The Conquering Sword of Conan (49 page)

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Authors: Robert E. Howard

Tags: #Fiction

Red Nails
is so rich a story that we can’t hope to explore it in detail within the scope of this essay; a lot could be said about the relationship between Conan and Valeria, for instance, in which it is quite tempting to see a parallel with that of Howard and Novalyne Price, who had quite a temper; Valeria of the Red Brotherhood is indeed a welcome change from some of Howard’s more passive female characters. (He had, however, portrayed strong and interesting women characters before Valeria, and his meeting with Novalyne, such as Bêlit [in
Queen of the Black Coast
] and Sonya of Rogatino [in the historical adventure
The Shadow of the Vulture
].) In Tascela, the female vampire who refuses to die, feeding on younger women, fighting for the attentions of Conan, and thus jealous of Valeria, it is more than tempting to see a fictional representation of Howard’s mother, who always was hostile toward Novalyne Price. Olmec could then be seen as Howard’s father, and the whole story an allegorical tale, in which Howard and Novalyne set foot in the decayed universe that has become the Howard house….

Howard sent
Red Nails
to Farnsworth Wright on July 22, 1935. The next day he wrote Clark Ashton Smith: “Sent a three-part serial to Wright yesterday: ‘Red Nails,’ which I devoutly hope he’ll like. A Conan yarn, and the grimmest, bloodiest and most merciless story of the series so far. Too much raw meat, maybe, but I merely portrayed what I honestly believe would be the reactions of certain types of people in the situations on which the plot of the story hung.” To Lovecraft, he later commented: “The last yarn I sold to Weird Tales – and it well may be the last fantasy I’ll ever write – was a three-part Conan serial which was the bloodiest and most sexy weird story I ever wrote. I have been dissatisfied with my handling of decaying races in stories, for the reason that degeneracy is so prevalent in such races that even in fiction it can not be ignored as a motive and as a fact if the fiction is to have any claim to realism. I have ignored it in all other stories, as one of the taboos, but I did not ignore it in this story. When, or if, you ever read it, I’d like to know how you like my handling of the subject of lesbianism.” (One wonders if “lesbianism” was indeed the central theme of
Red Nails
to Howard. The story only touches on the subject because of the vampiric nature of Tascela, but this was nothing new after Le Fanu’s
Carmilla
.)

As Howard mentions, the story was accepted by Weird Tales, which began its serialization a few days after Howard’s suicide and ended it as news of his death was announced in the magazine. It was the last Conan story.

Howard’s interests – and output – in the last year of his life were increasingly western-oriented, and he didn’t write a fantasy story in that period. A few short weeks before his death, he wrote that he was contemplating writing a fantasy. Two drafts for that unfinished weird story – set in sixteenth-century America – were found among his papers after his death, proof that he had not entirely abandoned the idea of writing fantasy tales. Whether he would have eventually returned to Conan after some time is a question that must remain unanswered.

In 1935, Howard sent several stories to England via his agent Otis Adelbert Kline. The stories, sent to Weird Tales’ representative in the United Kingdom, included several Conan tales, which were sent on 25 September:
Beyond the Black River
,
A Witch Shall Be Born
, and
The Servants of Bit-Yakin
. It seems probable Howard had no real hopes for these, as he had tear-sheets of Weird Tales pages sent, not actual typescripts. Anyway, nothing ever came out of this.

Howard’s last work on Conan occurred in March 1936, when two fans, John D. Clark and P. Schuyler Miller, sent him a letter in which they attempted to establish the chronology of the Conan tales. Howard’s letter, reproduced in this volume, is essential to the reader interested in Conan’s “biography,” though Howard was perhaps having some fun with the two fans. For instance, he wrote that Conan “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.” Clark and Miller couldn’t possibly know that Howard was referring here to
The Frost-Giant’s Daughter
, the second-written Conan tale, which had been rejected by Wright and was still unpublished in its original form. With his reply, Howard included a map, expanded from the very rough ones he had prepared in 1932; it was to be the last work he would do on Conan.

