The obviously incomplete state of the Conan saga has tempted me and others to add to it, as Howard might have done had he lived. Besides editing the unpublished Conan stories, I undertook, in the early 1950’s, to rewrite the manuscripts of four other unpublished Howard adventure stories to convert them into Conan stories. These stories were laid in the Orient in medieval and modern times. The conversion did not prove difficult, since the heroes were all cut from the same cloth as Conan. I had merely to change names, delete anachronisms, and introduce a supernatural element. The stories remained about three-quarters or four-fifths Howard.
Since then, in company with my colleagues Bjorn Ny-berg and Lin Carter, I have been engaged in completing the incomplete Conan stories and in writing several pastiches, based upon hints in Howard's notes and letters, to fill the gaps in the saga. The present story, by Carter and me, is based upon a paragraph in a letter that Howard wrote, three months before his untimely death, to the educator and science-fiction writer P. Schuyler Miller, an old Conan fan. Howard wrote:
[Conan] travelled widely, not only before his kingship, but after he was king. He travelled in Khitai and Hyrkania, and to the even less known regions north of the latter and south of the former. He even visited a nameless continent in the western hemisphere, and roamed among the islands adjacent to it. How much of this roaming will get into print., I cannot foretell with any accuracy...
(The entire letter is printed in the volume Conan of the present Lancer series, pp. 16-20.)
Of the present Lancer series, six volumes have already been published, with several more to come. Because of legal complications, it was not possible to issue these volumes in chronological order; Conan, the first volume chronologically, was the fifth to appear. Present plans call for a total of at least twelve volumes, of which this one will be chronologically the last.
Readers who want to know more about Conan, Howard, or heroic fantasy generally are referred, first to the list of other Conan books, and other books by Howard published by Lancer, on the page preceding the title page, and further to two periodicals and one book. One periodical is Amra, published by George H. Scithers, Box 9120, Chicago, Illinois, 60690; this is the organ of the Hyborian Legion, a loose group of admirers of heroic fantasy and of the Conan stories in particular. The other periodical is The Howard Collector, published by Glenn Lord, literary agent for the Howard estate, Box 775, Pasadena, Texas, 77501; this is given to articles, stories, and poems by and about Howard. The book is The Conan Reader., by the present author, published by Jack L. Chalker, 5111 Liberty Heights Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland, 21207; this consists of articles on Howard, Conan, and heroic fantasy previously published in Amra. I also listed many works by Howard and sword-and-sorcery stories by other writers in my introduction to the volume Conan in the present series.
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 (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, the rival and partner of Acheron in the days of the latter's bloodstained glory. Further south yet, beyond deserts and veldts, were barbarous black kingdoms.
North of the Hyborians lay the barbarian lands of Cim-meria, 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 and brawled and battled his way across half the prehistoric world to rise at last to the kingship of a mighty realm. The son of a blacksmith in the bleak, backward northern land of Cimmeria, Conan was born on a battlefield in that land of rugged hills and somber skies. As a youth, he took part in the sack of the Aquilonian frontier post of Venarium.
Subsequently, joining in a raid with a band of Æsir into Hyperborea, Conan was captured by the Hyperboreans. Escaping from the Hyperborean slave pen, he wandered south into the kingdom of Zamora. For several years, he made a precarious living there and in the adjacent lands of Corinthia and Nemedia as a thief. (See the map.) Green to civilization and quite lawless by nature, he made up for his lack of subtlety and sophistication by natural shrewdness and by the herculean physique he had inherited from his father.
Growing tired of this starveling existence, Conan enlisted as a mercenary soldier in the armies of Turan. For the next two years he traveled widely, as far east as the fabled lands of Meru and Khitai. He also refined his archery and horsemanship, both of which had been at best indifferent up to the time of his joining the Turanians,
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 upon the career of a mercenary soldier in the Hyborian kingdoms. Circumstances - violent as usual -made him a pirate along the coasts of Kush, with a crew of black corsairs and the Shemitish she-pirate Belit as his partner. The natives called him Amra, the Lion.
After Belit was slain, Conan became a chief among the black tribes. Then he served as a condottiere in Shem and among the southernmost Hyborian kingdoms. Later still, Conan appeared as a leader of the kozaki, 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 stretch as a mercenary captain in the army of the king of Iranistan, Conan arrived in the foothills of the Himelian Mountains, a vast stretch of broken country sundering Iranistan, Turan, and the tropical kingdom of Vendhya. In the course of wild adventures, he tried but failed to weld the fierce hill tribes into a united power. Next, he returned westward for another stretch of soldiering in Koth and Argos. During this period, he was briefly co-ruler of the desert city of Tombalku. Then back to the sea, first as a pirate of the Baracha Isles, then as captain of a ship of the Zingaran buccaneers.
When rival buccaneers sank Conan's ship, he served again as a mercenary in Stygia and among the black kingdoms. Then he wandered north to Aquilonia and became a scout on the Pictish frontier. When the Picts, with the help of the wizard Zogar Sag, attacked the Aquilonian settlements, Conan failed to save Fort Tuscelan but did save the lives of a number of settlers between the Thunder and Black rivers.
After rising to command in the Aquilonian army and defeating a Pictish invasion, Conan was lured back to Tarantia, the capital, and imprisoned by the jealous King Numedides. Escaping, he became involved in a three-cornered conflict among the Picts and two crews of pirates on the western coast of Pictland. Then he was chosen to lead an Aquilonian revolution against the degenerate King Numedides. Slaying Numedides on his own throne, Conan, in his early forties, became the ruler of the mightiest Hyborian kingdom.
Conan soon found that being king was no bed of houris. A cabal of discontented nobles almost succeeded in assassinating him. By a ruse, the kings of Ophir and Koth trapped and imprisoned him in order to have a free hand with the conquest of Aquilonia. With the help of a fellow prisoner - a wizard - Conan escaped in time to turn the tables on the invaders.