“The Klausner curse,” Thulmann’s voice rose above the crowd, projected to the very back of the room, a trick often employed by actors upon the stage and taught to every Templar and priest of Sigmar. The crowd grew silent again, staring once more at the man whom they had come here to confront. “I have heard much of this curse, but know little,” the witch hunter continued when he saw that he had the attention of the room. “I have seen for myself the remains of one of this fiend’s victims, a cattleman named Skimmel who was found in the early hours of this morning.” The news brought a shocked gasp from some in the crowd who had not given full credence to the rumours that had already been circulating about the village. “His lordship thinks these crimes are the work of a wolf. I know better. I must know more.”
Thulmann strode away from the bar, stepping to the fore of the crowd, his keen gaze sweeping across the faces filling the room. “You, the good folk of Klausberg are the ones to whom I must turn if we are to put an end to these atrocities and bring this insidious fiend to justice. You must tell me all that you have seen, all that you have heard.” Thulmann let his lean features spread into a grim smile. “Together, if we keep our faith in Sigmar, we will overcome this evil.”
The witch hunter’s quick, impassioned words had their effect, and a new murmur, this one of excitement and cautious hope, rippled through the room. Thulmann smiled as he watched his handiwork take root. Now he needed to cultivate it and force what he had planted to bear fruit.
A small, mousy man broke away from the crowd, nervously approaching the witch hunter.
“I can help you, master witch finder,” the little man said, wringing his hat between his hands. “You see, I have seen the daemon for myself,” the little man confessed when he was aware that he had Thulmann’s attention.
At the bar, Streng overheard the little man’s story. He grumbled into his ale and drained the last dregs from his flagon. “There are times when I truly regret deserting the army,” he mused. “I have a bad feeling that this is going to be one of them.”
* * * * *
“I’m sorry, sir, but I be closing early. You’ll have to come back tomorrow,” the butcher informed the man who had just slipped into his tiny shop. The rebuked customer stood in the doorway of the shop, a perplexed look contorting his pale features. He brushed a ratty string of oily hair from his face as the butcher rounded the counter, tossing his stained apron on the floor.
He glanced about the shoddy interior, staring with keen interest at the bisected pig carcasses hanging from hooks fixed to the ceiling, at the barrel of dismembered chicken refuse that would be later ground into meal for hogs, dogs and the least discriminatory of the town’s human denizens. The smell of blood and the buzzing of flies occupied the visitor’s other senses.
“It will only take a moment,” he told the butcher. “Some sausage and a bit of pig’s blood to boil it in.” The butcher shook his head, hastening toward the door and hurrying the robed man before him as though he were a wayward duckling.
“No time, my friend,” the butcher told him. The big man paused, his eyes narrowing as he looked more closely at his guest. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” he commented with an accusing voice.
“Humble means,” the pasty faced man returned, shrugging his shoulders in apology and resignation. “I fear I cannot often afford decent meat but must make do with what I can provide for myself.” He froze for a moment, staring at a haunch of meat resting on a wooden platter, trying to decide what exactly it had come from. The crawling blanket of flies that clothed a fair portion of it did little to aid his study.
The butcher snorted with distaste. “Poacher, eh? Lord Klausner will catch you soon enough, rabbit-catcher, and then you’ll be for it.” The man laughed grimly. “He might even try and lay the terror on your head if you’re not careful. He’d be just as happy to put the blame on a two-legged wolf as a four-legged one.”
The customer chuckled nervously. “That would certainly be an unpleasant turn of events,” he muttered. His speech trailed away as he stared at a cow head lying atop a wooden box, its lifeless eyes staring back at him, its thick tongue protruding from its dead mouth. “All the more reason for me to procure some of your provender,” the man said hastily as he saw the butcher advancing toward him. The big man was not moved, pushing his ill-featured patron back out the door.
