The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

  Firing his crossbow, Rodrigo saw Magnus’s only human eye burst in Raphael’s face before the rat-hand bit the brigand and began slinging him about by his shoulder. Hegel felt his helmet pulled free and heard it being rent in the mouth against his shoulder, then he felt another tongue wrapping around his neck and teeth chewing his beard, pulling his head in despite his efforts. Then Magnus collapsed, dragging Hegel to the ground and tossing Raphael through the air and onto Rodrigo.

  The fight had taken them away from the campfires and the moon hid, but criminal eyes are always sharpest in darkness. Noble and misanthrope alike stood transfixed, weapons slipping from their shaky fingers. The beast lay motionless but none of the crusaders moved, two sprawled a dozen feet away, one half-chewed in the mouths peppering the abomination’s flank, and the last swallowed whole. The two popes held up their priest, who vomited bile and smoke, the miasma coalescing around him into horrible shapes cavorting in the starlight. The odors and sounds his body released would have gagged a necromancer but his acolytes savored the vileness.

  Then Magnus’s neck bulged and the prisoners stared, wondering what new horror birthed from its gargantuan corpse. Fur split, its entire head suddenly rolled away from its body, and a man-shaped thing crawled forth.

  “Mary!” the magenta man gasped, holding aloft Magnus’s giant heart. “By the Virgin, we done it!”

  At Manfried’s invocation of Mary’s name Hegel tore himself free of the cooling tongues and teeth, and Rodrigo and Raphael slowly untangled their sprained and bleeding limbs from one another. Manfried’s beard resembling afterbirth and Hegel’s chewed down to his cheeks, the Grossbarts embraced atop their fallen adversary, shouting amens that were taken up by the few survivors.

  Over his brother’s shoulder Hegel saw Heinrich erupt in a bloody mist, and a sinisterly familiar shape landed in the spray beside the yeoman’s deflating body.

  Heinrich did not see the grotesque demon vacate his largest bubo, his stolen melancholic humour coursing through the parasitic monster in place of blood. Instead he saw Brennen as the boy had first appeared in the midwife’s arms, chubby, yawning, and terribly put out to be brought into such a cold world. His chest heaving with the pulse of festering corruption instead of life, Heinrich heard the Grossbarts shouting and realized he could search for eternity and never find a devil as evil as they. His son’s name bubbled on his rancid lips as he slipped beyond pain and joy alike.

  “Circles!” Hegel shouted, shoving the mace into Manfried’s arms and sprinting toward his fallen pick. “Draw circles bout you in the dirt! Now!”

  “Ah fuck it all,” Manfried groaned, seeing what his brother was on about. “Not all this again.”

  “Grossbarts!” The high-pitched squeal shook their bowels. “Thought you had me! Thought you had me in those hills, in that hog!” The carapaced, miasma-wreathed thing bounded in ten-foot strides toward Hegel but he snatched his pick and knelt on the ground. The demon saw what he intended and sped at him, its victorious rant turning to a horrified wail. Completing the circle in the sand, Hegel looked up to see the cloud of pestilential, stinking fog surround him, the demon bouncing before him on its rearmost legs. Hegel started back but caught himself before he fell outside the ring he had scratched in the sand.

  Without further hesitation the demon spun and made for Manfried, but the crimson Grossbart had completed his own circle, being mindful not to drip onto the band that encircled him. The foul thing hopped toward Rodrigo and Raphael but the men had made a wide ring around both of them. Without understanding the language the prisoners saw enough to imitate the crusaders, and again the demon was denied.

  With a final agonized screech the demon leaped high into the night and vanished, all going silent upon the desert. The young noble began shouting and jumping in the air, praising the name Grossbart. Hegel and Manfried both yelled at him to calm his foolish ass but he could not understand, and as his foot landed straddling the edge of the circle a stinking comet plummeted into his face.

  The noble rolled in the sand and they saw the suddenly shrunken demon squirming down his bulging throat, pus oozing around his split lips. The other Egyptian turned away after making sure his own circle remained unbroken. Rodrigo and Raphael stared in shock but the Grossbarts knew at once how to handle this dire turn.

  “Shoot’em!” Manfried shouted, realizing his crossbow had fallen somewhere during the battle. “With the quickness!”

