regions had affected Manfried, Hegel assumed, refusing to allow the possibility of manticore venom. The solution lay in reaching higher ground where the wind prevented the pestilential vapors from gathering.
Both had nearly expired from the plague when they were ten years old and Hegel knew the cure as well as the symptoms-since Manfried had yet to sprout the buboes, clean wind and prayer might save him. Their mother had known, which is surely why she delivered them into a decayed lean-to high in the hills and abandoned them when their humours became disturbed so long ago.
Hegel dragged Stupid’s hardened skin behind them by its former owner’s tether, but with his brother’s dead weight on his shoulders Hegel had to leave most of the meat behind. He wheezed his way up the creek, reckoning it to be the surest path to higher ground. Pausing only when it was necessitated by exhaustion, Hegel trudged onward, his injured right arm dripping more than sweat from his exertions. Midday never came in that dismal wood, evening following directly after morning. The snow fell steadier than before, and his brother’s damp body pressing against his back gave Hegel a stubborn cough.
With the light almost gone and the forest even thicker, Hegel laid his dying brother on the ground and collapsed beside him, hacking up phlegm. He pinched Manfried’s nose and poured water down his throat and unsuccessfully attempted to force him to swallow some horse meat Hegel had chew-softened. He gathered wood but his numb fingers hampered his ability, and he glumly realized the smoke leaving his mouth with each breath would probably exceed what he could coax from the damp branches. Returning to his equally snow-brushed brother, Hegel began to pray.
The pitiful fire he managed hissed and popped, and no matter how hard Hegel blew the thick pieces would not catch and the thickening snow sizzled as it smothered. As he looked up to curse the heavens, his sharp eyes caught a hint of red in the forest. Holding his breath, terrified it was only his own paltry fire reflecting off a wet leaf, he stood and stared. He took several weak-kneed steps forward, squinting. His wide grin split his cheek anew, blood dribbling into his beard.
Hurriedly gathering their scant provisions and hoisting his brother, Hegel plowed through the underbrush, blind but for the white cloud of snow around him and the distant beacon. He broke into a clearing and stumbled onward, free of the limbs and roots that impeded his progress. Now he could make out the roof and walls, and the single window glowing through the white and black night. He had feared it to be fairyfire or worse, but Mary be praised, a cabin emerged from the snow and darkness.
Without setting down his brother he slapped the flimsy door with his good hand, bellowing out:
“Open up! Ill man out here, open up! Open up in the name a Mary and all the saints!”
Nothing. No sound at all, save the Brothers’ labored breathing. Manfried moaned in his sleep, and Hegel banged again.
“Open up or I’ll knock it down,” Hegel roared. “Give us our sanctuary or by Mary’s Will I’ll take it!”
A shuffling came toward the door. A voice, faint enough to be almost drowned out by Manfried’s whimpering, floated through. Hegel could not say if it belonged to man or woman, child or parent.
“Your word first,” flitted out. “You’ll do no evil, lest your soul be blackened for all time.”
Impatient beyond reckoning, Hegel yelled even louder. “Course I ain’t evil! Open up!”
“And you’ll try no mischief, nor do no harm?”
“There’ll be mischief plenty if you don’t let us in!”
“Your word.”
“My word, yes, and my brother’s, and Mary’s, and her moon-fruit boy’s if you open up!”
“What was that about the Christ?”
“What? Nuthin!”
“Calm yourself, and remember your word,” and wood slid on wood, and the door pushed out. Blinded by the glare, Hegel stumbled inside, knocking over a small table. Stamping his feet, Hegel set Manfried on the ground. A smell of spoiled milk and sour sweat filled the thick, greasy air of the hut. The door closed behind them and the board slid back in place. Hegel whirled to confront the person who had possibly murdered his brother by forcing him to wait out in the snow on the verge of death.
The oldest person Hegel had ever seen stared back at him, a woman sixty years old if she was a day. He could be sure of her sex only by her lack of beard, her taut yet cracked face offering no other markers. Bald save for specters of white hair and swathed in rags, her bulbous body contrasted her emaciated countenance. The manticore-slayer and dog-breaker Hegel took a step back from the fearsome crone.
