Chapter 1

The Moon of Skulls

By ROBERT E HOWARD

"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."

Kane smiled thinly. "I carry the lives of many warriors in _my_ hand."

The negro's gaze traveled uncertainly up and down the shimmery length
of the Englishman's sword. Then he shrugged his mighty shoulders and
let his spear point sink to the earth.

"You bear no gifts," said he; "but follow me and I will lead you to the
Terrible One, the Mistress of Doom, the Red Woman, Nakari, who rules
the land of Negari."

He stepped aside and motioned Kane to precede him, but the Englishman,
his mind on a spear-thrust in the back, shook his head.

"Who am I that I should walk in front of my brother? We be two
chiefs--let us walk side by side."

In his heart Kane railed that he should be forced to use such unsavory
diplomacy with a black savage, but he showed no sign. The giant
bowed with a certain barbaric majesty and together they went up the
hill trail, unspeaking. Kane was aware that men were stepping from
hiding-places and falling in behind them, and a surreptitious glance
over his shoulder showed him some two score black warriors trailing out
behind them in two wedge-shaped lines. The moonlight glittered on sleek
black bodies, on waving head-gears and long cruel spear blades.

"My brothers are like leopards," said Kane courteously; "they lie in
the low bushes and no eyes see them; they steal through the high grass
and no man hears their coming."

The black chief acknowledged the compliment with a courtly inclination
of his lion-like head, that set the plumes whispering.

"The mountain leopard is our brother, oh chieftain. Our feet are like
drifting smoke but our arms are like iron. When they strike, blood
drips red and men die."

Kane sensed an undercurrent of menace in the tone. There was no actual
hint of threat on which he might base his suspicions, but the sinister
minor note was there. He said no more for a space and the strange
band moved silently upward in the moonlight like a cavalcade of black
specters led by a white ghost. The trail grew steeper and more rocky,
winding in and out among crags and gigantic boulders. Suddenly a great
chasm opened before them, spanned by a natural bridge of rock, at the
foot of which the leader halted.

* * * * *

Kane stared at the abyss curiously. It was some forty feet wide,
and looking down, his gaze was swallowed by impenetrable blackness,
hundreds of feet deep, he knew. On the other side rose crags dark and
forbidding.

"Here," said the black chief, "begin the true borders of Nakari's
realm."

Kane was aware that the warriors were casually closing in on him. His
fingers instinctively tightened about the hilt of the rapier which he
had not sheathed. The air was suddenly supercharged with tension.

"Here, too," the black man said, "they who bring no gifts to
Nakari--_die!_"

The last word was a shriek, as if the thought had transformed the
speaker into a maniac, and as he screamed it, the great black arm went
back and then forward with a ripple of mighty muscles, and the long
spear leaped at Kane's breast.

Only a born fighter could have avoided that thrust. Kane's instinctive
action saved his life--the great blade grazed his ribs as he swayed
aside and returned the blow with a flashing thrust that killed a
warrior who jostled between him and the chief at that instant.

Spears flashed in the moonlight and Kane, parrying one and bending
under the thrust of another, sprang out upon the narrow bridge where
only one could come at him at a time.

None cared to be first. They stood upon the brink and thrust at him,
crowding forward when he retreated, giving back when he pressed them.
Their spears were longer than his rapier but he more than made up for
the difference and the great odds by his scintillant skill and the cold
ferocity of his attack.

They wavered back and forth and then suddenly a black giant leaped
from among his fellows and charged out upon the bridge like a wild
buffalo, shoulders hunched, spear held low, eyes gleaming with a look
not wholly sane. Kane leaped back before the onslaught, leaped back
again, striving to avoid that stabbing spear and to find an opening
for his point. He sprang to one side and found himself reeling on the
edge of the bridge with eternity gaping beneath him. The blacks yelled
in savage exultation as he swayed and fought for his balance, and the
giant on the bridge roared and plunged at the rocking white man.

