Conan the Wanderer.

by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague DeCamp, and Lin Cater.

Introduction.

Robert E. Howard (1906-36), the creator of Conan, was born in Peaster, Texas, and spent most of his life in Cross Plains, in the center of Texas. During his short life (which ended in suicide at the age of thirty) Howard turned out a large volume of popular fiction: sport, detective, Western, historical, adventure, science fiction, weird, and ghost stories, besides his verse and his many fantasies. Of his several series of heroic fantasies, the most popular have been the Conan stories. Eighteen of these were published in Howard's lifetime; eight others, from mere fragments and outlines to complete ma.n.u.scripts, have been found among his papers since 1950. The incomplete stories have been completed by my colleague Lin Carter and myself.

In addition, in the early 1950s, I rewrote four unpublished Howard ma.n.u.scripts of Oriental adventure, with medieval and modem settings, to convert them into Conan stories by changing names, deleting anachronisms, and introducing a supernatural element. This did not prove hard, since Howard's heroes are pretty much cut from the same cloth, and the resulting stories are still about three-quarters or four-fifths Howard.

Of these, the story The Flame Knife is the longest Howard originally wrote it in 1934 as a 42,000-word novella of adventure in modern Afghanistan, called "Three-Bladed Doom." The hero was Francis X.

Cordon, one of Howard's large fictional family of brawny, brawling Irish adventurers and the hero of several published stories of Oriental adventure. In "Three-Bladed Doom," the cult exposed by the hero is a modern revival of the medieval a.s.sa.s.sins. When the original version failed to sell, Howard in 1935 rewrote it to a length of 24,000 words; but that version likewise failed to find a market The story showed the influence of Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy. The present collaborative version, with 31,000 words, is intermediate in length between Howard's two original versions.

Carter and I have also written several pastiches, based upon hints in Howard's notes and letters, to fill up gaps in the saga. "Black Tears,"

in the present volume, is one of these.

All these stories belong to a sub-genre of imaginative fiction that connoisseurs call "heroic fantasy," or, sometimes, "swordplay-and-sorcery fiction." Such a story is laid in an imaginary ancient or medieval setting-perhaps this world as it is supposed to have been long ago, or as it will be in the remote future, or on another planet, or in another dimension-where magic works and modern technology has not yet been discovered. Examples of the genre-outside the Conan stories-are E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, J. R. R.

Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn, and Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

When well done, stories of this kind provide the purest fun of fiction of any kind.

Of the several larger-than-life characters who stride through Howard's pages, Conan the Cimmerian is his hero of heroes. Conan lived, loved, and moved in Howard's imaginary Hyborian Age, about twelve thousand years ago, between the sinking of Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history. A gigantic barbarian adventurer from the bleak, backward northern land of Cimmeria,

Conan brawled and battled his way across half the world of his time, wading through rivers of gore and overcoming foes both natural and supernatural to become, at last, king of the mighty Hyborian kingdom of Aquilonia.

Arriving as a raw, hulking, lawless youth in the kingdom of Zamora (see the map), Conan for a few years made a precarious living there and in the neighboring lands as a thief. Tiring of this starveling existence, he enlisted as a mercenary in the armies of Turan. For the next two years he traveled widely and refined his knowledge of archery and horsemanship.

As a result of a quarrel over a woman with a superior officer, Conan fled from Turan. After an unsuccessful try at treasure-hunting in Zamora and a brief visit to his Cimmerian homeland, he embarked upon the career of mercenary soldier in the Hyborian kingdoms. Circ.u.mstances -violent as usual-made him a pirate along the coasts of Kush, with a Shemitish she-pirate, Belit, as his partner and a crew of bloodthirsty black corsairs. After Belit was slain, he became the chief of a black tribe, then served as a mercenary in Shem and among the most southerly Hyborian nations.

Later still, Conan appeared as a leader among the kozaki, a horde of outlaws who roamed the steppes between the Hyborian lands and Turan. He captained a pirate craft on the great inland Sea of Vilayet.

While serving as captain of the royal guard of Queen Taramis of Khauran, Conan was captured by the queen's enemies, who crucified him.

When a vulture flew down to try to peck his eyes out, Conan bit the bird's head off. (You can't have a tougher hero than that.) Olgerd Vladislav, Zaporoskan leader of a band of Zuagirs, the nomadic, desert-dwelling eastern Shemites, happened upon Conan at this juncture and rescued him-for his own purposes-from the cross. When friction arose between Conan and Olgerd, the hard-bitten Cimmerian ruthlessly ousted Olgerd from the leadership of the band, which-after overthrowing the enemies of Queen Taramis and restoring her to her throne-he led off eastward to plunder the Turanians. At that point, the present story begins.

