Tales of the Old World (101 page)

“The inn, he was taking a room at the inn.” The girl retreated into the
safety of the crowd as Reinhardt released her. The nobleman did not even notice
her go, his mind already processing the information she had given him. His right
hand slid beneath the shabby cloak and closed around the hilt of his sword.

“Soon, Mina,” Reinhardt whispered, “soon your murderer will discover what
suffering is.”

Gerhardt Knauf had never known terror such as he now felt. The wonderful
thrill of fear that he enjoyed when engaging in his secret activities was gone.
The presence of the witch hunter had driven home the seriousness of discovery in
a way that Knauf had never fully comprehended before. The shock and looks of
disbelief he had visualised on his neighbours’ faces when they realised that the
merchant was more than he seemed had become the frenzied visages of a
bloodthirsty mob. In his imagination, Knauf could even smell the kindling as it
caught flame.

The calf-eyed merchant with his beetle-like brow downed the contents of the
tankard resting on the bar before him in a single bolt. Knauf pressed a hand
against his mouth, struggling to keep the beer from leaving his body as quickly
as it had entered it. The merchant managed to force the bile back into his
stomach and let his head sway towards the man sitting beside him.

“Mueller,” croaked Knauf, his thin voice struggling to maintain a semblance
of dignity, even as he struggled against fear and inebriation. The heavy set
mercenary at his side looked away from the gob of wax he had been whittling into
a lewd shape and regarded the merchant.

“You have done jobs for me before,” Knauf continued.

“Aye,” the mercenary cautiously replied, fingering his knife.

“And I have always paid you fairly and promptly,” the merchant added, his
head swaying from side to side like some bloated reptile.

“That is true enough,” Mueller said, a smirk on his face. The truth of it was
that Knauf was too timid to be miserly when it came to paying the men who
protected his wagons. A cross look from Rail, or Gunther, or even from the
scarecrow-like Hossbach, and the mercenaries would see an increase in their
wages.

“Would you say that we are friends?” Knauf said, reaching for another ceramic
tankard of beer. He swallowed only half the tankard’s contents this time,
spilling most of the remainder when he clumsily set the vessel back upon the
table.

“Were you to pay me enough, I would even say that we were brothers,” Mueller
replied, struggling to contain the laughter building within his gut. But the
condescending sarcasm in the mercenary’s voice was lost on the half-drunken
Knauf. The merchant caught hold of Mueller’s arm and stared into his face with
pleading eyes.

“Would you murder for me?” the merchant hissed. This time Mueller did laugh.

“By Ulric’s fangs, Gerhardt!” the mercenary swore. “Who could you possibly
hate enough to need killed?” Mueller laughed again and downed his own tankard of
beer.

“The witch hunter,” whispered Knauf, his head swaying from side to side to
ensure that no one had overheard.

“Have you been reading things you shouldn’t?” Mueller asked, only
half-seriously. The look of fear in Knauf’s eyes killed the joke forming on the
mercenary’s lips. Mueller rose from his chair and stared down at the merchant.

“Forty gold crowns,” the mercenary declared, waving away the look of joy and
hope crawling across Knauf’s features. “And as far as the boys are concerned,
you are paying us ten.” Mueller turned away from the table and started to walk
into the main room of the beer hall.

“Where are you going?” Knauf called after Mueller in a voice that sounded
unusually shrill even for the merchant.

“To get Hossbach and the others,” Mueller said. “Maybe I’ll see if I can’t
learn something about our friend as well.” The mercenary turned away. He only
got a few steps before Knauf’s drunken hands were scrabbling at the man’s coat.

“How are you going to do that?” Knauf hissed up at him with alarm.

Mueller extracted himself from the merchant’s grip. He pointed a finger to
the far end of the beer hall where a bawdy song and shrieks of mock indignation
marked the crowd gathered in morbid fascination around the man who had rode into
Kleinsdorf with the witch hunter.

“How else? I’ll speak with his lackey,” Mueller shook his head as Knauf
started to protest. “Leave this to me. Why don’t you go home and get my gold
ready?” The mercenary did not wait to see if Knauf would follow his suggestion,
but continued across the beer hall, liberating a metal stein from a buxom
barmaid along the way.

