The Witch Watch

by Shamus Young

  The gunshots rang out surprisingly quickly, and at an even rate.

  “They have very good rifles,” Gilbert commented as they ran.

  “What?” Simon gasped. His steps were already faltering.

  Gilbert grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him sideways, “This way. Into the trees.”

  The shots fell silent as Gilbert and Simon dove into the shroud of the forest. The men shouted to each other, but Gilbert could not catch the words.

  “We’ll never escape them all,” Simon gasped. He stopped and conscripted a tree to keep him from falling over.

  “We don’t need to escape them all,” Gilbert pointed out. “They won’t all follow and leave the Four Horsemen unattended. I suspect no more than half of them will give chase. Come on. Walk if you can. The woods are big and lanterns can’t see far. We should be fine as long as we can get some distance before daybreak.”

  It was dark here under the trees, and Gilbert could only barely make out Simon’s outline as he pulled himself upright. The bright moon was fortunate. There was just enough light for them to move without running face-first into a tree. Simon stumbled now and again on tree roots, but the shouts of their pursuers became increasingly distant.

  “How many are there, do you think?” Simon asked as he struggled for breath. “I didn’t think to count them.” They had been fleeing for perhaps a quarter hour and had now stopped for another rest.

  “There were six men,” Gilbert replied, “Four rifles. Two swords with lanterns, one of which was their captain. Plus the woman. They won’t send both lanterns away, which means we only have one lantern chasing us. Most likely not the leader. He’ll want to investigate the goings-on at the tomb, and leave the chase to his men.”

  “You know a great deal about the Witch Watchers,” Simon marveled.

  “No. I know a great deal about being a soldier. And the task of running around in the woods looking for a deadly wizard, at night, with one lantern, is exactly the sort of job that an officer would delegate.”

  Simon slumped down against an old tree-trunk and hung his head between his knees. “I see. You’re right. They must be assuming you’re a wizard. Who ever heard of performing a revivification on a common soldier?”

  “Who ever heard of reviving the wrong person?” Gilbert shot back.

  Simon was quiet for some time. Gilbert waited patiently as the boy recovered his breath with much coughing and sighing. For his own part, Gilbert didn’t feel short of breath or even tired.

  When Simon’s breathing had settled, he pushed himself upright. “You said there was a woman there. I hadn’t noticed her. I do wonder what that was all about. They’re wizard hunters. Well, wizard killers, really. I wonder why they would bring along a woman for grim work like that.”

  “Let us make every effort to not find out,” Gilbert suggested.

  “We need to find out where they ran off to. That was an abomination, for sure,” Alice insisted. She was standing with Captain Turpin in front of the tomb, looking off into the distance where the fugitives had vanished into the trees.

  The captain nodded. “I’ve sent Lieutenant Stanway after it with the rifles.”

  “Not all of them,” objected Private Archer, holding up his own rifle.

  “All of the other rifles, then,” the captain said with irritation, obviously not appreciating the correction from a subordinate. Turning back to Alice he said, “Jack won’t give up the chase easily. You know how he is about the undead. You and I need to sort out things with these four.” He pointed at the old men gathered in a heap at the door of the tomb, “No good all of us running off and leaving them loose to make more trouble.”

  Alice relented with a nod. Of course the captain was right. She wanted to chase after the abomination because it was the most interesting of the problems at hand, but interesting threats weren’t always the most dangerous.

  She and the captain stooped down and searched the robed men while Private Archer stood with his rifle ready in case any of the men proved more dangerous than they seemed. The captain seized the swords and daggers the men had been carrying. All of the prisoners were alive. Two were conscious, although stunned and muttering incoherently. One of these had a broken nose.

  “I wonder why the abomination attacked them?” the captain muttered.

  “Perhaps it’s a feral. They might have botched the revivification,” Alice said, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. The question had been loitering in her mind as well.

  “It didn’t look feral to me.”

  “No, it didn’t,” she admitted. “It ran away, and not towards us when we started shooting. I suppose it could have been a betrayal. These foul sorts are always plotting, even against each other.”

  The captain examined the tomb entrance. A door of iron bars hung open, and a broken chain was piled nearby. He lifted a padlock and held it up to the light for Alice to see. It had been covered with a wax seal. “Looks like the church sealed this place up, and this lot opened it again.”

  “They didn’t have a key, or they would have used it instead of cutting the chain. And they were up to no good, or they would have called a locksmith. Let’s see what we can learn inside.”

  “Archer, watch these men,” said the captain. “Keep them here. Shoot them if they give you any trouble. And watch out for spellcraft. They’re dazed now, but we don’t know how they’ll behave once they recover their senses.”

  Private Archer sighed and assumed his post guarding four helpless old men.

  Alice took the lantern and led the way in. She was very relieved that their working relationship had advanced to the point where the captain no longer insisted on marching out in front. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder to know that he would follow her down the steps.

  She was glad she’d chosen to wear trousers. She disliked showing off her legs like this, but practicality should always come before propriety. She was wearing a man’s trousers and jacket that had been tailored to her unusually narrow frame. She was wearing sturdy riding boots, which came up almost to her knees. She tried to offset the masculinity of her outfit by growing her hair long, and tying it up in many colorful ribbons.

