‘A Dingy, Ill-Famed Den’

The Black Hand of Set: Chapter 14 of Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon

Reading from pages 190-196 of the DelRey edition

Impressions by James LaFond

The opening illustration presents a horror started man with a black hand imprinted on his bare chest as he lays still in death on a shadow-cast floor.

“Conan woke from a sound sleep as quickly and instantly as a cat. And like a cat he was on his feet with his sword out before the man who touched him could so much as draw back.”

That’s Robert E. Howard on PTSD before it had a diagnosis.

Finding that his quarry is hiding in a place called the House of Servio, Conan is off on a brief, brutal and unsuccessful venture which finds him stretched senseless among the bodies of a reasonably competent band of murders as a pressgang happens by to force him into the slavery of the sailor.

But Conan is not so much the story of this chapter, but rather the tale of his grim pursuers who bring sedate death in his angry wake.

Death is illustrated by the artist as four predatory black birds on wing, searching the world below for their quarry, relentlessly seeking the hero via at once arcane and beastly methods.