The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane (selected quotes)

"Collected in this volume, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Gary Gianni, are all of the stories and poems that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. Together they constitute a sprawling epic of weird fantasy adventure that stretches from sixteenth-century England to remote African jungles where no white man has set foot. Here are shudder-inducing tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, of dark sorceries wielded by evil men and women, all opposed by a grim avenger armed with a fanatic's faith and a warrior's savage heart."
- The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

Skulls in the Stars

He told how murderers walk the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain,
With crimson clouds before their eyes
And flames about their brain:
For blood has left upon their souls
Its everlasting stain
HOOD

Of one thing Kane was sure: there would be no hunting of him across the dreary moors, no screaming and fleeing to be dragged down again and again. If he must die he would die in his tracks, his wounds in front.

For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, equally abstract, form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost?

"Life was good to him, though he was gnarled and churlish and evil," Kane sighed. "Mayhap God has a place for such souls where fire and sacrifice may cleanse them of their dross as fire cleans the forest of fungous things. Yet my heart is heavy within me."
"Nay, sir," one of the villagers spoke, "you have done but the will of God, and good alone shall come of this night's deed."
"Nay," answered Kane heavily, "I know not - I know not."

The Right Hand of Doom

"Roger Simeon, the necromancer!" sneered the grating voice. "A dealer in the diabolic arts and a worker of black magic! My word, all his foul power could not save him when the king's soldiers surrounded his cave and took him prisoner. He fled when the people began to fling cobble stones at his windows, and thought to hide himself and escape to France. Ho! Ho! His escape shall be at the end of a noose. A good day's work, say I."
He tossed a small bag on the table where it clinked musically.
"The price of a magician's life!" he boasted. "What say you, my sour friend?"
"I say," said he in a low powerful voice, "that you have this day done a damnable deed. Yon necromancer was worthy of death, belike, but he trusted you, naming you his one friend, and you betrayed him for a few filthy coins. Methinks you will meet him in Hell, some day."

He was a light sleeper as becomes a man who habitually carries his life in his hand.

Red Shadows

Suddenly the slim form went limp. The man eased her to the earth, and touched her brow lightly.
"Dead!" he muttered.
Slowly he rose, mechanically wiping his hands upon his cloak. A dark scowl had settled on his somber brow. Yet he made no wild, reckless vow, swore no oath by saints or devils.
"Men shall die for this," he said coldly.

"Because you are a rogue whom it is my destiny to kill," answered Kane coldly. He did not understand. All his life he roamed about the world aiding the weak and fighting oppression, he neither knew nor questioned why. That was his obsession, his driving force of life. Cruelty and tyranny to the weak sent a red blaze of fury, fierce and lasting, through his soul. When the full flame of his hatred was wakened and loosed, there was no rest for him until his vengeance had been fulfilled to the uttermost. If he thought of it at all, he considered himself 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 Solomon Kane was not wholly a Puritan, though he thought of himself as such.

The Castle of the Devil

"Sir, what matters it where a man be if he is carrying out God's plan for him?"

""It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives."

Death's Black Riders

The hangman asked of the carrion crow,
but the raven made reply:
"Black ride the men who ride with Death
beneath the midnight sky,
"And black each steed and grey each skull
and strange each deathly eye.
"They have given their breath to grey old Death
and yet they cannot die."

The Moon of Skulls

"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

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 the 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.

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

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.

"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

"By thought a crawling ruin,
By life a leaping mire,
By a broken heart in the breast of the world,
And the end of the world's desire."
CHESTERTON

"The last lost giant, even God,
Is risen against the world."
CHESTERTON

The Blue Flame of Vengeance

"Death is a blue flame dancing over corpses."
SOLOMON KANE

"Young man, your words are vain and worldly. They are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
"How come you here?" asked Jack bluntly. "And how is it that I saw you not until you spoke?"
"I came here as all honest men come, young sir," the deep voice answered, as the speaker wrapped his wide black cloak about him and reseated himself on the boulder, "on my two legs - as for the other: men engrossed in their own affairs to the point of taking the Name in vain, see neither their friends - to their shame - nor their foes - to their harm."

