Solomon Kane (11 page)

He stumbled after the remnants of his flock, and Kane heard him attempt to lead them in prayer. As they fled into the distance, darkness seemed to loom over the fields. The air had grown colder, flecked with vicious windblown snow. Meredith and Samuel came forward in the wagon as their mother said “What must we do, William? Can we go on?”

Edward frowned in concern at his sister and their brother. “We must turn back.”

“I believe this is the only road that will take us to the
ship,” William told him.

“You would never lead us into danger,” Katherine said.

“You know I would not. I would lead us to the New World, where all our futures await us.”

“But William...” Katherine glanced at Samuel as if she wished he could not hear. “There is evil abroad,” she said. “The witch and now these raiders. Might it not be evil that is waiting for us?”

“Then more than ever we need to leave this land.” Perhaps William had failed to grasp her meaning, unless he preferred to leave it unremarked. “Solomon,” he said. “Can you help us?”

Kane gazed ahead to see that the road forked in the distance. The left branch led westwards. “I will do everything I can. I believe we should turn west,” he said and felt as though his destiny was speaking through him.

“S
olomon,” Edward murmured and leaned forward from the wagon in order to keep his voice low. “Are you sure this is the safest way?”

“There is no safe way, Edward.” Kane had already been alert, but now he narrowed his eyes against the racing flakes of snow to stare around him. Beyond the trees between which he was leading the horses along a narrow track, the extent of the forest was veiled by windblown snow. At least the storm had laid an icy quiet on the woods, where the only sounds were the creaks of the wagon and the monotonous clopping of hooves on the frozen track. “You must know the Devil is abroad in many forms,” Kane said.

He glanced back to find agreement in Edward’s eyes but no satisfaction. Beside her son Katherine said “He is speaking of the raiders, Solomon.”

“I hope we may slip past them unseen,” said Kane. “I believe they may travel from village to village.” Too much reassurance was unwise, and he had to say “Be wary all the same. These forests are not without their dangers.”

The wagon emitted a sharp creak, which the snowfall ought to muffle before the noise travelled far. Samuel had climbed forward to peer between Edward and their mother. “What kind of dangers?” he said in a bid to sound adventurous.

“None that will harm us, Samuel,” his father said behind him.

“Solomon will keep us safe,” his mother assured him.

As Kane stared along the track, where the pallor of the snow was holding back the winter dusk, the boy said “Oughtn’t we to stop?”

His mother tried to look no more than puzzled. “Why, Samuel?”

“If we stop while it’s snowing it will cover our tracks.”

“Well thought, Samuel,” Edward said. “Would you not say so, Master Kane?”

“Indeed I would,” Kane said, pleased not just for the boy but that his brother had praised him. He pointed ahead, where a gentle slope led down to a hollow sheltered by evergreen foliage. “Would that serve, Edward, do you think?”

“It is the choice I would have made myself,” Edward told him.

Kane led the horses down the slope and across the hollow, where a stream trickled through the mossy roots of trees outlined by snow. While Samuel unhitched the horses and led them to the water, the rest of the family began to set up camp. Kane went to Meredith as she applied herself to erecting one of the tents. He knew she was proficient at the task, but she seemed untypically awkward now. She was favouring her right hand, and he took hold of the other.

Meredith resisted for a moment and then let him open her hand. Her palm was raw with scrubbing, which had been unable to erase the mark the witch had made. The shapeless blackness had spread, extending twisted tendrils almost to the edge of her small palm. The blotch and its filaments appeared to be embedded in the hand. “Does it hurt?” Kane murmured.

Meredith gazed at the hand as if she hardly recognised it. “I don’t feel anything,” she said.

A snowflake settled on the blotch, and Kane was dismayed to observe how long it lay there before it began to melt. Meredith shivered and brushed it off her hand. “Why did that creature mark me?” she whispered.

“Evil has its own reasons, Meredith, and only evil knows them.” This was hardly reassuring, Kane saw. “Believe me,” he said, “there is no evil in you.”

“Father says so often there is evil in the world, but I had never seen it before.”

She was still gazing at her defaced hand. Kane grew aware that William and Edward had paused in their tasks to watch him and Meredith. “It is my fault you have encountered it now,” he said. “It followed me.”

Meredith raised her eyes to him. Whatever feelings they contained, pity was uppermost. She might have spoken, but William did. “It may have followed you, Solomon,” he said, “but I do not believe it is within you. You should not blame yourself.”

“Evil does not hunt evil down,” said Edward. “It is all of us who honour God that it is impatient to claim.”

Kane wanted to accept this for himself, and saw that Meredith wished to embrace it too. As he kept his peace she asked him “Are we safe?”

“You are as safe as any family can be in this world.” This seemed too guarded, and so he vowed “I will do everything within my power to make sure you are.” With a surge of energy he set about rigging the tent. “That’ll hold a mains’l in a Nor’easter,” he declared.

Samuel left the horses to drink while he found wood for the fire. “Bring the biggest pieces if you want soup,” William called after him.

Kane stole over to William and took him by the arm,
murmuring “Perhaps you should set only a small fire tonight.”

William glanced at the snow that came whirling out of the twilight. “It will be colder by dawn.”

“We do not want to attract unwanted attention.” Even more quietly Kane said “Yet while I am with you, perhaps you will.”

“Then we shall confront it together,” William said and grasped Kane’s arm.

