“Recently, yes.” The man tottered but kept his feet, slowly approaching them.

“And you know where the villagers are?” Ennio pressed.

“Certainly. They’re inside.” The pig rider suddenly succumbed to a coughing fit.

“And?” Ennio had a hand on Hegel’s shoulder but Hegel threw an elbow, reminding him not to come too close.

“And?” The man regained himself.

“Look you barmy bastard, he’s askin where everyone went and why, so either tell’em and piss off or just piss off.” Manfried was known for many things but not for patience.

“I came out of the mountains,” the man said, as if that settled it.

“Amazin,” said Manfried. “That a fact? Wonder a wonders.”

“He was already with me, or I was with him, no matter. We came together, then.” The three men peered at the animal while the lunatic continued. “We arrived, and they did welcome us, despite it all, and we were admitted. And when they had all joined us, converting if you will, then we summoned the rest. A certain pattern of bell-tollings brought them running, with their babes and dogs and wives and that was the end.” As he talked he staggered slowly toward them.

“That’s close as you’re gettin, less you wanna see what’s under the snow round here.” Manfried had traded mace for crossbow.

For the first time the man’s smile faltered. “Please, simply a blanket will save me. Will you let a weary traveler freeze? A scrap of cloth, I beg.”

“Hey now,” said Hegel, “we’s bein charitable enough, lettin you get back on that beast and ride out the way you rode in. Monastery’s close, warm your bones there.”

“What you mean,” Ennio called, voice raising, “that was end? Something is wrong, Grossbarts! Where are monks and villagers? What they convert to? What was ended?”

“I mean,” the man said, all good humour gone, “that was their end. They rest inside, where you will too.”

“He’s a witch!” Ennio screamed.

The man made to lunge but the Grossbarts hefted their bows demonstratively and he paused, poised to pounce.

“You a monk?” Hegel asked.

“No,” the man replied.

“Settles that, then.” Manfried shrugged, and they both shot.

One bolt struck the man’s swollen stomach and the other his neck. He silently pitched backward, blood geysering toward their feet. He convulsed in the snow, the pig trotting over and snuffling at his wounds.

The Brothers and Ennio cautiously approached the twitching body, each holding a weapon. Hegel felt worse than before, his bowels pinched. The man mumbled deliriously, pawing the pig’s snout. Ennio knelt beside him, but not too close.

“What’s he sayin?” Manfried asked, recognizing the ranting as the same tongue Ennio addressed the guards with.

“He begs not to abandon him,” Ennio said. “They’ve traveled far, and he has been obedient to his mas-” Ennio rolled away with a squeal. “The pig, the pig!”

“What’re you on bout?” Manfried demanded.

“Porco is his master, the pig is Devil!” Ennio kicked away in the snow, desperate to avoid the hog.

“Hmmm.” Manfried had heard the Devil would take the form of a cat, but never a swine. Then again, he must come from the same place as Ennio, so maybe the Devil worked different down in the Romish kingdoms. Worst case they would have bacon, Manfried reasoned, and attacked the beast. It saw him coming and bolted.

Ennio got to his feet and joined the chase, Manfried and he pursuing the pig through the snow-draped cemetery. Hegel, however, could not lift his eyes from the dying man. With the man so close, he could clearly make out his features. He stank horribly, his face covered in sores and stains. A dark suspicion took hold of Hegel, and he squatted to get a better look.

The Grossbarts’ uncle had taught them to look first under the arms and behind the groinpurse. Of course king and slave alike should be burned, but in practice many who should have met the flame instead sneaked into their ancestral grounds through well-meaning descendants. These tombs should be avoided lest one doom themself before even inspecting other nearby graves for less dangerous bounties.

The bright moon revealed a purplish tint to the swollen lumps under the dead man’s arms, great swollen lumps far bigger than Hegel thought possible. He recoiled, the stink of the man turned sinister. He saw his brother and Ennio chasing the pig back his way.

“Manfried!” Hegel bellowed, backing away from the corpse, “it’s the pest!”

“Eh?” Manfried stumbled, the pig avoiding his mace again.

“Leave it!” Hegel’s voice boomed out over the valley. “Plague! It’s got the plague!”

Manfried stopped dead, then went rolling when Ennio crashed into his back. Getting up and delivering several kicks to Ennio, Manfried wiped the snow off and returned to his brother by the door of the crypt. The pig lay down in the snow beside the dead man, watching Manfried warily.

“Plague?” Manfried wiped sweat from his face, eyes darting to the body.

Hegel nodded solemnly. “Buboes big as my fists.”

“Explains him talkin nonsense.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah, makes you all touched in the head.”

“Where’d you hear-”

“He moves!” Ennio yelped, propped against a stone cross.

“Eh?” The Grossbarts looked, and indeed, the man arched his back and thrashed. His left shoulder swelled and turned black, and he foamed at the mouth. Gore leaked around the quarrels embedded in him, then began spurting out further than should be possible.

“That look right to you?” Hegel demanded but Manfried just gaped.

The curious pig snuffled closer, then screeched and ran off through the churchyard. The man’s armpit ballooned outward and he sprayed vomit all over himself. The stench of putrescence grew stronger, the man voiding himself from every orifice. Then he rolled on his side with his left arm twisted behind his head and the pulsing bubo burst, an oozing discharge hissing in the snow.

“Nah, ain’t look right to me,” Manfried admitted.

The flow of fluids from the armpit quickened and thickened, and then the pus, blood, and biles poured upward into the frosty air, swirling into a hovering humoural maelstrom above the corpse. The growing mass of liquid let off a meaty, musky, hot-rot stench that curled the nose hairs of all present, and before any could move something coalesced within the impossible floating whirlpool. The veil of humours parted even as clouds took the moon but the night illuminated what it should have hidden, as though darkness had become black sunshine. The three men stared, each one slipping down into a bottomless pit of his own mind.

A body the size and shape of a barrel jutted up into the air behind the thing’s skull-sized head, plates of shell bristling with long hairs. Six willowy, multi-segmented limbs protruded from its thorax, the two pairs in the rear arcing back and up before angling down to make heart-shaped imprints on the corpse with its oddly dainty cloven hooves. The front appendages functioned more as arms than as legs despite their similar four-part build and length, the pair stroking the clump of dagger-length antennae jutting out in place of a nose. They saw its hard, shiny face possessed the bulging eyes of a man, the horns and floppy ears of a goat, and small spines running in combs along its cheeks to join the protruding cluster of feelers. It hopped clumsily into the snow beside the corpse of its former host, its cylindrical, bulbous abdomen held aloft behind it to reveal a decidedly human erection of prodigious size, the organ straining up between the plates like a knight’s lance or a scorpion’s stinger.

Manfried prayed under his breath, Hegel turned to run, and Ennio retched. Wreathed in a thin yellow mist, it dribbled a viscous film as it turned its head to each of them in turn. Its antennae trembled and, proving that events can always worsen, it addressed them:

“Grossbarts, eh?”