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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hyborian Age, by Robert E. Howard
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Hyborian Age
-
-Author: Robert E. Howard
-
-Release Date: February 24, 2013 [EBook #42182]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HYBORIAN AGE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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-
-                          THE HYBORIAN AGE
-
-                         By Robert E. Howard
-
-    [Transcriber's Note: This etext was first published in The
-    Phantagraph February, August, and October-November 1936 issues.
-    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
-    copyright on this publication was renewed.]
-
-
-    (Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to
-    advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a
-    fictional background for a series of fiction-stories. When I began
-    writing the Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this 'history'
-    of his age and the peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his
-    sagas a greater aspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to
-    the 'facts' and spirit of that history, in writing the stories, it
-    was easier to visualize (and therefore to present) him as a real
-    flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready-made product. In
-    writing about him and his adventures in the various kingdoms of his
-    Age, I have never violated the 'facts' or spirit of the 'history'
-    here set down, but have followed the lines of that history as
-    closely as the writer of actual historical-fiction follows the lines
-    of actual history. I have used this 'history' as a guide in all the
-    stories in this series that I have written.)
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Of that epoch known by the Nemedian chroniclers as the Pre-Cataclysmic
-Age, little is known except the latter part, and that is veiled in the
-mists of legendry. Known history begins with the waning of the
-Pre-Cataclysmic civilization, dominated by the kingdoms of Kamelia,
-Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule and Commoria. These peoples spoke a
-similar language, arguing a common origin. There were other kingdoms,
-equally civilized, but inhabited by different, and apparently older
-races.
-
-The barbarians of that age were the Picts, who lived on islands far out
-on the western ocean; the Atlanteans, who dwelt on a small continent
-between the Pictish Islands and the main, or Thurian Continent; and the
-Lemurians, who inhabited a chain of large islands in the eastern
-hemisphere.
-
-There were vast regions of unexplored land. The civilized kingdoms,
-though enormous in extent, occupied a comparatively small portion of the
-whole planet. Valusia was the western-most kingdom of the Thurian
-Continent; Grondar the eastern-most. East of Grondar, whose people were
-less highly cultured than those of their kindred kingdoms, stretched a
-wild and barren expanse of deserts. Among the less arid stretches of
-desert, in the jungles, and among the mountains, lived scattered clans
-and tribes of primitive savages. Far to the south there was a mysterious
-civilization, unconnected with the Thurian culture, and apparently
-pre-human in its nature. On the far-eastern shores of the Continent
-there lived another race, human, but mysterious and non-Thurian, with
-which the Lemurians from time to time came in contact. They apparently
-came from a shadowy and nameless continent lying somewhere east of the
-Lemurian Islands.
-
-The Thurian civilization was crumbling; their armies were composed
-largely of barbarian mercenaries. Picts, Atlanteans and Lemurians were
-their generals, their statesmen, often their kings. Of the bickerings of
-the kingdoms, and the wars between Valusia and Commoria, as well as the
-conquests by which the Atlanteans founded a kingdom on the mainland,
-there were more legends than accurate history.
-
-Then the Cataclysm rocked the world. Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and the
-Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new
-continent. Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves,
-or sinking, formed great inland lakes and seas. Volcanoes broke forth
-and terrific earthquakes shook down the shining cities of the empires.
-Whole nations were blotted out.
-
-The barbarians fared a little better than the civilized races. The
-inhabitants of the Pictish Islands were destroyed, but a great colony of
-them, settled among the mountains of Valusia's southern frontier to
-serve as a buffer against foreign invasion, was untouched. The
-Continental kingdom of the Atlanteans likewise escaped the common ruin,
-and to it came thousands of their tribesmen in ships from the sinking
-land. Many Lemurians escaped to the eastern coast of the Thurian
-Continent, which was comparatively untouched. There they were enslaved
-by the ancient race which already dwelt there, and their history, for
-thousands of years, is a history of brutal servitude.
-
-In the western part of the Continent, changing conditions created
-strange forms of plant and animal life. Thick jungles covered the
-plains, great rivers cut their roads to the sea, wild mountains were
-heaved up, and lakes covered the ruins of old cities in fertile valleys.
-To the Continental kingdom of the Atlanteans, from sunken areas, swarmed
-myriads of beasts and savages--ape-men and apes. Forced to battle
-continually for their lives, they yet managed to retain vestiges of
-their former state of highly advanced barbarism. Robbed of metals and
-ores, they became workers in stone like their distant ancestors, and
-had attained a real artistic level, when their struggling culture came
-into contact with the powerful Pictish nation. The Picts had also
-reverted to flint, but had advanced more rapidly in the matter of
-population and war-science. They had none of the Atlanteans' artistic
-nature; they were a ruder, more practical, more prolific race. They left
-no pictures painted or carved on ivory, as did their enemies, but they
-left remarkably efficient flint weapons in plenty.
-
-These stone-age kingdoms clashed, and in a series of bloody wars, the
-outnumbered Atlanteans were hurled back into a state of savagery, and
-the evolution of the Picts was halted. Five hundred years after the
-Cataclysm the barbaric kingdoms have vanished. It is now a nation of
-savages--the Picts--carrying on continual warfare with tribes of
-savages--the Atlanteans. The Picts had the advantage of numbers and
-unity, whereas the Atlanteans had fallen into loosely knit clans. That
-was the west of that day.
-
-In the distant east, cut off from the rest of the world by the heaving
-up of gigantic mountains and the forming of a chain of vast lakes, the
-Lemurians are toiling as slaves of their ancient masters. The far south
-is still veiled in mystery. Untouched by the Cataclysm, its destiny is
-still pre-human. Of the civilized races of the Thurian Continent, a
-remnant of one of the non-Valusian nations dwells among the low
-mountains of the southeast--the Zhemri. Here and there about the world
-are scattered clans of apish savages, entirely ignorant of the rise and
-fall of the great civilizations. But in the far north another people are
-slowly coming into existence.