Because of legal complications, it was not possible to publish the books of Lancer Books' present Conan series in chronological order. A total of eleven or twelve books are planned, of which more than half have already been published. When the series is complete, this will be the fourth volume, following Conan the Freebooter and preceding Conan the Adventurer. A list of the volumes of the series in chronological order is given on the page before the t.i.tle page of this volume.

Readers who wish to know more about Conan, Howard, or heroic fantasy in general are referred to two periodicals and one book. One periodical is Amra, published by George H. Scithers, Box 9120, Chicago, 111, 60690; this is the organ of the Hyborian Legion, a loose group of admirers of heroic fantasy and of the Conan stories in particular. The other periodical is The Howard Collector published by Glenn Lord, literary agent for the Howard estate, Box 775, Pasadena, Texas, 77501; this is devoted to articles, stories, and poems by and about Howard. The book is The Conan Reader, by the present writer, published by Jack L.

Chalker, 5111 Liberty Heights Ave., Baltimore, Md, 21207; this consists of articles on Howard, Conan, and heroic fantasy previously published in Amra, I also listed many works by Howard and sword-and-sorcery stories by other writers in my introduction to the volume Conan of the present series.

L. Sprague de Camp

After the events narrated in "A Witch Shall Be Born" (in Conan the Freebooter), Conan leads his band of Zuagirs eastward to raid the cities and caravans of the Turanians. He is about thirty-one years old at his time and at the height of his physical powers. He spends, altogether, nearly two years with the desert Shemites, first as Olgerd lieutenant and then as their sole chieftain. But the fierce and energetic King Yezdigerd reacts swiftly to Conan's pinp.r.i.c.ks; he sends out a strong force to entrap him.

Black Tears

1. The Jaws of the Trap.

The noonday sun blazed down from the fiery dome of the sky. The harsh, dry sands of Shan-e-Sorkh, the Red Waste, baked in the pitiless blaze as in a giant oven. Naught moved in the still air; the few th.o.r.n.y shrubs that crowned the low, gravel-strewn hills, which rose in a wall at the edge of the Waste, stirred not.

Neither did the soldiers who crouched behind them, watching the trail.

Here some primeval conflict of natural forces had riven a cleft through the escarpment Ages of erosion had widened this cleft, but it still formed a narrow pa.s.s between steep slopes-a perfect site for an ambush.

The troop of Turanian soldiery had lain hidden atop the hills all through the hot morning hours. Sweltering in their tunics of chain and scale mail, they crouched on sore hams and aching knees. Cursing under his breath, their captain, the Amir Boghra Khan, endured the long, uncomfortable vigil with them. His throat was as dry as sun-baked leather; within his mail, his body stewed. In this accursed land of death and blazing sun, a man could not even sweat comfortably; the desiccated desert air greedily drank up every drop of moisture, leaving one as dry as the withered tongue of a Stygian mummy.

Now the amir blinked and rubbed his eyes, squinting against the glare to see again that tiny flash of light. A forward scout, concealed behind a dune of red sand, caught the sun in his mirror and flashed a signal toward his chief, hidden atop the hills.

Now a cloud of dust could be seen. The portly, black-bearded Turanian n.o.bleman grinned and forgot his discomfort. Surely his traitorous informant had truly earned the bribe it took to buy him!

Soon, Boghra Khan could discern the long line of Zuagir warriors, robed in flowing white khalats and mounted on slender desert steeds. As the band of desert marauders emerged from the cloud of dust raised by the hoofs of their horses, the Turanian lord could even make out the dark, lean, hawk-faced visages of his quarry, framed by their flowing headdresses-so clear was the desert air and so bright the sun.

Satisfaction seethed through his veins like red wine of Aghrapur from young King Yezdigerd's private cellars.

For years, now, this outlaw band had harried and looted towns and trading posts and caravan stations along the borders of Turan-first under that blackhearted Zaporoskan rogue, Olgerd Vladislav; then, a little more than a year ago, by his successor, Conan. At last, Turanian spies in villages friendly to the outlaw band had found a corruptible member of that band-one Vardanes, not a Zuagir but a Zamorian. Vardanes had been a blood brother to Olgerd, whom Conan had overthrown, and was hungry for vengeance against the stranger who had usurped the chieftainship.

