Witch Finder

by C. L. Werner

  Gotter peered into the darkness in the corners of his cellar, conjuring up shapes without form or distinction. His mind raced with horrors recollected from childhood, frightful stories told to terrify the unruly child. ‘Be a good boy, Fritz,’ his mother used to say. ‘Or the underfolk will come and take you away.’ The baker shuddered, tears rising unbidden to his eyes, blurring his gaze even as they darted from side to side, straining to see every inch of the cellar.

  The faint scurrying persisted, and Gotter was certain he could smell something that was not flour nor sawdust nor the mustiness of the room. The stench of mangy fur, of rank verminous breath, of rotting meat caught between sharp fangs. A cough began to gather in his chest. The baker fought to contain the spasm, his eyes on those hideous tracks.

  ‘Sigmar preserve me,’ he prayed. ‘I’ll never take advantage of anyone that lives again. I’ll make honest bread with real flour. Just let me make it back to the stairs. Don’t let them see me.’

  Even as the thought crossed his mind, there was movement among the shadows of the flour stacks. Red eyes gleamed out from the darkness, seeming to peer straight into Gotter’s soul. The baker fought to move, tried to turn and flee back up the stairs, but the only response from his paralysed body was the trickle of urine that spilled down his leg.

  The shadow began to slink forward. More red eyes winked into existence, glaring at him from the darkness. The cough he had been suppressing wheezed from his mouth in a choking rattle, its strength diminished by the terror surging through his mind. The shape became more distinct as it emerged into the dim light. Gotter tried to look away, tried to shut his eyes, but his body refused to obey even so small a command.

  It was the size of a man. Its outlines suggested the basic human form. Tattered scraps of leather and filthy cloth clung to its shape after the fashion of a tunic and kilt. But it was not a man. Unclean brown fur covered most of its form, save where it faded to a mangy white upon its belly and throat. The hands were tipped with sharp claws, like obscene talons. From the creature’s hindquarters, a long, naked tail twitched and writhed. Its face was pulled into a long muzzle, whiskers surrounding its nose, huge incisors protruding from its mouth. The red eyes considered him with pitiless malevolence, a spite beyond human comprehension.

  The monster stalked forward, its movements cautious. Gotter almost gave a nervous laugh as he noticed the faint white powder staining the creature’s muzzle, realising what had been stealing his grain and flour. But his paralysed body was too rebellious to embrace the onset of madness. The skaven raised its face, sniffing at the air. The monster gave voice to a sound part hiss and part squeak. Other lurking shadows skittered forward, revealing themselves as the creature’s noxious kin. The first skaven scuttled right up to Gotter, its muzzle sniffing at his clothes. As the ratman hissed, two more of the monsters hurried forward.

  A black paw pulled the table leg from Gotter’s grasp, while other inhuman hands closed upon his shoulders and arms. Their touch snapped the baker from his paralysis. Gotter kicked and struggled in their grasp, a wretched moan quivering past his lips. But the skaven were unmoved, pulling him into the darkness. The sound of grinding stone rumbled through the cellar. Gotter watched in horror as a portion of the wall fell inward, revealing the black opening of a tunnel.

  ‘Take-take,’ the first skaven chittered. ‘Doktor-man like-like. Grey seer like-like. Reward much-much.’ The other rat-men laughed at their leader’s pronouncement. Gotter joined their hideous merriment as his mind broke. The skaven, undisturbed by his madness, carried him forth into the tunnel.

  ‘Fritz has been a bad boy, mummy,’ Gotter giggled as the blackness loomed toward him. ‘And now the underfolk have come to take him away!’

  The baker’s laughter faded as the door slowly closed behind him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The sun retreated before the encroaching darkness, relinquishing its dominion like a vanquished prince. Shadows gathered about the narrow streets of Wurtbad, bringing with them the cold chill of autumnal night. People hurried back into the shelter of their homes, abandoning their streets to those bold enough to challenge the dark or rich enough to hire bodyguards. For night brought out the city’s predators, its thieves and cutpurses, murderers and housebreakers. The night was their time and decent folk best stayed behind locked doors. With the plague abroad, the ranks of the desperate, the killers and looters, was swollen by wretched men looking not for the price of ale, but the price of bread. The city watch now patrolled in mobs of a dozen and more, and even they kept mostly to the well-lit streets, perfectly willing to allow the human scum to ply their nefarious trades in the side streets and back alleys.

