The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

A faint drizzle fell on Eisengrim as the old minotaur rode into Anderswo, filling the air with tiny sprites of moisture that flickered and flashed when they reflected the dim light of some candle burning in a nearby window. His charger’s hooves tore up fist sized-chunks of mud as he guided it around deep puddles and the occasional raccoon scavenging among the hovels for discarded food. He had been here once before, many years ago, and though the town had all but faded from his memory, he could still remember where to find the poorhouse.

There was no one out, and he doubted that even as strange figure as he cut would have been noticed at such a time in such a night as this. Yet, despite this certainty, Eisengrim was ill at ease. He looked at any open window he noticed in the sodden darkness. He had drawn his hammer and set it across his saddle within easy reach. He had also made sure that his short sword was loose in its scabbard. A small pouch on his belt contained almost two dozen shards of star stone freshly acquired, some with traces of their former owners’ blood still on them. Volkard, his enemy, had come here...but why? Had some of the stones the old bull kept been given out here? Siegfried had doubted it, but Eisengrim had learned to never let any clue alone. He had met his enemy and fought him, but he had not heard him speak a word. People here had. What had he told them? How had they responded? The questions fascinated the old bull, and he was filled with an ancient’s stubborn resolve to see them answered before he would permit himself the rest and time his body needed to heal.

St. Laurin’s appeared before him. It had been a nunnery once, built as a fortress of the new faith at the edge of the realm where the old had once reigned. Things had changed much since those times. Cracked saints swayed precariously from first story perches. Few lights burned within, easily seen through empty windows. When Eisengrim knocked on the door it was if there was a thunderclap on the other side. He heard gasps and hushed arguments. They went on until he knocked again, less politely this time. There was a click and a patch of light opened up at his sternum. He bent down somewhat and saw frightened green eyes through the grill, reflecting the flickering light of the candle she bore.

“What do you want?”

Eisengrim took out his star stone from under his clothes and held it up to the light of her candle.

“To help.”

He was let in at once.

The girl was small for a human, or perhaps she was a tall dwarf? A boy in the service of the nuns went out to take his horse into their empty stable which apparently had neither doors, nor a gate.

“What happened to them?” he asked a much older sister who had stood a few feet behind the neophyte, as if trying to hide in the shadows. She started a little when he looked her directly in the eye.

“They were stolen, along with the horses and the carts,” she nearly gasped

“Can you get them back?” asked the neophyte.

“I will see what I can do about replacing them,” was the only answer the witch hunter could give. He felt a breeze and noted the planks on some walls. “Who stole the windows?”

“That was a different crowd,” the older sister said, her voice reminding him of a trapped viper. He suspected there was more fire and brimstone than love and forgiveness, here.

“My sympathies,” Eisengrim said, discarding his sodden travelling cloak, and handing it to the neophyte. He kept his hammer. He was feeling a little dizzy, and it enhanced the terrible authority the law gave him in these parts. “I need to speak with whoever is in charge here, please. It is urgent to an investigation I am conducting.”

“Are you hunting a witch?” asked the neophyte, her eyes lighting up.

Her elder struck her across the back of the head with her hand, and quickly sent the crying girl away to see that the Lord’s coat was dried.

“I am not a Lord,” Eisengrim said with a warning glare to the indifferent old woman. “And that was unnecessary.”

“You are in our walls,” snapped the sister. “I will not be told how to behave by the likes of you.”

She guided him through cavernously dark halls by the light of her candle. Eisengrim was aware of openings to the left and right, and heard the patter of rain on what he remembered to be the courtyard. The nuns had once walked circles there, reading their hymnals aloud, exercising body and soul without the risk of meeting any of the common man they had been sent here to instruct. The old bull slowed and glanced out into the large space at the centre of the nunnery. There had been something off about the noise of the water landing out there, and now he saw why. The stone floor was gone. There were potatoes growing out there.

“Your order had seen better times,” he said, catching up with the old woman.

“We are tested, just as you are,” she said back unflinchingly. “We will triumph against the dead world. We will change everything for the better.”

She glanced over her shoulder as they walked, her eyes narrowing. Eisengrim nodded and hoped he was giving the response she was looking for. He was too tired for arguments right now.

