Part 1 (1/2)

The Conquering Sword of Conan

Robert E Howard

Foreword

I never knew Conan Oh, I saw the ht I knew all about Conan's character Then I read the stories presented here

I knew next to nothing until then And neither does anyone else who hasn't read Howard

Because locked within these flights of fury, these vaults of untamed male fantasy, is the actual persona of the character so many have captured on canvas

And noas my turn and I leapt at the chance I believed that the real character would come to life in my mind's eye in a different way than what I had been exposed to Intuitively, I kneas not understanding the full picture

I began reading with the daunting task beforeto capture a view of Conan that was entirely my own approach As I read I was struck by Howard's words The words hich he chose to describe certain passages were the for the dictionary

The farther I read, theclassic in a broader sense than the pulp genre I viewed them in a way that N C Wyeth may have absorbed Treasure Island or Mead Schaeffer visualized Lorna Doone A grand adventure scale with all the seriousness that the Golden Age illustrators embued their pictures A classic illustrated adventure book I wanted to own Conan the way those guys owned their presentations of beloved characters

There was soin waves of postures, lighting, and hts, out cah a creek bed, on his way to or from so many of the actions in this collection

It beca Conan's essential portrait Alert, confident, and solitary

I wanted a range of his e to appear stemmed from my desire to portray the stealthy, panther-like side of the Ciht in The Man-Eaters of Zamboula, on a mission to educate soht scene because I wanted to see those streets in Za about, ever watchful for dangerous cannibals

Then the pirate story As adventurous and mythical as Sabatini's Captain Blood, Conan steps into the story of The Black Stranger in full-on pirate gear I had to show him as no one is likely to have seen hialia, as if Howard had just discovered an old trunk of his grandfather's in the dusty attic The portrait of Black Sarono is in the Golden Age mode 6

of limited colors: red, black, and white, and executed with the sa was an excuse to capturean old pirate tale

And I reveled in it

I also knew that I had to present Conan as the flat out, berserker warrior that instantly coainst showing him this way, indeed, I had to find my particular point of view for the battle madness It came as two pieces One was Conan one on one with an equally corded Pict This became the dustjacket I wanted to show a bit of tension in the exchange, not a clear view of Conan conquering And I needed to present his dynamic physique This led to the second battle scene with Conan surrounded and exploding into a killing , upward elehtning I added the background bolt to charge the scene and the sharpness of the reat musculature ca up those stairs for Muriela, light glistening off his sweaty back, so many archways to race over

Beyond the Black River was especially visual in a classic Conan way, but again I chose a night scene of warriors in a stealth assault mode I was there on the hillside as those malevolent mercenaries, like black ops of today, climbed the embankht and sunny day to see the Picts getting pelted with anything that would fit in a catapult It seeedy to be killed on such a beautiful day

Red Nails could be painted over and over again (And I hope it will be bytooaway froerated manifestation, I just had to see that decrepit old man and his bizarre instrument of death Besides, it was an excuse to paint that babe, Tascela

I saved the final piece for the title page I wanted it to be an icon of the character of Conan the Cimmerian: adventurer, warrior, and explorer of the weird ways of Hyperboria Several influences of mine cried out, but I listened to a particular voice fron with his efficiency in e my heroes and end ory Manchess 2005

Introduction

This volu Star collection of Robert E Howard's tales of Conan of Ciment, synopsis, and note that Robert E Howard ever co some of the drafts) and only those written by Howard hies of the three volu this collection Incredible as it may seem, it is a world premiere: Howard's complete Conan stories had never before appeared in a uniforement, and interpolations by others For the first tied on its own merits

It is also the first ti to the character's ”biography,” but in the order Horote them, as seems to have been his intention: ”That's why they skip about so e adventurer, telling tales of a wild life at random, seldom follows any ordered plan, but narrates episodes widely separated by space and years, as they occur to him”

Previously, any conclusion one was te Howard's achievement with his Conan series could only be based upon a presentation which not only didn't shoard's growth as a writer, but presented the stories according to Conan's ”career,” in a ue, was meant to bolster an interpretation of that career alien to Howard's original conception The interpolation of nonHoward Conan stories into the series, the altering and rewriting of certain passages in Howard's texts (notably in The Black Stranger), the adding of introductory paragraphs before every story, and even the retitling of Howard's novel froon to Conan the Conqueror, all worked toward presenting the whole series not as the life of ”the average adventurer,” as Hoould have it, but as a cohesive saga, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, a kind of Tolkienesque quest in which each story represented yet another step up a ladder from penniless thief (as depicted in Tower of the Elephant) to on)

Conan's haphazard and carefree life was artificially transformed into a ”career” What made the series so wonderful that intense senti from the complete independence of each story fro character other than Conan in these tales!) was undone, and Conan's adventurous life became a ”h to see in Conan nothing shi+p through his physical ht (as exemplified in the Hollywood version of the Ci of Aquilonia is not in question, of course: he was king in the very first story Horote about him But nowhere in the stories as Horote the one day In Beyond the Black River, Conan comments: ”I've been a abond, a general hell, I've been everything except a king, and I may be that, before I die” In Red Nails, he is no do even that Isimply because the situation presented itself to him at a particular moment of his life, not because of any predetershi+p, it was not an imperialistic one, but rather an Arthurian one, in which the king is first and foremost at the service of his people and not the reverse, soConan's only a anymore: ”ProsperotheseI have done never did

I wish I es since I had a horse between my knees but Publius says that affairs in the city require h, Prospero When King Nuory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to ht and my sword is useless”