  A different sort of scum gathered in the shadows of an old guildhall. Seven men, their garb heavy to ward off the chill of night and black to blend into the shadows, traced patterns into the dust with their feet. They were old hands at villainy – cut-throats, kidnappers and worse. Their catalogue of sin was enough to shame Khaine, the lord of murder, down in his fiery hells. Yet even these men were uneasy, their shreds of conscience sickened by the acts perpetrated upon their own people these last weeks, and the deeds their hated master would still have them do. But the will to survive was stronger, a shackle their loathsome master had wrapped about each of their necks. A bond not one of the seven had either the courage or the decency to break.

  The sound of a trapdoor slamming shut startled them. It brought the rogues around to face the archway that yawned at the rear of the meeting hall, behind the rotting remains of a wooden lectern. It was a portal that opened upon shadow, leading back into the old offices and storerooms of the guild. Now it led to the passageway that connected this place to the lair of their master. The thieves cast nervous looks at one another, some fingering the daggers and swords they wore beneath their cloaks. Their unease did not lessen as a tall, thin figure emerged from the darkness. The elderly man wore a heavy brown coat about his emaciated frame, a massive hat covering his head. The thieves bowed their heads slightly as their master stepped into the grey moonlight seeping through the guildhall’s grimy windows.

  ‘You are all here,’ Doktor Weichs pronounced. ‘Forgive my delay, but it is unfashionable for a gentleman to be punctual. As gentlemen yourselves, I am sure you understand,’ he added with a withering sneer.

  ‘You have brought it?’ one of the thieves almost pleaded, his voice cracking. The other men remained silent, but the question was foremost in their own minds.

  ‘Of course,’ Weichs smiled, stepping toward the battered lectern from which the long dead guildmaster once conducted meetings. The doktor’s gloved hand removed seven small clay bottles from his coat, setting each upon the pedestal. The man who had spoken took a step forward. The doktor shot him a stern glance. Chastised, the thief retreated, wiping his moist hands upon his cloak.

  Weichs studied the desperate yearning within the feverish gazes of the men. He locked eyes with each of them, fairly daring them to rush forward and take for himself that which each needed, to quench the longing that burned within their veins. Finally, Weichs stepped back, waving his hand towards the podium. Like a pack of starving curs, the thieves rushed forward, shoving and pushing one another as they took up the bottles and hastily downed their contents.

  When the last bottle had been emptied, Weichs clapped his hands together. A shadow detached itself from the darkness of the archway. Smaller than Weichs, its hunched shoulders were covered by a filthy black robe, its head by a black cowl. It walked with an unsettling motion that suggested the inhuman, an odour of decay clung to it like an unholy aura. From the front of the cowl, a rat-like muzzle protruded, its chisel fangs exposed. Hands covered in mangy brown fur hung from the sleeves of the robe, gripping the wooden box the creature held before it. The thieves backed away as the monster advanced, setting the box down beside the lectern.

  ‘A fresh supply of medicine for you,’ Doktor Weichs told his men. ‘A fresh supply of medicine for Wurtbad.’ Flashes of guilt flicker
ed across the faces of the thieves.

  ‘You know what to do,’ Weichs said. The thieves nodded solemnly, hastily producing leather gloves from their pockets. From the linen bags they carried, the men removed strange leather masks. One of the thieves produced a tinderbox and each man came to him to light a hemp match. Another thief handed out small cloth knots that smelled faintly of lilac. Each thief lit the cloth, the smell of lilac intensifying as the fabric smouldered, then dropped the pomanders down the narrow beaks of their masks. With the scent of lilac filling the meeting hall, human faces disappeared behind bird-like visages.

  Doktor Freiherr Weichs uttered a sardonic laugh as his plague doktors came forward, removing the bottles of poison the skaven had brought. Each man took one and placed it in the bag he had brought with him. They would spread out, filtering through the city like daemonic messengers. Heralds of hope to the terrified people of Wurtbad, all the while carrying the very doom that those same people feared. There was a sick irony behind such a deceit, such as only a man like Weichs could appreciate.

