“To the West Coast, then, I came, on the slim chance that you still lived, and there heard among the natives that some years ago a white child had been taken from a ship whose crew had been slain, and sent inland as a part of the tribute the shore tribes paid to the upper river chiefs.
“Then all traces ceased. For months I wandered without a clue as to your whereabouts, nay, without a hint that you even lived. Then I chanced to hear among the river tribes of the demon city of Negari and the black queen who kept a white woman for a slave. I came here.”
Kane's matter-of-fact tone, his unfurbished narration, gave no hint of the full meaning of that tale – of what lay behind those calm and measured words – the sea-fights and the land fights – the years of privation and heart-breaking toil, the ceaseless danger, the everlasting wandering through hostile and unknown lands, the tedious and deadening labor of ferreting out the information he wished from ignorant, sullen and unfriendly savages, black and white.
“I came here” said Kane simply, but what a world of courage and effort was symbolized by that phrase! A long red trail, black shadows and crimson shadows weaving a devil's dance – marked by flashing swords and the smoke of battle – by faltering words falling like drops of blood from the lips of dying men.
Not a consciously dramatic man, certainly, was Solomon Kane. He told his tale in the same manner in which he had overcome terrific obstacles – coldly, briefly and without heroics.
“You see, Marylin,” he concluded gently, “I have not come this far and done this much, to now meet with defeat. Take heart, child. We will find a way out of this fearful place.”
“Sir John took me on his saddlebow,” the girl said dazedly, and speaking slowly as if her native language came strangely to her from years of unuse, as she framed in halting words an English evening of long ago: “He carried me to the seashore where a galley's boat waited, filled with fierce men, dark and mustached and having simitars, and great rings to the fingers. The captain, a Moslem with a face like a hawk, took me, I a-weeping with fear, and bore me to his galley. Yet he was kind to me in his way, I being little more than a baby, and at last sold me to a Turkish merchant, as he told you. This merchant he met off the southern coast of France, after many days of sea travel.
“This man did not use me badly, yet I feared him, for he was a man of cruel countenance and made me understand that I was to be sold to a black sultan of the Moors. However, in the Gates of Hercules his ship was set upon by a Cadiz slaver and things came about as you have said.
“The captain of the slaver believed me to be the child of some wealthy English family and intended holding me for ransom, but in a grim darksome bay on the African coast he perished with all his men except the Greek you have mentioned, and I was taken captive by a black chieftain.
“I was terribly afraid and thought he would slay me, but he did me no harm and sent me up-country with an escort, who also bore much loot taken from the ship. This loot, together with myself, was, as you know, intended for a powerful king of the river peoples. But it never reached him, for a roving band of Negari fell upon the beach warriors and slew them all. Then I was taken to this city, and have since remained, slave to Queen Nakari.
“How I have lived through all those terrible scenes of battle and cruelty and murder, I know not.”
“A providence has watched over you, child,” said Kane, “the power which doth care for weak women and helpless children; which led me to you in spite of all hindrances, and which shall yet lead us forth from this place, God willing.”
“My people!” she exclaimed suddenly like one awaking from a dream; “what of them?”
“All in good health and fortune, child, save that they have sorrowed for you through the long years. Nay, old Sir Hildred hath the gout and doth so swear thereat that I fear for his soul at times. Yet methinks that the sight of you, little Marylin, would mend him.”
“Still, Captain Kane,” said the girl, “I can not understand why you came alone.”
“Your brothers would have come with me, child, but it was not sure that you lived, and I was loth that any other Taferal should die in a land far from good English soil. I rid the country of an evil Taferal – 'twas but just I should restore in his place a good Taferal, if so be she still lived – I, and I alone.”
This explanation Kane himself believed. He never sought to analyze his motives and he never wavered, once his mind was made up. Though he always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that all his actions were governed by cold and logical reasonings. He was a man born out of his time – a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan, though the last assertion would have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in the somber clothes of a fanatic. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect – he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.
“Marylin,” he now said kindly, taking her small hands in his sword-calloused fingers, “methinks you have changed greatly in the years. You were a rosy and chubby little maid when I used to dandle you on my knee in old England. Now you seem drawn and pale of face, though you are beautiful as the nymphs of the heathen books. There are haunting ghosts in your eyes, child – do they misuse you here?”
She lay back on the couch and the blood drained slowly from her already pallid features until she was deathly white. Kane bent over her, startled. Her voice came in a whisper.
“Ask me not. There are deeds better hidden in the darkness of night and forgetfulness. There are sights which blast the eyes and leave their burning mark forever on the brain. The walls of ancient cities, recked not of by men, have looked upon scenes not to be spoken of, even in whispers.”
Her eyes closed wearily and Kane's troubled, somber eyes unconsciously traced the thin blue lines of her veins, prominent against the unnatural whiteness of her skin.
“Here is some demoniacal thing,” he muttered. “A mystery –”
“Aye,” murmured the girl, “a mystery that was old when Egypt was young! And nameless evil more ancient than dark Babylon – that spawned in terrible black cities when the world was young and strange.”
