by C. L. Werner
‘The witch!’ the baron continued. ‘Find her again. Tell her to lift this curse she has placed upon my lands! If she won’t,’ he paused, wondering if he dared voice the words. ‘If she won’t, kill her and bring her head back to me! Do this, and you shall have a fortune!’
Brunner remained impassive, detaching the baron’s fingers from his hand and brushing them aside. ‘Why not send a messenger to Wurtbad? You can have witch hunters here inside a week, and they will work much cheaper.’
The baron started to speak, then cast a nervous glance at his son and the valet. ‘I need her gone now!’ The authority drained out of his voice and his words became desperate, almost pleading. ‘You will do it for me!’
‘I’ll take it under serious consideration,’ Brunner answered, motioning for the valet to lead on. The servant hesitated, unsure if his master had finished speaking with his guest, but when the baron made no protest, he motioned for Brunner to follow him down the stone-walled corridor.
‘Two thousand crowns!’ the valet whistled once they were out of sight of the baron. ‘You could buy all of Wurtbad with that much money! Still, to go after a witch…’
Brunner interrupted the lad’s thoughts. ‘You know where the Kislevites sleep?’ he asked.
The valet blinked, confused by the abrupt question. ‘Yes, of course.’ He shivered as the bounty hunter took something from his belt and tossed it at him. Instinctively, the boy caught it, apprehension turning to joy when he found it to be a silver shilling.
‘You’ll have to earn that,’ Brunner warned him, causing the valet’s grin to soften. He reached into his belt again, removing a small pouch. He handed it to the boy. ‘I want you to grind that into their boots. They can’t see you doing it and once it’s done you can’t say anything about it.’
The boy gulped at the implied threat, but nodded his understanding.
‘One last thing,’ Brunner told him. ‘I want to know as soon as the Kislevites leave the castle tomorrow. There’s an extra shilling in it for you if I can still smell kvas at the gates.’
Brunner motioned for the valet to be off on his clandestine errand. He watched him race off, then turned and entered his room. It was not thoughts of witches and wolves that occupied him, it was the memory of Viktor’s body and the marks the wolf had left upon it. How very different from the marks on the dead wolf hunter’s body. Those wounds had looked like the sort of thing that might be left by a bear claw honed to razor-keenness.
Brunner strode across the courtyard of Castle Hartog, the chill of morning turning his breath to mist before him. He stepped into the stables. A young stable boy was sleeping just inside, nestled within a mound of hay. A kick roused the boy from his slumber. He blinked at the bounty hunter, eyes going wide with fright.
‘You’ve been here all night?’ he demanded. The youth nodded, too afraid to speak. ‘What did the Kislevites ask you to do to my horse?’
The boy shuddered, quickly scrambling to the pile of hay and digging in it for something. He swiftly turned back around, displaying a pair of cruel-looking triangular pieces of metal.
‘He asked me to put these in their hooves,’ the boy confessed. ‘But I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t, no matter what they paid me!’ The lad’s face turned a sickly green. ‘I had a look in that barrel when we removed the tack from your packhorse. I wouldn’t do nothing to provoke you, as Rhya is my witness I wouldn’t!’
‘Well spoken,’ the bounty hunter’s chill voice answered. He watched as the boy wilted beneath his gaze. ‘A wise decision. Now I need you to fetch me a pig, the leaner the better, and a length of rope to use as a leash.’ He waved the boy away. ‘I’ll take care of saddling my own horse.’
The bounty hunter cast a strange sight as he left the castle. Mounted on the back of his charger Fiend, he was crouched low in the saddle, watching the pink and brown swine the stable boy had found for him as it tugged and strained on the end of its leash. He set the beast down. Instantly its nose was snuffling against the ground, and it uttered a sharp squeal. The pig strained at the end of its rope. Brunner chuckled grimly to himself. Farmers in Bretonnia would train hogs to hunt truffles and they held that the noses of their hogs were sharper than any hound. He was counting that the snouts of the Empire’s swine were no less keen. If there was one thing a pig enjoyed eating more than a truffle it was a snotling. The snotling dung he had the valet grind into the boots of the two Kislevites was something he doubted the slovenly wolf hunters would even notice, but to the pig, it was the scent of a most delicious supper.