  Of course, there was an even more subtle irony behind his hold over the men. They had been poisoned by Weichs soon after he arrived in Wurtbad, with a foul mixture of crushed warpstone and weirdroot in their beer and ale. A combination almost guaranteed to cause mutation, if it did not bring instant death. Weichs had happily informed these thieves and murderers of what was happening to their bodies, and why. He had told them the only way to protect themselves from total degeneration was with the potions only he could provide. There was no other choice. They had to become his slaves, if they did not wish to become monsters. Weichs chuckled again. There was an even more poetic irony in that the ‘medicine’ that held them to his will was nothing more than a smaller dose of the very concoction that poisoned them. His plague doktors worked to help him secure subjects for his experiments, little suspecting that they themselves were just part of one grand experiment.

  The old man’s features disappeared behind those of a bird of prey. The plague doktor reached down into the wooden box, removing the last of the black glass bottles. He turned the grey lenses of his mask upon the rat-man lingering nearby. ‘I shall need six tonight,’ Weichs stated, lifting his hands and displaying the appropriate number of fingers. The skaven chittered in its own vile language, holding up its malformed hands to display six clawed talons in response. Doktor Weichs turned away, marching from the guildhall with a deliberately unhurried pace.

  The skaven’s malicious gaze followed the plague doktor’s departure. The creature laughed. It had not been deceived. It had smelled the fear beneath the man’s calm demeanour. Trickles of saliva dripped from the creature’s mouth. Perhaps the time would soon come when Skilk had no further use for the doktor-man.

  Hungry thoughts crawled through its mind, the scent of lilac in its nose. The skaven scurried back into the welcoming darkness.

  The witch hunter and his companion rode in silence toward the city, sensing the grim atmosphere that hung all about them. Despair clung to the walls of Wurtbad, the unspoken dread that hangs over any community haunted by pestilence. The first sign of the corruption was outside the city walls, the great pit that yawned open in what had once been a wheat field. The plague pit had been filled with naked bodies, black robed priests of Morr chanting sombre prayers to sanctify the dead as they were hastily thrown in. Barrels of quicklime edged the pit, the priests tossing shovels of the powdery substance upon each body as it settled. Lit by flickering torches bound to tall poles, there was something spectral about the ghastly sight.

  More sinister still had been the two silent, armour-clad warriors who stood guard over the priests and the plague pit. Encased in plate mail crafted from obsidian, they wore a hooded tabard not unlike the robes of the priests. They were the Black Guard, templars of Morr, god of death. Warriors who did not concern themselves with the living, only with the sanctity of the dead. The mere presence of such fearsome knights kept even the most distraught mother from reclaiming the body of her child from the plague pit, and their deadly reputation kept opportunistic grave robbers from plying their trade.

  Within the city, the streets seemed even more desolate than Thulmann had remembered them. Sewage and waste had begun to accumulate in the gutters, a sure sign that the dung-gatherers and muckrakers were no longer active. The witch hunter shook his head as he wrinkled his nose at the stench. He had seen enough over the years to know that doktors and physicians were right to claim filth was a breeding ground for disease, and that sanitation was the best safeguard against pestilence. Altdorf’s elaborate network of sewers had been constructed because of such concerns, as had those of Nuln. But Wurtbad, once the glittering prize of one of the poorest realms of the Empire, had no such system. Living in squalor, the men and women who cleaned the streets were among those hardest hit by the plague.

  ‘Watch what you’re stepping in!’ Streng snarled at his mount, slapping its neck in irritation as the hoof squashed against the dirty cobbles. The bearded mercenary displaced his irritation from the animal and back to his employer.

  ‘We were better off in that ghoul-nest Murieste,’ the thug spat. ‘They’ll have to drown this place to get rid of the stink!’ Thulmann gave his henchman a tired stare.

  ‘Persevere,’ the witch hunter told him. He turned his gaze back around, staring at the street sign the two riders had just passed. A clutch of shadowy figures lurked within the mouth of an alleyway. As Thulmann rode beneath one of the street lamps, and they saw what kind of a man they were shadowing, the ruffians slipped back into the darkness. ‘If foul odours are the worst trial we face here, then Sigmar is being exceedingly kind.’ Thulmann stared upwards at another street sign. With a slight pull on the reins he brought his steed to a halt.

