Night of the Witch, page 2
Everyone is dying out there. Liesel is in a prison wagon.
What can I do?
“Do all witches hear the voice, Mama?” I asked years ago. I been about ten. “The one asking them to try wild magic? Is that a goddess talking to me like Perchta talks to you?”
The goddess Perchta, the Mother, long ago chose my mother as one of her favored witches. It means nothing more than Mama has her ear, is blessed and guided by the Mother Goddess—but to be chosen by a goddess! For a young witch, the idea had been all I wanted.
But my mother’s face. Save me, I’ll never forget that look on her face, a flinch of disgust that she smothered with a too-wide smile. “The goddesses do speak to us, but they would never tell us to use wild magic. Don’t think on it, mein Schatz. Think only on how you will resist its pull. Tell me now, what are you?”
My heart sank. A goddess hadn’t chosen me? Not even Holda, the Maid, young and fierce and bright? Surely I was worthy of Holda’s blessing!
“I’m a good witch, Mama,” I said, and smiled. “A green witch!”
She nodded. “A good green witch, indeed.”
I say that to myself now. A good witch. A green witch. I use herbs and create spells. I do not hear the voice in my head; I do not feel its pull; I am a good witch—
Will a good witch survive this?
I scream and fly to my feet, the iron bar back in my hand, and with my last fleeting remnants of strength, I pry the other bars free and gouge enough dirt out to widen the opening.
I will not give in. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.
I throw that word up against the voice in my head. Never, never, you will never get me; you’ve taken enough.
A stream of smoke floats through the cellar window.
It could be mist on an early morning breeze, common enough now in winter—except for the smell. Wood and cinder, earthy and rich, a fire on a summer night, a smoldering kitchen flame under a boiling pot—and it isn’t innocently gray. It’s heavy, choking black.
The oddity doesn’t make it past my focused terror.
I need to get out of this cellar. Now.
The smoke blows, obscuring the town square, filling this cellar until every blink is grating sand on my eyelids and every breath burns.
Once the bars are freed, I stack more crates back beneath the window and haul myself up to the opening.
My body scrapes against the edges of the window hole as I wiggle free. Streaks of dirt drag along my coarse blue kirtle, my square-necked shift beneath splotched with grime and sweat as I roll to my feet outside.
“Mama!” I scream into the smoke, coughing each breath. “Aunt Catrin! Liesel!”
Why haven’t any hexenjägers swept in on me yet? I’m out of the cellar; they might not be able to see me in the smoke, but they should be able to hear my screams now. I don’t care. I’m too overcome with panic, and I shout the names again.
The wind shifts.
The sky clears first. Brightest blue, high afternoon, a crisp December day as any other.
Liesel wanted to make sweet zwetschgenkuchen today but use apples instead of plums. No, I told her, I’m sorry, Liesel, I can’t. Mama needs my help with the chores I didn’t do yesterday, on my birthday.
My birthday.
The thought of it cracks my heart, shatters what’s left, and it’s in that state that I see what has become of Birresborn.
Bodies lie everywhere, left to fall where they were killed. Some hexenjägers; not enough. Mostly my family, my coven, shot with rifles or stabbed with blades.
I stand still for a moment, the world off-balance, and I realize—I’m the only thing standing now in this village. The surviving hexenjägers have left. My coven is…
In the center of the square stands a single stake.
How long did I cower in that cellar? Too long, not enough.
The wind whistles, catches, puffs smoke higher, and I hear only the thud of my shattered heart beating in my ears. I hate the absence of noise more than screaming, this incessant, defeated silence.
I drop to my knees in front of her stake. Her burnt remains are held to the charred wood by a great iron chain.
They didn’t take her back to Trier. Didn’t give her the sham of a trial.
They branded her chest. A curved D, for dämon. Demon.
I did not hear her scream when the kommandant lit her fire, when he branded her—she would never have given him the satisfaction
“Mein Schatz.”
