Solomon Kane

by Ramsey Campbell

  The rain fell behind as though it were pursuing the refugees. A dull glow took hold of the sky ahead, but the sun was still hiding its face from the land. The track meandered between unfenced fields overgrown with weeds, and Kane could see for miles. The way was deserted, which only made him feel as though he no longer knew where he was bound or what drove him – as though even his adversary had abandoned him, finding him too insignificant and powerless to be worthy of attention. He had vowed to save Meredith, but was he simply clinging to an illusion that she was still alive? If indeed she had survived, might she have succeeded in escaping? In that case she would surely have fled eastwards. His doubts weighed his mind down, and he was continuing along the track only because the horse had been given no reason to halt when he heard a bell ahead.

  The note was low and intermittent. Kane could have thought it was tolling for the fate that had overtaken the land. Above the horizon the sky grew red, and flakes of snow began to sparkle dully in the air. When Kane made out the tower silhouetted against the muffled sunset he thanked God that the church still stood. Its bell rang across the fields like the note of a buoy in the midst of an open sea, and Kane wondered if he dared to feel reassured that he was on the right path after all. He was scant minutes away from the church when he saw the sky through the roof.

  Perhaps the church was only derelict with age. Kane dismounted at the lich-gate and tethered the horse to a gatepost before stepping into the graveyard. Monuments towered over him, their inscriptions blurred by moss. A solitary splintered tree stood among the neglected graves. The bell had fallen silent, hanging inert in the tower above the exposed beams that were almost all that survived of the roof. The thick stones of the walls were piebald with lichen and rough with centuries of weathering. Kane climbed the steps to the door beneath a rounded arch and removed his hat as he twisted the heavy ring to lift the latch.

  The door creaked inwards, and he heard wings fluttering among the rafters. He passed beneath the arch and then, as if in deference to some obsolete ritual, closed the door of the ruin behind him. A chill wind and a dance of snowflakes came along the nave to meet him, and he wondered if a wind could have rung the bell. The grey tiled floor was stained and scattered with debris. Rotting leaves had gathered around the bases of the stout pillars on either side of the nave as if the shafts were tree-trunks. A hole gaped in the left-hand wall, where a statue depicting a saint or some benefactor of the church had fallen supine, its face shattered to powder. It seemed to Kane that none of this dereliction mattered, for one thing had remained intact: a stone crucifix in a niche to the left of the altar. Falling to his knees in front of it, he bowed his head. “Dear God, I beg you to listen to me now,” he said.

  Did he sense a response? He gripped his hands together until the knuckles ached. “I have failed you,” he said, words that made his mouth taste as raw as an open wound. “I cannot find her.”

  There was indeed a response. Perhaps it had been attracted by his supplication or simply by his presence. Was he not even to be allowed to pray in peace? He loosened his hands but kept them clasped. “I am lost and I need your light to help me find my way,” he said, which was all he had time to pronounce. Snatching his hands apart, he drew his sword as he spun around. In a moment the edge of the blade was at the throat of the man who had crept up behind him.

  The man had raised a cudgel to strike Kane down. His red-rimmed eyes stared wildly out of a thin pallid face. His long ragged locks were several shades of paleness, some of them almost white. However discoloured his round collar and black robes might have grown, he was a priest, and Kane laid his sword on the tiles so as to display his empty hands. “Such times we live in,” he said.

  The priest’s eyes jerked in their sockets, but he did not speak or change his stance. “Forgive me, Father,” Kane murmured. “I wished only for a little refuge and a moment for prayer.”

  The priest stared about him as if he were remembering the church, and then he let the cudgel drop. He caught it within inches of striking the floor and clutched it with both hands to his chest like a relic of the Cross while he lifted his eyes heavenwards. “Praise God in His sanctuary,” he cried. “Praise Him in the firmament of His power.”

  Perhaps he was seeing more than Kane could – more than the reddened clouds like raw flesh exposed by the wounds in the roof. His wild gaze stayed fixed on the sky until the clouds grew black as though rot had crept into the wounds, and then his stare sank into the church. “I have seen such terrible things,” he declared.

