[Mathias Thulmann 01] - Witch Hunter Read online

  He flicked slowly through the worn pages, trying to match one of the patterns he saw there to the arrangement of crimson splotches upon his map.

  A sharp knock upon the door roused him from his tedious labour. The witch hunter rubbed at his eyes again, slipping the thin volume back into its sheath.

  After hours of study, Thulmann decided that his sudden inspiration was an unlikely one. Whatever foul ritual his nameless foe was perpetrating, the sites of the killings did not seem to be a part of it. None of the symbols he had tried to impress upon the map had fit, no matter how complex. There were always other murders, other deaths that did not conform to whatever pattern Thulmann tried to establish.

  A sudden chill crawled along the witch hunter’s spine. Unless the fiend were crafty enough to slay simply to break such a pattern. If that were the case, it would truly take the hand of Sigmar to outguess the monster.

  Thulmann sipped at his glass of wine, grown warm from his neglect, as he walked across the room and opened the door. He half expected to see Reikhertz the innkeeper, following his established custom of inquiring as to the witch hunter’s needs before seeking his own bed. Instead, Thulmann was surprised to find Streng standing there. An uneasy alarm crept into him. It would have taken no mean matter to make the mercenary leave his drinking and gambling after their collection of statements had been completed.

  “Seems you need to update that doodle of yours,” Streng said, a wicked grin on his face. “Reikhertz just let a very distressed fellow in. Insists he needs to speak to the witch hunter.”

  Thulmann set his glass down with a groan. “My ears are fairly bleeding already with the imaginings of these people. If I have one more hell-hound described to me by some oaf who wouldn’t know a troll from a fox with the mange, I swear that the lout will be introduced to a tall tree and a short drop.”

  Streng scratched his scraggly beard. “Not that sort of thing he wants to see you about,” the mercenary informed him. “Seems this fellow had a brother. A brother who went out tonight and never came back.”

  Thulmann stared intently at his henchman, his irritation forgotten. “Go on,” he told him.

  “Well, this fellow gets worried when his brother doesn’t come back. So he leaves his brother’s wife and children safely locked up in the house and goes out looking for him.” The mercenary looked over at the map sprawled across the table. “You better stock up on red paint,” Streng nodded toward the table. Thulmann reached behind him, snatching up his weapons belt from where it lay draped over the bed frame. Pausing to grab up his hat and cloak, he joined Streng in the hallway.

  “Have the Klausners been informed?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Not by our man,” Streng told him. “But in a village this size, you can bet that they have more than a few eyes and ears.”

  Thulmann strode, toward the stairs. “Then we’d better be quick. I’d like a little time to examine the surroundings before Wilhelm’s men arrive to run us off,” the witch hunter said as he descended the stairs.

  The moons of Mannsleib and Morrsleib were low in the darkened sky as the witch hunter and his party made their way through the maze of thin, pole-like trees. He had taken a reluctant Reikhertz along with them, as well as the brother of the slain man to act as their guide.

  The brother, one Fritz Gundolf, had been no less reluctant than the squeamish Reikhertz to accompany Thulmann on his gruesome expedition. It had taken an exertion of his authority and a few thinly veiled threats to impel Fritz to lead them to his brother’s remains. Having seen the mutilated body once, Fritz was visibly horrified at the prospect of revisiting the horrid scene, taking long pulls from the squat clay bottle of ale Reikhertz had provided him with, trying to bolster his courage and numb his fear.

  A chill wind whipped Thulmann’s cloak about as he followed the light cast by the lanterns borne by Reikhertz and Streng, desiccated leaves swirling about his every step.

  He glanced about him, remarking once more upon the remoteness of the area. They were so close to the heart of the district, and yet to the witch hunter, it felt every bit as lonely here as on the slopes of the Grey Mountains or the haunted domains near the dreaded Drakwald Forest.

  There was an ugly reason for this, one which Fritz Gundolf had repeated to him. The Klausners might be the lords and masters of the district, but they were not well-loved and their black-stoned keep and its surrounding forest were openly shunned by the common folk. It had been the rather diminished value of the land adjoining that of the Klausners that had prompted the Gundolfs’ employer, a Klausberg lumber merchant, to purchase the property.

