The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart Read online

  “Well Hell, everyone knows rape ain’t the same.”

  “It ain’t?”

  “Nah, you gotta want it. It’s fuckin spiritual.”

  Hegel ruminated only a moment before his mind convinced his mouth that his brother was indeed in the wrong: “Nah.”

  “Nah?”

  “Nah.”

  “Explain your fuckin nah or stand and deliver, you mouthy bastard!”

  “Rape,” Hegel cleared his throat, “is the forcible takin a one’s purity through brute effort. Or in simpler speak for simpler ears, only a virgin can be raped, and she ain’t virgin once she’s had the business.”

  “Seein’s how I happen to be dealin with a hollowhead, I’s prepared to overlook your disparagin view a my ears. As for rape bein constrained to those what still got their chaste goin on, let lone possible only on such, may I ask by whose oafish, misshapen mouth you gained this wisdom?”

  “Jurgen was sayin-”

  “Ah! Illumi-fuckin-nation! The same Jurgen what was so fond a tellin you the evils a liberatin the dead a their unused valuables, that ill-learned asshole?”

  “Now Jurgen weren’t half bad!”

  “Correct again, that sister-fuckin thief was all bad. Can’t trust a man what cleans his dirty junk in his ma’s mouth, regardless how fit she might appear to the unrelated eye.”

  “That’s damn conjecture and you know it!”

  “Jecture or no, don’t lend’em weight as a reliable font a knowledge.” Manfried adopted the northern accent of the accused incest practitioner: “Only virgins kin git rapt. Gittin rapt means you ain’t virgin nah more. Ashes to assholes that filth told you fuckin your own kin weren’t no sin, neither, eh?”

  “No,” Hegel lied, and poorly at that.

  “Well, who you trust is up to you,” Manfried sighed, “some forsaken degenerate or your own blood, sayin naught a the fuckin Virgin.”

  “You know it ain’t like that, brother!”

  “Then why’s we still talkin, eh?”

  That was good enough for the both of them, and they bedded down for the night. A howling wolf somewhere deep in the mountains reminded them of the prudence of keeping watch and they passed another night in shifts. The sun found them where it had left them-mildly lost in the Alps.

  Picking their way up and down the range for several days brought them no closer to the southern road, and after a minor squabble over whose sense of direction surpassed the other’s, they traveled southwest over the spines of great peaks, skirting their stony brows and plodding onward, always in search of the next pass. The weather grew meaner by the day, the winds slashing ever deeper through their coats. The grassy meadows diminished in size and frequency while the glaciers increased, and each night the baying of wolves seemed closer. The meat had run out and the turnips were growing scant, and while Manfried’s logic had thus far prevailed, they both appraised Horse hungrily by starlight.

  After a week they clambered to the summit of a boulder field and surveyed a forest sprouting between two monstrous ridges. They scrambled down the scree, dragging the weary Horse behind them. Firewood, fresh water, protection from the wind, and hopefully meat awaited them. Birds circled the thick pines, and the shady Brothers were cheered to enter shadows after being exposed to the open sky for days on end. The silence of tombs enveloped them, and the naïve Brothers prayed they might even stumble upon an overgrown churchyard. The Virgin had delivered them into such a fine sanctuary the idea did not seem beyond reason.

  “Mark me well,” Hegel cautioned, “them hill-dogs we’s been hearin is probably laid up somewhere in here.”

  “Stands to reason,” Manfried agreed, scampering around the thick bushes that choked the wood. “Wolf meat’s better than none, though.”

  A brook could be heard deeper in the copse, and when they finally found it among the twisted trunks they made camp nearby. Stretching out on the moss and drinking their fill, they realized they had burned most of their daylight; night comes on fearful quick in the mountains. They collected a huge pile of fallen limbs and underbrush but found no evidence of any animal they might catch for dinner. Hegel made a stew out of the last few turnips while his brother set snares along the stream, and even when the wind rocked the trees and howled through the crags above they remained comfortable.

  “You want to sit first?” Manfried asked, pulling his blankets tight.