"The Lord hath led my feet into many strange places, and over many queer paths," said he sombrely. "Some were fair and many were foul; sometimes I seemed to wander without purpose or guidance but always when I sought deep I found fit reason therefor. And harkee, lad, forbye the fires of Hell there is no hotter fire than the blue flame of vengeance which burneth a man's heart night and day without rest until he quench it in blood."
"It hath been my duty in times past to ease various evil men of their lives - well, the Lord is my staff and my guide and methinks he hath delivered mine enemy into mine hands."

Solomon Kane regarded him with a cold concentrated hate in his eyes; yet it was not so much the hatred that was blood chilling - as it was a bleak certainty of doom, a relentless cold blood lust that was sure of satiety.
"Death was more kind to her than you had been. She had no brothers, no one but that old man. None might avenge her -"
"Except you, Sir Galahad?" sneered the Fishhawk.
"Yes, I, you damned black swine!" roared Kane unexpectedly. The crash of his powerful voice almost shattered the ear drums and hardened buccaneers started and blenched. Nothing is more stunning or terrible than the sight of a man of icy nerves and iron control suddenly losing that control and flaming into a full withering blast of murderous fury. For a fleeting instant as he thundered those words, Kane was a fearful picture of primitive, relentless and incarnate passion. Then the storm passed instantly and he was his icy self again - cold as chill steel, calm and deadly as a cobra.

"Would you were handier with the steel, Sir George; I take shame in slaying you - but - well, when a man sets foot on an adder he asks not its size."

"Thou hast thanked me enough, little one," said the strange man tenderly. "'Tis enough to see thee well and delivered out of persecution."
"But who are you? Whence come you? What seek you? Whither do you go?"
"I am a landless man." A strange intangible, almost mystic look flashed into his cold eyes. "I come out of the sunset and into the sunrise I go, wherever the Lord doth guide my feet. I seek - my soul's salvation, mayhap. I came, following the trail of vengeance. Now I must leave you. The dawn is not far away and I would not have it find me idle. It may be I shall see you no more. My work here is done; the long red trail is ended. The man of blood is dead. But there be other men of blood, and other trails of revenge and retribution. I work the will of God. While evil flourishes and wrongs grow rank, while men are persecuted and women wronged, while weak things, human or animal, are maltreated, there is no rest for me beneath the skies, nor peace at any board or bed. Farewell!"
"Stay!" cried out Jack, rising, tears springing suddenly into his eyes.
But the tall form had vanished in the darkness and no sound came back of his going.

The Hills of the Dead

"Yonder in the unknown vastness" - his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight - "yonder lie mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle - once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding - over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure - mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing."

Trailing his musket he started forward slowly. He had no objective in view. This was all unknown country and one direction was as good as another. Many weeks ago he had plunged into the jungle with the assurance born of courage and ignorance. Having by some miracle survived the first few weeks, he was becoming hard and toughened, able to hold his own with any of the grim denizens of the fastness he dared.

Out of the caves they were swarming, the terrible black silent shapes; up the slopes they came charging and over the boulders they came clambering, and their red eyes were all turned toward the two humans who stood above the silent city. The caves belched them forth in an unholy judgment day.

The dead hands were close at their back when they scrambled up the last slope and stood on a ledge which was the top of the crag. The fiends halted silently a moment, then came clambering after them. Kane clubbed his musket and smashed down into the red-eyed faces, knocking aside the upleaping hands. They surged up like a black wave; he swung his musket in a silent fury that matched theirs. The black wave broke and wavered back; came on again.

He - could - not - kill - them! These words beat on his brain like a sledge on an anvil as he shattered wood-like flesh and dead bone with his smashing swings. He knocked them down, hurled them back, but they rose and came on again.
Kane's vision blurred to the sweep of hideous black faces with red, staring eyes. Those in front were horrible to see now, for their skulls were shattered, their faces caved in and their limbs broken. But still they came on and those behind reached across the shoulders to clutch at the man who defied them.
Kane was red but the blood was all his. From the long-withered veins of those monsters no single drop of warm red blood trickled.

The Return of Sir Richard Grenville

One slept beneath the branches dim,
Cloaked in the crawling mist,
And Richard Grenville came to him
And plucked him by the wrist.
No nightwind shook the forest deep
Where the shadows of Doom were spread,
And Solomon Kane awoke from sleep
And looked upon the dead.

He spake in wonder, not in fear:
"How walks a man who died?
"Friend of old times, what do ye here?
"Long fallen at my side?"

"Rise up, rise up," Sir Richard said,
"The hounds of Doom are free;
"The slayers come to take your head
"To hang on the ju-ju tree.

