There were ten in all. Anton Klausner had been right, the fiend had spared neither woman nor child.
“The bastard,” Gregor swore as he laid eyes upon the evidence of mass murder. “There is no end fitting enough for such scum!” He smashed his fist against the wall in impotent fury.
“Rest assured, we shall find this monster, and bring it down,” Thulmann told him. He slowly circled the mound, staring intently at the bodies.
“Well, it seems Anton and his lads didn’t do too fine a job of searching this hovel,” Streng stated with a macabre humour. The mercenary lifted a clay bottle from the floor, holding it to his ear so he could hear its contents slosh about. “Any wagers on whether it is ale, mead or beer?” he asked.
“You should include poison on your list of liquors,” Thulmann said. Streng arrested the bottle’s advance a hand’s breadth from his lips. With a nervous look, the mercenary lowered the bottle, dropping it to the floor with a crash.
“Is that how this was done?” asked Gregor, struggling to maintain his calm. These might not have been mighty nobles or great scholars, but they had been people, good hard-working Klausbergers. To see them slaughtered in such a cold and ruthless fashion offended every sensibility in the young man’s body and filled his heart with a fiery need for revenge.
“There are no marks of violence that I can see,” the witch hunter informed him. “Apart from some scratches that are hardly of enough import to have caused death. Indeed, I rather suspect that they were caused after death, when, for whatever reason, the fiend decided to construct this morbid testament to his evil.” Thulmann turned away in disgust from the piled dead. “No, our killer employed some foul venom to work this evil, or else some sending of the blackest magic.”
Gregor shuddered at the possibility. To kill without a sword or weapon of any sort, to simply mutter an incantation, make a few gestures and then invoke death. It was a horrible thing to contemplate.
Thulmann began to inspect the room, looking for any clues as to the motivation and purpose for this last atrocity. There had been something more to this act; it had broken entirely with the pattern set by the other murders. No lone woodsman, no solitary farmer lured from his home in the dead of night, rather an entire household slaughtered under their own roof!
Did it bespeak some final sacrifice, an end to the fiend’s blasphemous rituals? Or perhaps these people had not been so innocent as they seemed. The villain he sought had associates, and perhaps it was they the witch hunter now gazed upon, given a treacherous reward by their unholy master. Whatever the truth, Thulmann held out a vain hope that some clue might yet linger within the charnel house, something left behind by the perpetrator of this act and not discovered by Anton Klausner and his men.
“Search the floor above,” Thulmann told Gregor and Streng as he peered into the little sleeping nook set to one side of the room. “Look for anything out of the ordinary.”
Streng nodded in understanding, patting Gregor’s shoulder and motioning for the noble to follow him.
The two men climbed the stairs, the rickety steps swaying beneath Streng’s heavy tread. The mercenary paused at the top of the stairs. He stared down at a tiny crumpled shape, turning it over with his foot, then bending down to extract the rotting object clenched in its jaws. It was a human forearm, the flesh so decayed and rotten that in places the bone peered through. A large section had been stripped completely bare by the dog’s fangs.
“Rather unusual toy for anybody’s dog, don’t you think?” Streng said, letting the loathsome object fall. The mercenary continued on, ducking into one of the side rooms.
Gregor stared down at the rotted limb. His mind cringed as he considered how it might have come to be in such a place. For the first time, something of the true nature of the man they hunted impressed itself upon him and Gregor appreciated in full the horrible power arrayed against them.
As the noble began to turn away from his fascinated study of the rotted arm, his eyes caught a slight glitter upon the floor. He took a few steps and bent forward to retrieve the small metal object.
When he saw what he had picked up, he stared at it as though he held a lethal serpent in his grasp. Gregor’s limbs began to shake, shivering with a palsy of terror. He could feel his stomach churning, his bile fighting to purge itself from his body. The noble’s vision began to blur, refusing to accept the thing his eyes beheld.
