“Get out,” Bedeckt said to the farmers, rolling his shoulders and hearing the crunch of arthritic bone and muscle.
In a heartbeat they were gone, the door slamming behind them.
The three in the corner stood, unhurried. One stepped into the light. Face pocked with acne scars and a straggly attempt at a beard, the man looked whip lean and mean. He grinned bad teeth and pocketed a small mirror.
Zukunft had said something about a Mirrorist.
“The One True God told me you’d come,” said the lean man, drawing a slim-bladed sword. His eyes screamed madness.
The One True God. What shite. The only person who really knew where we were going—
“Shite,” he muttered. Zukunft’s Reflection. Could it have somehow tricked this T?uschung priest? Had it led him into a trap? Too rutting late now.
Bedeckt moved around the intervening tables, eyes locked on the three. He said nothing; the axe would speak for him.
The other two stepped into the light and Bedeckt understood the farmers’ unease. Both men were Befallen, their flesh infested with parasites. Their faces writhed as swarms of tunnelling bugs crawled beneath the surface. They drew blades matching that of the Mirrorist.
“The One True God says we are to send you to Swarm,” said the lean man. The three spread out so as not to hamper each other’s movement. “He said you’d find the message we left and follow.”
A maggot crawled from the nose of one of the Befallen and fell at his feet. All three shrugged their cloaks aside, exposing matched hauberks beneath. They looked confident.
They were waiting for me.
His rage subsided, replaced with cold calculation. Had Zukunft led him to this intentionally, or was this the work of whoever she hallucinated in her mirror? Did it matter?
Bedeckt stopped, resting his half-hand atop the back of a heavy wood chair, and waited.
The priest glanced past Bedeckt, toward the door. “Where is the Greatest Swordsman in the World?”
Bedeckt grinned death. Their idiot god told them he still travelled with Wichtig? Did this mean Zukunft was not to blame? Did some other power work behind the scenes to manipulate him?
The three priests stopped, waiting. Finally, one said, “He’s supposed to be here.”
The Mirrorist waved the man to silence. All three looked less sure of themselves.
“The child was for you,” said the lean man, struggling to regain composure. “You recognized that scene?” He advanced and the others followed, crouched and ready. “Did we get it right, the broken bones?”
You got it right. And now they’d pay.
“That Geborene—”
Bedeckt threw the chair at the Mirrorist and followed in its wake, swinging his axe at the nearest Befallen. The man lifted his sword to defend and Bedeckt hacked through it like it was a blade of grass. He cleaved the Befallen from shoulder to sternum. A morass of maggots, beetles, and worms spilled from the gaping wound to fall writhing at the man’s feet. The Befallen stumbled back, feet slipping in spilled blood and crawling insects, and fell dead to the floor, his skull striking stone like the gong of a muted church bell.
As Bedeckt spun to face the second Befallen, fire lanced a hole in his gut, just beneath the ribs. You’re slowing down, old man. Bedeckt retreated, his half-hand clutched against his side. Blood pulsed between his fingers with each beat of his heart. He dared not look to assess the damage.
The Befallen followed, teeth bared in a savage snarl showing gums infested with pallid grubs, face twisting and squirming from within. A glistening white worm pushed its way free of his lower eye lid, distorting the eyeball, and lay stuck to his cheek.
“Without the Swordsman,” wheezed the Befallen, breath wretched with rot, “you’re nothing.”
The man lunged and Bedeckt batted the thin blade aside with his axe, retreating and grinding his teeth against the pain tearing his side. He heard no bubbling of breath and prayed that meant a lung hadn’t been opened. That was a little low for the lungs, old man. He put steel in your belly.
The Befallen followed, taunting Bedeckt with words barely heard.
Damned idiot, facing three men alone. Perhaps thinking he had fifteen years before once again setting foot in the Afterdeath was a little optimistic. The Mirrorist extricated himself from the chair Bedeckt threw and circled in the opposite direction, hoping to flank the axe man.
Bedeckt pushed a chair between himself and the Befallen and the man kicked it away with a scornful laugh. The axe felt heavy, hung low. Any lower and he’d be dragging the damned thing.
Why am I here? How did I let this happen? The damned list, it’s things I won’t do. There’s nothing on there about racing around trying to rescue every god-damned child on the planet because I feel guilty about—