"The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bullington Jesse)

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 he 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.

The spectral town glistened until clouds again enveloped it with the rightful darkness of night. The Grossbarts did not pause, and when they finally deposited Ennio on the ground outside the tavern fresh snow further shadowed them. When neither guard opened the door they forced it as they had before and dragged the comatose Ennio beside the fire. Alphonse’s snoring stopped when Manfried kicked him off his chair and began shouting in his face.

“Where’s your man?” said Manfried.

“Shit-sipping bastard,” Alphonse slurred.

“Right!” Manfried began pummeling him until Hegel dragged him off.

“Need all the swords we got if that thing comes back,” Hegel advised.

“What you did to Ennio?” Alphonse crawled to the driver and shook his shoulders. Ennio immediately awoke screaming and clawing at Alphonse’s face. The injured man’s bloodshot eyes registered Manfried advancing and he immediately went still.

“Demon,” Manfried said, and Hegel did not argue.

“What?” said Alphonse, squinting at the Brothers.

“A demon from the pit!” Hegel exploded. “Somethin from Hell, that sink through your stony pate? A goddamn fiend!”

“What?” Alphonse repeated.

“Pestilence,” Manfried proclaimed, pacing the room and pulling his beard. “Had the rot in’em. Came out. Demons and plague, Mary preserve us!”

“Plague?” Alphonse blanched and Ennio moaned.

“Shut your holes, damn you!” Hegel yelled, hurling a chair against the wall.

“Brother,” Manfried hissed in Grossbartese. “Need to keep our calm if we’s gonna get shy a here and over to the sandy lands. Calm.”

“Calm?” Hegel forsook their private lingo. “Calm! Got us a demon after us! Not some manti-what or beastly-man, but a real demon! You seen it!”

“Yeah, I seen.” Manfried shuddered. “Maybe it stayed up on the hill.”

“Rot! I seen it! It’s comin! The witch’s curse, Manfried, the witch’s curse!” Hegel raged, the foreigners cowering on the floor.

“Faith!” Manfried shouted.

“Balls!” responded Hegel, smashing a table with his sword.

“She’s watchin over us!”

“Damn right! Got us a hex gonna last til we die!”

“No, you twat, Mary!” said Manfried. “We live and die by the will a the Virgin! We die when She wills it, not fore! Faith, damn your beard, faith!”

“Faith?” Hegel panted.

“Faith,” Manfried sighed, having almost convinced himself. “You know what we gotta do.”

“Kill us a demon. For real.”

“Mary bless us, we will. Better to just get shy a this place without settin eyes on it again. Now where’s that ignorant cunt you was with?” Manfried demanded of Alphonse.

They found Giacomo facedown in the hallway, near the rear door. He had drowned in a shallow puddle of snowmelt, the water barely covering his nose and mouth. The three mobile men convened in the hall, and after Alphonse told his fractured tale all three glanced at the cloth obscuring the woman’s room.

Manfried ripped the partisan down. “What you gotta say?”

The most beautiful woman the repulsive graverobber had ever spied looked up, her supple body partially draped in dirty blankets. Hegel and Alphonse tried to peer around Manfried but his square shoulders filled the narrow doorway. Her pale thigh shone like the moon, and going on the glorious contours of the cloth he doubted she wore anything beneath her covers. She smiled mischievously, black hair glistening down her side, and Manfried suddenly felt compelled to apologize; for what, he knew not. Before he could speak she raised a finger to her dark lips, and they all heard a rapping on the front door.

Hegel and Alphonse rushed back to the main room, and Manfried sorrowfully followed, promising his eyes they would soon take her in again. She smelled different from any woman he had met, and despite the urgency with which Hegel and Alphonse ran to the door he could not tear his mind from her. The night’s events were near-forgotten, and his sharp ears were dull to the shouting all around him.

“Manfried!” Hegel barked in his face.

“Eh?” Manfried tried to clear his thoughts.

“It’s here!” Hegel’s eyes bulged, alarmed at his brother’s nonchalance.

“Faith.” Manfried smiled dreamily, then shook off her phantom. “Shut it, all a yous!”

The room fell gravely still save for Ennio, who moaned beside the hearth with a bottle clutched in both hands. The knocking did not come again, but something snuffled at the bottom of the door, blowing snow in through the crack. The Grossbarts advanced, the drunken Alphonse following them with rushlight and sword. They stood there for a moment, then Manfried spurred himself into action.

