The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (50 page)

The ships reappeared around the bend and the Grossbarts hopped overboard, Rodrigo and Martyn joining the Brothers on the swampy
shore. As they unloaded the boat, Martyn struck the cackling Arab in the mouth, sending Al-Gassur tumbling into the mire.
The Hospitallers trudged dutifully after as the group splashed through sludge and waded through pools, collectively collapsing
behind a mucky island no bigger than a half-sunk wagon when the ships came within earshot, men rushing about on deck and yelling
to the vessels behind them.

A collective groan washed over the party as lights fell on their nearby boat, everyone digging further into the filth. Rather
than stopping, however, the first ship glided past and the men began to hope. Two more ships, and then the last, a great whale
of a galley, rows of oars raised as the current swept them along. From this final boat several smoldering bundles fell into
the Grossbarts’ beached ship and the waterlogged vessel unexpectedly exploded in flames. Then the ships were gone around another
bend, leaving only the moon to display the smoke rising from where their boat had sat.

While neither would admit it, that night, soaked to the bone and coated in mud, was the most miserable the Grossbarts had
yet experienced. The twitterings and slurpings rose to a raucous cheer, mocking their dejection. Not one voice broke the silence
to lament their lot, the slime around Al-Gassur vibrating from his repressed laughter. The summit of the gelatinous island
proved no more dry or pleasant than its base, and before the sun even rose they tramped back to the ruins of their boat.

Rodrigo and Al-Gassur walked downstream a bit to laugh without fear of reprisal until they both collapsed. Their shared mirth
quickly degenerated into a fight when Al-Gassur again imitated the deceased Ennio, lying in the mud and whispering to the
livid Rodrigo how the Grossbarts had murdered his brother. The incensed man reopened his punctured palm during the fracas,
the sight of which cheered the gloomy Grossbarts.

“Back to Alexandria, then?” Martyn said hopefully, nudging the burnt out shell of their galley. “We’ve only gone a few days
upriver, so surely—”

“Surely that city’s thick with Arabs by now,” Manfried said.

“Them boats wasn’t carryin pilgrims such’s us, mark me,” Hegel agreed.

“But without a boat, how will we travel?” Martyn asked what he thought to be a rhetorical question, being as they were surrounded
by swampland.

“Unlike yourself, we didn’t sail out the womb with boats stead a feet.” Manfried shouldered his pack. “Given as I am to thinkin
fordin yon river might prove a task what with our armor and such, I move we hike upstream as we’s been.”

“Damietta is east of Alexandria.” One of the Hospitallers broke with the clump of men and motioned away from the river, over
the bog. “That is the closest other city.”

“Seein as you’s speakin proper, I find it disconcertin you think so simple,” Manfried replied. “If we’s trekkin through marsh,
might’s well do it next to clean water stead a that meck.”

“Farewell, then,” the man said, filling a waterskin from the river. “Cardinal, I assume you will travel with us?”

Martyn looked to the Grossbarts, who were both smiling at him and shaking their heads, hands on pick and mace. “No,” he sighed,
“I have faith Mary will guide us.”

“Fine.” The warrior-monk stood, the previous days in close company with both cardinal and Grossbarts having convinced him
of their madness. “When we reach Rhodes I’ll inform the king and the new Pope of your decision.”

“New Pope?” Martyn had nearly forgotten his own previous delusions that these men had based all of their decisions upon. The
Hospitallers convened, and several of them exchanged soft words before three split from the pack and marched to Martyn. These
men knelt in the muck and pledged their continued dedication to his safety while their brothers turned their backs on the
Grossbarts. Of the three Moritz spoke both Italian and German while Bruno and Werner knew only German, their voices unwavering
as they dirtied their lips on the silt of the Nile.

The other seven Hospitallers marched toward the rising sun. Just out of sight of their former company, they were cheered to
discover the bog yielded to lush farmland and bountiful orchards. They rested in the shade of an enormous tree and gorged
themselves on dates, unaware that a salamander had nested in the roots and infected every fruit with its dread toxins. They
all began convulsing and sweating blood, and only after their organs burst from the heat did their suffering end.

“Settled then.” Hegel nodded south up the river. “Get Rigo off our Arab and we can move on.”

The bloodied Al-Gassur assured the Grossbarts they had made the correct choice, for just up the river lay churchyards grander
than Alexandria and Venezia combined. A week passed and no cemeteries appeared, only the swamp they plodded through and the
river bordering it. A viper bit Werner in the hand when he filled his waterskin and within an hour the knight expired, bloated
and rotting as if he had spent weeks submerged in the Nile.

Even the mighty rations of the Grossbarts dwindled, and one evening when they scrambled up a rare dry prominence a crocodile
attacked Bruno. The beast exploded out of the muck bordering the rise, its huge jaws latching onto his leg. The knight, confronted
with the ancestral nemesis of his kind, let out a scream as the dragon yanked him into the water. The Brothers Grossbart came
to his rescue, but while Hegel’s pick skewered its brain, in the chaos Manfried snapped Bruno’s neck with his mace. Only after
did Hegel realize the rolling monster had slashed open his boot and shin with its claws. They smoked the salty, wet crocodile
meat with the dead shrubbery shrouding the top of the mound, even the wounded Hegel happier for the encounter. Moritz and
Martyn interred Bruno in the mud, and the Hospitaller cross they marked his grave with found its way into Al-Gassur’s bag.

