Prologue

Los Angeles 1937

They come for him at night. A cold night, damp creeping through stone walls, old iron bars slick with sweat.

He sits at the table, massive shoulders set, hunched over a cracked chessboard. He lost track of the game days ago, maybe longer. The pieces stand where they were left, mid-battle, kings facing one another across the board, oblivious to the loss of life and hope. A war neither would win.

The door groans. Boots on stone. He does not look up. Not yet. They have come before; men in grey coats, men with needles, with black notebooks and soft voices. Nothing ever changed.

Wait though. This time, it’s different. He can taste it, bitter on the tongue.

Two step in. Not orderlies. Not doctors. These are men who have killed before. He can feel it in the way they move. The first wears a long black coat, plain but well made. The bulge of a hand in pocket, cradling a pistol, is clear at a glance. The second, broader, face marked with old scars, carries a simple case. Neither speaks.

One word would change everything. One word is all it would take to end the quiet hell that has held him in its jaws for what feels like years.

It has marked him. Deep furrows across his brow. A little grey in the thick overgrown beard. A leaner look around the eyes that speaks of hunger no food could touch. The cell. The crossing. The long silence between stars. They have twisted something in him.

He looks older, yes, but not diminished. The power is still there, more tightly wound than ever, like a storm trapped in skin. Something else stirs behind his wolf-like gaze too. Something you wouldn’t want to meet in the dark...

The man in the coat speaks first.

“You are coming with us.”

Esau Cairn smiles.

It is not a kind smile.

Los Angeles 1934

The Professor stood hunched in his cluttered laboratory, the faint hum of the artefact making the silence sharp and strange. It lay heavy on his table, alien, metallic, coldly glowing under dim lights. He hadn't really believed he would find it, still less that it's promise would be realized. But on a whim, a favor to an old friend, he had undertaken the quest. The kind of moment that shaped a life. Or ruined it.

A soft knock broke his trance. He quickly covered the artefact with a rag. “Enter.”

Rennick eased through the door, cautious, lizard eyes flickering around the room. Young, lean, clever: too clever by half. The Professor felt a pang of unease.

“You wanted me, Professor?”

The Professor watched Rennick carefully. “Yes. We need to talk.”

Rennick’s gaze twitched to the covered table, then back. “Of course.”

Rennick’s face was pale and tight with anger as he gathered his things. He had nothing much, just a few papers, a stained notebook, and resentment enough for a lifetime. The Professor watched from the doorway.

“Your references were forged,” The Professor said bluntly. “You lied.”

Rennick kept his face turned away. “It was one mistake—”

“It was a lie,” The Professor corrected him, voice flat. “I won’t tolerate liars here. Goodbye, Rennick.”

He turned stiffly, meeting the older man’s gaze. “Goodbye, Professor.” The Professor saw something dark in those eyes then, something that lingered after Rennick had gone.

In the hallway outside the laboratory, Rennick shouldered through the door, face flushed, his grip tight on a battered satchel stuffed with his papers. He barely noticed the big man standing by the frame until the collision jolted them both.

“Watch where you're going,” Rennick snapped, voice sharp with anger. His nerves were raw. He’d been humiliated, dismissed, the future he had imagined crumbling in an instant.

Cairn was still, and composed. Slowly, he turned, broad shoulders rolling with easy control. His piercing gray eyes locked on Rennick as he looked down at the smaller man; calm, cold, unblinking. Dark brooding features, heavy jaw and brows, adding to a jolting impression of primal intensity.

“You should take more care yourself,” Cairn said, voice low. He smiled faintly, almost a gesture of politeness. But there was nothing polite in the eyes that held Rennick now.

The words dried on Rennick’s tongue. For a moment, he could not breathe.

It hit him then, in a wave of memory. A boy again, small hands clutching the bars of a metal cage. The tiger had paced lazily, back and forth. He had jeered at it, threw the little stone to watch it bounce dully from the beast’s hide. Emboldened by distance, protected by steel. But when the great cat turned, slow and deliberate, and fixed him with that heavy gaze, something primitive had cracked open inside him.