“Sorry friend,” the butcher mumbled, turning to lock the door to his shop. “Afraid you’ll have to live on rabbit a bit longer. Big doings at the inn, and I’ll not miss a moment of it.”
“Is that so,” the pale man asked, glancing in the direction of The Grey Crone. There was indeed a steady stream of traffic flowing into the building. He tried to recollect his sketchy knowledge of Imperial holidays. “The Festival of St. Ulfgar?” he asked as the butcher completed his task.
“No indeed!” the butcher scoffed. “The witch hunter is there, taking statements from any who will give them.” The butcher turned, walking quickly in the direction of the inn. “Finally, somebody’s going to put an end to these killings,” he called back as he raced away.
Carandini scowled as he heard the villager’s words, quickly sheathing the triple-edged dagger he had been holding beneath the voluminous sleeve of his tattered grey cassock.
He had feared something like this. Things had been stalemated for several weeks now, but the arrival of this witch hunter would give a new strength to the enemy. The necromancer scuttled off down the nearest alley, trying to remain inconspicuous. Strangers were common enough in Klausberg, even under the current pall, but he wanted to take no chances. This close to achieving everything he had ever hoped for, he was even more paranoid than usual about putting his own neck in jeopardy.
The necromancer hastened to where he had tethered his sickly mule and rode off to bring the ill news to his confederate.
Night had fallen by the time Carandini returned to his lair, a small and abandoned shack five miles outside the village. Even so, the necromancer was obliged to wait for nearly an hour before his ally put in his appearance. Carandini turned away from his small fire as he heard the swish of clothing behind him. The necromancer could barely make out the white face that rose above his confederate’s black clothing, even with his supernaturally keen night sight. Carandini rose to his feet, wiping the dirt and soot from the front of his cassock.
“Forgive my tardiness,” the shadow said. Carandini could just make out the movement of the speaker’s mouth within the smoky darkness that surrounded him. “I was unavoidably delayed.”
“You have not been discovered?” demanded Carandini, his hand closing about the small vial he had sewn within the lining of his cloak.
“I am not so reckless as to jeopardise all that we have worked for,” the shadow hissed, his powerful tones redolent with resentment. “There is nothing in this world or the next more important than the prize we will claim.”
“A permanent and lasting end to both of us is something that I should hold of greater importance!” Carandini snapped. “It might be of interest to you to know that a witch hunter has come to Klausberg. You must be more cautious than ever! If it is even suspected…”
“I have known about the witch hunter’s arrival for two days now,” the other told him. “I watched him ride from the keep the first night he was here.” Carandini rounded on his companion, fury swelling within him, forgetting for a moment even the habitual loathing and fear which his ally caused in his heart.
“You knew about him and said nothing!” the necromancer shouted incredulously.
“Would you have informed me were our positions reversed?” the shadow asked calmly, his deeply accented voice twisted with a cruel mirth.
Carandini scowled and retreated back toward the fire. There was truth in his ally’s words, Carandini would indeed have kept the information to himself, in hopes that he might find some way to use the witch hunter against his associate when the time came.
It did not disturb Carandini that his co
mpanion did not trust him, neither of them were such fools as to trust one another any more than a miser would trust a dwarf with his money-belt. They were useful to one another right now, but once that usefulness had run its course, their fragile alliance would come to an end, and the one who struck first would most likely also be the one to triumph. No, their mutual capacity for treachery was something of an unspoken understanding between them; what disturbed Carandini was the felicity with which his associate had predicted what shape his plots might assume when that time came.
“Do not brood so,” the shadow hissed. “There are ways that we might turn this man’s arrival to our advantage.” Carandini looked up sharply, his face twisted with suspicion. “Our mutual advantage,” the shape added.
“Being burned at the stake is not something I should find advantageous,” spat Carandini. “And I dare say that it would not do yourself any great amount of good.”
