The Hyborian Age

by Robert E. Howard

the icy deserts, entered the steppes, driving theaborigines before them, and launched themselves against the westernkingdoms. These newcomers were not at first allies with the Turanians,but skirmished with them as with the Hyborians; new drifts of easternwarriors bickered and fought, until all were united under a great chief,who came riding from the very shores of the eastern ocean. With noAquilonian armies to oppose them, they were invincible. They swept overand subjugated Brythunia, and devastated southern Hyperborea, andCorinthia. They swept into the Cimmerian hills, driving the black-hairedbarbarians before them, but among the hills, where cavalry was lesseffectual, the Cimmerians turned on them, and only a disorderly retreat,at the end of a whole day of bloody fighting, saved the Hyrkanian hostsfrom complete annihilation.

  While these events had been transpiring, the kingdoms of Shem hadconquered their ancient master, Koth, and had been defeated in anattempted invasion of Stygia. But scarcely had they completed theirdegradation of Koth, when they were over-run by the Hyrkanians, andfound themselves subjugated by sterner masters than the Hyborians hadever been. Meanwhile the Picts had made themselves complete masters ofAquilonia, practically blotting out the inhabitants. They had brokenover the borders of Zingara, and thousands of Zingarans, fleeing theslaughter into Argos, threw themselves on the mercy of thewestward-sweeping Hyrkanians, who settled them in Zamora as subjects.Behind them as they fled, Argos was enveloped in the flame and slaughterof Pictish conquest, and the slayers swept into Ophir and clashed withthe westward-riding Hyrkanians. The latter, after their conquest ofShem, had overthrown a Stygian army at the Nilus and over-run thecountry as far south as the black kingdom of Amazon, of whose peoplethey brought back thousands as captives, settling them among theShemites. Possibly they would have completed their conquests in Stygia,adding it to their widening empire, but for the fierce thrusts of thePicts against their western conquests.

  Nemedia, unconquerable by Hyborians, reeled between the riders of theeast and the swordsmen of the west, when a tribe of AEsir, wandering downfrom their snowy lands, came into the kingdom, and were engaged asmercenaries; they proved such able warriors that they not only beat offthe Hyrkanians, but halted the eastward advance of the Picts.

  The world at that time presents some such picture: a vast Pictishempire, wild, rude and barbaric, stretches from the coasts of Vanaheimin the north to the southern-most shores of Zingara. It stretches eastto include all Aquilonia except Gunderland, the northern-most province,which, as a separate kingdom in the hills, survived the fall of theempire, and still maintains its independence. The Pictish empire alsoincludes Argos, Ophir, the western part of Koth, and the western-mostlands of Shem. Opposed to this barbaric empire is the empire of theHyrkanians, of which the northern boundaries are the ravaged lines ofHyperborea, and the southern, the deserts south of the lands of Shem.Zamora, Brythunia, the Border Kingdom, Corinthia, most of Koth, and allthe eastern lands of Shem are included in this empire. The borders ofCimmeria are intact; neither Pict nor Hyrkanian has been able to subduethese warlike barbarians. Nemedia, dominated by the AEsir mercenaries,resists all invasions. In the north Nordheim, Cimmeria and Nemediaseparate the conquering races, but in the south, Koth has become abattle-ground where Picts and Hyrkanians war incessantly. Sometimes theeastern warriors expel the barbarians from the kingdom entirely; againthe plains and cities are in the hands of the western invaders. In thefar south, Stygia, shaken by the Hyrkanian invasion, is being encroachedupon by the great black kingdoms. And in the far north, the Nordictribes are restless, warring continually with the Cimmerians, andsweeping the Hyperborean frontiers.

  Gorm was slain by Hialmar, a chief of the Nemedian AEsir. He was a veryold man, nearly a hundred years old. In the seventy-five years which hadelapsed since he first heard the tale of empires from the lips ofArus--a long time in the life of a man, but a brief space in the tale ofnations--he had welded an empire from straying savage clans, he hadoverthrown a civilization. He who had been born in a mud-walled,wattle-roofed hut, in his old age sat on golden thrones, and gnawedjoints of beef presented to him on golden dishes by naked slave-girlswho were the daughters of kings. Conquest and the acquiring of wealthaltered not the Pict; out of the ruins of the crushed civilization nonew culture arose phoenix-like. The dark hands which shattered theartistic glories of the conquered never tried to copy them. Though hesat among the glittering ruins of shattered palaces and clad his hardbody in the silks of vanquished kings, the Pict remained the eternalbarbarian, ferocious, elemental, interested only in the naked primalprinciples of life, unchanging, unerring in his instincts which were allfor war and plunder, and in which arts and the cultured progress ofhumanity had no place. Not so with the AEsir who settled in Nemedia.These soon adopted many of the ways of their civilized allies, modifiedpowerfully, however, by their own intensely virile and alien culture.

