Brunner the Bounty Hunter Read online

  Brunner dropped to the ground, watching through the night. If tradition was right, then the carcass of a werekin would change back into its human shape with the dawn. It was a terrible thing to consider, the only thing the body of a dead priestess would earn him would be a noose. Still, he did not want to risk the legends being right. After all, the dagger Dietrich had stabbed into the beast had been a silvered one, and silver was the only metal that could bring harm to a werekin.

  ‘You’ve got your beast!’ snarled Pujardov, struggling against his bonds. ‘Untie me!’

  The bounty hunter shook his head, then a grim smile started to form. What was it the old witch had said? The bite of the werekin would make a courageous man into a werekin? If so, then it would certainly do the same to a murderous Kislevite slug. Brunner walked towards the hunter, releasing him from the tree but leaving his hands tied. He shoved Pujardov towards the body of the wolf-beast. The hunter cringed away from the carcass in mortal terror, but another shove from Brunner pitched him to the ground beside it.

  ‘You’ll die for this! And for what you did to my father!’ Pujardov threatened.

  Brunner ignored the curses raging off the Kislevite’s tongue, instead seizing the man’s arm and shoving it between the gaping jaws of the wolf. Eyes wide with horror, Pujardov tried to squirm away as Brunner pushed the jaws of the dead beast close, sinking their sharp fangs into the Kislevite’s flesh.

  A dead priestess was worth nothing, but a live monster, that would be worth a considerable reward, enough to warrant waiting at the castle until the next time Morrslieb was full. When the baron watched Pujardov change, whatever the Kislevite tried to tell him would be forgotten.

  On the ground beside him, Pujardov wailed in agony, horrified at what the bounty hunter had done to him.

  Brunner shook his head. ‘What are you crying about? You would have made a lousy orphan anyway.’

  THE DOOM OF GNASHRAK

  Prowling the streets of Miragliano one day, in search of an elusive merchant who had a supply of Arahyan inks at a suspiciously low price, I found myself unexpectedly staring into the black steel face of Brunner’s helmet. I was surprised at our sudden meeting; it had been some months since our last conversation. The bounty hunter nodded, relaxing the grip his hand had assumed on the hilt of his sword as he saw my own unarmed condition. I believe that the bounty hunter had a certain fondness for me, but I doubt if he trusted anyone.

  I greeted Brunner warmly, happy indeed to have stumbled upon him, thoughts of stolen ink at once banished from my head. My initial recounting of the man’s exploits had proven extremely popular. Indeed, I was still living off some of the proceeds the pamphlet had won me, and I was eager to repeat my past success. I wasted no time in unleashing a barrage of questions, asking him where he had gone these past months, what feats of bravery (and avarice, though I kept that thought firmly to myself) he had accomplished. Brunner batted away my questions, saying that the street was no place to talk. He began to walk away, and as he did so, I noticed the stiff manner in which he moved and the fact that some pieces of his armour appeared to be new, as though the old ones had required replacements. The thought occurred to me that perhaps his lengthy absence had not been due to some long and difficult string of hunts, but because this grim and forbidding man had actually encountered a foe who was his equal Perhaps he had spent these long months recovering from injuries received in battle?

  Thrilled by the prospect of such a tale, I hurried after him, a feat made easy by the slowed nature of his stride. As I had half-expected, Brunner’s path led me to the Black Boar. I found the bounty hunter seated, as usual, at one of the rear tables, a tankard of beer set before him. I noticed a second tankard opposite him and quietly chastised myself for being so foolish as to think that my contact had not seen me dogging his tracks.

  I took the unspoken invitation, and seated myself at his table. I sipped at my beer a moment, noting the dents and scratches on his armour, and observing once more the stiff, awkward movements of his left arm as he lifted the cup to his mouth. I inquired as to what mishap had discomfited Brunner so, not daring to suggest that he had fallen prey to injury or illness.

