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Published in Red Shadows, 1968.
| Chapter I | Chapter II | Chapter III |
Solomon Kane started up in the darkness, snatching at the weapons which lay on the pile of skins that served him as a crude pallet. It was not the mad drum of the tropic rain on the leaves of the hut roof which had wakened him, nor the bellowing of the thunder. It was the screams of human agony, the clash of steel that cut through the din of the tropical storm. Some sort of a conflict was taking place in the native village in which he had sought refuge from the storm, and it sounded much like a raid in force. As Solomon groped for his sword, he wondered what bushmen would raid a village in the night and in such a storm as this. His pistols lay beside his sword, but he did not take them up, knowing that they would be useless in such a torrent of rain—a rain which would wet their priming instantly.
He had laid down fully clad, save for his slouch hat and cloak, and without stopping for them, he ran to the door of the hut. A ragged streak of lightning which seemed to rip the sky open showed him a chaotic glimpse of struggling figures in the spaces between the huts, dazzlingly glinting back from flashing steel. Above the storm he heard the shrieks of the black people and deep-toned shouts in a language unfamiliar to him. Springing from the hut he sensed the presence of one in front of him; then another thunderous burst of fire ripped across the sky, limning all in a weird blue light. In that flashing instant Solomon thrust savagely, felt the blade bend double in his hand, and saw a heavy sword swinging for his head. A burst of sparks, brighter than the lightning, exploded before his eyes; then blackness darker than the jungle night engulfed him.
Dawn was spreading pallidly over the dripping jungle reaches when Solomon Kane stirred and sat up in the ooze before the hut. Blood had caked on his scalp and his head ached slightly. Shaking off a slight grogginess, he rose. The rain had long since ceased, the skies were clear. Silence lay over the village, and Kane saw that it was in truth a village of the dead. Corpses of men, women, and children lay strewn everywhere—in the streets, in the doorways of the huts, inside the huts, some of which had been literally ripped to pieces, either in search of cowering victims, or in sheer wantonness of destruction. They had not taken many prisoners, Solomon decided, whoever the unknown raiders might be. Nor had they taken the spears, axes, cooking pots, and plumed head-pieces of their victims, this fact seeming to argue a raid by a race superior in culture and artisanship to the crude villagers. But they had taken all the ivory they could find, and they had taken, Kane discovered, his rapier and his dirk, pistols, and powder-and-shot pouches. And they had taken his staff, the sharp-pointed, strangely-carved, cat-headed stave, which his friends, N’Longa, the West Coast witch-man, had given him, as well as his hat and cloak.
Kane stood in the centre of the desolated village, brooding over the matter, strange speculations running at random through his mind. His conversation with the natives of the village, into which he had made his way the night before out of the storm-beaten jungle, gave him no clue as to the nature of the raiders. The natives themselves had known little about the land into which they had but recently come, driven over a long trek by a rival, more powerful tribe. They had been a simple, good-natured people, who had welcomed him into their huts and given him freely of their humble goods. Kane’s heart was hot with wrath against their unknown destroyers, but even deeper than that burned his unquenchable curiosity, the curse of the intelligent man.
For Kane had looked on mystery in the night. And the storm—that vivid flame of lightning—had showed him etched momentarily in its glare a fierce, black-bearded race—the face of a white man. Yet according to sanity there could be no white men—not even Arab raiders—within hundreds and hundreds of miles. Kane had had no time to observe the man’s dress, but he had a vague impression that the figure was clad bizarrely. And that sword which, striking glancing and flat, had struck him down—surely that had been no crude native weapon.
Kane glanced at the crude mud wall which surrounded the village, at the bamboo gates which now lay in ruins—hewn to pieces by the raiders. The storm had apparently abated when the raiders marched forth, for he made out a broad trampled track leading out of the broken gate and into the jungle.
Kane picked up a crude native axe that lay nearby. If any of the unknown slayers had fallen in the battle, their bodies had been carried away by their companions. Leaves pieced together made him a makeshift hat to protect his head from the force of the sun. Then Solomon Kane went through the broken gate and into the dripping jungle, following the spoor of the unknown.
Under the giant trees the tracks became clearer, and Kane made out that most of them were of sandals—a type of sandal, likewise, that was strange to him. The remaining tracks were of bare feet, indicating that some prisoners had been taken. Apparently they had a long start for, though he travelled without pause, swinging along tirelessly on his rangy legs, he did not sight the column in that day’s march.
He ate of the food he had brought from the ruined village, and pressed on without halting, consumed by anger and with the desire to solve the mystery of that lightning-limned face; more, the raiders had taken his weapons, and in that dark land a man’s weapons were his life. The day wore on. As the sun sank, the jungle gave way to forest-land, and at twilight Kane came out on a rolling, grass-grown, tree-dotted plain, and saw far across it what appeared to be a low-lying range of hills. The tracks led straight out across the plain, and Kane believed the raiders goal was those low, even hills.
