 "Black Colossus" is a really stellar Conan story that has a little bit of everything, and the more I think about it, the more I love this story. It was published in the June 1933 issue of Weird Tales, with a Margaret Brundage painting gracing the cover of princess Yasmela pleading to the god Mitra. Conan has headed far east of Asgalun from "Hawks Over Shem" to the tiny kingdom of Khoraja, and the capital city which shares its name. Conan isn't here long before he leads an army away from the city, through the Pass of Shamla, and then rides alone to Kuthchemes. I've got a new map tracking him up to this point. I have to say, "Black Colossus" does peak a little bit early, but that's not a knock at the rest of the narrative. It opens on the ancient, domed ruin of Kuthchemes, with a master thief named Shevatas hoping to plunder it. The air is tense and the atmosphere of fear is palpable. Truly, it's a tomb raiding scene to match the best of them. Conan isn't introduced until a bit later in the story, after we spend some time with the princess Yasmela. She's not quite a damsel in distress, but she's not as compelling as some of the other Hyborian heroines, either. I always like when we get to spend some time with non-Conan characters: it always helps define the stakes and flesh out the world a bit. We get to hear the voices of the gods for the first time, as Mitra speaks to Yasmela to find the first man she runs into on the street in order to help her save her kingdom. It just so happens to be everyone's favorite Cimmerian. I was talking with someone recently on Reddit about this episode: it seems to me that this is proof of the gods in the Hyborian Age. Mitra not only responds to the prayer, but also tells Yasmela exactly where to find Conan. The commenter was pretty much making the argument that this was a trick of a priest of Mitra, like we'll see in "The Ivory Goddess," with someone throwing their voice from a hidden location, but it seems like a huge leap of faith for that person to tell Yasmela exactly where to go to find Conan. It's too coincidental for me! I found this scene to contain a passage that seems pretty illustrative of Robert E. Howard's personal philosophy. As Yasmela asks Mitra for aid, we get a descriptive passage of the effigy carved of him in a hidden temple beneath her palace:
 Most of Howard's stories contain at least some element of distain for cities. It's pretty unsurprising for a Texan author who was so interested in westerns, as this attitude seeps into most of his work. He clearly considers city life less pure, less clean, and less moral than life in the country. A lot of times, this tinges his writing with what we would call the "noble savage" trope today. I often think that he would very much get along with regionalist writers like Willa Cather. The above passage in particular shows a reverence for the unencumbered. A sort of rugged individualism, or artistic state of nature that he seems to yearn for as if to say, If only I could create whatever I liked without having to worry about society's response to anything. "Black Colossus" feels like a real turning point in Conan's journey. For the first time in his life, we see Conan growing to be the shrewd, skilled military commander that would be able to take Aquilonia and become king. He says that he's more careful than usual because it's not only his life on the line, and it's true that this is a more careful Conan than we've ever seen before. It's always seemed to me that Conan is not the best military commander because he's necessarily the smartest or most experienced leader, but because he's the most unflappable. It takes a hell of a lot to rattle Conan of Cimmeria, meaning that he makes few mistakes. There are some real banger lines in this story, one of which shows how Conan thinks of battle. "Conan listened unperturbed. War was his trade. Life was a continual battle, or series of battles, since his birth. Death had been a constant companion. It stalked horrifically at his side; stood at his shoulder beside the gaming-tables; its bony fingers rattled the wine-cups. It loomed above him, a hooded and monstrous shadow, when he lay down to sleep. He minded its presence no more than a king minds the presence of his cupbearer. Some day its bony grasp would close; that was all. It was enough that he lived through the present."  Conan gained his panther-like stealth skills in the thief stories. He learned military ways and horsemanship in the Turanian army. He got his sea legs in "Queen of the Black Coast." He's now learning to command and strategize. It's a real pleasure to follow this chronology fully and see him become, you know, Conan a bit at a time.
According to "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career", Conan "may be about 27. I've used this essay as a tool to help map his career, but I would like to say that I'm not treating it as gospel truth- if I did, there wouldn't be much point in me trying to map out these stories. That essay's authors do note that King Yildiz of the Turanian empire seems to have died around some point here, being replaced by King Yezdigerd, who gets mentioned so incredibly often in stories following this. You know how sometimes a person might be your best friend but then you realize you're not their best friend? It definitely seems like King Yezdigerd is not Conan's arch nemesis, but Conan is King Yezdigerd's arch nemesis. "Black Colossus" fucks. Part of me wishes that we got to see more of the villain, but that feeling also goes away when we finally get to see him riding a chariot, pulled by some kind of black camel demon, driven by some kind of black ape demon, and there stands Thugra Khotan on the back of it. There are clear stakes, Conan is badass, the villain is menacing, the setpieces are epic, and the pacing is very solid. This might be one of the most well-rounded adventure stories I've ever read. I like to think that Roy Thomas agrees with me about how good this one is, since he didn't waste any time adapting it to Savage Sword, with it appearing as just the second issue complete with one of the best Savage Sword covers of all time. It's probably not the best Conan story of all time, but it's certainly in my top 3 (up there with "The Tower of the Elephant" and "Queen of the Black Coast" as of now. In fact, I think when I'm done with this chronology, I'll rank all the Howard-written stories. Next time, we're reading "Shadows in the Dark," which I've never read an adaption of, nor have I ever even heard anyone discuss the story if I remember right. We'll see how it compares to today's epic.
