Red Shadows by Robert E. Howard (best free e reader txt) 📖

Red Shadows

 

Robert E. Howard

 

Also published as Solomon Kane, and first appeared in Weird Tales, August 1928. Copyright un-renewed.

 

Chapter 1. The Coming of Solomon

 

The moonlight shimmered hazily, making silvery mists of illusion

among the shadowy trees. A faint breeze whispered down the valley,

bearing a shadow that was not of the moon-mist. A faint scent of smoke

was apparent.

 

The man whose long, swinging strides, unhurried yet unswerving,

had carried him for many a mile since sunrise, stopped suddenly. A

movement in the trees had caught his attention, and he moved silently

toward the shadows, a hand resting lightly on the hilt of his long,

slim rapier.

 

Warily he advanced, his eyes striving to pierce the darkness that

brooded under the trees. This was a wild and menacing country; death

might be lurking under those trees. Then his hand fell away from the

hilt and he leaned forward. Death indeed was there, but not in such

shape as might cause him fear.

 

“The fires of Hades!” he murmured. “A girl! What has harmed you,

child? Be not afraid of me.”

 

The girl looked up at him, her face like a dim white rose in the

dark.

 

“You—who are—you?” her words came in gasps.

 

“Naught but a wanderer, a landless man, but a friend to all in

need.” The gentle voice sounded somehow incongruous, coming from the

man.

 

The girl sought to prop herself up on her elbow, and instantly he

knelt and raised her to a sitting position, her head resting against

his shoulder. His hand touched her breast and came away red and wet.

 

“Tell me.” His voice was soft, soothing, as one speaks to a babe.

 

“Le Loup,” she gasped, her voice swiftly growing weaker. “He and

his men—descended upon our village—a mile up the valley. They

robbed—slew—burned—”

 

“That, then, was the smoke I scented,” muttered the man. “Go on,

child.”

 

“I ran. He, the Wolf, pursued me—and—caught me—” The words died

away in a shuddering silence.

 

“I understand, child. Then—?”

 

“Then—he—he—stabbed me—with his dagger—oh, blessed saints!—

mercy—”

 

Suddenly the slim form went limp. The man eased her to the earth,

and touched her brow lightly.

 

“Dead!” he muttered.

 

Slowly he rose, mechanically wiping his hands upon his cloak. A

dark scowl had settled on his somber brow. Yet he made no wild,

reckless vow, swore no oath by saints or devils.

 

“Men shall die for this,” he said coldly.

 

Chapter 2. The Lair of the Wolf

 

“You are a fool!” The words came in a cold snarl that curdled the

hearer’s blood.

 

He who had just been named a fool lowered his eyes sullenly

without answer.

 

“You and all the others I lead!” The speaker leaned forward, his

fist pounding emphasis on the rude table between them. He was a tall,

rangy-built man, supple as a leopard and with a lean, cruel, predatory

face. His eyes danced and glittered with a kind of reckless mockery.

 

The fellow spoken to replied sullenly, “This Solomon Kane is a

demon from Hell, I tell you.”

 

“Faugh! Dolt! He is a man—who will die from a pistol ball or a

sword thrust.”

 

“So thought Jean, Juan and La Costa,” answered the other grimly.

“Where are they? Ask the mountain wolves that tore the flesh from

their dead bones. Where does this Kane hide? We have searched the

mountains and the valleys for leagues, and we have found no trace. I

tell you, Le Loup, he comes up from Hell. I knew no good would come

from hanging that friar a moon ago.”

 

The Wolf strummed impatiently upon the table. His keen face,

despite lines of wild living and dissipation, was the face of a

thinker. The superstitions of his followers affected him not at all.

 

“Faugh! I say again. The fellow has found some cavern or secret

vale of which we do not know where he hides in the day.”

 

“And at night he sallies forth and slays us,” gloomily commented

the other. “He hunts us down as a wolf hunts deer—by God, Le Loup,

you name yourself Wolf but I think you have met at last a fiercer and

more crafty wolf than yourself! The first we know of this man is when

we find Jean, the most desperate bandit unhung, nailed to a tree with

his own dagger through his breast, and the letters S.L.K. carved upon

his dead cheeks. Then the Spaniard Juan is struck down, and after we

find him he lives long enough to tell us that the slayer is an

Englishman, Solomon Kane, who has sworn to destroy our entire band!

What then? La Costa, a swordsman second only to yourself, goes forth

swearing to meet this Kane. By the demons of perdition, it seems he

met him! For we found his sword-pierced corpse upon a cliff. What now?

Are we all to fall before this English fiend?”

 

“True, our best men have been done to death by him,” mused the

bandit chief. “Soon the rest return from that little trip to the

hermit’s; then we shall see. Kane can not hide forever. Then—ha, what

was that?”

 

The two turned swiftly as a shadow fell across the table. Into the

entrance of the cave that formed the bandit lair, a man staggered. His

eyes were wide and staring; he reeled on buckling legs, and a dark red

stain dyed his tunic. He came a few tottering steps forward, then

pitched across the table, sliding off onto the floor.

 

“Hell’s devils!” cursed the Wolf, hauling him upright and propping

him in a chair. “Where are the rest, curse you?”

