Solomon Kane (14 page)

The horses had already found a nearby stream. Kane laid the body of the raider out of the girl’s sight in a hollow on the moor some way from the stones. He spoke a brief prayer and then set about collecting fuel to build a small fire. Before long Elizabeth came to help him. Among the contents of his saddlebag were the makings of a broth, which was lukewarm by the time he served it to Elizabeth. He waited until she appeared to have recovered some of her stubborn courage, because he had to question her. “Tell me what you know of the raiders,” he said.

“They came from the west.” Elizabeth’s gaze ranged nervously about the moor, but she must be unable to orient herself beneath the concealed sun. “There were just a few at first,” she whispered, “but more and more came. It was like a plague.”

It seemed to Kane that the land might indeed be cursed as Egypt once had been – rendered barren by the implacable winter, robbed of sunlight and infested by the raiders. “Go on, child,” he said.

“They came to our village. That masked one brought them.” She glanced uneasily towards the distant cawing of a crow. “Some of our men chose to join them. If they didn’t,” she said as though she felt bound to defend people whom she must have known all her life, “they were killed or taken away.”

Her eyes grew blank, attempting to shut out the memory, unless they were trapping it within her. “It is over now,” Kane murmured. “Put your trust in God.”

He saw a plea in her eyes before she voiced it. “Can anyone fight this evil?”

Kane felt as if he were renewing his vow, on her behalf as well as Meredith’s. “I can,” he said.

He left Elizabeth to finish her broth while he led the horses back from grazing, and was unsurprised to find her asleep beside the remains of the fire. He distributed the provisions between the saddlebags of the horses, and then he loaded a pistol and laid it on the ground next to Elizabeth together with shot and a bag of powder. He straightened up, only to stand protectively over her. Every moment he lingered might be endangering Meredith, but he turned away burdened by doubt. He was leading his horse out of the stone circle when Elizabeth stirred and awoke. She struggled to her knees, throwing off Kane’s cloak that she had wrapped around herself. “What are you doing?” she pleaded.

“I have left you half the provisions,” Kane said. “Do you know how to use a pistol?”

“Why?” Elizabeth said before her eyes filled with awareness that looked painfully close to renewed grief. “Are you leaving me?”

“I must, Elizabeth.” Kane returned to her and went down on one knee before her. “You cannot come where I am going,” he said. “I am bound westwards.”

Defiance reawakened in her eyes, and a yearning for protection too. “When you have rested take the horse and ride east,” he said, pointing in the direction opposite to that the Overlord had taken. “Find a church and beg sanctuary.”

He saw Elizabeth discover some resolve within herself. The sight both heartened him and made him feel shamefully inadequate. “May God protect you,” he said and touched a sign of the cross to her forehead.

As he stood up, Elizabeth rose too and held out the cloak to him. “You will need this more than me,” she said.

Kane accepted it wordlessly, moved by her determination. When he mounted his horse Elizabeth stayed within the stone circle, as though on some atavistic level she felt that it might help to keep her safe. “What are you going to do?” she asked him.

Kane gave her a grim smile that he hoped would add to her fortitude. “I’m going hunting,” he said.

W
hen the man beside Meredith lolled against her yet again she knew he was dead. She risked a glance at him and saw that his bruised and bloody head had fallen back, raising his empty gaze heavenwards. God had taken him, she thought. All the same, she pushed the corpse away, lodging it in one corner of the cage. Its left hand dangled through the bars, and one of the raiders cut at the fingers with a whip before seeing they were lifeless. He emitted a grunt that might have expressed brutish amusement or dissatisfaction, and his blackened eyeballs turned towards Meredith. For a moment she was both afraid and hopeful that he meant to open the cage and drag her forth. If he did, she vowed, she would elude him – elude all of them and run wherever she could hide. But the discoloured gaze strayed away from her as though there was very little of a brain behind it, and the hulking creature recommended trudging beside the cart as it lurched over the uneven track through the forest. Meredith could only bide her time and put her trust in God.

Her father used to say that they would never fully understand God’s purpose for them until they were granted a sight of Him. She prayed her father and the rest of her family had that now – the knowledge and the reward of being in God’s presence. She wanted to believe
that they might be interceding on her behalf, but was she not setting herself above her fellow captives in the cage? Every human being was meant to be equal in the eyes of God, which seemed to imply that even the raiders must be, if they were still human. She found this hard to grasp, and she had to struggle to remember that until His children were summoned to Him, they should devote their lives to those things that would please Him. She could see nothing anywhere around her that would give pleasure to God – not the bestial men disfigured by occult symbols, not the victims crammed into the cage and moaning with despair or whimpering in pain as the cart jolted over the road, except for those who had been reduced to hopeless silence. Meredith could have imagined that she had been cast into Hell if someone had not been attempting to pray on the far side of the cage. The low voice was silenced by a crack of a whip, but Meredith seized upon the prayer and kept it within herself. Perhaps that was the purpose of their plight – to encourage the devout to immerse themselves in supplication, to concentrate on secret prayers that would bring them closer to God.

In that case, perhaps it was not wrong of Meredith to pray for deliverance. Captain Kane had said that he would do everything in his power to make sure that she and the family were safe. Even if he had failed to protect them, surely God would not prevent him from keeping such a solemn word to her, and might even help him. She peered through the bars at the track. Aside from the raiders who were following the prison cart the road was deserted, and there was no sign of a rider among the trees. A raider grinned evilly at Meredith as he saw that she was hoping to be rescued, unless he had some fouler thought in mind. She raised her eyes beyond the black inhuman gaze and strove to hold on to her faith, in God and in
Captain Kane as well. Then she wondered if her prayers had been answered in some unexpected way, because the cart was slowing down.

