"Give me a bow," requested CONAN. "It's not my idea of a manly weapon, but I learned archery among the Hyrkanians, and it will go hard if I can't feather a man or so on yonder deck."From "Queen of the Black Coast"
"You grow sober with authority," quoth Amalric. "Such madness as that was always your particular joy."From "Black Colossus"
"Aye, when I had only my own life to consider," answered CONAN.
CONAN was basically a direct-actionist. Such subtlety as he possessed had been acquired through contact with more devious races. When taken off guard by some unexpected occurrence, he reverted instinctively to type. So now instead of hiding or slipping away in the opposite direction as the average man might have done, he ran straight down the corridor in the direction of the sound.From "Jewels of Gwahlur"
"How did you get away?" He asked presently.From "Beyond the Black River"
CONAN tapped his mail shirt and helmet.
"If more borderers would wear harness there'd be fewer skulls hanging on the altar-huts."
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"
He grinned hardly, and his fierce blue eyes burned with a light any woman could understand as they ran over her magnificent figure, lingering on the swell of her splendid breasts beneath the light shirt, and clear white flesh displayed between breaches and boot tops.From "Red Nails"
"Don't you know?" he laughed. "Haven't I made my admiration for you plain ever since I first saw you?"
"A stallion could have made it no plainer," she answered disdainfully.
It was the stealthy opening of a door which awakened the Cimmerian. He did not awake as civilised men do, drowsy and drugged and stupid. He awoke instantly, with a clear mind, recognising the sound that had interrupted his sleep.
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"
"I don't kill women ordinarily," he grunted; "though some of these hill women are she-wolves"From, "The People of the Black Circle"
In my county, no starving man is denied food, but you civilised people must have you recompense- if you are like all I have ever met. We have done no harm and are just leaving.From, "The Slithering Shadow"
CONAN agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his was the arm that carried out her ideas. It mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long as they sailed and fought. He found life goodFrom "Queen of the Black Coast"
Ishtar's curse on these on these white-livered reformers who close the grog-house! "Let men sleep rather than guzzle," they say - aye, so they can work and fight better for their masters! Soft-gutted eunuchs, I call them. When I served with the mercenaries of Corinthia we swilled and wenched all night and fought all day-From "Black Colossus"
He saw a tall, strongly made youth standing beside him. This person was as much out of place in that den as a gray wolf among the mangy rats of the gutters. His cheap tunic could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist and heavy arms. His skin was brown from outland suns, his eyes blue and smoldering; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead. From his girdle hung a sword in a worn leather scabbard.From "The Tower of the Elephant"
In strong contrast stood CONAN, grim, blood-stained, naked but for a loin-cloth, shackles on his mighty limbs, his blue eyes blazing beneath the tangled black mane that fell over his low broad forehead. He dominated the scene, turning to tinsel the pomp of the conquerors by the sheer vitality of his elemental personality, and the kings in their pride and splendour were aware of it each in his secret heart.From "The Scarlet Citadel"
Behind an ivory, gold-inlaid writing-table sat a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination born of a fighting-man.From "The Phoenix on the Sword"
There was a wolfishness about this warrior that marked the barbarian. The eyes of no civilized man, however wild or criminal, ever blazed with such fire.From "Black Colossus"
I was born in the Cimmerian hills where the people are all barbarians. I have been a mercenary soldier, a corsair, a kozak and a hundred other things. What king has roamed the countries, fought the battles, loved the women and won the plunder that I have?From, "The People of the Black Circle"
"I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or CROM's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content"From "Queen of the Black Coast"
"There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people," answered CONAN. "In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity"From "Queen of the Black Coast"
Belit shuddered. "Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny. What do you believe, CONAN."
He shrugged his shoulders. "I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply."