Brunner let the eager pig lead the way. Wolf and witch would wait. First he would need to attend to his rivals. He had no intention of ending up like Otto and however many other hunters the treacherous Kazan and Pujardov had ambushed and killed.
For most of the morning, the boundless appetite of the pig guided Brunner through the winding paths of the forest. Even by day, there was a brooding intensity about the place, an air of lurking menace. The trees pressed in close about him and he found himself watching every shadow for signs of movement. He knew that Fiend would sense the wolf-beast long before he did, but he felt there was no reason not to be cautious just the same.
It was nearly noon before a sharp cry echoed through the forest. The bounty hunter was not surprised to find that the sound came from the direction the pig was leading him. He tied the end of the swine’s leash to a branch and pressed on ahead. It seemed he had been harsh belittling the skills of the Kislevites. In only a few hours they had managed something it seemed the baron had never been capable of. They had caught the witch.
The two wolf hunters were crouched in a small clearing, a little fire burning on the ground between them. Lying on the ground, trussed up like a Sigmarzeit goose, was the old hag Mamma Miranda. Her feet, thrust full in the flames, had blackened, blood oozing from the split skin. Pujardov, kneeling close to her head, kept pouring kvas down her mouth each time she seemed about to pass out, the burning spirit snapping her back into awareness.
‘It is so simple, little mama,’ Kazan scolded. ‘All you do is lift curse. I tell Lord Dietrich, Pujardov pulls your feet from fire and everyone happy.’ The Kislevite stabbed a curved dagger into the soil, snorting with agitation. ‘Why you so stubborn? You like to hurt? That is what make you glad?’ He stood and drew an ugly-looking axe from his belt. ‘It is your choice, little mama,’ he sighed. ‘Pujardov, hold out her hand. I start with thumb and work the way around.’
So intent were they on the vicious torture that the first the two wolf hunters were aware of Brunner’s presence was when Fiend bolted out from the brush. The charger slammed into the stunned Kazan, knocking the man into the fire. He squealed and shrieked as he rolled across the ground, trying to douse his smoking garments. Pujardov rushed at Brunner, a spiked club in his hand. Brunner swung Fiend around, a kick of the charger’s hoof sending the hunter’s furred cap flying into the bushes and throwing the man himself to the ground.
‘I kill you!’ Kazan snarled, rising to his feet, the axe still clenched in his fists. ‘I kill you, you son of…’
Brunner’s pistol barked and Kazan’s threat died in a gargle of blood. The bounty killer holstered the spent weapon and dropped down from the saddle. Pujardov groaned as Brunner strode past the prone Kislevite. Brunner reached down, grabbed hold of the youth’s scalplock and slammed his face into the ground until he stopped moving.
Brunner rose from the unconscious wolf hunter and walked to the abused wreck of the old woman. Fire, it seemed, had not been the first motivational tool the two Kislevites had used on her.
Miranda’s eyes fluttered, but she forced them to focus on the bounty hunter as he loomed over her. A vindictive smile spread across her face. ‘So you took Mamma Miranda’s advice,’ she cackled, oblivious to the trickle of blood streaming from her mouth as she spoke.
‘The baron is paying me two thousand crowns to end your curse,’ Brunner told her. ‘Whether you live or die doesn’t interest him so long as the c
urse is lifted.’
The witch laughed, spitting gore into the grass. ‘So he remembers me, does he? As well he should. It’s not every man bold enough to take the virtue of a priestess.’ A sly grin worked its way through her pain. ‘Though you might say it is a trait of the Hartogs!’
‘The curse, witch!’ Brunner growled. He was not certain what kind of magic there was in the old woman, but he did know what kind of damage had been done to her. Whatever she would do, she did not have long to do it.
‘The curse!’ Miranda cackled. ‘Oh yes, it will survive old Mamma Miranda, have no fear. There’s some things it is easy to invoke than send away.’ She looked sternly into Brunner’s eyes. ‘Take no part in it!’ she hissed. ‘My Masters will not forgive me if you die because of my magic and death is no refuge from Their wrath!’
‘Then end your enchantment!’ Brunner said.
