by C. L. Werner
Brunner was nothing if not pragmatic. Why drag the entire body away, when just the head would do?
The bounty killer cut a formidable aspect upon the back of his grim black warhorse, a Bretonnian steed named Fiend. The man wore a suit of weathered brigandine armour, metal studs poking through the layers of reinforced leather. Steel vambraces shielded his forearms, a breastplate of thick gromril covering his chest. Bandoliers of crossbow bolts and throwing knives criss-crossed his torso and from his leather belt a riotous array of weapons dripped like venom from a serpent’s fang. The fat-bladed knife with its serrated edge, the morbid Headsman, Viktor had seen in action among the ashes of the pirate lair. A thick hatchet, its wooden heft deeply stained from its blood-drenched career. A pair of slender, almost delicate looking crossbow pistols hung at his hips, their blackened steel frames almost melding with the sombre coat of Fiend as they slapped against the horse’s flanks. Across his belly, Brunner wore a holstered duelling pistol, one of the killer’s hands lingering close to the grip of the firearm. Against the bounty hunter’s left hip, the sheathed length of a murderous falchion, a butchering blade capable of tearing the steel from a man’s grip as easily as it could gut the man himself.
Brunner’s face was largely hidden beneath the visor of his rounded sallet helm, but what Viktor could see was a hard, unforgiving countenance with a mouth turned down in a perpetual scowl and a shallow grey scar pulling at the chin. He knew the man was a Reiklander by his speech and accent, but highborn or low commoner was something Viktor found strangely difficult to extract from the bounty hunter’s voice. Certainly the hunter’s casual disdain for Viktor’s attempts at bribery to secure his release bespoke no commoner scraping to earn his living by such a dangerous profession. Though, perhaps, this was simply because he had not offered enough?
‘You know,’ Viktor began without preamble. ‘I have some rather influential friends who would make it well worth your while…’ He paused as another branch came slashing into his face, opening an oozing cut in his cheek. Viktor cursed lividly, then struggled to refocus his thoughts. ‘My friends would pay well to have me back safe and sound, and wouldn’t be too particular about who they paid, or why.’
Viktor felt rather than saw Brunner’s steely glare as he swung back around in his saddle.
‘Friends like your pirates?’ the bounty hunter sneered. ‘All the money I want from that sort I can put across Paychest’s back.’ Brunner tapped the metal handle of the Headsman in a grim gesture. ‘As for you, I’d consider what I had to say very carefully. I’m not a tolerant man and my indulgence is over.’ Brunner turned back around, spitting the stump of his cigar into the darkness. ‘Vaulkberg wants you alive. He didn’t say anything about with or without tongue.’
All the colour drained out of Viktor Schwartz as he heard the threat, stunned into silence by the casual manner in which it was made. Shocked into silence, the outlaw was almost pulled from his feet as the bounty hunter’s animals continued their march through the benighted forest. Too terrified even to curse, Viktor stumbled along in his effort to keep up.
Suddenly, Viktor found himself crashing into the rump of Paychest. The grey packhorse stood stock still, its eyes wide with alarm, its ears standing up, its hooves pawing nervously at the ground. Ahead, he could see the black bulk of Fiend and even the warhorse seemed agitated, swinging its huge head from side to side as though trying to spot some hidden menace. The bounty hunter upon its back was likewise rigid with concentration, listening for any errant sound among the shadows. His hand had fallen to the grip of his pistol, slowly inching the weapon from its holster.
All was silence, even the chirping of crickets seemed to be muted by some unseen malignance. Viktor could hear his heart hammering in his chest, feel his throat going tight from fear. He could feel it now, as surely as the horses and the hunter. There was something out there, something obscene and unnatural.
From somewhere deep in the forest, a piercing howl rose into the night. It was a savage, feral sound, both deep and sharp, seeming to echo in the very bones of those who heard it. It was not unlike the cry of a wolf, but of such volume and magnitude that defied belief. Viktor muttered a quite prayer to Taal, god of the beasts and the wild, as he heard it. The bounty hunters horses nickered and stamped their hooves in agitation. For his part, Brunner drew his pistol and checked to see that the firing cap was secure upon the weapon’s steel nipple.