She heard shouts and cries ahead. The road was emerging from the forest, beyond which it led into a small village. Most of the raiders marched into the single lane. While they resembled a rabble more than an army, they were united in brutal purpose. As they began to smash their way into the cottages and hunt down villagers in the street, the driver of the prison cart assumed authority over his fellows. “Clear out the dead,” he barked.

One raider unlocked the barred door at the back of the cart, and his companion crouched into the cage to drag out the corpse beside Meredith. As he flung it sprawling onto the track she made her bid for freedom. She had reached the doorway before the raider with the key planted a large simian hand between her breasts and shoved her so hard that she fell helplessly against a woman. He prodded Meredith with the handle of his whip to keep her there while his confederate hauled two more corpses from among the prisoners, and then he slammed the heavy door with a clang that reverberated through every bar and set the horses snorting. As he thrust the key into the lock Meredith demanded “Where are you taking us?”

The raiders gazed at her, and the symbols around their mouths seemed to twist them into identical grimaces of contemptuous indifference. As they turned their hulking backs on her she raised her voice. “What do you want of us? What is going to happen to us?”

“Be still, child.” The woman into whose arms she had been thrown touched her shoulder. “Make your peace with God,” she murmured as she might have comforted a daughter. “It is over for us.”

“God does not wish this fate for us,” Meredith said fiercely. “He would never leave us in the clutches of the Devil and his creatures. There must be a way out. I know there is.”

Their fellow captives looked as if they feared her words would bring the raiders’ wrath upon them. “Slavery or sacrifice,” the woman whispered, “those are our only ways out. God has abandoned us. He will not deliver us from this.”

“He will not abandon anyone who puts faith in Him.” Meredith felt her words renewing her own belief. “We mustn’t give up,” she said. “Take my hand. We shall find the strength to survive this.”

A clangour shook the bars against which she was forced to lean, and the vibrations shivered through her spine into her skull. A raider was dragging the flat of his sword across the bars. “Shut your row,” he snarled at her.

As the other captives mutely urged her to obey, Meredith heard a woman in the village street. “Please don’t,” the woman cried and then screamed “No!”

Meredith turned to see the raiders at their evil work. In the irregular space that did duty as a village square, a dozen gibbets had been raised. Men and even boys hung in mid-air, jerking voicelessly as stranded fish while women cried out on their behalf. Raiders were emerging from the cottages with their arms full of provisions, but none of them acknowledged the hanged with so much as a glance. Another dozen victims were lined up on their knees in the square. Women and children and old men had been herded into a corner, some of them burying their faces in their hands. One man bolder than his companions found his voice. “Don’t do it,” he called to the kneeling men. “Don’t join them.”

His intervention emboldened a youth in the line, who
shouted along it “Don’t, father.”

Several raiders were advancing to subdue the protest until another of the men who had been forced to kneel turned to his fellows and then to the other villagers. “What choice is there?” he said, his voice small and alone in the open space beneath the low dull sky. “If we join them they will let the village stand.”

He stiffened with his head turned, and the raiders grew as still. A horseman had ridden into the square. Meredith recognised him and clenched her fists fiercely, but only the right one ached. As though in a grotesque demonstration of his power, his great harsh voice emerged from two of his minions at once. “Will you serve the Master?” it said.

More than one of the men on their knees shuddered at the sound, and the man at the right-hand end of the line seemed to feel compelled to speak. “Yes,” he stammered.

“Father,” his son protested afresh.

The man did not look at him, but lifted his head as the masked rider dismounted and approached him, hands outstretched. Perhaps he imagined that he was about to be raised to his feet, but the hands clamped themselves to his skull. “What are you doing?” he cried in a voice that seemed to be struggling to hold onto its shape.

“To serve us,” the monstrous duo chorused, “you have to join us.”

“No,” the man pleaded, but the hands held him fast. Meredith did not see what overtook him, because the youth who had called to him sprang to his feet. He could have been no older than fourteen. He dashed at the masked figure, snatching out a short blade that had been concealed inside his shirt. “Father,” he shouted in an agony of grief.

The figure observed him as he might have watched an insect run towards him. As the boy came within reach, his
adversary met him with a great blow of a sword, cleaving his skull open. His father was standing now. His face was a mass of livid symbols, and his eyes had filled with blackness. They betrayed not a flicker of emotion as he watched his son twitch on the cold earth and grow still.

Meredith’s soul revolted at the spectacle, and there was something even worse. Three men had apparently been attracted to the village by the sounds of grief and looting: a tattooed man, a deliberately bald one, a third with a braided beard. Tramping past the prison cart, they halted in the square. The masked leader of the raiders turned to scrutinise them and seemed pleased by what he saw – their bulk and their affinity with him. “Will you join us?” his doubled voice said.

The tattooed man strode forward, and the masked figure held out his hands. They closed around the man’s head, and Meredith saw tendrils swarm from the fingertips to burrow under the man’s skin, forming arcane symbols in the flesh. The man’s eyes bulged, flooding with blackness, and his head reared up. He was not struggling to free himself; he was celebrating the transfiguration, thrusting his head against the hands like a pet against its master’s. “It’s good,” he bellowed in a thick transformed voice, and Meredith saw that she was witnessing a kind of blasphemous baptism. In that moment she vowed afresh that she would do whatever was necessary to escape.