To his surprise, Markoff did not even blink, but instead snorted disdainfully, before resuming his seat at the table.
“I’ll do worse than threats if this cur Meisser continues on as he has,” Markoff stated. “He has only two dozen men. I have five hundred, and the baron’s guard if I need to call upon it.”
Thulmann stared for a moment, at a loss for words. Had he actually heard the Lord Chief Justice of Wurtbad threaten violence against a chapter house of Sigmarite templars? The shock receded after a moment, replaced not with the outrage at such blasphemy Thulmann expected, but a deep curiosity at how matters between the secular and temple authorities could have degenerated to such a point.
“Perhaps I might be able to make your concerns known to the proper authorities if I were to know the particulars of the matter,” the witch hunter told Markoff.
“Particulars of the matter?” Markoff scoffed. He pulled the knife from the roast duck, pointing it at Thulmann. “Four households slaughtered in two months, slashed to ribbons. This killer doesn’t leave bodies, he leaves piles of meat!” Markoff plunged the knife back into his dinner with a savage thrust. “Nor does this human vermin prey upon the poor and unknown. No, the merchant quarter is his hunting ground! The merchant quarter, a district almost as secure as the baron’s own palace!”
Markoff rose again, his body trembling with agitation. “As if the massacres were not enough, rumour began to build among the superstitious simpletons in the street. They said that no human assassin could manage such horrors, that it was the work of some devilish sending, some daemon beast called up by sorcerers and witches!”
Markoff glared at Thulmann, his face livid with rage.
“That is where your friend comes in! Witches and daemons are the province of Sigmar’s temple knights, those who would protect us from the menaces of Old Night. Meisser took over the investigation after the second incident, fumbling about like some backwoods roadwarden. He’s arrested fifty-seven people, hung five and burned three! The streets around his chapter house echo with the screams of his prisoners until the first light of dawn!” Markoff’s face twisted into an almost bestial snarl. “And still this murderous maniac has not been stopped! Only two weeks ago there was another incident. The Hassel family, an old and respected house, butchered like swine from the old grey-headed Erik Hassel to Frau Hassel’s infant child.”
Thulmann listened to the magistrate’s tirade, feeling the fury communicate itself from Markoff to the witch hunter himself. This Meisser, this witch hunter captain, sounded to be as much of a terror to the city as whatever fiend was perpetrating these atrocities. Without having met Meisser, Thulmann could guess his type—brutal and incompetent, perfectly willing to hang and torture the innocent simply to mask his own inability to uncover the real villain. Perhaps there was another reason behind such doings, but Thulmann had seen enough brutality and incompetence wearing the colours of the temple to doubt it.
“Thank you for voicing your concerns, Lord Chief Justice,” Thulmann said, bowing his head to the official. “Rest assured that I will personally investigate this matter. That is, if you will officially sanction such an investigation.” For the first time since the witch hunter had entered the room, Markoff’s hostility abated. He returned to his seat, nodding thoughtfully to himself before speaking.
“Whatever you need from me, you will have,” Markoff declared, a smile crawling onto his face.
The battered human body that lay lashed to the top of the wooden table might once have been a woman beneath the dirt, dried blood, singed flesh and blackened bruises. Now, she was like everyone else in the dungeons beneath Wurtbad’s chapter house—a condemned heretic, guilty of consorting with the Dark Gods to bring horror and death to the city. There was only the rather irritating formality of wringing a confession from the sorry wretch before she could be legally executed.
Witch Hunter Captain Meisser loomed above the table, his piggish features smiling down at the prisoner with false sympathy. Meisser was an aging man, his body no longer strong and virile, but flabby and wasted beneath his soft embroidered tunic and sleek green hose. His hair had begun to desert him, leaving only a fringe of white about his temples and the back of his head. In some ways, his overall appearance suggested an old hunting hound that had outlived its best days and now desperately clung to what remained of its former power.
