Jesse Bullington - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

“Grossbarts,” it lamented as it clawed out around the bolt. Pulling itself free in a welter of gore, it had diminished to the size of a cat. “Break their wards! Help me, brothers, as I helped you!”

Paolo and Vittorio appeared through the gloom but made no move to rush the Brothers Grossbart. The brains of the two boys had long since baked from fever and sun to little more than paste but they strode forward nevertheless, their putrescent hearts pumping pus and biles through bodies long ripe for the grave.

“Something the matter?” asked Paolo.

“Something troublesome?” asked Vittorio.

“Kick their circles!” the demon howled, dancing around them. “Please, brothers!”

“No,” said Vittorio.

“No,” agreed Paolo.

“Why?!” The demon jumped onto Paolo’s shoulder and howled in his ear, “They’ve done you as wrong as I!”

“Wrong.” Paolo stroked the fiend’s thorax before it hopped back down to the sand. “They have done you wrong, and these mounts of ours, but what have they done to us?”

“What?” asked Vittorio, “save reprimand your folly? Many chances to spread the gift you have wasted, leading us here.”

“What?” asked Paolo, “save deliver us our freedom from your yoke? What have they done to us ?”

“This!” Manfried shouted, hurling a dagger with expert precision. The long knife disappeared in the rotten robe, the handle marking where Paolo’s heart lay. The barber’s son pitched onto his face, farting, belching, and smoking.

“And you!” Hegel’s pick spun through the air, the point sinking in Vittorio’s stomach. He was knocked to the ground, and several more Grossbart-born missiles struck him before he could rise. A dagger once used by Captain Barousse to end his own life flew from Hegel’s fingers and sunk into the Road Pope’s chest.

“Ain’t suffer no demons to live!” Manfried shouted at the pincushioned corpse.

“Witches neither!” Hegel hollered. “When yous get to Hell tell’ em Saint Hegel put you there!”

The first demon shook with laughter, bouncing atop the corpses and chastising its fellows as they burst from their hosts’ buboes. These two were smaller but equally vile, and they at once skipped to the first, their sharp digits, pointy horns, and hooked feet scratching at skin and plating that strained to contain the greasy fluids within. The first continued to reprimand the others, easily evading them with its longer legs as the organ crowning its posterior fired spurt after chunky spurt of rank discharge into the air.

Nothing stirred on the sands for leagues and leagues save the encircled men, all living things fleeing at the first whiff of Heinrich’s rank retinue-even the maggots had abandoned their rotting hosts as the demons wreaked the full extent of their evils upon the flesh of their human mounts. The demons sprang toward the Grossbarts, bringing their stinking miasma with them. Even this could not penetrate their circles, and the Grossbarts heckled the demons and spat upon them until they realized this pleased the creatures. As the darkness dwindled and light began to creep over the sands a strange transformation in attitude took place, all three demons piling against each other and frantically bartering with the Grossbarts to leave their circles.

“I know where riches beyond counting lie,” the first demon squealed.

“I know where there are more,” the second countered, “and I’ll leave you intact as soon as we find another body for me!”

“Please,” the third whined, “if you break the circles of your fellows we shan’t touch you, and may part in peace!”

“Balls,” snorted Hegel. “Cockcrow’s at hand, so yous best set to prayin. To me.”

“It’s gonna hurt,” Manfried said excitedly, “ain’t it? It’s gonna hurt worse than I can imagine, bein sent back down!”

Rodrigo and Raphael were barely awake but dared not rest until the fiends departed for good. The last prisoner shifted from foot to foot, ineffectively trying to banish the cramps that plagued him. Like the Grossbarts, he had drawn a narrow circle that did not afford him enough room to safely sit within its boundary. The demons also hassled him, Raphael, and Rodrigo but none would bargain.

The sunlight crested a dune and the demons groaned, clumsily hurling themselves away from the glow, too weak to move with more than staggering bounces. Then they ceased their moaning and all turned toward the light. The Grossbarts perked up, for all three snuffled the anteneae-ringed weeping sores they had in place of mouths and pushed themselves toward the rising sun.

Tears of pus dribbled as the sunlight descended upon them, two curling their legs underneath themselves and covering their eyes with their skeletal paws, but the original demon forced itself forward. Then a beam touched its loathsome body mid-hop and its exoskeleton shattered with a thousand fissures. The swirling miasma became a black cloud of smoke issuing forth as it shriveled to nothing in the sand, only a scorch mark on the earth denoting its passing. Manfried felt the sunlight envelop him and stepped out of the ring to better taunt the last two demons.

One mustered its strength and flew at him, howling his name as it entered the sunlight and burst, rancid liquids staining the sand at his feet. The last gave a final desperate push into the shadows and then was overtaken, belching pestilential fumes as it deflated and spun in the sand. Then they were alone in the desert, the demons forced back into their pit to scheme and moan and curse the Grossbart name.

Of Raphael and Rodrigo little more is recounted here, for the men parted ways with the Grossbarts after their battle with the demons. Rodrigo sought to liberate Barousse’s bones from the Hospitallers’ cemetery on Rhodes, wishing that he might rest in a holier place-a goal the Grossbarts heartily approved. Raphael wanted only to leave the miserable country that had shaken his spirit and stolen his fist, and so he accompanied Rodrigo on the long, limping trek north to the Holy Land and beyond. Mary willing, their fresh wounds did not fester and their path remained clear, but the Grossbarts did not know, for they turned south as they always did.

The sole surviving prisoner, a hardened killer named Hassan, led them to Cairo, and while the sun scalded and the sand chafed and Hegel’s three-fingered hand itched and Manfried’s punctured gut throbbed they at last stood on the dunes overlooking the great tombs of Gyptland. They could not verbally communicate with Hassan, referring to him as Arab in Al-Gassur’s stead, yet through pantomime and prayer he had brought them to their destination. No tears of joy or shouts of triumph passed through their beards, only smug mutters of satisfaction.

They spent several days scouting the stone monoliths, choosy as nobles about their grapes. All the pyramids appeared too exposed to still hold riches, but eventually they stumbled across a stone arch half-buried in the sand. They spent all night clearing out the entrance and bickering.

“This Arab done us better than the last,” Hegel panted.

“Least he don’t talk all that rubbish. Be nice if he talked proper though, so we could explain why his share’ll be less than ours.” Manfried dumped another helmet of sand out of their excavation.

“He’ll get the point in one fashion or another.” Hegel spit on his hands. “Think we’s bout ready.”

“Yeah.” Manfried removed his prybar. “Let’s crack it.”

“Wonder what befell our Arab. The other one, I mean.” Hegel jammed his tool into the slight seam in the stone.

“Sandy-eared fuck.” Manfried strained. “Told you. Got carried off long with that other monster. Seen it myself.”