The Sage of Cimmeria
By Connor Eddles
The night upon the western ocean has always been silent. Mariners from every civilised land have spun tale upon tale of why. Some say that vengeful gods murdered the deity who rules the west, and the ocean keeps her silence to mourn him. Others claim bewitchment, and the silence as a warning against sailing off the edge of the world. Only one man knew the truth of the western ocean. And Ardal, son of Cairbre, was going to find him.
All his life Ardal had known the great heroes. His father, a fisherman, had shared hearth and ship-berth with men of every land between Aquilonia and Stygia, and few more besides. When the winter ice clogged the bays and inlets around their village, there was little else to do besides tell tall tales and whittle scavenged wood scraps, watching the home fire burn low as the winds shrieked and moaned between the unyielding mountain passes outside.
But his father was dead, along with the subtle joys and quiet contentment of childhood. Ardal had wakened in the night to find his parents speaking at the door to their longhut. Peeking around the corner, he spied his mother cradling her longbow of ash, a quiver of steel broadhead arrows stolen from a shipwrecked vessel of Melnibone at her belt. His father had a hold of her cloak and was begging her to stay. Ardal could not recall the words, but her never forgot how she pushed the great, bearlike Cairbre aside and strode out to meet the raiders, head held high. She had never returned. The raiders had been driven back, but the slaughter was too great. That spring, there had been too few hands to fish and forage and till the fields. Cairbre and the other remaining men set out to find some sort of food or help, but it was scarcely two days before a pair of ragged survivors stumbled back into town, bandit arrows still piercing their flesh. Cairbre was not one of them.
Ardal spent a long year slaving in the fishing boats and scrounging amid the markets, trying vainly to scrape enough coppers for food and a warm bed. But as more people left the village and the clan began to disintegrate, he realised that the rocky, barren shore held nothing further for him, save hunger and certain misery.
And so, one quiet, misty night in early spring, he snuck to the shoreline and stole a small fishing skiff, leaving behind only dark memories and a set of shallow footprints, washed away by the oncoming tide.
Under the indigo night sky, the ocean was flat as glass i every direction. A high, cold wind caressed Ardal as he let loose the sails and aimed the prow of his small vessel towards the western stars. The cold wind did not set him to shivering. Rather, it filled him with bold and impetuous energy, the knowledge that he was treading the righteous path, the path to the greatest hero ever known. The hero his father had told tales of, the hero whispered about by ever trader, thief mercenary and prisoner for years. The Cimmerian, he was called; one man of great strength and cunning who had seized the throne after a life of adventure, only to set sail west and never return, choosing to perish among the uncharted lands.
But Ardal knew he was not dead. A hero could not die until his apprentice came forth to be trained, according to the stories. And as every child knows, stories are truth beyond imagination. The Cimmerian lord was out there, brooding upon some great black throne, waiting for a worthy successor. Many men and boys had sailed west to find the Cimmerian, from Ardal’s village and many other places. Inlanders from Zamora and Hyperboria came every summer, seeking to
charter longboats and crewmen to take them west, unto the edge of the world. They had been derided as fools when they arrived, but there was always a desperate fisherman or struggling boatsman willing to risk it all for the glint of gold and sheen of bright gemstones. None of them had returned either, but it never dissuaded more inlanders coming, and more desperate seamen accepting their offers.
Ardal knew he was different, though. His need was desperate and his heart was firm, and the story would provide. Ardal was a firm believer in the magic of stories; there were so many, and that must mean that they’re true! Right?
The sails swelled as the cold western winds bore Ardal’s little boat far over the smooth ocean. He had packed a selection of dried fish and bread, and enough hooks and line to catch more. He hoped that the voyage would not be long, for he had been raised on a diet of smoked and fresh fish, and hungered above all for the succulent fruits, the thick red meats, the foods of conquest and glory. For the boy from the peasant fisher village, not even the sharpest steel or gaudiest gold could sway his heart or fill his mind as swiftly or as well as the promise of a varied diet and a decent amount of food.
