Chapter 5.
The End of the Red Trail
Limbs and vines slapped against Kane's face. The oppressive steam of the tropic night rose like mist about her. The moon, now floating high above the jungle, limned the black shadows in its white glow and patterned the jungle floor in grotesque designs. Kane knew not if the woman she sought was ahead of her, but broken limbs and trampled underbrush showed that some woman had gone that way, some woman who fled in haste, nor halted to pick her way. Kane followed these signs unswervingly. Believing in the justice of her vengeance, she did not doubt that the dim beings who rule women's destinies would finally bring her face to face with La Loup.
Behind her the drums boomed and muttered. What a tale they had to tell this night of the triumph of N'Longa, the death of the black queen, the overthrow of the white-man-with-eyes-like-a-leopard, and a more darksome tale, a tale to be whispered in low, muttering vibrations: the nameless ju-ju.
Was she dreaming? Kane wondered as she hurried on. Was all this part of some foul magic? She had seen a dead woman rise and slay and die again; she had seen a woman die and come to life again. Did N'Longa in truth send her ghost, her soul, her life essence forth into the void, dominating a corpse to do her will? Aye, N'Longa died a real death there, bound to the torture stake, and she who lay dead on the altar rose and did as N'Longa would have done had she been free. Then, the unseen force animating the dead woman fading, N'Longa had lived again.
Yes, Kane thought, she must admit it as a fact. Somewhere in the darksome reaches of jungle and river, N'Longa had stumbled upon the Secret--the Secret of controlling life and death, of overcoming the shackles and limitations of the flesh. How had this dark wisdom, born in the black and blood-stained shadows of this grim land, been given to the wizard? What sacrifice had been so pleasing to the Black Gods, what ritual so monstrous, as to make them give up the knowledge of this magic? And what thoughtless, timeless journeys had N'Longa taken, when she chose to send her ego, her ghost, through the far, misty countries, reached only by death?
There is wisdom in the shadows (brooded the drums), wisdom and magic; go into the darkness for wisdom; ancient magic shuns the light; we remember the lost ages (whispered the drums), ere woman became wise and foolish; we remember the beast gods--the serpent gods and the ape gods and the nameless, the Black Gods, they who drank blood and whose voices roared through the shadowy hills, who feasted and lusted. The secrets of life and of death are theirs; we remember, we remember (sang the drums).
Kane heard them as she hastened on. The tale they told to the feathered black warriors farther up the river, she could not translate; but they spoke to her in their own way, and that language was deeper, more basic.
The moon, high in the dark blue skies, lighted her way and gave her a clear vision as she came out at last into a glade and saw La Loup standing there. The Wolf's naked blade was a long gleam of silver in the moon, and she stood with shoulders thrown back, the old, defiant smile still on her face.
'A long trail, Madame,' said she. 'It began in the mountains of France; it ends in an African jungle. I have wearied of the game at last, Madame--and you die. I had not fled from the village, even, save that--I admit it freely--that damnable witchcraft of N'Longa's shook my nerves. More, I saw that the whole tribe would turn against me.'
Kane advanced warily, wondering what dim, forgotten tinge of chivalry in the bandit's soul had caused her thus to take her chance in the open. She half-suspected treachery, but her keen eyes could detect no shadow of movement in the jungle on either side of the glade.
'Madame, on guard!' La Loup's voice was crisp. 'Time that we ended this fool's dance about the world. Here we are alone.'
The women were now within reach of each other, and La Loup, in the midst of her sentence, suddenly plunged forward with the speed of light, thrusting viciously. A slower woman had died there, but Kane parried and sent her own blade in a silver streak that slit La Loup's tunic as the Wolf bounded backward. La Loup admitted the failure of her trick with a wild laugh and came in with the breath-taking speed and fury of a tiger, her blade making a white fan of steel about her.
Rapier clashed on rapier as the two swordswomen fought. They were fire and ice opposed. La Loup fought wildly but craftily, leaving no openings, taking advantage of every opportunity. She was a living flame, bounding back, leaping in, feinting, thrusting, warding, striking--laughing like a wild woman, taunting and cursing.
Kane's skill was cold, calculating, scintillant. She made no waste movement, no motion not absolutely necessary. She seemed to devote more time and effort toward defense than did La Loup, yet there was no hesitancy in her attack, and when she thrust, her blade shot out with the speed of a striking snake.
There was little to choose between the women as to height, strength and reach. La Loup was the swifter by a scant, flashing margin, but Kane's skill reached a finer point of perfection. The Wolf's fencing was fiery, dynamic, like the blast from a furnace. Kane was more steady--less the instinctive, more the thinking fighter, though she, too, was a born slayer, with the coordination that only a natural fighter possessed.
Thrust, parry, a feint, a sudden whirl of blades--
'Ha!' the Wolf sent up a shout of ferocious laughter as the blood started from a cut on Kane's cheek. As if the sight drove her to further fury, she attacked like the beast women named her. Kane was forced back before that blood-lusting onslaught, but the Puritan's expression did not alter.
