[Mathias Thulmann 00a] - A Choice of Hatreds

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  “Firstly, Mathias Thulmann is not my master. We’re partners, him and me, that’s what it is. Secondly, we are on our way to Stirland. Lots of witches down in Stirland.” Streng snorted derisively. “Do you honestly think we’d cross half the Empire to come here?” Streng laughed. “I wouldn’t cross a meadow to come to this rat nest,” he said, before adding, “present company excepted, of course,” to the locals gathered around him.

  As Streng returned his attention to the giggling creature seated on his knee, Mueller extracted himself from the hangers-on and made his way toward the beer hall’s exit. The mercenary spied a familiar face in the crowd and waved the man over to him. A young, wiry man with a broken nose and a livid scar across his forearm walked over to Mueller. The mercenary took the flower-festooned hat from the man’s head and sent it sailing across the crowded room with a flick of his wrist.

  “Go get Gunther and Hossbach,” Mueller snarled. “I found us some night work.” The angry look on the young man’s face disappeared at the mention of work. Rail set off at a brisk jog to find his fellow sellswords. Mueller looked at the crowd around Streng one last time before leaving the beer hall.

  The mercenary had found out all that he needed to know. The witch hunter was only passing through Kleinsdorf; he would not be expecting any trouble. Like all the other jobs he had done for Gerhardt Knauf, this one would hardly be difficult enough to be called “work”.

  A cheer went up from the crowd below as a small boy shimmied up the massive pole standing in the centre of the square and thrust a crown of flowers on the gilded skull at its top.

  At the moment, Reinhardt von Lichtberg envied the boy his agility. The nobleman was gripping the outer wall of the inn, thirty feet above the square. To an observer, he might have looked like a great brown bat clinging to the wall of a cave. But there were no eyes trained upon Reinhardt, at least not at present. The few revellers who had lifted their heads skyward were watching the boy descend the pole with a good deal less bravado than he had ascended with. Still, the threat of discovery was far too real and Reinhardt was not yet ready to see the inside of a cell.

  Slowly, carefully, Reinhardt worked his fingers from one precarious handhold to another. Only a few feet away he could see the window that was his goal. It had been easy to determine which room the murderer occupied; his was the only window from which light shone. Somehow it did not surprise Reinhardt that the witch hunter had taken a room on the inn’s top floor. One last trial, one final obstacle before vengeance could be served.

  At last he reached the window and Reinhardt stared through the glass, seeing for the first time in six months the man who had destroyed his life. The murderer sat in a wooden chair, a small table set before him. He cut morsels from a large roasted goose, a wicker-shrouded bottle of wine sitting beside it.

  Reinhardt watched for a moment as the monster ate, burning the hated image of the man into his memory. He hoped that the meal was a good one, for it would be the witch hunter’s last.

  With an animal cry, Reinhardt crashed through the window, broken glass and splintered wood flying across the room. Landing on his feet, the sword at his side was in his hand in less than a heartbeat. To his credit, the witch hunter reacted swiftly, kicking the small table at Reinhardt an instant after he landed in the room while diving in the opposite direction to gain the pistols and longsword that lay upon the bed. But Reinhardt had the speed of youth and the martial training of one who might have been a captain in the Reiksguard on his side. More, he had purpose.

  The witch hunter’s claw-like hand closed around the grip of his pistol just as cold steel touched his throat. There was a brief pause as Thulmann regarded the blade poised at his neck before releasing his weapon and holding his hands up in surrender. Both arms raised above his head, Mathias Thulmann faced the man with a sword at his throat.

  “I fear that you will not find much gold,” Mathias said, his voice low and unafraid.

  “You do not remember me, do you?” Reinhardt snarled. “Or are you going to pretend that your name is not Mathias Thulmann, Templar of Sigmar, witch hunter?”

  “That is indeed my name, and my trade,” replied Mathias, his voice unchanged.

  “My name is Reinhardt von Lichtberg,” spat the other, pressing the tip of his blade into Mathias’ throat until a bead of crimson slid down the steel. “I am the man who is going to kill you.”

  “To avenge your lost love?” the witch hunter mused, a touch of pity seeming to enter his voice. “You should thank me for restoring her soul to the light of Sigmar.”

