Solomyn Kane Relentless
by Roberta E. Howard
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Roberta E. Howard
A Solomyn Kane story
A Gender Switch Adventure
Chapter 1.
The Coming of Solomyn
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 woman whose long, swinging strides, unhurried yet unswerving, had carried her for many a mile since sunrise, stopped suddenly. A movement in the trees had caught her attention, and she moved silently toward the shadows, a hand resting lightly on the hilt of her long, slim rapier.
Warily she advanced, her 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 her hand fell away from the hilt and she leaned forward. Death indeed was there, but not in such shape as might cause her fear.
'The fires of Hades!' she murmured. 'A boy! What has harmed you, child? Be not afraid of me.'
The boy looked up at her, his face like a dim white rose in the dark.
'You--who are--you?' his words came in gasps.
'Naught but a wanderer, a landless woman, but a friend to all in need.' The gentle voice sounded somehow incongruous, coming from the woman.
The boy sought to prop himself up on his elbow, and instantly she knelt and raised his to a sitting position, his head resting against her shoulder. Her hand touched his breast and came away red and wet.
'Tell me.' Her voice was soft, soothing, as one speaks to a babe.
'La Loup,' he gasped, his voice swiftly growing weaker. 'She and her men--descended upon our village--a mile up the valley. They robbed--slew--burned--'
'That, then, was the smoke I scented,' muttered the woman. 'Go on, child.'
'I ran. She, 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 her dagger--oh, blessed saints!-- mercy--'
Suddenly the slim form went limp. The woman eased his to the earth, and touched his brow lightly.
'Dead!' she muttered.
Slowly she rose, mechanically wiping her hands upon her cloak. A dark scowl had settled on her somber brow. Yet she made no wild, reckless vow, swore no oath by saints or devils.
'Women shall die for this,' she 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.
She who had just been named a fool lowered her eyes sullenly without answer.
'You and all the others I lead!' The speaker leaned forward, her fist pounding emphasis on the rude table between them. She was a tall, rangy-built woman, supple as a leopard and with a lean, cruel, predatory face. Her eyes danced and glittered with a kind of reckless mockery.
The fellow spoken to replied sullenly, 'This Solomyn Kane is a demon from Hell, I tell you.'
'Faugh! Dolt! She is a man--who will die from a pistol ball or a sword thrust.'
'So thought Jean, Juanita 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, La Loup, she comes up from Hell. I knew no good would come from hanging that friar a moon ago.'
The Wolf strummed impatiently upon the table. Her keen face, despite lines of wild living and dissipation, was the face of a thinker. The superstitions of her followers affected her not at all.
'Faugh! I say again. The fellow has found some cavern or secret vale of which we do not know where she hides in the day.'
'And at night she sallies forth and slays us,' gloomily commented the other. 'She hunts us down as a wolf hunts deer--by God, La 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 woman is when we find Jean, the most desperate bandit unhung, nailed to a tree with her own dagger through her breast, and the letters S.L.K. carved upon her dead cheeks. Then the Spaniard Juanita is struck down, and after we find her she lives long enough to tell us that the slayer is an Englishwoman, Solomyn Kane, who has sworn to destroy our entire band! What then? La Costa, a swordswoman second only to yourself, goes forth swearing to meet this Kane. By the demons of perdition, it seems she met her! For we found her sword-pierced corpse upon a cliff. What now? Are we all to fall before this English fiend?'
'True, our best women have been done to death by her,' 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 woman staggered. Her eyes were wide and staring; she reeled on buckling legs, and a dark red stain dyed her tunic. She came a few tottering steps forward, then pitched across the table, sliding off onto the floor.
'Hell's devils!' cursed the Wolf, hauling her upright and propping her in a chair. 'Where are the rest, curse you?'
'Dead! All dead!'
'How? Satan's curses on you, speak!' The Wolf shook the woman savagely, the other bandit gazing on in wide-eyed horror.
'We reached the hermit's hut just as the moon rose,' the woman muttered. 'I stayed outside--to watch--the others went in--to torture the hermit--to make her reveal--the hiding-place--of her 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 woman clad all in black--coming from the trees--'
'Solomyn 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 woman slumped forward on the table.
'Saints and devils!' raged the Wolf. 'What does she look like, this Kane?'
'Like--Satan--'
The voice trailed off in silence. The dead woman 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 herself! I tell you--'
She 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 La Loup turned to the other.
'This ends the band,' said she. '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?'
'She 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 her.
'He,' indicating the corpse on the floor, 'said, 'I got here first.' Does that mean Kane was pursuing her 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 woman 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 her 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 La Loup's keen imagination pictured the dark slayer, Solomyn Kane, gliding through the blackness, a shadow among shadows. She grinned crookedly; this time the Englishwoman would be foiled.
'There is a chest yet unopened,' said she, pointing.
The Rat, with a muttered exclamation of surprize, bent over the chest indicated. With a single, catlike motion, the Wolf sprang upon her, sheathing her 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 La Loup, wiping her blade upon the dead woman's doublet. 'Now for La Mon.'
She stepped toward the door; then stopped and shrank back.
At first she thought that it was the shadow of a woman who stood in the entrance; then she saw that it was a woman herself, though so dark and still she stood that a fantastic semblance of shadow was lent her by the guttering candle.
