Solomon Kane Read online

  A crow cawed, and the other bird flapped like a black flag at a tournament. The man seized Kane by the hair and dragged him staggering to his feet. His grip felt capable of tearing clumps of hair out of Kane’s scalp. He manhandled Kane to the fire and forced Kane’s head down towards the flames while the shaven-pated man toyed with his knife, testing the point with his thumb, and the bearded man raised his staff as an additional threat. “Burn him,” he shouted, and the man with the knife yelled louder “Burn him.”

  As though it were in league with his adversaries, the fire was blazing now. Kane felt the heat on his face like a reminder of Hell. It seared his cheeks, where he felt stubble begin to smoulder. The fire was stinging his eyeballs by the time he found the power to heave his head back against the grasp in his hair and then to stiffen his whole body against the brute strength of his captor. “Burn him,” the others cried like spectators at an execution. “Burn him.”

  The tattooed man redoubled his grip on Kane’s hair and twisted it viciously before shoving with all his brutish might. Perhaps the unjust accusation of witchcraft lent Kane strength. After all his months of meditative retreat on the island – after all that he had done for the church and for himself – surely he was not to be slain as a sorcerer. He tensed every muscle against the assault, and this time his captor was unable to force him down. Eventually the tattooed man gave up the attempt but kept hold of Kane’s hair while he moved to peer into Kane’s face. His lips drew back from his teeth in a feral grimace. “There’s murder in your eyes,” he said in delight.

  The other men welcomed the development with grunts of pleasure. Kane was silent, and his captor yanked ferociously at his hair. “Would you kill me, pilgrim?” he said.

  Kane gritted his teeth while he offered up the painful ignominy to God. “No,” he said.

  The shaven man brought his face so close that Kane had to breathe in the fellow’s raw stale exhalation. “You won’t kill the man who steals from you?” he said with disbelief that sounded gleeful.

  Kane’s time at the monastery was being put to the test, and he did not hesitate. “I will not fight another man.”

  His interrogator slapped Kane across the face with the back of his hand as hard as he could. His knuckles caught Kane’s nose, and blood trickled into Kane’s mouth. The crows or the other men – perhaps all of the spectators – uttered hoarse sounds of appreciation. “You worthless coward,” the bald man snarled. “Fight me,” he urged and punched Kane in the face.

  Kane might have fallen except for the grasp in his hair. In a moment his captor released him. He managed not to collapse, though his head swam with the blow and his face throbbed like a wound. He tasted blood, but as his strength ebbed back he refused to let it tempt him to retaliate. “I have renounced violence,” he vowed.

  The words were not addressed to his tormentors, but the shaven man raised his raw-knuckled hand to cup it behind one misshapen empurpled ear. “What’s that you say?” he barked.

  The tattooed man put his hands together in a parody of prayer, which the patterns etched into his skin rendered diabolical. “Says he’s renounced violence,” he intoned like a monk echoing a phrase of holy ritual.

  “Well, that’s a shame.” The bearded man gave Kane a moment to anticipate what kind. “Because we haven’t,” he said and lifted his staff high. He used both hands to swing it, and the thick handle clubbed Kane on the side of the head. The blow flung Kane to the unyielding earth. In his last moment of consciousness he saw the sneering faces of the robbers, savagely painted by the firelight, and beyond them a crow taking to the air. Then a void as black as the crow swallowed him.

  SEVEN

  It seemed to Kane that a great voice spoke to him out of a vast darkness, summoning him before the throne of judgment. “You will do as I say, Solomon,” it said.

  Time and space had no meaning in the dark. Instantly he was back at Axmouth, in the great hall of the castle he had once called his home. The light of many candelabras mellowed the stone of the walls and the columns that supported the high roof, but it could not soften the presence that dominated the hall. He was seated on the massive baronial throne at the end of the room, his powerful hands gripping its arms so hard that every knuckle stood out like a threat of a blow. His sternness might almost have turned him to stone, a statue of a magistrate. He was Josiah, Kane’s father.

