men spinning almost out of reach.
The jaws on Magnus’s left elbow tore into Rodrigo’s leg, taking away a massive dripping chunk. Had Raphael not already lost his left hand it would have disappeared into the snapping mouth that grazed his bandaged wrist. The skeletal outline of Magnus’s face twisted toward Manfried and Raphael, the warped nostril billowing, two eyes shining black and the third yellow. The remaining two prisoners, one a hardened killer who had that very night determined just what the Grossbarts were after in his homeland and the other a young Moslem noble who had never struck a foe, swung their swords into the backs of Magnus’s ankles. The biting teeth on the creature’s feet kicked as Magnus tried to right himself, legs as thick as tree trunks pumping the air as the convicts hacked.
The four men near Magnus’s head and arms scrambled back only to leap again into the fray, the downed creature’s bellows of fury turning to wails as ax and sword and mace fell on every limb. A foot found the noble’s chest but his last blow cut the mighty paw free and the young man fell backward, the jaws gnawing his bare chest despite being severed. Tendons popped in the other leg, the more seasoned prisoner dodging the deadly kicks as he cut ever deeper. The mangled rat-head became mush under Hegel’s mace and then came loose from Rodrigo’s stabbings, and Magnus’s right arm flew off at the elbow from Manfried and Raphael’s onslaught.
Swaying in the moonlight, Heinrich called his son’s name over and over but his child had departed, taken by something even fouler than he. Staggering toward the Grossbarts and their followers he raised his dull scourge, grief dampening his cheeks for the first time since abandoning his humanity. Poor Magnus bawled as the bastards dismembered him, the child rolling toward one group only to have the other hew into his exposed torso.
With the arm removed, Manfried pressed in to hack the thing’s head open when the barbed scourge whipped around his face and pulled him off the beast. Heinrich’s stench blinded them as he swung the flail around at Raphael, but then both he and Manfried turned their attentions to the possessed yeoman. Heinrich fell into the arms of his acolytes as Manfried’s ax cleaved into his shoulder and Raphael’s sword slit open his belly. He cackled even as black slime bubbled from his wounds, his assailants returning to their task.
“Burn it!” Hegel told the two prisoners. “Oil the mecky fucker!”
“Don’t let them!” Heinrich shrieked at Vittorio and Paolo, who still hung back.
Hegel had noticed Magnus’s fresh wounds healed quicker than new ones could be made. The severed rat-hand had melted into bubbling filth at their feet and a new, placenta-veiled bulge quickly grew from the stump. The Egyptian criminal helped the noble throw the rear paw off before it ate its way to his heart, but then the foot turned to ash and hooked toes burst from Magnus’s gory ankle. Aghast, the younger prisoner had the sense slapped into him by his murderous countryman.
Without the two men working its legs, Magnus recovered sufficiently to leap away from the other four attackers, the fresh rat-hand uttering a snarling squeak at its rebirth. Manfried caught sight of something behind the great chops of its central stomach-mouth and charged. Hegel and Raphael were close after but Rodrigo slumped, his wounded leg leaking like a worn-out wineskin. Clumsily bandaging himself and taking up his crossbow, Rodrigo aimed at Magnus’s face.
The abomination tried to stand on its hind legs but they were not yet whole and buckled, Magnus dropping to all fours to greet their charge. Raphael slashed across its nostril, popping the eyeball beside it and bringing the creature’s focus upon him. Racing past the roaring arms, Hegel followed his brother until Manfried ducked under the creature’s stomach and the beast lunged forward.
A thigh struck Hegel, teeth latching onto his arm and pulling him against Magnus’s side. More mouths opened where Hegel had sworn there were none, pinning him flat as fangs rent his armor to get at his flesh. He tried to use his mace but a long, greasy tongue wrapped around it, pulling him closer. Immobile, Hegel saw a cloud growing around the wounded Heinrich, and, knowing what it presaged, began to pray as he struggled.
In the moonless shadow of the creature’s belly, Manfried held his prybar in both hands and stood up-directly into the largest of Magnus’s mouths. Blinded in the dank, plaque-ridden stink of its maw, Manfried held his prybar until the jaws closed on him and the metal tool embedded itself in the monster’s gums. With a silent prayer, Manfried released his grip on the instrument that prevented the teeth from biting him in half, its muscles straining to snap the prybar keeping its mouth ajar. A warm, vinegar-sour mist boiled out of the hidden pit where all its mouths led, choking the Grossbart with its pungent exhalation. Reaching up into the blackness, Manfried tore with his bare hands through flesh and tissue, noxious blood burning his skin and eyes before the monster moved forward and the Grossbart held on to meat to keep from falling out. His boots dragging on the ground, Manfried dug through the back of the creature’s gut-throat until several of Magnus’s teeth popped and the prybar slipped, the beast’s mouth snapping shut.
Firing his crossbow, Rodrigo saw Magnus’s only human eye burst in Raphael’s face before the rat-hand bit the brigand and began slinging him about by his shoulder. Hegel felt his helmet pulled free and heard it being rent in the mouth against his shoulder, then he felt another tongue wrapping around his neck and teeth chewing his beard, pulling his head in despite his efforts. Then Magnus collapsed, dragging Hegel to the ground and tossing Raphael through the air and onto Rodrigo.
The fight had taken them away from the campfires and the moon hid, but criminal eyes are always sharpest in darkness. Noble and misanthrope alike stood transfixed, weapons slipping from their shaky fingers. The beast lay motionless but none of the crusaders moved, two sprawled a dozen feet away, one half-chewed in the mouths peppering the abomination’s flank, and the last swallowed whole. The two popes held up their priest, who vomited bile and smoke, the miasma coalescing around him into horrible shapes cavorting in the starlight. The odors and sounds his body released would have gagged a necromancer but his acolytes savored the vileness.