“We can arrange something to dispose of this man, certainly,” the shadow hissed, slowly circling the fire. “If he hunts a beast, then perhaps we should let him find a beast. But consider this,” the voice dropped into a slithering whisper. “We might do better than simply kill him. We might direct his attention to where it will serve us best. The enemy of our enemy” the figure grew quiet as he considered his idea.
“His presence here interferes with our plans,” stated the necromancer. “I had to abandon my choice for the next ritual because of his presence in the town.”
“The rituals will proceed,” the shadow assured Carandini. “Nothing can be allowed to prevent them. You will simply have to find another viable sacrifice. However, it is wise to plan for every contingency.”
Emil Gundolf slowly picked his way through the trees, lips pursed as he whistled a low, mournful tune. He had walked this way countless times, yet never had his spirits been so low, his fears so great. Evil was abroad in Klausberg, striking everywhere, striking anyone. It was dangerous to be abroad at night.
He cast a nervous look over his shoulder, staring at the now distant light twinkling from his home. He could be at home now, safe and warm beside his wife and children.
The thought of his wife and daughters caused the forester to grip his axe a bit more securely. He fastened the top button of his coat and strode onward. Whatever fiend was abroad, it could be no more deadly than an empty belly, of that Gundolf was certain. And if the blight really had spread from the Klausner estate into Franz Beicher’s timber, then Gundolf could expect a very summary dismissal from Beicher when the merchant discovered that his logging grounds had become corrupted.
Warmed by such grim pragmatism, Emil Gundolf continued to whistle and walk through the maze of rail-thin trunks.
He did not see his attackers, for they set upon him in darkness and silence from behind.
A heavy hood was slipped over his head before Gundolf could even open his mouth to scream, and powerful hands tore his axe from him.
The forester struggled as he was pushed and pulled, striving to overcome the tremendous strength of his captors. He soon realised that he was no match for those that held him, but Gundolf had no delusions regarding what his fate would be if he allowed them to drag him away.
Every step he tried to stamp the feet of his attackers, tried to smash an elbow or a shoulder into the face or stomach of one of his unseen adversaries. Sometimes he was rewarded by a grunt of pain or a muttered curse, sometimes the grip upon him would lessen slightly. But never enough, never would his captors weaken enough to allow him to slip their clutches.
Emil Gundolf thought of his wife, his tiny twin daughters, waiting nervously beside the hearth, waiting for him to return. Within the cloying darkness of the suffocating hood the forester shouted, screamed in impotent anguish, but the mask smothered the sounds. Tears welled up in his eyes, dampening the cold leather.
After some time, his captors brought him to a halt. Gundolf was gasping for breath beneath the hood, fighting to pull every scrap of air through the heavy leather. Sightless, with his arms now bound at his sides, he was unable to brace himself when his captors threw him to the ground. Gundolf groaned as his foes kicked and rolled his body into position upon the cold damp earth.
“That will do,” a cold voice spoke from somewhere above him. The last thing Emil Gundolf heard was the sound of his wool shirt being cut open and the wet flop of his guts as they spilled from his torn belly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mathias Thulmann sat before the small table that rested within his room at The Grey Crone, staring intently at the old map of the district he had acquired from the village scribe. It was a crude thing, and now bore the irregular splotches and blemishes the witch hunter had daubed onto it.
Each splotch was accompanied by a number, and each number accompanied an entry in the cloth-bound chapbook in which Thulmann had written all the information he had gained from the villagers. He rubbed his eyes, cursing once again the ethereal weapons of the Dark Gods: ignorance, superstition and fear. They had certainly been working overtime upon the people of Klaus-berg. The peasant farmers, tradesmen and rugged foresters were jumping at every shadow, cringing at every sound in the night, certain that the perpetrator of these vile crimes (which they had named the Klausner daemon) was near. Thulmann had hoped to learn something of value. Perhaps he had, but separating it from all the chaff of panic and superstition was going to be a monumental task.