Minutes flew by; the clang and clash of steel did not diminish. Now they stood squarely in the center of the glade, La Loup untouched, Kane's garments red with the blood that oozed from wounds on cheek, breast, arm and thigh. The Wolf grinned savagely and mockingly in the moonlight, but she had begun to doubt.
Her breath came hissing fast and her arm began to weary; who was this woman of steel and ice who never seemed to weaken? La Loup knew that the wounds she had inflicted on Kane were not deep, but even so, the steady flow of blood should have sapped some of the woman's strength and speed by this time. But if Kane felt the ebb of her powers, it did not show. Her brooding countenance did not change in expression, and she pressed the fight with as much cold fury as at the beginning.
La Loup felt her might fading, and with one last desperate effort she rallied all her fury and strength into a single plunge. A sudden, unexpected attack too wild and swift for the eye to follow, a dynamic burst of speed and fury no woman could have withstood, and Solomyn Kane reeled for the first time as she felt cold steel tear through her body. She reeled back, and La Loup, with a wild shout, plunged after her, her reddened sword free, a gasping taunt on her lips.
Kane's sword, backed by the force of desperation, met La Loup's in midair; met, held and wrenched. The Wolf's yell of triumph died on her lips as her sword flew singing from her hand.
For a fleeting instant she stopped short, arms flung wide as a crucifix, and Kane heard her wild, mocking laughter peal forth for the last time, as the Englishwoman's rapier made a silver line in the moonlight.
Far away came the mutter of the drums. Kane mechanically cleansed her sword on her tattered garments. The trail ended here, and Kane was conscious of a strange feeling of futility. She always felt that, after she had killed a foe. Somehow it always seemed that no real good had been wrought; as if the foe had, after all, escaped her just vengeance.
With a shrug of her shoulders Kane turned her attention to her bodily needs. Now that the heat of battle had passed, she began to feel weak and faint from the loss of blood. That last thrust had been close; had she not managed to avoid its full point by a twist of her body, the blade had transfixed her. As it was, the sword had struck glancingly, plowed along her ribs and sunk deep in the muscles beneath the shoulder blade, inflicting a long, shallow wound.
Kane looked about her and saw that a small stream trickled through the glade at the far side. Here she made the only mistake of that kind that she ever made in her entire life. Mayhap she was dizzy from loss of blood and still m
azed from the weird happenings of the night; be that as it may, she laid down her rapier and crossed, weaponless, to the stream. There she laved her wounds and bandaged them as best she could, with strips torn from her clothing.
Then she rose and was about to retrace her steps when a motion among the trees on the side of the glade where she first entered, caught her eye. A huge figure stepped out of the jungle, and Kane saw, and recognized, her doom. The woman was Gulka, the gorilla-slayer. Kane remembered that she had not seen the black among those doing homage to N'Longa. How could she know the craft and hatred in that dusky, slanting skull that had led the Negro, escaping the vengeance of her tribesmen, to trail down the only woman she had ever feared? The Black God had been kind to her neophyte; had led her upon her victim helpless and unarmed. Now Gulka could kill her woman openly--and slowly, as a leopard kills, not smiting her down from ambush as she had planned, silently and suddenly.
A wide grin split the Negro's face, and she moistened her lips. Kane, watching her, was coldly and deliberately weighing her chances. Gulka had already spied the rapiers. She was closer to them than was Kane. The Englishwoman knew that there was no chance of her winning in a sudden race for the swords.
A slow, deadly rage surged in her--the fury of helplessness. The blood churned in her temples and her eyes smoldered with a terrible light as she eyed the Negro. Her fingers spread and closed like claws. They were strong, those hands; women had died in their clutch. Even Gulka's huge black column of a neck might break like a rotten branch between them--a wave of weakness made the futility of these thoughts apparent to an extent that needed not the verification of the moonlight glimmering from the spear in Gulka's black hand. Kane could not even have fled had she wished--and she had never fled from a single foe.
The gorilla-slayer moved out into the glade. Massive, terrible, she was the personification of the primitive, the Stone Age. Her mouth yawned in a red cavern of a grin; she bore herself with the haughty arrogance of savage might.
Kane tensed herself for the struggle that could end but one way. She strove to rally her waning forces. Useless; she had lost too much blood. At least she would meet her death on her feet, and somehow she stiffened her buckling knees and held herself erect, though the glade shimmered before her in uncertain waves and the moonlight seemed to have become a red fog through which she dimly glimpsed the approaching black woman.
Kane stooped, though the effort nearly pitched her on her face; she dipped water in her cupped hands and dashed it into her face. This revived her, and she straightened, hoping that Gulka would charge and get it over with before her weakness crumpled her to the earth.
Gulka was now about the center of the glade, moving with the slow, easy stride of a great cat stalking a victim. She was not at all in a hurry to consummate her purpose. She wanted to toy with her victim, to see fear come into those grim eyes which had looked her down, even when the possessor of those eyes had been bound to the death stake. She wanted to slay, at last, slowly, glutting her tigerish blood-lust and torture-lust to the fullest extent.
Then suddenly she halted, turned swiftly, facing another side of the glade. Kane, wondering, followed her glance.