"Swift feet press the jungle mud
"Where the shadows are grim and stark,
"And naked men who pant for blood
"Are racing through the dark."

And Solomon rose and bared his sword,
And swift as tongue could tell,
The dark spewed forth a painted horde
Like shadows out of Hell.

His pistols thundered in the night,
And in that burst of flame
He saw red eyes with hate alight,
And on the figures came.

His sword was like a cobra's stroke
And death hummed in its tune;
His arm was steel and knotted oak
Beneath the rising moon.

But by him sang another sword,
And a great form roared and thrust,
And dropped like leaves the screaming horde
To writhe in bloody dust.

Silent as death their charge had been,
Silent as night they fled;
And in the trampled glade was seen
Only the torn dead.

And Solomon turned with outstretched hand,
Then halted suddenly,
For no man stood with naked brand
Beneath the moon-lit tree

Wings in the Night

And then Kane caught a glimpse among the tress that made his heart leap with a sudden, nameless horror, and a few moments later he stood before Horror itself, stark and grisly. In a wide clearing, on a rather bold incline stood a grim stake, and to this stake was bound a thing that had once been a black man.
He knew much of the fiendishness of man's inhumanity, but now he shuddered and grew sick. Yet it was not so much the ghastliness of the mutilations, horrible as they were, that shook Kane's soul, but the knowledge that the wretch still lived.
Kane spoke to the ghastly thing and it screamed unbearably, writhing in incredible contortions, while its head jerked up and down with the jerking of mangled nerves, and the empty, gaping eye-sockets seemed striving to see from their emptiness. And moaning low and brain-shatteringly it huddled its outraged self against the stake where it was bound and lifted its head in a grisly attitude of listening, as if it expected something out of the skies.
"Listen", said Kane, in the dialect of the river-tribes. "Do not fear me - I will not harm you and nothing else shall harm you any more. I am going to loose you."
Kane poured water from his canteen between the mangled lips, and bending close, said: "Tell me more of these devils, for by the God of my people, this deed shall not go unavenged, though Satan himself bar my way."

Even as Kane whirled he realized he had committed the jungle-farer's unpardonable crime - he had allowed his astonishment and curiosity to throw him off guard.

The bat-people were taking to the air. No longer would they face this white skinned madman who in his insanity was more terrible than they. But they went not alone alone into the upper regions. In their lustful talons they bore writhing, screaming forms, and Kane, raging to and fro with his dripping ax, found himself alone in a corpse-choked village.
He threw back his head to shriek his hate at the fiends above him and he felt warm, thick drops fall into his face, while the shadowy skies were filled with screams of agony and the laughter of monsters. And Kane's last vestige of reason snapped as the sounds of that ghastly feast in the skies filled the night and the blood that rained from the stars fell into his face.

Kane looked at the shambles that had been Boganda, and he looked at the death mask of Goru. And he lifted his clenched fists above his head, and with glaring eyes raised and writhing lips flecked with froth, he cursed the sky and the earth and the spheres above and below. He cursed the cold stars, the blazing sun, the mocking moon and the whisper of the wind. He cursed all fates and destinies, all that he had loved or hated, the silent cities beneath the seas, the past ages and the future eons. In one soul-shaking burst of blasphemy he cursed the gods and devils who make mankind their sport, and he cursed Man who lives blindly on and blindly offers his back to the iron-hoofed feet of his gods.

Then as breath failed he halted, panting. From the lower reaches sounded the deep roaring of a lion and into the eyes of Solomon Kane came a crafty gleam. He stood long, as one frozen, and out of his madness grew a desperate plan. And he silently recanted his blasphemy, for if the brazen-hoofed gods made Man for their sport and plaything, they also gave him a brain that holds craft and cruelty greater than any other living thing.
"There you shall bide," said Solomon Kane to the head of Goru. "The sun will wither you and the cold dews of night will shrivel you. But I will keep the kites from you and your eyes shall see the fall of your slayers. Aye, I could not save the people of Boganda, but by the God of my race, I can avenge them. Man is the sport and sustenance of titanic beings of Night and Horrow whose giant wings hover ever above him. But even evil things may come to an end - and watch ye, Goru."

