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Title: The Hyborian Age
Author: Robert E. Howard
Release Date: February 24, 2013 [EBook #42182]
Language: English
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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
Æsir 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, Æsir 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 Æsir, 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 Æsir. 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 Æsir, 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 Æsir 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 Æsir. 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 Æsir 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 Æsir 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 Æsir 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 Æsir 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 Æsir
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 Æsir 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 Æsir. The
Nemedians of Irish legendry were the Nemedian Æsir. 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, Æsir 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....
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