“You have been through a terrible trial,” Meisser said, his dry voice echoing about the stark stone walls of the cell. The woman looked up at him, eyes nearly swollen shut, reaching desperately toward the sympathetic tone the witch hunter had allowed to colour his voice. She did not see the knowing smiles that formed on the faces of the two men standing on the other side of the table, the torturers who had reduced her to such a state. They had seen this tactic many times, seen the interrogating witch hunter shore up a prisoner’s fading hopes only to smash them like a child’s sandcastle.
“You have not confessed to any wrong doing, you have sworn that you are a faithful and devout servant of most holy Sigmar.” Meisser brushed aside a stray lock of matted hair from the woman’s face, returning the painful smile that worked its way onto her battered features. “Perhaps Sigmar has seen fit to gift you with strength enough to resist the ordeals which law dictates we must employ to unmask the heretic and the infidel, the witch and the sorcerer. Still,” Meisser’s tone became less insinuating, more careless, as though speaking of trivialities rather than the life of another human being, “we cannot be entirely certain that you have been truthful with us. You say that you sold herbs and roots to the households in the merchants’ quarter, doing so from door-to-door. But how can we be certain that this was your true purpose, that you were not simply using it as a cover for your real activities, a blind to conceal your unholy witchcraft?” Meisser paused for a moment, as though deep in thought. He let the implications of his words sink into the injured wretch strapped to the table.
“What we need is corroboration,” Meisser declaimed, as though the thought were entirely novel and new. He looked again into the red-lined eyes of his prisoner. “I understand that you have two children.” He let the statement hang in the air, watching as the look in his prisoner’s eyes went from one of confusion to one of absolute horror. The woman’s body began to tremble, slapping against the wooden table as she began to sob. Meisser waited while the woman’s excess of emotion played itself out, until her shuddering body began to lie a little more still upon the table. Meisser cocked his head in his prisoner’s direction, then smiled down at the woman. There was no friendliness in his smile now, only a predatory grin.
“What was that you said?” Meisser asked. “I thought I heard you say something.” The last light flickered out within the woman’s eyes, the last gleam of hope draining out of her. She closed her eyes and opened her bruised lips.
“I confess.” The words escaped her in a sob that shook her entire body. Meisser turned away, striding back toward the door of the cell.
“My associates will take down the details of your confession,” he said. “Please furnish them with whatever they require. We will, of course, need to corroborate them later.” Meisser closed the door on the horrified scream that sounded from the cell as the full level of the witch hunter’s ruthless treachery impacted against the prisoner’s darkest fears.
Meisser made his way through the maze of darkened bare-stone halls until at last he ascended the wooden stair that would lead him from the dungeons to the chapter house above. There was a great deal of work still to be done. Another confession meant that he would need to arrange a date for another public execution with the Lord Chief Justice and the city burgomasters. That another execution would displease Markoff did not overly bother the witch hunter. The magistrate had no conception of just how deeply the seed of corruption had taken root in his city, and how desperately in need of people like Meisser Wurtbad really was. He’d continue to uncover every witch and heretic in the city before he was through, and when the murders stopped, the
n even Lord Chief Justice Markoff would be unable to cast derision upon Meisser’s methods.
Meisser paused as he walked down the wood-walled hallway of the chapter house. Ahead of him in the corridor he could see Emil, one of his apprentice witch hunters opening the door of Meisser’s private study, a tray in his hands. The witch hunter captain snarled under his breath, hurrying forward to confront his underling. No one was admitted into that room unless he himself accompanied them. Emil would not soon forget that rule again once his superior was done with him.
Emil hesitated when he saw Meisser, the colour draining from his face. But it was an even more apprehensive look that he gave to the room itself, lingering but a moment at the threshold before slipping inside. Meisser did not pause to consider his underling’s curious actions, but hurried after the man, opening the study door almost as soon as Emil had closed it.