‘You don’t understand what I’ve done,’ the witch answered. ‘What is done can’t be taken back! “Even the noble heart, that fears not Old Night, may be cursed and damned, by the werekin’s bite!” It was the blood of the werekin I mixed into the philtre, to damn and destroy the baron’s preening son!’
Brunner found himself recoiling from the hag’s slobbering words. The werekin, men that wore the shape of beasts at the full of Morrslieb, things so terrible that most insisted they were nothing more than fable and traveller’s tale. He remembered the strange paws of the wolf and the terrible intelligence in its strange eyes. Was that what the witch had summoned to work her revenge?
Miranda was laughing again, forcing herself onto her elbows. ‘End the enchantment you say?’ Blood dribbled down her chin as she laughed. ‘Oh, aye, that I can do, and won’t the baron and his son be so happy when it is done!’ Brunner thought the words would be her last, as the ravaged body shuddered in a spasm of coughing. But the witch had strength enough to point at the curved dagger Kazan had stabbed into the ground.
‘There is your key, Brunner of Drakenberg!’ she hissed. ‘Cut the beast but once with that blade and the enchantment will be broken! Aye, the enchantment will be broken!’ Another fit of laughter gripped her, but this time there was no strength to sustain the toll it took from her body. She collapsed, her last breath wheezing from her bloodied lips.
Brunner bent to the earth and retrieved the dagger from the ground. He slid it beneath his belt and moved on to the chore of binding Pujardov. The wolf hunter regained awareness just as he was finishing the labour. Pujardov struggled against his bonds, but found himself trussed tightly to the trunk of a fir tree.
‘Save your energy,’ Brunner advised Pujardov as he stepped away. ‘You’ll need it.’
Pujardov hurled curses at the bounty hunter, then gave a wail of horror as he saw his father’s body strewn along the ground. ‘You killed my father!’
Brunner looked up from reloading his pistol. ‘Be thankful I need live bait to lure the wolf to me, or you’d have gotten the same,’ he warned.
Brunner looked at the position of Mannslieb and judged that another hour had passed. He raised his pistol into the air and fired. The report echoed through the forest. He was playing a dangerous game, he knew, but he was trusting that he had guessed the lay of the land correctly. Coiled in the branches of a big oak at the edge of the clearing, the bounty hunter looked down at the bait tethered to the trunk below.
Pujardov glared up at him. ‘This won’t work, murder swine! The wolf won’t come where it hears hunters!’
Brunner poured powder down the barrel of the pistol. ‘If it was a wolf, you’d be right. But this beast, I think, likes to fight. That is why Dietrich paid you and your father to kill all the other hunters and make it look like the beast’s work.’ Pujardov’s sullen silence was all the confirmation he needed. ‘He pays you to make sure no one hurts the beast.’
‘Clever,’ a sharp voice snarled from the shadows. Brunner swung around, firing his pistol at the voice. He swore as he heard the round smash against a tree.
‘No more of that!’ Dietrich growled, stepping into the clearing, his pistol pointed at Brunner. The bounty hunter was perched in the tree above Pujardov, a vantage point that allowed him to watch almost every approach to the clearing and his bait. ‘Unless you want to die where you stand!’
‘You won’t kill me,’ Brunner told him. ‘You can’t afford to now.’
A tinge of doubt crept into Dietrich’s hate-filled eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’ He glanced at Pujardov, a terrible suspicion growing in his mind.
‘Your assassins didn’t get anything out of the witch before she died,’ Brunner said. ‘But I heard a few things. Something about a philtre and how to break an enchantment.’
Dietrich’s body trembled with rage. ‘Tell me what she said!’ he ordered.
‘No,’ Brunner answered. ‘We bargain for that. Throw away your pistol.’
Indecision crawled across the baronet’s face, his anger warring against his fear. It was the fear that finally won out. ‘Throw away yours first,’ he said, gesturing at Brunner’s crossbow pistols. The bounty hunter nodded, carefully unfastening the weapons and letting them fall to the ground. With a sour expression, Dietrich threw his own weapon away.
The instant the threat of the pistol was gone, Brunner dropped from the tree, using Pujardov’s body to cushion the fall. The Kislevite’s livid curses went unnoticed as the bounty hunter rolled across the ground. As he straightened, a slender throwing knife flew from his hand. The blade slashed into Dietrich’s arm, biting deep into his noble flesh.
