"But your majesty!" cried the squire in great perturbation. "The battle is lost! It were part of majesty to yield with dignity becoming one of royal blood!"From "The Hour of the Dragon"
"I have no royal blood," ground CONAN. "I am a barbarian and the son of a blacksmith."
Tarascus spoke.From "The Hour of the Dragon"
"You have not yet named my ransom."
CONAN laughed and slapped his sword home in its scabbard. He flexed his mighty arms, and ran his blood-stained fingers through his thick black locks, as if feeling there his re-won crown.
"There is a girl in your seraglio named Zenobia."
"Why, yes, so there is."
"Very well." The king smiled as at an exceedingly pleasant memory. "She shall be your ransom, and naught else. I will come to Belverus for her as I promised. She was a slave in Nemidia, but I will make her queen of Aquilonia"
It was a girl who stood grasping the bars with her slender fingers. The dim glow behind her outlined her supple figure through the wisp of silk twisted about her loins, and shone vaguely on jewelled breast-plates. Her dark eyes gleamed in the shadows, her white limbs glistened softly, like alabaster. Her hair was a mass of dark foam, at the burnished luster of which the dim light hinted.From "The Hour of the Dragon"
He inspected the weapon the girl had given him, and smiled grimly. Whatever else she might be, she was proven by that dagger to be a person of practical intelligence. It was no slender stiletto, selected because of a jeweled hilt or gold guard, fitted only for dainty murder in milady's boudoir; it was a forthright poniard, a warrior's weapon, broad-bladed, fifteen inches in length, tapering to a diamond-sharp point.From "The Hour of the Dragon"
It floated hazily, then leaped into startling clarity- a tall man, mightily shouldered and deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He was clad in silk and velvet, with the royal lions of Aquilonia worked in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shone on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed more natural to him than the regal accouterments. His brow was low and broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner fire. His dark scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man and his velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his limbs.From "The Hour of the Dragon"
CONAN had been told dark tales of hidden where intense smoke drifted up incessantly from black altars were kidnapped humans were sacrificed before a great coiled serpent, whose fearsome head swayed for ever in the haunted shadows.From, "The Hour of the Dragon"
Persecution caused the followers of Asura to hide their temples with cunning art, and to veil their rituals in obscurity; and this secrecy, in turn, evoked more monstrous suspicion and tales of evil.
But CONAN's was the broad tolerance of the barbarian, and he had refused to persecute the followers of Asura or to allow the people to do so on no better evidence than was presented against them, rumours and accusations that could not be proven. "If they are black magicians," he had said, "how will they suffer you to harry them? If they are not, there is no evil in them. Crom's devils! Let men worship what gods they will."
Their present king is the most renowned warrior among the western nations. He is an outlander, an adventurer who sized the crown by force during a time of civil strife, strangling King Namedies with his own hands, upon the very throne. His name is CONAN, and no man can stand before him in battle.From, "The Hour of the Dragon"
