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- Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
Set during the turbulent era of the Crusades, "Hawks of Outremer" follows Cormac FitzGeoffrey, a fierce and restless warrior of mixed Norman and Gaelic blood. Seeking purpose and vengeance, Cormac ventures across the battle-ravaged lands of Outremer, drawn into a brutal web of betrayal, politics, and warfare. His relentless quest for justice pits him against ruthless enemies in a world where loyalty is rare and survival demands a ruthless heart.
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Seitenzahl: 52
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Hawks of Outremer
Robert E. Howard
SYNOPSIS
Set during the turbulent era of the Crusades, "Hawks of Outremer" follows Cormac FitzGeoffrey, a fierce and restless warrior of mixed Norman and Gaelic blood. Seeking purpose and vengeance, Cormac ventures across the battle-ravaged lands of Outremer, drawn into a brutal web of betrayal, politics, and warfare. His relentless quest for justice pits him against ruthless enemies in a world where loyalty is rare and survival demands a ruthless heart.
Keywords
Crusades, Vengeance, Warfare
NOTICE
This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.
Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.
Hawks of Outremer
"The still, white, creeping road slips on.Marked by the bones of man and beast.What comeliness and might have goneTo pad the highway of the East!Long dynasties of fallen rose.The glories of a thousand wars.A million lovers' hearts composeThe dust upon the road to Fars."
— Vansittart
Chapter I:A Man Returns
"Halt!" The bearded man-at-arms swung his pike about, growling like a surly mastiff. It paid to be wary on the road to Antioch. The stars blinked redly through the thick night and their light was not sufficient for the fellow to make out what sort of man it was who loomed so gigantically before him.
An iron-clad hand shot out suddenly and closed on the soldier's mailed shoulder in a grasp that numbed his whole arm. From beneath the helmet the guardsman saw the blaze of ferocious blue eyes that seemed lambent, even in the dark.
"Saints preserve us!" gasped the frightened man-at-arms, "Cormac FitzGeoffrey! Avaunt! Back to Hell with ye, like a good knight! I swear to you, sir-"
"Swear me no oaths," growled the knight. "What is this talk?"
"Are you not an incorporeal spirit?" mouthed the soldier. "Were you not slain by the Moorish corsairs on your homeward voyage?"
"By the accursed gods!" snarled FitzGeoffrey. "Does this hand feel like smoke?"
He sank his mailed fingers into the soldier's arm and grinned bleakly at the resultant howl.
"Enough of such mummery; tell me who is within that tavern."
"Only my master, Sir Rupert de Vaile, of Rouen."
"Good enough," grunted the other. "He is one of the few men I count friends, in the East or elsewhere."
The big warrior strode to the tavern door and entered, treading lightly as a cat despite his heavy armor. The man-at-arms rubbed his arm and stared after him curiously, noting, in the dim light, that FitzGeoffrey bore a shield with the horrific emblem of his family-a white grinning skull. The guardsman knew him of old-a turbulent character, a savage fighter and the only man among the Crusaders who had been esteemed stronger than Richard the Lion-hearted. But FitzGeoffrey had taken ship for his native isle even before Richard had departed from the Holy Land. The Third Crusade had ended in failure and disgrace; most of the Frankish knights had followed their kings homeward. What was this grim Irish killer doing on the road to Antioch?
Sir Rupert de Vaile, once of Rouen, now a lord of the fast-fading Outremer, turned as the great form bulked in the doorway. Cormac FitzGeoffrey was a fraction of an inch above six feet, but with his mighty shoulders and two hundred pounds of iron muscle, he seemed shorter. The Norman stared in surprised recognition, and sprang to his feet. His fine face shone with sincere pleasure.
"Cormac, by the saints! Why, man, we heard that you were dead!"
Cormac returned the hearty grip, while his thin lips curved slightly in what would have been, in another man, a broad grin of greeting. Sir Rupert was a tall man, and well knit, but he seemed almost slight beside the huge Irish warrior who combined bulk with a sort of dynamic aggressiveness that was apparent in his every movement.
FitzGeoffrey was clean-shaven and the various scars that showed on his dark, grim face lent his already formidable features a truly sinister aspect. When he took off his plain visorless helmet and thrust back his mail coif, his square-cut, black hair that topped his low broad forehead contrasted strongly with his cold blue eyes. A true son of the most indomitable and savage race that ever trod the bloodstained fields of battle, Cormac FitzGeoffrey looked to be what he was-a ruthless fighter, born to the game of war, to whom the ways of violence and bloodshed were as natural as the ways of peace are to the average man.
Son of a woman of the O'Briens and a renegade Norman knight, Geoffrey the Bastard, in whose veins, it is said, coursed the blood of William the Conqueror, Cormac had seldom known an hour of peace or ease in all his thirty years of violent life. He was born in a feud-torn and blood-drenched land, and raised in a heritage of hate and savagery. The ancient culture of Erin had long crumbled before the repeated onslaughts of Norsemen and Danes. Harried on all sides by cruel foes, the rising civilization of the Celts had faded before the fierce necessity of incessant conflict, and the merciless struggle for survival had made the Gaels as savage as the heathens who assailed them.
Now, in Cormac's time, war upon red war swept the crimson isle, where clan fought clan, and the Norman adventurers tore at one another's throats, or resisted the attacks of the Irish, playing tribe against tribe, while from Norway and the Orkneys the still half-pagan Vikings ravaged all impartially.
A vague realization of all this flashed through Sir Rupert's mind as he stood staring at his friend.
"We heard you were slain in a sea-fight off Sicily," he repeated.
Cormac shrugged his shoulders. "Many died then, it is true, and I was struck senseless by a stone from a ballista. Doubtless that is how the rumor started. But you see me, as much alive as ever."