He had stood frozen, the world narrowing to those yellow eyes. The cage meant nothing. The bars meant nothing. His parents’ voices faded. All he had known was fear, sharp and absolute. He pissed himself then. His bladder emptied without his will, warmth soaking down his legs, shame burning hotter than the wetness.

Now, here, with Cairn’s eyes boring into him, that same animal fear slammed back. The man was not just a man. Not something to out-think or manipulate. He felt it in his marrow. He was prey staring into the eyes of the predator.

It lasted only a breath, a frozen instant, but it burned deep.

He forced a step back, heart pounding, the satchel slipping on his shoulder. Fury rushed in to cover his fear, blind and cold. Hatred filled him, sharp as the shame had been on that childhood day. Hatred for Cairn; to be made so small, so powerless.

He stumbled away, boots scraping on the shingle of the Professor's dusty driveway towards his battered '27 Model T Coupe. With each step, distance brought relief, but the hatred deepened. One day, he promised to himself, as the rage steadied and grew. One day I’ll have your head on my wall. And the old bastard's next to it.

Cairn sat at the small table, whisky untouched, chess pieces arranged precisely. The Professor watched him quietly.

The game had slowed. Cairn was cat still, eyes on the board. Across from him, the Professor’s gaze began to wander. On the desk behind Cairn, the old Lange and Söhne caught the light, where he had set it after winding that morning. The watch had been his father’s, carried out of Leipzig in ’81, back when Stoecker first helped turn the streets sour and wise men sought opportunities in the New World.

Most days, its weight and presence brought a quiet reassurance. The solid craftsmanship, the matchless intricacy of the watchmaker’s art brought near to perfection. An emblem of civility and civilisation. Today, with Rennick’s shadow still hanging in the room, something of its old history stirred instead. The Professor shifted in his chair and looked again to the board.

“You’re troubled, Esau,” said The Professor. “More than usual.”

Cairn gave a dry chuckle. “You ever get the feeling you’re made for a different time?” He drawled in his deep Plains accent.

The Professor shifted uneasily. “Every day.”

“Politicians, lawyers,” Cairn muttered. “All lies and slippery hands. They’re pressing me hard, trying to box me in.”

“You’re a strong man,” said The Professor, distracted again, his thoughts sliding now to the alien artefact hidden mere feet away.

“Strong men break too,” Cairn said softly.

When Cairn burst into the laboratory days later, blood was thick and drying on his knuckles, his face tight with panic. “I’m done for,” he gasped, eyes wild. “Killed a man. Had to.”

“Who?”

“Boss Blaine,” Cairn said bitterly, voice shaking with the memory of violence. “Corrupt, crooked. Tried to frame me. They’ll hang me for it!”

The Professor’s gaze sharpened, decision made instantly. He removed the rag, revealing the humming artefact. “Listen to me very carefully, Esau.”

Cairn stared, breathing ragged, barely comprehending. “What is that?”

“Your only escape.”

There was no proof, but the press branded him “The Scientist in the Killer’s Pocket,” and colleagues began to whisper and edge away. The Professor refused to cooperate with the authorities, claimed he didn’t know Cairn, and denied any knowledge of his disappearance. But people talked. And talked.

Rennick read every headline with greedy satisfaction, seeing opportunity in the wreckage. He had met Cairn at the Professor’s house once, but he said nothing. Not out of loyalty. Not fear. Just cold calculation. The silence bought him leverage. By not contradicting the Professor’s story, he helped push the old man deeper into the shadows. And in those shadows, Rennick built his rise. His supposed contempt for the Professor’s methods, along with carefully planted rumors of secret research and buried relics, made him useful to the right people. He knew just enough to open doors, and just little enough to be trusted.

That was when the Organization took notice. No names. No banner. Just whispers behind locked doors. It had no headquarters, no public front. Power ran through it like blood through hidden veins; behind companies, behind thrones, behind the men the world believed they had elected. Wealth older than empires moved when it gave the nod. Its agents wore no insignia, but their word traveled faster than the law. When they reached for something, resistance rarely mattered.

Now, they were reaching for the Professor.

And what they wanted, they would take.

