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CONAN THE WARRIOR
by Robert E. Howard

Copyright 1967 by L. Sprague de Camp. All right reserved.


Red Nails was originally published in _Weird Tales_ for July, August, September and October, 1936; copyright 1936 by Popular Fiction Publishing Co. It was reprinted in _The Sword of Conan_ by Robert E. Howard, N.Y.: Gnome Press, Inc., 1952.

Jewels of Gwahlur was originally published in _Weird Tales_ for March, 1935; copyright 1935 by Popular Fiction Publishing Co. It was reprinted in _King Conan_ by Robert E. Howard, N.Y.: Gnome Press, Inc., 1953.

Beyond the Black River was originally published in _Weird Tales_ for May and June, 1935; copyright 1935 by Popular Fiction Publishing Co. It was reprinted in _King Conan_.


Distributed by Ace Books
A division of Charter Communications, Inc.
A Grosset & Dunlap Company

Printed in the U.S.A.


Contents

Introduction 9
Red Nails 11
Jewels of Gwahlur 105
Beyond the Black River 157


Pages 6 and 7: A map of the world of Conan in the Hyborian Age, based upon notes and sketches by Robert E. Howard and upon previous maps by P. Schuyler Miller, John D. Clark, David Kyle, and L. Sprague de Camp, with a map of Europe and adjacent regions superimposed for reference.

Cover Painting by Frank Frazetta . . . with grateful acknowledgement to Roy Krenkel, advisor.

The biographical paragraphs between the stories are based upon _A Probable Outline of Conan's Career_, by P. Schuyler Miller and Dr. John D. Clark, published in _The Hyborian Age_ (Los Angeles: LANY Cooperative Publications, 1938) and on the expanded version of this essay, _An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian_, by P. Schuyler Miller, John D. Clark, and L. Sprague de Camp, published in _Amra_, Vol. 2, No. 4, copyright 1959 by G.H. Scithers, used by permission of G.H. Scithers. _Amra_ (Box 9120, Chicago, 60690) is the organ of the Hyborian Legion, a loose organization of people who make a hobby of tales of heroic fantasy and of the Conan stories in particular.



INTRODUCTION

Of all the many kinds of fiction, the one that gives the purest entertainment is heroic fantasy: the story of swordplay and sorcery, laid in an imaginary world -- either this planet as it was long ago, or in the remote future, or on another world, or in another dimension -- where magic works and all men are mighty, all women beautiful, all problems simple, and all life adventurous. In such a world, gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars; sorcerer cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk crumbling ruins; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor.
One of the greatest writers of heroic fantasy was Robert Ervin Howard (1906-36), who lived most of his short life in Cross Plains, Texas. Howard was a voluminous writer for the pulp magazines of the time. Jack London, Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H.P. Lovecraft all influenced him.
Howard's most memorable character was Conan the Cimmerian. Conan is supposed to have lived about twelve thousand years ago, in the Hyborian Age between the sinking of Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history. A gigantic barbarian adventurer from the northern land of Cimmeria, Conan wades through rivers of blood and overcomes foes both natural and supernatural to become, at last, king of the Hyborian kingdom of Aquilonia.
Eighteen Conan stories were published in Howard's lifetime, and several more have been discovered in manuscript since his early death. It has been my privilege to edit these for publication and to revise and complete those that were unfinished.

Conan arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora (see the map) and for several years made a precarious living as a thief there and in Corinthia and Nemedia. Then he was a mercenary soldier, first in the oriental realm of Turan and then in the Hyborian kingdoms. Forced to flee from Argos, he became a pirate along the coast of Kush, in partnership with a Shemitish she-pirate, Belit, and with a crew of black corsairs. Here he earned the name of Amra, the Lion.
After Belit's death, Conan returned to the trade of mercenary in Shem and in the adjacent Hyborian kingdoms. Subsequently he adventured among the nomadic outlaws, the _kozaks_, of the eastern steppes; the pirates of the Sea of Vilayet; and the hill tribes of the Himelian Mountains on the borders of Iranistan and Vendhya. Then another stretch of soldiering in Koth and Argos, in the course of which he was briefly co-ruler of the desert city of Tombalku. Then back to the sea, first as a pirate of the Baracha Isles, then as captain of a ship of the Zingaran buccaneers. When this volume takes up, he was in his late thirties.

L. Sprague de Camp