  The bounty hunter sipped at his beer for a moment then set his tankard down, fixing me with cold blue eyes. In a low voice that was kindred to the sound of a raven gliding toward a gallows, he asked me if I had ever hunted orcs…

  Smoke billowed from the blazing rubble, fingers of flame clutching at the darkening, overcast sky. Screams and sounds of slaughter rose into the darkness, as if to welcome the advent of night. Beside the inferno that had moments before been a barn, a massive, brutish shape loomed, glaring at the burning building.

  The dancing flames picked out details of the figure. The shape belonged to no human body. The legs were short, bandy, almost bowed. The arms were long, much longer than a man’s: more like the limbs of the fabled apes of the South Lands and rippling with such a quantity of muscle that even the strongest man could not match. The shoulders were broad, nearly four feet in breadth. The head jutted forward from the shoulders, supported by a thick stump of a neck. Its skull was thick, the forehead sloping away so quickly from the creature’s face as to be almost nonexistent. Sharp, wolf-like ears adorned the sides of the head. One of them was notched and sported dozens of steel and brass rings, blades of rusting metal dangling from each loop.

  The face of the beast was dominated by a massive maw, the lower jaw of the creature’s mouth jutting forward, allowing its tusk-like fangs to stab past its upper lips and cheeks. Each of the tusks was tipped by a cap of steel pinned into the living ivory of the fangs. The tips of the two longest fangs rested against the edge of the deep-set eye sockets that sank into the creature’s skull from either side of its small, smashed, snout-like nose. Beady red eyes glowered from the shadowed pits of the creature’s face, offsetting the dark green hue of its leathery, weathered hide.

  The monster had come from the impenetrable depths of the mountains in the south known as the Vaults, and wore the tale of his travels upon his grotesque body. Armour encased his form, armour ripped from the bodies of butchered foes. The shoulder plates that protected his upper arms had been beaten from the helmets of human knights, the chainmail hauberk that dripped about his chest and hung below his waist had once graced an ogre mercenary, the steel leggings had been cobbled together from the greaves of a dozen militiamen who had been unfortunate enough to discover the beings that had been preying upon their mountain village’s cattle.

  The piecemeal armour was held together by numerous leather straps and bits of wire, and it creaked and groaned as the orc moved. But the blade held in his ham-like fist was no looted and violated craftwork of man. The work of his own people’s brutish smiths, it was a massive, cleaver-like blade, its edge nearly three and a half feet in length, honed to a dull sharpness that would punch through bone and steel without notching the blade. A thick, round stump of steel formed a crude handle for the orc’s fist to grip at the bottom of the blade. A sideshow strongman would have been hard pressed to even lift the mass of steel. The orc lifted it above his head in one hand without even a grunt of effort from his lungs. The cleaver was like the orc who wielded it—and whose people had crafted it—massive, monstrous, ugly and murderous.

  The orc’s mouth gaped open, exposing bits of rotting meat caught between the fangs. Its voice roared over the screams, over the crackle of the flames. It was like the boom of a cannon, and carried with it the grating harshness of a knife scraping bone. The slobbering, brutal tones sounded like shredding metal. The monster was howling to his minions in the harsh Orrakh tongue.

  The orcs had fallen upon the village like one of the Grey Mountains’ capricious storms: suddenly, without warning, and utterly devastating. The villagers, peasant farmers and a few craftsmen, had fallen before the orcs like wheat before the scythe, and the greenskin marauders had reaped that harvest in a frenzy of murder and butchery. The terrified Bretonnians had mounted no form of defence. The
y had run before the orcs, fleeing for their lives rather than standing to fight. The sight of their human adversaries fleeing had driven the raiders into an even more berserk rage. They had come for loot and slaughter, it was true, but above all else, they had come for battle. Now, with the entire hamlet in flames, the last survivors cowered within the quickly burning barn.

  Gnashrak turned his attention toward the barn as the wooden door opened. A coughing man emerged, thick black smoke billowing from behind him. Several soot-stained, sobbing faces appeared in the doorway behind him, gasping for fresh air.

  Gnashrak’s beady red eyes studied the man. He was a burly sort for a human, most likely the protector of this nest of cattle. A simple leather contrivance hung about his neck and was tied to his knees. The man held a large hammer in his hands, but one look told Gnashrak that it was a tool, not a weapon. The orc’s gruesome face twisted, as though he had eaten something distasteful. He spat a blob of phlegm as if to remove a foulness from his mouth. Still, the warboss hefted his huge blade and shambled forward.

