Chronologically Speaking, Part Twenty-Three: The Yaralet Fragment ("The Hand of Nergal")

Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.

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We have before us quite the head-scratcher.

​The Yaralet fragment, also known by the monikers "Unititled draft (The battle stretched silent...)" and "The Hand of Nergal," is an extremely small blip in the Conan mythos. Even the Lin Carter edit (which I argue is the only thing people should be calling "The Hand of Nergal," seeing as Howard's short fragment doesn't mention Nergal at all) seems to be nobody's favorite. They're almost too different to really be considered related. All the "Nergal" version carries over is the image of Conan on a battlefield and an oppressive city named Yaralet.

According to Patrice Louinet in his Hyborian Genesis essay, this fragment was probably written in early 1933, though Louinet also says he has a hard time placing it.

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"It is difficult to assign a precise date to the Conan fragments that appear in this volume... Both were written in 1933, the second after April 1933. It is tempting to see them as false starts toward resuming the Conan series after a lapse of several months."

The Carter version appeared in 1968, with the Howard fragment not being made public until it appeared in the "Miscellanea" section of 1976's The Last Celt, where it appears with some other drafts and materials. And because it's so short, there's also not a ton to take from it chronologically.

• Physically, Conan is described as a large man, clad simply: "a Cimmerian, a giant with a black mane and smoldering blue eyes. His girdled loin-cloth and high-strapped sandals were splashed with blood." Notably, he's not referred to as a "youth" like he is in some of his youngest appearances. Dale Rippke notes that Conan is wearing essentially the same thing he wore in all the thief stories, and is unarmored.
• Conan seems to be working as a mercenary, but also seems somewhat inexperienced at mercenary work because of his slowness to realize that he should be looting corpses like other survivors: "Carefully yet impatiently he moved among the dead, limping from corpse to corpse, and swearing wrathfully as he did so. Others had been before him; not a bracelet, gemmed dagger, or silver breastplate rewarded his search. He was a wolf who had lingered too long at the blood-letting while jackals stripped the prey."
  • To me, this reads as Conan being a savage in battle, living up to the designation of "barbarian," and then realizing that he's missed out on the spoils because all of the "civilized" mercenaries have already given up the fight to pick through the bodies. This suggests a younger, less controlled and less-sophisticated Conan.
  • Conan being new to mercenary work almost certainly places this story prior to "The Devil in Iron," in which he is a mercenary chief.
• Conan is in a plain near a city. This city is probably Yaralet, but there's no actual confirmation that it is so. It's not named when Conan is in the scene, just "the towers of the city gleamed faintly in the sunset." In the second part of the fragment, the scene changes to the city of Yaralet, saying, "In the city of Yaralet, when night came on..." All we know about Yaralet is that it's oppressive and menacing at night for some unknown reason.

Those are the only clues given as to when this story might take place; that's not a whole lot to go on.

Conan is dressed nearly identically to his appearances in other early mercenary stories, like "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "Iron Shadows in the Moon." "Xuthal" is one of his first mercenary stories within the chronology I've laid out here, and seeing as Conan appears here as a savage, somewhat inexperienced mercenary here, I think it stands to reason that the two may be close in time to one another. I don't want to give the clothes too much weight, because Conan appears to be a somewhat experienced mercenary at the start of "Queen of the Black Coast," when he's wearing much more ornate armor.

I wondered for quite some time how much to make of the fact that the unnamed woman we see briefly is white (she has "white limbs"), seeing as Howard's attitudes toward race usually caused him to note people's skin colors. "Xuthal" takes place near to Stygia and does it make more sense for this story to take place further north if the woman were white? Or would Howard make her darker-skinned by terming her "dusky" or black? Ultimately, I decided not to make too much of this. Conan comes across people who are non-native to regions all the time. 

Interestingly enough, this story is usually placed as Conan's Turanian mercenary episode, but it does not mention Turan at all, nor is the city of Yaralet ever placed in any country on the map (on many maps, people place Yaralet in the northern part of Turan, close to the Vilayet Sea). If it does not take place in Turan, then Conan's Turanian mercenary period is essentially confined in the entire canon to just a line or two in which he says that he learned archery from the Hyrkanians. 

Comic Yaralet, as depicted by John Buscema

I've left these wonderings in above so that you can see my thought process and check me if you think I'm incorrect. This story doesn't honestly have a very good placement anywhere in the timeline. What I've decided to go with is the idea that it's probably the first first mercenary story. I think it makes somewhat thematic sense to have Conan be struggling to loot in one story and then have become much better at it for the beginning of "Queen of the Black Coast," when his outfit seems to be entirely looted, before losing it all aboard the Tigress down south. This isn't exactly a revolutionary placement, but I think I've put it here for different reasons than most chronologizers.

​I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also, thank you to Bobby Derie from Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein for some help with this one.  

Here's our nearly-completed chronology. Just a few more entries to go!

1. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
2. The God in the Bowl
3. Rogues in the House
4. The Tower of the Elephant
5. The Nestor synopsis ("The Hall of the Dead")
6. The Yaralet fragment ("The Hand of Nergal")
7. Queen of the Black Coast
8. The Shumballa fragment ("The Snout in the Dark")
9. Xuthal of the Dusk
10. The Gazal fragment ("Drums of Tombalku")
11. Iron Shadows in the Moon
12.  The Devil in Iron
13. The People of the Black Circle
14. A Witch Shall Be Born
15. The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
16. Black Colossus
17. The Pool of the Black One
18. The Servants of Bit-Yakin
19. Red Nails
20. The Black Stranger
21. Beyond the Black River
22. The Phoenix on the Sword
23. The Scarlet Citadel
24. The Hour of the Dragon