It was a ring, a simple band of gold. Its face bore a shield-like device, upon which had been etched two figures. One was a griffon rampant, and beneath its clawed foot it crushed the shape of a slavering wolf. Gregor closed his fist around the object, refusing to accept the importance of what he had discovered. How often had he gazed upon this ring? How often had he seen it, clinging to his father’s frail fingers?
“Come along now,” Streng’s voice intruded upon Gregor’s terrified thoughts. The noble snapped out of his fear, stamping it down as he forced control back into his frame. The mercenary looked at Gregor with a glint of suspicion in his eye. “Find anything?” he asked.
“No,” stated Gregor, discreetly slipping the ring into his pocket. “Shall we try the other room?” he asked.
“If it’s as small as this one, I think I can manage on my own,” Streng told him. “You go down and see if Mathias needs any help.”
* * * * *
Gregor stepped down into the central room of the cottage, gripping the creaking banister with a hand that had not entirely ceased trembling. He looked over to find the witch hunter emerging from the back room, a bit of mouldy cloth impaled upon a long iron needle gripped in his hand.
“I found this back there,” Thulmann told him. “Rather shabby even for a peasant, wouldn’t you say? Stinks worse of death than those over there do.” The witch hunter shook the offensive scrap from the end of the needle. “It’s my guess that our friend did not work alone when he did this, and his assistants were of a most unusual sort.”
“We found an arm bone upstairs,” Gregor told the witch hunter, “clutched in the jaws of a little dog. It looked like it had been a month in the grave.” The noble’s expression suddenly changed, his eyes going wide with alarm, his mouth dropping open with shock. A gasp emptied his lungs and it was with a trembling hand that he pointed at the witch hunter.
Thulmann spun around to see what had drained the colour from Gregor’s face. He sprang back as he saw the pile of corpses begin to twitch, as the topmost of them began to lift itself with awkward movements. The rigid expression locked upon the dead woman’s face did not change, nor did any sound issue from her frozen mouth, but a ghastly intent emanated from her dull eyes.
“Zombie,” the witch hunter hissed in a mixture of alarm and loathing. He lifted his pistol, bringing it to bear upon the animated corpse. It crawled from the pile, falling to the floor with a heavy thud, then awkwardly began to gain its feet once more, ignorant of the ankles that had snapped beneath its ungainly descent.
“Streng!” Thulmann called out as the rest of the slain family began to stir.
The witch hunter pushed Gregor toward the door. “It’s a trap! Get the horses!” he ordered the young noble. The harsh commands snapped Gregor from his horrified paralysis and he raced out into the yard, only to be brought up short a few feet from the collapsed doorway.
Six stumbling, shambling shapes had emerged from the barn, bits of hay still clinging to their rotted, dripping frames. They must have lain hidden beneath the hay when Anton had made his search, only to emerge now to close the trap. Gregor met the empty, vacant stare of the skull-faced horrors, then withdrew back into the house.
“No good!” he told Thulmann. The witch hunter had backed up nearly to the stairway, the shuffling zombies slowly closing in upon him. “There are more outside!”
The witch hunter snarled under his breath, firing his pistol into the nearest of the corpse-creatures, exploding its skull. The thing took another stumbling step forward, then collapsed, tripping up two of its fellow abominations. “Da
mn it Streng!” Thulmann called out.
The mercenary appeared at the head of the stairway, his crossbow gripped in his hands. He took in the situation with a calm, chilling detachment, then aimed his weapon. The bolt smashed through the arm of one of the decaying horrors that was now stalking through the front door, pinning the rotting limb to the wall.
“I shouldn’t stay down there if I were you, Mathias,” the mercenary said. Gregor and the witch hunter followed his example, slowly ascending the rickety stair. The silent, stumbling figures shuffled after them.
“An excellent suggestion,” Thulmann commented, drawing his second pistol and firing over Gregor’s shoulder into the rigid face of the foremost of the monsters. The bullet tore through its skull, exploding from the back of its head in a spray of greasy brain matter. The zombie sagged to its side, flopping on the floor like a fish out of water.
