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

XXII. Sins of the Father

After many days on the road Heinrich and the twins approached a village. Heinrich insisted they wait until after dark to investigate but when no fires were lit and only the wind stirred they investigated the empty hamlet. A flame-gutted building gave Heinrich miserable cramps, armpits pulsating and blood blistering his arteries. The feeling dissipated, only to return when they passed the scorched monastery during their ascent. They stayed to the roads, it being winter in the wilds, and while the boys ran down any game they scented Heinrich saw neither breathing man nor beast until they left the mountains.

Heinrich’s intuition and the lads’ noses guided them down the left branch when the road split on the high hills past the forest. They took to traveling from dusk until early morning, spending the daytime foraging, hunting, and sleeping in the deep thickets choking the knolls. They skirted the towns and houses that now dotted the landscape, despite the curious youngsters’ whines of protest. The twins grew with each meal they caught, each now standing as high as Heinrich’s shoulder.

Dozing by a creek late one afternoon, Heinrich awoke to a wail echoing through the ravine. Both boys were absent and, hope blossoming in his breast, Heinrich dashed through the brambles to the road. Sliding into the gulley the trail ran through, he saw several prone figures on the road and a few more running in opposite directions, Magnus pursuing one group and Brennen the other.

Loath as he was to see them feast on innocents, Heinrich knew any witnesses would spread the word of their presence and then men unaware of their situation would be hunting them as they hunted the Grossbarts. The screams deteriorating into squeals just up the road, Heinrich drew his dagger and approached the half dozen prostrate men. Several of them bled from deep bites speckling their bare torsos and torn breeches but Heinrich realized that while a few were unconscious the rest were fervently praying, eyes shut, brows wedded to the dirt. Save for one dressed in white robes their backs were scratched and bleeding, as if they too had run through brambles.

His long knife gripped in one hand, Heinrich bent and retrieved one of their scourges from the dirt. The barbed flail dripped onto the dusty road, and Heinrich smiled as he realized their identity. He had not seen a flagellant in over a decade, most vanishing along with the plague they had sought to avert with their corporeal mortification.

Crouching behind one of the men, Heinrich reached around and slit his throat. The flagellant thrashed forward, a font of blood splashing the feet of the man before him. They knew he was among them without opening their eyes and their prayers grew louder even as their numbers dwindled with each slash of his dagger. Now only two remained, his boys baying like packs of hounds on each side of the road.

Underneath his skin, deep in his veins where blood, phlegm, and black and yellow biles pulsed against each other, Heinrich’s companion protested angrily at this murderous turn. Upon first entering the turnip farmer it had felt relief to inhabit a host as eager for the same end as itself, but now the deranged man refused to do as he was bidden. Dead men’s ability to spread the blessings of the pit were negligible, and one after another Heinrich was insensibly murdering all of the potential carriers.

Leaving the presumed leader unscathed, Heinrich began lashing the other man mercilessly, blood spattering on the high leaves over their heads. The man’s prayers remained strong even when most of the scabbed skin on his back came loose, but when the white of his spine shone in the dappled sunlight he shrieked and writhed, allowing Heinrich to flail his stomach, arms, and face. Only when the wretch went limp, his exposed musculature quivering in the chill wind, did Heinrich turn to the robed leader.

Long-festering frustration partially sated, Heinrich addressed the praying man he mistakenly took to be a priest. “Remove your robes.”

The man continued to pray, his voice cracking.

“Remove them!” Heinrich barked.

Still the leader prayed. Heinrich swiped the scourge under-handed so it whipped beneath the man’s neck, wrapping around his throat and chin. Yanked backward, the man choked and spluttered as he landed on his rear, his eyes still closed, his lips resuming the prayer as soon as the scourge slackened.

“Pray for them!” Heinrich shouted. “Pray for my family!”

Dragging the lash free in a welter of blood, Heinrich dropped his dagger and brought the weapon back down with both hands. Heinrich’s delight grew with each wet smack of the scourge, the pleasurable warmth in his guts recalling the sensation of eating a bowl of Gertie’s stew, or watching Brennen pull his first turnip. He remembered how pleasant his wife had smelled after they made love, how Brennen laughed and clapped when his mother made shadows on the wall, how his littlest girls would kiss him on his cheeks simultaneously. Inside Heinrich the demon continued to plead for the man’s life, a whisper trickling through his mind like the fluids dribbling down his victim’s face, but Heinrich would not heed the council. It was not enough that those who wounded themselves to stop the plague become hosts themselves. They were servants of a God so cruel He would absolve the Grossbarts, and so they must be punished as only Heinrich and his lads could.

After a time Heinrich realized the man had expired and he whipped an exposed skull, embedded strips of scalp, hair, and gore dulling the scourge’s impact. The skeletal face now resembled those of his boys who sat watching him, gnawing on flagellant bones. Glancing at the carnage, Heinrich now saw only Gertie bleeding to death from an ax wound, Brennen’s gurgling throat, the blackened husks of his daughters, and the four children they had buried before, some still from Gertie’s womb, others living a year or five before being stolen by God. He heard the screams of his little girls, smelled the stink of gravedirt and his burning home. His face hard, he spit in the dead leader’s gaping mouth.

“Let us be demons, then!” Heinrich screamed. “Let us be the pestilence upon those that would abide such cruelties as this! Let us riot and rampage upon the servants of that devil in the sky who deceives the whole world into His worship! Vengeance is our name and deed! Vengeance for every murdered child, for every raped woman, for every soul who toils only to see all they have loved and wrought wither and sicken, suffer and die! No absolution! No confession! No last rites! Grossbarts, we come for you!”

Magnus and Brennen howled from every mouth and wept to see their master weep. The scourge bit into Heinrich’s back with every oath but his tears were not for his own anguish, they were shed for every innocent who held false hope for some final apology, some explanation. As he threw down the barbed whip and fell to his knees, the terrified boys hastened to lick his wounds and whimper their devotion.

By dusk they had removed the bodies from the road, the twins devouring a mind-boggling amount of flesh before lounging in the shade, their stomachs distended, every tongue lolling. Heinrich had meticulously cleaned the scourge in the stream and donned the leader’s soiled robes. His ablutions complete, the moon dangled low over the thickets as they again sought their bearded quarry.