Give it up, kid. We’re in Gottlos.
Scowling at his bandaged hand, Wichtig ignored the girl. The missing fingers itched. The bandages wrapping his ruined left ear left him deaf on that side and feeling perpetually off balance. His face—his once beautiful, flawless face—felt like ground chuck.
He distracted himself by replaying the sparring session with Opferlamm. There wasn’t a real lesson. He only wanted to know how it felt, to see if he could fight like that ugly old man from his dream. He could.
Glancing over his shoulder Wichtig saw Opferlamm, brows furrowed in concentration, as she thought about gods knew—and no doubt didn’t care—what.
She reminds me of me. Just not nearly as attractive. Wichtig bared teeth at the rain. Not as attractive as I used to be.
This was all Bedeckt’s fault.
Bedeckt’s plan to steal the Geborene god-child got me killed. He rubbed at the knuckles of his missing fingers. I am scarred all because Bedeckt abandoned me in the Afterdeath. This couldn’t be Wichtig’s fault. Could it?
“What am I doing?” he whispered. He knew better than to dwell on the past, and he knew better than to question himself. Contemplation breeds melancholy. Thinking only led to trouble and depression. Bedeckt did enough of it for both of them. Wichtig turned his thoughts to his apprentice, thinking back to their brief sparring match.
She isn’t bad with a sword, he decided. Opferlamm could be a real contender.
It would be a shame if I have to kill the girl.
The horses plodded through endless muck.
Stick Morgen and stick his stupid Reflection, Nacht. I’m going to kill Bedeckt’s fat old arse.
In hindsight, Bedeckt was the source of all Wichtig’s woes. Looking back, the worse decision he ever made was to travel with the axe man. He should have stayed in Traurig. He’d be a famous poet by now, on par with that Cotardist hack, Halber Tod. Sure, Wichtig left his wife before meeting Bedeckt, but he only left Traurig when the old goat lured him away with promises of fame and fortune. Were it not for Bedeckt, Wichtig was sure he’d have patched things up with his wife and been the father he always knew he would be. Gods, I miss Fluch. There was a boy who knew how to get into trouble.
Bedeckt cost Wichtig everything: his wife, his son, his career as a poet.
Who knows, maybe I even would have returned to Geldangelegenheiten and retaken my job with the palace guard.
Looking back, he realized that was easily the highest paying, least demanding job he ever held. He’d been swimming in coin, bedding wealthy wives and daughters by the score, and drinking with his fellow guard every evening. Why his wife demanded they leave the city, he’d never know. They went from a gorgeous home of brass and marble to a two-room shack in Traurig that smelled like feet. Maybe it had something to do with being closer to her mother. He couldn’t remember.
Either way, Bedeckt ruined all of it. And now Wichtig was riding to save the old goat from the scariest, most dangerous woman he ever met. Well, maybe he was. He hadn’t actually decided. Certainly joining Stehlen in murdering Bedeckt would be easier and safer.
She must have expected me to abandon her. It would be Bedeckt who she’d really be angry with.
Blöd grunted and loosed a foul, gut-churning fart. It hung in the sodden air, following Wichtig for two dozen paces. He rode in hunched misery, the rain pounding his shoulders and stinging his face.
Opferlamm kicked her horse—Wichtig couldn’t remember what she called it—into a trot and caught up with her master.
Master, I like that. He’d have to tell the girl to call him master until the apprenticeship was complete.
She looked miserable, soaked through and shivering from the cold. Snot and rain dripped from her nose in equal measure. Opferlamm’s suffering lifted Wichtig’s spirits.
The lass shielded her eyes with a hand, scowling into the murk ahead. “Ground looks odd,” she yelled over the incessant hiss of rain.
When he spotted the first body, Wichtig wasn’t even sure what he saw. Wearing the remains of a Gottlos livery, the woman looked like something big clawed its way free from her heart. She was ripped open like a badly peeled fruit.
“It’s like someone wore her as skin,” said Opferlamm, staring at the gory remains. “And then tossed it aside.”
Still mounted, Wichtig leaned low in the saddle for a closer look. “Did she explode from the inside?”
