Bedeckt brought the girl from the Afterdeath. She was here, caught in this insanity because he led her here. He used her, dragged her along her so he could keep using her and he always knew it would likely end in her death. And she followed. She followed him, hating and cursing him and always looking to him like he was her hope, her salvation and damnation. Looking at him like he was the perfect man to turn his back and abandon her to her delusions. She wanted him to save her and she wanted him to desert her.
He would be the last man to let her down, to betray her.
“Go to hell,” Bedeckt told her and she cried into his chest.
Beyond the log walls of the farmhouse, reality came apart like an unravelling blanket, tugged and torn by rampant delusion. Bedeckt’s madness did war with the insanity of the Geborene Geisteskranken.
My madness. My delusions.
“No. I am sane.”
Bedeckt’s mind frayed.
The list. The damned list. Saving people was not on the list. Abandoning friends was not on the list. The list—
Why are you here? Are you trying to save Morgen? Why did you try and save that child and his family from those T?uschung priests? Why didn’t you rut Zukunft when she first offered herself? She’s no child. She’s a woman. Why do you keep trying to save her?
Everything Bedeckt believed about himself was wrong. The list was a lie, something to hide behind. He was a coward. His life was a lie.
Cowardice isn’t on the list.
Bedeckt laughed, the cracked sound of a breaking mind.
He had but one truth left to cling to: Sanity.
“I am sane,” he said into Zukunft’s hair as his dead, torn from the Afterdeath, warred with a Therianthrope dragon. And lost.
Zukunft lifted her head, her green eyes meeting his with a bruised look. “I’m so scared,” she said, voice so soft he barely heard her through what remained of his ears. “Don’t let them have me. I was wrong. I don’t want to die.”
Glancing beyond Zukunft, he saw Stehlen draw a knife, keeping it hidden behind her body so Wichtig couldn’t see it.
In a moment, she’d gut the Swordsman or bury the blade in what little brain he had. Wichtig might be the Greatest Swordsman in the World, but Stehlen was the perfect killer. In this, no one could match her.
Bedeckt struggled to rise, his hands slipping in his own blood. He drew breath, lungs, filling with blood, shuddering from the effort.
If she killed Wichtig, she’d never forgive herself. She’d see it afterwards, realize he let her win, allowed her to kill him. Bedeckt wanted to laugh. Stehlen and forgiveness in the same thought. Madness. He coughed blood.
Unable to form words, Bedeckt loosed an incomprehensible roar at Stehlen and Wichtig, hoping to break their deadly fixation.
***
Stehlen manoeuvred her body, keeping the knife from Wichtig’s sight. She bled from so many shallow wounds she felt like she’d bathed in blood. The inside of this farmhouse reeked of carnage, stunk like an abattoir.
Bedeckt roared like an angry bull moose and Wichtig glanced over Stehlen’s shoulder, distracted. She ignored everything except the kill. Her knife moved, spinning in nimble fingers and stabbing upward beneath the Swordsman’s field of vision. She’d drive the blade through his chin and into his brain.
Then she saw Lebendig, curled on the floor in an expanding pool of her own viscera. The Swordswoman clutched the carving of Wichtig in bloody fingers. She held a knife in her other hand, poised and ready to stab it into the carving.
Stehlen knew, saw it in a sliver of time as her hand brought the knife toward Wichtig’s exposed throat: Lebendig had been awake. She saw Stehlen hide the carvings in her pack.
I could never hide anything from her.
And now Lebendig would kill Wichtig.
Stehlen spun the knife, whisking it past Wichtig’s jaw, severing the lobe of his right ear.
The knife left Stehlen’s hand, spinning in the most beautiful arc, and buried itself in the Swordswoman’s throat.
Stehlen’s lover gurgled and twitched. Her eyes met Stehlen’s as she dropped the knife held in her fist and raised that hand to touch the hilt of the knife in her throat. Pale eyes dimmed.
Fire lit Stehlen’s guts and chest. She burbled a laughing cough of blood. She tasted steel. Glancing down she saw Wichtig’s sword, buried to the hilt in her belly. The blade angled up, the tip jutted out the back of her neck. She followed the hand holding the sword up the strong arm to the muscled chest. How many nights had she lain awake thinking about that chest? Even scarred, even bleeding and wounded, he was beautiful. She followed the chest to the broad shoulders and up to meet those flat grey eyes.
But they weren’t flat. She saw anguish there. Understanding she never would have expected to see in Wichtig. She tried to tell him he was a shite killer and that he’d never match her but the words wouldn’t come. She tried to tell him he had Bedeckt’s cat turd face. She tried to spit on him. Couldn’t.
Wichtig blinked, freeing tears. He reached an arm around her waist, holding her close as he drew his sword from her.
How many times have I wanted him to stick me?
“No,” said Wichtig. “I…I didn’t mean to…”
Stehlen leaned her head against his shoulder, let him take her weight. He held her, sobbing into the matted mess of her hair.
She drew another knife and held it, tip touching Wichtig’s belly below his navel. She heard his breath catch.
That’s right. I win. I always win.
And still he didn’t release her, made no attempt to defend himself.