He hesitated; across the grasslands came the thunderous roaring of lions, echoing and re-echoing from a score of different points. The great cats were beginning to stalk their prey, and it would be suicide to venture across that vast open space, armed with only an axe. Kane found a giant tree and, clambering into it, settled himself in a crotch as comfortably as he might. Far out across the plain he saw a point of light twinkling among the hills. Then on the plain, approaching the hills, he saw other lights, a twinkling fire-set serpentine line that moved toward the hills, now scarcely visible against the stars along the horizon. It was the column of raiders with their captives, he realized. They were bearing torches and travelling swiftly. The torches were no doubt to keep off the lions, and Kane decided that their goal must be very near at hand if they risked a night march on those carnivore-haunted grasslands.
As he watched, he saw the twinkling fire-points move upward, and for awhile they glittered among the hills; then he saw them no more. Speculating on the mystery of it all, Kane slept, while the night winds whispered dark secrets of ancient Africa among the leaves, and lions roared beneath his tree, lashing their tufted tails as they gazed upward with hungry eyes.
Again dawn lighted the land with rose and gold, and Solomon descended from his perch and took up his journey. He ate the last of the food he had brought, drank from a stream that looked fairly pure, and speculated on the chance of finding food among the hills. If he did not find it, he might be in a precarious position, but Kane had been hungry before—aye, and starving and freezing and weary. His rangy, broad-shouldered frame was hard as iron, pliant as steel.
So he swung boldly out across the savannas, watching warily for lurking lions, but slackening not his pace. The sun climbed to the zenith and dipped westward. As he approached the low range, it began to grow in distinctness. He saw that instead of rugged hills, he was approaching a low plateau that rose abruptly from the surrounding plain and appeared to be level. He saw trees and tall grass on the edges, but the cliffs seemed barren and rough. However, they were at no point more than seventy or eighty feet in height, as far as he could see, and he anticipated no great difficulty in surmounting them.
Approaching them he saw that they were almost solid rock, though overlaid by a fairly thick stratum of soil. Boulders had tumbled down in many places and he saw that an active man could scale the cliffs in many places. But he saw something else—a broad road which wound up the steep pitch of the precipice, and up which led the spoors he was following.
Kane approached the road, noting the excellence of the road’s workmanship—certainly no mere animal path or even a native trail. The road had been cut into the cliff with consummate skill, and it was paved and balustraded with smoothly cut blocks of stone.
Wary as a wolf, he avoided the road; further on he found a less steep slope up which he went. It was unstable footing, and boulders that seemed to poise on the slope threatened to roll down upon him, but he accomplished the task without undue hazard and came out over the edge of the cliff.
Kane stood on a rugged, boulder-strewn slope, which pitched off rather steeply onto a flat expanse. From where he stood, he saw the broad plateau spread out beneath his feet, carpeted with lush green grass. And in the midst—he blinked his eyes and shook his head, thinking he looked on some mirage or hallucination. No! It was still there: a massive walled city, rearing from the grassy plain. He saw the battlements, the towers beyond, with small figures moving about them. On the other side of the city he made out a small lake, on the shores of which stretched luxuriant gardens and fields, and meadow-like expanses filled with grazing cattle,
Amazement at the sight held the Puritan frozen for an instant; then the clink of an iron heel on a stone brought him quickly about to face the man who had come from among the boulders. This man was broad-built and powerful, almost as tall as Kane, and heavier. His bare arms bulged with muscles, and his legs were like knotted iron pillars. His face was a duplicate of that Kane had seen in the lightning flash—fierce, black-bearded; the face of a white man with arrogant eyes and a predatory hooked nose. From his bull throat to his knees he was clad in a corselet of iron scales, and on his head was an iron helmet. A metal-braced shield of hardwood and leather was on his left arm, a dagger in his girdle, and a short but heavy iron mace in his hand.
All this Kane saw in a glance as the man roared and leaped. The Englishman realized in that instant that there was to be no such thing as a parley, it was to be a battle to the death. As a tiger leaps, he sprang to meet the warrior, launching his axe with all the power of that rangy frame. The warrior caught the blow in his shield. The axe-edge turned, the haft splintering in Kane’s hand, the buckler shattered.
Carried by the momentum of his savage lunge, Kane’s body crashed against his foe who dropped the useless shield and, staggering, grappled with the Englishman. Straining and gasping they reeled on hard-braced feet, and Kane snarled like a wolf as he felt the full power of his foe’s strength. The armour hampered the Englishman, and the warrior had shortened his grasp on the iron mace and was ferociously striving to crash it on Kane’s bare head.
The Englishman was striving to pinion the warrior’s arm, but his clutching fingers missed, and the mace crashed sickeningly against his bare head. Again it fell, as a fire-shot mist clouded Kane’s vision, but his instinctive wrench avoided it, though it half-numbed his shoulder, ripping the skin so that the blood started in streams.
Maddened, Kane lunged fiercely against the stalwart body of the mace wielder, and one blindly grasping hand closed on the dagger hilt at the warrior’s girdle. Ripping it forth, he stabbed blindly and savagely.