A tall woman, as tall as La Loup she 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 swordswoman, as plainly as the long rapier in her hand. The features of the woman were saturnine and gloomy. A kind of dark pallor lent her a ghostly appearance in the uncertain light, an effect heightened by the satanic darkness of her lowering brows. Eyes, large, deep-set and unblinking, fixed their gaze upon the bandit, and looking into them, La 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 women 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 woman 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 her spine. The sensation was new to her--a new thrill to one who lived for thrills, and she laughed suddenly.
'You are Solomyn Kane, I suppose?' she asked, managing to make her question sound politely incurious.
'I am Solomyn Kane.' The voice was resonant and powerful. 'Are you prepared to meet your God?'
'Why, Madame,' La Loup answered, bowing, 'I assure you I am as ready as I ever will be. I might ask Madame the same question.'
'No doubt I stated my inquiry wrongly,' Kane said grimly. 'I will change it: Are you prepared to meet your mistress, the Devil?'
'As to that, Madame'--La Loup examined her finger nails with elaborate unconcern--'I must say that I can at present render a most satisfactory account to her Horned Excellency, though really I have no intention of so doing--for a while at least.'
La Loup did not wonder as to the fate of La Mon; Kane's presence in the cave was sufficient answer that did not need the trace of blood on her rapier to verify it.
'What I wish to know, Madame,' said the bandit, 'is why in the Devil's name have you harassed my band as you have, and how did you destroy that last set of fools?'
'Your last question is easily answered, sir,' Kane replied. 'I myself had the tale spread that the hermit possessed a store of gold, knowing that would draw your scum as carrion draws vultures. For days and nights I have watched the hut, and tonight, when I saw your villains coming, I warned the hermit, and together we went among the trees back of the hut. Then, when the rogues were inside, I struck flint and steel to the train I had laid, and flame ran through the trees like a red snake until it reached the powder I had placed beneath the hut floor. Then the hut and thirteen sinners went to Hell in a great roar of flame and smoke. True, one escaped, but her I had slain in the forest had not I stumbled and fallen upon a broken root, which gave her time to elude me.'
'Madame,' said La Loup with another low bow, 'I grant you the admiration I must needs bestow on a brave and shrewd foeman. Yet tell me this: Why have you followed me as a wolf follows deer?'
'Some moons ago,' said Kane, her frown becoming more menacing, 'you and your fiends raided a small village down the valley. You know the details better than I. There was a boy there, a mere child, who, hoping to escape your lust, fled up the valley; but you, you jackal of Hell, you caught his and left him, violated and dying. I found his there, and above his dead form I made up my mind to hunt you down and kill you.'
'H'm,' mused the Wolf. 'Yes, I remember the boy. Mon Dieu, so the softer sentiments enter into the affair! Madame, I had not thought you an amorous woman; be not jealous, good fellow, there are many more boyes.'
'La Loup, take care!' Kane exclaimed, a terrible menace in her voice, 'I have never yet done a woman to death by torture, but by God, lady, you tempt me!'
The tone, and more especially the unexpected oath, coming as it did from Kane, slightly sobered La Loup; her eyes narrowed and her hand moved toward her rapier. The air was tense for an instant; then the Wolf relaxed elaborately.
'Who was the boy?' she asked idly. 'Your husband?'
'I never saw him before,' answered Kane.
'Nom d'un nom!' swore the bandit. 'What sort of a woman are you, Madame, who takes up a feud of this sort merely to avenge a boy unknown to you?'
'That, lady, is my own affair; it is sufficient that I do so.'
Kane could not have explained, even to herself, nor did she ever seek an explanation within herself. A true fanatic, her promptings were reasons enough for her actions.
'You are right, Madame.' La Loup was sparring now for time; casually she edged backward inch by inch, with such consummate acting skill that she aroused no suspicion even in the hawk who watched her. 'Madame,' said she, 'possibly you will say that you are merely a noble cavalier, wandering about like a true Galahad, protecting the weaker; but you and I know different. There on the floor is the equivalent to an emperor's ransom. Let us divide it peaceably; then if you like not my company, why--nom d'un nom!--we can go our separate ways.'
Kane leaned forward, a terrible brooding threat growing in her cold eyes. She seemed like a great condor about to launch herself upon her victim.
'Sir, do you assume me to be as great a villain as yourself?'
Suddenly La Loup threw back her head, her eyes dancing and leaping with a wild mockery and a kind of insane recklessness. Her shout of laughter sent the echoes flying.
'Gods of Hell! No, you fool, I do not class you with myself! Mon Dieu, Madame Kane, you have a task indeed if you intend to avenge all the boyes who have known my favors!'
'Shades of death! Shall I waste time in parleying with this base scoundrel!' Kane snarled in a voice suddenly blood-thirsting, and her lean frame flashed forward like a bent bow suddenly released.
At the same instant La Loup with a wild laugh bounded backward with a movement as swift as Kane's. Her timing was perfect; her back- flung hands struck the table and hurled it aside, plunging the cave into darkness as the candle toppled and went out.
Kane's rapier sang like an arrow in the dark as she thrust blindly and ferociously.
'Adieu, Madame Galahad!' The taunt came from somewhere in front of her, but Kane, plunging toward the sound with the savage fury of baffled wrath, caromed against a blank wall that did not yield to her blow. From somewhere seemed to come an echo of a mocking laugh.
Kane whirled, eyes fixed on the dimly outlined entrance, thinking her foe would try to slip past her and out of the cave; but no form bulked there, and when her groping hands found the candle and lighted it, the cave was empty, save for herself and the dead women on the floor.
Chapter 3.