She grinned, black-toothed and scab-gummed. “Welcome, welcome.”
“Uh, thank you,” said Hegel.
“Hard night for traveling?” Her eyes shone in the firelight.
“Had worse. My brother’s in a bad way, though.”
“So I see.” Yet she did not remove her eyes from Hegel.
“Caught’em a touch a the pest out in the wood.” Hegel’s body hummed, either from the change in climate or her presence, he could not be sure which.
“Oh did he? Found a pest in the forest?” she asked.
“No, er,
“He’s got the black bulges, does he?”
“Not yet, he-” Hegel stopped short when the woman darted out a hand and poked his wounded face. He snatched for his sword, but the look in her eye held it in its sheath. He stared aghast as she licked the blood from her finger, appraisingly.
“Not out there,” she muttered, “no, no, caught a different case of death, I’d wager.”
“He ain’t dead yet,” said Hegel, turning to Manfried.
The walls of the cramped interior bulged with cluttered shelves containing bottles, jars, and heaps of bones and feathers, and from the ceiling hung a hundred different bundles of drying plants and strips of cloth. The firepit in the rear filled the room with a pungent, piney haze that masked the sickly smell of the crone, a small, snowmelt-dripping hole in the roof failing to accommodate all the smoke. An empty chair sat before the firepit and one corner held a heap of rags, the other a small woodpile.
Hegel dragged his brother onto the hearthstones. Manfried had grown pale but his skin burned, his body wracked with spasms. The crone leaned over them both, clucking softly.
“Caught a case right enough, a case of the comeuppance!” she jeered.
Hegel’s hand again reached for his sword but her tongue intercepted him.
“Calm, calm, Grossbart, remember your promise.”
“Slag,” Hegel hissed, “you watch yourself.”
She cackled in a manner only the elderly can master.
“Wait a tic.” Hegel swallowed, neck-hairs reaching for the roof. “How’d you know our name?”
“You look like long-beards to me,” she replied. “Don’t you call a thing by what it most resembles? Call a dog a dog, a beast a beast, eh?”
“Suppose so,” Hegel allowed, not convinced.
“Your brother’s dying,” she said, her voice lacking the solemnity Hegel felt the situation deserved.
“Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t. You don’t look like no barber, so maybe you should mind your mouth.”
“Well, Grossbart,” she said, “tis true I’m no barber-I’m better than one. Barber couldn’t do anything for that man, just put him on the cart for the crows.
Hegel stepped toward her, dried belladonna brushing his hair. “If I was you, I’d incline myself with the quickness.”
“Menacing words, menacing eyes.”
“You-”
“Careful. I’ll mend your brother, and you besides, if you do as I say.”
“What we got that you want?”
“Oh, nothing special, nothing unique. Just that thing all men got, the tail we feeble women lack.”
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in, but when it did Hegel recoiled. “I couldn’t give you that even if I was a mind to.”
“No? Even for your brother?”
Hegel chewed his lip, considered slaying the woman, thought better of it, spit twice and said, “See, I’s chaste-”
“Even better!”
“I wouldn’t know how-”
“I can teach you, it’s simply done.”
“I-”
“You?”
“After you fix’em up.”
She brayed again. “Think I trust you, Grossbart? Think I don’t know what you’re thinking? Don’t worry, it’ll be done soon, and might not be as bad as you think.”
“I doubt that. What guarantee I got you can even heal’em?”
“Guarantee’s my oath, just like yours. I can sweeten his wounds, same as I can make it sweet for you.” She lasciviously hiked her rags up around her thighs, revealing complicated networks of veins bulging under the pruned skin. Hegel smelled a stronger, acidic scent overpowering the burning wood and felt his horse meat rise in his throat but choked it down.
“Like I said,” he managed through his disgust, “I would if I could, but I can’t, and that’s all there is to it.”
She had turned and rooted through an array of jars on a shelf, her backside thrown out toward him. She turned back triumphantly with a dusty vessel, its rag stopper half-rotten. Withdrawing the rag she offered it to Hegel.
“Knock this into that gut of yours.” Her eyes glittered.
“Give me your word it ain’t poison.”
“Given, given,” she replied dismissively.
