The Conquering Sword of Conan (45 page)

“Then suddenly the music changed to a shrill keening and Xatmec screamed like one in agony and like a madman he tore opened the door and rushed out, with his sword lifted. A dozen blades struck him down and over his body the Xotalancas surged into the guard-room.”

“The pipes of madness,” muttered Olmec. “They were hidden in the city – old Tolkemec used to speak of them. The dogs found them, somehow. There is great magic hidden in this city – if we could only find it.”

“Are these all of them?” demanded Conan.

Olmec shrugged his shoulders. Only thirty of his people were left. Men were driving twenty new crimson nails into the ebony column.

“I do not know.”

“I’ll go to Xotalanc and see,” said Conan. “No, you won’t, either,” his to Valeria. “You’ve got a stab in your leg. You’ll stay here and get it bandaged. Shut up, will you? Who’ll go and guide me?”

Techotl limped out.

“I’ll go!”

“No, you won’t. You’re wounded.”

A man volunteered and Olmec ordered another to go with the Cimmerian. Their names were Yanath and Topal. They led Conan through silent chambers and halls until they came to the bronze door that marked the boundary of Xotalanc. They tried it gingerly and it opened under their fingers. Awedly they stared into the green-lit chambers. For fifty years no man of Teculhtli had entered those halls save as a prisoner going to a hideous doom.

Conan strode in and they followed. They found no living men, but they found evidences of the feud.

In a chamber there stood rows of glass-like cases. And in these cases were human heads, perfectly preserved – scores of them.

Yanath stood staring at them, a wild light in his wild eyes.

“There is my brother’s head,” he murmured. “And my sister’s son, and my father’s brother!”

Suddenly he went mad. The sanity of all the Tlazitlans hung on a hair trigger. Howling and frothing he turned and drove his sword to the hilt in Topal’s body. Topal went down and Yanath turned on Conan. The Cimmerian saw the man was hopelessly mad so he side-stepped and as the maniac went past, he swung a cut that severed shoulder bone and breast, and dropped the man dead beside his dying victim.

Conan knelt beside Topal and then caught the man’s wrist as, with a dying effort, he drove a dagger at the Cimmerian’s breast.

“Crom!” swore Conan. “Are you mad, too?”

“Olmec ordered it,” gasped the dying man. “He bade me slay you while returning to Tecuhltli –” and with the name of his clan on his lips, Topal died.

Conan rose, scowling. Then he turned and hurried back through the halls and chambers, toward Tecuhltli. His primitive sense of direction led him unerringly back the way they had come.

And as he approached Tecuhltli he was aware of someone ahead of him – someone who gasped and panted and advanced with a floundering noise. Conan sprang forward and saw Techotl crawling toward him. The man was bleeding from a deep gash in his breast.

“Conan!” he cried. “Olmec has taken the yellow-haired woman! I sought to stay him, but he struck me down. He thought he had slain me! Slay Olmec, take her and go! He lied to you! There was but one dragon in all the forest, and if you slew it, there is no fear but you can win through to the coast! For many years we worshipped it as a god, and offered up victims to it! Haste! Olmec has taken her to the –”

His head slumped down and he died.

Conan sprang up, his eyes like live coals. So that was why Olmec gave orders to Topal that he should be slain! He might have known what was going on in that black-bearded degenerate’s mind. He raced recklessly, counting his opponents in his mind. There could not be more than fourteen or fifteen of them. In his rage he felt able to account for the whole clan single-handed.

But craft conquered, or rather controlled, his berserk rage. He would not attack through the door by which the Xotalancas had come. He would strike from a higher or a lower level. Doubtless half a century of habit would cause all the doors to be locked and bolted, anyway. When Topal and Yanath did not return, it might rouse fears that some of the Xotalancas still survived.

He went down a winding stair, and heard a low groan ahead of him. Entering cautiously he saw a giant figure strapped to a rack-like frame. A heavy iron ball was poised over his breast. His head rested on a bed of iron spikes. When this became unbearable the wretch lifted his head – and a strap fastened to his head worked the iron ball. Each time he lifted his head, the ball descended a few inches toward his hairy breast. Eventually it would crush him to a pulp. The man was gagged, but Conan recognized him. It was Olmec, prince of Teculhtli.

