[Mathias Thulmann 00c] - Witch Work Read online

  “Perhaps,” Thulmann mused, his suspicions aroused. It was far too easy, and Thulmann had learned the hard way that it was the simple things that were to be trusted the least. “Let us go see for ourselves.” He turned, ordering Meisser’s men to maintain their vigil, then told Streng to lead him to the man he had captured.

  The scene before the home of the merchant Bromberg was anything but the one Thulmann had expected to find. Bromberg’s entire household was on the street, arguing violently with the dark-clad witch hunters Streng had left behind. Hunched upon the ground, hands tied against his back, was a miserable-looking man wearing a shabby blue robe. Resting on the ground beside him was a large satchel, its contents spilled onto the cobbles. Thulmann could see several sticks of pigment, a number of brushes and a small chapbook among the debris.

  “What is going on here?” Meisser demanded, taking the initiative away from Thulmann before the other witch hunter could seize it. “Get these people back in their home!” he ordered his men.

  “They claim that this man is innocent, captain,” one of the witch hunters spoke, uncertain whether to direct his words at Meisser or Thulmann.

  “We caught him making devil’s marks on the walls of the house,” Streng growled at the merchant and his family. “Probably saved all your necks!”

  “Doomed us you mean!” a thick-set man Thulmann took to be Bromberg himself snarled back. “I hired this man to protect my home with his magic!”

  “Magic? What heresy is this?” demanded Meisser.

  “No heresy,” protested the prisoner, struggling to rise to his feet, but at last resigning from the effort. “I am a licensed practitioner, a student of the Colleges in Altdorf. I was hired to paint protective runes upon this man’s home, to ward away the evil spirits.”

  Thulmann listened only partially to the magician’s story, turning over the man’s effects with the toe of his boot. They seemed to bear out his story, the chapbook proving to be a volume describing certain hex signs employed by the ancient elven mages of fabled Ulthuan. Unsettling, to be sure. Unpleasant, certainly, but nothing heretical.

  “You’d hire a mage to protect you from a witch?” Meisser was snarling at Bromberg. “Why not simply set fire to your house now and be done with it! Arrest these people!”

  Thulmann turned away from his examination of the conjurer’s effects to countermand Meisser’s excessive commands when a shot echoed into the night. Every head turned in the direction from which the sound had originated. Thulmann had given the other witch hunters strict orders to signal if they were in need of help by firing a shot into the sky.

  “That came from Strasser’s,” the witch hunter said, a dark foreboding clouding his thoughts. Whatever horror was stalking Wurtbad, he was certain that it had chosen now to strike. They’d allowed this foolishness with the hex-dauber to draw them away from where they were needed the most. But perhaps it would not be too late if they were to hurry.

  “Come!” Thulmann shouted to Streng and the two apprentice witch hunters. “We’ve no time to waste!”

  “But the prisoners?” protested Meisser, still waiting for someone to carry out his order to arrest Bromberg’s household.

  “Leave them,” Thulmann spat. “You’ve got a real monster to deal with now!”

  The front door of the Strasser home was open when Thulmann and his party arrived, the heavy oak portal creaking in the chill night breeze. There was no sign of the two men he had left behind, and Thulmann decided that they must have rushed into the Strasser residence when the alarm was raised. The witch hunter cast a warning look to his companions, drawing both of his pistols with a single motion. The other templars nodded their understanding, each man pulling his own weapon. Thulmann looked back towards the house, cautiously making his way to the yawning doorway.

  The foyer within seemed unremarkable enough, a slender-legged table laden with a massive clay pot resting against the opposite wall. A gaudily chequered carpet clothed the bare wood floor, and it was this item that immediately caught Thulmann’s attention, for it was smouldering beneath an overturned oil lamp. The witch hunter stepped over to the object, Streng and his other companions following close behind. Thulmann knelt to inspect the lamp, discovering that part of the carpet’s gaudiness was due to the bright crimson that stained much of its surface.

  A sound of shock and disgust brought Thulmann back to his feet. One of Meisser’s apprentices was peering into the room that opened to the left of the foyer. The man now recoiled away in horror, fighting to maintain his composure.

