Robert Ervin Howard

The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is a 1935 fantasy novel written by Robert E. Howard featuring his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It was the last Conan story published before Howard's suicide although not the last to be written. The plot is a loosely based melange of motifs from previous Conan short stories, most notably "The Scarlet Citadel", with which it shares an almost identical storyline. It takes place when Conan is about forty-five, during his reign as King of Aquilonia, and follows a plot by a group of conspirators to depose him in favor of Valerius, heir to Conan's predecessor Numedides, whom he had slain to gain the throne

People of the Dark was written in the year 1932 by Robert Ervin Howard. "I came to Dagon's Cave to kill Richard Brent. I went down the dusky avenues made by the towering trees, and my mood wellmatched the primitive grimness of the scene. The approach to Dagon's Cave is always dark, for the mighty branches and thick leaves shut out the sun, and now the somberness of my own soul made the shadows seem more ominous and gloomy than was natural..."

People of the Dark is a collection of stories by Robert E. Howard that includes: "The Black Stone", "Children of the Night", "The Dark Man", "The Footfalls Within", "Gods of Bal Sagoth", "Horror from the Mound", "Kings of the Night", "The Last Day", "People of the Dark", "The Song of the Mad Minstrel", and "The Thing on the Roof". The title story, "People of the Dark", is considered to be part of the Cthulhu Mythos. It was first published in Strange Tales, June 1932.

Taramis, Queen of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than the normal quiet of a sleeping place. She lay staring into the darkness, wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone out. A flecking of stars marked a gold-barred casement that lent no illumination to the interior of the chamber. But as Taramis lay there, she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before her. She watched, puzzled. It grew and its intensity deepened as it expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath, starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that circle of light-a human head.

The story begins in an Argos port where Conan forcefully demands passage aboard a sail barge, the Argus, which is casting off for southern waters to trade beads, silks, sugar and brass-hilted swords to the black kings of Kush. At first, the captain of the barge objects to his demand to travel without paying for the passage, and Conan threatens him and the crew with his drawn sword. But eventually the captain agrees to let Conan stay on board, since "It would be useful to have a fighting man on the voyage" and gradually Conan and the captain, named Tito, become quite friendly.

Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures glared at each other. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky was over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at their feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come to a tryst through the shambles of a dead world. In the brooding silence they stood face to face. Both were tall men, built like tigers. Their shields were gone, their corselets battered and dinted. Blood dried on their mail; their swords were stained red. Their horned helmets showed the marks of fierce strokes. One was beardless and black maned. The locks and beard of the other were red as the blood on the sunlit snow.