Chapter 9
Otto
In his twenty years as a mercenary, Otto has found that there is a trick to surviving war with both your body and mind intact: You must try not to think. If you are on the battlefield, thinking will only get you killed. Afterward, dwelling on all the horror will make your mind crack like an egg.
Otto does his best not to remember what happened at the farm: the knife that went in his throat and killed him, thus making him a necromancer’s plaything, and everything the necromancer made him do to Gottfried and Wolf after he was forced to kill Fergus, and poor dying Karl…
Otto has tried to run from the necromancer, of course he has, but his feet won’t obey him and simply lead him back.
It’s the same for his hands; whatever spell this sorcerer has spoken won’t allow Otto to hurt him, or himself for that matter.
The best thing he can do to protect himself now is to think nothing.
There are ways to make your mind as empty as an upturned jug, such as coupling with a woman or drinking till you can’t walk straight.
Neither are options here, and so Otto simply focuses on the tasks the necromancer gives him instead: cooking supper, finding water, building a fire.
The necromancer owns a leather pouch with bits of bone, all shiny and smooth from being handled so much.
Every now and again, he fishes a few of them out of the pouch and throws them in the air, then catches them on the back of his hand.
It reminds Otto of a children’s game he used to play with sheep’s bones, though Otto suspects these bones are not animal in nature.
They travel hard and soon reach the Bavarian Forest. Such woods never fail to make Otto nervous. There’s no saying who or what might lurk in there: demons, the restless dead, werewolves, witches, hungry peasants armed with pitchforks.
Fucking farmers. Nowadays, a soldier is more likely to be struck down by a peasant than by a fellow soldier. That is, if the hunger and disease don’t get him first.
Though I am already dead, so what does it matter?
What could be worse than this? Otto thinks.
He knows not whether to laugh or to cry.
He does neither. Though the necromancer has sewn up the wound in his throat, he is afraid that too rigorous a movement such as those produced by hysterical laughter will cause the stitches to rupture.
Dead bodies don’t heal. Any abuse his body suffers now will be permanent.
When the necromancer has once again played with his bones and has made them follow a gurgling stream afterward, Otto asks, “What even do you want that bloody skull for?” Although he has tried not to think at all, it’s been on his mind a lot these past few days.
Otto knows what he will wish for once they have reunited the saint’s skull with her body, of course he does, because he plans to live a long healthy life with his beloved Frieda, but what on earth could a witch who already holds power over both the dead and the living wish for?
The necromancer smiles and says, “I have my reasons.”
“Dark and disturbing reasons no doubt.”
The necromancer tosses one of the bones into the air, catches it lazily. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you are in league with Satan.”
“Why do you revile Satan so?”
Otto blinks, then realizes the necromancer’s question is genuine. “Satan turned against God, who is good and all-powerful. For this, he was damned to Hell, and now he tries to corrupt us and have us turn away from God that we too may be damned.”
“Suffering shared is suffering halved and all that?”
Otto has found that this is the way of the necromancer; he will remain pensive and silent for long stretches of time, almost as if forgetting Otto is unwillingly trudging along. Then, he will suddenly become talkative.
“This way, my dear Otto,” the necromancer says, and Otto’s feet move without his permission, following the necromancer’s lead.
“How do you know what way to go?” Otto asks.
“The bones tell me so.”
“Not very good at it, are they? We still haven’t found that bloody skull.”
The necromancer toys with a bone, letting it jump from knuckle to knuckle.
“The bones tell me where to find her, but we still have to close the distance between us and her ourselves.” He tosses the bone back into the pouch, fishes a different one from it, and rolls it between his fingers.
“Now, as to the matter of Satan. Might it not be possible that Satan is actually God’s most beloved angel, given the holiest of tasks: to tempt people to sin?
Only if you are tempted and reject that temptation can you truly call yourself virtuous. ”
“That’s blasphemy,” Otto retorts.
The necromancer grins. “Perhaps, but that does not make it untrue. Ask yourself this, Otto Donatus Kreuzler: If God is indeed all-powerful and as good as you claim He is, then why would He allow your Satan to exist? It only makes sense if you suppose that Satan is doing exactly what God wants him to do. The very idea that an angel could rebel against God is preposterous if you believe that angels were created to be entirely good. Turn to the left here, please. We are drawing close.”
