Conan vs. the skeletal warrior

In the shadowed depths of a forgotten tomb, Conan, the young Cimmerian slave and Pit fighter, confronts a horror that transcends the mortal realm: an enormous skeletal warrior, clad in corroded copper armour, who rises from a marble throne to claim the very sword Conan has just taken as his own. This encounter, a clash between the living and the dead, stands as one of the most harrowing trials in Conan's early life, testing not only his prowess with a blade but the very foundations of his courage. It is a battle that forces the barbarian to confront the terrors of the grave, and through it, he emerges not merely victorious, but transformed, having won a weapon of immense power and proven that even the undead cannot stand against his will to survive.

The Tomb and the Discovery

The battle begins not with a clash of steel, but with an act of desecration born of desperation. Having descended into a lower level of a strange structure, Conan finds himself in a chamber littered with the debris of ages: rotted cloth and hard, unidentifiable lumps. Using flint and steel taken from a dead Hyrkanian, he kindles a small flame from the dry cloth, and by its feeble orange light, the true nature of his surroundings is revealed. The walls are embellished with polished stone reliefs depicting bizarre figures and forms unknown to him, and the floor is cluttered with the skulls and bones of at least a score of human beings, their flesh long since disintegrated into dust.

Peering deeper into the gloom, Conan discovers a huge throne carved from a block of opalescent material, perhaps marble or alabaster. Upon this seat of honour sits an enormous skeletal warrior, still clad in copper armour of a strange design, turned green by the corrosion of many years. Conan guesses that the living man whose bones these were had been half again as tall as he, perhaps a member of a long-forgotten race. Lighting his way with a rude torch fashioned from a femur wrapped in rotting cloth, he approaches the armed figure. Beneath the shadow of the heavy helm, the face of the skull seems frozen in a silent scream, and across its spread knees lies a great sword, sheathed in leather so rotted that patches of iron beneath the hide are visible. The hilt and pommel of corroded bronze crawl with cryptic characters, wrought by a master's hand.

The Claiming of the Sword

Conan takes up the sword, and at the touch of his fingers, the scabbard crumbles into dust, thin fragments of bronze falling to the floor with the ghost of a tinkle. The blade, now fully exposed, proves to be a huge length of dull iron, spotted with patches of corrosion, but rust has not bitten it deeply enough to affect its strength. The edge, when Conan thumbs it, is still sharp. As he caresses the perfect planes of the blade and the exquisite workmanship of the hilt, his eyes cloud with painful memories, recalling the making of the great steel sword that was his father's masterpiece. Shrugging the memory away, he hefts the ancient weapon, finding the balance so perfect that it seems made for his arm alone. He raises the sword above his head, feeling his thews swell with power and his heart beat faster with the pride of possession. With such a blade, he thinks, no destiny would be too high for a warrior to aspire to; even a barbarian slave, a Pit fighter scorned and marked for death, might hack his way to an honoured place among the rulers of the earth.

Exhilarated by the dreams the splendid weapon arouses, Conan feints and cuts the air with wild abandon, and as the keen sword slices through the stale air of the death chamber, he utters the venerable war cry of the Cimmerians. Loud and clear he shouts it, the cry reverberating around the chamber and disturbing ancient shadows and age-old dust. In his exuberance, the young barbarian never pauses to think that such a challenge, wide-flung in such a place, might rouse thoughts and feelings that have slumbered there for countless centuries among the bones of those whose thoughts they were.

The Awakening of the Dead

Suddenly, Conan hears an answering war cry. It seems to come from a great distance, carried on the wind, but there is no wind. He pauses, his sword arm still upraised, wondering if it is perhaps the wolves that howl. Again the mad cry rises, so near now that it beats against his ears and deafens him. Conan wheels, feeling the hair lift from his scalp and his blood congeal to ice, for the dead man lives and moves. Slowly, the skeleton rises from the marble throne, glaring at the Cimmerian youth from deep pits now filled, it seems, with demonic fire. Bone rubs against bone, like tree branches brushing together in a storm, as the terrible grinning skull approaches on funereal feet. Conan, his arm still raised, stands frozen by horror into immobility.