When his supporters propose that he conquer another kingdo been dispossessed of Aquilonia, in The Hour of the Dragon, Conan's answer is unequivocal: ”Let others dream imperial dreams I but wish to hold what is ether by blood and fire It's one thing to seize a throne with the aid of its subjects and rule then realm and rule it by fear I don't wish to be another Valerius No, Trocero, I'll rule all Aquilonia and no ”

We are here very far froeneral public has of Conan, that of a fur-clad, semi-illiterate brute (for Conan in the hs' Tarzan: both mysteriously lost their ability for articulate speech), bent only on raping, slaying, and conquering The tales of Conan as a king, the last ones chronologically speaking, should thus in no way be considered as the cul the e After all, these tales of King Conan were penned rather early in the history of the series (The Phoenix on the Sword and The Scarlet Citadel were a the very first Conan stories written by Howard in 1932, and The Hour of the Dragon, written in 1934, was essentially a cannibalization of earlier efforts)

All the tales in this third voluon It is therefore in these that ill find Howard's final words on Conan, the conclusion to his four-year stint with the character that brought him fame They do not represent any sort of conclusion whatsoever to the character's life (how could they when Howard hinorance: ”As for Conan's eventual fate frankly I can't predict it In writing these yarns I've always felt less as creating the his adventures as he told them to me”), but they are the conclusion to the series: Red Nails was completed in July 1935, eleven 9

months before Howard's suicide No evidence exists that Howard ever wrote anything about the character after that date

Weird Tales' inability to pay Howard regularly probably played a great part in this, and it could be said that Hoas forced by circumstances to abandon the character The fact that he submitted only one story to Weird Tales after Red Nails supports the idea However, by late 1934, Hoas clearly branching out from fantasy fiction, and was more and more interested in the history and lore of his own country, the American Southwest, and in its potential as a subject for fiction It is this growing passion which colored the last Conan tales: for the first ti hich he was in touch in his everyday life His knowledge of the Celts, which had perained from books only The last Conan stories those contained in this volume were tales in which Hoould continue, as he had in all the stories to date, to explore his theme of ”barbarism versus civilization,” but for the first time he was in a position to add e of his subject

Three of the tales contained in this volu Howard's best Conan stories: Beyond the Black River, Red Nails, and The Black Stranger The first two are overwhelly considered by Howard scholars and connoisseurs alike to be a the best tales of the entirety of Howard's fiction Here was a writer at the peak of his talent producing the tales which would eventually propel him beyond the status of exceptional storyteller, to that of an author who also had a e to deliver With these last Conan tales, Howard proved that he was indeed worthy of critical attention

It is in that sense that we can consider the last Conan stories as a conclusion to the series, but also as a form of literary testament The events depicted in Beyond the Black River were nothing especially new in Howard's fiction, replete with tales depicting successful forays of savages against civilized settlerown too weak to defend themselves

In Beyond the Black River, as in those other tales, it is the inevitable division of the civilized people and the weakening that goes with it which brings about their defeat What sets Beyond the Black River apart, however, is that the background and characters ring true, because all were drawn from sources that were so much closer to Howard than his usual pseudo-Celtic or pseudo-assyrian settings The settlers, farmers, and workers that people this particular story are not cardboard characters, but are as alive and vibrant as Conan himself Few are the writers of fantasy stories who have succeeded infantasy with realism with such mastery The story is a et in the way, because he subdued the more fantastic eleazine conventions: he carried his grih to its bitter end, and didn't let et in the way The last Conan stories are much more realistic than fantastic, and it is that realism which sets them apart Hoas very much aware of this Just after he had sold Red Nails he commented to Clark Ashton Smith: ”Too much raw meat, maybe, but I merely portrayed what I honestly believe would be the reactions of certain types of people in 10

the situations on which the plot of the story hung It may sound fantastic to link the term 'realism' with Conan; but as a matter of fact his supernatural adventures aside he is the most realistic character I ever evolved”

If Beyond the Black River represents Howard's definitive state barbarism, he chose, in Red Nails, the other Conancivilizations Once again, it was definitely not a new theme for the Texan For exa of the decadent empire of Valusia, and countless Howard stories are set in locales that usually were somewhere between decadent and decayed The situation inevitably led to a final destruction, usually at the hands of the barbarians ere always, conveniently, at the gates, waiting for such a moment In Red Nails, however, Howard dispensed with the barbarians and made sure his city was utterly isolated Red Nails would thus be the story of a decaying process that would be carried to its logical conclusion Written at a ti rate, her body slowly decaying under her son's eyes toward a conclusion that was as inevitable as it was obvious, the last Conan story is a tale which is particularly rich in resonance with the terrible events that were happening in Howard's life andthe story (For a fuller explanation of the background to each story, see ”Hyborian Genesis Part III” at the end of this voluacy His suicide at age thirty cut short a career that had promised to be an exceptional one Less than a month before his death, he wrote Lovecraft: ”I find itbut western yarnsI have always felt that if I ever acco hile in the literary field, it would be with stories dealing of the central and western frontier” Hoould probably have become an important writer in that field, but fate decided otherwise However, the Conan stories transcend by their very nature the genre they are derived froh-adventure By displacing the theave those stories a universality they would not have had in another form They becao

”Scratch the veneer at your own risk,” I wrote concerning the stories found in the first volume

You are about to discover that the veneer is almost nonexistent in most of the tales of this last opus

This is Howard at his rawest