Conan, King of the Barbarians
This was the barbarian I grew up with. I remember how weird the comic looked on the spinner racks when I was a kid. Nearly everyone else was in spandex and had capes. I was down with superheroes, still am. But there’s something about barbarians and jungle girls that just will not leave me alone. Yeah, Raquel Welch in 1 MILLION BC really scarred me for life too.
At the time the comic came out, I didn’t even know who Conan was. I hadn’t noticed the Lancer editions that were coming out with Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, and Lin Carter’s names on them. But after I read Roy Thomas’s story and devoured Barry Wood’s art, I had found a new hero to root for. Conan wasn’t Superman, didn’t have web-spinning ability, or powers gained from cosmic radiation, but he was the closest thing there was to Batman before Batman became the Dark Knight we all know and love these days. Denny O’Neill was just warming up his character-changing ideas for Batman, and Frank Miller was still in school.
For a lot of years there, I read all the barbarian heroes. They had their worlds that were interesting and fun. Thongor of Lost Lemuria (also by Lin Carter). Kothar of the Magic Sword (written by comics and SF veteran Gardner F. Fox). And dozens of others. Before John Jakes reached bestsellerdom with his international hits, The Kent Family Chronicles, he was penning the adventures of Brak the Barbarian.
Sadly, the barbarian hero seems to have faded from publication as fantasy novels have gone more upscale and moved in political climates (Tolkein meets West Wing) like in Game of Thrones.
With the advent of ebooks, a return to basically the same kind of pulp atmosphere (including dark economic times) that spawned Howard’s Hyborian, Phil Athans and I thought it would be good to bring a hero like this out again. So we did.
In the meantime, you can still enjoy the original in books, comics, and movies. The latest run at Dark Horse Comics includes the fateful meeting of Conan and Belit. I’m really enjoying it.
But don’t forget to pick us up!
VOYAGE OF THE MERRY HANGMAN
Prologue
The Black Forest
Four men stood under the tree where a young girl cowered in fear. The fierce red hair and the elk hides she wore told Arron that she was one of the Twelve Tribes, and though she was not a member of his family, she was of his people. The Black Forest and the Frozen Vast was her home. She didn’t look more than twelve winters old.
And the men were outsiders, from the hated Heteronomy to the south where wizards worked their dark arts.
The men grinned and taunted her. Since there were only four of them, Arron believed they were scouts for a larger force that could be nearby. Lately there had been more and more Heteronomy soldiers through the Black Forest. The shamans among the Twelve Tribes all saw portents of evil things to come.
“Come down, girl. We won’t hurt you.” The tallest of the Heteronomy warriors waved at the girl. He was big and strong and wore a fierce beard as the Southerners sometimes did while in the Vast. The Black Forest people went beardless. The scout’s chainmail gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and he kept his right hand on the long sword at his side.
The girl only hugged the tree bole more fiercely and cried out again for help. Snow had been tramped down all around the tree, mute evidence that the men had looked for openings. A small obsidian knife gleamed in the girl’s hand. The blade was used more for gutting elk and bear and rabbits than as a weapon. But it was enough to hold the Heteronomy soldiers at bay.
A surge of pride flared through Arron. She was a true child of the Twelve Tribes, and the men before her were cowards.
Another man stood gazing up at the girl while holding a loaded crossbow at the ready. “She’s not gonna come down, Rukkan. And if we let her keep squalling like that, some of them redheaded vermin will come along to spoil our fun.” He licked his lips. “Been a long time since I’ve had a girl that young. If you want, I can put a quarrel through her leg, bring her down to us.”
“I don’t want her wounded.” Rukkan frowned and fisted his sword.
“It’s not like she’s gonna live long after anyways.”
“I don’t care about that. It’s the mess that concerns me. I don’t want to have to wash her blood out of my clothing.”
While the men had been talking, Arron had drawn his bow from his back, strung one end of it, then braced it against his foot and bent it to string the other end. The men continued watching the girl like sharp-nosed foxes waiting for their prey to make a mistake. Silently, Arron nocked one arrow and drew the fletchings back to his ear and held another at the ready in his left hand as he gripped the bow.
