She started running up the steps and heard Hagen’s heavy footsteps behind her. The stairs were becoming even steeper; her muscles were burning and her heart was beating in her throat.
Greta was under the impression that the creature pursuing her was no man but a fierce predator who wouldn’t rest until he caught his prey. But when she shot a glance backward, she saw that Hagen was lagging behind. He was limping heavily. Greta remembered that the mercenary had been injured atop the platform on Castel Sant’Angelo. But he wasn’t giving up. Slowly but steadily he followed her, his sword dragging loudly across the stones. He didn’t utter a word.
When Greta took her next step, a stone broke away and her right foot slipped into a crack. She pulled and tore, but her shoe was stuck. The harder Greta pulled, the more her foot seemed to become lodged. Her ankle started to bleed. She tried to get up but every movement resulted in agony.
Beneath her, the dragging of the sword was accompanied by heavy steps.
Tap, tap, tap.
Greta’s dress was laced with thorns, a rivulet of blood ran down her face, and still she tried to pull her foot free. The giant in the long black coat was coming closer and closer, like a larger-than-life wolf on two legs. Yard by yard, step by step.
In her despair, Greta looked searchingly toward where Karl was probably lying with his bones shattered.
Someone was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Greta blinked. At first she thought it was Karl. But then she recognized her father. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, carrying in his hands the leather bag that gave off a strange glow, as if it was shining from the inside.
“Hey!” shouted Johann as he laboriously climbed the steps, raising the bag so that Hagen could see it. “Let my daughter go. It is me you are seeking.”
Hagen stopped and looked around. Slowly, he lowered his sword.
“I’m not seeking any of you,” he grumbled. “I am merely the guardian. You know the rules, Doctor. You must come of your own free will. And alone. The master wants you and no one else.”
“So he told you,” said Johann. “You know who you’re serving?”
“Oh yes.” The giant bared his teeth. “In some ways I have always served him. Since the beginning of time. On the battlefields of the world we sang his song, and when we covered our swords with blood we wrote in his language. The church curses him, and yet she collaborates with him when she sends her sheep to their deaths. But the chaos isn’t perfect yet.”
Hagen’s voice sounded strange, changed somehow, as if someone else was speaking through him.
“Give the master what he desires,” Hagen continued in a sonorous bass. “You won’t regret it, Faustus!”
“This, you mean? Why not? He can have it.”
Johann hurled the satchel at Hagen.
“Catch it and give my regards to your master in hell!”
The bag flew through the air and the mercenary reached out his hand. The moment he caught it, a glowing red mass spilled from inside the sack, and sparks and fire rained onto Hagen.
The giant roared when the fire burned his chest. From there it spread across his entire body, red, blue, and white flames licking in all directions. Hagen dropped the sword and beat at the flames with his hands. But Greta saw to her horror that the movement only made the flames grow faster. Now Hagen’s beard and hair had caught fire. He fell to his knees, and his roaring became louder until it turned into beastly screeching as the flames consumed him.
An image from Dante’s Inferno, thought Greta.
Never before had she seen such a powerful fire.
Hagen knelt upright as a human torch for a few more heartbeats, then he let off one last long moan. Slowly, he tilted forward and then rolled down the stairs. Faust jumped aside as Hagen hurtled toward the bottom like a burning thornbush.
In the end, the giant was but a ball of fire that burned out in a shower of sparks somewhere on the overgrown tracks of Circus Maximus.
Hell had come to take him.
Karl groaned and palpated his limbs like he had learned during his studies of medicine at Leipzig. All his bones seemed to be intact, which bordered on a miracle. After all, Hagen had thrown him headfirst down the stairs, but a protruding tree root had stopped his fall and prevented the worst. When the mercenary had sped past him as a living torch, Karl had quickly sought shelter behind a weathered column. Now he emerged from his cover and looked down. There was no sign of Hagen, but it was obvious that the giant was dead, burned to death like a dry pine tree in the middle of summer.
Karl knew how high-proof alcohol burned, and he knew the effect of blackpowder. But this fire had been something else. Something more deadly than anything he had ever seen. It was like the wrathful finger of God had touched Hagen.
Or that of the devil, he thought involuntarily.
He limped up the stone steps until he reached Greta and Johann. Greta sat leaning against one of the steps, her face twisted with pain. Her right foot was stuck in a crack.
“Hold on,” said Karl. “The more you move the worse it’ll get.” He pulled and wiggled the slab until he managed to break it free. Groaning, Greta pulled out her tattered leather shoe.
“Thanks,” she said breathlessly and cautiously moved her foot. “I don’t think it’s broken. The worst