  Not everybody in the room was anxious to face him. The servants busying themselves about the long oaken table in the middle of the hall must be hoping that their activities would lend them anonymity – would let the lord of Axmouth think that they were hardly there at all, as good as invisible, certainly unable to overhear what was being said. The solitary figure who was confronting Josiah, standing defiantly before the throne, was just fourteen years old. What he lacked in age and stature he was making up in spirit, and Kane hardly knew whether to admire or counsel him, for he was Kane’s younger self. Josiah’s keen grey eyes were regarding him without favour, and the long face etched by harsh experience was set in a decision against which there was no appeal. “Do not forget your place, Solomon,” Josiah said for everyone to hear.

  The boy drew himself up in mute fury that he should be shamed in front of the servants. Every man must find his place, Kane wanted to assure him; it was ordained by God. He could not speak, and in any case he knew that he would have gone unheard. Before the boy could put his protest into words, Josiah said “You are the second son.”

  Kane grew aware of the older youth. He stood closer to their father, relishing every nuance of the scene. Marcus had inherited the long face, but his chin was weak, his mouth loose and petulant. He wore his hair luxuriously long, and it was as pale as his eyes, from which it might almost have leached the colour. “Marcus is my heir,” Josiah said, but he refrained from glancing at him, so that Kane could have suspected him of loving the idea more than the man. “He will be master of these lands on my death.”

  “Father, Marcus is a brute.” The boy turned to scowl at his brother, who raised a golden goblet of wine in an ironic toast to the truth. “And a bully,” the boy insisted.

  “You will take holy orders.” Perhaps Josiah was determined not to hear anything that would make him regret his decision, rooted as it was in his ancestry, but Kane could have thought he was handing down the boy’s fate as a penance for rebelliousness. “You will join the church as I command,” Josiah said.

  The boy’s eyes gleamed with dismayed rage, and Kane could have wished his youthful self to have been as voiceless as he himself was now. “I do not want to be a priest,” the boy said.

  He was giving voice to all the frustrations of his youth – to being treated as inferior by his father and the traditions of their line and, more maliciously, by Marcus. “What you want is of no importance,” Josiah reminded him so fiercely that the words were echoed from every corner of the venerable hall.

  Marcus watched his brother’s face as if it were a source of delicious amusement and lifted the goblet once more. “Father Simnal is here to take you to the abbey,” Josiah said.

  Kane grew more conscious of the robed intruders as the boy did. All five men were crowned with black caps that had put his young self in mind of a judge about to pronounce a death sentence – a fivefold sentence that would deny Kane the chance to live as he deserved, to enjoy the world to the full. Father Simnal paced softly forward, stretching out his hands in a gesture of acceptance that might have foretokened a benediction, but the boy turned his back on the contingent from the abbey and faced his father. “I will not go,” he said.

  Marcus’s eyes glittered with wicked delight while Josiah’s grew as cold and still as stone. If Kane could have found a means to reach the boy he would have urged him to accept the situation. He was only being sent where he would eventually find a home – in the embrace of religion. He might have found peace all those years ago instead of being driven to seek it as a refuge from all the evil he had committed since. Instead he had to listen to his father pronou
ncing judgment once again. “If you defy me you will have nothing,” Josiah said.

  The boy gazed deep into his eyes and saw no hint of mercy. His own face grew stiff with resignation, and he turned away to stride down the long room. Josiah’s voice pursued him. “I will cut you off,” it thundered.

  The servants watched the boy covertly as they performed whatever tasks they could find. Kane thought he discerned sympathy on at least one face. Father Simnal took another pace towards the boy, but the hands that stretched forth from the long sleeves looked ineffectual now. “You will be a landless vagrant,” Josiah warned his son, and the priest made to put his hands together in some kind of prayer for Kane if not for obedience. “Is that what you want?” Josiah demanded.

