The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

The bolt snapped aside with such force the door shook. It creaked loudly as the large, frightening man let himself in.

“Time to go, boy.”

Martin Bauer got up from the corner of the room, where some blankets and a bucket had been waiting for him the previous night. A weak, unsteady light came from the high window above him. He had managed to heave himself up to the ledge the night before, only to find that it iron bars had been fixed across it from the outside. He looked at the man carefully, took in his filthy rags, unkempt beard, and mace at his hip. His head snapped to the left as the boy watched him. Martin could not say why, but this odd motion which was repeated a few second later unnerved him. Looking beyond, Martin saw the hallway just outside, and obeyed. There were other people here.

One was waiting in the hallway. A big minotaur, bare chested and fat. He had tattoos across his meaty arms of a pattern completely different to Bader’s. Martin looked him over warily, and then paused. His eyes were oddly dilated. The stone around his neck caught Martin’s eye, glinting as it was in a light he couldn’t see. It was startlingly like the one his father had bought, and which he’d told him his mother had owned as well.

“Did you kill my dad?”

The man behind him slapped him hard across the back of the head. The boy cried out.

“MOVE!”

They went downstairs a flight, and then another, with the minotaur in the front, and the hateful man covering the boy’s retreat. This place was vast, and old. Drafts wafted everywhere. Every surface was filthy and the smell was terrible. Martin covered his nose, tried to remember something of the night before. It was difficult though, as if his memories were trying to hide away. They reached the ground floor where there was a little more light from some lit candles. Martin could hear a large fire crackling from where he guessed a sitting or a reception room was, off to his right. His captors led him to the left though, through a cramped hall that had probably been for servants whenever this place had been more than a rotting shell in the woods. Did he know this place? The boy struggled to remember. Only a day had passed, but they had walked most of the night, at least until everything had become too much for him, and he wound up being carried.

There were more people in the kitchen. Another minotaur was at the stove, fussing over something that was frying, and burning. A pair of cackling human men and a female runner were sitting at a cracked, uneven table where they were playing cards. The female, and one of the men, Martin saw, were wearing stones just like the minotaur who had brought him in here. Were the rest, too? Why? Were these bandits, and this was their way of recognising each other?

A blue scaled dragon man, one of the Scaled, came into the kitchen from another doorway. He was carrying a pair of sloshing pales of water. Again, Martin saw a stone around his neck.

“Sit down, boy,” the dragon man snapped. The bearded man shoved Martin roughly towards a stool by the wall. He obeyed quietly. He wanted to ask what was going on, but had already formed a good idea in his mind about that. He had heard stories about bandits like these. They killed, raped, and ransomed their way from one settlement to the next, until the law or even, sometimes, the Hunters, caught up with them. Harsh laughter came from down the hallway. More voices, easily half a dozen. The ceiling above suddenly creaked, and Martin heard a loud thud as if someone had fallen out of bed directly above them. Dear god, how big was this gang? Were there any worse than the one who…who…

Something smashed. Martin almost leapt up from his stool in fright. The bearded man, as if waiting for him to do this, came upon him an instant later slapped him across the face, spraying spittle all over him until the shaking boy fell back down onto his seat.

Martin hugged himself. He felt the tears coming. The man slapped him again. He started crying. He was dimly aware of the laughter in the kitchen having stopped. The man was screaming at him in incoherent, nonsensical gibberish, and the boy readied himself for another blow, but it never came. The man stopped screaming, his breathe becoming ragged, terrified.

“Mette.”

Martin heard the man staggered back, his bare feet seeming to slide across the dirty stone floor. The boy worked up his courage, and uncovered his eyes.

A human woman was standing in the doorway that led out into the hall. Her dress might have been pink, once. Her face was withered from age, and her eyes seemed too big for her head. Shocks of grey and white peppered themselves through her unkempt black hair.

“Herman,” she said. “Why are you hitting that boy?” her large eyes grew predacious as they scanned the other people in the room. “Why are all just sitting there? Are any of you going to do something about this?”

Fear and silence descended upon the room like a sudden frost. No one moved. All eyes were locked upon the strange, crazed looking old woman.

“Who went to fetch the boy?” Mette asked. When no one answered, she glanced the man who had struck Martin. He was hugging himself, shaking his head horribly as his breathing grew frighteningly erratic. Spittle flecked out of his mouth. “Herman?”

“I’m sorry, Mette,” the man croaked. He stopped shaking his head, stamped his foot loudly, and nodded his head with what seemed to be massive effort. Mette sighed, then glared at the rest of them.

“I told you all not to let Herman near the boy. I told you all he can’t control himself. Have you all been eating those roots again?” She glared at the fat, half naked minotaur behind her, and a sneer grew on her face. She slapped the massive brute across the face. The minotaur gave her a baffled look, but showed no other reaction.

“I knew it!” Mette screamed.

She started pacing then, her bare feet slamming loudly on the ground as she did a circuit around the room, glaring into the faces of all the bandits with a hateful, triumphant jeer. She grabbed the two men at the table in turn, pressed her face down against theirs as if looking for something, before she did the same to the female runner. None of them dared offer any resistance, giving into her as if they were guilty children being inspected by a tutor.