When Valeria retired into the chamber indicated by Olmec, a woman followed her and bandaged the stab in the calf of her leg. Silently that woman retired and as a shadow fell across her, Valeria looked up, to see Olmec staring down at her. She had laid her blood-stained sword on the couch.

“She has done a clumsy job,” criticised the prince of Tecuhltli, bending over the bandage. “Let me see –”

With a quickness amazing in one of his bulk, he snatched her sword and threw it across the chamber. His next move was to catch her in his giant arms.

Quick as he was, she almost matched him, for even as he grabbed her her dirk was in her hand and she stabbed murderous at his throat. Somehow he caught her wrist and then began a savage wrestling match, in which his superior strength and weight finally told. She was crushed down on a couch, disarmed and panting, her eyes blazing up at him like the eyes of a trapped tigress.

Though prince of Tecuhltli, Olmec moved in haste and silence. He gagged and bound her and carried her along corridors and hallways to a secret chamber. There, before he could have his will of her, came Tascela. He hid the girl, and he had a clash of wits with Tascela, in which she persuaded him to drink wine with her. He did so and was instantly paralyzed. She dragged him into a torture room and stretched him on the rack where Conan found him.

Then she carried Valeria back to the throne-chamber where the survivors were gathered, after having carried the bodies of the slain into the catcombs. Four had failed to return and men whispered of the ghost of Tolkemec. She prepared to suck the blood from Valeria’s heart to retain her own youth.

Meanwhile Conan had released Olmec, who swore to unite forces with him. Olmec led the way up a winding stair, where he struck Conan from behind. As they rolled down the stair Conan lost his sword, but strangled the prince with his bare hands.

Conan’s leg was broken, but he hobbled to the throne room where he stumbled into a trap set for him. Then from the catacombs came old Tolkemec, who slew all the Tecuhltli with his magic and while he was so

[Draft stops here; the fifty-second – and probably last – page of the typescript is apparently lost.]

Ephemera

Letter to P. Schuyler Miller

Lock Box 313
Cross Plains, Texas
March 10, 1936

Dear Mr. Miller:

I feel indeed honored that you and Dr. Clark should be so interested in Conan as to work out an outline of his career and a map of his environs. Both are surprisingly accurate, considering the vagueness of the data you had to work with. I have the original map--that is, the one I drew up when I first started writing about Conan-- around here somewhere and I’ll see if I can’t find it and let you have a look at it. It includes only the countries west of Vilayet and north of Kush. I’ve never attempted to map the southern and eastern kingdoms, though I have a fairly clear outline of their geography in my mind. However, in writing about them I feel a certain amount of license, since the inhabitants of the western Hyborian nations were about as ignorant concerning the peoples and countries of the south and east as the people of medieval Europe were ignorant of Africa and Asia. In writing about the western Hyborian nations I feel confined within the limits of known and inflexible boundaries and territories, but in fictionizing the rest of the world, I feel able to give my imagination freer play. That is, having adopted a certain conception of geography and ethnology, I feel compelled to abide by it, in the interests of consistency. My conception of the east and south is not so definite or so arbitrary.

Concerning Kush, however, it is one of the black kingdoms south of Stygia, the northern-most, in fact, and has given its name to the whole southern coast. Thus, when an Hyborian speaks of Kush, he is generally speaking of not the kingdom itself, one of many such kingdoms, but of the Black Coast in general. And he is likely to speak of any black man as a Kushite, whether he happens to be a Keshani, Darfari, Puntan, or Kushite proper. This is natural, since the Kushites were the first black men with whom the Hyborians came in contact--Barachan pirates trafficking with and raiding them.

As for Conan’s eventual fate--frankly I can’t predict it. In writing these yarns I’ve always felt less as creating them than as if I were simply chronicling his adventures as he told them to me. That’s why they skip about so much, without following a regular order. The average adventurer, telling tales of a wild life at random, seldom follows any ordered plan, but narrates episodes widely separated by space and years, as they occur to him.