“Look at those claw marks in the bone” said Opferlamm.
“Stay sharp,” said Wichtig, nudging Blöd forward at a walk. “Eyes open.”
They found the second corpse a dozen yards away. Also garbed in Gottlos livery, it too looked like something fought its way free of a human body.
“What’s wrong with the ground?” she asked.
The earth ahead looked like it had been tilled by an angry and deranged god, torn wide with gaping wounds. Trees lay scattered, their roots ripped from the soil.
Wichtig squinted through the rain, realizing these were not branches he saw protruding from the sundered earth, but human limbs.
“There’s too many,” he said, struggling to make the vision make sense. There were hundreds buried here, all in Gottlos livery.
“We should turn back,” said Opferlamm, horse slowing as, eyes wide and rolling, it surveyed the landscape. “Yeah, we should definitely turn back.”
“No,” said Wichtig nodding toward a shallow slope. “We’ll ride to the top of that hill, get a better view of what this is.”
“Maybe I should wait here?”
“You’ll ride at my side,” said Wichtig, not wanting to go alone, “or you’ll find a new master.”
Wichtig pointed Blöd at the hill and the beast plodded on, wuffling its complaints, footsteps sounding strangely spongy. Opferlamm followed, though none too quickly. The number of shattered and torn bodies increased as they rode. It looked like the very earth joined in the battle and attacked the Gottlos troops. Horses, too, were littered among the partially buried corpses, though none showed the terrifying wounds the people bore.
“This isn’t a hill,” said Opferlamm.
“Of course it—”
“It’s a burial mound.” She gagged, and puked semi-digested porridge down the length of her right leg. “We’re riding on thousands of corpses.”
Thousands? The girl was right, the ground was more flesh and savaged bone than soil and rock.
“How many soldiers can Dieb Schmutzig muster?” asked Wichtig.
“Maybe five thousand?” Opferlamm gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Useless twit,” muttered Wichtig as he crested the mounded dead. Turning Blöd in a complete circle, he surveyed what he could through the curtains of blinding rain. “I can’t see more than a dozen paces,” he said to Opferlamm as the young Swordswoman arrived at his side.
Lightning shredded the sky, lighting the world in strobing white and the red and brown of commingled mud and blood. For a thousand strides in every direction, corpses lay sprawled and broken, shredded from the inside out. Their armour—those few wealthy enough to have any—was burst from within. From atop the piled dead, they saw long stretches of bubbled earth. Straight lines cut the mud where stone and bone alike ran like thick blood. The dead caught in the wide strips of oblivion were unlike the others. They were twisted, melted, ravaged by chaotic delusion run amok. It was impossible to tell the remains of men from the corpses of their horses, so fused had they become.
No tree stood.
“That’s impossible,” said Opferlamm. She squinted into the sky.
Wichtig glanced up at the roiling clouds. “What is?”
“The lightning lit something from above. I saw a shadow. Huge. Above the clouds. Wings.”
“What the hells are you babbling about?”
“Dragon.”
“No such thing.”
Opferlamm looked at Wichtig like her teacher had gone mad. “What’s not sticking possible?” she screamed.
“Calm yourself.” Wichtig r
econsidered the straight lines of malignant devastation. Dragon. He swallowed.
Again lightning ravaged the sky and this time he saw it, the shadow of something huge, wings spread, gliding above the clouds.
It would have to be…the wings…straight lines…death in the sky…
An animal scream of purest agony and terror broke his thoughts, scattered them, sent sanity sprinting to hide in a ditch.
“What’s—”
Something fell kicking and twisting through the clouds and Wichtig, neck craning, watched.
“It’s a horse,” said Opferlamm, also following its descent. “How did it—”
Is it going to land on—
It crashed to the earth three strides away with bone jarring force and showered them in mire and horse guts.
Sitting atop Blöd on this mound of corpses, Wichtig suddenly felt very exposed. There, a few hundred yards to the south, he saw a farmhouse. Where total devastation reigned, it still stood.
“We have to get to that farmhouse.”