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 In the early Spring of 1933, Conan the Cimmerian had hit something of a low point, at least in the mind of his writer, Robert E. Howard. Howard had written a dozen of them, but only three had made it to publication, so he was yet to see what a smash hit his barbarian would be. None of the stories had graced the cover of the magazine. Howard's agent, Otis Kline, was encouraging REH to diversify his portfolio a bit to keep the cash flowing. Howard, who was already very interested in western and boxing stories, didn't need a ton of convincing. He wouldn't return to writing Conan stories for several months. During this period away from the Hyborian Age, he tried his hand at writing a novel several times and even banged out about 5000 words a day, 7 days a week, for a time. He tried to sell collections of his short stories, and he wrote in other genres. One of the books he wrote during this time was a novella of political intrigue that was set in Cairo, Egypt, among factions vying for power. It was called Hawks Over Egypt. Kline received the Hawks Over Egypt from Howard on October 23rd, 1933, and it didn't go out to the publishers for one reason or another. In August 1935, Kline received a rewrite of the story and submitted it to the magazine Argosy. They rejected it. He sent it to Blue Book in January of 1936. They rejected it. He sent it to Complete Stories in April. They rejected it. The next day he sent it off to Short Stories. They rejected it. He didn't send it out again.  For the next twenty years, Hawks Over Egypt sat in a trunk with everything else Robert E. Howard failed to publish during his short lifetime. In the early 1950s, that trunk was accessed by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, who picked through to find unpublished Conan stories. They pulled out eight fragments or outlines of Conan material, but with it they found four unpublished stories that weren't set in the Hyborian Age. In 1953, publisher Martin Greenberg suggested that they be turned into Conan tales. de Camp rewrote them with Conan as the central character, "by changing names, deleting anachronisms, and introducing a supernatural element." It wasn't hard, he said, "since Howard's heroes were pretty much all cut from the same cloth." One of those stories was Hawks Over Egypt, which became "Hawks Over Shem," and was first published in the collection Conan the Freebooter in 1968. As such, the story is credited to both Howard and de Camp. Conan the Freebooter is up on the Internet Archive for free and I really owe a beer to whoever uploaded all these books, because I've been reading entirely for free. In "Hawks Over Shem," Conan has decided to make some dough at what he's usually been best at: mercenary work in Shem. After his whole army is wiped out, we find him in Asgalun looking for revenge. The story has a great opening and it's a pretty decent adventure: there's lots and lots of political intrigue, assassinations, secret passageways, cleaved body parts...  I still think we're on a bit of an upswing from the low point of "The Vale of Lost Women" and filler of "The Castle of Terror," but the story isn't top-notch. This is partially because it has so many names of one-off characters or other vocabulary terms to learn. I tried to keep track as I read and came up with Asgalun, Akhirom, Anakim, Abibaal, Abdashtarth, Othbaal, Zeriti, Pelishita, Imbalayo, Farouz, Mazdak, Rufia, Mattenbaal, Bombaata, Keluka, and Khannon. I'm usually pretty quick on the uptake for those sorts of things, but I found myself struggling with which of the characters whose names start with "A" were which. I read Roy Thomas's version of this story prior in Savage Sword #36 and found it to be vastly superior. The original Hawks Over Egypt did eventually see publication, in the collection called The Road of Azrael in 1979. I've noticed that now that Conan is at the very least in his mid-20s, the stories don't often point out that he is young anymore. He seems to finally be solidly in the period that we think of as prime Conan. His skill is unmatched, his cunning and maturity are growing, and he's much more well-traveled. Next time, in "Black Colossus," we're leaving Shem, but we won't go far. We're headed to the tiny nation of Khoraja, which I don't think we've seen referenced in any other Conan story so far. Chronologically speaking, I really appreciate that this section of stories has featured only small moves at a time. Conan is spending a story or two in every nation, moving only one country at a time, in a general direction of coming back up north from the Black Kingdoms. Sometimes the chronologies move him really far between stories (like when he goes from Khitai all the way back below the Vilayet sea to the Hyborian kingdoms again), and that always feels like maybe there's a better way to sort them, but I can't think of one. These fit together nicely. ★★★☆☆   After a couple of mediocre tales, "The Snout in the Dark" is somewhat of a return to form. It is, at the very least, much more entertaining than most of Conan's adventures in Kush. I get the sense that I like this one more than some other folks. At the end of "The Castle of Terror," Conan stole a horse and some articles of armor from a Stygian, which he arrives to this story clad in. He's made it to the kingdom of Kush proper, which the story says he and other northerners sometimes refer to all of the "black kingdoms" as. He's been moving northward since leaving the evil castle in the veldt. This story fits very well exactly where it's traditionally been put by other chronologies: between "The Castle of Terror" and before "Hawks Over Shem." It has to take place after his time as a pirate, because the events of "Queen of the Black Coast" are explicitly mentioned. There are a decent number of Conan stories that are built around political intrigue, and I think that depending on how they're handled, they can be some of the best or some of the worst. For example, Conan the Liberator is basically all politicking and spies and plans to usurp, but it keeps Conan stuck in military camps and in fields, so it kills any sense of adventure. This one is a little better. We are in the city of Meroë, which is divided into a rigid caste system based on race. As you might have guessed for REH, the dark-skinned Kushites are on the bottom, with the lighter-skinned ruling class (which he calls "dusky." Can you just be normal about skin color for once, Howard?) above them. Members of the ruling class are trying to worm their way to the top through assassinations and spies and framing one another for crimes, all the while worrying about angering the populace as a whole and risking an overthrow. Conan complicates all of this on arrival because he's loyal to the queen, Tananda (at least insofar as she's paying him well), but he's also very popular among the other mechanisms of power, so he kind of has to be stepped around. Though this story is once again weird and off-putting when it comes to race, I was really glad to see that the lower caste ends the story by essentially rising up in revolution. "Slay alll the lords! Cast off your bonds! Kill the masters! Be free men again and not slaves! Kill, kill, kill!" I think that's just about the best ending we could hope for in a story like this. I read both the original rough draft by Howard in my copy of The Complete Chronicles of Conan, as well as the de Camp & Carter rewrite in Conan of Cimmeria, and this time I vastly prefer the rewrite. It doesn't seem that there's any information about when in the 30s Howard began "Snout in the Dark," but it was never published originally until the rewrite made its debut in 1969. Conan has continued to grow and is, for once, perhaps the most interesting character in the story. He has pretty much matured to the point of knowing when it's advantageous to hold his tongue. "'I am a wanderer,' [Conan] said simply, 'with a sword for hire. I came here to seek my fortune.' He did not think it wise to tell her of his previous career as a corsair on the Black Coast, or of his chieftainship of one of the jungle tribes to the south."
As a longtime D&D player, Conan comes off as very lawful neutral in this story. While he has his own code of honor, he's only working with the ruling class as it benefits him, and is completely ready to throw off those bonds when it's expedient for him.
The pig-ape-demon thing of the title is a fun monster (though not everyone seems to think so), but I like that it's a physical match for Conan, unlike most enemies that aren't literally giant monsters. They do battle inside his temporary home, with lightning flashing through the windows to illuminate his pig tusks. I thought it was pretty cool, anyway. Conan ends this story by riding north once again. He says that he's done with the southern kingdoms and might even take another crack at civilization. I'm now 20 stories into this chronology! Thanks for following me on it if you've been reading! "Hawks Over Shem" is up next, so I assume we'll be going to the kingdom of Shem. ★★★☆☆  This Bill Sienkiewicz painting doesn't actually have anything to do with "The Castle of Terror," but NOBODY has done art of this story. People like to talk shit online about the title of this story, calling it generic. I'm not going to say they're wrong, but I'm a big fan of old horror movies and I have to say that I've seen dozens of horror movies from the 50s and 60s with titles just as generic that were really fun. I always enjoy when Conan stories focus on the horror, and while this story is a lesser one, I thought it was decent, if forgettable. I think anime fans would refer to this one as a "filler episode." "The Castle of Terror" was written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in 1969. It follows directly from "The Vale of Lost Women" as Conan is headed back toward cities out of the jungle when he finds himself on a massive grassland. Forced by pursuing lions to seek respite in a creepy castle on the plain, Conan stays the night astrally-projecting and sort of communing with spirits. The astral projection part is unique. Conan is suddenly privy to knowledge without knowing how he knows it, and it adds some suspense as we hear the intentions of a thousand and one ancient ghosts which mean to do him harm, but first have to manifest physically. Matters get complicated when Stygians show up, also seeking shelter from a storm. We get a bit of a standoff where Conan is deciding whether to try his luck with the Stygians or focus on the blob of ancient ghost stuff. The descriptions feel gothic and menacing, which add some Howardesque (Howardian?) prose to the narrative. We also get numerous references to the castle being as old as King Kull of Valusia, and that's always welcome in a Conan story.
