First Conan Fight Scene
from "The Phoenix on the Sword"
For #Warrior Wednesday
The first story Howard published with Conan was “The Phoenix on the Sword,” in Weird Tales, December 1932.
As before, I will include spoilers. You can read The Phoenix on the Sword on-line for free. https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600811h.html
You might also want to check out a version done by
, whose recent article inspired me to do this Conan piece now.Conan has conquered the throne of Aquilonia. He is introduced, in an excerpt from “The Nemedian Chronicles,” as “Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”
We have, as yet, no way to cast him as good or evil something in-between. But Howard introduces the true villains in the first chapter. It reminds me of what will become the much more developed beginning of “The Hour of the Dragon.” An Aquilonian outlaw has enslaved a Stygian sorcerer to help him with his bid to assassinate the outsider who has taken over the throne of Aquilonia. The outlaw and the sorcerer have assembled a group of four leaders, and a band of 16 rogues to take Conan down. The idea is to face him, startled out of sleep, with twenty against one, after making sure his usual defenders are nowhere close.
And so it goes. Conan’s normal allies are lured away when he is attacked by the Aquilonian outlaw, two soldiers, and a minstrel (the poet).
The sorcerer, meanwhile, has broken his shackles and called upon an evil monster, a fighter like a cross between a mummy and a baboon. But by calling on the monsters, he has also awakened another force – the spirit of the long-dead sage, Epemetrius, who looks after Aquilonia, and who sides with Conan, even though he is not himself Aquilonian. In a vision or dream sequence, he engraves his sign of the Phoenix in the sword. Conan will need to fight flesh and blood in the usual way, but for the summoned monster, he will have the help of the phoenix.
The final chapter is a fighting sequence, which starts out twenty to one. But as I read through it, I started to understand what was happening, and how it made a kind of sense. I also recognized the same sort of gory detail that I have been finding in the Iliad, especially. The main difference there is that in the Iliad, almost every death called out includes at least the name of the one killed – Howard doesn’t do that here.
Conan fights 20 human foes and a monster
Conan is awake and getting ready for an attack. He has his sword with the phoenix, and has managed to get on most of armor, except for his side armor, his helmet, and his shield. He is alone in his bedchamber. In my fighting analysis, I’m going to avoid the worst of the gore.
Ascalante comes in with two other fighting men, Grommel and Volmana, the poet Rinaldo, and sixteen desparate rogues. Despite also being a swordsman, Ascalante does not seem to be wearing any armor. Grommel and Volmana are the only attackers in full armor, including helmet and visor. While it is still 20 to one, the attackers are surprised to see Conan awake, alert, armed, and partially armored.
20 currently fighting: Ascalante, Grommel, Volmana, Rinaldo, 16 rogues.
Grommel comes right at Conan without hesitation, who kills him immediately with his sword, which bashes through his helmet to his skull, but also breaks his sword, leaving him part of the blade with the hilt. Meanwhile, one of the 16 rogues knicks him in the ribs in the unprotected space between his front and back armor. It’s not serious, but it is our second reminder that Conan is vulnerable there. Meanwhile, Conan kills one of the rogues by hitting him in the temple, using the hilt and broken sword as a cestus [something like a spiked or amored fist].Conan has killed one of their best fighters and one of their rogues.
18 currently fighting: Ascalante, Volmana, Rinaldo, 15 rogues.
Ascalante sends 5 of his remaining 15 rogues to guard the door, being suddenly worried that Conan might get away. So the number of rogues currently fighting has gone down to 10. And while Ascalante distracts his men by sending some of them to the door, Conan has a chance to replace his broken sword with an axe that he takes from the wall.
13 currently fighting: Ascalante, Volmana, Rinaldo, 10 rogues.
Now armed with the axe, he kills another rogue, and severs the shoulder of another.
11 currently fighting: Ascalante, Vomana, Rinaldo, 8 rogues [5 rogues are guarding the door, one has a severed shoulder and is dead or out of the action].
The attackers crowd Conan, but they are actually hampered by their number, in this enclosed space. They are hitting out blindly, while Conan moves as quickly as a cat. He fights Ascalante, who can barely avoid Conan’s axe, but is distracted by Rinaldo. Conan doesn’t want to kill the poet, even though he has portrayed Conan as a “black-hearted savage from the abyss,” and just shatters Rinaldo’s sword and pushes him away. Meanwhile, he kills another rogue but unfortunately gets his first serious wound: one of the other rogues manages a blow with his broadsword powerful enough to get through Conan’s armor and hit his shoulder.
10 currently fighting: Ascalante, Vomana, Rinaldo, 7 rogues. Conan has a shoulder wound.
The other fully armed warrior, Volmana, now pushes through his own men (throwing them left and right) to get through to Conan. Who ducks deeply under Volmana’s sword, then pivots on his heel and kills him with a blow from the side. Unfortunately, Rinaldo still won’t be warned off, forcing Conan to finally kill him, and leaving him open to a more serious wound: one of the rogues has managed to get a good hit on Conan’s unprotected side.
8 currently fighting: Ascalante, 7 rogues. Conan has a gaping wound in his side that he is holding together.
“Who dies first?” challenges Conan.
Ascalante leaps at him, but is almost hit by Conan’s axe twice. Meanwhile, one of the rogues tries to attack and Conan kills him, with a force that throws his body against the legs of the other attackers.
7 currently fighting: Ascalante, 6 rogues.
While Conan and Ascalante are squaring off again, something appears at the door, causing the 5 rogues guarding the door and the 6 still fighting to run away screaming. It’s the mummy/baboon monster that Thoth conjured, with instructions to kill Ascalante and anyone around him. The monster sinks its talons into Ascalante, but paralyzes him with fear by making him look into his eyes and kills him. Then he turns to Conan.
Conan throws his axe, full force, and hits the monster’s skull, but the axe just glances off. The monster grabs Conan by an arm, but doesn’t go for the kill, instead making Conan look into his eyes, as he did with Conan. But Conan isn’t paralyzed by fear and horror; instead, it raises in him a “frenzied fury, akin to madness.” He actually moves backward, dragging the monster with him still attached to his arm, until reaching out, his hand somehow lands on the hilt of the broken sword with the phoenix. This is the only true “luck” Conan has had since the fight began, and it’s hard not to attribute it to the deliberate working of the spirit of Epemetreus, although Howard doesn’t specifically say that. Conan stabs the monster with the sword that has the phoenix, and the monster dies, melting and disintegrating into a slimy mess.
Now that everything is in hand, the palace, including Conan’s guard and allies, come in. The fight is over.
The Leaders of Warrior Wednesday/Sword & Saturday:
- The Brothers Krynn’s Newsletter;
- Tales of Calamity and Triumph
Interestingly, the Gutenberg version drops a lot of information--every time break, and an entire paragraph from chapter 5:
"Gromel! Volmana! Rinaldo!" exclaimed Publius, the high councillor, wringing his fat hands among the corpses. "Black treachery! Some one shall dance for this! Call the guard."
(occurs after the combat, with a dropcap)
The closest of the free modern online versions I found was this: https://bearlib.com/robert-e-howard/text/PhoenixSword.html which substitutes a "* * *" break where the original version used a dropcap to indicate a time break, but changes the capitalization of Thoth-Amon.
And of course you can get the original online in page 51 of the PDF of Weird Tales December 1932: https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v20n06_1932-12_AT-sas/page/n49/mode/2up
The manner in which you break down this combat does help to reflect the parallels between Howard's approach to writing the scene and the way Homer portrays combat in The Iliad. Wonderful catch that reinforces some of the reasons why it's so important for us to familiarize ourselves with the classics.