Conan the Barbarian #29 – “Two Against Turan” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with Conan arriving in Aghrapur, capital of the Kingdom of Turan, where he turns a few heads even among the jaded city dwellers. As he walks the streets, a statue of the “living god Tarim” is paraded past and the people go into a frenzy of worship. Conan knows the truth about the Tarim (that he was an inbred imbecile and is now dead, killed by the very soldiers who were supposed to rescue him),
but when he voices his contempt the crowd turns on him. After fighting the mob (and wrestling a horse!), he flees, ending up taking shelter in a house where he’s helped by a stranger. This man (an Iranistani named Ormraxes) leads Conan away from the crowd to a tavern, where he lets the barbarian know that his aid wasn’t just an altruistic impulse … he wants Conan’s help. Before he can explain himself, Ormraxes is interrupted by Turanian soldiers busting in to grab him (and they refer to him as Eithriall). Conan fights beside his new compatriot, but ends up getting knocked out. He awakens in a back room with strangers tending his wounds, led by a man wearing a hood. The 
hooded man tells Conan that King Yildiz’s men took Ormraxes to a dungeon and he wants Conan to rescue him, but insists it has to be done before sunrise. Conan agrees, since Ormraxes saved his life, and sets off to the dungeon with only one man to guide him. Conan breaks into the dungeon and kills several guards before finding Ormraxes, who is so weak he can hardly walk. Conan gets him back to the hideout just before dawn, where he’s startled to learn that the hooded man is an exact double of Ormraxes. Turns out the man (whose real name is Eithriall) is a sorcerer who conjured an astral double of himself to gather information in Aghrapur. Using the spiritual double halved Eithriall’s power and being separated for one more day might have killed him, but now he plans to reabsorb the double and use his full power to lay waste to all of Turan. Conan takes down Eithriall’s bodyguards and tosses a scimitar to
disrupt the rejoining. As the sun rises, both versions of Eithriall are consumed by flames, just before some Turanian soldiers show up. The soldiers knew Eithriall was planning something but decided to let Conan handle the dirty work for them. They tell the barbarian they need someone like him to help them against their enemies and offer him a choice: join the Turanian army or be thrown in the dungeons. Being a pragmatic soul, Conan decides to enlist. This story is based on a non-Conan tale by Robert E. Howard called Two Against Tyre. As the title suggests, it was set during the Crusades, but Roy changed a few names and juggled the story a bit, adding some magic to make it fit Conan’s world better. Despite what the cover shows, there’s no “sexy woman of the month” in this issue for Conan to rescue, argue with, or seduce.
Conan the Barbarian #30 – “The Hand of Nergal” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with Conan, now serving as a mercenary with the Turanian army, leading a cohort of soldiers against the horde of a rebellious satrap (Munthassem Khan) in northern Turan. Conan and his men are doing pretty well until they’re attacked by giant ghostly bats. The bats seem to drain the life from the Turanian soldiers (ignoring the rebels) and frightening them into a rout. Conan tries to stop the mad retreat and attacks one of the ghostly bats, but stabbing it produces a deadly chill in his body and he falls before the creature. Before it can finish him, Conan
accidentally grasps an amulet he’s wearing (which he apparently found by chance at another campsite) and that causes the bat to retreat. Conan is so weak he passes out and wakes later to an empty battlefield, populated only by the dead. He stumbles to the river for a drink and hears someone moaning in pain nearby. It turns out to be a beautiful slave girl (Hildico), who was sent to find Conan by her master, Atalis (who just happens to live in Yaralet, Munthassem Khan’s stronghold). Hildico doesn’t know why Atalis wants Conan but when she mentions his willingness to pay a lot of gold, Conan figures he 
might as well take the offer since his career as a Turanian soldier seems to be over. Hildico is in bad shape after being run over by a retreating horse, so Conan has to carry her as he heads for Yaralet. We see two men waiting for Hildico and Conan, Atalis and Prince Thann, who sound like they’re plotting against Munthassem Khan (although Khan sounds like a real scumbag, so I guess these conspirators are actually the good guys). Conan and Hildico show up and Conan sees that both Atalis and Thann are afflicted with some kind of curse: Atalis has bouts of pain and Thann has periodic fits of blindness. Atalis tells Conan the state of things in Yaralet, which was once a prosperous and happy city, ruled by a munificent and wise leader. But Munthassem Khan was also a keen scholar,
always bringing in artifacts from other lands to study. One of those artifacts turned out to be a cursed gem called the Hand of Nergal, which turned Munthassem Khan into a bloodthirsty dictator who loosed the demon bats on the city and brutally stifled any hint of dissent. Atalis says the amulet Conan found is the Heart of Tammuz, the counter-charm to the Hand of Nergal, and that it can protect them as they go after Khan. Atalis leads Conan and Thann through some underground tunnels into the palace where Atalis expects Khan to be in a drugged sleep. But Khan is waiting for them and uses the Hand of Nergal to 
blast them. Conan can’t get close enough to kill Khan because he doesn’t know how to activate the Heart of Tammuz, so he ends up getting blasted too. Hildico (who followed them through the tunnels) shows up and tears the Heart from around Conan’s throat, throwing it at Khan and knocking the Hand of Nergal from his grasp. When the two opposing gems hit the floor, incarnations of Tammuz and Nergal rise from them and start fighting. Tammuz triumphs and vanishes, leaving Khan dead and everyone else healed of their hurts. Conan decides to return to Aghrapur for some more mercenary work, refusing the large reward Atalis offers and taking instead a small sack of gold, a horse … and Hildico. This is a pretty good story, based on a Lin Carter Conan tale
that was in turn based on a fragment of a Conan story by Robert E. Howard. It’s pretty good for a non-Howard yarn, with larger stakes than Conan usually plays for, Tammuz and Nergal representing the age-old struggle between good and evil. It seems like a hell of a coincidence that Conan just happened to find the Heart of Tammuz, but Atalis says the Heart “wanted” to be found, which reminds me of what Gandalf said about Bilbo finding the One Ring, that it was meant to happen. Hildico is interesting too, at first seeming like the usual non-entity slave girl, but she’s the one who actually saves the day (and the 
world) by tossing the amulet at Munthassem Khan, so she turns out to be more than just a pretty face. Of course Conan taking her as “payment” at the end isn’t exactly empowering, but I’m hoping that means we’ll see more of her and I hope she’ll continue to be resourceful and not just fade into the background. The art is getting better with every issue and Roy made sure it was extra special here by having the demon bats, plus Tammuz and Nergal, done in color-holds, which means they were printed without the usual black outlines to give them a more ethereal quality.