He eventually found himself before the entrance to the house’s chapel. Midnight mass had come and gone, and yet he noticed a number of sisters still kneeling in supplication before a collection of unimpressive wooden icons. The sea of candles which illuminated the icons with a surprising brilliance lacked any sort of candelabra or even rudimentary candlesticks. Instead, they were held in place by their own melting wax. He waited at the doorway as his guide walked in, half disappearing into the shadows with such silence that after a second one might scarce believe a woman had been there. Eisengrim eventually saw her silhouette move among the hunched ones, stopping finally by a lone figure at the front. As the Abbess rose, the sisters of her order lowered their heads further, so that they might not look upon her face in shadow as she passed them by. Eisengrim waited for her in the light. He fell to one knee and offered up his hammer to her that she might bless it.

The Abbess dutifully sprinkled holy water on his hammer, and spoke the words in the old tongue. She blessed him then, her hand resting upon his bent head. Eisengrim rose only at her bidding. The sister that had fetched her mistress was barely tall enough to reach his chest. He looked the Abbess eye to eye.

“What clan are you?” asked the Abbess, her bovine eyes brown, her robes barely concealing her size and raw power.

“I stopped having a clan when I took my oath,” Eisengrim said with a weary smile. She was older than him, her hide greying in places so far untouched on his. If he was any judge, in her youth she could have had any bull she wanted. “I cannot imagine it was any different for you.”

“Very true,” replied the Abbess. “I am High Sister Hildrun, of the Order of St. Laurin.”

“I am Eisengrim the Hammer, of the Order of St. Heinrich. It is an honour to meet you, Abbess.”

*

“His name is Volkard. He was here a few days ago. A bull with a black hide. He was at the head of a number of followers who were seen in the town.”

Hildrun’s face told him all he needed to know. Volkard was not the sort of person one forgot easily. They had retired to her offices, which had not been designed with a minotaur in mind.

“He was here,” she said.

“What did he want?” The Hammer asked.

“He gave us alms,” the Abbess explained. “I was not comfortable taking anything from him, but we have many here in need, and our order has seen better days.”

Eisengrim took out a gold coin and placed it on the desk between them. Siegfried had given it, and the rest he carried to him for examination...and destruction.

“Like this?”

The Abbess nodded, a look of dread spreading across her face.

“Have you spent any of them?” asked the witch hunter.

“Some,” Hildren answered, her tone betraying a hint of fear as she went on quickly. “I paid off our debts with the grocers in town. I’ve ordered new windows for the ground floor. When winter comes, the boards aren’t enough to keep the cold out. I’ve ordered meat from the market for our charges. We needed seeds for our fields. I’ve commissioned the carpenter and smith in town to replace our gate…”

Her voice had trembled from the start, until finally she could not go on. She despairingly trailed off. She looked away that he might not see the tears forming in her eyes. But he did.

“I’ll give you a receipt,” Eisengrim said, hating himself. “I’ll make sure the Chancellery recompenses your order in full…with interest.”

“The children and the parents we keep here are cold and they are hungry now,” the Abbess Hildrun snapped back, her composure returning along with a quiet fury that would probably have humbled and silenced weaker males.

“It’s Elvish,” Eisengrim replied, tapping the dreadful piece of metal between them. “It needs to be destroyed. I am sorry, Abbess, I truly am, but it is dangerous. The Elves left their evil on everything they touched. Buildings. Coins. Weapons. Everything. Nothing that belonged to the world they built can be allowed to remain with us. If it is found, then it must be broken, or melted down. That is the law, Abbess, and I am one of its enforcers. I’ll need a list of everyone in town that you may have given that coin to. I’ll need their addresses.”

“You really mean to go chasing after every pfennig of it?” Hildrun asked sceptically.

“I’ve done it before,” Eisengrim replied.

Hildrun slumped back in her heavy, uncomfortable looking chair. Her face was a study in disappointment and betrayal.

“What am I going to do about the orders I made?” she asked him. Her pride, what little of it there might have been, was swept away. “What am I to tell my sisters and the people we keep here?”