  His words seemed to shake the flames of the candelabras. Perhaps the boy’s flight did. He was set on his course now, and nothing could stop him. He had the sureness of youth – of knowing he was unappreciated and misunderstood. He strode into the corridor that led to the outer doors, but even here his father’s voice was at his back. “Walk out now,” it declared, “and you may never return.”

  Kane knew this was true, and would have grasped his younger self by the shoulder to detain him if he could. The boy seized the rings set in the stout doors and twisted them, and a squeal of metal echoed through the corridor. “Do not defy me, Solomon,” Josiah cried.

  His voice was overwhelmed by the rumble of timber as the boy flung the doors wide. They might have been the entrance to a furnace, because fire was waiting beyond them – waiting for Kane, who could no longer stay separate from his younger self. The fire streamed along the blade of the molten sword held by the hooded figure he recognised all too well. The sword had been raised high to greet him, and now it swept down. It seemed to part Kane from his consciousness – from everything he had been. For a moment, unless it was an eternity, there was only the absence of light, a void too total even to be described as darkness, and then Kane grew aware of a face hovering above him – an innocent face, a young woman’s face. In that first instant he thought that, unworthy though he was, an angel had descended to earth to save him.

  EIGHT

  The world swayed around Kane as he regained consciousness once more, and at first he thought he was at the mercy of a storm at sea. Light flared above him, but it was not the blazing sword that awaited him at the end of every awful dream. It was weak sunlight, and his eyes flickered open to fasten on it. He was still being rocked from side to side by the vehicle that carried him, but there was no storm. He lay beneath a canvas roof, and above him he saw a young woman’s face.

  He had seen it before, when he had struggled free of the dream of his banishment from Axmouth. The small delicate face was crowned by a white cap that might have been the garb of a nurse rather than the headgear of a Puritan. “Be calm, sir,” she murmured. “You are safe.”

  Kane saw that they were not alone in the covered wagon. A boy was watching them, and now he parted the flaps at the back and jumped down. “He’s awake, father,” he called. “That man, he’s awake.”

  The wagon lurched over some unevenness in the road. As it steadied, the young woman leaned closer to Kane, unstoppering a leather flask. “Here,” she said softly, “take a drink of water.”

  Kane found that he was lying on a bed as narrow as the bench on which he had slept in his monastic cell. When he attempted to raise his head from the pillow, he managed just an inch before the effort revived pains all over him – a throbbing of his head, a soreness of the stomach, a dull bruise over his ribs. He remembered the blows that had caused them all, but any rage at his assailants was too distant to grasp. Perhaps he had learned to put such feelings from him. As his head sank to the pillow the young woman murmured “Sir, let me help. Drink if you can.”

  She slipped a soft cool hand behind Kane’s head and lifted it. When she put the flask to his lips Kane sipped and then drank. At last he gasped, and the young woman let his head rest on the pillow. Not just the water seemed to be giving him back some strength; Kane thought her concern for him did. At first glimpse he had taken her for an angel, and it still seemed to Kane that in some way she was capable of redeeming him. “Who are you?” he said and was dismayed to hear how feeble his voice had grown.

  The young woman stroked his forehead and then straightened up as if she might have presumed too much. “My name is Meredith,” she said.

  “Meredith.” Kane lingered over the syllables, which sounded almost like a gentle prayer, as she turned away to acknowledge a newcomer. “His fever has broken, father,” she said.

  In a moment Kane recognised the pockmarked weather-beaten face, the eyes underlain with a trace of humour at odds with the sombre Puritan raiment. “Thank the Lord, sir,” the man said and made his way along the swaying wagon. “By His grace you will be well.”

  He reached for Kane’s wrist and found the pulse, which he contemplated for some moments before nodding in approval at his daughter. “My name is William,” he said. “William Crowthorn.”

  “And mine is Solomon.” For a breath Kane wondered if his whole name might be renowned for the evils he had perpetrated, but concealing it would be vain and a hindrance to repentance. “Solomon Kane,” he said.