The invitation had come in a crisp envelope, no letterhead, no sender's name. A single line in elegant script:

A possible opportunity awaits. Discretion expected. Tuesday September 4, The Exeter Building, Room 412. 7.30pm

He came. Of course he came. What choice did he have?

The office was no dingy backroom. A modern white palace of commerce on West 5th Street. It was high above the city, behind thick glass, quiet, insulated from the traffic noise below. Rich carpets. Polished wood. A faint scent of tobacco and old books. Everything old money, subtle and precise. The kind of room where men made decisions that shaped nations.

He waited, perched stiffly in a leather chair. The city lights shimmered beyond the glass. His hands would not quite stop trembling. Months of ruin had taken their toll. If this was an offer, a way back, could he refuse?

The door opened with a soft click.

The man who entered was tall, lean, immaculate. Silver at the temples. Sharp eyes that missed nothing. His hair was graying just the shade Cary would be aiming for in a few years. The suit: dove‑gray and perfectly cut by Nathan Turk. He moved like a dancer gone cold with practice. No wasted motion.

“Professor,” the man said smoothly, taking a seat opposite, without shaking hands. “My name is Calder. You are welcome here.”

He gestured, almost casually, to a polished wooden box on the table.

“A cigar?”

The Professor hesitated, pulse quickening. The box gleamed. Expensive. Cuban, no doubt. He nodded and reached out. “Thank you.”

Calder selected one, clipped and lit it with slow care using a polished Dunhill. Then he passed the lighter across the table.

The Professor took the first draw, steadying himself. Smooth, rich, the smoke a comfort.

Calder leaned back in his chair, drawing easily on his cigar. As he did, his cuff slipped back a fraction, the movement effortless. A slim gold Patek Philippe Calatrava caught the light, the soft gleam speaking volumes. The Professor recognized it at once, and felt the involuntary stab that followed. Old Europe. Pure class. The kind of thing a man like him might covet, but would never wear. Temptation and envy, both sharp behind the tobacco smoke in his throat.

“A drink?” The smile was faint. “Whisky? Or something lighter...a cocktail perhaps?”

Something knotted in the Professor’s gut. The question hung there, too casual. His mind ran ahead, reading shadows. A test? A signal?

“Whisky,” he said quickly. “Neat.”

A slight pause. “Excellent choice.”

Crystal glasses. A bottle of something old, pale gold. Calder poured with precise movements. No words spoken. No hint, one way or another. The Professor took the glass with a hand that barely shook.

He sipped. The warmth helped. Some of the tightness in his chest began to ease.

“You understand,” Calder said, voice pleasant, “that an opportunity exists here. For the right man. A man of vision.”

The Professor nodded. “I hope so.”

“We have followed your work. With great interest. What was done to you, the public ruin, was... regrettable.”

That faint smile again. The Professor found his voice. “I have ideas. New lines of inquiry. If support could be found, I would see the work continued.”

“Of course.” He leaned back slightly. “You would be well supported. Your reputation, restored. A new beginning.”

Hope flickered. A new beginning. After everything, could it be possible?

“There is, of course, one small detail.”

The words were soft. The smile remained. The room felt colder.

“You have been engaged in... unique work.” The Calder’s gaze sharpened. “We know this.”

A pulse hammered in the Professor’s temples.

“I conduct many lines of inquiry.”

“Indeed.” Calder’s voice grew quieter. “But let's not waste words.”

The air pressed close. The walls seemed smaller, the lights dimmer.

“The artefact. We know now that it was you who found it. We know, of course, about the world beyond.”

Cold dread filled his gut. He forced his face to remain neutral.

“We would see this work continued,” the man said softly. “With our... support.”

The Professor’s heart pounded. He kept his voice steady. “You do not understand what you are asking.”

Calder did not blink. “We understand more than you think.”

He leaned forward now. Not close, not threatening. Not yet. But the temperature of the room had changed. The warmth of cigars and whisky was gone. Something colder had taken its place.

“You have built a working doorway. We know this.”

The Professor’s mouth was dry. He said nothing.

“There are those,” he continued, voice smooth as silk, “who would see such work wasted. Buried. Lost.”

A pause. The faintest shift of tone.