  “Rigo!” Hegel yelled at finding his own broken. “Shoot, Rigo, shoot!”

  Rodrigo stared blankly at the possession taking place while Raphael clumsily tried to cock the bow. With one hand this proved impossible given the model of weapon and Raphael shook Rodrigo, yelling in his face. The younger man blinked at him, and vomited all over them both.

  “Rigo!” Manfried bellowed. “Listen, fuckwit, that’s what happened to Ennis!”

  “Ennio!” Hegel shouted. “That same demon did that same thing to your brother Ennio!”

  This captured Rodrigo’s attention, and he notched the only bolt left in his quiver. The possessed noble gained his feet, ropes of bile swinging from his chin. The cackling demoniac snatched up a dropped sword and swayed toward the closest Grossbart-Manfried. As he swiped the weapon down to smudge Manfried’s circle, Rodrigo’s last quarrel penetrated the noble’s chest and skewered his heart. The man collapsed, screeching and spraying biles from every hole.

  “Grossbarts,” it lamented as it clawed out around the bolt. Pulling itself free in a welter of gore, it had diminished to the size of a cat. “Break their wards! Help me, brothers, as I helped you!”

  Paolo and Vittorio appeared through the gloom but made no move to rush the Brothers Grossbart. The brains of the two boys had long since baked from fever and sun to little more than paste but they strode forward nevertheless, their putrescent hearts pumping pus and biles through bodies long ripe for the grave.

  “Something the matter?” asked Paolo.

  “Something troublesome?” asked Vittorio.

  “Kick their circles!” the demon howled, dancing around them. “Please, brothers!”

  “No,” said Vittorio.

  “No,” agreed Paolo.

  “Why?!” The demon jumped onto Paolo’s shoulder and howled in his ear, “They’ve done you as wrong as I!”

  “Wrong.” Paolo stroked the fiend’s thorax before it hopped back down to the sand. “They have done you wrong, and these mounts of ours, but what have they done to us?”

  “What?” asked Vittorio, “save reprimand your folly? Many chances to spread the gift you have wasted, leading us here.”

  “What?” asked Paolo, “save deliver us our freedom from your yoke? What have they done to us?”

  “This!” Manfried shouted, hurling a dagger with expert precision. The long knife disappeared in the rotten robe, the handle marking where Paolo’s heart lay. The barber’s son pitched onto his face, farting, belching, and smoking.

  “And you!” Hegel’s pick spun through the air, the point sinking in Vittorio’s stomach. He was knocked to the ground, and several more Grossbart-born missiles struck him before he could rise. A dagger once used by Captain Barousse to end his own life flew from Hegel’s fingers and sunk into the Road Pope’s chest.

  “Ain’t suffer no demons to live!” Manfried shouted at the pincushioned corpse.

  “Witches neither!” Hegel hollered. “When yous get to Hell tell’ em Saint Hegel put you there!”

  The first demon shook with laughter, bouncing atop the corpses and chastising its fellows as they burst from their hosts’ buboes. These two were smaller but equally vile, and they at once skipped to the first, their sharp digits, pointy horns, and hooked feet scratching at skin and plating that strained to contain the greasy fluids within. The first continued to reprimand the others, easily evading them with its longer legs as the organ crowning its posterior fired spurt after chunky spurt of rank discharge into the air.

  Nothing stirred on the sands for leagues and league
s save the encircled men, all living things fleeing at the first whiff of Heinrich’s rank retinue-even the maggots had abandoned their rotting hosts as the demons wreaked the full extent of their evils upon the flesh of their human mounts. The demons sprang toward the Grossbarts, bringing their stinking miasma with them. Even this could not penetrate their circles, and the Grossbarts heckled the demons and spat upon them until they realized this pleased the creatures. As the darkness dwindled and light began to creep over the sands a strange transformation in attitude took place, all three demons piling against each other and frantically bartering with the Grossbarts to leave their circles.

  “I know where riches beyond counting lie,” the first demon squealed.

  “I know where there are more,” the second countered, “and I’ll leave you intact as soon as we find another body for me!”

  “Please,” the third whined, “if you break the circles of your fellows we shan’t touch you, and may part in peace!”

