Tales of the Old World (17 page)

“The baron told me that the attack on his goods occurred some ten miles from
Bechafen,” Sassen continued. “He says the band of brigands headed east into the
forest, towards the mountains.”

“How did he discover that?”

“After the attack he and his men returned to the carts, only to find them
plundered. A fresh trail led off into the woods.”

Heidel nodded silently and disappeared back into his own thoughts as they
rode on.

The scattered vegetation around the road slowly transformed into forest:
first a copse of trees here; then a slightly larger copse there, then they came
quicker and faster until there was only a wall of thick greenery. Heidel was
most comfortable in the wilderness. There was something about its simplicity.
Danger was swift and direct: wild beasts searching for food; the descent of the
winter snows; the surge of the stormy sea. Heidel’s worries were equally simple:
finding a camp-site out of the weather; keeping warm and dry; saving enough
provisions for the journey. Evil was stark, clear, easy to locate; creatures of
darkness wandering the woods, raiding small villages, or hiding in the
mountains. Heidel’s task was simple: to find them, and to eliminate them.

Cities were another story. Affluence made Heidel uneasy. The machinations and
intrigues of the courts, great glittering balls with ladies hiding their
pockmarks under white paint and rouge, lords and princes wallowing in a sordid
world of whores and white powders. Nothing was simple, everything was veiled and
obscured. People spoke and acted according to complex codes and signs that had
to be interpreted. A friendly greeting could conceal a serious insult. Your best
friend could be your worst enemy. Simplicity and directness were seen as
colloquial and quaint. Danger came in all sorts of guises, all manner of forms.
He could never move in that society. They brought malevolence upon themselves.
He could not, he would not, protect them. Better to leave that to witch hunters
like Immanuel Mendelsohn.

Heidel leaned over and spat on the ground at the thought of the man.

Mendelsohn, a self-proclaimed witch hunter, was a nobleman by birth. He had
grown up amongst the lords and the ladies—and the whores. He could move with
ease in high society: with his frilled silk shirts, his brown curly locks, his
floppy hats and pointed leather boots. And, for all this, Mendelsohn was not
above suspicion. After all, it is a short step from silk shirts to other
pleasures of the flesh. First came the finery, then the women and the illicit
substances. Then came corruption, sure as night followed day. No, Heidel did not
like him or his kind. Heidel did not like the aristocrat’s search for fame, his
love of publicity, his attempt to turn everything into a drama. Mendelsohn gave
witch hunters a bad name and it would not surprise Heidel if one day he would
have to go after the noble himself. That stray thought brought an ironic smile
to his lips.

Heidel shook his head and banished Mendelsohn from his thoughts. He
recognised that such thoughts had a habit of turning him distinctly surly. He
looked around at the forest. The trees seemed to be getting thicker, more
twisted, the underbrush more prickly and uninviting. Sassen rode beside him in
silence, tracker’s eyes now intent on finding the trail of the quarry.

Maybe four hours after they left Bechafen, Sassen suddenly called a halt. He
reined in his horse and leaped down to the road. He crept, head down along the
edge of the forest. It appeared to Heidel as if the little man was actually
sniffing for the trail. Then the tracker looked up suddenly and stated: “Here it
is.”

Heidel dismounted too and walked over to him. On the ground were a series of
scuffled tracks leading into the forest. Without Sassen he would have ridden
straight past it.

The way into the forest was marked by several broken branches and the tracks,
still distinct after two days without rain, leading into the darkness. Once into
the trees it would be hard going. Branches hung low like outstretched arms
barring the way; roots twisted like tentacles from the ground, threatening to
trip them.

“Do you know this area well?” Heidel asked the tracker.

“Fairly well. It’s all pretty much like this, I’m afraid. But that means it
will hamper the band as much as us. We’ll have to walk, anyway.”

Sassen wrinkled his eyes, an annoying habit that Heidel had noticed; the
little man always squinted when he spoke.

“It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to travel at night,” Heidel said. He
looked to the sky, as if night was about to fall then and there. But it was
still deep and blue with clumpy white clouds rolling slowly overhead.

