Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart - By Jesse Bullington Page 0,15

retrieved the other arbalest. Stringing it, he rejoined his brother’s vigil. “Got an idea. Need to shoot soon as you see’em.” Manfried had lapsed into a guttural vernacular that only his brother could decipher. Their uncle grew furious whenever the Brothers adopted it, paranoid they were plotting against him. His suspicions were only occasionally justified.

“No need to say it twice,” Hegel replied in the same.

“Gotta stoke these flames, shine some light on matters,” Manfried announced to the wood, back in his regular Germanic mode of speech.

Dumping more branches on what quickly grew into a bonfire, Manfried suddenly leaped to his feet and hurled a flaming brand into the limbs overhead. Hegel stood ready but saw only the thick boughs of the pines. When the branch plummeted back down they avoided being singed by the hair of their beards.

“Damn,” they both said, Hegel looking right, Manfried looking left.

“Suppose he’s a ghost?” Hegel asked in their unique tongue.

“More likely a cannibal tryin to put the spook on us,” Manfried replied in kind.

“What’s a cannibal do all the way out here?”

“What you think he does? Eats people, told us himself.”

“Awful strange, be smart enough to talk but dumb enough to eat other folk stead a proper beasts. All they’s good for.” Hegel glanced at Stupid, who had calmed after the voice departed and stood dozing near the fire.

“Them crumbs you find in church is all cannibals, and they’s liable to talk you to death in the bargain.”

“What crumbs? What church?” asked Hegel.

“All a them. That’s what they eat, say it’s the body a Mary’s babe, and the wine’s his blood.”

“Oh, that rot again. Recollect that time we stole all a that hard bread and wine? That make us cannibals?”

“Hell no! Need a priest to turn it to flesh and blood.”

“Witchery,” Hegel judged it.

“It surely is. That’s how you know a man’s pure or not. Honest man don’t eat nobody else. Specially not no kin a Mary, I don’t care how much a bitchswine he is.”

“So you think whoever’s out there’s just a heretic?” Hegel felt relieved.

“Yeah, nuthin more nor less.” Manfried was not the least bit sure but it would not do to frighten his brother with speculation. “Besides, if he was somethin more than moonfruit what’s stoppin him from rushin us right now? Or earlier when I was asleep?”

“True words. Means to put the rattle on us, so’s we stay up all night and is half-strong come cockcrow.”

“Exactly.” Manfried heartened at Hegel’s sound point. “Any fool’ll tell you night’s when there’s real nastiness afoot. Nuthin I ever heard a prefers day to night cept ordinary people. So you get some rest, and I’ll stand guard.”

“I won’t hear it, brother, my watch had only begun when I roused you. I’ll stay up, you take in some shut-eye.”

“Nonsense. I can see from here your eyes are saggin and you’s got that tremor on your lip you always get when you’s tuckered.”

Hegel tried unsuccessfully to get a gander at his own mouth but his bulbous nose blotted out all but his lower beard. He reluctantly lay down, too out of sorts to argue anymore. He still felt hot and cold all over but could no longer be sure if this came from being watched or from exhaustion. He pretended to sleep for several hours, always keeping one eye half-cocked on the trees. He then switched places with Manfried, who did the same even less convincingly. Only Horse got any rest that night, and an hour before dawn both Grossbarts squatted beside the fire, crossbows ready, too tired to speak and without even a turnip to gnaw.

IV

A Lamentable Loss

The dawn light grew with agonizing slowness, and when Horse whinnied the Brothers both spun around. In the dimness nothing stirred save Stupid, who stomped and pulled at his tether, eyes swelling at something behind them. Then they heard the swishing, and slowly turned to face the enemy.

He perched on a low-hanging branch a few dozen paces away, smiling mischievously. Guessing from his sparse and wispy hair he held over fifty years on his wrinkled crown, but his teeth and eyes appeared hard and sharp. His face, however, did not hold their attention.

Under his chin any semblance of humanity was absent, his body instead akin to those of the panthers and leopards that stalk desolate regions. His mottled pelt bristled, various hues contrasting splotches of naked skin. The swish-swish-swishing came from the balding tail whipping behind him of its own accord. His front paws dangled over the branch,