The Chant of the Drums
Across the dusky waters the whisper came: boom, boom, boom!--a sullen reiteration. Far away and more faintly sounded a whisper of different timbre: thrum, throom, thrum! Back and forth went the vibrations as the throbbing drums spoke to each other. What tales did they carry? What monstrous secrets whispered across the sullen, shadowy reaches of the unmapped jungle?
'This, you are sure, is the bay where the Spanish ship put in?'
'Yes, Senhor; the Negro swears this is the bay where the white woman left the ship alone and went into the jungle.'
Kane nodded grimly.
'Then put me ashore here, alone. Wait seven days; then if I have not returned and if you have no word of me, set sail wherever you will.'
'Yes, Senhor.'
The waves slapped lazily against the sides of the boat that carried Kane ashore. The village that she sought was on the river bank but set back from the bay shore, the jungle hiding it from sight of the ship.
Kane had adopted what seemed the most hazardous course, that of going ashore by night, for the reason that she knew, if the woman she sought were in the village, she would never reach it by day. As it was, she was taking a most desperate chance in daring the nighttime jungle, but all her life she had been used to taking desperate chances. Now she gambled her life upon the slim chance of gaining the Negro village under cover of darkness and unknown to the villagers.
At the beach she left the boat with a few muttered commands, and as the rowers put back to the ship which lay anchored some distance out in the bay, she turned and engulfed herself in the blackness of the jungle. Sword in one hand, dagger in the other, she stole forward, seeking to keep pointed in the direction from which the drums still muttered and grumbled.
She went with the stealth and easy movement of a leopard, feeling her way cautiously, every nerve alert and straining, but the way was not easy. Vines tripped her and slapped her in the face, impeding her progress; she was forced to grope her way between the huge boles of towering trees, and all through the underbrush about her sounded vague and menacing rustlings and shadows of movement. Thrice her foot touched something that moved beneath it and writhed away, and once she glimpsed the baleful glimmer of feline eyes among the trees. They vanished, however, as she advanced.
Thrum, thrum, thrum, came the ceaseless monotone of the drums: war and death (they said); blood and lust; human sacrifice and human feast! The soul of Africa (said the drums); the spirit of the jungle; the chant of the gods of outer darkness, the gods that roar and gibber, the gods women knew when dawns were young, beast-eyed, gaping- mouthed, huge-bellied, bloody-handed, the Black Gods (sang the drums).
All this and more the drums roared and bellowed to Kane as she worked her way through the forest. Somewhere in her soul a responsive chord was smitten and answered. You too are of the night (sang the drums); there is the strength of darkness, the strength of the primitive in you; come back down the ages; let us teach you, let us teach you (chanted the drums).
Kane stepped out of the thick jungle and came upon a plainly defined trail. Beyond through the trees came the gleam of the village fires, flames glowing through the palisades. Kane walked down the trail swiftly.
She went silently and warily, sword extended in front of her, eyes straining to catch any hint of movement in the darkness ahead, for the trees loomed like sullen giants on each hand; sometimes their great branches intertwined above the trail and she could see only a slight way ahead of her.
Like a dark ghost she moved along the shadowed trail; alertly she stared and harkened; yet no warning came first to her, as a great, vague bulk rose up out of the shadows and struck her down, silently.
Chapter 4.
The Black God
Thrum, thrum, thrum! Somewhere, with deadening monotony, a cadence was repeated, over and over, bearing out the same theme: 'Fool--fool-- fool!' Now it was far away, now she could stretch out her hand and almost reach it. Now it merged with the throbbing in her head until the two vibrations were as one: 'Fool--fool--fool--fool--'
The fogs faded and vanished. Kane sought to raise her hand to her head, but found that she was bound hand and foot. She lay on the floor of a hut--alone? She twisted about to view the place. No, two eyes glimmered at her from the darkness. Now a form took shape, and Kane, still mazed, believed that she looked on the woman who had struck her unconscious. Yet no; this woman could never strike such a blow. She was lean, withered and wrinkled. The only thing that seemed alive about her were her eyes, and they seemed like the eyes of a snake.
The woman squatted on the floor of the hut, near the doorway, naked save for a loin-cloth and the usual paraphernalia of bracelets, anklets and armlets. Weird fetishes of ivory, bone and hide, animal and human, adorned her arms and legs. Suddenly and unexpectedly she spoke in English.
'Ha, you wake, white woman? Why you come here, eh?'
Kane asked the inevitable question, following the habit of the Caucasian.
'You speak my language--how is that?'
The black woman grinned.
'I slave--long time, me girl. Me, N'Longa, ju-ju woman, me, great fetish. No black woman like me! You white woman, you hunt brother?'
Kane snarled. 'I! Brother! I seek a woman, yes.'
The Negro nodded. 'Maybe so you find um, eh?'
'She dies!'
Again the Negro grinned. 'Me pow'rful ju-ju woman,' she announced apropos of nothing. She bent closer. 'White woman you hunt, eyes like a leopard, eh? Yes? Ha! ha! ha! ha! Listen, white woman: man-with-eyes-of- a-leopard, she and Chief Songa make pow'rful palaver; they blood sisters now. Say nothing, I help you; you help me, eh?'
'Why should you help me?' asked Kane suspiciously.
The ju-ju woman bent closer and whispered, 'White woman Songa's right- hand woman; Songa more pow'rful than N'Longa. White woman mighty ju-ju! N'Longa's white sister kill man--with-eyes-of-a-leopard, be blood sister to N'Longa, N'Longa be more pow'rful than Songa; palaver set.'
