THE PHOENIX ON THE SWORD

Here we are. At long last, I've reached the beginning. After four solid months of reading and writing about Conan the Barbarian stories, I've come to the very first one every published, and it really feels like it's been a journey.

I made a lot of hay about the fact that Robert E. Howard presented Conan as a sort of memory reaching him from a long-forgotten past when I was writing about his poem "Cimmeria" and his essay "The Hyborian Age." It feels very thematically appropriate that he would continue with that theme (to a lesser extent) in "The Phoenix on the Sword." Instead of Conan reaching Howard through time, it's Conan's barbarism and a sage named Epemitreus reaching out to King Conan.

​"The Phoenix on the Sword" is the earliest Conan anything to exist- with its first drafts reaching back to 1929 as an unpublished King Kull story "By This Axe I Rule!" My Kull reading is pretty much limited just to Kull comics, but he's nowhere near as cool as Conan. Patrice Louinet notes in the essay "Hyborian Genesis" that Kull was transformed into King Conan with very few edits, mostly just the color of his eyes: "grey for the Atlantean, blue for the Cimmerian."

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I wrote way back in my second column on this blog that Robert E. Howard wrote the first Conan stories in a quick blast: before any had been published, he had written "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "The Phoenix on the Sword," "The God in the Bowl," and had outlined another, this one about Conan thieving in a Zamorian city. Some version of that story would eventually become "The Tower of the Elephant."

Howard submitted "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" and "The Phoenix on the Sword" to Fransworth Wright at Weird Tales together, and received this response on March 10th, 1932:

“Dear Mr. Howard: I am returning ‘The Frost Giant’s Daughter’ in a separate envelope, as I do not much care for it. But ‘The Phoenix of [sic] the Sword’ has points of real excellence. I hope you will see your way clear to touch it up and resubmit it. It is the first two chapters that do not click. The story opens rather uninterestingly, it seems to me, and the reader has difficulty in orienting himself. The first chapter ends well, and the second chapter begins superbly; but after King Conan’s personality is well established, the chapter sags from too much writing. I think the very last page of the whole story might be re-written with advantage; because it seems a little weak after the stupendous events that precede it.”

"Frost-Giant" was reworked for another mag, "Bowl" was stashed, and "Phoenix" would receive heavy edits.

Patrice Louinet says that Howard cut huge chunks of the story out to condense the opening to "The Nemedian Chronicles" bit we always see. Conan very quickly became the man we all know him, though starting at the end of his career and then jumping back toward the beginning in "Tower." I always wonder how that felt to back-fill a character's history like that. Howard wrote to his friend HP Lovecraft the following month:

“I’ve been working on a new character, providing him with a new epoch—the Hyborian Age, which men have forgotten, but which remains in classical names, and distorted myths. Wright rejected most of the series, but I did sell him one—‘The Phoenix on the Sword’ which deals with the adventures of King Conan the Cimmerian, in the kingdom of Aquilonia.”

"The Phoenix on the Sword" picks up about a year after Conan has seized the crown of Aquilonia. At this time, Conan is said to be in this "early to mid forties." As Conan stuff frequently repeats, he wears the crown upon a troubled brow. Though King Numedides was broadly disliked when Conan deposed him, society has a short memory, and people are now upset at Conan and regularly call him a tyrant, though there's nothing in the story to suggest he's anything of the kind. 

The narrative alternates back and forth between King Conan in his court with his single loyal advisor Prospero and the shadowed rooms of those who wish to replace him: mostly Ascalante, Dion, and their supposed slave, Thoth-Amon.

This is the second story in a row (not counting the Conanless interlude of "Wolves Beyond the Border" or the half-century-removed Conan the Liberator) to feature Thoth-Amon as its principle antagonist, and I understand that he'll be sticking around for most of the rest of these stories. Ascalante and Thoth both do their best to assassinate Conan, both failing because of Conan's immense strength. Visited in a dream by the sage Epemitreus, Conan is whisked away to the dark crypts below Mount Golamira and given some extra oomph to save his life, as Conan is apparently favored by the gods (something we also saw in "Black Colossus")- though not all gods, as Nebethet in "The Ivory Goddess" seems pretty nonplussed with the Cimmerian.