-
-At the time of the Cataclysm, a band of savages, whose development was
-not much above that of the Neanderthal, fled to the north to escape
-destruction. They found the snow-countries inhabited only by a species
-of ferocious snow-apes--huge shaggy white animals, apparently native to
-that climate. These they fought and drove beyond the Arctic circle, to
-perish, as the savages thought. The latter, then, adapted themselves to
-their hardy new environment and throve.
-
-After the Pictish-Atlantean wars had destroyed the beginnings of what
-might have been a new culture, another, lesser cataclysm further altered
-the appearance of the original continent, left a great inland sea where
-the chain of lakes had been, to further separate west from east, and the
-attendant earthquakes, floods and volcanoes completed the ruin of the
-barbarians which their tribal wars had begun.
-
-A thousand years after the lesser cataclysm, the western world is seen
-to be a wild country of jungles and lakes and torrential rivers. Among
-the forest-covered hills of the northwest exist wandering bands of
-ape-men, without human speech, or the knowledge of fire or the use of
-implements. They are the descendants of the Atlanteans, sunk back into
-the squalling chaos of jungle-bestiality from which ages ago their
-ancestors so laboriously crawled. To the southwest dwell scattered clans
-of degraded, cave-dwelling savages, whose speech is of the most
-primitive form, yet who still retain the name of Picts, which has come
-to mean merely a term designating men--themselves, to distinguish them
-from the true beasts with which they contend for life and food. It is
-their only link with their former stage. Neither the squalid Picts nor
-the apish Atlanteans have any contact with other tribes or peoples.
-
-Far to the east, the Lemurians, levelled almost to a bestial plane
-themselves by the brutishness of their slavery, have risen and destroyed
-their masters. They are savages stalking among the ruins of a strange
-civilization. The survivors of that civilization, who have escaped the
-fury of their slaves, have come westward. They fall upon that mysterious
-pre-human kingdom of the south and overthrow it, substituting their own
-culture, modified by contact with the older one. The newer kingdom is
-called Stygia, and remnants of the older nation seemed to have survived,
-and even been worshipped, after the race as a whole had been destroyed.
-
-Here and there in the world small groups of savages are showing signs of
-an upward trend; these are scattered and unclassified. But in the north,
-the tribes are growing. These people are called Hyborians, or Hybori;
-their god was Bori--some great chief, whom legend made even more ancient
-as the king who led them into the north, in the days of the great
-Cataclysm, which the tribes remember only in distorted folklore.
-
-They have spread over the north, and are pushing southward in leisurely
-treks. So far they have not come in contact with any other races; their
-wars have been with one another. Fifteen hundred years in the north
-country have made them a tall, tawny-haired, grey-eyed race, vigorous
-and warlike, and already exhibiting a well-defined artistry and poetism
-of nature. They still live mostly by the hunt, but the southern tribes
-have been raising cattle for some centuries. There is one exception in
-their so far complete isolation from other races: a wanderer into the
-far north returned with the news that the supposedly deserted ice wastes
-were inhabited by an extensive tribe of ape-like men, descended, he
-swore, from the beasts driven out of the more habitable land by the
-ancestors of the Hyborians. He urged that a large war-party be sent
-beyond the arctic circle to exterminate these beasts, whom he swore were
-evolving into true men. He was jeered at; a small band of adventurous
-young warriors followed him into the north, but none returned.
-
-But tribes of the Hyborians were drifting south, and as the population
-increased this movement became extensive. The following age was an epoch
-of wandering and conquest. Across the history of the world tribes and
-drifts of tribes move and shift in an everchanging panorama.
-
-Look at the world five hundred years later. Tribes of tawny-haired
-Hyborians have moved southward and westward, conquering and destroying
-many of the small unclassified clans. Absorbing the blood of conquered
-races, already the descendants of the older drifts have begun to show
-modified racial traits, and these mixed races are attacked fiercely by
-new, purer-blooded drifts, and swept before them, as a broom sweeps
-debris impartially, to become even more mixed and mingled in the tangled
-debris of races and tag-ends of races.
-
-As yet the conquerors have not come in contact with the older races. To
-the southeast the descendants of the Zhemri, given impetus by new blood
-resulting from admixture with some unclassified tribe, are beginning to
-seek to revive some faint shadow of their ancient culture. To the west
-the apish Atlanteans are beginning the long climb upward. They have
-completed the cycle of existence; they have long forgotten their former
-existence as men; unaware of any other former state, they are starting
-the climb unhelped and unhindered by human memories. To the south of
-them the Picts remain savages, apparently defying the laws of Nature by
-neither progressing nor retrogressing. Far to the south dreams the
-ancient mysterious kingdom of Stygia. On its eastern borders wander
-clans of nomadic savages, already known as the Sons of Shem.
-
-Next to the Picts, in the broad valley of Zingg, protected by great
-mountains, a nameless band of primitives, tentatively classified as akin
-to the Shemites, has evolved an advanced agricultural system and
-existence.
-
-Another factor has added to the impetus of Hyborian drift. A tribe of
-that race has discovered the use of stone in building, and the first
-Hyborian kingdom has come into being--the rude and barbaric kingdom of
-Hyperborea, which had its beginning in a crude fortress of boulders
-heaped to repel tribal attack. The people of this tribe soon abandoned
-their horse-hide tents for stone houses, crudely but mightily built, and
-thus protected, they grew strong. There are few more dramatic events in
-history than the rise of the rude, fierce kingdom of Hyperborea, whose
-people turned abruptly from their nomadic life to rear dwellings of
-naked stone, surrounded by cyclopean walls--a race scarcely emerged from
-the polished stone age, who had by a freak of chance, learned the first
-rude principles of architecture.
-
-The rise of this kingdom drove forth many other tribes, for, defeated in
-the war, or refusing to become tributary to their castle-dwelling
-kinsmen, many clans set forth on long treks that took them halfway
-around the world. And already the more northern tribes are beginning to
-be harried by gigantic blond savages, not much more advanced than
-ape-men.
