Solomon Kane (13 page)

“No.” Perhaps William had failed to hear, unless he found Kane’s words insufficiently fervent. “You get her back,” he exhorted, seizing Kane by the arm. “Swear this to me now.”

The last of his strength was enough to pull Kane towards him. Kane sank to his knees on the frozen leaves, which felt cold and hard as a mosaic. The plea that gleamed in William’s eyes filled Katherine’s as well. “I swear,” said Kane.

“Deliver her from this evil. It will be –” William clutched harder at Kane’s arm as if he were clinging to a raft in the midst of a flood. “It will be your redemption,” he said.

“Listen to him, Solomon,” Katherine whispered.

“These are my last words. I know God in Heaven hears them.” William’s gaze was fixed on Kane, and yet he appeared to be seeing far more – a vision that included Kane. “If you save our child,” he said, “if you do this...”

He coughed, and blood trickled from his mouth. He redoubled his grip on Kane’s arm, anchoring himself in another few moments of life. “If you do it,” he managed to pronounce, “your soul will be saved. I know it to be true.”

Kane yearned to believe him, and it seemed to him that William was experiencing a vision he had earned with his
life. “Now swear to me that you will find her,” William said, though he scarcely had the breath to speak. “Swear it, Solomon.”

“I swear I will find her,” Kane said with all his soul.

He never knew if William had heard. As the grasp relaxed on his arm and fell away, Kane laid a gentle hand on William’s face to close the sightless eyes. The gesture seemed to waken Katherine from her grieving trance. She lifted the chain of the locket from around William’s neck and handed it to Kane. “Go now. Find her,” she said.

Kane could tell it was as passionate a prayer as Katherine had ever uttered. He strode from corpse to raider’s corpse, gathering weapons – swords, knives, a brace of pistols, a pouch of gunpowder. He found shot for the pistols and loaded them before thrusting them into his belt. His search had brought him close to the entrance of one of the tents, and he glanced back at Katherine, who nodded as she cradled her husband’s body. “Whatever you need is yours,” she said almost too softly to be heard.

Kane stooped into the tent to retrieve William’s cloak. He swung it about himself and then clapped Edward’s conical buckled hat on his head. He was uniformed as a Puritan at last, and his weapons made him an avenger. A splash of crimson on the blanched ground caught his eye. It was Meredith’s shawl, cast down like a challenge. As he tied it about his waist, he could have fancied that he was wearing her colours to a tournament. All he required was a steed, and in a moment he heard a muted whinny and the sound of hooves. A saddled horse, which must have been ridden by one of the raiders, had appeared out of the mist on the track.

Kane mounted it and wheeled it to face Katherine. Her arms were around William, her cheek pressed against his.
For a moment her gaze found Kane. “God go with you,” she whispered and turned her eyes back to William. She was as motionless as her husband when Kane glanced at them from the track, and the mist swallowed them as Kane rode to meet his fate.

B
efore Kane had ridden far along the track he heard hoofbeats ahead. He urged the horse faster and peered into the mist, from which tree after dripping tree advanced to meet him. While there was no sign of the riders, the sound of hooves was growing louder. He was not overtaking his quarry. More than one of the horsemen had turned back to deal with him.

As they rode out of the mist they spurred their horses to either side of the track, drawing swords to cut Kane down. He drummed his heels against his horse’s ribs and sent it galloping between the riders. He had a pistol in each hand. The moment he came abreast of the riders he discharged both weapons, and the men were dashed to the ground in a flurry of leaves. Kane did not even glance at them as he rode at all speed down the track. Although he strained his ears and held his breath, he could no longer hear any hoofbeats ahead.

Had the riders turned aside to lose him? He cursed the mist that might be hiding them. He could only follow the track for want of any other. Was that a distant sound of hooves or just the pounding of his heart? Surely the noise was ahead of him, where the mist appeared to be thinning. So were the trees, and seconds later he was in the open.