Thulmann slammed the smoking pistol back into its holster, swiftly retreating up the stairs. Gregor followed in his wake, slashing with his sword to keep the undead horrors at bay. His sword ripped and tore at the clutching arms that reached out toward him, tearing the lifeless flesh, spilling rank and gluey blood.
“Mathias,” Streng called down as he reloaded his crossbow. “Probably a bad time to point this out, but there’s no way down from here.” The mercenary aimed and fired, the bolt punching harmlessly through the chest of one of the undead monstrosities.
“What about the windows?” Thulmann snapped, reaching forward and pulling Gregor back as the clawing hand of a zombie nearly fixed upon the young noble’s arm. Thulmann lashed out with a sidewise slash of his longsword, bisecting the putrid creature’s face. The zombie stumbled back, arresting the advance of its fellows, then began to lumber forward once more, teeth dripping from its injury.
“No good. They’re too narrow for a fox to slip through,” Streng snarled in disgust. “Made to keep thieves out.”
“They also serve to keep us in. I fear I underestimated terribly the cunning of our enemy. It seems he isn’t adverse to playing the hunter himself.” Thulmann suddenly noticed a shudder pass through the oncoming horde.
For a brief moment, they were still, but it quickly passed. The witch hunter did not have long to wonder about the cause. The controlling influence of the zombie master had isolated one of the monsters from its fellows, guiding it toward the piled mass of straw and bedding that was heaped in one corner of the room below.
Thulmann watched in fascinated horror as the monster fumbled at its pocket, removing a small tinderbox. With dull, idiot movements, the rotten fingers began to work the mechanism.
“Streng, shoot the one in the corner over there!” Thulmann cried out. The mercenary aimed and fired, the bolt punching through the corpse-creature’s neck and burying itself in the monster’s shoulder. The zombie did not so much as flinch. Thulmann swore. Below him, Gregor sliced the clutching hand from one of the creatures, a bubble of black blood oozing from the stump.
“We could use an idea right now,” the noble said. “Maybe push through them after their friend gets its fire started and they start to retreat?”
Thulmann shook his head, his sword crunching into the collarbone of the zombie that had slipped into the space vacated by the one Gregor had maimed. The zombie pitched sideways, breaking through the banister and crashing to the floor below. No sooner had it hit the ground then the corpse began to pick itself up, broken rails protruding from its chest.
“They won’t retreat,” the witch hunter stated. “These things are simply a mockery of life, enslaved completely to the will of the one who called them from their graves. They will keep pursuing even as the entire building comes down around us!”
Streng fired another bolt into the zombie down below. The thing crumpled as its knee exploded, pitching forward into the flickering flames that were beginning to rise from the heap. The mercenary gave voice to a colourful curse as the burning creature rose, its skin and clothing afire. Its task completed, the burning automaton limped across the room to join its fellows.
“Wait a moment!” exclaimed Gregor as he watched the flames rise. “If we can’t go down, perhaps we can go up!” Thulmann glanced overhead, observing that the roof was simply thatch thrown over wooden beams.
“Streng!” he cried. “Find something to stand on and knock a hole in this roof! We’ll keep these creatures at bay.”
The mercenary hurried off, slipping into one of the rooms. Thulmann and Gregor could hear the mercenary tip some heavy object over, then the sound of him savaging the ceiling with his sword. The two men continued to back up the stairs, the undead horrors shambling after them in eerie silence. Below, one entire side of the room had become engulfed in fire, the flames quickly spreading through the dry wood and even dryer thatching of the roof.
“He’d better hurry,” Gregor grunted as he slashed at the zombie reaching toward him. The creature stumbled back, its arm dangling uselessly from its cloven shoulder.
A shout from the side room caused both men to turn their heads. “You go first,” Thulmann ordered Gregor. The noble opened his lips to protest, but the expression in Thulmann’s eyes brooked no question.
The noble slashed once more at the zombies climbing the stairway, then turned and raced toward the room. He found that Streng had tipped over a heavy wooden wardrobe, the most lavish furnishing they had yet seen in the hovel. Overhead, sunlight shone through a large hole that had been cut through the thatching.
