03 - The Conquering Sword Of Conan (Robert E Howard)

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The Conquering Sword of Conan

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Publication Information

Foreword

Introduction

The Servants of Bit-Yakin

Beyond the Black River

The Black Stranger

The Man-Eaters of Zamboula

Red Nails

Miscellanea

Untitled Notes

Wolves Beyond the Border, Draft A

Wolves Beyond the Border, Draft B

The Black Stranger, Synopsis A

The Black Stranger, Synopsis B

The Man-Eaters of Zamboula, Synopsis

The Conquering Sword of Conan

Red Nails, Draft

Ephemera

Letter to P. Schuyler Miller

Map of the Hyborian Age

Appendices

Hyborian Genesis Part III

Notes on the Conan Typescripts and the Chronology

Notes on the Original Howard Texts

Acknowledgments

Praise for Robert E. Howard

Other Books by Robert E. Howard

The Conquering Sword of Conan

This is for Brodie Goheen and Cody Goheen,

my models for Conan and his world. Your excitement about this

book and enthusiasm about my work continues to inspire me.

Gregory Manchess

The Conquering Sword of Conan

The Servants of Bit-Yakin

first published Weird Tales, March 1935 (as Jewels of Gwahlur)

Beyond the Black River

first published Weird Tales, May and June 1935

The Black Stranger

original version first published Echoes of Valor, Tor, 1987

The Man-Eaters of Zamboula

first published Weird Tales, November 1935 (as Shadows in Zamboula)

Red Nails

first published Weird Tales, July, August–September and October 1936

The Conquering Sword of Conan

Foreword

I never knew Conan. Oh, I saw the movies and studied the paintings and thought 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 now it was 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 knew

I was not understanding the full picture.

I began reading with the daunting task before me of trying to capture a view of Conan that was

entirely my own approach. As I read I was struck by Howard’s wordsmithing. The words with

which he chose to describe certain passages were themselves descriptive and visual. It sent me

running for the dictionary.

The farther I read, the more I realized that these stories were becoming classic 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 so much to choose from. The images were cascading and overlapping in waves of

postures, lighting, and movement. As I sketched away into many nights, out came the Conan

bouldering through a creek bed, on his way to or from so many of the actions in this collection.

It became the slipcase, presenting Conan’s essential portrait. Alert, confident, and solitary.

I wanted a range of his emotions. The next painting to appear stemmed from my desire to

portray the stealthy, panther-like side of the Cimmerian. And so he strides atop the wall at

night in The Man-Eaters of Zamboula, on a mission to educate someone about the way the

world works. I added another night scene because I wanted to see those streets in Zamboula

and find Conan rescuing Nafertari, sneaking 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 him portrayed. Finest pirate regalia, 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

The Conquering Sword of Conan

of limited colors: red, black, and white, and executed with the same spirit. Each black-and-

white chapter painting was an excuse to capture my chance of illustrating an 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 comes to

mind at the mention of the stories. I wasn’t against 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 machine. The bodies work as a swirling, upward element toward Conan, captured

in mid-flash of some offstage lightning. I added the background bolt to charge the scene and

the sharpness of the melee. Another chance to capture Conan’s great musculature came in The

Servants of Bit-Yakin. I could see him rushing 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 embankment on their mission of mayhem. In

contrast, I chose a bright and sunny day to see the Picts getting pelted with anything that would

fit in a catapult. It seemed ironic tragedy to be killed on such a beautiful day.

Red Nails could be painted over and over again. (And I hope it will be by many others!) But

even though I steered away from showing too many monsters for fear of taking away from the

readers’ own exaggerated 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 from Leyendecker and

proceeded to design with his efficiency in mind. It was a fun and fitting way for me to indulge

my heroes and end my own adventure into Howard’s world.

Gregory Manchess

2005

The Conquering Sword of Conan

Introduction

This volume completes the Wandering Star collection of Robert E. Howard’s tales of Conan of

Cimmeria. Every story, fragment, synopsis, and note that Robert E. Howard ever committed to

paper about the Cimmerian (even including some of the drafts) – and only those written by

Howard himself – can now be found in the pages of the three volumes comprising this

collection. Incredible as it may seem, it is a world premiere: Howard’s complete Conan stories

had never before appeared in a uniform collection free from revision, rearrangement, and

interpolations by others. For the first time, Howard’s Conan series can be judged on its own

merits.