The forest had given way to moorland. The greater part
of the mist stayed among the trees. Enormous slabs of mossy rock and expanses of heather sparkling dully with frost stretched to the horizon. The moor was a labyrinth of paths, but Kane did not hesitate. A horseman was riding westwards, carrying a girl who lay across the back of his steed.

He did not look around until Kane began to narrow the distance between them. His horse must be exhausted; it was unable to outrun Kane’s, even when the rider drove his spurs into its sides and then raked them through the flesh. In minutes Kane had halved the distance, and in another he was closer still. The horseman jerked the reins cruelly to direct his steed towards a stone circle that stood in the midst of the heath. Perhaps he thought the ancient weathered stones might retain some pagan magic that would protect him from vengeance, unless he was so desperate to take refuge that the incomplete circle looked like cover. He rode onto the patch of frozen grass encircled by the stones and reined the horse around to face Kane, who stayed at the edge of the circle. “Give me the girl,” Kane told him.

The black eyes flickered like a lizard’s, and the livid symbols around the raider’s mouth seemed to twist it into a grimace. Kane thought the man might attempt to flee or, worse, to injure Meredith. He began to ride around the perimeter of the circle, so fast that the raider could not turn to keep him in sight. “Give her to me,” Kane said so harshly that it was clear he would use no more words.

Perhaps the rider was as fatigued as his steed, which stood panting and dribbling foam. He raised the hand that was planted in the small of the girl’s back and shoved her off the horse. She fell to the earth with a gasp and drew in all her limbs, covering her face with her hands. Kane dismounted and hurried to her. “Meredith,” he
murmured, brandishing his sword to keep the horseman well away. “If she has been harmed...”

She flinched when he took her gently by the shoulder. He had to hold her more firmly and start to help her to her feet before she would take her hands away from her face. He had after all not recognised her long dark dishevelled hair and sombre clothes. The girl was not Meredith.

She recoiled as Kane strode away from her to seize the rider by the throat. Before the man could find a weapon Kane dragged him out of the saddle and flung him to the ground, knocking all the breath out of him. “Where is she?” Kane demanded.

“There,” the man panted, jabbing a thick finger towards the girl. “You have her.”

Kane let him stumble to his feet before he hit him. The man’s face felt swollen and misshapen, and put Kane in mind of fungus. “That is not her,” Kane said through his teeth. “Where is the girl you took from our camp?”

The man wiped blood from his split lip and turned a coaly glare on Kane. “I don’t know.”

Kane punched him in the mouth once more and felt rotten teeth yield in their sockets. “Tell me where she is, or I swear by the living God –”

“I don’t know,” the man protested doggedly and spat blood on the pallid grass. “I don’t know you. I was never at your camp.”

“I am Solomon Kane.” He struck the man a third time. “You know who took her,” he said. “They are of your kind. They must have ridden this way.”

“We are legion,” the raider said, spitting out a tooth as brown and porous as old bone. “We are everywhere in this land.”

The girl cried out and hid her face anew as Kane took
his knife from his belt and held the point against the man’s cheek beneath the left eyeball. He had a sickened notion that the flesh might split like a toadstool, releasing some substance he would rather not envision. “Tell me what you know,” he said under his breath, “or you will never see again. Where will they take her?”

“To our master’s castle,” the man said as if he were speaking of his god, and licked his bloody lips. “For sacrifice. He needs the blood of such as her.”

“Who is your master?” Kane demanded. “The creature who must hide his face behind a mask?”

“Not the Overlord.” Fear glimmered in the black depths of the raider’s eyes. “The sorcerer,” he whispered. “Malachi.”

Kane sensed that dread was close to silencing his informant. He pressed the point of the knife against the skin beneath the eye. “Where is this sorcerer’s domain?”

“Ride west,” the man muttered and struggled to regain his voice. “Ride –”

He choked as though his tongue had withdrawn into his throat like a worm into the earth. His eyes bulged, filling with a deeper blackness. His lips twisted as if the symbols embedded in the flesh were strings that were tugging at them. “Where?” Kane said urgently.

