Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart - By Jesse Bullington Page 0,93
the door, his fists tightening on the table until they went milky, then managed through clenched teeth: “You may stay in my home until you secure your own passage, that is your reward. We will discuss specifics later.”
“What kind a captain don’t sail?” Manfried sneered, unprepared for the short shrift this man suggested.
“Leave me. Now.” His florid face swelled, and that too began turning white, starting at the tip of his nose and spreading inward.
“We can talk more later,” Hegel offered, standing and backing toward the door. The captain had made him go all cold and sober—without letting on in his face, Hegel realized that at some point the captain had picked the loaded crossbow back up.
“Yeah, let the prospect simmer twixt your ears fore givin a final response,” Manfried agreed, knocking his chair back and following his brother.
The captain stared wrathfully at them until Hegel unlocked the door and stepped out, Manfried backing out behind him. Pulling the door closed, they exchanged nasty looks and strode back to their rooms. Rodrigo approached them on the way to the stair but thought better of it and diverted his path down the captain’s hall. Neither brother spoke until they bolted the door in Hegel’s room.
“You like that much’s me?” Manfried asked.
“Mecky as it gets,” said Hegel.
“Think he can dismiss us like that?”
“Man’ll think a lot a things less someone shows’em his error.”
“Only sometimes. Oft Mary’s guidance’s the only thing set one straight.”
“Seemed a decent sort til the end there,” Hegel ruminated.
“If he holds decent he’ll see his crime and make amends,” said Manfried, removing his boots.
“And that Arab? We really mean to waste even a bottle on that wretch?”
“First I was thinkin no, just get on Rodrigo’s ass a touch, but recent epiphanies got me shifted a different direction.”
“How’s that?”
“Know how Ponce’s cousin and others we seen don’t speak proper? And how we can speak like we’s always done in the real proper way and even that sow what birthed us couldn’t comprehend a word?”
“Yeah, so different folk speak different. That’s what goes under the term proper fuckin knowledge. You just figure that out?” Hegel grinned and dodged a thrown boot. Over the run of their brotherhood they had both developed an almost supernatural knack for dodging expected and surprise attacks alike.
“Don’t try actin the abbot with me! Ever think there might be a higher purpose to keepin our swarthy servant about?”
“If you got an example I’ll hear it stead a you playin the bishop,” Hegel said.
“So we speak our way, others don’t, and we also speak the other that men do up north in the Germania or empire or what they call it any given day. But we don’t speak what they do down here.”
“Agreed.”
“But that priest speaks up-there tongue and down-here tongue, just like Ponce and Ellis, and just like that Arab.”
“Enni—Oh!” Hegel finally caught on. “But wait, if you’s suggestin we use that Arab to tell us what foreigners’ sayin, why not use the priest? He ain’t the Infidel.”
“Fine and good for dealin with the rabble round here, but where’s we headed?”
“Gyptland.”
“And who lives in Gyptland?”
“The dead?”
“What!?”
“Er… gold. And sand.”
“Lives, muttonhead, lives!”
Hegel’s brow furrowed as he labored to remember their uncle’s teachings and other hearsay. “Deadly beasts and monsters?”
“Arabs, you simple slit, Arabs!” Manfried launched another boot, then ducked when it was caught returned.
“Once again, proper fuckin knowledge,” Hegel complained. “I thought you meant other than them.”
“Now how do you suppose Arabs speak?”
“With their—No, put it down, no call for that.” Hegel stared hard at the knife his brother brandished. “You mean how’s them what live there sound when they speak, like we’s doin now, or when we’s with others don’t understand the way the two a us do?”
“Yeah,” Manfried said.
“I dunno, how do they speak?”
“I dunno either.”
“Oh.”
“But I bet that Arab does.”
“Oh! That’s brilliant!”
“Yeah, I know it.” Manfried imitated his brother: “With their mouths. Ignorance ain’t a sin but it oughta be.”
To Rodrigo, Martyn, and anyone else unfortunate enough to hear them speak the Brothers’ voices sounded identical, but to each other subtle differences were noted but ignored except when they mocked each other. They wrestled for the better part of an hour, such commonplace scrapes the source of their prowess in combat with others less Grossbart than themselves. A knocking on the door disturbed their fracas.
“Enter!” shouted Manfried, which set off another row as they occupied Hegel’s room.
“Excuse me,” Father Martyn said, then louder to break up the melee, “Grossbarts!”
“What?” Blood oozed from Hegel’s cavernous nostrils.