Coven: a dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 2) (14 page)

“That’s not how things work,” the older man admonished him. “Territories aren’t just handed out like noble titles, you know. You need to apprentice yourself to me for a few more years before I put you forward for your own patch.”

“But Ulrich’s land—”

“If you want to shortcut the process, you’d have to talk to Damon himself. Although, I advise against it. He isn’t a man who takes kindly to upstarts.”

“Well, I’m not afraid of him.” The young man sounded amused. “Oh, barkeep! Can you tell me where I might find the most noble scharfrichter Damon of Donau-Ries? I have a matter I wish to discuss with him.”

I leaned forward, listening frantically. Thanks to this young idiot, I was going to find out exactly what I needed to know.

“Like I told the last one of ye, he’s already at the castle,” the barkeep answered gruffly. “You know that man don’t waste time on drinking if there’s blood to be spilled. You lot have filled the dungeon to bursting, so he’s gone to make a head-start on the torturing.”

“Sir, sir!” I heard footsteps running behind the bar. A young, high-pitched voice called out. “They’ve drunk the barrel dry.”

The bartender sighed. “Well, fetch another barrel, lad. And be quick about it!”

We ducked back into the shadows as a young boy ran into the store from the bar. Tjard’s nails dug into my arm. We stood bone still, my heart pounding against my chest. Our black cloaks should hide us from view, but if the boy saw us move, or sensed our presence, or saw the moonlight bouncing off Tjard’s bald-spot… we were done for.

I held my breath, not daring to turn my head to glance at Tjard, in case the noise should alert the boy. He moved deeper into the room, cursing loudly as he searched the racks for the barrel he wanted. He stopped in front of the shelf we hid behind, his eyes darting across the barrels. My whole body froze, my chest cold as ice. Did he see us?

The boy moved on, crossing the room and finally locating the right barrel on the shelf opposite us. With a lot of swearing and exertion, he dragged one of the barrels from the bottom shelf and rolled it across the floor and back into the bar.

Only when the boy had left the room did I feel able to breathe again. Tjard shuffled forward, leaning his head against the wall to listen. We both heard the bartender propping up the barrel and serving his first tankard from the tap. “It will be some time before anyone needs to come back here again,” Tjard whispered. “We might learn more that’s of use to us from these scharfrichters, including the meaning of these odd amulets.”

“My father is in the dungeon,” I said, unable to keep the grin from my face. I touched the handle of Maerwynn’s knife at my belt. “He is alone, for the other scharfrichters are all here. That is all I need to know.”

Tjard made to grab my arm again, but I was too quick for him. I ducked around him, scrambled out from behind the barrels, and ducked back out into the street. I turned my eyes to the horizon, and there, towering over the terraced wooden buildings of the city, were the imposing turrets of the castle, one of the seats of Lord Benedict’s power and the place where his court was held. My rage burned red-hot in my veins.

“Ulrich, be careful…
Ulrich
…” Tjard ran after me, but I ignored him as I strode towards the castle, a single purpose on my mind.

T
he castle gates
were much more heavily guarded than the city wall, but I had been to the dungeon in Stuttgart castle before with my father. I remembered a passage that connected the dungeon to the outer wall – a way for enemies of the Lord to be snuck into the castle without arousing the attention of the people. “There are some things,” I remember my father telling me, in his harsh, no-nonsense voice, “that are best left to the privacy of the dungeon. You will discover, Ulrich, that a powerful man’s most dangerous enemies are friends to his face, and so we need to be like shadows in the night if we hope to do our godly duty for the Lord.”

I would be as a shadow tonight. I crept along the darkened streets, searching the ground on either side of the road for the hatch. Tjard ran behind me, protesting with every step. After kicking up several clouds of dirt and dust to no avail, I walked over a small lawn containing an ornamental garden and a statue of Lord Benedict in the guise of Mars, the Roman war god. To my surprise, as I stepped on to the grass, my boots made a hollow sound against the earth.
That’s odd.

I bent down and searched with my hands through the grass. It wasn’t long before I found a small metal latch hiding amongst the greenery. Someone had cleverly planted the shallow lawn over top of the hatch, trusting that no citizen would want to risk trampling the pretty garden in Lord Benedict’s city. “Gotcha.” I whispered.

