The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [25]
The witch wore Bernardo’s clothes, and the naked man lay at her feet making small wet noises and holding both hands to his bloody mouth. As if she had been waiting for his audience, the witch nodded at Manuel and squatted over Bernardo, slitting his throat with a dagger. With his dagger, Manuel realized, and even though he could see the weapon his hand went to the empty sheath at his waist. She must have taken it when she bumped into him on the hill, and she must have used it on the Kristobels and now, obviously, on Bernardo.
In the better light she looked older than he had originally thought, but not by much. She was short but surprisingly well-built, her close-cropped hair the dull, grayish brown of the bistre Manuel used for his ink, her skin darker than the dead leaves at her feet. And in the time it had taken him to kill one man on equal footing she had killed three, and all with his dagger.
“You’re a witch,” said Manuel, a bitter metallic taste in his mouth. He realized he had bitten his tongue when he had fallen during the fight, and he spit red. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” the witch said in Alemannic German to match his, and he saw her mouth was smeared with blood.
“And you used your witchcraft on them?” Manuel smiled to hear such words leave his mouth.
“No, I used your knife on them,” said the witch.
“I saw that.” Manuel nodded, pushing the rest of the way through the prickly bars of the juniper and looking down at the witch and Bernardo’s leaking body. “That’s your witchcraft, isn’t it? Being so good with a blade? The way so-called learned men attribute—”
Then Manuel stopped. Bernardo was getting up, planting his bloody hands in the thick crimson pool his neck had created, and he jerked up to his feet, the flow at his neck quickening from the exertion. He stood swaying beside the witch, who smiled faintly at Manuel. The artist was also a soldier and knew a dead man when he saw one, and Bernardo was most assuredly dead, the wound in his neck as wide as Manuel’s thumb and deep enough that as the risen corpse turned its head Manuel saw the hint of bone that must be his spine. Manuel was going to be sick, he was—
Manuel started awake in a shadowy cave long after the rain started, thunder murmuring its displeasure to be left outside. His wrist hurt and he had no idea where he was, confusion and pain adding a sinister edge to the gloom. Between the artist and the mouth of the cave was a small campfire, and Manuel lay very still, trying to straighten out what had actually happened from what his exhausted mind had made him dream before collapsing. Yet the whole morning seemed implausible, and he was cold and damp and sore and could smell the char of cooking pork, and so he got up and went to the fire where the witch sat in front of a joint of roasting meat and a simmering stewpot.
“I wonder at you, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern,” said the witch, and when she did not offer him her waterskin he rooted through the piled bags at his feet until he found one. He dug deeper until he found another skin full of wine and an apple, and then he sat down.
“Do you?” He sounded scared to himself, and realized that he was. He did not know where his sword was, nor his dagger. Fuck.
“I do. I wonder if those men hadn’t meant to rape me if you would have set me free. I wonder. When you found me, when your master was ordering you to deliver me, you said the Spanish men would burn me, yes?”
“At best.” Manuel took a slug of wine.
“So that is alright. You were not happy about it but you would have done it, but when they decided to rape me you told me to be ready to run. That was foolish. We both would have been caught, and I still would be raped, and you would probably be killed. Are you foolish enough to think you could have fought them all when one of them almost finished you?”
“No, I didn’t …” Manuel took another pull. “I didn’t think they would be so close. I thought you might be able to get away, or that the Kristobels would come around if I put Werner down quick.