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