“Sometimes they confess straight away,” Streng was saying as Mueller
inconspicuously joined his audience. “That’s the worst of it. There’s nothing
left to do but string them up, or burn them if they’ve been particularly bad.”
Streng paused to smile at the woman sitting on his knee.

“So how do you go about finding a witch?” Mueller interrupted Streng’s
carousing. The lout turned to Mueller and regarded him with an irritated sneer.

“I don’t. That’s the Templar’s job. Mathias finds them and then I make them
confess. That way everything is above board and the Temple can burn the filthy
things without anybody being upset.” Streng turned away from Mueller and
returned his attention to his companion.

“So your master has come to Kleinsdorf looking for witches?” Mueller
interrupted again.

Streng shook his head and glared at this man who insisted on intruding on his
good time.

“Firstly, Mathias Thulmann is not my master. We’re partners, him and me,
that’s what it is. Secondly, we are on our way to Stirland. Lots of witches down
in Stirland.” Streng snorted derisively. “Do you honestly think we’d cross half
the Empire to come here?” Streng laughed. “I wouldn’t cross a meadow to come to
this rat nest,” he said, before adding, “present company excepted, of course,”
to the locals gathered around him.

As Streng returned his attention to the giggling creature seated on his knee,
Mueller extracted himself from the hangers-on and made his way toward the beer
hall’s exit. The mercenary spied a familiar face in the crowd and waved the man
over to him. A young, wiry man with a broken nose and a livid scar across his
forearm walked over to Mueller. The mercenary took the flower-festooned hat from
the man’s head and sent it sailing across the crowded room with a flick of his
wrist.

“Go get Gunther and Hossbach,” Mueller snarled. “I found us some night work.”
The angry look on the young man’s face disappeared at the mention of work. Rail
set off at a brisk jog to find his fellow sell-swords. Mueller looked at the
crowd around Streng one last time before leaving the beer hall.

The mercenary had found out all that he needed to know. The witch hunter was
only passing through Kleinsdorf; he would not be expecting any trouble. Like all
the other jobs he had done for Gerhardt Knauf, this one would hardly be
difficult enough to be called “work”.

A cheer went up from the crowd below as a small boy shimmied up the massive
pole standing in the centre of the square and thrust a crown of flowers on the
gilded skull at its top.

At the moment, Reinhardt von Lichtberg envied the boy his agility. The
nobleman was gripping the outer wall of the inn, thirty feet above the square.
To an observer, he might have looked like a great brown bat clinging to the wall
of a cave. But there were no eyes trained upon Reinhardt, at least not at
present. The few revellers who had lifted their heads skyward were watching the
boy descend the pole with a good deal less bravado than he had ascended with.
Still, the threat of discovery was far too real and Reinhardt was not yet ready
to see the inside of a cell.

Slowly, carefully, Reinhardt worked his fingers from one precarious handhold
to another. Only a few feet away he could see the window that was his goal. It
had been easy to determine which room the murderer occupied; his was the only
window from which light shone. Somehow it did not surprise Reinhardt that the
witch hunter had taken a room on the inn’s top floor. One last trial, one final
obstacle before vengeance could be served.

At last he reached the window and Reinhardt stared through the glass, seeing
for the first time in six months the man who had destroyed his life. The
murderer sat in a wooden chair, a small table set before him. He cut morsels
from a large roasted goose, a wicker-shrouded bottle of wine sitting beside it.

Reinhardt watched for a moment as the monster ate, burning the hated image of
the man into his memory. He hoped that the meal was a good one, for it would be
the witch hunter’s last.

With an animal cry, Reinhardt crashed through the window, broken glass and
splintered wood flying across the room. Landing on his feet, the sword at his
side was in his hand in less than a heartbeat. To his credit, the witch hunter
reacted swiftly, kicking the small table at Reinhardt an instant after he landed
in the room while diving in the opposite direction to gain the pistols and
longsword that lay upon the bed. But Reinhardt had the speed of youth and the
martial training of one who might have been a captain in the Reiksguard on his
side. More, he had purpose.