“We are not among them.”

The Professor looked down at the whisky in his hand. The glass trembled, ever so slightly. His mind raced. They knew too much. How? It did not matter. The net was already around him.

“You would give me resources? Freedom?” Buy time. Time to think, to plan.

The smile returned, thin and sharp. “We would give you everything you required. Equipment. Staff. Safety. Reputation...in time.”

The Professor breathed slowly. He wanted to believe it. Wanted it badly. But something in the man’s eyes said otherwise.

“And in return?” he asked quietly.

“You will continue your work. Fully. No limits.”

“And if I decline?”

Calder took his time. He rose smoothly, buttoning his jacket.

“You will not.”

A faint nod. A signal, or perhaps a simple gesture of dismissal.

“You will have time to consider.”

He moved to the door, then paused. Glanced back, eyes colder than before.

“Think carefully Professor.”

And then he was gone. The door closed softly. The room seemed larger again, but emptier. The smoke hung in the still air. The whisky tasted of ash.

The Professor sat alone, the weight of what had passed settling on his chest. With a heart wrenching certainty he knew it; they would simply close every door until only one remained.
Days later, he sent the letter; polite but firm. Tempted more than was comfortable, but he knew what working for them would mean and he could see no real alternative. Ruin he could stand, but the loss of his soul..?

It happened on a night heavy with rain, the streets slick and dark. The Professor sat at his desk, staring at the dim outlines of research notes. His mind drifted, images of Cairn’s desperate escape and Rennick’s bitter exit clouding his thoughts. A noise snapped him alert. His pulse quickened, imagination firing.

He stood cautiously, peering through the window into the darkness. Forced to move to more humble accommodation in Westlake since Cairn's leap to freedom, his current rooms were clean, but shabby and the constant noises of a town at night served to unsettle his nerves to a fine point. Shadows danced beneath the streetlamp, coalescing briefly into forms of imagined menace. Relief flooded him as he saw a cat step smoothly from the gloom, eyes glinting in the faint light. He exhaled softly, chuckling at his overwrought reaction.

His quiet laugh just enough to mask the faint shift of air behind him. A breath, soft as silk. Then hands, gloved and cold, clamped over his mouth. Iron fingers crushed his throat, the pressure sudden, merciless. His chest convulsed. Panic flared, bright and useless. A strangled noise buzzed in his skull but went nowhere, trapped behind choking flesh.

He clawed at the grip, nails splitting, wrists burning. No air. No sound. Blackness crept at the edges of his sight. He tried to turn, to fight, but his limbs felt slow, distant, already betraying him. His pulse thundered in his ears, wild and ragged.

Pain bloomed in his chest. Cold, deep, sliding between ribs, ripping breath from his lungs. The steel was inside him. He could feel the wet heat pour out, draining, draining.

Thoughts scattered. Rage. Shame. Too late. His notes. His work. The artefact. Fool. He should have destroyed it all.

Esau...Edwin...Forgive me.

The floor tilts. The dark surges up to take him. His last breath rattling to silence in his throat.

Almuric

On Almuric, the Yaga were broken, but not destroyed. The last of their forces had scattered, hiding among dark places, feeding on old hatred. Among the Gura, old grudges had flared. Tribes that once fought side by side now eyed each other across the ashes. The fragile unity that Cairn had helped build was crumbling.

In the abandoned stone hall that formed part of Koth’s war camp, the chieftains met. Firelight danced on the walls. Smoke coiled thick in the air, heavy with sweat and old blood. Thab leaned close to Cairn, voice low.

“We waited too long. The Korga have turned. Pledged to the Yaga.”

“They think the spoils will be theirs,” Cairn muttered. His hands were tight around the rim of his cup. “Fools.”

Around the fire, voices rose and fell. Arguments flared. Altha, proud and cold, silenced them with a word. “There will be no more delay. At dawn, we march.”

There was no certainty in the air. No clear path. Only the knowledge that the Yaga and their new allies must be broken, now, or all would fall to ruin.

Soon though, plans were being drawn on rough hides. Flank here, strike there. Cairn would lead the spear from the West. Thab with him. Altha and her allies from the front. A final blow, if fate allowed.