Meisser’s study was opulently furnished, a massive desk dominating a room flanked by bookcases crammed with leather-bound folios. A massive portrait of the witch hunter captain himself consumed the wall directly behind the desk. A tall, thin man was standing before the portrait, looking up at it as he drank from a wineglass taken from the tray Emil had carried into the room.
“Rather poor quality,” the thin man commented. “You should have commissioned an artist to do this rather than trying your own hand with a brush.”
Meisser felt his already aroused anger swell. “You insolent cur! How dare you!”
The tall man turned around, glaring at Meisser with unrestrained contempt. “Allow me to introduce myself. Mathias Thulmann, templar knight of the Order of Sigmar.” Thulmann turned toward where Emil had retreated after bringing him his wine. “Thank you Brother Emil, that will be all. I would have words with your captain.”
A visibly relieved Emil bowed to each of the men in turn and hurried from the room.
“To what do I owe this visit?” Meisser asked, striving to regain his composure. He fumbled at the tray Emil had left sitting on his desk, pouring wine for himself. “You have not come from Altdorf, have you?”
“No,” Thulmann replied, stepping away from the portrait and turning a seemingly idle eye upon the shelves of neatly ordered folios. “Is there any reason you should be expecting a visitor from Altdorf?”
“Why no, none at all,” Meisser responded, taking a deep drink from his glass.
“Then you must have some very influential friends,” Thulmann snapped, spinning about like a cornered wolf. “The Lord Chief Justice has sent no less than five official protests to the Great Temple calling for your removal! I did not want to believe all that he told me, but since entering this room and reading these,” the witch hunter’s hand slammed against the desk where Meisser noticed a number of parchment sheets from his records had been piled, files relating to his investigations into the merchant quarter massacres and the arrests he had made since the first incident.
“These horrors run deeper than they might at first seem,” Meisser sputtered, taking another sip of wine.
“The only thing that runs deeper than it seems is your incompetence!” Thulmann snarled back. “You’ve filled your dungeons with innocent men and women on charges so outrageously stupid that it is a wonder the people of this city haven’t already ripped down this chapter house and stretched that miserable neck of yours!”
“Now see here!” Meisser retorted. “You’ve no authority to speak to me in such a manner! Wurtbad is my posting, my responsibility!” Meisser cringed as Thulmann’s hand fell to the sword hanging from his belt.
“You have friends in Altdorf?” Thulmann sneered. “So do I. You see this sword? It was a gift to me from the Grand Theogonist himself. I would advise against making this a matter to be arbitrated by our superiors.” Thulmann felt a great sense of satisfaction as Meisser wilted before him.
“What would you advise?” the witch hunter captain asked in a haunted, defeated voice.
“First we will free these people you have detained. If they have already confessed, you will strike out their words and burn the confessions,” Thulmann told him. “Secondly, we will work with Lord Markoff’s men in this matter, not exclude them. He has a much larger body of men at his command and we will need them.”
A suspicious curiosity brought words to Meisser’s lips. “Why will we need Markoff’s men? If you are thinking to place a permanent guard upon the merchant quarter, it won’t work. It’s already been tried.”
“You’ve been too busy arresting herbalists and midwives,” Thulmann chided the other man. “You’ve ignored the more obvious facts in the case.” Thulmann’s hand slapped against the piled papers on Meisser’s desk. “Each of these massacres occurred during either the first night of Morrslieb waxing full or the first night of Mannslieb falling dark—nights when the powers of evil are at their most powerful. And you have failed to notice another pattern to these crimes.”
“Pattern?” Meisser scoffed. “There is no pattern to these crimes. They are the work of some daemonic beast spat up from the blackest hell!”
“Perhaps,” conceded Thulmann. “But if it is a daemon, then someone called it into being. There is a human intelligence behind these attacks. Or do you think a mere beast would select only the households of merchants involved in Wurtbad’s river trade?”
“You learned all this just from reading my records of the investigation?” Meisser demanded, his tone incredulous.
