The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (29 page)

The second had no such vacant area, its entire back snapping and snarling, tongues of mud staining the shiny teeth. Desperately
he moved to its front, the last of her fingers disappearing into the mouth on its face. He placed the heart in its stomach,
gibbering maws in place of breasts thwarting any effort to place it higher. This scrap also began beating, and the two smaller
mouths faded back into the surface, the teeth migrating to form a mouth protecting the heart in its belly. Heinrich fell back,
relieved to be done.

They had finished the arms and both scuttled toward the head when Heinrich realized he had forgotten something. Kicking it
away, he scooped it up and went for her mouth. They were making for his legs, hundreds of teeth chattering intently as they
neared further meat. He cut her tongue free and dropped the bloody lump just as the mouths found his feet.

The chorus of grunts the babes made as they fought over the head made him light-headed, and dropping the dagger he snatched
the tongs. He backed toward the door as her skull cracked open, and bit into her tongue. It squirmed in his mouth and he gagged
and coughed, the appendage wriggling through his fingers. Crouching to retrieve it, he saw the abominations stand and walk
toward him, dozens of smiling mouths turned in his direction. He jumped away and tripped over the stoop, falling outside into
the slush.

Standing and backing away, he chewed the writhing tongue, the flesh attempting to squirm up his throat even as he swallowed.
The children followed him out into the morning light, each now grown as tall as his waist. One spotted the rat carcass and
scooped it up but the other advanced on Heinrich. He shoved the rest of the tongue into his mouth and choked on it, trying
to force it down. The child-thing leaped at him and with a swallow he fell backward, holding up his hands and screaming.

“Stop!”

To his amazement, they did. The monstrosity had landed on his chest but rather than chewing the mouths remained shut, its
solitary eye blinking innocently at him. The other ran on all fours to its brother, nuzzling its soft skull against Heinrich’s
chin.

He scrambled to his feet, knocking the one on his chest to the ground. Its mouths opened and began bawling in union, its eye
filling with tears. He saw the indentation of his hand on its cheek and pity consumed him; he knew at once this must be Brennen
and the other Magnus. Retrieving the tongs, he picked the shimmering pelt out of the mud and offered it to them. They fell
upon it instantly, growling and snarling as each tried to wrestle it from his brother.

The hide tore in half and Heinrich witnessed their final transformation. Steam rose from them as the pelt came alive and adhered
to their bodies, the boys rolling in the snow and wailing from every mouth. Heinrich noticed Magnus’s face had acquired two
more round little eyes from the dead rat, although they had grown significantly larger in the boy’s face. One was set in the
appropriate socket, the other bulging out in place of a second nostril. The strange skin spread over their clay flesh, and
their myriad tongues turned pink and wet as they frothed and spit. Their limbs lengthened and twisted, pudgy hands now furry
claws, knees snapping backward and feet lengthening.

The boys wailed even when they had ceased smoking and twisting, and Heinrich knelt between them, stroking their coats. Unlike
those who had worn the pelt in earlier ages neither had fully abandoned his human shape, but neither did they retain a singularly
human appearance.

Magnus’s black fur covered every bit except the mouths peppering his small body, and while his legs were distinctly rodent-like
he managed to stand and walk like a man. His third eye glistened with snot dribbling from his disfigured shard of a nose.
In place of his left hand he wielded the giant snout of a rat, its nose snuffling, its growl emanating from every maw save
the proper one.

Brennen’s coat shone brown and red and white and every other color his twin lacked. Under his bristly hair the handprint on
his face remained, finger-sized grooves sunk in over his empty eye socket and where the other nostril would be on a natural
creature. His legs were less bowed than Magnus’s but his arms and hands bulged with muscle, his long fingers sprouting hooked
brown talons.

Heinrich took his boys into his arms until they stopped mewling, whispering his devotion to them. They horrified him, but
not as much as he horrified himself, and with the marked difference that they were innocent. Their growling brought a smile
to his lips and tears to his puffy eyes.

In fairness to his memory, the Heinrich who left the valley the next morning bore little resemblance, save the physical, to
the yeoman who had shared his hearth with his plow horse on rainy nights before building the barn. Despair had yielded to
optimistic loathing, an abiding conviction that they would locate the Grossbarts and enact their vengeance. Even when the
wind cut and the snow swirled they were warm in the burrows Brennen dug, the twins tightly wedged in the blankets with their
arms and legs wrapped around Heinrich, tickling him with countless kisses from uncounted mouths.

Several days after besting the Road Popes, the Grossbarts and company found themselves arriving in Venezia long after dark.

“Real choice swap you rigged for us there,” said Manfried, staring down the black canal where the skiff had vanished before
the seasick Brothers could raise a fist to stop the boatmen. “A tidy wagon and four strong horses for a one-way trip to an
island. Choice, my brother, choice.”

“Mary’s Sweetness, those cheats done cheated us,” said Hegel when he regained his composure. “Pardon me for puttin my faith
in my fellow fuckin man! When that mecky mung-gargler said slaves and a boat we all know he meant for the long term and not
the short!”

“No matter,” said Manfried.

“No matter?!”

“Nope, no matter at all.” Manfried flashed his teeth. “I’ll allow it might a been nice to keep the boat, but I had a witch-touch
a my own on the ride over, meanin we’s vindicated true at present, lack a wagon and boat notwithstandin.”

“How’s that?” Hegel screwed up his face more than nature already had.

“Figured it all went too smooth, yeah? So in such an event as just transpired, I took me a precaution and left that bottle
a apple-water in the boat.”

“Why’d you do a thing like that?” asked Hegel, “so if and when they did rob us we’d be down a bottle besides?!”