This story features almost no dialogue. I only realized about halfway through that I didn't think Conan had actually said anything so far (after all, it was just him, lions, and ghosts so far), but he hadn't so much as opened his mouth to take Crom's name in vain. The whole thing is almost completely silent until a Stygian starts screaming at the end. It kind of reminded me of an issue of Amazing Spider-Man I read as a kid called "Nuff Said," which didn't have a single word in it. Gary at Sprague de Camp Fan, who I enjoy reading along with many of these posts, notes that Conan comic GOATs Roy Thomas and John Buscema were both very uninspired by this portion of Conan's career. Same. For this story in particular, it's mostly just lacking flavor. Conan's path is generally one that's headed north. We'll still be in Kush next time in "The Snout in the Dark." ★★☆☆☆  Well, here it is. The first one-star review I'm putting on a Conan story and the absolute worst one so far. In February of 1933, about a month after selling "Rogues in the House" to Weird Tales, Robert E. Howard was feeling a little bit burned out on the Conan character. In the course of a year since his trip to Mission, Texas where he first envisioned Cimmeria and then stories just poured out of him, involuntarily, if he's to be believed, about this barbarian creation, he had penned twelve Conan tales. Nine of them he sold to Weird Tales, but only three of them had made it to print. Howard had a burgeoning interest in writing western stories during this time, and apparently noted that the Depression was hitting his industry hard, was hoping to diversify his storytelling. According to "Hyborian Genesis," Patrice Louinet says that we can probably trace "The Vale of Lost Women" back to one pen pal of Howard's, who told him a story about white Texans getting captured by Native Americans in the 1830s: “In 1836, when the Texans were fighting for their freedom, the Comanches were particularly bold in raiding the scattered settlements, and it was in one of those raids that Fort Parker fell. Seven hundred Comanches and Kiowas literally wiped it off the earth, with most of its inhabitants. . . . Fort Parker passed into oblivion, and among the women and children taken captive were Cynthia Anne Parker, nine years old, and her brother John, a child of six. Louinet hypothesizes that Howard was trying to imbue his story with the themes of many westerns: about the dangers of the frontier. He feels that those themes were lost in translation to the fantasy setting. What we're left with, according to Louinet, is "unsettling reading." I'll go a step further and call it an irredeemably racist excuse for a fantasy story. I agree with Louinet that Howard missed when it came to writing a "weird western," but what he managed to do was imbue this story with every "going native" anxiety that white people had held since colonial America. We saw it in The Last of the Mohicans in 1757, we saw it in the film The Birth of a Nation in 1915, and it's alive and well in "The Vale of Lost Women" in 1933. I'm not being hyperbolic about this- every description of black characters in this story is pretty horrifically racist. By the time Conan says, "I am not such a dog as to leave a white woman in the clutches of a black man," I was just about ready to be done. Even from just a literary perspective, I find stories like this to be of unacceptably low quality. Howard, who has proven time and again to be able to be able to whisk us away to lands undreamed of, he can't imagine a black culture not completely infected by his own vile views. Howard frequently uses skin color as a shorthand for goodness. White is purity and morality, and darker skin sits on a spectrum of immoral to straight-up subhuman. I haven't ever read the Roy Thomas Marvel Comics adaption of this story, and I would be interested to. Sometimes Thomas very subtly sands off some of the rougher edges of Howard.   I'm genuinely not trying to put Howard's racism front-and-center in these posts, mostly because I'm trying to have a good time by reading and writing about one of my favorite fictional characters, but this story makes it impossible to ignore. I often see hand-waving about the racism of the time. "It was the 30s, what do you expect?" I don't think we have to accept that. My grandfather told me a story once about how a kid in town called one of his only black classmates the n-word when they were in school. My grandpa and some other kids beat the shit out of him, and "He didn't say that word no more," according to my grandpa. That was in the early 40s.
The only good thing about this story is that it is told from the perspective of the girl Livia entirely, which makes it a little unique in the Conan canon. After burning Bêlit's ship the Tigress upon her death, Conan has been living in Kush and making a name for himself with his fighting strength. He's farther south than he's ever been on the map. Howard took a break of a few months to write stories that had nothing to do with Conan after this one. There's no record that he ever submitted it to Weird Tales, and it was published for the first time in Magazine of Horror in 1967. Horrifying indeed. If only this slop had stayed in trunk. "The Castle of Terror" is up next. Sounds cool! ★☆☆☆☆  I have a sort of treasured memory when it comes to "Queen of the Black Coast," if you'll indulge me. In the summer of 2015, my wife (still my girlfriend at the time) and I had just moved back home to Colorado after a few years of living in Florida. Since I'm a teacher, I was on summer break, but my wife was working at a veterinary office and since she didn't have a car at the moment, I was driving her to work in the mornings. I dropped her off at work, and, realizing I had absolutely nothing to do with the whole rest of the day, drove to the Barnes & Noble on Pearl Street in Boulder and decided to bum around among the shelves for a while. I saw a thick volume of The Complete Chronicles of Conan and picked it up since I had read a few issues of Savage Sword recently and had a very budding interest in the big guy. For some reason, I had it in my head that "Queen of the Black Coast" was the first Conan story (it's not, but I didn't yet have a smartphone to look that up on the fly) so I flipped to the middle of the book and started reading. The story absolutely flew by, and while I meant to just check out the first couple of pages, I accidentally read the whole thing. When I looked up, sitting in the back corner of the store with big, south-facing windows and the morning light streaming in probably just after 8, I was pretty enraptured. I was also feeling very, very at peace. I bought the book and skipped around in it a little bit more that day. I think I read "Black Colossus" next, and then "The Phoenix on the Sword."  "Queen of the Black Coast" was published in the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales, and as the cover story it has a painting that doesn't look anything like Conan or Bêlit. This story kind of sneaks up on you, in a way. It's not the flashiest of all Conan tales, but, and I reserve the right to change my mind on this as I read further, it might be the best-written of all Conan stories. The story begins in medias res with Conan fleeing the guards of Argos, where he clamors aboard a ship and demands safe passage. It's an exciting beginning that wastes no time, not that Howard usually does. The Argus (yes, the Argus is docked in Argos) is quickly beseeched by pirates and Conan meets the first real love of his life, Bêlit. Bêlit is certainly a fun character to spend some time with; she's like the pirate version of a pulp noir femme fatale, and she perfectly matches Conan's intensity. It's not like the two have long adventures in which we see them fall in love, but- to use the language of a current meme- they match each other's freak. But, not to take anything away from her, I think the best thing about this story is what Bêlit brings out in Conan. "'Conan, let us go and sack that city!'  