Checking that no guards were around, I lifted the hatch, revealing a dark tunnel beneath. “Wait here,” I told Tjard. “Guard this entrance from notice. If you see anyone coming, close the hatch and wait here until I return. I’ll knock three times and you can open the door again.”

“And if someone should recognize me, or they demand to check the hatch?” Tjard’s mouth was set in a firm line.

“If something should happen,” I growled. “You are to run. Do not risk your life on my account, Tjard. This is not your battle. Let’s have at least one of us escape with our lives.”

“If it’s all the same,” Tjard growled. “I’d like us both to.”

“As would I. But we can’t always get what we want.”

There was no ladder down into the tunnel. Tjard helped lower me down, then shut the hatch on top of me, sealing off the square of moonlight that had served as the only light source. I groped with my fingers, moving as quickly as I dared in the darkness in the direction of the castle. The passage sloped downward, moving deep below the castle wall toward the dungeon, where two floors of cells waited to be filled with witches and heretics. I took my time descending, each strep reminding me of my purpose.

If I kill my father, it is the first step in securing my freedom. Mine and Ada’s.

My forehead connected with something hard. I stepped back, rubbing the spot I had hit, and groped with my fingers to discern the shape of the object. The passage ended suddenly at a low wooden door. The hinge was crusted with rust. The passage had not been used for some time. I tugged at the door. The hinge dropped off the door and landed on the stone floor with a clatter. I winced as the door flew open and banged against the stone wall behind me. Hopefully no one heard that.

I stared into the room beyond. It was a storage chamber, stacked high with coiled lengths of chain, blacksmithing tools, wooden stools and other items needed in the dungeons. I noticed a stack of broken barrels in the corner, and a pile of straw that might have been bedding for one of the guards. A rat skittled across the floor in a carefree manner. There was no one around, although I could hear faint voices from down the corridor.

As silently as I could, I clambered over the piles of junk in the room and ducked into the hallway. The voices grew louder, and I realized they were not talking, they were crying.

I had entered the cells.

The hall I stood in narrowed in width, so that I had to turn sideways in order to squeeze my bulk through. On either side of the wall were thin doors made of iron bars, leading into small square cells barely long enough for a man to lie down. Into each cell had been crammed several people, mostly women of all ages, but I saw some men and children too. They were naked, their bodies bruised and maimed from the whip and the devices of my trade. Dull eyes stared at me through hair streaked with filth. The man in the beer hall hadn’t exaggerated, the cells really were ready to burst with the press of the unfortunates trapped inside.

As I stalked through the cells, hands reached through the bars, grabbing at my cloak. “Have mercy, scharfrichter!” a man moaned. “Please, we did nothing wrong!” A woman sobbed. All about me I heard the haunted cries of the damned.

“Help us!”

“Have mercy!”

“Please, my children will die without me!”

I wanted nothing more than to shut out their pitiful cries, but they came at me from all sides, assailing me with their misery. I kept trudging onward, setting my face in a scowl, narrowing my eyes, hoping I looked to them terrifying, and not the way I truly felt – shame.

I could save them all. I could sneak them out through the passage, and out of the city, and help them to run into the forest to hide. I could take from this place right now, and delay their suffering. But what good would it do? I would buy them time, and false hope, nothing more. The scharfrichters had fast horses and keen eyes, they would soon round up every escaped prisoner and bring them back to the dungeon again. The few that managed to escape would soon starve in the forest. No one passing through the woods would help a man or woman condemned to die.

It turned out, neither would I. “Don’t touch me,” I snapped at an old man who tried to pull my cloak from my head. He snapped his hands back through the bars, glaring at me with derision. The cloak slipped over my shoulder, revealing a flash of the side of my face before I quickly replaced it. The man glared at me harder.

“I know who you are,” he whispered.

“Don’t speak to me, old man.” I snapped, but the cold, dark look in his eyes made me pause.

“I know who you are!” he repeated, loud enough that those unfortunates around him looked up. My stomach clenched with fear.

