The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1 (11 page)

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 at the gorilla-slayer.

The black man had apparently forgotten him; he stood, half crouching, spear lifted, eyes fixed upon that clump of blackness. Kane looked again. Now there was motion in the shadows; they merged fantastically and moved out into the glade, much as Gulka had done. Kane blinked: was this the illusion that precedes death? The shape he looked upon was such as he had visioned dimly in wild nightmares, when the wings of sleep bore him back through lost ages.

He thought at first it was some blasphemous mockery of a man, for it went erect and was tall as a tall man. But it was inhumanly broad and thick, and its gigantic arms hung nearly to its misshapen feet. Then the moonlight smote full upon its bestial face, and Kane’s mazed mind thought that the thing was the Black God coming out of the shadows, animated and blood-lusting. Then he saw that it was covered with hair, and he remembered the manlike thing dangling from the roof-pole in the native village. He looked at Gulka.

The negro was facing the gorilla, spear at the charge. He was not afraid, but his sluggish mind was wondering over the miracle that brought this beast so far from his native jungles.

The mighty ape came out into the moonlight and there was a terrible majesty about his movements. He was nearer Kane than Gulka but he did not seem to be aware of the white man. His small, blazing eyes were fixed on the black man with terrible intensity. He advanced with a curious swaying stride.

Far away the drums whispered through the night, like an accompaniment to this grim Stone Age drama. The savage crouched in the middle of the glade, but the primordial came out of the jungle with eyes bloodshot and blood-lusting. The negro was face to face with a thing more primitive then he. Again ghosts of memories whispered to Kane: you have seen such sights before (they murmured), back in the dim days, the dawn days, when beast and beast-man battled for supremacy.

Gulka moved away from the ape in a half-circle, crouching, spear ready. With all his craft he was seeking to trick the gorilla, to make a swift kill, for he had never before met such a monster as this, and though he did not fear, he had begun to doubt. The ape made no attempt to stalk or circle; he strode straight forward toward Gulka.

The black man who faced him and the white man who watched could not know the brutish love, the brutish hate that had driven the monster down from the low, forest-covered hills of the north to follow for leagues the trail of him who was the scourge of his kind–the slayer of his mate, whose body now hung from the roof-pole of the negro village.

The end came swiftly, almost like a sudden gesture. They were close, now, beast and beast-man; and suddenly, with an earth-shaking roar, the gorilla charged. A great hairy arm smote aside the thrusting spear, and the ape closed with the negro. There was a shattering sound as of many branches breaking simultaneously, and Gulka slumped silently to the earth, to lie with arms, legs and body flung in strange, unnatural positions. The ape towered an instant above him, like a statue of the primordial triumphant.

Far away Kane heard the drums murmur. The soul of the jungle, the soul of the jungle: this phrase surged through his mind with monotonous reiteration.

The three who had stood in power before the Black God that night, where were they? Back in the village where the drums rustled lay Songa–King Songa, once lord of life and death, now a shriveled corpse with a face set in a mask of horror. Stretched on his back in the middle of the glade lay he whom Kane had followed many a league by land and sea. And Gulka the gorilla-slayer lay at the feet of his killer, broken at last by the savagery which had made him a true son of this grim land which had at last overwhelmed him.

Yet the Black God still reigned, thought Kane dizzily, brooding back in the shadows of this dark country, bestial, blood-lusting, caring naught who lived or died, so that he drank.

Kane watched the mighty ape, wondering how long it would be before the huge simian spied and charged him. But the gorilla gave no evidence of having even seen him. Some dim impulse of vengeance yet unglutted prompting him, he bent and raised the negro. Then he slouched toward the jungle, Gulka’s limbs trailing limply and grotesquely. As he reached the trees, the ape halted, whirling the giant form high in the air with seemingly no effort, and dashed the dead man up among the branches. There was a rending sound as a broken projecting limb tore through the body hurled so powerfully against it, and the dead gorilla-slayer dangled there hideously.