Boghra thoughtfully tugged his beard. The Zamorian traitor was a smiling, laughing villain, dear to a Turanian heart Small, lean, lithe, and swaggering, handsome and reckless as a young G.o.d, Vardanes was an amusing drinking companion and a devilish fighter but as cold-hearted and untrustworthy as an adder.

Now the Zuagirs were pa.s.sing through the defile. And there, at the head of the outriders, rode Vardanes on a prancing black mare. Boghra Khan raised a hand to warn his men to be ready. He wanted to let as many as possible of the Zuagirs enter the pa.s.s before closing the trap upon them. Only Vardanes was to be allowed through. The moment he was beyond the walls of sandstone, Boghra brought his hand down with a chopping motion.

"Slay the dogs!" he thundered, rising.

A hail of hissing arrows fell slanting through the sunlight like a deadly rain. In a second, the Zuagirs were a turmoil of shouting men and bucking horses. Flight after flight of arrows raked them. Men fell, clutching at feathered shafts, which sprouted as by magic from their bodies. Horses screamed as keen barbs gashed their dusty flanks.

Dust rose in a choking cloud, veiling the pa.s.s below. So thick it became that Boghra Khan halted his archers for a moment, lest they waste their shafts in the murk. And that momentary twinge of thrift was his undoing. For out of the clamor rose one deep, bellowing voice, dominating the chaos.

"Up the slopes and at them!"

It was the voice of Conan. An instant later, the giant form of the Cimmerian himself came charging up the steep slope on a huge, fiery stallion. One might think that only a fool or a madman would charge straight up a steep slope of drifting sand and crumbling rock into the teeth of his foe, but Conan was neither. True, he was wild with ferocious l.u.s.t for revenge, but behind his grim, dark face and smouldering eyes, like blue flames under scowling black brows, the sharp wit of a seasoned warrior was at work. He knew that often the only road through an ambush is the unexpected.

Astonished, the Turanian warriors let bows slacken as they stared.

Clawing and scrambling up the steep slopes of the sides of the pa.s.s, out of the dust-clouded floor of the defile, came a howling mob of frenzied Zuagirs, afoot and mounted, straight at them. In an instant the desert warriors-more numerous than the amir had expected- came roaring over the crest, scimitars flashing, cursing and shrieking bloodthirsty war cries.

Before them all came the giant form of Conan. Arrows had ripped his white khalat, exposing the glittering black mail that clad his lion-thewed torso. His wild, unshorn mane streamed out from under his steel cap like a tattered banner, a chance shaft had torn away his flowing kaffia. On a wild-eyed stallion, he was upon them like some demon of myth. He was armed not with the tulwar of the desert folk but with a great, cross-hilted western broadsword-his favorite among the many weapons of which he was master. In his scarred fist, this length of whirling, mirror-bright steel cut a scarlet path through the Turanians. It rose and fell, spraying scarlet droplets into the desert air. At every stroke it clove armor and flesh and bone, smashing in a skull here, lopping a limb there, hurling a third victim mangled and p.r.o.ne with ribs crushed in.

By the end of a short, swift half-hour it was all over. No Turanians survived the onslaught save a few who had fled early-and their leader.

With his robe torn away and his face b.l.o.o.d.y, the limping and disheveled amir was led before Conan, who sat on his panting steed, "wiping the gore from his steel with a dead man's khalat.

Conan fixed the wilted lordling with a scornful glance, not unmixed with sardonic humor.

"So, Boghra, we meet again!" he growled.

The amir blinked with disbelief. "You!" he gasped.

Conan chuckled. A decade before, as a wandering young vagabond, the Cimmerian had served in the mercenaries of Turan. He had left King Yildiz's standards rather hurriedly over a little matter of an officer's mistress-so hurriedly, in fact, that he had failed to settle a gambling wager with the same amir who stood astonished before him now. Then, as the merry young scion of a n.o.ble house, Boghra Khan and Conan had been comrades in many an escapade from gaming table to drinking shop and bawdy house. Now, years older, the same Boghra gaped up, crushed in battle by an old comrade whose name he had somehow never connected with that of the terrible leader of the desert tribesmen.

Conan raked him with narrowing eyes. "You were awaiting us here, weren't you?" he growled.

The amir sagged. He did not wish to give information to the outlaw leader, even if they were old drinking companions. But he had heard too many grim tales of the Zuagirs' b.l.o.o.d.y methods of wringing information from captives. Fat and soft from years of princely living, the Turanian officer feared he could not long keep silent under such pressure.

Surprisingly, his cooperation was not needed. Conan had seen Vardanes, who had curiously requested the post of advance scout that morning, spur ahead through the further end of the pa.s.s just before the trap had been sprung.