[Mathias Thulmann 01] - Witch Hunter Read online

  “There goes a man who is quite pleased with himself,” commented Thulmann as he and Streng continued their own journey. “A man who is trying to be deceitful is always the easiest to deceive.”

  The witch hunter reflected upon the exchange as they continued to ride. Clearly the steward Kohl had been the one in command, a certain sign that Wilhelm Klausner did not trust his son Anton with the task of beating Thulmann to the location of Gundolf’s body, even to mollify his son’s inflated ego.

  He could appreciate the elder Klausner’s position: he could ill afford to let an outsider solve these crimes, and was desperate to maintain his edge over Thulmann. At best, to allow such a situation to occur would certainly cause his perception of power and authority in the district to diminish greatly. At worst, perhaps the patriarch feared the unearthing of some old legacy of the Klausner clan, some evidence that the curse was more than a simple fable. No doubt Kohl had orders to rearrange the murder scene when he came upon it, to mislead or confuse the Templar’s own investigations. Perhaps it might even resemble the work of a wolf by the time Kohl was finished with things.

  Thulmann also pondered the absence of Gregor in the hastily assembled hunting party. By all accounts, Gregor was the more intelligent and capable of Wilhelm’s two sons, and certainly Thulmann’s own impression of the young noble did not contradict such an evaluation.

  Why then had Wilhelm sent Anton rather than Gregor? Was there some motive behind the patriarch’s decision, or had Gregor refused to be a party to Wilhelm’s deceptions and intrigues? The young man did have a very deep-seated sense of honour, one that might be very easily offended by Wilhelm’s plotting.

  Certainly, Gregor had displayed a much more helpful attitude than his father and seemed just as eager to end this menace to the people of Klausberg as the witch hunter himself. Such feelings would not lend themselves well to old Wilhelm’s desperate and selfish attempts to maintain his authority.

  Thulmann decided that when he reached the keep, he would speak with the young Gregor openly about what he had learned from his study of Gundolf’s corpse. Sharing such intelligence with the young noble might further ingratiate Thulmann into Gregor’s confidence, and the witch hunter was in desperate need of at least one ally at the keep.

  Wilhelm Klausner was indeed indisposed when Thulmann arrived at the keep. The servant had conducted the witch hunter and his henchman to a small parlour in which he had found the patriarch’s wife seated in a high-backed chair knitting a shawl with a pair of long iron needles. The woman smiled when she saw the witch hunter, apologising profusely for her husband’s inability to receive visitors. He had not been in the best of health lately and recent events had not improved the situation at all.

  “I am afraid that you are to blame for some of the worry he feels,” Ilsa Klausner told him. “These terrible killings have been distressing him horribly, sapping his strength. But I think it was your arrival that really weakened him,” she confessed. “He has lost his old self-confidence. I think he takes your arrival here to mean that others have lost confidence in him as well.”

  “I am not here to usurp his lordship,” Thulmann said, seating his lean form in the chair opposite the lady. “My only concern is to learn what is behind these outrages and put an end to them.”

  Ilsa Klausner bent forward, severing a strand of wool with her teeth. “I understand that, Herr Thulmann. But you must understand, protecting this district is my husband’s duty, and one he takes very seriously. I am afraid that he takes your being here as something between an insult and a challenge.” The woman smiled, setting aside her handiwork. “I know that a person should not speak so openly with a man in your profession, you are so unaccustomed to people speaking their mind. But that is how I see things between yourself and my husband.”

  The sound of boots clicking upon the tiles of the floor caused Ilsa to look away from the witch hunter. Thulmann followed the woman’s gaze, not entirely surprised to find Gregor stepping into the room.

  “Ernst said that we had guests,” Gregor said as he walked toward his mother’s chair. He leaned forward, allowing the older woman to kiss his cheek. Straightening, he bowed his head toward Thulmann. “I am sorry that you have again been cheated of a decent night’s sleep, Herr Thulmann.”

