The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (52 page)

After a long silence, Hegel and Manfried exchanged a glance and began to chuckle. Raphael and Rodrigo soon joined in, and
all four laughed until their ribs ached. Al-Gassur and Martyn looked on amazed until Manfried recovered enough to ask another
question.

“And you got nuthin else to confess? No other lies need tellin? Last chance!” Manfried’s smile was too broad, too honest.

“What, er, no?” Al-Gassur had not expected them to be amused, but then they fulfilled his expectations by leaping upon him,
Hegel holding his arms and Manfried seizing him around the thighs.

“We’ll make you honest yet, Arab!” Manfried began tearing Al-Gassur’s breeches. “What’s under here, then, a stump? I seen
you runnin in Venetia, Arab, seen you runnin with both legs!”

Al-Gassur struggled but they held him fast. Blocking the man’s view of his own exposed lower half Manfried revealed the bound
leg and tore the rags keeping it lashed against thigh and ass. Then Manfried drew his dagger and pressed the dull side against
Al-Gassur’s knee.

“Gonna cut it off, Arab, so’s you ain’t a liar no more!” Manfried dragged the metal across his skin, making the beggar scream
and wail. Then the Grossbarts let him go, and he scurried away into the dark while they laughed and laughed. They had not
had such sport since they first came to Gyptland.

Heartbroken that his confession had not bothered the wicked twins in the slightest, Al-Gassur took succor in that he no longer
needed to bind his leg. In the dark between the fires he stealthily extracted his hidden treasure from his smaller bag, as
well as the spool of thin, flexible cable he had found in Alexandria. He noosed one end of the line around the swaddled bottle
and the other around his thigh, then stuffed the bottle back into his satchel and shoved the bag up the front of his short
tunic to serve as a false potbelly. Only a searching eye would notice the cable leading from the top of his breeches to the
bottom of his shirt; having robbed him of even the satisfaction of his deception, Al-Gassur had little doubt the Grossbarts
would soon turn to his physical possessions, but if they wanted his brother’s heart they would have to cut it out of him.

“I have a confession as well,” Rodrigo said after the cackling at Al-Gassur had calmed. “When I came above deck on the ship
it wasn’t to save your lives, it was to watch you hang. I wanted to witness your suffering, for I blamed you then as I do
now for Ennio’s death.”

“What brought illumination to your ignorant fuckin ass?” Manfried said.

“One fool shot a bow at me and then the other tried to stab me. Has a way of making a man come round.” Rodrigo, like Al-Gassur,
waited for a kick that never came.

“Killin them bitchswine only penance you needed, boy, so I pronounce you clean,” judged Hegel.

“Heretics!” Martyn pointed at them. “By Mary’s Virginal Belly, you are heretics!”

“Stow that noise,” Hegel said, “or I’ll demote you to bishop.”

“Blasphemer!” Martyn snapped. “Only the Lord may judge me!”

“Heth a thaint!” Raphael wagged his stump from Hegel to Martyn. “Know your own pwace, Pwiest!”

“Just cause you ride with us don’t mean we won’t execute your ass,” Hegel reminded Martyn. “You been slippin of late, but
despite all a your recent blasphemin I got faith you hates demons and witches and such, so you’s probably goin upways if I
put you down like a blood-simple hound. If not that’s your own mecky fault. What was it you said bout us bein tools and Her
Will bein done?”

All eyes were on Cardinal Martyn, who stood on shaky legs surveying the four men he had shared so many days with. Everything
seemed so utterly wrong that he turned away without a word and stalked off, the jeers of the Grossbarts following him into
the night. Instead of making for the other fire he wandered out into the open desert, a cool wind rinsing his mind free of
the Grossbartian dust that had coated it for so long even as his good hand stripped him of the murder-bought cardinal’s vestments.
Scaling a dune he followed the ridge until the rosy full moon again slid under the clouds. Completely naked, drunk, and crazed
through the clarity of just what he had been up to over the last year of his life, Martyn looked back at the twin campfires
and wept.