First of all, Conan seems happy. When I was writing about "The Hand of Nergal," I mentioned two parts about a wistful love of adventure that felt shoehorned in at the time. However, here, the feeling really seems earned. Everett F. Blieler, a midcentury fiction editor, said, "Queen of the Black Coast" was "probably the best of the Conan stories, perhaps because it is the only one based on another emotion than lust, greed, or hatred." I'm inclined to agree with him here (maybe not the best, but one of the best, for the same reason he said). The tone of the novel is somehow easier, without losing any of the excitement that you want in a sword-and-sorcery story. The other aspect that's really enjoyable is that Conan opens up to someone in ways we've never seen. "'What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them.' Particularly, I like the above line because it outlines something Conan is usually sketchy about. Sure, he swears by Crom in nearly every story, but does Conan believe in Crom? Does he worship Crom? The answers are apparently a yes and a no. "Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."  This reads like manifesto for the Conan books themselves. To borrow from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, it's like asking Conan, "What is best in life?" To burn with life, love, slay, be content. I don't want to imply that all pulp writing is subpar, far from it, but most of these stories were written as escapist tales for boys to read during the depression, if we're being honest. "Queen of the Black Coast" is so well-put-together that I forget that while reading it. It is absolutely bogged down by some more of Howard's weird, racist attitudes toward Black characters (Must they always be referred to as "blacks?" Once again, how about "the pirates" or "the crew" or even just "the men?") and his anti-Semitism creeping in at the edges if you examine how he describes Shemites. I don't want to be hyperbolic and say that it's a perfect story. When Bêlit saves Conan at the end of the story, it's an all-timer. I only wish that Howard hadn't killed Bêlit in the same story in which she was introduced. I would love for more buccaneer stories to be the continuing adventures of Conan of Cimmeria and Bêlit of the sea. In terms of our chronology, I understand that it's the first of what people refer to as the pirate stories, but I think most of those are from novels or elsewhere, so we won't see more of a sea-borne Conan coming up, at least not for a while. Conan is really far south right now, and he'll spend the next several stories working his way back north, so in my head, I'm kind of thinking of this next set as his "Goin' Down South" period. Conan has moved a long way already from the end of "The Lair of the Ice Worm" to the opening of "Black Coast:" in the prologue that was probably added by L. Sprague de Camp to the collection Conan of Cimmeria, Conan has dipped down from the snows through Nemedia, Ophir, and Argos working as a mercenary, and his clothing at the beginning of the story reflects that. For all of Howard's regressive, backwards views on race, he sure makes Conan look rad as hell with his multicultural garb: "His horned helmet was such as was worn by the golden-haired Æsir of Nordheim; his hauberk and greaves were of the finest workmanship of Koth; the fine ring-mail which sheathed his arms and legs was of Nemedia; the blade at his girdle was a great Aquilonian broadsword; and his gorgeous scarlet cloak could have been spun nowhere but in Ophir." Because the story only mentions the countries that he passed through, we don't have an exact path, but it's pretty much just a southeasterly trajectory. While aboard the ships the Argus and the Tigress, Conan hugs the borders of Shem, Stygia, and Kush. They travel up the Zarkheba River together.
Conan is about 24. Up next is "The Vale of Lost Women," which I've never read in any form. ★★★★★  I'm sighing. You'll have to settle for picturing me sigh. L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter are really messing with our chronology now, unfortunately. Way back in my first post while reading "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," I noted that de Camp and Robert Jordan but this story at twenty-third and twenty-fifth in their respective chronologies. Most of the chronologies vary a little bit, but one story being twenty-four placements away is uncommon. Now I get why. I don't agree with it, but I get why. de Camp and Carter clearly intended this story to follow directly after "Frost-Giant." As they often do, they put it in their little prologue blurb at the beginning of the story. The rest of this story has to be at least a few stories into his career as Conan is riding a horse he has acquired in Zamora, he mentions the Hyperborean slavers he was sold to in "Legions of the Dead," he speaks languages he's acquired while traveling. I honestly think I'm going to kind of split the difference. I'm keeping both stories in their placements, and here's why.
You are absolutely welcome to disagree with me. I suppose the parts that are confounding our timeline I'm just going to treat as non-canon, but I suppose it all does get cleaned up if we just place "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" directly prior to this story.
The good news for me is that this isn't exactly a big winner of a Conan tale to begin with. There are some fun descriptions in the beginning as Conan swings his axe from his horse to save Ilga, but the rest of the story is mediocre. Part of that comes from the title, which gives far too much away. The best Conan titles are intriguing without revealing too much. "The Hall of the Dead?" Super spooky. "A Witch Shall Be Born?" Sounds ominous. "The Blood-Stained God?" That's rad as fuck. But we know exactly what we're going to see in "The Lair of the Ice Worm." I bet there will be an ice worm and we'll enter his lair. Something that doesn't reveal our final enemy would be much more fun here, like "The Lair in the Glacier" or "The Curse of Snow Devil Glacier." We don't know what the Thing in the Crypt will be or what kind of elephant we'll see in the tower, so why give it away here? The way Conan dispatches the ice worm of the title is pretty cool, but it's not enough to save this story from mediocrity. Conan is riding his horse along the slopes of the Eiglophian mountains, which are on the northern reaches of Cimmeria at the beginning of this story. Since he's coming from Zamora, I think it makes sense that he's riding east-to-west. Next time, we're headed to Argos where we're going sailing with one of the most famous Conan stories of all time! ★★☆☆☆ Toward the end of the thief stories, I mapped all of Conan's major movements, and I'm going to do that again to keep everything straight. This map represents his time as a Turanian mercenary, from "The Hand of Nergal," up to "The Lair of the Ice Worm."  1. Conan begins on the steppes of Turan, participating in a battle against the bat creatures controlled by Munthassem Khan. He finds a woman named Hildico along a river and goes with her to Yaralet. In Yaralet, he defeats Munthassem Khan. He stays there about a week before riding away at the end of "The Hand of Nergal."