He figured two arrows would be the most he could get into the air before the men knew he was there. After that, he might get another shaft or two toward them. He knew he had to make them count because four to one on the ground could mean the death of him.
And the girl.
Fifty feet away, he was a silent, bronzed wraith in the spruce trees around him. His elk hide pants and shirt blended in with the forest and he wore his red hair pulled back. He shifted just enough to get a clear line of sight on the four men and the girl.
The crossbowman was the most immediately dangerous. The short, heavy quarrels could dance through the brush fairly accurately and plunge through chainmail in a twinkling.
And Arron had marked the man because he had been so callous in his thoughts of the girl.
Letting out half a breath, Arron released the first arrow and smoothly nocked the second one while the first was still in flight. He’d intended to take Rukkan down with his second shaft, but one of the other men stepped in front of the man, making the shot harder. Arron shifted targets automatically and loosed the second arrow.
The first arrow flew true, hissing across the snow-covered ground and sinking into the crossbowman’s neck just an inch above his shoulder. The soldier dropped his crossbow and clawed frantically at the arrow that pierced his throat as his screams turned to frightened gargling. Bright blood splashed over his chest and hands, and Arron knew the obsidian tip had sliced his enemy’s jugular.
The second arrow thudded into the hollow of the second soldier’s neck just below his skull. That, too, was a killing shot, and one that took life faster. The second man dropped like a brained fish and sprawled across the snow-covered ground, spilling crimson onto the pristine whiteness.
Arron drew and loosed again, aiming again at Rukkan. Wily as a wolf, the soldier threw himself forward and fetched up behind the tree where the girl hid.
“Hoff!” Rukkan peered around the tree and Arron’s fourth arrow nearly took him in the eye as the obsidian tip raked splinters from the bark. “How many do you see?” The man’s voice remained cool and controlled despite how close death had come calling.
“Only one.” Hoff, the other Heteronomy warrior, flashed through the surrounding woods and closed on Arron’s position.
Arron only spotted the man now and again. Then he cursed himself because he realized the brief conversation had been meant to distract him from Rukkan. When Arron glanced back at the tree, the Heteronomy commander had disappeared.
Gently, making himself breathe normally, the air cold enough to turn his exhalations into puffs of gray fog, Arron leaned his bow against the nearest tree. He reached over his shoulder and took up the short-hafted battle-axe he carried as his main weapon. He closed his left hand around the pronghorn hilt of the long knife at his waist and pulled it free. The knife had been forged of good steel, as the axe had been. He had labored and traded for those weapons, as he had for the skills with which he used them.
The silent way he moved through the harsh wilderness came from hunting and foraging for years in the Black Forest. His father had raised him to be a hunter and a scout, and few of his tribe were better.
Arron stayed low and kept his weapons at the ready as he strode through the trees. He chose to remain a moving target rather than holing up. Prey in motion drew out the hunters, and he wasn’t a widefoot rabbit to lie in wait for the wolf that would eat him. He glanced up at the girl in the tree. She was his eyes now, whether she spoke to him or not, because she had the high ground.
The girl looked to the left and to the right, letting Arron know his two opponents had chosen a split approach. Her voice was thin in the gusting winter winds, but she called out almost calmly, “Look out to the left.”
Following the girl’s direction almost caused Arron’s undoing. He glanced to his left as he readied his weapons, but saw nothing save stirring snow ghosting between the trees and brush. Only the heavy crack of the warrior’s boot plunging through a patch of frozen bog warned Arron of the man’s approach from behind.
Spinning to his left, Arron dropped his axe to a low position and lifted his knife. He caught his opponent’s blade more by instinct and training than through sight. Everything happened in a blur. The man followed his overhand sword blow, using his body as a battering ram and trusting in the chainmail he wore.
Knocked only partially off balance because he’d been expecting the move, Arron planted his right boot as he swung about to glance off his opponent. Regaining his footing, Arron shifted his weight to his left foot and whipped the axe around in a tight arc.
Too late, the Heteronomy warrior realized his mistake. Legend had it that Black Forest tribesmen could move like ghosts through the ice and snow, that they could sense the arctic muskeg that shifted so treacherously underfoot. Those stories were overblown, of course, and none of the Twelve Tribes were able to turn into bears either.