  “It is another quality of the insidious practices of the forces of darkness that they must wait for the most uncharitable hours in which to work their devilry,” the witch hunter said. “One becomes accustomed to irregular hours.” Thulmann’s eyes narrowed. “Of course I was rather surprised not to find you with your brother. We passed him and his men on the road coming here.”

  Gregor and his mother shared an awkward look for a moment. Ilsa was the first to look away and speak. “My son did want to go. He insisted, but my husband forbade him,” she stated. “My husband is a very cautious man and he felt it would be far too reckless to jeopardise both of his sons upon such a potentially dangerous excursion.”

  “It is just as well that you did remain at the keep,” Thulmann told the young noble. Gregor Klausner’s expression became one of cautious interest. “You see, there were some things which I wanted to discuss with you. I have learned quite a bit since we parted ways, but I feel that I need a man of your insight to evaluate the facts I have collected.”

  Ilsa started to rise from her chair. “That means, I suppose, that you have men’s business to discuss,” she said. Gregor motioned for her to sit down.

  “No need to leave, mother,” he said. “When Herr Thulmann was here last, he expressed a wish to see the family records. I think that we can have our discussion there just as easily as here.” Gregor turned his head back towards the witch hunter. “Herr Thulmann, shall we withdraw to the library then?” He extended his hand to indicate the open doorway through which he had made his own entrance.

  The witch hunter nodded and rose from his chair. He bowed again to Ilsa Klausner.

  “Give my regards to your husband,” the witch hunter said. The woman smiled up at him as she returned to her knitting.

  “Assuredly,” she told Thulmann. “But not until you have finished your business with my son,” she added with a conspiratorial wink. Thulmann marvelled at her for a moment, then followed Gregor from the room.

  The library was a large room, dominating one corner of the keep. It might once have been a barracks of some sort. Thulmann could still see the remains of wooden beams sunken into the perimeter walls of the room, the last remnants of walkways and ladders that had once provided archers with access points to the narrow windows set some fifteen feet above the floor.

  Now the vast hall had been fully converted, mammoth wooden bookcases filling the centre of the room. Each was at least ten feet in height, and at least three feet in depth. Doubled upon one another, sometimes in ranks four and five long, the cases made a maze of the old chamber. Each was filled almost to bursting with thin folios and monstrously bloated tomes, mounds of cylindrical scroll-cases and stacks of unbound parchment and paper.

  The musty odour of rotting wood and mould was thick and heavy about the hall. Thulmann smiled to himself as he was conducted into the room. How many times had he stood in rooms exactly like this stalking some obscure shred of knowledge? For every second of terror spent confronting some loathsome visitation of the Ruinous Powers how many hours had he spent rummaging about in some dusty old library?

  “Your mother is quite a remarkable woman,” Thulmann told the young noble. Gregor looked away from lighting a number of candles fixed into the claws of a candelabra shaped like a wrought-iron sea monster standing at the centre of a small desk.

  “That she is,” Gregor admitted. “She has a sharp mind and a proud spirit, and isn’t afraid to let anyone know it. When my father went away to serve the temple, Ivar Kohl tried to run the estate his own way, as he had when my grandfather left, but my mother wouldn’t let him. She had her own ideas, and was not about to let Kohl push her around.”

  Gregor chuckled as he slipped into h
is recollections. “I have to say, even old Ivar would have to confess that she ran things very well until my father returned.”

  Thulmann only partly heard what Gregor was saying, his attention instead fixed upon the large map of the district hanging upon one of the walls. The witch hunter could see more detail was present in this work than the one back in his rooms at The Grey Crone.

  He stared at it for some moments, studying its every line, imagining red splotches upon its surface. There had to be a key, something that would make these killings take up some semblance of reason. It was like one of the cryptograms such groups like the Pallisades played with. Once the code was discovered, the message would stand revealed. But what was the code? And what was the hideous message it concealed?

