80 Years of Conan: "The Phoenix on the Sword" - Chapter V

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?

I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.

The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;

Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king.

 - The Road of Kings.

80 Years of Conan: "The Phoenix on the Sword" - Chapter IV

When the world was young and men were weak, and the fiends of the night walked free,

I strove with Set by fire and steel and the juice of the upas-tree;

Now that I sleep in the mount's black heart, and the ages take their toll,

Forget ye him who fought with the Snake to save the human soul? 

80 Years of Conan: "The Phoenix on the Sword" - Chapter III

Under the caverned pyramids great Set coils asleep;
Among the shadows of the tombs his dusky people creep.
I speak the Word from the hidden gulfs that never knew the sun
Send me a servant for my hate, oh scaled and shining One!

80 Years of Conan: "The Phoenix on the Sword" - Chapter II

When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat,

The people scattered gold-dust before my horses feet;

But now I am a great king, the people hound my track

With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.

                    — The Road of Kings.

80 Years of Conan: "The Phoenix on the Sword" - Chapter I

    Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn. Into a dim alley, one of a veritable labyrinth of mysterious winding ways, four masked figures came hurriedly from a door which a dusky hand furtively opened. They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely about them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness. Behind them a sardonic countenance was framed in the partly opened door; a pair of evil eyes glittered malevolently in the gloom.
    “Go into the night, creatures of the night,” a voice mocked. “Oh, fools, your doom hounds your heels like a blind dog, and you know it not.”
 - "The Phoenix on the Sword"

80 Years of Conan: "The Phoenix on the Sword" - Introduction

Red Fury's a lucky man!

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.”
- The Nemedian Chronicles, "The Phoenix on the Sword"

So the legend began in December of 1932. The newspaper kiosks, magazine stands, and newsagent shelves carrying Weird Tales received the latest edition, Volume 20, Number 6, and a new cultural icon strode into the popular consciousness. Not yet the fantasy juggernaut of later decades, Conan the Cimmerian's first appearance in any medium was nonetheless auspicious indeed. Could anyone have any idea of how this issue would change the course of fantasy fiction forever?

Taking Things Literally

After my Elves in the Hyborian Age post, I was pondering this extract from "The Phoenix on the Sword":

“They will continue to think that I serve them, until our present task is completed. Who are they to match wits with Ascalante? Volmana, the dwarfish count of Karaban; Gromel, the giant commander of the Black Legion; Dion, the fat baron of Attalus; Rinaldo, the hare-brained minstrel. I am the force which has welded together the steel in each, and by the clay in each, I will crush them when the time comes. But that lies in the future; tonight the king dies.”

Wouldn't it be amusing (well, irritating to an extent, but amusing in the long run) if a future comic adaptation took "dwarfish" and "giant" altogether too literally? Conan and the Midnight God made the Giant-Kings into literal giants, after all.