“What you want?” shouted Manfried.

“Let me in,” a voice pleaded.

“Why?” asked Manfried.

“Warmth. Christian succor. I’ll not harm you, I swear.”

“Yeah, and who is you and where you come from?” asked Manfried.

“I’m Volker, I live on the edge of town. I’ve been hiding, please let me in.”

“Oh, rot, you’s that same meckin demon!” Hegel shouted.

“Demon? Demon!” The man beat on the door. “Then let me in, for the love of the Christ babe! My soul’s in danger, and if it takes mine then yours is damned for not saving me!”

“Maybe open the door and look?” Alphonse turned from Grossbart to Grossbart.

“I ain’t gonna dignify that with a response cept to say by my ma’s foul mound, how thick’re you?” said Manfried, and then raised his voice. “Give us a private discussion, Volker!”

“Hurry!”

Manfried retreated to the center of the room, Hegel and Alphonse in tow. “Listen,” he told his brother in their familial language, “it’s tryin to trick its way in, might imply it’s too weak to bust the door. We wait it out til cockcrow, it’ll turn to dust in the sun.”

“You sure a that?” asked Hegel.

“What you say?” Alphonse’s distress grew with each development, and a council he could not decipher sat poorly with him. The twin glares emasculated his tongue, though, and he went to Ennio’s corner to try and calm him. Alphonse’s booze-soaked brain could not comprehend much, and he took another pull from Ennio’s bottle.

“Demons can’t bide daylight, any child’ll tell you,” Manfried insisted.

“What about that demon in the woods? He seemed to prefer it,” said Hegel.

“Now you was the one insistin that weren’t no demon.”

“Witch told me it used to be a man. You wanna hinge your soul on a witch’s word or a child’s tale?” Hegel glanced at the door. “Should a drawn a circle in the snow round the tavern, that would a done it.”

“How’s that different from my so-called superstition?” Manfried demanded.

“Cause it’s fact, as our uncle told us.”

“So you’s gonna believe that road-apple? Sides, if that’s the case we can draw circles round us on the floor in here.”

“Stop him!” Ennio wailed, and the Grossbarts saw Alphonse crouched by the front door, his ear pressed to the wood.

Manfried and Hegel both went for him but before they took three steps the crazed man tossed back the board latching the door. The door blew inward, snow swirling around the manically laughing Alphonse. A silhouette loomed behind him in the doorway, stopping the Grossbarts’ feet and Ennio’s scream.

“Seeing this, Grossbarts?” Alphonse cackled. “Think you kill my cousin and live? Think you kill me? I have its word!”

Alphonse’s left eye sprang from its socket in a spray of blood. His jaw hung loose and the mess of his brains spilled from it, the entire back of his head caved in. He dropped dead on the floor in front of his assailant.

The hog from the cemetery stepped into the room on its hind legs, chunks of Alphonse’s skull and hair stuck to its left front hoof. Its black eyes shone and it casually kicked the door shut behind it. The Grossbarts were no longer strangers to sanity-stealing horrors, yet the comparatively simple sight of an animal walking like a man stunned them immobile. Not Ennio, who crawled toward the hallway, refusing to look at whatever had entered the tavern.

“Grossbarts,” the pig said, licking its teeth.

Before they had set out into the mountains such a fright would have sent the Brothers reeling into a panic, but having recently experienced equally traumatizing events they shakily held their ground. Hegel began hyperventilating, tunnel vision setting in as he jerkily raised his sword. Manfried held the rushlight steadier than his mace, which shook along with the rest of him. The hog took another step, its hoof clicking on the wood, and the Brothers reacted.

Manfried hurled his rushlight at the pig and ran, and Hegel rushed the beast. A stinking cloud of saffron vapor spewed from its snout, enveloping Hegel as he hacked at it. Reaching the hall, Manfried realized his brother did not follow and turned back to the room, kicking the hallway door shut to prevent Ennio from running out on them. Hooves struck at the blinded Hegel but his sword connected and sent the beast rolling across the floor. He staggered, choking and coughing on the reeking miasma.

“Brother!” Manfried called but Hegel paid no heed, doubled over in agony.

