Chapter 6
Otto
And then, Otto is walking alongside the necromancer toward the farm.
He has no memory of getting up and leaving the barn, only of the knife in his throat, and the blood, and the darkness.
Panicked, he looks down at his hands. They are covered in blood, as are his shirt and trousers.
He feels his throat. There is a cut, which feels cool and wet, and doesn’t pain him nearly as much as it should, not even when he thrusts his finger inside up to the second knuckle, though it does make him gag.
“Don’t do that, please,” the necromancer says. “You’ll rot fast enough without putting your grubby finger into that wound and widening it, and then I’ll have to find you another body, which is altogether more trouble than I need.”
Otto finds his hand moving away from the wound of its own accord.
He tries to stop walking, to turn around and run back to the camp, where his Frieda is waiting for him, because she is a soldier’s wife and as such comes with him wherever he is sent, but his legs won’t obey him.
He is bound fast to this he-witch and must do as commanded.
“Please, please, please,” Otto pleads, then hushes because he doesn’t know what it is exactly he is begging for.
He begins to cry like a child, he is so afraid.
He tries to resist whatever sinister influence this devil has over him that makes him follow like a leashed dog, clutching the little crucifix with such might, the gold splits the skin of his palm, and is resisting still by the time they have entered the farm.
Wolf, Gottfried, and Fergus the Irishman are all seated around the table playing cards. The farmer’s daughter sits on Gottfried’s knee, wincing whenever he moves, sobbing softly to herself. The capillaries in her eyes have burst, turning them pink.
“You took your sweet time,” Gottfried says.
“Who is this?” Wolf asks, barely glancing up from his hand of cards.
The necromancer places a hand on Otto’s shoulder and says, “Go on, dear Otto. Tell them who you think I am,” as if Otto is a shy boy who must be encouraged to speak up in front of his elders.
“A witch,” Otto chokes out.
The men look up, ready to laugh and joke. When they notice the gaping wound in Otto’s throat and his shirt sodden with blood, the smiles fall off their faces faster than overripe fruit from a tree.
Wolf is the first to speak. “Otto, what happened to your throat?”
He claps his hand over the wound as if to hide it. It stings. “I think he killed me,” he says, the horror of it all compelling him to simple honesty.
“But why?” Wolf asks.
“For a laugh,” the necromancer answers, and giggles, the sound high and strangely girlish.
Gottfried stops jiggling his leg, clears his throat, and asks in a voice that is remarkably steady, “What can we do for you?”
“Shut up!” Fergus hisses. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t converse with witches, you stupid Protestant?”
“He’s come for that skull of yours, Gottfried, the one you took from that Swede.
I told you not to take it. I told you to leave it, that nothing good would come of it, but you were greedy, weren’t you?
And now we are all damned,” Otto moans. His voice sounds hoarse.
Maybe the necromancer damaged my voice box when he threw that knife and killed me, oh God oh God oh God…
Gottfried keeps looking at the necromancer.
His bearded face betrays no emotion, but from the set of his jaw and the way he grips the farmer’s daughter’s waist, Otto can tell he’s afraid.
“I don’t have that skull anymore. I used it as a bet during a game of dice, and I lost. That was about a week ago. I can tell you—”
With a roar, Fergus jumps to his feet. In one smooth motion, he vaults over the table and draws his sword. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” he screams, raising the sword to decapitate the necromancer.
“Be a dear and kill him, please,” the necromancer whispers in Otto’s ear, his breath so soft, it’s almost a caress.
Otto snatches a knife from the table and plants it into Fergus’ neck.
For a moment, Fergus stands still, his face so full of shock and betrayal, it looks like an open wound. He feels for the knife, tugs it out. Before it can clatter to the floor, the blood is already bursting from the cut in a brilliant crimson jet. He staggers, then falls heavily.
Did I look like that, too? Otto wonders as he kneels down next to him.
The blood just keeps coming, hot and sticky, coating his hands and drenching every bit of his clothes not yet soaked.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Fergus. He made me do it.
You saw, didn’t you? Saw how he whispered in my ear?
I didn’t want to do it, I swear.” He knows he’s babbling, but he can’t stop.
Fergus grips Otto’s arm and squeezes it hard enough to bruise. He tries to say something, but all that comes up is more blood, first in thick globs, then as a fine mist whilst he chokes. His body tenses, then grows slack.
“What the fuck did you do that for? Are you in league with the devil?” Wolf asks. He has gotten to his feet and is holding his rosary in a shaking fist.
Otto looks at him helplessly. “He made me.”
“We know,” Gottfried says without ever taking his eyes off the necromancer.
Fergus’s body begins to jerk. Otto leans over him, thinking that perhaps he’s still alive, but when Fergus rises in that juddering way that characterized every move the farmhand made and the necromancer cackles as roughly as a dog’s bark, Otto knows what’s truly going on.
The necromancer makes Fergus dance a jig, his head lolling, the wound in his neck opening and closing like a mouth. In a guttural voice unlike his own, he begins to sing.
“There once was a family living on a farm.
All day they worked, doing not one bit of harm.
Five little soldiers came to them in the field one day
And took their health, maidenhead, and life away.
Five little soldiers, up to their usual tricks
Of rape and torture and feeding off others like ticks,
Five little soldiers knowing no other way to get by
Than through sucking the peasant population dry,
Not knowing that with every little thing they took,
They signed their names over and over in Satan’s book
For there is not a sin the devil doesn’t see.
Watch out, little soldier boys, now he is coming for thee…”
Wolf has begun to pray to drown out the sound, tears streaming down his ashen cheeks.
Otto can’t do anything but whimper. Even Gottfried has lost his calm; he is shaking.
“Please,” he says, and his voice trembles as much as his body, “there’s no need for these devilish tricks.
I’ll tell you anything you want to know. ”
The necromancer titters. “Now where would be the fun in that?”
For the first time in three days, the farmer’s daughter stops her weeping. Through her dead black teeth, she begins to laugh.