The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [170]
“Mind the arms, love,” said Monique as Awa leaped over the creek to embrace her friend. The gunner’s voice was level despite the rivulets pouring down from her squinting blue eyes, and Awa saw that both of the woman’s arms were bound in stained bandages, her left in a sling at her chest and her limp-wristed right held clumsily out in front of her, as though she did not know what to do with it. “Kin I jus’ say that you’re a welcome sight, shit-lookin though ya surely are?”
“Monique.” Awa touched the giantess’s shoulder. “You’re really here!”
“In the flesh, or what’s left of it.” Mo leaned closer. “Oi, wipe these eyes for me fore the others come along an’ see me actin the feeble, eh?”
“Others?” “Awa!” Manuel came trotting out of the woods. “For fuck’s sake, what are you doing out here?!”
“Manuel!” Awa laughed with delight. “Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern! Who else do you have out there, Johan and Ysabel?”
“Who?” Monique shook her head. “We got the fuckin quack with us.”
“Not Paracelsus?!” Awa cried, and then he emerged wheezing after Manuel, and there on the bank of the creek Awa laughed and wept to see her friends appearing one after another when she needed them most. She gathered her gear and followed them deeper into the wood where they had camped for lunch upon finding the manse burned to the ground. After she had eaten and achieved a tidy little drunk from Paracelsus’s schnapps, they all began talking at once, all four faces struggling to contain their grins.
Before the telling of tales could begin in earnest, Awa insisted on examining Monique’s arms against the woman’s protests. Paracelsus tried to explain that the obstinate gunner had not allowed him to amputate but Awa would hear none of it, one look at the spirits infecting the wounds confirming that she was already in mortal danger. Manuel’s bitten face would require a bit of tending as well, but Monique had no right to even be alive. Awa set out immediately with stewpot in hand to retrieve the necessary parts from the discarded bodies of Merritt and Kahlert after securing the promises of her friends not to follow her.
No sooner had she left than Paracelsus had dire need of a shit, and after quitting the campfire the physician crept after Awa, watching with interest as she cut flesh and bones from two fresh corpses that lay close to where they had found her. She knew the noisy doctor was watching her grind up the meat and bone with the aid of her knife’s pommel, and on the return trip she made sure to catch up with him and have a little word on the propriety of the occasional judicious silence.
Otherwise she was as honest as the dead with her companions as she prepared the stew that only Monique was allowed to sample, much as the smell of fresh pork excited Manuel. She made a much smaller batch for the artist soon after, which he found stringy for his taste—thankfully the sinuses and cheek meat of the dead men did their work well enough without his palate’s approval. As they ate Awa told them everything, about her servitude to the necromancer and her onanistic romance with Omorose and her curse and her years of searching graveyards and the friends she had made amongst the dead, and her enemies as well. They only occasionally interrupted her with their questions, and when she was finished they took their turns, Awa immensely relieved to hear they had dispatched the hyena.
“And when we got to Calw we heard that Ashton Kahlert’s estate had burned down, so of course we came over to have a look ourselves,” concluded Manuel. “Camped out here so as not to arouse the local ire by picnicking in the ashes, though we gathered that the barkeep at least was no friend of Kahlert.”
“An’ I’m walkin down ta see if all’s still quiet so’s we kin get out the way we come in,” said Monique, “an’