  Only the lure of money could give any of the people of Klaus-berg reason enough to linger so near the ill-favoured family’s holdings.

  What had the Klausners done to earn such enmity, the witch hunter wondered? True, the younger son, Anton, was a vicious and foul-tempered brute, but Wilhelm Klausner himself seemed a fairly considerate lord, his inability to put a stop to the murders notwithstanding, and Gregor Klausner was a bright and honourable man, one who had a deep commitment and affection for the people of the district.

  The villagers and farmers could certainly have done much worse by way of rulers. Why then the resentment and fear? Was it some legacy from the Klausners’ careers as witch hunters?

  Thulmann knew only too well the fear and nervous suspicion a witch hunter evoked in all he encountered. But was that enough to explain the stigma that clung to the Klausners, or was it something more? Time and again over the course of the night, Thulmann had heard hushed voices speak of the dread curse that hovered about the patriarchs of the Klausner line, the horrible thing that would ravage the land until it bore the elder Klausners soul back with it to the blackest pits of the Dark Gods.

  Ahead of him, the lanterns came to a halt. Thulmann advanced, joining his companions. Streng and Reikhertz were looking at Fritz. The forester was turned around, his back facing the direction in which they had been travelling.

  The trembling man took another pull from his bottle, spilling the fiery liquor about his shirt. With his other hand, he stabbed a finger at the trees behind him.

  “That way,” the man choked as the alcohol stung his throat. “Emil is in there! And ain’t nothing you can do to make me go no further!” he swore, staring at the witch hunter with a mixture of terror and defiance. Thulmann nodded, drawing one of his pistols from its holster.

  “Very well, friend Gundolf,” his silky voice spoke. “But you will remain fixed to this spot.” He wagged the barrel of his gun at the subdued peasant. “I warn you, even in poor light I am an excellent shot.”

  Thulmann stalked ahead and gestured for Streng and Reikhertz to accompany him. A part of him disliked threatening the forester, he had after all done his duty and had already displayed a commendable degree of fortitude by returning to this place despite the possibility that whatever had killed his brother might still be abroad. Yet another part of him understood that only by keeping Fritz more afraid of him than whatever had killed his brother would Thulmann keep the man from fleeing back to his hovel as soon as the witch hunter was out of sight. It was an unfair and brutal sort of efficiency, but that did not lessen its effectiveness.

  The smell of blood and excrement announced the body long before the light from the lanterns revealed it. Thulmann deftly relieved Reikhertz of his lantern as the innkeeper withdrew to vomit beside one of the spindly trees.

  The form sprawled across the grass had spilled its guts in an entirely different fashion.

  Thulmann stepped closer, holding his lantern high to reveal as much of the sorry form and its surroundings as he could. Once again, blood stained very little of the ground, most of it splashed across the ground in the familiar south-easterly direction. The body itself was hideously mangled, but the witch hunter had some idea what he was looking at, and what he was looking for.

  A cursory glance showed Thulmann that the forester’s belly had been slashed open, his intestines and stomach removed an
d placed on the ground beside the corpse’s left boot. Further mutilation had occurred in the chest, the ribcage again cut open and spread.

  This time it was not the heart that had been removed, but the lungs. The witch hunter’s mind swept back to an incident three years before, in a small town just outside Talabheim where a fledgling daemonologist and necromancer named Anatol Drexel had practised his foul arts. One of his rituals had been to expunge the “breath of life” from a corpse by puncturing its lungs.

  According to blasphemous texts written by no less terrible a personage than the infamous Doom Lord of Middenheim, doing so would make the corpse ideal for a sort of grisly pseudo-resurrection as one of the undead. But if that was what had been done here, why had the perpetrator of this atrocity left the body behind, where it was certain to be discovered?

