“Won’t matter soon, old man,” said Stehlen over his shoulder.
Bedeckt snarled in anger and dove at Kot, thinking to tackle the big man to the mud. The bastard would still beat him to death, but at least his brains wouldn’t paint the trees. His left knee gave as his feet slid in the muck and he landed on his knees at Kot’s feet, staring at the big brutes undone belt buckle.
Kot raised his cudgel. Bedeckt watched strands of murky water fall away from the iron head in swirling pirouettes, soon to be commingled with his own blood and grey matter.
The brute grunted an interrogative “Hmn?” and stared down at Bedeckt, finally blinking a second time. Small eyes narrowed in dim confusion. Zukunft stood behind Kot, a small knife buried in his lower back. She twisted it and he said “Oh.”
“Now is the time to get your knife,” said Stehlen.
“Knife?”
“The one you dropped in the mud. It’s right in front of you.”
Bedeckt looked down, spotting the gleam of bright metal. Using his whole hand, he grabbed the knife and drove it into Kot’s belly. He dragged the blade sideways, spilling the man’s guts into the sucking mud and splashing himself with gore and blood.
Kot remembered Bedeckt and returned his attention to the old man, still showing no more emotion than mild puzzlement.
Blinking through a haze of blood and viscera, Bedeckt clubbed the big man in the back of the knees, dropping him. Crawling through Kot’s innards, he climbed atop him. Grabbing the brute’s head, Bedeckt slammed it over and over against the ground beneath. He crushed it to the ground until the back of Kot’s skull became soft like moss.
“He’s dead,” said Zukunft. “You can stop.”
Leaning close, Bedeckt whispered into the corpse’s ear, “When I find you in the Afterdeath, I will kill you again. I’ll follow you to whatever waits after that. I’ll kill you there too. Anywhere your shite soul flees I will follow.”
Rolling off the dead man, he lay sprawled in the mud. Sink in. Sink away.
“Are you hurt?” asked Zukunft.
Bedeckt coughed a groan of laughter. “Gods yes.”
“I mean worse than you were,” she said.
“Still yes,” he said. He cracked an eye open and glanced at her. Red washed his vision a bloody smear. “You?”
“I’ll survive.”
That makes one of us.
She laughed then, a mad cackle tinged with hysteria. “You’re bleeding all over the place. Gods, your face.” She crawled to his side, lay in the mud beside him. “And I thought you were ugly before.”
“Ah,” said Bedeckt. “The callow honesty of youth.”
“Just because you saved me from being raped and my clothes are tatters,” she said, still giggling and fighting back choking sobs, “doesn’t mean you can ogle my arse any time you want.”
“Fine. Anyway, I think you saved me.”
Zukunft lay her head on his chest. “So you owe me one then, right?”
“I guess so,” said Bedeckt. “I guess so.”
“Good.” She rose to her feet, as graceful as ever. “Let’s get you back on your horse.” She held out a hand as if offering to pull Bedeckt from the clinging muck and he stared at it.
“Thought I might lie here for a moment,” he said.
Zukunft shook her head. Her hair, caked with gore and mud, clung to her face and he wanted to wipe it clear. “We have to go,” she said.
With her help, he made it to his knees and stopped there to rest, panting and wheezing. He glanced sideways at her. “Have my choices been sane?”
“What choices?”
“Staying with you.”
Zukunft pursed her lips, examining him. Something behind her eyes retreated, grew hard and distant. “I’m going to get you killed. I told you it ends badly. I told you I murdered my sister and she wants to punish me. I told you I want her to. You’re a stupid old man. You follow me like a love-lorn puppy, hoping I’ll let you stick me. I’m using you and you know I’m using you. What sane person would stay with someone like that?”
“I’m sane,” said Bedeckt.
“Fine,” she said. “Get on your damned horse.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I can no longer pretend the future doesn’t terrify me. The philosophers say that, in this responsive reality, we are the authors of our own fate. Could there be a more damning curse? I look at the choices I have made and I see that I have carefully constructed my own failure.
—Pfeilmacher, Wahnist Author