  The witch hunter looked away from the map, staring intently at Gregor. “I need your help,” he told the noble. “You are aware that another life was taken this night. I have seen the body, and it was not the work of any brute beast. My associate,” Thulmann indicated Streng, who had slouched down into a heavy chair and was studiously inspecting a portfolio of exotic Bretonnian woodcuts, “found tracks this time. Footprints of at least two men.”

  Gregor considered Thulmann’s statement, striding back and forth behind the desk as he turned them over in his mind. “Then it is not one fiend we are seeking, but some dark conspiracy!” he exclaimed.

  “The secret, I feel, is somehow tied into your family history,” the witch hunter told him. He waved his arm to encompass the towering bookcases behind him. “Somewhere in these records may be the clue we need to learn the nature of this fiend.” The witch hunter clenched his fist. “And once I have put a name to this pestilence, then I may be able to guess its intentions, and predict where it will strike next.”

  “And destroy him,” Gregor stated.

  “And destroy him,” the witch hunter concurred.

  Cruel eyes studied the two-storey, half-timber structure. The night was nearly spent, the moons already retreating toward the horizon. There was not much time left in which to act, but Carandini was nothing if not a careful man. He wanted to give the poison every chance to work its course.

  A few of the brutish farmers had been quite large, and it might take the poison a little longer to run its course through bodies so laden down with meat and muscle.

  The necromancer looked at the rotting thing beside him. He had long ago lost any sense of horror at the many appearances assumed by death. In fact, to him there was nothing quite so wondrous as watching that almost mystical transformation as a living body became a corpse, to see the corruption work its way through the flesh, as tissue withered and bones broke through the weakened flesh.

  The necromancer smiled at the stiff, still figure. His pale hand patted some of the mould from the front of its tunic, stopping when the rotted cloth began to fall apart. Dismayed, Carandini instead concentrated on stuffing the creature’s dangling eye back into its socket. He found the organ reluctant to return to its place however, popping free whenever he removed his hand.

  Annoyed, Carandini produced his dagger and pounded the greasy, staring object into the zombie’s skull with the hilt of the weapon.

  Turning from his gruesome maintenance, the necromancer stared keenly at the house once more. He had come upon it shortly after dark, creeping across the farmyard to the brick-lined well that stood before the house. The poison had gone in, and he had slunk back to the shadows. It had been hard not to laugh when the wife of one of the farmers had emerged to retrieve a bucket of water from the well.

  The woman could not imagine how astounding they would find this evening’s gruel. Indeed, they would never eat anything else ever again.

  Carandini motioned for the creature beside him and the five others like it to advance. The necromancer followed after his loathsome creations. He would allow his zombies to enter the structure ahead of him, let them discover if anyone still lived. After all, a knife in the ribs or a hatchet in the head would not do them any great deal of harm. Nothing that couldn’t be made right by a few incantations and a little baby’s fat.

  The walking corpses stalked towards the door, their movements stiff and silent and began to batter on the heavy door with their decaying fists.

  The necromancer watched the windows of the house. If anyone was still inside, they could not fail to hear the commotion. However, no light appeared in any of the windows, and the only sound to rise from the structure was the howling of a dog. Carandini smiled. If he ever tired of trying to unlock the secrets of death, he might make a successful career as a professional poisoner back in his native Tilea.

  After a few minutes, the relentless pounding of the zombies caused the door to collapse inward with a resounding crash. Carandini heard the frightened yip and the angry snarl of a dog as his undead slaves marched inside. The necromancer waited a few moments more to follow after them, then with swift, scuttling steps, made his way into the residence.

  The main room of the farmhouse was a shambles, furniture tipped over, part of a rug pushed into the embers in the fire-pit where the covering was now slowly smouldering.

  Carandini strode towards the hearth and pulled the rug from the fire, stamping out the fledgling flames with his boots. It would hardly do for the place to burn down. The necromancer looked up from his task, his weasel-like face grinning as he spied the large iron pot that had fallen to the floor. As he had known, there was some still-warm gruel at the bottom of the pot.