  “Guess so.” Hegel set both crossbows beside the fire. They had salvaged only a dozen bolts, one of these having been removed from Hans’s groin. Hegel looked forward to trying out the heavy sword and pick, his brother curling up beside Bertram’s mace and his ax leaned against a tree. After Manfried began snoring, Hegel swigged the last bit of gutrot.

  Night wore slowly under the trees, the canopy blotting out any stars or moonshine. The large fire provided ample light though, and nothing stirred in the wood. Just as Hegel felt his lids droop and reckoned he should wake his brother, a peculiar feeling crept over him.

  In the course of their nefarious adventures neither Grossbart was a stranger to being hunted, yet time and again Hegel felt some inkling of when their pursuers drew close, and always knew when they were being watched. He kept such things to himself save when the situation necessitated it, and years earlier his uncle had declared him to possess the Witches’ Sight after Hegel suddenly urged they take cover just before a search party rounded the path they had walked. Hegel resented the term as any good Christian would, but his hunches always proved right.

  The familiar raising of his hackles told him eyes watched from somewhere beyond the fire, and given the unbroken silence their owner must be soft of sole indeed. A more cautious and clever man might have feigned sleep to lure out the voyeur or slowly reached for a weapon. Such intelligent action would have meant disaster for both Grossbarts, so it is fortunate Hegel instead leaped to his feet as he notched a quarrel, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “Come out, you bastards!”

  Manfried rolled out of his blankets and gained his feet, mace and ax at the ready.

  “Got guests?” Manfried blinked his eyes, peering into the night.

  “Don’t know,” Hegel shouted even louder. “Guests show themselves, honest-like! Only fools and fiends cower in the dark!”

  A deep laugh rolled out of the blackness, and to Hegel’s shock it came from just behind him. He twisted around, crossbow leveled, but found no target. He aimed at where he thought the laughter emanated from but held his finger, wanting to make sure.

  “Come over by the fire,” Hegel called a bit more softly. Manfried moved closer to his brother, squinting into the moonless forest.

  “No thank you,” a voice growled from the dark, seeming to come from a throat choked with gravel. “Unless you care to douse that fire.”

  Another chuckle that chilled the guts of both Brothers. They were accustomed to being the sinister voice in the night, and did not care to be on the receiving end of such a discourse. Manfried attempted to wrest control of the situation.

  Taking a step forward, Manfried intoned, “May all those who love their salvation say evermore Mary is great!”

  Another genuine belly laugh, and after a pause, that voice: “My mistress is far closer than that slattern, dwelling as she does in this very wood!”

  “Fire your bow,” Manfried hissed.

  Hands shaking, Hegel fired toward the voice. There was a skittering in the underbrush while Hegel clumsily reloaded, Manfried cocking his ear to pin down where the man was moving. Readied, Hegel raised the weapon but the silence persisted, only their breathing and the wind disturbing the stillness. Then they heard a swishing, like a switch being swung back and forth. Now the man must be even closer, somewhere just beyond the glow of the fire.

  “Not Christian,” the man complained. “Come into my house and try to murder me.”

  “See, it ain’t like that,” Hegel explained. “My finger slipped.”

  The chortling bothered them more than the voice, and the fain
t whipping noise did not help.

  “Slipped, did it? Oh, then it’s alright. After all, travelers in the night are right to be cautious, especially so deep in the wood, so far in the mountains. Never know who’s out there, prowling the night.”

  “Right enough,” Manfried answered, sorely aware he did not need to yell to be heard.

  “It’s been an awful long time,” said the man, “since we’ve had any visitors who’d talk to us.”

  “That a fact?” Hegel swallowed, still trying to pinpoint the man’s location.

  “Most just scream like children and run. Rather, they try to run.” Neither Grossbart found this warranted even a chuckle, let alone the drawn-out laugh that shook their nerves.

  “We’s talkin,” Manfried pointed out. “Ain’t gonna run. Anyone runs, reckon it’ll be you.”

  Hegel could not return his brother’s weak smile. “Yeah, uh, that’s how it is, friend.”

  “Oh, I think I could make you run,” the voice growled. “Yes, I wager you’d run if you weren’t too scared to do nothing but mess your drawers and pray. All it’d take is me taking a few more steps toward that fire. Still want me to come into the light? Fair’s fair, here I come.”

