“Distilled potato mash.”
“Fine.” Why did that sound familiar? Wichtig shrugged the thought away. When the beverage arrived, he didn’t so much drink it as throw it at his mouth. A decision he instantly regretted. It felt like someone doused his face in lamp oil and set it alight.
“Again,” he said, torn mouth turning the words into a sopping slur. He caught sight of his reflection in the filthy brass mirror mounted behind the bar. He was slashed from his right ear and across his lips to the left side of his chin. Wiping at the blood, Wichtig caught a flash of pale white and saw the giant’s sword had grooved the bone on its way out. “Am I pretty?” he asked no one and fell off his stool laughing. When he managed to regain his seat he found the bar quiet, everyone staring at him. “What?” It sounded more like whaff.
A Swordsman, young and bulging with muscle, stood at the door. He had eyes only for Wichtig who turned away to find his next awful drink awaiting him on the bar. He threw it in his mouth and hissed at the pain, spattering the bar in a red mist. His eyes ran with tears and he laughed, the choking sobs of a mind unwilling to accept what has happened.
“You,” said the young Swordsman, striding toward Wichtig. “You killed Arg Gro??”
Wichtig had no clue what the idiot was raving about. “Go away. Busy.” Talking sprayed more blood.
The Swordsman approached Wichtig to stand sneering at his side. “I’ve killed dozens of Greatest—”
Wichtig killed him with the sword lying on the bar. The dead Swordsman toppled, taking the sword with him. Wichtig, deciding he’d never make it back into the stool if he tried to retrieve the weapon, threw back another drink of searing agony. The pain kept him awake, meant he wasn’t yet dead.
The man Wichtig sent returned with a surgeon—an old man, himself looking dangerously intoxicated. Wichtig paid the man and dumped the rest of the coin gathered coin into the shaking hands of the surgeon.
“Fix,” he said, gesturing at his face with his partial hand.
The cutter, surprisingly deft for a man so clearly well into his cups, caught Wichtig’s wrist and lifted it for a tentative sniff. His nose, bulbous and deep pored, slashed red and blue with broken veins, wrinkled in distaste. “Rot,” he said. He stared at Wichtig, blinking as if struggling to focus for several heartbeats before saying, “Got a room?”
Wichtig took a couple of coins from the surgeon and tossed them at the innkeeper. “Now I do.” He grabbed the drunken cutter by the shoulder. “You’ll have to help me.”
The innkeeper directed them to a room, and Wichtig and the surgeon—clutching a bottle of Kartoffel to his chest—stumbled up the short and leaning staircase. The Swordsman wasn’t sure who leaned on whom more.
Once in the room, the surgeon sat him in a rickety chair and laid out a bag of assorted instruments, reminding Wichtig of Schnitter’s tools of torture, though not as clean.
The surgeon splashed Wichtig’s face with more Kartoffel before the Swordsman could explain he already did that downstairs, and then drank several pulls while Wichtig blinked tears from the harsh alcohol stinging his eyes.
“Ready?” said the old man.
“Yes,” lied Wichtig.
With a brackish belch the old man set to work. First he sewed Wichtig’s lips with a length of catgut. Each tug of the needle felt like claws tearing at Wichtig’s reality. The missing ear was bad, but this…
Take away his beauty, his physical perfection, and what was he?
Wichtig tried to ask the surgeon what beauty was worth but the old man told him to shut-up.
Finally, tying off the ends of the thread, the surgeon sat back and examined his work, nodding as if pleased. “Don’t talk for a while,” he said.
“Arse,” managed Wichtig. His lips felt like someone sewed two dead cats to his face. He laughed, a mirthless chuckle causing the surgeon to give him an uncertain look. Cat turd face. That’s what Stehlen always calls Bedeckt when he has something on his mind.
With a shrug the old man set to unwrapping Wichtig’s left hand. He tutted as he worked, complementing whoever did the bandaging and cursing them for not cleaning the wound first. When he peeled the last away, the sour stench of infection filled the room, clogging Wichtig’s nostrils. The Swordsman spat salty bile and averted his face, afraid to look.
Wichtig weaved in and out of consciousness as the surgeon worked, carving away dead and rotten flesh. The old man paused often to either pour Kartoffel down his own throat or splash it on Wichtig. When he finally shrugged at his handiwork and declared whatever remained of Wichtig’s hand clean, he sewed that closed with thick strands of catgut. By the time he worked on Wichtig’s foot, the Swordsman was numb with drink and mumbling songs he remembered from his childhood.