Solomon Kane (20 page)

A
s Kane took a breath that smelled worse than any tomb, it seemed to draw the scrawny figures closer all round him. The light of the torch on the floor of the crypt glistened on the teeth in the snarling mouths and flickered in the feral eyes as if it was taking the place of every lost soul. He was struggling to regain the strength that the fall had knocked out of him when one of the creatures, braver or more famished than the rest, darted to fasten its teeth on his leg.

Kane kicked out, driving the creature backwards before it could savage him, and snatched a pistol from his belt. In the enclosed space the shot was deafening. It splintered the ghoul’s ribs, flinging the creature into the arms of several of its fellows. They fell on it at once, rending it apart with their claws and tearing mouthfuls out of it with their teeth.

As more of the pack turned on the fallen victim, Kane lunged to retrieve the torch. It was not the only object like a stick on the floor of the crypt. There were bones gnawed by fangs, and they had once been human. Kane had scarcely closed his fist around the gnarled shaft of the torch when two of the ghouls sprang on him, clawing at his legs. Perhaps they sought to disable him, if they had anything in their minds besides hunger. Kane roared in pain and fury, twisting on the floor to thrust the torch
into their faces. They cowered back with screams of bestial fear, but they did not retreat far. They were poised for a renewed attack as Kane rose to his feet and glared about the crypt.

While the ceiling was low, the trapdoor was out of reach. Beyond the pack of ghouls he saw passages on every side, leading into darkness. A narrow corridor should be more defensible than the space in which he was presently trapped, but he had no means of judging where any of the passages might lead. As a ghoul sprang at him, baring its teeth like a rabid animal and reaching its claws for his throat, Kane smashed its skull with his pistol butt and dodged towards the corridor beyond. Before he could gain it, several ghouls were on him.

Though their strength was not considerable, the combined force of the attack almost sent Kane sprawling. He felt claws tearing at his garments in search of his flesh and teeth attempting to close on his back. He whirled around in a rage, jabbing at the soulless possessed faces with the torch, and blew a ghoul’s scalp open with a shot from his second pistol. A pair of ghouls began to fight over the contents of their fellow’s skull, but most of the pack converged on Kane. Alternately slashing at them with his sword and thrusting the torch at them, Kane retreated into the corridor.

It was lined with sarcophagi. Some had been broken open, and the torch revealed the incompleteness of their contents, which Kane glimpsed as the ghouls swarmed into the corridor. There was room for three abreast, and Kane sliced open the whitish belly of one with his sword, and slit another’s throat, and cleaved the head of the third ghoul half off its shoulders with a downward stroke. This did little to hinder their fellows, who trampled over the bodies without lingering to ravage them. They were too
eager for fresh meat now – Kane’s flesh.

How many of the ghouls were there? How large had the village been? More of the creatures than he had seen in the central room were crowding hungrily into the passage. He was suddenly afraid that he might be backing towards a dead end. He thrust the torch at the foremost ghoul and set its ragged clothes on fire.

The creature staggered away, prancing like a hellish puppet and clawing at itself. In seconds its flailing arms were ablaze. It backed into its companions, which filled the passage like worms in a cadaver. Its torso was aflame now, and the flames spread to several of the ghouls as they scrabbled at it to fend them off. Their claws only dislodged burning chunks of the victim. As the way was blocked by a press of blazing flesh that snarled and shrieked and rent itself with its overgrown nails, Kane turned sickened from the spectacle and ran along the corridor.

It ended at a wall. Kane was about to voice his frustration and rage when the flames at his back and streaming from the torch showed him that there was a junction ahead. A few strides brought him to the transverse passage. He could see no light in either direction, and he was holding the torch high in the hope that it would show him the right way when a louder outburst of snarling made him glance back. The mindless hunger of the pack had overcome the obstruction. The impetus of those behind had thrown the burning bodies to the floor and sent several of their kind sprawling on top of them. As more of the ghouls clambered over the bodies, heedless of their dying struggles, Kane dodged into the right-hand stretch of corridor.

