This is a guest post from Deuce:

Manly Wade Wellman led a helluva life. Born in 1903 in what is now known as Angola, he was made the adopted son of a tribal chief thanks to his father’s medical expertise. Manly’s father was not only a doctor but also a published author and all-around man of parts. His parents moved to the USA when he was six. Wellman graduated college at Wichita State University in the great state of Kansas before making an unholy pilgrimage to Columbia University, where he earned another degree. MWW immediately set out on his chosen career as an author, having a story published in the November 1927 issue of Weird Tales.

Wellman’s literary career would last over six decades. He was a true student of history, writing numerous non-fiction works and biographies. He also penned a multitude of fun SF tales, of which his “Hok the Mighty” stories might be my favorite. However, his fictional bread n’ butter was crafting yarns of occult detectives. First there was Judge Pursuivant, then John Thunstone and then, John the Balladeer.

John the Balladeer, whom MWW once called “a cross between John the Baptist and Johnny Cash”, dominates Wellman’s literary legacy. As Conan is to Robert E. Howard, so is John to Manly’s reputation among his fans.

However, Wellman loved writing Sword-and-Sorcery. His Thunstone tales are essentially a modern (1940s) version, with Thunstone using his “Dai sword” in supernatural combat more than once. Manly’s “Hok” tales are borderline. I class them as SF, since I recall no actual supernatural elements in them. If we are to believe MWW himself, he came up with the idea for his ‘Kardios the Atlantean’ tales for Weird Tales in the ’30s.

True or not, Kardios is how I first discovered Wellman’s fiction, specifically in Swords Against Darkness II. I soon read most of the Thunstone and Balladeer tales. Then I tracked down Manly’s Cahena: A Dream of the Past.

Cahena was published by Doubleday in hardcover a few months after MWW died. That was its only printing until DMR Books picked up the flickering torch and republished it in 2020.

Cahena is Wellman’s final novel. After decades of writing about occult detectives, far-flung space adventures and the American South, he decided to scribe a sword-and-sorcery novel about the Berbers’ struggle against Arab imperialists in the last decade of the seventh century.

Make no mistake: Cahena is a sword-and-sorcery novel. Historical sword-and-sorcery. Despite totally artificial limits set by those with agendas, Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane yarns are S&S. Period. As are yarns like “Worms of the Earth” and “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth”. Among the “First Dynasty” of S&S scribes, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore and Fritz Leiber all wrote ‘Historical Sword-and-Sorcery’ during the 1930s. I will defend this anywhere and anytime.

Cahena bridges the gap between the seventh and eighth centuries. There had been an initial wave of Arab Muslim conquerors–riding high off their conquest of formerly Christian Egypt–which had swept all the way to the Atlantic. However, resistance from the indigenous Christian Berber tribes had forced all that back to eastern Libya. Wulf the Saxon, a native of England, had been fighting for the Byzantine throne for almost a decade. He was among the troops that were sent to reinforce Carthage, which fell to the Mohammedans in 698 AD.

Wulf finds refuge among the Berber forces of the Cahena–a prophetess of supernal beauty. He tells them his bonafides:

“You’ve come far across the world,” Bhakrann [the Cahena’s captain] observed. “You escaped being killed by Moslems, then by us. Call yourself lucky.”

“Call yourselves lucky, too,” said Wulf at once, and Cham snorted, but again Bhakrann laughed.

Wulf then relates what happens when unbelievers fall into the hands of Allah’s Faithful:

He described the sack of the cities, men butchered, women screaming in hysterical terror, children herded away like sheep.

“They’re shipping those children to Damascus,” said Wulf.

This isn’t Wulf’s first rodeo. He has fought the rabid hordes of the Prophet (PBUH) all along Byzantium’s frontiers and seen what happens to those who lose. Possibly the deadliest swordsman in North Africa, Wulf has also studied the battles of Caesar and others. Both attributes bring him into the Cahena’s inner circle.

‘Cahena’ is another form of the Arabic Al-Kahina, which means prophetess/sorceress. Meant as an insult–like ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’–the Berbers adopted it for her ‘outer name’. Her true name was reserved for her inner circle. The Cahena’s powers are real.

This brings up the ‘Sword-and-Sorcery’ classification of Cahena. The Cahena has objectively authentic supernatural powers of prophecy and clairvoyance (two different things, by the way). Also, Wulf kills what has to be a lamia-vampire in the course of the novel. Finally, there is the presence of the demon/war-god/death-god, Khro. That is a little murkier, but still convincing within the narrative.

Let me put this in very simplistic terms: there is far more ‘sorcery’/the supernatural in Cahena than there is in “Rogues in the House” or “Swords of the Purple Kingdom”. And yet, the latter yarns are totally considered ‘canonical’ S&S and Cahena is just/simply/merely ‘historical fantasy’. Quit beclowning yourselves, Poindexters. For your own sakes.

I won’t toss out any more spoilers, but here’s an excerpt from one battle:

He lifted his sword high and urged his war horse forward. Spear men fell away to right and left before him, running to find their own mounts and join the counterattack. A wordless howl beat up from the men riding behind Wulf. He saw Uchia on foot to one side, and even as Wulf saw him Uchia went down under the frantic blow of a Moslem scimitar. Riding in, Wulf sped a swift slash and down went the slayer, across Uchia’s body.

Wulf put his horse to a mighty jump over two chargers that struggled in crippled pain on the ground, and drove in among the discomfited Moslems beyond.

Blood n’ thunder stuff! There was a rumor at one point that Karl Edward Wagner “helped” MWW with those battle scenes. David Drake — a man who would know — categorically shot that down. This is Wellman at the peak of his narrative powers.

Cahena: A Dream of the Past is Manly Wade Wellman’s final, epic triumph in a career with plenty of milestones. He had already won/earned the World Fantasy Convention’s ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in 1980 and had nothing to prove.

I have read the vast majority of MWW’s novels. Cahena stands above all the rest. Put aside the fact that any John the Balladeer novel was just another ‘Conanic episode’ in the hero’s career–as fun as that might be–Cahena simply contains more emotional depth and resonance. I’ve read all the Balladeer novels and have never reread any of them. Despite starting a decade later, I’ve reread Cahena four times.

DMR Books republished Cahena: A Dream of the Past–for the first time ever–in 2020. That license runs out in a few days, on June 1. It may be another forty years–or never–before a publisher takes a chance on a ‘dead tree’ edition. Grab a copy while you can. Order it here.