E
ven after William took over his watch in the depths of the night, Kane did his best not to sleep. He lay beneath the canvas shelter and listened to the noises of the forest and the camp. Underlying every sound was the constant murmur of the stream. Now and then a horse would snort, its breath steaming like a geyser in the icy air, and more than once Meredith murmured uneasily in her sleep. Sometimes branches creaked, but the sound was always followed by a soft rush and a loose thud as foliage shed its pelt of snow. There were no signs of life outside the camp, not even the fluttering of birds, so that eventually Kane gave up his attempt to watch the pallid dimness through the trees beyond the firelight. He closed his eyes, and for a while he was aware of nothing until a figure loomed over him.

His eyes sprang open as he twisted onto his back. He seized the hand that was reaching for him, and then he saw that the figure silhouetted against the greyish glow of dawn was Samuel. “Solomon,” the boy whispered.

He had been eager to take his turn on watch, and his father must have agreed at last. “What is it?” Kane said low.

There was a tinge of excitement in the boy’s eyes, but apprehension too. “I heard something,” he said.

Kane rose into a crouch beneath the awning. “Where?”

“Beyond the trees,” Samuel whispered and pointed past the ashen remains of the fire. “Somewhere over there.”

Kane grasped the boy’s shoulder to stay him and to communicate his approval. “Wait here, Samuel,” he said.

In a very few moments he was out of the camp and swiftly climbing a slope on the far side from the woodland track. By the time he reached the summit he could hear the sounds the slope had concealed – a muffled rumble of wheels, a guttural clamour that might have been of voices. They were several hundred yards away, beyond another rise. He picked his way quickly over the frozen snow to the foot of the ridge and ran as fast as stealth would let him to the further slope. He could hear cries now and, in response to them, shouts that seemed close to bestial. He had almost reached the crest of the ridge when he heard someone behind him.

Samuel was halfway to him. Kane gestured him back, but the boy advanced. As he climbed the icy slope there was nothing in his eyes but determination. “Keep down,” Kane murmured urgently, “keep quiet,” and fell into a crouch as he gained the top of the ridge.

Even if Kane’s warning failed to silence the boy, the spectacle must have robbed him of words. Below the ridge was a track wider than the one the Crowthorns’ wagon had taken. Two horse-drawn vehicles were trundling along it – metal cages on wheels. They were full of prisoners packed together so cruelly that some were crushed against the bars. A third prison cart had been halted beside the track while more captives were herded in. Their cries were piteous, but their captors paid no heed, and Kane knew them for the raiders that plagued the land.

They were hulking and brutish, and bald to a man. They were garbed in discoloured leather that only made
them look more nearly animal. Their raw lips were drawn back in ferocious grimaces that seemed far too much like the expression of one solitary face, while their eyes were as black as the moon’s hidden side – as the eyes of any creatures that might lurk in that unearthly region. Their faces were covered with symbols that Kane recognised as the language of the blackest magic, and the signs were not merely inscribed or even tattooed on the skin. Perhaps they were branded, but he had the unpleasant impression that the livid sigils had overgrown the flesh like some diabolical species of parasite. He crouched lower and grabbed Samuel’s shoulder. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “Go back to the camp and tell your father we must move out with all speed. And go quietly for all our sakes.”

Samuel met his gaze like a man twice the boy’s age. In a moment he was sliding down from the ridge, and Kane turned to watch the raiders. The door of the third cage had been slammed and locked, and a raider was slashing with a whip at any hand or arm that protruded through the bars. Some of his fellows snarled hideous threats at the captives or jeered at them as the cart began to rumble along the track. Kane was pacing along the ridge in case the raiders turned towards the Crowthorns when he heard Samuel cry “Solomon!”

Kane whirled around and saw smoke above the glade where the family was camped. He ran down the slope so fast that he was barely able to maintain his balance on the icy earth. He heard cries and brutish shouts, but they were not behind him. The smoke rose to meet him as he sprinted up the further bank. The Crowthorns’ wagon was ablaze, and he could have thought the flames were prancing in grim triumph.

At least a dozen raiders had invaded the camp. Two
of them were dragging Meredith backwards to fling her down at the edge of the glade. Her mother threw herself at them, but a thickset raider felled her with a punch to the back of the head and slung her like a sack next to Meredith. William had found a sword and was slashing at several attackers, but they evaded him with mocking ease. Two seized his arms and wrenched them back until the sword dropped from his fist, and a third seized it by the blade to club William to his knees with the hilt. Edward was being punched almost insensible by a raider while two others held the victim’s arms. Both men were thrown down beside the women while Samuel watched in dismay from behind a tree halfway down the slope. Kane shouted a warning, but it was too late; a raider whose lividly blemished face was additionally decorated with an eye-patch had captured the boy with a forearm around his throat. “Stop,” Kane shouted.

The raiders became still, but not in response to him. Something was approaching through the mist that had risen with the dawn. Kane heard a sound like a victorious drum, which resolved itself into hoofbeats as a shape appeared between the trees. The horse was as black as the eyes of the raiders, and so was the garb of its rider. His hands were hidden by leather gloves, and his face by a mask. Stitches reminiscent of raw flesh crisscrossed the mask, whose mouth was an implacable slit devoid of emotion. While the eyes that peered out of the mask might belong to a man, Kane saw no soul in them; they seemed inhumanly indifferent to the victims of the raid. They gazed at Kane as if he were hardly worth noticing, and then they turned to Samuel as the raider who had captured him flung him down beside his family. “Leave them alone,” Kane shouted.