The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  'Where the real wizards would have promptly taken everything you had and cast you down again,'

  Achilea said scornfully.

  'Besides,' Conan added, 'you haven’t done badly out of this for a runaway Kothian slave.' He tapped the bulging sack that depended from Amram’s girdle. 'You seem to have acquired some valuables during your stay.'

  'A few baubles, yes,' said the little man. shrugging. 'Perhaps enough for a little stake to get me started again, after ail this sacrifice.'

  'If those are opals,' Conan said meaningfully, 'you are set for life.'

  'Surely you would not deprive me of this small satisfaction?'

  Conan laughed 'No, all I want just now is that river.'

  They passed through the darkened city, seeing only by the dim, uncertain light of small clusters and

  lines of glowing fungus. The people of the city crouched in huddled groups, wailing in their fear of the doom that had come upon their ancient domain.

  'Out!' Conan shouted at them. 'If any of you has the spirit to live, get to the river. Janagar is no more!' None of diem paid him the slightest attention.

  The river-smell grew ever stronger, and at last they followed Amram to a gigantic natural cavern where black water flowed along in a broad, slow stream. By the light of great, globular clusters of glowing fungus, they saw a rough stone jetty to which was tied a long raft of logs with a rude brush hut erected in its centre. To the raft was lashed a targe dugout canoe. Upon the raft stood four tiny brown men who began to gesticulate wildly and chatter questions at the newcomers.

  The river-folk,' Amram informed his companions. 'They are puzzled by the commotion and the extinguishing of the torches. I fear I must tell them that their age-old trade with Janagar is at an end. No, perhaps I shall wait until we are well away from here,' He began to converse with the tiny men in a language Conan did not understand. Soon they quieted.

  'Where does the river lead?' Conan demanded

  'This is a loop that branches from the Styx,' Amram told him. He pointed to his left. 'Upstream, where the villagers live, it passes beneath a mountain range and emerges almost at the boundary between Punt and Keshan.' He pointed to his right, 'Downstream, it rejoins the Styx near the great bend, with Stygia on the southern bank and land claimed by Shem to the north. The villagers come here, trade their wares, including the timber of the raft, and paddle back home in the dugout. I am about to take passage with them, to return to my home in Keshan. I think the canoe is large enough to hold all of us'

  'Nay,' said Conan. 'We will take the raft. I’ll wager there is a war in Shem, where a good fighting-man can make his way with a sword and a stout heart' He cocked an eyebrow toward Achilea and she smiled.

  'Aye, just now I’ve no urge to see the dark and jungled lands. I’m for the raft,' she declared.

  'Then farewell, my friends,' Amram said, stepping into the dugout. 'In three days, you should see the sunlight again.' He shook his head. 'With all the fools, knaves and cowards in the world, why did I have to encounter a pair of genuine heroes?'

  'Your gods do not love you, Amram,' Conan said. 'But may they watch over you anyway.

  Farewell.' The brown men climbed into the dugout and took up their paddles. Minutes later, they were out of sight.

  'Let’s be off,' Conan said. They stepped aboard the raft and while the women took up poles, Conan drew his sword and slashed through the ropes that bound the float to the jetty fore and aft. Putting their shoulders to the poles, they pushed themselves to midstream; then they laid the poles aside as the current carried them downstream. Gradually, the sounds of the city faded behind them. They soon were out of the great cavern and in a cave that was narrower, but still spacious. Overhead, the glowing fungus began to thin out.

  At the stern of the raft was an earth-filled firebox and a stack of wood. With flint and steel, me Cimmerian struck a light and soon had a small fire burning. The smoky, orange flames seemed decidedly clean after the unnatural lighting of the underground city. Achilea came to stand beside him.

  'Payna,' she said, 'tend the fire. Should the raft drift too close to a wall, fend it off with one of the poles. Conan and I have matters to attend to in the hut here. Do not disturb us.'

  Payna looked the Cimmerian up and down without favour. Then she delivered the longest speech he had heard pass her lips. 'My queen, I honour this great, ugly beast for the services he has done you, but as I have said to you before, you are far too soft where men are concerned.'

