by Warhammer
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. Bipod 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.
'Taal's Mercy!' the rider gasped. 'I didn't see you there! Morr's oath, I saw only the wolf!'
'Then you missed,' Brunner said, picking himself from the ground and gesturing at the injured tree. The bounty hunter's eyes were narrowed and filled with menace, scrutinising the horseman and his weapons.
The rider's face flushed somewhat at the remark and he shoved the pistol back into its holster with an embarrassed motion. 'I am truly sorry,' he said. 'I didn't know there were o
ther hunters abroad tonight. Those damn Kislevites will be whoring and drinking by this time and, well, they are burying Otto in the morning.'
Brunner stalked over to his horses, trying to quiet them down. Only the fact that it was tied to Fiend's saddle had prevented Paychest from bolting during the ghastly encounter. He paused to regard the rider, his interest piqued not by apologies for slovenly marksmanship, but by mention of hunters and a hunt.
'What's this about a hunt?' he asked.
The rider seemed to be taken aback by the question. 'Then you weren't engaged by my father?'
'I don't even know who your father is,' Brunner said, patting and rubbing the neck of his packhorse.
The rider straightened in his saddle, throwing out his chest in a manner that would have looked out of place even in a Sierck play. 'I am the Baronet Dietrich Hartog, son of his lordship the Baron Friederick Hartog.'
'An awful lot of barons for one stretch of forest,' Brunner muttered under his breath, looking sadly at the gory wreckage of Viktor Schwartz.
'I am sorry about your friend,' Dietrich said. 'I will help you take him back to the village for burial.'
Brunner turned away, shaking his head and pulling himself into Fiend's saddle. He cut away the tether and threw it onto the ground beside the body. 'Leave him,' the bounty hunter said, his voice cold. He cast a last glance at the mangled corpse. 'He's no good to anyone... now.'
As Dietrich Hartog led him through the forest, the baronet filled Brunner in regarding the situation in his father's domain. Roughly a year before, a strange predator had appeared, preying on the herds and generally wreaking havoc through the district. Every effort made by his fathers gamekeepers to track it down failed and before long the beast progressed from picking off the odd goat or calf to feeding on those who tended them. Once a month, when Morrslieb the Chaos moon was at its height, new outrages would shock the district. Those few who had seen it and survived described an enormous black wolf, bigger than a steer and possessed of unnatural strength and boldness.
Dietrich was not prepared to endow the wolf with such powers, though he grudgingly admitted it was far more cunning than common for its breed, 'more fox than wolf, he mused. It was too smart for local hunters to bring down and his father had been forced to recruit hunters from all across Stirland to try and defeat it. One and all had failed, many of them becoming victims of the wolf themselves. In desperation, the baron had finally increased the bounty on the black wolf to five hundred crowns and had dispatched couriers to bear news of the reward to the far corners of the Empire.
The swollen bounty had brought wolf hunters swarming upon the district, but even experienced marksmen from Hochland and veteran woodsmen from the Drakwald had failed to best the beast.
'My father can hardly increase the bounty any more than he already has,' Dietrich said as they emerged from the tangle of the forest and into the open fields beyond. In the distance, little snakes of smoke marked the village and beyond it, with the morning sun just beginning to peek above its battlements was the looming bulk of Castle Hartog. 'And if the wolf isn't stopped, the peasants will start abandoning us in droves.'
Brunner gave the nobleman a shrug. 'They expect the baron to protect them. That's why they pay him taxes and give him their fealty. If your father can't honour that obligation, then he has no right to expect them to stay.'
Dietrich's face flushed with outrage at the impertinent words, his hand falling to the jewelled hilt of his sword.
Brunner seemed to ignore the angry gesture, pointing instead to a curious structure standing in the middle of the fields. 'What is that?' he asked, nodding his chin towards the ring of crude stone monoliths and the little wood hut nestled in their shadow.
'A shrine to Rhya, the Earth Mother,' Dietrich answered, almost automatically. 'It has stood here since before the time of Sigmar, so they say,' he added with a surly note.
'Your people must be extremely pious,' Brunner said, watching as a line of figures draped in black emerged from the hut and began to walk into the stone circle. Closer now, he could see a pile of wood at the centre of the circle. Towards this, the figures bore a burden covered in a linen shroud.
'The nearest priest of Morr is three hundred miles from here,' Dietrich said. 'It is imprudent to wait for him to visit us, so we consign the dead to Morr's gardens in the old way.' He pointed at the shrouded body. 'I don't think Otto will complain.'
The mourners laid their burden upon the pile of kindling, then began to step away from the mound. Brunner put his spurs to Fiend's flanks as he saw another mourner emerge from the hut, a flaming brand in her hand. Dietrich cursed and spurred his own mount after Brunner, taken aback by the bounty hunter's sudden rush toward the circle.