Kane parried with all his strength--a feat few swordsman could have
accomplished, off balance as he was--saw the cruel spear blade flash by
his cheek--felt himself falling backward into the abyss. A desperate
effort, and he gripped the spear shaft, righted himself and ran the
spearman through the body. The black's great red cavern of a mouth
spouted blood and with a dying effort he hurled himself blindly against
his foe. Kane, with his heels over the bridge's edge, was unable to
avoid him and they toppled over together, to disappear silently into
the depths below.

So swiftly had it all happened that the warriors stood stunned. The
giant's roar of triumph had scarcely died on his lips before the two
were falling into the darkness. Now the rest of the negroes came out on
the bridge to peer down curiously, but no sound came up from the dark
void.

_2. The People of the Stalking Death_

"Their gods were sadder than the sea,
Gods of a wandering will,
Who cried for blood like beasts at night
Sadly, from hill to hill."

--_Chesterton._

As Kane fell he followed his fighting instinct, twisting in midair so
that when he struck, were it ten or a thousand feet below, he would
land on top of the man who fell with him.

The end came suddenly--much more suddenly than the Englishman had
thought for. He lay half stunned for an instant, then looking up, saw
dimly the narrow bridge banding the sky above him, and the forms of
the warriors, limned in the moonlight and grotesquely foreshortened as
they leaned over the edge. He lay still, knowing that the beams of the
moon did not pierce the deeps in which he was hidden, and that to those
watchers he was invisible. Then when they vanished from view he began
to review his present plight. The black man was dead, and only for the
fact that his corpse had cushioned the fall, Kane would have been dead
likewise, for they had fallen a considerable distance. As it was, the
white man was stiff and bruised.

He drew his sword from the negro's body, thankful that it had not been
broken, and began to grope about in the darkness. His hand encountered
the edge of what seemed a cliff. He had thought that he was on the
bottom of the chasm and that its impression of great depth had been a
delusion, but now he decided that he had fallen on a ledge, part of the
way down. He dropped a small stone over the side, and after what seemed
a very long time he heard the faint sound of its striking far below.

Somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed, he drew flint and steel from
his belt and struck them to some tinder, warily shielding the light
with his hands. The faint illumination showed a large ledge jutting out
from the side of the cliff, that is, the side next the hills, to which
he had been attempting to cross. He had fallen close to the edge and it
was only by the narrowest margin that he had escaped sliding off it,
not knowing his position.

Crouching there, his eyes seeking to accustom themselves to the abysmal
gloom, he made out what seemed to be a darker shadow in the shadows
of the wall. On closer examination he found it to be an opening large
enough to admit his body standing erect. A cavern, he assumed, and
though its appearance was dark and forbidding in the extreme, he
entered, groping his way when the tinder burned out.

Where it led to, he naturally had no idea, but any action was
preferable to sitting still until the mountain vultures plucked his
bones. For a long way the cave floor tilted upward--solid rock beneath
his feet--and Kane made his way with some difficulty up the rather
steep slant, slipping and sliding now and then. The cavern seemed a
large one, for at no time after entering it could he touch the roof,
nor could he, with a hand on one wall, reach the other.

At last the floor became level and Kane sensed that the cave was much
larger there. The air seemed better, though the darkness was just as
impenetrable. Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. From somewhere
in front of him there came a strange indescribable rustling. Without
warning something smote him in the face and slashed wildly. All about
him sounded the eery murmurings of many small wings and suddenly Kane
smiled crookedly, amused, relieved and chagrined. Bats, of course.
The cave was swarming with them. Still it was a shaky experience, and
as he went on and the wings whispered through the vasty emptiness
of the great cavern, Kane's Puritan mind found space to dally with
a bizarre thought--had he wandered into Hell by some strange means,
and were these in truth bats, or were they lost souls winging through
everlasting night?

Then, thought Solomon Kane, I will soon confront Satan himself--and
even as he thought this, his nostrils were assailed by a horrid scent
fetid and repellent. The scent grew as he went slowly on, and Kane
swore softly, though he was not a profane man. He sensed that the
smell betokened some hidden threat, some unseen malevolence, inhuman
and deathly, and his somber mind sprang at supernatural conclusions.
However, he felt perfect confidence in his ability to cope with any
fiend or demon, armored as he was in unshakable faith of creed and the
knowledge of the rightness of his cause.