The witch hunter’s claw-like hand closed around the grip of his pistol just
as cold steel touched his throat. There was a brief pause as Thulmann regarded
the blade poised at his neck before releasing his weapon and holding his hands
up in surrender. Both arms raised above his head, Mathias Thulmann faced the man
with a sword at his throat.

“I fear that you will not find much gold,” Mathias said, his voice low and
unafraid.

“You do not remember me, do you?” Reinhardt snarled. “Or are you going to
pretend that your name is not Mathias Thulmann, Templar of Sigmar, witch
hunter?”

“That is indeed my name, and my trade,” replied Mathias, his voice unchanged.

“My name is Reinhardt von Lichtberg,” spat the other, pressing the tip of his
blade into Mathias’ throat until a bead of crimson slid down the steel. “I am
the man who is going to kill you.”

“To avenge your lost love?” the witch hunter mused, a touch of pity seeming
to enter his voice. “You should thank me for restoring her soul to the light of
Sigmar.”

“Thank you?”
Reinhardt bellowed incredulously. The youth fought to
keep himself from driving his sword through the witch hunter’s flesh. “Thank you
for imprisoning us, torturing us? Thank you for burning Mina at the stake? Thank
you for destroying the only thing that made my life worth living?” Reinhardt
clenched his fist against the wave of rage that pounded through his body. He
shook his head from side to side.

“We were to be married,” the nobleman stated. “I was to serve the Emperor in
his Reiksguard and win glory and fame. Then I would return and she would be
waiting for me to make her my wife.” Reinhardt pulled a fat skinning knife from
a sheath on his belt. “You took that from me. You took it all away.” Reinhardt
let the light play across the knife in his left hand as he rolled his wrist back
and forth. The witch hunter continued to watch him, his eyes hooded, his face
betraying no fear or even concern. Reinhardt noted the man’s seeming
indifference to his fate.

“You will scream,” he swore. “Before I let you die, Sigmar himself will hear
your screams.”

The hand with the knife moved toward the witch hunter’s body… And for the
second time that evening, Mathias Thulmann had unexpected visitors.

The door burst inwards, bludgeoned from its hinges by the ogre-like man who
followed the smashed portal into the room. Three other men were close behind the
ape-like bruiser. All four of them wore a motley array of piecemeal armour,
strips of chainmail fastened to leather tunics, bands of steel woven to a padded
hauberk. The only aspect that seemed to link the four men was the look of
confusion on their faces.

“The witch hunter was supposed to be alone,” stated Rail, puzzled by the
strange scene they had stumbled upon. Reinhardt turned his body toward the
mercenaries, keeping his sword at Mathias’ throat.

“Which one is he?” asked Rail, clearly not intending the question for either
of the men already in the room.

“Why don’t we just kill them both?” the scarecrow-thin figure of Hossbach
said, stepping toward Reinhardt.

Like a lightning bolt, the skinning knife went flying across the room.
Hossbach snarled as he dodged the projectile. The mercenary did not see the
sword that flashed away from Thulmann’s throat to slice across his armour and
split his stomach across its centre. Hossbach toppled against the man who had
dealt him the fatal wound. His sword forgotten on the floor, the mercenary
clutched at Reinhardt, grabbing for the man’s sword arm. Reinhardt kicked the
dying man away from him, sending him crashing into the foot of the bed, but
Hossbach had delayed him long enough. The brutish fist of Gunther crashed into
Reinhardt’s face while his dagger sought to bury itself in the pit of
Reinhardt’s left arm. The nobleman managed to grab his attacker’s wrist, slowing
the deadly blade’s strike. The blade pierced his skin but did not sink into his
heart. His huge opponent let a feral smile form on his face as he put more
strength into the struggle. Slowly, by the slightest of measures, the dagger
continued its lethal passage.

Suddenly the sound of thunder assailed Reinhardt’s ears; a stench like rotten
eggs filled his nose. One moment he had been staring into the triumphant face of
his attacker. In the next instant the mercenary’s head was a red ruin. The hand
on the dagger slid away and the mercenary fell to the floor like a felled tree.
Reinhardt saw one of the attackers run through the shattered doorway. The other
lay with a gory wound on the side of his head at the feet of the only other man
still standing in the room.