Rattle of Bones - Robert E Howard

0:00When you're ready to slow down, especially before bed, listen to Soul Good Sounds. We create calming audio, ambient soundscapes, and peaceful listening experiences designed to help you relax, unwind, and fall asleep. Search Soul Good Sounds wherever you listen to podcasts, that's S-O-L-G-O-O-D sounds. Soul Good Sounds rest well. Rattle of Bones by Robert D. Howard Landlord Ho, the shout broke the lowering silence and reverberated through the black forest with sinister echoing. This place hath a forbidding aspect to me seemeth. Two men stood in front of the forest tavern. The building was low, long, and rambling, built of heavy logs. Its small windows were heavily barred, and the door was closed. Above the door its sinister sign showed faintly, he cleft skull. This door swung slowly open, and a bearded face peered out.

1:00The owner of the face stepped back and motioned his guests to enter, with a grudging gesture it seemed. A candle gleamed on a table, a flame smoldered in the fireplace. ''Your names?'' Solomon Cain said the taller man briefly. ''Gaston la mort,'' the other spoke curtly. ''But what is that to you?'' Strangers are few in the black forest, grunted the host, bandits many, sit at yonder table and I will bring food. The two men sat down, with the bearing of men who have traveled far. One was a tall gaunt man, clad in a featherless hat and somber black garments, which set off the dark pallor of his forbidding face. The other was of a different type entirely, bedecked with lace and plumes, although his finery was somewhat stained from travel. He was handsome in a bold way, and his restless eyes shifted from side to side, never still an instant. The host brought wine and food to the rough-ewn table, and then stood back in the shadows, like a somber image.

2:01His features, now receding into vagueness, now luredly etched in the firelight as it leapt and flickered, were masked in a beard which seemed to almost animal-like in thickness. A great nose curved above this beard, and two small red eyes stared unblinkingly at his guests. ''Who are you?'' suddenly asked the younger man. ''I am the host of the cleft skull tavern,'' suddenly replied the other. His tone seemed to challenge his questioner to ask further. ''Do you have many guests?'' ''Larmoan pursued?'' ''Few come twice,'' the host grunted. Pain started and glanced up straight into those small red eyes, as if he sought for some hidden meaning in the host's words. The flaming eyes seemed to dilate, then dropped solently before the Englishman's cold stare. ''I'm for bed,'' said Cain abruptly, bringing his meal to a close, ''I must take up my journey by daylight, and I, at the Frenchman. Host, show us to our chambers.'' Black shadow was wavered on the wall as the two followed their silent host down a long,

3:01dark hall. The stocky, broad body of their guide seemed to grow and expand in the light of the small candle which he carried, throwing a long, grim shadow behind him. At a certain door he halted, indicating that they were to sleep there. They entered, the host lit a candle with the one he carried, then lurched back the way he had come. In the chamber the two men glanced at each other. The only furnishings of the room were a couple of bunks, a chair or two, and a heavy table. Let us see if there be any way to make fast the door, said Cain, ''I like not the looks of my host.'' ''There are racks on the door and jam for a bar,'' said Gueston, ''but no bar.'' We might break up the table and use its pieces for a bar, Muse Cain. ''Mondue,'' said Lermont, ''you are a timorous, Monsieur.'' Cain scowled, ''I like not being murdered in my sleep,'' he answered gruffly. ''My faith,'' the Frenchman laughed, ''we are chance met, until I overtook you on the forest road, an hour before sunset, we had never seen each other.''

4:03''I have seen you somewhere before,'' answered Cain, ''though I cannot now recall where. As for the other, I assume every man is an honest fellow, until he shows me he is a rogue. Moreover, I am a light sleeper and slumber with a pistol at hand.'' The Frenchman left. ''I was wondering how Monsieur could bring himself to sleep in the room with a stranger, ha ha! All right, Monsieur Englishman, let us go forth and take a bar from one of the other rooms.'' Taking the candle with them, they went into the corridor. Other silence rained, and the small candle twinkled redly and evilly in the thick darkness. My host hath neither guests nor servants muttered Solomon Cain, a strange tavern. What is the name now? These German words come not easily to me, the cleft skull, a bloody name of faith. They tried the rooms next to theirs, but no bar rewarded their search, unless they came to the last room at the end of the corridor. They entered. It was furnished like the rest, except that the door was provided with a small, barred

