[Mathias Thulmann 01] - Witch Hunter Read online

  “You see that they ain’t helping themselves to my ale down there,” Reikhertz told her in a stern voice. Without another word, Miranda retreated back down the hall.

  “It really was my fault,” apologised Gregor. “Don’t be too hard on Miranda.”

  Reikhertz transferred his glare to the lord. “You’re the son of Lord Klausner, and that puts certain obligations upon me, certain privileges custom dictates I extend to you.” Anger flared up in his voice and he jabbed a finger toward Gregor. “But those privileges don’t extend to the person of my daughter.” Reikhertz started to stalk out into the hallway. Gregor caught him by the arm.

  “I’ve been nothing but proper and honourable with your daughter,” he told the innkeeper. Reikhertz brushed the young noble’s hand away as though it were a noxious insect.

  “I appreciate what you’ve done for us,” the innkeeper told him. “But you’re a Klausner all the same. Being the best of a bad breed doesn’t make you any more decent.” Reikhertz took a deep breath. “You know my father was killed by your family. Not an easy thing to forgive or forget.”

  “That is a fact that might have been worthy of knowing,” interrupted Thulmann. Unobserved by the other men, he had risen from his table to listen to the tense conversation.

  “You’d heard enough stories like it the other night,” Reikhertz told him. “It is not something I like to talk about,” he added.

  Thulmann looked at him expectantly and the innkeeper continued in a subdued voice. “It was near on twenty winters ago, I was only a boy, but I can recall every detail. His,” he pointed toward Gregor, “grandfather was dying, health fading quite fast. Then the daemon came. My father was one of its last victims.”

  Thulmann nodded his head in grim appreciation of the tragedy Reikhertz had alluded to. A sudden flare of inspiration filled his eyes. “Do you know where your father was found?” he asked, gesturing for Reikhertz to come over to the table. Soon all four men were staring down at Thulmann’s heavily marked map of the district.

  “It was over near the old crossroads that lead to…” the innkeeper’s voice caught in his throat. His finger had been following the road, but when he reached the site he wished to indicate, he found a bright crimson splotch. “But you’ve already marked the spot,” he muttered. “How did you know?”

  Thulmann shook his head. “I didn’t. That mark shows where a herb grower named Jannes was killed. This is very important, Reikhertz. You say your father was the last of the daemon’s victims?”

  Reikhertz shook his head. “No, there was a midwife, Lucina Oberst. She died a few nights after my father. She was the last. But I don’t remember exactly where they found her. Someplace near…” he looked away as he saw still another crimson splotch where he had been about to point. “What does this mean?”

  Gregor looked away from the map, grasping the importance of • what they had chanced upon. “There were six victims back then,” he told Thulmann.

  “Yes, and I would wager that each of them died at a spot already marked on my map,” the witch hunter declared. “Thirty years and the killer strikes in the exact same places.”

  “But it has never been this bloodthirsty before,” protested Gregor. “They haven’t killed six this time, they’ve killed twenty-nine times, if we discount the massacre at the Brustholz farm.”

  Thulmann nodded. “Yes, that atrocity was a trap designed to dispose of me, not a part of whatever foul ritual these other murders are a part of.” He began drawing lines between the first six murders, snarling in disgust when they did not match up. Then he noticed a curious fact. Both of the marks that Reikhertz had indicated, also murders from three decades ago, were not among the first six killings.

  “Reikhertz, the other murders thirty years ago, do you recall where the bodies were found?” The innkeeper leaned down again.

  “I remember. It’s the sort of thing a person doesn’t forget.” He pointed out the scenes, each, not surprisingly, already marked in red. Thulmann saw that only three of them were included in the earliest killings. Realisation began to dawn on him. He drew a connection not between the current killings, but those long ago, finding himself staring at a hexagonal shape. Then he looked back to the other murder sites he had bypassed in drawing his shape.

  A sudden understanding filled him as he began to draw the connecting lines between these. A pentagon was soon described upon the map.

  The witch hunter leaned back in something approaching triumph. “There is a connection, a pattern,” he declared. “I did not see it because there is not one here, but two. The hexagon, the squared circle employed by mystics to protect them from daemons and other malign supernatural forces.”