Robert E. Howard committed suicide on June 11, 1936. Conan the Cimmerian, however, is still with us. In spite of some difficult years, he has managed to survive, and shows no signs of weakness.

The barbarian’s longevity wouldn’t have surprised Howard.

The barbarian must always ultimately triumph.

N
OTES ON THE
C
ONAN
T
YPESCRIPTS AND THE
C
HRONOLOGY

By Patrice Louinet

LIST OF THE EXTANT CONAN TYPESCRIPTS
(July 1934–July 1935)

The final drafts of the stories published in Weird Tales were probably destroyed after the story was typeset, and thus are no longer extant.

Regarding the terminology used: a draft is “incomplete” when we are missing at least one page; it is “unfinished” when Howard didn’t finish the draft. Sometimes Howard would write a draft and rewrite only a portion of it; such drafts are subdivided with numerals (i.e., draft b2 recycles pages from draft b1). All drafts have been examined for the preparation of this volume unless noted.

The Servants of Bit-Yakin

– draft a, untitled, 32 pgs. (numbered 1–5, 7–33 in error)

– draft b, 48 pgs.

– draft c, (final Weird Tales version), survives as carbon, 56 pgs.

Beyond the Black River

– draft a, untitled, 56 pgs.

– draft b, (final Weird Tales version), survives as untitled carbon, 69 pgs.

The Black Stranger

– synopsis a, untitled, single-spaced, 2 pgs.

– draft a, untitled, dwindling to a synopsis, 64 pgs.

– draft b1, incomplete, pgs. 47–81 of 81 pgs.

– draft b2, incomplete, pgs. 47–93 of 93 pgs., (numbered 47–59, 59–93) (pages 79–81 are perhaps missing; they were not located in time for this edition)

– draft c, final version, 98 pgs., (plus discarded pg. 35) (also survives as a carbon)

– in addition to his final draft, Howard wrote a two-page synopsis of the first part of this story, conceived as a serial; undoubtedly this would have appeared in Weird Tales—had the story been accepted—at the beginning of the second installment.

The Man-Eaters of Zamboula

– synopsis, 1 pg.

– draft a, dwindling to a synopsis, 24 pgs.

– draft b, 33 pgs.

– draft c, (final Weird Tales version), survives as carbon, 40 pgs. (page 32 is perhaps lost; it was not located in time for this edition)

Red Nails

– draft a, untitled and incomplete, pgs 1–52 of 53?, dwindling to a synopsis, (probably lacking the final page only)

– draft b, incomplete, pgs. 27–91 of 91, dwindling to a synopsis

– draft c1, partial, pgs. 97–100, (draft for last few pgs. of c2)

– draft c2, (final Weird Tales version), survives as incomplete carbon, pgs. 17–102 of 102 (pages 44–45, 47–51, 53, 56–77 are perhaps lost; they were not located in time for this edition)

Untitled Notes (The Westermarck . . .)

– single-spaced page

Wolves Beyond the Border

– draft a, unfinished and dwindling to a synopsis, 15 pgs.

– draft b, unfinished, 25 pgs.

N
OTES
O
N
T
HE
O
RIGINAL
H
OWARD
T
EXTS

The texts for this edition of
The Conquering Sword of Conan
were prepared by Patrice Louinet, Rusty Burke, and Dave Gentzel, with assistance from Glenn Lord. The
stories have been checked either against Howard’s original typescripts, copies of
which were furnished by Glenn Lord and the Cross Plains Public Library, or the first
published appearance if a typescript was unavailable. Drafts of Howard’s stories,
when extant, have also been checked to ensure the greatest accuracy. Every effort
has been made to present the work of Robert E. Howard as faithfully as possible.
Deviations from the original sources are detailed in these textual notes. In the
following, page, line, and word numbers are given as follows: 57.2.9, indicating page
57, second line, ninth word. Story titles, chapter numbers and titles, and breaks
before and after chapter headings, titles, and illustrations are not counted. The
page/line number will be followed by the reading in the original source, or a
statement indicating the type of change made.

