Solomon Kane (17 page)

At least it was heading eastwards, where any safety ought to be. The river was clear of rocks now, and she wanted to believe that the headlong speed at which she was being borne was only to her good. It might even be faster than anyone could ride along the cliff. Had the raiders seen her reach the surface? Perhaps they assumed the fall must have killed her, or that she had drowned. As she composed a silent prayer – the torrent left her no breath for even a whisper – those were among the entreaties she made. Her eyes were so blurred by spray, and the course of the river had grown so dark, that she did not immediately observe that the nearer bank was no longer a cliff.

Soon it was no taller than she would be if she could stand. She blinked at it through the spray as the torrent rushed her onwards, and saw nobody in the gloom among the trees. The land sloped down until it was level with the river, which sprouted reeds along its margin. Meredith grappled with the tree and the implacable current, and eventually managed to steer the tree towards the bank.
The branches snagged the reeds and became entangled in them, and the trunk swung landwards. As it bumped against the bank Meredith scrambled over the supine tree and sprawled face down on the muddy grass.

She lay there, panting and drenched and utterly spent, until she realised that the tumult of the river would prevent her from hearing anyone who approached. She pushed herself up on her unsteady arms and blinked hard at the dark. Tall dim silhouettes and hulking ones gathered around her, and their companions appeared behind them in the gloom, but all of them were trees and bushes. As far as she could make out, none of them hid anything more human or once human. All the same, anybody searching for her would look for her close to the river.

She lurched to her feet and stumbled away. The rain had stopped, but she could not be any more soaked. Her saturated clothes clung to her like an icy second skin, and her hair dangled like drowned weeds against her face. Stealth was impossible; once she left the sounds of the river behind she heard the mud suck at every footstep. The treacherous ground slowed her down until her body felt like a burden too ponderous for her exhausted legs to support. When she lost her footing in the mud she no longer had the strength to save herself from falling. She grabbed at a bush but succeeded only in snapping a handful of twigs before she hit the sodden earth.

She was almost too weakened to gasp. Her bruised hand and the insensible one spread slackly open on the drenched grass. At least she was away from the river and surrounded by bushes. Surely they would hide her, even from any searchers. Surely she ought to be safe there while she regained just a little of her strength – and then she heard a muffled footstep, and another.

Had her pursuers left their horses for the sake of stealth? She made to pray not to be found, and then as her hands moved to join together she felt how the left one was tainted. Perhaps that was one function of the mark – to prevent her from praying as she had prayed ever since she had words. She could only inch her right hand forward to keep her face out of the mud. She closed her eyes and clung to an idea no less childish than desperate – that so long as she was unable to see, she could not be seen either. But the inexorable footsteps came on, halting just a few yards away. Meredith released a breath that felt as though she were giving up more than air, and then she raised her head.

A solitary figure was just visible against the thick night sky. It was smaller and slighter than a man. As Meredith peered at the face it began to take shape. She could hardly believe she recognised him, but it seemed she did. “Samuel,” she whispered. “Am I dead?”

“Dead, miss?” The boy gave a laugh so nervous it was barely audible. “You ain’t dead. You can’t be. You’re speaking to me.”

He was not Samuel. His accent reminded her of Captain Kane’s. Meredith managed to sit back on her haunches and brushed ineffectually at the muddy front of her soaked dress. “I thought I was,” she said, not without wistfulness.

“We may be,” the boy muttered, “if we wait round here much longer.”

He started as a black shape flapped out of a tree – a crow. It flew towards the ill-defined horizon, and the boy glanced apprehensively about. “What is it?” Meredith whispered.

“There’s terrible things in the dark, miss.”

He spoke as if he was afraid his very words would bring
them. Meredith wanted to believe he was just beset by night fears – he seemed more timid than Samuel – but she was too aware of the evils that were abroad. She tried to stand, only to discover that her legs were incapable of the task. “Please help me,” she said.

The boy hesitated until Meredith held out her shaky hands, and then he trudged forward to grab her arms, so that she felt he was avoiding the touch of her infected palm. Having hauled her unceremoniously to her feet, he let go at once. She caught at his arm as her legs wavered. “May I lean on you?” she pleaded.

“I’m meant to be finding the ewe. She’s wandered.” When Meredith staggered against him the boy relented. “I’ll help you a bit of the way,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know.” Even if it had not been so dark Meredith would have had to confess “I don’t know where I am.”

The boy peered into her face and reached a decision. “You can come home,” he said. “You’ll be safe there for the night.”

“Thank you.” The words seemed not just inadequate but impersonal. “What is your name?” Meredith said.

“Thomas.” With a hint of defiant familial pride the boy said “Thomas Woolman.”

“Thank you, Thomas. I’m Meredith,” she said and found she was unable to go on.

As soon as they took a step she stumbled. “You can put your arm round me if you like, Mistress Meredith,” he said.

She draped her right arm across his shoulders, and he matched his pace to hers. Their slowness gave her time to imagine an attacker behind every bush, especially since Thomas had begun to peer nervously at them. She
would have searched for conversation, but she sensed he would be nervous of that as well. She tried to silence her thoughts too until the bushes thinned out and the trees gave way to bare fields. “There,” Thomas murmured.

He was pointing across the nearest field at a group of small buildings huddled against the featureless dark. A rush-light flickered beyond a cottage window, but the other buildings were unlit. “That’s my father’s farm,” Thomas said. “Don’t make any noise now. They mustn’t know you’re here.”

Meredith had an uneasy notion that he did not mean his family. “Who?” she whispered.