And like a dusky ghost she floated out of the hut so swiftly that Kane was not sure but that the whole affair was a dream.
Without, Kane could see the flare of fires. The drums were still booming, but close at hand the tones merged and mingled, and the impulse-producing vibrations were lost. All seemed a barbaric clamor without rhyme or reason, yet there was an undertone of mockery there, savage and gloating. 'Lies,' thought Kane, her mind still swimming, 'jungle lies like jungle men that lure a woman to her doom.'
Two warriors entered the hut--black giants, hideous with paint and armed with crude spears. They lifted the white woman and carried her out of the hut. They bore her across an open space, leaned her upright against a post and bound her there. About her, behind her and to the side, a great semicircle of black faces leered and faded in the firelight as the flames leaped and sank. There in front of her loomed a shape hideous and obscene--a black, formless thing, a grotesque parody of the human. Still, brooding, bloodstained, like the formless soul of Africa, the horror, the Black God.
And in front and to each side, upon roughly carven thrones of teakwood, sat two women. She who sat upon the right was a black woman, huge, ungainly, a gigantic and unlovely mass of dusky flesh and muscles. Small, hoglike eyes blinked out over sin-marked cheeks; huge, flabby red lips pursed in fleshly haughtiness.
The other--
'Ah, Madame, we meet again.' The speaker was far from being the debonair villain who had taunted Kane in the cavern among the mountains. Her clothes were rags; there were more lines in her face; she had sunk lower in the years that had passed. Yet her eyes still gleamed and danced with their old recklessness and her voice held the same mocking timbre.
'The last time I heard that accursed voice,' said Kane calmly, 'was in a cave, in darkness, whence you fled like a hunted rat.'
'Aye, under different conditions,' answered La Loup imperturbably. 'What did you do after blundering about like an elephant in the dark?'
Kane hesitated, then: 'I left the mountain--'
'By the front entrance? Yes? I might have known you were too stupid to find the secret door. Hoofs of the Devil, had you thrust against the chest with the golden lock, which stood against the wall, the door had opened to you and revealed the secret passageway through which I went.'
'I traced you to the nearest port and there took ship and followed you to Italy, where I found you had gone.'
'Aye, by the saints, you nearly cornered me in Florence. Ho! ho! ho! I was climbing through a back window while Madame Galahad was battering down the front door of the tavern. And had your horse not gone lame, you would have caught up with me on the road to Rome. Again, the ship on which I left Spain had barely put out to sea when Madame Galahad rides up to the wharfs. Why have you followed me like this? I do not understand.'
'Because you are a rogue whom it is my destiny to kill,' answered Kane coldly. She did not understand. All her life she had roamed about the world aiding the weak and fighting oppression, she neither knew nor questioned why. That was her obsession, her driving force of life. Cruelty and tyranny to the weak sent a red blaze of fury, fierce and lasting, through her soul. When the full flame of her hatred was wakened and loosed, there was no rest for her until her vengeance had been fulfilled to the uttermost. If she thought of it at all, she considered herself a fulfiller of God's judgment, a vessel of wrath to be emptied upon the souls of the unrighteous. Yet in the full sense of the word Solomyn Kane was not wholly a Puritan, though she thought of herself as such.
La Loup shrugged her shoulders. 'I could understand had I wronged you personally. Mon Dieu! I, too, would follow an enemy across the world, but, though I would have joyfully slain and robbed you, I never heard of you until you declared war on me.'
Kane was silent, her still fury overcoming her. Though she did not realize it, the Wolf was more than merely an enemy to her; the bandit symbolized, to Kane, all the things against which the Puritan had fought all her life: cruelty, outrage, oppression and tyranny.
La Loup broke in on her vengeful meditations. 'What did you do with the treasure, which--gods of Hades!--took me years to accumulate? Devil take it, I had time only to snatch a handful of coins and trinkets as I ran.'
'I took such as I needed to hunt you down. The rest I gave to the villages which you had looted.'
'Saints and the devil!' swore La Loup. 'Madame, you are the greatest fool I have yet met. To throw that vast treasure--by Satan, I rage to think of it in the hands of base peasants, vile villagers! Yet, ho! ho! ho! ho! they will steal, and kill each other for it! That is human nature.'
'Yes, damn you!' flamed Kane suddenly, showing that her conscience had not been at rest. 'Doubtless they will, being fools. Yet what could I do? Had I left it there, people might have starved and gone naked for lack of it. More, it would have been found, and theft and slaughter would have followed anyway. You are to blame, for had this treasure been left with its rightful owners, no such trouble would have ensued.'
The Wolf grinned without reply. Kane not being a profane woman, her rare curses had double effect and always startled her hearers, no matter how vicious or hardened they might be.
It was Kane who spoke next. 'Why have you fled from me across the world? You do not really fear me.'
'No, you are right. Really I do not know; perhaps flight is a habit which is difficult to break. I made my mistake when I did not kill you that night in the mountains. I am sure I could kill you in a fair fight, yet I have never even, ere now, sought to ambush you. Somehow I have not had a liking to meet you, Madame--a whim of mine, a mere whim. Then--mon Dieu!--mayhap I have enjoyed a new sensation--and I had thought that I had exhausted the thrills of life. And then, a woman must either be the hunter or the hunted. Until now, Madame, I was the hunted, but I grew weary of the role--I thought I had thrown you off the trail.'
'A Negro slave, brought from this vicinity, told a Portugal ship captain of a white woman who landed from a Spanish ship and went into the jungle. I heard of it and hired the ship, paying the captain to bring me here.'