  Another thing that the Tileans despised about the people of the Empire—their predictability. They were so disgustingly easy to. predict, their thoughts regimented and unimaginative. It was no wonder that all the great thinkers and artisans were Tilean born and bred. The necromancer smiled again—as his scheming ally would learn soon enough for himself.

  Carandini made his way from the living room, throwing aside the heavy fur curtain that separated a niche at the rear of the room. He peered into the gloomy space beyond, staring at the simple straw mattress, at the filthy fur blankets, at the two bodies lying sprawled upon the floor.

  Carandini pursed his lips and tutted as he saw the corpses. “Must have been something they ate,” he muttered, wiping a stringy lock of hair from his face.

  The necromancer went back into the living room, this time following the small hallway, finding another tiny room at its terminus. The hanging here had already been torn down, and the necromancer could see two gaunt figures standing above the straw bed. He shuffled into the chamber, oblivious to the reeking corpse-things, and smiled down at the two bodies curled upon the bed.

  There was no need to feel for any sign of warmth or pulse, the purpling tinge of the corpses told the necromancer that his poison had done its work. He looked at each of the stationary corpse things. They did not glance at him, but remained motionless, their colourless eyes focused on the wall.

  “Take these into the other room,” Carandini told his slaves. There was no real need to speak to them, it was the exertion of the necromancer’s will that caused the zombies to obey his commands, but there were times when Carandini slipped into his old habits.

  The corpse-creatures bent forward, almost in perfect synchronisation, and pulled the two bodies from the bed. Carandini did not linger to see his slaves complete their task, but slipped back into the hall, climbing the stairs that led to the upper floor of the dwelling.

  At the top of the stairs he found another of his zombie slaves, this one standing idle over the body of a very fat and very old woman. A small dog dangled from the monster’s arm, worrying the rotted flesh viciously. The zombie was oblivious to the damage being inflicted upon it, its vacant stare contemplating the floor.

  As Carandini came forward, he extended his will. The zombie lifted its free arm and brought its skeletal fist smashing down into the skull of the dog. The animal gave a muffled yelp, then fell to the floor, its weight snapping the arm it had been worrying like a twig. Carandini stared down at the dead animal, then looked up at his rotting creation. A look
of annoyance crawled across his features. The necromancer pulled his dagger and grabbed something dangling from the zombie’s face. With one deft stroke, he cut the veins connecting the recalcitrant eye to the creature’s skull and tossed the disagreeable organ down the stairs.

  “Take that,” the necromancer ordered, pointing at the old woman’s body with his knife, “below.” Once more he did not wait for his creation to obey, but continued down the narrow hall. A sudden sound made the necromancer pause. It did not sound like one of his creations blundering about, he thought. Carandini paused then hurried into a room at the far end of the hallway.

  He found another of his creatures here, its skull-like face looking blankly at the wall. The bed was actually equipped with an iron frame, though the bedding itself was the usual pile of straw covered by furs and blankets. Two bodies were sprawled here, but they did not interest Carandini as much as the others had. No, it was the tiny shape nestled between them, the tiny little shape that sobbed with a fear its small mind could not fully appreciate.

  The child’s eyes were locked on the grisly shape of the zombie, not even looking away when the necromancer glided towards the bed.

  “Oh,” Carandini said, his voice soft. “You poor little thing,” he reached forward, picking the child from between his dead parents. The boy began to cry as the necromancer held him. “You have been a bad little thing, haven’t you?” the necromancer said. He exerted his will, causing the zombie to pull the child’s father from the bed. He could hear the other two zombies pulling bodies from one of the other bedrooms. The child hid his face in the fur of Carandini’s cassock, and the necromancer gently patted his back.

  “You really should have eaten your gruel like a good little boy,” Carandini told him, striding from the room ahead of the overladen zombie. He paused in the hallway, shifting his grip on the boy and removing a small object from a pouch on his belt. His associate’s contingency was a small thing, and something of an enigma to Carandini. He was not entirely sure how it would benefit them to have the witch hunter discover it here, but such had been his confederate’s directions when he had given it to Carandini.