Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers

by Krpoun, RW

  “Then all we have to do to test a person’s loyalty is to check ‘em for tattoos, cult ones, that is,” Rolf nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yes, basically, the first ink is applied upon initiation.”

  “Good enough,” Kroh grinned, causally inspecting his axe-blade. “Just to keep things neat, why don’t you step out of your clothes for a moment, flute-player?”

  “I’m hardly a cultist,” Halabarian cocked an eyebrow at Starr, who had flushed beet-red.

  “No, Kroh’s right, for security we’ll, he’ll need to see. I’ll go into my room, call when you’re done.” Her exit was not much short of a run.

  The minstrel looked at the two Badgers before him, and considered the options: lose his dignity, or get pounded into the cracks between the planks in the floor. Moving as quickly as he could, he stepped out of his clothes, turned around once, and got dressed. “Now what shall we do for entertainment?” he inquired.

  “Start bringing in those we trust,” Kroh shrugged. “Before this is over the whole town will have to get naked in front of us.”

  “It was a disaster, Master Guide,” The Bondsmaster finished his description of the attack. “Only I survived.”

  “Were any Badgers slain?”

  “I doubt it, Master Guide, but I cannot be certain given the press of battle and the poor light.”

  “This...pig, it actually routed the entire attack?”

  “It was a really huge animal, sir, you would have had to see it... anyway, the Badgers seemed to be expecting our attack.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder: they are professionals, after all, a quality that seems to be rare in our own ranks these days. Enough,” the Master Guide waved away another explanation from the Bondsmaster. “Everything has changed: now we must set aside our plan and fight for the survival of the Assembly itself. At least you employed Knotsmen who cannot be quickly traced back to the main body of the Assembly, so with care and caution we can weather this storm and wreak havoc upon our foes in our own good time. Contact our friends and tell them that we have learned that five cohorts of Imperial troops are on their way to Hohenfels to mount a campaign against the Purple Spider; tell them that if they attack within two days we will be able to open the gates and aid them from within, thus depriving the Imperial forces of a supply base from which to mount their attacks.”

  “Yes, Master Guide.”

  “I shall alert the outer Assembly before going to relocate our supplies at the primary site. We can wait with alerting the Inner Assembly until tomorrow as I doubt the mercenaries will act effectively before then, there is a vast gulf between knowing that you face an Assembly and knowing whom makes up the Assembly. The plan can be implemented elsewhere in the future, once things have calmed down.”

  “What shall we do about the Badgers, Master Guide?”

  “Once we have returned from our tasks and carefully alerted the Inner Assembly we shall mount another assault upon them and anyone they have rallied to their cause. You shall lead this cleansing and succeed in each particular, or die in the attempt.”

  “By your command,” the pale-faced Bondsmaster bowed.

  Rudolf Sleiger stared at the line of bodies while Doctor Drewes got dressed. It was all like a bad dream: the sudden, secretive summons in the night, the four corpses of locals known to him to some degree, the tattoos of obviously evil design, the deadly serious nature of the mercenaries. He had seen dead men with the wounds of battle upon them before, of course; during his stint as an Imperial Marine he had killed a few himself, but that was when he had been young and stupid, far from home and searching for adventure. He had hoped to have left all that behind him when his enlistment ran out and he returned to Hohenfels.

  Rolf thumped on the door and a red-faced Starr entered the room, avoiding the unconcerned Doctor’s eyes. “These four live outside town: two trappers I know only by sight, Theodore Weissenberger who is a hired hand of the Ehrler’s, and another hired hand I can’t place, probably because his face is split in two,” the Mayor observed, tearing his gaze from the dead. “Now we know that we have a cult in Hohenfels, one which has ties to the Goblins and who is responsible for at least six deaths locally, no, seven counting Trella. Rooting them out would seem to be in order.” He scowled at the bodies again. “I’m wondering how many killings and disappearances up and down the river which we put down to the Purple Spider were actually these buggers’ work.”

