Conan the Barbarian #151 – “Vale of Death” – Michael Fleisher/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with Conan hunting in the mountains of Cimmeria. He’s attacked by a giant hawk and dropped into a hidden valley. He comes upon a burning castle where some hill tribes (the Yggdar) have slaughtered all the inhabitants (the Osiiren) … or almost all. A dying man gives Conan a locket and begs him to deliver it and pass on a message, but he expires before he can go into detail. Conan kills an Yggdar straggler and takes his horse, riding through the valley to look for a way out. He runs into an Osiiren prince (and his trained mountain lion) , who recognizes the locket as belonging to his betrothed
(Kamali), who he hopes still lives. He takes Conan to meet his father, the king, who tells Conan how the Osiiren and Yggdar were at war for years before they decided to make peace. The Osiiren forgot how to fight, turning towards art and learning instead. But now a sect of Yggdars, worshipping a death god, has arisen and started killing Osiiren. The king asks Conan to go with his son to rescue Kamali, giving him a ruby as an inducement. Conan leads the prince out to seek Kamali and they find her being held in a small camp in the hills. They attack the camp and waste the Yggdars, but Kamali is killed. Conan soon realizes the kidnapping was a feint to draw them out while the bulk of 
the Yggdars attacked the castle. They find the castle burning and everyone dead, so the prince immediately wants revenge. He and Conan track the Yggdars to a cave where they’re offering loot from the castle to a statue or their god. Conan topples the statue on them, while the prince and his mountain lion kill the Yggdars who try to escape. The prince ends up bringing down the entire cave (with some long-dormant psionic powers) and Conan gets out just in time, letting a few Yggdar survivors go free. This is an okay story, although it doesn’t have much of a Robert E. Howard flavour to it. And the Osiiren’s dormant psionic powers are kinda goofy (and unnecessary), but then I was never a fan of psionics in D&D either.
Conan the Barbarian #152 – “The Dark Blade of Jergal Zadh” – Michael Fleisher/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with Conan wasting some bandits, unaware he’s being watched by an exiled demon-lord (Jergal Zadh) and his sexy henchwoman (Cleolanthe). Jergal knows Conan is fated to be a king, so he wants to take over Conan’s mind and rule through him. He sends Cleolanthe as bait, using an illusory monster to bring Conan to her rescue. When he breaks his sword, Cleolanthe says she knows where he can get a new one and leads Conan to the ruined temple dedicated to Jergal Zadh. There he finds a sword in the hands of an idol, but when he takes it, Cleolanthe conjures a
phantasmal horde to attack him. Conan wastes them all, not knowing that every time he uses the sword it absorbs some of his life force. Unaware of Cleolanthe’s treachery, Conan makes camp with the woman but soon passes out, weakened by the sword draining his life away. Cleolanthe starts to feel bad about betraying Conan, but Jergal reminds her she has no choice, so she conjures another phantasmal monster. Conan wakes up and fights it, but gets weaker as the sword takes more of his life energy, almost moving by itself against the monster. Conan manages to finish off the fake beat, thinking he’s saving Cleolanthe. That impresses her and she bangs him, telling Jergal 
afterwards (telepathically) that she doesn’t want Conan to die. Jergal sends a bunch of demons to claim what’s left of Conan’s soul, but Cleolanthe knocks him out so he can’t wield the sword and wastes the demons herself. She tosses the sword in the ocean, which restores Conan’s strength, but breaking her bond with Jergal causes her to revert to her true self, hundreds of years old. She ages and turns to dust in Conan’s arms and Jergal swears vengeance on Conan. This was a pretty good story; I like how Cleolanthe slowly grows a conscience (and the way John Buscema draws her I can definitely see why Conan couldn’t resist her), and it looks like Jergal Zadh might become a recurring foe for Conan.