This story brought up two of the more interesting and less well-known facts about Conan:
1) Howard struggled with depression his entire life eventually succumbing and killing himself after the death of his mother. The way he described Cimmeria and Conan's own way of living are very different in that context, aren't they? In a way, I think, Cimmeria and Crom really represent Howard's own psyche. A dark and gloomy country, full of grim men, where life is only slightly better than death and there is no hope, here or hereafter. And Conan is the part of Howard that clings to life, drinking and laughing and struggling to stay alive. And Conan is constantly in danger, but I can't help but imagine that all of the things trying to kill Conan are really Howard's own self-destructive impulses, because depression is a country that you can't ever really leave.
2) In a weird way, the Conan stories really are the pre-history of Lovecraft's mythos. The strange and primordial creatures from beyond space and time that can never be permanently defeated, only temporarily repelled. Civilization as a thin veneer, a pleasant lie that preserves us from sanity-blasting realities. Of course, Conan deals with these things very differently from a Lovecraft protagonist. Where Lovecraft's heroes tend to shriek and faint and go mad, Conan just punches Cthulhu in the face.
Anyway, I have always been charmed by Conan in general and this story in particular. A lot of the imagery in this series - and this story - has made a deep impact on me, and it's always fun to see where the bits and pieces of it have crept into the larger world of fantasy. For example, those steps in the tomb, where the inlay is the image of the defeated primordial god... not only is that incredibly awesome and evocative, but did you know that in the relatively recent RPG Exalted, that exact image is repeated? There's a location described in a supplement in which the floor of the grand ballroom is inlaid with the silhouettes of the primordials, the mad and evil creator-beings who the main characters defeated in their past lives.
There's a lot to be critical of in Conan. It isn't a series that has a lot to say to women, for example, and while that's not the end of the world - there are stories out there written for women that don't have a lot to say to men, and that's ok, too - the exclusively boy's club aspect of fantasy fiction is something we are trying to leave behind us.
By the way, this is not true of the later Conan stories written by Robert Jordan. Not to speak ill of the dead... but I could not force my way through those. Holy cow, did Jordan have issues. The Howard Conan stories are all about Conan's manly self kicking manly butt, with occasional women to be saved (and occasionally, women that Conan needs to save himself from, or women who don't actually need his help - it's surprising, but true), but at least they are consistent. Some of the women Conan meets aren't very capable in the realm of stabbing and killing, but the self-rescuing princesses (well, pirate queen) don't suddenly turn into pitiful little girls when Conan's mighty thews are around. The Jordan stories - well, the first one that I couldn't get through, I don't know about the rest - in fact feature a powerful noblewoman known as a competent fighter and hunter... who completely loses her sh*t when Conan is around and needs to be perpetually saved from rapists and usurpers. It's insane.
The race issues are also problematic. On the one hand, I have found in reading the entire Howard cannon of Conan stories that it isn't as bad as you'd think. There's a certain... dwelling on the different ethnicities that are uncomfortable to a modern reader. However, there isn't a sense that any of them are better than any other. They have racial characteristics, sure, but it isn't like the Aquilonians are noble and honest while the Zamorans are sneaky and criminal. Some Aquilonians are good and some are bad, and some Zamorans are good and some are bad, and so are Stygians and Hyperboreans and so on. What's awkward today is that Aqulionians are all good or bad in a distinctly Aquilonian way.
We don't like to think of race working that way - and, in fact, it doesn't - but in a way, it's progressive. Had Conan been written by a lot of Howard's contemporaries, one or two of the races - probably the Aquilonians - would have had the market cornered on goodness, a couple - the non-Anglo European types - would have been the sort of people you can deal with, but never really trust, and the rest - particularly the Stygians (black people) and probably Khitains (asians) - would have been inevitably antagonists. The fact that Howard spreads his good and evil around all the races is remarkable for his time, though the focus on race is uncomfortable to us today.
I could go on about the idea of "ethnofantasy," and how there is some stuff about it that I continue to find interesting - basically, I think a story about the limited reality and nigh-unlimited perception that one's heritage determines one's character and destiny, and the tension between that and free will, would be really neat - but this comment has gone on long enough. Suffice it to say that I love Conan - especially this story - and I think that it remains relevant to fantasy today, not just as picture of where we've been, but as something we can continue to learn from going forward.