What followed happened suddenly. He was groping his way along when in
front of him two narrow yellow eyes leaped up in the darkness--eyes
that were cold and expressionless, too hideously close-set for human
eyes and too high for any four-legged beast. What horror had thus
reared itself up in front of him?

This is Satan, thought Kane as the eyes swayed above him, and the next
instant he was battling for his life with the darkness that seemed to
have taken tangible form and thrown itself about his body and limbs
in great slimy coils. Those coils lapped his sword arm and rendered
it useless; with the other hand he groped for dagger or pistol, flesh
crawling as his fingers slipped from slick scales, while the hissing of
the monster filled the cavern with a cold p├Žan of terror.

There in the black dark to the accompaniment of the bats' leathery
rustlings, Kane fought like a rat in the grip of a mouse-snake, and he
could feel his ribs giving and his breath going before his frantic left
hand closed on his dagger hilt.

Then with a volcanic twist and wrench of his steel-thewed body he tore
his left arm partly free and plunged the keen blade again and again to
the hilt in the sinuous writhing terror which enveloped him, feeling at
last the quivering coils loosen and slide from his limbs to lie about
his feet like huge cables.

The mighty serpent lashed wildly in its death struggles, and Kane,
avoiding its bone-shattering blows, reeled away in the darkness,
laboring for breath. If his antagonist had not been Satan himself, it
had been Satan's nearest earthly satellite, thought Solomon, hoping
devoutly that he would not be called upon to battle another in the
darkness there.

* * * * *

It seemed to him that he had been walking through the blackness for
ages and he began to wonder if there were any end to the cave when a
glimmer of light pierced the darkness. He thought it to be an outer
entrance a great way off, and started forward swiftly, but to his
astonishment, he brought up short against a blank wall after taking a
few strides. Then he perceived that the light came through a narrow
crack in the wall, and feeling over this wall he found it to be of
different material from the rest of the cave, consisting, apparently,
of regular blocks of stone joined together with mortar of some sort--an
indubitably man-built wall.

The light streamed between two of these stones, where the mortar had
crumbled away. Kane ran his hands over the surface with an interest
beyond his present needs. The work seemed very old and very much
superior to what might be expected of a tribe of ignorant negroes.

He felt the thrill of the explorer and discoverer. Certainly no white
man had ever seen this place and lived to tell of it, for when he had
landed on the dank West Coast some months before, preparing to plunge
into the interior, he had had no hint of such a country as this. The
few white men who knew anything at all of Africa with whom he had
talked, had never even mentioned the Land of Skulls or the she-fiend
who ruled it.

Kane thrust against the wall cautiously. The structure seemed weakened
from age--a vigorous shove and it gave perceptibly. He hurled himself
against it with all his weight and a whole section of wall gave way
with a crash, precipitating him into a dimly lighted corridor amid a
heap of stone, dust and mortar.

He sprang up and looked about, expecting the noise to bring a horde
of wild spearmen. Utter silence reigned. The corridor in which he now
stood was much like a long narrow cave itself, save that it was the
work of man. It was several feet wide and the roof was many feet above
his head. Dust lay ankle-deep on the floor as if no foot had trod there
for countless centuries, and the dim light, Kane decided, filtered in
somehow through the roof or ceiling, for nowhere did he see any doors
or windows. At last he decided the source was the ceiling itself, which
was of a peculiar phosphorescent quality.

He set off down the corridor, feeling uncomfortably like a gray ghost
moving along the gray halls of death and decay. The evident antiquity
of his surroundings depressed him, making him sense vaguely the
fleeting and futile existence of mankind. That he was now on top of the
earth he believed, since light of a sort came in, but where, he could
not even offer a conjecture. This was a land of enchantment--a land of
horror and fearful mysteries, the jungle and river natives had said,
and he had gotten whispered hints of its terrors ever since he had set
his back to the Slave Coast and ventured into the hinterlands alone.

Now and then he caught a low indistinct murmur which seemed to come
through one of the walls, and he at last came to the conclusion that he
had stumbled onto a secret passage in some castle or house. The natives
who had dared speak to him of Negari, had whispered of a ju-ju city
built of stone, set high amid the grim black crags of the fetish hills.

