CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Never trust the distrustful. Never love those who cannot return it. Never lend money to one who would not lend it to you.
What we see in ourselves is what we see in the world.
—Basamortuan Proverb
Bedeckt’s nightmares rode and walked in disorganized ranks alongside the axeman’s horse. Great sheets of lightning purpled his vision, left bright streaks and scars of blinding light across the hellish landscape. Far above strange shapes swooped through soot-black clouds.
This isn’t real.
Armies of corpses marched at his side, soldiers from a score of wars he hardly remembered.
I couldn’t have killed all of you.
With a slash of lightning the sky caught fire, burning as if the clouds held oil instead of rain.
This isn’t real. It couldn’t be. Reality was broken, savaged by delusion. Somewhere some Geisteskranken riding the ragged Pinnacle toppled into the abyss.
A hand, small and icy cold, grabbed at Bedeckt’s ruined hand and he snatched it away with a scream of terror.
Zukunft whimpered, eyes round with fear, riding huddled in a sodden blanket against the torrential downpour. She dropped her hand back to her side, clearly hurt and terrified by his reaction. Was this her doing, was she twisting reality with her delusions? No, she’s a Mirrorist. Not even particularly powerful.
Downpour? Bedeckt rubbed the forefinger and thumb of his left and together, checking to see if it was indeed oil. One strike of lightning and— No, just water.
We’re in someone’s hell.
But whose?
Bedeckt recognized an old soldier, scarred from countless wars, marching at his side. Bedeckt remembered they’d argued about something but couldn’t remember the man’s name. We were friends.
“Are you hallucination or albtraum?” Bedeckt asked. “If albtraum, I haven’t gone mad.”
The soldier glanced up at Bedeckt, a knife protruding from his chest.
“I remember putting that there,” said Bedeckt, staring at the knife. We argued during a card game. The man accused Bedeckt of cheating, which of course he was.
“We are your dead,” said the old soldier. “Your hallucinations have stolen us from the Afterdeath, made us real.” He grinned bloody teeth and Bedeckt remembered how much he hated his friend and his easy way with women. “I am dead and I am here.”
“No,” said Bedeckt “I am sane.”
“That seems unlikely, given the evidence.”
Bedeckt rode past a huge and shaggy man, easily over seven feet tall. The monster slogged through the mud, an axe identical to Bedeckt’s buried in his skull.
That was the Therianthrope bear I killed in Neidrig.
“There are men I’ve killed who aren’t here,” he said.
“How can you tell, there’s so many.” The soldier laughed, scratching at the still raw wound where the knife jutted from his belly. “Anyway, those who died in the Afterdeath are gone to whatever comes next.” He glanced at Bedeckt. “Apparently even beyond your reach.”
“Bedeckt,” said Zukunft, again grabbing his hand and squeezing it until he thought he’d scream from the pain. “You have to stop. You’re making this a hell. These people are dead. Let them be.”
Bedeckt tried to pull his hand away but he was too weak. “I can’t. This isn’t me. I’m sane.” He looked around, hunting through the thronging dead for some likely culprit. “Someone is doing this to me.”
“Someone else is pulling the dead from your past?” said Zukunft, and the old soldier laughed, blood spurting from the knife wound.
“Maybe it’s Morgen,” said Bedeckt, desperate. This isn’t me. “Maybe your sister. Some Geisteskranken is trying to drive me mad.” He attempted to stand in his stirrups but Zukunft held him down. “It won’t work,” he yelled at the dead. “I am sane.”
Your dead. Your delusions. Your madness.
No. That’s what they wanted. Someone sought to undermine him, shake his belief in himself. It wouldn’t work. None of this is real. He was still lying on that tavern floor, bleeding out his last, dying from a gut wound. Nothing else made sense. Maybe the T?uschung killed him and he was trapped in their hell.
He straightened, again scanning the dead.
“This isn’t right,” he said.
Zukunft uttered a tittering giggle stained dark with hysteria. She made a show of taking in the nightmare surroundings. “What isn’t?” she asked, still clutching his hand. Their horses rode so close together Bedeckt’s leg rubbed against hers.
“If this was me hallucinating this, my father would be here.”
“I am,” said his father. “You pathetic shite.”
“One more word from you,” said Bedeckt, “and I swear I’ll kill you again.”
Arsehole, Bedeckt’s horse, nickered and sidestepped something beneath its hooves in dainty, dancing steps. Peering into the mud, Bedeckt saw the remains of a partially buried corpse.
Just more dead.
He blinked as another corpse, this one crushed flat as if a great boulder rolled over it, passed beneath. And another. More cadavers slid by, ragged and empty, crushed and broken.