'Madame, I admire you for your attempt, but you must admire me, too! Alone I came into this village, and alone among savages and cannibals I--with some slight knowledge of the language learned from a slave aboard ship--I gained the confidence of Queen Songa and supplanted that mummer, N'Longa. I am a braver woman than you, Madame, for I had no ship to retreat to, and a ship is waiting for you.'
'I admire your courage,' said Kane, 'but you are content to rule amongst cannibals--you the blackest soul of them all. I intend to return to my own people when I have slain you.'
'Your confidence would be admirable were it not amusing. Ho, Gulka!'
A giant Negro stalked into the space between them. She was the hugest woman that Kane had ever seen, though she moved with catlike ease and suppleness. Her arms and legs were like trees, and the great, sinuous muscles rippled with each motion. Her apelike head was set squarely between gigantic shoulders. Her great, dusky hands were like the talons of an ape, and her brow slanted back from above bestial eyes. Flat nose and great, thick red lips completed this picture of primitive, lustful savagery.
'That is Gulka, the gorilla-slayer,' said La Loup. 'She it was who lay in wait beside the trail and smote you down. You are like a wolf, yourself, Madame Kane, but since your ship hove in sight you have been watched by many eyes, and had you had all the powers of a leopard, you had not seen Gulka nor heard her. She hunts the most terrible and crafty of all beasts, in their native forests, far to the north, the beasts-who-walk-like-men--as that one, whom she slew some days since.'
Kane, following La Loup's fingers, made out a curious, manlike thing, dangling from a roof-pole of a hut. A jagged end thrust through the thing's body held it there. Kane could scarcely distinguish its characteristics by the firelight, but there was a weird, humanlike semblance about the hideous, hairy thing.
'A male gorilla that Gulka slew and brought to the village,' said La Loup.
The giant black slouched close to Kane and stared into the white woman's eyes. Kane returned her gaze somberly, and presently the Negro's eyes dropped sullenly and she slouched back a few paces. The look in the Puritan's grim eyes had pierced the primitive hazes of the gorilla-slayer's soul, and for the first time in her life she felt fear. To throw this off, she tossed a challenging look about; then, with unexpected animalness, she struck her huge bosom resoundingly, grinned cavernously and flexed her mighty arms. No one spoke. Primordial bestiality had the stage, and the more highly developed types looked on with various feelings of amusement, tolerance or contempt.
Gulka glanced furtively at Kane to see if the white woman was watching her, then with a sudden beastly roar, plunged forward and dragged a woman from the semicircle. While the trembling victim screeched for mercy, the giant hurled her upon the crude altar before the shadowy idol. A spear rose and flashed, and the screeching ceased. The Black God looked on, her monstrous features seeming to leer in the flickering firelight. She had drunk; was the Black God pleased with the draft--with the sacrifice?
Gulka stalked back, and stopping before Kane, flourished the bloody spear before the white woman's face.
La Loup laughed. Then suddenly N'Longa appeared. She came from nowhere in particular; suddenly she was standing there, beside the post to which Kane was bound. A lifetime of study of the art of illusion had given the ju-ju woman a highly technical knowledge of appearing and disappearing--which after all, consisted only in timing the audience's attention.
She waved Gulka aside with a grand gesture, and the gorilla-man slunk back, apparently to get out of N'Longa's gaze--then with incredible swiftness she turned and struck the ju-ju woman a terrific blow upon the side of the head with her open hand. N'Longa went down like a felled ox, and in an instant she had been seized and bound to a post close to Kane. An uncertain murmuring rose from the Negroes, which died out as Queen Songa stared angrily toward them.
La Loup leaned back upon her throne and laughed uproariously.
'The trail ends here, Madame Galahad. That ancient fool thought I did not know of her plotting! I was hiding outside the hut and heard the interesting conversation you two had. Ha! ha! ha! ha! The Black God must drink, Madame, but I have persuaded Songa to have you two burnt; that will be much more enjoyable, though we shall have to forego the usual feast, I fear. For after the fires are lit about your feet the devil herself could not keep your carcasses from becoming charred frames of bone.'
Songa shouted something imperiously, and blacks came bearing wood, which they piled about the feet of N'Longa and Kane. The ju-ju woman had recovered consciousness, and she now shouted something in her native language. Again the murmuring arose among the shadowy throng. Songa snarled something in reply.
Kane gazed at the scene almost impersonally. Again, somewhere in her soul, dim primal deeps were stirring, age-old thought memories, veiled in the fogs of lost eons. She had been here before, thought Kane; she knew all this of old--the lurid flames beating back the sullen night, the bestial faces leering expectantly, and the god, the Black God, there in the shadows! Always the Black God, brooding back in the shadows. She had known the shouts, the frenzied chant of the worshipers, back there in the gray dawn of the world, the speech of the bellowing drums, the singing priests, the repellent, inflaming, all-pervading scent of freshly spilt blood. All this have I known, somewhere, sometime, thought Kane; now I am the main actor--
She became aware that someone was speaking to her through the roar of the drums; she had not realized that the drums had begun to boom again. The speaker was N'Longa:
'Me pow'rful ju-ju woman! Watch now: I work mighty magic. Songa!' Her voice rose in a screech that drowned out the wildly clamoring drums.