  “Nah, that’s alright,” Hegel quickly interjected. “You’s fine where you’s at, and we’s fine where we’s at, no sense in, uh, no sense in-”

  “Forcin us to kill you,” Manfried finished, but the words almost stuck in his craw. He was no superstitious bumpkin but he knew dark things move at night, especially in the wilds where men rarely journey. Still, no sense in getting all frazzled. Sweat poured down his face despite the frigid night air. The chortling coming from the dark twisted his bowels, and his whole body shook with nervous excitement.

  “Can’t have that,” the unseen interloper managed through his mirth. “My goodness, no.”

  “Knew he was bluffin,” Manfried muttered, mouth dry and brow damp.

  “Can’t have you killing me, that wouldn’t do at all. Have to put food on the board, yes?” the man rasped, only now his voice came from above them, drifting down out of the thick pine boughs. Manfried felt nauseous and light-headed, even his oversized ears failing to detect the movement in the dark.

  “Yeah.” Hegel tried to keep his voice from quavering but he felt ill and weird. The Witches’ Sight-if that was truly what he possessed instead of mundane intuition-wracked his body with chills, every scrap of his skin itching to dash off into the night away from this clearly Mary-forsaken wood.

  “So we’s decided,” Hegel finally said.

  “Yes we are,” the voice almost whispered from the trees.

  “You stay where you’s at and we stay where we’s at,” Hegel confirmed.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Hegel felt relieved.

  “Until morning.”

  “Til mornin?” Manfried bit his lip.

  “When I fall upon you and eat you both alive.”

  For the first time in their lives the Grossbarts were dumb-struck.

  “You’ll scream then,” he continued, his voice rising with the wind. “You’ll beg and cry and I’ll suck the marrow from your bones before you expire. You’ll feel bits of you sliding into my belly still attached, and I’ll wear your skins when the weather turns.”

  “Uh,” Hegel managed, looking like an occupant of the crypts from which they made their living.

  Manfried could not even get that much out, eyes like saucers. His lips moved in prayer but no sound emerged. His faith that whoever waited outside their vision posed no serious hazard to them had dissipated. He wanted to spit in the face of whoever lurked in the trees, to say something so insulting it would make even his brother blush. What finally came out mirrored Hegel’s statement:

  “Uh.”

  Laughter rained down on them with such heartiness that pine needles accompanied it. The Brothers had subconsciously drawn so close that when their shoulders brushed they both jumped. No further sound came from the darkness, save the swishing both found familiar yet neither could place.

  “Fire’s low,” Hegel whispered, the shadows lengthening on their periphery.

  “So put wood on,” Manfried snapped. Neither had taken his eyes off the overhanging branches since the laughter had trailed off on the wind. They were uncertain whether moments or hours had passed, scanning the trees for movement. Hegel cracked first but used his feet to kick limbs onto the blaze, unwilling to set down his crossbow for even an instant.

  “Watch my ass,” Manfried said, and retrieved the other arbalest. Stringing it, he rejoined his brother’s vigil. “Got an idea. Need to shoot soon as you see’em.” Manfried had lapsed into a guttural vernacular that only his brother could decipher. Their uncle grew furious whenever the Brothers adopted it, paranoid they were plotting against him. His suspicions were only occasionally justified.

  “No need to say it twice,” Hegel replied in the same.

  “Gotta stoke these flames, shine some light on matters,” Manfried announced to the wood, back in his regular Germanic mode of speech.

  Dumping more branches on what quickly grew into a bonfire, Manfried suddenly leaped to his feet and hurled a flaming brand into the limbs overhead. Hegel stood ready but saw only the thick boughs of the pines. When the branch plummeted back down they avoided being singed by the hair of their beards.

  “Damn,” they both said, Hegel looking right, Manfried looking left.

  “Suppose he’s a ghost?” Hegel asked in their unique tongue.

  “More likely a cannibal tryin to put the spook on us,” Manfried replied in kind.

  “What’s a cannibal do all the way out here?”

  “What you think he does? Eats people, told us himself.”

