The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  To his own astonishment, it went in easily and stayed there. He released the hilt and backed away.

  Jaganath looked down in puzzlement, then smiled. 'Think you that any weapon made by mortal hands can harm me?' He enveloped the hilt in his huge hand and tugged, but it would not pull free. Now Cha raised his arm and pointed at the sword protruding from Jaganath's vast belly.

  'Behold the sword of the Kings of Valusia, forged more than four thousand years ago from a fragment of a meteor—one of the Arrows of Indra!'

  Jaganath's face became transformed with rage. Frantically, he wrenched at the sword, widening the great rent in his belly. Blood, smoke, and flame poured from the wound, and Jaganath's demented howling reverberated through the cave, causing stones to fall from the ceiling.

  Slowly, the wizard-demigod began to shrink.

  'This cannot be!' Jaganath shrieked, his voice dwindling as did his body. 'I am a god! I am the king of sorcerers!'

  Conan stepped forward and gripped the sword. With a powerful heave he pulled the blade loose from the obese body with a hideous wet sound.

  Jaganath collapsed to the floor, a mere fat man once again. Soon he was a fat corpse.

  An unearthly sound came from the back of the cave. Conan looked to see the pit-thing coming toward them. Cha took Conan by the shoulder.

  'Time to go now!'

  Cha's massive dignity disappeared as he gathered his long robes up around his skinny knees and dashed for the cave entrance. Conan wasted no time in following. Behind them a great rumbling began, and the whole mountaintop trembled.

  They had gained the entrance when Conan stopped and looked back.

  The evil thing was still there, but something was different about the scene.

  Then he saw it. The throne of Crom was vacant. His mind just had time to register mis fact, then he saw a gigantic stone foot descend upon the squirming horror and the body of Jaganath, grinding them relentlessly into the stone floor.

  XVI

  Farewell to Cimmeria

  Conan sat upon a rock outcropping with his cloak drawn close about him. Snow had been falling since he and Cha had come out of the cave.

  Winter had come to Ben Morgh, but any Northlander preferred the clean privations of winter to the unnatural warmth they had found on Ben Morgh. All day and all night the clans had scoured the caves beneath Ben Morgh, bringing out what captives they could find alive. Many were Cimmerians or other northern people, but some were of nations nobody

  could identify, not even Conan or Cha. The tunnel entrances of the lower pit gaped wide now, but nobody had been able to work up the nerve to look into the House of Crom.

  Cha came up to Conan. Once again he was a ragged mountebank. 'All out now. Lower caverns caving in. Soon this pit collapse as well. Your Crom not want them.'

  'Why did Hathor-Ka fail?' Conan asked.

  'She ally herself with Thoth-Amon. He very great wizard, evil but very wise. He know better than to fool with these powers. He pretend to give her whole spell of Great Summoning, but he leave out crucial verse. He could have put an end to this thing long ago, but he think it good way to get rid of rivals.'

  'I hope I never encounter him,' Conan grumbled.

  Cha held out a hand, palm up. 'Now, you give me back amulet? One of my best. I may need it.'

  Conan took the thing in his hand. 'I paid for this. What will you give me for it?'

  Cha grinned. 'Tell you good fortune?'

  'It had better be a good one, not like last time.'

  'Very well. How you like this? Someday you be king of Aquilonia. Good, not so?'

  'Weil, I suppose that's worth an amulet.' Conan took it off, not believing a word. He tossed the thing to Cha, who caught it, chuckling.

  'Good-bye now. Got to go catch my dragon.' The old man disappeared among the rocks, and Conan shook his head, sorry to see the last of him.

  At the bottom of the Field of the Dead he found the host assembled. A new cairn marked the burial place of the men who had fallen in the battle.

  The Cimmerians had completed their simple funeral rites and were ready to depart. Conan found Canach with the other chiefs. 'What shall we do with these?' he said, gesturing toward the group of freed prisoners who shivered in the cold.