  Thulmann raced forward to see what had disturbed the witch hunter, maintaining a ready grip on his pistols.

  The room inside was a parlour, judging by the numerous chairs and divans. Now it was a slaughterhouse, walls and furnishings dripping with slimy gore. Heaps of human wreckage were strewn about the chamber. Thulmann considered how apt Markoff’s words had been. “This killer does not leave bodies, he leaves meat.”

  “I guess this means you were right,” Streng commented from the doorway, scratching at his beard. He looked about the room, his expression indifferent. “I hope they don’t expect us to clean…”

  The remainder of Streng’s irreverent remark was silenced when a scream rang out from the floor above. Thulmann raced past his henchman back into the hall. With hurried steps, he raced toward the stairway at the end of the corridor, not pausing to see if anyone followed him. As he ran, the scream sounded once more, high pitched and hideous in its conveyance of agony and horror. That a human being was dying an ugly and terrible death, the witch hunter did not doubt for a moment. He only hoped to be quick enough to catch the murderer.

  Thulmann reached the wooden stairway, and stared up at the gloom that held dominance in the rooms above. A dark shape toppled out of that darkness and it was only by an effort that Thulmann managed to keep himself from putting a bullet into it. In the slight illumination offered by the stairway, Thulmann could see that it was a body wearing the cloak of one of Meisser’s men. He could also see the wet, ragged mess that had once been the man’s chest, the ruin of a throat that had been torn out. The dying man crashed down the stairs, narrowly missing Thulmann as he jumped out of the way. The dying templar smashed against the balustrade, then rolled to the base of the stair, a scarlet pool spilling from his mangled body as he came to rest.

  Thulmann spared only a moment to consider the man’s ruin, then sprinted up the remainder of the stairs, taking them three at a time. The unfortunate templar could not have lasted long with such horrible wounds, which meant that his killer was still near at hand.

  A sound like tearing cloth greeted the witch hunter as he reached the upper hallway. Here, the dark was almost complete, broken only by the fitful light trickling in through the windows. Thulmann hesitated for a moment, trying to decide from which direction the sound emanated. He turned toward the room on his left, kicking the door open.

  A spindly figure rose from the floor as the witch hunter entered, a crumpled heap lying at its feet. It was little more than a shadow, a black silhouette lit by the feeble light shining through the window, but even so, its inhuman outline chilled the witch hunter’s heart. It was much too thin for even the most emaciated beggar, much too tall for the lankiest of men. The motions of the thing were jerky and unnatural, like the death spasm of a slaughtered beast. It lifted a thin arm and Thulmann could see claws gleaming in the faint light. With an awkward motion, the shadow took a step towards him.

  Thulmann fired his weapons into the ghastly apparition, the roar of the pistols almost deafening within the confines of the room. The flash of the muzzles revealed the shadow’s leering visage, its spindly body and talons. One bullet smashed through the thing’s shoulder, another tore into its belly. The creature’s thin form jerked and twitched as it was struck, but no cry of pain sounded from its gash-like mouth, nor did it falter in its gruesome advance. Thulmann noted with horror that the bullet which had struck the abomination’s belly had set something alight, yet the cr
eature paid its smouldering wound not even the slightest notice.

  More shots rang out and Thulmann became aware for the first time that he was not alone. Meisser and the two apprentice witch hunters discharged their weapons into the creature, causing its skeletal form to twitch and jerk with each impact. Streng lunged forward, slashing at the monster with his sword. There was the sound of steel slamming into wood as the blade bit into the creature’s leg. Streng freed his weapon only with effort, barely rearming himself in time to meet the downward swipe of the creature’s claw. Sparks glistened in the darkness as steel scraped against steel and Streng was flung back by the strength of his enemy’s blow.

  Then the creature paused, glaring at its attackers from the centre of the room. With a speed that Thulmann would have thought the abomination incapable of, it turned, sprinted toward the window and leapt through it in an explosion of glass and splintered wood. The witch hunters hurried forward, expecting to find their monstrous foe sprawled in the street below. Instead, they had a fleeting glimpse of a lank-limbed figure scuttling across the rooftops, a twinkle of light flashing out from where the wound in its belly continued to smoulder. Thulmann looked back to the street where a number of Markoff’s soldiers and Meisser’s apprentices were charging toward the Strasser house. He called down to one of the mounted soldiers.

