Conan the Swordsman Read online

  Conan the Swordsman

  (1978)

  L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, & Björn Nyberg

  Contents

  THE CONAN SAGA by L. Sprague de Camp

  LEGIONS OF THE DEAD by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE PEOPLE OF THE SUMMIT by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp

  SHADOWS IN THE D ARK by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE STAR OF KHORALA by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE GEM IN THE TOWER by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE IVORY GODDESS by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  MOON OF BLOOD by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  HYBORIAN NAMES by L. Sprague de Camp

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Book information

  Contents

  THE CONAN SAGA by L. Sprague de Camp

  LEGIONS OF THE DEAD by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE PEOPLE OF THE SUMMIT by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp

  SHADOWS IN THE DARK by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE STAR OF KHORALA by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE GEM IN THE TOWER by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  THE IVORY GODDESS by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  MOON OF BLOOD by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

  HYBORIAN NAMES by L. Sprague de Camp

  THE CONAN SAGA

  How would you like to go to a world where men are mighty, women are beautiful, problems are simple, and life is adventurous? Where gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars; sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk crumbling ruins of hoary antiquity; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor? And where nobody so much as mentions the income tax or the school-dropout problem or atmospheric pollution?

  This is the world of heroic fantasy; or, as some prefer to call it, swordplay-and-sorcery fiction. We apply the name "heroic fantasy" to stories laid in an imaginary, pre-industrial world—in the remote past, the remote future, another planet, or another dimension—where magic works, machinery has not been invented, and gods, demons, and other supernatural beings are real and portentous presences.

  Fiction of this genre is pure entertainment. It is not intended to solve current social and economic problems; it has nothing to say about the faults of the foreign-aid program, or the woes of disadvantaged ethnics, or socialized medicine, or inflation. It is escape fiction of the purest kind, in which the reader escapes clear out of the real world. And why not? As J. R. R. Tolkien once said, a man in prison is not required to think of nothing but bars and cells and jailers.

  The stories in this saga feature one of the most popular characters of heroic fantasy ever invented.

  This is Conan the Cimmerian, the gigantic, invincible, swashbuckling prehistoric adventurer. Conan was conceived in 1932 by Robert Ervin Howard (1906-36) of Cross Plains, Texas. Robert E. Howard was a leading author of adventure fiction for the pulp magazines, which flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, dwindled away during the paper shortage of the Second World War, and were replaced in popular reading after that war by the paperbacked book.

  Howard wrote not only fantasies but also science fiction, Western, sport, detective, historical, and oriental stories. After an early struggle to establish himself, he attained a fair degree of success, earning what was in the Depression days of the early 1930s a respectable income. He had a few close friends in west-central Texas—none of whom cared for his stories—and a growing circle of admiring correspondents, including leading fantasists of the time like H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and August Derleth. Although a big, powerful man like his heroes, Howard had his private demons, including an excessive devotion to and dependence upon his mother. In 1936, when his aged mother lay dying, he ended a promising literary career by suicide.

  Howard's stories, although not without fault, are distinguished by strong plots, a sound, taut, economical, colorful, vivid style, a marvelous sense of pace and action, and most of all by a singular emotional intensity, which sweeps the reader along. As his pen pal Lovecraft wrote in a letter to E. Hoffmann Price, "the real secret is that he himself is in every one of [his stories]." Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Harold Lamb, Talbot Mundy, Arthur D. Howden Smith, and Sax Rohmer all influenced him, but Howard achieved his own unique synthesis.

  Like most of Howard's stories, the tales of the Conan saga are somber in tone, with a keen sense of the inevitable tragedy of life and the harshness of existence in the medieval and ancient worlds. There is only a rare gleam of humor. Nevertheless, Howard was by no means humorless. He wrote many boxing and Western stories full of broad, slapstick, frontier humor, often hilarious. Even at his pulpiest, Howard is always fun to read. The term "natural storyteller" applies to Howard as strongly as it does to any writer, ancient or modem.

  Howard wrote several fantasy series, most of which appeared in the magazine Weird Tales, which began publication in 1923. Of these series, the most popular by far have been those about Conan the Cimmerian. They have been printed and reprinted, in this and in at least seven foreign countries, long after the death of the original author and the demise of the magazine in which they were first published.

  Howard was the leading American pioneer in heroic fantasy. Fiction of this kind was introduced in the 1880s by the British artist, writer, reformer, decorator, poet, manufacturer, and printer William Morris. In the early twentieth century, it was further developed by Lord Dunsany and Eric R. Eddison and, later, by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) and T. H. White (The Once and Future King). Besides Robert E. Howard, leading American practitioners of the genre include Clark Ashton Smith, Catherine L. Moore, and Fritz Leiber.