  For a short age Pict and Hyrkanian snarled at each other over the ruinsof the world they had conquered. Then began the glacier ages, and thegreat Nordic drift. Before the southward moving ice-fields the northerntribes drifted, driving kindred clans before them. The AEsir blotted outthe ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, and across its ruins came to gripswith the Hyrkanians. Nemedia had already become a Nordic kingdom, ruledby the descendants of the AEsir mercenaries. Driven before the onrushingtides of Nordic invasion, the Cimmerians were on the march, and neitherarmy nor city stood before them. They surged across and completelydestroyed the kingdom of Gunderland, and marched across ancientAquilonia, hewing their irresistible way through the Pictish hosts. Theydefeated the Nordic-Nemedians and sacked some of their cities, but didnot halt. They continued eastward, overthrowing a Hyrkanian army on theborders of Brythunia.

  Behind them hordes of AEsir and Vanir swarmed into the lands, and thePictish empire reeled beneath their strokes. Nemedia was overthrown, andthe half-civilized Nordics fled before their wilder kinsmen, leaving thecities of Nemedia ruined and deserted. These fleeing Nordics, who hadadopted the name of the older kingdom, and to whom the term Nemedianhenceforth refers, came into the ancient land of Koth, expelled bothPicts and Hyrkanians, and aided the people of Shem to throw off theHyrkanian yoke. All over the western world, the Picts and Hyrkanianswere staggering before this younger, fiercer people. A band of AEsirdrove the eastern riders from Brythunia and settled there themselves,adopting the name for themselves. The Nordics who had conqueredHyperborea assailed their eastern enemies so savagely that thedark-skinned descendants of the Lemurians retreated into the steppes,pushed irresistibly back toward Vilayet.

  Meanwhile the Cimmerians, wandering southeastward, destroyed the ancientHyrkanian kingdom of Turan, and settled on the southwestern shores ofthe inland sea. The power of the eastern conquerors was broken. Beforethe attacks of the Nordheimir and the Cimmerians, they destroyed alltheir cities, butchered such captives as were not fit to make the longmarch, and then, herding thousands of slaves before them, rode back intothe mysterious east, skirting the northern edge of the sea, andvanishing from western history, until they rode out of the east again,thousands of years later, as Huns, Mongols, Tatars and Turks. With themin their retreat went thousands of Zamorians and Zingarans, who weresettled together far to the east, formed a mixed race, and emerged agesafterward as gypsies.

  Meanwhile, also, a tribe of Vanir adventurers had passed along thePictish coast southward, ravaged ancient Zingara, and come into Stygia,which, oppressed by a cruel aristocratic ruling class, was staggeringunder the thrusts of the black kingdoms to the south. The red-hairedVanir led the slaves in a general revolt, overthrew the reigning class,and set themselves up as a caste of conquerors. They subjugated thenorthern-most black kingdoms, and built a vast southern empire, whichthey called Egypt. From these red-haired conquerors the earlier Pharaohsboasted descent.

  The western world was now dominated by Nordic barbarians. The Pictsstill held Aquilonia and part of Zingara, and the western coast of thecontinent. But east to Vilayet, and from the Arctic circle to the landsof Shem, the only inhabitants were roving tribes of Nordh
eimir,excepting the Cimmerians, settled in the old Turanian kingdom. Therewere no cities anywhere, except in Stygia and the lands of Shem; theinvading tides of Picts, Hyrkanians, Cimmerians and Nordics had levelledthem in ruins, and the once dominant Hyborians had vanished from theearth, leaving scarcely a trace of their blood in the veins of theirconquerors. Only a few names of lands, tribes and cities remained in thelanguages of the barbarians, to come down through the centuriesconnected with distorted legend and fable, until the whole history ofthe Hyborian age was lost sight of in a cloud of myths and fantasies.Thus in the speech of the gypsies lingered the terms Zingara and Zamora;the AEsir who dominated Nemedia were called Nemedians, and later figuredin Irish history, and the Nordics who settled in Brythunia were known asBrythunians, Brythons or Britons.

  There was no such thing, at that time, as a consolidated Nordic empire.As always, the tribes had each its own chief or king, and they foughtsavagely among themselves.