The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon

  Matthew realized that might well be the truth, for he had only the short-bladed sword as a weapon. Still…dark was falling…they might yet be able to get to the river. But what had happened to the other men…Magnus, Stamper, Gunn, Bovie and the others?

  “Corbett, you were asked a question!” Royce said from his hidden position. “What’s your proof?”

  Matthew figured the man wanted to get a fix on him when he spoke, but he couldn’t resist. He kept low to the ground, right beside Quinn and one arm over her. “The compress Dr. Stevenson gave you for the horse bite,” he said. “It broke open when Sarah grasped your arm after you’d stabbed her the first time. You knew it had. I imagine you spent some time cleaning that up after you scared Abram into running. What did you do, work it into the ground? But some of the material inside the compress was under Sarah’s fingernails. Mrs. Kincannon knows that, I showed it to her. Are you going to go to the Green Sea and kill her, too?”

  Royce didn’t answer.

  “No use in your killing anyone else,” Matthew told him. “You’re finished, Royce. Where are the others?” A chill passed through him, as he realized what might have happened. “Did you kill all of them?”

  “Not all, I had some help from the swamp. Abram? You never should’ve shown any interest in that girl. I watched you. I watched the both of you. Whisperin’ together when you didn’t think anybody was lookin’. Walkin’ together, right in the broad daylight. And in that barn at night…makes me sick to my stomach, thinkin’ about it.”

  “You were wrong, Cap’n Royce,” Abram called out. “Miss Sarah was teachin’ me to read, and that’s the—”

  The next musket shot hit the willow tree trunk and threw splinters. Abram ducked his head down against his father’s shoulder.

  “Don’t lie!” Royce seethed. “I know what you were doin’ in there! Night after night…I followed her, I saw you go in there too! Only one reason you’d be breakin’ the law and meetin’ in that barn after dark! Wouldn’t even offer me a smile, and her givin’ herself to that black skin! Well, she paid for it!”

  “Royce!” Matthew said, as lightning flashed above and more thunder growled. “Was Sarah carrying a book when you stabbed her? And did she drop that book to the ground? Surely you saw it!”

  “That’s a damned lie, too! Her teachin’ a skin to read! Don’t matter if she had a book or not, they wasn’t readin’ in that barn!”

  Abram had crawled over to tend to his brother, who was in obvious pain but nodded to show he was hanging on.

  “You didn’t have to kill the girl!” Matthew said. “Why didn’t you go to Kincannon? Tell him what you thought was going on?”

  “Think he would have believed me? About his darlin’ daughter? He would’ve run me off tarred and feathered! I told her I knew what she was doin’, and if she was nice to me…show me a little favor…I wouldn’t tell. But she looked at me like she always did…like I was lower than dirt…and she’d rather have that damn black skin than me? Treatin’ that slave better than a white man?”

  “Miss Sarah brought the books and she was teachin’ me to read!” Abram shouted back. “That’s all!”

  A third shot rang out in reply. Matthew heard the ball zip past. It was a higher report than the first two shots. A pistol, Matthew thought. And did Royce have one musket or two? How quick was he at reloading the weapons? Was it worth the risk to charge at him with the sword? But he was hidden there in the thicket, and by the time Matthew crossed the fifteen yards or so between them another musket could be ready. Matthew glanced back at Abram and Tobey. The blood was oozing between Tobey’s fingers. It might not have been a killing shot but in time it would be, and time was a precious commodity.

  Matthew was still weak from his own loss of blood. He thought he was turning into a bearded ragamuffin himself, a pale piece of parchment as Magnus had said at the Sword of Damocles Ball, which seemed a lifetime away. Lightning zigzagged across the sky and thunder boomed overhead, and Matthew Corbett was caught between what he ought to do and what he feared to do.

  “Give it up!” Royce called. “None of you are leavin’ this swamp!”

  Abram suddenly stood up. He drew a knife from the waist of his breeches. “You won’t be leavin’ it either, Cap’n Royce,” he promised, and with an inhalation of breath he ran past Matthew and Quinn toward the woods where Sarah’s killer lay in wait.

  Magnus Muldoon knew it was coming. All this blood…the smell of it…the Soul Cryer was coming.