  With the end of the magazines Unknown Worlds in 1943 and Weird Tales in 1954, it looked for a while as if fantasy had become a casualty of the machine age. In the 1950s, publication in hard covers of Tolkien's three-volume novel The Lord of the Rings and the reprinting of the Conan stories began a modest revival. With the appearance both of the Tolkien and of the Howard stories in paperback came a tremendous upsurge of interest in fantasy. Millions of copies of both series have been sold, and other writers have composed fantastic tales obviously influenced by these two authors.

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  I became involved in this blooming of heroic fantasy in 1951, when I discovered a pile of unsold Howard manuscripts in the closet of a literary agent in New York. These included two unpublished Conan stories, one story originally written as a Conan story but actually published in a fan magazine with the hero's name changed, and several adventure stories with medieval and modern settings. By arrangement with the heirs of Robert E. Howard, I edited the rejected Conan stories and arranged for their publication. Later I rewrote four of the medieval and modern stories to turn them into Conan stories. I also collaborated with a Swedish fan, Bjorn Nyberg, on a novel, The Return of Conan.

  A few years later, I was fortunate in being able to arrange for publication of the whole Conan saga in paperback, putting all the then-existing Conan stories in chronological order. More unpublished stories were discovered by Glenn Lord, agent for the Howard heirs. One was complete; the rest were fragments or synopses only. My colleagues Lin Carter, Bjorn Nyberg, and I have completed those unfinished Conan stories and, to fill the gaps in the saga, have written several Conan stories of our own, following the hints in Howard's letters and original stories. We have tried to copy Howard's style and type of plotting. How successful we have been in this endeavor, the reader must judge. Since the demand f
or Conan stories has become greater than Carter, Nyberg, and I could fill, other contemporary writers have also been enlisted to try their hands at Howard pastiches.

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  The first hint of the Conan stories came in a series of tales that Howard wrote in 1929, laid in the time of the supposed lost continent of Atlantis. His hero was a Stone Age Atlantean named Kull, who gets to the mainland, becomes a soldier in the civilized kingdom of Valusia, and rises to be king of that land. Howard wrote—or at least began—thirteen Kull stories but sold only three. One of these brought Kull by magical time travel to the historical era and involved him with another of Howard's heroes, the Pictish chieftain Bran Mak Morn of Roman times. Three Kull stories, left unfinished, were later completed by Lin Carter.

  Since the Kull stories enjoyed only meager success, Howard put the idea aside. In 1931, however, Howard read a series of articles by a French writer on the Atlantis legend and was stimulated to try again his basic concept of a prehistoric adventure-fantasy world, this time in a more polished and carefully thought-out form. His hero would be named Conan, an old Celtic name borne by, among others, several dukes of medieval Brittany. Conan, Howard said, "simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande ... . He simply stalked full grown out of oblivion and set me at work recording the saga of his adventures ... . Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I have come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian."

  As a stage for Conan to stride across, Howard devised a Hyborian Age, about twelve thousand years ago, between the sinking of the Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history. This period, Howard supposed, was one in which magic was rife and supernatural beings walked the earth. The records of this civilization were lost, save for myths and legends, as a result of barbarian invasions and natural catastrophes. Howard worked out a detailed fictional "history" of this Hyborian Age, covering several thousand years. In the midst of this time, Conan lived, loved, wandered, and bat tl ed his way to kingship.

  Howard made it plain that this pseudo-history was invented for storytelling purposes and was not to be considered a serious theory of human prehistory. Howard had read widely in history and said he enjoyed writing historical fiction. It is sad that he did not survive to the 1950s, when such fiction was at the peak of its popularity.

  Conan (Howard assumed) was a native of the bleak and barbarous northern land of Cimmeria. The Cimmerians he supposed to have been the ancestors of the historical Celts. Still further north lay the subarctic lands of Vanaheim, Asgard, and Hyperborea. Adven turing with a band of Æ sir from Asgard on a raid into Hyperborea, Conan was captured and imprisoned. Escaping, he made his way southward to the land of Zamora, east of the Hyborian nations. These nations— Aquilonia, Nemedia, Corinthia, Ophir, and Koth— had arisen after the Hyborians, another group of northern barbarians, had conquered the sorcerous kingdom of Acheron and built up their own kingdoms on its ruins, three thousand years before Conan's time.

  In Zamora, Corinthia, and Nemedia, Conan led a precarious life as a thief, more notable for strength and daring than for skill and subtlety. Becoming weary of this starveling existence, he enlisted in the armies of Turan. This kingdom lay east of Zamora, along the western shores of the great inland Sea of Vilayet, whose shrunken remnants we today call the Caspian. The Turanians were one of the nomadic peoples of Hyrkania, which began east of the sea and stretched for thousands of miles to far Khitai. Hyrkania corresponded to the steppes and deserts of Central Asia today.

  As a soldier of Turan, Conan learned horsemanship and archery and rose to commissioned rank. Trouble with a superior caused him to desert. After some unsuccessful treasure hunting, he wandered westward, serving as a condottiere in Nemedia, Ophir, and Argos. Again, trouble with the law compelled him to flee, this time to sea. When his ship was captured by a pirate vessel of the black corsairs, commanded by the seductive Shemitish she-pirate B êl it, he joined Bêlit in piratical raiding of the Black Coast.

