The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

They emerged from the governor’s palace more than an hour after they had entered. The Duke, despite being an old hand within the Order, had never encountered a witch in the course of his career. Janus had found himself in the odd position of aiding the man with decision making based on experiences which were entirely fictional. The Duke was deferential, and seemed to know all the other hunters by name. He had nothing but praise for Klara, though she had said very little of her apprentice to the Duke. Kurt had contributed little, other than draining another cup of wine. As glad as he was to leave and get back out onto the streets of Eichen, the runner’s relief seemed far greater.

“I hate humans,” Janus grumbled to himself once they were mounting their horses again.

“He seemed to like you,” said Kurt reflexively. It was true. The Duke had been very courteous to the young hunter, and was genuinely puzzled why his mistress had spoken so little of him.

“I don’t care, Kurt.”

“He asked your advice,” the human went on. “He listened to you, Janus.”

This did little to ease the tension the runner was clearly feeling. Indeed, after a second it seemed to set him off. His fur began to bristle, and the fangs in his mouth became visible in the light as he began to snarl, and speak. “That’s because his precious reputation might be ruined if this all goes wrong. Now, if it does he can say he listened to me and it’s all my fault! That’s how this works! He doesn’t give a damn about anyone!”

Kurt was astonished. “What’s wrong with you?” He asked, genuinely worried for his friend. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Go to the inn,” Janus snapped at him, his fangs and claws flashing for just a second. “Get a room and wait for me there!”

“What about you?”

“I’m going out into the ruins,” the runner answered, his ears lowering. He shut his hands into tight fists, as if he couldn’t trust his fingers. “I’ll see if I can find your son.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Kurt asked, feeling a trickle of ice make its way down his spine, as a heavy weight began to accrue in his belly.

“What?” Janus almost cried back, looking horrified. “No! What fucking good would you be out there? Siegfried and I had to carry you out of the temple!”

Kurt shrugged. He did not really know what he could do, but he felt reluctant parting with Janus. The runner was obviously on edge. Bauer wondered if what he had heard about their kind was true, that they could tell a person’s feelings by their scent. How on earth could that work, and just what might that do to a person? Kurt was afraid of this place and the great danger he knew that lay just beyond the palisade wall. Everyone else, be they townspeople or soldiers, were probably feeling much the same. Could a place stink of fear? Could that start affecting someone that could notice, the way Janus might?

“Look, Kurt,” the runner said then, drawing his friend out of his silence. “I’m fine. I just…I want this to be over with. I’m going to scout out the temple. You heard the Duke: none of his men will go near it. I can do it. I should do it. It’s just…”

The runner trailed off, looking grim. He bit his lip, scratched his bare chest briefly, looking suddenly lost. Kurt wanted to say something, but a change came over Janus after a moment of uncertainty. His eyes narrowed. His arm extended, offering his clawed hand to the human he had spent the last few days with.

Kurt took his hand, and squeezed. He did not want to let go.

“I’ll be back in a few hours, Bauer. Hopefully the others are on their way. If I don’t come back though...you need to make sure they’re found and brought here.”

“Stay safe, Janus,” Kurt whispered, squeezeing the clawed hand tighter, causing a sensation in the limb that probably matched the feeling in his throat. He had lost so many friends, and now another was about to go into danger, for him. “Don’t do anything stupid out there, please. You’re no good to your people dead.”

The hunter nodded and forced a smile. They eventually released each other’s hands. Janus rode out into the dark. Kurt watched him until he’d disappeared in the gloom, and lingered for quite some time after.

*

After passing through the gate, Janus proceeded through darkened streets, heading for the old ruined temple at the centre of the dead city. His horse became uncooperative as he drew closer, just as before. The fear in the air grew thicker. His free hand constantly checked his bow, his axe, his knife, and his star stone. His clawed fingers pressed against the smooth surface of the only thing that might keep him alive tonight. There was no one around. The caravans of the gypsies had vanished from the streets. As he drew further from the inhabited enclave of the old city, all hints of firelight vanished, until the illumination was provided only by the stars and an indifferent moon. Even this was fitful and inconstant, disrupted by thick banks of passing cloud. Janus had brought a torch with him. He did not light it. He continued his ride until the clopping of his mount’s shoes upon the cobblestones beneath him grew too loud and unsettling. He hid the mare in a ruined building with no door down a street with a smashed statue at its centre. The runner made sure to mark the house with some chalk so he could find it in the dark in a hurry. He checked his gear one last time, muttering the names of his tribe’s gods as he did so. He cursed them all roundly and headed back out, creeping among silent stones and a fickle sky.