-
-The tale of the next thousand years is the tale of the rise of the
-Hyborians, whose warlike tribes dominate the western world. Rude
-kingdoms are taking shape. The tawny-haired invaders have encountered
-the Picts, driving them into the barren lands of the west. To the
-northwest, the descendants of the Atlanteans, climbing unaided from
-apedom into primitive savagery, have not yet met the conquerors. Far to
-the east the Lemurians are evolving a strange semi-civilization of their
-own. To the south the Hyborians have founded the kingdom of Koth, on the
-borders of those pastoral countries known as the Lands of Shem, and the
-savages of those lands, partly through contact with the Hyborians,
-partly through contact with the Stygians who have ravaged them for
-centuries, are emerging from barbarism. The blond savages of the far
-north have grown in power and numbers so that the northern Hyborian
-tribes move southward, driving their kindred clans before them. The
-ancient kingdom of Hyperborea is overthrown by one of these northern
-tribes, which, however, retains the old name. Southeast of Hyperborea a
-kingdom of the Zhemri has come into being, under the name of Zamora. To
-the southwest, a tribe of Picts have invaded the fertile valley of
-Zingg, conquered the agricultural people there, and settled among them.
-This mixed race was in turn conquered later by a roving tribe of Hybori,
-and from these mingled elements came the kingdom of Zingara.
-
-Five hundred years later the kingdoms of the world are clearly defined.
-The kingdoms of the Hyborians--Aquilonia, Nemedia, Brythunia,
-Hyperborea, Koth, Ophir, Argos, Corinthia, and one known as the Border
-Kingdom--dominate the western world. Zamora lies to the east, and
-Zingara to the southwest of these kingdoms--people alike in darkness of
-complexion and exotic habits, but otherwise unrelated. Far to the south
-sleeps Stygia, untouched by foreign invasion, but the peoples of Shem
-have exchanged the Stygian yoke for the less galling one of Koth. The
-dusky masters have been driven south of the great river Styx, Nilus, or
-Nile, which, flowing north from the shadowy hinterlands, turns almost at
-right angles and flows almost due west through the pastoral meadowlands
-of Shem, to empty into the great sea. North of Aquilonia, the
-western-most Hyborian kingdom, are the Cimmerians, ferocious savages,
-untamed by the invaders, but advancing rapidly because of contact with
-them; they are the descendants of the Atlanteans, now progressing more
-steadily than their old enemies the Picts, who dwell in the wilderness
-west of Aquilonia.
-
-Another five centuries and the Hybori peoples are the possessors of a
-civilization so virile that contact with it virtually snatched out of
-the wallow of savagery such tribes as it touched. The most powerful
-kingdom is Aquilonia, but others vie with it in strength and mixed race;
-the nearest to the ancient root-stock are the Gundermen of Gunderland, a
-northern province of Aquilonia. But this mixing has not weakened the
-race. They are supreme in the western world, though the barbarians of
-the wastelands are growing in strength.
-
-In the north, golden-haired, blue-eyed barbarians, descendants of the
-blond arctic savages, have driven the remaining Hyborian tribes out of
-the snow countries, except the ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, which
-resists their onslaught. Their country is called Nordheim, and they are
-divided into the red-haired Vanir of Vanaheim, and the yellow-haired
-Ęsir of Asgard.
-
-Now the Lemurians enter history again as Hyrkanians. Through the
-centuries they have pushed steadily westward, and now a tribe skirts the
-southern end of the great inland sea--Vilayet--and establishes the
-kingdom of Turan on the southwestern shore. Between the inland sea and
-the eastern borders of the native kingdoms lie vast expanses of steppes
-and in the extreme north and extreme south, deserts. The non-Hyrkanian
-dwellers of these territories are scattered and pastoral, unclassified
-in the north, Shemitish in the south, aboriginal, with a thin strain of
-Hyborian blood from wandering conquerors. Toward the latter part of the
-period other Hyrkanian clans push westward, around the northern
-extremity of the inland sea, and clash with the eastern outposts of the
-Hyperboreans.
-
-Glance briefly at the peoples of that age. The dominant of Hyborians are
-no longer uniformly tawny-haired and grey-eyed. They have mixed with
-other races. There is a strong Shemitish, even a Stygian strain among
-the peoples of Koth, and to a lesser extent, of Argos, while in the case
-of the latter, admixture with the Zingarans has been more extensive than
-with the Shemites. The eastern Brythunians have intermarried with the
-dark-skinned Zamorians, and the people of southern Aquilonia have mixed
-with the brown Zingarans until black hair and brown eyes are the
-dominant type in Poitain, the southern-most province. The ancient
-kingdom of Hyperborea is more aloof than the others, yet there is alien
-blood in plenty in its veins, from the capture of foreign
-women--Hyrkanians, Ęsir and Zamorians. Only in the province of
-Gunderland, where the people keep no slaves, is the pure Hyborian stock
-found unblemished. But the barbarians have kept their bloodstream pure;
-the Cimmerians are tall and powerful, with dark hair and blue or grey
-eyes. The people of Nordheim are of similar build, but with white skins,
-blue eyes and golden or red hair. The Picts are of the same type as
-they always were--short, very dark, with black eyes and hair. The
-Hyrkanians are dark and generally tall and slender, though a squat
-slant-eyed type is more and more common among them, resulting from
-mixture with a curious race of intelligent, though stunted, aborigines,
-conquered by them among the mountains east of Vilayet, on their westward
-drift. The Shemites are generally of medium height, though sometimes
-when mixed with Stygian blood, gigantic, broadly and strongly built,
-with hook noses, dark eyes and blue-black hair. The Stygians are tall
-and well made, dusky, straight-featured--at least the ruling classes are
-of that type. The lower classes are a down-trodden, mongrel horde, a
-mixture of negroid, Stygian, Shemitish, even Hyborian bloods. South of
-Stygia are the vast black kingdoms of the Amazons, the Kushites, the
-Atlaians and the hybrid empire of Zembabwe.
-
-Between Aquilonia and the Pictish wilderness lie the Bossonian marches,
-peopled by descendants of an aboriginal race, conquered by a tribe of
-Hyborians, early in the first ages of the Hyborian drift. This mixed
-people never attained the civilization of the purer Hyborians, and was
-pushed by them to the very fringe of the civilized world. The Bossonians
-are of medium height and complexion, their eyes brown or grey, and they
-are mesocephalic. They live mainly by agriculture, in large walled
-villages, and are part of the Aquilonian kingdom. Their marches extend
-from the Border Kingdom in the north to Zingara in the southwest,
-forming a bulwark for Aquilonia against both the Cimmerians and the
-Picts. They are stubborn defensive fighters, and centuries of warfare
-against northern and western barbarians have caused them to evolve a
-type of defense almost impregnable against direct attack.
