She held onto the bars and struggled not to shudder. While he was beyond the altar she had seen that his face was decorated with dozens of straight lines, and now she saw their nature. They were lines of some magical text inscribed on the flesh, as though his face were a page of a grimoire. They were in no alphabet Meredith recognised, but she had an uneasy sense that his eyes were able to convey the meaning, unless his actions would. His left temple bore a large raw sigil that might have been the Devil’s brand. Was he aware of her thoughts? His eyes glittered with black delight, and he passed his pale tongue over his lips as if savouring a taste or anticipating an experience. Meredith had the impression that the darkness of which his eyes were no more than a symbol was reaching for her, closing its insidious oppressive embrace around her. She was striving to fend it off with a prayer when she heard a distant scream.
The sorcerer seemed eager to relish her reaction. Meredith choked down her distress as the screams of protest grew less remote and more desperate. Somebody was being brought up from the dungeons, and Meredith knew she was about to witness one more slaughter. Soon the victim was dragged between the mirrors through the antechamber. The light fluttered with the screams, as if the torches were paying the woman a derisive tribute. She fell silent as two raiders bore her into the great hall, where she blinked in terror at the altar and the sorcerer and then stared with abhorrence at Meredith. She was the woman who had accused Meredith of witchcraft, and her hatred gave her back her voice. “Did you choose me for your entertainment? Has he put you there to watch?”
“I believe I am being saved for worse,” Meredith said.
She had not thought it until she spoke, and she wished she had taken time to find another answer. She would not have been surprised if the woman had retorted that it was no more than Meredith deserved, but perhaps she had grasped Meredith’s plight at last. As the raiders dragged the woman to the altar Meredith called urgently “What is your name? Tell me your name.”
“Anne,” the woman cried as if it let her cling to a scrap of her sense of self. “Anne Cooper.”
“I will pray for you, Anne,” Meredith promised, and dared to go further. “Let my prayer carry you to God.”
She began to pray as the raiders spread-eagled Anne Cooper on the altar, gripping her wrists and ankles. She had to raise her voice when the woman’s screams grew louder as the sorcerer picked up the ceremonial knife. He removed the ragged cap that Anne still wore and laid it on her chest as gently as a seducer. He took hold of a fistful of her hair, in which streaks of grey were visible among the raven locks. Whatever cares had silvered them and etched premature lines in her face, they were at an end for her. Pulling her head back to the full extent of the neck, the sorcerer cut her throat from ear to ear.
Her shriek of incredulous protest almost blotted out Meredith’s prayer. Soon the scream weakened, growing clogged and liquid. The sorcerer gestured the raiders away and planted a hand on Anne’s heart as she flailed at the altar with all her limbs. He was holding her in position, but he might have been squeezing forth the gouts of blood by leaning all his weight on her. The blood coursed through the grooves in the altar and streamed down the channel into the pit in the floor. Meredith was just able to make out the bottom of the pit – more than she would have preferred. There was no doubt now that it was pulsing like a monstrous heart, and she seemed to sense the presence of whatever it was helping to enliven, as yet invisible but so close that the room grew miasmatic with its imminence. She glimpsed movements in the antechamber, and risked an apprehensive glance. Every one of the mirrors that she could see contained a hideous shape. They had come to the surface to watch the sacrifice.
She would not look again. She kept her gaze on Anne Cooper and managed not to falter in her prayer. Anne’s struggles grew feebler, and her cries subsided to a choking gurgle. As the last of her blood drained away into the heart of the corrupted place, her body drew into itself as though reverting to its unborn state. A parting breath rattled in her throat, and then her face grew slack and empty, just as the rest of her did. Meredith sent a prayer to follow her – to accompany her, she hoped. “Amen,” Meredith said.
The sorcerer lifted his head to enjoy her behaviour. His reptilian tongue flickered out to part his lips and shape a wicked smile. “Amen,” he echoed.
His voice was soft yet shrill as the hiss of a snake. It sounded like the icy darkness in his eyes rendered audible, and sent an uncontrollable shiver through Meredith. All her outrage and dismay seemed to be reduced to a single question. “Why are you doing this?” she cried.
He extended his long fingers towards her and brought his hands almost together. He might have been parodying prayer or demonstrating the mechanism of a trap. “He will come,” he said.
THIRTY-SIX
“Keep climbing, lad,” Mcness told Caldicott. “Nearly there.”
Kane held onto the rungs set in the streaming wall and looked down. Now that he and the men were almost at the surface they had doused their torches, and the only light came through the grating overhead. Caldicott was clinging to the rungs beneath Kane, and Mcness was below the youth’s feet in the vertical passage. The younger man looked grimly determined even though whey-faced. Kane listened hard but could hear no sound above him besides the constant hiss and drip of rain. He was about to raise the grating when he heard another noise beyond it. “Wait,” he muttered.
“Wait,” Caldicott whispered, and the word was repeated by a succession of low voices into the depths of the sewer.
In a moment Kane identified the sound in the courtyard – the rumbling of the portcullis. It gave way to the trundling of heavy wheels, and he heard wails of despair. There was no mistaking the arrival of another prison wagon. “Hold fast,” said Kane.
Versions of the command were passed down into the dimness. It might have been an hour or more since the first of the men had lowered themselves from the cliff path to clamber into the mouth of the sewer. Their efforts were rewarded by a trudge through the noisome passage. Caldicott and several of his young companions had vomited, so that Kane was afraid that if they had to tarry in the sewer they would be little use as fighters. The dull thunder of wheels grew louder, and he saw them roll ponderously past within inches of the grating. Then a prisoner looked down and saw him.
Kane clenched his fists on the rungs and held himself absolutely still – even his face, even his eyes. The woman’s downcast gaze was lingering on him, trying to establish what was there. Although she seemed bewildered, she was opening her mouth, but the cart lumbered out of sight before he heard her speak. In a moment the boots of a raider shook the grating, and Kane grasped the hilt of his sword. Mud fell through the grating to spatter his upturned face, and then the raider had tramped past. Perhaps the woman’s senses were too blunted by her plight for her to comprehend what she had seen, or perhaps she was fearful of drawing attention by speaking. Kane heard the great inner doors of the courtyard groan open, and the cart and the raiders passed within. Their dogged sounds receded, and the doors shut with a massive slam.
Once he was sure that the courtyard was deserted Kane gripped the topmost rung and planted his hand against the grating. He pushed and pushed harder, and then shoved with all his strength, but the cover did not stir. Rust and, he suspected, the weight of passing wagons had wedged it into its metal frame. He thrust the fingers of both hands through the mesh and braced his feet on a rung, and then he levered at the grating with every muscle he could bring to bear. It shifted reluctantly, grinding against the frame. With another shove that involved his entire body Kane dislodged it, and it reared up with a squeal of metal.
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. “D
ear 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 th
at 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.
Solomon Kane Page 20