The Servants of Bit-Yakin

Text taken from Howard’s carbon, provided by Glenn Lord. (Page 53 of the carbon
was in such bad shape that it had to be retyped by Glenn Lord, respecting Howard’s
layout and eventual mistakes.)

The carbon has no title for the first chapter; it was either added by Howard directly on the typescript or added by the Weird Tales editor. 4.6.17: reach; 4.10.4: crossed-legged; 4.17.2: invistigation; 4.25.13: ampiteater; 4.30.3: exaled; 6.2.8: sacret; 6.28.9: indiscretly; 6.33.8: “stood” absent from original and taken from Weird Tales text; 6.35.8: “with within” in original; 8.9.3: lapus-lazuli; 8.17.8: “be” absent from original; 8.33.9: freizes; 9.3.2: preversed; 9.3.8: effected; 9.40.5: established; 10.12.8: Pains-takingingly (hyphenated); 10.28.9: period after “characters”; 10.36.10: this page of the carbon is damaged and the following words or phrases up to and including 10.39.5 are taken from Weird Tales text: 10.36.10: “script”; 10.37.2: “familiar,”; 10.37.9: “been modified”; 10.38.1: “nomad”; 10.38.6: “baffled him. He”; 10.38.13: “recurrent”; 10.39.5: “as a proper name. Bit-Yakin. He gathered”; 11.2.4: mauscript; 11.32.11: posssessed; 14.7.15: carefull; 14.32.9: the last three letters of “immemorial” are unreadable on the carbon; 16.6.10: contemptously; 16.14.11: “forget” absent from original and taken from Weird Tales text; 16.33.6: space before “watching”; 17.5.15: caves; 17.21.17: of; 17.23.2: no period and quotation mark after “immediately” (typed to right edge of paper); 17.24.9: Zembawans; 18.10.5: explict; 18.35.12: “if” absent from original; 18.38.1: squaked; 18.39.6: freizes; 19.17.13: Conan’s; 19.36.2: tense; 20.4.6: straining; 20.11.2: holloweed; 21.6.3: “not” absent from original; 21.7.5: Obvious; 22.38.1: Gawlur; 23.23.11: “cry” absent from original and taken from Weird Tales text; 24.32.11: “not” repeated; 25.2.4: “this” repeated (This this); 25.22.14: “the” absent from original; 27.1.9: instantly; 27.9.1: through; 28.14.7: difficukty; 29.3.14: where; 29.11.2: the that; 30.2.10: phosphorous; 31.3.8: prophesy; 31.6.11: descrated; 31.37.9: yards; 32.3.7: “a” absent from original; 32.9.11: escounced; 32.14.10: phosphorous; 32.25.15: the first three letters of “cavern” are unreadable on the carbon; 32.29.2: set; 34.20.16: the; 34.21.5: chainting; 34.38.15: phosphorous; 35.2.5: is; 36.1.8: grassped; 36.24.3: “glow” absent from original and taken from Weird Tales text; 39.15.10: hyphen instead of comma after “grey”; 40.3.5: blood; 40.14.5: down downward; 40.14.13: nervelss; 41.9.4: jems; 41.16.11: the line: “like you. There’s no use going back to Keshia. There’s nothing in Keshan” didn’t register on the carbon. The text is taken from the Weird Tales text.