-
-Five hundred years later the Hyborian civilization was swept away. Its
-fall was unique in that it was not brought about by internal decay, but
-by the growing power of the barbarian nations and the Hyrkanians. The
-Hyborian peoples were overthrown while their vigorous culture was in its
-prime.
-
-Yet it was Aquilonia's greed which brought about that overthrow, though
-indirectly. Wishing to extend their empire, her kings made war on their
-neighbors. Zingara, Argos and Ophir were annexed outright, with the
-western cities of Shem, which had, with their more eastern kindred,
-recently thrown off the yoke of Koth. Koth itself, with Corinthia and
-the eastern Shemitish tribes, was forced to pay Aquilonia tribute and
-lend aid in wars. An ancient feud had existed between Aquilonia and
-Hyperborea, and the latter now marched to meet the armies of her western
-rival. The plains of the Border Kingdom were the scene of a great and
-savage battle, in which the northern hosts were utterly defeated, and
-retreated into their snowy fastnesses, whither the victorious
-Aquilonians did not pursue them. Nemedia, which had successfully
-resisted the western kingdom for centuries, now drew Brythunia and
-Zamora, and secretly, Koth, into an alliance which bade fair to crush
-the rising empire. But before their armies could join battle, a new
-enemy appeared in the east, as the Hyrkanians made their first real
-thrust at the western world. Reinforced by adventurers from east of
-Vilayet, the riders of Turan swept over Zamora, devastated eastern
-Corinthia, and were met on the plains of Brythunia by the Aquilonians
-who defeated them and hurled them flying eastward. But the back of the
-alliance was broken, and Nemedia took the defensive in future wars,
-aided occasionally by Brythunia and Hyperborea, and, secretly, as usual,
-by Koth. This defeat of the Hyrkanians showed the nations the real power
-of the western kingdom, whose splendid armies were augmented by
-mercenaries, many of them recruited among the alien Zingarans, and the
-barbaric Picts and Shemites. Zamora was reconquered from the Hyrkanians,
-but the people discovered that they had merely exchanged an eastern
-master for a western master. Aquilonian soldiers were quartered there,
-not only to protect the ravaged country, but also to keep the people in
-subjection. The Hyrkanians were not convinced; three more invasions
-burst upon the Zamorian borders, and the Lands of Shem, and were hurled
-back by the Aquilonians, though the Turanian armies grew larger as
-hordes of steel-clad riders rode out of the east, skirting the southern
-extremity of the inland sea.
-
-But it was in the west that a power was growing destined to throw down
-the kings of Aquilonia from their high places. In the north there was
-incessant bickering along the Cimmerian borders between the black-haired
-warriors and the Nordheimir; and the Ęsir, between wars with the Vanir,
-assailed Hyperborea and pushed back the frontier, destroying city after
-city. The Cimmerians also fought the Picts and Bossonians impartially,
-and several times raided into Aquilonia itself, but their wars were less
-invasions than mere plundering forays.
-
-But the Picts were growing amazingly in population and power. By a
-strange twist of fate, it was largely due to the efforts of one man, and
-he an alien, that they set their feet upon the ways that led to eventual
-empire. This man was Arus, a Nemedian priest, a natural-born reformer.
-What turned his mind toward the Picts is not certain, but this much is
-history--he determined to go into the western wilderness and modify the
-rude ways of the heathen by the introduction of the gentle worship of
-Mitra. He was not daunted by the grisly tales of what had happened to
-traders and explorers before him, and by some whim of fate he came among
-the people he sought, alone and unarmed, and was not instantly speared.
-
-The Picts had benefited by contact with Hyborian civilization, but they
-had always fiercely resisted that contact. That is to say, they had
-learned to work crudely in copper and tin, which were found scantily in
-their country, and for which latter metal they raided into the mountains
-of Zingara, or traded hides, whale's teeth, walrus tusks and such few
-things as savages have to trade. They no longer lived in caves and
-tree-shelters, but built tents of hides, and crude huts, copied from
-those of the Bossonians. They still lived mainly by the chase, since
-their wilds swarmed with game of all sorts, and the rivers and sea with
-fish, but they had learned how to plant grain, which they did sketchily,
-preferring to steal it from their neighbors the Bossonians and
-Zingarans. They dwelt in clans which were generally at feud with each
-other, and their simple customs were blood-thirsty and utterly
-inexplicable to a civilized man, such as Arus of Nemedia. They had no
-direct contact with the Hyborians, since the Bossonians acted as a
-buffer between them. But Arus maintained that they were capable of
-progress, and events proved the truth of his assertion--though scarcely
-in the way he meant.
-
-Arus was fortunate in being thrown in with a chief of more than usual
-intelligence--Gorm by name. Gorm cannot be explained, any more than
-Genghis Khan, Othman, Attila, or any of those individuals, who, born in
-naked lands among untutored barbarians, yet possess the instinct for
-conquest and empire-building. In a sort of bastard-Bossonian, the priest
-made the chief understand his purpose, and though extremely puzzled,
-Gorm gave him permission to remain among his tribe unbutchered--a case
-unique in the history of the race. Having learned the language Arus set
-himself to work to eliminate the more unpleasant phases of Pictish
-life--such as human sacrifice, blood-feud, and the burning alive of
-captives. He harangued Gorm at length, whom he found to be an
-interested, if unresponsive listener. Imagination reconstructs the
-scene--the black-haired chief, in his tiger-skins and necklace of human
-teeth, squatting on the dirt floor of the wattle hut, listening intently
-to the eloquence of the priest, who probably sat on a carven,
-skin-covered block of mahogany provided in his honor--clad in the silken
-robes of a Nemedian priest, gesturing with his slender white hands as he
-expounded the eternal rights and justices which were the truths of
-Mitra. Doubtless he pointed with repugnance at the rows of skulls which
-adorned the walls of the hut and urged Gorm to forgive his enemies
-instead of putting their bleached remnants to such use. Arus was the
-highest product of an innately artistic race, refined by centuries of
-civilization; Gorm had behind him a heritage of a hundred thousand years
-of screaming savagery--the pad of the tiger was in his stealthy step,
-the grip of the gorilla in his black-nailed hands, the fire that burns
-in a leopard's eyes burned in his.
