The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

Birdsong reached his ears. A veil of light danced through the gaps in the trees. Sabine held his hand. She pulled, trying to guide him, but he wouldn’t move. He wanted to. He really did, but something…

Sabine understood. She always did. There were times when things were wrong, and she had just known by looking at him what they were. She would help him fix them. In each other’s arms, they had never stopped being young. He drew her to him. He kissed her as she pressed against him, weightless. He knew this wood. He knew these trees. They were good trees. The land was rich: it hadn’t been farmed in centuries. This land would make them rich. These trees would build their home. Had they really asked too much of this life?

Sabine touched his face. She was beautiful. She had chosen him. She had looked for him in that final, unexpected second, while he had waited outside like a fool. The nurse had told him otherwise, but he was certain he had heard her call his name. Amid his tears and sobs a stubborn bawling had clawed at him.

Kurt held his wife. He wanted her. There was nothing on this earth he wanted more. He drew on her warmth, and the scent of vanilla and cherries filled his world. Her scent. Kurt breathed it in and their clothes were gone. They were man and woman together. This had been everything he wanted. Everything. Not gold. Not land. Not a son. Just her. Just…her.

“Kurt.”

No. Go away.

“Kurt!”

Kurt opened his eyes. It was all gone, snatched away from him by a clawed hand at his shoulder. He found Janus looking down on him. For an instant, Kurt wanted desperately to strike him.

“What?”

“It’s time to go,” the runner whispered.

Kurt dragged himself up into a sitting position. He had half expected to see breakfast on the fire, but it was out. Everyone else was still asleep. It was only then that he remembered the plan: Janus had volunteered to take the last watch of the night.

The runner pulled him up. Kurt started coughing but Janus had quieted him an instant later. A clawed, furred hand covered his mouth as the runner held him still with a ruthless, desperate strength he’d not thought the runner capable of. Janus kept glancing about them, at the prone forms still sleeping under their blanket, his eyes wide with real fear. Once he was certain Kurt was done endangering them, he helped pack. Kurt followed him as quietly as he could as they slipped away from the others in camp.

“Where are we going?” Kurt asked, as they loaded up their horses.

“After your son,” the runner explained quietly. “I know where the next crossing is. You heard them talking to Siegfried. The monster that took your boy is almost out of people to protect him. Once we find them, I might be able to slip into their camp and steal him right from under their noses.”

Kurt wanted to be happy. Something in him stirred. “Are you sure you can do it?”

“It’s what you hired me for, isn’t it?” The runner hissed back, bristling with impatience.

“I know,” Kurt acknowledged with a half-hearted nod. “But this sounds really dangerous.”

Janus gave him a withering stare. “You want them to take your son to the Sanctum? Is that it?”

“You know I don’t!”

“Hush, Kurt! One of them might hear you!” Janus hissed with sudden desperate fear and an anxious look back over the human’s shoulder. Satisfied that Kurt’s outburst hadn’t woken anyone, he continued in hushed tones. “We’ll be safer with them, but they want to make your boy a captive. He’ll spend the rest of his life in one of their cold stone tombs surrounded by people that will be looking for any excuse to bash his little head in! They aren’t going to give him to you just because beg for him when this is all over. They’ll take him away from you, just like that black minotaur they are hunting did.”

Kurt listened in silence. When Janus had finished, the wolf man was shaking. Foam flecked around his bare white fangs. Kurt looked back at those they were leaving behind. He struggled then to remember the dream he had been dragged from. He tried to conjure Sabine’s pale, glorious beauty before him then, but he could not. She was lost again to him. Like all the times before. All he had left of her was out there, waiting for him.

*

“I should have said something last night.”

They were on the road, near the edge of the town. Kurt had not liked the idea of going through Anderswo again, but it was the fastest, most direct route to get to the next crossing river crossing.

Janus shrugged. “What could you have said? It’s the past, Kurt. I’m free of them. I don’t want to see them again.”

“I’m not much of a friend,” the human said, his voice and head low.

“Is that what we are?” There was real surprise in the runner’s voice when he asked this.

Kurt shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t really remember what having a friend was like. Sabine was all I needed when she was alive. After that, I just didn’t care anymore.”

“When I was with my tribe,” Janus told him, his gait relaxing. “I’d go out and hunt with a pack. There’d be maybe ten or more of us.”

“Were you all friends?”

“We grew to be,” the wolf man explained. “I miss them all, but I’ve been gone a long time. Some of them might not be there when I return. Hunting was dangerous. That’s why you needed a pack to rely on.”

“I’m sure they miss you,” Kurt said. The outskirts of the town appeared before them, slipping out from behind a thick wall of trees.

“I hope so,” the runner said, though there was something in his tone that hinted at another thought. “Klara said she would change me for the better. I didn’t want her to, but she insisted I throw away many of my ways and my traditions. I have seen a lot more of the world than any of my people has before. I want to go home, but I’m afraid, Kurt. What if I’m different now, and they don’t want me back?”