“Please,” I whispered, trying to appeal to him. “Stop talking. I may yet be able to save you—”

“You are the son of Damon of Donau-Ries. You are the one they are hunting, the scharfrichter who abandoned his faith to save a witch.” His eyes narrowed at me. “Five years ago, you burned my daughter at the stake as a witch. You watched, silent as death, as the flames consumed her. You didn’t even give me a body I could bury.”

I heard my name whispered from lip to lip as the prisoners passed the message down their ranks. I glared at the man, terrified of what his revelation might cost me. He glared back at me, a look of satisfaction on his wrinkled, scarred face. “Fear not.” I growled, masking my fear with anger. “You will be reunited with her soon enough.”

“What made you turn from your crimes, witch hunter? What is it about your harlot that makes her so special? Why couldn’t it have been my daughter Muriel you saved?” The man’s eyes never left my own. “She was no witch. She
deserved
to be spared.”

Muriel.
I’d only ever met one girl named Muriel, and I remembered her well. She had been the third girl Tjard and I freed, but only after she and I had enjoyed two days of exquisite torture in the dungeon. A flash of her danced across my memory; Muriel tied to my St. Andrew’s Cross, her full breasts pointing high and her head thrown back in ecstasy while I thrust the handle of a whip up inside of her. Tjard and I had taken Muriel to the edge of Lord Benedict’s lands and set her free, but of course she could not return to her family. They had to believe her dead, in order that they be spared from knowledge that could incriminate them in the future. I wanted to spit the truth back at her father, tell him all the dirty things his precious daughter screamed at me as I twisted her pert nipples, but I didn’t. He would be tortured soon enough, and that knowledge in the hands of my father would be far too dangerous.

I sighed and turned away, pulling my hood further down over my eyes. The man yelled after me, angry words that sliced through my skin.

“Why do you turn away, witch hunter?” The man screamed after me. “Can you not bear to face me? You killed my only child, my beautiful girl, and with my dying breath I will curse you!”

He was trying to get me to lose my temper – perhaps so that I’d run him through with my sword now and spare his suffering, perhaps so the guards would come down to see the commotion and find me here – but I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I didn’t blame him for his anger, I would’ve hated my daughter’s killer, too.

I passed the end of the hall and descended a short stone staircase. At the foot of the staircase I saw what I was looking for: the dungeon door, thick and wooden and crisscrossed with heavy iron hinges. It hung open, revealing a few inches of the room beyond. Inside, I heard a woman whimpering, her cries growing in volume as the wheel of the rack creaked and the cruel device pulled her arms and legs from their sockets.

I reached out for the door, then paused, my hand resting against the cold wood. In the room beyond was my father, a man I hadn’t seen since I’d left his employ five years ago. A man I abhorred, but also feared. And here he was, in his element, with all the tools of his trade at his command. Why did I come here? Why did I choose to confront him in
his
domain?

It’s your domain, also.
I reminded myself, clenching my hand into a fist. An image of Ada flashed before my eyes, her curvy hips spread wide on the St. Andrew’s Cross, the comfortable feeling of the leather whip pressed against my palm. The burst of pleasure I got from teasing her body to oblivion. Out of something abhorrent, I’d managed to create a haven. I knew the ways of the dungeon just as well as he, maybe I did stand a chance after all.

Ada’s face loomed in my vision, her eyelids half shut, her cheeks flushed with colour, her lips open in a silent O. Her presence in my mind steadied me. My heart hammering, I pushed against the heavy door, swinging it inward just wide enough so I could slip through. I darted along the wall, into the shadow behind a large furnace used to heat up pokers and brands. The furnace wasn’t lit, and my bulk fitted behind it nicely. I crouched down, and held my breath, listening for any sign that I’d been spotted.
He will be too engrossed in his work to notice the movement of my shadow,
I told myself, but my heart pounded against my chest all the same. I leaned forward slowly, peering around the edge of the furnace, and waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom.

A single lamp shone, placed on a sconce fitted to the frame of the rack. On the rack, a naked girl, barely thirty summers old, lay stretched out, her body streaked with a bloody lattice from the whip, her fingers mashed beyond recognition from the screws. The room stank of shit and blood, vile perfumes of the executioner’s craft.