Beyond the Black River

Text taken from Howard’s carbon, provided by Glenn Lord. (Pages 1 and 65 of the carbon were in such bad shape that they had to be retyped by Glenn Lord, respecting Howard’s layout and eventual mistakes.) The chapters are untitled in the carbon, except for the first one. A blank line in the ts. below each new chapter suggests Howard intended to add titles; these may have been present on the ts. sent to Weird Tales. It is also possible that these were added by the Weird Tales editor. 45.7.6: “a” before “soft” in original; 45.13.9: cabin; 46.37.14: “been” absent from original; 48.7.1: “and” absent from original; 50.10.13: quotation mark before “Conan”; 52.14.4: the words “straying” and “strayed” appear on the carbon, one typed over the other, though it is not clear which was Howard’s final choice; 52.21.1: accomodate; 52.25.12: “of” absent from original; 52.35.8: blunder; 56.22.6: pythong; 56.39.14: no space between “know” and em-dash; 59.13.2: breek; 59.14.1: sword; 60.40.13: touched; 64.10.3: coifures; 65.22.1: “four of” in original; 65.31.12: accomodated; 65.37.2: of; 67.15.13: shoudders; 67.17.9: that; 67.26.1: beast; 67.40.9: thew; 68.20.2: futiley; 68.29.13: “in” unreadable due to a crease on the carbon; 68.39.7: ancient; 74.17.2: avoiding; 74.22.13: cubs; 74.25.6: “and” absent from original; 76.5.6: carnivora; 76.21.3ff: “looking for us” unreadable due to a crease on the carbon and taken from Weird Tales text; 76.23.12: “to” absent from original; 76.33.13: doesn’ (typed to right edge of paper); 77.26.7: villave; 78.15.9: “with” after “trade” in original; 79.8.12: laying; 79.20.4: “the” absent from original; 80.13.7: “a” absent from original; 83.14.12: “yards” absent from original and taken from Weird Tales text; 84.4.3: furious; 84.7.6: no comma after “Cimmerian”; 84.31.6: accrosst; 84.36.12: broast; 86.1.4: glancing; 88.7.13: “and” unreadable due to a crease on the carbon; 88.29.13: hideous; 88.29.14: slashdd; 88.38.12: “was” instead of “no”; 88.40.14: growl; 91.28.10: pleasur (typed to right edge of paper); 93.1.6: “shoulders” absent from original and taken from Weird Tales text; 93.28.12: “blood” instead of “wound” in original; 93.34.2: boths; 96.7.7: slepp; 96.11.10: comma after “blazed”; 98.2.16: settlers’; 100.1.1ff: the carbon is torn here and the first two words (“No; Conajohara) are unreadable; text taken from Weird Tales text.

The Black Stranger

Text taken from Howard’s typescript, in the holdings of the Cross Plains Public Library. The original has a number of annotations in pencil, some of which are from Howard’s hand. We have ignored these since they correspond to the changes Howard introduced when he rewrote the story as a Terence Vulmea tale: as was customary, Howard’s corrections for the Conan version of the typescript were typed rather than penciled. Interested readers are invited to consult the facsimile edition of “The Black Stranger,” published in 2002 by Wandering Star. 104.19.13: statue; 106.23.7: agily; 107.27.7: nitched; 109.6.1: repellant; 109.14.12: cerulian; 112.22.10: neice; 112.23.1: protege; 116.3.5: Storm’s; 120.15.8: roasing; 120.22.11: silene; 120.36.12: It’s; 121.6.8: neice; 122.27.3: fixidly; 122.38.10: no period after “intentions”; 125.33.11: “in” absent from original; 126.17.4: neice; 126.35.15: curtisied; 128.12.3: comma after “Curse”; 128.26.12: “a” repeated; 129.10.11: neice; 133.21.14: randy; 133.22.1: “the” absent from original; 136.32.2: “the” repeated (the The Red Hand); 136.34.12: adaptibility; 138.11.8: surveilance; 140.35.3: every; 140.35.5: eaves dropping; 143.27.8: appeares; 145.11.14: no quotation mark after “years!” in original; 146.26.2: “is” absent from original; 147.6.7: neice; 147.10.16: “w ill” (extra space); 147.35.5: “of” absent from original; 148.22.6: rogue’s; 148.26.10: potents; 149.18.15: venmous; 149.24.5: “on” absent from original; 149.39.1: seem; 150.11.13: crew; 152.1.2: paroxism; 153.23.10: “it” absent from original; 153.40.4: dirction; 154.26.13: quotation mark before “he” rather than after “Eagle-Picts,”; 156.7.11: “the” absent from original; 156.40.13: nitched; 158.38.1: jamb; 159.19.5: “for” absent from original; 160.40.7: clapsed; 161.35.8: “cloak-wrapped” not hyphenated (“cloak wrapped”); 162.9.6: resplendant; 163.1.9: no comma after “strand”; 164.40.1: question mark rather than period after “help”; 165.34.5: when; 168.35.6: And; 170.10.1: no comma after “glare”; 171.3.8: headlong; 172.15.11: irrelevency; 172.21.5: consumated; 172.32.6: no space between the quotation mark and “she.”