Your outline follows his career as I have visualized it pretty closely. The differences are minor. As you deduct, Conan was about seventeen when he was introduced to the public in “The Tower of the Elephant.” While not fully matured, he was riper than the average civilized youth at that age. He was born on a battlefield, during a fight between his tribe and a horde of raiding Vanir. The country claimed by and roved over by his clan lay in the northwest of Cimmeria, but Conan was of mixed blood, although a purebred Cimmerian. His grandfather was a member of a southern tribe who had fled from his own people because of a blood-feud and after long wanderings, eventually taken refuge with the people of the north. He had taken part in many raids into the Hyborian nations in his youth, before his flight, and perhaps it was the tales he told of those softer countries which roused in Conan, as a child, a desire to see them. There are many things concerning Conan’s life of which I am not certain myself. I do not know, for instance, when he got his first sight of civilized people. It might have been at Vanarium, or he might have made a peaceable visit to some frontier town before that. At Vanarium he was already a formidable antagonist, though only fifteen. He stood six feet and weighed 180 pounds, though he lacked much of having his full growth.

There was the space of about a year between Vanarium and his entrance into the thief-city of Zamora. During this time he returned to the northern territories of his tribe, and made his first journey beyond the boundaries of Cimmeria. This, strange to say, was north instead of south. Why or how, I am not certain, but he spent some months among a tribe of the Æsir, fighting with the Vanir and the Hyperboreans, and developing a hate for the latter which lasted all his life and later affected his policies as king of Aquilonia. Captured by them, he escaped southward and came into Zamora in time to make his debut in print.

I am not sure that the adventure chronicled in “Rogues in the House” occurred in Zamora. The presence of opposing factions of politics would seem to indicate otherwise, since Zamora was an absolute despotism where differing political opinions were not tolerated. I am of the opinion that the city was one of the small city-states lying just west of Zamora, and into which Conan had wandered after leaving Zamora. Shortly after this he returned for a brief period to Cimmeria, and there were other returns to his native land from time to time. The chronological order of his adventures is about as you have worked it out, except that they covered a little more time. Conan was about forty when he seized the crown of Aquilonia, and was about forty-four or forty-five at the time of “The Hour of the Dragon.” He had no male heir at that time, because he had never bothered to formally make some woman his queen, and the sons of concubines, of which he had a goodly number, were not recognized as heirs to the throne.

He was, I think, king of Aquilonia for many years, in a turbulent and unquiet reign, when the Hyborian civilization had reached its most magnificent high-tide, and every king had imperial ambitions. At first he fought on the defensive, but I am of the opinion that at last he was forced into wars of aggression as a matter of self-preservation. Whether he succeeded in conquering a world-wide empire, or perished in the attempt, I do not know.

He travelled widely, not only before his kingship, but after he was king. He travelled to 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 can not foretell with any accuracy. I was much interested in your remarks concerning findings on the Yamal Peninsula, the first time I had heard anything about that. Doubtless Conan had first-hand acquaintance with the people who evolved the culture described, or their ancestors, at least.

Hope you find “The Hyborian Age” interesting. I’m enclosing a copy of the original map. Yes, Napoli’s done very well with Conan, though at times he seems to give him a sort of Latin cast of the countenance which isn’t according to type, as I conceive it. However, that isn’t enough to kick about.

Hope the enclosed data answers your questions satisfactorily; I’d be delighted to discuss any other phases you might wish, or go into more details about any point of Conan’s career or Hyborian history or geography you might desire. Thanks again for your interest, and best wishes, for yourself and Dr. Clark.

Cordially,
Robert E. Howard

P.S. You didn’t mention whether you wanted the map and chronology returned, so I’m taking the liberty of retaining them to show to some friends; if you want them back, please let me know.

Map of the Hyborian Age

The following map was originally enclosed with Howard’s letter of March 10, 1936, to P. Schuyler Miller. It is, as Howard states, a copy of the original map of the Hyborian Age, which the Texan had prepared in March 1932 (see
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
). However, as can readily be seen by comparing the different versions, Howard updated his map during the copying process, adding several cities and countries mentioned in the tales.