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Robert E. Howard
created two resourceful men of action who roam the tumultuous
frontiers of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, and Arabia at the
turn of the 20th Century, while around them rage great global
conflicts: the silent war between England and Russia for control
of the strategic lands of India and Afghanistan and the guerrilla
campaigns of T.E. Lawrence in Arabia during World War I. Although
set in relatively modern times, these stories are marked by the
same lavish color, precipitous action, and dauntless characters
that distinguish Howard’s heroic fantasy. Only this time,
you’re as likely to hear gunfire as the clash of steel when
the fighting starts.
Gordon is called “El Borak” – the Swift –
by the untamed tribesmen of Central Asia and the Middle East.
The nickname describes his speed with sword and revolver, the
latter skill perfected in an earlier career as a Texas gunman.
A freelance adventurer who occasionally hires on with the British
Secret Service to foil Russia’s imperialistic designs north
of the Khyber Pass, Gordon sometimes rides into trouble alone,
sometimes with a small band of dedicated friends. In the fearsome
Land of Ghouls, he infiltrates and shatters a resurgent band of
outlaws who have attempted to revive the brotherhood of the Assassins.
In the corpse-choked Pass of Swords, he throws off his disguise
as “Shirkuh,” a killer for hire, to foil the sinister
Black Tigers. When WW1 explodes, he follows the call of duty southward
to fight alongside Lawrence of Arabia.
Like Gordon, Kirby O’Donnell is a restless American who
has found his true home on the far borders of High Tartary. Armed
with the fighting-knife called the kindhjal and cloaked in the
assumed identity of “Ali El Ghazi,” a Kurdish soldier
of fortune, O’Donnell follows a legend of vast treasure
to the forgotten city of Shahrazar. He finds the fortune, then
consigns it to destruction so as to prevent it from igniting a
conflagration across Central Asia. But another fabulous hoard
awaits, the ruby-encrusted idol known as the Blood-stained God;
it is O’Donnell’s for the taking, in the rugged hills
beyond the Crag of Eagles – if he can survive multiple double-crosses
to claim it!
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