In India, Solomon Kane is following a black-maned lion at the urging of N’Longa’s ancient staff.
A murdered monk has returned as a vetala, Rani Durgavati faces Mughal demands, and Kane still cannot tell who – or what – is directing his course.
With Solomon Kane: The Lion Errant #3, the staff is worth another look.
It has saved Kane’s life, summoned an old friend, and survived from an age beyond human memory. Patch Zircher’s latest adventure also brings back two people whose history with Kane began in The Serpent Ring.
Short on time? Read “The Hills of the Dead,” then The Lion Errant #1-2. That gives you the story of how Kane received the staff and the two issues leading directly into #3.
For a fuller reading, follow the order below.
Red Shadows
Start with Kane’s first published adventure and his first meeting with N’Longa.
Pursuing Le Loup from France to Africa, Kane finds himself a captive alongside a man whose powers he has reason to fear before he learns to trust him.
N’Longa leaves his own body and sends his spirit into a corpse. If the vetala in The Lion Errant #1 caught your attention, return to this scene.
This story also puts N’Longa’s later friendship with Kane in perspective, as their first meeting was hardly a comfortable one.
The Moon of Skulls
In the story “The Moon of Skulls”, Kane mentions having sailed to “Hindustan and Cathay.” It is only a passing remark, but Zircher has cited it as an opening for the India adventure in The Lion Errant.
There is another connection to keep in mind.
“The Moon of Skulls” takes Kane to Negari, an African city with an Atlantean past.
That history will surface again when “The Footfalls Within” reaches back into the staff’s origins.
The Hills of the Dead
If you read only one Howard story before #3, read this one.
N’Longa gives Kane the staff and tells him how to call for help: lay it across his breast, fold his hands over it, and sleep. When Kane reaches out to N’Longa in The Lion Errant #2, he uses the same method.
In the vampire-haunted hills, the staff protects Kane where his ordinary weapons fail. It can also draw N’Longa’s spirit to him. But the man who gives it to Kane cannot account for its age. By the end of the story, Kane knows what the staff can do for him, but he does not know where it came from.
That unanswered question follows him into The Lion Errant.
Wings in the Night
In this story, Kane learns that the staff does not make him invulnerable.
The winged akaana of this story are living creatures, however monstrous they may be, and N’Longa’s help is shown here to be reserved for supernatural threats.
This story also finds Kane raging against the gods and devils that make sport of human lives.
In The Lion Errant, where he cannot tell what power is steering his path, that anger has fresh relevance.
The Footfalls Within
Now return to the question “The Hills of the Dead” leaves open: what is the staff?
Howard traces it through the hands of Moses and Solomon, the Pharaohs and the kings of Atlantis, then further back into a world before humankind. The weapon N’Longa placed in Kane’s hands is older, and stranger, than Kane first understood.
“The Footfalls Within” was published before “Wings in the Night,” but Kane remembers the akaana in it. Reading it here follows that reference and lets the staff’s history unfold after you have seen both its powers and its limits.
The Serpent Ring #1-4
Before the Bensaids return in The Lion Errant #2, meet them in Zircher’s first Solomon Kane miniseries.
A dying man’s request sends Kane to Abramo Bensaid, a Venetian scholar, and his daughter, Diamanta, with a stolen statuette of Set.
Their search for the Serpent Ring draws the three into an adventure marked by family loyalties and secrets Kane has good reason to fear revealing.
Those four issues, also collected as Volume 1, give Abramo’s examination of the staff in The Lion Errant #2 some history. They also explain why Diamanta’s reunion with Kane is more complicated than a meeting between old acquaintances.
The Lion Errant #1-2
Now return to India in 1564.
Rani Durgavati faces Mughal demands, a murdered monk rises as a vetala, and a black-maned lion draws Kane onward at the staff’s urging. By the end of #2, N’Longa and the Bensaids have entered the story, but Kane still does not know who is guiding him (or why).
With the earlier stories in mind, you know how Kane came by the staff, what it has done for him, how far back its history reaches, and why the Bensaids matter. The question of where the lion is leading him remains for The Lion Errant #3.
All five Howard stories in this guide are collected in The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane.
Solomon Kane: The Lion Errant #3 is now on sale!
