Witch Killer

by C. L. Werner

  Thulmann could see Ehrhardt and one of Haussner’s flagellants running towards one of the burrows as squealing skaven scurried down them. Before they could reach it, the ground shook and a cloud of dust erupted from the hole. Moments later, the other burrows vomited brown clouds of dirt and soil. It was scant consolation to know that the skaven had probably killed many of their own when they had collapsed their tunnels.

  The witch hunter rose, surveying the carnage all around him. Four of Haussner’s men were dead, as was the sharpshooter Driest. Gernheim was sporting a deep gash in his leg and arm, but otherwise seemed to have suffered no injuries. Captain-Justicar Ehrhardt appeared unharmed, his black armour proving invulnerable to the crude, rusted blades and rude swordsmanship of the ratkin.

  ‘Shall we pursue those abominations, Brother Mathias?’ Haussner asked as he approached Thulmann, apparently oblivious to the miraculous energies that had passed through his body only moments before.

  ‘No,’ Thulmann replied, trying to keep any trace of awe from his voice. ‘It would take us days to clear enough rubble to get into their tunnels.’ He turned his head, looking directly at Krieger. ‘From past experience I can say we will need more men if we are going to scour an entire warren.’

  ‘Then what do you propose we do?’ Krieger asked.

  ‘We go back to Wyrmvater,’ Thulmann answered, ‘but first I want a search made of these bodies. Unless I miss my guess, I don’t think we will find our friend Naschy among them.’

  ‘You still think he was a part of this?’ Ehrhardt’s voice was a deep, forbidding growl.

  ‘It would be an interesting question to pose to him,’ Thulmann said, ‘especially if we find him in Wyrmvater instead of here.’

  Streng was jolted by the agonised shriek of his horse as he galloped through the fields beyond Wyrmvater. The animal reared back and crashed to its side. Streng felt the wind knocked out of him as he struck the ground, the impact stunning him. When he was able to suck breath back into his body, the first thing he observed was the dull throbbing pain in his leg. The second was the arrow sticking from his horse’s throat.

  Streng’s mind raced as his eyes scoured the landscape. The arrow had certainly come from the woods on his left; it was the only cover from which an archer could have concealed himself and still struck his horse from that direction. He turned his attention to the right, scanning the terrain for something that might afford him shelter. The thug smiled as he sighted a jumbled pile of boulders a few yards from the edge of the woods. Next to the walls of Brass Keep, it was the best he could ask for.

  Slowly, painfully, Streng dragged his leg from beneath his dead horse. The real pain didn’t set in until his foot was free and then a shockwave of throbbing misery exploded through his body. A quick inspection confirmed his fear – his ankle was broken. Streng rolled onto his side, reaching towards his saddle and then cursed again. His ankle hadn’t been the only thing crushed beneath his horse, his crossbow had been as well. He shook his head in disgust.

  Loud voices rose from the woods. Streng peered over the carcass of his dead mount, watching as three figures emerged from the treeline, bows clutched in their hands.

  ‘I thought you were going to clean up?’ Lajos sat in the chair in Silja’s room, changing the bandage wrapped around his arm.

  ‘Not with you watching,’ Silja said. She checked her pistol again and slid it into the holster fastened to her belt. The little merchant seemed to wilt with disappointment, returning his attention to the ugly gash running down his forearm.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Silja said. ‘Don’t you want to catch that scum?’

  ‘Me?’ A shocked expression filled the merchant’s face. ‘I’m no warrior. I am perfectly content to leave that sort of stupidity to people like you and Thulmann.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Silja growled. ‘At least you could help us look.’ Their first stop after losing Weichs at the mill had been Wyrmvater’s town hall to report the skirmish to Reinheckel. The burgomeister had listened with grave concern as Silja described the fight and the escape of the heretic physician. Reinheckel had promised to round up the town militia and help Silja uncover the dangerous outlaw. He would check with the gate guards whether the fugitive had passed through their posts and report his findings to Silja. He suggested that Silja might use the time to get clean and rest before the hunt. She would have welcomed the chance, but in truth she found the delay insufferable. She needed to be active, needed to be out there trying to find this madman. After coming so close and having him slip through her fingers, she felt a gnawing guilt chewing at her gut. How was Thulmann able to endure this for so long?

