Grim and gritty fiction, today all the rage, has always been around. What separates it from the fiction of old is often a matter of emphasis.

Armored knights fighting in tournaments, even wielding blunt-tipped lances in controlled melees, is a pretty darned violent activity if you pause to think about it. Would you want to be struck on the helmet with the weight of a charging rider, your momentum and that of your opponent coming together to create an impact so great it snaps the straps on your jousting helm and sends it clattering into the dirt, and your mount staggered from the impact?

Then you line up and do it two more times for honor’s sake?

This is the world of Howard Pyle’s Men of Iron.

This is a story ostensibly for children or teens, but like all good young adult fiction it can be enjoyed by us full grown adults. I know I did, despite its reputation as a mere coming of age story. It’s an old book, published in 1891 and written by an author perhaps best known for his extraordinarily illustrations and paintings, often used to supplement works of children’s literature, including his own such as The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

But Men of Iron has surprising grit to it, too. Which leads me back to emphasis.

Where Grimdark fiction revels in gory details and emphasizes bloodshed and suffering, stories like Men of Iron draw the lens back, gray out the spouting red, and dim the unbearable screams of the wounded.

But … they convey just enough detail to let us know what these times entailed, which were certainly not all romantic:

So, Myles went to France in Lord George’s company, a soldier of fortune, as his Captain was. He was there for only six months, but those six months wrought a great change in his life. In the fierce factional battles that raged around the walls of Paris; in the evil life which he saw at the Burgundian court in Paris itself after the truce—a court brilliant and wicked, witty and cruel—the wonderful liquor of youth had evaporated rapidly, and his character had crystalized as rapidly into the hardiness of manhood. The warfare, the blood, the evil pleasures which he had seen had been a fiery, crucible test to his soul, and I love my hero that he should have come forth from it so well. He was no longer the innocent Sir Galahad who had walked in pure white up the Long Hall to be knighted by the King, but his soul was that of a grim, sterling, rugged sort that looked out calmly from his blue eyes upon the wickedness and debauchery around him, and loved it not.

Perhaps there is not enough visceral detail in that paragraph for a modern reader used to A Game of Thrones. But here it works. We get enough to know that these men were, well, men of iron, for a reason. What they did and saw made manifest that “the best steel goes through the fire,” to quote the great Ronnie James Dio.

With the lens fixed at a further distance Men of Iron offers a welcome antidote to Grimdark. It is a tale of romance, and honor, and doing what is right. It is simple, and offers a moral compass. But it’s not sugar-coated, and its events test the hero’s mettle.

The story opens upon eight-year-old Myles Falworth in the year 1400. His father, the Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth, Baron of Falworth and Easterbridge, is a tough old warrior, now blinded and lame after getting his head stomped upon by a charger in a tourney. Lord Falworth loses everything when he offers succor to an old friend involved in a plot to overthrow King Henry IV. The vengeful king sends a force to root Sir John Dale out of Falworth’s hall:

He remembered how some of the castle women were standing in a frightened group upon the landing of the stairs, talking together in low voices about a matter he did not understand, excepting that the armed men who had ridden in the courtyard had come for Sir John Dale.

They find Sir John Dale soon enough, and mete out a brutal punishment that forever stamps itself in Myles’ memory:

Master Robert snatched Myles away from his father, and bore him out of the room in spite of his screams and struggles, and he remembered just one instant’s sight of Sir John lying still and silent upon his face, and of the black knight standing above him, with the terrible mace in his hand stained a dreadful red.

Falworth Castle is taken and Myles’ life changes in an instant. He and his family are left penniless. Eventually he’s taken in by an Earl who owes his father a debt, and there becomes a squire and eventually a knight.

Men of Iron is an ode to childhood, and a tale of the transition from boyhood to manhood. It is simple, and predictable. But it is told with a passion and a welcomed unadorned prose, love of the subject matter, and historical fidelity. Pyle offers a detailed chapter on Myles’ knighting ceremony, and we wonder at the ritual, and Myles’ beatific attitude, and revel in his sheer joy at becoming the champion of which he had always dreamed.

Aren’t these kind of stories the best, or at least, just what we need sometimes?

Among the book’s highlights are the great sequences that describe just how much training went into squiredom and knighthood. “Men of iron” carries a double meaning—encased in armor, knights are literal men of iron. But they are also honed to iron-hardness from years of rigorous training and discipline. Encased in steel, they were fearsome and rightfully feared on the battlefield. Make no mistake, whatever Braveheart may tell you, a trained knight would go through your average unarmored foe, wild and barbaric though he may be, like shit through a goose. They were simply far more skilled, incredibly hardened and awesomely fit. Able to shrug off blows due to their suits of steel, knights would wade in and wreak bloody havoc on their opponents.

A modern reader is apt to have different expectations of what unfolds in this novel. My cynical side cried out when Myles offers his unwavering loyalty to the Earl of Mackworth, even when we see that the Earl’s cause is not always noble, and at times uses Myles as a pawn in a campaign of conquest and politics. A modern writer would have Myles question his Earl, and revolt, and undermine the institution of knighthood. But, that would be an anachronism. Knights were loyal, and often (though not always) operated with a code of chivalry that we might find incredulous today, and view with cynicism.

Refreshingly, Pyle does not, and so with Men of Iron won me over.

My lone serious critique of the story is a crucial scene near the end where our hero is unhorsed and cannot rise. Helpless knights pinned down beneath the weight of their armor, even heavy jousting armor, is a wives’ tale, but one that was believed for some time. Pyle likely followed the wisdom of the day when he wrote his story. Unfortunately this scene is a significant plot point; were it merely mentioned in passing I would be far more forgiving. We now have records that knights could ably jump on to a horse, climb ladders, etc., all while wearing heavy armor.

Despite this relative quibble, I can say I greatly enjoyed Men of Iron, and wish we had more stories like this. If you are casting about for the next work of sword-and-sorcery or heroic fantasy and don’t mind the occasional foray into historical fiction, enter the lists of Pyle’s novel.

Brian Murphy is the author of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (Pulp Hero Press, 2020). Learn more about his life and work on his website, The Silver Key.