The Footfalls Within

Solomon Kane gazed somberly at the black woman who lay dead at his feet. Little more than a girl she was, but her wasted limbs and staring eyes showed that she had suffered much before death brought her merciful relief.
His cold eyes deepened strangely, showing chill glints and lights like clouds passing across depths of ice.
He raised his head and gazed eastward. Black dots against the blue wheeled and circled.
"The kites mark their trail," muttered the tall Englishman. "Destruction goeth before them and death followeth after. Wo unto ye, sons of iniquity, for the wrath of God is upon ye. The cords be loosened on the iron necks of the hounds of hate and the bow of vengeance is strung. Ye are proud-stomached and strong, and the people cry out beneath your feet, but retribution cometh in the blackness of midnight and the redness of dawn."

Kane followed like a brooding ghost and his rage and hatred at into his soul like a canker. Each crack of the whips was like a blow on his own shoulders. The heat and cruelty of the tropics played queer tricks with white men. Ordinary passions become monstrous things; irritation turns to a berserker rage; anger flames into unexpected madness and men kill in a red mist of passion, and wonder, aghast, afterward.
The fury Solomon Kane felt would have been enough at any time and in any place to shake a man to his foundation; now it assumed monstrous proportions, so that Kane shivered as if with a chill, iron claws scratched at his brain and he saw the slaves and the slavers through a crimson mist.

"Take up these weapons which the warriors dropped in their haste," said he, "and get you home. This is an evil place. Get ye back to your villages and when the next Arabs come, die in the ruins of your huts rather than be slaves."

The Children of Asshur

They had been a simple, good-natured people, who had welcomed him into their huts and given him freely of their humble goods. Kane's heart was hot with wrath against their unknown destroyers, but even deeper than that burned his unquenchable curiosity, the curse of the white man.

Kane swore sickly. How incredible - how ghastly - to think that his lusty English oaths had doomed a man to a horrible death. Aye - crafty Yamen had translated his random words in his own way. And so the prince, whom Kane had never seen before, writhed beneath the skinning knives of his executioners in the market-place below, where the crowd shrieked or jeered.
"Sula," he said, "what do these people call themselves?"
"Assyrians, bwana," answered the black absently, staring in horrified fascination at the grisly scene below.

A red mist veiled the Englishman's sight and through it he saw horror growing in Shem's inhuman eyes - saw them distend and turn blood-shot - saw the mouth gape and the tongue protrude as the shaven head was bent back at a horrible angle - then Shem's neck snapped like a heavy branch and the straining body went limp in Kane's hands.

And now around the corner came roaring a great tawny shape. A lion, loose in the city streets!
The blacks dropped the litter and fled, shrieking, while the people on the housetops screamed. The girl cried out once, scrambling up in the very path of the charging monster. She stood facing it, frozen with terror.
Kane, at the first roar of the beast, had experienced a fierce satisfaction. So hateful had Ninn become to him that the thought of a wild beast raging through its streets and devouring its cruel inhabitants had given the Puritan an indisputable satisfaction. But now, as he saw the pitiful figure of the girl facing the man-eater, he felt a pang of pity for her, and acted.

Kane faced them, red fury seething in his soul, ready to leap among them and do what damage he could with his naked hands before he died, when down the stones of the street sounded the tramp of marching men, and a company of soldiers swung into view, their spears red from the recent strife.
The girl cried out and ran forward to fling her arms about the stalwart neck of the young officer in command and there followed a rapid fire of conversation which Kane naturally could not understand. Then the officer spoke curtly to the guards, who drew back, and advanced toward Kane, his empty hands outstretched, a smile on his lips. His manner was friendly in the extreme and the Englishman realized that he was trying to express his gratitude for his rescue of the girl, who was no doubt either his sister or his sweetheart. The priest frothed and cursed, but the young noble answered him shortly, and made motions for Kane to accompany him. Then as the Englishman hesitated, suspicious, he drew his own sword and extended it to Kane, hilt foremost. Kane took the weapon, it mighty have been the form of courtesy to have refused it, but Kane was unwilling to take chances, and he felt much more secure with a weapon in his hand.

Solomon Kane's Homecoming

The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs,
the air was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand
when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence strange and dazed
through the little Devon town,
His gaze, like a ghost's come back to life,
roamed up the streets and down.
The people followed wonderingly
to mark his spectral stare,
And in the tavern silently
they thronged about him there.
He heard as a man hears in a dream
the worn old rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking-jack
and spoke as a ghost might speak:

"There sat Sir Richard Grenville once;
in smoke and flame he passed,
"And we were one to fifty-three,
but we gave them blast for blast.
"From crimson dawn to crimson dawn,
we held the Dons at bay.
"The dead lay littered on our decks,
our masts were shot away.