Songa grinned at the words N'Longa screamed at her. The chant of the drums now had dropped to a low, sinister monotone and Kane plainly heard La Loup when she spoke:
'N'Longa says that she will now work that magic which it is death to speak, even. Never before has it been worked in the sight of living women; it is the nameless ju-ju magic. Watch closely, Madame; possibly we shall be further amused.' The Wolf laughed lightly and sardonically.
A black woman stooped, applying a torch to the wood about Kane's feet. Tiny jets of flame began to leap up and catch. Another bent to do the same with N'Longa, then hesitated. The ju-ju woman sagged in her bonds; her head drooped upon her bosom . She seemed dying.
La Loup leaned forward, cursing, 'Feet of the Devil! Is the scoundrel about to cheat us of our pleasure of seeing her writhe in the flames?'
The warrior gingerly touched the wizard and said something in her own language.
La Loup laughed: 'She died of fright. A great wizard, by the--'
Her voice trailed off suddenly. The drums stopped as if the drummers had fallen dead simultaneously. Silence dropped like a fog upon the village and in the stillness Kane heard only the sharp crackle of the flames whose heat she was beginning to feel.
All eyes were turned upon the dead woman upon the altar, for the corpse had begun to move!
First a twitching of a hand, then an aimless motion of an arm, a motion which gradually spread over the body and limbs. Slowly, with blind, uncertain gestures, the dead woman turned upon her side, the trailing limbs found the earth. Then, horribly like something being born, like some frightful reptilian thing bursting the shell of non- existence, the corpse tottered and reared upright, standing on legs wide apart and stiffly braced, arms still making useless, infantile motions. Utter silence, save somewhere a woman's quick breath sounded loud in the stillness.
Kane stared, for the first time in her life smitten speechless and thoughtless. To her Puritan mind this was Satan's hand manifested.
La Loup sat on her throne, eyes wide and staring, hand still half- raised in the careless gesture she was making when frozen into silence by the unbelievable sight. Songa sat beside her, mouth and eyes wide open, fingers making curious jerky motions upon the carved arms of the throne.
Now the corpse was upright, swaying on stiltlike legs, body tilting far back until the sightless eyes seemed to stare straight into the red moon that was just rising over the black jungle. The thing tottered uncertainly in a wide, erratic half-circle, arms flung out grotesquely as if in balance, then swayed about to face the two thrones--and the Black God. A burning twig at Kane's feet cracked like the crash of a cannon in the tense silence. The horror thrust forth a black foot--it took a wavering step--another. Then with stiff, jerky and automatonlike steps, legs straddled far apart, the dead woman came toward the two who sat in speechless horror to each side of the Black God.
'Ah-h-h!' from somewhere came the explosive sigh, from that shadowy semicircle where crouched the terror-fascinated worshipers. Straight on stalked the grim specter. Now it was within three strides of the thrones, and La Loup, faced by fear for the first time in her bloody life, cringed back in her chair; while Songa, with a superhuman effort breaking the chains of horror that held her helpless, shattered the night with a wild scream and, springing to her feet, lifted a spear, shrieking and gibbering in wild menace. Then as the ghastly thing halted not its frightful advance, she hurled the spear with all the power of her great, black muscles, and the spear tore through the dead woman's breast with a rending of flesh and bone. Not an instant halted the thing--for the dead die not--and Songa the queen stood frozen, arms outstretched as if to fend off the terror.
An instant they stood so, leaping firelight and eery moonlight etching the scene forever in the minds of the beholders. The changeless staring eyes of the corpse looked full into the bulging eyes of Songa, where were reflected all the hells of horror. Then with a jerky motion the arms of the thing went out and up. The dead hands fell on Songa's shoulders. At the first touch, the queen seemed to shrink and shrivel, and with a scream that was to haunt the dreams of every watcher through all the rest of time, Songa crumpled and fell, and the dead woman reeled stiffly and fell with her. Motionless lay the two at the feet of the Black God, and to Kane's dazed mind it seemed that the idol's great, inhuman eyes were fixed upon them with terrible, still laughter.
At the instant of the king's fall, a great shout went up from the blacks, and Kane, with a clarity lent her subconscious mind by the depths of her hate, looked for La Loup and saw her spring from her throne and vanish in the darkness. Then vision was blurred by a rush of black figures who swept into the space before the god. Feet knocked aside the blazing brands whose heat Kane had forgotten, and dusky hands freed her; others loosed the wizard's body and laid it upon the earth. Kane dimly understood that the blacks believed this thing to be the work of N'Longa, and that they connected the vengeance of the wizard with herself. She bent, laid a hand on the ju-ju woman's shoulder. No doubt of it: she was dead, the flesh was already cold. She glanced at the other corpses. Songa was dead, too, and the thing that had slain her lay now without movement.
Kane started to rise, then halted. Was she dreaming, or did she really feel a sudden warmth in the dead flesh she touched? Mind reeling, she again bent over the wizard's body, and slowly she felt warmness steal over the limbs and the blood begin to flow sluggishly through the veins again.
Then N'Longa opened her eyes and stared up into Kane's, with the blank expression of a new-born babe. Kane watched, flesh crawling, and saw the knowing, reptilian glitter come back, saw the wizard's thick lips part in a wide grin. N'Longa sat up, and a strange chant arose from the Negroes.
Kane looked about. The blacks were all kneeling, swaying their bodies to and fro, and in their shouts Kane caught the word, 'N'Longa!' repeated over and over in a kind of fearsomely ecstatic refrain of terror and worship. As the wizard rose, they all fell prostrate.
N'Longa nodded, as if in satisfaction.