  “What does your device say, Miss White?” The captain asked.

  Alice consulted her ethergram, which was mounted on her arm with rough leather straps. She flicked one of the dials a few times and watched the needle in silence. “Nothing. No spellcraft, at least. There’s a bit of activity, but I’d say that’s residual from the revivification.”

  “That’s good. I’d hate to face a wizard in a tight place like this.” He looked back at the narrow passage behind them.

  They examined several chambers and found nothing amiss. At the end of the hall they found the chamber of Lord Mordaunt.

  “Bloody hell. They brought back the viscount, didn’t they?” Turpin grumbled as the light fell on the circle of charcoal in the middle of the room.

  “Stop here,” she told the captain, “Don’t follow me into the room.” She walked carefully around the sorcery circle, examining it from every angle. Finally her light fell on the bare stone where one would normally expect to find a body.

  “Yes,” she said bitterly, “His Lordship is up again.”

  “Bloody hell,” the captain repeated.

  She crouched and examined the sorcery on the floor. It was the span of a man’s arms, and nearly a perfect circle. “Such beautiful handwriting. Note how the lettering retains a constant size around the entire perimeter, and yet each stanza exactly fills the circumference without gaps. No sign of erasing, either. That takes practice.” She brushed her fingertips against the floor and quickly withdrew them. “It’s still quite cold to the touch. The revivification was done very recently.”

  “So one of the gentlemen upstairs is the sorcerer,” Turpin said with a self-satisfied nod.

  “Perhaps. But none of them made this. Their hands were clean.” She held up a wedge of charcoal that had been left beside the circle.

>   “Blast. So that must have been the sorcerer we saw running off with the abomination. Now we have an abomination and a sorcerer on the loose.”

  “They left us a book to read!” Alice said with mock cheerfulness. She gently lifted the leather-bound volume and cradled it in one arm, and then pulled a ribbon out of her hair to mark the current page. She spent a minute or two leafing through it. “Looks like... another copy of the 1627 Werner Krauss book.”

  “Looks bigger than the other 1627’s I’ve seen.”

  “Yes. Some material has been added. And a good deal of it has been translated into English. At least, the German parts have. Lots of annotations. Looks like this began as a direct copy and evolved into a work of its own over the years. I can’t imagine why they would leave a treasure like this behind.”

  Unable to contain his curiosity, the captain stepped into the room and peered over her shoulder. “Can you tell anything else about its lineage?” he asked.

  “No, except that it looks like it was all written by one hand.”

  “Well, those four upstairs will swing for their part in all this. So we have something to show for our efforts here.”

  “Yes,” Alice said without looking up from the book. “Now we just need to track down that abomination.”

  Gilbert stepped off the carriage and smoothed out his uniform. While he enjoyed London immensely, he was always glad to return to Rothersby. As the carriage pulled away, he looked up the hill towards the house and was surprised to see a plump young man trying to push a trunk up the path with limited success.

  “Gilbert dear!” Mother called. She was standing a few steps ahead of the young man. “You came home just in time! Do help poor Leland.” She was wearing a broad white hat to protect her from the sun and securing it in place with one hand to protect it from the vigorous spring wind.

  Gilbert strode up the path to where Leland had given up on pushing the trunk and taken to sitting on it. Gilbert vaguely recognized him as a neighbor, although he couldn’t recall the family name. He was short (although everyone seemed at least a little short to Gilbert) and was wearing an ill-fitting brown tweed suit. Around his neck was a red bow tie, which rose and fell as he heaved for air.

  “Mother, I have some good news for you,” Gilbert said cheerfully.

  “And I have news for you, but it can wait. Help Leland with my new chest before it kills him.”

  “I’ll take one side, you take the other,” Leland said as he moved himself into place.

  Gilbert frowned. He would rather do this job alone. Not wanting to be rude (Mother would make a fuss if he was rude to a neighbor) he moved into position and lifted up his side. It was challenging to keep it steady, mostly due to the fact that Leland was ready to buckle under the weight. Gilbert was willing to take more of the weight for himself, but their stark height differential made this difficult. Eventually they took slow, faltering steps towards the house.

  “Gilbert, I received a letter from your sister in America. It seems they’re expecting their first child this fall.” She hovered nearby, supervising their work as if she expected they would dash her treasure to the ground at the earliest opportunity.

  “Ruby and what’s-his-name are starting a family?” Gilbert remarked in wonder.

  “Yes. Your sister, eight years your junior, is now married, settled, and having children. And she’s very curious as to whether you’ve met anyone or are moving in the direction of marriage yourself.”

  “I’m sure her curiosity is minuscule compared to yours, mother. But no, I did not miraculously court, wed, and impregnate a girl while I was in London this weekend.”

  “Don’t be vulgar!” She lightly swatted him on the shoulder. Gilbert suspected her lenience was for the benefit of her trunk, and not his arm.

