The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Conan the Cimmerian, #1)

by Robert E. Howard

“Bêlit!” screamed Conan. She flashed a quick glance toward him, and in her dark eyes he saw her love flaming, a naked elemental thing of raw fire and molten lava. Then she was gone, and the Cimmerian saw only the winged fiend which had staggered back in unwonted fear, arms lifted as if to fend off attack. And he knew that Bêlit in truth lay on her pyre on the Tigress’ deck. In his ears rang her passionate cry: “Were I still in death and you fighting for life I would come back from the abyss –”

Only the age-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in the mind of Shevatas, the thief, driving his breath quick and sharp against his clenched teeth.

Meanwhile, the rule of the struggling kingdom was in the white hands of young princess Yasmela, the king’s sister. Minstrels sang her beauty throughout the western world, and the pride of a kingly dynasty was hers. But on that night her pride was dropped from her like a cloak.

“You are marked for mine, princess,” came the gloating whisper. “Before I wakened from the long sleep I had marked you, and yearned for you, but I was held fast by the ancient spell by which I escaped mine enemies. I am the soul of Natohk, the Veiled One! Look well upon me, princess! Soon you shall behold me in my bodily guise, and shall love me!”

“But thou shalt be my queen, oh princess! I will teach thee the ancient forgotten ways of pleasure. We –” Before the stream of cosmic obscenity which poured from the shadowy colossus, Yasmela cringed and writhed as if from a whip that flayed her dainty bare flesh. “Remember!” whispered the horror. “The days will not be many before I come to claim mine own!”

“This day you become knights!” he laughed fiercely, pointing with his dripping sword toward the hillmen horses, herded near by. “Mount and follow me to hell!”

Out on the desert, in the hills among the oceans of dead, men were dying, were howling with wounds and thirst and madness, and kingdoms were staggering. Then all was swept away by the crimson tide that rode madly in Conan’s soul, as he crushed fiercely in his iron arms the slim white body that shimmered like a witch-fire of madness before him.

“This keel will stain the blue waves crimson wherever it plows.” “Aye, to sail with you on blue seas or red,” she answered passionately. “You are a barbarian, and I am an outcast, denied by my people. We are both pariahs, wanderers of the earth. Oh, take me with you!” With a gusty laugh he lifted her to his fierce lips. “I’ll make you Queen of the Blue Sea! Cast off there, dogs! We’ll scorch King Yildiz’s pantaloons yet, by Crom!”

Endowed with all the barbarian’s ferocious love of life and instinct to live, Conan the Cimmerian yet knew that he had reached the end of his trail.

“I’ve been thinking I must be,” he growled. “By Crom, if I am sane, I’m out of place here, because these people are all maniacs.

In his frenzy, he must have run full into that which he sought to escape. No man can avoid his fate.”

“That was Thog, the Ancient, the god of Xuthal, who dwells in the sunken dome in the center of the city. He has always dwelt in Xuthal. Whether he came here with the ancient founders, or was here when they built the city, none knows. But the people of Xuthal worship him.

and as for my people – by Crom, I’d like to see a priest try to drag a Cimmerian to the altar! There’d be blood spilt, but not as the priest intended.”

All the obscenity and salacious infamy spawned in the muck of the abysmal pits of Life seemed to drown her in seas of cosmic filth. And in that instant she knew that whatever form of life this thing represented it was not a beast.

“It’s all your fault,” she interrupted. “If you had not looked so long and admiringly at that Stygian cat –” “Crom and his devils!” he swore. “When the oceans drown the world, women will take time for jealousy. Devil take their conceit! Did I tell the Stygian to fall in love with me? After all, she was only human!”

“You exploit a whole kingdom for your personal greed, and under the guise of disinterested statesmanship, you swindle the king, beggar the rich, oppress the poor, and sacrifice the whole future of the nation for your ruthless ambition. You are no more than a fat hog with his snout in the trough. You are a greater thief than I am. This Cimmerian is the most honest man of the three of us, because he steals and murders openly.”

But she made no effort to classify his position among the races of mankind. It was enough that his skin was white.

Yikes!

“You care naught that a man of your own color has been foully done to death by these black dogs – that a white woman is their slave! Very well!” She fell back from him, panting, transfigured by her passion.

Wow-ugly stuff

In spite of all Livia had experienced, she had still instinctively supposed a woman’s consent the pivot point of such a game as she proposed to play. She was stunned by the realization that nothing hinged upon her at all. She could not move men as pawns in a game; she herself was the helpless pawn.

Tomorrow we hold council. When I get through with him, he’ll be holding council in Hell.”

She sought not to reason or analyze; she was and these strange beings dancing about her were;

What was that thing?” “A god,” she whispered. “The black people spoke of it – a god from far away and long ago!” “A devil from the Outer Dark,” he grunted.

“Get up,” he grunted. “It was a foul bargain I made. I do not regret that black dog Bajujh, but you are no wench to be bought and sold. The ways of men vary in different lands, but a man need not be a swine, wherever he is. After I thought awhile, I saw that to hold you to your bargain would be the same as if I had forced you. Besides, you are not tough enough for this land. You are a child of cities, and books, and civilized ways – which isn’t your fault, but you’d die quickly following the life I thrive on. A dead woman would be no good to me. I will take you to the Stygian borders. The Stygians will send you home to Ophir.”

(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional background for a series of fiction stories. When I began writing the Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this “history” of his age and the peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his sagas a greater aspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to the “facts” and spirit of that history, in writing the stories, it was easier to visualize (and therefore to present) him as a real flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready-made product. In writing about him and his adventures in the various kingdoms of his Age, I have never violated the “facts” or spirit of the “history” here set down, but have followed the lines of that history as closely as the writer of actual historical-fiction follows the lines of actual history. I have used this “history” as a guide in all the stories in this series that I have written.)

Conan’s intense physical life appears as a desperate attempt to forget Cimmeria and whatever frightful memory is associated with that country.