Solomon Kane

by Ramsey Campbell

  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.

  SIXTEEN

  “Solomon,” 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.

  SEVENTEEN

  Even 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.

  The masked rider spurred his horse forward and reined it to a halt near the blazing wagon. He merely nodded at the man with the eye-patch, but his minion understood, and Kane had the awful notion that the raiders had just a single evil soul between them. The man hauled Samuel to his feet and dragged him away from his family, into the middle of the glade. The raider’s one eye glinted like a snake’s at Kane, and so did the eyes within the mask. “Leave him be,” Kane yelled and started down the slope.

  Nobody else could rescue Samuel. Several raiders stood over the Crowthorns, swords poised to cut them down if they should move. Katherine and Meredith cried out, and William groaned from the depths of his soul while Edward mumbled some prayer, because Samuel’s captor had drawn a knife from his belt. The blade was the length of the boy’s forearm and serrated along one edge. The other looked sharp as a razor, and that was the edge the man put to Samuel’s throat. “Don’t you hurt him,” Kane shouted.

  “Solomon,” Meredith pleaded, “help him.”

  It seemed to Kane that the horseman and his minion were issuing some kind of challenge to him, perhaps for daring to confront them. Otherwise, why had he not been overpowered or slain? He took a pace towards Samuel, but the boy’s captor pressed the blade against Samuel’s throat, and Kane saw it was close to breaking the skin. He held his ground and strove to fix the horseman’s gaze with his. “Listen to me,” he said as evenly as he could. “These people are no threat to you. You can see they’re Christians. They want only to leave this land.”

  The eyes in the mask seemed to gleam with malicious amusement, and Kane saw the identical expression in the raider’s one eye. Perhaps Kane should not have mentioned Christianity, and he was searching for words when Samuel, inflamed by the bite of the knife or by the treatment of his family, called out “Kill them, Solomon. Kill them all.”

  Kane thought he glimpsed anticipation in the horseman’s eyes, and fancied that the look had appeared in the eyes of every raider. “Don’t struggle, Samuel,” he urged. “He knows you can do him no harm. I am certain he will let you go.”

  “Listen to him, Samuel, listen,” William cried.

  Katherine and Edward and Meredith exhorted him too, but perhaps the boy’s plight made him deaf to their advice. “I know you can do it, Solomon,” he pleaded. “Kill him!”

  “Just be quiet, Samuel,” Kane said with a savagery born of desperation, and turned to the rider. “You,” he said and glimpsed some kind of response deep in the eyes of the unseen face. “Are you their master? What is it you want?”

  The eyes considered him and then found Samuel. The horseman lifted one gloved hand, and Kane was afraid what the gesture might be about to convey. “I’ll do anything,” he vowed.

  The hand closed into a fist with a creak of leather. The raider who held Samuel moved, and Kane grew fearful for the boy, but the man was only lifting his disfigured head. The face overgrown with symbols twisted as if it was straining to adopt a different shape. The man’s throat worked convulsively while the solitary ebon eyeball bulged in its socket. The thick greyish lips were distorted by a violent grimace, and blood trickled from one corner. The eye focused on Kane, and the mouth spoke. “Kill me,” it said. “Can you?”

  The voice was scarcely human. It was deep and harsh and resonant, and seemed to reverberate through the forest. Kane understood at once that it belonged less to the speaker than to the man behind the mask, who had commandeered his minion’s body to speak on his behalf. Kane hardly knew which of them to address, but he appealed to the leader. “I cannot,” he said. “I am a man of peace.”

  The rider’s eyes were as unresponsive as his mask. Kane heard Samuel attempt to suppress a cry, and turned to see that his captor had pulled the boy’s head back by the hair. The family cried out, and Meredith’s plea was loudest. “Solomon, stop him!”


  Kane dug his fingernails into his palms in an agony of powerlessness. “Don’t you hurt that boy,” he snarled as though his words might have the force of prayer.

  “This boy...” For a grotesque moment the hand that gripped Samuel’s hair might almost have been laying a benediction on his head. “This child has more heart than any of you,” the voice that had borrowed the distorted mouth declared. “He is the only man here.”

  Kane saw the horseman lift his gloved hand. The eyes in the mask were blank with indifference, and all at once Kane was filled with dread. “Listen to me,” he begged. “A child can be no use to you. Take me instead.”

  Before he had finished speaking, the emotionless gaze abandoned him. It fastened on Samuel, and the raised fist fell like a hammer. The gesture was weighty enough to drive a nail into a coffin, but its effect was deadlier. In less time than it took Kane to draw a breath, the one-eyed man cut Samuel’s throat from ear to ear.

  The boy’s eyes widened in disbelief that looked very much like betrayal. They were gazing straight at Kane as they dimmed and misted over. The man with the eye-patch held up Samuel’s body as if to display it for his master’s approval. Once it had twitched its last he let it fall to the frozen earth, where it turned the leaves around it red.

  Kane heard cries of horror that fell short of expressing his own. “Oh God,” Katherine wept, “my son...” Grief seemed to have separated her from William, who moaned “My boy, oh Samuel...” Edward attempted to pronounce a prayer while Meredith found nothing to say except, in worse than despair, Kane’s name. As Kane struggled to find some response, the one-eyed raider spared Samuel’s body a glance. “This was the only man here,” said the voice that occupied his mouth.