  “Thank you?” Reinhardt bellowed incredulously. The youth fought to keep himself from driving his sword through the witch hunter’s flesh. “Thank you for imprisoning us, torturing us? Thank you for burning Mina at the stake? Thank you for destroying the only thing that made my life worth living?” Reinhardt clenched his fist against the wave of rage that pounded through his body. He shook his head from side to side.

  “We were to be married,” the nobleman stated. “I was to serve the Emperor in his Reiksguard and win glory and fame. Then I would return and she would be waiting for me to make her my wife.” Reinhardt pulled a fat skinning knife from a sheath on his belt. “You took that from me. You took it all away.” Reinhardt let the light play across the knife in his left hand as he rolled his wrist back and forth. The witch hunter continued to watch him, his eyes hooded, his face betraying no fear or even concern. Reinhardt noted the man’s seeming indifference to his fate.

  “You will scream,” he swore. “Before I let you die, Sigmar himself will hear your screams.”

  The hand with the knife moved toward the witch hunter’s body… And for the second time that evening, Mathias Thulmann had unexpected visitors.

  The door burst inwards, bludgeoned from its hinges by the ogrelike man who followed the smashed portal into the room. Three other men were close behind the ape-like bruiser. All four of them wore a motley array of piecemeal armour, strips of chainmail fastened to leather tunics, bands of steel woven to a padded hauberk. The only aspect that seemed to link the four men was the look of confusion on their faces.

  “The witch hunter was supposed to be alone,” stated Rail, puzzled by the strange scene they had stumbled upon. Reinhardt turned his body toward the mercenaries, keeping his sword at Mathias’ throat.

  “Which one is he?” asked Rail, clearly not intending the question for either of the men already in the room.

  “Why don’t we just kill them both?” the scarecrow-thin figure of Hossbach said, stepping toward Reinhardt.

  Like a lightning bolt, the skinning knife went flying across the room. Hossbach snarled as he dodged the projectile. The mercenary did not see the sword that flashed away from Thulmann’s throat to slice across his armour and split his stomach across its centre. Hossbach toppled against the man who had dealt him the fatal wound. His sword forgotten on the floor, the mercenary clutched at Reinhardt, grabbing for the man’s sword arm. Reinhardt kicked the dying man away from him, sending him crashing into the foot of the bed, but Hossbach had delayed him long enough. The brutish fist of Gunther crashed into Reinhardt’s face while his dagger sought to bury itself in the pit of Reinhardt’s left arm. The nobleman managed to grab his attacker’s wrist, slowing the deadly blade’s strike. The blade pierced his skin but did not sink into his heart. His huge opponent let a feral smile form on his face as he put more strength into the struggle. Slowly, by the slightest of measures, the dagger continued its lethal passage.

  Suddenly the sound of thunder assailed Reinhardt’s ears; a stench like rotten eggs filled his nose. One moment he had been staring into the triumphant face of his attacker. In the next instant the mercenary’s head was a red ruin. The hand on the dagger slid away and the mercenary fell to the floor like a felled tree. Reinhardt saw one of the attackers run through the shattered doorway. The other lay with a gory wound on the side of his head at the feet of the only other man still standing in the room.

  A plume of grey
smoke rose from the barrel of the pistol Mathias Thulmann held in his right hand. The other pistol, its butt bloody from its impact against the mercenary’s skull, was cocked and pointed at Reinhardt von Lichtberg’s own head.

  “It seems the last of these yapping curs has not seen fit to remain with us,” Thulmann said. Although he now held the upper hand, the witch hunter still possessed the same air of cold indifference.

  “Go ahead and kill me, butcher,” Reinhardt swore, his heart afire with the injustice of it all. To come so close… “You will be doing me a service,” he added.

  “There are some things you should know before I decide if you should live or die,” the witch hunter sat down on the bed, motioning Reinhardt to a position from which the pistol could cover him more easily.

  “Have you not wondered what brought me to your father’s estate?” Mathias asked. He saw the slight look of interest surface amidst Reinhardt’s mask of hate. “I was summoned by Father Haeften.” Reinhardt started at the mention of the wizened old priest of Sigmar who led his father’s household in their devotions. It was impossible for him to believe that the kindly soft-spoken old man could have been responsible for bringing about Mina’s death. The witch hunter continued to speak.

