“The Tower of the Elephant” is the third short story that Robert E. Howard published starring Conan. While the first two- “The Phoenix on the Sword” and “The Scarlet Citadel-” feature a much older King Conan, this one has him at almost his youngest. If you ignore any Conan story that wasn’t written by or at least planned and begun by Howard (and obviously I'm not doing that), “Tower” is only the second story, following “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” which wasn’t even published until long after Howard’s death. In a way, that means that this was the very first tale in Conan’s chronology for several decades, at least until “Frost-Giant” was restored to its Conan-centric plot (rather than his “Gods of the North” rewrite) and published in 1953.

“The Tower of the Elephant   (Weird Tales, March 1933):    The earliest of the published chronicles, and one of Conan’s first adventures in the thief-city of Zamora.   He is still a youth, more daring than adroit at thievery, and has yet to earn a reputation among other followers of his profession.” - “A Probably Outline of Conan’s Career” by P. Schuyler Miller & John D. Clark

“The Cimmerian glared about, embarrassed at the roar of mocking laughter that greeted this remark. He saw no particular humor in it, and was too new to civilization to understand its discourtesies. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”

“The Tower of the Elephant” has made its way into numerous Conan adaptions, understandably. It’s had three comic adaptions alone and while I feel like I always talk about Savage Sword on here, the original Howard story was my first encounter with this one, though Roy Thomas’s version is great work, as always. ​Now that Conan has explored some of the northern territories, he’s descended from the mountains of Brythunia into Zamora, where we’ll stay for a few more entries. "The Hall of the Dead" is next. I was in a band called Radroach back in the day, and we recorded a jam we called "Heart of the Elephant." I know our singer recorded it, but unfortunately it doesn't seem like he can find it. I'm devastated. ★★★★★

"How can you kill a thing that is already dead?"

"The Thing in the Crypt" is a short story by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, published in 1967 in the generically-named book Conan. It's the second de Camp / Carter story in a row and picks up very briefly after the conclusion of "Legions of the Dead." I hadn't read this story before, nor had I read any adaptions of it, but it certainly didn't disappoint. Of the few texts I've read for the chronology so far, "The Thing in the Crypt" is by far the best.  At the end of "Legions of the Dead," Conan is being hauled off to be sold to Hyperborean slavers, and this story picks up just after having escaped their clutches by using his own chains as a weapon. After reading "Legions of the Dead," I had hoped we would see more of Vammatar the Cruel, but we're not so lucky. Conan begins this story being chased by ravenous wolves, with only his length of chain for protection, escaping south through the mountains toward Brythunia.

"And then the hair lifted from the nape of his neck, and the boy felt his skin roughen with a supernatural thrill. For there, enthroned on a great, stone chair at the further end of the chamber, sat the huge figure of a naked man, with a naked sword across his knees and a cavernous skull-face staring at him through the flickering firelight."

"Like all barbarians, he dreaded the supernatural terrors of the grave and the dark, with all its dreads and demons and the monstrous, shambling things of Old Night and Chaos, with which primitive folk people the darkness beyond the circle of their campfire. Much rather would Conan have faced even the hungry wolves than remain here with the dead thing glaring down at him from the rocky throne, while the wavering firelight painted life and animation into the withered skull-face and moved the shadows in its sunken sockets like dark, burning eyes."

"Grinning jaws moved open and shut in a fearful pantomime of speech. But the only sound was the creaking that Conan had heard, as if the shriveled remains of muscles and tendons rubbed dryly together. To Conan, this silent imitation of speech was more terrible than the fact that the dead man lived and moved."

This is an excellent Conan story, a classic that can compete with much of Howard's work, though I won't go as far to say it's one of the best. My only gripe with it is a very, very small one. Sometimes I forget that these stories were mostly written over 45 years ago for an audience of 15 year-old boys, so sometimes it catches me off guard when you read a line like, "his questing fingers told him that here were chisel marks on the stone, forming cryptic glyphs in some unknown writing. Unknown, at least, to the untutored boy from the barbarous northlands, who could neither read nor write and who scorned such civilized skills as effeminate." It takes me out of it a bit to read lines saying, "Conan couldn't read because that shit's for girls." I can't recall if Conan can ever read in stories in which he's older, but I hope he grows in his maturity. If anything, Conan is definitely a power fantasy who we cast ourselves into, so I don't exactly love that part. [Update: Hey, this is Dan writing a month or so later. Conan does learn to read. In fact, Conan learns to read and speak in many languages. Much later on, when Conan is in his late forties, stories will say that Conan becomes so adept at languages that linguists would be impressed with him. Seeing as being able to read a word may be the difference between life and death, Conan becomes quite the polyglot! Love it.]

“I know that for months I had been absolutely barren of ideas, completely unable to work up anything sellable. Then the man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen—or rather off my typewriter—almost without effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. Episode crowded on episode so fast that I could scarcely keep up with them. For weeks I did nothing but write of the adventures of Conan. The character took complete possession of my mind and crowded out everything else in the way of story-writing. When I deliberately tried to write something else, I couldn’t do it.”

“I believe, for instance, that the gloominess in my own nature can be partly traced to the surroundings of a locality in which I spent part of my baby-hood. It was a long, narrow valley, lonesome and isolated, up in the Palo Pinto hill country. It was very sparsely settled and its name, Dark Valley, was highly descriptive. So high were the ridges, so thick and tall the oak trees that it was shadowy even in the daytime, and at night it was as dark as a pine forest—and nothing is darker in this world. The creatures of the night whispered and called to one another, faint night-winds murmured through the leaves and now and then among the slightly waving branches could be glimpsed the gleam of a distant star.”

"KNOW, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars—Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen- eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."—The Nemedian Chronicles (in "The Phoenix on the Sword")

I know I had read "The Hyborian Age" before, but it hadn't really stuck with me. It doesn't truly count as a Conan story seeing as Conan is never even mentioned, but that's probably fine, because it doesn't sit with the best of them. Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend new readers begin here, but it's a fun curiosity if you want to know more about Conan's undreamed-of age.

"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."