Part 1 (1/2)
Conan the Adventurer.
by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague DeCamp.
Introduction.
Robert Ervin Howard (1906-36) was born and lived most of his life in Cross Plains, Texas. In his short lifetime he turned out a large volume of general pulp-magazine fiction: sport, detective, western, and Oriental adventure stories, besides his many tales of fantasy. Of Howard's several series of heroic fantasies, the most popular have been the Conan stories. These are laid in Howard's imaginary Hyborian Age, between the sinking of Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history.
Howard was a natural story-teller, whose tales are unsurpa.s.sed for vivid, colorful, headlong, gripping action. The Conan stories are the ultimate in tales of swashbuckling adventure with a strong and sinister flavor of the supernatural.
Howard wrote over two dozen Conan stories, ranging in length from 3,000 to 66,000 words. Of these, eighteen were published during his lifetime.
Several others, from mere outlines to completed ma.n.u.scripts, have turned up in Howard's scattered papers during the last twenty years. It has been my good fortune to edit these for publication, to complete those that were only partly written, and to rewrite several other unpublished Howard stories to fit them into the Conan saga.
One of the stories in this volume, ”Drums of Tombalku,” was recently discovered by Glenn Lord, the literary agent for the Howard estate, in the form of an outline and a rough draft of the first half. I have finished the story in accordance with the outline. The other three stories, except for a few very small editorial changes, are in the form in which they appeared in Weird Tales in the early 1930's.
As nearly as such things can be calculated. Conan flourished about twelve thousand years ago. In this time (according to Howard) the Western parts of the main continent were occupied by the Hyborian kingdoms. These comprised a galaxy of states set up by northern invaders, the Hyborians, three thousand years before on the ruins of the evil empire of Acheron. South of the Hyborian kingdoms lay the quarreling city-states of Shem. Beyond Shem slumbered the ancient, sinister kingdom of Stygia. Farther south yet, beyond deserts and veldts, were barbarous black kingdoms.
North of the Hyborians lay the barbarian lands of Cimmeria, Hyperborea, Vanaheim, and Asgard. West along the ocean were the fierce Picts. To the east glittered the Hykanian kingdoms, of which the mightiest was Turan.
Conan, a gigantic adventurer from backward Cimmeria, arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora, between the Hyborian lands and Turan. For two or three years he made his living as a thief in Zamora, Corinthia, and Nemedia. Growing tired of this starveling existence, he enlisted as a mercenary in the armies of Turan. For the next two years he traveled widely and refined his knowledge of archery and horsemans.h.i.+p.
As a result of a quarrel with a superior officer, Conan left Turan.
After an unsuccessful try at treasure-hunting in Zamora and a brief visit to his Cimmerian homeland, he embarked on the career of a mercenary soldier in the Hyborian kingdoms. Circ.u.mstances-violent as usual-made him a pirate along the coasts of Kush, where the natives called him Amra, the Lion. When his partner, the Shemitish she-pirate Belit, was slain, he became a chief of one of the black tribes. Then he served as a mercenary in Shem and among the most southerly Hyborian kingdoms.
Later still, Conan appeared as a leader of the kozaks, a horde of outlaws who roamed the steppes between the Hyborian lands and Turan. He was captain of a pirate craft on the great inland Sea of Vilayet and a chief among the nomadic Zuagirs of the southeastern deserts. After a spell as a mercenary captain in the army of the king of Iranistan, he arrived in the foothills of the Himelian Mountains, a vast stretch of broken country separating Iranistan, Turan, and the tropical kingdom of Vendhya. At that point, the present volume begins.
L. Sprague de Camp
The People of the Black Circle
Declining the offer of Kobad Shah's successor, Arshak, to return to the service of Iranistan and defend that kingdom against the incursions of King Yezdigerd of Turan, Conan rides east into the foothills of the Himelian Mountains, on the northwest frontier of Vendhya. Here he next appears as a war-chief of the savage Afghuli tribesmen. He is now in his early thirties (about thirty-three, in fact), at the height of his physical powers, and known throughout the civilized and barbarian worlds, from Pictland to Khitai.
1. Death Strikes a King
The king of Vendhya was dying. Through the hot, stifling night the temple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echo in the gold-domed chamber where Bhunda Chand struggled on the velvet-cus.h.i.+oned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; his ringers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine. But his veins stood out like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with the nearness of death. Trembling slave-girls knelt at the foot of the dais, and leaning down on him, watching him with pa.s.sionate intensity, was his sister, the Devi Yasmina. With her was the wazam, a n.o.ble grown old in the royal court. She threw up her head in a gusty gesture of wrath and despair as the thunder of the distant drums reached her ears.
”The priests and their clamor!” she exclaimed. ”They are no wiser than the leeches, who are helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why. He is dying now-and I stand here helpless, who would burn the whole city and spill the blood of thousands to save him.”
”Not a man of Ayodhya but would die in his place, if it might be, Devi,” answered the wazam ”This poison--”
”I tell you it is not poison!” she cried. ”Since his birth he has been guarded so closely that the cleverest poisoners of the East could not reach him. Five skulls bleaching on the Tower of the Kites can testify to attempts which were made-and which failed. As you well know, there are ten men and ten women whose sole duty is to taste his food and wine, and fifty armed warriors guard his chamber as they guard it now.
No, it is not poison; it is sorcery-black, ghastly magic---”
She ceased as the king spoke; his livid lips did not move, and there was no recognition in his gla.s.sy eyes. But his voice rose in an eery call, indistinct and far away, as if he called to her from beyond vast, wind-blown gulfs.
”Yasmina! Yasmina! My sister, where are you? I can not find you. All is darkness, and the roaring of great winds!”
”Brother!” cried Yasmina, catching his limp hand in a convulsive grasp.
”I am here! Do you not know me---”
Her voice died at the utter vacancy of his face. A low, confused moaning waned from his mouth. The slave-girls at the foot of the dais whimpered with fear, and Yasmina beat her breast in her anguish.