 

“Dead! All dead!”

 

“How? Satan’s curses on you, speak!” The Wolf shook the man

savagely, the other bandit gazing on in wide-eyed horror.

 

“We reached the hermit’s hut just as the moon rose,” the man

muttered. “I stayed outside—to watch—the others went in—to torture

the hermit—to make him reveal—the hiding-place—of his gold.”

 

“Yes, yes! Then what?” The Wolf was raging with impatience.

 

“Then the world turned red—the hut went up in a roar and a red

rain flooded the valley—through it I saw—the hermit and a tall man

clad all in black—coming from the trees—”

 

“Solomon Kane!” gasped the bandit. “I knew it! I—”

 

“Silence, fool!” snarled the chief. “Go on!”

 

“I fled—Kane pursued—wounded me—but I outran—him—got—here—

first—”

 

The man slumped forward on the table.

 

“Saints and devils!” raged the Wolf. “What does he look like, this

Kane?”

 

“Like—Satan—”

 

The voice trailed off in silence. The dead man slid from the table

to lie in a red heap upon the floor.

 

“Like Satan!” babbled the other bandit. “I told you! ‘Tis the

Horned One himself! I tell you—”

 

He ceased as a frightened face peered in at the cave entrance.

 

“Kane?”

 

“Aye.” The Wolf was too much at sea to lie. “Keep close watch, La

Mon; in a moment the Rat and I will join you.”

 

The face withdrew and Le Loup turned to the other.

 

“This ends the band,” said he. “You, I, and that thief La Mon are

all that are left. What would you suggest?”

 

The Rat’s pallid lips barely formed the word: “Flight!”

 

“You are right. Let us take the gems and gold from the chests and

flee, using the secret passageway.”

 

“And La Mon?”

 

“He can watch until we are ready to flee. Then—why divide the

treasure three ways?”

 

A faint smile touched the Rat’s malevolent features. Then a sudden

thought smote him.

 

“He,” indicating the corpse on the floor, “said, ‘I got here

first.’ Does that mean Kane was pursuing him here?” And as the Wolf

nodded impatiently the other turned to the chests with chattering

haste.

 

The flickering candle on the rough table lighted up a strange and

wild scene. The light, uncertain and dancing, gleamed redly in the

slowly widening lake of blood in which the dead man lay; it danced

upon the heaps of gems and coins emptied hastily upon the floor from

the brass-bound chests that ranged the walls; and it glittered in the

eyes of the Wolf with the same gleam which sparkled from his sheathed

dagger.

 

The chests were empty, their treasure lying in a shimmering mass

upon the bloodstained floor. The Wolf stopped and listened. Outside

was silence. There was no moon, and Le Loup’s keen imagination

pictured the dark slayer, Solomon Kane, gliding through the blackness,

a shadow among shadows. He grinned crookedly; this time the Englishman

would be foiled.

 

“There is a chest yet unopened,” said he, pointing.

 

The Rat, with a muttered exclamation of surprize, bent over the

chest indicated. With a single, catlike motion, the Wolf sprang upon

him, sheathing his dagger to the hilt in the Rat’s back, between the

shoulders. The Rat sagged to the floor without a sound.

 

“Why divide the treasure two ways?” murmured Le Loup, wiping his

blade upon the dead man’s doublet. “Now for La Mon.”

 

He stepped toward the door; then stopped and shrank back.

 

At first he thought that it was the shadow of a man who stood in

the entrance; then he saw that it was a man himself, though so dark

and still he stood that a fantastic semblance of shadow was lent him

by the guttering candle.

 

A tall man, as tall as Le Loup he was, clad in black from head to

foot, in plain, close-fitting garments that somehow suited the somber

face. Long arms and broad shoulders betokened the swordsman, as

plainly as the long rapier in his hand. The features of the man were

saturnine and gloomy. A kind of dark pallor lent him a ghostly

appearance in the uncertain light, an effect heightened by the satanic

darkness of his lowering brows. Eyes, large, deep-set and unblinking,

fixed their gaze upon the bandit, and looking into them, Le Loup was

unable to decide what color they were. Strangely, the mephistophelean

trend of the lower features was offset by a high, broad forehead,

though this was partly hidden by a featherless hat.

 

That forehead marked the dreamer, the idealist, the introvert,

just as the eyes and the thin, straight nose betrayed the fanatic. An

observer would have been struck by the eyes of the two men who stood

there, facing each other. Eyes of both betokened untold deeps of

power, but there the resemblance ceased.

 

The eyes of the bandit were hard, almost opaque, with a curious

scintillant shallowness that reflected a thousand changing lights and

gleams, like some strange gem; there was mockery in those eyes,

cruelty and recklessness.

 

The eyes of the man in black, on the other hand, deep-set and

staring from under prominent brows, were cold but deep; gazing into

them, one had the impression of looking into countless fathoms of ice.

 

Now the eyes clashed, and the Wolf, who was used to being feared,

felt a strange coolness on his spine. The sensation was new to him—a

new thrill to one who lived for thrills, and he laughed suddenly.

 

“You are Solomon Kane, I suppose?” he asked, managing to make his

question sound politely incurious.

 

“I am Solomon Kane.” The voice