A moment the clear moon limned the great ape in its glimmer, as he stood silently gazing up at his victim; then like a dark shadow he melted noiselessly into the jungle.

Kane walked slowly to the middle of the glade and took up his rapier. The blood had ceased to flow from his wounds, and some of his strength was returning, enough, at least, for him to reach the coast where his ship awaited him. He halted at the edge of the glade for a backward glance at Le Loup’s upturned face and still form, white in the moonlight, and at the dark shadow among the trees that was Gulka, left by some bestial whim, hanging as the she-gorilla hung in the village.

Afar the drums muttered: “The wisdom of our land is ancient; the wisdom of our land is dark; whom we serve, we destroy. Flee if you would live, but you will never forget our chant. Never, never,” sang the drums.

Kane turned to the trail which led to the beach and the ship waiting there.

The One Black Stain

Sir Thomas Doughty, executed at St. Julian’s Bay, 1578

They carried him out on the barren sand

where the rebel captains died;

Where the grim grey rotting gibbets stand

as Magellan reared them on the strand,

And the gulls that haunt the lonesome land

wail to the lonely tide.

Drake faced them all like a lion at bay,

with his lion head upflung:

“Dare ye my word of law defy,

to say that this traitor shall not die?”

And his captains dared not meet his eye

but each man held his tongue.

Solomon Kane stood forth alone,

grim man of a somber race:

“Worthy of death he well may be,

but the court ye held was a mockery,

“Ye hid your spite in a travesty

where Justice hid her face.

“More of the man had ye been,

on deck your sword to cleanly draw

“In forthright fury from its sheath,

and openly cleave him to the teeth–

“Rather than slink and hide beneath

a hollow word of Law.”

Hell rose in the eyes of Francis Drake.

“Puritan knave!” swore he,

“Headsman, give him the axe instead!

He shall strike off yon traitor’s head!”

Solomon folded his arms and said,

darkly and somberly:

“I am no slave for your butcher’s work.”

“Bind him with triple strands!”

Drake roared in wrath and the men obeyed,

hesitantly, as men afraid,

But Kane moved not as they took his blade

and pinioned his iron hands.

They bent the doomed man to his knees,

the man who was to die;

They saw his lips in a strange smile bend;

one last long look they saw him send

At Drake, his judge and his one-time friend,

who dared not meet his eye.

The axe flashed silver in the sun,

a red arch slashed the sand;

A voice cried out as the head fell clear,

and the watchers flinched in sudden fear,

Though ’twas but a sea-bird wheeling near

above the lonely strand.

“This be every traitor’s end!” Drake cried,

and yet again;

Slowly his captains turned and went,

and the admiral’s stare was elsewhere bent

Than where cold scorn with anger blent

in the eyes of Solomon Kane.

Night fell on the crawling waves;

the admiral’s door was closed;

Solomon lay in the stenching hold;

his irons clashed as the ship rolled,

And his guard, grown weary and overbold,

laid down his pike and dozed.

He woke with a hand at his corded throat

that gripped him like a vise;

Trembling he yielded up the key,

and the somber Puritan stood up free,

His cold eyes gleaming murderously

with the wrath that is slow to rise.

Unseen to the admiral’s cabin door

went Solomon from the guard,

Through the night and silence of the ship,

the guard’s keen dagger in his grip;

No man of the dull crew saw him slip

in through the door unbarred.

Drake at the table sat alone,

his face sunk in his hands;

He looked up, as from sleeping–

but his eyes were blank with weeping

As if he saw not, creeping,

Death’s swiftly flowing sands.

He reached no hand for gun or blade

to halt the hand of Kane,

Nor even seemed to hear or see,

lost in black mists of memory,

Love turned to hate and treachery,

and bitter, cankering pain.

A moment Solomon Kane stood there,

the dagger poised before,

As a condor stoops above a bird,

and Francis Drake spoke not nor stirred,

And Kane went forth without a word

and closed the cabin door.

The Dark Man

For this is the night of the drawing of swords,

And the painted tower of the heathen hordes

Leans to our hammers, fires and cords,

Leans a little and falls.