2. Travelling with Juma, Conan goes far east to the land of Meru in "The City of Skulls." They are in the Talakma foothills when they are captured marched south. 3. In the city of Shamballah in Meru, Conan and Juma defeat the god-king ruler Jalung Thongpa to end "The City of Skulls." 4. This one is hard to plot on a map. Conan and his unit are ambushed by Khozgarians. I can't find any maps where the "Misty Mountains" are labeled, so I believe "The People of the Summit" takes place in southern Hyrkania. 5. Conan flees south with his hostage to avoid the ambush that killed his unit. He says that if he escapes the mountains it will only be a two-day ride to the Turanian city Samara, so I believe we have to be near the southern tip of the Vilayet Sea. 6. At the end of "The People of the Summit," he's headed back to Samara. 7. "The Curse of the Monolith" brings Conan back east to Kusan. 8. Conan heads back to more familiar stomping grounds, returning to Zamora in "The Curse of the Monolith." I just kind of fudged a transparent line on the map between Kusan and Zamora because this map is already crazy tight around the bottom of the Vilayet Sea. He begins the story "The Blood-Stained God" in Arenjun and then rides into the Kezankian Mountains. 9. In the Kezankian Mountains, he finds the temple of the blood-stained god. So Conan spends about two years with the Turanians before turning back west. At the start of "The Lair of the Ice Worm," it's stated that he's about 23. He'll be even further west at the start of that story.  Okay, I'm excited. We're finally leaving behind Conan's mercenary period for Turan, which I feel was, on the whole, just a little bit less fun than this thieving period. We've also reached another story with its genesis in Robert E. Howard, though the finished product is very different than how Howard started it. "The Blood-Stained God" (sometimes The Blood-Stained God in italics because it's referred to as a novella, though it's really no longer than most of Howard's short stories, so I'm not sure why this one counts as a novella. Also, sometimes it's spelled without the hyphen in the word "Blood-Stained," so sometimes it's The Bloodstained God. Sorry to be such a fucking English teacher about the title.) was published in 1955 in the short story collection Tales of Conan. But it began life not as a Conan story at all. In the 1930s, Howard had another pulp character in print: an Indiana Jones-style treasure hunter named Kirby O'Donnell. He only published two Kibry O'Donnell stories, those being Swords of Shahrazar in 1934 and The Treasure of Tartary in 1935. The Curse of the Crimson God was rejected by at least four different magazines in 1936, and while the original saw publication in the 70s, L. Sprague de Camp Conanized it and turned the draft from Howard's notes into "The Blood-Stained God" for 1955's Tales of Conan.
I'm not sure how much credit to give to Howard and how much to give to de Camp, but what we're left with is a pretty excellent Conan story. Conan has left the Turanian army and is back in Zamora. He is in the city of Arenjun, which de Camp has once again said is the City of Thieves. In previous posts, I noted how de Camp kind of just decided that the Zamorian City of Thieves is Arenjun. However, in my read on this story, I think Conan may actually be in Arenjun, not in the thief-city. I say this for two reasons: the city's description in the beginning is unlike any description we've previously gotten of the City of Thieves, and more importantly, Conan is in proximity to the Kezankian Mountains on the eastern border of Zamora. If Dale Rippke is to be believed, the City of Thieves is all the way on the other side of the country. In summary: de Camp conflates the two cities. In the past stories, Conan has been to the City of Thieves. This time, he's in Arenjun. "Hidden in the [Kezankian] mountains near here is an ancient temple, which the hill folk fear to enter." We follow Conan with Sassan, of Iranistan, to the temple of the blood-stained god, with a couple of ambushes along the way. They're trying to outrun a troop of guards led by an uncompromising leader named Keraspa, forcing Conan to team up with the distrustful Zyras to race to the temple. Teaming Conan up with allies we know he can't trust is always a formula for a good time. It raises the stakes and promises some action later in the story. "Dawn broke as they came out of a narrow gorge into a steep-walled valley... There seemed no way down into the mist-veiled depths of the valley far below. The men wasted few glances in this direction, for the sight ahead drove hunger and fatigue from their minds. There on the ledge stood the temple, gleaming in the rising sun. It was carved out of the sheer rock of the cliff, its great portico facing them."  I know Indiana Jones is inspired by pulp heroes of the 1930s, but I'm still a little caught off-guard when I read something that reminds me so clearly of those films. Like the Temple of Doom scene in "The City of Skulls," this description of a canyon-borne hidden temple cut from the rock of the wall seems straight out of Last Crusade. It sounds so much like the Holy Grail's temple (which, yes, I know was shot at the real Al-Khazneh in Jordan) that I wonder if someone involved in making those films had read Conan. Both are pretty dope. I really enjoyed this one. Thematically, it would sit nicely with the thief stories, but it doesn't fit there chronologically.
Conan is headed north and west after this story. According to de Camp and Carter, he returns to Cimmeria for a time, but I believe this all happens off-screen. Several chronologies put "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" next, but I still feel like that story needs to be earlier on (I mean, I have it listed first) in our chronology. It seems a little odd and random to me that Conan just up and decides to return to the Aesir to hang out with them, so I'm not sold on changing the order. "The Lair of the Ice Worm" is up next. ★★★★☆  We have never been this far east. I don't know if we'll ever get this far east again! In "The Curse of the Monolith" by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, we are with Conan in the large nation of Khitai, the Hyborian predecessor for Chinese culture. This story was published in 1968 in the magazine Worlds of Fantasy under a different title, strangely. It was titled there as "Conan and the Cenotaph," but was renamed to "The Curse of the Monolith" when it was reprinted in the book Conan of Cimmeria starting the following year. Once again, the Internet Archive is coming in clutch because I've been able to read the Ace Books titles Conan, Conan the Swordsman, and now Conan of Cimmeria all for free on that awesome site. I would really love to know how people kept up with Conan stories in the 60s since they were being published in such different places. Were magazines like Worlds of Fantasy available widely at drug store magazine racks? I wonder how much hunting-down you had to do if you were a sci-fi fan back then. I would imagine you would have to rely a lot on word of mouth or a really reliable store clerk to be able to grab many publications like that. I'm 32, so I do remember before information on just about everything was available on the internet. Specifically, I remember gobbling up as many episodes of The Twilight Zone as I could on the New Year's Even marathon every year, hawking the magazine rack for Amazing Spider-Man comics, and trying to figure out every channel that showed Star Trek reruns. But all of that was when I was like 16 at the most. Now there are vast, fan-run wikis for every interest. In terms of our narrative, Conan has now been a Turanian merc for over a year. We get another mention of his friend Juna in this one. While Juna was given a cushy job as captain of the guard in Aghrapur by King Yildiz, Conan is still out on the road. He's brought an offer of a trade treaty to Kusan, which is a small kingdom in western Khitai. I'm not sure we ever get to see eastern Khitai- most maps of the Hyborian Age are pretty barren over there, implying that we don't get much detail about adventures further east. I read one time that a very late trek in Conan's career (after his Kingship of Aquilonia) takes him even to the Hyborian analogue for Japan, but I'm not sure which story that was in. Kusan is very different to most of the kingdoms we've seen so far. There's lots of what you might expect in an imagined version of China from the perspect of an American in the 1960s. The villain of the piece, Duke Feng, has a voice that is described as catlike several times. Last year when I read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, I noticed that he also described Chinese men (in that case spoken by dock workers in California during the late 1800s) as men with "speech like cats." Is this some weird, old-timey stereotype?  Duke Feng is a pretty fun villain. You can tell he's up to absolutely no good from his very first line, but what he's up to hangs in the air. When he traps Conan using the magnetized monolith, he sits a ways off on a hill and menacingly starts playing a shrill tune on a flute, so that's cool. Conan doesn't like Feng much, judging his foppish ways, but also for the first time admitting some envy over how Feng is effortlessly charming to people. Conan is said to have polished up a bit while traveling with the Turanians and is, dare I say it, somewhat of a polyglot now. The story makes note that his Khitan language is little more than a smattering of words, but he's doing very well with Hyrkanian language.  This was a quick little Conan story: maybe a little bit inconsequential, even if it does represent a massive step across the map. It was adapted into Savage Sword #33, which I must have read (I'm into at least issue 70 by now) but I can't remember at all. It has a bangin' cover with some excellent color work on it.