Gregor sheathed his blade, then climbed atop the wardrobe. Stretching his arms, he jumped toward the opening, catching the beams that edged the hole and pulling himself up onto the roof.
Gregor paused for a moment, looking around him for any sign of Streng, but he could not see the mercenary. Smoke was rising from a section of the roof only twenty feet away, and he could see tiny fingers of fire peeping between the thatching. He looked back down into the hole.
“Herr Thulmann!” he shouted. “There is not much time!” He waited, watching the room beneath the hole, with many a nervous glance at the creeping smoke and flame. Suddenly, a shadow moved across the floor. The eager, hopeful look on Gregor’s face faded however, when a purple-skinned figure shuffled into view, surveying the room with sidewise swings of its torso.
The zombie paused for a moment, then lifted its head, staring straight up at Gregor with its dull, vacant eyes. The noble cringed back as the monster reached up toward him. Cursing, Gregor slid down towards the low end of the roof, lowering himself from its edge with his hands and dropping to the ground.
“Nice to see that you made it,” Streng called out to him. Gregor turned about to see the mercenary seated on the back of his horse, the reins for Gregor’s and Thulmann’s own steeds clutched in his meaty hands.
“Nice of you to wait,” Gregor snapped. The bearded mercenary chuckled.
“I risk my neck only when it might serve a purpose,” Streng told him. “I didn’t see any way that dropping back down would help the situation.”
“But your master! He’s still in there!” As Gregor spoke the words, a look of regret came upon Streng. “We have to go back for him!” exclaimed the young noble.
“Back into that?” Streng said, his voice sombre. Gregor turned to regard the cottage. The lower floor was almost entirely engulfed in fire now, the plaster peeling away as the flames devoured the beams beneath them. Thick black smoke billowed upwards into the sky, turning the afternoon into twilight. The noble stared down at the ground, shaking his head.
“I vow that I will not rest until this fiend is made to pay for his crimes,” Gregor swore.
“A commendable oath,” a silky voice told him. Both Gregor and Streng turned their heads to see the witch hunter emerging from the billowing smoke. His hat was gone, his thin face stained by soot and the long cloak upon his back was torn, but otherwise he looked none the worse for his ordeal.
“I thought they had you,” stated Gregor. Thulmann nodded to the young noble.
“I will admit that
there was a moment when I thought the same,” he confessed. “Some reckless desperation seemed to come upon them and they pressed me harder than before. One of them even slipped past me. I was forced to turn my back to them and trust to the grace of Sigmar to preserve me as I raced toward the opening friend Streng provided us with.” The witch hunter shook his head as he recollected his near escape. “I dropped down on the other side of the building, somewhat alarmed not to find you two awaiting me.”
Thulmann turned and regarded the blazing structure. A figure could be briefly seen shambling towards the doorway, its body wreathed in flame. But even as it staggered forward, its knees buckled and it fell to be consumed by the fire. “It seems our enemy desires to swap the roles of hunter and prey,” Thulmann told his companions. “This might mean he’s worried that I might be close to guessing his purpose and thwarting whatever diabolical plan he has in his mind.”
The witch hunter climbed into the saddle of his horse. “We proceed with care now,” he cautioned. “For our enemy has become doubly dangerous.”
Carandini glared at the scrabbling mummy’s claw, hissing with rage as he read the inscription upon the page. The necromancer rose to his feet, pounding his fist into his hand.
“Did you truly think it would be so easy?” the low voice of his confederate spoke to him from the deep shadows at the back of the ruin. The necromancer turned around with a start, visibly flinching from his surprise. He tried to recover his composure, determined to show no weakness before his nebulous ally.
“I had not expected you,” he said. “Not so… soon. Are you certain that it is safe to be out?”
“My being here is not without some slight danger,” the shadow conceded. “But no more than I am willing to risk.” The voice grew stern. “Certainly less dangerous than your failure to kill the witch hunter.”
[Mathias Thulmann 01] - Witch Hunter Page 14