“I don’t know what to say,” Kurt replied. It was true. He really had no idea what sort of future the runner was facing. He knew next to nothing of his companion’s kind, other than the rare interaction at the Great Market on Sundays. Martin had always been the curious one. He had tried to learn all he could of the other peoples and places that made their world. Kurt had only wanted to be left alone in his darkening, empty room.

Janus cursed, suddenly and sharply. Kurt blinked, as if he were pulled from another dream. He pulled his reins instinctively, and his horse ground to a halt a few paces ahead of his friend’s, and just before the other that waited for them on the road. He could hear Janus muttering to himself, risked a glance behind him to see the runner unsling his bow and reaching for his arrows.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Eisengrim. He towered over the pair on his own massive shire horse. He looked different, though Kurt was at a loss to guess how. He stared up at the brute, and realised then just hold old this bull was.

“We’re not going back,” Janus snarled behind him. “Let us pass!”

Eisengrim tapped the flank of his horse with a booted foot. The charger meekly moved aside for the pair.

An awkward silence prevailed. Janus had not knocked an arrow, nor had he returned it to its quiver, or unstrung the bow. He looked at the Hammer, as if trying to spot a trick somewhere, while Eisengrim regarded him with a tired sort of indifference.

“You would be safer if you stayed with us,” the bull said.

“I know,” answered Kurt. “But you’ll take my son away.”

The old bull let out a long sigh. “What do you want of me, Bauer? I’m sworn to protect every living person in this kingdom. My Order’s mandate extends even beyond Sturmwatch’s borders. There is a power at work here I cannot see, but it means to crush us all. Your son, willingly or not, is part of its plans. I can’t just let him roam free.”

“You can’t have him,” Kurt snarled. He didn’t believe the noise had come from his own throat. For a moment it was as if someone else was deciding his actions. He could hear his voice growing louder, sharper. He felt the weight of the sword in his hand, and was shocked that it had somehow gotten there. “He’s my son! He’s done nothing wrong!”

“I’m not going to fight you, Bauer. I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want anyone to be hurt. Can you really not see my side of this at all?”

“Fuck your side!” The father roared.

The Hammer was silent for a few glacial seconds, his eyes narrowing dangerously before he finally spoke. “You saw what happened at your farm. All those people were snuffed out because something out there wanted your son badly enough to do that. You think it’ll stop just because we slay Volkard? Do you really mean to tell me you can hold back whatever is searching for your boy, and others like him?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” replied with a tried, angry shrug. This was getting on his nerves now. What if this was a trick, to hold them up until their absence from the camp was noticed? “If he’s not safe here, I’ll take somewhere else. Some place across the sea where none of you can reach him!”

“What makes you think what you’d be running from would not chase after you? I don’t know how, Bauer, but they knew where your son was. Not only him, but others like him. You can’t escape these people, and they won’t stop until they have him. If he’s at the Sanctum, he’ll have mountains, fortress walls and several hundred bulls of the Cloud Walkers standing between him and harm.” Eisengrim turned his attention to Janus, desperation and exasperation obvious both in his voice and on his face. “Janus, for the love of god, can you not make him see any sense at all in this?”

“It’d be awful hard for me to speak on this, Eisengrim. I don’t have a son. I figure my view might be a little different if I did.”

The bull sighed.

“Go then,” Eisengrim sighed bitterly, his massive shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. When he straightened again, there was a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there moments before. “The hell with the pair of you! Kurt, I give you this warning because I don’t want to hurt you, or your son: do not get in my way.” He turned back to the runner, then. “Janus, if you give a damn about him, you’ll lead him off the trail. If you do it, I promise that not only will you be reinstated as a hunter, but I will train you myself.”

“I’ve had enough of my life wasted by your kind, Hammer,” was the answer, punctuated by a snarl and a flash of fangs. “I’ll take my chances with Bauer.”

The bull sighed again, and kicked his charger. He stomped past them both without another word.

Kurt and Janus remained still, watching him until he was gone. When they were certain he was not coming back, they set off again.

“We’re going to be riding until noon,” Janus explained as they reached the town proper.

There were barely any signs of life at this hour. The sight of it and the conversation they’d just had with Eisengrim words brought Kurt briefly back to that terrible scene at his home. For a moment, he wondered where all the bodies here would be stacked if such an evil was to come here. He dispelled it quickly, though, for the sake of his own sanity. Things had been simple once, before Sabine had died. Then he had been a man. Then, he had mattered. Then Sabine had died, and he had ceased to be a man. Then his farm had died, and he’d learned he’d never mattered at all to anyone but Sabine and Martin and his employees. Little people like the Bauers of this world were little better than insects to be stepped on by those with power. Their motives did not matter. It was all the same under a boot.

“That’s fine, Janus. Thank you.”

“I owe you a great deal, Kurt, but you’re welcome. I’ll get your boy for you. I swear.”