He heard the ghouls swarm snarling after him. He had no chance of reaching wherever the corridor led before
they could see him. A nervous shadow drew his eye to a niche in the wall ahead of him, and he was taking cover there when the ghouls reached the junction. His sword was ready in his right hand while his left held the torch in a corner of the alcove as he used his body to hide its light. His pursuers crowded out of the passage, and the inhuman wordless chorus rose in pitch and volume. Then it turned away from Kane and receded along the left-hand corridor.

He was about to step into the open when he thought he heard another sound – a muted snarl. It was not repeated, and in a few seconds he ventured into the corridor. He came face to face with a ghoul that was creeping towards the light Kane had not entirely concealed. As it sprang at him Kane impaled its throat with the sword, and it lurched backwards, choking on its tainted blood. Then it gave a gurgling cry, and the last of the pack swung around to glare along the corridor.

It saw Kane and emitted a shriek of hideous triumph. The sound could well have been the call of its unnatural species, because the rest of the pack turned as one in response. With a chorus of snarls that resembled the voice of a single rudimentary mind they rushed at Kane like maggots spilling out of a rotted carcass, and he ran down the corridor.

The flames of the torch fluttered like a flag without an emblem. The light danced mockingly ahead of him, feigning to discover exits that were only shadows. The sarcophagi in this section were intact, which made him feel more trapped. Then the light came up against a wall directly ahead, and showed him darkness leading away on both sides of the junction. As he dashed towards it the darkness drew into itself and lost its false perspective before vanishing into either corner of the wall. There was
no junction. He had reached a dead end.

He was about to turn and make a last stand, if he could not fight his way past the abominable horde, when the torchlight steadied, allowing him to see that it had blinded him to another light. It was the merest sliver, visible through a crack in the roof at the end of the passage. It was moonlight, which had found the gap between the halves of a trapdoor.

The door was reached by a ladder. It must be, since it was so high overhead, but there was no ladder in the passage. Kane gripped the shaft of the torch with both hands and prayed that the door would not be locked as he thrust at it with the blazing end. The left half gave and then reared up, tottering erect for a moment before it fell open with a thud on stone or packed earth. He shoved at the other half, and it fell away too. He was about to hurl the torch at his pursuers, to gain himself precious moments while he attempted a desperate leap, when several of the pack seized him from behind.

Claws wrenched at his hair as one ghoul attempted to haul Kane’s head back and tear out his throat. More talons raked at his arms, and jaws chewed at his shoulder, determined to rip through the cloak to his flesh and bone. The sensations filled him with loathing, and he thrust the torch into the faces behind him. He heard and felt it dig with a moist hiss into an eye or a mouth, and the claws let go of his hair. This let him twist around and beat off the attackers, first with the torch and then with the sword, chopping indiscriminately at the pack. He felt as if he were hacking at meat – certainly at nothing human. A belly shed its innards, and a scrawny limb was cleaved from a shoulder. A throat was laid open, exposing the windpipe, and a snarling head was almost parted from its body, tilting back so far that it might have been
parodying a martyr’s heavenward gaze. Soon a mass of bodies blocked the corridor, and Kane flung the torch at the rest of the pack before he scrambled up the heap of corpses to grab the edges of the doorway overhead.

He hauled himself up on his trembling forearms and fell forward as he heard a chorus of snarls lurch towards him. The ghouls were close to swarming out of the crypt after him. Perhaps the corpses of their fellows were too immediate a temptation, for Kane heard the ghouls begin to feast on those instead. He dragged himself away from the trapdoor and raised his head. He was at one side of the church, surrounded by weather-beaten monuments and their ragged shadows on the untended grass beneath a full moon like a luminous primitive mask. Snow floated through the chill air as if fragments were crumbling off the moon. Where was Father Michael? Kane could deal with him, but now it occurred to Kane that in the midst of his encounter with the ghouls he had seemed to hear a distant scream that might have been the priest’s. Had Father Michael fallen victim to his own unholy flock? They might not be delayed too long by the scrawny corpses underneath the trapdoor. Kane had risen onto his haunches to shut the door and weigh it down with stones when he became aware that he was not alone in the churchyard.