  “I too,” Kane said and felt compelled to reassure him if he could. “I left few of them alive.”

  “Night has come.” The priest seemed unable to keep his eyes still, and his gaze jerked away from Kane. “Will you find sanctuary in my church?” he said.

  Kane wanted to refuse. The night should not daunt him from searching for Meredith. Then the priest shuffled to a corner of the ruin to gather an armful of kindling, and Kane saw a cooking-pot there too. He would make better progress if he were dry and fed, and he could regain the time lost. Perhaps in some sense the priest might prove to be an answer to his prayer. “God bless you, Father,” he said.

  He was disconcerted to see the priest start to build the fire in the middle of the nave. Why were there no pews? Had they been used for fuel? The priest’s hands shook as he struck a flint, but eventually a spark set a bunch of twigs alight. The fire spread to the wood heaped above them, and Kane was reminded of the stone circle on the moor – of that primitive instinct to use a fire to ward off the darkness and whatever lurked there, and the refuge that the girl Elizabeth had seemed to find in the pagan place. The thoughts were less than welcome – they seemed capable of rousing doubts that he could not afford to entertain – and he spoke in the hope of banishing them. “This is your home?”

  The priest was hanging the pot full of rain on a metal stand over the fire. “I have nowhere else,” he said and stared at Kane across the flames. “Have you come far?”

  “Three days’ hard ride brought me here,” Kane said and crouched towards the fire. “But where here is, I know not.”

  “These are the borders of Somerset and Devonshire.”

  Kane felt as if some aspect of his destiny had overtaken him by stealth. “My home too,” he muttered.

  The priest leaned closer, and shadows worked his face. “This, your home?”

  “I grew up –” Since this was hardly the case, Kane said “I spent my childhood not so very far from here.”

  “A sad homecoming for you.” Kane thought the priest might offer solace, but the man’s thoughts appeared to have settled elsewhere. “What is your name?” the priest said.

  “Solomon Kane.”

  He saw no recognition in the priest’s eyes; indeed, it was impossible to fix their expression. “I am Michael,” the priest said.

  He must be named for the angel who had fought the hordes of Lucifer, and Kane could only wonder what dread confrontation had reduced him to his present fearful state. “What is your mission?” Father Michael said.

  “Like you, I am pledged to fight evil. I must rescue a girl who was taken by the raiders,” Kane said. “They killed her family. Have they been here?”

  “Those black-eyed jackals of Malachi?” Father Michael’s eyes grew unnaturally bright, as though to demonstrate they were free of blackness. “Aye, they passed through here,” he said and glared about at the ruined church. “What malice they must have to desecrate the house of God.”

  Kane gazed past him at the crucifix. However the shadows tugged at it and played mockingly around it, the cross and the figure nailed to it stood steadfast. “They may cast down the house,” he said, “but they cannot cast down God. He is eternal.”

  Father Michael seemed not to hear. “And now they hold sway over all the lands west of here,” he said.

  Once more Kane had a sense that his fate was upon him – had perhaps never left him. “Then I shall be riding westward.”

  The priest clas
ped his hands together in prayer or the memory of one. “You shall ride to your death, my son.”

  “Better destruction than cowardice,” said Kane.

  “They say no man may stand against Malachi.” The priest had rediscovered some vestige of nerve – enough to resent Kane’s retort. “I heard you at your prayers,” he said. “It seems you have despaired of your mission.”

  “Not while I live.” Kane did his best to turn his rage away from the priest. “Who is this Malachi?” he demanded. “Why should any who fear God fear him?”

  “A servant of the Devil.” Father Michael lowered his voice as if in fear of being overheard. “A sorcerer,” he said.

  “I was told this,” Kane said impatiently. “Where has he found such power?”

  “No-one ever sees him.” Perhaps the priest meant this for some kind of an answer, unless he had begun to mutter with no thought of his listener. “He hides away in his castle and sends forth that masked warrior to do his bidding,” he said. “His army makes slaves of the weak and soldiers of the strong.”