“All of you!” Mette screamed, her wild hair seeming to rise as she rampaged about. “All of you are fucked up!” Her eyes turned upon the scaled man who had been taking up the doorway. When she stalked towards him he fled to a corner on the far side of the kitchen. This action seemed to finally snap the rest of the armed populace into action, as everyone was fleeing to the far corner of the kitchen in a few seconds.

“Give them to me!” Mette howled, the pitch of her voice enough to make Martin grit his teeth and cover his ears. This was insane. Was this real? Was he really here, or was all of this a bizarre, frightening dream? Herman had stopped shaking, but was still hugging himself as he stood by the boy and watched Mette, transfixed. Martin wanted to flee, but he was too afraid. The laughter down the hallway had stopped. It was only a matter of time before someone else came into the room. What if it was him?

“Put them on the table!” Mette screeched at the cornered gang. She pointed at the uneven table with the abandoned cards scattered across it. “Put them on the table! Put them on the table! Put them on the table!”

“You can’t take the roots.” the fat minotaur slurred. “We need them, Mette. What’ll we do when we get to the wasteland without them? I don’t want the dreams.”

Mette slapped him across the face again, so hard this time the male seemed to feel it, despite his addled state. She pointed to the table again. Reluctantly, one by one, the bandits she had cornered obeyed, coming forward and depositing small bags or pockets full of gnarled, blackened plants on the table. Mette sent them all to stand back in the corner, while beside Martin, Herman started laughing and clapping his hands. The boy looked from the cackling man to the wretched woman. Instinctively, Martin looked for a stone around her neck. There was none.

“What are you going to do with them?” the female runner asked, her eyes wide and afraid.

Mette did not seem to hear her. Instead, the old woman raised a hand above her head, as her face took on the look of deep concentration. Everyone in the kitchen seemed to hold their breath, and Martin realised he was doing it too. The feeling of anticipation was palpable, but for what?

It happened, then.

There were several gasps, and the fat minotaur cursed aloud. Herman stopped laughing. He stood in wonder. Martin sat still, his jaw growing slack. Somewhere, far away, an animal screamed. And then another, and another. Martin was barely aware of the piercing whinnying, his attention, and that of the whole room being directed elsewhere.

There was fire in Mette’s outstretched hand. It danced, and weaved, before slithering along her arm like a pet snake. Martin felt his blood run cold. Memories came flooding back. Andrej. Eckhart. Bader. The field full of the bodies of people who had helped raise him. It had been black, but the hand of the monster that had not held him stretched out before them and there had been light.

The fire snapped out like a coiled snake from Mette’s hand. It engulfed the roots and set them ablaze. There was screaming, panic, acrid smoke. Martin screamed. He was up then, dashing for the door but powerful hands grabbed his shoulders. They dug into his flesh and suddenly his feet were not touching the ground anymore. There was motion, and then a bang, and the world started rocking lazily from side to side as he heard an old woman’s scream, and then draw closer.

“Put him down, Herman!”

“He tried to run! I caught him!”

“Yes, Herman. Yes you did, but you must put him down now.”

Martin felt cold, suddenly. He tried to open his eyes. Had he done so, or only thought he had? Everything was still black. He tried to move, but his body and senses were sluggish. There was an idea, more than a feeling of being grabbed by the arm.

“Sit him back down, Herman.”

“Yes, Mette.”

Martin wanted to say something as he felt himself being manhandled. In the dark he saw Eckhart’s staring eyes, and a chill ran through him as he thought he could feel Bader’s dead fingers interlock with his. Herman’s ragged face and awful, stinking breath suddenly filled up his world, and he had not the strength to look away or escape.

“You were told not to hurt him,” said the Mette, coming to tower over both of them. “You were told not to lay a finger on him unless he made a fuss.”

“But he was trying to escape,” Herman protested, looking up at the woman. There something dog like about him. A stone, just like all the others wore, was visible about his neck now.

More people were piling into the room, despite the large fire and the smoke it was belching that Martin could still see the edge of, despite how close Herman and Mette were to him.

“I know, my boy. I know.”

Mette patted Herman on the shoulder, and the man grinned idiotically up at her.

“But you must be more careful, Herman dear. Martin’s special, aren’t you son?”

The boy tried to say something, tried to beg to be let go. Instead he started coughing, as he sucked in a breath of vile smelling smoke and the stench of unwashed bodies.

Behind Mette someone was screaming about the fire she had started. Someone else, further away, was howling about dead horses. Mette pushed Herman aside. She knelt down and took a firm grip of Martin’s shoulders. She smiled then, revealing a mouth full of brown, cracked teeth.

“Don’t be afraid, son,” Mette said. Martin tried to stand up, tried to flee, but his legs wouldn’t work. He felt warmth on his face, in his pants, and realised he had wet himself. He wanted to scream, to fight the woman off when she leaned down to hug him to her filthy, rotten body.

“Sssh,” she whispered, muffling his sobs against her body. “It’s alright, son, its fine. You’re safe now. You’ll never be afraid or hurt, again. Why would we hurt you?”

Her hand played through his hair, and Martin remembered looking back at his dead home as the light of the free hand shone down the hill upon it like a new sun. He had seen bodies in the yard, and knew there would be more in the buildings. Everyone was gone, lying where they had fallen, like discarded dolls. He tried to push her away, started screaming for his father. Mette laughed, held him tighter.

“You’re one of us, Martin. You’re one of us!”