SANCHA, ONCE OF KORDAVA, yawned daintily, stretched her supple limbs luxuriously, and composed herself more comfortably on the ermine-fringed silk spread on the carack's poop-deck. That the crew watched her with burning interest from the waist and forecastle she was lazily aware, just as she also aware that her short silk kirtle veiled little of her voluptuous contours from their eager eyes.From "The Pool of the Black One"
A barbarian of barbarians, the vitality and endurance of the wild were his, granting him survival were civilised men would have perished.From, "The Slithering Shadow"
At his feet rested a girl, one white arm clasping his knee, against which her blond head dropped. Her white skin contrasted with his hard bronzed limbs; her short silken tunic, low-necked and sleaveless, girdled at the waist, emphasized rather than concealed her lithe figure.From, "The Slithering Shadow"
"That's CONAN the northron, the most turbulent of all my rogues. I'd have hanged him long ago, were he not the best swordsman that ever doned a hauberk-"
I came to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe.From "The Tower of the Elephant"
He caugth me helpless with drink, Wine is a curse- by the ivory bosom of Ishtar, even as I speak of it, the traitor is here! Friend, please pour me a gobletFrom "The Scarlet Citadel"
In this stress all the venner of civilazation had faded; it was a barbarian who faced his conquerors. CONAN was a Cimmerian by birth, one of those fierce moody hillmen who dwelt in their gloomy, cloudy land in the north. His saga which led him to the throne of Aquilonia, was the basis for a whole cycle of hero-tales.From "The Scarlet Citadel"
"Their chief is CROM. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send dooms, not fortune. He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of gods?"From "Queen of the Black Coast"
I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.From "Queen of the Black Coast"
Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.From "Queen of the Black Coast"
...he crossed the chamber, while she cowered back against the wall, sobbing frantic pleas for mercy. Grasping her yellow locks with no gentle hand, he dragged her off the bed. Thrusting his blade back into its sheath, he tucked his squirming captive under his left arm, and strode to the window. Like most houses of that type, a ledge encircled each story, caused by the continuance of the window-ledges. CONAN kicked the window open and stepped out on that narrow band. If any had been near or awake, they would have witnessed the bizarre sight of a man moving carefully along the ledge, carrying a kicking, half-naked wench under his arm. They would have been no more puzzled than the girl.
Reaching the spot he sought, CONAN halted, gripping the wall with his free hand. Inside the building rose a sudden clamour, showing that the body had been discovered. His captive whimpered and twisted, renewing her importunities. CONAN glanced down into the muck and slime of the alley below; he listened briefly to the clamour inside and the pleas of the wench; then he dropped her with great accuracy into a cesspool. He enjoyed her kickings and flounderings the concentrated venom of her profanity for a few seconds, and even allowing himself a low rumble of laughter.
"Listen! I'll draw those black swine into another part of the castle and keep them busy for a while. Meanwhile you shake these fools awake, bring their swords to them- it's a fighting chance. Can you do it?"From "The Pool of the Black One."
His gods were simple and understandable; CROM was their chief, and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth dooms and death. It was useless to call on CROM, because he was a gloomy, savage god, and he hated weaklings. But he gave a man courage at birth, and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian's mind was all any god should be expected to do.From "The Tower of the Elephant"
"Wine!" gasped the king from the couch where they had lain him. They put a goblet to his bloody lips and drank like a man half dead with thirst.You can't fault a guy for liking his wine :-)
"Good!" he grunted, falling back, "Slaying is cursed dry work."
They had staunched the flow of blood, and they innate vitality of the barbarian was asserting itself.
Their gods are CROM and his dark race, who rule over a sunless place of everlasting mist, which is the world of the dead.I'm curious to see how CROM evolves through the stories, since apart from his use as an expletive, he's not getting mentioned very much so far.
...he's beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter; for he has ripped the heart from my chest when he chose to sing for me. I shall die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo's songs will live for ever.From "The Phoenix on the Sword"
"Rinaldo!" his voice was strident with desperate urgency. "Back!" I would not slay you-"
"Die, tyrant!" screamed the mad minstrel, hurling himself headlong on the king. CONAN delayed the blow he was loth to deliver, until it was too late. Only when he felt the bite of steel in is unprotected side did he strike, in a frenzy of blind desperation.
Ronaldo dropped with his skull shattered...
As in a nightmare Natala felt her tunic being stripped from her, and the next instant Thalis had jerked up her wrists and bound them barely touching the floor. Twisting her head, Natala saw Thalis unhook a jewel-handed whip from where it hung on the wall, near the ring. The lashes consisted of seven round silk cords, harder yet more pliant than leather thongs.
With a hiss of vindictive gratification, Thalis drew back her arm, and Natala shrieked as the cords curled across her loins. The tortured girl writhed, and tore agonizedly at the thongs which imprisoned her wrists.
...She had never guessed the punishing power of hard-woven silk cords. Their caress was more exquisitely painful than any birch twig or leather thongs.
He had squatted for hours in the courtyard of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of theologians and teachers and came away in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the head.
The land was torn with wars of the barons, and the people cried out under suppression and taxation. Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world.From "The Scarlet Citadel"
What word from you shall I say to your women, before I flay their dainty skins for scrolls whereon to chronicle the triumphs of Tsotha-Lanti?From "The Scarlet Citadel"
...he knew that Zamora's religion, like all things of a civilized, long-settled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals.From "The Tower of the Elephant"
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.From "The Tower of the Elephant"
...the priest must be centuries ahead of his generation, to perfect such an invention; but Conan put it down to witchcraft and troubled his head no more about it.
"How did you recognize me in this blackness?" He demanded.From, "Rogues in the House"
"I smelled the perfume you put on your hair when you came to my cell." answered Conan. I smelled it again a while ago, when I was crouching in the dark preparing to rip you open."
Murilo put lock of his black hair to his nostrils; even so the scent was barely apparent to his civilised senses, and he realised how keen must be the organs of the barbarian.
Waking to stupefied but ferocious life when they seized him, he disemboweled the captain, burst through his assailants and would have escaped, but for the liquor that still clouded his senses. Bewildered and half blind, he missed the open door in his headlong flight, and dashed his head against the stone wall so terrifically that he knocked himself senseless.From "Rogues in the House"
He spat in CONAN's face and snatched at his own sword.
The Barachan's movement was too quick for the eye to follow. His sledge-like fist crunched with a terrible impact against his tormentors jaw, and the Zingaran catapulted through the air and fell in a crumpled heap by the rail.
CONAN turned towards the others. But for a glitter in his eyes, his bearing was unchanged. But the baiting was over as suddenly as it began. The seamen lifted their companion; his broken jaw hung slack, his head lolled unnaturally.
There are brains and gut and blood to be cleaned off marble tiles, and if their god still lives, he carries more wounds than I.From "The Slithering Shadow"
"I was born in the midst of battle," he answered, tearing a chunk of meat from a huge joint with his strong teeth. "The first sound my ears heard was the clang of swords and the yells of slaying..."From "Black Colossus"
I will sweep into the lands of my ancient enemies. Their kings shall furnish me skulls for goblets, and their women and children shall be slaves of my slaves' slaves.