Then, thought Kane, it may be that I have blundered upon the very thing
I sought and am in the midst of that city of terror. He halted, and
choosing a place at random, began to loosen the mortar with his dagger.
As he worked he again heard that low murmur, increasing in volume as
he bored through the wall, and presently the point pierced through,
and looking through the aperture it had made, he saw a strange and
fantastic scene.

He was looking into a great chamber, whose walls and floors were of
stone, and whose mighty roof was upheld by gigantic stone columns,
strangely carved. Ranks of feathered black warriors lined the walls
and a double column of them stood like statues before a throne set
between two stone dragons which were larger than elephants. These
men he recognized, by their bearing and general appearance, to be
tribesmen of the warriors he had fought at the chasm. But his gaze
was drawn irresistibly to the great, grotesquely ornamented throne.
There, dwarfed by the ponderous splendor about her, a woman reclined. A
black woman she was, young and of a tigerish comeliness. She was naked
except for a beplumed helmet, armbands, anklets and a girdle of colored
ostrich feathers and she sprawled upon the silken cushions with her
limbs thrown about in voluptuous abandon.

Even at that distance Kane could make out that her features were regal
yet barbaric, haughty and imperious, yet sensual, and with a touch of
ruthless cruelty about the curl of her full red lips. Kane felt his
pulse quicken. This could be no other than she whose crimes had become
almost mythical--Nakari of Negari, demon queen of a demon city, whose
monstrous lust for blood had set half a continent shivering. At least
she seemed human enough; the tales of the fearful river tribes had lent
her a supernatural aspect. Kane had half expected to see a loathsome
semi-human monster out of some past and demoniacal age.

The Englishman gazed, fascinated though repelled. Not even in the
courts of Europe had he seen such grandeur. The chamber and all
its accouterments, from the carven serpents twined about the
bases of the pillars to the dimly seen dragons on the shadowy
ceiling, were fashioned on a gigantic scale. The splendor was
awesome--elephantine--inhumanly oversized, and almost numbing to the
mind which sought to measure and conceive the magnitude thereof. To
Kane it seemed that these things must have been the work of gods rather
than men, for this chamber alone would dwarf most of the castles he had
known in Europe.

The black people who thronged that mighty room seemed grotesquely
incongruous. They no more suited their surroundings than a band
of monkeys would have seemed at home in the council chambers of
the English king. As Kane realized this the sinister importance of
Queen Nakari dwindled. Sprawled on that august throne in the midst
of the terrific glory of another age, she seemed to assume her
true proportions--a spoiled, petulant child engaged in a game of
make-believe and using for her sport a toy discarded by her elders. And
at the same time a thought entered Kane's mind--who were these elders?

Still the child could become deadly in her game, as the Englishman soon
saw.

A tall massive black came through the ranks fronting the throne,
and after prostrating himself four times before it, remained on his
knees, evidently waiting permission to speak. The queen's air of lazy
indifference fell from her and she straightened with a quick lithe
motion that reminded Kane of a leopardess springing erect. She spoke,
and the words came faintly to him as he strained his faculties to hear.
She spoke in a language very similar to that of the river tribes.

"Speak!"

"Great and Terrible One," said the kneeling warrior, and Kane
recognized him as the chief who had first accosted him on the
plateau--the chief of the guards on the cliffs, "let not the fire of
your fury consume your slave."

The young woman's eyes narrowed viciously.

"You know why you were summoned, son of a vulture?"

"Fire of Beauty, the stranger brought no gifts."

"No gifts?" she spat out the words. "What have I to do with gifts? I
bade you slay all black men who came empty-handed--did I tell you to
slay white men?"

"Gazelle of Negari, he came climbing the crags in the night like an
assassin, with a dagger as long as a man's arm in his hand. The boulder
we hurled down missed him, and we met him upon the plateau and took
him to the Bridge-Across-the-Sky, where, as is the custom, we thought
to slay him; for it was your word that you were weary of men who came
wooing you."

"Black men, fool," she snarled; "black men!"

"Your slave did not know, Queen of Beauty.