Conan’s head hung low from his broad shoulders, his near-naked body slick with blood and sweat. Iron chains stretched him wide, shackled to tall poles, suspending him above the writhing sea of beasts. They clawed, they gnashed, they screamed for blood, each one crying for his flesh, each one howling as if their hunger alone might tear him apart.

Above them, on the ledge, stood their master. A giant wrapped in the hide of some monstrous kill, crowned with horns like a king, or a priest, or a warlock. His mustache wagged as he roared, stoking the frenzy, drinking in the adoration of the mob like a god fattening on sacrifice.

This was the day Conan would die. The beasts knew it. Their master knew it. And Conan, swaying in the black fog of half-consciousness, knew it too.

He faded in and out. Each time his eyes cracked open, he caught the gleam of feverish eyes below, torchlight flashing on snarling teeth. He smelled rot and damp stone. He heard them shrieking for his skin, for his heart, for his skull to be split and mounted. He felt the giant’s hands on him—grabbing his hair, shaking him, striking him.

Crom, he prayed. Crom…

The chanting grew. A tide of voices pounding like drums against the cavern walls. They wanted blood. They demanded it. The giant raised his arms and the hammer at his belt caught the light – a slab of steel, a builder’s tool made into a weapon, the kind that could smash walls or skulls alike. He held it aloft and the cavern shook with approval.

Crom, strong on his mountain, Conan whispered. He thought then of the riddle of steel, of whether he would ever know its truth, whether he would speak again, fight again, or only be meat for the creatures snarling beneath him. The iron cuffs tore his wrists raw. His muscles burned with the weight of his own body. His blood ran into the muck below, where filthy hands reached upward like starving chicks, clawing for their share.

The horned giant yanked Conan’s head down, forcing his chin to his chest, baring the back of his neck. The crowd fell silent. The giant spoke, his voice booming through the cavern:

“See what I have brought you! Conan, scourge of our people! Conan, who slaughtered us on the fields of war, who crushed our homes, who drove us down into this pit! It was he who forced the hammer into our hands to dig our own graves!”

The beasts shrieked. The cavern shook. Perhaps it was true, what he said. Conan had been many things; thief, reaver, king, corsair, vagabond. He had left blood on countless altars. But truth mattered little. The only truth now was the hammer in the giant’s hands.

“Tonight we rise again!” the horned one bellowed. “We drink the blood of our greatest enemy! We feast on Conan the Barbarian!”

The mob roared, a storm of sound crashing against stone. The giant lifted the hammer high. “This is the hammer of our people! With it I strike, and I release his soul! I will drink it! I will devour it! DESTROY! DESTROY! DESTROY!”

The chant rolled like thunder. The hammer lifted higher. Conan’s head hung, his strength nearly gone. All he had left was prayer.

Crom, hear me…

The hammer fell –

And Conan screamed his last word, a sound that tore from his chest like the cry of a dying world.

“CROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”

The cavern answered. The walls buckled. Stone cracked. The ceiling collapsed as though a mountain itself had dropped from the sky. Blocks of rock the size of warhorses crashed down, crushing beast and master alike. The horned giant vanished beneath stone, his body ground into the muck. His people were flattened like insects, pressed into the earth, buried alive beneath the weight of their own tomb.

Silence followed. Silence and dust.

Conan hung limp in the chains, the air thick with the smell of stone and blood. Around him there was no sound of victory, no chant, no scream. Only the silence of a grave.

And in that silence, deep atop his mountain, Crom answered the prayer of the last Cimmerian.

One day – many days from this one – Conan the Barbarian would ride again.