"The Phoenix on the Sword," though not quite as excellent as some of the immediately-preceding stories, is pretty darn good. Although it was written on the other end of Howard's time writing Conan, it is a nice addendum to "Beyond the Black River" and "The Treasure of Tranicos." I would argue that "The Phoenix on the Sword" is Howard's treatise on the nature of power.

When writing about "Beyond the Black River," I spent a bunch of ink on how it's clear that Robert E. Howard believes that barbarism will always win when pitted against civilization. However, I was left with one lingering question: what exactly is it about barbarism that helps it win all the time? "Phoenix" offers on possible answer: it's men of action who drive that victory.

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Conan and Thoth-Amon are really on the same side in this story- the side of barbarism. Both men are surrounded by pencil-pushers, sycophants, ladder-climbers, and navel-gazers who are utterly unnecessary. Howard draws the line between Conan and the other men in Aquilonia toward the end of the story:

"Yes, yes!" cried Publius, who was a man of plans rather than action. "We must bind his wounds. Send for every leech of the court! Oh, my lord, what a black shame on the city! Are you entirely slain?"

Conan and Thoth, however, are men of action, and therefore are the ones who hold the true power throughout the story.

Conan gained power by himself beheading King Numedides. He, at least within the fiction of the narrative, rightfully gained this power by being the strongest and the best. Though the country has quickly forgotten that they chanted his name while he slew Numedides and have confused themselves with who is a martyr and who is a tyrant, Conan earned his crown.

He doesn't need the fluff of society to defend him: he can do that on his own.

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Then as he stood, a stealthy sound in the corridor outside brought him to life, and without stopping to investigate, he began to don his armor; again he was the barbarian, suspicious and alert as a gray wolf at bay.

While Conan's barbarism is the source of his power and not his kingship, ironically (if anything, his kingship gets in the way), Thoth-Amon's on the other end of the social strata for now.

Thoth is currently acting as a slave to Ascalante. Because of his temporary guise, this asshole Dion can't even tell that Thoth is one of the most powerful sorcerers on the planet. He sees Thoth as nothing more than a slave, incapable of challenging him. Even when Thoth outright tells Dion about his past, Dion is so checked out that he doesn't really hear, and accidentally hands Thoth's source of power right back to him. He dies in the process, needless to say. ​

"Ring? Ring?" Thoth had underestimated the man's utter egoism. Dion had not even been listening to the slave's words, so completely engrossed was he in his own thoughts, but the final word stirred a ripple in his self- centeredness.
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"Ring?" he repeated. "That makes me remember—my ring of good fortune. I had it from a Shemitish thief who swore he stole it from a wizard far to the south, and that it would bring me luck. I paid him enough, Mitra knows. By the gods, I need all the luck I can have, what with Volmana and Ascalante dragging me into their bloody plots—I'll see to the ring."

The epigraphs that proceed each chapter in "The Phoenix on the Sword" seem to support this theme of power. They've been pulled from "The Nemedian Chronicles" and a poem or ballad called "The Road of Kings," and the one at the beginning of chapter 5 seems to have the most to say.

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
--The Road Of Kings

Howard proved to be somewhat of a anti-colonialist in "Beyond the Black River." He had Conan spit that the Aquilonian oligarchy should split up their lands and not take up so much space, that they should squeeze the common man less. Here, he implies that common man is above a king. Subtle tongues, sophist guile, and cultured ways all fall to broadswords. All this fuss and feathers is just distraction from pure ways of living that are in touch with the world.

Our next story is "The Scarlet Citadel," which I'm really excited for. Jim Zub, the current writer of Conan comics at Titan, recently posted a write-up about it on Reddit, which someone in the comments called "the original dungeon crawl." Can't wait!

★★★★☆

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