Beyond Redemption (28 page)

Bedeckt grunted and nodded agreement but didn't look like he really believed it.

When Morgen returned from scrubbing his hands, Stehlen and Bedeckt had left. He glanced at the empty seats. “Why did Bedeckt take Stehlen instead of you? He should have taken you.”

“They need some alone time together.” Wichtig waggled eyebrows at the boy. “To do adult stuff.”

“You're lying.”

“Can't get one past you.” Wichtig raised an eyebrow. “Just what are you capable of?”

“I don't know. Aufschlag frowned on showing off.”

“Could you help me find this shite-hole's Greatest Swordsmen?” Wichtig asked.

Morgen thought about it. The reflections would show him what he wanted to know. “Why?”

“How do you think one becomes the Greatest Swordsman in the World?”

The answer was obvious. “You have to fight other great Swordsmen.”

“Of course. Can you help me find them?”

“Do you want to start with a good one and work your way up, or go after the best first?”

Wichtig looked thoughtful and Morgen knew the Swordsman was pretending; he'd already made up his mind.

“If we start with the very best,” said Wichtig, “we won't have to fight the others.”

Once on the street, Morgen stared raptly into an unsavory puddle of something thin and brown and tinted with a hint of red. Someone's kidneys were definitely failing.

He lost himself in the puddle. “I see her. She's not far from here. There's an inn called the Schwarze Beerdigung. It's much cleaner than where we are staying,” he added petulantly. His hands stung, raw from scrubbing.

“She? How can a woman be the Greatest Swordsman in the World? Wait. If she's seeking the title of Greatest Swords
woman
in the World, is she still worth fighting?”

What difference does it make?
“She's the best in this . . .”

“‘Shite-hole' is the word you are looking for. Or cesspit, piss-pot, dung heap, or turd bucket.”

“She's the best fighter in this turd bucket,” finished Morgen, smiling uncertainly up at Wichtig. Aufschlag had never let him use the words he learned from the church guards.

Wichtig ruffled Morgen's hair and set off down the street. Gods knew where the man's hands had been. Morgen tried not to show his distaste at the contact as he hurried to keep up.

“That's my boy,” said Wichtig. “You'll be one of us before long.” He gestured grandly at the refuse-strewn streets of Neidrig. “Free to wander the open road. Free to taste all the pleasures life offers to those bold enough to take a bite.” He glanced at Morgen. “Do you like girls yet?”

“I haven't met very many,” Morgen admitted.

“A situation we must remedy.”

“The few priestesses I met seemed nice. Before this, I never left the church.”

“You lived there with your parents?” Wichtig asked, watching the crowd around them.

Morgen shook his head. “I don't have parents.”

“You never met your mother? That's not all bad. Mine sent me away to live with my father. He sent me back after I sold his horse to buy a lute.”

“No, I mean I never had a mother.”

Wichtig, spotting a young tough sporting a businesslike sword, distractedly said, “Everyone has a mother.”

“I am the manifestation of the faith of the Geborene Damonen and all Selbsthass.”

Wichtig stopped suddenly and Morgen narrowly avoided walking into him. “Is that what Konig told you?” He made a noise like a wet fart. “You need to learn to ask questions.” Laughing, he once again set off down the filth-strewn street.

Morgen followed. Had Konig lied?
Why would . . .
“Why would Konig lie?”

“Every god needs a good backstory,” Wichtig said over his shoulder. “Don't take it personally. It's just that ‘born of the faith of the believers' is better than ‘born of a tavern whore.'”

Was this true? If this was a lie, what other lies did he believe?
No, Konig wouldn't lie to me. I am to be the Geborene god, I was born of their faith
. The words rang hollow.

“Let's pay this Swordswoman a visit,” said Wichtig, as if their previous conversation was already forgotten. As if they'd discussed nothing of importance. “Is she attractive?”

Morgen blinked up at the Swordsman.
Why would Wichtig lie, what could he hope to gain?
“Nicer than Stehlen,” he said, his thoughts jumbled and chaotic.

Wichtig guffawed. “Everyone is nicer than Stehlen in every way imaginable. I've met donkeys with better personalities, tomcats
with sturdier morals, billy goats who smell better, and horses who are a gentler ride.”

“Gentler ride?”

“Never mind.”

Though the Schwarze Beerdigung was nowhere near what Wichtig would call a respectable establishment, it was indeed superior to the Ruchlos Arms. The tables, rough as they looked, were actually tables. The chairs were real chairs, and the bar looked like it had been made specifically to be a bar. The boy followed him in, walking as if in a daze.
What the hells is wrong with him?

In one corner a hefty woman sat with three well-armed men. The woman and her coterie of warriors ignored Wichtig's entrance, but he knew they'd noticed his arrival. How could they not, he was impossible to miss. Such grace. Such poise.
What had the brat said?
Physical perfection. Such physical perfection. The very essence of the perfect warrior given flesh.