  It seemed that the question Kane needed to ask was apparent on his face, because the priest declared “God will save the faithful.”

  “He has saved you. That is your meaning.” Kane could not suppress his anger. “I have seen the faithful slain without mercy,” he said. “I have seen a boy slaughtered in front of his parents’ eyes.”

  “I speak of their souls,” Father Michael rebuked him. “This is the end of days.”

  A chill wind glittering with snow snatched at the flames, which hissed, and shadows capered around the church. “Do you truly believe that?” Kane protested.

  “I have read it.” The priest darted away from the fire, and his prancing shadow grew gigantic on the tiled floor. It seemed to be absorbed by the ravaged wall as he climbed the steps to the pulpit and brought down a heavy volume. “I have read it,” he repeated like a prayer.

  He carried the Bible to the fire and squatted to turn the pages. The light plucked at them, and his nervous fingers did. “It is here,” he insisted.

  Kane stood up and wandered towards the altar rather than observe the priest’s agitated search. He had a sense that Father Michael was driven by some force that the priest scarcely understood. Now that Kane was so close to the altar he saw little evidence of desecration; it seemed disused rather than defiled. How secure was Father Michael’s grasp of what was real? He was still clawing at the pages with his fingernails, but his eyes were flickering so wildly that Kane doubted he saw the words. “Such things are here that never should be,” the priest muttered. “Every foul thing that the light of Christ kept at bay is crawling out of the pit to curse the land.”

  He glared about the church as though he saw worse than the restless shadows. “God is testing my faith,” he said.

  The submissive piety was more than Kane could bear. “I think Christ and all His angels are asleep whilst we are left to suffer.”

  “You mind your blasphemy!” Father Michael clapped the Bible shut, and the echoes of the dull sound were swallowed by the eager darkness. “It can only be as God wills it,” he proclaimed.

  Kane felt as if he were the solitary worshipper at the mercy of a sermon. While he wanted to believe, he had seen too much suffering. “How can it be as God ordains?”

  The priest hugged the Bible and raised a pious hand. “My son...”

  Kane began to pace like a beast in a cage. “How can it be right that this evil walks among us when all we have to protect us is – what? Simple faith?”

  Father Michael clutched the Bible to himself as if that were sufficient answer. Kane saw the priest clinging to his faith beside the fire dwarfed by the vast darkness, and the sight aggravated his rage. “Tell me, priest,” he said. “Where are the men to fight this power?”

  The priest gazed at him and then fumbled to open the Bible. “It is written in the Scriptures –”

  Kane jerked up a hand. Even if the gesture seemed close to profane, he had to silence Father Michael. “What was that?” he breathed.

  Until it was repeated he might almost have taken the noise for a wind in a crevice of the church. If it was a voice, it belonged to nothing human. It was not solely a low moan, nor quite a snarl. He peered towards the windows, but the blackness that the narrow arches framed was impenetrably thick. The priest seemed confused by Kane’s behaviour, and blinked rapidly at him. “I heard something outside,” Kane said.

  All at once the priest’s gaze steadied. “No, my son,” he said. “There is nothing evil out there.”

  Kane could only think that the priest’s mind had proved unequal to the threat they faced. “Father, if you listen –”

  Father Michael shook his head so ponderously that his thoughts might have been weighing it down. “The evil is already here,” he said.

  He laid the Bible on the tiles beside the fire and beckoned to Kane, who watched him trudge along the nave and stoop to a section of the floor beyond the reach of the firelight. The priest prised up a metal ring and hauled a trapdoor open, then let it drop on the tiles. The impact seemed to call forth an inhuman chorus of hungry snarling. “See,” Father Michael said with a kind of defiant pride.

  Kane stepped forward, but to the fire. He found a stick that had only just caught the flames and dragged it forth. Holding the brand high, he paced along the nave. He was yards short of the trapdoor when a stench came to meet him. It put him in mind of the foetor of a cave that was the lair of many reptiles, and there was the reek of raw meat and the stink of droppings too. An outburst of snarling greeted the torchlight as it flickered into the depths. The voices sounded worse than bestial – far too close to human. Kane made himself venture to the opening as Father Michael stepped back to leave him more room. He thrust the torch into the opening and had to steel himself not to recoil as the things beneath the floor turned up their faces and stretched out their clawed hands in a vain attempt to drag him into the crypt. “My God,” Kane whispered.

