The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

Gerda emerged from the woods.

“I can’t find them,” she said. “There’s no sign of tracks anywhere.”

The others were quiet. They had crossed the river a day ago now, heading back north in a bid to locate and cut off their quarry’s escape. None of them, not even Gerda, had seen any sign of them.

“Could they have struck out east?” Dietrich suggested.

Eisengrim rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It was possible, of course. The forests were thick out there, but they afforded few crossings. Hiding would be easy, but escape? Up until now, his foe had been acting with one obvious purpose: flight. After the hammering they had received, it made sense to the old bull that the survivors of Volkard’s company would try and get across the border to the Dead Lands by the most direct route possible. Eisengrim had expected his enemy to be panicked by their defeat. Or had something else happened? Had Volkard’s own men turned on him? That was worth consideration, too. Leaders that could not win rarely survived long, and the hunters had inflicted a heavy defeat on the scum that followed him. If they headed further north, might they find their work done for them?

Eisengrim looked back into the woods, and only then became aware of the silence. Everyone was looking to him.

“We’ll keep heading north, for now,” he announced, making sure to sound confident, and in control. “We can’t just assume our prey is coming to us any longer. We must find him.”

They stayed close enough to the river as they rode that they might hear it, travelling in a loose skirmishing line just wide enough to let them keep each other within sight. Gerda scouted ahead, disappearing into the woods as she always did. Time crawled by, and yet the tension seemed to rise steadily. Eisengrim slipped his hammer out of its harness. He felt as if he should expect something soon, though he had little idea what.

The answer came in the late afternoon.

“Fuck,” cursed Klara.

They searched the bodies for clues. There was at least no doubt about how they had died.

“More from the Hold,” Theo announced, kneeling down by one of the more intact bodies. Everyone had looked at him.

“Are you certain?” Eisengrim asked the Oak.

The younger bull nodded. “I was there a few years ago. It’s all in the hair. Here in Sturmwatch, it’s the women who wear braids,” he explained, gesturing to the corpse he’d been examining. What was left of his head possessed an unmistakable shoulder-length ponytail. “Fellows like this in the Hold: they’re basically like landed knights here. I figured they were just roving mercenaries, but this one, he’s an ataman. One of their officers.”

“That could just mean he’s a deserter,” suggested Klara.

Theo shook his head sharply. “There’s no way he could have convinced his whole squadron to leave their homeland with him,” he protested. He looked increasingly on edge.

“The Hold is not known for liking us,” Siegfried stepped, coming to Theo’s aid. He walked over to stand beside the dead man Theo had identified as the leader, and nodded confirmation. “They used to have ties with Elves.”

Eisengrim felt his mood sinking further. More than ever, he felt his age. This was a game for younger players, and yet half of them seemed determined to run away. He sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“The worst case scenario is that they are here following orders,” Eisengrim theorised to his people. “We will operate under that assumption until we have evidence to suggest otherwise. Gerda, can you find where our surviving friends went?”

“Aye,” said the dwarf.

“Then let’s get after them. We need to finish this matter as quickly as possible.”

It did not take Gerda very long to find their way to the place where they’d watched Volkard destroy a bridge with his magic. None of them had been ready to see it standing again, albeit in a cruder form.

“Is this what the Elves could do?” Theo asked, after they had all been silent for far too long.

“None of the texts speak about magic being used to build things,” the prince replied, voice cracking with fear. He, like most of the others, had a pallid quality about him. Looking at the structure seemed to be making the young man uncomfortable, but he did not seem willing, or able, to look away.

Eisengrim saw the bridge, just as the others did. The sight of the bridge had answered at least one of the old bull’s questions. Now, it raised another.

“Where will he go?”

“Eichen.”

Eisengrim glanced over at the prince, who finally managed to draw his attention back to the now, and the task at hand.

“I’m certain of it, Eisengrim,” he continued, adamantly meeting the old bull’s gaze. “It’s the closest town, and the ruins of the Elven temple in the city centre are crawling with Ashen.”

“Then there’s no time to waste.”

