Guilt. Bedeckt laughed, shaking his head, and the Befallen scowled in confusion. Apparently having your intended victim laugh with you was less entertaining. A long trail of blood followed Bedeckt. He couldn’t remember the last time he bled so much. Even back in Selbsthass, when they faced that Mehrere guarding Morgen’s chambers—
The door to the tavern slammed open, breaking Bedeckt’s thoughts. From the corner of his eye he saw Zukunft, soaking wet, shirt and skirt hugging every curve. A slim, long-bladed knife sat tucked into her belt. The Befallen saw her too, his mouth opening, eyes widening in surprise.
Distractions are death.
Bedeckt killed the man. Hurling himself forward and raising the axe in a scything upward swing, he cleaved into the man’s groin up to his navel. The Befallen dropped. The axe, blade caught in bone, tore from Bedeckt’s hands. Bedeckt slipped in his own blood, staggered, and fell. Scrabbling to draw a knife, he dragged himself away from the T?uschung priest who followed, gaze darting between Zukunft and Bedeckt.
“Are you the Greatest Swordsman in the World?” the lean man asked, glancing at the girl and frowning in confusion.
Bedeckt laughed, choked short by a cough of pain. He felt wide open, like his guts might spill forth. Half-hand keeping his insides in, one hand clutching a stupid little knife while simultaneously trying to drag himself further from the madman.
Zukunft, gorgeous and soaked to the skin, stood without a hint of fear in her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“But…a woman?”
Zukunft shot him an angry look, green eyes flashing. “And why not?”
The T?uschung shrugged. He turned away from Bedeckt, his attention on Zukunft. Sinking into a fighter’s crouch he shuffled toward her, poised as if expecting attack. “No scars,” he said.
“No.”
“You don’t have a sword.”
“Don’t need one.”
Reaching up Bedeckt gripped the side of a table. When he tried to pull himself to his feet, the table, a top-heavy oaken monstrosity, came down upon him.
Zukunft ran a hand through her wet hair, clearing it from her eyes. She looked ready, unworried.
She should be worried. The girl had no idea of the danger she was in.
Bedeckt rolled to his belly and, his hands and knees sliding on blood-slicked stone, again tried to stand. “I’m here,” he managed to say between gritted teeth. They ignored him. Run, you stupid girl, run.
The T?uschung priest circled, moving ever closer to Zukunft who appeared to watch nothing but his feet. Her lips moved as if counting. He stepped forward and she drew the knife tucked into her belt, causing him to pause. When he saw she remained standing exactly as she had, he resumed his approach.
Bedeckt flailed at a table leg, trying to make noise, desperate to distract the T?uschung priest. Still they ignored him.
The priest feinted with his sword and Zukunft didn’t flinch, didn’t even seem to have noticed, so fixated was she with his feet. Bedeckt coughed blood, marvelled at how dark everything had become. He pushed himself to his knees. He saw the T?uschung priest lunge forward in a blur of speed as Zukunft, still watching his feet, said, “There.”
The T?uschung priest stepped straight into Zukunft’s blade. She didn’t stab him so much as hold it so he might impale his eye socket on it.
The man grunted surprise and crumpled.
Bedeckt did the same.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Anyone remember Pfeilmacher? He wrote those awful books about a reality that was fixed, unresponsive to the beliefs of man. They were drivel. I met him years after reviewing his novel and he was a lumbering beast, with flesh like one of those armoured swamp creatures with all the teeth. He said the reviews of those who themselves wrote nothing of value no longer bothered him, that he’d become inured to rejection. I told him I thought his second book was worse than the first and he cried, his skin growing even thicker.
—Richter Kritik - The Geldangelegenheiten Literary Review
The sound of some poor bastard’s moaning woke Wichtig from his slumber and stopped the moment he cracked his eyes open. He couldn’t move, not even turn his head.
I’m paralysed! That sticking horse threw me and broke my spine and I’m crippled!
He’d kill the beast.
Wichtig’s toes felt cold and he wiggled them. Then he wiggled his fingers. He felt the cold grit of stone beneath his bare arse.
Straining to sit, he felt a band of something across his forehead. Not paralysed, he was bound and helpless.
What the hells?
The bridge. The tower. Weak from the albtraum attack, he’d fallen off his horse.
The Gottlos border.
“Shite.”
Not to worry. He’d explain the mistake and be on his way.
Really? What mistake? They’ll think you’re working for the Geborene and you are—were—whatever. You’re working directly for their god. Or maybe he was. He wasn’t sure.
“Well, they don’t know that.”