or manticore, they had definitely smote it back to Hell. When the snow began floating down again and the haze of morning arrived, he went to wake his brother, meaning to have a word with him about the propriety of leaving some things alone. Manfried would not stir, despite Hegel’s mounting efforts. He would not awaken at all, for his arrow-punctured ear had reopened and turned sour, infecting him with a mortal fever.
V
The Other Cheek
“Death,” said the priest, “is not the end, Heinrich. You know this.”
“Do I?” Heinrich flexed his toes in the too-tight turnshoes Egon had given him. The dry clothes were of course appreciated after a night in the wet mud choking on a turnip, but the carpenter had obviously failed to deliver the two things Heinrich truly wanted. That the rest of the jury had not returned hardly surprised the yeoman, having experienced firsthand what the Grossbarts were capable of.
“Outliving one’s family is the greatest test of our faith. While this is your supreme loss, it is hardly your first,” the priest said gently. “The stillborn child and the other—”
“Two were stillborn, Father.” Heinrich glowered at the man. “And what of Gertie and Brennen and my three girls? Been too long since we all seen you. What if—” Heinrich choked on the words and the thought of damnation.
“Heinrich,” said the priest. “We’ve been through this. It’s not as if your wife or children committed the sort of sins that would require my intercession!”
“What did you say?” Heinrich felt chills spiraling up his legs into his bowels. “Sins requiring intercession?”
“I said, it’s not as if they committed the sort of wickedness that might damn a soul were it not absolved by a priest. We all have our little foibles but the good Lord has—What are you doing?” The priest blinked at Heinrich, who had jumped to his feet. The grieving turnip farmer went straight to Egon’s table and snatched up a knife. The priest would have called Egon and his wife back inside the carpenter’s hovel but Heinrich had turned back around.
“Absolution. Penance. Forgiveness.” Heinrich shook the knife at the priest, his voice cracking. “You saying there’s a way?”
“A way? Heinrich, the knife—”
“Oh.” Heinrich crouched and cut into his soiled leather hose heaped near the door, gritting his teeth at the exertion but watching the priest intently. “If they get to one of yours and confess and do the work, they’ll be forgiven. Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“Ah,” said the priest. “Well…”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Heinrich stood, wrapping the blade in a strip of leather cut from his hose and dropping the knife into the single pocket of his tunic. “I’m off then, Father.”
“What?” the priest nervously backed toward the door as Heinrich advanced. “Where are you—”
“Think I’ll forget? Think I’ll forgive?” Heinrich glared at the priest, whose back now met the wooden door. “Excuse me, there’s work to be done.”
Sliding out of the way, the priest waited a beat until Heinrich had flung open the door and stepped out into the daylight before following. The priest knew something had changed inside the farmer and suspected that unless he acted quickly sin might well beget sin. Egon’s eldest son bumped into the priest as he went outside and he saw Egon arguing with Heinrich in the yard, several other villagers approaching from their respective homes near the manor house.
“What’s he on about?” the lad asked. “He looks worse than he did the day after they—”
“Hush, boy,” said the priest, emboldened by the sun and the witnesses. “Ho, Heinrich, be still!”
Heinrich and Egon both turned to the priest, a small crowd quickly forming. Among them were the kin of those jury members the Grossbarts had murdered on the mountainside. The priest and the farmer squared off on either side of the group, and the priest sensed his chance to shame the man into obedience.
“I know what you are plotting.” The priest addressed the village as much as he did Heinrich. “You wish justice! Don’t we all? But you risk your soul by attempting to do the Lord’s work for Him!”
“And you don’t try and do the Lord’s work every day?” said Heinrich, earning gasps from more than one neighbor. “I aim to do one thing, and that’s catch the Grossbarts before they can get to a priest and wash themselves clean. There’s no place in Heaven for such as them, and I’m but an instrument of God.”
“You?! Heinrich, you are incensed with grief and rage and pride,