I'm beginning to notice a pattern. The de Camp and Carter stories aren't usually quite as good as the Howard-penned tales. Honestly, there is a huge number of Conan writers who treat Howard as kind of unassailable, and I think he's far from that, but I will say that de Camp and Carter aren't usually quite as good. Luckily for me, Howard is back (kind of) in the next story in our chronology, "The Blood-Stained God." ★★★☆☆ Alright, we're adding a new voice to the authorship. So far, we have read...
Nyberg is kind of interesting in that he's go very little in his bibliography. There's one Conan novel, a few Conan short stories, two other stories written in the late 50s, and a quick essay titled "Conan and Myself." According to that essay, he was just a Conan fan who started banging away at a typewriter with the intention of improving his WPM and figured the way to do that was by writing a sequel to the novel Conan the Conqueror. Apparently, people liked it and eventually de Camp gave it the once-over, and it was published. That sounds surprisingly easy, but less surprising when you go on the official Conan website and see that they literally have a button that anyone can press that's like, "Hey, do you want to use Conan for an idea you have? Just ask us!" I wonder if that's how Conan gets licensed for stuff like the MK1 character pack. Heroic Signatures is surprisingly easy to reach. They respond to things like Youtube comments and are generally really nice. In "Conan and Myself," Nyberg writes that his conversations with de Camp revealed that de Camp thought Conan's years as a mercenary in the Turanian army were perhaps the most interesting and most unexplored part of Conan's career, and that's exactly what's happening in "The People of the Summit." While I can't say it's uninteresting, I definitely don't think it's the most interesting part of his career by a huge margin.
Conan seems to be continuing to grow in his skills, because we see him do some things in this story that we haven't gotten yet. Usually when Conan encounters something very supernatural, he has a moment where our authors note that he freezes in fear because he hates and distrusts the paranormal so much. Here, though, Conan quickly shakes it off and acts rather than standing with his mouth agape thinking shitshitshitshitshit. Additionally, while encountering cairns of round stones which he recognizes to be graves of long-dead mountain people, he carefully steps around them in order to show respect for their passing, which is something unlike what we've ever seen him do. Yes, he does end up needing to huck the rounded stones at at the egg spider to force it off the cliff, but he only does that when he's out of options.
"The People of the Summit" is a fun, solid Conan story with an interesting setting that makes for a good time. Nyberg's alright! I'm excited that our next story, "The Curse of the Monolith," will take us much farther to the east than we've ever been to the land of Khitai.
★★★★☆  "The City of Skulls" is the next story for our chronology, following from "The Hand of Nergal." It's a creation of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in which Conan continues to ride as a mercenary for the Turanian empire. Chronologically speaking, the story explicitly states that it's been seven months since the events of "Nergal," but Conan will travel with the Turanians for about two years, reaching as far as Khitai, Howard's analogue for China. Conan and his friend Juma are accompanying the princess of Turan to her wedding, to unite the Turanians and Hyrkanians in peace. They're captured on the steppes of Hyrkania and brought south into a mountain range into the country of Meru. The setting is pretty cool- there's a large bowl within the mountains that hosts a hidden jungle and a city where every inch is decorated with skull designs. One scene is remarkably similar to Temple of Doom: Conan and Juma crouch in a balcony over an evil ceremony in an underground temple with a gigantic statue of a multi-armed death god on one side and a host of worshippers beneath them, just like when Indy, Willie, and Short Round discover the temple to Kali beneath Pankot Palace.   I can't say I'm a huge fan of this story. I knew eventually that one of these stories would be too uncomfortably racist to really get into, I just expected it to be one of Howard's stories, rather than de Camp or Carter's. Most of the racism is directed toward Juma, Conan's friend and a fellow outlander from Kush who travels with the Turanians. It's far from horrific and it's not the worst we'll see during this chronology, but it sucks some air out of the narrative. Juma's characterization is similar to Conan: he's tall, strong, and clever, but the way the story talks about him always makes sure to other him. He's almost exclusively called "the black." For example, right before Juma kills the evil king Jalung Thongpa: "The black was too far from the tableau to interfere, but his frustrated rage demanded an outlet." Why not "Conan's ally," "Conan's friend," "The Kushite," or heck, just "Juma" than frequently referring to him just by the color of his skin? Did they have to give him a stereotypical hoop earring? Did they have to make sure that the only protagonist Black character thus far had slavery in his past? I have seen praise for this story for Juma not being a complete stereotype, but I don't dig it. I don't even know if Juma represents de Camp and Carter trying to be inclusive with a Black character, seeing as they were writing during the Civil Rights Momement in 1967, but they failed.
