The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  XI. A Humourous Adventure

  The Brothers heaved into each other and the prybar did its job. The slab of a door scraped and groaned, the hinges resisting. Another thrust and they had it, dust indistinguishable from the swirling snow. Manfried tried to light the pig-fat candle stolen from Heinrich’s house while Hegel opened the door fully. Then Ennio appeared from behind a mound, gasping and gibbering.

  “What’re you-” Manfried stopped in mid-sentence.

  Hegel’s testicles retracted into his body and he swooned, the fear he had smothered returning with terrible vigor. He slowly turned to see the source of his foreboding. Ennio pawed at his legs and skittered past him into the tomb. A naked man astride an enormous hog rode slowly toward them through the churchyard, his teeth sparkling.

  The stink rode with him, stirring the stomachs of all present. Manfried scowled at the intruder and loosed his mace from its ring on his belt. Hegel wobbled his head and his prybar, ready to follow his brother. Man and pig stopped between the frosty heaps, four black eyes gleaming in the night. They stared at the Grossbarts and the Grossbarts stared back. Ennio whimpered from the crypt’s interior.

  “Greetings!” called the man.

  “Yeah,” Manfried said. “What you want?”

  “I want,” the man said slowly, “to know just who you are and what you intend by sneaking in here in the middle of the night and opening that crypt.”

  “We’s Grossbarts,” said Manfried. “What you think we want? And what you doin on that pig?”

  “Why ain’t he wearin nuthin?” Hegel asked Manfried.

  “You want to steal from the dead, I presume,” said the man. “I’m riding this beast as it suits me, and it always behooves a prudent fellow to hold something in the lurch. Finally, I am nude as it is a tranquil night and the cool air helps my skin.”

  “Full moon,” Hegel hissed, and Manfried nodded.

  “Yeah, well, seein’s how you know the situation, you oughta know we’d prefer some privacy right now. And you’s gonna catch a cool death you keep out here without no shirt.” Manfried knew how to deal with moonfruits.

  “No hurries, no worries.” The pig sat down and the man stumbled off its back. He swayed in the snow, a constant cloud of steam rising from him as though he smoldered.

  “You are from the monastery?” Ennio asked, having come back to his senses. He stood in the doorway, keeping the Grossbarts between him and the man. Hegel slowly bent and retrieved his loaded crossbow from the step behind his brother.

  “Recently, yes.” The man tottered but kept his feet, slowly approaching them.

  “And you know where the villagers are?” Ennio pressed.

  “Certainly. They’re inside.” The pig rider suddenly succumbed to a coughing fit.

  “And?” Ennio had a hand on Hegel’s shoulder but Hegel threw an elbow, reminding him not to come too close.

  “And?” The man regained himself.

  “Look you barmy bastard, he’s askin where everyone went and why, so either tell’em and piss off or just piss off.” Manfried was known for many things but not for patience.

  “I came out of the mountains,” the man said, as if that settled it.

  “Amazin,” said Manfried. “That a fact? Wonder a wonders.”

  “He was already with me, or I was with him, no matter. We came together, then.” The three men peered at the animal while the lunatic continued. “We arrived, and they did welcome us, despite it all, and we were admitted. And when they had all joined us, converting if you will, then we summoned the rest. A certain pattern of bell-tollings brought them running, with their babes and dogs and wives and that was the end.” As he talked he staggered slowly toward them.

  “That’s close as you’re gettin, less you wanna see what’s under the snow round here.” Manfried had traded mace for crossbow.

  For the first time the man’s smile faltered. “Please, simply a blanket will save me. Will you let a weary traveler freeze? A scrap of cloth, I beg.”

  “Hey now,” said Hegel, “we’s bein charitable enough, lettin you get back on that beast and ride out the way you rode in. Monastery’s close, warm your bones there.”

  “What you mean,” Ennio called, voice raising, “that was end? Something is wrong, Grossbarts! Where are monks and villagers? What they convert to? What was ended?”

  “I mean,” the man said, all good humour gone, “that was their end. They rest inside, where you will too.”

  “He’s a witch!” Ennio screamed.

  The man made to lunge but the Grossbarts hefted their bows demonstratively and he paused, poised to pounce.