  “Quite a few, I would imagine.” Halabarian shrugged. “What surprises me is that they attacked the Badgers, thus tipping their hand.”

  “It’s because we found Trella, and the location of the ‘Bad Place’,” Starr offered. “I’ll bet the ‘Bad Place’ is a ritual center for the cult, where their presence can be proven.”

  “Actually, no, that wouldn’t be likely,” Drewes demurred. “The Scarlet Web have no ritual sites, only meeting grounds which have no special significance to them. It is the site of a murder, preferably one that includes the betrayal of trust and slow, painful death that is important to them.”

  “An arms storage point? They were trading weapons to the Goblins,” Kroh puffed a smoke ring.

  “As a point of fact, I have developed my own theory, which I believe might have some bearing upon the matter,” Drewes took a sheaf of notes from his battered backpack. “I examined those shards you gave me, and in truth spent a considerable amount of time with them as they were nothing known to me. It wasn’t until I rethought the site at which they were found and applied that to my testing was I able to uncover their nature. There is a plant called Meson’s vine, a creeper whose berries are very toxic if ingested in quantity. The plants are fairly rare, and in any case are seldom used as poisons because the berries are very small and extremely sour; before anyone consumed enough poison to harm themselves the taste would have long since driven them away. Now, a semi-dried berry from this vine is pale yellow, almost white, and has the consistency of firm cooked potatoes outside their skin, but the sourness and an acidic smell are very noticeable in this state, which is also the most toxic.”

  “But we gave you flakes of stuff, not any berries, and they didn’t smell,” Kroh interrupted.

  “Yes, which was why I was confused, until I tested...to cut to the meat of the matter, the berries had been influenced by enchantment of a dark variety, removing both the taste and smell, and cementing them together into blocks or similar masses which could be cut or formed similar to the inner portion of a raw potato.”

  “The Langs: their killing was ritualized,” Starr exclaimed. “You mean they used the ritual to make magic which changed the berries? But why?”

  “Firstly, not magic precisely...” Drewes began and then shrugged. “Anyway, because the finished product could be cooked in any dish calling for potatoes, and the end result would be a terribly poisonous concoction, all the more so as the toxins involved are slow-acting, relatively-speaking.”

  “By the Eight, the puddings,” Sleiger breathed, eyes wide. “Forst is giving a holiday pudding to every household in this area; they’re the lesser sort (because of the cost and number), containing minced beef and potatoes, amongst other things. They’ll all be eaten at about the same time, so there probably won’t be one person in fifteen that won’t have at least one portion.”

  “Except the cultists,” Kroh scowled.

  “If cooked in a pudding, I would suppose the result would not likely be fatal except to the weak, the very young, and the very old,” Drewes thumbed thoughtfully through his notes. “But anyone who ate even an average portion of a pudding would be incapacitated by severe stomach distress, headaches, and extreme cramping of the primary muscle groups, the effects lasting for several hours at the very least.”

  “Leaving the entire town helpless,” Halabarian stroked the frame of his harp. “The cultists could do whatever rituals and acts they desired on a grand scale, steal what they want, and then let the Goblins into town to loot and burn. Hohenfels is largely destroyed, and the Purple Spider takes the
blame. The ‘survivors’, cultists all and now secretly wealthy, re-establish the town, and...Forest protect us, they would have the whole area under their thumb.”

  “You said these berries are rare, but it would take pounds to make all those puddings,” Kroh argued. “So where do they get them from?”

  “The Goblins, as the vine thrives near sulfur springs, several of which exist in the foothills under the Purple Spider’s direct control. I imagine the cultists paid the Goblins with arms to sow and cultivate the plants, then bought the harvest of berries with more weapons.” Drewes shrugged. “They’ve probably been working at this for years.”

  “Well, it’s going to come to a damned screeching halt, by the Eight,” Sleiger stood up angrily. “I’ll see every last tattooed bastard dancing at the end of a rope before sunset tomorrow.”