Brunner reined his horse before the woman bearing the torch, blocking her from the pyre. He saw now that he was mistaken, she was not one of the drab mourners, but a priestess. Beneath a cape of woven leaves and a mantle of flowers, she wore a shift of thin white cloth, a garment so fine it might have been crafted from strands of gossamer. The almost transparent robe left nothing of the woman's supple body to the imagination and the face that regarded him from beneath the flowery headdress was of almost divine beauty. There was no accusation in her soft blue eyes, no hardening of her velveteen lips as the huge black charger blocked her path. She simply gestured at the sky and spoke in a voice that was like the sigh of a breeze through long grass.
'The morning grows apace, child,' the woman said. 'If this poor man's soul is to be entrusted into Mother Rhya's care, I must consign him to fire in time for the flames to meet the first rays to shine upon the sacred circle'
'I will only be a moment,' Brunner told her, turning Fiend and moving towards the pyre. He barely looked up when he heard Dietrich reach the standing stones, the nobleman's face contorted with restrained rage and something more, an expression of profound relief.
Brunner reached down and pulled back the shroud, staring intently at the face, then passing his gaze along the length of the man's mutilated body.
'You dare interrupt the ceremony?' Dietrich challenged. This time he would have drawn his sword, but for the slender hand that restrained him.
'There is time yet.' the priestess said. 'And it is fitting there should be one mourner here who did not come because of the baron's largesse.'
Brunner watched the exchange, noticing the way the priestess's eyes lingered on Dietrich, the way her hand tightened almost imperceptibly around that of the baronet. He filed the observation away with the others he had already made.
Brunner pulled the shroud back in place, leaning back in his saddle. He nodded to the priestess. 'I don't recognise him, or at least he doesn't look like anybody I'm interested in.' He stared at Dietrich. 'It looks like the wolf played a bit of havoc with your man.'
'Maybe you should reconsider your interest in my father's reward.' came Dietrich's cold response.
'Maybe.' mused Brunner. 'But your wolf has already cost me three hundred gold crowns. It would be nice to make that back, and with interest.'
Confusion showed on Dietrich's face. 'My name is Brunner.' the bounty killer explained. 'I hunt men. That carrion we left in the forest was bound for Reiksfang prison and the court of Judge Vaulkberg.' Brunner smiled thinly as he saw the disgust on the nobleman's face when he mentioned his profession. 'I admit that wolves aren't my usual quarry, but for five hundred crowns I'd pull a troll from its hole. Besides, is a wolf really so much different from a man?'
Brunner let the nobleman consider the barb, turning instead to regard the comely priestess. He made an expansive gesture to the pyre. 'I'm done. You can burn him now.'
Baron Friederick Hartog was an old man and the years had not been kind to him. Only wisps of hair clung to his scalp, his wrinkled skin sunken against his weary bones. His toothless mouth drooled from the corner where a stroke had paralysed his face and the eyes which stared out from deep with their sockets were heavy with melancholy and despair. The rich purple robe he wore se
emed almost to smother him and press down upon his weakened frame with its weight. A page ran after him, carrying his ring and crown and other badges of rank and office. The old baron wheezed as he sank into his gilded chair at the head of the long table in the castle's grand hall.
The arrival of the bounty hunter, and his harrowing escape from the wolf, had provoked the baron into holding a feast. Brunner suspected it was an excuse to hold the celebration, a futile effort on the old man's part to escape from his problems, if only for a few hours.
Brunner found himself seated close to the baron, much to the chagrin of the courtiers and landed gentry who surrounded him. He suspected that, in the current crisis, the baron had more use, and more reason to entertain, the company of men such as himself than fawning hangers-on who could offer no solution to his troubles.
At the baron's side, glowering at Brunner whenever his eyes strayed in the bounty hunter's direction, was Dietrich. The baronet had tried to convince his father that even in their duress they did not need the services of a hired killer such as Brunner. Indeed, Dietrich had argued the subject with surprising vehemence until finally roared down by a diatribe that brought a fit of coughing from his father's wasted body.
When he was not glowering at the bounty hunter or trying to soothe his father's fears, Dietrich's eyes would stray down the table and linger on a slender figure seated among the district's aristocracy. A less observant watcher might have missed the coy glances shared between the baronet and the raven-haired beauty from the stone circle. She had discarded her thin robe and leaf mantle for a more sociable emerald gown and doeskin gloves. This, Brunner learned, was Frieda, the priestess of Rhya and the district's spiritual mentor. Brunner had heard little about the worship of Rhya, her faith was suborned to that of Taal in less backward provinces. Only in Stirland did she still receive worship in her own right rather than as the wife of the nature god Taal. He wondered what manner of strictures the Old Faith had regarding its priestesses and how Mother Rhya might take one of her servants dallying with a baronet.