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- Herausgeber: Titan Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Capturing the electric short fiction energy that led Robert E. Howard to be one of the top fantasy writers of the century, with exclusive serialized eBook stories starring Conan, Solomon Kane, and more by many of today's top writers in fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. While on an intelligence mission in Central Asia, British Lieutenant John Stock encounters Francis Xavier Gordon, the renowned adventurer better known as El Borak. Called "The Swift," the Texan gunslinger is as at home in the Pamir Mountains as the snow leopards that inhabit them. Times are desperate, Gordon reveals: the legendary city of Lamakan, ruled by the mysterious Queen Zohra, is not only very real, but in danger. Surrounded by encroaching Russian troops, Lamakan faces an existential threat. With Stock desperate to learn more about Queen Zohra, and Gordon desperate to free her people, the two must venture forth into a city under siege and hope to save it. Facing fire from all sides, it is up to the fearless El Borak to rescue the mythical Lamakan from total devastation.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
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Copyright
El Borak: The Siege of Lamakan
About the Author
EL BORAKTHE SIEGE OF LAMAKAN
JAMES LOVEGROVE
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EL BORAK: THE SIEGE OF LAMAKAN
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803366524
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: September 2024
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
© 2024 Robert E. Howard Properties LLC (“REHP”). EL BORAK, ROBERT E. HOWARD, and related logos, names and character likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of REHP. Heroic Signatures is a trademark of Cabinet Licensing LLC.
James Lovegrove asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
THE SIEGE OFLAMAKAN
AN EL BORAK ADVENTURE
JAMES LOVEGROVE
Report by John Stock, lieutenant in the 1st Regiment of Punjab Infantry, sent to George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India, at his residence at Government House in Calcutta, dated February 1903
* * *
Dear Lord Curzon,
Having made it safely back to Kabul, I am pleased to provide you with an account of my mission, trusting that you will pass on the intelligence contained herein to our paymasters in Whitehall and that it will prove valuable to them as well as to you.
You will recall how I ventured into the Pamir mountains at the start of the winter, accompanied by my trusty Pundit colleague, Aarav Choudhury. This I did at your personal behest, with a view to discovering more about Queen Zohra. She, it was rumoured, had taken it upon herself to unite disparate regional tribes in revolt against Russian incursion upon their territory, inciting them to harry and kill any of the invaders they came across. This resulted in numerous skirmishes and not a few casualties on either side. My mission was to ascertain whether there was any substance to these claims and, if so, whether Zohra and her policy might prove advantageous to our own interests in the region.
There was some debate regarding the woman’s very existence, with certain parties suggesting that she was naught but a myth, and likewise Lamakan, the remote city over which she supposedly ruled. In these confused times, and in this benighted corner of the world, it is perfectly possible that stories about an idealized queen—imperious, insubordinate, beautiful, exhorting her subjects to revolt against an oppressor—might arise spontaneously, out of nothing more than a fervent desire for them to be true. At the very least, wishful thinking might distort and exaggerate fact into fiction.
It turns out that this latter-day Boadicea is not only real but is, in my judgement, a force to be reckoned with. As to the likelihood of her accepting support from Britain, and perhaps even entering into an alliance with us, I shall leave that to wiser heads than mine to determine.
* * *
We had a hard journey of it almost from the moment we left Afghanistan, travelling north into Turkestan and thence into the Pamirs. Choudhury has huge expertise when it comes to the region, having conducted numerous one-man expeditions there as part of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. I could not ask for a more reliable companion, or for that matter a more resourceful one.
He instinctively performed various of the techniques he was taught in order to make his observations unnoticed, such as taking steps of equal measurement, precisely two thousand of them to the mile, and counting off the miles on the prayer beads on his wrist. Thanks to this and other skills, he is akin to a human sextant: he always seems to know where he is, to the nearest degree of latitude and longitude.
Yet, as we ventured deeper into that high fastness, with its broad-beamed valleys, its sharp blue lakes and its close-shouldering, sinewy mountains, we strayed so far outside Choudhury’s scope of knowledge that even he admitted we were entering terra incognita. Large swathes of the area are under Russian control, and our every footstep was dogged by the awareness that at any time we might stumble upon some of the Tsar’s men, whether soldiers or spies.
In the past, while undertaking missions such as this, I have adopted the guise of a hakeem—a doctor or wise man—a role I have been able to pull off convincingly thanks to some basic medical training and my fluency in Persian, Pashto, and several of the regional dialects. However, for all that my skin has been darkened by years of exposure to the tropical sun, my features remain distinctly European, and there have been times when my imposture has come close to being penetrated, with potentially dire consequences. As an example of this, you will perhaps recall the perilously close shave I had with some Turcoman slavers a couple of years ago.
