“Mary!” the magenta man gasped, holding aloft Magnus’s giant heart. “By the Virgin, we done it!”

At Manfried’s invocation of Mary’s name Hegel tore himself free of the cooling tongues and teeth, and Rodrigo and Raphael slowly untangled their sprained and bleeding limbs from one another. Manfried’s beard resembling afterbirth and Hegel’s chewed down to his cheeks, the Grossbarts embraced atop their fallen adversary, shouting amens that were taken up by the few survivors.

Over his brother’s shoulder Hegel saw Heinrich erupt in a bloody mist, and a sinisterly familiar shape landed in the spray beside the yeoman’s deflating body.

Heinrich did not see the grotesque demon vacate his largest bubo, his stolen melancholic humour coursing through the parasitic monster in place of blood. Instead he saw Brennen as the boy had first appeared in the midwife’s arms, chubby, yawning, and terribly put out to be brought into such a cold world. His chest heaving with the pulse of festering corruption instead of life, Heinrich heard the Grossbarts shouting and realized he could search for eternity and never find a devil as evil as they. His son’s name bubbled on his rancid lips as he slipped beyond pain and joy alike.

“Circles!” Hegel shouted, shoving the mace into Manfried’s arms and sprinting toward his fallen pick. “Draw circles bout you in the dirt! Now!”

“Ah fuck it all,” Manfried groaned, seeing what his brother was on about. “Not all this again.”

“Grossbarts!” The high-pitched squeal shook their bowels. “Thought you had me! Thought you had me in those hills, in that hog!” The carapaced, miasma-wreathed thing bounded in ten-foot strides toward Hegel but he snatched his pick and knelt on the ground. The demon saw what he intended and sped at him, its victorious rant turning to a horrified wail. Completing the circle in the sand, Hegel looked up to see the cloud of pestilential, stinking fog surround him, the demon bouncing before him on its rearmost legs. Hegel started back but caught himself before he fell outside the ring he had scratched in the sand.

Without further hesitation the demon spun and made for Manfried, but the crimson Grossbart had completed his own circle, being mindful not to drip onto the band that encircled him. The foul thing hopped toward Rodrigo and Raphael but the men had made a wide ring around both of them. Without understanding the language the prisoners saw enough to imitate the crusaders, and again the demon was denied.

With a final agonized screech the demon leaped high into the night and vanished, all going silent upon the desert. The young noble began shouting and jumping in the air, praising the name Grossbart. Hegel and Manfried both yelled at him to calm his foolish ass but he could not understand, and as his foot landed straddling the edge of the circle a stinking comet plummeted into his face.

The noble rolled in the sand and they saw the suddenly shrunken demon squirming down his bulging throat, pus oozing around his split lips. The other Egyptian turned away after making sure his own circle remained unbroken. Rodrigo and Raphael stared in shock but the Grossbarts knew at once how to handle this dire turn.

“Shoot’em!” Manfried shouted, realizing his crossbow had fallen somewhere during the battle. “With the quickness!”

“Rigo!” Hegel yelled at finding his own broken. “Shoot, Rigo, shoot!”

Rodrigo stared blankly at the possession taking place while Raphael clumsily tried to cock the bow. With one hand this proved impossible given the model of weapon and Raphael shook Rodrigo, yelling in his face. The younger man blinked at him, and vomited all over them both.

“Rigo!” Manfried bellowed. “Listen, fuckwit, that’s what happened to Ennis!”

“Ennio!” Hegel shouted. “That same demon did that same thing to your brother Ennio!”

This captured Rodrigo’s attention, and he notched the only bolt left in his quiver. The possessed noble gained his feet, ropes of bile swinging from his chin. The cackling demoniac snatched up a dropped sword and swayed toward the closest Grossbart-Manfried. As he swiped the weapon down to smudge Manfried’s circle, Rodrigo’s last quarrel penetrated the noble’s chest and skewered his heart. The man collapsed, screeching and spraying biles from every hole.

“Grossbarts,” it lamented as it clawed out around the bolt. Pulling itself free in a welter of gore, it had diminished to the size of a cat. “Break their wards! Help me, brothers, as I helped you!”

Paolo and Vittorio appeared through the gloom but made no move to rush the Brothers Grossbart. The brains of the two boys had long since baked from fever and sun to little more than paste but they strode forward nevertheless, their putrescent hearts pumping pus and biles through bodies long ripe for the grave.

“Something the matter?” asked Paolo.

“Something troublesome?” asked Vittorio.

“Kick their circles!” the demon howled, dancing around them. “Please, brothers!”

“No,” said Vittorio.

“No,” agreed Paolo.

“Why?!” The demon jumped onto Paolo’s shoulder and howled in his ear, “They’ve done you as wrong as I!”

“Wrong.” Paolo stroked the fiend’s thorax before it hopped back down to the sand. “They have done you wrong, and these mounts of ours, but what have they done to us?”

“What?” asked Vittorio, “save reprimand your folly? Many chances to spread the gift you have wasted, leading us here.”

“What?” asked Paolo, “save deliver us our freedom from your yoke? What have they done to us?”

“This!” Manfried shouted, hurling a dagger with expert precision. The long knife disappeared in the rotten robe, the handle marking where Paolo’s heart lay. The barber’s son pitched onto his face, farting, belching, and smoking.

“And you!” Hegel’s pick spun through the air, the point sinking in Vittorio’s stomach. He was knocked to the ground, and several more Grossbart-born missiles struck him before he could rise. A dagger once used by Captain Barousse to end his own life flew from Hegel’s fingers and sunk into the Road Pope’s chest.

“Ain’t suffer no demons to live!” Manfried shouted at the pincushioned corpse.

“Witches neither!” Hegel hollered. “When yous get to Hell tell’ em Saint Hegel put you there!”

The first demon shook with laughter, bouncing atop the corpses and chastising its fellows as they burst from their hosts’ buboes. These two were smaller but equally vile, and they at once skipped to the first, their sharp digits, pointy horns, and hooked feet scratching at skin and plating that strained to contain the greasy fluids within. The first continued to reprimand the others, easily evading them with its longer legs as the organ crowning its posterior fired spurt after chunky spurt of rank discharge into the air.

Nothing stirred on the sands for leagues and leagues save the encircled men, all living things fleeing at the first whiff of Heinrich’s rank retinue-even the maggots had abandoned their rotting hosts as the demons wreaked the full extent of their evils upon the flesh of their human mounts. The demons sprang toward the Grossbarts, bringing their stinking miasma with them. Even this could not penetrate their circles, and the Grossbarts heckled the demons and spat upon them until they realized this pleased the creatures. As the darkness dwindled and light began to creep over the sands a strange transformation in attitude took place, all three demons piling against each other and frantically bartering with the Grossbarts to leave their circles.

“I know where riches beyond counting lie,” the first demon squealed.

“I know where there are more,” the second countered, “and I’ll leave you intact as soon as we find another body for me!”

“Please,” the third whined, “if you break the circles of your fellows we shan’t touch you, and may part in peace!”

“Balls,” snorted Hegel. “Cockcrow’s at hand, so yous best set to prayin. To me.”