Two more convicts were torn apart by Magnus’s voracious legs and right arm, the rat-faced left hand intent only on devouring Hegel. The creature had regained its balance and pressed forward, murine jaws tearing into Hegel’s left hand and coming away with the Grossbart’s two outer fingers and sword. Hegel responded by burying his pick in its snout but the arm drew back and Hegel released his weapon lest he be pulled any closer to the behemoth.
Drawing his prybar, Hegel jabbed the comparatively normal but massive hand snatching at his face. Then the other arm returned, the bestial face wielded like a club. Hegel sprawled on the ground under the impact but rolled away before the toothy feet could fall. He spied Manfried’s mace on the ground beside him and snatched it, but this distraction enabled the three-eyed horror to focus fully on its quarry, all other victims forgotten in its rage.
The pick-skewered rat-hand leaked blood from its clamped jaws, but as it fell they again sprang open to rend Hegel’s exposed back. Manfried swung his ax over his prone brother’s head, exploding rat teeth and severing the lower jaw. Magnus’s mouths shrieked and he threw himself atop them, desiring only to crush and chew their defiant bones. Rodrigo snatched Hegel and Raphael seized Manfried, each jerking a brother in a different direction. The beast crashed to the empty ground, two pairs of men spinning almost out of reach.
The jaws on Magnus’s left elbow tore into Rodrigo’s leg, taking away a massive dripping chunk. Had Raphael not already lost his left hand it would have disappeared into the snapping mouth that grazed his bandaged wrist. The skeletal outline of Magnus’s face twisted toward Manfried and Raphael, the warped nostril billowing, two eyes shining black and the third yellow. The remaining two prisoners, one a hardened killer who had that very night determined just what the Grossbarts were after in his homeland and the other a young Moslem noble who had never struck a foe, swung their swords into the backs of Magnus’s ankles. The biting teeth on the creature’s feet kicked as Magnus tried to right himself, legs as thick as tree trunks pumping the air as the convicts hacked.
The four men near Magnus’s head and arms scrambled back only to leap again into the fray, the downed creature’s bellows of fury turning to wails as ax and sword and mace fell on every limb. A foot found the noble’s chest but his last blow cut the mighty paw free and the young man fell backward, the jaws gnawing his bare chest despite being severed. Tendons popped in the other leg, the more seasoned prisoner dodging the deadly kicks as he cut ever deeper. The mangled rat-head became mush under Hegel’s mace and then came loose from Rodrigo’s stabbings, and Magnus’s right arm flew off at the elbow from Manfried and Raphael’s onslaught.
Swaying in the moonlight, Heinrich called his son’s name over and over but his child had departed, taken by something even fouler than he. Staggering toward the Grossbarts and their followers he raised his dull scourge, grief dampening his cheeks for the first time since abandoning his humanity. Poor Magnus bawled as the bastards dismembered him, the child rolling toward one group only to have the other hew into his exposed torso.
With the arm removed, Manfried pressed in to hack the thing’s head open when the barbed scourge whipped around his face and pulled him off the beast. Heinrich’s stench blinded them as he swung the flail around at Raphael, but then both he and Manfried turned their attentions to the possessed yeoman. Heinrich fell into the arms of his acolytes as Manfried’s ax cleaved into his shoulder and Raphael’s sword slit open his belly. He cackled even as black slime bubbled from his wounds, his assailants returning to their task.
“Burn it!” Hegel told the two prisoners. “Oil the mecky fucker!”
“Don’t let them!” Heinrich shrieked at Vittorio and Paolo, who still hung back.
Hegel had noticed Magnus’s fresh wounds healed quicker than new ones could be made. The severed rat-hand had melted into bubbling filth at their feet and a new, placenta-veiled bulge quickly grew from the stump. The Egyptian criminal helped the noble throw the rear paw off before it ate its way to his heart, but then the foot turned to ash and hooked toes burst from Magnus’s gory ankle. Aghast, the younger prisoner had the sense slapped into him by his murderous countryman.
Without the two men working its legs, Magnus recovered sufficiently to leap away from the other four attackers, the fresh rat-hand uttering a snarling squeak at its rebirth. Manfried caught sight of something behind the great chops of its central stomach-mouth and charged. Hegel and Raphael were close after but Rodrigo slumped, his wounded leg leaking like a worn-out wineskin. Clumsily bandaging himself and taking up his crossbow, Rodrigo aimed at Magnus’s face.
The abomination tried to stand on its hind legs but they were not yet whole and buckled, Magnus dropping to all fours to greet their charge. Raphael slashed across its nostril, popping the eyeball beside it and bringing the creature’s focus upon him. Racing past the roaring arms, Hegel followed his brother until Manfried ducked under the creature’s stomach and the beast lunged forward.
A thigh struck Hegel, teeth latching onto his arm and pulling him against Magnus’s side. More mouths opened where Hegel had sworn there were none, pinning him flat as fangs rent his armor to get at his flesh. He tried to use his mace but a long, greasy tongue wrapped around it, pulling him closer. Immobile, Hegel saw a cloud growing around the wounded Heinrich, and, knowing what it presaged, began to pray as he struggled.
In the moonless shadow of the creature’s belly, Manfried held his prybar in both hands and stood up-directly into the largest of Magnus’s mouths. Blinded in the dank, plaque-ridden stink of its maw, Manfried held his prybar until the jaws closed on him and the metal tool embedded itself in the monster’s gums. With a silent prayer, Manfried released his grip on the instrument that prevented the teeth from biting him in half, its muscles straining to snap the prybar keeping its mouth ajar. A warm, vinegar-sour mist boiled out of the hidden pit where all its mouths led, choking the Grossbart with its pungent exhalation. Reaching up into the blackness, Manfried tore with his bare hands through flesh and tissue, noxious blood burning his skin and eyes before the monster moved forward and the Grossbart held on to meat to keep from falling out. His boots dragging on the ground, Manfried dug through the back of the creature’s gut-throat until several of Magnus’s teeth popped and the prybar slipped, the beast’s mouth snapping shut.
Firing his crossbow, Rodrigo saw Magnus’s only human eye burst in Raphael’s face before the rat-hand bit the brigand and began slinging him about by his shoulder. Hegel felt his helmet pulled free and heard it being rent in the mouth against his shoulder, then he felt another tongue wrapping around his neck and teeth chewing his beard, pulling his head in despite his efforts. Then Magnus collapsed, dragging Hegel to the ground and tossing Raphael through the air and onto Rodrigo.
The fight had taken them away from the campfires and the moon hid, but criminal eyes are always sharpest in darkness. Noble and misanthrope alike stood transfixed, weapons slipping from their shaky fingers. The beast lay motionless but none of the crusaders moved, two sprawled a dozen feet away, one half-chewed in the mouths peppering the abomination’s flank, and the last swallowed whole. The two popes held up their priest, who vomited bile and smoke, the miasma coalescing around him into horrible shapes cavorting in the starlight. The odors and sounds his body released would have gagged a necromancer but his acolytes savored the vileness.
Then Magnus’s neck bulged and the prisoners stared, wondering what new horror birthed from its gargantuan corpse. Fur split, its entire head suddenly rolled away from its body, and a man-shaped thing crawled forth.