  They went into the little hut. It was crude and unfurnished, but they cared nothing for that Achilea unbuckled her sword-belt and her weapons fell to the logs along with his. She tugged at the thongs fastening her skimpy garments.

  'Three days,' she said. 'How much can we accomplish in three days?'

  'More than any ordinary man and woman,' he replied, performing the same actions. 'As Amram

  said, we are heroes!' Then they lunged for each other like mating tigers.

  The three stood on the northern riverbank and watched the raft float downstream toward the Western Sea. The Cimmerian stretched his mighty arms, exulting in open, clean air and sunshine that was not the brutal glare of the desert. To the south, they could just discern a pyramid where some .forgotten king of Stygia was entombed. To the north, east and west, grassland extended to the limit of vision.

  'Let’s go that way,' Conan said, pointing westward. 'If we don’t find a war before long, I don’t know Shem.'

  'No,' Achilea said with a sad sigh. 'I go that way.' She pointed to the north.

  'Why?' Conan asked, astonished. 'What is up there? '

  'My homeland. I want to see my son once more. And I want my throne back. I will go and fight Briseis. All my wilderness sisters save Payna are dead now because of her. It is time for her to die.'

  He stood as if thunderstruck. 'Very well then, I will help you.'

  She shook her head. 'No, Conan, it is hopeless. When I am queen again, there will be no place for a man at my side.' She smiled wanly. 'We could not be together for long; you know that as well as I do.

  We are heroes, and two such cannot live beneath the same roof. We would be at each other’s throats before the turning of a year. Farewell, Cimmerian.' She leaned forward, kissed him lightly, men turned and began to walk northward, her last follower close behind her.

  Conan stood watching as the two forms dwindled with distance and vanished from sight. 'Farewell, my queen,' he whispered at last With a grim expression on his craggy features, he turned and strode west. Far behind him, the eternal sands of the desert buried the shattered ruins of Janagar of the Opal Gates.

  The Devil in Iron

  Robert E. Howard

  I

  The fisherman loosened his knife in its scabbard. The gesture was instinctive, for what he feared was nothing a knife could slay, not even the saw-edged crescent blade of the Yuetshi that could disembowel a man with an upward stroke. Neither man nor beast threatened him in the solitude which brooded over the castellated isle of Xapur.

  He had climbed the cliffs, passed through the jungle that bordered them, and now stood surrounded by evidences of a vanished state. Broken columns glimmered among the trees, the straggling lines of crumbling walls meandered off into the shadows, and under his feet were broad paves, cracked and bowed by roots growing beneath.

  The fisherman was typical of his race, that strange people whose origin is lost in the grey dawn of the past, and who have dwelt in their rude fishing-huts along the southern shore of the Sea of Vilayet since time immemorial. He was broadly built, with long apish arms and a mighty chest, but with lean loins and thin bandy legs. His face was broad, his forehead low and retreating, his hair thick and tangled. A belt for a knife and a rag for a loin-cloth were all he wore in the way of clothing.

  That he was where he was proved that he was less dully incurious than most of his people. Men seldom visited Xapur. It was uninhabited, all but forgotten, merely one among the myriad isles which dotted the great inland se
a. Men called it Xapur, the Fortified, because of its ruins, remnants of some prehistoric kingdom, lost and forgotten before the conquering Hyborians had ridden southward. None knew who reared those stones, though dim legends lingered among the Yuetshi which half intelligibly suggested a connection of immeasurable antiquity between the fishers and the unknown island kingdom.

  But it had been a thousand years since any Yuetshi had understood the import of these tales; they repeated them now as a meaningless formula, a gibberish framed to their lips by custom. No Yuetshi had come to Xapur for a century. The adjacent coast of the mainland was uninhabited, a reedy marsh given over to the grim beasts that haunted it. The fisher’s village lay some distance to the south, on the mainland. A storm had blown his frail fishing-craft far from his accustomed haunts, and wrecked it in a night of flaring lightning and roaring waters on the towering cliffs of the isle. Now in the dawn the sky shone blue and clear, the rising sun made jewels of the dripping leaves. He had climbed the cliffs to which he had clung through the night because, in the midst of the storm, he had seen an appalling lance of lightning fork out of the black heavens, and the concussion of its stroke, which had shaken the whole island, had been accompanied by a cataclysmic crash that he doubted could have resulted from a riven tree.

