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Then like the fading of a mirage it was gone, but the Gauls on the high slope had dropped their weapons and stared like men dazed–For the man called Kull had vanished and there was no trace of his going!
“Strike if you will; I am sick of slaughter. It is a cold mead, this kinging it. A king must gamble with men’s lives and naked swords.
but my heart is cold in my breast.” Cormac wearily dropped his sword-point to the ground. “You are a born king of men, Bran,” said the Gaelic prince.
“He died a hundred thousand years ago, as men reckon time,” answered the wizard, “but in his own age. He died not from the swords of the Gauls of this age. Have we not heard in legends how the king of Valusia traveled into a strange, timeless land of the misty future ages, and there fought in a great battle? Why, so he did! A hundred thousand years ago, or today!
“And then Kull lived despite his many wounds,” said Cormac, “and has returned to the mists of silence and the centuries. Well–he thought us a dream; we thought him a ghost. And sure, life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusion, and it is in my mind that the kingdom which has this day been born of swords and slaughter in this howling valley is a thing no more solid than the foam of the bright sea.”
Fear stalked rampant from birth to death. For man was weak and helpless in those days, and Fear walked always by his side, and at night It lay down by his side.
“I have spoken.” the man answered sullenly. “And when did a Pict speak truth?” sneered Kull, being fully aware that the Picts did not lie, but using this means to anger the man.
Kull reflected on the strange state of affairs that made him ally of ancient foes and foe of ancient friends.
barbarian characters evolving in kingdoms or empires from earth’s mythical past, confronted, in one way or another, by decaying civilizations–Kull by his adopted country, Conan by the Hyborian kingdoms. Conan had replaced Kull, and Howard found it impossible to write about a character who no longer represented a vehicle through which he could express his ideas.
he had given birth to a new subgenre of literature, since dubbed “Heroic Fantasy,” “Epic Fantasy,” or “Sword and Sorcery”–denominations
Howard set his stories in universes not so much imaginary as they are forgotten: he wrote about our world and his themes are universal ones.