  “The dire wolf at the bridge!” exclaimed Gregor. Thulmann nodded.

  “Then we have this other figure,” the witch hunter indicated the pentagon. “The murder sites used to form it were spaced much more widely, completely enclosing the first shape. The pentagon is employed by daemonologists and necromancers to invoke the forces of death and ruin, to summon and bind the blackest currents of sorcery.” Thulmann’s voice grew contemplative. “Not one ritual, but two. One designed to protect, the other…” He stared at the multitude of other marks upon his map, those that had not yet been fitted into a pattern. Gregor noted the witch hunter’s area of study.

  “You can add another mark to your map,” he told Thulmann in a sombre voice.

  “There’s a man trying to reach the bottom of a cask of ale downstairs who already told us,” Streng interjected.

  “Then you already know that Otto the frog catcher was killed last night?” Gregor asked. The other three men in the room stared at him.

  “No,” sputtered Reikhertz. “They said it was Weiss,” the innkeeper seated himself on the edge of Thulmann’s bed, shaking his head in disbelief. The witch hunter grabbed Gregor.

  “Where was the man found?” he demanded, his words clipped by his excitement. The young noble tapped the surface of the old parchment, indicating a spot some distance from the place where Weiss had been found.

  “This horror compounds itself,” Thulmann commented as he marked the spot. “Two murders in one night. This man Otto, what condition was his body in?”

  “A terrible sight. One of Anton’s men found him and said that he only knew it was Otto because his frog bag was lying nearby” Thulmann leapt to his feet when Gregor had related his information.

  “Go to the shrine of Morr and bring back the priest,” Thulmann ordered Streng. The mercenary grinned, handing his stein to Reikhertz and departing at a brisk jog.

  “The priest?” asked Gregor.

  “I need to know exactly how each of these,” the witch hunter gestured at the marks on his map, “died. You see, there is not one fiend plaguing Klausberg this time. There are two.”

  After the dour mortuary priest had left, Thulmann smiled in triumph at the white chalk lines that swarmed across his map, describing a number of hexagons and pentagons. He looked over at the expectant faces of Gregor and Streng. Reikhertz, disturbed enough by the grim business, had withdrawn to meet his afternoon custom in the tavern down below.

  “Two,” Thulmann repeated. “Two necromancers at work.” He gestured at the complex network of pentagons and the solid ring of hexagons. “One conducts the rituals that form this hexagon. He is less cautious about his craft, taking no pains to hide the nature of his ceremonies. The other plies his trade farther afield, mutilating the bodies when he is finished with them. His handiwork composes this pentagon.”

  The witch hunter gave a sigh. “But the question remains, what is the purpose of these atrocities, and why have they become so much greater than those in the past? Unless…” Thulmann glanced over at Gregor. “Perhaps these unholy degenerates are not working in concert with one another, but rather Seek to undo each other’s rituals’ He stabbed a finger at the map again. The killings that form the pentagon, from the beginning they were not the same as what was done thirty years ago. Something new, something
outside the established pattern. Perhaps something meant to break that pattern?”

  “Then finding the one won’t yield up the other,” groaned Gregor.

  “Removing one of these predators may expose the other, if we can take the fiend alive,” Thulmann told him. “If these sorcerers are at odds, then they must know something of one another. More than we know about them, in any event.” He looked back at the map, staring at the only partially formed figures he had drawn. “The pentagon needs two more points to close the current pattern,” he said. “But the hexagon is nearly complete. Only one more red mark to seal it. If the pattern holds, the fifth and sixth sacrifices that compose the six-sided circle will occur on coincident nights’

  “That would mean the killer will strike again tonight!” exclaimed Gregor. Thulmann smiled grimly.

  “Yes, but this time we know where his ritual will take place,” the witch hunter told him. “And we will be ready for him.”

  “I’ll alert my father, gather some soldiers from the keep,” Gregor stated, turning to leave the room.

  “That would be unwise,” Thulmann’s sharp tone brought the young noble to a halt.