Wichtig struck a heroic pose and grinned his best cocky grin at the table. While they pretended to ignore him and his perfect teeth, Wichtig took the opportunity to look them over.

The men were nothing. Run-of-the-mill toughs, each displaying the sloped brows, bad teeth, and thick clublike fingers of the dull-witted.
Add them together,
thought Wichtig,
and you still wouldn't get one real destiny
. Well armed and probably tolerably well versed in the use of their rather plain weapons, they still didn't matter. Not like Wichtig.

The woman was something else. A pair of beautiful matched swords hung at her waist in ornate leather sheaths, one dangling either side of the chair she straddled. Her hair, a pale orange bordering on strawberry, was hewn short and rough. The large helm sitting atop the table explained the bad hairstyle. Though
Wichtig found her face flat and her chin thick and strong, he was interested to note she was also unscarred. An impressive feat, if she really was a contender and an active Swordsman.
Swordswoman,
Wichtig corrected. Her arms looked like tree trunks, and Wichtig could only guess at how her legs looked under the long mail skirt. He'd never had a really large, muscular woman before and wondered what sexual feats she'd be capable of.

Wichtig leaned close to whisper to Morgen. “Listen carefully. If communication is manipulation, sex is all-out war.” He gestured toward the woman, ignoring the boy's look of confusion. “And she looks like she'd be a good fight.”

“She's very good,” answered Morgen, misunderstanding. “But you don't have to worry.”

Wichtig feigned shocked outrage. “Me? Worry?”

“You are the Greatest Swordsman in the World. You would win.”

Would? What does
that
mean?
Wichtig, pushing the thought aside, approached the table. A larger audience would have been nice, but the boy would suffice. Come to think of it, it might be more important he impress the boy than a crowd of lowly peasants.

“Greetings and salutations, my good . . .” Hells, he should have asked the boy the woman's name. “People.”

The woman glanced dismissively at him and returned her attention to the tabletop. “Begone.”

“Ah, a woman of few words. It matches your beauty.”

She scratched at the tabletop with a blunt fingernail and sounded bored. “You're pretty enough for both of us.”

Nicely done!
He hadn't expected wit. “True. I am. Which is lucky. For you.”

She glanced at the men at her table and they stood to face Wichtig. “Beauty doesn't do well in Neidrig,” she said.

“I had noticed, but was too polite to say anything.”

Finally she looked up and gestured at the largely empty room.
“This is pointless. There is no crowd to impress. Continue on this path and you will die.”

Wichtig backed away from the table, though only far enough to allow him an unhindered draw of his weapons. “I seek only to impress the boy. After these three”—he nodded at the standing warriors—“would you mind terribly if I killed you?”

She ignored the question and glanced past Wichtig at Morgen with a flicker of concealed curiosity. “The boy? Who is he?”

“Oh, nobody,” Wichtig drawled. “But he is going to be a god. So, if you don't mind . . .”

Wichtig killed the three men with three swift and precise strikes. The last one managed a look of wide-eyed surprise before dying.

Wichtig grimaced. “I must be slowing in my old age. Normally I can kill twice as many before one manages to react.” A bald-faced lie, but he delivered it with perfect sincerity. It sounded good, like it was truth.

The woman remained sitting, but her hands fell to the pommels of her sheathed swords. She looked up at Wichtig as if noticing him for the first time. “Do you seek to defeat me, or merely kill me?”

“Why, both!” Wichtig bowed with a flourish and a wink. “I'll await you on the street. A few mortal witnesses wouldn't hurt.”

“Are you really going to be a god?” Lebendig Durchdachter asked the boy.

“Yes,” he answered, and she believed him. She had no choice. “And Wichtig is the Greatest Swordsman in the World.” She knew this was true too and followed the man's slim hips with her gaze as he wove between tables on his way toward the front door. She remained sitting, watching as the strange boy followed the Swordsman. The faith of all the people of Neidrig
paled before the force of the child's belief in his friend. If she followed them out, it was only a matter of time before she lay dying in the street.

Her old Blade Master had always said things like “enter every fight knowing today is a good day to die.” The man, like all men, was an idiot.
Today is a shite day to die.

Lebendig Durchdachter stood and dropped a few coins on the table to cover the cost of her drinks. Gods be damned if she would cover the cost of her dead companions', whom she stepped over on the way to the bar.

She gestured to the innkeeper and dropped a few more coins atop the bar. “When the man comes back in, this will buy him a few drinks.”

The innkeep nodded as he accepted the coins but couldn't meet her eyes. “So you're going to face him?”

“Hells no. I'm going out the back. The drinks are to distract him long enough that I can get away.”

He finally made eye contact. “I always knew you were a good deal smarter than my other patrons.”