Without waiting to see if Opferlamm followed, Wichtig drove Blöd forward with a scream, kicking the beast ever faster as it raced down the awkward slope of ravaged dead. Blöd stumbled at the bottom of the hill. The beast was just recovering when its front legs found some hidden pit and it pitched forward, bones snapping, head smashing into the sodden soil. Wichtig jumped, rolling free, and continued toward the house at a mad sprint. Not once did he look back at his horse. Even over the bone shaking roar of thunder, Blöd’s screams were deafening. Wichtig left them behind. I’ll find another damned horse. This time he wouldn’t name the damned thing.
Lighting flashed, setting the world afire, and a monstrous winged shadow swept over Wichtig.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
There is a rare and peculiar breed of Wendigast who believe they gain strength and wisdom from those they devour. While they are more common among the northern Verschlinger tribes than the city-states, it is the Wendigast of the Basamortuan Desert that are most interesting. There, in the endless dunes, the practice of devouring human flesh is reviled far beyond what the mores of the desert tribes would suggest. Anyone even suspected of cannibalism is slain. This practice is most extreme among the Etsaiaren tribe. For thousands of years, the Etsaiaren have gathered the corpses of cannibals—and Cotardists, though I fail to see the connection—in Santu Itsasoa (translated as The Sea of Souls). The dead and undying are lashed to cactuses by their innards and tendons, always facing toward Geldangelegenheiten.
As the Etsaiaren are murderous savages, I have never been able to learn why they should so revile cannibals.
—Geschichts Verdreher - Historian/Philosopher
Thirst clogged Bedeckt’s throat, left him gagging road dust with every breath. The world swung like a thurible in the hands of a mad priest; a thurible crammed tight with rotting meat. Ghosts crowded the streets of whatever city he was in. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked familiar. Neidrig? No. Some of the buildings looked to be made of stone and weren’t in the process of slumping to the earth. He didn’t remember anything like that in Neidrig.
Stehlen, a rotting corpse, reeking of bile and spilled stomach acid, rode at his side, sneering hate at anything and everything. Her flesh had collapsed in, leaving her already bony frame little more than parchment flesh stretched tight over jutting joints. He saw her rotting teeth, stained yellow and brown, through thin membranes of tattered cheeks.
Wichtig was worse. He’d lost fingers and an ear. His flawless face, always ruggedly handsome, always ready with a cocky grin, was scarred deep with fresh wounds. He looked like he’d been sewn up by the world’s worst seamstress. He’d been savaged, torn and riven.
Missing two fingers from his left hand. Missing his left ear. A face of scarred ruin.
Gods, he looks like me.
Like Bedeckt perhaps forty years ago.
“You shite-sucking goat sticker,” said Stehlen. “You left us behind. You abandoned us.”
“You aren’t here,” said Bedeckt. “I’m not seeing this. Just hallucinations.”
“I’m going to kill you,” said Stehlen.
“I’m already dying.”
“I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World,” said Wichtig. For the first time ever, Bedeckt believed him. And yet the Swordsman sounded empty.
Bedeckt lay in the mud. In a panic, he struggled to look about, trying to find Kot. Where was the monster? The cudgel…Bedeckt waited for his brain to explode, showering the trees with worms of thought. Stehlen sat on one side, Wichtig the other.
The Kleptic spat into the fire, her saliva hissing and popping and stinking like rotting teeth. She no longer looked dead.
Fire?
“She’s hideous,” said Zukunft, sitting alone on the far side of the fire, huddled in a blanket. She stared wide-eyed at Bedeckt and his friends. Her mirror lay propped against her leg, facing Bedeckt. Within its surface he saw only fire.
“I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World,” said Wichtig, poking at the fire with a stick.
Bedeckt stared at Zukunft, the heat of the fire making her hazy and indistinct. She looks less real than Wichtig and Stehlen. “Where?” he asked.
“We found a town a few hours ago. You started screaming at everyone. We had to get out fast.”
“She’s lying,” said Stehlen. “She could have found you a healer in the city, at least someone to cut the rot away and cauterize the wound.” Stehlen spat at Zukunft and the girl flinched. “She wants you to die,” said the Kleptic.
“That’s not true,” said Zukunft, voice small as she huddled deeper into her blanket.
