Robert E. Howard 48 min read

A girl in a torn tunic staggers from her dying horse into a reedy clearing, eyes wide as a trapped animal, as a mocking mailed rider dismounts before her, and Conan is not far off.

Robert E. Howard's 1934 story is a rousing, atmospheric Conan sword-and-sorcery adventure. Vivid, eerie, savagely well-told. Read it for classic Conan, a fugitive girl, a haunted island of iron statues, pirates, and a lurking horror, from the founding master of the genre.

In its time

Published in 1934, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

48 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).