“Unlikely,” Sassen agreed. “We’ll just have to make the best of the day.”

“Fine. Then we had better begin.”

For four days they pushed through the forest, the gnarled branches of the
trees blocking them and their horses, thorns and bushes scratching against their
legs, drawing blood wherever the skin was exposed. In no time Heidel’s hands
were covered in a delicate latticework of dried blood. The days were dark as the
sun was shut out by the canopy overhead. But if the days were dark, the nights
were blacker still. Even the shadowy forms of the trees disappeared into the
night.

Every day passed the same. They awoke at first light and departed as quickly
as possible. During the day they pushed on as hard as they could for, according
to the baron, the bandits would have two days’ start on them. If Heidel and
Sassen pressed on with this pace they could catch them within a week at most,
less if the band had made more permanent camp somewhere. When they caught them,
surprise would be the key. Heidel would stand no chance against a united group;
he would have to pick them off one by one.

On the morning of the fourth day since entering the forest, Sassen stopped
and inspected the tracks, an action that had become increasingly regular. “They
are less than a day away from us.” He peered up at Heidel and squinted.

Ahead of them they could see twenty feet at the most. At any moment they
might stumble upon the prey. That could mean death or worse. In these close
confines, the hunters would become the hunted, and the black warrior’s horde
would surely crush them. Often Heidel heard rustling close to them in the forest
or fluttering amongst the branches above, but whatever it was remained
unsighted. He assumed they were just the movements of birds and animals, but
they made him jittery anyway.

Perhaps to ease his tension Sassen kept trying to strike up a conversation,
trying to get Heidel to tell of his exploits as a witch hunter.

“How many have you put to death?” he asked one time.

Heidel glared at him.

“You are grim, Herr Heidel.”

“Better to say nothing at all, than to say nothing using many words.” The
witch hunter spoke plainly.

Undeterred, Sassen continued: “I hear you burnt a man only last month. What
for?”

“He was in league with corruption.” Heidel practically spat the sentence out,
the words so filled with revulsion and disdain.

“What did he do?” Sassen inquired timidly.

“When I arrived in this particular village many were falling ill. It was like
a plague.” Heidel’s voice rose in intensity as he spoke, passion beginning to
creep into his account. “At first I could not discern the cause of this illness.
I studied the victims and found that they had great red swellings beneath the
skin. Under the armpits, on the neck, between the legs. As a test I punctured
one of the victim’s swellings, and from the wound squirmed a writhing mass of
worm-like creatures, all purple and yellow and bulbous. Alas, the victim died.
Later I tried to cleanse a victim by applying fire to his swellings. But the
strain was too much on his body.”

Heidel glanced at Sassen, who looked on with a mix of disgust and excitement.

“Continue, continue,” the tracker said, pulling his thin beard with his
fingers and licking his lips.

“I realised that the only victims were men, and so turned to the origins of
the illness: if I could determine the cause then perhaps I could save these poor
people. It took me but a day to find the truth. I interviewed the men and found
that those who fell ill first had something in common. All were suitors of a
woman, a particular woman. Searching her house I found nothing. But I was
undeterred. I pressed the woman for the names of all who courted her. Under
duress she produced a list, and all on that list were ill… all save one, the
keeper of the inn. I found in that man’s cellar a cauldron full of writhing,
squirming larvae. These he would feed to the men when they were drunk, placing
them in their ale. Somehow they would eat their way through the flesh and the
insides. And so he was burnt at the stake that very night.”

“But why, why did he do it?”

“He called it an act of love. He loved her, but she did not return his
feelings. As a result he hated her other lovers and decided to kill them. But as
he acted out his drama he lost his mind. His hatred for these particular men
turned into a hatred of all men. Soon it would have become a hatred of all the
world and everything within it. That way is the path to darkness.”

After he finished there was silence for a moment, and then Sassen burst into
a high fit of uncontrollable laughter.

“You think it funny?” Heidel’s eyes flashed and his hand moved unconsciously
to his sword.