  ‘I’m quite happy to stay right here,’ Lajos said. ‘That maniac already had some of my blood, and that’s all he’s going to get. Besides, I don’t get along too well with your burgomeister.’

  ‘Are you a man or a m–’ Silja stopped in mid-sentence, her words arrested by the sharp click that had sounded from the hallway. She thought at first that she had been hearing things, but Lajos had turned his head towards the door too. Silja walked over to the door, and tested it. Someone had locked them in.

  ‘I guess you are staying too,’ Lajos said, but there was a troubled note in his voice. Silja walked to the window and stared out at the streets of Wyrmvater.

  ‘Something is going on out there,’ she said. There was a steady stream of people making their way through the streets, all in the same direction. The only place of any importance in that quarter of the town was the Sigmarite chapel. ‘It looks like they are all going to temple. There isn’t any sort of Reiklander holy day today, is there?’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter anyway,’ Lajos quipped, walking away from the window. ‘They don’t have a priest here.’ The strigany dropped back down into his chair. Silja followed him across the room.

  ‘What do you mean they don’t have a priest?’ she demanded. Lajos frowned, realising that he might have said too much. He tried to shrug off the question but Silja would not be put off.

  ‘All right,’ he at last relented. ‘When I was here years ago they said their priest had died, they had an altar boy or something filling in for him. Well, the altar boy is still filling in.’

  Silja stood staring at the merchant, digesting what he had just told him. She turned and walked towards the door, drawing her pistol. Lajos leapt from his chair, darting over and grabbing her hand before she could fire.

  ‘What do you think you are doing!’ he gasped.

  ‘Something strange is going on here,’ Silja replied. ‘I intend to find out what.’

  Lajos raised his hands, urging Silja to remain calm. ‘All the more reason to stay put. Thulmann’s the witch hunter, let him figure out what’s going on.’

  ‘I might have expected a strigany to say something like that,’ Silja hissed. Lajos glared back at her, colour filling his cheeks.

  ‘Oh, that’s right!’ he snarled. ‘All strigany are thieves and liars! We grovel before daemon idols and help vampires steal babies in the night! We’re all money-grubbing villains who would sell our own mothers to a goblin’s harem and wouldn’t give a crust of bread to a starving child unless we saw a way to profit from it!’ Lajos stormed back to his chair, his body trembling with fury.

  Silja walked over to the seated merchant, setting her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry for what I said,’ she told him. Lajos smiled sadly, patting her hand.

  ‘You go through your whole life with people hating you and despising you not because of who you are, but who they have decided you are,’ Lajos said. ‘They call you thief and idolater, the lapdog of monsters and the helpmate of daemons. You’d think eventually you’d get used to it, but you never do.’

  Lajos sighed and turned his head back to the door. ‘You still want to get out of here?’

  ‘I have to,’ Silja said. ‘I have to do something.’ Lajos nodded his understanding, pushing himself back out of his chair.

  ‘Well, let’s see about getting that door open,’ he said, ‘
but put away that hand cannon. Somebody wants to keep us here and if they hear that thing go off, they’ll know we’re loose.’ The merchant reached into his sleeve, his hand returning with a slender piece of twisted metal. Silja had seen enough lockpicks in her time to recognise one when she saw it. Lajos saw the recognition in her eyes. ‘Sometimes, when people tell you that you are something long enough, you decide that you are.’ He made his way to the door, thrusting the pick into the lock of the door. After a few moments of fiddling, Silja heard the mechanism click.

  Lajos gripped the knob, slowly pulling the door open. A quick inspection of the hallway determined that there was no guard. He closed the door again and turned to face Silja. ‘Now that it’s open, where are we going?’

  Silja walked over to the door, opening it and stepping into the hall. ‘I want to see what’s so interesting at the chapel,’ she said. She turned and began to creep her way towards the stairs.