I've done some writing on the internet before with a social justice bent to it, and we always got comments saying we were idiots for examining pop culture of the past and not completely ignoring and accepting the racist elements. A professor I had about fifteen years ago always used a phrase that I like: "Just because we historicize, doesn't mean we excuse." Just because we understand that times were different and we can't fairly hold people like Robert E. Howard to the standards to today doesn't mean that we have to excuse their awful behavior. I agree that it would be unfair to expect a perfectly acceptable (by modern standards) depiction of Juma, but we don't have to just accept failures of the past. "The City of Skulls" was already a slightly lesser Conan story, and we can leave it behind. Next up is "The People of the Summit!" ★★☆☆☆  Here is my approximation of Conan's movements from the beginning of his life through the story "The Hand of Nergal." 1. Conan is born in northwest Cimmeria, literally on a battlefield. 2. A young Conan, probably no more than 16, participates in raiding parties and particularly the siege of Venarium. 3. The events of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" take place in Nordheim, so Conan has traveled far to the north. He is with the Aesir raiding party at the beginning and end of the story. Many Conan readers place this story much later in Conan's career, but I think it makes the most sense here. 4. The Aesir dip down into Asgard where "Legions of the Dead" takes place. At the end of "Legions of the Dead," Conan is sold to Hyperborean slavers. 5. Conan has escaped his Hyperborean captors and is fleeing south through the mountains of Brythunia. Within these mountains, "The Thing in the Crypt" takes place. Conan continues southward, with his mind set on Zamora. 6. Conan arrives at the Zamoran City of Thieves. I've decided that it makes most sense to me that the City of Thieves and Arenjun are indeed two separate cities, so I've place this point on where Conan expert Dale Rippke approximated the Thief City to be. This is where "The Tower of the Elephant" (and Conan and the Sorcerer, mostly) takes place. 7. Trying his thieving elsewhere, Conan moves south to Shadizar the Wicked, the capital city of Zamora. He goes to the ruined, ancient city of Larsha nearby (which, on this map, makes it look like it's actually located over the border in Koth?) in "The Hall of the Dead". Having made trouble in Shadizar, Conan ends the story riding westward on the Corinthian Road toward Nemedia. 8. In Numalia, Nemedia, Conan attempts to steal from the Temple of Kallian Publico and gets mixed up in the murder of its proprietor, as seen in "The God in the Bowl." Conan apparently starts moving east again upon leaving Nemedia. Somewhere on this path eastward, he passes through an unnamed city where the events of "Rogues in the House" take place. 9. Acting as a mercenary, Conan participates in a battle with the army of Turan. The battle takes place in an open field, along a river. After the battle, when Conan finds Hildico, he travels with her to the city of Yaralet, where the rest of the story takes place. Conan defeats Munthassem Khan in Yaralet in "The Hand of Nergal." He stays there about a week before riding away from the city. I really don't have much experience with the next several stories in my chronology- I've read a comic book adaption of "The City of Skulls" but don't know "The People of the Summit," "The Curse of the Monolith," "The Blood-Stained God," or "The Lair of the Ice Worm" at all. After that, Conan heads to the sea with "Queen of the Black Coast." I understand there are more pirate stories than just that one, but I don't think they're in my chronology... The essay "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" suggests about two or three years spent in the service of armies as a sellsword: "Riding westward into Corinthia, Conan becomes a mercenary soldier under one of the many roving generals of that time. He fares well and learns much of the art of civilized war among the Hyborian kingdoms. During a lull in the wars, he returns for a short time to his native Cimmeria, but the love of adventure again draws him south. He continues to prosper as a soldier, finally arriving in the seacoast kingdom of Argos, where a brush with the law forces him to ship with a coastwise trader, southward bound." With that being said, I wonder if all the stories up to "Black Coast" will be mercenary stories...
"The Hand of Nergal" is another one of the stories that were started by Robert E. Howard during his lifetime and then finished later by another author. That seems to usually be the team of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, but this one was just finished by Carter alone. It has some good scenes, but ultimately feels like it's just a little bit less than the sum of its parts. In my own estimation, its vibe is more that of Carter than Howard. It just doesn't feel like REH's other work.  The story opens on a battlefield which is already at the height of its carnage. Conan is working as a mercenary for the armies of Turan after deciding to leave thievery behind for a time. The copy of this story I read was in the 1967 book Conan and each entry has a short recap at the beginning, which I've found very helpful. I don't know if they appear with every version of these stories, but I kind of hope they do. This one seems to imply some character growth in the part of Conan- he's seen how society runs and has decided that he doesn't really want any part of it, so he'll go do what he does best. At the end of "Rogues in the House," he got ahold of a horse, then headed east, and has made it quite a ways.   Conan fights some very cool giant, sinewy bat creatures on the field of combat, but his army is ultimately unsuccessful. There are some very cool and cinematic moments throughout, as well as one very funny passage that I'm not sure was intended to be funny. Carter introduces Bakra of Akif, who is played up like a major badass. We watch him get picked up and then yeeted back down onto the battlefield in an unceremonious death, ending with, "Thus ended the career of Bakra of Akif." I don't know if it was supposed to be funny, but it made me laugh. As one of the only survivors of the fight, Conan comes across a girl name Hildico, who tells him that he's needed by Prince Than in the city of Yaralet. There, we get a huge exposition dump from the monk Atalis about how Yaralet is beset by an awful curse that has turned their leader evil. It suffers from a lack of "show, don't tell," as it feels we don't actually get to see any of Yaralet- we just sneak with Conan and Hildico through underground tunnels. Conan helps defeat the evil forces by using the Heart of Tammuz, a gem he randomly found prior to the opening of the story, and it all feels just a little bit cheap, though the spark-flying battle between two constructions of light and shadow is pretty darn cool. Speaking of unintentionally funny moments, the Heart of Tammuz is gassed-up as the powerful counter-talisman to the evil Hand of Nergal (from way back in King Kull's time!). Atalis says several times, "The Heart will protect you... all his power will be gone!" It doesn't work as planned, since the villain Munthassem Khan awakens and says, "The Heart protects, in very truth--but only him who knows how to invoke its power!" At this point in the story, I'm wondering what the correct way to invoke that power is. A moment later, Hildico appears and chucks the Heart of Tammuz at the Khan: "It caught him full between the eyes with an audible thud. Eyes filming, he sank bonelessly into the cushioned embrace of his black throne. The Hand of Nergal slid from nerveless fingers to clank against the marble step." Apparently, the "correct" way to use the Heart was to just fucking throw it at your enemy's head and it'll knock them unconscious. This is the worst talisman of all time!  "The Hand of Nergal" is a bit odd in construction and tone compared to other Conan tales. I would argue that its inciting incident doesn't actually happen until two-thirds of the way into the story. The stakes are a little weak as well. Usually they are simple: Will Conan get the treasure? Will Conan defeat the monster? Will Conan survive the evil sorcerer's plans? But he doesn't have much of a personal stake in this story, voluntarily going to Yaralet to help the people there, without much of anything riding on his success for him. I know that's the more heroic thing to do than needing to get something out of it, but it weakens the plot some for me. The tone is a bit odd compared to other stories from this section of Conan's career too. It's got this kind of wide-eyed, full-hearted reverence for adventure that hasn't even been alluded to in previous tales. Conan's been mostly working to subsist himself: he steals not because he loves treasure but because it buys him lots of meat, wine, and nights with women. He works as a mercenary not because he has any allegiance to the empire, but because it pays well and he's good at it. However, there are two lines in this story that just feel out of place. The first is at the end of Chapter 3: "They rode across the shallow ford of the river and across the gloom-drenched plain towards Yaralet,... and Conan's heart, which never beat more joyously than when thrilled with the promise of excitement and adventure, sang." And the other is the last line of the story: "[Conan] swung about, flung up one brawny arm, grinned back at them farewell, and rode off with the lithe girl clasped before him. Atalis chuckled. 'Some men fight for things other than gold,' he observed." Both of these sections felt odd. Since when has Conan just loved adventure? Sure, his quests have all been voluntary and it's not like they're a slog, but he mostly seems to be doing them out of necessity, greed, lust, or just a desire to make a mark on the world. We've never gotten any hint that his heart sings at the idea of adventure. And as for the second quote, just no. Conan hasn't ever fought for anything other than gold at this point. Conan does indeed have a sense of duty and he's certainly not a bad guy, at least compared to all the other movers and shakers of the Hyborian Age, but I don't know if this kind of heroic wistfulness is earned. I wonder if Lin Carter felt like Conan's motivations felt a little weak while drafting this story. Why does he go to Yaralet to help these people? Well, I suppose if we throw some lines in there about how much he loves the promise of a good adventure, it will seem like he's getting something out of it. I wrote more than I meant to about this story, as it's not one of the best. It just kind of ran through me. Maybe I'm not much of a Lin Carter fan. Conan will still be working with the Turanian army as a merc in our next story, "The City of Skulls," though I think we're going even further east to never-before-seen lands. I've been working on a map to track Conan's movements up to this story, that I'll post soon. ★★★☆☆ 
Somehow written in only one draft in January of 1933, "Rogues in the House" is a really fun time and is probably the funniest Conan story I've read. It follows Conan being sprung from jail by the young nobleman Murilo, who is certain that his life has been threatened by the Red Priest Nabonidus. Nabonidus has furtively gifted him a disembodied ear, so I'm kind of with Murilo on this one. Murilo's a young buck whose plan doesn't go as he envisioned- the guard he bribes is arrested totally by coincidence, leaving Conan to essentially free himself. Thinking that he needs to take matters into his own hands, Murilo goes to the house of the Red Priest to kill him by his own hand. “Glad you liked ‘Rogues in the House.’ That was one of those yarns which seemed to write itself. I didn’t rewrite it even once. As I remember I only erased and changed one word in it, and then sent it in just as it was written. I had a splitting sick headache, too, when I wrote the first half, but that didn’t seem to affect my work any. I wish to thunder I could write with equal ease all the time." -Robert E. Howard Conan, on the other hand, manages to escape prison anyway by doming a guard with a beef bone and strolling out. To get his revenge on a woman who sold him out to the guard, he, quite hilariously, breaks into her house and drops her from the second story into a pile of shit (in The Maze, a section of the city notable for its particularly shit-strewn streets). Conan meets up with Murilo who has gotten captured, and the two must make their way from the dungeons out of Nabonidus's booby-trapped house together. While Conan is still young (according to "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career," he's 19 or 20 now), he gets to be contrasted by the utter greenhorn Murilo throughout the story. Murilo is likable (mostly) and seems totally in over his head, which gives Conan a chance to really show off his skill as the muscle. They're quickly joined by the Red Priest himself, who has been knocked out and left in the dungeons, creating an unlikely and uneasy trio of these Rogues which are in the House.  The aspect of the story with by far the most mirth is the relationship between Nabonidus and his missing-link servant, Thak, who is also hunting them through the house. Now, I really love Conan and his world, but I don't think anyone would ever accuse Robert E. Howard of stunning characterization. They're largely flat, stock characters. Evil sorcerers, duplicitous beauties, power-hungry rulers... even Conan is most often a sullen, stubborn soldier of fortune. Nabonidus and Thak buck this trend, though. "Conan," he whispered, "it was no man that stood before me! In body and posture it was not unlike a man, but from the scarlet hood of the priest grinned a face of madness and nightmare! It was covered with black hair, from which small pig- like eyes glared redly; its nose was flat, with great flaring nostrils; its loose lips writhed back, disclosing huge yellow fangs, like the teeth of a dog. The hands that hung from the scarlet sleeves were misshapen and likewise covered with black hair. All this I saw in one glance, and then I was overcome with horror; my senses left me and I swooned."  Thak (a pig-eyed, close-eared, hairy creature that's about two-thirds human and one-third beast) is several things to the Red Priest: a pet, a student, a science project, a servant, a guard, and we get to see Nabonidus react with glee as he realizes that Thak has maintained some of the lessons he's tried to teach him, or is at least mirroring his master. As Conan, Murilo, and Nabonidus watch Thak from a complex system of advanced mirrors that work like a security camera, Thak dispatches of even more rogues who had entered his house to kill him, excitedly noting that Thak was growing intellectually, while still speaking of him like a thing. The way Nabonidus acts with Thak and his one-time compatriots of Conan and Murilo render him much less predictable and way more enjoyable to spend time with than most Hyborian Age villains. The house of the Red Priest is also a fun spot from which our protagonist rogues need to escape. It's trapped by a series of curtains and pull-strings which render each doorway a mystery. It's got the classic sense of adventure that the best Conan stories do, but with lots of pathos and humor along the way. By the time Conan casually hucks a chair across the room at the grinning Nabonidus (who has, of course, tried to double-cross his fellow rogues), killing him, I laughed out loud. His blood does run red indeed.  Conan concludes this story by taking a horse and riding out of this city in Corinthia, presumably far to the east. The next story in our chronology is "The Hand of Nergal," which takes place far to the east in Turan. I made a note at the end of my last entry that perhaps "Rogues" and "Bowl" should be switched in their placement, and at this point, I don't think it really matters. In my own opinion, the vibe of this story fits nicely in with the thief stories, so including it alongside "The Tower of the Elephant," and "The Hall of the Dead" comprises a nice little trilogy. There's a ton of great art of Conan fighting Thak-- especially that Frank Frazetta painting at the top, featuring Conan wrapping his legs around Thak. I'm a huge slut for Frazetta-- so I've plastered them all over this post. I hadn't read any adaptions of "Rogues in the House" prior to this, which surprises me (it probably shouldn't since I've stuck to Savage Sword so religiously). It's a really cool story that would translate well to other mediums. I know it has an adaption in the Marvel Conan the Barbarian title, so I've finally decided to pull the trigger on getting Conan the Barbarian: The Original Comics Omnibus Vol.1 when it releases in September. I don't usually do omnibuses, but I'm pretty excited to dig into it, so I think I'll pony up the massive pricetag.
"The Hand of Nergal" is next. ★★★★★ |
AuthorHey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order. 
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