It was an old woman, bent backed and shabbily dressed. Straggly white hair hung about her body, drooping as far as her knees. The hag opened her gash-like mouth, letting a trickle of spittle drool from her lips.
“So, my boy was followed after all,” the witch observed, the words escaping her toothless maw in a scratchy hiss. “But if you think you’ll be stoking a fire with these old bones, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Your unholy tricks won’t protect you now, old hag,” declared Thulmann, striding toward the witch, sword and pistol both pointed at her breast. “The judgement of the god you’ve profaned and mocked is upon you this night!”
The old crone’s smile broadened, ghastly in its malevolence.
“Think so, do you?” she cackled. “But you’ve forgotten Chanta Favna’s darling boy!” From the black interior of the hovel, the sound of creaking wood and groaning iron issued, followed a moment later by the tottering form of the monstrous abomination which the witch hunters had tracked to this, the lair of its creator and controller.
It was so tall that it was forced to stoop under the low ceiling of the hovel. It was rail thin, which was fitting, since just such an object had been used to form its spine. Its body was an old burlap sack stuffed with rubbish and old dried out reeds. Its arms were long sticks, hinged at the shoulder and elbow with iron fittings. Its legs were poles, wooden feet nailed at their ends. The monster’s head was an old pumpkin, upon which had been carved a leering and ghastly suggestion of a face. About its neck hung a withered, dried out toad, a talisman that reeked of loathsome and unholy magic. However, it was none of these features which arrested the attention of the men who had moments before challenged the construction’s mistress, rather it was the long, sharp claws of steel that tipped each of the scarecrow’s slender arms, the bladed hands that still dripped with blood from those it had slaughtered already this night.
Almost before the men could fully register its appearance, the scarecrow was upon them, lashing at them with its murderous swipes of its rickety limbs. One of Meisser’s apprentices fell under the monster’s steel claws, wriggling on the floor as he tried to push his entrails back into the gaping hole the scarecrow had ripped from his belly. The other witch hunters warded off the butchering sweeps of the automaton’s flailing arms, swords crashing against claws of steel. Thulmann fired his pistol into the ghastly pumpkin face, the shot shattering against the sorcery-strengthened shell. Streng tore Meisser’s own pistol from his belt, firing at the scarecrow as its bladed hand swept toward the throat of his employer. The shot glanced off the claw, the impact redirecting the flashing talon to chew into the timber wall of the hovel.
Meisser lunged at the scarecrow as it tried to free its hand from the wall, stabbing and slashing at the unnaturally strong substance of its backbone. It seemed impossible that such a ramshackle thing could move with such deadly swiftness. Thulmann moved to aid the witch hunter captain in his efforts, but was dealt a glancing blow that knocked him to the floor. One of Meisser’s remaining apprentices shouted a warning to his mentor as the scarecrow freed its trapped arm, but the older witch hunter was too slow in recognising the danger. The scarecrow’s claws slashed downward, ripping open Meisser’s swordarm. With a scream of anguish, Meisser fell back, his apprentices stepping forward to protect their master. The scarecrow lashed at the swords of the two men, its powerful blows forcing them to give ground before it.
“That’s it!” laughed Chanta Favna. “Kill them all! But do it slow my pet, I want to savour every scream!” The hag’s hands were held before her, swaying and jerking in time to the scarecrow’s movements. Dangling from those withered claws was an articulated wooden doll, a small manikin that the witch manipulated with deft motions of her scrawny fingers. The severed leg of a toad was fastened about the scarecrow’s neck, another also fastened around the midsection of the tiny figure. As the doll moved, so too did her sorcerous construction. From the edges of the battle, Streng noted the old hag’s manipulations.
“Mathias!” the bearded henchman called out, deflecting another slash of the scarecrow’s claw with a desperate sweep of his sword.
Rising from the floor, half-dazed by the automaton’s blow, the witch hunter looked over at his hireling. “The witch’s doll! She’s controlling the scarecrow with it!”