  Gnashrak growled at the leather-aproned human. The man hesitated, glancing back at the burning barn. Then he walked forward. He shifted his grip on the hammer, his knuckles turning white as he firmed his grasp. The man spread his legs apart, adopting a combat stance. It had been long years since he had raised a weapon against bandit raiders, but the blacksmith was no coward. He fought down the fear in his breast, staring at the mob of greenskinned monsters with his best defiant glare. Gnashrak and his followers laughed at the pathetic sight. The blacksmith rushed at them, hate overcoming his fear as their grunting laughter washed over him. Gnashrak’s lips twisted into a parody of a smile.

  The orc warboss loped forward, the brutal length of his cleaver held straight up beside him. Thick lines of foamy spittle trickled from the corners of the fiend’s mouth as he anticipated the coming fray. The blacksmith was the first man in the entire village to turn and fight him, and Gnashrak intended to savour the moment.

  ‘Orc scum!’ the man screamed in a voice filled more with terror than rage. He leapt forward, bringing the hammer down in a smashing blow. The orc leader stepped back, turning his body, and letting the clumsy blow strike the armour of his shoulder guard. Gnashrak glared at the man. The orc’s jaws dropped to their full cavernous extent and a deep, rumbling roar issued from its bellows-like lungs. The blacksmith cringed, holding the hammer across his chest, as though to make a barrier between himself and the greenskin marauder.

  Gnashrak lifted his massive blade and brought the weapon crashing down. The crude cleaver snapped the steel hammer like a twig, and sliced into the flesh of the man cowering behind the crude weapon, crunching through his ribcage and severing him crosswise from shoulder to waist. Blood exploded from the wound that slid apart, the dismembered halves slipping into the dirt. The faces at the doorway of the burning barn wailed in horror. Gnashrak paused to hawk a glob of phlegm on the dead body. He turned and roared at his followers.

  The orcs rushed forward, not using their weapons to kill, but to herd the survivors back into the burning barn. Gnashrak watched his mob for a moment, then craned his bull neck about, casting a last disgusted look at the mutilated blacksmith. He turned his eyes from the body, towards the orcs herding the cowering survivors back into the blazing barn, with the points of spears. The screams brought a slight smile to Gnashrak’s face, but it was not enough. As the clouds at last released the slightest of drizzles, the orc nodded to himself.

  Somewhere to the north, he would find the knights who owned the sorry cattle he and his mob had claimed. Then there would be a slaughter worthy of an orc, a proper fight to make the name of Gnashrak Headkrusher. The peasants thought the harvest was past, but the orc would teach them and their masters differently. There was a second harvest coming. A harvest reaped not with sickles, but with swords.

  Opening his massive maw once more, Gnashrak voiced his bestial howl of ambition into the falling night.

  The castle of the Marquis de Galfort loomed over the flat meadowlands. Tall towers thrust upward from every corner of the curtain wall, while still taller pillars of stone rose from the keep. From the height of the tallest tower, the marquis could look down upon his entire domain, even to the distant green apparition on the horizon that marked the easternmost limit of his realm, the edge of the faerie-haunted wood of Loren. He could see every farm, every village, every little hovel the peasants of his land called home.

  It was a sight the aged marquis never tired of: looking down upon his land, his possessions, knowing that they were his, his by decree of Bretonnia’s king and the grace of the Lady, Bretonnia’s patron deity. He would drink in the blue of the sky, the gold of the fields, the green of the meadows long into the afternoon. Then the sun would begin its downward descent and the marquis would return to his chambers within the castle and attend to such duties as were necessary to manage his domain and could not be delegated to his wife or his steward.