—
Chesterton

A biting wind drifted the snow as it fell. The surf snarled along the rugged shore and farther out the long leaden combers moaned ceaselessly. Through the gray dawn that was stealing over the coast of Connacht a fisherman came trudging, a man rugged as the land that bore him. His feet were wrapped in rough cured leather; a single garment of deerskin scantily sheltered his body. He wore no other clothing. As he strode stolidly along the shore, as heedless of the bitter cold as if he were the shaggy beast he appeared at first glance, he halted. Another man loomed up out of the veil of falling snow and drifting sea-mist. Turlogh Dubh stood before him.

This man was nearly a head taller than the stocky fisherman, and he had the bearing of a fighting man. No single glance would suffice, but any man or woman whose eyes fell on Turlogh Dubh would look long. Six feet and one inch he stood, and the first impression of slimness faded on closer inspection. He was big but trimly molded; a magnificent sweep of shoulder and depth of chest. Rangy he was, but compact, combining the strength of a bull with the lithe quickness of a panther. The slightest movement he made showed that steel trap coordination that makes the super-fighter. Turlogh Dubh–Black Turlogh, once of the Clan na O’Brien.
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And black he was as to hair, and dark of complexion. From under heavy black brows gleamed eyes of a hot volcanic blue. And in his clean-shaven face there was something of the somberness of dark mountains, of the ocean at midnight. Like the fisherman, he was a part of this fierce western land.

On his head he wore a plain vizorless helmet without crest or symbol. From neck to mid-thigh he was protected by a close-fitting shirt of black chain mail. The kilt he wore below his armor and which reached to his knees, was of plain drab material. His legs were wrapped with hard leather that might turn a sword edge, and the shoes on his feet were worn with much traveling.

A broad belt encircled his lean waist, holding a long dirk in a leather sheath. On his left arm he carried a small round shield of hide-covered wood, hard as iron, braced and reinforced with steel, and having a short, heavy spike in the center. An ax hung from his right wrist, and it was to this feature that the fisherman’s eyes wandered. The weapon with its three-foot handle and graceful lines looked slim and light when the fisherman mentally compared it to the great axes carried by the Norsemen. Yet scarcely three years had passed, as the fisherman knew, since such axes as these had shattered the northern hosts into red defeat and broken the pagan power forever.

There was individuality about the ax as about its owner. It was not like any other the fisherman had ever seen. Single-edged it was, with a short three-edged spike on the back and another on the top of the head. Like the wielder, it was heavier than it looked. With its slightly curved shaft and the graceful artistry of the blade, it looked the weapon of an expert–swift, lethal, deadly, cobra-like. The head was of finest Irish workmanship, which meant, at that day, the finest in the world. The handle, cut from the heart of a century-old oak, specially fire-hardened and braced with steel, was as unbreakable as an iron bar.

“Who are you?” asked the fisherman with the bluntness of the west.

“Who are you to ask?” answered the other.

The fisherman’s eyes roved to the single ornament the warrior wore–a heavy golden armlet on his left arm.

“Clean-shaven and close-cropped in the Norman fashion,” he muttered. “And dark–you’d be Black Turlogh, the outlaw of Clan na O’Brien. You range far; I heard of you last in the Wicklow hills preying off the O’Reillys and the Oastmen alike.”

“A man must eat, outcast or not,” growled the Dalcassian.

The fisherman shrugged his shoulders. A masterless man–it was a hard road. In those days of clans, when a man’s own kin cast him out he became a son of Ishmael with a vengeance. All men’s hands were against him. The fisherman had heard of Turlogh Dubh–a strange, bitter man, a terrible warrior and a crafty strategist, but one whom sudden bursts of strange madness made a marked man even in that land and age of madmen.

“It’s a bitter day,” said the fisherman apropos of nothing.

Turlogh stared somberly at his tangled beard and wild matted hair. “Have you a boat?”

The other nodded toward a small sheltered cove where lay snugly anchored a trim craft built with the skill of a hundred generations of men who had torn their livelihood from the stubborn sea.