There was nothing more to say. Only the fight to come.

The warriors drifted to their rest. Altha to speak with her winged cohort. Cairn, body aching, head thick with grim thought, climbed into the bed of a covered supply wagon. A thin blanket, the creak of old timber. He let his eyes close at last.

That was when it struck.

The pull. The cold wrench, deep in the marrow. No sound. No warning. No fight.

One breath beneath the canvas. Then nothing. Torn away. Pulled through space and time.

Back on Almuric, the warriors would find only the empty wagon. No sign. No word.

To them, it would seem betrayal and desertion. His last conscious feeling before oblivion, bitterest shame.

Los Angeles 1936

He returns bruised, broken and confused, babbling of distant worlds. Dragged from the machine, half-conscious, clothes torn, body marked by forces no man should endure. The Organization's surgeons worked quickly, not out of kindness, but to preserve what value he might still hold.

It was Rennick who convinced them to try. He promised insight; knowledge drawn from his time with the Professor. He has spoken of what he has seen, what the Professor had hinted at. Rare resources, strange metals, energy beyond known science. A world ripe for exploitation.

Rennick’s claims are stitched from fragments, half-truths and ambition. The Professor has been killed, discarded as a loose end. Now, with the Professor gone, and his notes in their possession, Rennick’s value is thin and growing thinner.

Yet the machine has worked. After a fashion. It has brought something back.

Cairn.

The battered man rages and fights, until sedation takes him. Locked away, drugged, isolated, he lives haunted by guilt. The betrayal his comrades on Almuric surely feel, and the death of the Professor; the blood of friends stain his hands.

Days stretch to weeks, weeks to despair. His refusal to talk, to help those he knows to be his bitterest enemies, ensures his imprisonment.

Then they come for him.

They bring him, chained and under guard, into a quiet room of pale walls and polished wood. At the far end of the long table sits Calder.

Rennick is there too, thin and pale, perched nervously in a high-backed chair. His eyes flicker between Cairn and Calder.

Cairn stands silent, unmoving. His wrists bleed where the chains bite into them. His gaze burns into Rennick, who cannot quite meet it.

Calder speaks first. His voice is calm, almost pleasant. “Mr Cairn. You are here because you know things that interest us. The late Professor spoke highly of you.”

Cairn said nothing. What was the point?

Calder’s eyes sharpen. “There is no need for hostility. You are a man of... unique experience. We value that.”

Still Cairn says nothing. His gaze never leaving Rennick.

It is Rennick who breaks first. “He’s dangerous Mr Calder. He'll tell you nothing. He barely understands the work.”

Calder holds up a hand. “We shall see.”

Turns to Cairn. “Mr Rennick has told us much. Of the Professor’s work. Of the world beyond. Of resources beyond value.”

A flicker of contempt crosses Cairn’s face.

“Rennick,” he says at last. His voice is rough with disuse. “Was never trusted. The Professor kept him at arm’s length. He knew little. He was told less”

Rennick flushes. “That is a lie. I was his assistant. He relied on my insight.”

Cairn’s smile is cold. “He tolerated you. Nothing more.”

Calder watches them both, weighing the words.

Cairn’s voice drops lower. “And the Professor’s death. That lies at your feet.”

Rennick half-rises. “I did what was needed. You have no idea what’s at stake.”

Calder’s gaze pins him. “Enough.”

Silence.

Then Calder speaks again, softly. “What matters now is this. We have reached across worlds. You are proof of that, Mr Cairn. What lies beyond, we will have. It is destiny fullfilled”

He stands. The guards move in.

No. Something inside Cairn snaps free.

No warning. No roar. Just movement; time to act, time to fight.

He twists, hard, dragging one guard off balance with the chain. The man stumbles, arms flailing. Cairn’s knee rises fast, brutal, cracking ribs. The chain snaps taut, then whirls. The second guard takes it across the throat, a wet choking sound as cartilage gives way.

The first guard lunges, blade drawn now. Too slow. Cairn catches his wrist, wrenches hard, the snap of bone sharp as gunfire. He drives the man’s own blade up, deep into the gut, twisting. The body sags, dead before it hits the floor.

