Free Solomon Kane by Ramsey Campbell Page B

beat with life.”
    This was plainly more than the boy had expected to hear, and he fell back a pace. Kane hoped he had conveyed a lesson, but he was glad that most of the family had been out of earshot. Having regained his pluck, Samuel overtook him once more. “Would you fight me?” he said.
    “If you persist in your questions I might,” Kane replied with a laugh.
    He was striding onwards towards the dark cloud, whichhe thought he had identified as smoke from a chimney, when the boy dodged to the hedgerow alongside a field and disentangled a stick from the twigs. “Fight me now,” he said, poking Kane with the stick.
    It found the bruise on Kane’s chest, but the ache no longer troubled him. “I have no reason to fight you, young man,” he said.
    The boy ran to Meredith and grabbed her around the waist, flourishing his stick. “Stop it, Samuel,” she said, but with an indulgent smile.
    “Now you have a reason, Solomon,” the boy called. “You must help save this beautiful maiden from me.”
    “Help, Solomon,” Meredith cried. “Save me or I shall be lost forever.”
    A horse snorted and whinnied. “Don’t scare the horses,” Edward objected.
    It was only play, thought Kane, and strode ahead to find a stick on the verge of the road. He lifted it with the toe of his boot and kicked it deftly into his hand, spinning it several times before he turned to Samuel and parried his thrust. He could have snatched the stick from the boy’s grasp with a flick of the wrist, but he was careful just to deflect Samuel’s attempts to prod him. “I knew you’d fight if you had to,” Samuel told him.
    Meredith clapped her hands at the spectacle, and her parents watched in amusement. Even Edward seemed to find no cause for disapproval. He leaned forward in his seat, and then his gaze rose beyond the combatants. “Dear Lord,” he said, and “Father.”
    He reined the horses to a stop as Crowthorn hurried past them to stare ahead. “Samuel, get back to the cart,” he said. “Go on.” The boy retreated unwillingly to the wagon, and Kane saw a black shape flutter up above the road. The way led to a village, where the shape swoopedpurposefully down and was lost to sight. Kane preferred not to speculate on its purpose. The cloud he had seen was indeed smoke, but not from any chimney. Even at that distance he could see that the village was a blackened shell.

THIRTEEN

    A s the men came abreast of the outermost cottages a fragment of oily blackness rose into the air as though to greet them. It drifted towards the wagon, which was halted several hundred yards beyond the remains of the village. Samuel waited beside the horses, murmuring to them as one gave an uneasy snort and pawed the bare earth of the road. His mother and Meredith stood together in front of him, and Kane thought they hoped to block his view. He would have liked to think they saw as little as Samuel did.
    The village had consisted of a handful of buildings gathered around a green, but every one had been destroyed. Nothing remained on either side of the uneven road except blackened skeletons of cottages – timber remnants gnawed by flames and scaly with charring. Even the earth around the ruins had been seared black. Might the village have been plundered and then burned to the ground? Kane had heard no rumours of marauders, but he was about to question his companions when he saw an object in the remains of a doorway. It had been a villager, and the sight filled Kane’s mouth with a sour taste of evil. Far worse had befallen the village than a raid.
    The man was sprawled across the threshold with his legs still in the road. The heat that seized him had been so fierce that it was impossible to distinguish his peelingskin from the shreds of his garments. Kane wondered if the corpse had been distorted by the heat, given the awkwardness of its position, but then he saw that the man had twisted his torso around in a desperate attempt to fend off whatever was