My body bends double. I cannot will it to stay upright. I claw the earth, nails digging deep into ashes and mud, and from the pit of me, the core of me, I scream.
It is a promise.
It is a beginning.
2
OTTO
The city of Trier smells like fear and shit.
I wrap my black cloak over my shoulders, securing the pierced-heart brooch at the neck. My leather boots are polished to a mirror shine. My belt is heavy with my sheathed sword hanging on my left and a wheellock pistol holstered to my right, but before I open the door to the headquarters of the hexenjägers in the Porta Nigra, I mentally pause, feeling each hidden weapon on my body, thinking of what I would need to do to reach each one instantly.
A dagger at my back and a smaller one in my boot. A silver knife beneath each shirt cuff, the cost of such blades immense, but paid for from the archbishop’s own coffers.
A vial of holy water around my neck. A scroll of parchment with a verse from Exodus written in Latin, blessed by the Pope himself, sewn into my cloak. A jar of dirt from Jerusalem, tiny and clinking in my pocket next to a golden crucifix, the only thing I have left of my father’s.
Witches need more than blades to pierce them before they are cast into hell.
Our weapons are designed to rend the flesh and burn the soul.
I sling open the door and step onto the stone corridor. As I expected, there are fewer witch hunters here than normal. My plan to get regular updates from the city while I was on patrols meant that I cut my most recent tour of the southern part of the diocese short.
“Kapitän!” One of the lower-ranked men shouts, running toward me.
It’s a new recruit, Johann, too junior to have been included on patrols outside the city yet. He’s a kid, really, fifteen or sixteen. I’m no more than a few years his senior, but that age difference feels…wrong. He has peach fuzz on his chin, a gleam of innocence still alight in his eyes.
“What is it?” I growl.
“Kommandant Kirch is not yet back,” the boy stutters. “I—we were not sure of the changes to the executions?”
“Changes?”
The boy bobs his head. “Ja, Kapitän.” He holds a paper out to me.
I snatch it from him. It bears the archbishop’s seal, as well as the stamp of the executioner, that pompous ass. Both men are far older, and yet they cower behind boys like Johann.
Like me.
There is a reason why the hexenjägers are young. They say it takes youth and the strong muscles of good holy boys to fight the devilish strength of the witches. The oldest among us is Kommandant Dieter Kirch, and he is in his early twenties. I, at nineteen, am the captain, second-in-command. To be fair, I have only been elevated to this position because I had my father’s name behind me. Nepotism worked in my favor, as did the kommandant’s personal approval of me.
And, well, Trier is running out of good holy boys willing to wear the black cloaks. What started as a mania has settled into something even darker. There are rumblings of rebellion. The archbishop may lead the charge against the witches, but the parishes have started to question whether or not the man is correct in his crusade. There is, after all, far more gold on his fingers and around his neck than what is used for alms.
Unfortunately for them, the archbishop has been known to hear blasphemy among the doubters, blasphemy that is often treated with the same fire as the witches face.
The archbishop sits upon a literal throne, watching the burnings from afar. The executioner, he lights the fires, but it is the hexenjägers, the children he trains, who bind the hexen to the stakes. Who haul their crying, fighting bodies to the pyres.
Who root out the evil as if it is a foul weed that will wither and die in the sun.
There is always fire between the others and the hexen. Fire, and the children like Johann who they have trained to dirty their hands.
Fools.
I snap the parchment out, scanning the words quickly. The archbishop has written the decree in Latin—it is, after all, a mandate from the Church—but it’s also a precaution. Few of the lesser-ranked boys can read even in German, fewer still in the language of God.
“I knew about this,” I state flatly.
Bright red splotches stain Johann’s face. He’s nervous around me. “It’s just that…with Kommandant Kirch gone…”
I start walking toward my office, and Johann races to keep up. I insisted early on that the only way the hexenjägers could truly be efficient at purging evil from the diocese was through efficient communication, and it became my role within the unit to create that system of messengers. It is often a tedious task, and not without its trouble, but it also means that I am the first to know when the next burning will be and where the next patrols will be sent out.