  “The father reported that one of his parish was touched by Chaos,” Thulmann paused, letting the distasteful word linger in the air. “A young woman who was with child, whose own mother bespoke the irregularities that were manifesting beneath her skin.”

  Stunned shock claimed Reinhardt. With child. His child.

  “Upon my arrival, I examined the woman and discovered that her mother’s fears had proven themselves,” Thulmann shook his head sadly. “Her background was not of a suspicious nature, but the Darkness infects even the most virtuous. It was necessary to question her, to learn the source of her affliction. After several hours, she said your name.”

  “Hours of torture!” Reinhardt spat, face twisted into an animal snarl. “And then you took me so that your creature might ‘question’ me!”

  “Yes!” affirmed Thulmann, fire in his voice. “As the father, the source of her corruption might lie within you, yourself! It was necessary to discover if there were others! Chaos is a contagion, where one is infected others soon fall ill!”

  “Yet you released me,” challenged Reinhardt, the shame he felt at his own survival further fuelling the impotent rage roaring through his veins.

  “There was no corruption in you,” the witch hunter said, almost softly. “Nor in the girl, not in her soul at least. It was days later that she confessed the crime that had been the cause of her corruption.” The witch hunter stared into Reinhardt’s blazing eyes.

  “Do you know a Doktor Weichs?” he asked.

  “Freiherr Weichs?” Reinhardt answered. “My father’s physician?”

  “Also physician to his household. Your Mina confided a most private problem with Weichs. She was worried that her condition would prevent you from leaving the von Lichtberg estate, from joining the Reiksguard and seeking the honour and glory that were your due. Weichs gave her a potion of his own creation which he assured her would dissolve the life within her womb as harmlessly as it had formed.”

  Mathias Thulmann shook his head again. “That devil’s brew Weichs created was what destroyed your Mina, for it contained warpstone.” The witch hunter paused again, studying Reinhardt. “I see that you are unfamiliar with the substance. It is the pure essence of Chaos, the black effluent of all the world’s evil. In the days before Magnus the Pious, it was thought to possess healing properties, but only a fool or a madman would have anything to do with the stuff in this more enlightened age. Instead of destroying the life in the girl’s belly, the warpstone changed it, corrupted woman and child. When I discovered this, I knew you were innocent and had you released.”

  “And burned her!” Reinhardt swore.

  The witch hunter did not answer the youth but instead kicked the figure lying at his feet.

  “There is life in you yet,” Thulmann snarled, looking back at Reinhardt to remind his prisoner that his pistol was yet trained on him. “Account for yourself, pig! Who sends you to harm a duly-ordained servant of Sigmar?”

  Mueller groaned as he rolled onto his side, staring at the witch hunter through a swollen eye. Carefully he put a hand to his split lip and wiped the trickle of blood from his mouth.

  “Gerhardt… Knauf,” Mueller said between groans. “It was Gerhardt Knauf, the merchant. He was afraid you had come to Kleinsdorf seeking him.”

  Mathias Thulmann let a grim smile part his lips. “I am looking for him now,” he stated. The witch hunter smashed the heel of his boot into the grovelling mercenary’s neck, crushing the man’s windpipe. Mueller uttered a half-gargle, half-gasp and writhed on the floor as he desperately tried to breathe. Thulmann turned away from the dying wretch.

  “This Knauf has reasons to see me dead,” Thulmann told Reinhardt, as though the noble had not heard the exchange between witch hunter and mercenary. “Reasons which lie in the corruption of his mind and soul. If you would avenge your beloved, do so upon one deserving of your wrath, the same sort of filth that destroyed the girl long before I set foot in your father’s house.”

  Reinhardt glared at the witch hunter. “I will kill you,” he said in a voice as cold as the grave. Mathias Thulmann sighed and removed a set of manacles from the belt lying on the bed.