  The words were no longer a prayer. Perhaps no prayer could encompass what he saw below him. The night had veiled some details of the creatures that he had encountered by the poisoned lake, but the torchlight spared him nothing. The faces that were straining up towards him like a brood in an evil nest were almost as fleshless as skulls – the skulls of a link between humanity and some diabolical species. They looked starved not just of nourishment but of their souls. In their eyes there was only savage hunger, which appeared to have forced their jaws forward, stretching their mouths unnaturally wide. Every head was balding, patched with tufts and strands of hair, and what remained of their flesh was pale as the undersides of slugs. As a score of discoloured scrawny arms reached up in a horrid parody of yearning for the light, Kane cried “What deviltry is this?”

  “Satan hath desired to have them, that he may sift them as wheat.” While he intoned the words from the Bible the priest seemed to recall his vocation, but then he giggled like a child unable to contain his mirth. “What was I to do?” he said.

  He was answered by the snarls of many wordless voices under the church. “Destroy them, man,” Kane told him.

  “I cannot destroy them.” Father Michael’s eyes glistened with compassion. “They were men and women once,” he said. “They were people I knew.”

  “They are no longer,” Kane said over the inhuman clamour. “Release their souls. If God has any purpose for them now, that must be His will.”

  “There is Janet. There is Winifred.” Father Michael was peering at the malformed faces, but Kane was unconvinced that the priest recognised them. “It was Malachi’s curse that changed them,” Father Michael said with some defiance. “It was no fault of theirs.”

  “Then cleanse them of this evil,” Kane urged, lifting the torch like a sword.

  “They are my test of faith.” Father Michael fumbled at his throat, where he seemed to expect to find a cross. “I am to love even the foulest creatures,” he insisted, and turned an uncertain smile on the horde below him
.

  “But do not love their foulness,” Kane said, and had to swallow as a wave of the inhuman stench overwhelmed him. “Deliver them from it. That must be our task.”

  “They are my flock and I am their shepherd,” Father Michael said, and his voice swelled with a distorted pride. “I pray with them each night,” he assured Kane, “and hear them raise their voices to God.”

  In that moment Kane saw that the priest was far worse than stubborn – that he had lost his mind. “I keep them,” Father Michael said. “I care for them.” He reached out his hands as though in benediction, but the gesture might have been emulating the talons that reached up from the crypt. His proud smile grew lopsided, and he giggled again. Barely audibly he said “I feed them.”

  “Feed them?” Kane’s soul revolted at the thought. He leaned forward to thrust the torch lower and search the crowded gloom. The hands clawed at the light as if they sought to tear it to shreds, the gaping mouths snarled and bared their bloodstained fangs. He could see nothing of their food – nothing but the pallid bodies pressed together close as maggots in a container of bait. “What do you feed them?” he demanded.

  “Flesh,” Father Michael said, and rushed at him.

  Before Kane could retreat from the opening, the priest’s hands slammed against his back. There was more strength in his wiry frame than Kane would have expected, and he must have been husbanding it for that moment. Kane teetered on the edge and almost regained his balance. Then his foot skidded on a slippery tile, and he fell into the midst of the creatures that were slavering for him.

  He was still gripping the torch. At the last moment the inhuman throng backed away from the light, tumbling over one another in their haste. Kane struck the earth floor with an impact that hammered all the breath out of him and jarred the torch from his grasp. As he glared about him at the ghoulish horde, Father Michael called down to him. He was still secure in his priesthood; he might almost have been preaching a sermon. “I deliver you unto Satan’s creatures for the destruction of your flesh, that your spirit may be saved. May God have mercy on your soul,” he intoned and shut the trapdoor with a slam that laid low the flame of the torch.