The ebon gaze stayed fixed on him, but all at once he knew that someone else was using the eyes to observe him. The mocking laugh that emerged from the mouth could have been no more unnatural if it had been uttered by a statue. It was followed by the voice of the creature that had slain Samuel. “Solomon Kane,” the enormous thick voice said, and the swollen lips writhed into a mirthless grin. “Will you play the torturer?”

“I will do what I must to find the girl,” vowed Kane.

“You may carve the flesh from this worthless body.”
The raider spread his arms wide as though to parody a crucifixion. “But it will not tell you what you want to know. I will not let it,” the voice said.

The eyes seemed delighted not just at his predicament but with the helplessness of the raider. “What in God’s name are you?” Kane demanded.

“I am nothing in your God’s name,” the man declared and grinned viciously at him.

A movement in the sky distracted Kane. More than a dozen crows were circling against the sullen clouds that hid the sun. They might have been hovering to form an unholy halo for the figure below them – a horseman watching from the crest of a rise on the moor. Though it was hundreds of yards distant, Kane knew that its face was concealed by a mask. Its voice was directly in front of him. “Your quest for the girl will only lead you into darkness,” it said.

Kane saw that darkness eyeing him. “I will find her,” he said like an oath.

“Not before her life is taken.” As Kane held back from slashing the man’s face in response, the eyes gleamed in anticipation. “To free the demon sent to claim you,” the voice relished telling him.

Kane snatched the blade away and turned towards the distant horseman. “I will hunt you down,” he shouted, “and send your black heart back to Hell!”

“I have no heart.” It was still the man within arm’s length who spoke. He gave a laugh that spilled blood from his mouth. “Nor do you,” he said.

The Overlord wheeled his horse around and rode westwards at a gallop, accompanied by the crows, which cawed as they flocked above him. As though invisible strings that bound him to the puppeteer had snapped, the man in the stone circle jerked and twitched like a victim of
a fit before crumpling to the earth. A final spasm doubled up his body and released it, and then the blackness drained from his eyes, leaving them dead but human. As the skin absorbed the symbols that marked it, Kane heard a muffled sob. The girl had watched the transformation, covering her mouth to stifle her dismay. Kane took a pace towards her, but she scrambled backwards. “I mean you no harm, child,” he murmured. “You are safe.”

He faltered for a moment as he recalled assuring Meredith that he would keep her and her family safe. Meredith would be; that was his destiny now. “The beast is gone,” he told the girl.

She risked a doubtful glance at the prone body. “Is it dead?” she whispered.

“I promise you it is.” Kane removed his cloak and offered it to her, and she allowed him to drape it around her shoulders. “Are you injured?” he said.

She rose to her feet, wincing a little. “No,” she said with a touch of defiance.

Kane smiled at her bravery but desisted when she frowned at him. “What is your name?” he said.

“Elizabeth Bracewell,” said the girl, defiantly still.

“I am Solomon Kane, Elizabeth.”

She seemed scarcely to hear him. She limped to the edge of the stone circle, staying well clear of the body on the grass, and gazed across the empty moor. “I want to go home,” she said.

Kane saw that her bravado was a way of fending off the truth of her situation. He stood next to her between the broken stones and made to take her arm. “You should rest,” he said.

Elizabeth moved beyond his reach and peered about at the moorland paths as if she imagined that her way might reveal itself somehow. A chill wind came to greet
her, shivering the crystallised heather. “No, I want to go home,” she said, sounding younger than her years.

“Child...” Kane put a gentle arm around her shoulders. “They leave none alive,” he murmured. “There is no home for you to return to.”

For a moment she struggled against his support and the knowledge. Then a great sob shuddered through her, and she was overwhelmed by tears. Kane held her for a long time before her sobs grew intermittent and she began to gulp for breath. He was seeing Meredith’s family slaughtered once more, and his own failure to protect them. When he sensed that Elizabeth was trembling with cold as well as grief he led her into the shelter of the largest standing stone. “You must have something to sustain you,” he said.