-
-Arus was a practical man. He appealed to the savage's sense of material
-gain; he pointed out the power and splendor of the Hyborian kingdoms, as
-an example of the power of Mitra, whose teachings and works had lifted
-them up to their high places. And he spoke of cities, and fertile
-plains, marble walls and iron chariots, jeweled towers, and horsemen in
-their glittering armor riding to battle. And Gorm, with the unerring
-instinct of the barbarian, passed over his words regarding gods and
-their teachings, and fixed on the material powers thus vividly
-described. There in that mud-floored wattle hut, with the silk-robed
-priest on the mahogany block, and the dark-skinned chief crouching in
-his tiger-hides, was laid the foundations of empire.
-
-As has been said, Arus was a practical man. He dwelt among the Picts and
-found much that an intelligent man could do to aid humanity, even when
-that humanity was cloaked in tiger-skins and wore necklaces of human
-teeth. Like all priests of Mitra, he was instructed in many things. He
-found that there were vast deposits of iron ore in the Pictish hills,
-and he taught the natives to mine, smelt and work it into
-implements--agricultural implements, as he fondly believed. He
-instituted other reforms, but these were the most important things he
-did: he instilled in Gorm a desire to see the civilized lands of the
-world; he taught the Picts how to work in iron; and he established
-contact between them and the civilized world. At the chiefs request he
-conducted him and some of his warriors through the Bossonian marches,
-where the honest villagers stared in amazement, into the glittering
-outer world.
-
-Arus no doubt thought that he was making converts right and left,
-because the Picts listened to him, and refrained from smiting him with
-their copper axes. But the Pict was little calculated to seriously
-regard teachings which bade him forgive his enemy and abandon the
-warpath for the ways of honest drudgery. It has been said that he lacked
-artistic sense; his whole nature led to war and slaughter. When the
-priest talked of the glories of the civilized nations, his dark-skinned
-listeners were intent, not on the ideals of his religion, but on the
-loot which he unconsciously described in the narration of rich cities
-and shining lands. When he told how Mitra aided certain kings to
-overcome their enemies, they paid scant heed to the miracles of Mitra,
-but they hung on the description of battle-lines, mounted knights, and
-maneuvers of archers and spearmen. They harkened with keen dark eyes and
-inscrutable countenances, and they went their ways without comment, and
-heeded with flattering intentness his instructions as to the working of
-iron, and kindred arts.
-
-Before his coming they had filched steel weapons and armor from the
-Bossonians and Zingarans, or had hammered out their own crude arms from
-copper and bronze. Now a new world opened to them, and the clang of
-sledges re-echoed throughout the land. And Gorm, by virtue of this new
-craft, began to assert his dominance over other clans, partly by war,
-partly by craft and diplomacy, in which latter art he excelled all other
-barbarians.
-
-Picts now came and went freely into Aquilonia, under safe-conduct, and
-they returned with more information as to armor-forging and
-sword-making. More, they entered Aquilonia's mercenary armies, to the
-unspeakable disgust of the sturdy Bossonians. Aquilonia's kings toyed
-with the idea of playing the Picts against the Cimmerians, and possibly
-thus destroying both menaces, but they were too busy with their policies
-of aggression in the south and east to pay much heed to the vaguely
-known lands of the west, from which more and more stocky warriors
-swarmed to take service among the mercenaries.
-
-These warriors, their service completed, went back to their wilderness
-with good ideas of civilized warfare, and that contempt for civilization
-which arises from familiarity with it. Drums began to beat in the hills,
-gathering-fires smoked on the heights, and savage sword-makers hammered
-their steel on a thousand anvils. By intrigues and forays too numerous
-and devious to enumerate, Gorm became chief of chiefs, the nearest
-approach to a king the Picts had had in thousands of years. He had
-waited long; he was past middle age. But now he moved against the
-frontiers, not in trade, but in war.
-
-Arus saw his mistake too late; he had not touched the soul of the pagan,
-in which lurked the hard fierceness of all the ages. His persuasive
-eloquence had not caused a ripple in the Pictish conscience. Gorm wore a
-corselet of silvered mail now, instead of the tiger-skin, but underneath
-he was unchanged--the everlasting barbarian, unmoved by theology or
-philosophy, his instincts fixed unerringly on rapine and plunder.
-
-The Picts burst on the Bossonian frontiers with fire and sword, not clad
-in tiger-skins and brandishing copper axes as of yore, but in
-scale-mail, wielding weapons of keen steel. As for Arus, he was brained
-by a drunken Pict, while making a last effort to undo the work he had
-unwittingly done. Gorm was not without gratitude; he caused the skull of
-the slayer to be set on the top of the priest's cairn. And it is one of
-the grim ironies of the universe that the stones which covered Arus's
-body should have been adorned with that last touch of barbarity--above a
-man to whom violence and blood-vengeance were revolting.
-
-But the newer weapons and mail were not enough to break the lines. For
-years the superior armaments and sturdy courage of the Bossonians held
-the invaders at bay, aided, when necessary, by imperial Aquilonian
-troops. During this time the Hyrkanians came and went, and Zamora was
-added to the empire.
-
-Then treachery from an unexpected source broke the Bossonian lines.
-Before chronicling this treachery, it might be well to glance briefly at
-the Aquilonian empire. Always a rich kingdom, untold wealth had been
-rolled in by conquest, and sumptuous splendor had taken the place of
-simple and hardy living. But degeneracy had not yet sapped the kings and
-the people; though clad in silks and cloth-of-gold, they were still a
-vital, virile race. But arrogance was supplanting their former
-simplicity. They treated less powerful people with growing contempt,
-levying more and more tributes on the conquered. Argos, Zingara, Ophir,
-Zamora and the Shemite countries were treated as subjugated provinces,
-which was especially galling to the proud Zingarans, who often revolted,
-despite savage retaliations.