  'Give them provisions and send them on their way, I suppose,' said Canach. 'Some of the women might make good wives. A little new blood now and then does not come amiss.'

  'After the caves,' said Wulfhere, grinning, 'even Cimmeria might seem tolerable.'

  They descended the slopes of Ben Morgh, and into the hills beyond.

  From time to time the fighting men of a clan would split off from the main group to return to their lands. All would be at peace until the last clan had returned home, then the feuds would begin once more. Once they all halted and looked up. Overhead, above the clouds, they could hear a sound, as of the beating of great wings.

  By the time they reached Canach land all had gone except Conan's closest kin and the little band of Æsir. Near the winter village they halted for a last time. Conan and Chulainn stood together. Chulainn with his arm about Bronwith. 'Will you stay the winter with us, Conan?'' Chulainn asked.

  'No, my place is not here. It was good to come back and see my kin, but it will be good to be away again. I go with Wulfhere's band, to winter in the halls of Asgard.'

  'Then good fortune to you, kinsman,' Bronwith said.

  Conan turned to go but something stopped him. The great sword at his waist did not feel right somehow. It had been his sword. Now it was not.

  He took it from his waist and handed it, sheathed, to Chulainn. 'For your son,' he said. With the Æsir, he mounted one of the little mountain ponies.

  'Don't ride naked, Conan,' said Wulfhere. The As tossed him a Vanir blade taken in the battle and Conan belted it on.

  'Conan!' called Chulainn. Conan wheeled his pony to face his kinsman.

  'To which son shall we give this? We intend to have many. To the first?

  That one we shall name for you.'

  Conan thought for a moment, then said: 'To the strongest.' He turned again and, with the Æsir, he rode from the land of his people.

  The Frost-Giant’s Daughter

  Robert E. Howard

  The clangour of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race.

  Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures glared at each other. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky was over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at their feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come to a tryst through the shambles of a dead world. In the brooding silence they stood face to face.

  Both were tall men, built like tigers. Their shields were gone, their corselets battered and dinted. Blood dried on their mail; their swords were stained red. Their horned helmets showed the marks of fierce strokes. One was beardless and black-maned. The locks and beard of the other were red as the blood on the sunlit snow.

  'Man,' said he, 'tell me your name, so that my brothers in Vanaheim may know who was the last of Wulfhere’s band to fall before the sword of Heimdul.'

  'Not in Vanaheim,' growled the black-haired warrior, 'but in Valhalla will you tell your brothers that you met Conan of Cimmeria.'

  Heimdul roared and leaped, and his sword flashed in deathly arc. Conan staggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the singing blade crashed on his helmet, shivering into bits of blue fire. But as he reeled he thrust with all the power of his broad shoulders behind the humming blade. The sharp point tore through brass scales and bones
and heart, and the red-haired warrior died at Conan’s feet.

  The Cimmerian stood upright, trailing his sword, a sudden sick weariness assailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like a knife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely apart. He turned away from the trampled expanse where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked with red-haired slayers in the embrace of death. A few steps he took, and the glare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave of blindness engulfed him and he sank down into the snow, supporting himself on one mailed arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of his eyes as a lion might shake his mane.

  A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight cleared slowly. He looked up; there was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not place or define – an unfamiliar tinge to earth and sky. But he did not think long of this. Before him, swaying like a sapling in the wind, stood a woman. Her body was like ivory to his dazed gaze, and save for a light veil of gossamer, she was naked as the day. Her slender bare feet were whiter than the snow they spurned. She laughed down at the bewildered warrior. Her laughter was sweeter than the rippling of silvery fountains, and poisonous with cruel mockery.

  'Who are you?' asked the Cimmerian. 'Whence come you?'

  'What matter?' Her voice was more musical than a silver-stringed harp, but it was edged with cruelty.