A chill wind rustled through the brush, fanning the terror of the two horses, forcing the bounty hunter to forget his weapon for the moment to quieten his steed. Viktor dodged out of the path of the bucking Paychest until the bounty killer dismounted and calmed the draft horse as well.
When he turned from his chore, Brunner ripped the pistol back from its holster, allowing his other hand to slip around the hilt of his falchion. Ahead, in the darkness, a shape moved, creeping through the brush towards the two men.
Brunner aimed his pistol at the approaching shadow, his finger loose around the trigger. The slightest pressure would send a lead ball blasting through the head of the advancing wraith. Though he could make out nothing but a darker shadow beyond the bushes, the manner in which Fiend and Paychest reacted to the unseen denizen of the dark was enough to make him aware that it was no natural thing. The woods and forests of the Empire were havens for all manner of goblins and beastmen, as well as other, less wholesome inhabitants. A few more steps, and Brunner would make the wilds of Stirland safer by one less monster.
The bounty hunter gave a sharp cry of alarm as the pistol fell from his gloved hand. The leather smoked where the suddenly white-hot weapon had seared him where he gripped it. The spectral chill of sorcery whirled around him, creating a sinister contrast to his burned hand. Brunner tore his falchion from its sheath, staring into the darkness, ready to rush his spell-slinging foe. The shadow he had seen before was no longer there. The bounty hunter’s instincts caused him to spin around towards the other side of the path.
A dark figure smiled at him with a ratty, gap-toothed grin as Brunner raised his falchion to strike.
‘None of that, sweetie,’ the figure croaked in a voice that was withered with age and evil. ‘It’s no harm Mamma Miranda means to you. It’d be a true pity for me to have to burn your other hand now.’
As she spoke, the woman stepped forwards into the dim light of the moon. She was a little creature, barely tall enough to touch the fetlocks of Brunner’s charger, her back almost as crooked as a woodsman’s bow. She leaned upon a knobbly cane of oak and was wrapped tight in a dark woollen shawl, the hood pulled close about her scraggly white hair and shrivelled head. It was a desiccated, reptilian face that stared from the frame of the hood, the skin splotched with brown blemishes and wrinkled like old leather. Her nose was a little bulb set above her wide, rodent-like mouth and the eyes that gleamed from either side of it were strangely luminescent in the darkness. A tangle of charms and talismans rattled about her throat and dangled from her wrists, bearing symbols of Ahalt the Drinker and other, even more unspeakable gods.
Brunner slowly lowered his sword, carefully returning it to its sheath. Miranda watched the action with seemingly rapt attention, then her rat-like grin hardened.
‘Don’t think I don’t see you going for your knife while you put yon boar-cutter away,’ the old woman cackled. ‘It’s a good turn I mean you and you have nay right to bear me such ill.’
‘Is that so?’ the bounty hunter returned. He folded his arms across his chest in a seeming gesture of defeat. ‘What have I done to warrant the interest of a witch?’
Miranda scowled at the word and her glittering eyes took on an even uglier appearance. ‘It’s careful you should be about baiting me, child. There’s Powers I be beholden to and They be the ones what have an interest in you, nay old Mamma Miranda. Left to me, and I’d leave you to have your bones picked clean and your guts spilt across the forest!’
‘I care nothing for your daemons or your magic, witch!’ Brunner growled back. Th
e fingers of his left hand slipped gradually beneath the vambrace on his right arm, reaching for the slender throwing knife hidden there. ‘I have business in Reikland and no desire to waste words with a heretic hag!’
The witch uttered a cackle of scornful amusement. She stabbed a crooked finger at Viktor. ‘Your dead man will never reach the judge, and weeds will grow through your gnawed bones and a fitting end it would be too.’ Miranda’s scowl grew even sicklier and she fingered one of her talismans, a metal sliver of moon intersected by a disc. ‘Unfortunately it would sit ill with my Masters if I were to allow harm to befall you because of my magic, and Their displeasure is not a thing to be taken lightly.’