Closing his eyes, Martyn remembered the past for what it was and not what he had made it. His thoughts turned away from the
lies he had almost believed, all the way back to Elise bidding him farewell before entering the convent where she would live
out her days without him. The Bird Doctor had come for them in the garden but while Martyn fell to his knees in terror she
had seized up his staff and beaten the avian-masked demoniac into the fire. When the unclean spirit abandoned its vessel and
came for them she stood strong, her fiery staff between them and possession. Then it had entered the unfortunate rider and
fled, and the two of them had wandered south. Even after Elise had disappeared behind the nunnery’s gate Martyn could not
believe her decision, and a year passed before he picked up his cowl and staff and went in search of vengeance.

The broken man did not hear the sand shifting as the behemoth rushed up the dune behind him, instead the soft, warm cadence
of Elise’s voice bringing tears to his cracked cheeks. Martyn did not feel the warm breath emanating from Magnus’s dozens
of mouths behind him, tightening his hand on her shoulder as she told him they must part and seek solace in God instead of
each other. The massive rat’s head Magnus had in place of a left hand accommodated all of Martyn’s lame arm and part of his
chest into its mouth before snapping shut. His body was acting curiously and his chest boiled, but in the cloister of his
mind Martyn finally forgave her for abandoning him, although even as he died he could not forgive himself. Perhaps God would,
he thought, and then thought no more.

“Martyn.” The thing inside Heinrich spoke with the farmer’s mouth as he rode up astride Brennen. “A monk, one of the only
to escape me in years past. How might one doubt the existence of Fate, with such proof as our happy reunion down all these
days?”

Heinrich had nothing to offer but a dull push to keep moving, to find the Grossbarts before he fell into the eternal sleep.
His tenant merely directed the eyes they shared toward the two campfires blazing at the base of the dune, and tears of happiness
dribbled down into Brennen’s mouths. The husks of Vittorio and Paolo appeared in the moonlight, and, inevitable as death itself,
all five rushed down the hillside and fell upon the Grossbarts.

“Martyn’s hereby relieved of his duties,” said Hegel with a nod into the darkness where the cardinal had disappeared. “I reckon
that makes you high priest or prelate, brother.”

“An honor I’s happy to receive.” Manfried gurgled as he drank heartily.

“Rigo and Raph, you two’s bishops, Hell, you’s a bishop, too, Arab.” Hegel nodded at his own wisdom and the returned Al-Gassur.

“Why not a cardinal, O font of the ages?” asked Al-Gassur.

“That title’s been corrupted, as has pope.” Hegel hiccupped. “Fact is, ain’t been a legitimate pope since Formosits.”

“Shame he had to go heretical on us,” said Manfried. “Martyn weren’t a bad sort fore his office went to his head. Sayin that
rot bout you not beein saintly.”

“I did die a horrible death,” Hegel agreed. “That She saw fit to raise me up only proves Her commitment to spite that celestial
rapist and his so-called martyrs. Any real saint ain’t gonna stand quiet for no martyrin, believe you me. Urgh!”

Hegel finished his proclamation by spraying vomit into the fire, bringing on a cheer from his brother. Never before had Hegel
felt the Witches’ Sight come upon him with such speed and violence, and he battled his rebellious body to warn Manfried. Finally
swallowing back the puke, he gasped, wild eyes roving over the skies and sand.

“We’s in a trap! Arabs!”

The freed slaves rushed an masse to the Grossbarts’ fire, experience having taught them to hasten when Hegel craved their
audience.

“How’s that?” said Manfried, hopping into a squat and eyeing the horde of foreign allies suddenly crowding the edge of the
fire.

“What kwan ower ownswelves dew?” Raphael panted.

“Suffer!” a voice crowed from darkness. “That’s all I’ve left you, Grossbarts!”

“Who the fuck—” Hegel began.

“Who else but your nemesis?!” Heinrich shambled into the firelight, flanked by Paolo and Vittorio. The young Italians’ tongues
were too swollen for them to speak, but they grinned and drooled on their papal robes at seeing their quarry. In one misshapen
hand Heinrich lazily dragged the scourge up his bulging stomach and chest, his sullied robe and rotting flesh peeling off
like a roast turnip skin.

