The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [43]
“Please,” Manuel said, “I won’t tell anyone. Please.”
Awa wished he had not said that. Of course he would tell someone, and even if he did not she would have to worry about it for the rest of her days if she let him go, which was far more trouble than it was worth. He had mentioned God to the other men just before releasing her, she had heard him through the sack they had covered her with. That made it a little better, as he presumably would be less frightened of death than the animals she trapped and killed for her dinners.
Manuel recognized the resignation in her shoulders as she clambered up to a crouch, the weary sigh as keen an indicator as her shouting in his face, I’m going to kill you, Niklaus! I’m going to kill you even if I won’t really enjoy it! His own shoulders had bowed under that same weight many a morning, after all, and did his breath not fall out of him with equal dismay when his prayers were said before battle instead of bed? She was going to kill him because, well, who really knew why witches killed people? Maybe because he knew she was a witch and might tell—
The witch was reaching out toward him and Manuel kicked her hand away, hardly the dignified march to his Maker he had seen for himself but there it was, and he kicked again as she came closer. He had painted himself a few times, which always made him feel a little bit like an asshole, but now he was suddenly wishing he had written plays or poems instead, about himself, about all this, so he could write some choice final words for himself, something concise and graceful and—
“Fuck fuck fuck,” Manuel wailed as her fingers stung his ankle like the nettles that had grown beside his great-aunt’s hut, a burning chill racing up his bones and striking his heart, quick and sure as water running down the sluice of the little red millwheel he always passed on his way home to Bern, to his family, and then Niklaus Manuel Deutsch died. His chin hit his chest and he floundered backwards, his legs twitching on the ground as his breath froze on his lips. The artist was just another bland and anonymous corpse, the destiny of many a soldier not blessed with extraordinary luck or skill, and the fate of quite a few with plenty of both.
Looking down at the body, Awa wondered why she had not killed the man completely. If she did not restore him in a day or two his organs would no longer work properly, but the little death was, for the time being, hardly different than putting him to sleep. Supposedly—she had never applied it to herself and never would if she could help it, her experience with the trick at her tutor’s hand enough to put her off it forever. She returned to her fire and cooling meat, and as she ate she considered whether or not to give back what she had taken.
Strange, how she had been resigned to die only a few days ago, to abandon the impossible quest that had wasted almost four precious years, yet as soon as men tried to help shuffle her toward her end she fought like a desperate beast, like a woman with everything to lose. She had actually been scared of being raped, of being killed, even though she sometimes thought she deserved both. Had she not given up, resolved to lose something far more precious than her life?
“Stop,” Awa said as she realized she was muttering to herself again, and after she had eaten she sifted through the bags of her captors. The satchels were carefully emptied one at a time by the fire, sorted through, and then put back precisely as she had found them. She tried to guess which bag went with which dead man, but the first two bags contained identical blankets, bowls, and food, although in the bottom of the second she came across a moldering human thumb. The third bag seemed just as bland, but then her fingers felt a small, smooth oval plank of wood. Carefully removing it, she gasped and then grinned, holding the picture before her. On the flat circle of wood was a mildly smudged black sketch of a nude woman—her breasts pert,