Kane frowned, troubled. At the girl's strange words he felt an eery crawling fear at the back of his brain, as if dim racial memories stirred in the eon-deep gulfs, conjuring up grim chaotic visions, illusive and nightmarish.
Suddenly Marylin sat erect, her eyes flaring wide with fright. Kane heard a door open somewhere.
“Nakari!” whispered the girl urgently. “Swift! She must not find you here! Hide quickly, and” – as Kane turned – “keep silent, whatever may chance!”
She lay back on the couch, feigning slumber as Kane crossed the room and concealed himself behind some tapestries which, hanging upon the wall, hid a niche that might have once held a statue of some sort.
He had scarcely done so when the single door of the room opened and a strange barbaric figure stood framed in it. Nakari, queen of Negari, had come to her slave.
The black woman was clad as she had been when he had seen her on the throne, and the colored armlets and anklets clanked as she closed the door behind her and came into the room. She moved with the easy sinuousness of a she-leopard and in spite of himself the watcher was struck with admiration for her lithe beauty. Yet at the same time a shudder of repulsion shook him, for her eyes gleamed with vibrant and magnetic evil, older than the world.
“Lilith!” thought Kane. “She is beautiful and terrible as Purgatory. She is Lilith – that foul, lovely woman of ancient legend.”
Nakari halted by the couch, stood looking down upon her captive for a moment, then with an enigmatic smile, bent and shook her. Marylin opened her eyes, sat up, then slipped from her couch and knelt before her black mistress – an act which caused K
ane to curse beneath his breath. The queen laughed and seating herself upon the couch, motioned the girl to rise, and then put an arm about her waist and drew her upon her lap. Kane watched, puzzled, while Nakari caressed the white girl in a lazy, amused manner. This might be affection, but to Kane it seemed more like a sated leopard teasing its victim. There was an air of mockery and studied cruelty about the whole affair.
“You are very soft and pretty, Mara,” Nakari murmured lazily, “much prettier than the black girls who serve me. The time approaches, little one, for your nuptial. And a fairer bride has never been borne up the Black Stairs.”
Marylin began to tremble and Kane thought she was going to faint. Nakari's eyes gleamed strangely beneath her long-lashed drooping lids, and her full red lips curved in a faint tantalizing smile. Her every action seemed fraught with some sinister meaning. Kane began to sweat profusely.
“Mara,” said the black queen, “you are honored above all other girls, yet you are not content. Think how the girls of Negari will envy you, Mara, when the priests sing the nuptial song and the Moon of Skulls looks over the black crest of the Tower of Death. Think, little bride-of-the-Master, how many girls have given their lives to be his bride!”
And Nakari laughed in her hateful musical way, as at a rare jest. And then suddenly she stopped short. Her eyes narrowed to slits as they swept the room, and her whole body tensed. Her hand went to her girdle and came away with a long thin dagger. Kane sighted along the barrel of his pistol, finger against the trigger. Only a natural hesitancy against shooting a woman kept him from sending death into the black heart of Nakari, for he believed that she was about to murder the girl.
Then with a lithe cat-like motion she thrust the girl from her knees and bounded back across the room, her eyes fixed with blazing intensity on the tapestry behind which Kane stood. Had those keen eyes discovered him? He quickly learned.
“Who is there?” she rapped out fiercely. “Who hides behind those hangings? I do not see you nor hear you, but I know someone is there!”
Kane remained silent. Nakari's wild beast instinct had betrayed him and he was uncertain as to what course to follow. His next actions depended on the queen.
“Mara!” Nakari's voice slashed like a whip, “who is behind those hangings? Answer me! Shall I give you a taste of the whip again?”
The girl seemed incapable of speech. She cowered where she had fallen, her beautiful eyes full of terror. Nakari, her blazing gaze never wavering, reached behind her with her free hand and gripped a cord hanging from the wall. She jerked viciously. Kane felt the tapestries whip back on either side of him and he stood revealed.
For a moment the strange tableau held – the gaunt white man in his blood-stained, tattered garments, the long pistol gripped in his right hand – across the room the black queen in her savage finery, one arm still lifted to the cord, the other hand holding the dagger in front of her – the white girl cowering on the floor.
Then Kane spoke: “Keep silent, Nakari, or you die!”
The queen seemed numbed and struck speechless by the sudden apparition. Kane stepped from among the tapestries and slowly approached her.
“You!” she found her voice at last. “You must be he of whom the guardsmen spake! There are not two other white men in Negari! They said you fell to your death! How then –”
“Silence!” Kane's voice cut in harshly on her amazed babblings; he knew that the pistol meant nothing to her, but she sensed the threat of the long blade in his left hand. “Marylin,” still unconsciously speaking in the river-tribes' language, “take cords from the hangings and bind her –”
He was about the middle of the chamber now. Nakari's face had lost much of its helpless bewilderment and into her blazing eyes stole a crafty gleam. She deliberately let her dagger fall as in token of surrender, then suddenly her hands shot high above her head and gripped another thick cord. Kane heard Marylin scream but before he could take another step, before he could pull the trigger or even think, the floor fell beneath his feet and he shot down into abysmal blackness. He did not fall far and he landed on his feet; but the force of the fall sent him to his knees and even as he went down, sensing a presence in the darkness beside him, something crashed against his skull and he dropped into a yet blacker abyss of unconsciousness.
