Conan

Conan is the protagonist of the tale recorded in the Nemedian Chronicles, a figure who rises from the frozen wastes of Cimmeria to become Conan the Great, the mightiest lord of his day and ruler of Aquilonia, the proudest kingdom in the dreaming West. His story, as told to the scribe Kallias of Shamar in the later days of his reign, is framed as a legendary account of a thief, a reaver, and a slayer who came to tread the jewelled thrones of the Earth beneath his sandalled feet. The narrative traces his transformation from a nine-year-old boy on a storm-swept ridge to a king, with his journey marked by slavery, combat, and an unrelenting pursuit of vengeance against the man who destroyed his family.

Origins and the Riddle of Steel

Conan's formative moment occurs on a rocky ridge swept clear of snow, where his father, Corin the smith, a burly and bearded man of gigantic stature, braves a howling storm to impart the central lesson of his life. Drawing an enormous two-handed sword, the weapon of a god, Corin chants an ancient rune spell and thrusts the blade into the heart of the tempest, as if piercing the firmament itself. He tells his son that men now hold the secret of steel, but that they are mortals, weak and foolish, and must be wary of the blade's mystery and power. When the boy confesses he does not understand, Corin explains that before a man is worthy to bear a sword of steel, he must learn its riddle and understand the ways of steel, for in all the world one can trust no one—neither man nor woman nor beast, nor spirit nor demon nor god—but only a blade of well-forged steel.

Corin then cups his son's small hands within his own and curls the boy's fingers about the hilt of the great sword, delivering the philosophy that will govern Conan's life. He declares that the heart of a man is like a piece of unworked iron, which must be hammered by adversity and forged by suffering and the challenges flung by the thoughtless gods, nigh unto the point of breaking. It must be purged and hardened in the fires of conflict, purified and shaped on the anvil of despair and loss. Only when his heart has become as steel will Conan be worthy to wield a keen-edged sword in battle and win against his enemies, as did the gods when they conquered the dark giants. This lesson, imparted in the wild night of storm and incantation, becomes the foundation of Conan's identity, and he will later echo its wisdom in his final confrontation with his nemesis.

The Raid and the Road to Slavery

Conan's childhood is shattered almost immediately after his father's lesson, as he comes to learn his first lesson in suffering far too early for so young a child. The quiet of a frozen dawn is fractured by the clamour of horsemen who crash through the bushes, their iron-shod horses shattering the thin ice of the stream that parallels the village. Dark and grim, wearing leather armour scaled with iron and holding axes, spears, and swords, the raiders sweep down upon the hamlet, and Conan witnesses the brutal slaughter of his people. A fleeing mother is impaled by a rider's lance, the spearhead bursting into view between her breasts before the soldier tears the shaft loose from her mangled flesh. Corin the smith roars "The Vanir!" and plunges from his hut swinging his blacksmith's hammer, but the raid is overwhelming.

The leader of the raiders, a man in a jewelled helmet, accepts the sword of Corin the smith from his lieutenant Rexor, and the Vanir chant a portentous name: "Doom... Doom... Doom!" Conan perceives that this is no mere word of welcome but a name to conjure with, a name to fear. Doom, a lithe figure in serpentine mail, saunters up to the embattled Cimmerians, mother and son, studying the sheer perfection of the weapon in his hands. When Maeve, Conan's mother, draws up her splendid body and raises her broadsword, Doom doffs his jewelled helm, revealing a lean-jawed, darkly handsome face, and a small smile flickers across his thin lips. Without a cry or even a gasp, Maeve falls as a tree falls before the axe of the forester, and Conan stares in disbelief as his mother's severed head rolls in the mire at his feet, her pale face displaying only a dreamy-eyed look of fascination. As the hate-filled boy whips about and aims his knife at Doom's broad back, the Vanir are upon him, dragging him into a snowdrift and wresting his knife from his grasp.