  “You a monk?” Hegel asked.

  “No,” the man replied.

  “Settles that, then.” Manfried shrugged, and they both shot.

  One bolt struck the man’s swollen stomach and the other his neck. He silently pitched backward, blood geysering toward their feet. He convulsed in the snow, the pig trotting over and snuffling at his wounds.

  The Brothers and Ennio cautiously approached the twitching body, each holding a weapon. Hegel felt worse than before, his bowels pinched. The man mumbled deliriously, pawing the pig’s snout. Ennio knelt beside him, but not too close.

  “What’s he sayin?” Manfried asked, recognizing the ranting as the same tongue Ennio addressed the guards with.

  “He begs not to abandon him,” Ennio said. “They’ve traveled far, and he has been obedient to his mas-” Ennio rolled away with a squeal. “The pig, the pig!”

  “What’re you on bout?” Manfried demanded.

  “Porco is his master, the pig is Devil!” Ennio kicked away in the snow, desperate to avoid the hog.

  “Hmmm.” Manfried had heard the Devil would take the form of a cat, but never a swine. Then again, he must come from the same place as Ennio, so maybe the Devil worked different down in the Romish kingdoms. Worst case they would have bacon, Manfried reasoned, and attacked the beast. It saw him coming and bolted.

  Ennio got to his feet and joined the chase, Manfried and he pursuing the pig through the snow-draped cemetery. Hegel, however, could not lift his eyes from the dying man. With the man so close, he could clearly make out his features. He stank horribly, his face covered in sores and stains. A dark suspicion took hold of Hegel, and he squatted to get a better look.

  The Grossbarts’ uncle had taught them to look first under the arms and behind the groinpurse. Of course king and slave alike should be burned, but in practice many who should have met the flame instead sneaked into their ancestral grounds through well-meaning descendants. These tombs should be avoided lest one doom themself before even inspecting other nearby graves for less dangerous bounties.

  The bright moon revealed a purplish tint to the swollen lumps under the dead man’s arms, great swollen lumps far bigger than Hegel thought possible. He recoiled, the stink of the man turned sinister. He saw his brother and Ennio chasing the pig back his way.

  “Manfried!” Hegel bellowed, backing away from the corpse, “it’s the pest!”

  “Eh?” Manfried stumbled, the pig avoiding his mace again.

  “Leave it!” Hegel’s voice boomed out over the valley. “Plague! It’s got the plague!”

  Manfried stopped dead, then went rolling when Ennio crashed into his back. Getting up and delivering several kicks to Ennio, Manfried wiped the snow off and returned to his brother by the door of the crypt. The pig lay down in the snow beside the dead man, watching Manfried warily.

  “Plague?” Manfried wiped sweat from his face, eyes darting to the body.

  Hegel nodded solemnly. “Buboes big as my fists.”

  “Explains him talkin nonsense.”

  “Does it?”

  “Yeah, makes you all touched in the head.”

  “Where’d you hear-”

  “He moves!” Ennio yelped, propped against a stone cross.

  “Eh?” The Grossbarts looked, and indeed, the man arched his back and thrashed. His left shoulder swelled and turned black, and h
e foamed at the mouth. Gore leaked around the quarrels embedded in him, then began spurting out further than should be possible.

  “That look right to you?” Hegel demanded but Manfried just gaped.

  The curious pig snuffled closer, then screeched and ran off through the churchyard. The man’s armpit ballooned outward and he sprayed vomit all over himself. The stench of putrescence grew stronger, the man voiding himself from every orifice. Then he rolled on his side with his left arm twisted behind his head and the pulsing bubo burst, an oozing discharge hissing in the snow.

  “Nah, ain’t look right to me,” Manfried admitted.

  The flow of fluids from the armpit quickened and thickened, and then the pus, blood, and biles poured upward into the frosty air, swirling into a hovering humoural maelstrom above the corpse. The growing mass of liquid let off a meaty, musky, hot-rot stench that curled the nose hairs of all present, and before any could move something coalesced within the impossible floating whirlpool. The veil of humours parted even as clouds took the moon but the night illuminated what it should have hidden, as though darkness had become black sunshine. The three men stared, each one slipping down into a bottomless pit of his own mind.