It is also the first time the stories are published, not arranged according to the character’s

“biography,” but in the order Howard wrote them, as seems to have been his intention: “That’s

why they skip about so much, without following a regular order. The average 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 tempted to draw regarding Howard’s achievement with his

Conan series could only be based upon a presentation which not only didn’t show Howard’s

growth as a writer, but presented the stories according to Conan’s “career,” in a manner which,

I would argue, was meant to bolster an interpretation of that career alien to Howard’s original

conception. The interpolation of non–Howard 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 from the

original The Hour of the Dragon to Conan the Conqueror, all worked toward presenting the

whole series not as the life of “the average adventurer,” as Howard would 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 mighty monarch of a civilized empire (The Hour of the Dragon).

Conan’s haphazard and carefree life was artificially transformed into a “career.” What made

the series so wonderful – that intense sentiment of freedom resulting from the complete

independence of each story from its predecessor and successor (almost no recurring character

other than Conan in these tales!) – was undone, and Conan’s adventurous life became a

“manifest destiny,” so to speak. It then became easy enough to see in Conan nothing more than

a superman who would rise from poverty to kingship through his physical might (as

exemplified in the Hollywood version of the Cimmerian).

That Conan eventually became king of Aquilonia is not in question, of course: he was king in

the very first story Howard wrote about him. But nowhere in the stories as Howard wrote them

do we detect a hint of a plan to become king one day. In Beyond the Black River, Conan

The Conquering Sword of Conan

comments: “I’ve been a mercenary captain, a corsair, a kozak, a penniless vagabond, a general

– hell, I’ve been everything except a king, and I may be that, before I die.” In Red Nails, he is

no more precise: “I’ve never been king of an Hyborian kingdom. . . . But I’ve dreamed of being

even that. I may be too, some day. Why shouldn’t I?” Conan became a king simply because the

situation presented itself to him at a particular moment of his life, not because of any

predetermined plan.

As to Howard’s conception of kingship, 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, so

much so that in fact King Conan’s only ambition at times would be not to be a king anymore:

“Prospero . . . these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did. . . .

I wish I might ride with you to Nemedia. . . . It seems ages since I had a horse between my

knees – but Publius says that affairs in the city require my presence. Curse him! . . . I did not

dream far enough, Prospero. When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown

from his gory 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 my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.”

When his supporters propose that he conquer another kingdom after having 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 mine. I have no desire to rule an empire welded

together by blood and fire. It’s one thing to seize a throne with the aid of its subjects and rule

them with their consent. It’s another to subjugate a foreign realm and rule it by fear. I don’t

wish to be another Valerius. No, Trocero, I’ll rule all Aquilonia and no more, or I’ll rule

nothing.”

We are here very far from the perception the general public has of Conan, that of a fur-clad,

semi-illiterate brute (for Conan in the media suffered the same fate as Burroughs’ 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 culmination of a lifelong saga that leads to becoming the most

powerful ruler of the Hyborian Age. 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

among 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 volume were written well after The Hour of the Dragon. It is therefore

in these that we will 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 himself pleaded ignorance:

“As for Conan’s eventual fate – frankly I can’t predict it. In writing these yarns I’ve always felt

less as creating them than as if I were simply chronicling his adventures as he told them to

me.”), but they are the conclusion to the series: Red Nails was completed in July 1935, eleven

The Conquering Sword of Conan

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 Howard was 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, Howard was 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 time, Howard’s interest was something with which he was in touch in his everyday

life. His knowledge of the Celts, which had permeated many of the early Conan stories, was

gained from books only. The last Conan stories – those contained in this volume – were tales in

which Howard would 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 much more

sincerity and firsthand knowledge of his subject.

Three of the tales contained in this volume are among Howard’s best Conan stories: Beyond the

Black River, Red Nails, and The Black Stranger. The first two are overwhelmingly considered

by Howard scholars and connoisseurs alike to be among 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 message 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 settlements and cities that had grown 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 in mingling fantasy with realism with such mastery. The

story is a masterpiece because Howard didn’t let any damsel in distress get in the way, because

he subdued the more fantastic elements of the tale, and refused to resort to pulp magazine

conventions: he carried his grim opening predicament through to its bitter end, and didn’t let

melodrama get in the way. The last Conan stories are much more realistic than fantastic, and it

is that realism which sets them apart. Howard was 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

The Conquering Sword of Conan

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摘要：

TheConqueringSwordofConan1ContentsTitlePageDedicationPublicationInformationForewordIntroductionTheServantsofBit-YakinBeyondtheBlackRiverTheBlackStrangerTheMan-EatersofZamboulaRedNailsMiscellaneaUntitledNotesWolvesBeyondtheBorder,DraftAWolvesBeyondtheBorder,DraftBTheBlackStranger,SynopsisATheBlackStr...

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03 - The Conquering Sword Of Conan (Robert E Howard)

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