Novella: Red Nails

Overview
"Red Nails" is one of Robert E. Howard's final and most powerful Conan novellas, pairing the Cimmerian with Valeria, a fierce and hatchet-handed pirate. The tale is a tight, brutal exploration of violence, decay, and the corrosive effects of long-lived enmity, driven by relentless action and claustrophobic atmosphere. It stands out for its compressed intensity and for showcasing Howard's punchy, evocative prose at its best.

Setting and Premise
Conan and Valeria stumble upon a sealed, decaying city far from the civilized coasts, a place abandoned by time and preserved like a stage for its inhabitants' final plays of blood. The city is dominated by two rival factions locked in a seemingly endless war, their conflicts ritualized into generations of mutual slaughter. The ruined streets and dripping chambers form a labyrinthine arena where the past and present bleed into one another.

Plot Summary
Conan and Valeria explore the city, drawn into the factions' intrigues after they witness battles and betrayals that have calcified into daily life. The pair allies with one side for a time, but the complexity of loyalties and the depth of the hatred around them soon makes any neutral stance impossible. As alliances shift and treachery multiplies, the city's violence escalates into a savage crescendo. The final acts become a merciless sweep of combat and revelation, in which the factions' ancient hatreds consume them and expose the city's grim secret. Conan and Valeria fight their way through claustrophobic corridors and collapsing allegiances, using guile and steel to survive while the surrounding society implodes.

Themes and Tone
"Red Nails" probes the idea that civilizations rot from within when vengeance and tradition become ends in themselves. The story frames warfare as ritual and habit, showing how an entire culture can ossify around its own cruelty until nothing humane remains. The tone is both visceral and fatalistic: Howard spares little sentimentalism, preferring stark depictions of blood, desperation, and the physicality of combat. Through Conan and Valeria, barbarism is portrayed as a form of primal honesty compared with the corrupt sophistication that birthed the city's decline.

Characters and Dynamics
Conan is at his most elemental, clever, strong, and unromantic about violence, while Valeria emerges as a standout: audacious, competent, and unflinching. Their partnership is built on mutual respect and shared appetite for danger rather than sentimental attachment, and it gives the story a charged camaraderie that offsets the city's pervasive rot. The rival factions are less individualized heroes than embodiments of a civilizational sickness, their leaders and champions acting as tragic caricatures of a civilization that has forgotten any purpose beyond slaughter.

Legacy and Impact
"Red Nails" is often cited as a pinnacle of the sword-and-sorcery genre, notable for its combination of savage action, moral starkness, and an almost archaeological sense of ruin. It influenced later fantasy that leans into grim atmospheres and morally ambiguous protagonists, and it remains one of the most frequently anthologized Conan tales. The novella's compact fury and narrative economy continue to attract readers who appreciate Howard's ability to make a ruined city feel like both setting and antagonist.