The cold was bitter, and the sea was calm, and Ardal settled down in his cloak and dozed alongside the tiller, starting awake whenever the boat began to stray from a western heading. The icy winds blurred his vision and made his head swim, but even in a befuddled state Ardal realised something was wrong. The stars seemed to shift and blur, and as his vision cleared the sky became an alien place. No constellation matched his memory, and for the first time Ardal began to feel the creeping touch of fear. As far as he could see, he was still heading west; the faint hints of dawn were beginning to emerge behind him, banishing the unfamiliar stars and bringing the comfort of the day.
That paltry moment of comfort was soon shattered, however. The skies darkened the further west he sailed, and soon great torrents of rain were lashing his small vessel as the calamitous din of thunder and spearing flashes of lightning roared overhead. Ardal scrambled to lower the sail and try to ride out the storm, but his efforts were in vain. A bolt of lightning shone from the heavens, crawling down at frightening speed to strike the mast of his boat. There was a great blast of white light, and as Ardal was flug from the boat and into the darkening waves, he wondered, not for the last time, if destiny had some issue with his ambitions. But before he could think further, the cold wet darkness enveloped him.
For an unknown age he was buffeted, struck my swirling currents, blind and salt-rimed in the ocean’s dark embrace. His head broke the surface sporadically, granting him the mercy of another breath before he was clutched and drawn back beneath by the vast strength of the unknown, uncaring sea-currents. Consciousness became alien to him, his mind so enamoured of the desire to live that all other thought was driven from him entirely. The bitter, brackish salt water invaded his mouth and nose, burning him inside and scouring him clean of a childhood of grime and fish-gutting.
When he washed ashore upon alien sands, tinted pale white in the light of a quarter moon, he still did not wake immediately. He lay upon the surf, caressed by the treacherous waves lapping upon that foreign shore, and did nothing but breathe. His breaths were ragged and hacking at first, the scraps and starts of water bursting from his mouth to drain into the sand before him and swiftly vanishing, the only sign of his ordeal seeming to be the raggedness of his clothes and the dead, worn expression his face held. But soon he could lie no loger. The pale fingers of dawn struck his still form, and he groggily wakened and clambered to his feet, aching and worn and desperately, desperately thirsty. He stumbled forward, the ocean athis back, into the strange forest before him. All green and torrid and filled with scheming, venomous life it was, a pit of plague and poison more akin to a jungle of primordial times than the newly-birthed, more civilised age Ardal was born into.
His ears caught the sound of water not of the ocean, and with a rapid stumble he made his way through the trees, soon coming to the source of the sound. A great basin of stone had been ploughed into the earth by a raging waterfall, tumbling endlessly into the deep pool beneath. Wary of deep water since the storm, Ardal crept down to the shore of the little lake and swiftly set to gorging himself upon the water, lavishing in the clean taste and splashing himself until the stinging crust of salt was absent from his skin. He gingerly stepped into the most shallow part of the waters, feeling the dense clay beneath his feet and crouching suddenly.
Within the mud of the lakeshore there glimmered something of metal, of the craftsmanship of men. Ardal eased forward until the water was at his hips, and plucked the object from the clinging soil. It was a dagger, but one unlike Ardal had ever seen before. It was formed of shaped metal akin to bronze, though no rust had marred it during its time in the lake. The blade itself was composed of small shards of some dark rock set into the metal core, each one wickedly sharp and black as night. Ardal carefully stowed it in his belt, and took note of the rumbling in his belly. His boyish appetite had not been dulled by his ordeal, and as he spied a creeping vine festooned with bright fruits, his hunger came to him renewed and desperate.