  'Call up your men,' said he, grasping his sword. 'Yet though my strength fail me, they shall not take me alive. I see that you are of the Vanir.'

  'Have I said so?'

  His gaze went again to her unruly locks, which at first glance he had thought to be red. Now he saw that they were neither red nor yellow but a glorious compound of both colours. He gazed spell-bound. Her hair was like elfin-gold; the sun struck it so dazzlingly that he could scarcely bear to look upon it. Her eyes were likewise neither wholly blue nor wholly grey, but of shifting colours and dancing lights and clouds of colours he could not define. Her full red lips smiled, and from her slender feet to the blinding crown of her billowy hair, her ivory body was as perfect as the dream of a god. Conan’s pulse hammered in his temples.

  'I can not tell,' said he, 'whether you are of Vanaheim and mine enemy, or of Asgard and my friend. Far have I wandered, but a woman like you I have never seen. Your locks blind me with their brightness. Never have I seen such hair, not even among the fairest daughters of the Æsir. By Ymir –'

  'Who are you to swear by Ymir?' she mocked. 'What know you of the gods of ice and snow, you who have come up from the south to adventure among an alien people?'

  'By the dark gods of my own race!' he cried in anger. 'Though I am not of the golden haired Æsir, none has been more forward in sword-play! This day I have seen four score men fall, and I alone have survived the field where Wulfhere’s reavers met the wolves of Bragi. Tell me, woman, have you seen the flash of mail out across the snow-plains, or seen armed men moving upon the ice?'

  'I have seen the hoar-frost glittering in the sun,' she answered. 'I have heard the wind whispering across the everlasting snows.'

  He shook his head with a sigh.

  'Niord should have come up with us before the battle joined. I fear he and his fighting-men have been ambushed. Wulfhere and his warriors lie dead.

  'I had thought there was no village within many leagues of this spot, for the war carried us far, but you can not have come a great distance over these snows, naked as you are. Lead me to your tribe, if you are of Asgard, for I am faint with blows and the weariness of strife.'

  'My village is further than you can walk, Conan of Cimmeria,' she laughed. Spreading her arms wide, she swayed before him, her golden head lolling sensuously, her scintillant eyes half shadowed beneath their long silken lashes. 'Am I not beautiful, oh man?'

  'Like Dawn running naked on the snows,' he muttered, his eyes burning like those of a wolf.

  'Then why do you not rise and follow me? Who is the strong warrior who falls down before me?' she chanted in maddening mockery. 'Lie down and die in the snow with the other fools, Conan of the black hair. You can not follow where I would lead.'

  With an oath the Cimmerian heaved himself up on his feet, his blue eyes blazing, his dark scarred face contorted. Rage shook his soul, but desire for the taunting figure before him hammered at his temples and drove his wild blood fiercely through his veins. Passion fierce as physical agony flooded his whole being, so that earth and sky swam red to his dizzy gaze. In the madness that swept upon him, weariness and faintness were swept away.

  He spoke no word as he drove at her, fingers spread to grip her soft flesh. With a shriek of laughter she leaped back and ran, laughing at him over her white shoulder. With a low growl Conan followed. He had forgotten the fight, forgotten the mailed warriors who lay in their blood, forgotten Niord and the reavers who had failed to reach the fight. He had thought only for the slender white shape which seemed to float rather than run before him.

  Out across the white blinding plain the chase led. The trampled red field fell out of sight behind him, but still Conan kept on with the silent tenacity of his race. His mailed feet broke through the frozen crust; he sank deep in the drifts and forged through them by sheer strength. But the girl danced across the snow light as a feather floating across a pool; her naked feet barely left their imprint on the hoar-frost that overlaid the crust. In spite of the fire in his veins, the cold bit through the warrior’s mail and fur-lined tunic; but the girl in her gossamer veil ran as lightly and as gaily as if she danced through the palm and rose gardens of Poitain.

