Solomon Kane (28 page)

Kane supported himself with one hand on the muddy earth of the courtyard and held the grating with the other while he made sure that nobody was approaching to investigate the sound. At last he climbed higher and let the hinged cover drop to the ground with a muted thud before he clambered up into the rain. He blinked his eyes clear as he rose to his feet, and then he glared around him. “Dear God,” he breathed.

The courtyard was ornamented with death. Human skulls were impaled on stakes thrust in the mud, and strings of skulls like an ogre’s jewellery dangled from the walls that enclosed the yard. The longest strings hung above the inner entrance, and Kane wondered if they were meant as a hideous greeting to the caged prisoners, an indication of their fate. He saw all this not just by the dismal light that seeped through the black clouds but by the glow of a wagon that had been overturned and set on fire. The pointless destruction seemed like the act of an idiot child, and Kane thought it showed how mindless the raiders had grown, or how corrupted by Malachi’s influence, which had left them unable to achieve anything but ruination. Kane was scarcely aware that his companions had joined him in the courtyard until Caldicott spoke. “Was this your home?”

“Explains a lot,” Mcness said as if he was finding what humour he could.

“When Malachi’s head is on a spike,” said Kane, “it will be once more.”

“Where will we find him?” Fletcher said.

Kane’s answer tasted sour in his mouth. “I believe he will have taken the great hall.”

“And how are we getting in there?” Mcness was anxious to learn.

“There is a way up through the dungeons,” Kane said before a noise distracted him.

At first he could neither identify nor locate the sound. He might have fancied that it was the rattle of a monstrous snake or the clatter of a gourd that was being shaken in some ritual. A mass of smoke rose from the blazing wagon to hover above the courtyard as though the source of the rhythmical staccato had summoned it for concealment. Rain raked at the smoke, and as the mass grew thinner Kane made out a small figure on the wooden balcony above the inner entrance. It was the little girl whom Meredith had rescued from the ruined village – the witch.

She leaned over the balcony to simper at him. She was flanked by human skulls on poles, and she was brandishing a skull, shaking it to produce the sharp dead sound. The smoke drifted aside and the wagon blazed up, casting her shadow on the wall behind her. It was taller than the girl, unstable and deformed. As it pranced with the movement of the flames it seemed almost as gleeful as her voice. “Welcome home,” she cried, “Solomon Kane.”

The shadow was betraying her nature, Kane thought – revealing her true self. It seemed to shiver with delight as it imitated the girl in holding a skull high. As she shook the skull again, reawakening its lifeless chatter, he wondered if she meant to show him the fate she wished upon him. Or was she giving a signal? The idea sent his hand to his dagger just as she flung the skull at him.

The missile was still flying through the air when he launched the dagger at her with all his force and skill. He felt as if he was using the weapon as much on Meredith’s behalf as his own. It sailed end over end and pierced the girl’s chest like an arrow, throwing her backwards and pinning her to the wall. Her face appeared to crumple
with a childish disbelief not far short of petulant, and in less than a breath the features grew ancient and wizened, dried up by evil as well as by age. The face worked and then flew apart – the entire dwarfish body did, blackening as it separated into fragments. They were crows, which emitted harsh desolate cries while they flapped up to merge with the pall of cloud that loomed over Axmouth.

The skull had shattered on the ground in front of Kane. The contents had spilled out of the smashed cranium, and he was unnerved to see that the object lying in the mud was a withered brain. Was it shrunken so small and hard because the victim’s soul had been stolen or subjected to some worse atrocity? Kane had no time to wonder. Perhaps the shaking of the skull had indeed been a signal, or silencing it had. He was about to lead the way to the dungeons when another door burst open, and raider after raider stormed forth.

Their faces were so disfigured by sigils that they were scarcely human, and there was nothing in their eyes but death. Kane unsheathed his sword and strode to meet them, cutting one brute down before the man could lift his own blade, impaling another through the heart, almost severing the arm of a third. Mcness was beside him, laying about himself with an axe. Telford and the others moved to flank them, and Kane saw that the youngest had all the fervour of youth. Caldicott was among the bravest, his sickness forgotten or conquered, as he took on two adversaries at once, hacking and stabbing like a veteran. All finesse was abandoned, and Kane thought sheer fierce determination might win the day. Then the inner doors swung open, expelling fire and smoke like an exhalation from Hell, and the Overlord stalked into the courtyard.

His advent seemed to possess his minions with redoubled fury. Kane saw the blow of a raider’s sword
cleave through one man’s blade and send him staggering backwards. The masked figure was striding straight at Kane. Caldicott and Fletcher ran to intercept him, but he parried their blows with a single two-handed sweep of his sword. It sliced through Fletcher’s neck, having disarmed Caldicott, whom the Overlord seized by the throat. Before Kane could reach him, a twist of the black-gloved hand snapped Caldicott’s neck like a flimsy branch.

The Overlord flung Caldicott’s body into the mud like a child throwing away a broken doll. Kane saw raiders swarming out of the doorway, and fell back alongside his companions. “Telford, get your men inside,” he urged. “We cannot win this.”

As Telford glanced at him in something too close to despair, the Overlord came at Kane. One of the raiders was in his way, but not for long. The Overlord thrust his sword through him from behind and swung the twitching body away from him with such force that it slid from the point of the blade and crumpled into the mud. “Go, Telford,” Kane shouted over the clangour of blades and the cries of the wounded. “Take your men and free the prisoners if you can.” He had scarcely finished speaking when the Overlord was upon him.