He read one of the entries in his chapbook, sipping at a glass of wine from the bottle Reikhertz had provided him with. It was a perfect example of the confused nonsense that he was coming up against in his inquiries. A swineherd had gone out at night to investigate the agitated sounds of his hogs. Turning from the swine pens, he had nearly expired from fright when he had seen the evil eyes of a daemon glaring at him from the dark loft of his barn.
A few quick questions about the daemonic eyes and their size in relation to the dimensions of the loft, had convinced Thulmann that they were not nearly so large nor so extraordinary as the man had imagined them.
The witch hunter drew a line through the record. The swineherd’s account was almost certainly a case of mistaken identity, in this instance a harmless owl transformed by shadow and fear into some emissary of the Ruinous Powers, one of many accounts Thulmann was finding himself drawing marks through.
It was a strange paradox. On the one hand he had Wilhelm Klausner, who, for reasons of his own, refused to admit the possibility of the unnatural no matter the evidence that might be presented. On the other hand he had the people of Klausberg, who were seeing a ghoul behind every tree and a blood-hungry fiend under every haycart.
Thulmann looked again at his map. There were several marks that were made not in the blue paint with which he had denoted the peasants’ accounts, but in bright red. These denoted incidents that could not be disputed, incidents that were without a doubt the work of the witch hunter’s quarry. For at each of those sites, some forsaken soul had met a gruesome and hideous death.
The witch hunter counted them again, shaking his head at the enormity of the horror that had struck this community. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven red marks. Twenty-seven lives ended by this unholy marauder.
Thulmann studied the locations of the victims, trying to decide if there was any pattern to the fiend’s carnage. But there was nothing. North of the village, east of the village, south, west. In woods and in fields, pasture and bog, it seemed to make no difference.
Thulmann sighed in frustration at the turn his thoughts had taken. Klausner’s mythical wolf would have chosen some sort of hunting ground, its methods and actions betraying its simple brute intellect. If the enemy were a simple beast, it should have displayed such character from the beginning, stalking a particular sort of prey and only under particular conditions. But this fiend must be something else. Thulmann wondered if the killer’s disordered mind still clung to any sort of purpose, or had the killings themselves become all the purpose they needed? Those who dabbled in the black arts did so at the peril of n
ot only their immortal soul, but their very ability to reason.
Once again, Thulmann found himself considering the foul Erasmus Kleib. He had all too readily dismissed the sorcerer as a madman, falling into the same trap that had caused his mentor to underestimate their foe, at the cost of his life.
Kleib had been a twisted and evil man, but he had not been truly insane. He had been all too aware of the horror and perversion of what he did; he had appreciated in the full that his actions were lawless and murderous. That great intellect, that powerful mind had been twisted, tainted, but it had not been broken. It was not the base cunning of a madman that had allowed Erasmus Kleib to remain at large, committing his atrocities, for so many years, but the wicked application of that tremendous intellect. It had been all too easy to call him a madman, as if that would excuse his seduction to the ways of evil.
Thulmann considered if he might not be doing the same with the Klausberg fiend. He removed a thin volume, bound in leather, from an oilskin pouch that rested upon the covers of his bed. Speaking a quick prayer for guidance to his patron god Sigmar, he opened the slender tome.
It was a simple thing, employed by many witch hunters. Upon the pages of the slender book were drawn many of the symbols and signs employed by those who practised the darker aspects of wizardry. The more potent sigils and scripts employed to create the full designs were absent, but enough were present to allow the witch hunter to recognise such symbols should he encounter them. It was a book Thulmann consulted only with reluctance, for even such reduced emblems of sorcery disquieted him, but there were times when its usefulness could not be denied.
He flicked slowly through the worn pages, trying to match one of the patterns he saw there to the arrangement of crimson splotches upon his map.
A sharp knock upon the door roused him from his tedious labour. The witch hunter rubbed at his eyes again, slipping the thin volume back into its sheath.
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