5:06opening, and fastened from the outside with a heavy bolt, which was secured at one end to the door jam. They raised the bolt and looked in. There should be an outer window, but there is not muttered Cain. ''Look! The floor was stained darkly. The walls and the one bunk were hacked in places, great splinters having been torn away.'' ''Men have died in here.'' said Cain somberly. ''Is Yonder not a bar fixed in the wall?'' ''I, but he's made fast.'' said the Frenchman, tugging at it. ''The... A section of the walls hung back, and Gaston gave a quick exclamation. A small secret room was revealed, and the two men bent over the grizzly thing that lay upon its floor. The skeleton of a man, said Gaston, and behold, how his bony leg is shackled to the floor. He was imprisoned here and died.'' ''Nay, said Cain. The skull is cleft. Me thinks my host had a grim reason for the name of his hellish tavern.'' This man, like us, was no doubt a wanderer who fell into the fiend's hands.

6:07''Ladli,' said Gaston, without interest. He was engaged in idly working the great iron ring from the skeleton's leg bones. Failing in this, he drew his sword, and with an exhibition of remarkable strength, cut the chain which joined the ring on the leg to a ring set deep in the log floor. ''Why should he shackle his skeleton to the floor?'' used the Frenchman. ''Mont-blu, to the waste of good Jane. Now miss you, hereanically addressed the white heap of bones. I have freed you, and you may go where you like.'' ''Have done, Cain's voice was deep. No good will come of marking the dead.'' The dead should defend themselves, leth, lauron. ''Somehow, I will slay the man who kills me, though my corpse climb up forty fathoms of ocean to do it.'' Cain turned toward the outer door, closing the door of the secret room behind him. He liked not this talk which smacked of demonery and witchcraft, and he was in haste to face the host with the charge of his guilt. As he turned, with his back to the Frenchman, he felt the touch of cold steel against

7:08his neck and knew that a pistol muzzle was pressed close beneath the base of his brain. ''Move not miss you, the voice was low and silky. Move not, or I will scatter your few brains over the room.'' The Puritan, raging inwardly, stood with his hands in the air, while our mall slipped his pistols and soared from their sheaths. ''Now you can turn,'' said Gaston, stepping back. Cain bent a grim eye on the dapper fellow, who stood bare-headed now, hat in one hand, the other hand leveling his long pistol. ''Gaston the butcher,' said the Englishman somberly. ''Fool that I was to trust a Frenchman.'' ''You range far, murderer. I remember you now, with that cursed great hat off. I saw you in Calais, some years ago. ''I. And now you will see me never again. What was that?'' Rat's exploring on skeleton, said Cain, watching the bandit like a hawk, waiting for a single slight wavering of that black gun muzzle. The sound was of the rattle of bones.

8:10Back enough, return the other. ''Now miss you, Cain. I know you carry considerable money on your person. I had thought to wait until you slept and then slay you, but the opportunity presented itself and I took it. You trick easily.'' ''I had little thought that I should fear a man with whom I had broken bread,' said Cain, a deep timber of slow fury sounding in his voice. The bandit left cynically. His eyes narrowed as he began to back slowly toward the outer door. Cain's sinews tensed involuntarily. He gathered himself like a giant wolf about to launch himself in a death-leap, but Gaston's hand was like a rock and the pistol never trembled. ''We will have no death plunges after the shots,' said Gaston. ''Stand still, miss you. I have seen men killed by dying men, and I wish to have a distance enough between us to preclude that possibility. My faith, I will shoot, you will row and charge, but you will die before you reach me with your bare hands. And mine host will have another skeleton in his secret niche.