The baronet recovered from his surprise almost too quickly for Brunner. The jewelled sword was in his hand a moment before the heavy falchion of the bounty killer came smashing down. Instead of collapsing the noble’s skull, the blade only grazed his shoulder. Dietrich paled at the sight of his own blood on Brunner’s sword.
‘Surely the man who hunts wolves with neither spear nor bow isn’t afraid of a little blood,’ Brunner snapped. ‘Because I assure you, there is more where that came from!’
The bounty hunter ripped his falchion free from Dietrich’s parrying steel, nearly breaking the slender blade of his enemy in the manoeuvre. He swung the falchion at the nobleman’s face, at the same time bringing his boot cracking into his shin. The unexpected move staggered the baronet. Brunner moved in for the kill.
The deathblow never struck. From the darkness, something black and savage exploded, smashing into the bounty hunter with the force of a lightning bolt. Brunner was knocked sprawling. He felt fangs scrape against his helm as he rolled on the ground, felt claws catch in his armour. The bounty hunter smashed a fist into the wolflike face of his attacker, then brought the iron pommel of his falchion crushing down on one of its hand-like paws.
The wolf yelped more from surprise than pain, but its cry was picked up by the wounded Dietrich.
‘Don’t dare strike her, you scum!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you dare touch my Frieda!’
As it heard the name, the wolf-beast disentangled itself from Brunner. With a quick, loping trot, it ran to the wounded nobleman. Dietrich’s vengeful advance was halted in a piteous display of affection as the wolf nuzzled its face against his body, licking timidly at his wounds. The baronet’s hand stroked the wolfs pelt, not with the idle touch of man and beast, but the adoring caress of lovers.
‘She cheated me!’ Dietrich raged. ‘The witch cheated me. She said the philtre would make Frieda love me despite her vows to the goddess. She said nothing about… about… this!’ He turned tear-rimmed eyes to the she-wolf. ‘He won’t hurt you, my love! None of them will ever hurt you!’
Brunner staggered to his feet, another throwing knife in his hand. The wolf-beast turned, snarling at him. Dietrich glared at the bounty hunter, some trace of reason overcoming his concern for his lover.
‘You can’t hurt her,’ he smiled. ‘When she is like this, no one can. So what does your knife matter!’
‘It’s not for her!’ Brunner growled back. In a fluid motion, he sent the knife
whistling through the air and slamming into the nobleman’s injured shoulder. Dietrich screamed in pain, his agony exciting the wolf-beast’s adoring fury. The monster lunged at Brunner, covering the clearing in a single bound.
The bounty hunter was ready for her, the witch’s curved dagger slashing through the black pelt. The she-wolf wailed as the blade struck her, blood bubbling from the wound. Brunner leapt back as the beast clawed at him. He readied himself for another attack, then hesitated as he saw the wolf-beast’s body shudder. He remembered what Miranda had told him about breaking the enchantment.
If he expected the wolf to change back into a woman, however, he was disappointed. It was still the lupine face of a beast that regarded him when the convulsions passed and the wolf lifted herself from the ground. The only change that had come upon it were the eyes. No longer blazing red, they were a soft blue, filled with horror and disgust and shame. Filled with so many things, but not a trace of love.
‘Frieda!’ Dietrich screamed, rushing to the fallen wolf.
Again the wolf-beast reacted to hearing her name. Understanding shone in her eyes. She knew all that had been done to her and why. She also knew who had forced this nightmare upon her.
With a snarl that was more than that of an animal, the she-wolf leapt upon Dietrich, her fangs closing about his throat. Savagely she worried at the nobleman’s flesh, scattering his blue blood across the clearing. The baronet shrieked, wailing in agony that was more than physical. His hand closed about the heft of a jewelled dagger and with a moan of utter despair, he drew the blade and sank it into his lover’s side.
Man and beast slumped to the ground, each quivering as death crept into their limbs. Dietrich struggled to touch his hand to the she-wolf’s head, the wolf struggling just as hard to pull away from his noxious touch. In the end, it was the beast who won and an almost human smile spread across its muzzle as it saw the baronet’s hand slump into the grass just out of reach of her.