Conan went to bed, after rendering me many small insults. The company gathered at the campfire, that is, the tribe looked to me to see how I took this, but I remained calm-faced so they took heart.

He was still abed, when I got up to check on the sentries, and take my morning bath in a creek. I could have solved my problem with him right then by slashing the gladius across his throat after doing a Rotating Swan Leap to get close to him.

But it might not have worked, and besides, he was not evil, just pushy, and lastly he was my guest which to my surprise counts for something with me.

After a quick bite of wild eggs fried by the communal campfire in the shade of the tower, I sought out my barbarian guest.

He stood near seven feet, was wondrously graceful, very well muscled, and spun the giant two-handed longsword of his about like an expert.

It was a preposterous weapon. The blade was a hand-width’s wide, and the whole was over seven feet from blunt tip to the pommel of the hilt. In most universes, despite his reach advantage, my gladius would be a much better choice. But thrusting did little more than annoy people or giant wild boars in this universe.

“Don’t you get tired?” I asked him from about ten feet away as he whipped through a formalized pattern. After all, his sword was at least fifteen pounds which is incredibly heavy for a sword. Two and three pounds or less is more normal.

“The true swordsman never gets tired when steel is in his hand. Not like the sorcerer with his flabby arms.” He sneered at me. I sighed, and took off my shirt.

An abundance of scars along with my martial arts training and my rugged lifestyle left very little flab.

“Now, Conan, men with this sort of weapon conquered a land a hundred days walk from side to side.” I raised the gladius, and then put it down. “But I need to learn how to use your weapon.” And so saying, I lifted up a longsword “of doom” as I privately called it which I had borrowed from one of my tribespeople.

Conan examined it and allowed that it was serviceable.

“Now if you think you have enough control over your blade to not kill me, I’d like to have some lessons.” That challenged deflected his considered idea to ‘accidentally’ kill me.

We started, and at first I was awkward, but I caught on fast. Still, I kept on trying to thrust with the weapon when I saw an opening, and I paid for it with a number of bruises, and minor cuts.

He was terrifically good, with a broad range of techniques, and a decent teacher. At the end of the day, he told me I had started as a twelve-year-old child in a barbarian tribe which could kill any normal man, and progressed to the level of a beginning raider.

Then I put down my sword, and fell over as exhaustion hit me.

“See, you not listen. While you hold steel, a swordsman fights, but let it go, and you fall down. Why you no listen to Conan?” He ridiculed me in a good-humored way as he dragged my exhausted body back to the campfire.

We had rabbits and small game birds that night, and Conan made me eat about three times what I wanted to. I suppose to replace the calories I had burned up yesterday.

The next day was more of the same, except I waited until I got to the campfire and my throne to let go of the sword.

The week came and went, and we interrupted our training to hunt for food for the tribe. I summoned the game with magic, and Conan and I killed it, and the tribespeople dragged it back, dug up roots, and cooked the whole thing.

I saw Conan looking uncomfortable. And yet he was enjoying himself vastly. I think I knew the cause; he was finding out another way of life that was better than his solitary wandering.

Finally, after a month, and the discomfort was getting the better of him, and making him snappy, and I had learned enough to be a decent fighter with the giant longsword, and I spoke to him in front of the people of the tribe at the campfire.

“Lord Conan, you have taught me well. You came here thinking me just another sorcerer to be slain, and now you see other things. I promised you a chance at a great reward if you taught me, did I not?”

He nodded.

“Well, I shall give you that chance, and another chance if you dare it.”

Poor Conan was always a sucker for a dare.

He nodded his acceptance.

At my direction, he held out his sword. I summoned a fire elemental in the midst of the flame, and bowed to it. Then I summoned an earth elemental and asked it to get me certain elements.

The young lad came forth with a wagon carrying a nine foot thick bed of charcoal which Conan plunged his sword into. Then I directed the earth elemental to place those elements into the charcoal, and then I summoned an air elemental to provide pure oxygen.

I asked the barbarian if he trusted me for this was dangerous.

The fire elemental ate into the charcoal, and flames surrounded the barbarian, but he was untouched. While his sword was still hot, I reached into the fire with long tongs made of lesser swords for this purpose, and he let go, and I welded strips of steel to the hilt to make sure that he had contact with steel that fit the local universes requirements.

And then the air elemental blew all the fire and the dust away, and Conan stood there with a gleaming sword in his hand. We tested the modern steel alloy and it cut other blades with ease, and the magic held so that he could fight all day.

He was immenselely pleased.

And then I offered him another piece of metal, if he would go and retrieve the slaves from Calt.

He accepted, and two months later with a band of barbarians in tow, he showed up to receive the gold I had promised his mercenaries which he then dismissed. And then before the others, I gave the barbarian what I had promised him.

Gold. A golden crown. And thus Conan the Barbarian became Conan the King.

Over the next year, his kingdom grew. It became a place famous for its swords, and its peacefulness, and for the fact that sorcerers were allowed to live in its lands provided they did no evil.

The other kingdoms tried to rise against him for they saw the goodness of his reign and it threatened them, but we broke them in a series of battles that added half their lands, the better half to ours.

Finally, after five years, I thought I had taught what I could, and the sorcerers were being tempted to evil by my eternal youth, and indeed these people did not need me anymore, and I was becoming a problem, a stumbling block to them, and so I left a copy of my story for the king to have read to him (since he could not read), and I followed my first instinct to the lake. There I found a gate to another universe.

And proving that this land had changed me as well, I leapt boldly into the gate with longsword in hand, and a song in my heart.

Tadeusz