  “Balls,” snorted Hegel. “Cockcrow’s at hand, so yous best set to prayin. To me.”

  “It’s gonna hurt,” Manfried said excitedly, “ain’t it? It’s gonna hurt worse than I can imagine, bein sent back down!”

  Rodrigo and Raphael were barely awake but dared not rest until the fiends departed for good. The last prisoner shifted from foot to foot, ineffectively trying to banish the cramps that plagued him. Like the Grossbarts, he had drawn a narrow circle that did not afford him enough room to safely sit within its boundary. The demons also hassled him, Raphael, and Rodrigo but none would bargain.

  The sunlight crested a dune and the demons groaned, clumsily hurling themselves away from the glow, too weak to move with more than staggering bounces. Then they ceased their moaning and all turned toward the light. The Grossbarts perked up, for all three snuffled the anteneae-ringed weeping sores they had in place of mouths and pushed themselves toward the rising sun.

  Tears of pus dribbled as the sunlight descended upon them, two curling their legs underneath themselves and covering their eyes with their skeletal paws, but the original demon forced itself forward. Then a beam touched its loathsome body mid-hop and its exoskeleton shattered with a thousand fissures. The swirling miasma became a black cloud of smoke issuing forth as it shriveled to nothing in the sand, only a scorch mark on the earth denoting its passing. Manfried felt the sunlight envelop him and stepped out of the ring to better taunt the last two demons.

  One mustered its strength and flew at him, howling his name as it entered the sunlight and burst, rancid liquids staining the sand at his feet. The last gave a final desperate push into the shadows and then was overtaken, belching pestilential fumes as it deflated and spun in the sand. Then they were alone in the desert, the demons forced back into their pit to scheme and moan and curse the Grossbart name.

  XXXI. The Final Heresy

  Of Raphael and Rodrigo little more is recounted here, for the men parted ways with the Grossbarts after their battle with the demons. Rodrigo sought to liberate Barousse’s bones from the Hospitallers’ cemetery on Rhodes, wishing that he might rest in a holier place-a goal the Grossbarts heartily approved. Raphael wanted only to leave the miserable country that had shaken his spirit and stolen his fist, and so he accompanied Rodrigo on the long, limping trek north to the Holy Land and beyond. Mary willing, their fresh wounds did not fester and their path remained clear, but the Grossbarts did not know, for they turned south as they always did.

  The sole surviving prisoner, a hardened killer named Hassan, led them to Cairo, and while the sun scalded and the sand chafed and Hegel’s three-fingered hand itched and Manfried’s punctured gut throbbed they at last stood on the dunes overlooking the great tombs of Gyptland. They could not verbally communicate with Hassan, referring to him as Arab in Al-Gassur’s stead, yet through pantomime and prayer he had brought them to their destination. No tears of joy or shouts of triumph passed through their beards, only smug mutters of satisfaction.

  They spent several days scouting the stone monoliths, choosy as nobles about their grapes. All the pyramids appeared too exposed to still hold riches, but eventually they stumbled across a stone arch half-buried in the sand. They spent all night clearing out the entrance and bickering.

  “This Arab done us better than the last,” Hegel panted.

  “Least he don’t talk all that rubbish. Be nice if he talked proper though, so we could explain why his share’ll be less than ours.” Manfried dumped another helmet of sand out of their excavation.

  “He’ll get the point in one fashion or another.” Hegel spit on his hands. “Think we’s bout ready.”

  “Yeah.” Manfried removed his prybar. “Let’s crack it.”

  “Wonder what befell our Arab. The other one, I mean.” Hegel jammed his tool into the slight seam in the stone.

  “Sandy-eared fuck.” Manfried strained. “Told you. Got carried off long with that other monster. Seen it myself.”

  “Yeah, I mean after that, though,” Hegel grunted.

  “Well it was either demon or angel, so Heaven or Hell.”

  “But which?”

  “You’s the damn saint.” Manfried felt the block shift slightly. “Ask Mary.”

  “It’s there!” said Hegel.

  It actually took them the rest of the night to wedge it open enough to slip through. Before they entered they called Hassan down from his sentry position on top of the dune to have a drink. While the three laughed and rubbed their hands in anticipation light crept up the side of their dune, and the Grossbarts ate the last of the camel they had stolen from a Bedouin several days before. The beast had struck Hegel as even more suspect than a horse.