Upon hearing Streng’s words, the witch’s ugly eyes focused upon the recovering Thulmann. She cackled and hissed slippery, inhuman syllables, forcing the witch hunter to meet her transfixing gaze. Chanta Favna placed all of her dark will and malignancy into her hypnotic spell, willing the witch hunter to remain where he was. With her hands, she manipulated the wooden doll. In time to her manipulations, the scarecrow turned away from its hard-pressed opponents, its creaking steps turning back toward Thulmann.
Mathias Thulmann could feel the dread power of the old witch surging through his body, paralysing every nerve, urging him not to rise, commanding him to remain still. He could feel himself struggling to resist her, but it was as if his body was not his own. The witch hunter was dimly aware of the creaking, tottering steps that were closing in upon him, yet such was the numbing power of the witch’s magic that he was unable to muster any sense of haste to speed his struggles. Indeed, his entire being seemed to be in a stupor, a stupor not merely of body but of soul as well. Only one part of his being seemed to be clear and distinct. The witch hunter’s right hand yet retained its grip upon his sword, the sword that had been given to him in the Great Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf, the sword that had been blessed by the Grand Theogonist Volkmar himself. Thulmann forced himself to focus upon the sword and his hand, and as he did so, the numbing deadness seemed to lessen. He could sense his arm now, then the feeling of warmth and control spread to his shoulder.
Chanta Favna stared in disbelief as the witch hunter began to fend off her viperous gaze. The witch’s face grew dark with worry, her manipulation of the manikin a bit hastier and more desperate. She risked a glance to see how her automaton was doing, but found it beset once again by the other witch hunters, their clumsy efforts to destroy it nevertheless managing to impede its progress.
As the witch’s attention wavered, Thulmann tore himself from her lingering spell. The witch hunter surged to his feet and sprang at the old woman. “Enough of your black magic crone!” he cried out. The steel of Thulmann’s sword flashed in the flickering light as it swept downward at Chanta Favna. The witch screamed in a howl of pain and despair as the blade bit through her wrists. The scraggly clawed hands of the hag dropped to the floor, the manikin still held in their disembodied clutch. As the doll struck the floor, so too did the scarecrow, tottering for one moment like a puppet struggling to stand after its strings have been severed. The bundle of sticks and straw struck the ground and broke apart, the pumpkin head rolling away from its wooden shoulders.
Mathias Thulmann loomed over Chanta Favna and watched the witch as she pressed the bleeding stumps of her wrists against her body. “Fetch brands from the crone’s fire,” the witch hunter snarled, glancing to see the surviving men from Wurtbad ministering to Meisser’s hideous injury. “See to him later!” he snapped. “I want this hag’s wounds cauterised before she bleeds out. There are questions I would ask her.” The witch stared up at Thulmann’s menacing tone.
“I’ll tell you nothing you filth! Swine!” The witch managed to forget her own agony to heap maledictions upon the witch hunter.
“Streng, go and fetch the men watching the perimeter,” Thulmann told his henchman, ignoring the curses bubbling from the witch’s mouth. “Tell them to ready some torches. I want this place razed when we leave it.” He turned his attention back to Chanta Favna. One of the men from Wurtbad held her fast while the other pressed a knife he had heated to a red glow against the bleeding stumps of her arms.
“I’ll tell you nothing!” the witch managed to scream between painful shrieks. Thulmann considered his prisoner, his face grown cold and expressionless now that the hunt had reached its end.
�
��They all say that,” he stated in a voice that was not without a note of remorse and regret. “But in the end, they all talk.” Thulmann turned away from Chanta Favna, and stalked toward the doorway of the witch’s hut.
“They all talk,” the witch hunter muttered. “Even when they have nothing left to say.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C.L. Werner has written a number of Lovecraftian pastiches and pulp-style horror stories for assorted small press publications and Inferno! magazine. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.
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[Mathias Thulmann 00c] - Witch Work Page 4
