Yesterday, to kick off Cimmerian September, I reread The Phoenix on the Sword, the first Conan story published in Weird Tales magazine. The prose crackles and action is visceral. It’s easy to see why it made a strong impression on readers in 1932.
All but one of the canon Conan stories are short fiction, and can be read in one or two sittings. The Phoenix on the Sword is just over 9000 words. Punchy, pulpy and potent. There are 21 Conan stories, 5 fragments of unfinished work, a poem, and an essay. Definitely readable in September.
The sense of a huge world brimming with adventure and an existing march of history is deftly built right from the start with a quote from “The Nemedian Chronicles”, a fictional historical text that lends the story you’re about to read an air of importance.
“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars—Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen- eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.” —The Nemedian Chronicles
Then, the reader is thrust into the middle of tension – a plan to kill King Conan built on political machinations, bitter grievances, and jealousy.
Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn. Into a dim alley, one of a veritable labyrinth of mysterious winding ways, four masked figures came hurriedly from a door which a dusky hand furtively opened. They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely about them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness.
That’s right – in the first Conan story he is already King of Aquilonia! The canon Conan tales jump around the timeline, showcasing different periods of his life, building thematically rather than chronologically (Which is why I move around in the new comic series as well).
Playing against every stereotype of the lunkhead barbarian that clings to Conan’s pop culture legacy, he is introduced at a writing table, discussing the wider world — geography, history, politics, poetry, some of the experiences that led to his kingship and a wistful desire to charge into action like he did in his youth.
Behind an ivory, gold- inlaid writing-table sat a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his actions. Either he was perfectly at rest—still as a bronze statue—or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of over-tense nerves, but with a cat-like speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him.
That said, The Phoenix on the Sword doesn’t drag and there’s plenty of action once the conspirators kick off their assassination attempt. Approximately 2000 of those 9000 words are an extended action sequence that is bombastically bloody and brutal.
As he sprang from the wall his ax dropped an outlaw with a severed shoulder, and the terrible back-hand return crushed the skull of another. Swords whined venomously about him, but death passed him by breathless margins. The Cimmerian moved in, a blur of blinding speed. He was like a tiger among baboons as he leaped, side-stepped and spun, offering an ever-moving target, while his ax wove a shining wheel of death about him.
There’s also a distinct thrust of cosmic horror, a quality baked into Conan’s adventures right from the start. Creatures exist outside the physical world. Magic is mysterious, terrifying, and never under complete control.
The slavering jaws closed on the arm Conan flung up to guard his throat, but the monster made no effort to secure a death-grip. Over his mangled arm it glared fiendishly into the king’s eyes, in which there began to be mirrored a likeness of the horror which stared from the dead eyes of Ascalante. Conan felt his soul shrivel and begin to be drawn out of his body, to drown in the yellow wells of cosmic horror which glimmered spectrally in the formless chaos that was growing about him and engulfing all life and sanity. Those eyes grew and became gigantic, and in them the Cimmerian glimpsed the reality of all the abysmal and blasphemous horrors that lurk in the outer darkness of formless voids and nighted gulfs. He opened his bloody lips to shriek his hate and loathing, but only a dry rattle burst from his throat.
I’m reading for pleasure, but since I write Conan professionally it’s also research, so I keep a pad of paper close by to jot down specific words or turns of a phrase that strike a chord so I can effectively craft narration that carries similar qualities without copying word-for-word.
If you haven’t read the original Conan prose stories, I recommend the Del Rey 3-book set, which has each story unedited and essays that add context around their publication.
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