Then Magnus’s neck bulged and the prisoners stared, wondering what new horror birthed from its gargantuan corpse. Fur split, its entire head suddenly rolled away from its body, and a man-shaped thing crawled forth.
“Mary!” the magenta man gasped, holding aloft Magnus’s giant heart. “By the Virgin, we done it!”
At Manfried’s invocation of Mary’s name Hegel tore himself free of the cooling tongues and teeth, and Rodrigo and Raphael slowly untangled their sprained and bleeding limbs from one another. Manfried’s beard resembling afterbirth and Hegel’s chewed down to his cheeks, the Grossbarts embraced atop their fallen adversary, shouting amens that were taken up by the few survivors.
Over his brother’s shoulder Hegel saw Heinrich erupt in a bloody mist, and a sinisterly familiar shape landed in the spray beside the yeoman’s deflating body.
Heinrich did not see the grotesque demon vacate his largest bubo, his stolen melancholic humour coursing through the parasitic monster in place of blood. Instead he saw Brennen as the boy had first appeared in the midwife’s arms, chubby, yawning, and terribly put out to be brought into such a cold world. His chest heaving with the pulse of festering corruption instead of life, Heinrich heard the Grossbarts shouting and realized he could search for eternity and never find a devil as evil as they. His son’s name bubbled on his rancid lips as he slipped beyond pain and joy alike.
“Circles!” Hegel shouted, shoving the mace into Manfried’s arms and sprinting toward his fallen pick. “Draw circles bout you in the dirt! Now!”
“Ah fuck it all,” Manfried groaned, seeing what his brother was on about. “Not all this again.”
“Grossbarts!” The high-pitched squeal shook their bowels. “Thought you had me! Thought you had me in those hills, in that hog!” The carapaced, miasma-wreathed thing bounded in ten-foot strides toward Hegel but he snatched his pick and knelt on the ground. The demon saw what he intended and sped at him, its victorious rant turning to a horrified wail. Completing the circle in the sand, Hegel looked up to see the cloud of pestilential, stinking fog surround him, the demon bouncing before him on its rearmost legs. Hegel started back but caught himself before he fell outside the ring he had scratched in the sand.
Without further hesitation the demon spun and made for Manfried, but the crimson Grossbart had completed his own circle, being mindful not to drip onto the band that encircled him. The foul thing hopped toward Rodrigo and Raphael but the men had made a wide ring around both of them. Without understanding the language the prisoners saw enough to imitate the crusaders, and again the demon was denied.
With a final agonized screech the demon leaped high into the night and vanished, all going silent upon the desert. The young noble began shouting and jumping in the air, praising the name Grossbart. Hegel and Manfried both yelled at him to calm his foolish ass but he could not understand, and as his foot landed straddling the edge of the circle a stinking comet plummeted into his face.
The noble rolled in the sand and they saw the suddenly shrunken demon squirming down his bulging throat, pus oozing around his split lips. The other Egyptian turned away after making sure his own circle remained unbroken. Rodrigo and Raphael stared in shock but the Grossbarts knew at once how to handle this dire turn.
“Shoot’em!” Manfried shouted, realizing his crossbow had fallen somewhere during the battle. “With the quickness!”
“Rigo!” Hegel yelled at finding his own broken. “Shoot, Rigo, shoot!”
Rodrigo stared blankly at the possession taking place while Raphael clumsily tried to cock the bow. With one hand this proved impossible given the model of weapon and Raphael shook Rodrigo, yelling in his face. The younger man blinked at him, and vomited all over them both.
“Rigo!” Manfried bellowed. “Listen, fuckwit, that’s what happened to Ennis!”
“Ennio!” Hegel shouted. “That same demon did that same thing to your brother Ennio!”
This captured Rodrigo’s attention, and he notched the only bolt left in his quiver. The possessed noble gained his feet, ropes of bile swinging from his chin. The cackling demoniac snatched up a dropped sword and swayed toward the closest Grossbart-Manfried. As he swiped the weapon down to smudge Manfried’s circle, Rodrigo’s last quarrel penetrated the noble’s chest and skewered his heart. The man collapsed, screeching and spraying biles from every hole.
“Grossbarts,” it lamented as it clawed out around the bolt. Pulling itself free in a welter of gore, it had diminished to the size of a cat. “Break their wards! Help me, brothers, as I helped you!”
Paolo and Vittorio appeared through the gloom but made no move to rush the Brothers Grossbart. The brains of the two boys had long since baked from fever and sun to little more than paste but they strode forward nevertheless, their putrescent hearts pumping pus and biles through bodies long ripe for the grave.
“Something the matter?” asked Paolo.
“Something troublesome?” asked Vittorio.
“Kick their circles!” the demon howled, dancing around them. “Please, brothers!”
“No,” said Vittorio.
“No,” agreed Paolo.
“Why?!” The demon jumped onto Paolo’s shoulder and howled in his ear, “They’ve done you as wrong as I!”
“Wrong.” Paolo stroked the fiend’s thorax before it hopped back down to the sand. “They have done you wrong, and these mounts of ours, but what have they done to us?”
“What?” asked Vittorio, “save reprimand your folly? Many chances to spread the gift you have wasted, leading us here.”
“What?” asked Paolo, “save deliver us our freedom from your yoke? What have they done to
“This!” Manfried shouted, hurling a dagger with expert precision. The long knife disappeared in the rotten robe, the handle marking where Paolo’s heart lay. The barber’s son pitched onto his face, farting, belching, and smoking.