Close-locked, the fighters staggered backward, the one stabbing in venomous silence, the other striving to tear his arm free so that he might crash home one destroying blow. The warrior’s short, half-hindered blows glanced from Kane’s head and shoulders, lacerating the skin and bringing blood in streams. Red lances of agony pierced the Englishman’s clouding brain. And still the dagger in his lunging hand glanced from the iron scales that guarded his foe’s body.
Blinded, dazed, fighting on instinct alone as a wounded wolf fights, Kane’s teeth snapped, fang-like, into the great bull throat of his foe. The torn flesh and a burst of flooding blood brought an agonized roar from the powerful frame. The lashing mace faltered and the warrior flinched back. They reeled on the edge of a low precipice and pitched, rolling headlong and close clinched. At the foot of the slope they brought up, Kane uppermost. The dagger in his hand glittered high above his head and flashed downward, sinking hilt-deep in the warrior’s throat. Kane’s body pitched forward with the blow and he lay senseless above his slain enemy.
They lay in a widening pool of blood. In the sky specks appeared, black against the blue, wheeling, circling, and dropping lower. Then from among the defiles appeared men similar in apparel and appearance to he who lay dead beneath Kane’s senseless body. They had been attracted by the sounds of battle, and now they stood about discussing the matter in harsh and gutteral tones. Slaves stood a little way from them in complete silence.
They dragged the forms apart and discovered that one was dead, one probably dying. Then, after some discussion, they made a litter of their spears and sword-slings, and ordered their slaves to lift the bodies and carry them. The party set out toward the city which gleamed strangely in the midst of the grassy plain.
Consciousness returned to Solomon Kane. He was lying on a couch covered with finely dressed skins and furs, in a large chamber, whose floor, walls, and ceiling were of stone. There was one window, heavily barred, and a single doorway. Outside stood a stalwart warrior, in appearance much like the man he had slain.
Then Kane discovered another thing; golden chains were on his wrists, neck, and ankles. They were linked together in an intricate pattern, and were made fast to a ring set in the wall with a strong silver lock.
Kane found that his wounds had been bandaged, and as he pondered over his situation a slave entered with food and a kind of purple wine. The Englishman made no attempt at conversation, but ate the food offered and drank deeply. The wine was drugged, and he soon fell asleep. Many hours later when he awakened, he found that the bandages had been changed. A different guard stood outside the door—a man of the same caste as the former soldier, however—muscular, black-bearded, and clad in armour.
This time when he awakened he felt strong and refreshed. Kane quickly decided that when the slave returned he would seek to learn something of the curious environs into which he had fallen. The scruff of leather sandals on the tilings announced the approach of someone, and Kane sat up on his couch as a group of figures entered the chamber.
In the background lurked the slave who had brought Kane’s food. Before him, a group of men had assembled in a little clump; robed, inscrutable, shaven of face and head. And a little apart from them stood a man whose figure dominated the whole scene. He was tall, with garments of silk bound by a golden-scaled girdle. His blue-black hair and beard were curiously curled; his hawk-nosed face cruel and predatory. The arrogance of the eyes, which Kane had noticed as characteristic of the unknown race, was in this man much more evident than in the others. On his head was a curiously carved circlet of gold, in his hand a golden wand. The attitude of the rest toward him was one of cringing servility, and Kane believed that he looked upon either the king or the high priest of the city.
Beside this personage stood a shorter, fatter man, with shaven face and head, clad in robes much like those worn by the lesser persons in the background, but far more costly. In his hand he bore a scourge composed of six thongs made fast to a jewel-set handle. The thongs ended in triangular shaped bits of metal, and the whole represented as savage as implement of punishment as Kane had ever looked upon. The man who bore this had small eyes, shifty and crafty, and his whole attitude was a mixture of fawning servility toward the man with the sceptre, and of intolerant despotism toward the lesser-beings.
Kane gave back their stare, trying to place an elusive sense of familiarity. There was something in the features of these people which vaguely suggested the Arab; yet they were strangely unlike any Arabs he had ever seen. They spoke together, and their language at times had a somehow familiar sound. But he could not define these faint stirrings of half-memory.
At last the tall man with the sceptre turned and strode majestically forth, followed by his slavish companions. Kane was left alone. After a time the fat second in command returned with half a dozen soldiers and acolytes. Among these was the young slave who brought Kane’s food, and a tall and sombre figure, naked but for a loin-cloth, who bore a great key at his girdle. The soldiers ringed Kane, javelins ready, while this man unlocked the chains from the ring in the wall. They surrounded him and, holding to his chains, indicated that he was to march with them. Surrounded by his captors, Kane emerged from the chamber into what appeared to be a series of wide galleries winding about the interior of the vast structure. Tier by tier they mounted and turned at last into a chamber much like that he had left, similarly furnished. Kane’s chains were made fast to a ring in the stone wall near me single window. He could stand upright, or lie, or sit on the skin-piled couch, but he could not move half a dozen steps in any direction. Wine and food was placed at his disposal.