  “What you reckon’s inside?” asked Hegel.

  “Witch’s gold,” Manfried belched. “If we’s lucky, regular gold if we ain’t.”

  “Why’d I want some gold touched by a witch?” Hegel demanded.

  “Cause then we’d never be able to spend it all.”

  “But if a witch grubbed it up-”

  “Then you bless it pure, thickhead, I swear, you’s…” Manfried trailed off, his eyes trained on the beams of sunlight brushing the top of the arch.

  “I’s what, bath-mouth?” Hegel asked. “Answer up, son, and lose your holy station.”

  “Shut it.” Manfried dropped his meat and slowly stood, brushing the weathered stone. “Brother,” his voice shaking along with his shoulders, “what you make a this?”

  Hegel set down his wine but before he could reprimand Manfried he saw it too, and slumped back in the sand. “What the shit?”

  “It’s it, ain’t it?!” Manfried turned away from the rough G chiseled in the stone, the symbol clearly fresher than the worn bas-reliefs. “That’s our goddamn mark!”

  “Yeah.” Hegel felt sick. “Damn if it ain’t.”

  “What in Hell!?” Manfried kicked the sand and threw his prybar down. “Lousy old fucker! All the goddamn tombs in Gyptland!”

  Hassan stood and gestured to the engraving, shrugging his shoulders. Manfried sucker punched him and when the man fell he booted him again. For several minutes Manfried raged and swore and Hegel drank.

  “Our grandad,” Hegel explained to the contorted guide. “Truth finally be laid bare, I’d kind a doubted he ever made it.”

  “Pack it up,” Manfried said. “Let’s get movin to the next one.”

  “Hold a tic.” Hegel held up his hand.

  “Why? Why the fuck-”

  “Cause I said so!” Hegel jumped up. “You know that feelin I get when somethin don’t wash, or we’s liable to get some ill our way?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I ain’t got it.” Hegel scratched his beard. “Anythin, I feel, I dunno, good bout this here crypt.”

  “Eh?”

  “Yeah!” Hegel picked up the prybar and offered it to his brother. “I mean, he might a carved it fore he went in, and dropped dead at the sight a all the loot. Or he couldn’t carry it all, meant to come back for it but didn’t want our cunt
y da slip-pin in fore he could get back.”

  “Suppose the possibility exists.” Manfried stroked the end of his beard to remind his brother that with half of Hegel’s in a monster’s gullet, there could be no denying the superiority of Manfried’s silver bush.

  “Can’t hurt nuthin.” Hegel stood up. “Get with it, Arab.”

  Hefting their gear, Hegel lit an oil lamp taken from the same unfortunate traveler whose camel they had killed and squirmed inside. Manfried followed with Hassan close behind, only his fear of the saint preventing him from knifing Manfried in the back. Stone stairs led down into midnight, and with each step Hegel felt more confident. Then the stair underfoot gave a soft click as he put his weight on it, and even without the goosepimples exploding on his neck he would have known to run for it. A thunderous crashing echoed after them, and reaching an opening Hegel ducked around the corner followed by Manfried. As they looked back for Hassan an explosion of dust and rock shards exited the stairwell, snuffing out their lamp.

  “Feel good bout it?!” Manfried punched at his brother but in the black vault he only hurt his hand on the wall. “Mecky fuckin asshole!”

  “Stow it,” said Hegel, “I’s relightin the lamp so’s we can find a way out.”

  When Hegel finally got it lit they saw the entire stairway was choked with fallen blocks from the ceiling. They stood in a massive stone chamber far exceeding any sepulcher they had previously pilfered. Amidst grumblings they agreed there must be another stairway or exit somewhere in the vault. They were wrong.

  There lived Grossbarts before Hegel and Manfried, and, unfortunately for this happy world, there have lived Grossbarts since. A complete chronicle of that benighted clan would fill more volumes than every holy text of every people of every land, and so rejoice that there is little more recorded here. The Brothers Grossbart received exactly what they deserved down in that hallowed desert tomb, and it is easy to assume they lived only as long as their water and air held out. Thus, their end may have been more merciful to humanity than the tragedy that was their birth.