So I know Kommandant Kirch left Trier with more than half our men, a sudden mission that had been prompted by necessity when a large and powerful coven had been uncovered. It must have been a surprise to the kommandant, who otherwise wouldn’t have left the city during an important time. I know he’s been obsessed with finding covens that still have elders; it’s no wonder that he would attack as soon as he heard, even if that left the city without its main hexenjäger forces.
And I already knew about the burning, scheduled for the solstice in a few days. We typically have burnings of one to two witches every few weeks, but the archbishop put a hold on them, intending to have one large burning at the end of the year to showcase the triumph of good over evil, letting the smoke of the bodies of burned witches scent the cold December air.
It is for these reasons that I’ve rushed to the city, cutting my own fruitless patrol short.
There is, after all, much to do when you’re about to help murder a hundred people.
Witches, I remind myself as I enter my office. They’re not people. They’re witches.
“But sir—” Johann lingers at the doorway, unsure of whether he is allowed to step inside the tiny stone room that serves as my office.
“What is it?” I demand. There’s a lot to plan before the solstice, and I have no time for mewling boys who do not know what to do other than hesitate.
“Kapitän Ernst, we have held the witches in prison for weeks. No burnings. It’s…getting crowded.”
“Yes,” I reply acidly, “when you don’t burn witches alive and instead leave them in a cell, they do tend to not simply disappear. What do you want me to do about it?”
Truth be told, I dread the day. The streets will choke with the stench of rendered flesh. My stomach twists, although my face betrays no emotion.
All the Holy Roman Empire will see the smoke rising from Trier, and all will tremble with fear. Exactly as the kommandant wants.
If the archbishop’s order goes as planned.
“If Kommandant Kirch does not come back before the solstice…” Johann starts, his words fading out as he tries to put a cohesive sentence together, “we aren’t sure what to do. Perhaps you could authorize a new location for the prisoners, or…” His voice trails off at my quelling glare.
I narrow my eyes, considering the options. “I’ll inspect the prison,” I say. It would not suit my plans if the prisoners were moved. I shove past the boy and march down the stone corridor. When I do not hear the younger man’s boots following my own footsteps, I bark, “Come along!”
Johann scrambles to keep up as I descend the massive winding iron staircase.
The headquarters of the hexenjägers is in the Porta Nigra—the Black Gate made by the Romans when they occupied the city-state of Trier hundreds of years ago. The building has been remade into a church, the upper level used by the blessed witch hunters.
But I continue down the iron stairs, winding round and round, dizzyingly descending past the church, deeper, deeper underground.
“Sir?” Johann squeaks, but I ignore him.
There is no part of Trier that is untouched by Rome. The Germanic nations are the Holy Roman Empire for a reason—centuries have passed, but our stones were cut by Roman laborers, our streets mapped by Roman cartographers, our religion seeped into the people by Roman Emperors. Constantine the Great himself lived in Trier.
And his men carved out the aqueducts.
The enormous tunnel system under the streets of Trier is ancient but still good, designed to bring the clean waters of the Moselle River into the city. Not many remember it now, centuries later. There are rumors that the aqueducts are haunted, and Johann crosses himself as I approach the entrance underground. He truly is still a child.
The only ones who haunt the aqueducts are the witch hunters.
I hand Johann a torch, and he holds it while I use my flint to light the greased bundle atop the stick. I let him go first, and although the torch trembles in his hand, Johann enters the narrow passage, shoulders hunched but without any hesitancy to his steps.
Once inside, no light reaches through the tunnel. Cold water sloshes over our feet. Johann’s dim light barely flickers.
It doesn’t matter. I close my eyes, embracing the darkness. I know these routes better than anyone. Johann peers nervously into the side tunnels, shoulders hunched, eyes squinting.