  Gregor turned slowly, a questioning look on his face. The witch hunter gestured for him to look at the map again. “The hexagon, the protective circle, do you see what lies at its heart?” Gregor’s eyes widened with shock as he saw Klausner Keep lying perfectly within the hexagonal pattern. It could be no coincidence that the keep lay at the very centre of the figure, there was some dark purpose at work.

  Gregor pondered once more the sickeningly familiar ring he had discovered amidst the carnage of the Brustholz farm. If the keep was at the centre of this web of horror, then most assuredly Wilhelm Klausner was the centre, the cornerstone, of the keep. But what possible reason could there be that might drag his father into such gruesome and horrific occurrences?

  “I fear that the man we hunt is not unknown within the halls of your household.” Thulmann rose to his feet, gathering up the hat Reikhertz had procured to replace the one he had lost to the burning farmhouse and the heavy leather belt from which dripped his pistols and sword.

  “No, we will keep what we have learned to ourselves,” Thulmann declared. “Then we may be sure that our quarry will not be expecting us.”

  “Just the three of us then?” asked Gregor. Thulmann nodded.

  “Right and justice are with us, Gregor,” the witch hunter stated. “They are all the reinforcements we shall require.” Streng gave his employer a sarcastic grin. Thulmann turned on him, his voice sharp. “You doubt the might of Sigmar?” he snapped. Streng shook his head.

  “Not at all,” the thug said. “I just respect it more when it is wearing plate mail and the colours of the Reiksguard.”

  A half-dozen men were scattered about The Grey Crone’s common room when Thulmann and his companions descended the stairs. The witch hunter paid them little heed, striding toward the bar where Reikhertz was busy serving a large man with a bald head and a massive moustache.

  “We’ll be needing our horses, friend Reikhertz,” the witch hunter said. The innkeeper paused and nodded to the Templar. The heavy-set man he was serving turned around, looking over Thulmann with a sour look on his rugged features.

  “The man was serving me, witch finder,” he snarled. Thulmann gave a thin smile in return and turned to walk away. “I was talking to you, witch finder,” the ruffian called after him, stalking away from the counter.

  “But I was not talking to you,” Thulmann retorted with a dismissive voice. The bald man dipped his head in a slight mockery of a bow.

  “Of course not, you only talk to wretched old ladies,” he sneered. “Talk ’em into saying all sorts of silly things so you can burn ’em and hang ’em and whatever else tickles your fancies.”

  Thulmann’s eyes narrowed, his face slipping into a mask of sullen anger and indignation. He shook his hand toward his assailant.

  “As a duly appointed servant of Holy Sigmar,” Thulmann warned him, “I can tell you that your words flirt with heresy. Since you are obviously drunk, I am prepared to be lenient and ignore your impious remarks’

  “Oh, is that so?” snorted the ruffian. His hand slid to his belt, pulling it around so that the sword sheathed at his side was in ready reach. “I’m not some poor defenceless woman that you can beat and abuse. You’ll find me a much colder vintage than that.”

  “I suggest you go home and sleep away these bottled spirits that so affect you,” Thulmann told him. There was a sharpness to the witch hunter’s words now, and a crueller glint in his eyes than there had been moments before. “Before I begin to take offence to your belligerence.”

  The swordsman laughed, looking about the room, his face lifted in amusement. From the base of the stairs, Streng and Gregor watched the situation unfold. Streng gripped the young noble’s arm to prevent him from interceding in the coming confrontation.

  “I can’t tell you how much it frightens me that I might cause you offence,” the swordsman snickered. He leaned forward, his face a hand’s breath from Thulmann’s own. “Tell me, would it offend you if I were to say your precious Sigmar isn’t fit to lick the piss from Ulric’s boots?”

  The witch hunter leapt back, meeting the swordsman’s dancing blade with his own sword. His attacker seemed shocked by the older man’s speed, but quickly regained his composure, pressing his attack. The other patrons in the room scattered, chairs clattering to the floor, leather jacks and clay steins spilling ale and beer as the men gripping them rose hurriedly, giving the two combatants ample room to fight.

  “Blasphemy and heresy” the witch hunter snarled above their crossed steel. “You had best hope that my sword finishes you, friend.” The swordsman’s eyes displayed a flicker of fright at the cruelty stamped upon Thulmann’s words. He withdrew a pace, the witch hunter at once capitalising upon the opening and pressing his own counter attack.