His captors left him, and Kane noticed that neither was the door bolted nor a guard placed before it. He decided that they considered his chains sufficient to keep him safe, and after testing them he realized that they were right. Yet, there was another reason for their apparent carelessness, as he was to learn.
The Englishman looked out of the window, which was larger than the other had been and not so thickly barred. He was looking out over the city from a considerable height. Below him were narrow streets, broad avenues flanked by what seemed to be columns and carven stone lions, and on wide expanses of flat-roofed houses. Many of the buildings were of stone, and others were of a sun-dried brick. There was a massiveness about this architecture that was vaguely repellent—a sombre, heavy motif that seemed to suggest a sullen and slightly inhuman character of the builders.
A wall that surrounded the city was tall and thick, with towers spaced at regular intervals. He saw armoured figures moving sentinel-like along the wall, and meditated upon the warlike aspect of this people. The streets and market places below him offered a colourful maze as the richly clad people moved in an ever-shifting panorama.
As for the building which was his prison, Kane could make out little of its nature. Yet, below him he saw a series of massive tiers descending like giant stair-steps. It must be, he decided with a rather unpleasant sensation, built much like the fabled Tower of Babel, one tier above another.
Kane turned his attention back to his chamber. The walls were rich in mural decorations, carvings painted in various colours, well-tinted and blended. Indeed, the art was of as high a standard as any the Englishman had ever seen in Asia or in Europe. Most of the scenes were of war or of the hunt—powerful men with black beards that were often curled, in armour, slaying lions and driving other warriors before them. Some of the pursued warriors were naked black men; others closely resembled their pursuers.
The human figures were not as well depicted as those of the beasts; they were conventionalised to a point that often lent them a somewhat wooden aspect. But the lions were portrayed with vivid realism. Some of the scenes showed the black-bearded slayers in chariots, drawn by fire-breathing steeds, and Kane felt again that strange sense of familiarity, as if he had seen these scenes—or similar scenes—before. The chariots and horses, he noted, were inferior in life-likeness to the lions. The fault was not in conventionalising but in the artist’s ignorance of his subject, Kane decided, noting mistakes that seemed incongruous considering the skill with which they were portrayed.
Time passed swiftly as he pondered over the carvings. Presently the silent slave entered with food and wine.
When he set down the viands, Kane spoke to him in a dialect of the bush tribes, to one of the divisions of which he believed the man belonged, having noted certain tribal scars on his features. The dull face lighted slightly, and the man answered in a tongue similar enough for Kane to understand him.
“What city is this?”
“Ninn, bwana.”
“Who are these people?”
The dull slave shook his head in doubt. “They be very old people, bwana. They have dwelt here very long time.”
“Was that their king who came to my chamber with his men?”
“Yes, bwana. That be King Asshur-ras-arab.”
“And the man with the lash?”
“Yamen, the priest, bwana Persian.”
“Why do you call me that?” asked Kane nonplussed.
“So the masters name you, bwana—” the slave shrank back and his skin turned ashy as the shadow of a tall figure fell across the doorway. A shaven-headed, half-naked giant entered, and the slave fell to his knees wailing his terror. Mighty fingers closed about the terrified throat, and Kane saw the wretched slave’s eyes protruding, his tongue thrust from his gaping mouth. His body writhed and threshed unavailingly; hands clawed weakly and more weakly at iron wrists. Then he went limp in his slayer’s hands. As the shaven-headed warrior released him, the corpse slumped loosely to the floor. The warrior smote his hands together, and a pair of slaves entered. Their faces turned ashy at the sight of their companion’s corpse, but at a gesture they callously laid hold of the dead man’s feet and dragged him from the room.
The warrior turned at the door and his opaque and implacable eyes met Kane’s gaze, as if in warning. Hate drummed in Kane’s temples, and it was the grim eyes of the murderer which fell before the cold fury in the Englishman’s glare. The man went noiselessly forth, leaving Kane to his meditations.
When food was next brought to Kane, it was carried by a rangy young slave of genial and intelligent appearance. Kane made no effort to speak to him; apparently the masters did not wish for their captive to learn anything about them for some reason or another.
How many days Kane remained in the high-flung chamber, he did not know. Each day was exactly like the last, and he lost count of time. Sometimes Yamen the priest came and looked upon him with a satisfied air that made Kane’s eyes turn red with the killer’s lust; sometimes the giant murderer noiselessly appeared, to disappear just as noiselessly.
Kane’s eyes were riveted to the key that swung from the silent giant’s girdle. Could he but once get within reach of the fellow—but his captor was careful to stay out of reach unless Kane was surrounded by warriors with readied javelins.
Then one night to his chamber came Yamen the priest with the silent giant who was called Shem and some fifty acolytes and soldiers; it was Shem who unlocked Kane’s chains from the wall, and, between two columns of soldiers and priests, the Englishman was escorted along the winding galleries that were lighted by flaring torches set in the niches along the walls, and borne in the hands of the priests.
