Page 3 of The Piper's Pursuit

When he had played about an hour, the innkeeper’s wife brought him a tankard of ale, a bowl of mutton stew, and a slab of bread. He sat to eat, and the innkeeper joined him.

“You’re not from nearby, are you?”

“I’m from Hagenheim originally, but I haven’t been there in over a year.”

“You may not have heard, then.” The innkeeper leaned forward, fixing his eyes on Steffan’s.

“Heard?”

“Of the plague of rats that has been tormenting the town of Hamlin.”

Hamlin was a town under his father’s authority, in the region of Hagenheim.

“I have heard tales of this plague of rats. I thought they might have only been the fanciful stories people invent to distract children.”

“Indeed, they are not just fanciful stories. The plague of rats is real. I have seen it with my own eyes.” The grizzled innkeeper lowered his voice. “But there is something else plaguing Hamlin, something more terrible than rats.”

“What do you mean?” Steffan shoveled another bite of stew into his mouth. Truly, the innkeeper was not exaggerating overmuch when he’d said it was the best in the Holy Roman Empire.

“People are being taken, gone—more than sixty people, last I heard.”

Steffan rested his wooden spoon on the side of his bowl and stared back at the man. Was he daft? An outrageous liar? Surely sixty people could not have simply gone missing from Hamlin.

“What do you think is happening to them?”

“They say a beast is dragging them off and eating them.”

“A beast? What sort of beast?”

“No one knows exactly. Some think it could be a wolf, or a large dog gone wild.”

“It would take a very large and vicious dog to kill a man, and wolves rarely kill people, especially in town. Is there proof?”

“Would the bodies of several half-eaten villagers be proof enough for you? A woman was found with her arm torn off, the rest of her body partially eaten, and her throat... The poor woman’s head was nearly separated from her body.”

Steffan winced at the gruesome images his mind conjured up, familiar images of his time fighting in Poland. He had to blink hard to rid them from his thoughts and remember where he was.

“Has anyone actually seen the beast or been attacked and lived to tell of it?”

“Ja, there have been two or three. One man was attacked on his way through his field outside Hamlin town. He said it looked like a giant wolf. The beast bit him on the ankle, but the man beat it with his walking stick until the animal let go. But the wound took on a putridness and the man died a few weeks later.”

If only the poor man had had some of the healing salve Steffan’s sister-in-law had given him.

“I have been traveling for a while and have not heard about this. All I’ve heard about are the rats.”

“The mayor of Hamlin is my sister’s brother-in-law’s cousin,” the innkeeper went on, his gaze shifting to the door as two men walked in and seated themselves, “and he does not want the news to be spread abroad.”

“Why is that? Does he not want the creature captured or killed?” Steffan resumed his eating, taking a bite of stew then of bread.

“The mayor’s lord is the Duke of Hagenheim, and the mayor is afraid of being held accountable for allowing the beast to kill so many people. He’s offering a reward to anyone who will either kill or capture it, but no one has been able to find it. Or they are too afraid to go looking.”

“A reward, you say?” Steffan leaned in, remembering the one silver guilder in the pouch on his belt—all the money he had.

“The mayor says he’ll give one thousand silver guilders and his daughter’s hand in marriage to the man who can kill the beast that’s wreaking havoc and frightening the townspeople.”

When the innkeeper said the words “a thousand silver guilders,” Steffan’s heart jumped into his throat. The money was a very enticing reward, though he was hardly anxious to marry a mayor’s daughter he’d never seen before. Hamlin suddenly seemed a very interesting place.

“Has this creature come into town?”