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- Herausgeber: Titan Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Serie: Savage Tales Short Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Capturing the electric short fiction energy that led Robert E. Howard to be one of the top fantasy writers of the century, with exclusive serialized eBook stories starring Conan, Solomon Kane, and more by many of today's top writers in fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. Created by the author responsible for Conan of Cimmeria, Solomon Kane is "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… a knight errant in the somber clothes of the 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."—Robert E. Howard, "The Moon of Skulls"
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Leave us a Review
Copyright
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About the Author
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SOLOMON KANE: THE HOUND OF GOD
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803366357
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: November 2023
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
© 2023 Robert E Howard Properties LLC. SOLOMON KANE, ROBERT E HOWARD and related logos, names and character likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of Robert E Howard Properties LLC. All Rights Reserved. Heroic Signatures is a trademark of Cabinet Licensing LLC.
Jonathan Maberry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Typeset by ePub KNOWHOW Ltd.
THE HOUND OF GOD
JONATHAN MABERRY
Livonia, 1598
The traveler looked up at the leaden sky. The sun was a ghost behind veils of gray clouds. With whispered cruelty a raw wind proclaimed the advent of winter.
Pines towered around him, rising like the arms of supplicants begging for warmth, for forgiveness. For anything except to be witnesses to what lay on the ground around them.
The traveler closed his eyes and prayed for strength and understanding. Unspoken prayers, because he did not at all trust that anything spoken would come out as mere words. Screams were far more likely. And so he ground his jaws together and gave his words no breath or liberty. He stood thus for a long time, fists balled at his sides, chest heaving as if he had climbed a great mountain. That was passion, though, and not exertion.
Passion.
Despair.
Hatred.
When he opened his eyes, there were no angels to stand with him, flaming swords in hand. There was nothing at all except the endless forest, the supplicating trees, and the blood.
So much blood.
Everywhere.
It soaked into the loamy soil and ran in crooked lines down the bark of the pines. It glistened in small crimson pools and gleamed on the sword-tip ends of sturdy late autumn grass. The entire clearing in which he stood was awash in it, and here and there rose islands in this red lake. Small islands, lumpish and obscene, hinting at what they had been before this butchery. Heads and arms, legless torsos. There was a pair of hands still clutched around the shaft of a scythe.
There were other bundles, too, and it was these that made him look away. Small, ruined things wrapped in the tattered rags of swaddling clothes.
“God in heaven,” he said as the tears coursed down his face. “Have Hell’s doors opened?”
A crow, perched on a branch above him, cawed softly as if in reply.
He turned to look at it. Even the bird’s oily black wings were spattered with scarlet, and the red on its beak spoke eloquently of the feast his presence had interrupted. Solomon Kane snatched at his Spanish rapier, wanting to slash the bird from its perch and stamp it with a punishing bootheel.
But he paused, the steel only half drawn, sighed sadly, and let the sword slide back into its sheath.
He had seen murder before. Kane had spilled an ocean of blood in his own travels, in wars and skirmishes, in dark African jungles and bat-infested castles. The sight of death was not new to him, nor the evidence of murder and slaughter.
And yet… this unsettled him, and he was not a man who was easily disturbed.
The carnage around him was not the result of a battle. Apart from the scythe, there were no weapons here. This was not even the leavings of a band of brigands. Not one among the many dead were soldiers or even as much as a beadle with his staff.