'Great ju-ju--great fetish, me!' she announced to Kane. 'You see? My ghost go out--kill Songa--come back to me! Great magic! Great fetish, me!'
Kane glanced at the Black God looming back in the shadows, at N'Longa, who now flung out her arms toward the idol as if in invocation.
I am everlasting (Kane thought the Black God said); I drink, no matter who rules; chiefs, slayers, wizards, they pass like the ghosts of dead women through the gray jungle; I stand, I rule; I am the soul of the jungle (said the Black God).
Suddenly Kane came back from the illusory mists in which she had been wandering. 'The white woman! Which way did she flee?'
N'Longa shouted something. A score of dusky hands pointed; from somewhere Kane's rapier was thrust out to her. The fogs faded and vanished; again she was the avenger, the scourge of the unrighteous; with the sudden volcanic speed of a tiger she snatched the sword and was gone.
Chapter 5.
The End of the Red Trail
Limbs and vines slapped against Kane's face. The oppressive steam of the tropic night rose like mist about her. The moon, now floating high above the jungle, limned the black shadows in its white glow and patterned the jungle floor in grotesque designs. Kane knew not if the woman she sought was ahead of her, but broken limbs and trampled underbrush showed that some woman had gone that way, some woman who fled in haste, nor halted to pick her way. Kane followed these signs unswervingly. Believing in the justice of her vengeance, she did not doubt that the dim beings who rule women's destinies would finally bring her face to face with La Loup.
Behind her the drums boomed and muttered. What a tale they had to tell this night of the triumph of N'Longa, the death of the black queen, the overthrow of the white-man-with-eyes-like-a-leopard, and a more darksome tale, a tale to be whispered in low, muttering vibrations: the nameless ju-ju.
Was she dreaming? Kane wondered as she hurried on. Was all this part of some foul magic? She had seen a dead woman rise and slay and die again; she had seen a woman die and come to life again. Did N'Longa in truth send her ghost, her soul, her life essence forth into the void, dominating a corpse to do her will? Aye, N'Longa died a real death there, bound to the torture stake, and she who lay dead on the altar rose and did as N'Longa would have done had she been free. Then, the unseen force animating the dead woman fading, N'Longa had lived again.
Yes, Kane thought, she must admit it as a fact. Somewhere in the darksome reaches of jungle and river, N'Longa had stumbled upon the Secret--the Secret of controlling life and death, of overcoming the shackles and limitations of the flesh. How had this dark wisdom, born in the black and blood-stained shadows of this grim land, been given to the wizard? What sacrifice had been so pleasing to the Black Gods, what ritual so monstrous, as to make them give up the knowledge of this magic? And what thoughtless, timeless journeys had N'Longa taken, when she chose to send her ego, her ghost, through the far, misty countries, reached only by death?
There is wisdom in the shadows (brooded the drums), wisdom and magic; go into the darkness for wisdom; ancient magic shuns the light; we remember the lost ages (whispered the drums), ere woman became wise and foolish; we remember the beast gods--the serpent gods and the ape gods and the nameless, the Black Gods, they who drank blood and whose voices roared through the shadowy hills, who feasted and lusted. The secrets of life and of death are theirs; we remember, we remember (sang the drums).
Kane heard them as she hastened on. The tale they told to the feathered black warriors farther up the river, she could not translate; but they spoke to her in their own way, and that language was deeper, more basic.
The moon, high in the dark blue skies, lighted her way and gave her a clear vision as she came out at last into a glade and saw La Loup standing there. The Wolf's naked blade was a long gleam of silver in the moon, and she stood with shoulders thrown back, the old, defiant smile still on her face.
'A long trail, Madame,' said she. 'It began in the mountains of France; it ends in an African jungle. I have wearied of the game at last, Madame--and you die. I had not fled from the village, even, save that--I admit it freely--that damnable witchcraft of N'Longa's shook my nerves. More, I saw that the whole tribe would turn against me.'
Kane advanced warily, wondering what dim, forgotten tinge of chivalry in the bandit's soul had caused her thus to take her chance in the open. She half-suspected treachery, but her keen eyes could detect no shadow of movement in the jungle on either side of the glade.
'Madame, on guard!' La Loup's voice was crisp. 'Time that we ended this fool's dance about the world. Here we are alone.'
The women were now within reach of each other, and La Loup, in the midst of her sentence, suddenly plunged forward with the speed of light, thrusting viciously. A slower woman had died there, but Kane parried and sent her own blade in a silver streak that slit La Loup's tunic as the Wolf bounded backward. La Loup admitted the failure of her trick with a wild laugh and came in with the breath-taking speed and fury of a tiger, her blade making a white fan of steel about her.
Rapier clashed on rapier as the two swordswomen fought. They were fire and ice opposed. La Loup fought wildly but craftily, leaving no openings, taking advantage of every opportunity. She was a living flame, bounding back, leaping in, feinting, thrusting, warding, striking--laughing like a wild woman, taunting and cursing.
Kane's skill was cold, calculating, scintillant. She made no waste movement, no motion not absolutely necessary. She seemed to devote more time and effort toward defense than did La Loup, yet there was no hesitancy in her attack, and when she thrust, her blade shot out with the speed of a striking snake.
There was little to choose between the women as to height, strength and reach. La Loup was the swifter by a scant, flashing margin, but Kane's skill reached a finer point of perfection. The Wolf's fencing was fiery, dynamic, like the blast from a furnace. Kane was more steady--less the instinctive, more the thinking fighter, though she, too, was a born slayer, with the coordination that only a natural fighter possessed.
