Title: The Hyborian Age

Author: Robert E. Howard

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The Hyborian Age

Robert E. Howard







(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 Adanteans, 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 myterious 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 allowing 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 tawnyured

Hyborians have moved southward and westward, con-uenng 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 AEsir 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 hi 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, AEsir 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

Zembabwei.



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 laters 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 AEsir, 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 Aquilbnia

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 unbutch-

ered--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 intent-ness 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 AEsir. 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 overrun 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 AEsir, 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 Gunder-land, 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 AEsir 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 ALsir. 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

AEsir 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 ysir

blotted out the ancient kingdom of Hyperborea, and across its ruins

came to grips with the Hyrkan-ians. Nemedia had already become a

Nordic kingdom, ruled by the descendants of the AEsir 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 Gun-derland, 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 ALsir 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 ALsir 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 Nordheimr 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 Nordheimr,

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 AEsir 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

AEsir. The Nemedians of Irish legendry were the Nemedian AEsir. 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, AEsir 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 nuxed

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...







THE END