IV
DREAMS OF EMPIRE
“For Rome was given to rule the world
And gat of it little joy –
But we, we shall enjoy the world,
The whole huge world a toy.”
CHESTERTON
Slowly Kane drifted back from the dim realms where the unseen assailant's bludgeon had hurled him. Something hindered the motion of his hands and there was a metallic clanking when he sought to raise them to his aching, throbbing head.
He lay in utter darkness but he could not determine whether this was absence of light, or whether he was still blinded by the blow. He dazedly collected his scattered faculties and realized that he was lying on a damp stone floor, shackled by wrist and ankle with heavy iron chains which were rough and rusty to the touch.
How long he lay there, he never knew. The silence was broken only by the drumming pulse in his own aching head and the scamper and chattering of rats. At last a red glow sprang up in the darkness and grew before his eyes. Framed in the grisly radiance rose the sinister and sardonic face of Nakari. Kane shook his head, striving to rid himself of the illusion. But the light grew and as his eyes accustomed themselves to it, he saw that it emanated from a torch borne in the hand of the queen.
In the illumination he now saw that he lay in a small dank cell whose walls, ceiling and floor were of stone. The heavy chains which held him captive were made fast to metal rings set deep in the wall. There was but one door, which was apparently of bronze.
Nakari set the torch in a niche near the door, and coming forward, stood over her captive, gazing down at him in a manner rather speculating than mocking.
“You are he who fought the men on the cliff.” The remark was an assertion rather than a question. “They said you fell into the abyss – did they lie? Did you bribe them to lie? Or how did you escape? Are you a magician and did you fly to the bottom of the chasm and then fly to my palace? Speak!”
Kane remained silent. Nakari cursed.
“Speak or I will have your eyes torn out! I will cut your fingers off and burn your feet!”
She kicked him viciously, but Kane lay silent, his deep somber eyes boring up into her face, until the feral gleam faded from her eyes to be replaced by an avid interest and wonder.
She seated herself on a stone bench, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands.
“I never saw a white man before,” she said. “Are all white men like you? Bah! That can not be! Most men are fools, black or white. I know most black men are fools, and white men are not gods, as the river tribes say – they are only men. I, who know all the ancient mysteries, say they are only men.
“But white men have strange mysteries too, they tell me – the wanderers of the river tribes, and Mara. They have war clubs that make a noise like thunder and kill afar off – that thing which you held in your right hand, was that one of those clubs?”
Kane permitted himself a grim smile.
“Nakari, if you know all mysteries, how can I tell you aught that you know not already?”
“How deep and cold and strange your eyes are!” the queen said as if he had not spoken. “How strange your whole appearance is – and you have the bearing of a king! You do not fear me – I never met a man who neither loved nor feared me. You would never fear me, but you could learn to love me. Look at me, white man – am I not beautiful?”
“You are beautiful,” answered Kane.
Nakari smiled and then frowned. “The way you say that, it is no compliment. You hate me, do you not?”
“As a man hates a serpent,” Kane replied bluntly.
Nakari's eyes blazed with almost insane fury. Her hands clenched until the lon
g nails sank into the palms; then as quickly as her anger had arisen, it ebbed away.
“You have the heart of a king,” she said calmly, “else you would fear me. Are you a king in your land?”
“I am only a landless wanderer.”
“You might be a king here,” Nakari said slowly.
Kane laughed grimly. “Do you offer me my life?”
“I offer you more than that!” Kane's eyes narrowed as the queen leaned toward him, vibrant with suppressed excitement. “White man, what is it that you want more than anything else in the world?”
“To take the white girl you call Mara, and go.”
Nakari sank back with an impatient exclamation.
“You can not have her; she is the promised bride of the Master. Even I could not save her, even if I wished. Forget her. I will help you forget her. Listen, white man, listen to the words of Nakari, queen of Negari! You say you are a landless man – I will make you a king! I will give you the world for a toy!
“No, no! Keep silent until I have finished,” she rushed on, her words tumbling over each other in her eagerness. Her eyes blazed, her whole body quivered with dynamic intensity. “I have talked to travelers, to captives and slaves, men from far countries. I know that this land of mountains and rivers and jungle is not all the world. There are far-off nations and cities, and kings and queens to be crushed and broken.
“Negari is fading, her might is crumbling, but a strong man beside her queen might build it up again – might restore all her vanishing glory. Listen, white man! Sit by me on the throne of Negari! Send afar to your people for the thunder-clubs to arm my warriors! My nation is still lord of central Africa; together we will band the conquered tribes – call back the days when the realm of ancient Negari spanned the land from sea to sea! We will subjugate all the tribes of the river, the plain and the sea-shore, and instead of slaying them all, we will make one mighty army of them! And then, when all Africa is under our heel, we will sweep forth upon the world like a hungry lion to rend and tear and destroy!”