“Anyone,” Thomas said and supported her to the hedge around the field. Now that they were in the open he seemed more anxious. As he guided Meredith along a rough path that followed the perimeter of the field, she sensed his impatience with her tardiness. The night was silent apart from the bleating of sheep, with no sign of life from the farmhouse. Thomas steered her off the path well before they reached the building and ushered her around the edge of the farmyard. A hen clucked in its sleep, but it was a man’s cough that made the boy start. When nobody appeared at the lit window he hurried Meredith to the barn.

The door opened with a faint creak, and Thomas glanced nervously towards the house. As soon as Meredith was through the meagre opening he offered her, the boy dodged in and shut the door. The darkness felt like some undefined threat rendered tangible until Meredith heard the striking of a flint, and a rush-light flared up to illuminate the interior. Shadows fluttered bat-like above the rafters and performed a ponderous dance behind bales of hay, but the large room seemed empty of actual danger. Thomas watched Meredith sink onto a heap of
straw, and then he cleared the floor in front of her and set the rush-light down. He took off his heavy woollen coat and settled it around Meredith’s shoulders, then stepped quickly back. “Nobody but me will come in here,” he said. “You can sleep.”

“Thank you. God bless you, Thomas,” Meredith said.

“I’ll get you when it’s safe,” Thomas said and frowned. “Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to isolate her with all that it summoned up. “I managed to escape from – I can’t say what they are,” she whispered. “The raiders. Servants of evil, some terrible evil.”

Thomas glanced towards the door as if he wanted to escape what she was saying. “They –” Meredith blurted, and her words did their best to desert her, but they were all that remained in her mind. “They killed my family,” she said.

The boy watched unhappily as she was overwhelmed by tears. “There’s nothing you could have done,” he mumbled.

Meredith sobbed and gulped and eventually recaptured her voice. “How do you know that, Thomas?”

“The raiders came here too.” As Meredith shivered, not just with the chill of her drenched clothes, he said “To our village. We gave them food. We gave them whatever they wanted. That’s how everyone survives here. My father says we might as well be slaves.”

He must have seen that Meredith felt vulnerable again. His words had brought the raiders and the threat of their return too close. “This place is safe,” he said. “It’ll be warm. I’ll try and bring you some food and clothes when I can.”

He retreated to the door and stood with one hand on the latch. “Don’t go outside,” he said. “Don’t go near the
door.” He snatched it ajar and slipped through the gap. In a moment it was shut as if the boy had vanished like a will-o’-the-wisp. Shadows pranced behind the bales and veered about under the roof, and then the flame steadied. As Meredith gazed at it her eyelids seemed to gain an unbearable weight – to take on all the exhaustion she had been fighting off. In another breath she was asleep, and there was no peril where she found herself, nor any cold or loss.

A
s Kane rode through the low hills he was aware that a change had invaded the late afternoon. Was there a sound besides the incessant hiss of rain, which had begun to seem as constant as the sunless sky? His horse had sensed something ahead, and gave an uneasy snort. Kane stroked its wet head and guided the horse up a hill. Before they reached the top of the gradual slope he thought he heard an unfamiliar noise – a murmur too low to be defined, or perhaps just an unidentifiable vibration. He came to the brow of the hill and was scarcely aware of reining the horse to a standstill. “Dear God in Heaven,” he breathed.

Beyond the hills the landscape flattened out, and it was thronged with people fleeing eastwards. A few couples supported each other, but most of the fugitives were alone. Every head was downcast as a penitent’s, lashed by the rain. Even at that distance the spectacle exuded despair. It was plain that the refugees believed their world had been brought to an end. The exodus might have been mistaken for a pilgrimage, but Kane thought they were advancing as hopelessly as a beast goes to the slaughterhouse. The notion enraged him, and he rode downhill.

No doubt some if not all of the throng took him for a raider. Many kept their heads down, and even those who
glanced up in fear or beaten resignation seemed to find no reassurance in the sight of him. He rode back and forth among them, but none of the solitary girls was Meredith. He might have shown the fugitives the locket, except that his instincts told him that they were too immured in their own misery to identify a stranger, unless their despondency had infected him as well. He could almost have imagined that they were trudging without souls, in a devilish parody of the Day of Judgment. When at last the parade of defeated faces came to an end, Kane rode fast until he found a westward track.

The rain fell behind as though it were pursuing the refugees. A dull glow took hold of the sky ahead, but the sun was still hiding its face from the land. The track meandered between unfenced fields overgrown with weeds, and Kane could see for miles. The way was deserted, which only made him feel as though he no longer knew where he was bound or what drove him – as though even his adversary had abandoned him, finding him too insignificant and powerless to be worthy of attention. He had vowed to save Meredith, but was he simply clinging to an illusion that she was still alive? If indeed she had survived, might she have succeeded in escaping? In that case she would surely have fled eastwards. His doubts weighed his mind down, and he was continuing along the track only because the horse had been given no reason to halt when he heard a bell ahead.

The note was low and intermittent. Kane could have thought it was tolling for the fate that had overtaken the land. Above the horizon the sky grew red, and flakes of snow began to sparkle dully in the air. When Kane made out the tower silhouetted against the muffled sunset he thanked God that the church still stood. Its bell rang across the fields like the note of a buoy in the midst
of an open sea, and Kane wondered if he dared to feel reassured that he was on the right path after all. He was scant minutes away from the church when he saw the sky through the roof.

Perhaps the church was only derelict with age. Kane dismounted at the lich-gate and tethered the horse to a gatepost before stepping into the graveyard. Monuments towered over him, their inscriptions blurred by moss. A solitary splintered tree stood among the neglected graves. The bell had fallen silent, hanging inert in the tower above the exposed beams that were almost all that survived of the roof. The thick stones of the walls were piebald with lichen and rough with centuries of weathering. Kane climbed the steps to the door beneath a rounded arch and removed his hat as he twisted the heavy ring to lift the latch.