"We beat them back with broken blades,
till crimson ran the tide;
"Death thundered in the cannon smoke
when Richard Grenville died.
"We should have blown her hull apart
and sunk beneath the Main."
The people saw upon his wrists
the scars of the racks of Spain.

"Where is Bess?" said Solomon Kane.
"Woe that I caused her tears."
"In the quiet churchyard by the sea
she has slept these seven years."
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane,
and Solomon bowed his head.
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
and the fairest fade," he said.

His eyes were mystical deep pools
that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head
and spoke of his wanderings.
"Mine eyes have looked on sorcery
in the dark and naked lands,
"Horror born of the jungle gloom
and death on the pathless sands.

"And I have known a deathless queen
in a city old as Death,
"Where towering pyramids of skulls
her glory witnessth.
"Her kiss was like an adder's fang,
with the sweetness Lilith had,
"And her red-eyed vassals howled for blood
in that City of the Mad.

"And I have slain a vampire shape
that sucked a black king white,
"And I roamed through grisly hills
where dead men walked at night.
"And I have seen heads fall like fruit
in the slaver's barracoon,
"And I have seen winged demons fly
all naked in the moon.

"My feet are weary of wandering
and age comes on apace;
"I fain would dwell in Devon now,
forever in my place."
The howling of the ocean pack
came whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane threw up his head
like a hound that snuffs a trail.

A-down the wind like a running pack
the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again
and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam
grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by
and went into the night.

A wild moon rode the wild white clouds,
the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again
and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon,
where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eery echoed call
that whistled down the wind.

Solomon Kane's Homecoming (variant)

The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs,
the wind was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand
when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence through the streets
of the little Devon town,
The folk all followed whispering
all up the streets and down.
They whispered of his sun-bronzed hue
and his deep strange stare;
They followed him into the tavern
and thronged about him there.
He heard, as a man hears in a dream,
the old worn rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking jack
and spoke as a ghost might speak:

"Where are the lads that gathered here
so many years ago?
"Drake and Hawkins and Oxenham,
Grenville and Leigh and Yeo?
"Was it so long ago," said Kane,
"sat Richard Grenville there?
"The dogs of Spain," said Solomon Kane,
"by God, we fought them fair!

"For a day and a night and a day again
we held their fleet at bay,
"Till their round shot riddled us through and through
and ripped our masts away.
"Where is Bess?" said Solomon Kane.
"It racked me hard to go -
"But I heard the high tide grate the keel
and I heard the sea-wind blow.

"I left her - though it racked my heart
to see the lass in tears -"
"In the quiet churchyard by the sea
she has slept these seven years."
The sea-wind moaned at the window pane
and Solomon bowed his head.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
and the fairest fade," he said.

His eyes were mystical deep pools
that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head
and spoke of his wanderings.
"My feet have tracked a bloody way
across the trackless sands,
"Mine eyes have looked on sorcery
in the dark and naked lands.

"And I have known a deathless queen
in a city old as Death;
"Her smile was like a serpent's kiss,
her kiss was like Lilith's breath.
"And I roamed through grisly hills
where dead men walked by night,
"And I have seen a tattered corpse
stand up to blast men's sight.

"And I have heard the death-chant rise
in the slaver's barracoon,
"And I have seen a winged fiend fly,
all naked, in the moon.
"My feet are weary of wandering
and age comes on apace -
"I fain would dwell in Devon now,
forever in my place."

The shouting of the ocean-winds
went whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane raised up his head
like a hound that snuffs a trail.
A-down the wind like a running pack,
the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again
and girt his Spanish blade.

Hands held him hard but the vagrant gleam
in his eyes grew blind and bright,
And Solomon Kane put by the folk
and went into the night.
A wild moon rode in the wild white clouds,
the waves their white crests showed
When Solomon Kane went forth again,
and no man knew his road.

They saw him etched against the moon
on the hill in clouds that thinned,
They heard an eery echoed call
that whistled down the wind.
Out of the tavern into the night
went Solomon Kane once more,
He heard the clamor of the winds,
he had harked to the ocean's roar.