COMING SOON!
But they were dangerous foes, especially on their own terrain.
The axe smacked the warrior’s helm a ringing blow and left him staggered. Before he could recover, Arron thrust the long knife up through the man’s throat and into his brain. Bright red blood spattered the skirling snow. One of the clan shamans could tell events of the man’s life from the blood skein, but Arron could not.
He regained his footing and stood in a half-crouch, taking a brief instant to take fresh grips on his weapons. His breath puffed in gray fogs before him as he looked around. Panic clawed at him when he realized he’d lost sight of the Heteronomy warrior. Still, he made himself be calm as he turned in a circle. He lifted his voice to the girl.
“Do you see him?”
“No.” Fear thinned her voice. Slowly, she started to climb down the tree.
“Stay there.”
“We can fight together.” Though she argued, the girl froze in place.
“No. You’ll only get in the way.”
“Not if I can get a bow in my hand.”
If Arron hadn’t been so afraid, he would have laughed at the girl’s spirit. That certitude was what Sovitta-Maton, the God of Darkness, Cold, and Cruelty, had given the Black Forest people so that they might survive in the inhospitable land eternally locked in winter’s embrace. Fear was a constant in the Black Forest, but a man could not give in to it. Giving in to fear created a fracture that would shatter even the coldest resolve.
And Arron’s resolve was that the Heteronomy warrior would die at his hand as had his fellows.
Though the man made no sound and he was hidden by trees, Rukkan remained visible to Arron’s keen eyes. Forever hunting in the Black Forest had trained the young warrior to look for telltale signs of quarry. The cold was his world, and he was part of it. One lesson that he had learned was that everything living had to breathe. And if that thing breathed in the Black Forest, it left its breath in the air.
A thin trail of gray fog slid out from behind a tree to Arron’s right. He weighed his chances of taking the man with his axe and knife, and thought it was possible. But his bow lay only a short distance away. As soon as his decision was made, he turned and sprinted for the bow, thinking he could get an arrow into his foe before the man knew he was onto him.
Instead, the warrior exploded from hiding. Brush broke across his mailed body and cracked in the cold air.
Arron spun and managed to get his axe up to block the man’s sword blow. Both weapons became tangled and locked. The man kept coming, throwing out his left hand to close around Arron’s throat and snatch his breath away. Instinctively, Arron stabbed with his knife as the bigger man drove him backward through the snow. The chainmail stopped the dagger again and again, and the dulled scrape of the blade across the rings echoed around Arron.
“You’re going to die this day, whelp.” Rukkan’s face was terrible with fury. There was fear in there as well, and Arron took pride in that. He had put fear in that man.
Arron drew back his knife to strike again, but his opponent headbutted him and he blacked out for just a moment. He managed to keep the long sword locked with his axe and prayed to the Cold One that the Heteronomy metal would break.
Still pushing Arron before him, Rukkan shoved the young Black Forest warrior through a wall of dense brush. The jagged ends of broken branches tore at Arron and pierced his flesh. Warm blood trailed the burning fire of the cuts. He lost the dagger when his hand slammed into a tree. Then he rebounded from another tree and was suddenly through the brush and into a clearing.
With a mighty heave, Rukkan shoved Arron away from him and lifted his sword. Unable to get his footing, Arron skidded across a snow-covered sheet of ice. He tumbled and rolled, instinctively spreading his weight across the surface of the unseen pond. Bogs filled the Black Forest, all of them potentially holding hidden death.
Falling through the ice into the depths was one of those hidden deaths. Arron knew where he was now, and he knew that this particular bog was deep enough to sink a man thrice over.
“Are you prepared to meet your heathen god, boy?” Rukkan grinned menacingly. “Or do you need a moment more?”
“No. I’m ready.” Arron tightened his hand around the hilt of his axe. “But I won’t be meeting him today. When you see Sovitta-Maton, tell him it was Arron of the Black Forest who sent you.”
Rukkan cursed and started forward.
Quick as he could, Arron lifted his axe and struck the frozen ice. Once. Twice. On the third strike, and Rukkan only then surmising what might be happening as ice chips flew, the bog’s surface splintered and black bog water drank down the ice.