  A body the size and shape of a barrel jutted up into the air behind the thing’s skull-sized head, plates of shell bristling with long hairs. Six willowy, multi-segmented limbs protruded from its thorax, the two pairs in the rear arcing back and up before angling down to make heart-shaped imprints on the corpse with its oddly dainty cloven hooves. The front appendages functioned more as arms than as legs despite their similar four-part build and length, the pair stroking the clump of dagger-length antennae jutting out in place of a nose. They saw its hard, shiny face possessed the bulging eyes of a man, the horns and floppy ears of a goat, and small spines running in combs along its cheeks to join the protruding cluster of feelers. It hopped clumsily into the snow beside the corpse of its former host, its cylindrical, bulbous abdomen held aloft behind it to reveal a decidedly human erection of prodigious size, the organ straining up between the plates like a knight’s lance or a scorpion’s stinger.

  Manfried prayed under his breath, Hegel turned to run, and Ennio retched. Wreathed in a thin yellow mist, it dribbled a viscous film as it turned its head to each of them in turn. Its antennae trembled and, proving that events can always worsen, it addressed them:

  “Grossbarts, eh?”

  Hegel slapped Manfried dead in the mouth, bringing him back to something resembling mental coherence. Manfried slung his arm around Hegel’s, the woozy Brothers supporting one another. Ennio wiped his mouth and fled with a shriek, and this seemed to decide the matter for the monster. It pounced after Ennio, its spindly legs somehow propelling its bloated form high into the air after the screaming wagon driver. The Grossbarts ran as one but immediately stopped when they saw Ennio and his pursuer were headed for the exit.

  “What in fuck?” Manfried panted.

  “Uhhh.” Hegel felt vomit creep up his throat but forced it down.

  “This way,” said Manfried, dashing in the opposite direction from Ennio.

  The churchyard that had struck them as massive now appeared small indeed. The church grounds sat on a shelf, the door in the wall that Ennio ran toward the only exit. The cliffs rising on one side and dropping on the other met at the end of the triangular plot, affording few hiding places. They could find no purchase to climb up to a higher road or possibly scramble over the abbey walls without disclosing their presence, and, of all the ill luck, the clouds thickened overhead, darkening the cemetery. Ennio’s screams drew closer, and they desperately went to the ledge. They saw a snowdrift shining below but could not gauge the drop.

  “Rope,” Manfried instructed.

  “In the bags,” Hegel groaned.

  “So?” Then Manfried realized they had both left their bags on the steps of the tomb. “Go on back and get’em.”

  “Nope.” Hegel vigorously shook his head. “Let’s try cuttin round while it’s after Ennio.”

  “Sound.”

  They were near the end of the churchyard where the cliffs on either side merged into one sheer curtain of stone. Staying close to the mounds they fled back toward the monastery wall. As they neared the back of the crypt, the hog-having burrowed into a snowdrift-appeared underfoot. It squealed and Manfried shouted.

  The light-headed Ennio heard someone nearby but dared not look, the blinding cloud of stink alerting him that his hunter drew closer as well. He angled toward where he hoped the Grossbarts hid. Few men have experienced the terror that drove Ennio forward, few men save the Grossbarts.

  Hegel saw Ennio and turned around, running to the ledge. Manfried, still stunned from stepping on the pig, dallied a moment more and so caught a glimpse of the fell thing leaping from atop a tombstone. Its legs shuddered and its heavy abdomen swayed as it landed beside Ennio, the man narrowly avoiding its groping arms.

  Hegel lowered himself over the edge, the rock cutting into his chest, his fingers clawing the slick stone for purchase. His boot-tips found a crack, and then another cloud darkened the night, and he blindly scrambled down the cliff. The cloud passed moments before Manfried would have run off the edge.

  Throwing himself backward, Manfried slid legs-first over the side. Fortunately Hegel had cleared a few handholds of snow, and Manfried grabbed these as he went over, banging himself against the cliff. Unfortunately for Hegel, his brother’s flailing legs kicked his fingers, but Hegel managed to snatch the straps of Manfried’s hose before falling. The added weight almost pulled them both down, only Manfried’s red fingers keeping them suspended on the cliff face.