By the light Kane again observed the carven figures marching everlastingly around the massive walls of the galleries. Many were life-sized, some dimmed and somewhat defaced as with age. Most of these, Kane noted, portrayed men in chariots drawn by horses, and he decided that the later, imperfect figures of steeds and chariots, had been copied from these older carvings. Apparently there were no horses or chariots in the city now. Various racial distinctions were evident in the human figures—the hooked noses and curled black beards of the dominant race wore plainly distinguishable. Their opponents were sometimes black men, sometimes men like themselves, and occasionally tall, rangy men with unmistakable Arab features.
Kane was startled to note that in some of the older scenes, men were depicted whose apparel and features were entirely different from those of the Ninnites. These strangers were always pictured in battle scenes and significantly, Kane thought, not always in retreat. Frequently they seemed to be having the best of the fight, and nowhere could the Englishman find them portrayed as slaves. But what interested him was the familiarity of those carven features—they were like the countenance of a friend in a strange land to the wanderer. Apart from their strange, barbaric arms and apparel they might have been Englishmen, with their European features and yellow locks.
Somewhere, in the long, long ago, Kane knew, the ancestors of the men of Ninn had warred with men kin to his own ancestors. But in what age, and in what land? Certainly the scenes were not laid in the country that was now the homeland of the Ninnites, for these scenes showed fertile plains, grassy hills, and wide rivers. Aye, and great cities like Ninn, but strangely unlike.
And suddenly Kane remembered where he had seen similar carvings, wherein kings with black curled beards slew lions from chariots. He had seen them on crumbling pieces of masonry that marked the site of a long forgotten city in Mesopotamia, and men had told him those ruins were all that remained of Nineveh the Bloody, the accursed of God.
The Englishman and his captors had reached the ground tier of the great temple, and they passed between huge columns, squat and carven like the walls. At length they came to a vast circular space between the massive wall and the flanking pillars. Cut from the stone of the mighty wall sat a colossal idol—carven features as devoid of human weakness and kindness as the face of a Stone Age monster.
Facing the idol on a stone throne in the shadow of the pillars sat the King, Asshur-ras-arab. The firelight flickered on his strongly chiselled face so that at first Kane thought it was an idol that sat on the throne.
Before the god and facing the king’s throne was another, smaller throne. A brazier on a golden tripod stood before it; coals glowed in the brazier and smoke curled languorously upward.
A flowing robe of shimmering green silk was put upon Kane, hiding his tattered and stained garments and the golden chains. He was motioned to sit in the throne before the brazier, and he did so without a sound. Then his ankles and wrists were locked cunningly to the throne, hidden by the folds of the silken robe.
The lesser priests and the soldiers melted away, leaving only Kane, the priest Yamen, and the king upon his throne. Back in the shadows among the tree-like columns Kane occasionally glimpsed a glint of metal like fireflies in the dark. Warriors still lurked there, out of sight. He sensed that some sort of a stage had been set. Kane felt a suggestion of charlatanry in the whole procedure.
Now Asshur-ras-arab lifted the golden wand and struck once upon a gong that hung near his throne. A full and mellow note like a distant chime echoed among the dim reaches of the shadowy temple. Along the dusky avenue between the columns came a group of men whom Kane realized must be the nobles of that fantastic city. They were tall men, black-bearded and haughty of bearing, clad in shimmering silk and gleaming gold. And among them walked one in golden chains, a youth whose attitude seemed a mixture of apprehension and defiance.
The assemblage knelt before the king, bowing their heads to the floor. At a word from him, they arose and faced the Englishman and the god behind him. Now Yamen, with the firelight glinting on his shaven head and into his evil eyes so that he looked like a paunchy demon, cried out a sort of weird chant and flung a handful of powder into the brazier. Instantly a greenish smoke billowed upward, half-veiling Kane’s face. The Englishman gagged, the smell and taste were unpleasant in the extreme. He felt groggy, drugged. His brain reeled like a drunken man’s, and he tore savagely at his chains. Only half-conscious of what he said, unaccustomed oaths ripped from his lips.
He was dimly aware that Yamen cried out fiercely at his curses, the priest leaning forward in an attitude of listening. Then the powder burned out, the smoke waned away, and Kane sat groggy and bewildered on the throne.
Yamen turned toward the king and bent low. He straightened and, with his arms outstretched, spoke in a sonorous tone. The king solemnly repeated his words and Kane saw the face of the noble prisoner go white. Then his captors seized his arms, and the band marched slowly away, their footfalls coming back eerily through the shadowy vastness.
Like silent ghosts the soldiers came from the shadows and unchained him. Again they grouped themselves about Kane and led him up and up through the dim galleries to his chamber, where again Shem locked his chains to the wall. Kane sat on his couch, chin on his fist, striving to find some motive in all the bizarre actions he had witnessed. And presently he realized that there was undue stir in the streets below.
