Skulls in the Stars - Robert E. Howard (fb2 epub reader .TXT) 📗

Skulls in the Stars

 

by Robert E. Howard

 

A Solomon Kane Story

 

First published in Weird Tales, January 1929

 

He told how murders walk the earth

I

There are two roads to Torkertown. One, the shorter and more direct

route, leads across a barren upland moor, and the other, which is much

longer, winds its tortuous way in and out among the hummocks and

quagmires of the swamps, skirting the low hills to the east. It was a

dangerous and tedious trail; so Solomon Kane halted in amazement when

a breathless youth from the village he had just left, overtook him and

implored him for God’s sake to take the swamp road.

 

“The swamp road!” Kane stared at the boy. He was a tall, gaunt man,

was Solomon Kane, his darkly pallid face and deep brooding eyes, made

more sombre by the drab Puritanical garb he affected.

 

“Yes, sir, ‘tis far safer,” the youngster answered to his surprised

exclamation.

 

“Then the moor road must be haunted by Satan himself, for your

townsmen warned me against traversing the other.”

 

“Because of the quagmires, sir, that you might not see in the dark.

You had better return to the village and continue your journey in the

morning, sir.”

 

“Taking the swamp road?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Kane shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

 

“The moon rises almost as soon as twilight dies. By its light I can

reach Torkertown in a few hours, across the moor.”

 

“Sir, you had better not. No one ever goes that way. There are no

houses at all upon the moor, while in the swamp there is the house of

old Ezra who lives there all alone since his maniac cousin, Gideon,

wandered off and died in the swamp and was never found—and old Ezra

though a miser would not refuse you lodging should you decide to stop

until morning. Since you must go, you had better go the swamp road.”

 

Kane eyed the boy piercingly. The lad squirmed and shuffled his feet.

 

“Since this moor road is so dour to wayfarers,” said the Puritan, “why

did not the villagers tell me the whole tale, instead of vague

mouthings?”

 

“Men like not to talk of it, sir. We hoped that you would take the

swamp road after the men advised you to, but when we watched and saw

that you turned not at the forks, they sent me to run after you and

beg you to reconsider.”

 

“Name of the Devil!” exclaimed Kane sharply, the unaccustomed oath

showing his irritation; “the swamp road and the moor road—what is it

that threatens me and why should I go miles out of my way and risk the

bogs and mires?”

 

Sir,” said the boy, dropping his voice and drawing closer, “we be

simple villagers who like not to talk of such things lest foul fortune

befall us, but the moor road is a way accurst and hath not been

traversed by any of the countryside for a year or more. It is death to

walk those moors by night, as hath been found by some score of

unfortunates. Some foul horror haunts the way and claims men for his

victims.”

 

“So? And what is this thing like?” “No man knows. None has ever seen,

it and lived, but late-farers have heard terrible laughter far out on

the fen and men have heard the horrid shrieks of its victims. Sir, in

God’s name return to the village, there pass the night, and tomorrow

take the swamp trail to Torkertown.”

 

Far back in Kane’s gloomy eyes a scintillant light had begun to

glimmer, like a witch’s torch glinting under fathoms of cold grey ice.

His blood quickened. Adventure! The lure of life-risk and drama! Not

that Kane recognized his sensations as such. He sincerely considered

that he voiced his real feelings when he said:

 

“These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness

have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat

Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time.”

 

“Sir,” the boy began, then closed his mouth as he saw the futility of

argument. He only added

 

“The corpses of the victims are bruised and torn, sir.”

 

He stood there at the crossroads, sighing; regretfully as he watched

the tall, rangy figure swinging up the road that led toward the moors.

 

The sun was setting as Kane came over the brow of the low hill which

debouched into the upland fen. Huge and blood-red it sank down behind

the sullen horizon of the moors, seeming to touch the rank grass with

fire; so for a moment the watcher seemed to be gazing out across a sea

of blood. Then the dark shadows came gliding from the east, the

western blaze faded, and Solomon Kane struck out, boldly in the

gathering darkness.

 

The road was dim from disuse but was clearly defined. Kane went

swiftly but warily, sword and pistols at hand. Stars blinked out and

night winds whispered among the grass like weeping spectres. The moon

began to rise, lean and haggard, like a skull among the stars.

 

Then suddenly Kane stopped short. From somewhere in front of him

sounded a strange and eery echo—or something like an echo. Again,

this time louder. Kane started forward again. Were his senses

deceiving him? No!

 

Far out, there pealed a whisper of frightful slaughter. And again,

closer this time. No human being ever laughed like that—there was no

mirth in it, only hatred and horror and soul-destroying terror. Kane

halted. He was not afraid, but for the second he was almost unnerved.