  “That’s the idea,” Kroh thumped a fist on the table. “We’ll show them how to play about with strangling ropes!”

  “But we need to move carefully,” Starr interjected. “Otherwise the cultists could kill those of us who know about the situation; after all, there are only six of us who know and whom we can surely trust.”

  “True in part, but in an hour there’ll be more in town who know and whom we can trust,” Sleiger countered. “I know my wife’s no cultist, and with the doctor to come along and ‘check’ for some sort of disease that affects the skin, we can sort out a goodly number of the town before the cat’s out of the bag. We’ll move slowly at first until we’re sure of enough of the Militia to be able to act overtly.”

  “Then we’ll split into two forces,” Starr offered. “We three Badgers will go and investigate the place Trella described while you and the Doctor begin to sort out the Militia, with Halabarian along for support, as an expert archer he would be of great help should things go wrong.”

  “True enough, but shouldn’t you take more than your companions?”

  “Hergar the smith seems competent,” Kroh observed. “He and his big journeyman should round us out.”

  “Fine. Now, when should we act, and in which direction?” the Mayor unfolded the map of the town he had given the Badgers.

  “Forst would seem to be a cultist,” Halabarian pointed out. “Firstly, because of the puddings, and secondly because of his behavior when we questioned his daughter.” The minstrel described the interview.

  “What about Captain Meyer?” Kroh rumbled. “That bastard strikes me as a sneak-killer.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to take that seriously,” Sleiger nodded. “When we decided to hire an outside professional for the post of Watch and Militia commander, it was Forst who was in charge of seeking out a suitable candidate; as I recall now, the three final applicants were all known to Forst in some manner or another. If Forst is a cultist, then it would make sense for him to see to it that a member of a similar cult took the position of Watch and Militia commander. Best to start there, then. If your people will go and recruit the smith, I’ll take the Doctor and Halabarian and verify the loyalty of several good men I’ve known for years. Once they’ve been checked and armed, we’ll move against Meyer and the three Watch men, each of whom is a Serjeant in the Militia as well. We’ll take control of the Watch House and Militia armory, and fan out from there. By the time you return we should have things well in hand.”

  “Good enough,” Starr nodded, standing. “To work, then.”

  “Bloody work,” the Mayor sighed deeply. “Hohenfels will never be the same after this.”

  “Neither will the Assembly,” Kroh snarled.

  The starlight was ample for Starr’s Threll-keen eyes as she crept towards Trella’s ‘Bad Place’, which was a ruined farmstead on the edge of the settled lands surrounding Hohenfels; interestingly, it was not far from the farm where Theodore Weissenberger had worked, a holding owned by the four Ehrler brothers, men described by the Mayor as a surly and untrustworthy lot.

  The ruined farm house was guarded: a Human male sat in a tree-stand, a cocked and loaded crossbow in his lap, the vapor of his breath giving his position away. Moving with excruciating care, Starr drew an ornately carved arrow from a side-pocket of her quiver and breathed words as she stroked the shaft, words muffled by the kerchief that covered her mouth and nose. Drawing and aiming carefully, she released, the shaft leaping across the distance to strike the sentry in the chest and rattle off into the undergrowth. The Human slumped back against the tree trunk, and seconds later a snore could be clearly heard on the still winter’s night air. The arrow she had fired was enchanted to send the victim into a deep, natural sleep; grinning, Starr slipped back to where the others waited and sent Rolf forward.

  Moving carefully, the big half-Orc slipped to the sentry’s tree and mounted the steps nailed into the trunk; a solid thump from the butt of his crossbow sent the sentry into a much deeper level of unconsciousness.

  When Rolf whistled Starr sent Kroh and Hergar into the farm house, leaving Gremheld on guard, and went to recover her arrow, a lengthy task that ended with her spitting a stream of oaths in Fiadaich, the Dwarven language, as her native tongue was sadly lacking in effective profanity: the shaft of the arrow was blackened and split. The enchantment held within it had weakened with use, finally failing altogether. It was a bitter blow as she had been presented with four such shafts when she had first left the Forest, and two others had failed in the months since, so the loss of this shaft left her with only one more.