Conan is marched away with the sole survivors of the dawn raid, a bedraggled line of old men, women, and children chained one to another, trudging across an endless expanse of pristine snow into slavery. Behind them, the Vanir put all buildings to the torch, trampling the hot coals and ashes under their horses' hooves so that when spring thawed the earth, no evidence would exist that here had ever been a dwelling place of men. The boy Conan staggers along, bent beneath the weight of his chain and chilled by the iron collar that clutches at his throat, his mind a turmoil of half-memories and uncomprehending dread, his emotions numbed by the living nightmare of the day's events.

The Wheel of Pain and the Pit

Conan and the other captives are herded through the palisaded gateway of a Vanir town called Thrudvang, where they are driven like cattle into slave pens offering scant protection from the elements. At dawn, the stronger and healthier among them are chained by rusty manacles to a massive wheel whose spokes are stout logs, polished smooth by the pressure of human hands, turning one enormous millstone upon another to grind grain to powder. To this Wheel of Pain, as the slaves come to call it, Conan is chained beside other ragged, dull-eyed youths and men from lands unknown or rarely mentioned in Cimmeria, while the captive women and girl-children of his village are led away to face a different, perhaps even uglier fate, never to be heard of again. The Master of the Wheel, a burly, swarthy man who seems to the labouring children to be an ogre, stands on the incline above the shallow pit, watching hawk-like to detect the laggard or the indolent, and only springs into action when an exhausted boy falls to his knees, laying crimson welts on pitiful shoulders with a vicious rawhide whip until the whimpering wretch staggers to his feet to toil once more.

After years of toil at the wheel, Conan is purchased by Toghrul, a pit master from Hyrkania, a land far to the east beyond barren Hyperborea. The red-bearded man travels with his troupe around Asgard and Vanaheim, sometimes together called Nordheim or Northlands, staging fights for the amusement of local chieftains and their gaming cronies, and Conan becomes a Pit fighter, a man-slayer battling for his life to feed the blood lust of the Nordheimers. The life of a Pit fighter is not quite the worst of lives, Conan grimly discovers, for to face an adversary and kill him is to enjoy, for a fleeting moment at least, the illusion of freedom, to be a whole man again. The gruelling torment of the Wheel had dehumanized him, but the fierce battles of the Pit restore something of manhood and self-love. Toghrul treats his favourite slaves well, seeing that they have plenty to eat and drink—rich roasts, thick wheaten bread, and mugs of foaming black ale—yet he takes care to see that his fighters do not escape, with armed guards watching them constantly and chaining them up whenever their master thinks there might be a chance of their making a break.

Conan's spirit remains unbroken despite his chains. When a Hyrkanian general asks the assembled slaves what is the best of life, Conan's mouth twitches in a shadow of a smile as he replies, "The best of life is to confront your enemy face to face, to see his hot blood spill upon the earth, and to hear the lamentations of his women!" The general's approval lights his dark eyes, and he warns Toghrul, "The Pit has not broken the spirit of your champion, O Toghrul. Neither has it sapped his will. Beware lest this young tiger some day turn and rend you!" Toghrul merely chuckles, replying, "He wears chains so that he cannot." But the general's warning proves prophetic, as Conan's journey will lead him ever closer to the man who destroyed his village.

The Road to Shadizar and the Meeting with Valeria

Conan eventually escapes his servitude and embarks on a long and weary journey to Shadizar of Zamora, the crossroads of the world, guided by a cryptic message whispered to him by a woman in the throes of passion. The journey takes him across the vast emptiness of the firmament, deep blue by day and cloudless, and by night a canopy of black velvet upon which the prodigal gods had stitched handfuls of diamonds. He travels with Subotai, a small Hyrkanian man who often trots to keep up with the limber strides of the giant Cimmerian, and the two devour the leagues with a measured pace. In Shadizar, Conan becomes involved with Valeria, a woman of fierce independence, and their relationship is marked by passion and mutual respect. However, when Conan departs eastward toward the Kezankian Mountains, he leaves Valeria sleeping, with only a handful of glittering stones, his share of the king's advance payment, on the empty pillow beside her. A tear rolls down her cheek and is instantly wiped away, as she sternly tells herself, "Pit fighters don't cry."

