The Witch Hunter Chronicles 2

by Stuart Daly

  The French duellist wastes no time in doing just that. Having seen me reach the end of the aisle of tombs, he sneaks around the eastern wall of the crypt, then steps forward, brandishes his sabres and charges towards the fallen angel.

  ‘Get away from the Watcher!’ he yells at the monks. ‘It’s time for it to face one of the Hexenjäger.’

  I don’t think these monks understand German, but the urgency and conviction in Armand’s voice makes them fall back. It also forces the Watcher to snap its head around, just as Armand tears into it, his dual blades blurs of movement, catching the Watcher off-guard and forcing it to stagger away from the fury of his attack.

  Launching himself forward in a series of traversing steps, Armand manages to draw aside the Watcher’s blade with a diversionary thrust. Capitalising on the advantage, he lashes out with his second sabre, driving it – deep – into the abomination’s chest. Roaring in pain, the fallen angel retreats to the opposite side of the chamber, granting me the opportunity to reach the chest.

  Now is my chance. May the Lord protect me.

  I burst free from my cover, racing past the startled monks, then straight into the alcove. I skid to a halt before the chest, almost knocking aside the monk fumbling with the set of keys and lock.

  ‘What…?’ the monk cries in Latin, almost jumping out of his skin.

  ‘Which key is it?’ I demand back in Latin, and snatch the keys from the monk. But there are over a dozen keys attached to the key-ring and they all look exactly the same.

  ‘Who are you?’ the monk stammers, staring at me through eyes wide with fear.

  ‘I’m part of the team sent by the Bishop of Paderborn. We’ve come for the Daggers of Gabriel. Now which key is it?’

  The monk crosses himself with trembling fingers and kisses the crucifix hanging from his neck. ‘May the Lord give us strength!’ he stammers and looks back at the Watcher. ‘I don’t know. And now you’ve made me lose my place. We are going to die here!’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ I return.

  Realising that the terror-stricken monk will be of little assistance in trying to access the daggers, I push him aside and inspect the chest. It is locked by a large detachable padlock. Sections of this padlock, however, have been nearly completely eaten through by rust. It must be several hundred years old. It’s probably the original lock placed on the chest when the Daggers of Gabriel were first brought to Meteora during the Crusades. There’s no need for a key here. One of my daggers should be able to pry the padlock open in a second or two.

  No sooner have I drawn the dagger from the fold in my right boot than Armand’s desperate cry comes from the far side of the crypt: ‘Jakob! Look out!’

  I turn around just in time to see the Watcher. It is at the far side of the chamber, some forty yards away. But it has knocked Armand aside and is tearing across the crypt.

  Coming straight for me.

  My blood turns to ice.

  But then some resolve rises from deep within me – possibly the warrior spirit of my father that courses through my veins. It forces me to push aside my fear and focus on the task at hand. Realising there’s not a second to lose, I wedge my dagger into the padlock and push down.

  I can hear the Watcher racing across the crypt, getting closer with each heartbeat. It can’t be any further away than thirty yards by now, but I dare not turn around. I need to focus on the lock and arm myself with one of the Daggers of Gabriel.

  I push down harder with my dagger and feel the semi-circular bar at the top of the padlock start to give. Then CLING! The lock breaks free of the chest.

  The daggers are impossibly close now. But so is the Watcher – only twenty yards away.

  Returning my dagger to the fold in my boot, I throw back the chest’s lid, where inside lie . . . the seven Daggers of Gabriel!

  I have never seen anything like them before. They are lying in a perfect row, side by side on a scarlet silk cloth. Their snaking, foot-long silver blades are completely covered in chiselled characters of some ancient language, and their blackened hilts are heavily decorated in gold and silver inlay.

  Seven daggers fashioned in Heaven’s forges by the Archangel Gabriel. Just staring at them makes the goose bumps on my arms bow in holy reverence. But now isn’t the time for marvelling at the daggers. Not with the Watcher only ten yards away.