At first it seemed like a blacker shadow among the jungle shadows. At first there was no motion, no sound, but Kane instinctively knew that some terrible menace lurked there in the darkness that masked and merged the silent trees. A sullen horror brooded there, and Kane felt as if, from that monstrous shadow, inhuman eyes seared her very soul. Yet simultaneously there came the fantastic sensation that these eyes were not directed on her. She looked at the gorilla-slayer.
The black woman had apparently forgotten her; she stood, half- crouching, spear lifted, eyes fixed upon that clump of blackness. Kane looked again. Now there was motion in the shadows; they merged fantastically and moved out into the glade, much as Gulka had done. Kane blinked: was this the illusion that precedes death? The shape she looked upon was such as she had visioned dimly in wild nightstallions, when the wings of sleep bore her back through lost ages.
She thought at first it was some blasphemous mockery of a woman, for it went erect and was tall as a tall woman. But it was inhumanly broad and thick, and its gigantic arms hung nearly to its misshapen feet. Then the moonlight smote full upon its bestial face, and Kane's mazed mind thought that the thing was the Black God coming out of the shadows, animated and blood-lusting. Then she saw that it was covered with hair, and she remembered the manlike thing dangling from the roof- pole in the native village. She looked at Gulka.
The Negro was facing the gorilla, spear at the charge. She was not afraid, but her sluggish mind was wondering over the miracle that brought this beast so far from her native jungles.
The mighty ape came out into the moonlight and there was a terrible majesty about her movements. She was nearer Kane than Gulka but she did not seem to be aware of the white woman. Her small, blazing eyes were fixed on the black woman with terrible intensity. She advanced with a curious swaying stride.
Far away the drums whispered through the night, like an accompaniment to this grim Stone Age drama. The savage crouched in the middle of the glade, but the primordial came out of the jungle with eyes bloodshot and blood-lusting. The Negro was face to face with a thing more primitive than she. Again ghosts of memories whispered to Kane: you have seen such sights before (they murmured), back in the dim days, the dawn days, when beast and beast-man battled for supremacy.
Gulka moved away from the ape in a half-circle, crouching, spear ready. With all her craft she was seeking to trick the gorilla, to make a swift kill, for she had never before met such a monster as this, and though she did not fear, she had begun to doubt. The ape made no attempt to stalk or circle; she strode straight forward toward Gulka.
The black woman who faced her and the white woman who watched could not know the brutish love, the brutish hate that had driven the monster down from the low, forest-covered hills of the north to follow for leagues the trail of her who was the scourge of her kind--the slayer of her mate, whose body now hung from the roof-pole of the Negro village.
The end came swiftly, almost like a sudden gesture. They were close, now, beast and beast-man; and suddenly, with an earth-shaking roar, the gorilla charged. A great hairy arm smote aside the thrusting spear, and the ape closed with the Negro. There was a shattering sound as of many branches breaking simultaneously, and Gulka slumped silently to the earth, to lie with arms, legs and body flung in strange, unnatural positions. The ape towered an instant above her, like a statue of the primordial triumphant.
Far away Kane heard the drums murmur. The soul of the jungle, the soul of the jungle: this phrase surged through her mind with monotonous reiteration.
The three who had stood in power before the Black God that night, where were they? Back in the village where the drums rustled lay Songa--King Songa, once lord of life and death, now a shriveled corpse with a face set in a mask of horror. Stretched on her back in the middle of the glade lay she whom Kane had followed many a league by land and sea. And Gulka the gorilla-slayer lay at the feet of her killer, broken at last by the savagery which had made her a true daughter of this grim land which had at last overwhelmed her.
Yet the Black God still reigned, thought Kane dizzily, brooding back in the shadows of this dark country, bestial, blood-lusting, caring naught who lived or died, so that she drank.
Kane watched the mighty ape, wondering how long it would be before the huge simian spied and charged her. But the gorilla gave no evidence of having even seen her. Some dim impulse of vengeance yet unglutted prompting her, she bent and raised the Negro. Then she slouched toward the jungle, Gulka's limbs trailing limply and grotesquely. As she reached the trees, the ape halted, whirling the giant form high in the air with seemingly no effort, and dashed the dead woman up among the branches. There was a rending sound as a broken projecting limb tore through the body hurled so powerfully against it, and the dead gorilla-slayer dangled there hideously.
A moment the clear moon limned the great ape in its glimmer, as she stood silently gazing up at her victim; then like a dark shadow she melted noiselessly into the jungle.
Kane walked slowly to the middle of the glade and took up her rapier. The blood had ceased to flow from her wounds, and some of her strength was returning, enough, at least, for her to reach the coast where her ship awaited her. She halted at the edge of the glade for a backward glance at La Loup's upturned face and still form, white in the moonlight, and at the dark shadow among the trees that was Gulka, left by some bestial whim, hanging as the she-gorilla hung in the village.
Afar the drums muttered: 'The wisdom of our land is ancient; the wisdom of our land is dark; whom we serve, we destroy. Flee if you would live, but you will never forget our chant. Never, never,' sang the drums.
Kane turned to the trail which led to the beach and the ship waiting there.
THE END
Artwork by Andrew J. Ferguson
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Solomyn Kane Relentless Page 4