The old bull led them over the bridge, kicking his mount into a gallop. The others followed, one after another. There was no time for uncertainty. Volkard had slipped from their fingers, and now there loomed a real danger of his escape. They knew where to go, but did they have the time to catch him before he disappeared?

*

“We need to go back, Kurt.”

“Where to?”

“Schweigen.”

“What?”

They were only a mile out from Eichen, their horses panting under them. The ragged skyline of the necropolis peaked out at them from behind its crumbling stone wall. They had been tracking Volkard since early morning. Kurt, not wanting to linger in the awful hovel they had stayed in, had insisted on accompanying the runner, and it was a good thing he had. It seemed the black minotaur Eisengrim had spoken of was not as dense as they had assumed.

“We know they’re in there, Janus!” The big man protested. “Why the hell would you want to go back?”

“Kurt, think about it,” the runner explained, looking nervous, with a sharp, pleading edge to his increasingly unsteady voice. “He’s lost all of his bodyguards, but there’s a whole cult in Eichen that’ll follow him. He’s hours ahead of us. He’ll be there already! Either he’s going to use them to hide, or he’s going to make an army of them, and have them kill Eisengrim and the others so he can get to the Dead Lands! I can’t sneak into that temple. They’ll tear me apart!”

“What about the letter Biana took to the King?” asked Kurt.

His friend’s sharp, ever-perked ears visibly paled. They had both seen the letter Siegfried had drafted and sent to his uncle. It had warned about the cult in the city, and urged that immediate action be taken to arrest them all. How many days had it been since that happened? Kurt struggled to count them, but the fear had him then. “Will there be troops there?”

“There,” Janus nodded, “or on the way.” The male runner cursed loudly in his own tongue. He looked back the direction they had come, then glanced back at the city.

Kurt was done wasting time. His son was in Eichen. He kicked his horse into a canter. Janus swore viciously after him, but in a few seconds the runner had caught up on his own horse.

“We’ll warn the troops to stay back and hide behind the palisade within the city,” Janus snarled. Kurt could hear his anger, but did not care. He kept his eyes fixed on his goal. “If Volkard runs into them, he’ll butcher them all.”

Kurt nodded.

“You are going to stay the palisade too, you hear me Kurt? I’ll scout out the area tonight. I’ll see if I can find anything.”

“Thank you Janus,” Kurt replied, the relief hitting him as he turned to look over at his friend. “You’re a good man.”

“Fuck you, Kurt! If I die tonight it’s on your fucking head!” The runner sneered, and snarled. He struck the pommel of his saddle, briefly disturbing the rhythm of the beast under him. “I’m sick of this land! I just want to go home.”

“If we can get Martin away from that monster safely,” Kurt replied, doing his best to sound reasonable. It was a tone he had used so often once, when Sabine had been alive, and he had needed to lead the men in building the new life for him, and his family. “Then we’re done, Janus. You can go home. You don’t have to take me to the sea, or anything else. You can go and be with your people. You can find that girl you wanted, and have children with her. You’ll understand, then. I promise.”

The dying city lay before them. There was life and bureaucracy still at the gates, but chaos waited beyond.

There were people leaving, despite the late hour. They passed a couple of carts heading out into the wilderness, burdened by frightened families and the few belongings they could take with them. The street inside, flanked by the same rotted carcasses of a dead world they’d left days ago, revealed half a dozen more. Another score of people alone on foot or horse waited their turn to pass the gates. The guards that took Kurt and Janus’ papers quickly relayed the news. A column of men-at-arms had arrived from Gozer, led by a small company of knights that morning, passing through this very gate into the city. Their commander had brandished a letter of authority from the King, granting him command of the garrison and ordering him to place the town under a state of emergency. He’d said he would be sending several of his men to take charge of the gate here, but those men had never arrived, or sent any word explaining their delay. Their bodies had only recently been found where they had fallen, untouched.

“I need to see who is in charge at once!” Janus yelled, almost hysterically, to the guards.

He produced his star-stone, its surface glittering strangely in the torchlight, and the blood from the faces of the men drained away.