-
-Koth was practically tributary, being under Aquilonia's 'protection'
-against the Hyrkanians. But Nemedia the western empire had never been
-able to subdue, although the latter's triumphs were of the defensive
-sort, and were generally attained with the aid of Hyperborean armies.
-During this period Aquilonia's only defeats were: her failure to annex
-Nemedia; the rout of an army sent into Cimmeria; and the almost complete
-destruction of an army by the Ęsir. Just as the Hyrkanians found
-themselves unable to withstand the heavy cavalry charges of the
-Aquilonians, so the latter, invading the snow-countries, were
-overwhelmed by the ferocious hand-to-hand fighting of the Nordics. But
-Aquilonia's conquests were pushed to the Nilus, where a Stygian army was
-defeated with great slaughter, and the king of Stygia sent tribute--once
-at least--to divert invasion of his kingdom. Brythunia was reduced in a
-series of whirlwind wars, and preparations were made to subjugate the
-ancient rival at last--Nemedia.
-
-With their glittering hosts greatly increased by mercenaries, the
-Aquilonians moved against their old-time foe, and it seemed as if the
-thrust were destined to crush the last shadow of Nemedian independence.
-But contentions arose between the Aquilonians and their Bossonian
-auxiliaries.
-
-As the inevitable result of imperial expansion, the Aquilonians had
-become haughty and intolerant. They derided the ruder, unsophisticated
-Bossonians, and hard feeling grew between them--the Aquilonians
-despising the Bossonians and the latter resenting the attitude of their
-masters--who now boldly called themselves such, and treated the
-Bossonians like conquered subjects, taxing them exorbitantly, and
-conscripting them for their wars of territorial expansion--wars the
-profits of which the Bossonians shared little. Scarcely enough men were
-left in the marches to guard the frontier, and hearing of Pictish
-outrages in their homelands, whole Bossonian regiments quit the Nemedian
-campaign and marched to the western frontier, where they defeated the
-dark-skinned invaders in a great battle.
-
-This desertion, however, was the direct cause of Aquilonia's defeat by
-the desperate Nemedians, and brought down on the Bossonians the cruel
-wrath of the imperialists--intolerant and short-sighted as imperialists
-invariably are. Aquilonian regiments were secretly brought to the
-borders of the marches, the Bossonian chiefs were invited to attend a
-great conclave, and, in the guise of an expedition against the Picts,
-bands of savage Shemitish soldiers were quartered among the unsuspecting
-villagers. The unarmed chiefs were massacred, the Shemites turned on
-their stunned hosts with torch and sword, and the armored imperial hosts
-were hurled ruthlessly on the unsuspecting people. From north to south
-the marches were ravaged and the Aquilonian armies marched back from the
-borders, leaving a ruined and devastated land behind them.
-
-And then the Pictish invasion burst in full power along those borders.
-It was no mere raid, but the concerted rush of a whole nation, led by
-chiefs who had served in Aquilonian armies, and planned and directed by
-Gorm--an old man now, but with the fire of his fierce ambition undimmed.
-This time there were no strong walled villages in their path, manned by
-sturdy archers, to hold back the rush until the imperial troops could be
-brought up. The remnants of the Bossonians were swept out of existence,
-and the blood-mad barbarians swarmed into Aquilonia, looting and
-burning, before the legions, warring again with the Nemedians, could be
-marched into the west. Zingara seized this opportunity to throw off the
-yoke, which example was followed by Corinthia and the Shemites. Whole
-regiments of mercenaries and vassals mutinied and marched back to their
-own countries, looting and burning as they went. The Picts surged
-irresistibly eastward, and host after host was trampled beneath their
-feet. Without their Bossonian archers the Aquilonians found themselves
-unable to cope with the terrible arrow-fire of the barbarians. From all
-parts of the empire legions were recalled to resist the onrush, while
-from the wilderness horde after horde swarmed forth, in apparently
-inexhaustible supply. And in the midst of this chaos, the Cimmerians
-swept down from their hills, completing the ruin. They looted cities,
-devastated the country, and retired into the hills with their plunder,
-but the Picts occupied the land they had over-run. And the Aquilonian
-empire went down in fire and blood.
-
-Then again the Hyrkanians rode from the blue east. The withdrawal of the
-imperial legions from Zamora was their incitement. Zamora fell easy prey
-to their thrusts, and the Hyrkanian king established his capital in the
-largest city of the country. This invasion was from the ancient
-Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, on the shores of the inland sea, but
-another, more savage Hyrkanian thrust came from the north. Hosts of
-steel-clad riders galloped around the northern extremity of the inland
-sea, traversed the icy deserts, entered the steppes, driving the
-aborigines before them, and launched themselves against the western
-kingdoms. These newcomers were not at first allies with the Turanians,
-but skirmished with them as with the Hyborians; new drifts of eastern
-warriors bickered and fought, until all were united under a great chief,
-who came riding from the very shores of the eastern ocean. With no
-Aquilonian armies to oppose them, they were invincible. They swept over
-and subjugated Brythunia, and devastated southern Hyperborea, and
-Corinthia. They swept into the Cimmerian hills, driving the black-haired
-barbarians before them, but among the hills, where cavalry was less
-effectual, the Cimmerians turned on them, and only a disorderly retreat,
-at the end of a whole day of bloody fighting, saved the Hyrkanian hosts
-from complete annihilation.
-
-While these events had been transpiring, the kingdoms of Shem had
-conquered their ancient master, Koth, and had been defeated in an
-attempted invasion of Stygia. But scarcely had they completed their
-degradation of Koth, when they were over-run by the Hyrkanians, and
-found themselves subjugated by sterner masters than the Hyborians had
-ever been. Meanwhile the Picts had made themselves complete masters of
-Aquilonia, practically blotting out the inhabitants. They had broken
-over the borders of Zingara, and thousands of Zingarans, fleeing the
-slaughter into Argos, threw themselves on the mercy of the
-westward-sweeping Hyrkanians, who settled them in Zamora as subjects.
