Conan of Aquilonia
L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter
INTRODUCTION
Of all the stalwart heroes of heroic fantasy, the most vigorous, virile, brawny, and mettlesome is Conan the Cimmerian. Conan was the invention of Robert E. Howard (1906-36), born in Peaster, Texas, and for nearly all his life a resident of Cross Plains, in the center of Texas. During his last decade, Howard turned out a large volume of what was called “pulp fiction”—sport, detective, western, historical, science-fiction, fantasy, weird, and ghost stories. At thirty, he ended a promising literary career by suicide. Howard is one of eight writers of imaginative fiction of whose books more than a million copies have been sold—but not, alas, during his lifetime.
Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unmatched for vivid, gripping, headlong action. His heroes—King Kull, Conan, Solomon Kane—are larger than life: men of mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will, who dominate the stories through which they stride. They are the polar opposite of the anti-hero of recent popularity.
Howard wrote several series of heroic fantasies (also called swordplay-and-sorcery stories), most of them published in Weird Tales. This magazine ran from 1923 to 1953 and in Howard’s time was the only outlet for fantasy. Of these stories, the longest and most popular series comprised the Conan tales. Eighteen Conan stories, from a 3,000-word short story to a 66,000-word novel, were published in Howard’s lifetime.
Eight other stories, from complete manuscripts to mere fragments and outlines, have been found among Howard’s papers since 1950. As one of the discoverers, I have edited some unpublished Conan stories for publication and rewritten four of Howard’s unpublished adventure stories as Conan stories. My colleague Lin Carter and I have, singly and jointly, completed the incomplete Conan stories and fragments. In addition, my colleagues Bjorn Nyberg and Lin Carter and I have written a number of original Conan stories to fill the gaps in the saga, as we think Howard might have done had he lived longer.
Readers who wish to know more about Conan, Howard, and heroic fantasy are referred to the other Conan books listed, especially to my introduction to the volume Conan. Of the works by Howard and other writers of heroic fantasy there listed, which ones are currently available can only be learned by inquiry.
There is also a periodical dealing with such matters; Amra, published by George H. Scithers, Box 8243, Philadelphia, Pa., 19101. This is the organ of the Hyborian Legion, a loose group of admirers of heroic fantasy and of the Conan stories in particular. Subscription to Amra makes one a Hyborian Legionnaire. Three books of articles, poems, and other contributions to Amra have been published by Jack L. Chalker, 5111 Liberty Heights Av., Baltimore, Md., 21207: The Conan Reader, The Conan Swordbook, and The Conan Grimoire. The last of these, edited by Scithers and myself, is still in print at the time of writing.
According to Howard and his posthumous collaborators, Conan lived, loved, and fought about twelve thousand years ago, eight thousand years after the sinking of Atlantis and seven thousand years before the beginnings of recorded history. In this time, by Howard’s calculations, the western parts of the main continent were occupied by the Hyborian kingdoms. These were a galaxy of states set up three thousand years earlier by northern invaders, the Hyborians, 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, the rival and partner of Cheron in the days, of the latter’s bloodstained glory. Further south yet, beyond deserts and veldts, were barbarian 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 Hyrkanian kingdoms, of which the mightiest was Turan.
Conan was a gigantic barbarian adventurer who roistered, brawled, and battled his way across half the prehistoric world. The son of a blacksmith in the bleak, backward northern land of Cimmeria, he waded through rivers of blood to overcome foes both natural and supernatural, to rise at last, at about the age of forty-one, to the kingship of Aquilonia, the mightiest Hyborian kingdom.
Matured and sobered by responsibility, Conan put down plots at home and invasions from abroad. Previously a great womanizer, he took a legitimate queen and settled down happily to rear a brood of offspring. Of these, the eldest was a son, also named Conan but usually known by his nickname of “Conn.”
This story deals with the adventures of Conan and Conn between Conan the Avenger, in which Conan recovered his queen of a year from the sorcerer Yah Chieng. and Conan of the Isles, in which the aging monarch abdicated his throne to set out for one last grand adventure in the unknown West. At the time of the present stories, Conan is nearing sixty. Save for the scars of many brawls and battles, which crisscross his mighty frame, one would take him for a much younger man. True, his square-cut mane of coarse, black, straight hair and the fierce black mustache, which he has assumed in deference to Aquilonian fashions, show traces of gray and his skin is becoming leathery. But while he is a little stiffer and slower than in his long-past youth, the strength of his massive thews is still that of two ordinary men.
L. Sprague de Camp
THE WITCH OF THE MISTS
ONE: The Thing That Fled
The sun, hidden by the heavy overcast, was nearing the western horizon. Above the clearing, the clouded sky hung like a rumpled blanket of dingy wool. Clammy tendrils of vapor slithered like wandering ghosts between the wet black tree trunks. Drippage from the recent rain pattered upon the drifts of fallen autumn leaves, whose bright scarlet, gold, and bronze were fading along with the light.
With a muffled thudding of hoofs, a creak of leather, and a clank of accouterments, a great black stallion burst into the gloom-shrouded mead. Fog boiled up before his plunging hoofs and parted to reveal a broad-shouldered giant on the huge horse’s back, his powerful legs clamped about the beast’s barrel. The man was no longer young, for Time had touched with gray the square-cut black mane and the heavy black mustache that swept fiercely out from either side of his grim, tight-lipped mouth. Years had cut deep lines about his jaw. His dark, heavy-featured, square-jawed face and thickly corded forearms showed the seams and scars of many brawls and battles, but his firm seat in the saddle and alert, brisk bearing belied his years.
For a long moment, the huge man sat motionless on the panting, lathered stallion. From under the brim of a sweat-stained forester’s felt hat, he raked the foggy clearing with a searching gaze and muttered a sulfurous oath.
Had any eye observed him, the watcher might well have mistaken the swarthy giant for some woodland brigand—until he noticed that the heavy broadsword at his side bore in its pommel a jewel worth a knight’s ransom, and the hunting horn that hung over his back was of ivory decorated with gold and silver filigree. He was, in fact, the king of Aquilonia, unchallenged ruler of the wealthiest and most powerful realm of the West. His name was Conan.
Again he scanned the mist-cloaked clearing with his fiery gaze. In the dimming light not even he could read the signs of recent hoof prints in the wet tangle of grasses, even though twigs were broken and fallen leaves disarranged.
Conan tugged at the sling of the horn and raised the instrument to his lips to blow the recheat, when the sound of hoofbeats came to his ears. Presently a gray mare shouldered through the bushes that ringed the clearing. A man of mature years but younger than Conan, with glossy black hair and flashing black eyes in a swarthy visage, rode out of the forest and saluted the king with easy familiarity.