A bony claw shoots out to snatch the sword from Conan's hand. Numb with terror, he retreats step by step, only the Cimmerian's laboured breath and the clicking of bones against the stone floor breaking the silence. The dead thing backs Conan against a wall. Pit fighter though he is, ready to do battle with man or beast and fearing neither pain nor mortal foes, he is still a barbarian, and like all barbarians he fears the terrors of the grave and the monstrous beings that inhabit the dark world and the hells beneath hells. The small torch burns low as he stands paralysed by fear.

The Battle and the Victory

Then a wolf howls. Galvanized into action by that familiar sound, Conan's terror melts like the snow in spring. He brings the sword down with a chopping blow that lopps off the clutching bony claw. He swivels to the side and, in the sputtering light, searches vainly for the stairs down which he had come. Relentlessly, the helmeted skull strides forward. With swift, powerful strokes Conan defends himself. At last he finds the narrow stairs, and backing up a single step, he drives his weapon through the rusted armour, through the bare rib cage, into the area where a living heart would beat.

With a sigh like sedge blown by an autumn wind, the walking skeleton pauses in mid-step. The giant form reels, takes two tottering steps towards the throne, and collapses into a heap of bones and dust. The helmet rings like a cracked bell when it strikes the stone flooring. Then the torch flickers and goes out. For a moment, the Cimmerian stands staring into the darkness, unable to comprehend that his supernatural adversary is truly dead and that the great sword is his. Then he turns and, holding his weapon at the ready, mounts the stairs.

The Aftermath and the Wolves

Emerging into the moonlight, Conan finds the wolves still waiting for him. Howling, they bound toward him, tongues lolling from their fanged jaws. With a tight smile, he takes his stance on the ledge and raises the long blade over his head. As the first beast hurls itself toward him, Conan pivots, sweeping his sword in a horizontal arc. Caught in mid-leap, the wolf is tossed high in the air and falls, yelping, to its death on the boulders. Before he can lift his sword arm to deliver another slashing blow, a second wolf springs at him, its jaws agape. In the white light of the moon, he drives the point of his blade between the open jaws, seating it deep in the animal's gullet. The wolf's legs scramble frantically on the rounded surface of a boulder as it tries in vain to tear itself loose from the impaling blade.

At that instant, a third wolf dives at Conan from the side, snapping at his legs. Still encumbered by the spitted animal, Conan kicks out, catching the new attacker on its nose. The beast draws back with a yelp, then makes another dive, but Conan, having freed his sword, deals the attacker a blow that lays open its skull. With three of their number down, the remaining wolves draw back, whining, and trot off, tails low, disappearing into the low-lying mists. Conan spends the night hidden among the boulders on the upland, alert to the twin dangers of further attacks by hungering beasts or walking dead men from the nearby cave. In the grey dawn, he skins the three dead wolves and, tying the skins together, makes a crude mantle for protection against the cold. Some of the flesh he roasts over a small fire and eats with ravenous enjoyment; some he wraps in the skin of a wolf's leg to assuage his hunger during the journey southward.

Significance and Legacy

The battle with the skeletal warrior is more than a mere test of arms; it is a crucible that forges Conan's identity. The fear he conquers is not of a mortal enemy but of the supernatural, the deepest terror known to his barbarian soul. By overcoming it, he proves that his courage is not limited to the physical realm but extends into the spiritual, a quality that will serve him in his future confrontations with the sorcery of Thulsa Doom. The sword he claims, an ancient weapon of forgotten craftsmanship, becomes a symbol of his rising power, a tool that will carry him from the depths of slavery toward his destiny as a conqueror. The event also echoes the lessons of his past, from the raid on his Cimmerian village by the Vanir to his years chained to the Wheel of Pain, where he vowed that men shall die for the suffering inflicted upon him. This victory, won against a foe that should be unbeatable, marks the moment Conan truly begins to believe that with such a blade, no destiny is too high for a warrior to aspire to.