-Behind them as they fled, Argos was enveloped in the flame and slaughter
-of Pictish conquest, and the slayers swept into Ophir and clashed with
-the westward-riding Hyrkanians. The latter, after their conquest of
-Shem, had overthrown a Stygian army at the Nilus and over-run the
-country as far south as the black kingdom of Amazon, of whose people
-they brought back thousands as captives, settling them among the
-Shemites. Possibly they would have completed their conquests in Stygia,
-adding it to their widening empire, but for the fierce thrusts of the
-Picts against their western conquests.
-
-Nemedia, unconquerable by Hyborians, reeled between the riders of the
-east and the swordsmen of the west, when a tribe of Ęsir, wandering down
-from their snowy lands, came into the kingdom, and were engaged as
-mercenaries; they proved such able warriors that they not only beat off
-the Hyrkanians, but halted the eastward advance of the Picts.
-
-The world at that time presents some such picture: a vast Pictish
-empire, wild, rude and barbaric, stretches from the coasts of Vanaheim
-in the north to the southern-most shores of Zingara. It stretches east
-to include all Aquilonia except Gunderland, the northern-most province,
-which, as a separate kingdom in the hills, survived the fall of the
-empire, and still maintains its independence. The Pictish empire also
-includes Argos, Ophir, the western part of Koth, and the western-most
-lands of Shem. Opposed to this barbaric empire is the empire of the
-Hyrkanians, of which the northern boundaries are the ravaged lines of
-Hyperborea, and the southern, the deserts south of the lands of Shem.
-Zamora, Brythunia, the Border Kingdom, Corinthia, most of Koth, and all
-the eastern lands of Shem are included in this empire. The borders of
-Cimmeria are intact; neither Pict nor Hyrkanian has been able to subdue
-these warlike barbarians. Nemedia, dominated by the Ęsir mercenaries,
-resists all invasions. In the north Nordheim, Cimmeria and Nemedia
-separate the conquering races, but in the south, Koth has become a
-battle-ground where Picts and Hyrkanians war incessantly. Sometimes the
-eastern warriors expel the barbarians from the kingdom entirely; again
-the plains and cities are in the hands of the western invaders. In the
-far south, Stygia, shaken by the Hyrkanian invasion, is being encroached
-upon by the great black kingdoms. And in the far north, the Nordic
-tribes are restless, warring continually with the Cimmerians, and
-sweeping the Hyperborean frontiers.
-
-Gorm was slain by Hialmar, a chief of the Nemedian Ęsir. He was a very
-old man, nearly a hundred years old. In the seventy-five years which had
-elapsed since he first heard the tale of empires from the lips of
-Arus--a long time in the life of a man, but a brief space in the tale of
-nations--he had welded an empire from straying savage clans, he had
-overthrown a civilization. He who had been born in a mud-walled,
-wattle-roofed hut, in his old age sat on golden thrones, and gnawed
-joints of beef presented to him on golden dishes by naked slave-girls
-who were the daughters of kings. Conquest and the acquiring of wealth
-altered not the Pict; out of the ruins of the crushed civilization no
-new culture arose phoenix-like. The dark hands which shattered the
-artistic glories of the conquered never tried to copy them. Though he
-sat among the glittering ruins of shattered palaces and clad his hard
-body in the silks of vanquished kings, the Pict remained the eternal
-barbarian, ferocious, elemental, interested only in the naked primal
-principles of life, unchanging, unerring in his instincts which were all
-for war and plunder, and in which arts and the cultured progress of
-humanity had no place. Not so with the Ęsir who settled in Nemedia.
-These soon adopted many of the ways of their civilized allies, modified
-powerfully, however, by their own intensely virile and alien culture.
-
-For a short age Pict and Hyrkanian snarled at each other over the ruins
-of the world they had conquered. Then began the glacier ages, and the
-great Nordic drift. Before the southward moving ice-fields the northern
-tribes drifted, driving kindred clans before them. The Ęsir blotted out
-the ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, and across its ruins came to grips
-with the Hyrkanians. Nemedia had already become a Nordic kingdom, ruled
-by the descendants of the Ęsir mercenaries. Driven before the onrushing
-tides of Nordic invasion, the Cimmerians were on the march, and neither
-army nor city stood before them. They surged across and completely
-destroyed the kingdom of Gunderland, and marched across ancient
-Aquilonia, hewing their irresistible way through the Pictish hosts. They
-defeated the Nordic-Nemedians and sacked some of their cities, but did
-not halt. They continued eastward, overthrowing a Hyrkanian army on the
-borders of Brythunia.
-
-Behind them hordes of Ęsir and Vanir swarmed into the lands, and the
-Pictish empire reeled beneath their strokes. Nemedia was overthrown, and
-the half-civilized Nordics fled before their wilder kinsmen, leaving the
-cities of Nemedia ruined and deserted. These fleeing Nordics, who had
-adopted the name of the older kingdom, and to whom the term Nemedian
-henceforth refers, came into the ancient land of Koth, expelled both
-Picts and Hyrkanians, and aided the people of Shem to throw off the
-Hyrkanian yoke. All over the western world, the Picts and Hyrkanians
-were staggering before this younger, fiercer people. A band of Ęsir
-drove the eastern riders from Brythunia and settled there themselves,
-adopting the name for themselves. The Nordics who had conquered
-Hyperborea assailed their eastern enemies so savagely that the
-dark-skinned descendants of the Lemurians retreated into the steppes,
-pushed irresistibly back toward Vilayet.
-
-Meanwhile the Cimmerians, wandering southeastward, destroyed the ancient
-Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, and settled on the southwestern shores of
-the inland sea. The power of the eastern conquerors was broken. Before
-the attacks of the Nordheimir and the Cimmerians, they destroyed all
-their cities, butchered such captives as were not fit to make the long
-march, and then, herding thousands of slaves before them, rode back into
-the mysterious east, skirting the northern edge of the sea, and
-vanishing from western history, until they rode out of the east again,
-thousands of years later, as Huns, Mongols, Tatars and Turks. With them
-in their retreat went thousands of Zamorians and Zingarans, who were
-settled together far to the east, formed a mixed race, and emerged ages
-afterward as gypsies.