A pair of militia guided them through the broken streets of the city. They passed yet more refugees heading towards the gate. Kurt wondered if it was any different at any of the other gates. As they reached the palisade wall and the inner gate, they encountered several dozen more people gathering there, asking questions of a man in full plate with a dozen men-at-arms around him. He had taken his helmet off, and was pleading for calm. Kurt felt as if he should stop and help the knight, or at least ask Janus to use the authority his stone granted him still to quiet things down, but the runner rode right past them, his gaze fixed ahead at the small palace used by the governor of the city.

Things changed quickly as they moved into the well-maintained streets of the inhabited quarter of the city. Eichen had changed with almost the sweep of a curtain from a ghost town to a military camp. Archers patrolled the wooden walls. Men-at-arms stood guard outside several prominent buildings.

“Lambs to the slaughter,” Janus said to him then, looking afraid.

“Should we tell them to leave?” Kurt asked.

“You can try that, Bauer. I wish you luck getting them to listen. They’ll have put some noble in charge of all this,” the runner explained bitterly. “He’ll be some silver-tongued jackass with a list of dead people on a page that share his name, and that will somehow make what he says worth a damn to these fools.”

When they reached the governor’s palace, they found what looked to be the beginnings of a military camp being erected in the courtyard. The common soldiery had begun cutting down the ornamental cherry trees in the park for firewood. The palace itself was large and would probably have been intimidating once, were it not so obviously in need of extensive repair. Just like the rest of Eichen, Kurt was given the impression of a dying man that was still somehow struggling to keep alive, despite how much of its body was still stubbornly rotting away.

Led inside through dilapidated halls and past scuttling, panicked officials, they came up against a wall of bureaucracy inside as a petty official at a desk tried to make them wait. Two men-at-arms guarded a mahogany door. It stood open, and beyond it hung a seal, recently attached of some lord or other. Janus wielded his star stone and the authority it provided him in circumstances such as this like a blunt instrument. The secretary retreated beyond the door, and soon they were asked in.

They found a human man standing within, an ermine-trimmed cloak about his shoulders and a silvered breastplate on his chest. The tone of the metal matched the streaks of grey in his well-kept hair and beard. Introductions were informal and quick. Janus had no patience for the way humans of rank interacted. The secretary was about to fetch the guards outside, but Armin Sarau, Duke of Horitz, would not hear of it.

“He is young and impatient,” the Duke said with a smile and a wave of his hand, dismissing the fussy secretary. He drew a necklace from under his breastplate, brandishing the star stone at its centre so that Kurt and Janus could clearly see it. “I was much the same when my King only needed my sword. Please be seated, gentlemen.”

They obeyed. The secretary reappeared with a servant bearing refreshments. The Duke sent the servant away. The secretary withdrew, after some sharp insistence.

“This is about my men who died in the street,” the Duke said with great authority. He poured himself some wine and then offered cups to Janus and then Kurt. The runner accepted; a little surprised at the sudden courtesy. “Your presence only confirms what I suspected already. Is this the same beast that struck your farm, Mr. Bauer?”

“It is, my lord,” Kurt answered with a nod.

“You have my sympathies,” the Duke said with a grave sigh as he passed the farmer a cup of wine. “Please, gentlemen, tell me what I am up against.”

“The witch is named Volkard,” Janus began, speaking quickly. “He is a large minotaur bull with a black hide. Young, still. He carries a sword that might be elven. He is followed by another minotaur, who is some kind of archer. We’ve been tracking the two of them for days.”

“That is all?” asked the Duke. “Just two minotaurs?”

Kurt watched the runner closely, taken aback but just how easily his friend lied to such a powerful official. He was glad that the Duke’s attention was fully fixed on what he probably thought was a fully trained hunter. Kurt wanted to look away, lest his nerves be noticed, and yet he could not. Not yet.

“Yes,” Janus lied smoothly. “That is all that’s left of their group.”

“Thank you,” said the Duke.

Kurt looked away, the cup in his hand trembling.