In the days that followed Heinrich’s donning of the flagellant’s robes, the boys remained obediently silent but would abduct any solitary travelers from the road and bring them before their stepfather, who would lecture the near-catatonic victims before allowing the twins to eat. With each gobbled victim the demon raged and worried at Heinrich to spare the potential converts but still the man overpowered his fiend. Heinrich’s fever never slackened, imbuing his limbs with an unwholesome vigor instead of weakening him, and without even noticing he lapsed into cannibalism when Brennen offered him the pinkest parts of the unfortunates they seized. The demoniac could no longer bear the sun, making the twins dig him deep burrows when no caves or thickets could be located. Worry plagued Heinrich, who had never seen a map but whose belly compelled him southward.
The night after they passed a town half-ruined by fire, his boys raced ahead toward a campfire beside a small river. They were in grasslands now, which afforded them few places to hide during the day, and Heinrich would have forbidden their investigation had he not held out hope for discovering the Grossbarts before they eloped by ship. The customary shrieks were quickly silenced, and as he waited by the riverbank Heinrich’s excitement waned, suspecting as he did that a Grossbart may curse and shout but will not shriek even if his genitals are gnawed by piglets.
The twins splashed through the current and deposited their charges before Heinrich, his disappointment sweetening at seeing their white vestments. Priests were better than nothing, but before he could launch into his diatribe they had rolled over, revealing their papal masks. Snatching them off, he peered into the unfocused, rolling eyes of the young men.
After he splashed them with water and booted them several times they began to speak, Magnus and Brennen eagerly watching from the shadows. The gibberish they spouted made no sense to Heinrich, who sighed and resigned himself to never knowing how they came to be dressed in such a manner. After all, the yeoman-turned-prophet only recognized a pope’s attire from a triptych he had seen long before and for all he knew most residents of the Papal States dressed that way.
Relieved to see an actual priest after being assaulted by devils, Paolo begged for mercy, explaining that only his desire to see his father avenged persuaded him to don the baggy garb of a Road Pope. Vittorio saw the beasts skulking in the weeds and knew at once this cruel-faced man could not be a priest, and so he tried to barter his friend’s soul in place of his. Heinrich raised his flail, knowing his words would be lost on these foreign heretics, when Paolo cursed their name, bowing his head and weeping.
“What name did you speak?” Heinrich demanded, unaware that the witch’s tongue knew all others, and he now addressed the lads in Italian.
“The Grossbarts!” wailed Paolo, tearing at the mud, his mind broken. “Those goddamn bastard Grossbarts! They burned us, they burned my father! They burned us! Bound and helpless, we could not get loose before!”
Unfortunately, while they understood him, Heinrich had not nibbled Nicolette’s ear and so all he comprehended was the name Grossbart and the youth’s rage toward them. Seeing this gave the demoniac pause, however, and Vittorio joined in cursing them, his hatred genuine as they had murdered his cousin Giovanni-known to his victims as Clement.
“Quit your barking!” commanded Heinrich, and the young men resumed their terrified prostrations, moaning and scratching at their faces in shock. “I only wish to know if you hate the Grossbarts more than you love the Virgin or your souls or the Great Demon of Heaven.”
The two nodded vigorously, begging for mercy. Paolo tried to explain that before being set upon by monsters they had been journeying south in pursuit of the Grossbarts but Heinrich silenced him with a gentle flick of his scourge. He told them to merely shake their heads or nod, for he recognized that they understood his words. They nearly snapped their necks so vigorously did they assent.
“Then you will be spared,” Heinrich said, and the twins wailed in disappointment until Heinrich commanded they be silent. “Put your masks back into place and swear to uphold my will in our quest to undo the Brothers Grossbart!”
They swore and nodded, clumsily refitting their masks with hands bruised raw from the teeth of the twins. Turning to his boys, Heinrich insisted they do nothing to harm their disciples, but to ensure they did not flee he assigned Magnus to mind Vittorio and Brennen to Paolo. The brothers jumped back into sight, bringing on another fit of tears and convulsions from the would-be Road Popes.
That night they took the sacrament of human flesh Heinrich offered, never suspecting the two abominations understood every word they whispered even if their master did not. Vittorio’s fear that they would have to kiss certain parts of the demons’ anatomies proved unfounded, although that was little succor. Escorting the novices back to their fire to retrieve their packs and weapons, Heinrich asked the lads if they knew which direction would take them to the sandy wastes of the Arab.
Being a barber of deserved reputation, Paolo’s father had known and passed on everything he understood of the profession and, unlike many of his trade, he had acknowledged that many advances had returned from the Crusades along with relics and other, more physical rewards. Whereas the average bumpkin might have pointed vaguely southward and picked his nose, Paolo motioned east, nodding his head vigorously when Heinrich narrowed his eyes. The fellow again pointed east, then curved his arm south, which seemed to please Heinrich.
They set off at once, the minds of the young popes irrevocably contaminated by the night’s horrid events. Without map or road they braved the wilds, Heinrich demanding the twins carry him over even the smallest stream rather than dampening his toes. Inexplicable impulses such as these beleaguered him and in the humid afternoons when sleep escaped him he would hear a soft, slithering voice that did not belong to him or any of those present, a whisper goading him to perform stranger rites still. Compromise was eventually brokered.
Now when they passed villages one of the novices would be forced to attempt a clandestine entry to deposit hunks of Heinrich’s rotting flesh in the wells. Where this proved impossible Heinrich would grow irrational, and order his boys to kidnap individuals from outlying farms so he could embrace and kiss them wantonly until they retched. Then they would be released, under a warning that if they spoke of what they had witnessed the demons would appear before them but to remember all was the fault of the Grossbarts. Few ever spoke again, the plague taking their lives before they sufficiently recovered from their horrors to think properly, let alone communicate beyond moans. In this fashion the Great Mortality enjoyed a brief renaissance in those regions, Heinrich’s retinue leaving plague and ruin in their footsteps as they marched to war against the Grossbarts.