“That hooch’s most powerful fruity, yeah?” Manfried cracked his knuckles. “So I doubt when they find the bottle and set in
they’ll be tastin all a them barber’s berries I mushed down in there. Didn’t wanna waste’em all on an eventuality I wasn’t
lookin forward to or forcin, but I reckon there’s enough in there to give’em just what’s comin their way.”

“Berries? You mean that poison?” Hegel smiled as he realized what his brother was about. “Clever as a crow, you are!”

Martyn swooned as he too understood what had unfolded, and his own part in it brought a massive weight pressing down on his
chest. Being the only one of the three who spoke Italian he had quickly grasped that the men of Mertes—the river town across
the lagoon from Venezia—intended to swindle the Grossbarts and he had done nothing to stop them, thinking it a fine come-uppance
for the twins’ arson of the neighboring village. Martyn realized he should have known the Grossbarts would turn the mischief
into something worse, and had he but warned either party those four dishonest but likely not murderous boatmen would not be
rowing away with a venomous jug of schnapps. His greed to reach a proper city and be done with the whole affair had blinded
him, and the realization brought stinging remorse to the priest’s eyes.

“Can’t all be—Where’s she goin?!” Manfried broke off mid-gloat as he noticed the woman disappear at the top of the stone steps
leading away from the small dock.

“After the feedbag!” Hegel tore up the stairs with Manfried hot after him.

Cresting the stair, Hegel reeled backward and would have fallen had Manfried not been right behind him. The woman waited for
them on a narrow road that sat like a ledge between the tall buildings and the canal. She tapped her foot in the most universal
gesture imaginable but the Grossbarts, deciding she had no intention of flight, first went and retrieved their food, schnapps,
and priest from the dock. Manfried helped Hegel lash the schnapps cask to his back and then hoisted the provisions.

Their pace and zeal greatly impeded, the trio gained the stairs where the woman waited. Despite the glow seen from the lagoon
very few lights burned in this part of the city, and to frustrate them further clouds had blotted out the sky—clouds that
appeared meaner than a riled Grossbart. True to its visage, the sky let them advance only a short distance before a deluge
crashed down on them.

Canal and road meandered in their course, and then they saw a faint light spilling from a side road. While the woman waited
in the road with her veiled face turned toward Heaven, the Grossbarts and Martyn stepped under the overhang of the covered
alley. A campfire burned forty-odd paces down the tunnel, a small crowd squatting around it. Hegel and Martyn kept their eyes
trained on this lot while Manfried stared at the woman, wondering how long he could bear the music of the rain alone.

“What say—” Hegel noticed his brother’s distraction, and resolving to make good after his previous blunder regarding their
passage, advanced on the fire alone. “All a yous, listen up! We’s lookin for the Bar Goose.”

Gray eyes under a filthy cowl flickered up from the fire, intrigued to be addressed in the barbaric tongue of the north.

“I’ll say it once more,” said Hegel, in no mood to be ignored. “Any a yous tell us where a man name a Bar Goose has his home
you might find yourself better for the honesty.”

The crutches were snatched and the gambit made.

Hegel turned back to Martyn and his brother to suggest they hurl the lot of rude beggars into the canal and commandeer their
campfire. Then he noticed a loping figure had left the circle and was approaching him. Several others were lazily taking their
feet, and Hegel put his hand on his pick.

“Barousse!” the beggar called, hurrying toward them. “Barousse!” again, followed by a string of foreign gibbering.

“He say Bar Goose?” Manfried asked his brother, turning back to the alley.

“And that he works for him,” said Martyn, his eyebrows creasing.

“That what he said?” asked Hegel, a report of thunder deafening him.

“Barousse!” the man shouted again, and drawing closer, he spoke in their native language. “I am a humble servant of Barousse,
how may I assist you gentlemen?”

The other beggars began moving as a pack down the alley, and they all took up the call of Barousse. These shouted that they
too worked for Barousse, and they should be the ones to assist. Hegel drew his pick and Manfried his mace, which stopped the
gang in their rag-swaddled tracks. An especially grimy old dodger braved their wrath and shoved the man who had originally
addressed them.

“Don’t trust that Arab cunny!
I
work for Barousse!” The new beggar shouted in passable German as his rival toppled into a puddle.

“Arab?” Hegel squinted through the rain and saw the first man’s cowl had fallen away, revealing a dark complexion and a wispy
red mustache. “You an Arab?”

“Through no fault of my own!” the Arab responded, standing wearily with the help of his crutches and then lashing out at his
attacker with disarming speed. The Arab feigned a punch only to kick the man in the back of the knee, and the surprised Grossbarts
saw at once that instead of the usual flesh-and-bone variety the Arab possessed a wooden leg. The usurper fell to the gutter
with a shout, and the one-legged Arab broke one of his crutches over the man’s back while balancing on the other.

“Come on, Arab!” Hegel laughed, marveling at their good fortune.

“Rest a yous gone.” Manfried hefted his mace at the small mob. “Get shy right quick fore we get feisty on you.”

The scrawny Arab pursed his lips in dismay at the loss of a crutch but his prone adversary’s groans were a bit of recompense.
Hegel and Manfried moved in on their guide to get their first gander at a real Arab. The fellow reeked like a sick sow’s discharge,
and Manfried took a healthy swig of schnapps to clear his mind and nose. The black-toothed Arab grinned at him, shuffling
closer and reaching for the bottle. He knew enough to not request such boons from his betters but doubted these bristly bastards
were that.

“Keep your stink to yourself,” said Manfried, “lest you wanna lose a hand in the bargain.”

“You think I… no, no, no, honest mistake, I would not presume, never, not once in all my life would I deign, in front of God
and all, no, no, no.” The Arab held up his stained palms defensively, the crutch protruding from his armpit.

“Where’s the Goose roost?” Hegel asked.

“At his estate, I would imagine. Or is this a riddle? I do love—”