Kane’s muscles were already aching from the combat, and his adversary’s strength seemed close to inhuman. A blow of the sword almost jarred Kane’s weapon from his hand. He parried another vicious stroke two-handed, and a third. Every impact shivered through his arms, weakening them further, and the blows were so relentless that he had no opportunity to reply with a lunge of his own. The wounds in his palms felt in danger of reopening. He was forced to retreat, and barely able to manoeuvre towards the castle rather than be driven to the outer entrance. He blocked a stroke so fierce that it
numbed his arms and sent him stumbling almost against the wall – and then he realised where chance or instinct had brought him.

He was at the steps that led down to the dungeons. Before he had time to catch his breath, another blow reverberated through his sword and bruised every joint in his fingers. The impact threw him off his footing, and he fell backwards down the steps, barely staying on his feet. Several raiders saw his fall and converged on him. He was trapped if the door behind him failed to open. He groped for the heavy ring in the door and twisted it, bruising his fingers afresh. Scales of rust flaked away in his grasp, but he felt no other movement. The Overlord started down the steps, raising his bloody sword, and his minions followed. They were almost within a blade’s length of Kane when the metal ring shifted with a grinding squeal, and the door swung inwards.

It let him into a rough stone corridor illuminated by a solitary torch. He slammed the door with such force that the torch-flame streamed away from him. Was there no bar to hold the door? In the tremulous light he could see none – and then a shadow outlined a length of wood lying by the wall. He dropped it into the sockets just as several bodies thumped against the door.

The bar was as thick as a child’s wrist and made of solid oak. Nevertheless Kane heard it tremble in the sockets. Another onslaught shook it visibly, and a third extracted a groan of protest. The wood had felt moist, so that Kane wondered if it had grown rotten with the corruption that had gathered within Axmouth. Perhaps the stairway afforded the raiders too little space to mount a decisive assault, because he heard their tread retreat into the courtyard. They would mean to track him down, and he hurried along the corridor.

While he knew that the steps led to the dungeons, he had never used the route. The corridor was ominously silent, so that he could have feared the prisoners had all been slain. It brought him to a junction with a passage that took him some way towards the great hall but ended at an intersection. More than one of the corridors there was unlit, and skulls glimmered in the dimness. He must be among the ancestral vaults. The passage to the great hall was the darkest, and Kane lifted a torch from a bracket. Sword at the ready in his other aching hand, he advanced along the corridor.

A face bobbed out of the darkness to watch him – its remains did. It was a skull in a niche. No eyes were turning to observe him; they were shadows in the holes where eyes used to be. Surely only the unsteadiness of the light made the oppressive darkness ahead seem disinclined to give way. He heard claws scrabbling beyond the light, but surely they belonged to rats, one of which – a loathsomely fat specimen, its pelt glistening with moisture – he saw disappear into a hole in the wall. The corridor bent sharply, and he saw torchlight at the end. He was making for it when he heard a rush of heavy footsteps, and raiders crowded into view ahead.

Even Kane could not overcome so many. He stood where he was, steadying his sword and the torch. At first he thought the raiders had been sent after him, but they must be reinforcements for the battle in the courtyard. They were brutishly intent on their mission, and passed the junction without noticing Kane. Their sounds receded, and then the silence was complete except for the flapping of torch-flames. No, there was another noise, though it scarcely dared to be audible. Someone was whimpering.

Kane strode to the junction. Across the passage along which the raiders had stampeded, steps led downwards.
As he made for the arched entrance, which was guarded by a skull on a shelf, he could feel how dank the depths were. At the foot of the steps a corridor was fitfully illuminated by guttering torches that sent up oily smoke to blacken the stone roof. On both sides of the corridor fearful faces peered between the bars of cells at the new light that was descending towards them. Kane held it high and strained his eyes. “Meredith,” he called.

Nobody answered him. As he set foot in the passage the faces flinched into the dimness as though the torch was too bright for them, unless they were afraid of Kane. “I will not harm you,” he said and made for the nearest cell, which was opposite an empty one. He laid the torch on the floor outside and raised the locket on its chain around his neck. “Have you seen this girl?” he said, cradling the open locket on his palm.

The women in the cell ventured to the bars and narrowed their eyes at the portrait of Meredith. Kane seemed to glimpse wariness before the oldest woman spoke. “She is not here.”

“I am certain she was brought to Axmouth. Do none of you know where she is?”

“She is not here,” another woman said, and her cellmates muttered in agreement. Kane saw nervousness in their eyes, and he was about to question it when it turned to naked fear. Some of the women cried out, and some even found words, but they were too late. Whoever had crept behind Kane had snatched the pistol from his belt and thrust the muzzle against his back.

Kane could not fail now, having come so far. He whirled around to knock the assailant’s hand aside. The man was a jailer, his broad face a mass of livid symbols under the low brow. His dull eyes widened as though the blackness within them had swollen with surprise in
the instant before Kane’s blade slashed his throat open. He wobbled backwards, clutching at the wound, and collapsed to the floor as Kane seized the pistol from him.

Kane could not wait for him to die. Three blows of the sword finished him off. Kane detached the keys from the jailer’s belt and straightened up to listen. It seemed that the man was the only guard down here, and Kane risked raising his voice once more. “Meredith,” he called. “Meredith.”

It brought no response. Kane found the key that unlocked the first cell and swung the door wide. “You’re free,” he said.

The women gazed at him as if their captivity had drained them of understanding, and certainly of will. “Go now,” Kane urged them. “Take care which way you go. The raiders may be occupied elsewhere.”

The women emerged one by one from the cell, sidling past him as though they had some reason to be fearful of him. As they fled up the steps he unlocked the next door. Though he showed every prisoner Meredith’s portrait, none would admit to having seen her. He heard their footsteps dwindle along an upper corridor, but no sounds to suggest that the fugitives had been recaptured or slain. He had done all he could on their behalf, he thought as he unlocked the last cell.