Then, stabbing through that awesome laughter, came the sound of a

scream that was undoubtedly human. Kane started forward, increasing

his gait. He cursed the illusive lights and flickering shadows which

veiled the moor in the rising moon and made accurate sight impossible.

The laughter continued, growing louder, as did the screams. Then

sounded faintly the drum of frantic human feet. Kane broke into a run.

Some human was being hunted to death out there on the fen, and by what

manner of horror God only knew. The sound of the flying feet halted

abruptly and the screaming rose unbearably, mingled with other sounds

unnameable and hideous. Evidently the man had been overtaken, and

Kane, his flesh crawling, visualized some ghastly fiend of the

darkness crouching on the back of its victim crouching and tearing.

Then the noise of a terrible and short struggle came clearly through

the abysmal silence of the night and the footfalls began again, but

stumbling and uneven. The screaming continued, but with a gasping

gurgle. The sweat stood cold on Kane’s forehead and body. This was

heaping horror on horror in an intolerable manner. God, for a moment’s

clear light! The frightful drama was being enacted within a very short

distance of him, to judge by the ease with which the sounds reached

him. But this hellish half-light veiled all in shifting, shadows, so

that the moors appeared a haze of blurred illusions, and stunted

trees, and bushes seemed like giants.

 

Kane shouted, striving to increase the speed of his advance. The

shrieks of the unknown broke into a hideous shrill squealing; again

there was the sound of a struggle, and then from the shadows of the

tall grass a thing came reeling—a thing that had once been a man—a

gore-covered, frightful thing that fell at Kane’s feet and writhed and

grovelled and raised its terrible face to the rising moon, and

gibbered and yammered, and fell down again and died in its own blood.

 

The moon was up now and the light was better. Kane bent above the

body, which lay stark in its unnameable mutilation, and he shuddered a

rare thing for him, who had seen the deeds of the Spanish Inquisition

and the witch-finders.

 

Some wayfarer, he supposed. Then like a hand of ice on his spine he

was aware that he was not alone. He looked up, his cold eyes piercing

the shadows whence the dead man had staggered. He saw nothing, but he

knew—he felt—that other eyes gave back his stare, terrible eyes not

of this earth. He straightened and drew a pistol, waiting. The

moonlight spread like a lake of pale blood over the moor, and trees

and grasses took on their proper sizes. The shadows melted, and Kane

saw! At first he thought it only a shadow of mist, a wisp of moor fog

that swayed in the tall grass before him. He gazed. More illusion, he

thought. Then the thing began to take on shape, vague and indistinct.

Two hideous eyes flamed at him—eyes which held all the stark horror

which has been the heritage of man since the fearful dawn ages—eyes

frightful and insane, with an insanity transcending earthly insanity.

The form of the thing was misty and vague, a brain-shattering travesty

on the human form, like, yet horribly unlike. The grass and bushes

beyond showed clearly through it.

 

Kane felt the blood pound in his temples, yet he was as cold as ice.

How such an unstable being as that which wavered before him could harm

a man in a physical way was more than he could understand, yet the red

horror at his feet gave mute testimony that the fiend could act with

terrible material effect.

 

Of one thing Kane was sure; there would be no hunting of him across

the dreary moors, no screaming and fleeing to be dragged down again

and again. If he must die he would die in his tracks, his wounds in

front.

 

Now a vague and grisly mouth gaped wide and the demoniac laughter

again shrieked but, soul-shaking in its nearness. And in the midst of

feat threat of doom, Kane deliberately levelled his long pistol and

fired. A maniacal yell of rage and mockery answered the report, and

the thing came at him like a flying sheet of smoke, long shadowy arms

stretched to drag him down.

 

Kane, moving with the dynamic speed of a famished wolf, fired the

second pistol with as little effect, snatched his long rapier from its

sheath and thrust into the centre of the misty attacker. The blade

sang as it passed clear through, encountering no solid resistance, and

Kane felt icy fingers grip his limbs, bestial talons tear his garments

and the skin beneath,

 

He dropped the useless sword and sought to grapple with his foe. It

was like fighting a floating mist, a flying shadow armed with dagger

like claws. His savage blows met empty air, his leanly mighty arms, in

whose grasp strong men had died, swept nothingness and clutched

emptiness. Naught was solid or real save the flaying, apelike fingers

with their crooked talons, and the crazy eyes which burned into the

shuddering depths of his soul.

 

Kane realized that he was in a desperate plight indeed. Already his

garments hung in tatters and he bled from a score of deep wounds. But

he never flinched, and the thought of flight never entered his mind.

He had never fled from a single foe, and had the thought occurred to

him he would have flushed with shame.

 

He saw no help for it now, but that his form should lie there beside