With a speed that even Brunner found amazing, the old woman removed a bundle of weeds from beneath her shawl and threw them at the bounty hunter’s feet. ‘You are not the only hunter abroad this night, Brunner of Drakenberg. When the beast picks up your scent, you must burn these herbs.’ Miranda saw the incredulous twist of Brunner’s mouth. ‘There are things against which lead and steel are not enough,’ she warned. ‘That is when you might be thankful for an old witch’s magic!’
Brunner bent down to retrieve the bundle of herbs, using the motion to cover his hand as he finished pulling the knife from beneath his armour. His eyes were only off the witch for an instant, but when he straightened to hurl his weapon at her, he found himself staring only at the night-blackened forest. He fought back the twinge of supernatural dread the hag’s vanishment evoked.
‘She… she disappeared… right there! While I was… was watching!’ stammered Viktor, pointing with his tethered hands at the empty bushes.
Brunner stalked over to his captive, checking his bonds. The witch might have vanished, but his prisoner wasn’t going to follow her example.
‘She… she was a witch!’ Viktor gasped. He grabbed Brunner’s arm in a desperate gesture. ‘She said I would never reach Judge Vaulkberg, that I was a dead man!’
Brunner shook off Viktor’s grasping hands. ‘The hag was wrong,’ he hissed. ‘You should be worried about what the judge is going to do to you, not some crazed hedge mage’s predictions.’
The bounty hunter walked back to Fiend, his contempt for the witch’s words still ringing in Viktor’s ears.
That Brunner did not discard the bundle of dried weeds, but stuffed them carefully in a saddlebag was an observation the frightened Viktor failed to make.
He was too busy listening to the renewed howling in the darkness and trying to convince himself it was not closer than it had been before.
The wolf howl dogged Brunner through the long hours of the night, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, but always there. The persistence of the howl had made Paychest all but unmanageable, and even Fiend was on edge. As for his captive, he had been forced to tie Viktor to his own saddle to prevent the fear-crazed man from trying to scramble into a tree every time he heard the howl. A broken leg would make getting him to the Reikland a good sight more difficult and Brunner would just as soon avoid such complication.
It was when the howling dropped off entirely that the bounty hunter came on edge. Viktor, oblivious to Brunner’s increased wariness, took the silence as sign that the wolf had forsaken them to find less formidable prey. The continuing agitation of the horses made it clear that the predator was still close.
When the attack came, it was of such speed and ferocity that even the bounty killer was caught unprepared. One instant there was the darkness of the path, the brambles and thickets pressing close to the overgrown trail. The next a pair of red eyes shone from the blackness. Brunner drew his pistol even as a terrible growl rumbled through the night. Branches snapped as something lithe and powerful lunged from its hiding place.
Brunner had an instant to observe the sleek black shape as it leapt upon him, bowling him from the saddle and smashing him to the ground. It was a wolf, a huge specimen of its breed. It jaws flashed white in the moonlight, froth dripping from its jowls. Brunner fired his pistol into the beast as its leap brought it crashing against him, shocked when the brute did not so much as yelp when the weapon discharged inches from its snapping fangs. A misfire was always a possibility, but the smoke and fire should have been enough to scare the animal off.
His second shock came as he struck the ground, the beast atop him. Brunner felt fingers close around his wrists, pinning him to the ground. As he stared up at his attacker, he saw only the canine snout and black-furred head of a wolf, its eyes gleaming with a cruel intelligence. Nursery fables and half-remembered legends flooded into Brunner’s mind as he felt the baleful gaze of the wolf fixed upon him. He fought down his superstitious dread with more difficulty than he had in his encounter with the witch. Natural or child of Old Night, the surest way to die beneath a predator’s jaws was to show fear.
Unfortunately, the same lesson had not been taught to Viktor Schwartz. The outlaw pulled at his tether, shrieking and wailing like a lost lamb. The noise of his terror brought the wolf’s head snapping about. Whatever intellect might lurk within the beast, it had no mastery over its savage instincts. Brunner felt a heavy weight press down on him, then the wolf was away, springing off of him and pouncing upon the screaming Viktor.