The Englishman peered out from his window. Great fires blazed in the market place and the figures of men, curiously foreshortened, came and went. They seemed to be busying themselves about a figure in the centre of the marketplace, but they clustered about it so thickly he could make nothing of it. A circle of soldiers ringed the group; the firelight glanced on their armour. About them clamoured a disorderly mob, yelling and shouting.
Suddenly a scream of frightful agony cut through the din, and the shouting died away for an instant, to be renewed with more force than before. Most of the clamour sounded like protest, Kane thought, though mingled with it was the sound of jeers, taunting howls, and devilish laughter. And all through the babble rang those ghastly, intolerable shrieks.
A swift pad of naked feet sounded on the tiles, and the young slave who was called Sula rushed in and thrust his head into the window, panting with excitement. The firelight from without shone on his contorted face.
“The people strive with the spearmen,” he exclaimed, forgetting in his excitement the order not to converse with the strange captive. “Many of the people loved well the young Prince Bel-lardath—oh, bwana, there was no evil in him! Why did you bid the king have him flayed alive?”
“I!” exclaimed Kane, taken aback and dumb-founded. “I said naught! I do not even know this prince! I have never seen him.”
Sula turned his head and looked full into Kane’s face.
“Now I know what I have secretly thought, bwana,” he said in the Bantu tongue Kane understood. “You are no god, nor mouthpiece of a god, but a man such as I have seen before the men of Ninn took me captive. Once before, when I was small, I saw men cast in your mold, who came with their native servants and slew our warriors with weapons which spoke with fire and thunder.”
“Truly I am but a man,” answered Kane, dazedly. “But what—I do not understand. What is it they do in yonder marketplace?”
“They are skinning Prince Bel-lardath alive,” answered Sula. “It has been talked freely among the marketplaces that the king and Yamen hated the prince, who is of the blood of Abdulai. But he had many followers among the people, especially among the Arbii, and not even the king dared sentence him to death. But when you were brought into the temple, secretly, none in the city knowing of it, Yamen said you were the mouthpiece of the gods. And he said Baal had revealed to him that Prince Bel-lardath had roused the wrath of the gods. So they brought him before the oracle of the gods—”
Kane swore sickly. How incredible—how ghastly—to think that his lusty English oaths had doomed a man to a horrible death. Aye—crafty Yamen had translated his random words in his own way. And so the prince, whom Kane had never seen before, writhed beneath the skinning knives of his executioners in the marketplace below, where the crowd shrieked or jeered.
“Sula,” he said, “what do these people call themselves?”
“Assyrians, bwana,” answered the slave absently, staring in horrified fascination at the grisly scene below.
In the days that followed Sula found opportunities from time to time to talk with Kane. Little he could tell the Englishman of the origin of the men of Ninn. He only knew that they had come out of the east in the long, long ago, and had built their massive city on the plateau. Only the dim legends of his tribe spoke of them. His people lived in the rolling plains far to the south and had warred with the people of the city for untold ages. His tribe was called Sulas, and they were strong and war-like, he said. From time to time they made raids on the Ninnites, and occasionally the Ninnites returned the raid, but not often did they venture far from the plateau. In such a raid Sula had been captured. Of late the Ninnites had been forced to range further afield in search of slaves, as the tribes shunned the grim plateau, and generation by generation moved further back into the wilderness.
The life of a slave of Ninn was hard, Sula said, and Kane believed him—seeing the marks of lash, rack, and brand on the youth’s body. The drifting ages had not softened the spirit of the Assyrians, nor modified their fierceness, a by-word in the ancient East.
Kane wondered much at the presence of this ancient people in this unknown land, but Sula had nothing further to tell him. They came from the east, long, long ago—that was all Sula knew. The Englishman knew now why their features and language had seemed remotely familiar. Their features were the original Semitic features, now modified in the modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and many of their words had an unmistakable likeness to certain Hebraic words and phrases.
Kane learned from Sula that not all of the inhabitants were of one blood. They did not mix with their slaves, or if they did, the offspring of such a union was instantly put to death. The dominant strain, Sula had learned, was Assyrian; but there were some of the people, both commoners and nobles, who were called “Arbii.” They were like the Assyrians, yet differing somewhat.
Another group were the “Kaldii”—magicians and soothsayers who were held in no great esteem by the true Assyrians. Shem, Sula said, and his kind were Elamites, and Kane started at the biblical term. There were not many of them, but they were the tools of the priests—slayers and doers of strange and unnatural deeds. Sula had suffered at the hands of Shem, as had every other slave of the temple.
And it was this same Shem on whom Kane kept hungry eyes riveted. At his girdle hung the golden key that meant liberty. But as if he read the meaning in the Englishman’s cold eyes, Shem walked with care, a dark sombre giant with a grim carven face. He came not within reach of the captive’s long and steely arms, unless accompanied by armed guards.