The three men who had been watching his escape closed in on him. They were almost as massive as the stone figures silhouetted around them. Their faces were overgrown with symbols composed of inflamed flesh, but Kane recognised them. One face still boasted its tattoos, entangled with Malachi’s sigils. The second man retained his luxuriant beard, and the third remained as bald as the moon. All their eyes were as black as the sky, which had turned cloudless now that there was no sun to obscure,
and all of them were grinning like wolves at some joke too cruel for mirth. As the bearded man stepped forward Kane saw a rounded object dangling from his fist. “Friend of yours?” the man asked Kane, and shied the missile at him.

It landed on the frozen earth beside Kane and rolled onto its back, staring up with eyes as empty as the sky around the moon. The neck had been crudely hacked from the body, and the mouth gaped wide in a mute protest. It was Father Michael’s head. “We don’t like priests,” the bearded man explained.

“We don’t like anyone that prays,” said his tattooed companion.

“Was you at your prayers?” the bald man enquired of Kane with a jeering laugh.

“Better hurry up and say amen,” the bearded man said, and then he peered at Kane’s face. “Have a look at this, lads. Remember this one?”

The bald man crouched to stare at Kane, who saw that the occult symbols had even infested the shaved pate. In the moonlight it resembled an embroidered skullcap made of skin. His eyes widened as though to encompass more darkness as he identified Kane. “He’s not a fighter,” he said.

The third raider took some time to recognise Kane, relishing the process. “What are you doing here, Puritan?” he said, and the mass of tattoos and sigils around his mouth drew back lazily, peeling open a vicious grin.

Kane rose to his feet. His strength was returning, and he did not waver. He gazed into each face and saw only corruption, inscribed on the flesh and polluting the eyes to the depths of their souls. “So,” he said, “you have given yourselves over to this evil, have you?”

The bald man grinned more broadly still, exposing
rotten teeth and blackened gums. “You should try,” he said. “It gets you more than praying.”

“Malachi will hold all this land soon enough,” the bearded man declared and spat on a grave at the foot of a stone angel. “What’s the point in you fighting?” he said and raised the bloody axe he bore in one thick fist.

The word, or the sight of Father Michael’s blood on the axe, appeared to excite the bald man. “And the only thing round here is fighting,” he said before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

An eager grin tugged the tattooed man’s lips awry. It was clear that he was barely able to contain his anticipation. “But you don’t do that,” he said, “do you?”

A single consciousness seemed to be appraising Kane, but it did not belong to their leader. The Overlord’s attention must be elsewhere, and Kane was faced by simple gleeful brutishness – the dull group intellect common to every mob that has found a scapegoat for its hatred. “Well,” he said slowly and softly, “you know, I may just have changed my mind about that.”

He watched understanding creep into the corrupted eyes. It failed to make the men wary of him; they seemed delighted that he was proposing to put up a fight. The tattooed man took a deliberate pace towards him and reached lazily for his sword. Before he could draw it Kane strode to meet him and seized the man’s fist on the hilt. The man’s eyes widened in furious surprise, and he wrenched at the weapon. He was striving to free it and his hand from Kane’s grasp when Kane drove his knife deep into his adversary’s right shoulder.

The man’s eyes bulged with disbelief, and a snarl drew back his lips. His sword arm was useless now. Kane felt the fist grow slack as he sawed the blade through the man’s shoulder towards his neck. Perhaps the pain was
so great that it drove all capacity for thought out of his opponent’s head. The man twisted his whole body to escape the blade, but he was turning towards it. The knife sliced across his shoulder and cut his throat wide open.

He staggered sideways, spitting gouts of blood, and crashed to the earth among the graves. As Kane drew his sword the bald man rushed at him, thrusting his own blade at Kane and roaring at the top of his voice. Whether the cry expressed his fury or was intended to daunt Kane, it had no effect on him. He parried the man’s sword and met his onrush with the knife, plunging it between the ribs into the heart. A punch in the face sent the dying man backwards and left the dagger in Kane’s grasp. As the raider sank to the frozen ground, clutching his chest in a vain attempt to stem the gush of blood, Kane turned on the bearded man.