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

class="calibre1">the fragments of the other ‘ victim, but the thought held no terrors

for him. His only wish was to give as good an account of himself as

possible before the end came, and if he could, to inflict some damage

on his unearthly foe. There above the dead man’s torn body, man fought

with demon under the pale light of the rising moon, with all the

advantages with the demon, save one. And that one was enough to

overcome the others. For if abstract hate may bring into material

substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, equally abstract, form a

concrete weapon to combat that ghost? Kane fought with his arms and

his feet and his hands, and he was aware at last that the ghost began

to give back before him, and the fearful slaughter changed to screams

of baffled fury. For man’s only weapon is courage that flinches not

from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions

of Hell can stand. Of this Kane knew nothing; he only knew that the

talons which tore and rended him seemed to grow weaker and wavering,

that a wild light grew and grew in the horrible eyes. And reeling and

gasping, he rushed in, grappled the thing at last and threw it, and as

they tumbled about on the moor and it writhed and lapped his limbs

like a serpent of smoke, his flesh crawled and his hair stood on end,

for he began to understand its gibbering. He did not hear and

comprehend as a man hears and comprehends the speech of a man, but the

frightful secrets it imparted in whisperings and yammerings and

screaming silences sank fingers of ice into his soul, and he knew. II

 

The hut of old Ezra the miser stood by the road in the midst of the

swamp, half screened by the sullen trees which grew about it. The

wall; were rotting, the roof crumbling, and great pallid and green

fungus-monsters clung to it and writhed about the doors and windows,

as if seeking to peer within. The trees leaned above it and their grey

branches intertwined so that it crouched in semi-darkness like a

monstrous dwarf over” whose shoulder ogres leer.

 

The road which wound down into the swamp among rotting stumps and rank

hummocks and scummy, snake-haunted pools and bogs, crawled past the

hut. Many people passed that way these days, but few saw old Ezra,

save a glimpse of a yellow face, peering through the fungus-screened

windows, itself like an ugly fungus.

 

Old Ezra the miser partook much of the quality of the swamp, for he

was gnarled and bent and sullen; his fingers were like clutching

parasitic plants and his locks hung like drab moss above eyes trained

to the murk of the swamplands. His eyes were like a dead man’s, yet

hinted of depths abysmal and loathsome as the dead lakes of the

swamplands.

 

These eyes gleamed now at the man who stood in front of his hut. This

man was tall and gaunt and dark, his face was haggard and claw-marked,

and he was bandaged of arm and leg. Somewhat behind this man stood a

number of villagers.

 

“You are Ezra of the swamp road?”

 

“Aye, and what want ye of me?”

 

“Where is your cousin Gideon, the maniac youth who abode with you?”

 

“Gideon?”

 

‘Aye.” He wandered away into the swamp and never came back. No doubt

he lost his way and was set upon by wolves or died in a quagmire or

was struck by an adder.”

 

“How long ago?”

 

“Over a year.”

 

“Aye. Hark ye, Ezra the miser. Soon after your cousin’s disappearance,

a countryman, coming home across the moors, was set upon by some

unknown fiend and torn to pieces, and thereafter it became death to

cross those moors. First men of the countryside, then strangers who

wandered over the fen, fell to the clutches of the thing. Many men

have died, since the first one.

 

“Last night I crossed the moors, and heard the flight and pursuing of

another victim, a stranger who knew not the evil of the moors. Ezra

the miser, it was a fearful thing, for the wretch twice broke from the

fiend, terribly wounded, and each time the demon caught and dragged

him down again. And at last he fell dead at my very, feet, done to

death in a manner that would freeze the statue of a saint.”

 

The villagers moved restlessly and murmured fearfully to each other,

and old Ezra’s eyes shifted furtively. Yet the sombre expression of

Solomon Kane never altered, and his condor-like stare seemed to

transfix the miser.

 

“Aye, aye!” muttered old Ezra hurriedly; “a bad thing, a bad thing!

Yet why do you tell this thing to me?” “Aye, a sad thing. Harken

further, Ezra. The fiend came out of the shadows and I fought with it

over the body of its victim. Aye, how I overcame it, I know not, for

the battle was hard and long but the powers of good and light were on

my side, which are mightier than the powers of Hell.

 

“At the last I was stronger, and it broke from me and fled, and I

followed to no avail. Yet before it fled it whispered to me a

monstrous truth.”

 

Old Ezra started, stared wildly, seemed to shrink into himself.

 

“Nay, why tell me this?” he muttered.

 

“I returned to the village and told my tale, said Kane, “for I knew

that now I had the power to rid the moors of its curse forever’. Ezra,

come with us!”

 

“Where?” gasped the miser.

 

“To the rotting oak on the moors.” Ezra reeled as though struck; he

screamed incoherently and turned to flee.

