Red Shadows - Robert E. Howard (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📗

did as N’Longa would have done had he been free. Then, the

unseen force animating the dead man fading, N’Longa had lived again.

 

Yes, Kane thought, he 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 bloodstained 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 he chose to send his ego, his 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 man 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 he hastened on. The tale they told to the

feathered black warriors farther up the river, he could not translate;

but they spoke to him in their own way, and that language was deeper,

more basic.

 

The moon, high in the dark blue skies, lighted his way and gave

him a clear vision as he came out at last into a glade and saw Le Loup

standing there. The Wolf’s naked blade was a long gleam of silver in

the moon, and he stood with shoulders thrown back, the old, defiant

smile still on his face.

 

“A long trail, Monsieur,” said he. “It began in the mountains of

France; it ends in an African jungle. I have wearied of the game at

last, Monsieur—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 him thus to take his chance

in the open. He half-suspected treachery, but his keen eyes could

detect no shadow of movement in the jungle on either side of the

glade.

 

“Monsieur, on guard!” Le Loup’s voice was crisp. “Time that we

ended this fool’s dance about the world. Here we are alone.”

 

The men were now within reach of each other, and Le Loup, in the

midst of his sentence, suddenly plunged forward with the speed of

light, thrusting viciously. A slower man had died there, but Kane

parried and sent his own blade in a silver streak that slit Le Loup’s

tunic as the Wolf bounded backward. Le Loup admitted the failure of

his trick with a wild laugh and came in with the breath-taking speed

and fury of a tiger, his blade making a white fan of steel about him.

 

Rapier clashed on rapier as the two swordsmen fought. They were

fire and ice opposed. Le Loup fought wildly but craftily, leaving no

openings, taking advantage of every opportunity. He was a living

flame, bounding back, leaping in, feinting, thrusting, warding,

striking—laughing like a wild man, taunting and cursing.

 

Kane’s skill was cold, calculating, scintillant. He made no waste

movement, no motion not absolutely necessary. He seemed to devote more

time and effort toward defense than did Le Loup, yet there was no

hesitancy in his attack, and when he thrust, his blade shot out with

the speed of a striking snake.

 

There was little to choose between the men as to height, strength

and reach. Le 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 he,

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 him to

further fury, he attacked like the beast men named him. 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, Le 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 he had begun to doubt.

 

His breath came hissing fast and his arm began to weary; who was

this man of steel and ice who never seemed to weaken? Le Loup knew

that the wounds he had inflicted on Kane were not deep, but even so,

the steady flow of blood should have sapped some of the man’s strength

and speed by this time. But if Kane felt the ebb of his powers, it did

not show. His brooding countenance did not change in expression, and

he pressed the fight with as much cold fury as at the beginning.

 

Le Loup felt his might fading, and with one last desperate effort

he rallied all his 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 man could have withstood, and Solomon Kane

reeled for the first time as he felt cold steel tear through his body.

He reeled back, and Le Loup, with a wild shout, plunged after him, his

reddened sword free, a gasping taunt on his lips.

 

Kane’s sword, backed by the force of desperation, met Le Loup’s in

midair; met, held and wrenched. The Wolf’s yell of triumph died on his

lips as his sword flew singing from his hand.

 

For a fleeting instant he stopped short, arms flung wide as a

crucifix, and Kane heard his wild, mocking laughter peal forth for the

last time, as the Englishman’s rapier made a silver line in the

moonlight.

 

Far away came the mutter of the drums. Kane mechanically cleansed

his sword on his tattered garments. The trail ended here, and Kane was

conscious of a strange feeling of futility. He always felt that, after

he had killed a foe. Somehow it always seemed that no real good had

been wrought; as if the foe had, after all, escaped his just

vengeance.

 

With a shrug of his shoulders Kane turned his attention to his

bodily needs. Now that the heat of battle had passed, he began to feel

weak and faint from the loss of blood. That last thrust had been

close; had he not managed to avoid its full point by a twist of his

body, the blade had transfixed him. As it was, the sword had struck

glancingly, plowed along his ribs and sunk deep in the muscles beneath

the shoulder blade, inflicting a long, shallow wound.

 

Kane looked about him and saw that a small stream trickled through

the glade at the far side. Here he made the only mistake of that kind

that he ever made in his entire life. Mayhap he was dizzy from loss of

blood and still mazed from the weird happenings of the night; be that

as it may, he laid down his rapier and crossed, weaponless, to the

stream. There he laved his wounds and bandaged them as best he could,

with strips torn from his clothing.

 

Then he rose and was about to retrace his steps when a motion

among the trees on the side of the glade where he first entered,

caught his eye. A huge figure stepped out of the jungle, and Kane saw,

and recognized, his doom. The man was Gulka, the gorilla-slayer. Kane

remembered that he had not seen the black among those doing homage to

N’Longa. How could he know the craft and hatred in that dusky,

slanting skull that had led the Negro, escaping the vengeance of his

tribesmen, to trail down the only man he had ever feared? The Black

God had been kind to his neophyte; had led him upon his victim

helpless and unarmed. Now Gulka could kill his man openly—and slowly,

as a leopard kills, not smiting him down from ambush as he had

planned, silently and suddenly.

 

A wide grin split the Negro’s face, and he moistened his lips.

Kane, watching him, was coldly and deliberately weighing his chances.

Gulka had already spied the rapiers. He was closer to them than was

Kane. The Englishman knew that there was no chance of his winning in a

sudden race for the swords.

 

A slow, deadly rage surged in him—the fury of helplessness. The

blood churned in his temples and his eyes smoldered with a terrible

light as he eyed the Negro. His fingers spread and closed like claws.

They were strong, those hands; men 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 he wished—and he had never fled from a single

foe.

 

The gorilla-slayer moved out into the glade. Massive, terrible, he

was the personification of the primitive, the Stone Age. His mouth

yawned in a red cavern of a grin; he bore himself with the haughty

arrogance of savage might.

 

Kane tensed himself for the struggle that could end but one way.

He strove to rally his waning forces. Useless; he had lost too much

blood. At least he would meet his death on his feet, and somehow he

stiffened his buckling knees and held himself erect, though the glade

shimmered before him in uncertain waves and the moonlight seemed to

have become a red fog through which he dimly glimpsed the approaching

black man.

 

Kane stooped, though the effort nearly pitched him on his face; he

dipped water in his cupped hands and dashed it into his face. This

revived him, and he straightened, hoping that Gulka would charge and

get it over with before his weakness crumpled him 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. He was not at all in a

hurry to consummate his purpose. He wanted to toy with his victim, to

see fear come into those grim eyes which had looked him down, even

when the possessor of those eyes had been bound to the death stake. He

wanted to slay, at last, slowly, glutting his tigerish blood-lust and

torture-lust to the fullest extent.

 

Then suddenly he halted, turned swiftly, facing another side of

the glade. Kane, wondering, followed his 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 his very soul.

Yet simultaneously there came the fantastic sensation that these eyes

were not directed on him. He looked