They leave behind the gurgling stream. Dandelions and nettles grow in the soft soil.
Otto picks one that has gone to seed, blows on it to scatter the fluff.
Frieda told him you may make a wish if you manage to scatter them all in a single breath.
In the three years of their marriage, he has never been able to.
“You are not giving me any choice now,” Otto says. “You made me kill my brothers in arms, and…” His breath—though he doesn’t need to breathe, he still has to draw in air and expel it if he wants to talk—catches in his throat.
Don’t think of it don’t think of it don’t think of it…
He clenches his fist around the dandelion stem, focuses on the crunch of it. Some seeds still cling to the heart of the dandelion. He makes himself count them until he is calm again.
The necromancer patiently waits for Otto to come back to himself, then giggles and says, “Well, I am not the Almighty, now am I? Besides, you were given many chances in life to turn away from sin and do good, yet how have you used them? Let’s keep walking as we talk; there’s a dear.”
“Who are you to judge? You sold your soul to Satan.”
“That I did,” the necromancer admits, smiling. Bemused.
“Why?”
“When God would not listen to my prayers, I turned to Satan instead.” He kicks a pebble toward Otto, whose feet kick it back to him without him meaning to.
“What could be so important that you had to beg Satan for it?” Otto asks.
“Enough about me. I believe we were talking about your life, and all the chances you were given to do good and chose to do nothing instead, or worse: evil. We need only look at that sad farm where I found you. You didn’t have to torture that farmhand before you threw him down the well.
Why, you needn’t have killed him at all!
” He deftly manages to lift the pebble into the air with a twist of his foot, bounces it twice on his shoe, then kicks it to Otto as if it is a pigskin ball.
Otto passes it back to him. “He attacked us.”
“Perhaps,” the necromancer says and smiles in that strange, sly way of his, eyes flashing golden in the light, “but you can’t say the same of the farmer’s daughter.”
Her whining sobs echo in Otto’s head. He puts the dandelion stem in his mouth, chews on it. The sound it makes is loud enough to banish that phantom weeping. “I didn’t rape her,” he says sullenly.
“And thus you presume yourself free of sin? You stood by and did nothing whilst your soldier friends had her time and time again.” Again he bounces the pebble on the top of his foot; again he passes it to Otto.
“What do you expect of me, man?” Otto grumbles and kicks that blasted pebble hard enough that it disappears into the underbrush. “That’s what happens to girls and women, both when it’s war and when it’s not. She’s not the only one, and she won’t be the last.”
The necromancer shrugs, then fishes three bones out his pouch. He juggles them for a few seconds, then throws them high and catches them on the back of his left hand. “Do you really think that just because something is common, it is therefore without fault?”
“Of course not, but it is the way of the world. It isn’t as if I could’ve stopped Gottfried, Wolf, and Fergus, either, even if I had wanted to.”
“Which you didn’t. Say you are right, and nothing you could have done could have kept your friends from raping her; that still doesn’t leave you blameless.
Or do you suppose that hitting her in the mouth with your fist so you needn’t be bothered by her weeping was a Christian thing to do?
You could have tried to soothe her suffering. Instead, you added to it.”
“Then let me die properly, so that I may be punished in Hell for what I did,” Otto snaps.
Again, the necromancer giggles. “Who says you aren’t in Hell already? Or do you like being a rotting corpse who must bow to my every will?” He pinches a bit of skin on Otto’s arm, which tears with a soft squelching sound.
“Don’t do that!” Otto exclaims and bats away the necromancer’s hand. “It hurts, and you know it won’t grow back!”
After the farm—don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it—the necromancer drained Otto of his remaining blood, then filled his veins with a concoction of vinegar, alcohol, and herbs to slow down the process of putrefaction, but that doesn’t mean Otto isn’t rotting a little already.
The necromancer unceremoniously drops the bit of flesh he has torn from Otto’s arm. “Don’t whine. I can always try to put you in a different body.”