  A dull curiosity had caused him to investigate; and now he had found what he sought and an animal-like uneasiness possessed him, a sense of lurking peril.

  Among the trees reared a broken dome-like structure, built of gigantic blocks of the peculiar iron-like green stone found only on the islands of Vilayet. It seemed incredible that human hands could have shaped and placed them, and certainly it was beyond human power to have overthrown the structure they formed. But the thunderbolt had splintered the ton-heavy blocks like so much glass, reduced others to green dust, and ripped away the whole arch of the dome.

  The fisherman climbed over the debris and peered in, and what he saw brought a grunt from him. Within the ruined dome, surrounded by stone-dust and bits of broken masonry, lay a man on a golden block. He was clad in a sort of skirt and a shagreen girdle. His black hair, which fell in a square mane to his massive shoulders, was confined about his temples by a narrow gold band. On his bare, muscular breast lay a curious dagger with a jewelled pommel, shagreen-bound hilt, and a broad crescent blade. It was much like the knife the fisherman wore at his hip, but it lacked the serrated edge, and was made with infinitely greater skill.

  The fisherman lusted for the weapon. The man, of course, was dead; had been dead for many centuries. This dome was his tomb. The fisherman did not wonder by what art the ancients had preserved the body in such a vivid likeness of life, which kept the muscular limbs full and unshrunken, the dark flesh vital. The dull brain of the Yuetshi had room only for his desire for the knife with its delicate waving lines along the dully gleaming blade.

  Scrambling down into the dome, he lifted the weapon from the man’s breast. And as he did so, a strange and terrible thing came to pass. The muscular dark hands knotted convulsively, the lids flared open, revealing great dark magnetic eyes whose stare struck the startled fisherman like a physical blow. He recoiled, dropping the jewelled dagger in his perturbation. The man on the dais heaved up to a sitting position, and the fisherman gaped at the full extent of his size, thus revealed. His narrowed eyes held the Yuetshi and in those slitted orbs he read neither friendliness nor gratitude; he saw only a fire as alien and hostile as that which burns in the eyes of a tiger.

  Suddenly the man rose and towered above him, menace in his every aspect. There was no room in the fisherman’s dull brain for fear, at least for such fear as might grip a man who has just seen the fundamental laws of nature defied. As the great hands fell to his shoulders, he drew his saw-edged knife and struck upward with the same motion. The blade splintered against the stranger’s corded belly as against a steel column, and then the fisherman’s thick neck broke like a rotten twig in the giant hands.

  II

  Jehungir Agha, lord of Khawarizm and keeper of the coastal border, scanned once more the ornate parchment scroll with its peacock seal, and laughed shortly and sardonically.

  'Well?' bluntly demanded his counsellor Ghaznavi.

  Jehungir shrugged his shoulders. He was a handsome man, with the merciless pride of birth and accomplishment.

  'The king grows short of patience,' said he. 'In his own hand he complains bitterly of what he calls my failure to guard the frontier. By Tarim, if I can not deal a blow to these robbers of the steppes, Khawarizm may own a new lord.'

  Ghaznavi tugged his grey-shot beard in meditation. Yezdigerd, king of Turan, was the mightiest monarch in the world. In his palace in the great port city of Aghrapur was heaped the plunder of empires. His fleets of purple-sailed war galleys had made Vilayet an Hyrkanian lake. The dark-skinned people of Zamora paid him tribute, as did the eastern provinces of Koth. The Shemites bowed to his rule as far west as Shushan. His armies ravaged the borders of Stygia in the south and the snowy lands of the Hyperboreans in the north. His riders bore torch and sword westward into Brythunia and Ophir and Corinthia, even to the borders of Nemedia. His gilt-helmeted swordsmen had trampled hosts under their horses’ hoofs, and walled cities went up in flames at his command. In the glutted slave markets of Aghrapur, Sultanapur, Khawarizm, Shahpur, and Khorusun, women were sold for three small silver coins – blond Brythunians, tawny Stygians, dark-haired Zamorians, ebon Kushites, olive-skinned Shemites.

  Yet, while his swift horsemen overthrew armies far from his frontiers, at his very borders an audacious foe plucked his beard with a red-dripping and smoke-stained hand.