  But this morning, the view had been spoiled, befouled by a thick stream of black smoke rising from the south, in the direction of the distant mountains. This was where a few hamlets stood, dwellings for the rugged peasant miners who clawed salt from the slopes of the Vaults and helped de Galfort’s domain prosper. Later in the day, the wasted, worn-out form of a peasant was brought to the castle, discovered by one of de Galfort’s game wardens wandering through the forest. Yet this sorry, terrified creature was no poacher and the tale he told the marquis turned his blood to ice. Not since the time of his own grandfather had the domain of the de Galforts been set upon by orcs. When last the marauders had come, it had taken two generations to repair the damage.

  Now the aged Marquis de Galfort sat in his throne room, deep in disturbed thoughts. He had ordered messengers to be sent at once to the neighbouring counts, barons and dukes, letting them know of this peril that had come upon his domain and threatened them all. There was no question that all were at risk, for orcs respect no boundaries, and it would not matter to them if the village they plundered belonged to de Galfort or some other. No, his neighbours would react as decent Bretonnian nobles, and would send a company of knights and such armsmen as they might muster to augment de Galfort’s own forces and hunt the orcs down. But it would take time, much time, for the aid to arrive. And the orcs would be free to loot and despoil until then. Unless the marquis were to act on his own, without the support of his neighbours.

  The marquis looked up from his chair and stared down into the eager young face of his son, Etienne, and wondered if he had ever borne such inexperience and naivete in his own youth.

  The boy had pleaded with him all morning, ever since the tale of orcs and slaughter had been related, to release to him the household knights, to let him ride down these monsters and make them learn the folly of trespassing upon lands protected by the de Galfort name.

  The marquis’s observation that the peasant had no idea how many orcs were in this raiding party, that an entire army of the greenskinned monsters might have been vomited from the mountains, had done nothing to dim the boy’s enthusiasm. He was young, not yet learned in the ways of war; the only blood he had ever shed was that of wolves, wild cats and bandits. He reckoned this to be a similar task, perhaps a bit nobler, putting more faith in the favours of the Lady and good Bretonnian steel than he did in the strength of monsters he only knew from legend and travellers’ tales.

  Truth to tell, it had been a long time since any in de Galfort’s domain had laid eyes upon an orc. Even the marquis himself had only seen stuffed specimens in the castle of the Duc de Vilifere—never a living, breathing greenskin. And the marquis was an old enough hunter and soldier to know that it is folly to pursue a foe, beast or man, whom you know nothing of.

  A servant entered, bowing low before the two noblemen and hastened toward the seated marquis.

  The marquis raised a thin hand, the fur-trimmed cuff of his voluminous robe falling away, and gestured for the servant to speak.

  ‘By your leave, my
lord,’ the servant said, his voice low, his eyes downcast. ‘I felt that you would like to be informed that the outlander is making ready to depart.’

  The marquis rose from his chair, an excited light blazing in his eyes. His wrinkled skin cracked into a smile. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Why did I not think of it before?’ He fixed his gaze on the servant. ‘Hasten to the gate and inform Sir Doneval that the outlander is not to be allowed to leave.’ A sly look entered the marquis’s eyes. ‘Tell him to bring the bounty hunter to me.’

  The marquis stroked the scraggly moustache that spread from the thick grey hairs of his nostrils to the corners of his chin. It was a nervous habit, a peculiarity of temperament that afflicted him whenever he was discomfited. Normally, it only struck him at balls and masquerades and other such public functions of pomp and pageantry. But there was something decidedly unsettling about the man who stood before him, his face unreadable behind the steel mask of the black helm he had not doffed upon entering the presence of the marquis, as custom demanded. Nor had he bowed, as had the armoured bulk of Sir Doneval, who was now crouched upon one knee.

  But the marquis had expected such disregard for his station from the man. Had he not behaved so the previous day? Had he not strode to the marquis’s throne with such arrogance that he might have been the Emperor himself? Had he shown any consideration for the delicate sensibilities of the women of the court when he had presented the marquis with the grisly object that had brought him to de Galfort’s domain?

  No, it was not the contempt for nobility which the bounty hunter showed that unsettled the marquis. There was an aura about the man, something which the aged marquis, with one foot in Morr’s domain already, could see with his tired old eyes. It was as if an air of dread hung about the man like a shroud, a miasma of blood and death.