Unbrauchbar? Bedeckt had a dim memory of people and buildings. Something wasn’t right. “You can see them?” he asked, nodding at Stehlen and Wichtig.
Zukunft nodded.
“They’re really here?”
Zukunft shook her head. “No.”
“But—”
“You’re hallucinating,” she said. “Your delusions are manifesting.”
“That’s not possible,” whispered Bedeckt. “I’m sane.”
“That’s not possible,” mocked Stehlen in a whiny voice. “I’m sane.”
Bedeckt’s father rose from the fire, a giant of a man with a leather belt wrapped around one mighty fist, the heavy buckle hanging in dull promise. He lashed at Bedeckt over and over, opening fresh wounds, splitting skin and exposing the bone beneath. Bedeckt cowered, mewling like a little boy, hiding from his father’s wrath. His mother stood in the background, screaming and helpless. Turning his attention on Bedeckt’s mother, his father lashed out with the belt, opening her face. She collapsed and he stood over her, the belt rising and falling, splashing the room with blood.
Bedeckt, Stehlen, Wichtig, and Zukunft watched as a second Bedeckt, young and strong, marred only by those scars his father gave him, rose from the fire to strike down the giant. They watched as he held his mother, promised the beast would never hurt her again. They watched him drag his father into the yard behind their hut and bury him there among the vegetables. When his mother died from her wounds, they watched him walk away, never to return.
“Always running away,” said Stehlen. “Right from the beginning.”
Bedeckt stared into the fire. “You’re not real.”
They watched him join war after war, sometimes on the winning side and joining in the spoils and plunder, sometimes on the losing and fleeing for his life. They saw him at the battle of Sinnlos, where the Seiger Geisteskranken cracked and brought down the city walls. He lost his fingers there, the wedding ring spinning away to be trampled into the mud. Once again they watched as Bedeckt fled. He abandoned his friends, the men he fought alongside, spent evenings drinking and whoring with.
“I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World,” said Wichtig, staring at the gap left by his own missing fingers.
“You’re not here,” said Bedeckt. He looked through the fire at Zukunft. “You either. I’m dreaming.”
“You’re
not,” said Zukunft. “I’m here.”
“No.”
“Always running,” repeated Stehlen.
“Not running from you.”
“Who are you lying to?” demanded the Kleptic. “Her?” She glared venom at Zukunft. “Or yourself.”
“I’m going to stop Morgen.”
“If you were really going to stop the little shite you’d have done it while you were still dead and had a hold on him. The Warrior’s Credo bound him to you. You ran away.”
Why didn’t he stop Morgen in the Afterdeath? He couldn’t remember. The list? Bedeckt struggled to explain. “I’m going to undo the damage I did.”
Stehlen snorted, a damp nasal honk. “He’ll fight and kill for the tiniest gain,” she said, “but he’s a coward.”
“Better a living coward than a dead hero,” snapped Bedeckt, struggling for composure.
“Then why didn’t you abandon my sister?” asked Vergangene from the mirror.
“Leave him alone,” said Zukunft, eyes pleading.
“None of this is real,” said Bedeckt. “These are fever dreams. I’m dying and the fever is breaking my mind. I’m still sane.”
“I’m still sane,” whined Stehlen. “Sane people die all manner of terrible deaths and not once do they manifest delusions.”
“I’m sane.”
“Tell her why you didn’t abandon her,” demanded Stehlen, nodding at Zukunft. “You love her, don’t you? Dirty old pig. You want to rut that perfect pale flesh, despoil it with your filth.”
Bedeckt remembered every glimpse he caught of thigh, every curve of breast. He remembered the way her shirt and skirt clung to her when wet. He hallucinated those moments over and over for all to watch.
“I never…” He couldn’t finish the thought. What, he never wanted to rut her? He thought about it all the time. She was young, beautiful. But that wasn’t it. He never acted on it, not once taken the thought seriously. He’d never touch her, never corrupt her. “I wouldn’t.”
Zukunft hid in her blanket, eyes wide as she witnessed his hallucinations, seeing herself as he saw her.
“That’s not me. I’m not pure like that.”
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