The first body he encountered was close to the edge of the temple. A scaled man hung from a lamppost by his ankles. A cart lay empty and abandoned nearby, its contents scattered and smashed across the street. Some wood had been piled up at the foot of a second lamppost, possibly as kindling, though no one hung above it. Janus checked the man, closed the eyes, and moved on.

As he drew nearer to the old temple, the signs of violence increased in frequency and intensity. These bodies were rarely as intact as the scaled he’d first found: missing limbs and sometimes eyes. Janus had hated enough people in his short life to understand vengeance when he saw it. The Ashen had been persecuted and hunted for centuries. They had gone to the rack and the pyre for their beliefs, and now it was everyone else’s turn to suffer as they had. He avoided the main streets, and began to thread his way through shattered, roofless houses after he saw a handful of the cult in the street. Naked and filthy, yet armed with shining new halberds, they watched in amusement as a pair of men, their naked bodies covered in fresh cuts, wrestled and struck each other in a terrified frenzy on the ground. The nearby stake, piled with wood but lacking a victim, told Janus all he needed to know of what was to come next. A nagging sense of guilt followed after him, as the rough roars of the two lives struggling to survive faded. Someone would be begging, and screaming soon. Janus hoped it would all be over by the time he had to cross this part of the ruins again.

The rubble that formed a cordon around the underground temple rose out of the night as his clawed feet discovered the smooth stone surface of the old quarter that had belonged to the Elves. Laughter and revelry reached his straining ears as Janus crouched low and approached. A great many fires burned here, scattered about haphazardly. The ranks of the Ashen seemed to have swelled since last he, Kurt and Siegfried had been here. They had emerged from the darkness of their subterranean lair, and danced and drank in the cool night air. Janus counted dozens as he circled the vast space, and wondered how many might be fresh converts to the religion that had won out in the end.

Eventually, the number of revellers passed a hundred. There were more, but Janus had stopped counting. Scouting the temple had been relatively easy up to this point, allowing him time to count the naked figures by the fires. It seemed the Ashen, drunk with this victory of theirs, had not posted any kind of picket or set any watches at all. Only the vast number of burning fires that illuminated the courtyard beyond the rocks kept the hunter at bay. There was only one nearby structure that seemed unguarded, and which would afford him a better view of what was going on the surface of the temple. Janus proceeded circuitously to the stable he and Kurt had left their horses on their last visit.

Despite the walls being cobbled together from larger chunks of shattered buildings, it afforded not only cover, but gaps from which the encampment of the Ashen could be observed. Reaching it had forced Janus into the light, however briefly, and that had been the only tense moment of the escapade so far. He’d managed to evade detection by those Ashen who might have been looking in his direction by crawling and keeping low until he slipped into the entrance of the broken old structure. There had been a slight chance he would have been spotted, but it never happened. The feeling sent a thrill through the runner, as he remembered the days when he had stalked prey with his people in the dark, far off forests. It had never been this easy stalking deer, or bear.

Despite know better, Janus felt himself becoming careless, contemptuous of these amateurs. He even briefly considered returning to the Duke’s headquarters and recommending a night attack against these idiots. It might have been possible to surprise and destroy the entire gathering if done correctly, if it were not for the witch, and the boy he held hostage. This notion, foolish as it was, was quickly dispelled when Janus spotted something huge emerge from the gaping black maw in the ground that led down into the inner depths of the destroyed temple. It was brown and horned, heavily muscled and had a bow slung over its shoulder that stood taller than the runner himself.

Janus instinctively slipped down onto his knees, clinging to the shadows left by the shattered rocks. Not only were there no guards in the stable, but there were no mounts either, or at least none left alive. They lay much like the ones back at the big house in the woods. The witch, at least, was not going anywhere in the immediate future. Janus crept along the makeshift wall of ill-fitting stones, watching the progress of the archer that had apparently nearly killed Theo, Dietrich and Klara, as he walked the perimeter of the fallen temple. Wherever he walked, the revelry stopped. Janus watched him exchange harsh words with one scattered group of Ashen after another. The celebrations did not resume in the minotaur’s wake. Clearly, Volkard had sent him up to silence the racket his people were making. A nagging feeling occurred to Janus, then. The others were fools, but this fellow clearly was not. Should he withdraw before the beast came his way? Janus weighed the options, and decided against it. It looked as if this male’s only goal was to end the riotous celebrations.