  The raiders gathered in front of the farm house to compare notes, the bound and gagged sentry leaning against the crumbling building. “Hajo Ehrler,” Hergar let the dazed cultist’s head drop back on his chest. “There’s three more brothers: Hector, Hanns, and Hermann.”

  “He’s a member of the Assembly,” Rolf blew on his hands. “I found a tattoo on his chest.”

  “There’s about fifty lumps of yellow stuff in there.” Kroh pointed into the farm house. “Wrapped up in sacking and sealed in boxes. They kind of look like peeled spuds, sort of, but a lot bigger, nearly pumpkin-sized.”

  “Good, we’re doing well.” Starr shivered despite her armor and coat. “We’ll destroy the poison with the vinegar we brought, just as the Doctor instructed, and then pay a visit to the rest of the Ehrlers.”

  “Might as well deal with this one right now,” Kroh suggested, raising his axe.

  “No.” Starr’s tone brooked no argument. “He might know something useful, and taking another prisoner will be difficult since I have only one more arrow that causes sleep, and I don’t want to risk using it.”

  “Might as well get to work then,” Kroh hefted his vinegar-filled canteen and shook it thoughtfully. “I wonder how the Mayor’s doing in town?”

  Rudolf Sleiger had not had a worse day, or night, in his life. Aside from that, things were progressing apace: from the Badger’s cottage he had gone to his home, donned his mail shirt and armed himself. He checked both his teenaged sons for tattoos while he gave his wife a thumbnail sketch of the night’s events, and bade them to stay behind locked doors until he returned. The three then went to Doctor Drewes’ home where Drewes picked up a few items, before proceeding to the Fisher Hawk, which had just closed, where they checked and recruited Claus Becker, his son, and three husky tavern workers. Jospur Kilner, the town’s boatwright was next; he, his two sons, and five apprentices and journeymen were checked and rallied to the cause.

  Now sixteen strong, they marched to the Watch House, where they found two of the Watch officers. When the Mayor ordered the two to strip to be checked for cult tattoos, one went for his sword only to die with a Lanthrell arrow through his heart; the other complied and now sat in one of the town’s two cells, having been exposed as a cultist.

  Sleiger formally activated the Militia, swearing Halabarian in as an acting member, and issued arms and armor from the Militia Armory to those who lacked them. Becker and Kilner (both of whom held the rank of Corporal in the Militia) were made acting Serjeants; Becker was left in charge of the Watch House with three Militiamen whil
e Kilner secured the Armory with two more.

  The Mayor, with Halabarian, the Doctor, and six well-armed men now proceeded to several other residences to awaken men he had known for years and whom he forced to strip at spear point, having decided that the excuse about a mysterious disease was too complex; those without tattoos joined his ranks, and any bearing the marks of the Scarlet Web were clapped in irons.

  It was nearing dawn when he led his force back to the center of town where three men and two women joined the cultist in the cells, and thirty-four men drew arms and armor. When all were armed and equipped Sleiger sent two to help Becker, added four to his group, and split the rest into three seven-man squads, each with a corporal or acting corporal in charge. These squads were sent to guard the waterfront defenses and the town palisade.

  Halabarian approached the Mayor as he stood conferring with the Town Clerk, Felix Kahn (who had been one of the four added to the Mayor’s section), and coughed to get his attention. “It will be dawn soon,” he prompted gently.

  “Yes, I know,” Sleiger sighed. “Time to have a word with Forst and some of the other questionable types. Neither Meyer nor the other Watch officer has showed up so far; I suppose they’re cultists as well, off on some evil business or another.” He shook his head. “I grew up with Friedrich Forst and his wife-neither was what you would call a close friend, but I never thought they would have anything to do with murder cults. Still, there’s six people in the cells, and three of them lived their whole lives in this area. This town will never be the same.”