  “Awful strange, be smart enough to talk but dumb enough to eat other folk stead a proper beasts. All they’s good for.” Hegel glanced at Stupid, who had calmed after the voice departed and stood dozing near the fire.

  “Them crumbs you find in church is all cannibals, and they’s liable to talk you to death in the bargain.”

  “What crumbs? What church?” asked Hegel.

  “All a them. That’s what they eat, say it’s the body a Mary’s babe, and the wine’s his blood.”

  “Oh, that rot again. Recollect that time we stole all a that hard bread and wine? That make us cannibals?”

  “Hell no! Need a priest to turn it to flesh and blood.”

  “Witchery,” Hegel judged it.

  “It surely is. That’s how you know a man’s pure or not. Honest man don’t eat nobody else. Specially not no kin a Mary, I don’t care how much a bitchswine he is.”

  “So you think whoever’s out there’s just a heretic?” Hegel felt relieved.

  “Yeah, nuthin more nor less.” Manfried was not the least bit sure but it would not do to frighten his brother with speculation. “Besides, if he was somethin more than moonfruit what’s stoppin him from rushin us right now? Or earlier when I was asleep?”

  “True words. Means to put the rattle on us, so’s we stay up all night and is half-strong come cockcrow.”

  “Exactly.” Manfried heartened at Hegel’s sound point. “Any fool’ll tell you night’s when there’s real nastiness afoot. Nuthin I ever heard a prefers day to night cept ordinary people. So you get some rest, and I’ll stand guard.”

  “I won’t hear it, brother, my watch had only begun when I roused you. I’ll stay up, you take in some shut-eye.”

  “Nonsense. I can see from here your eyes are saggin and you’s got that tremor on your lip you always get when you’s tuckered.”

  Hegel tried unsuccessfully to get a gander at his own mouth but his bulbous nose blotted out all but his lower beard. He reluctantly lay down, too out of sorts to argue anymore. He still felt hot and cold all over but could no longer be sure if this came from being watched or from exhaustion. He pretended to sleep for several hours, always keeping one eye half-cocked on the trees. He then switched places with Manfried, who did the same even less convinc
ingly. Only Horse got any rest that night, and an hour before dawn both Grossbarts squatted beside the fire, crossbows ready, too tired to speak and without even a turnip to gnaw.

  IV. A Lamentable Loss

  The dawn light grew with agonizing slowness, and when Horse whinnied the Brothers both spun around. In the dimness nothing stirred save Stupid, who stomped and pulled at his tether, eyes swelling at something behind them. Then they heard the swishing, and slowly turned to face the enemy.

  He perched on a low-hanging branch a few dozen paces away, smiling mischievously. Guessing from his sparse and wispy hair he held over fifty years on his wrinkled crown, but his teeth and eyes appeared hard and sharp. His face, however, did not hold their attention.

  Under his chin any semblance of humanity was absent, his body instead akin to those of the panthers and leopards that stalk desolate regions. His mottled pelt bristled, various hues contrasting splotches of naked skin. The swish-swish-swishing came from the balding tail whipping behind him of its own accord. His front paws dangled over the branch, hooked claws lazily extending and retracting.

  The Grossbarts had prepared themselves for anything; unfortunately, their concept of anything failed to include a hog-sized cat with the head of an old man. Horse whinnied but no other sound disturbed the morning, the monster and the men watching each other while light drifted down through the branches. With an air of finality the beast rose on its haunches, its four legs balanced on the limb.

  “Uhhh…” Hegel dumbly leveled his crossbow at it.

  Manfried stared, transfixed.

  They would fire their crossbows simultaneously, Hegel imagined, each quarrel embedding in one of the creature’s eyes. It would fall dead from the tree, snapping its neck for good measure when it hit the ground. The cunningly wrought animal-skin cloak would be dislodged, revealing what had to be a wizened but decidedly human body underneath. Hegel swallowed, and put the plan into action.

  Hegel fired his weapon but shook too badly to properly aim and his quarrel shot past the monster into the forest. Manfried reflexively pulled his trigger but did not raise the bow, the bolt kicking up dirt at their feet. The old man’s grin widened and he stepped forward along the branch.