Conan, now clad in fine raiment with a tunic of mesh-mail, a steel cap on his head, and a cloak of well-tanned wolf skin, rides through a pass in the Kezankian Mountains, bearing the ancient sword he had taken from the cave of the grinning skeleton, now whetted to a razor edge and thrust into a splendid scabbard of reptile skin. He has grown a coarse black beard, having ignored the practice of shaving that Toghrul had compelled his fighters to observe, eager to come to grips with Doom. Years later, he tells his scribe that he knew Valeria would never understand, for her gods were not the northern gods, and he turned east but bowed his head to Valhalla, knowing his life hung on a slender thread but having no other course.

The Final Confrontation and the Beheading of Thulsa Doom

Conan's vendetta culminates in a confrontation at the Mountain of Power, where Thulsa Doom has gathered his followers. Before the frozen faces of the faithful, Doom's neck lengthens, his jaws elongate, his nose shrinks and disappears, his forehead retreats, and his lips thin and vanish, his dark eyes rounding into lidless orbs as a purple tongue flicks out to test the air. Thulsa Doom bears the scaly serpent head of the ancient snake-men, those timeless enemies of all mankind, and the congregation gasps as one. Conan's sword sighs as it sweeps up in a great arc and clove the swaying snake head from the human body, which falls backward and lies writhing like a trampled serpent at the top of the wide steps, while the severed head rolls slowly down the long flight of stairs to come to rest beside the fountain pool.

Watching the gory object fall into the purple shadows of the dying day, Conan speaks half to himself: "My father was the light of day; Thulsa Doom, my night. Yet in one thing he spoke true. What matters is not the steel within the blade, but the steel within the man." This moment completes the circle of his father's teaching, affirming that the riddle of steel is ultimately about the heart and will of the wielder, not the weapon itself. Conan then turns to the guards who still hold the assemblage at bay, raising the Eye of Set and commanding, "You who were guards of Doom, go back to the caves from which he called you.... And find another source of meat. Go." As the beast-men melt away, the former followers of Thulsa Doom stare dejectedly about them, some sobbing for their dead leader, others weeping for their lost Paradise, their moans undulating like the restless singing of the surf.

The Cimmerian Code and the Meaning of His Journey

Throughout his journey, Conan embodies a code of stoicism and self-reliance that is deeply rooted in his Cimmerian heritage. When Valeria dies, Subotai weeps for her, explaining to the shaman, "She was a friend to me, but she was everything to him. But he is a Cimmerian and must not weep. So I do weep for him." Conan stands motionless through the night as the fire burns to coals and then to ash, and when the last ash vanishes, he turns to Subotai and the shaman, saying simply, "Now we must get ready." This restraint, this refusal to display grief, is not a lack of feeling but a discipline forged in the same fires that tempered his heart into steel.

Conan's story, as recorded by Kallias of Shamar, is a testament to the power of suffering to create strength. From the boy who witnessed his mother's beheading to the slave who turned the Wheel of Pain, from the Pit fighter who killed for the adulation of the crowd to the king who rules Aquilonia, Conan's life is a continuous process of being hammered, forged, purged, and shaped on the anvil of despair and loss. His final words over Doom's severed head affirm that the true steel is within the man, and it is this inner steel, won through a lifetime of adversity, that allows him to claim the throne of the proudest kingdom in the world. The Nemedian Chronicles present his tale as one of the many legends spun about him in his youth, where it is difficult to perceive the truth amid the many legends, but the core of his story—the vendetta, the suffering, and the triumph—remains a defining myth of the Hyborian Age.