  “I cannot let you interfere with my holy duty,” the witch hunter said, pressing the barrel of the pistol against Reinhardt’s temple. Thulmann closed one of the steel bracelets around the youth’s wrist, locking it shut with a deft twist of an iron key. The other half of the manacles he closed around one of the bed posts, trapping the bracelet between the mattress and the wooden globe that topped the post.

  “This should ensure that you do not interfere,” Mathias explained as he retrieved the rest of his weapons and stepped over the writhing Mueller.

  “I will kill you, Mathias Thulmann,” Reinhardt repeated as the witch hunter left the room. As soon as the cloaked shape was gone, Reinhardt dropped to his knees and stretched his hand toward the ruined body of the mercenary who had almost killed him—and the small hatchet attached to the man’s belt.

  Gerhardt Knauf paced nervously across his bedchamber. It had been nearly an hour and still he had had no word from Mueller.

  Not for the first time, the merchant cast his eyes toward the small door at the top of the stairs. The tiny room within was the domain of Knauf’s secret vice, the storehouse of all the forbidden and arcane knowledge Knauf had obtained over the years: the grimoire of a centuries-dead Bretonnian witch; the abhorred Ninth Canticle of Tzeentch, its mad author’s name lost to the ages; a book of incantations designed to bring prosperity, or alternately ruin, by the infamous sorcerer Verlag Duhring. All the black secrets that had given Knauf his power made him better than the ignorant masses that surrounded him, who sneered at his eccentric ways. Before the black arts at his command, brutish men like Mueller were nothing; witch hunters were nothing.

  Knauf took another drink from the bottle of wine he had removed from his cellar. The sound of someone pounding on the door of his villa caused the merchant to set his drink down. “Finally,” he thought.

  But the figure that greeted Knauf when he gazed down from his window was not that of Mueller. Instead he saw the scarlet and black garbed form of the mercenary’s victim. With a horrified gasp, Knauf withdrew from the window.

  “He has come for me,” the merchant shuddered. Mueller and his men had failed and now there was no one to stand between Knauf and the determined witch hunter. Knauf shrieked as he heard a loud explosion from below and the splintering of wood as the door was kicked open. He had only moments in which to save himself from the witch hunter’s justice, to avoid the flames that were the price of the knowledge he had sought.

  A smile appeared on Knauf’s face. The merchant raced for the garret room. If there was no one who would save him from the witch hunter, there was som
ething that might:

  * * *

  Mathias Thulmann paused on the threshold of the merchant’s villa and holstered the smoking pistol in his hand. One shot from the flintlock weapon had been enough to smash the lock on the door, one kick enough to force open the heavy oak portal. The witch hunter drew his second pistol, the one he had reloaded after the melee at the inn and scanned the darkened foyer. No sign of life greeted Thulmann’s gaze and he stepped cautiously into the room, watching for the slightest movement in the darkness.

  Suddenly the witch hunter’s head snapped around, his eyes fixating upon the stairway leading from the foyer to the chambers above. He could sense the dark energies that were gathering somewhere in the rooms above him. Somewhere in this house, someone was calling upon the Ruinous Powers. Thulmann shifted the pistol to his other hand and drew the silvered blade of his sword, blessed by the Grand Theogonist himself, and grimly ascended the stairs.

  Gerhardt Knauf could feel the eldritch energies gathering in the air around him as he read from the Ninth Canticle of Tzeentch. The power was almost a tangible quantity as it surged from the warlock and gathered at the centre of a ring of lighted candles. A nervous laugh interrupted the arcane litany streaming from Knauf’s lips as he saw the first faint glimmer of light appear. Swiftly, the glow grew in size, keeping pace with the increasing speed of the words flying from Knauf’s tongue. The crackling nimbus took on a pinkish hue and the first faint suggestion of a shape within the light was visible to him.

  No, the warlock realised, there was not a shape within the light; rather, the light was assuming a shape. As the blasphemous litany continued, a broad torso coalesced from which two long, simian arms dangled, each ending in an enormous clawed hand. Two short, thick legs slowly grew away from the torso until they touched the wooden floor. Finally, a head sprouted from between the two arms, growing away from the body so that the head was between its shoulders rather than above them. A gargoyle face appeared, its fanged mouth stretching across the head in a hideous grin. Two swirling pools of orange light stared at the warlock.