The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  “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.

  XXX. Their Just Reward

  “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 fl
ee 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.

  The witch-born beast howled in Al-Gassur’s face, dozens of mouths blowing the stink of his own death upon him. The beggar saw the bottle tumble out of the ripping satchel, and the small vessel containing his brother’s heart blazed with a pale yellow luminescence as the glass shattered in the gnashing teeth of Brennen’s hand. Al-Gassur closed his eyes, unaware that the loop of cable on the bottle’s neck slipped down a prodigious tooth and cut into its gums as the monster chewed glass and glowing relic.

  Just as there exist dark things that traverse oceanic abysses as if they were dry land, so too do fell beings troll the skies as if they were seas. The releasing of the artifact from its glass prison brought the attention of one of those, which might otherwise have failed to notice the object from such a distance. With the speed of God it descended from the heavens in pursuit of the shimmering prize for which all vile powers lust. Before Brennen could swallow the scorching relic a shadow even the moon feared to illuminate plucked him up with the ease of a falcon snatching a rodent. Blood splashed across Al-Gassur and he opened his eyes to see the beast vanish, but before the first syllable of thanks could leave his lungs the spool of cable he had attached to the bottle, and his thigh, burst from his satchel. Bonded to Brennen by the suddenly taut line, Al-Gassur shot into the sky and out of the knowing of the Grossbarts.

  Two more convicts were torn apart by Magnus’s voracious legs and right arm, the rat-faced left hand intent only on devouring Hegel. The creature had regained its balance and pressed forward, murine jaws tearing into Hegel’s left hand and coming away with the Grossbart’s two outer fingers and sword. Hegel responded by burying his pick in its snout but the arm drew back and Hegel released his weapon lest he be pulled any closer to the behemoth.

  Drawing his prybar, Hegel jabbed the comparatively normal but massive hand snatching at his face. Then the other arm returned, the bestial face wielded like a club. Hegel sprawled on the ground under the impact but rolled away before the toothy feet could fall. He spied Manfried’s mace on the ground beside him and snatched it, but this distraction enabled the three-eyed horror to focus fully on its quarry, all other victims forgotten in its rage.

  The pick-skewered rat-hand leaked blood from its clamped jaws, but as it fell they again sprang open to rend Hegel’s exposed back. Manfried swung his ax over his prone brother’s head, exploding rat teeth and severing the lower jaw. Magnus’s mouths shrieked and he threw himself atop them, desiring only to crush and chew their defiant bones. Rodrigo snatched Hegel and Raphael seized Manfried, each jerking a brother in a different direction. The beast crashed to the empty ground, two pairs of men spinning almost out of reach.

  The jaws on Magnus’s left elbow tore into Rodrigo’s leg, taking away a massive dripping chunk. Had Raphael not already lost his left hand it would have disappeared into the snapping mouth that grazed his bandaged wrist. The skeletal outline of Magnus’s face twisted toward Manfried and Raphael, the warped nostril billowing, two eyes shining black and the third yellow. The remaining two prisoners, one a hardened killer who had that very night determined just what the Grossbarts were after in his homeland and the other a young Moslem noble who had never struck a foe, swung their swords into the backs of Magnus’s ankles. The biting teeth on the creature’s feet kicked as Magnus tried to right himself, legs as thick as tree trunks pumping the air as the convicts hacked.

  The four men near Magnus’s head and arms scrambled back only to leap again into the fray, the downed creature’s bellows of fury turning to wails as ax and sword and mace fell on every limb. A foot found the noble’s chest but his last blow cut the mighty paw free and the young man fell backward, the jaws gnawing his bare chest despite being severed. Tendons popped in the other leg, the more seasoned prisoner dodging the deadly kicks as he cut ever deeper. The mangled rat-head became mush under Hegel’s mace and then came loose from Rodrigo’s stabbings, and Magnus’s right arm flew off at the elbow from Manfried and Raphael’s onslaught.

  Swaying in the moonlight, Heinrich called his son’s name over and over but his child had departed, taken by something even fouler than he. Staggering toward the Grossbarts and their followers he raised his dull scourge, grief dampening his cheeks for the first time since abandoning his humanity. Poor Magnus bawled as the bastards dismembered him, the child rolling toward one group only to have the other hew into his exposed torso.

  With the arm removed, Manfried pressed in to hack the thing’s head open when the barbed scourge whipped around his face and pulled him off the beast. Heinrich’s stench blinded them as he swung the flail around at Raphael, but then both he and Manfried turned their attentions to the possessed yeoman. Heinrich fell into the arms of his acolytes as Manfried’s ax cleaved into his shoulder and Raphael’s sword slit open his belly. He cackled even as black slime bubbled from his wounds, his assailants returning to their task.

  “Burn it!” Hegel told the two prisoners. “Oil the mecky fucker!”

  “Don’t let them!” Heinrich shrieked at Vittorio and Paolo, who still hung back.

  Hegel had noticed Magnus’s fresh wounds healed quicker than new ones could be made. The severed rat-hand had melted into bubbling filth at their feet and a new, placenta-veiled bulge quickly grew from the stump. The Egyptian criminal helped the noble throw the rear paw off before it ate its way to his heart, but then the foot turned to ash and
hooked toes burst from Magnus’s gory ankle. Aghast, the younger prisoner had the sense slapped into him by his murderous countryman.

  Without the two men working its legs, Magnus recovered sufficiently to leap away from the other four attackers, the fresh rat-hand uttering a snarling squeak at its rebirth. Manfried caught sight of something behind the great chops of its central stomach-mouth and charged. Hegel and Raphael were close after but Rodrigo slumped, his wounded leg leaking like a worn-out wineskin. Clumsily bandaging himself and taking up his crossbow, Rodrigo aimed at Magnus’s face.

  The abomination tried to stand on its hind legs but they were not yet whole and buckled, Magnus dropping to all fours to greet their charge. Raphael slashed across its nostril, popping the eyeball beside it and bringing the creature’s focus upon him. Racing past the roaring arms, Hegel followed his brother until Manfried ducked under the creature’s stomach and the beast lunged forward.

  A thigh struck Hegel, teeth latching onto his arm and pulling him against Magnus’s side. More mouths opened where Hegel had sworn there were none, pinning him flat as fangs rent his armor to get at his flesh. He tried to use his mace but a long, greasy tongue wrapped around it, pulling him closer. Immobile, Hegel saw a cloud growing around the wounded Heinrich, and, knowing what it presaged, began to pray as he struggled.

  In the moonless shadow of the creature’s belly, Manfried held his prybar in both hands and stood up-directly into the largest of Magnus’s mouths. Blinded in the dank, plaque-ridden stink of its maw, Manfried held his prybar until the jaws closed on him and the metal tool embedded itself in the monster’s gums. With a silent prayer, Manfried released his grip on the instrument that prevented the teeth from biting him in half, its muscles straining to snap the prybar keeping its mouth ajar. A warm, vinegar-sour mist boiled out of the hidden pit where all its mouths led, choking the Grossbart with its pungent exhalation. Reaching up into the blackness, Manfried tore with his bare hands through flesh and tissue, noxious blood burning his skin and eyes before the monster moved forward and the Grossbart held on to meat to keep from falling out. His boots dragging on the ground, Manfried dug through the back of the creature’s gut-throat until several of Magnus’s teeth popped and the prybar slipped, the beast’s mouth snapping shut.