The prisoner fell beneath the beast’s weight, crushed to the earth with savage violence. Blood spattered the bushes as the wolf’s claws tore into him, each of its hand-like paws clawing into his body with feral brutality. Viktor’s high-pitched screams degenerated into a bubbly gargle as the wolf’s fangs snapped close around his neck and began to worry at his throat. Arterial spray, almost black in the moonlight, spurted from the wound, bathing prey and predator in Viktor’s blood.
Brunner staggered to his feet, his chest still feeling the crushing weight of the wolf against it. He drew the crossbow pistols from his belt, taking aim even as he watched the beast slaughter his prisoner like a wayward calf.
‘Your pelt better be worth three hundred crowns, cur!’ Brunner snarled, loosing the bolts from his pistols into the wolf’s back. Both missiles struck home, stabbing into the beast. Brunner took a step back, once again struck with shock and horror. The bolts had struck true, but their effect could have been no more useless had he loosed them into a side of beef. The wolf barely deigned to notice their impact, but continued to savage the quivering body of its prey. As it snapped and slavered, the bolts seemed to work themselves loose from its body, falling into the mush of dead leaves on the ground.
Brunner tried to tell himself it was some trick of light and shadow, but the effort was too great. It was no wolf that held its prey in pawlike hands, and no beastman who defied bullets and bolts. It was something else, something that, as the witch had warned, did not respect steel and lead.
The bounty hunter pulled his tinderbox from a pouch on his belt, hurriedly trying to light the withered weeds the old woman had thrust upon him. The wolf-beast seemed to take notice the instant he began. It dropped Viktor’s gory carcass, its muzzled pulled into a snarl as it fixed him with its scarlet eyes. The creature slowly crept towards him, an angry growl rumbling through its powerful frame, keeping itself upright upon two legs, its clawed hands closing and opening in their eagerness for violence.
The weeds had just begun to smoulder, the first faint hint of noxious smoke rising from them, when the wolf-beast lowered its head and coiled its body into a crouch. Brunner dropped his tinderbox and dragged the hatchet from his belt. The move was only just in time as the wolf lunged for him, uncoiling in a black-furred streak of bestial fury. The bounty hunter twisted as it jumped, staggering from the glancing impact instead of being crushed beneath the beast’s body as he had before. As the wolf dove past him, he lashed out with the axe, slashing its edge through fur and flesh, hearing the steel scrape against bone. But when the beast was past and he looked at his axe, he found the blade unmarked by blood. He did not need to be a witch to know that the wolf’s hide was similarly unmarked, preserved by whatever unholy forces gave it power.
The wolf coiled to spring again,
but as it did so, it began to shake its head, snuffling loudly. It brought a forearm scratching against its muzzle, then rolled its face in the dirt. Brunner could see that the bundle of weeds was now smoking fiercely, the pungent reek almost overwhelming. Its effect on the wolf-beast was even worse, and with a mournful wail, like the whine of a child, the brute darted towards the trees.
Before it could vanish, Brunner was pulling his sword from its scabbard. If the weed could wreak such havoc on the beast, perhaps they had also foiled its invulnerability to steel. He started after the wolf, but the familiar sound of an explosive crack caused him to drop. The trunk of a nearby tree exploded with splinters as a bullet slammed into it.
Brunner rolled onto his belly, watching for the hidden shooter, the wolf already vanished into the undergrowth. After a few moments, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a rider ploughing his way through the undergrowth. The glow of a lantern appeared in the murk of the forest, soon followed by the one who held it.
The rider was a well-dressed man, the doublet beneath his engraved breastplate was extravagant and colourful, his stiff cavalry boots monogrammed with gilded letters, his rounded helm sporting outrageous plumes of ostrich feathers. The sword that hung from his belt was thin and rakish, with a jewelled hilt and silver etchings along its scabbard. The man’s face was clean, handsome in the classical Imperial style, with well-tended moustaches waxed into twisted curls. Pale blue eyes regarded Brunner with alarm and a smoking pistol almost fell from the riders beringed fingers.