Rexor

Rexor stands as the narrative's first and most persistent agent of destruction, the human face of the catastrophe that shatters Conan's childhood and sets the Cimmerian on his decades-long road of blood and vengeance. He is introduced as the mounted commander of the Vanir raiders who sweep down upon Conan's village, and he reappears at the climax of the story as the armored lieutenant of Thulsa Doom, the high priest of the serpent cult, and finally as Conan's doomed opponent in the last battle. More than any other figure except Doom himself, Rexor embodies the brutal, impersonal force of the world that Conan must learn to fight, and his death marks the completion of the vendetta that began with the murder of Corin the smith.

The Raid on the Cimmerian Village

Rexor first appears as the leader of the Vanir war-band that crashes through the bushes on a frozen dawn, their horses shod in iron 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 in their gloved hands, the raiders sweep down upon the hamlet, slaughtering the startled villagers. It is Rexor who, with a roar of triumph, leans from his saddle to thrust his lance between the shoulders of a fleeing mother, bearing her along limp as a rag doll before tearing the shaft loose from her mangled flesh. When the defenders are outnumbered and throw down their weapons, only Maeve, wife of Corin and mother of Conan, stands defiant, her small son beside her with his knife held at the ready. The mounted giant on the knoll then moves, picking his way down the slope with a measured control more terrible than the careless speed of fury, a veritable demon-king borne on a steed that seems no earthly horse at all. As the grim apparition passes them, the Vanir raiders bow and chant: "Hail to Commander Rexor! Hail to Rexor! And to Doom... Doom... Tulsa Doom...."

It is Rexor who personally oversees the final degradation of the village's resistance. When two raiders jeer at the half-naked Maeve and she cuts one across the back of his hand, the wounded man reaches for his sword, but Rexor emerges from the shadow of a burned-out hut, and not a word is spoken before the man wilts and withdraws. With an imperious gesture, Rexor points back along the rutted roadway on which lies the body of Corin the smith, his inert hand a finger's length away from the weapon that was his final masterpiece. A foot soldier lifts the blade, which no man could have wrested from Corin's living grasp, and brings it to his leader. Rexor raises the sword to study its splendid craftsmanship in the sun's slanting rays, while Conan, watching in fearful fascination, fights back the sobs that choke him, borne in upon him with hideous certainty that his father lives no more. His mother touches his shoulder, and a soldier laughs. This single act—the theft of Corin's masterpiece—becomes the material symbol of the entire vendetta, the object Conan will spend his life trying to reclaim.

The Master of the Wheel

After the raid, Rexor's captives are herded through the palisaded gateway of the Vanir town of Thrudvang, where 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. This Wheel of Pain, as the slaves come to call it, turns one enormous millstone upon another, grinding grain to powder beneath its ponderous weight. 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, wrapped in his greasy furs, watching hawk-like to detect the laggard or the indolent, and laying crimson welts on the shoulders of any exhausted boy who falls to his knees. Though Rexor himself does not oversee this labour, it is his raid that fills the slave pens, and the years Conan spends at the Wheel are the direct consequence of Rexor's command. The passage of time, however, transforms the relationship between the two: when they meet again, Rexor has aged, but the passage of time has somehow enhanced his presence and vitality, the brutality of his features refined by the passing years, colder than ever his eyes and deeper the lines of cruelty about his thin-lipped mouth, the iron grey that streaks his temples bespeaking a man of steel.

The High Priest of the Serpent

Rexor's second major appearance comes in the Temple of the Serpent in Zamora, where he has risen to become the black priest who guards the cult's secrets. Summoned by the simian guards to study the Cimmerian who has stolen the Eye of the Serpent, Rexor proves to be a man of gigantic stature, wearing armour of blue steel backed by black leather, with two serpents intertwined in high relief on his breast-piece. He does not remember the child snatched from his mother's side after her murder, but that does not matter: any intruder in the Temple of the Serpent is a foe-man, any uninitiated onlooker who observes the secret rites is an impious and blasphemous infidel, and the penalty is death, slow and painful death. His chill eyes take the measure of the Cimmerian seated before him, and the recognition that fails him is itself a kind of judgment: the boy he enslaved has become a man he cannot place, and the feud between them has outgrown memory. Rexor's role here is that of the enforcer of the cult's law, the guardian of its mysteries, and the instrument of its punishments, standing in the same relation to the temple's rites as he once stood to the raid on the village.

The Battle of the Burial Mounds

Rexor's final appearance is on the battlefield of the Burial Mounds, where he serves as the lieutenant of Doom, riding a dark horse and nursing his dazzled eyes after the wizard's magic has driven off the clutching hands of death. Conan, remembering Valeria's whispered words—"My love is stronger than death.... Were I dead and you in peril, I would return from Hell itself to fight beside you"—slips the giant's foot from the nearest stirrup and forces the huge man from his saddle. As Rexor lands, catlike, on his feet, Conan slaps the horse's rump, and the frightened animal careens away into the darkness. Conan rushes on Rexor, striking mercilessly at his armoured form; Rexor, his eyes recovered from the brilliance, slashes at his younger enemy. Conan deflects the blow, ducks, and rejoins the fray, driving the big man back with massive, wheeling strokes. Then, with a single overhand blow of the two-handed sword, the Cimmerian drives his steel into the cultist's neck. Rexor remains upright, a tower of muscle rooted to the ground, and then suddenly topples forward, his armour clanking, and lies still. The death of Rexor is the death of the old order that enslaved Conan, the final settling of the account that began with the raid on the village, and it clears the way for the confrontation with Doom himself.

The Lieutenant of Doom

Throughout the narrative, Rexor functions as the executive arm of Thulsa Doom's will, the one who carries out the physical violence that Doom's charisma and sorcery make possible. He is the commander who leads the raid, the priest who guards the temple, and the warrior who rides into battle at his master's side. His loyalty to Doom is absolute, and his authority over the Vanir raiders is derived entirely from his position as Doom's lieutenant, as the chant of the raiders makes clear: "Hail to Commander Rexor! Hail to Rexor! And to Doom... Doom... Tulsa Doom...." The hierarchy is explicit: Rexor is hailed first, but the ultimate allegiance is to Doom. This structure of authority—the charismatic leader and his brutal enforcer—is the model of power that the cult of Set reproduces throughout the kingdoms of the Hyborian Age, and Rexor is its most visible embodiment. His death at Conan's hands is therefore not merely the end of a personal feud but the breaking of the cult's military power, the removal of the sword that protected the serpent priest. When Conan later beheads Thulsa Doom on the steps of the Mountain of Power, he completes the work that began with Rexor's fall, and the two deaths together constitute the full destruction of the enemy that destroyed his village and his family.