Janus watched the minotaur get gradually closer to the makeshift stable in which he hid. As the bull drew closer, half framed in the flickering light of a nearby fire, the runner instinctively unslung his own bow. His clawed fingers quietly selected an arrow as he watched his prey getting closer, oblivious to the hunter’s presence. It would be a very useful kill, Janus decided, but he was no fool. He was not a great shot, and his enemy was facing him. This would not always be so. Sooner or later, the bull would change direction and return to the temple. Janus could wait. Even with his guard up, if he shot the minotaur in the back, the bull would not know where the shot came from if he survived long enough to wonder. It was a dangerous gamble, but this male was, by the accounts Janus had heard, both extraordinarily dangerous and protected from the sapping death of his master’s magic. Killing him would make both saving Martin and stamping out this evil far, far easier. His resolve set, Janus settled down to watch his prey, knocking his arrow and readying himself to loose when the first good opportunity presented itself.

The bull stopped at the edge of the light, his dark eyes narrow as he deliberately scanned the perimeter. The stable with the dead horses was the closest structure to the temple, and its presence seemed to annoy him. Janus slunk back, doing his best to stay quiet and vanish a little further into the cover of the stones. There were gaps aplenty that he could watch his prey out of, and yet only now did he begin to wonder just how good the sight of the archer was. Had he been spotted? As Janus watched the archer, there seemed to be an instant when their eyes met. The runner’s whole body went stiff, cold. He could have sworn his heart stopped. Time passed glacially by, until the minotaur looked elsewhere, his gait still tense, but displaying no sign of having noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Janus slunk back further, walking on his haunches, suddenly too afraid to let out the air his lungs held. It had been a mistake to use the stable to get closer. He realised that now, too late. Janus waited, finally releasing the breath he held when his lungs began to burn and his head grow light. He waited for the chance to strike, or at least withdraw, but the opportunity was not coming. The archer lingered, facing his direction, his face hidden mostly in shadow by the fire burning behind him. Janus hissed a curse under his breath. His legs began to hurt. His arms trembled. What was the bastard doing? Had he been spotted? If so, why was the bull not coming forward, or raising an alarm?

Come on, Janus thought, struggling to keep his breathing and his heart under control. Come on! Come forward, or look elsewhere!

The bull did neither.

His voice was deep and cracked like a whip in the night air. A jolt ran through the runner’s body at the commanding tone, and for just a second he worried that the bull was speaking to him, but he was wrong: it was worse. He was calling for some of the Ashen to attend him.

He did not have to call out a second time, for a group of half a dozen of the cult, their bodies filthy and bare, scrambled to his side. His gaze still fixed ahead on the stable, the archer commanded them to inspect it, and then occupy it, so that their enemies could not get close enough to accurately count their numbers.

Janus began scrambling back even as he heard the commands. They would be obeyed. No one in their right mind would refuse the will of such a terrifying creature. He needed to get away. He needed to escape, but the entrance was at an angle to the dim light of the fire. No one had been watching it when he had crept in here to use it as cover. Now there would definitely be people watching it as they approached.

Shit. Shit!

Janus cursed silently, looking around for an opening, some other avenue of escape. The gaps in the walls were only wide enough to watch through, not crawl. He could try slipping over the walls on the far side of the stable, but would the bull see him? He did not know, and by then was too afraid to try it. Heart racing, panting in fear, the cornered hunter looked about for a place to hide. There were dead horses lying splayed among soiled straw and piles of their excrement, and that was about it. Pens had been loosely laid out with crude piles of stone to separate the dead animals from one another. There was no cover to be had here, none that would keep him hidden for long. Heaving one of the horses up and slipping under it was out of the question. Theo might have been able to move one of the dead beasts, but Janus had no hope of it. There was no way he could fight half a dozen men on his own. Panic crept Janus’ heart. He felt cold, indifferent stone against his back as he pressed against the haphazard wall. He was trapped, and they were coming…