“It scarce looks seaworthy,” said Turlogh.

“Seaworthy? You who were born and bred on the western coast should know better. I’ve sailed her alone to Drumcliff Bay and back, and all the devils in the wind ripping at her.”

“You can’t take fish in such a sea.”

“Do ye think it’s only you chiefs that take sport in risking their hides? By the saints, I’ve sailed to Ballinskellings in a storm–and back too–just for the fun of the thing.”

“Good enough,” said Turlogh. “I’ll take your boat.”

“Ye’ll take the devil! What kind of talk is this? If you want to leave Erin, go to Dublin and take ship with your Dane friends.”

A black scowl made Turlogh’s face a mask of menace. “Men have died for less than that.”

“Did you not intrigue with the Danes?–and is that not why your clan drove you out to starve in the heather?”

“The jealousy of a cousin and the spite of a woman,” growled Turlogh. “Lies–all lies. But enough. Have you seen a long serpent beating up from the south in the last few days?”

“Aye–three days ago we sighted a dragon-beaked galley before the scud. But she didn’t put in–faith, the pirates get naught from the western fishers but hard blows.”

“That would be Thorfel the Fair,” muttered Turlogh, swaying his ax by its wrist-strap. “I knew it.”

“There has been a ship-harrying in the south?”

“A band of reavers fell by night on the castle on Kilbaha. There was a sword-quenching–and the pirates took Moira, daughter of Murtagh, a chief of the Dalcassians.”

“I’ve heard of her,” muttered the fisherman. “There’ll be a whetting of swords in the south–a red sea-plowing, eh, my black jewel?”

“Her brother Dermod lies helpless from a sword-cut in the foot. The lands of her clan are harried by the MacMurroughs in the east and the O’Connors from the north. Not many men can be spared from the defense of the tribe, even to seek for Moira–the clan is fighting for its life. All Erin is rocking under the Dalcassian throne since great Brian fell. Even so, Cormac O’Brien has taken ship to hunt down her ravishers–but he follows the trail of a wild goose, for it is thought the raiders were Danes from Coningbeg. Well–we outcasts have ways of knowledge–it was Thorfel the Fair who holds the isle of Slyne, that the Norse call Helni, in the Hebrides. There he has taken her–there I follow him. Lend me your boat.”

“You are mad!” cried the fisherman sharply. “What are you saying? From Connacht to the Hebrides in an open boat? In this weather? I say you are mad.”

“I will essay it,” answered Turlogh absently. “Will you lend me your boat?”

“No.”

“I might slay you and take it,” said Turlogh.

“You might,” returned the fisherman stolidly.

“You crawling swine,” snarled the outlaw in swift passion, “a princess of Erin languishes in grip of a red-bearded reaver of the north and you haggle like a Saxon.”

“Man, I must live!” cried the fisherman as passionately. “Take my boat and I shall starve! Where can I get another like it? It is the cream of its kind!”

Turlogh reached for the armlet on his left arm. “I will pay you. Here is a torc that Brian Boru put on my arm with his own hand before Clontarf. Take it; it would buy a hundred boats. I have starved with it on my arm, but now the need is desperate.”

But the fisherman shook his head, the strange illogic of the Gael burning in his eyes. “No! My hut is no place for a torc that King Brian’s hands have touched. Keep it–and take the boat, in the name of the saints, if it means that much to you.”

“You shall have it back when I return,” promised Turlogh, “and mayhap a golden chain that now decks the bull neck of some northern rover.”

The day was sad and leaden. The wind moaned and the everlasting monotone of the sea was like the sorrow that is born in the heart of man. The fisherman stood on the rocks and watched the frail craft glide and twist serpent-like among the rocks until the blast of the open sea smote it and tossed it like a feather. The wind caught the sail and the slim boat leaped and staggered, then righted herself and raced before the gale, dwindling until it was but a dancing speck in the eyes of the watcher. And then a flurry of snow hid it from his sight.