  “You!” Thulmann shouted. “The killer is escaping across the roofs! Follow it, but don’t confront it!” The soldier looked in the direction in which the witch hunter pointed, at once sighting the glow of the creature’s burning wound. The man nodded his understanding and set off at a gallop.

  “By all the gods,” muttered Meisser, leaning against one of the walls to support his sagging frame. “What was it?”

  Thulmann circled the room, staring at the floor. One of the apprentices had lit a candle, shedding some light upon the carnage that had taken place here. The other apprentice removed his cloak, casting it over the sorry remains the creature had been standing over—all that remained of the other man who had been left behind to watch the house. Thulmann at once noticed the thin, clawed footprints of the creature, picked out in blood upon the floor. They were mismatched, each foot of a different size, and yet as regular in outline as the print left by a man’s boot. Scattered about the floor were pieces of burnt straw. Thulmann picked one up, sniffing at its blackened end, unsurprised to detect the smell of gunpowder.

  “What in the hell was it?” Meisser repeated, striving to master the hysteria that threatened to overwhelm him.

  “Some abomination of the black arts,” Thulmann told him. “A degenerate derivation of the ancient pagan practices of lost Nehekhara. But where the liche-priests employed stone and precious metal to construct their ushabti, our killer has employed much humbler materials to construct his assassin.” Thulmann looked back out the window, across the silent rooftops. “And now the puppet is returning to its master.”

  * * *

  The horseman had exceeded Thulmann’s expectations, maintaining his pursuit of the fleeing apparition beyond the city walls until at last the flickering fire in its belly ceased to burn and he’d lost sight of it. By that time, however, there were other signs for the creature’s hunters to follow. The soil outside Wurtbad was soft and rich, easily holding the track of any creature’s passage across it. The witch hunters followed the strange clawed prints until at last the trail led them to an overgrown wheat field and the ramshackle hovel that crouched beyond it.

  It was nothing much to look at really. Just a tiny little hovel like so many others that might be found beyond the walls of Wurtbad: four walls of timber tilted at an angle by the attentions of time and the elements. The thatch roof was old and ill-maintained, the roofing damp and rotting where it was not missing altogether. Creeper vines and sickly yellow moss clutched at the chinking between the log walls, and the awning of planks that had once shaded the front of the structure now drooped across much of the façade, one of its support poles knocked down by some past storm. Indeed, despite everything, the dozen men who had furtively crept through the muddy, overgrown wheat field might have thought they had been led to the wrong place were it not for the thin plume of greasy smoke rising from a hole in the rotten roof and the flicker of light that danced behind the sagging door.

  Thulmann went ahead of the rest of the hunters, creeping through the muddy overgrown field until he could study the derelict structure from the very edge of the rampant crop. Thulmann kept a ready hand on the butt of one of his pistols, the other pulling at his thin moustache, a gesture that indicated a mind deep in thought. When he had seen enough, he scrambled back to where the other witch hunters awaited his return.

  “You were long enough,” observed one of the men crouching amidst the mud and rot. He was a short man with an unpleasantly cruel face, his features somehow suggesting both a pig and a cur. His hair had begun to desert him, leaving only a fringe of white. He wore a tunic of reinforced leather, stained black and studded with steel. A large duelling pistol was held in his leather-clad hands. The man’s fierce eyes glared at the returned watcher, voicing the unstated challenge lurking within his words.

  “Perhaps you would prefer that we simply announce ourselves,” sneered the moustached man. “I am certain that this murderous sorcerer would welcome us with open arms. Perhaps invite us for tea before we take him away to torture and burn.” He turned from the balding man, shaking his head with disgust. “You’ve made enough of a mess of things, Meisser. Just do as I tell you and we will free Wurtbad of this horror tonight.”

  Meisser’s hand clenched about the grip of his pistol making the leather creak. “See here, Thulmann,” he snarled. “I command here! Wurtbad is my posting, its protection is my duty, not yours! I’ll thank you to remember that,” the piggish man added, his voice boiling with indignation. The other witch hunter rounded on the balding Meisser, a face livid with rage.

