Robert Ervin Howard

Wings in the Night Robert Ervin Howard

Book Excerpt: ... A deep roaring to the westward warned him that beasts of prey were aroam, and he walked rapidly down the rolling slopes until he came to a dense grove some distance from that in which he had fought the cannibal. He climbed high among the great branches until he found a thick crotch that would accommodate even his tall frame. The branches above would guard him from a sudden swoop of any winged thing, and if savages were lurking near, their clamber into the tree would warn him, for he slept lightly as a cat. As for serpents and leopards, they were chances he had taken a thousand times. Solomon Kane slept and his dreams were vague, chaotic, haunted with a suggestion of pre- human evil and which at last merged into a vision vivid as a scene in waking life. Solomon dreamed he woke with a start, drawing a pistol--for so long had his life been that of the wolf, that reaching for a weapon was his natural reaction upon waking suddenly....