[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales June and July 1930.]
[Illustration: "The giant's roar of triumph had scarcely died on his
lips before the two were falling into darkness."]
"The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky;
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten Seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die."
--Chesterton.
_1. A Man Comes Seeking_
A great black shadow lay across the land, cleaving the red flame of
the sunset. To the man who toiled up the jungle trail it loomed like
a symbol of death and horror, a menace brooding and terrible, like the
shadow of a stealthy assassin flung upon some candle-lit wall.
Yet it was only the shadow of the great crag which reared up in front
of him, the first outpost of the grim foothills which were his goal.
He halted a moment at its foot, staring upward where it rose blackly
limned against the dying sun. He could have sworn that he caught the
hint of a movement at the top, as he stared, hand shielding his eyes,
but the fading glare dazzled him and he could not be sure. Was it a man
who darted to cover? A man, or----?
He shrugged his shoulders and fell to examining the rough trail which
led up and over the brow of the crag. At first glance it seemed that
only a mountain goat could scale it, but closer investigation showed
numbers of fingerholds drilled into the solid rock. It would be a task
to try his powers to the utmost but he had not come a thousand miles to
turn back now.
He dropped the large pouch he wore at his shoulder, and laid down the
clumsy musket, retaining only his long rapier, dagger, and one of his
pistols. These he strapped behind him, and without a backward glance
over the darkening trail he had come, he started the long ascent. He
was a tall man, long-armed and iron-muscled, yet again and again he was
forced to halt in his upward climb and rest for a moment, clinging like
an ant to the precipitous face of the cliff. Night fell swiftly and
the crag above him was a shadowy blur in which he was forced to feel
with his fingers, blindly, for the holes which served him as precarious
ladder. Below him, the night noises of the tropical jungle broke forth,
yet it appeared to him that even these sounds were subdued and hushed
as though the great black hills looming above threw a spell of silence
and fear even over the jungle creatures.
On up he struggled, and now to make his way harder, the cliff bulged
outward near its summit and the strain on nerve and muscle became
heart-breaking. Time and again a hold slipped and he escaped falling
by a hair's breadth. But every fiber in his lean hard body was
perfectly co-ordinated, and his fingers were like steel talons with
the grip of a vise. His progress grew slower and slower but on he went
until at last he saw the cliff's brow splitting the stars a scant
twenty feet above him.
And even as he looked, a vague bulk heaved into view, toppled on the
edge and hurtled down toward him with a great rush of air about it.
Flesh crawling, he flattened himself against the cliff's face and felt
a heavy blow against his shoulder, only a glancing blow, but even so it
nearly tore him from his hold, and as he fought desperately to right
himself, he heard a reverberating crash among the rocks far below.
Cold sweat beading his brow, he looked up. Who--or what--had shoved
that boulder over the cliff edge? He was brave, as the bones on many
a battlefield could testify, but the thought of dying like a sheep,
helpless and with no chance of resistance, turned his blood cold.
Then a wave of fury supplanted his fear and he renewed his climb with
reckless speed. The expected second boulder did not come, however, and
no living thing met his sight as he clambered up over the edge and
leaped erect, sword flashing from its scabbard.
He stood upon a sort of plateau which debouched into a very broken
hilly country some half mile to the west. The crag he had just mounted
jutted out from the rest of the heights like a sullen promontory,
looming above the sea of waving foliage below, now dark and mysterious
in the tropic night.
Silence ruled here in absolute sovereignty. No breeze stirred the
somber depths below, and no footfall rustled amid the stunted bushes
which cloaked the plateau, yet that boulder which had almost hurled the
climber to his death had not fallen by chance. What beings moved among
these grim hills? The tropical darkness fell about the lone wanderer
like a heavy veil through which the yellow stars blinked evilly. The
steams of the rotting jungle vegetation floated up to him as tangible
as a thick fog, and making a wry face he strode away from the cliff,
heading boldly across the plateau, sword in one hand and pistol in the
other.
There was an uncomfortable feeling of being watched in the very air.
The silence remained unbroken save for the soft swishing that marked
the stranger's cat-like tread through the tall upland grass, yet the
man sensed that living things glided before and behind him and on each
side. Whether man or beast trailed him he knew not, nor did he care
over-much, for he was prepared to fight human or devil who barred his
way. Occasionally he halted and glanced challengingly about him, but
nothing met his eye except the shrubs which crouched like short dark
ghosts about his trail, blended and blurred in the thick hot darkness
through which the very stars seemed to struggle, redly.
At last he came to the place where the plateau broke into the higher
slopes and there he saw a clump of trees blocked out solidly in the
lesser shadows. He approached warily, then halted as his gaze, growing
somewhat accustomed to the darkness, made out a vague form among the
somber trunks which was not a part of them. He hesitated. The figure
neither advanced nor fled. A dim form of silent menace, it lurked as if
in wait. A brooding horror hung over that still cluster of trees.
* * * * *
The stranger advanced warily, blade extended. Closer. Straining his
eyes for some hint of threatening motion. He decided that the figure
was human but he was puzzled at its lack of movement. Then the reason
became apparent--it was the corpse of a black man that stood among
those trees, held erect by spears through his body, nailing him to the
boles. One arm was extended in front of him, held in place along a
great branch by a dagger through the wrist, the index finger straight
as if the corpse pointed stiffly--back along the way the stranger had
come.
The meaning was obvious; that mute grim signpost could have but one
significance--death lay beyond. The man who stood gazing upon that
grisly warning rarely laughed, but now he allowed himself the luxury
of a sardonic smile. A thousand miles of land and sea--ocean travel
and jungle travel--and now they expected to turn him back with such
mummery--whoever they were.
He resisted the temptation to salute the corpse, as an action wanting
in decorum, and pushed on boldly through the grove, half expecting an
attack from the rear or an ambush.
Nothing of the sort occurred, however, and emerging from the trees, he
found himself at the foot of a rugged incline, the first of a series of
slopes. He strode stolidly upward in the night, nor did he even pause
to reflect how unusual his actions must have appeared to a sensible
man. The average man would have camped at the foot of the crag and
waited for morning before even attempting to scale the cliffs. But this
was no ordinary man. Once his objective was in sight, he followed the
straightest line to it, without a thought of obstacles, whether day or
night. What was to be done, must be done. He had reached the outposts
of the kingdom of fear at dusk, and invading its inmost recesses by
night seemed to follow as a matter of course.
As he went up the boulder-strewn slopes the moon rose, lending its air
of illusion, and in its light the broken hills ahead loomed up like
the black spires of wizards' castles. He kept his eyes fixed on the
dim trail he was following, for he knew not when another boulder might
come hurtling down the inclines. He expected an attack of any sort and,
naturally, it was the unexpected which really happened.
Suddenly from behind a great rock stepped a black man; an ebony giant
in the pale moonlight, a long spear blade gleaming silver in hand, his
headpiece of ostrich plumes floating above him like a white cloud. He
lifted the spear in a ponderous salute, and spoke in the dialect of the
river-tribes:
"This is not the white man's land. Who is my white brother in his own
kraal and why does he come into the Land of Skulls?"
"My name is Solomon Kane," the white man answered in the same language.
"I seek the vampire queen of Negari."
"Few seek. Fewer find. None return," answered the other cryptically.
"Will you lead me to her?"
"You bear a long dagger in your right hand. There are no lions here."
"A serpent dislodged a boulder. I thought to find snakes in the bushes."
The giant acknowledged this interchange of subtleties with a grim smile
and a brief silence fell.
"Your life," said the black presently, "is in my hand."