  The clash of steel rang through the common room as the blades of the two combatants flashed, struck and parried.

  The bald swordsman’s earlier bravado began to fade, and his movements degenerated into ever more frantic and desperate swings. By contrast, Thulmann worked his blade with a cold, judgmental manner, parrying his opponent’s every move with a delicate turn of wrist and waist.

  The swordsman cried out in alarm as Thulmann’s blade penetrated his defences and slashed his shoulder. “I hope the sight of your own blood does not offend you,” the witch hunter said, his voice rippling with a sadistic mockery. “You’ll see a fair deal more of it before I finish with you.”

  The swordsman cast a desperate look behind Thulmann, then redoubled his frantic efforts at defence. As the man fell back before Thulmann’s advancing blade, a scream of agony sounded from the back of the room.

  Streng wiped the blood from his knife on the grimy surface of his breeches even as his victim clutched at the wound in his neck. The heavy pistol fell from the rat-faced man’s hand, and a moment later, the backshooter joined his weapon on the floor, body shuddering in its death agonies.

  Seeing his comrade down, Thulmann’s opponent directed a wild swing at the witch hunter’s head, trying to slip past the witch hunter as he reacted to the erratic attack. Thulmann deftly ducked the wild swing and slashed his sword along the man’s ribs. The swordsman staggered away, slamming into the base of the counter as he slipped to the floor.

  The witch hunter strode toward him with slow, deliberate steps. His enemy lifted his blade in a last attempt at defence, but his fading strength was unequal to the task and the heavy length of steel clattered to the floor.

  Thulmann sneered down into the man’s pained features, then stooped down over his body, rummaging in the man’s pockets.

  “They meant to kill you,” exclaimed Gregor, rushing to the witch hunter’s side.

  “Yes,” Thulmann said, rising from the wounded swordsman, holding the small leather bag he had withdrawn from the man’s tunic. “They were paid to,” he kicked the leg
of the bald man. “This scum was supposed to keep me occupied while his associate put a bullet in my back. Isn’t that so, swine?” By way of answer, the swordsman gave voice to a dull groan of pain.

  Thulmann looked back toward Gregor. “I think you will find that the Klausner treasury is missing a few gold crowns.” Thulmann’s eyes hardened into chips of ice. The witch hunter reflected upon the pattern he had discovered, upon the situation of Klausner Keep at the very centre of the web, and upon Gregor Klausner’s timely arrival. Had he come to relay information, or to find out how much the witch hunter already knew? Thulmann gave voice to the suspicion his instincts forced to the fore of his thoughts. “Are you certain you came here alone?”

  Gregor pulled back in shock. “You don’t mean to think that I…”

  “Let’s ask this vermin,” the witch hunter replied. But when he turned to speak to the wounded man, he found that it was too late. His blow had punctured one of the man’s lungs. The only thing that would be coming from his mouth now was a thin trickle of blood. “Heathen wretch,” Thulmann hissed. “He might have held on a few moments more.”

  “The other one’s dead too,” Streng informed him.

  “My thanks, friend Streng,” the witch hunter replied. “To show my gratitude, you may keep the money you removed from his person.” The mercenary nodded, clearly not entirely pleased that his employer had guessed about the second bag of gold.

  “I swear to you, Herr Thulmann,” protested Gregor. “I never laid eyes upon these men before. On my faith in Sigmar, I swear it.”

  “He may be right about that,” observed Reikhertz, peering over the counter at the dead man slumped against his bar. The innkeeper’s face wrinkled in annoyance as he saw the blood spreading across the floor boards. “These two were caravan guards. Came in with the last wagon train from Wurtbad.”

  The name of the city gave Thulmann pause. Could it be that these men had nothing to do with the Klausners and Klausberg? Had they perhaps been hired by the same man who had employed the witch Chanta Favna to slaughter his business rivals? It was not entirely impossible that the merchant might not have some means of working his revenge even from a dungeon cell. Still, his instinct told him that the man who had paid these assassins was much nearer at hand.