Written circa 1934, reading from pages 405-406, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, Del Ray, 2003, NY

One of Howard’s best Conan stories was The Frost Giant’s Daughter, which was rejected by his editor. I am of the opinion that this fragment was a second chance at the same theme, with Conan the last survivor on a battlefield. This is a dark piece, as Conan wanders the field looking for loot, dragging his great sword behind him, only to find that camp followers and other human scavengers have already taken all the good loot. He hears the moans of a wounded soldier, only to find a bloody naked girl in agony. He decides to put her put of her misery with his sword—rejection notice!—until she pleads for help. Within 250 words he is waist deep in female machinations as he carries the woman to the city outside of which the battle was fought.

In Part 2 of the fragment the reader is taken into one of Howard’s better atmospheric horror scenes, as the citizens of the city of Yaralet, which Conan is even then seeking access to, are shivering in dread behind barred windows and bolted doors, ‘No watchmen walked the streets, no painted wenches beckoned from the shadows, no thieves stole nimbly through the winding alleys.’

Howard then brings us to a conversation between a certain Prince Than and a shrewd merchant who is afflicted with a muscular disease or nervous condition. Honestly, this fragment had the makings of one of Howard’s best tales. The characters were cleanly etched and Conan takes the stage as he does best, as a brutal barbarian, battle weary, and not about to take any civilized crap, or be deterred by some supernatural terror.

Howard has returned, briefly, in this fragment, to his wolf metaphor for the alienated man at odds with a corrupt world order, represented by the prince and the merchant and their haunted city. If done as a western this could read something like High Plains Drifter.

I might try my hand at writing his piece. If I ever do a Conan story it will be this one.