  “This wolf is getting pretty damn artsy, eh Mathias?” Streng chuckled with morbid humour. He looked away from his employer, delivering a gruesome description of the corpse for Reikhertz’s benefit. Thulmann ignored the renewed sound of retching and leaned down, inspecting the corpse a little more closely.

  Once again, the blood had been drained from the body, but this time the bloodletting had not been achieved by a stab into the jugular vein, but by the more crude method of slitting the victim’s throat. The witch hunter looked again at the spread of the blood on the ground. This was not the precise spray-effect that had marked the site of Skimmel’s death, but the more sloppy effect of liquid discharged from a bowl.

  The witch hunter stood back, studying the scene in its entirety. There had been less care made with this murder, the ritual fashion was there, but it was less efficient, less precise. There had been no attempt at further mutilation to obscure the intentions of the culprit, and the bloodletting had been crude compared to the single deep stab that had ended Skimmel’s life.

  There was an overall suggestion of haste and carelessness about this killing. Thulmann considered what this might mean. Was the killer losing patience with whatever sorcery he was trying to work, or perhaps there was an element of timing to his magic, and the time left to him was growing short?

  Perhaps the fiend he sought was becoming frightened, worried that he might be caught now that an outsider was investigating the killings. But such a conclusion would mean that the fiend did not fear the Klausners, who had been hunting him now for over a month. Thulmann wondered if he dare follow that notion where it might lead him.

  “Our wolf has a friend,” Streng interrupted. Thulmann looked over at his henchman. Streng was pointing his foot at an impression on the ground. “Boots, and rather fine ones,” the mercenary commented. “Much better than that poor dead bastard is wearing,” he added with a nod of his head toward the feet of the corpse. Thulmann did not need to shift his gaze to recall that Gundolf had been wearing a set of badly patched fur boots.

  The mercenary moved about, setting his foot beside another impression in the ground. Unlike the first, this mark was somewhat smaller than Streng’s foot, though it was likewise the mark of a heeled boot, not unlike a cavalryman’s. “Might even be a third one,” the henchman told Thulmann. He gestured toward a deep mark beside one of the trees. “Of course, it is only a partial and the man might have slipped when he made it, which would have stretched it a bit.”

  Thulmann nodded in approval. “The Count of Ostland lost a good scout when you deserted,” he observed. “Though I imagine that the longevity of his sergeants has improved in your absence.”

  The witch hunter began to stalk the area, inspecting the ground for footprints. “A good deal of tracks coming from that way,” he pointed the barrel of his pistol in the direction that they themselves had come.

  “Aye,” agreed Streng. “That’s how they brought the sorry bugger here. He must have tried to dig his feet in every step of the way to judge by the marks.”

  Thulmann circled the area again, inspecting the ground for further clues. After several minutes, he straightened, shaking his head in disgust. “They may have been sloppy in everything else,” he hissed, “but they made certain to leave no sign of where they went after committing their little atrocity.”

  “We might find something when the sun comes up,” suggested Streng.

  The witch hunter shook his head.

  “We are on borrowed time already,” he told his underling. “I think it is asking too much of even Sigmar to be free of Klausner’s meddling that long.” A sudden idea caused the witch hunter to break into a sly smile. “Of course, we might avail ourselves of his hospitality while he concerns himself with this occurrence.”

  Thulmann considered his idea a bit more, letting a slight laugh slip from his mouth. “We might even find him rather accommodating if he thinks he is keeping us from discovering this spectacle.” Thulmann cast one last look at Gundolf s body, then motioned for Streng to withdraw.

  “Let’s fetch Reikhertz and send him on his way, and tell that man Fritz to keep a close tongue.” Thulmann smiled again. “It wouldn’t do for his lordship to know we’ve been here. Not until I’m ready, at least.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The witch hunter found Klausner Keep in a great deal of agitation as he and Streng rode their steeds toward the imposing structure. Every window seemed to have been lit up, blazing with light and making it look as if the black toad of the keep had suddenly opened a chaotic multitude of eyes. The mouth formed by the gates of the keep yawned wide, and Thulmann could see riders galloping from the fortress, half their number holding aloft flickering torches that betrayed their advance. The horsemen thundered down the path, the hooves of their steeds flinging mud and pulped leaves in every direction.