9:12That is, if I do not kill him myself, the fool knows me not nor I him, more over. The Frenchman was in the doorway now, citing along the barrel. The candle which had been stuck in a niche on the wall shed a weird flickering light which did not extend past the doorway. And with the sunness of death from the darkness behind Gaston's back, a broad vague form rose up and the gleaming blades swept down. The Frenchman went to his knees like a butchered ox, his brain spilling from his cleft skull. Above him towered the figure of the host, a wild and terrible spectacle still holding the hangar with which he had slain the bandit. ''Oh, oh!'' he roared, back. Cain had leapt forward as Gaston fell, but the host thrust into his very face a long pistol which he held in his left hand. ''Back!'' he repeated in a Tigris roar, and Cain retreated from the menacing weapon and the insanity in the red eyes. The Englishman stood silent, his flesh crawling as he sensed a deeper and more hideous threat

10:13than the Frenchman had offered. There was something inhuman about this man, who now swayed to and fro like some great forest beast while his merciless laughter boomed out again. ''Gaston the butcher!'' he shouted, kicking the corpse at his feet. ''Oh! My fine brigand will hunt no more!'' I had heard of this fool who roamed the black forest. He wished gold, and he found death. Now your gold shall be mine, and more than gold, vengeance!'' ''I'm no foe of yours,'' Cain spoke calmly. ''Oh, men on my foes, look, the marks on my wrists, see, the marks on my ankles, and deep in my back, the kiss of the nut, and deep in my brain, the wounds of the years of the cold silent cells where I lay as punishment for a crime I never committed, the voice broke in a hideous grotesque sob. Cain made no answer. This man was not the first he had seen, whose brain had shattered amid the horrors of the terrible continental prisons. But I escaped the scream rose triumphantly.

11:14And here I make war, and all men. What was that? Did Cain see a flash of fear in those hideous eyes? My sorcerer is rattling his bones, whispered the host. Then laughed wildly, dying he swore his very bones would weave a net of death for me. I shackled his corpse to the floor, and now, deep in the night, I hear his bare skeleton clash and rattle as he seeks to be free. And I laugh, I laugh, ho ho ho, how he earns to rise and stalk like old king death along these dark corridors when I sleep to slay me in my bed. Suddenly the insane eyes flared hideously. ''You were in that secret room, you in this dead fool. Did he talk to you?'' Cain shuddered in spite of himself. Is it insanity? Or did he actually hear the faint rattle of bones as if the skeleton had moved slightly? Cain shrugged his shoulders, rats will even tug at dusty bones. The host was laughing again. He cycled around Cain, keeping the Englishman always covered, and with his free hand opened

12:16the door. All was darkness within, so that Cain could not even see the glimmer of the bones on the floor. ''Old men are my foes,'' mumbled the host, in the incoherent manner of the insane. ''Why should I spare any man? Who lifted a hand to my aid when I lay for years in the vile dungeons of Carl's rule? And for indeed never proven. Something happened to my brain, then. I became as a wolf, a brother to these of the black forest, to which I fled when I escaped. They have feasted my brothers, on all who lay in my tavern. All except this one, who now clashes his bones, this magician from Russia. Most he comes stalking back through the black shadows, when night is over the world, and slay me. For whom I slay the dead?'' I stripped his bones and shackled him. His sorcery was not powerful enough to save him from me, but all men know that a dead magician is more evil than a living one. ''Move not, Englishman. Your bones I shall leave in this secret room beside this one, too.

13:17The maniac was standing partly in the doorway of the secret room now. His weapons still menacing Cain. Suddenly he seemed to topple backward and vanished in the darkness, and at the same instant a vagrant gust of wind swept down the outer corridor and slammed the door shut behind him. The candle in the wall flickered and went out. Cain's groping hands, sweeping over the floor, found a pistol, and he straightened facing the door where the maniac had vanished. He stood in the utter darkness, his blood freezing, while a hideous muffled screaming came from the secret room, intermingled with the dry, grizzly rattle of fleshless bones. Cain's silence fell. Cain found flint and steel and lighted the candle. Then holding it in one hand and the pistol in the other, he opened the secret door. Great God, he muttered, as cold sweat formed on his body. This thing is beyond all reason, yet with my own eyes I see it. Two vows have here been kept, for guest on the butcher's swore that even in death he would avenge his slaying, and his was the hand which set yon fleshless monster free.

14:21As he, the host of the cleft skull lay lifeless on the floor of the secret room. His beastial face set in lines of terrible fear, and deep in his broken neck were sunk the bare finger bones of the sorcerer's skeleton. End of rattle of bones by Robert E. Howard.