As he approached the vine, Ardal realised that the stems and leaves followed a specific pattern on the rocky sab which the grew upon. Coming closer, he began to see hints of depressions and chisel marks near the base. Somebody had carved the rock and allowed it to become concealed by the twisted, heavily aged vines. Ardal had his priorities, however. Before any further mystery, he needed to eat.
The strange fruits were juicy and soft, the skins sliding free with ease to reveal the pulpy flesh within. Having devoured several of them, Ardal finally felt comfortable and satiated for the first time in ages. But the curiosity of youth is ever a pernicious thing, and he took his newfound knife to the vines upon the slab with infinite care. The tough, ropy plants gave way easily under the blade, and it did not take more than a few minutes to reveal most of the graven image.
The chiselled slab appeared to show a giant of a man, clad in chainmail and horned helm, grappling with a great snake of terrible size. The man’s hands were clenched around the throat of the serpent even as the beast coiled around him, both combatants snarling hatefully at each other. The detail and craftsmanship were beautiful and intricate, and Ardal took a moment to wonder why someone had dropped such a beautiful dagger and carved such an incredible mural in the middle of nowhere. Stepping back, he felt what appeared to be a twig snapping underfoot. Looking down, Ardal recoiled as he realised the he’d stepped on a human skeleton. A femur, to be precise, although Ardal’s bone-lore was sorely lacking. The splintered leg bone lay jumbled next to a ribcage, the skull lying in pieces amid the tangled arms and hips and legs.
Stumbling back, Ardal looked around him again, his eyes now unclouded by hunger. Clusters and fragments of bone littered the ground beneath the bushes and in the deeper parts of the lake. A battle had been fought here years before, with a great toll on its combatants. Only the Cimmerian could spark such a battle amidst the wild places! Ardal’s determination overcame his fear. He strode along the clearing, looking for more signs of humanity, aggressive or otherwise.
None of the bones beneath the bushes held anything of interest, and Ardal soon turned his attention to those beneath the water. Wading amid their remains, he fought down a sense of sacrilege. These bones had been living men once, now sunk into the mud and picked over by crabs. He pushed aside his feelings of dread and continued searching. Again, the bones revealed nothing. But as he waded further and further towards the waterfall, he realised that the sound of the falls hitting the lake surface were rather… hollow. Moving forward, he quickly ducked beneath the curtain of water, surfaced, and gasped.
Behind the waterfall was a cleft in the rock, which rapidly opened into an immense grotto as Ardal swam inwards. The walls were festooned with the history and victory of centuries, great chests overflowing with gold from rotten, cracked panels lay in every corner, and great jewels hung upon silver chains, glinting in the flickering light from outside. And it was there, in that treasure house, that Ardal found his hero.
More skeletons lay here too, these clad in rotting rags and scraps of armour, gleaming and clean despite years of lying upon the damp stone floor. The skeletons trailed into a raised dias in the corner of the grotto, their number growing until they clustered at the edge of the platform. Atop the great black throne that squatted upon that dias there sat a corpse. Wizened and worn it was, but the sheer size and bulk remained. Great thews stood out upon the body, anchored to muscles still bold despite the rot. A mane of black hair shot through with silver wreathed the skull like a storm cloud halo, and beneath that was a set of proud features, aged until the bleached skull beneath stood out starkly. The cold blue eyes still shone, and as Ardal looked on in terror the corpse moved, raising a hand before its face to inspect it with detached curiosity. Amid the sound of arcane whispers just beyond hearing, it spoke, with a voice as deep and strong as the roaring winds of Cimmeria.
“By Crom, I have slept for an age.”
He pierced Ardal with a lidless gaze, filled with undimmed ferocity.
“Now boy, you have traveled far and suffered greatly. But my pride still lingers. Say my name.”
“Conan.” The boy whispered.
“Aye, that was my name. And though the people of the world will whisper to me beyond the vale in secret worship, only the bold may receive my teachings. Are you bold, boy?”
Ardal nodded slowly.
“Then let us begin. First, we must find you a sword…”
