“I understand,” she said, and he knew she was already thinking about where he would spend the night. “Another ale?” she offered.
As long as he couldn’t pay for it, he might as well. “Please. What was your name again?”
“Reinigen,” she answered.
“Sorry,” he said, looking forlorn. “A lot on my mind.”
She squeezed his shoulder again before leaving and he noted the appreciative widening of her eyes as she felt his solidity.
He was definitely going to kill Bedeckt. Not for Morgen, but for what the bastard did to him. He’d take everything the old man had and leave him dead. It’s past time he learned to respect me. I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World and he pretends he could take me in a fight. Wichtig was through allowing that insult to go unanswered. I’ll warn him before I kill him. I want him ready. I want him to know what’s coming and why. He’d play with the old goat, disarm him a few times. Bedeckt would understand how thoroughly Wichtig outclassed him in every possible way. Then, when Bedeckt lay in the dust, fat and wheezing, Wichtig would kill him.
When the barmaid returned with his pint Wichtig was dry eyed and cold with rage. He hid that away. Emotion was weakness, one of the first lessons he learned as a child. He remembered being passed back and forth between his parents as he grew up, living with one for a few months before they tired of him and sent him back to the other. He remembered how much it hurt each and every time. He remembered the day he realized he was nothing to them beyond a means of hurting and punishing the other. He learned to master the game they only played at and worked them against each other, manipulating and twisting their emotions to his own benefit. In the end, when he sold his father’s favourite horse—a thoroughbred stallion—to buy himself a used lute, his father hadn’t even complained. The man looked sad, like he finally understood how utterly he failed at fatherhood.
Years later, after the birth of his own son, Wichtig swore never to make his father’s mistakes. He would be a better father. As soon as he could return with wealth and fame. Maybe he could force Morgen into granting the Geborene title he promised. That would be impressive enough.
“Was there a man here recently?” Wichtig asked the barmaid. “You’d remember him. Big. Lot’s of scars. Missing one and a half ears and two fingers. He’d have noisy knees and be lugging about a big axe.”
She nodded, eyes wide. “Did he kill your friend?”
Wichtig blinked and then, having already forgotten most of the story he wove a moment ago, realized what she suggested. Perfect.
“Yes,” he said. “He killed her. I have to hunt him down. He must pay for his crimes.”
“He was here yesterday,” she said. “Sitting right there,” she nodded at Wichtig, “In that very chair.” She bit her top lip, turning it pink. “He drank a lot. He was here with a woman.”
A woman? Stehlen? Had Bedeckt brought Stehlen and left Wichtig behind? “Was she ungodly ugly?”
“No. Quite the opposite.”
Definitely not Stehlen then. “Did he say where he was going?” he asked without hope.
She shook her head. “But he did ask what relations were like with Gottlos.”
Gottlos. Bedeckt was returning to where all this started? Why?
“Then I shall have to go after him,” said Wichtig, straightening in his chair and striking his best heroic pose. He heard her intake of breath.
“He looked dangerous,” she said. “Scary.”
“He is. But I am not worried. For I…” Wichtig paused for dramatic effect. “…am the Greatest Swordsman in the World.”
“You’re not Kurz Ehrfürchtig,” she said.
“Who?”
“Kurz Ehrfürchtig. He’s the Greatest Swordsman in the World.”
“Nonsense.”
“He is. Everyone knows it.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” said Wichtig.
She shrugged, looking apologetic, which annoyed the shite out of him.
“I’m Wichtig Lügner,” he said. “You must have heard of me.”
Her petite nose wrinkled. “Maybe. But that was a long time ago. You can’t be him. He’d be old now, in his thirties. Anyway, I heard he died in Neidrig a decade ago.”
“Well I did,” snapped Wichtig. “But I’m back.”
Her eyes widened. “Back from—”
“Back from the dead,” agreed Wichtig, wondering if he could fit this in with the rest of the horse-shite tale. He’d lost the thread almost the moment he started talking. The facts don’t matter, he reminded himself. Particularly as he hadn’t said anything factual to begin with. Honesty, he found, rarely improved a good tale. She didn’t seem to notice any inconsistencies. “I have unfinished business,” he added because that seemed like the kind of thing people back from the dead would say.
Wichtig slammed back his pint and stood. He wobbled a little. How many had he drunk? He couldn’t remember. “This Swordsman?”
“Kurz?”
“Yes. Where is he?
“He’s usually at the Fehlerhafte Turm. It’s not far from here,” she said.