“It helps when you do not make up your mind about something before considering every fact,” Thulmann reprimanded the older witch hunter. “You were so fixated upon the bestial violence of these killings that you did not pause to look for any subtlety behind them. How so inept and pompous a man could ever rise to the become captain of a chapter house is proof enough to me that the Dark Gods are at work in Wurtbad.”
“Then what is our next move?” Meisser asked, his voice struggling to contain the rage that flushed his skin. “We warn the river traders? Move them to a safer part of the city?”
Thulmann smiled indulgently and shook his head.
“We do neither,” he told Meisser. “Ask yourself this, who profits the most by these murders, who stands to gain by the slaughter of wealthy ship owners? The answer is, of course, another river trader. We warn these people and we alert the very man who set these atrocities in motion. No, Brother Meisser, the situation calls once more for subtlety. The moon of Mannslieb will grow dark in three days. Until then, we will watch and patrol as before, this time with the aid of Markoff’s people. But on the third day, every one of your men will situate himself near the home of a river trader. Because on that day, our killer will strike again.”
Twilight found the city of Wurtbad gripped by fear as tired labourers and craftsmen hurried to their homes, bolting their doors and windows. There was an almost palpable aura of terror in the streets as the sun began to fade, a despair that would not abate until morning broke. Thulmann had noted the air of dread since his first night within the city walls, but this night, it seemed to him, the fear was even greater, the haste of the townsfolk as they scrambled to their homes just that little bit faster than it had been previous nights.
Torches and oil lamps blazed upon every street corner and in every window in the merchant quarter, lighting up some streets almost as intensely as the noonday sun. Armed patrols of private militia, professional mercenaries and the regular city watch marched along the deserted lanes, the tramp of their boots echoing across the cobbles.
Thulmann turned his eyes to the fading sky, watching as stars began to wink into life, the pale sliver of Morrslieb peeking above the horizon. It would be a long night, a dark night for all the precautions the merchants had taken. But perhaps it would be the last such night the people of Wurtbad would need to suffer through.
“It seems no different from yesterday,” the man standing beside Thulmann commented. Meisser had forsaken his soft shirts and patterned tunics for a sturdy suit of leather armour reinforced with steel, a long-barrelled duelling pistol thru
st through the band of his belt, a heavy broadsword sheathed at his side.
Thulmann rolled his eyes at the comment. Meisser had spared no opportunity to cast doubt and derision on his rival’s every move, but even for the arrogant, pompous windbag it had been a stupid remark.
“We will know in the morning if tonight is the same,” Thulmann replied. “Until then I suggest that you keep your eyes open.”
Thulmann had positioned himself and a pair of witch hunters from the chapter house in an alleyway near the home of a merchant named Strasser. Other men were scattered about the district, teamed with soldiers from the Ministry of Justice and led by the more capable of Meisser’s apprentices. Thulmann had attached Meisser to his own group, not trusting the man to keep out of mischief were he let out of Thulmann’s sight.
“What do you expect us to look for?” Meisser asked, his tone surly and petulant.
“We will know it when we see it,” Thulmann said curtly.
One more idiotic quip and he was sorely tempted to have the man locked in his own dungeons until morning. The thought brought a smile to the templar’s stern features. He was still considering the idea when he saw Streng round a street corner and jog toward where Thulmann and his group were hidden. Thulmann had placed his underling in command of the men charged with watching the house of a merchant named Bromberg. If Streng had taken leave of his post, Thulmann knew that it could be only to bear very important news.
The bearded warrior came to a halt at the mouth of the alley, gripping his knees as he caught his breath. Thulmann hurried forward to learn whatever news his henchman had brought.
“We caught someone prowling around Bromberg’s house,” Streng informed his employer. “Making devil’s marks on the walls he was.”
“It would seem that I owe you an apology,” Meisser commented, his tone making it sound as though he had just stepped in something foul. “Night hasn’t even fallen and already our plan has netted us a sorcerer.”
[Mathias Thulmann 00c] - Witch Work Page 2