  Lajos rolled his eyes. ‘I should have left it locked,’ he grumbled.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘I still say we should get out of here.’ Lajos cast another apprehensive look in the direction of Wyrmvater’s small chapel. A steady stream of people was still filing into the building. Old and young, women and children, it seemed the entire town was heading into the house of worship.

  Well, except for the two militiamen haunting the Splintered Shield’s taproom, Silja reflected. After Lajos had opened the door, the two had cautiously made their way downstairs. Not knowing who had locked them in, or why, Silja decided that the best idea might be to slip out the side entrance of the inn rather than the front. Their route had very nearly caused them to walk straight into the two swordsmen, only Silja’s quick reaction allowing them to drop back behind the corridor wall before one of the guards saw them.

  They were guards; the turn of the conversation Silja overheard removed any doubt of that. They’d been left behind to ensure that Lajos didn’t go anywhere while the witch hunter was gone. It seemed the burgomeister was quite concerned that he wouldn’t get his chance at the plump strigany merchant. The gruesome speculation about what Reinheckel would do to Lajos caused all the colour to drain from his face. Lajos had scurried along the corridor, finding a shuttered window he decided that he could squeeze through. Silja hurried to keep up with the man as he made his escape.

  ‘We should go someplace safe and wait for Thulmann to get back,’ Lajos stated. Only threats had kept him from deserting Silja and leaving Wyrmvater on his own. Silja felt a pang of guilt as she reminded him how angry Mathias would be if Lajos let anything happen to her, deliberately pitting his fear of the witch hunter against his terror of Reinheckel’s revenge.

  ‘I want a look inside,’ Silja said. ‘I have to know what is going on.’ She watched as the last people on the street withdrew into the chapel. There was something unsettling about the way they had lurched and stumbled their way up the chapel steps. She could not dismiss their gaits as the ravages of injury or old age. ‘Come on. Every Sigmarite temple I’ve ever seen has had a separate priest’s entrance. We’ll try that.’

  ‘And then what? We go in and find the entire town howling prayers to the Prince of Pleasure? What will you do then, arrest everybody?’ Lajos shook his head. ‘I would have been better off sticking with that fanatic fruitcake Haussner!’

  ‘I just want to see what’s going on,’ Silja insisted. ‘We find out what these people are doing, then we go find Mathias and tell him and let him decide what to do.’

  Lajos twisted his hat in his hands, staring at his feet. At last he sighed and nodded. ‘All right, I know I’ll regret it, but we’ll try it your way.’

  The priest’s entrance was a small oak door set into the side of the stone-walled chapel, almost directly opposite the main entrance. With the entire mass of the chapel lying between themselves and any last-minute arrivals, Silja felt there was little risk of being spotted. The door was locked, but once again Lajos displayed the skill that common folk belief endowed every strigany.

  As the merchant pushed the door inwards, voices emerged from the shadowy interior of the chapel. Silja felt her skin crawl as the sound reached her ears. The voices were raised in some manner of song, but it wasn’t any that Silja had ever heard. The intonations didn’t even sound human, and the words of the hymn certainly did not belong to even the most ancient and debased forms of Reikspiel.

  ‘I suppose that explains why the walls are so thick,’ Lajos commented. Despite the flippancy of his words, Silja could see that his hands were trembling. Seeing the merchant’s anxiety firmed Silja’s own resolve.

  ‘Come along,’ Silja ordered, stepping into the narrow hallway, sword in hand. There was a heavy, almost animal smell to the hallway. The doors of storerooms, the vestry and the priest’s cell opened into the hallway. The hissing, snarling voices of the congregation emanated from around the turn of the corridor. The volume intensified as Lajos closed the door and joined Silja in the hallway.

  ‘Where do we…?’ The strigany’s question died on his lips as heavy footsteps sounded from beneath their very feet. Silja and Lajos stared at the floor as the steps continued, following their unseen path. They could hear what sounded like a trapdoor creaking open from behind the door of the priest’s cell. The heavy footsteps continued. This time there was no question that they came from the priest’s cell.