  Crowthorn gave no sign of recognition, and Kane found he might have hoped the man would know of Axmouth. The wagon had not been travelling from that direction, and realising this reminded Kane “You offered me a ride.”

  A paternal frown narrowed Crowthorn’s eyes, conveying regret rather than rebuke. “I did,” he said.

  “I should have accepted.”

  “You should.” The frown faded, and Crowthorn’s eyes grew reminiscent. “The good Lord must be watching over you,” he said. “He guided us to your rescue.”

  “Master Crowthorn...” As much as the drink of water, the sense of being in the bosom of a family seemed to be restoring Kane’s vigour. “Perhaps you have set me back on the road to my destiny,” he said.

  “It shall be as God wills.”

  Kane’s words had fallen short of expressing what he felt – that the Crowthorns were somehow bound up with his fate. They must have turned back to find him, unless they had been led astray by the tracks through the forest – in fact, led true. And had Meredith not seemed to stand between Kane and the reaper in his dream? It would hardly be proper to speak of this, and he held his peace as Crowthorn raised his voice. “Edward, pull over now,” he called. “We’ll make camp for the night.”

  “I see the place that has been provided for us, father.”

  The response sounded more elderly than the speaker, whom Kane guessed to be in his twenties. He heard the driver urge the horses onwards with an impatient clicking of the tongue that Kane could have taken for a sound of disapproval. Soon the wagon rumbled to a halt. “Pray excuse us, Master Kane,” Crowthorn said and set about unloading the wagon. “Rest now and regain your strength.”

  Meredith gave Kane an encouraging smile as she picked up utensils before following her father. In the calm after the incessant thunder of the wheels Kane heard a horse snort, the soughing of a wind in trees, the placid rippling of water. He lay and listened until the rattle of cooking utensils and the thuds of poles driven into earth made him feel idle. He raised his head without wavering, and found that he was capable of sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed. His various pains came with him, but he had suffered worse in battle, and they should be no excuse for indolence. With barely a stumble he made his way to the back of the wagon.

  It stood in a glade beside a river. Despite the muffling of the sun, he could tell that the muted light denoted late afternoon. Traces of frost outlined the bark of the trees, but for the moment there was no sign of snow in the air. At the edge of the river the water raced over stones, stretching weeds away from them as if the ripples were combing drowned hair. Meredith and her mother had set up a cooking pot on a stand beside the river. Crowthorn and his elder son were building a rough shelter for the night while the boy Kane had see
n in the wagon was stooping to the river, collecting stones to keep or to skim across the water. “Samuel, water the horses,” his brother called to him.

  The boy stayed in his crouch. “Why me?” he protested.

  “Samuel,” his father called more sternly than Kane would have expected of him. “Edward has given you a task. See you set to it at once.”

  Kane saw the elder son fix a disapproving look on Samuel. Unlike the boy, he had inherited their father’s features, though not all the strength of his mouth. Kane thought his lips seemed secretly a little petulant, hence more determined to wield power. Or was he interpreting the young man’s face in terms of his own troubled memories? Samuel opened his hands, and the stones clattered into the river. As the boy trudged to unhitch the horses, Kane stepped down from the wagon.

  Crowthorn’s wife hurried over to him, stretching out her hands. They must once have been delicate, but they were worn with toil. “Master Kane,” she protested. “You should be resting.”

  “I can hardly repay your hospitality with idleness.” Kane flexed his muscles and experienced no immediate loss of strength. “Give me a few minutes to clean up,” he said, “and then I’ll come and help you as I can.”

  Concern gave way to resignation in her eyes. Perhaps she was used to the stubbornness of a husband and two sons. She laid a hand on Kane’s and then turned back to her family. Kane’s bag was in the wagon, and proved to contain the few belongings the robbers had left him. He found a cloth and made his way across the ground strewn with leaves to the river.

  He came to the edge not far from Samuel, who was waiting to lead the horses away once they had drunk their fill. He was aware of Kane but did not glance at him. “You tend them well,” Kane said. “No task is unimportant if it does good.”