The Man-Eaters of Zamboula

Text taken from Howard’s carbon, provided by Glenn Lord. (Page 32 of the carbon is supposedly extant but was not located in time for the preparation of this volume; the text for this page [from 200.35.14: when, to 201.19.3: another] was taken from the Weird Tales appearance). 177.9.2: flambouyant; 179.17.7: heterogenous; 179.38.3: carving; 180.2.14: wounded; 180.5.7: by; 180.28.8: “a” absent from original; 180.28.14: no comma after “suk”; 180.36.6: no quotation mark after “thieves” (typed to right edge of paper); 183.20.14: “there” repeated; 184.4.3: “a” absent from original; 184.17.5: visullized; 184.35.11: a; 185.19.3: “the” absent from original; 185.29.6: “eastern-most” hyphenated at line break; 185.36.5: unsatieted; 185.40.5: no period after “escaped” (typed to right edge of paper); 186.32.12: no period after “streets” (typed to right edge of paper); 186.33.2: “me” absent from original; 189.8.2: black; 189.8.4: no comma after “past”; 189.8.8: scruffing; 189.11.4: “the” inserted in original (“the Aram’s death-house”); 189.20.6: unforseen; 189.39.2: quotation mark before “she” rather than after em-dash; 190.1.11: no quotation mark after “name” (typed to right edge of paper); 191.5.5: comma rather than period after “him”; 192.19.10: “A” absent from original (probably didn’t register on the carbon); 193.23.12: she; 194.5.10: one; 194.17.9: “help” absent from original; 195.3.6: “under” repeated; 195.10.14: of; 195.13.2: “the” absent from original; 195.36.2: filiaments; 195.40.11: no comma after “tugging” (typed to right edge of paper); 196.17.13: “a” absent from original; 196.27.10: “and” absent from original; 196.29.8: deafeningl (typed to right edge of paper); 198.10.4: breasts; 198.20.13: no period after “corridor” (typed to right edge of paper); 199.15.4: discernable; 200.14.12: no period after “dissemble” (typed to right edge of paper); 201.24.11: monster; 201.30.5: rythm; 201.32.8: tarrantella; 203.1.13: “mad-dog” in original; 203.21.9: plotte (typed to right edge of paper); 203.35.14: quarte (typed to right edge of paper); 207.5.12: grasping; 207.29.5: saw.

Red Nails

Text taken from Weird Tales, July, August–September, and October 1936 (three-part serial). The incomplete surviving carbon has been consulted for the preparation of this edition: variations within the printed text are minimal, mostly corrections of typographical errors. 224.21.1: Sailor’s; 227.17.9: period rather than comma after “girl”; 228.34.1: “plowshare” hyphenated at line break; 231.17.1: “love-making” hyphenated at line break; 234.18.5: has; 235.1.7: Science (Howard’s carbon has “Silence”; cf. 239.7.11); 238.5.3: Xotalancs; 239.23.4: “sword-thrust” hyphenated at line break; 243.34.3: Xotalancs; 248.2.1: “battle-ground” hyphenated at line break; 250.3.5: restorted; 254.13.6: “nearby” hyphenated at line break; 258.38.11: “sword-play” hyphenated at line break; 259.13.7: “throne-room” hyphenated at line break; 260.39.13: “witch-light” hyphenated at line break; 267.24.15: “wrestling-match” hyphenated at line break; 273.17.8: Techultli.

Untitled Notes