Never a day passed but Kane heard the crack of the scourge, the screams of agonized slaves beneath the brand, the lash, or the skinning knife. Ninn was a veritable Hell, he reflected, ruled by the demoniac Asshur-ras-arab and his crafty and lustful satellite, Yamen the priest. The king was high priest as well, as had been his royal ancestors in ancient Nineveh. And Kane realized why they called him a Persian, seeing in him a resemblance to those wild old Aryan tribesmen who had ridden down from their mountains to sweep the Assyrian empire off the earth. Surely it was fleeing those yellow-haired conquerors that the people of Ninn had come into Africa.
The days passed and Kane abode as a captive in the city of Ninn. But he went no more to the temple as an oracle.
One day there was confusion in the city. Kane heard the trumpets blaring upon the wall, and the roll of kettle-drums. Steel clanged in the streets, and the sound of men marching rose to his eyrie. Looking out, over the wall, across the plateau, he saw a horde of naked black men approaching the city in loose formation. Their spears flashed in the sun, their headpieces of ostrich-plumes floated in the breeze, and their yells came faintly to him.
Sula rushed in, his eyes blazing.
“My people!” he exclaimed. “They come against the men of Ninn. My people are warriors! Bogaga is warchief—Katayo is king. The war-chiefs of the Sulas hold their honours by the might of their hands, for any man who is strong enough to slay him with his naked hands, becomes war-chief in his place! So Bogaga won the chieftain-ship, but it will be many a day before any slays him, for he is the mightiest chieftain of them all!”
Kane’s window afforded a better view over the wall than any other, for his chamber was in the top-most tier of Baal’s temple. To his chamber came Yamen, with his grim guards, Shem, and another sombre Elamite. They stood out of Kane’s reach, looking through one of the windows.
The mighty gates swung wide; the Assyrians were marching out to meet their enemies. Kane reckoned that there were fifteen hundred armed warriors; that left three hundred still in the city, the bodyguard of the king, the sentries, and house-troops of the various noblemen.
The host, Kane noted, was divided into four divisions. The centre was in the advance, consisting of six hundred men, while each flank or wing was composed of three hundred. The remaining three hundred marched in compact formation behind the centre, between the wings, so the whole presented an appearance of this figure:
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/ ~ ~ ~ \
The warriors were armed with javelins, swords, maces, and short heavy-bows. On their backs were quivers bristling with shafts.
The Ninnites marched out on the plain in perfect order and took up their position apparently awaiting the attack. It was not slow in coming. Kane estimated that the attackers numbered at least three thousand warriors, and even at that distance he could appreciate their splendid stature and courage. But they had no system or order for warfare. It was in one great ragged, disorderly horde that they rushed onward, to be met by a withering blast of arrows that ripped through their bull-hide shields as though they had been made of paper.
The Assyrians had slung their shields about their necks and were drawing and loosing methodically, not in regular volleys as the archers of Crecy and Agincourt had loosed, but steadily and without pause, nevertheless. With reckless courage the Sulas hurled themselves forward, into the teeth of the fearful hail. Kane saw whole lines melt away, and the plain became carpeted with the dead. But the invaders came forward, wasting their lives like water. Kane marvelled at the perfect discipline of the Semitic soldiers who went through their motions as coolly as if they were on the drill ground. The wings had moved forward, their foremost tips connecting with the ends of file centre, presenting an unbroken front. The men in the company between the wings maintained their place, unmoving, not yet having taken any part in the battle.
The invading horde was broken, staggering back under the deadly fire against which flesh and blood could not stand. The great ragged crescent had broken to bits, and from the fire of the right flank and the centre, the Sulas were falling back disorderly, hounded by the ranging shafts of the Ninnite warriors. But on the left flank, a frothing mob of perhaps four hundred savage fighters had burst through the fearful barrage and, yelling like fiends, they shocked against the Assyrian wing. But before the spears clashed, Kane saw the company in reserve between the wings wheel and march in double quick time to support the threatened wing. Against that double wall of six hundred mailed men of war, the onslaught staggered, broke, and reeled backward.
Swords flashed among the spears, and Kane saw the naked warriors falling like grain before the reaper as the javelins and swords of the Assyrians mowed them down. Not all the corpses on the bloody ground were those of the attackers, but where one Assyrian lay dead or wounded, ten Sulas had died.
Now the attackers were in full flight across the plain, and the iron ranks moved forward in quick but orderly pace, loosing at every step, hunting the vanquished across the plateau; plying the dagger on the wounded, they took no prisoners. Sulas did not make good slaves as Solomon was instantly to see.
In Kane’s chamber, the watchers were crowded at the windows, eyes glued in fascination on the wild and gory scene. Sula’s chest heaved with passion; his eyes blazed with the blood lust of the savage as the shouts and the slaughter and the spears of his tribesmen fired all the slumbering ferocity in his warrior’s soul.
