Argon’s Other Eye 5 - Take me south, pony!

No! No! This isn’t Amoratia Ruby’s ‘ Schtupped by the Centaur’ – it’s Brak the Barbarian: The Sorceress! Other barbarians have two syllable names, but that wasn’t barbaric enough for Brak, who trims things right down to the bare essentials. Until someone creates a savage warrior from the untamed north called Ak or W, Brak wins the mighty-thewed hero with the shortest name contest. Incidentally, Bra the Barbarian is a popular parlour game (on certain websites), similar to ‘Pin the tail on the donkey’, only with a sweaty berserker and a Gossard Everyday Lacey Plunge.

Anyway, Brak comes from a wild land of ceaseless, no-quarter struggle against both man and nature and has evil sexy sorceress problems – so far, so good. Unusually, Brak appears to be (or is on the way to becoming) a Christian, if the Nameless God whose symbol is a cross with arms of equal length and his Nestorians have anything to do with it, not that that has much influence on his behaviour. He is on his way to Khurdistan, to ask what the extra  ‘h’ stands for, fighting the Dark God Yob-Haggoth, an affectionate tribute to Yog Sothoth, on his way. He is light-haired and mahogany tanned, looking exactly like David Dickinson, except all he wears is a lion skin. Mmmm’h!

Warning: spoilers ahead, if you're bothered.

The sorceress in question has red hair, so you know she’s Evil from the get-go, rides around in a chariot pulled by a giant dog, an adorable fuzzy Bichon called Puffpuff with a cute polka-dot bow around its neck and is already in a relationship with a naughty wizard called Tamar Zed. Despite this, she spends most of the book flirting with Brak, the hussy, which makes Tamar jealous; Nordica Firehair chokes this off pretty quickly by threatening to withhold access to her charms, so he practices his enchantment spells on a shepherdess instead. She doesn’t want him either – poor Tamar! – so he throws both Brak and the Shepherdess into the very Freudian manworm pit. The man-worm dies, twitching and spurting, then there are actual bats out of hell, who are gone when the morning comes because Brak’s killed ‘em all! Nordica, having been turned down by Brak (who believes that True Love Waits), then has it off with a blacksmith – it is, apparently, the kind of experience a man dreams about but never - , so I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but there you are. She’s having more fun than the barbarian is, that’s for sure, even if he does have an amusing joke to tell Tamar.

Knock knock!

Who’s there?

Yob-Haggoth!

Yob-Haggoth who?

Yob-Haggoth A Clue what I’m talking about!

Not that amusing, then.

Brak is, manly name notwithstanding, a bit of a crap barbarian. He manages to slay the man-worm, true, but that’s more or less it – he gets knocked unconscious three times, only once with spearbutts, and only wins through the intervention of one of those ducks with machineguns, after which he throws PuffPuff (sorry, ScarletJaws) off some battlements, then his pony takes him south, where the bending is. I think we’d better draw a veil over what comes next.

I think, next time, I'm going to investigate Richard Kirk's Raven.