  ‘We part company here,’ the witch hunter said. ‘I must go and see Meisser. You go to secure lodgings at the Seven Candles.’ Thulmann did not wait for Streng to reply, but carefully turned his horse about. Streng watched his employer ride off, listening to his mount’s hooves upon the cobbles.

  The mercenary’s hand dropped to the purse swinging from his belt. There were still a few pieces of silver in the worn leather pouch. Enough for at least one night of debauchery. A lewd grin began to work its way onto Streng’s face. Let Thulmann find his own rooms, the thug decided, he had his own priorities.

  Streng looked at the shop signs swaying in the cold breeze, studying the pictures they bore. The ex-soldier had little skill with letters, but an excellent eye for detail and a prodigious knack for building maps within his head. By the signs, he recognised a chandler, a cobbler and a knife maker all in a row. That meant he was in the Griefweg neighbourhood. If he continued along this street, it would eventually connect with Stahlstrasse, and its over-abundance of taverns, brothels and gambling dens.

  The Seven Candles could wait. Right now, Streng decided he needed ale, a wench – and more ale.

  It had been almost ridiculously easy to slip past the guards on the city walls. With his pallid features, dark attire and the air of morbidity that hovered about him, the soldiers at the east gate had taken Carandini for one of the priests of Morr, returned from dumping corpses in the vast plague pit beyond the city walls. The rickety old cart and the stench of death emanating from the wooden box it carried only added to that illusion. Not that the soldiers would have been able to stop him in any event. Carandini was bringing something much worse than plague to Wurtbad, something that would have destroyed the guards as swiftly and ruthlessly as it had their fellows who maintained the quarantine.

  The necromancer shuddered as he recalled the ease with which Sibbechai had killed them.

  As the cart rumbled through the silent streets, Carandini heard the soft creak of the box opening and closing behind him. The chill of the night air increased, the reek of death became still more distinct. A grotesque shadow rose above the necromancer, then settled beside him on the seat of the cart.

  ‘North,’ the vampire voice rasped. Carandini stared at th
e monster, trying to read some expression in the fires that shone from the sockets of the ghoulish face.

  ‘That takes us to the waterfront,’ the necromancer protested. ‘We will not find what we seek there.’ Despite a lifetime spent delving into the black arts and the morbid rites of necromancy, despite years of forcing the simulacrum of life into rotting corpses, Carandini winced as the vampire’s desiccated lips pulled back, exposing its over-sized fangs.

  ‘First we find a safe place to hide my resting place,’ the necrarch hissed. ‘I would not want to secure the treasure after so many centuries only to be destroyed by the rising sun.’ There was an unspoken threat behind Sibbechai’s words. Carandini wondered if the monster intended to turn on him even before they had secured the book.

  ‘Why the waterfront?’ Carandini asked, trying to discern the vampire’s intent.

  ‘I hear much,’ Sibbechai replied, ‘even within a wooden box. The soldiers at the gate spoke of plague in the dockyards. The living avoid such places when they can. There will be many buildings abandoned by their cowardly owners. Plenty of places to hide.’ A dry laugh, like the death rattle of a man choking upon his own blood, bubbled from the vampire’s withered throat.

  ‘Fear not, necromancer,’ Sibbechai spat, ‘once my grave is safely concealed, we shall find this wizard. Then we shall recover my book.’

  The chapter house of the Order of Sigmar, headquarters of the witch hunters of Wurtbad and its surrounding districts, was exactly as Thulmann had first seen it several weeks previously. It was a squat, two-storey building with a gabled roof and a plaster icon of the twin-tailed comet looming above the main door, with no sign of the subtle decay and neglect that had started to gnaw at some of the surrounding streets. Leave it to Meisser to ensure the street in front of the chapter house was swept, the gutters mucked out and the walls scrubbed clean, Thulmann told himself. The man should have been a bureaucrat. An entire city rotting away around him, yet he found time to worry about dirty walls and muddy gutters.