With the yell of a blood-mad panther, he sprang on the backs of his masters. Before any could lift a hand, he snatched the dagger from Shem’s girdle and plunged it to the hilt between Yamen’s shoulders. The priest shrieked like a wounded woman and went to his knees, blood spurting, and the Elamites closed with the raging slave. Shem sought to seize his wrist, but the other Elamite and Sula whirled into a deadly embrace, plying their knives which were in an instant red to the hilt.
Eyes glaring, froth on their lips. they rolled and tumbled, slashing and stabbing. Shem, seeking to catch Sula’s wrist, was struck by the hurtling bodies and knocked violently aside. He lost his footing and sprawled against Kane’s couch.
Before he could move, the chained Englishman was on him like a great cat. At last the moment he had waited for had come! Shem was within his reach, and even as he sought to rise Kane’s knee smote him in the breast, breaking his ribs. Kane’s iron fingers locked in his throat. Solomon was scarcely aware of the terrible, wild-beast struggles of the Elamite who sought in vain to break that grasp. A red mist veiled the Englishman’s sight and through it he saw horror growing in Shem’s inhuman eyes—saw them distend and turn bloodshot—saw the mouth gape and the tongue protrude as the shaven head was bent back at a horrible angle; then Shem’s neck snapped like a heavy branch and the straining body went limp in Kane’s hands.
The Englishman snatched at the key in the dead man’s girdle, and an instant later stood up free, feeling a wild surge of exultation sweep over him as he flexed his unhampered limbs. He glanced about the chamber. Yamen was gurgling out his life on the tiles, and Sula and the other Elamite lay dead, locked in each others’ iron arms, literally slashed to pieces.
Kane ran swiftly from the chamber. He had no plan except to escape from the temple he had grown to hate as a man hates Hell. He ran down the winding galleries, meeting no one. Evidently the servants of the temple had been massed on the walls watching the battle. But on the lower tier he came face to face with one of the temple guards. The man gaped at him stupidly—and Kane’s fist crashed against his black-bearded jowl, stretching him senseless. Kane snatched up his heavy javelin. A thought had come to him that perhaps the streets would be deserted as the people watched the battle, and he could make his way across the city and scale the wall on the side next the lake.
He ran through the pillar-forested temple and out the mighty portal. There a scattering of people shrieked and fled at the sight of the strange figure emerging from the grim temple. Kane hurried down the street in the direction of the opposite gate, seeing but few people. Then as he turned into a side street, thinking to shorten his route, he heard a thunderous roar.
Ahead of him he saw four slaves bearing a richly ornamented litter such as nobles rode in. The occupant was a young girl whose jewel-bedecked garments showed her importance and wealth. And now around the corner came roaring a great, tawny shape. A lion, loose in the city streets!
The slaves dropped the litter and fled, shrieking, while the people on the housetops screamed. The girl cried out once, scrambling up in the very path of the charging monster. She stood facing it, frozen with terror.
Solomon Kane, at the first roar of the beast, experienced a fierce satisfaction. So hateful had Ninn become to him that the thought of a wild beast raging through its streets and devouring its cruel inhabitants had given the Puritan an indisputable satisfaction. But now, as he saw the pitiful figure of the girl facing the man-eater, he felt a pang of pity for her, and acted.
As the lion launched himself through the air, Kane hurled the javelin with all the power of his iron frame. Just behind the mighty shoulder it struck, transfixing the tawny body. A deafening roar burst from the beast which spun sidewise in mid-air, as though it had encountered a solid wall and instead of the rending claws, it was the heavy, shaggy shoulder that smote the frail figure of its victim, hurling her aside as the great beast crashed to the earth.
Kane, forgetful of his own position, sprang forward and lifted the girl, trying to ascertain if she were injured. This was an easy task, since her garments, like the garments of most of the Assyrian noble women, were so scanty as to consist more of ornaments than of covering. Kane assured himself that she was only bruised, and badly frightened.
He helped her to her feet, aware that a throng of curious onlookers surrounded him. He turned to press through them, and they made no effort to stop him. Suddenly a priest appeared and yelled something, pointing at him. The people instantly fell back, but half a dozen armoured soldiers came forward, javelins ready. Kane faced the priest, fury seething in his soul. He was ready to leap among them and do what damage he could with his naked hands before he died, when down the stones of the street sounded the tramp of marching men. A company of warriors swung into view, their spears red from recent strife.
The girl cried out and ran forward to fling her arms about the stalwart neck of the young officer in command. There followed a rapid fire of conversation which Kane naturally could not understand. Then the officer spoke curtly to the guards who drew back. He advanced toward Kane, his empty hands outstretched, a smile on his lips.
His manner was friendly in the extreme, and the Englishman realized that he was trying to express his gratitude for the rescue of the girl, who was no doubt either his sister or his sweetheart. The priest frothed and cursed, but the young noble answered him shortly, and made motions for Kane to accompany him. Then as the Englishman hesitated, suspicious, he drew his own sword and extended it to Kane, hilt foremost. Kane took the weapon; it might have been the form of courtesy to have refused it, but Kane was unwilling to take chances, and he felt much more secure with a weapon in his hand.