Free The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington Page A

up!”
    “What was that about the Christ?”
    “What? Nuthin!”
    “Calm yourself, and remember your word,” and wood slid on wood, and the door pushed out. Blinded by the glare, Hegel stumbled
     inside, knocking over a small table. Stamping his feet, Hegel set Manfried on the ground. A smell of spoiled milk and sour
     sweat filled the thick, greasy air of the hut. The door closed behind them and the board slid back in place. Hegel whirled
     to confront the person who had possibly murdered his brother by forcing him to wait out in the snow on the verge of death.
    The oldest person Hegel had ever seen stared back at him, a woman sixty years old if she was a day. He could be sure of her
     sex only by her lack of beard, her taut yet cracked face offering no other markers. Bald save for specters of white hair and
     swathed in rags, her bulbous body contrasted her emaciated countenance. The manticore-slayer and dog-breaker Hegel took a
     step back from the fearsome crone.
    She grinned, black-toothed and scab-gummed. “Welcome, welcome.”
    “Uh, thank you,” said Hegel.
    “Hard night for traveling?” Her eyes shone in the firelight.
    “Had worse. My brother’s in a bad way, though.”
    “So I see.” Yet she did not remove her eyes from Hegel.
    “Caught’em a touch a the pest out in the wood.” Hegel’s body hummed, either from the change in climate or her presence, he
     could not be sure which.
    “Oh did he? Found a pest in the forest?” she asked.
    “No, er,
the
pestilence. You know, buboes?”
    “He’s got the black bulges, does he?”
    “Not yet, he—” Hegel stopped short when the woman darted out a hand and poked his wounded face. He snatched for his sword,
     but the look in her eye held it in its sheath. He stared aghast as she licked the blood from her finger, appraisingly.
    “Not out there,” she muttered, “no, no, caught a different case of death, I’d wager.”
    “He ain’t dead yet,” said Hegel, turning to Manfried.
    The walls of the cramped interior bulged with cluttered shelves containing bottles, jars, and heaps of bones and feathers,
     and from the ceiling hung a hundred different bundles of drying plants and strips of cloth. The firepit in the rear filled
     the room with a pungent, piney haze that masked the sickly smell of the crone, a small, snowmelt-dripping hole in the roof
     failing to accommodate all the smoke. An empty chair sat before the firepit and one corner held a heap of rags, the other
     a small woodpile.
    Hegel dragged his brother onto the hearthstones. Manfried had grown pale but his skin burned, his body wracked with spasms.
     The crone leaned over them both, clucking softly.
    “Caught a case right enough, a case of the comeuppance!” she jeered.
    Hegel’s hand again reached for his sword but her tongue intercepted him.
    “Calm, calm, Grossbart, remember your promise.”
    “Slag,” Hegel hissed, “you watch yourself.”
    She cackled in a manner only the elderly can master.
    “Wait a tic.” Hegel swallowed, neck-hairs reaching for the roof. “How’d you know our name?”
    “You look like long-beards to me,” she replied. “Don’t you call a thing by what it most resembles? Call a dog a dog, a beast
     a beast, eh?”
    “Suppose so,” Hegel allowed, not convinced.
    “Your brother’s dying,” she said, her voice lacking the solemnity Hegel felt the situation deserved.
    “Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t. You don’t look like no barber, so maybe you should mind your mouth.”
    “Well, Grossbart,” she said, “tis true I’m no barber—I’m better than one. Barber couldn’t do anything for that man, just put
     him on the cart for the crows.
I
might help him, if I was so inclined.”
    Hegel stepped toward her, dried belladonna brushing his hair. “If I was you, I’d incline myself with the quickness.”
    “Menacing words, menacing eyes.”
    “You—”
    “Careful. I’ll mend your brother, and you besides, if you do as I say.”
    “What we