“No, no, of course not.” Sassen suddenly looked worried and did not ask any
more questions of Heidel.

* * *

Around noon on the fourth day, the trail they had been following suddenly met
a path, wide enough for two carts, leading away to left and right. Once it must
have been well used, but now was overgrown, with the trees threatening to close
in once more. Sassen handed his horse’s reins to Heidel and bent down to examine
the tracks.

“They passed to the left,” he said, “but there are other tracks here, that
come from the right. Someone on a horse. It looks like he dismounted, for there
are new footprints. Here, see?” Sassen pointed to the new tracks. “Perhaps he
met the group here and has joined them.”

Heidel peered down. There was a small group of hoof-prints, one over the
other, as if the horse was made to wait for some time. Next to them were the
fresh prints of a boot.

“They are soft-soled,” Sassen noted. “See how faint the tracks are.”

“Well, with only one horse they can’t have gone far. If we mount here we may
catch them today. How old are these tracks?” Heidel peered down at the tracks
himself.

“Perhaps half a day.” Sassen squinted in the direction that the tracks led,
as if he might yet see the band travelling away from them.

“Then we shall ride slowly—and tonight we shall come upon them in a hail of
fire and light.” Heidel’s eyes flashed at Sassen. The tracker smiled grimly and
looked away.

They rode throughout the rest of that day and, as it became dark, Heidel
turned to Sassen: “You must set up camp here. We do not know how far away the
band is, but we must take no chances. I shall walk ahead and begin the work,
using my bow. I’ll be back before morning. Do not light a fire, for I want you
here when I return. Otherwise…” Heidel had nothing more to say, so he nodded,
dismounted, took his bow and quiver, and began the walk.

Sassen left the path behind him for a clearing, the two horses in tow. “Good
luck,” he called out to the witch hunter, who did not acknowledge him.

The new path was wide and above him he could see the stars. It was a relief
to feel the open air again and to feel the fresh wind. “Sigmar,” he prayed under
his breath, may the forest be kind to me tonight. “And Ulric, god of battle, to
you I pray also: together may we come down upon these abominations and cleanse
them with blood and steel.”

And his heart began to sing, as it always did before he went into battle. For
something stirred in him before he killed. It was as if his soul was suddenly in
harmony with the world, as if there was some secret melody, some logic, which
things and events travelled along. Truth, that was what it was. When a foe
squirmed upon his sword—that was truth. When the light in a mutant’s eyes
dimmed slowly, and then faded to black.

The road opened out into a large clearing. He found them there, camping
around a small fire. Already they were drunk or intoxicated, and he smiled
silently. Baron von Kleist had been right: these were evil things that needed
cleansing. Darkness undermines itself, he thought.

There were seven of them. Six things: neither men nor beasts but something in
between, twisted and vile. And the warrior, dull in his black and heavy armour,
his face hidden by a great helmet. Some nameless black meat was charring on a
spit above the fire. Bottles of liquid lay strewn amongst the creatures, who
rolled around on the ground amongst the dirt and their own filth. Only the
warrior sat calmly on an overturned log, contemplative and evil.

When three of the corrupted men-things began to make their way from the
clearing down a slope away to the right of him, Heidel seized his chance and
followed them. He crept as quietly as possible, a shadow in the darkness, yet
cursing under his breath as he heard the twigs breaking beneath his feet. But
the creatures didn’t hear him, for they were crashing down the slope carelessly.
After a minute they came to a small stream flowing gently, the sound of water
over rocks floating through the air. All three dipped waterskins into the water,
splashing their filth into the clear stream, and turned to carry them up the
hill.

It was then that Heidel struck. His first arrow hit the leading beast-man in
the neck, piercing its soft fur and sending blood gushing through its
bear-mouth.

Pandemonium broke loose. In a whirr of motion a second arrow whisked through
the air, another close behind. Two hits and a thing with tentacles fell
groaning. A last beastman hissed like a gigantic snake; something heavy crashed
into it from behind, screaming and lashing out. Then Heidel retreated back into
the darkness. An excellent initial foray; three creatures dead.