A third man charges. Bigger, heavier. A street fighter, broad of shoulder and fists thick with old scars. Cairn pivots, whips out an arm that wraps the chain round the man’s neck, pulls back hard as he braces a foot against the table. He thrashes, fists pounding, but Cairn pulls tighter. A gurgling wheeze, limbs weakening. One last savage twist. The body drops limp, head thudding against the side of the table on the way to the floor.

The table dominated the room. Heavy old oak, close to ten feet long, carved in the baroque style fashionable a generation ago. Its surface was dark with polish and age, the thick legs ornately fluted, claw-footed, solid as bedrock. It had been built to impress, and to last. Now it served as a temporary obstacle between Cairn and his prey.

Across the room, Calder watches with cold detachment. As the giant man turns toward him, he shifts behind the bulk of the table, placing it fully between them. One hand resting lightly on the polished edge, the other moving beneath. A faint mechanical hiss and the wall panel behind him opens to reveal a slim doorway.

Quickly, but without haste, Calder steps through and is gone. Door slipping back without a trace.

Rennick is backed against the far wall now, sliding down, hands over his face like a child. His breath comes in ragged sobs.

Cairn steps forward, around the table, slow and deliberate. One may have escaped, but the other is still here. The chain drags behind him, slick with blood.

Rennick lets out a thin sob. He sits, pushing back with his feet against the wall, arms raised now, palms out, eyes tight shut, head turned away. An instinctive but hopeless attempt at fending away the inevitable. Breath coming in short, panicked gasps.

Cairn’s arm tenses. He reaches for him, the fingers of his other hand curling into a fist.

A sharp sting lances his neck.

Back, on Almuric, on the march to grim Yugga he had been bitten like this. Shiny jet black insects, as big as the end of a man’s thumb, silent on gossamer wings with sharp chitinous blades on their heads. So sharp you didn’t feel it til it was too late and the wound was open. He blinks. Swats at it. Another sting, high on his thigh. Then one in his back, deep and sharp. Strange, that one. Not like the insects. This one scraped bone. Those never bit so deep. What were they called? Black-backed something...

Another sting. Then another. His limbs grow heavy. The floor sways beneath him.

He frowns. Tries to take another step. His legs fail.

Darkness coils at the edges of sight. His last thought, curiously calm.

Insects never bit so deep.

He collapses, hard and heavy, down he goes. The floor shaking with the impact.

Two men in the doorway. They enter the room, one carries the dart gun. The other, in a white coat, carries the leg irons. Others follow, grim and silent.

It takes four of them to lift Cairn’s great form. They strain, breath hissing through clenched teeth, as they drag him from the ruined room.

Rennick stays where he is, pressed to the wall, shivering, hands clamped over his face, shoulders hunched. Relief fights with shock and fear. The acrid smell of urine pervading his senses.

LosAngeles 1937

In a cold cell, Esau Cairn watches the two men who’d come for him. He stands slowly, fists loose, ready. “Where?”

“Back,” said the taller one, voice without feeling. “Back to Almuric.”

Cairn smiles wide, colder still. “You’ll regret it.”

“We’ll take our chances,” said the man, voice tight with suppressed unease. He motions to the door, the hand with the gun still inside the coat pocket.

Cairn steps towards them, something savage and old waking deep inside him. “Yes,” he said, voice quiet. “I suppose you will.”

Disclaimer

Ironhand is an original sequel to Robert E. Howard’s Almuric; a standalone work first published in 1939 and now in the public domain. This book is unauthorised and unofficial. It is not endorsed by the Howard Estate or any company holding rights to other Robert E. Howard characters. Everything beyond the original Almuric is the author’s own creation — a tribute to and inspired by the world and character that Howard set out just before his death in 1936.

Coming Soon. IRONHAND; a new sequel to the classic by pulp fiction master Robert E. Howard. The continuing adventures of Esau Cairn...

Prologue

Disclaimer

Coming Soon. IRONHAND; a new sequel to the classic by pulp fiction master Robert E. Howard. The continuing adventures of Esau Cairn. Sign up for more details including release dates for physical and audio books.