This was all Bedeckt’s fault.
Bedeckt’s plan to steal the Geborene god-child got me killed. He rubbed at the knuckles of his missing fingers. I am scarred all because Bedeckt abandoned me in the Afterdeath. This couldn’t be Wichtig’s fault. Could it?
“What am I doing?” he whispered. He knew better than to dwell on the past, and he knew better than to question himself. Contemplation breeds melancholy. Thinking only led to trouble and depression. Bedeckt did enough of it for both of them. Wichtig turned his thoughts to his apprentice, thinking back to their brief sparring match.
She isn’t bad with a sword, he decided. Opferlamm could be a real contender.
It would be a shame if I have to kill the girl.
The horses plodded through endless muck.
Stick Morgen and stick his stupid Reflection, Nacht. I’m going to kill Bedeckt’s fat old arse.
In hindsight, Bedeckt was the source of all Wichtig’s woes. Looking back, the worse decision he ever made was to travel with the axe man. He should have stayed in Traurig. He’d be a famous poet by now, on par with that Cotardist hack, Halber Tod. Sure, Wichtig left his wife before meeting Bedeckt, but he only left Traurig when the old goat lured him away with promises of fame and fortune. Were it not for Bedeckt, Wichtig was sure he’d have patched things up with his wife and been the father he always knew he would be. Gods, I miss Fluch. There was a boy who knew how to get into trouble.
Bedeckt cost Wichtig everything: his wife, his son, his career as a poet.
Who knows, maybe I even would have returned to Geldangelegenheiten and retaken my job with the palace guard.
Looking back, he realized that was easily the highest paying, least demanding job he ever held. He’d been swimming in coin, bedding wealthy wives and daughters by the score, and drinking with his fellow guard every evening. Why his wife demanded they leave the city, he’d never know. They went from a gorgeous home of brass and marble to a two-room shack in Traurig that smelled like feet. Maybe it had something to do with being closer to her mother. He couldn’t remember.
Either way, Bedeckt ruined all of it. And now Wichtig was riding to save the old goat from the scariest, most dangerous woman he ever met. Well, maybe he was. He hadn’t actually decided. Certainly joining Stehlen in murdering Bedeckt would be easier and safer.
She must have expected me to abandon her. It would be Bedeckt who she’d really be angry with.
Bl?d grunted and loosed a foul, gut-churning fart. It hung in the sodden air, following Wichtig for two dozen paces. He rode in hunched misery, the rain pounding his shoulders and stinging his face.
Opferlamm kicked her horse—Wichtig couldn’t remember what she called it—into a trot and caught up with her master.
Master, I like that. He’d have to tell the girl to call him master until the apprenticeship was complete.
She looked miserable, soaked through and shivering from the cold. Snot and rain dripped from her nose in equal measure. Opferlamm’s suffering lifted Wichtig’s spirits.
The lass shielded her eyes with a hand, scowling into the murk ahead. “Ground looks odd,” she yelled over the incessant hiss of rain.
When he spotted the first body, Wichtig wasn’t even sure what he saw. Wearing the remains of a Gottlos livery, the woman looked like something big clawed its way free from her heart. She was ripped open like a badly peeled fruit.
“It’s like someone wore her as skin,” said Opferlamm, staring at the gory remains. “And then tossed it aside.”
Still mounted, Wichtig leaned low in the saddle for a closer look. “Did she explode from the inside?”
“Look at those claw marks in the bone” said Opferlamm.
“Stay sharp,” said Wichtig, nudging Bl?d forward at a walk. “Eyes open.”
They found the second corpse a dozen yards away. Also garbed in Gottlos livery, it too looked like something fought its way free of a human body.
“What’s wrong with the ground?” she asked.
The earth ahead looked like it had been tilled by an angry and deranged god, torn wide with gaping wounds. Trees lay scattered, their roots ripped from the soil.
Wichtig squinted through the rain, realizing these were not branches he saw protruding from the sundered earth, but human limbs.
“There’s too many,” he said, struggling to make the vision make sense. There were hundreds buried here, all in Gottlos livery.
“We should turn back,” said Opferlamm, horse slowing as, eyes wide and rolling, it surveyed the landscape. “Yeah, we should definitely turn back.”
“No,” said Wichtig nodding toward a shallow slope. “We’ll ride to the top of that hill, get a better view of what this is.”
“Maybe I should wait here?”