Zub Tales

Continuing my Conan reread for Cimmerian September, the seventeenth published Conan story is Red Nails, which serialized across three issues of Weird Tales magazine, from July to October 1936. This story was the last one written by Robert E. Howard before his untimely death, and it was published posthumously.

Red Nails is one of the longer Conan tales at over 31,000 words, but it does quite a bit with the space its given, using ingredients from other Conan tales but bringing enough inventiveness to make it stand on its own, particularly when it comes to the intensity of its action scenes.

The story opens with Valeria, a swashbuckler who has struck out on her own after trouble broke out in the freebooter camp she was staying at. Valeria has elements of Agnes de Chastillon and Red Sonya of Rogatino mixed together in the Hyborian Age. Her strength, skill and beauty make her a worthy partner for our Cimmerian, especially at this experienced point in his career.

She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which ceased a hand’s breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.

Conan catches up to Valeria and the two of them are nearly slain by a hungry dinosaur-like creature they call a “dragon”:

Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.

The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.

The artwork from Weird Tales looks great, but unfortunately doesn’t match the action from the prose, where they’re perched on a huge rock just out of reach, trying to figure out how to kill it:

The first chapter doesn’t contribute much to the core plot, but does a great job of building up entertaining interplay between the two warriors and shows Conan’s inventiveness against an impossibly-strong foe.

Conan and Valeria flee toward a city they find in the remote forest – strange, opulent, and seemingly abandoned. The exploration of this city and its secrets feel like Howard finally delivering on the potential of a similar plot point from Xuthal of the Dusk. The environment is much more evocative and the slowly rising tension in the emptiness works really well:

She wondered how many centuries had passed since the light of outer day had filtered into that great hall through the open door. Sunlight was finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source. High up in the vaulted ceiling skylights were set in slot-like openings—translucent sheets of some crystalline substance. In the splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked like the eyes of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of hell with evil stars blinking overhead.

Valeria takes a rest while Conan continues exploring (never split the adventuring party!). Our swashbuckler gets ambushed and responds with skillful violence:

With one tigerish movement she was over the balustrade and dropping to the floor behind the awful shape. It wheeled at the thud of her soft boots on the floor, but even as it turned, her keen blade lashed down, and a fierce exultation swept her as she felt the edge cleave solid flesh and mortal bone.

The apparition cried out gurglingly and went down, severed through shoulder, breast-bone and spine, and as it fell the burning skull rolled clear, revealing a lank mop of black hair and a dark face twisted in the convulsions of death.

Beyond overall energy in the text, the combat in Red Nails is some of Howard’s best, most visceral and incredibly bloody, with a feeling of weight and consequence for every blow struck or wound received.

What Conan and Valeria discover is that this city, called Xuchotl, is a massive enclosed structure split into two sections. Each half is ruled by leaders, named Tecuhltli and Xotalanc, determined to finish the blood feud between their clans that has lasted for decades.

The story’s title comes from a post in one of throne rooms where a red nail is embedded every time one of their lifelong enemies are slain:

“While I talked with the woman, four Xotalancas came upon us! One I slew—there is the stab in my thigh to prove how desperate was the fight. Two the woman killed. But we were hard pressed when this man came into the fray and split the skull of the fourth! Aye! Five crimson nails there are to be driven into the pillar of vengeance!”

He pointed at a black column of ebony which stood behind the dais. Hundreds of red dots scarred its polished surface—the bright scarlet heads of heavy copper nails driven into the black wood.

This kind of stalemate conflict where the tide finally shifts upon the arrival of strangers is a genre classic, and it works well here, though there are a dizzying number of names that start with T’s and X’s thrown into the mix that can lead to confusion. I know which side each character is on, but a Dramatis Personae listing might be required to keep close track of specific characters.

That said, things become a lot clearer once the big battle arrives and the cast gets thinned out something fierce. This is REH’s barbaric bombast at its most brutal:

In sheer strength no three Tlazitlans were a match for Conan, and in spite of his weight he was quicker on his feet than any of them. He moved through the whirling, eddying mass with the surety and destructiveness of a gray wolf amidst a pack of alley curs, and he strode over a wake of crumpled figures.

Valeria fought beside him, her lips smiling and her eyes blazing. She was stronger than the average man, and far quicker and more ferocious. Her sword was like a living thing in her hand. Where Conan beat down opposition by the sheer weight and power of his blows, breaking spears, splitting skulls and cleaving bosoms to the breast-bone, Valeria brought into action a finesse of sword-play that dazzled and bewildered her antagonists before it slew them. Again and again a warrior, heaving high his heavy blade, found her point in his jugular before he could strike. Conan, towering above the field, strode through the welter smiting right and left, but Valeria moved like an illusive phantom, constantly shifting, and thrusting and slashing as she shifted. Swords missed her again and again as the wielders flailed the empty air and died with her point in their hearts or throats, and her mocking laughter in their ears.

This new artwork produced for the upcoming Conan board game expansion built around Red Nails visualizes this chaotic scene really well:

There isn’t as much strange magic in this story as some of the other Conan tales, but a few key moments hit the mark:

She glanced to the sinister skull, smoldering and glowing on the floor near the dead man. It was like a skull seen in a dream, undeniably human, yet with disturbing distortions and malformations of contour and outline. In life the wearer of that skull must have presented an alien and monstrous aspect. Life? It seemed to possess some sort of life of its own. Its jaws yawned at her and snapped together. Its radiance grew brighter, more vivid, yet the impression of nightmare grew too; it was a dream; all life was a dream-

The cry died in the guard’s throat as the thin, weird piping penetrated the metal door and smote on his ears. Xatmec leaned frozen against the door, as if paralyzed in that position. His face was that of a wooden image, his expression one of horrified listening. The other guard, farther removed from the source of the sound, yet sensed the horror of what was taking place, the grisly threat that lay in that demoniac fifing. He felt the weird strains plucking like unseen fingers at the tissues of his brain, filling him with alien emotions and impulses of madness.

Red Nails encompasses a lot of Robert E. Howard’s iconic Conan elements and themes – exploration of a lost city, ancient horrors lurking in the shadows, civilization VS savagery, and our protagonist thrust into the midst of it all, changing history on the keen edge of his blade. Its legacy as the final Conan story written by his creator gives it extra power, but its pretty damn powerful all on its own.

Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith‘s comic adaptation of Red Nails is a high watermark for Barry’s work on the Cimmerian and Marvel’s Conan comics as a whole. It was first published in Savage Tales #2 + 3, has been reprinted multiple times since, and is well worth seeking out.

If you haven’t read the original Conan prose stories, I recommend the Del Rey 3-book set, which has each story unedited and essays that add context around their publication.