Solomon Kane by Ramsey Campbell

pursuing him. The arms were still outstretched, and the fingers were charred to the bone. Might an agonised spasm have contorted the body as well? The mouth was gaping in a grimace, however nearly lipless, and the eyes must have expressed outrage too. But the eyes had been seared from the head.
    Now that Kane had noticed one corpse he saw them everywhere. Some of the villagers had sought refuge in their cottages, where they were almost indistinguishable from the rubble. Some had died in the street as they fled. One man’s hands had gouged furrows in the hard earth before his fingers were reduced to blackened bones. Another had perished clutching at his face, with which the heat had melded the remains of his hands as his body clenched itself. Kane could identify the bodies of women only by the children they had died trying to protect, because the women’s skulls were charred as bald as any man’s. The children were the worst, their small shrivelled bodies not merely clasped in their mothers’ arms but literally inseparable from them. Every child was eyeless. “Who could have done this?” Edward muttered almost too low to be heard.
    The question seemed to release the men from a silence that the devastation had imposed on them. “The Devil has been here,” William said in a voice quiet enough for church.
    Kane thought it did indeed resemble a vision of Hell: the tortured bodies, the stenches of charred wood and rubble and worse, the heat that still lurked on every side, parching his breaths and turning his throat raw.William’s remark sent Edward to his knees in the road, to raise his voice in prayer. “Holy Father...”
    As though in response to his entreaty, a crow flapped up from the heart of the village. Kane preferred not to wonder how it might have been busy until it had been disturbed. He heard more wings fluttering ahead, and strode towards them, only to halt. “No,” he said, “not the Devil.”
    In the middle of the green, surrounded by a patch of blackened grass, a stake protruded from the top of a pyre. While the lower section of the heap of fuel had been partly consumed, the stake was undamaged. “There was a witch,” Kane said.
    William advanced to stand by him. Not for the first time since entering the village, he made a sign of the cross. “There was a burning,” Kane told him, “but the creature must have broken loose.”
    A dull glint drew his attention to the top of the pyre. A heavy chain was coiled like a serpent around the foot of the stake. So the intended victim’s bonds had not burned through. “We should leave,” said Kane.
    Edward abandoned his prayer and stumbled to his feet, hurrying to join his father. “We cannot leave these people to the crows,” he protested.
    Kane disliked the prospect, but had Edward forgotten his young brother and the women? “We can do nothing for them, Edward,” Kane said. “The witch may still be here.”
    Edward folded his arms and faced him. “They must be given a Christian burial,” he said, and his mouth had grown firm.
    “My son,” William said, “you are a constant reminder of our duties.”
    “It must be done by nightfall,” said Kane. Given thestate of the bodies, it seemed a daunting task. He was staring about at the ruins, to make sure if he could that the creature responsible was not concealed among them, when Meredith called “Is someone there?”
    Her voice was closer than it ought to be. Kane turned to find that she had ventured as far as the edge of the village while Samuel and their mother lingered near the wagon. Meredith was peering into the remains of one of the outermost cottages. As Kane and his companions hurried to her, she stepped through the charred doorframe and picked her way across the rubble. “What is it, Meredith?” said Edward.
    She was stooping in the middle of the ruin. She had found a woman’s body, Kane saw. It appeared to be less affected by the fire than the others he had seen; even the clothes were