  Thulmann watched them advance with an elaborate calmness. Beside him, Streng caressed the stock of his crossbow.

  The foremost rider pulled his horse savagely to a stop only a dozen feet or so from where Thulmann and Streng’s horses stood beside the road. The sudden halt brought the rest of the company to a disordered stop, men and mounts grunting in protest. Anton Klausner curled his lip as he considered the witch hunter.

  “Such unpleasant things one finds upon the roads after dark,” the young lord said, his smouldering eyes locking with Thulmann’s. “I should have expected to find you occupied elsewhere.”

  Anton’s expression turned into a look of suspicion as much as contempt. “Or were you unaware of the latest killing?”

  “I am well aware that the fiend has struck again,” Thulmann returned, choosing to ignore the rogue’s baiting tone. “And you might have found me investigating the matter had my guide not deserted me.”

  “And you thought to conscript a new one from the keep?” Anton Klausner’s smile was every bit as unfriendly as an orc’s. “Somehow, I don’t think you will find my father eager to bend on his knee to please you. We are well capable of catching a simple wolf.”

  “You’ve done a fine job of it so far,” observed Streng, shifting his position so that the bolt of his weapon was aimed at the brash noble. Anton Klausner gave the henchman a murderous look.

  “Your pet vermin is speaking out of turn, witch finder,” he hissed. “Keep him in line lest I be forced to teach him some respect.”

  “You are welcome to try,” Thulmann told him, his silky voice remaining level. “Of course, he isn’t so restrained as I am when it comes to putting swaggering hotheads in their place.” Anton Klausner’s hand shot to the hilt of his sword. Thulmann could hear the nervous muttering of some of the other horsemen, uncertain whether they should aid their master, uneasy about raising arms against an agent of the temple.

  “Stop it at once! This bickering is pointless!” Ivar Kohl manoeuvred his steed between the two men. He glared for a moment at Anton, who reluctantly let his hand slip from his weapon.

  “You must forgive Master Anton’s rudeness, Herr Thulmann,” the steward said, his face displaying the false pleasantry it habitually slipped into. “The news of this latest tragedy has shocked and disturbed his lordship, indeed all of us, greatl
y.”

  “I am certain that it has,” Thulmann stated, keeping his eyes on the scowling Anton. “In fact, it was on this point that I journeyed to the keep. I wish to discuss with his lordship how we might bury our differences of opinion in this matter and combine our resources’

  “You will find that my father is indisposed,” Anton said, fairly spitting the words. Kohl cast another hostile look at the young noble. When he turned his attention back to Thulmann, he was once again displaying his oily smile.

  “It is true that his lordship is still very weak, but I think that he would receive a man such as yourself,” Kohl told the witch hunter.

  “It is a pity that you were unable to verify this tragic account. I am certain that the patriarch would be most anxious to hear any news about this matter.”

  “As I have said,” Thulmann informed the steward, “my guide let his fear get the better of him. No matter, I doubt if we would be able to find anything in the dark in any event.”

  Ivar Kohl nodded his head, chortling with enthusiastic agreement. “Oh doubtless, doubtless. Nothing more foolish than crashing into trees in the pitch of night. Still,” Kohl shrugged his shoulders, a gesture that somehow reminded Thulmann of an over-eager vulture, “the simple folk of this district would not be so understanding. They would take any delay on the part of his lordship in this matter as a sign that he was disinterested and unconcerned. So, for us, I fear, this foolish venture is unavoidable.”

  Kohl turned his gaze back on Anton Klausner, gesturing with a sidewise motion of his head that the young noble should get his men moving again.

  “I do hope that you and his lordship can come to an agreement,” Kohl told the witch hunter as Anton’s men began to gallop off down the path.

  The steward turned his own horse around. “Rest assured, Herr Thulmann, we will send word back to the keep in the unlikely event that we discover anything.” With a slight wave of his hand, Kohl joined Anton and the pair set off in pursuit of the departed soldiers.