Eisengrim sighed. He took out the pouch that held his own, untainted coin. It would not cover everything, but it was everything he had. It was good thing he was travelling with company. Hopefully there wouldn’t be too much grumbling when he needed to beg coin from Dietrich, or Gerda.

The Abbess looked at the small offering in silence. She rose and took out a large bag that swayed with great weight and dropped it on the table, which shook with the impact.

“A full receipt,” she said, all kindness gone. “With interest.”

“I’ll need to see anyone he spoke to,” said Eisengrim.

“We’ll go about that once we are done here,” said the Abbess, some authority creeping into her voice.

Eisengrim nodded, and admired her quietly.

*

“He tried preaching a false religion to those in the communal dining area. My sisters called me. They were afraid of him. I asked him to leave, and he did.”

“What was he preaching?” Eisengrim asked. They walked along a barely lit corridor which turned to the right into a black open space. A number of run down long tables flanked with creaking benches. He spotted vague shapes atop them all, and his sharp ears picked up reports of breathing. An occasional cough echoed out like a thunder crack. Hildrun did not answer him until they had weaved their way through the sleeping figures and come out the other side. Even then they whispered as they continued. Eisengrim had forgotten the time of day it was. He knew he should stop and rest soon, but there was so much to do, and time was his enemy.

“I didn’t hear myself,” Hildrun explained. “He had begun by loudly declaring our religion to be a false one, and that was enough to send the sisters in there running for me.”

“Was he violent? Did he threaten you or anyone here?”

The Abbess shook her horned head. “No. He was angry, but in a quiet way. I half expected him to demand his alms back, but he didn’t. He just smiled at me, and left without another word.”

“So no one really heard anything?” Eisengrim sighed. He returned his attention to his surroundings, or what little of them he could see in the limited light. He could hear the rain pattering on stonework again. He was forced to trust the Abbess to guide him through the sightless dark that enveloped the nunnery as the continued deeper in. Eisengrim was quietly amazed at how big this place was. Where were they going?

“I never said that,” the Abbess Hildrun answered, drawing him out of his thoughts. They had reached some steps that disappeared into an uneasy darkness below.

“He came here first,” she went on, with a gesture downward. “I don’t know how he knew about it.”

“What’s down there?” Eisengrim asked. A faint stirring of the air drew his attention to a window just to his right. Something had shattered it.

“We keep our patients down there,” Hildrun said. She was looking elsewhere. There was tension in her body language, as if she were a spring, or a viper, coiling up, readying itself.

“Hospitals are above ground usually,” Eisengrim observed. He looked back down again towards the stairs. He could feel his heart beating faster in his weary old chest. His hand tightened around his hammer.

“Ours is.”

“Is it full?”

Hildrun said nothing, thereby answering the old bull’s unasked question.

“Does the town know you’re harbouring people with the plague?”

“No,” Hildrun said, turning to look at him again. “They came to me for help. They were suffering. Laurin herself opened her arms to all who came to her. She gave protection and aid to anyone who asked it. I couldn’t turn them away, but I have kept them secret. Only a few sisters and the town apothecary know about them. Please, master witch hunter, do not force me to turn them out. There is nowhere else they can go. Most of them are dead, now. It will not be long before the rest go to join them.”

Eisengrim looked briefly from Hildrun to the dark secret she kept before him. The Law was clear here.

“How many?” He asked.

“Fifteen came to me,” came the answer, solemn and full of sadness. “Four remain. We burned the bodies, and buried the ashes with the proper rights. We have been very careful. It has not spread to anyone.”

Late stage, Eisengrim thought, remembering his schooling on this. That was good. The infection was too busy eating the victim alive to pass to anyone else, or at least that was what one barber he had spoken with suggested. Others, such as the priesthood, had very different views about anything to do with the plague, and they helped make the laws. But these poor souls were nearly gone, and moving them now might actually risk spreading what had so far been contained. It was a fact the old bull calmly clung to, lest he be called one day before a court to justify himself for recklessness, again.

“How long was he down there?”

“An hour.”

“Are they still coherent?”

Hildrun nodded. If word of this got out, then a mob would form quick enough, and burn the whole building down with everyone in it. Eisengrim had seen it happen before. He was not inclined to see it again.

“Lead on, Abbess. This secret is safe with me.”