  And so I snatch a dagger from the chest, leap to my feet and spin around to face the Watcher.

  The Watcher comes to an abrupt halt barely three yards away from me. Its eyes, the colour of freshly spilt blood, lock on the dagger – at one of the only weapons in existence that can kill it. Cheated of its goal, the Watcher’s features contort in a mixture of alarm and rage. It lifts its eyes to look into mine – a stare that transfixes me with its burning hatred. Then, for a brief second, the Watcher’s eyes flash in recognition.

  ‘You! I thought I had killed you back in the cemetery, witch hunter,’ it says, its deep voice echoing throughout the chamber, making it sound even more menacing. ‘You may have survived once, but I won’t make the same mistake again.’

  ‘Come any closer and you will die!’ I threaten, every inch of my body trembling, and brandish the dagger.

  The Watcher laughs maliciously. ‘Die? You dare threaten me. I have wandered this hell you call home for several millennia, filling hundreds of graves with those foolish enough to stand against me. Do you honestly believe that two witch hunters can stop me? You deceive yourself.’

  ‘I have one of the Daggers of Gabriel,’ I say defiantly. ‘We’ll never let you get your hands on the Tablet. You might as well give up and go back into the shadows where you belong.’

  The Watcher’s eyes flash. ‘Your confidence will be your undoing, mortal. Now prepare to meet the one you call Lord.’

  The Watcher reaches with its free hand into a fold of its robe as if to extract something, but one of the remaining six monks – in a vain attempt to seize an advantage over the distracted fallen angel – races over and tries to wrestle it to the ground.

  The Watcher becomes a blur of movement. There’s a terrible scream and a spray of blood as the Watcher’s blade cleaves the monk in two.

  I avert my eyes from the horrific scene, a sickness welling in my stomach.

  ‘Stay back!’ I bark in Latin at the remaining monks, hoping that no more of them will rush forward to their deaths. ‘Don’t go near the Watcher. Let me take care of this.’

  How these monks ever managed to protect the Daggers of Gabriel for several centuries is beyond me. Friedrich Geist had said that they were part of a military order formed during the Crusades. I had initially thought that the monks of Varlaam would be similar to the Hospitallers and the Knights Templar: military orders of monks formed during the Crusades to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. And from what I have read, they could fight.

  The monks of the Monastery of Varlaam, in actuality, appear to be novices in combat. They may once have been great warriors, but I fear they have become complacent over the centuries, hiding up here in their lofty fortress, believing that the inaccessibility of the monastery would ensure their safety. And now they are paying the ultimate price. It would be best if they withdrew from the fight and allowed Armand to deal with this.

  As if reading my mind, Armand races down from the far side of the crypt and stops some ten yards away from the Watcher, his sabres glistening in the dim light cast by the lantern in the alcove. It’s not as if he’s going to be able to kill the Watcher with those weapons, but I’m sure the heavy weight of the sabres, gripped fiercely in his hands, has at least made him feel stronger.

  ‘Well done,’ he says, noting the dagger in my hand. ‘Now let’s see if we can take this thing’s head as a trophy.’

  The Watcher’s head as a trophy! The thought hadn’t exactly crossed my mind. All I had planned on doing was fi
nding the daggers and making it out of here in one piece. I very much doubt, however, that the Watcher is going to simply let us walk out of here. It came to destroy the daggers, and it’s not going to stop now.

  Knowing that Armand will stand a much better chance of defending himself if he is armed with one of the Daggers of Gabriel, I take a step back towards the chest and start to reach down. The Watcher reaches into its robe and produces what it had previously been searching for – a human skull, covered in verses from some ancient language.

  ‘Look out!’ I warn. ‘The Watcher’s up to something.’

  ‘I can see that. But what?’

  As if in answer to Armand’s question, the Watcher holds the skull before it, smiles maliciously, and starts to speak in a language that sends a shiver of pure dread shooting up my spine.