 

On the instant, at Kane’s sharp order, two brawny villagers sprang

forward and seized the miser. They twisted the dagger from his

withered hand, and pinioned his arms, shuddering as their fingers

encountered his clammy flesh.

 

Kane motioned them to follow, and turning strode up the trail,

followed by the villagers, who found their strength taxed to the

utmost in their task of bearing their prisoner along. Through the

swamp they went and out, taking a little-used trail which led up over

the low hills and out on the moors.

 

The sun was sliding down the horizon and old Ezra stared at it with

bulging eyes—stared as if he could not gaze enough. Far out on the

moors geared up the great oak tree, like a gibbet, now only a decaying

shell. There Solomon Kane halted.

 

Old Ezra writhed in his captor’s grasp and made inarticulate noises.

 

“Over a year ago,” said Solomon Kane, “you, fearing that your insane

cousin Gideon would tell men of your cruelties to him, brought him

away from the swamp by the very trail by which we came, and murdered

him here in the night.”

 

Ezra cringed and snarled.

 

“You can not prove this lie!”

 

Kane spoke a few words to an agile villager. The youth clambered up

the rotting bole of the tree and from a crevice, high up, dragged

something that fell with a clatter at the feet of the miser. Ezra went

limp with a terrible shriek.

 

The object was a man’s skeleton, the skull cleft.

 

“You—how knew you this? You are Satan!” gibbered old Ezra.

 

Kane folded his arms.

 

“The thing I, fought last night told me this thing as we reeled in

battle, and I followed it to this tree. For the fiend is Gideon’s

ghost.”

 

Ezra shrieked again and fought savagely.

 

“You knew,” said Kane sombrely, “you knew what things did these deeds.

You feared the ghost the maniac, and that is why you chose to leave

his body on the fen instead of concealing it in the swamp. For you

knew the ghost would haunt the place of his death. He was insane in

life, and in death he did not know where to find his slayer; else he

had come to you in your hut. He hates man but you, but his mazed

spirit can not tell one man from another, and he slays all, lest he

let his killer escape. Yet he will know you and rest in peace, forever

after. Hate hath made of his ghost, solid thing that can rend and

slay, and though he feared you terribly in life, in death he fears you

not at all.”

 

Kane halted. He glanced at the sun.

 

“All this I had from Gideon’s ghost, in his yammerings and his

whisperings and his shrieking silences. Naught but your death will lay

that ghost.”

 

Ezra listened in breathless silence and Kane pronounced the words of

his doom.

 

“A hard thing it is,” said Kane sombrely, “to sentence a man to death

in cold blood and in such a manner as I have in mind, but you must die

that others may live—and God knoweth you deserve death.

 

“You shall not die by noose, bullet or sword, but at the talons of him

you slew—for naught else will satiate him.”

 

At these words Ezra’s brain shattered, his knees gave way and he fell

grovelling and screaming for death, begging them to burn him at the

stake, to flay him alive. Kane’s face was set like death, and the

villagers, the fear rousing their cruelty, bound the screeching wretch

to the oak tree, and one of them bade him make his peace with God. But

Ezra made no answer, shrieking in a high shrill voice with unbearable

monotony. Then the villager would have struck the miser across across

the face, but Kane stayed him.

 

“Let him make his peace with Satan, whom he is more like to meet, “

said the Puritan grimly. “The sun is about to set. Loose his cords-so

that he may work loose by dark, since it is better to meet death free

and unshackled than bound like a sacrifice.” As they turned to leave

him, old Ezra yammered and gibbered unhuman sounds and then fell

silent, staring at the sun with terrible intensity.

 

They walked away across the fen, and Kane flung a last look at the

grotesque form bound to the tree, seeming in the uncertain light like

a great fungus growing to the bole. And suddenly the miser screamed

hideously:

 

“Death! Death! There are skulls in the Stars!”

 

“Life was good to him, though he was gnarled and churlish and evil,”

Kane sighed. “Mayhap God has a place for such souls where fire and

sacrifice may cleanse them of their dross as fire cleans the forest or

fungus things. Yet my heart is heavy within me.” “Nay, sir,” one of

the villagers spoke, “you have done but the will of God, and good

alone shall come of this night’s deed.” “Nay,” answered Kane heavily.

“I know not—I know not.” The sun had gone down and night spread with

amazing swiftness, as if great shadows came rushing down from unknown

voids to cloak the world with hurrying darkness. Through the thick

night came a weird echo, and the men halted and looked back the way

they had come.

 

Nothing could be seen. The moor was an ocean of shadows and the tall

grass about them bent in long waves before the, faint wind, breaking

the deathly stillness with breathless murmurings.

 

Then far away the red disk of the moon rose over the fen, and for an

instant a grim silhouette was etched blackly against it. A shape came

flying across the face of the moon—a bent, grotesque thing whose feet

seemed scarcely to touch the earth; and close behind came a thing like

a flying shadow—a nameless, shapeless horror.

 

A moment the racing