  “I’ll remember four households butchered in their beds while you stumbled about in back alleys arresting midwives and herb-sellers,” Thulmann stated, brimming with contempt, thrusting every word like a dagger into the inflated ego of the pompous Meisser. The older witch hunter retreated back several steps before Thulmann’s cold fury.

  “I’ll report this flaunting of my authority!” Meisser warned, eyes round with shock. Suddenly his words were brought up short as the witch hunter felt the sharp prick of steel pressed against his side. He turned his head, finding himself staring into the smiling features of Thulmann’s underling. Streng grinned as he pressed the dagger in his hand a little more firmly against Meisser’s side.

  “You’ll do exactly like he tells you,” Streng hissed into Meisser’s ear. The balding witch hunter looked toward the other men lurking in the muddy field. They were his men, apprentice witch hunters under his command and tutelage. However, not a one of them moved. Meisser might be their commander, but they recognised a fool when they saw one, and none of them were eager to follow a fool into battle.

  Meisser licked his lips nervously and nodded his head in defeat.

  “Well done, Streng,” Mathias Thulmann told the knife-wielding thug. “Now if you will kindly relieve Brother Meisser of his pistol in order that I need not worry about a bullet in the back, we’ll be on about our business here.” The witch hunter looked around him, gesturing for the apprentices to draw close in order that he might disclose his plan of attack to them.

  Mathias Thulmann crouched just outside the filthy hovel, listening for any sign that the occupant of the hovel had detected the presence of his party, or the men he had deployed to surround it. He looked back at the five he had chosen to accompany him into the witch’s lair.

  “I remind each of you,” Thulmann whispered. “Guard your own lives, but see that the witch is taken alive.” The witch hunter studied each man’s face, making certain that his warning was understood. He met the questioning gaze of his henchman, Streng.

  “You certain that this is how you want to do it?” Streng asked. “Wouldn’t it be
better just to put the place to the torch and have done with it? We’ll be burning the heretic eventually anyway.”

  “I want to know the reason for these atrocities,” the witch hunter told him. He thought again of the four households, slaughtered down to the last child, each of them the household of one of Wurtbad’s most prosperous river merchants. There was something more than simple evil and malevolence at work here. Someone was hoping to profit by these horrors. Greed was one of the simplest motives by which any crime was countenanced. But it had taken a truly sick mind to consider witchcraft as the solution to such ambitions. “And I would hear who paid to have them done,” Thulmann added.

  “Shouldn’t you at least send him back to guard the perimeter?” Streng gestured with his head to indicate Meisser. The witch hunter captain of Wurtbad was now equipped with a sword, his confiscated duelling pistol tucked securely under Streng’s belt.

  “No, I want him with us,” Thulmann commented. “I wouldn’t want Brother Meisser to miss one moment of the excitement.” The witch hunter sighed, drawing his own sword. He pointed his sword at the hovel, and with a shout, the gathered men lunged forward, Streng at their forefront. The burly henchman sent a savage kick smashing into the ramshackle door, tearing it from its rotted leather hinges to crash upon the earthen floor of the hovel. Streng leapt into the room, Thulmann and the other witch hunters right behind him.

  The interior of the hut was small, but crammed. Dried bundles of weeds and herbs drooped from the ceiling, dead and eviscerated birds hung from leather straps fastened to every roof beam. A huge pile of bones was heaped against one wall, a collection of foul-smelling jars and pots filling a crude series of shelves beside it. The head and skin of a black cow stared at the intruders with its empty eye-sockets from the hook that fastened it to the support beam that rose from the centre of the hut. Beyond, shapeless masses dangled and drooped, drifting back into the inky recesses of the chamber. A dozen noxious stinks fought to overwhelm the senses of the men, but no more charnel a reek assailed them than that which rose from the small fire-pit and the black iron cauldron that boiled above it. As the attention of the witch hunters was drawn to the only source of light in the gloomy shack, a dark shape rose from beside the cauldron, glaring at the intruders.