  I have heard this language before, back in the cemetery at Wurzen – an unholy incantation, spoken by the Watcher as it weaved its dark magic to bring Andreas Rundst’s corpse back to life.

  Right now would be a good time for us to make our escape. For the Watcher is weaving its dark magic to raise the dead!

  ‘Forget about the Watcher,’ I call out to Armand. I reach into the chest, wrap the remaining six daggers in the silk cloth and place them hastily in the leather bag slung over my shoulder. ‘We came for the daggers and we have them. Now it’s time for us to get out of here – fast! The Watcher is trying to raise the dead. And we’re in a crypt. Who knows how many bodies are buried in here?’

  ‘What?’ Armand says, suddenly aware of the imminent danger we face, and looks fearfully at the floor of the crypt, as if expecting an army of undead to clamber out of the ground in answer to the Watcher’s dark summons.

  I skirt past the Watcher and, grabbing Armand and the closest monk, start to herd them towards the stairwell leading out of the crypt. ‘Just trust me on this one. We need to get out of here. Right now!’

  Just as we reach the stairwell, Armand stops and looks back at the Watcher. Drawing his pre-loaded pistol from his belt, he cocks back the firing pin and takes aim at the skull talisman with which the Watcher is trying to raise the dead.

  ‘I can’t kill the Watcher with this shot,’ he says, steadying his pistol. ‘But I’m sure going to try to stop it from raising an army of undead warriors.’

  Blam! The report of his eighteen-inch pistol barrel in the confined space of the crypt is enough to rupture your eardrums. In less than three heartbeats the pistol-smoke starts to clear, revealing the skull’s shattered bone fragments lying on the stone floor.

  I call out triumphantly, believing that Armand has foiled the Watcher’s diabolical spell. But then I notice the sadistic sneer on the Watcher’s face – a sneer so malicious it could burn down the Vatican.

  Armand was too late. The Watcher had already finished its incantation.

  And the dead start to rise.

  The six slain monks on the crypt floor are the first to answer the Watcher’s unholy summons. Their bodies convulse, infused with the diabolical breath of black magic. One by one, they clamber to their feet and set their death-glazed eyes upon us. As if things couldn’t get any worse, there’s a haunting, grinding sound as the stone lids atop the three tombs inside the crypt are pushed aside by each ancient corpse stirring within!

  The corpse in the tomb closest to the stairwell is the first to push aside its lid. First a skeletal hand appears, cloaked in dust, and then the tattered remains of a threadbare burial shroud. Another hand appears, followed by a skull crowned with wisps of silver hair and tatters of rotting flesh hanging from its cheekbones like strips of aged leather.

  Armand crosses himself. ‘Holy Mary! We’ve got a problem. Best if we got off this rock as fast as we can.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ I say, every inch of my body trembling as I make my way into the stairwell, taking the steps five at a time.

  And so our flight from the monastery begins – a desperate, panicked flight. Pushing and shoving one another, we tear up the stairs, driven by the tortured moans of the corpses that are lumbering after us, and by the screams of the remaining monks as they are cut to shreds, I can only imagine, by the Watcher.

  Emerging from the stairwell, we race through the church, spurred forward by the sounds of pursuit reverberating from below, the slim hope of surviving this nightmare increasing with each passing second. But we find our escape blocked by the three monks that had previously lain dead in the church entrance. They have now clambered to their feet, animated by the Watcher’s magic, and they set the death-white orbs of their eyes upon us the instant we enter the nave.

  But it’s what I notice through the church doorway that makes my eyes widen in pure terror. For the twenty monks who had sacrificed their lives to delay the fallen angel from entering the church have also answered the Watcher’s call. The courtyard is swarming with the undead, and they lurch towards the church doors, determined to block our sole means of escape.

  ‘We don’t stand a chance!’ I breathe, coming to an abrupt halt behind the monk who accompanied us out of the crypt. I’m transfixed by the horrific sight in the courtyard. ‘We can’t fight our way through them. There are too many!’