Turlogh realized something of the madness of his pilgrimage. But he was bred to hardships and peril. Cold and ice and driving sleet that would have frozen a weaker man, only spurred him to greater efforts. He was as hard and supple as a wolf. Among a race of men whose hardiness astounded even the toughest Norseman, Turlogh Dubh stood out alone. At birth he had been tossed into a snow-drift to test his right to survive. His childhood and boyhood had been spent on the mountains, coast and moors of the west. Until manhood he had never worn woven cloth upon his body; a wolf-skin had formed the apparel of this son of a Dalcassian chief. Before his outlawry he could out-tire a horse, running all day long beside it. He had never wearied at swimming. Now, since the intrigues of jealous clansmen had driven him into the wastelands and the life of the wolf, his ruggedness was such as can not be conceived by a civilized man.

The snow ceased, the weather cleared, the wind held. Turlogh necessarily hugged the coast line, avoiding the reefs against which it seemed again and again that his craft would be dashed. With tiller, sail and oar he worked tirelessly. Not one man out of a thousand of seafarers could have accomplished it, but Turlogh did. He needed no sleep; as he steered he ate from the rude provisions the fisherman had provided him. By the time he sighted Malin Head the weather had calmed wonderfully. There was still a heavy sea, but the gale had slackened to a sharp breeze that sent the little boat skipping along. Days and nights merged into each other; Turlogh drove eastward. Once he put into shore for fresh water and to snatch a few hours’ sleep.

As he steered he thought of the fisherman’s last words: “Why should you risk your life for a clan that’s put a price on your head?”

Turlogh shrugged his shoulders. Blood was thicker than water. The mere fact that his people had booted him out to die like a hunted wolf on the moors did not alter the fact that they
were
his people. Little Moira, daughter of Murtagh na Kilbaha, had nothing to do with it. He remembered her–he had played with her when he was a boy and she a babe–he remembered the deep grayness of her eyes and the burnished sheen of her black hair, the fairness of her skin. Even as a child she had been remarkably beautiful–why, she was only a child now, for he, Turlogh, was young and he was many years her senior. Now she was speeding north to become the unwilling bride of a Norse reaver. Thorfel the Fair–the Handsome–Turlogh swore by gods that knew not the Cross. A red mist waved across his eyes so that the rolling sea swam crimson all about him. An Irish girl a captive in the skalli of a Norse pirate–with a vicious wrench Turlogh turned his bows straight for the open sea. There was a tinge of madness in his eyes.

It is a long slant from Malin Head to Helni straight out across the foaming billows, as Turlogh took it. He was aiming for a small island that lay, with many other small islands, between Mull and the Hebrides. A modern seaman with charts and compass might have difficulty in finding it. Turlogh had neither. He sailed by instinct and through knowledge. He knew these seas as a man knows his house. He had sailed them as a raider and an avenger, and once he had sailed them as a captive lashed to the deck of a Danish dragon ship. And he followed a red trail. Smoke drifting from headlands, floating pieces of wreckage, charred timbers showed that Thorfel was ravaging as he went. Turlogh growled in savage satisfaction; he was close behind the viking, in spite of the long lead. For Thorfel was burning and pillaging the shores as he went, and Turlogh’s course was like an arrow’s.

He was still a long way from Helni when he sighted a small island slightly off his course. He knew it of old as one uninhabited, but there he could get fresh water. So he steered for it. The Isle of Swords it was called, no man knew why. And as he neared the beach he saw a sight which he rightly interpreted. Two boats were drawn up on the shelving shore. One was a crude affair, something like the one Turlogh had, but considerably larger. The other was a long low craft–undeniably viking. Both were deserted. Turlogh listened for the clash of arms, the cry of battle, but silence reigned. Fishers, he thought, from the Scotch isles; they had been sighted by some band of rovers on ship or on some other island, and had been pursued in the long rowboat. But it had been a longer chase than they had anticipated, he was sure; else they would not have started out in an open boat. But inflamed with the murder lust, the reavers would have followed their prey across a hundred miles of rough water, in an open boat, if necessary.