What would have been a twenty-minute walk or more meandering through the winding streets above is a quick ten minutes through the aqueducts. The tunnel branches off and then opens up to a sort of subbasement with pillars of brick holding the floor above our heads. Stone steps lead to a door.
“I’ll never figure out these tunnels,” Johann says mournfully. His torch flickers as I fit an iron key into the door.
I glance behind him as he swings the torch idly. “Watch it!” I bark.
The boy jumps, nearly slipping on the damp floor.
I grab the torch from him. “See those?” I point to the barrels stored on raised planks under the brick pillars to protect them from the water. Johann nods, eyes wide. “They’re full of gunpowder, you unverschämt. Be careful with your torch.”
“Why would they store that here?” Johann grumbles, but at my withering look, he says no more.
After letting the door at the top of the stairs swing open, I shove Johann through and then stash the quenched torch on a hook. We climb the steps, leaving wet boot prints on the stone. Once inside the main basilica, the guards on duty nod to us in greeting as we stride into the hall.
I stare about the prison in horror, although my face shows no emotion. Some of these witches have been behind bars for a month already. The hay at their feet is scant, stained brown, molding and musty where it’s not putrid and wet.
I harden my heart to pity. In order to contain the evil, this holy building was selected as the most secure and blessed. Where a congregation would typically gather, there are now iron bars extending from the cut stone floor, trapping the hexen. There is only one door facing the altar, with heavy chains and three locks keeping it secure.
“You can see, sir,” Johann says in his too-high voice, “there’s hardly any room left. If Kommandant Kirch comes back with more people from his raid of the coven in the north…”
“Kommandant Kirch can deal with it,” I say.
“Should we relocate some? There are cells in the Porta Nigra…”
“Monk’s cells, not prisoner cells,” I snap. Prior to the formation of the hexenjäger units, the upper part of the old building was a monastery. “Would you put a witch beside the bones of Saint Simeon?”
Johann blanches. “It’s just…it seems…” Johann’s voice fades to a whisper, but I still catch his words. “It doesn’t seem right, does it? It’s inhumane.”
He should be afraid to speak so foolishly. If Kommandant Kirch heard such presumptuous remarks from a recruit, the lad would be lashed at the very least.
I slam my fist against the boy’s jaw, the blow coming hard and fast and without warning. He spins in a circle before crashing down to the stone floor with a tooth-clacking snap of his head. Blood spurts from his lip as he looks up at me with wide, fearful eyes.
I crouch down in front of him before he has a chance to right himself.
“Are you suggesting, recruit, that these hexen be given better quarters?” I speak loudly, my voice carrying. Every single person in the vast room—witch or soldier—hears me. “A witch sells their soul to the devil,” I boom. “Each and every one of them will stay here. Behind this cage. Until they burn. Their comfort is of little concern to any true hexenjäger.” I stand, towering over the recruit, peering down my nose at the boy. “Am I understood?”
“Yes!” he squeaks. “Sir!”
I tilt my chin up and peer around the room. Roughly a hundred witches, crammed into a cage meant to hold only two dozen at most. Fewer guards than usual—most are with Kommandant Kirch, in his raid to the north. But enough.
My words settle over the basilica. The hexenjägers standing guard at the doors or patrolling the cage walk with proud steps, their spines straighter, their jaws more determined.
The witches—the ones still sensible to their plight—weep softly.
My words have ripped the last shred of their hope away.
I feel them watching me as I stride past the cage toward the main doors of the basilica. Dim light filters through the windows cut high above in the stone.
“Like his father.”
I hear the whisper behind me, but I don’t pause to see which fellow hexenjäger spoke. Everyone sees my father in me. A zealot, full of passion, a warrior of the faith. His death was ignoble, but his reputation outlasted him. He is the reason I was able to advance so quickly in the ranks of the hexenjägers, despite never having held a torch to a pyre. I may be second-in-command, and everyone else has forgotten the truth of it, but I have not: I am untested.