  ‘Now is not the time to give up. As long as we have the strength to wield steel, there is still hope,’ Armand snarls. ‘We must first seal those doors.’

  He then races forward to engage the three undead monks, who have started to move up the nave. His blades a whirring blur of death, he slices through the animated dead in a matter of seconds. Even before the last of the monks has fallen to the ground, Armand grabs a heavy iron candelabrum, dashes over to the doors, slams them shut, and – just as the undead in the courtyard reach the outside of the church – wedges the candelabrum through the door handles, sealing the church entrance.

  Not a second later, heavy thuds are rained upon the doors, which vibrate under the weight of the assault, but they hold firm.

  ‘Jakob – you need to hold this section.’ Armand directs me to brace my back against the doors. ‘Let nothing get through. And hand me one of those holy daggers.’ Tucking the dagger I hand him into his belt, he looks back at the monk who raced out of the stairwell with us. ‘You – what’s your name?’

  ‘Brother . . . Brother Nikolaos,’ the monk stammers in stilted German, his throat so constricted by fear that he can barely speak.

  ‘Nikolaos, listen carefully. Jakob is going to hold the doors, and I’m going to take care of whatever emerges from the crypt. But we won’t be able to hold them off forever. That’s why I need you to find us a way out of here. You know the layout of the monastery better than we do. You have to find us a way out of this church and then off this rock. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes.’

  Armand crosses over to the monk and places a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good. Then get started. And try to remain calm. Remember that we are in our Lord’s holy temple. He watches over our every step whilst we are in His church.’

  The conviction in Armand’s words, and his careful reference to the holy ground upon which we stand, seem to comfort and reassure the monk. Brother Nikolaos exhales heavily and his eyes flash with purpose. He then cranes his head around the church, thinking of a possible solution to our predicament.

  Armand, meanwhile, flexes his shoulders in preparation for combat and hastens over to the entrance to the crypt stairwell. His features set in a grim mask of determination, he kisses his blades and readies himself to face the oncoming horde of undead.

  My ears assailed by the guttural, blood-choked wails of the undead swarming outside, I push my back against the door, which shudders under the fury of the monks’ assault. It sounds as if some of the undead are launching themselves against the other side of the door in an attempt to batter their way into the church. I can also hear the insidious scratching of fingernails as some of the monks claw
at the panels, trying to pry apart individual sections of wood.

  Closing my eyes, I say a hasty prayer, willing the Lord to watch over us. But that doesn’t stop my hands from trembling uncontrollably. Somehow, I manage to sheathe my rapier, draw both of my pre-loaded pistols – which had been tucked into my belt, the gunpowder in their firing pans protected from the rain by the folds of my hip-length coat – and cock back their firing pins. Should the door be breached, I want none of the undead to come within ten yards of me. I know I can’t kill them all with these pistols, but I can at least eliminate two of their number the second they claw their way into the church. After that, I’m going to have no option but to engage them in melee combat, and the thought of that terrifies me.

  A spine-chilling scream from the northern transept catches my attention, telling me that the undead have emerged from the crypt. The battle of the church has begun.

  Armand’s sabres snake forward like bolts of lightning, slashing across the throat of the first of the undead to emerge from the stairwell. But even before this one has fallen to the ground, a second monk lumbers up the stairs and pushes past the first, its contorted fingers reaching out for Armand’s neck. Before I can manage a cry of warning, one of Armand’s blades cleaves through the monk’s outstretched arm. Not a second later, Armand’s second blade punches through the monk’s chest, and a carefully delivered kick sends the corpse tumbling back down into the darkness.

  ‘How are you faring?’ Armand calls out, sparing a glance over his shoulder to see what’s happening at the church doors.

  ‘These doors won’t hold them for much longer!’ I call back. I hear a creaking sound as one of the undead manages to wedge its fingers into a gap between the wooden beams of the door and starts to pry a panel free. ‘Nikolaos, we need to get out of here. Now!’