Hondren

Hondren was a squat, heavyset Gunderman soldier patrolling occupied Duthil, Cimmeria. He quickly made an ugly name for himself, always roaring and cursing, and cuffing boys out of his path when they did not move fast enough to suit him. His fellow soldiers despised him as well.

One day Hondren was hunting in the woods, and encountered Conan. When he accused the Cimmerian youth of scaring off the game, Conan replied that it was Hondren's own noisy, careless movement which had scared off the game. Hondren struck Conan, who replied in kind. The fight immediately escalated into deadly earnestness, until it was clear that it was to the death. Conan picked up a rock from the ground and bashed Hondren's head in.

Hondren was the first man Conan ever killed. Conan knew he had to hide the body completely, lest the Aquilonians take 10 hostages from Duthil to be executed by slow torture. He weighted the body with stones and sank it in the stream.

Conan confessed the deed to his father Mordec. While the blacksmith congratulated his son for ridding the area of a hated menace, he also knocked him down with a severe punch, to remind Conan never to brag about it, lest Conan's life and nine more be taken as reprisal.

The other occupying soldiers were not saddened by Hondren's disappearance, but were required to take notice of it. While there was suspicion that Hondren had been killed by human action, it could not be proven that he had not simply run afoul of a wolf or panther. Count Stercus considered executing hostages anyway, but was talked out of it by saner heads.

Ultimately, Hondren's body was never found, and the matter remained undiscovered at the time of the general Cimmerian uprising, which made it a non-issue.