The Black Stranger
Synopsis A

Conan the Cimmerian, vengefully following a Pictish war-party which had raided and killed among the Aquilonian settlements on Black River, was captured by Picts, and carried by them to their far western home-land. The ferocious Cimmerian killed the chief and escaped, fleeing toward the west, pursued by the enraged Picts. Throwing them off the trail, he discovered a path that wound up a cliff and following it, discovered a cave where stood a great ebony table about which sat dead men. He stepped into the cave and was instantly fighting for his life.

On a wide stretch of beach, backed against a deep forest, stood the settlement of a Zingara nobleman who had fled with his servant and his neice and taken refuge there. His retainers had built log houses and surrounded them with a stockade. None ventured far into the forest because they feared the ferocious Picts. But the neice was seated on the sand south of the promontory which rose beyond the bay, when her companion, a flaxen-haired Ophirean waif she had picked up, came running across the sand, naked and dripping from a plunge into the ocean, and cried that a ship was coming. The Zingara girl saw as she went up the gentle slope, and with the younger girl hurried to the fort, as they called it. The nobleman instantly called in his retainers from the fishing boats and the tiny fields along the forest edge, and ran up the banner of Zingara. The ship sailed into the bay and broke out the flag of the Barachan pirates, and a Zingaran recognized the ship as that of a noted pirate. The pirates came ashore and attacked the fortress, and had almost swarmed over the stockade, when another ship hove in sight, and broke out the colors of Zingara. But the pirate had already recognized it as the craft of a Zingaran buccaneer, and fearing to be trapped between two foes, he took his men aboard and sailed away up the coast.

The Zingaran anchored and came ashore with most of his men, but the nobleman distrusted him and refused to allow him to bring his men in the stockade. They camped on the beach, the Zingaran sent them out wine, and the buccaneer came into the nobleman’s hall. He told the buccaneer that his ship had been wrecked in a storm, and that the increasing menace of the Picts made it imperative that he take his band away. The buccaneer offered to take them all off in return for a treasure which he said was hidden in the vicinity – and for the hand of the neice. The nobleman refused that angrily, and denied all knowledge of the treasure. The buccaneer than told of a treasure hidden by a pirate centuries before, or a century, at least. He offered to have his men aid the nobleman’s men in finding the treasure. Then they would sail away to some foreign port, where he would marry the neice and give up his wild ways. While they were arguing, the neice stole away to find the little Ophirean girl had slipped out and returned to the beach to find a prized bracelet. She brought her into the banquet hall, and the girl informed the nobleman that she had seen a black man land on the beach in a queer craft. The nobleman instantly seemed seized with madness, and had the girl cruelly whipped, until he saw she was telling the truth. Then he agreed to the terms set forth by the buccaneer. The neice took the child and retired in horror to her room; she and the younger girl were about to flee in desperation to the woods, when they heard stealthy footsteps outside the door which terrified them. The child said it was the black man she had seen come ashore. Before dawn a terrible storm arose which wrecked the buccaneer’s ship on the rocky shore.

At dawn, just as the storm was clearing away, far up the coast a pirate met a stranger on the beach and was killed by him; the stranger took a map from his girdle.

The nobleman swore it was the black stranger who had raised the storm, a curse on his house, and the buccaneer said his men would build a ship. But just then the pirate sailed into the bay and demanded a parley. Protected by a point of land, he had ridden out the storm. He thought a Zingaran had killed his mate and stolen the map; he offered a trade; if they would give him the map, he would take off as many as he could and set them ashore some safe place. But while they argued Conan entered, and told them he had killed the man and stolen and map, and destroyed it. He did not need it, because he had found the treasure. He offered the plan: he and the captains would go after the treasure, leaving their men on the beach. They would divide it equally. The pirate was short of supplies. The nobleman would give them supplies; the pirate would take him off in the ship. The nobleman and the buccaneer would be left to build their own ship. After much wrangling, Conan and the sea-rovers made through the woods to the cave he had discovered where he hoped to trap them in the poison gas that filled it; but one of the nobleman’s men had hurried before them and was found dead in it, and the pirate accused Conan of trying to get he and the buccaneer out of the way to seize his ship and crew. In the fight that followed, the Picts attacked them, infuriated by the black stranger having murdered a Pict and stuck a gold chain stolen by the black man that night in the fort from the nobleman.

Conan joined forces with the others and they fought their way back to the fort, where they were besieged by hundreds of howling Picts. The black man got among them and killed a buccaneer, whereupon buccaneers and pirates fell to fighting and the Picts swarmed over the wall. Conan, running into the hall to rescue the girls, saw the nobleman hanging from a beam, and the black man gloating over him. He hurled a chair and knocked the thing down, then seized the girls and took shelter in a corner of the stockade. The pirate and buccaneer were killed in the red massacre; and Conan, with the girls, got away and fled in the pirate ship anchored in a bay on the coast.