The pig stood on its hind legs again, but the hoof it had killed Alphonse with stayed on the floor where Hegel’s blade had banished it. The hog charged its dry-heaving adversary but Manfried intercepted it with a thrown bottle that smashed against its fetlock, knocking it over beside Hegel. It latched onto Hegel’s boot with its teeth but he blindly kicked it off, falling down himself.

Manfried rushed the pig with his mace but it squatted and pounced, its misshapen frame belying a diabolical dexterity. It knocked Manfried over a table and pinned him down with its hoof on one arm and its blood-pumping stump on the other. Manfried spit in the porcine face as it leaned in, and he saw dozens of welts and boils coating its snout, one eye crusted shut with pus. Its dripping tongue snaked out toward Manfried, and with dread he saw buboes the size of apples blossoming in the crotch of its arm.

Rubbing his eyes, Hegel saw the beast pressing down on Manfried and he stumbled forward. Hegel’s sword slid between its ribs and he toppled it into the shelving, bottles raining on them and smashing at their feet. It bounced off the wall and brought its girth down on him, driving them both to the floor. Blood bubbled everywhere as he tried to dislodge his sword and focused on not being crushed by the braying beast grinding him into the broken pottery, schnapps, and oil.

Ennio rolled away from the reeling combatants and lay pressed against the hearth, the puddle of oil creeping toward his feet. He stuck his hand into the blaze and snatched out a brand, charring his fist and melting the skin off his palm. Manfried caught this from the corner of his eye and kicked the pig’s face, then seized Hegel and jerked him out from under its mass. Be it from concern for Hegel’s safety or difficulty in forcing his cooked nerves to obey his will, Ennio paused just long enough for Hegel to scramble out of the small pool before he slammed the flaming brand into the oil.

All three were blinded by the jet of flame that rushed over the floor and up the wall. The hog screamed and thrashed, a shadow capering inside a pillar of fire. It tried to stand but collapsed, its bristly coat crackling and letting off thick waves of smoke. The Grossbarts leaned against each other, Ennio shouting triumphantly in his native tongue. Then part of the silhouette split from the twitching bulk and shot through the flames onto Ennio. The man’s cheers turned to screams, the wall of the tavern blazing.

The Grossbarts ran to his aid out of instinct, and saw the greatly diminished demon had crawled halfway down his throat. Twiggy, flanged legs and its engorged abdomen protruded from Ennio’s dislocated jaw, the golden film coating the thing lubricating its passage into his gullet. Each Grossbart snatched a leg segment and tugged but the brittle limbs broke off, smearing their hands with rank pus. Without legs to hinder its progress it wriggled out of sight, Ennio’s neck bulging as it went.

Manfried seized Ennio’s tilted chin and snapped his neck, then Hegel kicked his corpse into the hearth.

The loft above had caught, the room filling with black smoke. Ennio’s body writhed on the coals and before the demon could escape again Manfried snatched a table and jammed it on top of the possessed corpse. The Brothers heaped stools against that, and then the smoke became impenetrable. Arm in arm they stumbled toward the door when a stray flame ignited the oily Hegel. Manfried shoved his burning brother ahead, crashing through the door and into the snow.

Hegel lay facedown in a snowdrift, steam and smoke rising from him. Manfried remembered the beauty in the back room an instant before a section of the roof collapsed, sealing the tavern-turned-oven. He fell to his knees but before the regret could leave his mouth or eyes she stepped around the corner, clad in a fine black dress with a veil pushed back to showcase her countenance. Manfried forgot his brother and ran to her side but before he could embrace her she pointed to the attached barn, the roof of which had caught fire.

The chaotic night became wilder still as Manfried braved the burning barn, side-stepping the frantic horses. The lax Ennio had not fully removed their harnesses, perhaps sensing the need for a hasty exit, and Manfried tightened their straps enough to pull the wagon out. He found more leather straps and cords and metal things heaped on the floor of the barn, and he carried these out before the smoke forbade him entrance. Now more exhausted than crazed, he returned to his smoldering brother.

Further proof of Mary’s Providence could be seen in Hegel’s unblemished beard. His pate, however, had felt the burn all the way to the root. His clothes were likewise scorched and ruined and he could do little more than cough. Coughing implied breathing and this pleased Manfried. Dragging Hegel into the wagon, Manfried found its interior to be a plush affair strewn with cushions. Here Manfried promptly joined his brother in a slumber resembling that of the dead, the Brothers Grossbart wrapped around each other in the absence of blankets.