  No sooner had Hegel rediscovered his handholds and released his brother than Manfried caught sight of the exhausted Ennio lurching toward him. Arms shaking uncontrollably, Manfried scrambled down, pausing only whenever his feet found Hegel instead of the next foothold.

  Ennio saw Manfried disappear over the ledge and used his last strength to charge ahead, the thing clumsily bounding behind him. Screaming a final prayer Ennio hurled himself off the cliff, spinning in midair to see if it pursued. It did not, craning over the edge and staring after him. Then his vision blurred as he plummeted, and everything shone white and black.

  The Grossbarts heard Ennio tumble past them, babbling as he dropped. He suddenly went silent, and the Brothers did not breathe. The shadow of the cliff obscured the bottom, but judging by the moans that began rising up it could not be too far down. They would have kept climbing but Manfried glanced up and saw the thing just above him, and from his vantage point he clearly made out the circular, winking, hemmorhoidal anus of a mouth behind its central ring of antennae. He had the sense to kick away from the rock face as he let go but still crashed onto Hegel, and both plunged through the moonlight.

  At the tavern, Alphonse and Giacomo quickly became blind drunk. They laughed at the Brothers’ foolishness and stewed over their threats and arrogant demeanors. It stood to reason such a miserable empire would produce such miserable bastards as the Grossbarts. They had it coming to them, of that the Italians were convinced.

  After another bottle they tired of discussing enemies past and present and the talk turned to women. Neither had laid eyes on the veiled maiden they had retrieved but both were convinced she must be gorgeous indeed or else the captain would never have sent for her from such a grand distance. Then they talked of the captain, and how peculiarly he was rumored to behave.

  They were both very drunk when the song started, floating out of the back of the tavern. Neither could rightly say what was sung but both found it far prettier than anything they had ever heard. Giacomo got to his wobbly feet and made for the door to the back rooms, but jealous as Alphonse was, he had drunk too much to move. Instead he cried dejectedly until he fell asleep, her music the first truly good thing in his hard life.

  Ennio broke Hegel’s fall, Hegel broke Manfried’s, and together the Brothers broke both of Ennio’s ankles. Hegel faceplanted in the snow between Ennio�
��s legs and blacked out. Manfried’s tail-bone landed on his brother’s and he rolled in the snow cursing. Ennio howled and clutched his legs, and would not be silent until Manfried began slapping him vigorously.

  Quieted by the drubbing, Ennio followed Manfried’s gaze up the cliff. Despite the reemerging moon they barely made out where the plateau holding the cemetery dipped in. Nothing stirred on the ledge. Then horrible shrieks echoed out over the mountains and back again, an inhuman wailing that rattled their nerves.

  Hegel came to and wiped the snow from his eyes and nose. Patting himself down, he found everything in order, luck having spared him from impalement on his own sword. Manfried likewise felt bruised but fit, but of course Ennio could do nothing but blubber, his mind as cracked as his legs.

  “Leave’em,” said Manfried, “we gots to go.”

  “Need’em for the wagon,” said Hegel.

  “We can figure it out,” Manfried insisted.

  “Drivin’s fine, but what bout hitchin? Wagon’s different from a cart, and we’s gonna need to make a sharp exit.” Hegel felt a touch ashamed to side with Ennio.

  They hoisted Ennio up and carried him between them, elbowing the fool whenever his crippled feet brushed the ground and he cried out. The town wall lay close at hand, and after toiling up and down several small hills they reached the gate. Hegel clambered over and let them in, suspiciously watching the dark monastery looming over the town. Narrowing his eyes, he picked up a shadow flitting over the road past the last bend. Something white moving over the white snow in the white moonlight. Whatever it might be-and he had a fairly good idea on that account-it brought the trembling back to his legs and his brain.

  “Run.” Hegel snatched Ennio’s right arm.

  Manfried grabbed the left and they rushed through the wagon tracks to the tavern, dragging Ennio. The poor driver went unconscious from the pain of his lower half bouncing on the icy road. As with the time he had spent with Nicolette, Hegel’s anxiety since first arriving had fluctuated mildly but never fully diminished, and now swelled again to mammoth proportions.