  Out of the smoke it skulked, at first a shadow and then a substance, moving with the strange irregular rhythm Magnus had already seen, but this time it crept slowly forward across the mud until it reached Barrows’ body. Then its misshapen snout sniffed at the blood, and the slitted yellow eyes stared at Magnus as if trying to determine what this huge muddied beast was…a challenger to its territory, or a fellow monster best left alone.

  It was not a ghost nor a witch-created demon but it was surely the biggest panther Magnus had ever seen. Except the dark blotches and streaks across its muscular brown body were burn scars, and its head showed what could happen to an animal caught in a raging forest fire. Both ears had been burned away, its skull hairless and nearly covered with scaly black scars, its muzzle malformed and twisted to expose on the left side the fangs as if in a grotesque grin, one foreleg withered by fire and its tail a blackened stub. It moved in such a manner, Magnus realized, because under the damaged skin some of the muscles had contracted and stiffened, and if this creature had been nearly burned to death seven years ago it must have suffered all the torments of agony. Even now, it must be still in pain…and maybe driven to its own kind of insanity, a thirst for blood and killing not for food but for domination. It could not growl and proclaim itself like an ordinary panther, it could only cry.

  Its eyes still fixed upon Magnus, it snapped at the falling embers as if in memory of what had deformed it. Bovie clung onto Magnus’ legs, as Magnus awaited the Soul Cryer’s decision to attack or not.

  With a whuff of breath the Soul Cryer suddenly lifted itself up onto its hind legs and balanced there. Bovie gave a strangled noise of terror, but Magnus remained silent and resolute though his heart hammered in his chest. Magnus thought the beast had learned this action possibly to overcome the weakness of the burned foreleg, or maybe as a way to scare off other younger and healthier male panthers. He prepared himself for the Soul Cryer to leap forward from its hind legs, and he aimed the pistol at its heart and the sword’s wicked edge at its throat.

  Nineteen

  As Abram started for Griffin Royce’s hiding place with a knife in his hand, Matthew scrambled up from the ground and with two desperate strides crashed into Abram, knocking him aside just as the musket fired. He had not come this far to watch Abram be shot down. The ball passed somewhere behind Matthew’s head and into the trees. Abram fell to the ground, and Matthew realized he had no choice but to charge into the smoke-filled thicket with his sword ready to slash flesh from bone because Royce would already be pouring the powder into another weapon.

  He leaped into the churning gunsmoke and through vines and thorny weeds that clutched at him like little claws. And there about ten feet to his left and crouched against an oak tree was the figure of Royce, frantically ramrodding a ball and cloth patch down into a second musket’s muzzle. Matthew rushed the man, even as Royce turned the musket on him and cocked it with a grimy thumb. As the musket’s barrel came at him, Matthew swung out with the sword and deflected it, the musket firing with a noise that shocked Matthew’s eardrums but the shot going wide. Then Royce became a truly wild animal, and with clenched teeth and a growling in his throat he struck at Matthew with the musket’s barrel but again Matthew’s sword knocked it aside.

  Royce launched himself at Matthew, the man’s right shoulder hitting him in the chest with bone-jarring force. The musket was dropped and forgotten as Royce fought Matthew for the sword, and Matthew was swung around and slammed so hard against the oak’s trunk the breath
burst from him and he and nearly lost his grip. Royce punched a fist into the arrow wound on Matthew’s shoulder, breaking it open and causing a fresh blossoming of blood. Matthew fought back as hard as he could, catching Royce on the jaw with his left fist and striking him a blow on the throat that caused his opponent to gag and falter for a few seconds, but the man was powerful and adept at close-in fighting. A knee rammed into Matthew’s stomach and a fist struck him on the back of the neck, but still Matthew clung to the sword, for to lose that was certain death. Royce gripped Matthew’s hair and tried to knee him in the face. Matthew stopped the knee with his free arm and struck into the pit of Royce’s stomach. The stocky killer let out a pained gasp of breath, but he would not let go of Matthew’s right wrist and began to brutally twist it to weaken the fingers and free the sword. With his other hand he drew his knife from its sheath, but before it could find flesh Matthew saw it coming. He was able to grasp the killer’s knife hand and for the moment hold the blade at bay with the strength of desperation.