-
-Meanwhile, also, a tribe of Vanir adventurers had passed along the
-Pictish coast southward, ravaged ancient Zingara, and come into Stygia,
-which, oppressed by a cruel aristocratic ruling class, was staggering
-under the thrusts of the black kingdoms to the south. The red-haired
-Vanir led the slaves in a general revolt, overthrew the reigning class,
-and set themselves up as a caste of conquerors. They subjugated the
-northern-most black kingdoms, and built a vast southern empire, which
-they called Egypt. From these red-haired conquerors the earlier Pharaohs
-boasted descent.
-
-The western world was now dominated by Nordic barbarians. The Picts
-still held Aquilonia and part of Zingara, and the western coast of the
-continent. But east to Vilayet, and from the Arctic circle to the lands
-of Shem, the only inhabitants were roving tribes of Nordheimir,
-excepting the Cimmerians, settled in the old Turanian kingdom. There
-were no cities anywhere, except in Stygia and the lands of Shem; the
-invading tides of Picts, Hyrkanians, Cimmerians and Nordics had levelled
-them in ruins, and the once dominant Hyborians had vanished from the
-earth, leaving scarcely a trace of their blood in the veins of their
-conquerors. Only a few names of lands, tribes and cities remained in the
-languages of the barbarians, to come down through the centuries
-connected with distorted legend and fable, until the whole history of
-the Hyborian age was lost sight of in a cloud of myths and fantasies.
-Thus in the speech of the gypsies lingered the terms Zingara and Zamora;
-the Ęsir who dominated Nemedia were called Nemedians, and later figured
-in Irish history, and the Nordics who settled in Brythunia were known as
-Brythunians, Brythons or Britons.
-
-There was no such thing, at that time, as a consolidated Nordic empire.
-As always, the tribes had each its own chief or king, and they fought
-savagely among themselves. What their destiny might have been will not
-be known, because another terrific convulsion of the earth, carving out
-the lands as they are known to moderns, hurled all into chaos again.
-Great strips of the western coast sank; Vanaheim and western
-Asgard--uninhabited and glacier-haunted wastes for a hundred
-years--vanished beneath the waves. The ocean flowed around the mountains
-of western Cimmeria to form the North Sea; these mountains became the
-islands later known as England, Scotland and Ireland, and the waves
-rolled over what had been the Pictish wilderness and the Bossonian
-marches. In the north the Baltic Sea was formed, cutting Asgard into the
-peninsulas later known as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and far to the
-south the Stygian continent was broken away from the rest of the world,
-on the line of cleavage formed by the river Nilus in its westward trend.
-Over Argos, western Koth and the western lands of Shem, washed the blue
-ocean men later called the Mediterranean. But where land sank elsewhere,
-a vast expanse west of Stygia rose out of the waves, forming the whole
-western half of the continent of Africa.
-
-The buckling of the land thrust up great mountain ranges in the central
-part of the northern continent. Whole Nordic tribes were blotted out,
-and the rest retreated eastward. The territory about the slowly drying
-inland sea was not affected, and there, on the western shores, the
-Nordic tribes began a pastoral existence, living in more or less peace
-with the Cimmerians, and gradually mixing with them. In the west the
-remnants of the Picts, reduced by the cataclysm once more to the status
-of stone-age savages, began, with the incredible virility of their race,
-once more to possess the land, until, at a later age, they were
-overthrown by the westward drift of the Cimmerians and Nordics. This was
-so long after the breaking-up of the continent that only meaningless
-legends told of former empires.
-
-This drift comes within the reach of modern history and need not be
-repeated. It resulted from a growing population which thronged the
-steppes west of the inland sea--which still later, much reduced in size,
-was known as the Caspian--to such an extent that migration became an
-economic necessity. The tribes moved southward, northward and westward,
-into those lands now known as India, Asia Minor and central and western
-Europe.
-
-They came into these countries as Aryans. But there were variations
-among these primitive Aryans, some of which are still recognized today,
-others which have long been forgotten. The blond Achaians, Gauls and
-Britons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded Ęsir. The
-Nemedians of Irish legendry were the Nemedian Ęsir. The Danes were
-descendants of pure-blooded Vanir; the Goths--ancestors of the other
-Scandinavian and Germanic tribes, including the Anglo-Saxons--were
-descendants of a mixed race whose elements contained Vanir, Ęsir and
-Cimmerian strains. The Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and Highland
-Scotch, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans. The Cymric tribes
-of Britain were a mixed Nordic-Cimmerian race which preceded the purely
-Nordic Britons into the isles, and thus gave rise to a legend of Gaelic
-priority. The Cimbri who fought Rome were of the same blood, as well as
-the Gimmerai of the Assyrians and Grecians, and Gomer of the Hebrews.
-Other clans of the Cimmerians adventured east of the drying inland sea,
-and a few centuries later mixed with Hyrkanian blood, returned westward
-as Scythians. The original ancestors of the Gaels gave their name to
-modern Crimea.
-
-The ancient Sumerians had no connection with the western race. They were
-a mixed people, of Hyrkanian and Shemitish bloods, who were not taken
-with the conquerors in their retreat. Many tribes of Shem escaped that
-captivity, and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed with
-Hyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, Israelites, and
-other straighter-featured Semites. The Canaanites, or Alpine Semites,
-traced their descent from Shemitish ancestors mixed with the Kushites
-settled among them by their Hyrkanian masters; the Elamites were a
-typical race of this type. The short, thick-limbed Etruscans, base of
-the Roman race, were descendants of a people of mixed Stygian, Hyrkanian
-and Pictish strains, and originally lived in the ancient kingdom of
-Koth. The Hyrkanians, retreating to the eastern shores of the continent,
-evolved into the tribes later known as Tatars, Huns, Mongols and Turks.
-
-The origins of other races of the modern world may be similarly traced;
-in almost every case, older far than they realize, their history
-stretches back into the mists of the forgotten Hyborian age....
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hyborian Age, by Robert E. Howard
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