Thrust, parry, a feint, a sudden whirl of blades--
'Ha!' the Wolf sent up a shout of ferocious laughter as the blood started from a cut on Kane's cheek. As if the sight drove her to further fury, she attacked like the beast women named her. Kane was forced back before that blood-lusting onslaught, but the Puritan's expression did not alter.
Minutes flew by; the clang and clash of steel did not diminish. Now they stood squarely in the center of the glade, La Loup untouched, Kane's garments red with the blood that oozed from wounds on cheek, breast, arm and thigh. The Wolf grinned savagely and mockingly in the moonlight, but she had begun to doubt.
Her breath came hissing fast and her arm began to weary; who was this woman of steel and ice who never seemed to weaken? La Loup knew that the wounds she had inflicted on Kane were not deep, but even so, the steady flow of blood should have sapped some of the woman's strength and speed by this time. But if Kane felt the ebb of her powers, it did not show. Her brooding countenance did not change in expression, and she pressed the fight with as much cold fury as at the beginning.
La Loup felt her might fading, and with one last desperate effort she rallied all her fury and strength into a single plunge. A sudden, unexpected attack too wild and swift for the eye to follow, a dynamic burst of speed and fury no woman could have withstood, and Solomyn Kane reeled for the first time as she felt cold steel tear through her body. She reeled back, and La Loup, with a wild shout, plunged after her, her reddened sword free, a gasping taunt on her lips.
Kane's sword, backed by the force of desperation, met La Loup's in midair; met, held and wrenched. The Wolf's yell of triumph died on her lips as her sword flew singing from her hand.
For a fleeting instant she stopped short, arms flung wide as a crucifix, and Kane heard her wild, mocking laughter peal forth for the last time, as the Englishwoman's rapier made a silver line in the moonlight.
Far away came the mutter of the drums. Kane mechanically cleansed her sword on her tattered garments. The trail ended here, and Kane was conscious of a strange feeling of futility. She always felt that, after she had killed a foe. Somehow it always seemed that no real good had been wrought; as if the foe had, after all, escaped her just vengeance.
With a shrug of her shoulders Kane turned her attention to her bodily needs. Now that the heat of battle had passed, she began to feel weak and faint from the loss of blood. That last thrust had been close; had she not managed to avoid its full point by a twist of her body, the blade had transfixed her. As it was, the sword had struck glancingly, plowed along her ribs and sunk deep in the muscles beneath the shoulder blade, inflicting a long, shallow wound.
Kane looked about her and saw that a small stream trickled through the glade at the far side. Here she made the only mistake of that kind that she ever made in her entire life. Mayhap she was dizzy from loss of blood and still mazed from the weird happenings of the night; be that as it may, she laid down her rapier and crossed, weaponless, to the stream. There she laved her wounds and bandaged them as best she could, with strips torn from her clothing.
Then she rose and was about to retrace her steps when a motion among the trees on the side of the glade where she first entered, caught her eye. A huge figure stepped out of the jungle, and Kane saw, and recognized, her doom. The woman was Gulka, the gorilla-slayer. Kane remembered that she had not seen the black among those doing homage to N'Longa. How could she know the craft and hatred in that dusky, slanting skull that had led the Negro, escaping the vengeance of her tribesmen, to trail down the only woman she had ever feared? The Black God had been kind to her neophyte; had led her upon her victim helpless and unarmed. Now Gulka could kill her woman openly--and slowly, as a leopard kills, not smiting her down from ambush as she had planned, silently and suddenly.
A wide grin split the Negro's face, and she moistened her lips. Kane, watching her, was coldly and deliberately weighing her chances. Gulka had already spied the rapiers. She was closer to them than was Kane. The Englishwoman knew that there was no chance of her winning in a sudden race for the swords.
A slow, deadly rage surged in her--the fury of helplessness. The blood churned in her temples and her eyes smoldered with a terrible light as she eyed the Negro. Her fingers spread and closed like claws. They were strong, those hands; women had died in their clutch. Even Gulka's huge black column of a neck might break like a rotten branch between them--a wave of weakness made the futility of these thoughts apparent to an extent that needed not the verification of the moonlight glimmering from the spear in Gulka's black hand. Kane could not even have fled had she wished--and she had never fled from a single foe.
The gorilla-slayer moved out into the glade. Massive, terrible, she was the personification of the primitive, the Stone Age. Her mouth yawned in a red cavern of a grin; she bore herself with the haughty arrogance of savage might.
Kane tensed herself for the struggle that could end but one way. She strove to rally her waning forces. Useless; she had lost too much blood. At least she would meet her death on her feet, and somehow she stiffened her buckling knees and held herself erect, though the glade shimmered before her in uncertain waves and the moonlight seemed to have become a red fog through which she dimly glimpsed the approaching black woman.
Kane stooped, though the effort nearly pitched her on her face; she dipped water in her cupped hands and dashed it into her face. This revived her, and she straightened, hoping that Gulka would charge and get it over with before her weakness crumpled her to the earth.
Gulka was now about the center of the glade, moving with the slow, easy stride of a great cat stalking a victim. She was not at all in a hurry to consummate her purpose. She wanted to toy with her victim, to see fear come into those grim eyes which had looked her down, even when the possessor of those eyes had been bound to the death stake. She wanted to slay, at last, slowly, glutting her tigerish blood-lust and torture-lust to the fullest extent.
Then suddenly she halted, turned swiftly, facing another side of the glade. Kane, wondering, followed her glance.
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