  Matthew gritted his teeth and would not open his fingers. He thought his wrist was about to snap, but let it break; he wasn’t giving up to this animal, and letting him kill—

  “Stop that, Cap’n Royce,” said Abram. “Drop the knife. I don’t want to have to cut you.”

  The pressure on Matthew’s wrist went away. He was released. Matthew staggered a few paces, then took in the scene. Abram had come up behind Royce and was gripping the back of the man’s shirt. More importantly, Abram’s blade was right up under Royce’s chin. Royce’s knife fell from his hand.

  “You all right?” Abram asked Matthew, and Matthew nodded but he was lying; he eased himself down to the ground, and was met there by Quinn. She put her arms around him and held him tightly and might have said to him Daniel, my sweet Daniel but Matthew was nearly beyond hearing.

  “Got you now,” said Abram to Royce, who managed for all his rage and ferocity to remain very still. “Takin’ you back to the Green Sea, cap’n. You’re my prisoner.” And then, because he was yet a slave and Royce a white man, however low, he added by force of habit the respectful, “Suh.”

  The Soul Cryer remained upright on its hind legs, as the yellow eyes in its burn-scarred head threw their own fire at Magnus.

  “Shoot it!” Bovie croaked. “Christ’s sake…shoot it!”

  But Magnus did not pull the trigger, nor did he slash with the sword.

  The Soul Cryer wavered, about to lose its tentative balance. Magnus recognized in the beast the cruelty of this wilderness and perhaps the cruelty of the world itself. He thought it was a tortured thing, a creature forsaken and maybe feared by its own breed. It prowled alone out here, hunted alone and wept alone. He knew solitude, and what it could do to a man. He wondered if years of it could do the same thing to a scarred and tormented panther, and maybe in the slitted eyes there was a death wish, if indeed the creature could think beyond the green walls of its prison.

  Embers rained down. The smoke swirled and the fire gave a dull roar as it jumped from tree to tree.

  Go home, Magnus thought. Go—

  The Soul Cryer trembled as its muscles tensed. It took a staggered step forward, its malformed mouth opening at a sideways angle to expose the vicious fangs. Saliva drooled from the jaws and down upon the black-streaked chest.

  —home, Magnus thought, and he pulled the pistol’s trigger.

  The ball hit the Soul Cryer as near to the heart as Magnus could aim. The creature gave a grunt of pain and fell backwards but quickly it righted itself again, now on all fours, and crouched staring at Magnus through the banners of gray smoke that moved between them. Magnus knew that one ball was surely not enough to kill it, unless it had indeed damaged the heart. The Soul Cryer was breathing heavily and blood bubbled at the blackened nostrils, but it showed no other sign of weakness or injury.

  He had no time to reload. He stood with the sword ready. His hand was trembling.

  The Soul Cryer suddenly turned toward Barrows’ body, moving with its pained rhythm. With its eyes still on Magnus, the beast angled its head and gripped its jaws around the dead man’s skull. It shook the body like a strawman in a display of tremendous power, and the jaws crunched around the skull and the fangs broke bone and the Soul Cryer ate Barrows’ brains with the determination of an eager child eating sugar candy.

  Magnus noted blood pooling under the panther’s chest. The Soul Cryer fed on Barrows’ essence, its eyes never leaving Magnus, and in their yellow glare Magnus saw the message Get away from here. Get away…and never, ever come back.

  When Barrows’ broken head was emptied, the Soul Cryer’s eyes blinked, releasing Magnus from their spell. The beast backed away, favoring its ruined foreleg. Giving a noise so near to a human sob that Magnus thought he might hear it in his nightmares, the panther turned with its stiffened motion and leaped into the thicket it claimed as home, and then nothing was left of it but a streak of bright red blood upon the swamp’s ancient mud.

  “Oh Jesus,” Bovie gasped. “Jesus help us…”

  It occured to Magnus that, though Caleb Bovie had been bitten on the balls by a cottonmouth, the man might be too tough to succumb to snake poison. Either that, or the snake hadn’t gotten both fangs to the task, or the venom had not been delivered in an amount to kill, or it was simply not time for Bovie to go. In any case, though Bovie’s face was still tinged with blue and his lips caked with dried foam, Magnus thought that if the lout was going to die he would’ve been dead already.

  “Can you stand up and walk?” Magnus asked.