In the days that followed the pain in Hegel’s leg worsened, as did his attitude. Manfried’s attempts to figure where this
new monstrosity fit into their growing catalogue went unanswered by his limping brother. Hegel stole the Arab’s crutch but
even with a peg leg and no assistance Al-Gassur moved quicker than he. Huts could sometimes be dimly seen on the opposite
bank but no men called to them and they knew better than to attempt a crossing. When Hegel felt the old itching at his neck
he turned and saw a large ship creeping up the river behind them. They all stopped, agreeing they had no choice but to hail
the galley.

“Now remember, Arab,” Hegel cautioned, “you’s the only one can speak like them, so be sure the meanin’s clear. They take us
to the tombs and they get some gold but not a coin fore then.”

“Of course, my kin in lame.” Al-Gassur bowed.

“And recollect right what happened to every cunt what tried doin us wrong or sellin us out,” Manfried added.

“What if they attack us?” Martyn worried his lip.

“Then we strike them down with the power of the Lord.” Moritz drew his massive sword, raising himself in the Grossbarts’ estimation.

“And if they don’t stop, but row past us?” Martyn insisted something must go wrong.

“That is reason Her Goodness Mary grant our ownselves crossbows,” Raphael said, lying in the mud to notch a bolt.

“Finally in decent company,” Hegel told his brother in their twinspeak.

“Close’s we’s liable to get, any rate.” Manfried also cocked his arbalest, switching back to German. “Here they come, so do
your stuff, Arab!”

They began jumping in the muck, yelling and waving their hands, even Rodrigo excited by the prospect of escaping the swamp.
The boat slowed, the bearded men at the oars staring at them in shock, those striding on the deck excitedly yelling. Al-Gassur
invented word after nonsensical word, tears of pleasure at the Grossbarts’ imminent undoing cleaning his mustache.

The rowers at the front locked their oars and stood as the boat glided toward the shore. The standing men withdrew bottles,
knocked them back themselves, and tossed them to the rejoicing men on the bank. Nothing is less cautious than a fiending alcoholic,
only Moritz abstaining from the drink. Yet when Hegel tilted a gifted bottle that old witch-chill rushed up and down his bones,
his belly twisting around his spine. He slapped a bottle out of Manfried’s hand and drew his pick.

“I don’t believe them boys was actually drinkin, brother. Drink’s probably got some Arab barber berries in it or such, so
lest you’s eager to wake up in some new place with all sorts a nasty to deal with I’d abstain.”

“I’s had enough a that shit to last a lifetime,” said Manfried, firing his crossbow into the first Mamluk to hit the bank,
and together they joined the fiercest, greatest battle of their lives.

The winter ended as Heinrich’s new family journeyed, the heat increasing even in the dank belly of the southern forests of
Wallachia. Over hills and rocky mounts, through sunny glens and shadowy gulches they crept, never doubting their purpose.
Vittorio talked incessantly while Paolo had not spoken since he recognized the grotesque buboes bulging under Heinrich’s arms
when the man removed his robes to pop blisters and peel skin, depositing them in a river upstream of a mill. Paolo had certainly
become mad as a mooncalf but his education stayed with him. Only when Vittorio scratched at his groin and armpits did the
barber’s son inspect his own, and at seeing the purple swellings he rejoiced to know he would soon die. He did not, nor did
Vittorio, nor did Heinrich.

When they skirted the massive city of Al-Gassur’s birth Heinrich danced lewdly by moonlight, reciting litanies inspired by
the whispers he heard not in his ear but in his heart. Drawing symbols in the dirt with a woodsman’s severed finger, Heinrich
repeated the words that freed similar beings from their torment, granting Paolo and Vittorio the same privilege he enjoyed.

Crossing the channel proved nigh impossible with the three demoniacs’ aversion to running water but they managed to steal
a boat and float across without dampening themselves. They were almost apprehended by mounted Turks several times in the barren
regions they crossed, but they hid in caves when the numbers were too great and descended on smaller groups, again devouring
all but one or two, leaving those to stagger home, infecting their loved ones and ranting the cursed name Grossbart that all
three of the possessed chanted hatefully.

Into the wastes, those born men now appeared barely more human than the twins, both of whom had grown to the height of horses
from constant feeding. Their buboes big as the honey-melons so loved in those regions, their pace weakened but their intent
did not, Vittorio and Paolo eagerly following their brothers into combat with men who shrieked and fled at their approach.
Their guts sagged with black and yellow biles, the humours churning but refusing to burst from their copious sores and wounds
so that they were able to drain them only into the pleading mouths of their victims. Any oases they traversed rotted to desert
at their presence, and for months they ate only men; all other creatures smelled their evil from great distances and could
not be caught even by the twins.

The things inside them communed while their hosts slept, delighting in the willingness of their servants and bartering with
their still-imprisoned kin for information regarding the Grossbarts. Those without form could do naught but enviously watch,
but the two released into the Italians had dutifully scoured with sight not constrained by space before being granted their
salvation. They were very close indeed; fortunate, for the oppressive heat that cooked them even as the seasons changed threatened
to slay their mounts before they captured their game, and in such desolate regions they might not find replacements before
being thrust back into the place they had so vigorously fled.

Outnumbered five to one, and with Cardinal Martyn and Al-Gassur swooning from the soporific-laden wine, the Grossbarts may
well have met their end there on the bank of the Nile had chance not favored them. The impressed men working the oars of that
particular galley were prisoners and not birth-slaves, and just as their Mamluk masters had once spurned their bondage and
usurped their keepers, so too did these slaves revolt upon witnessing the Grossbarts’ resistance. Chained in place though
they were, these wretches thrust their oars and feet before the charging legs of their masters, slowing the Mamluks attempting
to join the fight and winning the day—a boon that none of the victorious Europeans would ever acknowledge.