The stench overpowered them, even the Grossbarts gagging on the suddenly wet air. The slaves wailed at the uncomprehending
Saint Hegel to banish the demons, some fleeing and others praying. Raphael and Rodrigo vomited at the stink of pus and carrion,
and Al-Gassur burst a blood vessel in his eye staring at the festering men. The only pale areas on their blackened skin were
the weeping pustules that glistened like the moon.

“Heinrich?” Hegel could not feel his legs, dizzy from the reek.

Manfried squinted. “Who?”

“Yes!” Heinrich hooted. “It is we!”

“Who?!” Manfried repeated, refusing to believe it. “Nah it ain’t!”

“Mecky dirt-fuckin farmer!” Hegel stepped toward him, hefting his pick. “What you done to yourself?!”

“We’ve joined!” Heinrich cackled. “The one you thwarted in the mountains as you did me!”

“Witchery!” Manfried shouted.

“Yes!” agreed Heinrich. “She is with us as well! You killed her husband as you did my wife, and now her children will end
you as you ended mine!”

“Moonfruit let that demon in’em!” Hegel exclaimed, recognizing Heinrich’s rotten appearance for what it denoted. “The one
what slayed Ennio and them monks and the rest a that town!”

“Eh?” Rodrigo wiped the slick vomit from his lip and drew his sword. “He’s the one?”

“That’s it, ain’t it?!” Hegel demanded. “Confess now fore we smite you twice!”

“Yes!” Heinrich bellowed. “Now see what came from the witch’s loins, Grossbarts, see what you have brought out of Hell upon
you! Brennen! Magnus!”

“You’s
still
a fool!” Manfried said. “Who’s that skulkin behind you in them robes, eh? Couple a crumbs from that town we torched outside
Venetia, or is there true popery at work?!”

Hegel felt his guts try to flee north and south simultaneously, he alone comprehending the nuances of the situation. How might
a harvest spring forth but with a planted seed? Before he could recover, half a dozen slaves on the edge of the firelight
disappeared, yanked backward into the darkness without a scream among them—but their fellows who had seen what had taken them
supplied shrieks to go around. All assembled felt hot wind stir their hair, a wind that pushed and pulled like a rapid tide,
a wind born of dozens of massive mouths breathing in unison.

“Draw circles bout yourselves!” Manfried shouted before seeing the towering abominations.

“Use fire on’em!” Hegel shouted, spinning into a crouch and leaping at the shape blocking out the moon beside him.

Sheer idiotic rage allowed the Grossbarts to act, everyone else catatonic. Heinrich and his disciples chanted from across
the campfire, the enormous twins among the company and devouring two slaves apiece with the maws on their legs. Magnus thrust
his left arm at Hegel, the snarling rat-hand snapping its jaws over his head.

Hegel’s pick went into Magnus’s groin with a dull thunk and he jumped back, blood jetting into his face. Then the monstrosity’s
leg kicked out, the mouth on the sole of its hairy paw just the right size to bite off Hegel’s head. Galvanized by the Grossbarts’
heroic charge, the remaining men took action: a Syrian pederast jumped under Magnus’s extending leg and deflected the foot
before it could decapitate the saint. The mouth snapped over Hegel’s head and the unbalanced beast stumbled back. Before the
child-rapist could move, jaws behind Magnus’s knee opened and bit off his face, chewing the man’s triumphant smile as he fell
dying to the sand.

Brennen swiped a hand at Manfried, the Grossbart parrying three of the sword-sized claws with the haft of his mace. The pinky
talon, however, went under Manfried’s weapon, through a gap in his plate, and the claw sunk through his mail shirt as though
it were knit of yarn instead of iron. The force of the blow sent him rolling ass over head across the sand, his mace flying
into the sky. Before the creature pounced a figure flitted in front of its sole eye, scrambling away into the darkness. Bellowing
with every mouth, Brennen forgot Manfried and pursued the fleeing coward.

Looking back, Al-Gassur could not even piss himself before a huge hand closed around his left leg, the teeth thereon holding
it tight. Brennen lifted his victim to drop the morsel into the central mouth on his cyclopean face but then the satchel housing
Barousse’s relic slipped through Al-Gassur’s torn breeches and dangled beside him. The mock-Arab noticed this and invoked
the name of the captain, slapping the bag into one of the mouths. The lips encircling his leg parted in surprise, and Al-Gassur
fell to the sand.