  “Give it a try,” Bovie answered, still in a weak voice, but it was a moment before he did. The roar of the oncoming fire gave him the will to get to his knees, and then the mud-covered mountain hauled him up the rest of the way. Bovie staggered and almost went down again, but Magnus held him steady.

  “My head’s spinnin’,” Bovie complained. “Legs feel like much a’nothin’.”

  “I’m not carryin’ you out of here, that’s for sure.”

  Bovie took in the bodies on the ground. “Did Royce…” He looked at Magnus with his red-rimmed eyes. “Did Royce kill that girl?”

  “Yes,” was the answer.

  “But why would’ve he have done such a thing?”

  “Because,” Magnus said, and he’d already spent time thinking on this subject, “some men want what they can’t have, some men want to kill for what they can’t have…and I reckon some men want to kill what they can’t have. It’s that angel and devil fightin’, just like you said…and when the devil wins, sometimes an angel dies.”

  “Reckon so,” said Bovie. “Damn…am I gonna live?”

  “I believe you are.”

  “Told you it was just a black snake.”

  “So you did,” Magnus said. He glanced back through the smoke at the oncoming flames. It looked to be a solid wall of fire. He wondered if somewhere the Soul Cryer was not watching it as well, and if the creature might lie down exhausted and ready to die, and this time let the flames finish their job of destruction and rebirth. Magnus, however, was not ready to do the same. Royce was still out there, going after Matthew and the runaways. Magnus retrieved Stamper’s musket and gave Barrows’ musket to Bovie. Both, he saw, were primed and ready to be cocked and fired. He saw also that, regrettably, neither dead man had boots big enough to fit his feet. “Let’s get our tails to the river,” he said, and he started off with Bovie following, limping and rubbing his snake-bit balls.

  They had reached the Solstice River and, following its course, came upon the rowboat the slaves had stolen from the Green Sea. It had been pulled up onto shore through the mud and inexpertly covered with tree branches and foliage. Only a few yards from it was the boat that had brought Royce and Gunn. Overhead the lightning flared and the thunder spoke, and the sky to the northeast glowed red above the burning forest. Matthew could see the flames spearing up into the air and orange sparks flying like swarms of locusts. He was in a dazed state, clutching at his raw should
er wound and being supported by Quinn. Mars had been limping along as best he could, using a broken branch as a walking-stick. Tobey was still on his feet, but barely; his eyes were half-closed, he was stumbling from side to side and the blood from his wound had reddened his shirt and the left leg of his breeches. He was in a bad way, Matthew thought; Tobey had to be gotten back to the Green Sea as quickly as possible, or he would die.

  Abram had guided Griffin Royce forward by grasping the back of the man’s shirt and holding the reloaded pistol to Royce’s spine. Matthew had Royce’s knife tucked in the waistband of his breeches, and Quinn carried the short-bladed sword.

  As weak as he was, Matthew knew he needed to make some decisions regarding the boats. All of them could not travel in only one. “That one,” he said to Abram, motioning toward the boat that had brought Royce and Gunn, “should carry you, Mars and Tobey. Give me the pistol.”

  “I ought to travel with Royce,” Abram said. “Get him in faster that way, suh.”

  “You need to row your brother in,” Matthew answered. “Royce can row for Quinn and myself.”

  “I ain’t rowin’ for nobody,” Royce sneered. “What am I goin’ back to, a hangin’ party?”

  “Well, suh,” said Abram, who released Royce’s shirt and brought up his own knife to place against the front of Royce’s throat, “seein’ as how Miss Sarah was a kind friend to me, and you took her life, there would be nothin’ to stop me from killin’ you right here…and when we get back, sayin’ you was likely lost on the River of Souls. Who would there be to say any different?” He pressed the pistol’s barrel into Royce’s backbone. “Ball or blade, suh. You got a choosin’?”

  “Corbett won’t let you do that! Would you?” The hard green eyes glared at Matthew.

  “Seems you killed a friend of mine, too,” said Matthew, returning the glare. “I don’t know how you did it and maybe I don’t want to know.” He reached back and took the pistol from Abram’s hand. He placed the barrel between Royce’s eyes and cocked the weapon. “You were asked a question. If you won’t row, then…ball or blade?”