  On the broad steppes between the Sea of Vilayet and the borders of the easternmost Hyborian kingdoms, a new race had sprung up in the past half-century, formed originally of fleeing criminals, broken men, escaped slaves, and deserting soldiers. They were men of many crimes and countries, some born on the steppes, some fleeing from the kingdoms in the west. They were called kozak, which means wastrel.

  Dwelling on the wild, open steppes, owning no law but their own peculiar code, they had become a people capable even of defying the Grand Monarch. Ceaselessly they raided the Turanian frontier, retiring in the steppes when defeated; with the pirates of Vilayet, men of much the same breed, they harried the coast, preying off the merchant ships which plied between the Hyrkanian ports.

  'How am I to crush these wolves?' demanded Jehungir. 'If I follow them into the steppes, I run the risk either of being cut off and destroyed, or having them elude me entirely and burn the city in my absence. Of late they have been more daring than ever.'

  'That is because of the new chief who has risen among them,' answered Ghaznavi. 'You know whom I mean.'

  'Aye!' replied Jehungir feelingly. 'It is that devil Conan; he is even wilder than the kozaks, yet he is crafty as a mountain lion.'

  'It is more through wild animal instinct than through intelligence,' answered Ghaznavi. 'The other kozaks are at least descendants of civilised men. He is a barbarian. But to dispose of him would be to deal them a crippling blow.'

  'But how?' demanded Jehungir. 'He has repeatedly cut his way out of spots that seemed certain death for him. And, instinct or cunning, he has avoided or escaped every trap set for him.'

  'For every beast and for every man there is a trap he will not escape,' quoth Ghaznavi. 'When we have parleyed with the kozaks for the ransom of captives, I have observed this man Conan. He has a keen relish for women and strong drink. Have your captive Octavia fetched here.'

  Jehungir clapped his hands, and an impassive Kushite eunuch, an image of shining ebony in silken pantaloons, bowed before him and went to do his bidding. Presently he returned, leading by the wrist a tall handsome girl, whose yellow hair, clear eyes and fair skin identified her as a pure-blooded member of her race. Her scanty silk tunic, girded at the waist, displayed the marvelous contours of her magnificent figure. Her fine eyes flashed with resentment and her red lips were sulky, but submission had been taught her during her ca
ptivity. She stood with hanging head before her master until he motioned her to a seat on the divan beside him. Then he looked inquiringly at Ghaznavi.

  'We must lure Conan away from the kozaks,' said the counsellor abruptly. 'Their war camp is at present pitched somewhere on the lower reaches of the Zaporoska River – which, as you well know, is a wilderness of reeds, a swampy jungle in which our last expedition was cut to pieces by those masterless devils.'

  'I am not likely to forget that,' said Jehungir wryly.

  'There is an uninhabited island near the mainland,' said Ghaznavi, 'known as Xapur, the Fortified, because of some ancient ruins upon it. There is a peculiarity about it which makes it perfect for our purpose. It has no shore-line, but rises sheer out of the sea in cliffs a hundred and fifty feet tall. Not even an ape could negotiate them. The only place where a man can go up or down is a narrow path on the western side that has the appearance of a worn stair, carved into the solid rock of the cliffs.

  'If we could trap Conan on that island, alone, we could hunt him down at our leisure, with bows, as men hunt a lion.'

  'As well wish for the moon,' said Jehungir impatiently. 'Shall we send him a messenger, bidding him climb the cliffs and await our coming?'

  'In effect, yes!' Seeing Jehungir’s look of amazement, Ghaznavi continued: 'We will ask for a parley with the kozaks in regard to prisoners, at the edge of the steppes by Fort Ghori. As usual, we will go with a force and encamp outside the castle. They will come, with an equal force, and the parley will go forward with the usual distrust and suspicion. But this time we will take with us, as if by casual chance, your beautiful captive.' Octavia changed colour and listened with intensified interest as the counsellor nodded toward her. 'She will use all her wiles to attract Conan’s attention. That should not be difficult. To that wild reaver she should appear a dazzling vision of loveliness. Her vitality and substantial figure should appeal to him more vividly than would one of the doll-like beauties of your seraglio.'