  Silja grabbed Lajos by the arm, pulling him to the vestry. She pushed the strigany into the room and scrambled in behind him, closing the door after her so that only the most slender crack remained. She peered through it into the hallway, waiting for whoever was in the priest’s cell to emerge.

  ‘Lady Markoff.’ Silja tried to ignore Lajos’s whisper, focusing her attention on the hallway. She could hear the occupants of the cell moving around. It was hard to judge exactly how many there were. What was more puzzling however was her conviction that they had heard the steps begin underneath the chapel. It was not impossible that a Sigmarite chapel might have a crypt or a reliquary vault beneath it, but why would such a chamber emerge into a side room rather than near the altar?

  ‘Lady Markoff!’ Lajos’s voice was louder and more insistent. Silja turned her head to snap at him and quiet the merchant. As she did so, she was struck by an even more pungent sample of the bestial musk that permeated the chapel. Lajos was standing near the rows of wooden racks that held the vestments and priestly robes. There was a look of horror on his face. Silja quickly saw why.

  The robes were not the white and black of ordained Sigmarites. They were not woven from cloth. Instead the racks held row upon row of mangy, ill-smelling furs. Silja cast one last look into the hallway and closed the door completely. Her interest aroused, she walked across the vestry, joining Lajos beside the reeking garments. Conquering her disgust, she reached out and lifted one of the furs.

  Her loathing was rekindled as the garment flopped open in her hands and its shape was revealed to her. She dropped the disgusting thing to the floor, but was still unable to tear her eyes away from it. It was crafted from the furs of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of rats, the verminous hides stitched together to form a vile approximation of an immense rodent shape. From the back, a rope of dried pig intestine curled, ghastly in its semblance to a giant rat tail.

  Silja looked back at the racks horrified by what she was seeing. The furs were all like the one she had examined, hundreds of grotesque vermin vestments. She almost leapt out of her skin when Lajos grabbed her arm.

  ‘Can… can we go now?’ Lajos asked, his voice cracking. Silja nodded, struck mute by the sheer scope of the weirdness they had discovered. It was insane. What possible reason could there be to craft one such hideous raiment, much less hundreds of them? And why hide such a loathsome secret in the vestry of a chapel?

  ‘Yes,’ Silja finally said. ‘We’ll go get Mathias. He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘I am afraid that we can’t have you leaving us so soon.’

  A man stood in the doorway of the vestry, a big b
rutal looking man with a bushy beard and smouldering eyes. He had managed to slip into the vestry while Silja and Lajos’s attention was fixed on the grotesque rat-cloaks. He held a broad-bladed axe in his hairy hands, looking as if he dearly wanted to put it to use. But what struck Silja the most was the fact that she recognised him. Only hours before she had seen this man in the streets of Wyrmvater. He was Naschy, the man who had ridden out to guide Thulmann to the ruined shrine.

  ‘Try to stop us,’ Silja snarled at the axeman, gesturing at him with her sword. ‘I promise to leave enough of you in one piece to tell me what happened to Mathias.’

  Naschy grinned back at her. For a moment Silja thought the woodsman was going to meet her challenge, but he simply put a hand against the door behind him. ‘I’d stop worrying about the templar and start worrying about yourself.’ Naschy pushed the door open, revealing what was outside in the hallway. Lajos cried out in terror and Silja felt her grip on her sword falter.

  ‘And we meet again, my dear.’ Doktor Freiherr Weichs touched his bruised face before allowing his visage to twist into a triumphant sneer. He looked down at the feral shapes surrounding him. ‘I was quite excited when my friends caught your scent in here, but, alas, it seems they have their own plans for you.’ Weichs’s expression became grave and even his voice seemed to tremble as he spoke. ‘If that doesn’t frighten you, let me assure you that it should.’

  The night was well along when the remnants of the witch hunters’ entourage limped back behind the timber walls of Wyrmvater. ‘Limped’ was a precise term, Thulmann reflected. Following the skaven attack in the ruins, the only horse that had not run off or been killed was Kristoph Krieger’s, and the rival witch hunter had resolutely resisted all attempts to share his steed. Thulmann felt his already not inconsiderable dislike for the man swell with every mile that scarred the soles of his boots.