Jesse Bullington - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

She smiled at him, only the intervening crosses shielding her exposed body. The song touched Manfried in a place he had never acknowledged, and he walked down the crypt’s stairs into the water. When it reached his waist he paused, realizing how frigid the pond was. The strength in his legs disappeared, and with a smile on his lips he pitched forward, sinking instantly in the icy liquid.

Hegel sat up in the dark, his heart pounding from a dream he could not remember. He blinked and lay back down, but then he detected a faint splashing in the stillness, and the unease of his unremembered dream haunted him. As he stumbled to the door, the moonbeams reflecting off the snow blinded him for a moment. Then he saw Manfried at the foot of the crypt, face-down in a puddle. Hegel jumped down, rolled him over, and punched him in the gut. Through dark lips Manfried began vomiting water and coughing, and the astonished Hegel hurried back inside and brought him a bowl of the monks’ beer.

“What in the name a fuck, brother!” Hegel yelled. “You gotten moontouched or somethin?”

“Dreamin.” Manfried shuddered, sipping the alcohol.

“Bout what?”

“Can’t really say.”

“Get on in,” Hegel sighed, helping Manfried up.

Hegel started a new fire inside the crypt and shut the door most of the way. Manfried curled around the blaze, his beard and chest soaking. He nodded off immediately but Hegel stayed awake for several hours, watching his brother. Something worried him, and he went outside to make sure. Right enough, the pool in which he had discovered Manfried drowning was covered in a thick layer of ice except where his brother’s face had entered it. A chunk of broken masonry lay beside the hole, and Hegel had a sick feeling in his bowels. The wind picked up, stirring the snow around him as he stared at the still-smoking monastery. He spit twice, praised the Virgin, and went to bed.

They set off at daybreak. Accusations went back and forth at the wisdom in setting fire to the corpses before thoroughly checking all the rooms for hidden treasure. Monks might not have much in the way of coin, but surely a substantial amount might be found in the abbot’s quarters. The initial hope that the stone building would keep everything but the chapel safe had proved false, for the blaze had gutted all the interior rooms save the monks’ cells and the kitchen.

They did not trust the meat but besides grain they brought a bushel of turnips and a sack of mildly moldering rye bread. Hegel sniffed out three wheels of cheese, so the breakfast they ate on the bench surpassed any in memory. The road proved treacherous, the previous day’s heat combined with a windy night having resulted in more ice than snow. They wound up the mountain-side all morning, and when they reached the pass they both spit back the way they had come. Manfried refused to discuss his dream, instead turning the talk to their good fortune. Hegel had to agree, things could not be better and they would doubtless find themselves lords of Gyptland in the very near future.

The sky went gray in the afternoon and snow fell, summoning more curses and a slower road. Despite the deepening twilight Manfried insisted on continuing rather than stopping on the narrow track. When they almost went over the edge of a cliff bordering the road Hegel snatched the reins and they agreed breaking for the night would be a sharp plan. From Hegel’s perspective, the only thing dumber than a horse was four horses.

Several miserable days and worse nights later, they plodded along an identically icy stretch of thin road when, shortly before dusk, Hegel began feeling his preternatural worry building up inside like a bad case of gas. He grew increasingly anxious, finally stringing his crossbow and insisting he walk ahead of the wagon to guarantee their safety. Rounding a wide bend with a sheer drop-off on the right and a steep rise pimpled with snowy boulders on the left, Hegel noticed a sharp bump in the road. Pushing ahead, he found it to be loose rocks piled across the trail, lightly dusted with snow. It would take only a few minutes to scatter them enough for the wagon to pass but their presence bothered him immensely. Manfried had brought the vehicle up behind him when Hegel jumped and yelled to his brother.

“Stay clear!”

“Eh?”

“Don’t move!” But instead of Hegel, a massive boulder fifty paces up the slope shouted this. Squinting, they made out a dark shape behind it.

“Wasn’t plannin on it!” Hegel responded, slowly pulling his crossbow off his back.

“What if we do?!” Manfried shouted angrily at the unseen man, urging the horses on another few steps.

The boulder rocked violently, snow dropping from its summit. “Hell to pay, rest assured! I just want to speak for a moment!”

“Then come down here, so we can do that stead a yellin!” Hegel called. In a lower voice, and in Grossbartese to boot, he addressed his brother. “No highwayman’s pinchin our loot.”

“Yeah, but if they was thick in numbers they wouldn’t risk smashin the wagon,” Manfried replied, his own crossbow loaded on the bench.

The man yelled something in yet another language they did not understand.

“Speak proper, you sneak-thievin fucker!” Manfried barked.

“You don’t recognize your name?” the man shouted, and the boulder rocked again.

“Easy on, you godless cunt, we gotta woman in here!” Hegel shot back.

“Blaspheme at your own peril, serpent!” The boulder shifted violently but settled instead of rolling.

“What sort a footpad accuses Christian soldiers a blasphemy?” Manfried shouted, sensing a common ground.

“Did not the Son warn of your ravening kind upon a similar location?” he called back.

“See now!” Hegel responded, “We ain’t met no sons but we slain a damn demon, so your thievin ass had best recognize the quality at hand!”

The man did not say anything but jumped out from behind the boulder, squinting down at the Grossbarts, which is when Hegel’s quarrel struck him. Hegel tore up the slope toward the downed ruffian, pick in hand. Manfried stood on the bench, scanning the snowy scree with his crossbow leveled.

The man had almost crawled back to the log he had jammed under the boulder as a lever when Hegel reached him. The pick rose as the man rolled onto his back, jabbering at Hegel, the bolt skewering his forearm. Hegel almost spiked the man’s face but stopped in time, and uttering an oath to Mary, threw down his weapon and knelt beside him.

Seeing his brother duck out of sight Manfried shouted, “Careful, brother! Slit his treacherous throat and get back here!”

“We fucked up!” Hegel responded, his voice cracking. “He’s a monk!”

“A what?!”

“A monk, damn you!”

“Oh Hell.” Manfried sat down heavily on the seat.

“You’s gonna be rightened soon,” Hegel told his victim. “Sorry bout that.”

The man groaned, allowing his would-be prey to cut off the arrowhead protruding from his arm. Blood splattered on them both when Hegel pulled the shaft out, and continued welling forth even when they bound the wounds in strips of the man’s tattered habit. Clapping him on the back, Hegel helped him up and together they slowly went down to the road.

Manfried greeted them with a bowl of beer. “Now then, Friar, have a sip a this and then see how heretical we strike you.”

The shaken man balked, but Hegel sealed the offer. “It’s made by your folk, so I reckon there’s no sin in it.”

Gulping the beer and making a face he swooned and fell. Confusion, exhaustion, pain, and exposure had sapped his energy, and he did not awake until the moon had risen and the Grossbarts had made camp down the road. After much haranguing Manfried had consented to the liberation of more blankets from the wagon’s occupant, and with fresh snow powdering them they sat bundled up, watching the man stir.