Unable to get away, Rukkan went through as well while Arron scrambled back from the cracking surface. Partially drenched by the bog water, Arron held up, then turned back and looked at his vanquished foe.
Rukkan fought the water, but it was for naught. His armor, the very thing that had protected him, now served to pull him under. Through the black water, Arron grimly watched as the screaming, pallid oval that was the Heteronomy warrior’s face sank into the bog.
H.P. LOVECRAFT: THE WORK VS. THE MAN
I’ve been not just open about the influence H.P. Lovecraft has had on me, and on The Haunting of Dragon’s Cliff in particular—I’ve shouted it from whatever rooftop I could find (including this one). But lately there has been a lot being said about the late Mr. Lovecraft that’s made me, and a lot of other fans of this dark fantasy icon, a little uneasy. And that may be an understatement.
H.P. Lovecraft
Though I can’t say I didn’t notice an underlying racism in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, and for that matter, his friend Robert E. Howard as well, but even as a teenager (or younger) when I first discovered these authors, I put that down to the day and age in which they lived. These stories were written in the 1920s and 30s—much less enlightened times, some thirty years before the Civil Rights Movement brought about its massive shift in American society. In some ways, it was as though I thought of these men as some kind of primitives, communicating from a simpler, less civilized time.
But H.P. Lovecraft isn’t Homer, or even Shakespeare. Both of these men, Lovecraft and Howard, were Americans, living and working in the 20th century. And yes, Howard lived in Texas, a state not known in that day as a bastion of racial tolerance, but Lovecraft was a Yankee, and of the two, you’d think he would have known better. But he didn’t. He was a racist. I cant and won’t deny that.
A lot of this started to blow up, by the way, just this past December, when the brilliant author Nnedi Okorafor wrote about her unease with the bust of Lovecraft that she was given—the World Fantasy Award—and the mixed feelings that that brought up in her.
Can I be a Lovecraft fan, and allow my own writing to be inspired by his, when it’s plain he held some beliefs that I find personally abhorrent?
Then something made me think back to when I first started at TSR and was talking to my then-boss, the late Brian Thomsen, and I mentioned that I was a huge fan of Harlan Ellison. Brian knew everyone, and had at least a passing acquaintance with Harlan Ellison, and let’s just say Brian had a few choice words for my idol. And Brian wasn’t the only one. Even other fans would tell me stuff like: “I like his stories, but I hear he’s a total dick.” My answer was always the same: “I don’t care if he’s a dick, his work is phenomenal. He’s the greatest short story writer in the history of mankind. Let him be a dick if he wants to be.”
But yelling at people (including, years later, me!) over the phone about some little detail of this or that, or loudly voicing his opinion for all to hear, is one thing, and being a full-on racist is another. Harlan Ellison is smart and funny, and he has something to say, and that sometimes comes from a place of anger and frustration, but not hate. Lovecraft seems to have been, by all accounts, a painfully mild-mannered chap, not at all like Harlan Ellison in temperament, and yet there seems to have been this underlying pool of race hatred there.
I can’t pretend to know why he was like that. Racists aren’t born, they’re made—educated in hate, intolerance, and bigotry. Somewhere in his life, H.P. went through that indoctrination, and never seemed able to change his ways. And that is harder to forgive than Harlan Ellison’s colorful but otherwise well-intentioned outbursts.
In a college film history class, we watched the unedited version of the seminal silent movie Birth of a Nation. This is the film that for all intents and purposes set the language for narrative filmmaking that’s still in practice today. But it is a full-on KKK propaganda piece that was so bizarre to watch it seemed as though it had to be satire—but it wasn’t. The film features the heroic KKK riding to the rescue of a nation in the grips of black-faced white actors acting like ape-men. It was bizarre and twisted, and it came out of the same era, a decade here or there, as H.P. Lovecraft. And yet there we were, in a college classroom in 1983 studying what was good about Birth of a Nation while trying not to concentrate on the content.
I want to still like and admire the quality of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, even if I have to do it while trying not to concentrate on the quality of the man.
—Philip Athans
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