  On and on she led, and Conan followed. Black curses drooled through the Cimmerian’s parched lips. The great veins in his temples swelled and throbbed and his teeth gnashed.

  'You can not escape me!' he roared. 'Lead me into a trap and I’ll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet! Hide from me and I’ll tear apart the mountains to find you! I’ll follow you to hell!'

  Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from the barbarian’s lips. Further and further into the wastes she led him. The land changed; the wide plains gave way to low hills, marching upward in broken ranges. Far to the north he caught a glimpse of towering mountains, blue with the distance, or white with the eternal snows. Above these mountains shone the flaring rays of the borealis. They spread fan-wise into the sky, frosty blades of cold flaming light, changing in colour, growing and brightening.

  Above him the skies glowed and crackled with strange lights and gleams. The snow shone weirdly, now frosty blue, now icy crimson, now cold silver. Through a shimmering icy realm of enchantment Conan plunged doggedly onward, in a crystalline maze where the only reality was the white body dancing across the glittering snow beyond his reach – ever beyond his reach.

  He did not wonder at the strangeness of it all, not even when two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way. The scales of their mail were white with hoar-frost; their helmets and their axes were covered with ice. Snow sprinkled their locks; in their beards were spikes of icicles; their eyes were cold as the lights that streamed above them.

  'Brothers!' cried the girl, dancing between them. 'Look who follows! I have brought you a man to slay! Take his heart that we may lay it smoking on our father’s board!'

  The giants answered with roars like the grinding of ice-bergs on a frozen shore and heaved up their shining axes as the maddened Cimmerian hurled himself upon them. A frosty blade flashed before his eyes, blinding him with its brightness, and he gave back a terrible stroke that sheared through his foe’s thigh. With a groan the victim fell, and at the instant Conan was dashed into the snow, his left shoulder numb from the blow of the survivor, from which the Cimmerian’s mail had barely saved his life. Conan saw the remaining giant looming high above him like a colossus carved of ice, etched against the cold glowing sky. The axe fell, to sink through the snow and deep into the frozen earth as Conan hurled himself aside and leaped to his feet. The giant roared and wrenched his axe free, but even as he did, Conan’s sword sang down. The giant’s knees bent and he
sank slowly into the snow, which turned crimson with the blood that gushed from his half-severed neck.

  Conan wheeled, to see the girl standing a short distance away, staring at him in wide-eyed horror, all the mockery gone from her face. He cried out fiercely and the blood-drops flew from his sword as his hand shook in the intensity of his passion.

  'Call the rest of your brothers!' he cried. 'I’ll give their hearts to the wolves! You can not escape me –'

  With a cry of fright she turned and ran fleetly. She did not laugh now, nor mock him over her white shoulder. She ran as for her life, and though he strained every nerve and thew, until his temples were like to burst and the snow swam red to his gaze, she drew away from him, dwindling in the witch-fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child, then a dancing white flame on the snow, then a dim blur in the distance. But grinding his teeth until the blood started from his gums, he reeled on, and he saw the blur grow to a dancing white flame, and the flame to a figure big as a child; and then she was running less than a hundred paces ahead of him, and slowly the space narrowed, foot by foot.

  She was running with effort now, her golden locks blowing free; he heard the quick panting of her breath, and saw a flash of fear in the look she cast over her white shoulder. The grim endurance of the barbarian had served him well. The speed ebbed from her flashing white legs; she reeled in her gait. In his untamed soul leaped up the fires of hell she had fanned so well. With an inhuman roar he closed in on her, just as she wheeled with a haunting cry and flung out her arms to fend him off.

  His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her lithe body bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. Her golden hair blew about his face, blinding him with its sheen; the feel of her slender body twisting in his mailed arms drove him to blinder madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth flesh; and that flesh was cold as ice. It was as if he embraced not a woman of human flesh and blood, but a woman of flaming ice. She writhed her golden head aside, striving to avoid the fierce kisses that bruised her red lips.