Shadows (1928)

This here is a persistent thread throughout all of Howard’s Solomon Kane stories. Even though he dresses as a Puritan and sees himself as one, Kane is something different. Considering the time his stories are set in, he’s very open-minded. Around the time of witch finders, instead of being terrified by the occult and decrying it at every step, Kane accepts it and uses it to achieve his goals whenever he can. He even develops a lifelong friendship with N’Longa – an African “ju-ju man” and master necromancer.

In a way, Kane is much less of a Puritan and closer to a knight errant stuck in another time. He can even be considered similar to Don Quixote, only his windmills are actual giants and thus have to be dealt with accordingly. He’s no superman and is often completely unprepared for the supernatural threats he encounters. His plans often go awry, leaving him in precarious positions, and in turn leaving us wondering how he’ll manage to escape them.

At the end of the day, Solomon Kane is pulp fiction at its finest. And we hope this article managed to show you why and maybe inspired you to pick up a Robert E. Howard story or two yourself. They may be close to 100 years old, but they’re short, easy to read, and better than just about anything you can find in a bookstore today.

Feel free to let us know which Robert. E. Howard stories are your favorite, and which of them you would like to see spotlighted in a similar fashion.