  There was some confusion as they reached the steps. Gilbert and Leland both tried to go first, then they both tried to steer the other up first, and then they sort of staggered around in a circle. It was really hurting Gilbert’s back to carry the trunk while bending down to Leland’s height and while trying to correct for the boy’s hopeless vacillating.

  Finally Gilbert was done being polite.

  “Here.” He hoisted the burden away from Leland and placed the weight against his own chest.

  Leland stood there dumbly, lost for what to do next.

  “The door, if you please!” Gilbert growled.

  Leland hurried up the steps and hauled the door open, then stood in the way, then figured out where to place himself so that Gilbert could enter.

  “This means you’re going to be an uncle!” Mother called after him as he went inside. “At last,” she muttered a few moments later.

  “Please tell me this isn’t destined for the upstairs,” he said.

  “Sitting room,” she instructed as she followed them in. “And do be careful with it.”

  The trunk landed in the proper room with a thud. “So what’s the good news?” Gilbert asked innocently.

  “You know very well I just told you the good news!” she scolded.

  “That strikes me as terrible news,” he said, maintaining the pretense. “Now you will redouble your efforts to marry me off.”

  “I just want to see that you manage to produce grandchildren before I leave this world.”

  “Stop being silly, Mother. You aren’t leaving this world anytime soon.”

  “You’re thirty now, which means I can no longer go around pretending to be so myself.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Gilbert smiled. “I’ll tell people you’re my sister.” Mother was still young and vigorous, and the only damage she had suffered from age was that her smile was more deeply ingrained on her face.

  “Save your flattery for the unmarried girls you meet. Their youth will make them susceptible to your nonsense.”

  Leland tried again to sit on the trunk. Gilbert shoved him off and swung it open.

  “Now, don’t open-” Mother said, several seconds too late.

  “Ugh!” Gilbert winced as he was met with the smell of must and mildew. “It’s filled with moth-eaten blankets!”

  “I didn’t buy it for the blankets. I bought it for what you’ll have once you take them out.”

  “What’s that?” asked Leland. He rummaged through the pile, looking for the treasure. Puffs of dust rose to meet him, and he began sneezing.

  “An empty chest, of course!” Mother said. Turning her back on Leland she explained to Gilbert, “I bought it from the Brewers. Maybell was good enough to lend me Leland here to help bring it home.”

  “If you didn’t want the blankets, then why were we made to carry them?” Leland demanded between sneezes.

  Mother raised her eyebrows “I suppose we could have left them on your doorstep, but then you would have missed out on the exercise of pushing them here. And you are positively starved for exercise, Leland. How will you get a wife with your looks in such a sad condition?”

  “Looks are hardly important to a woman in search of a husband!” he protested. “Your son is built like a dock-worker and it’s done him no service as a suitor.”

  “That’s more to the discredit of the women in this country,” Mother insisted.

  “But why did you buy a trunk?” Gilbert asked, noting that it was rough and didn’t really match anything else in the house, much less the room.

  “I need something to hold my belongings when I go back to America,” she said casually, as if this was a perfectly ordinary thing for her to do.

  “You’re visiting Ruby?” Gilbert asked with incredulity.

  “No. I’m moving in with Ruby and Walter. And you should come along. There’s another nation full of women over there. Maybe one of them will have you, since you seem to do so poorly with the ones in this country.”

  Gilbert was stricken. “But... you can’t just move. I mean...” He trailed off, confused.

  “And why not? We don’t have any connection to this country now that your father is passed on. You spent the first fi
fteen years of your life over there, and it suited you well enough.”

  “But I’ve spent the last fifteen years here,” he protested. “I don’t want to just pick up and leave.”

  Mother took off her hat and headed out of the room, still talking to him. “You act as though you have some sort of life going on here, but you’re a piece of driftwood, dear Gilbert. Look at Leland. Ten years your junior and he’s begun his career. He’s going to work for the church.”

  “I’m going to help track down magical deviants,” Leland proclaimed.

  “You’ve been accepted to the Witch Watch?” Gilbert asked doubtfully.

  Leland bristled at this. “It’s called the Ministry of Ethereal Affairs, and no, I’m not working for them. I’m working for the church.”

  “I didn’t know there was a difference,” Gilbert shrugged.

  Leland gave an impatient snort. “The Ministry is a government institution and really only concerns itself with big public cases. Wizards, mind-controlled Members of Parliament, magical attacks on the royal family, that sort of thing. The church is less interested in headlines and more concerned with weeding out dangerous sorcery at all levels of society.” He stood up straight at this, like a soldier reporting for duty.

  “You see?” Mother said with pride. She patted Leland on the back like a child who had just cleaned up after himself. “He’s going to be doing important work.”

  “But that’s what I wanted to tell you,” Gilbert said. “I have found work.”

  “As a dock-worker,” Leland quipped, to his own amusement, and the indifference of everyone else.

  “I’ve been accepted to act as the personal guard of Viscount Mordaunt of Ravenstead."

  Gilbert led Simon as best he could through the unfamiliar woods. They left the pursuing lantern behind and allowed themselves a short rest. Thinking the chase was over, they began discussing where they might stop and rest for the night.