  After Bêlit's death, Conan resumed his career ashore as a mercenary soldier, first in the black countries, then in Shem and the Hyborian nations. He paid occasional visits to his Cimmerian homeland and spent a period as leader of an outlaw band, the kozaki of the steppes between Turan and Zamora. When the Turanian army broke up the band, Conan fought his way to leadership of a crew of pirates plying the Vilayet Sea.

  Next, Conan became a soldier in the army of the small southeasterly Hyborian kingdom of Khauran and, later, leader of the desert-dwelling Zuagir nomads. His wanderings took him as far east as Vendhya (corresponding to modern India) and south to the deserts between the sinister land of Stygia and the equatorial jungles. He joined the pirates of the Barachan Isles, then became captain of one of the privateering ships of the Zingaran buccaneers.

  When Conan's ship was sunk by Zingaran rivals, he served as a mercenary for Stygia. He sought and almost found his hoped-for fortune in the semi - civi li zed black countries of Keshan and Punt. At last he traveled northward, to resume life as a mercenary soldier in Aquilonia, the mightiest of the Hyborian kingdoms. He served on the Pictish frontier, was involved in bloody affrays with the fierce savages of Pictland, and for his success was promoted to general and called back to the capital, Tarantia.

  In Tarantia, the depraved and jealous King Numedides imprisoned Conan in a dungeon. But Conan escaped and adventured in the Pictish Wilderness with the primitive natives and with two bands of pirates. Eventually he found himself (at about forty years of age) leading a revolt against Numedides, whom he killed and whose throne he usurped.

  Other stories follow Conan's adventures into midd l e and old age, but of those you can read elsewhere. This synopsis will give you the framework needed to place the stories in this volume in time and place.

  So let us whet our steel, pull on our boots, and be off on a galloping charger or the heeling deck of a carack, to follow Conan through some of his many sorcerous and sanguinary adventures.

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  LEGIONS OF THE DEAD

  Conan, born in the bleak, cloud-oppressed northern hills of Cimmeria, was known as a fighter around the council fires before he had seen fifteen snows. In that year, the Cimmerian tribesmen forgot their feuds and joined forces to repel the Gundermen who, pushing across the Aquilonian frontier, had built the frontier post of Venarium and begun to colonize the southern marches of Cimmeria. Conan was one of the howling, blood-mad horde that swept out of the northern hills, stormed over the stockade with sword and torch, and drove the Aquilonians back to their former border.

  At the sack of Venarium, still short of his full growth, Conan already stood six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds. He had the alertness and stealth of the born woodsman, the iron-hardness of the mountain man, the Herculean physique of his blacksmith father, and a practical familiarity with knife, axe, and sword.

  After the plunder of the Aquilonian outpost, Conan returns for a time to his tribe. Restless under the conflicting urges of his adolescence, his traditions, and his times, he becomes involved in a local feud and is not sorry to leave his village. He joins a band of Æ sir in raiding the Vanir and the Hyperboreans. Some of the Hyperborean citadels, however, are under control of a caste of widely feared magicians, called Witch-men, and it is against one of these strongholds that Conan finds himself taking part in a foray.

  1 • Blood on the Snow

  A deer paused at the brink of the shallow stream and raised its head, sniffing the frosty air. Water dripped from its muzzle like beads of crystal. The lingering sun gleamed on its tawny hide and glistened on the tines of its branching antlers.

  Whatever faint sound or scent had disturbed the animal was not repeated. Presently it bent to drink again from the frigid water, which rushed and bubbled amid crusts of broken ice.

  On either side of the stream, steep banks o
f earth lay mantled in the new-fallen snow of early winter. Thickets of leafless bush grew close together under the somber boughs of the neighboring pines; and from the forest beyond, nothing could be heard but the ceaseless drip, drip of melting snow. The featureless leaden sky of the dying day scarcely seemed to clear the tops of the trees.

  From the shelter of the woods, a slender javelin darted with deadly precision; and at the end of its arc, the long shaft caught the stag off guard and sank behind its shoulder. The stricken creature bolted for the far side of the creek; then staggered, coughed blood, and fell. For a moment or two it lay on its side, kicking and struggling. Then its eyes glazed, its head hung limply, and its heaving flanks grew still. Blood, mixed with froth and foam, dribbled from its sagging jaws to stain the virgin snow a brilliant crimson.

  Two men emerged from the trees and studied the snowy landscape with searching eyes. The larger and older, plainly in command, was a giant of a man with massive shoulders and long, heavily muscled arms. The swell of his mighty chest and shoulders was visible beneath the cloak of fur that enveloped his stalwart figure and the coarse, baggy woolens he wore beneath the cloak. A broad belt of rawhide with a golden buckle held his garments around him, and a hood of wolf fur, forming part of the cloak, obscured his face.