Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

I’ve been walking in the forest, all my senses alert, jumping at the slightest sound: the wing-beats of birds, the distant howling of wolves that runs down the spine and loosens the bowels. Outside, the world could easily have come to an end, there might be nothing there.

Heading south until my legs wouldn’t hold me and I fell to the ground. I’ve devoured whatever I could get hold of to ease the pangs: acorns, wild berries, even leaves and bark when hunger bit deeper… Exhausted, the damp in my bones, my limbs growing heavier and heavier.

It was after sunset when the embers of a fire appeared through the bushes. I went closer, creeping up behind this oak tree.

To my right, about fifty yards away, three tethered horses: the smell might give me away. I stay motionless, uncertain, wondering how long it would take to mount one of these animals. I peer round the trunk again: they’re sitting around the fire, blankets over their shoulders, a flask is being passed from hand to hand, I can almost smell the spirits on their breath.

‘Oh! And when we charged and they ran off like scared sheep? I skewered three of them on a single lance! A pig on a spit!’

Drunken laughter.

‘I went one better than that. I fucked five of the women when we were sacking the city… and in between I never stopped killing the buggers… One of those whores bit half my ear off! Look…’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I cut her throat, the cow!’

‘Waste of time, you prick. Another day and she’d have given you one just to get her husband’s corpse back, same as all the rest of them…’

Another explosion of laughter. One of them throws another log on the fire.

‘I swear it was the easiest victory of my whole career, it was just a matter of shooting them in the back and skewering them like pigeons. But what a sight: heads flying through the air, people praying on their knees… I felt like a cardinal!’

He jangles a full purse and with a snigger the other two supply an echo, one of them making the sign of the cross.

‘How true. Amen.’

‘I’m going for a piss. Leave me a drop of that stuff…’

‘Hey, Kurt, make sure you do it a long way away, I don’t want to sleep with the stench of your piss under my nose!’

‘You’re so plastered you wouldn’t notice if I took a shit in your face…’

‘Go fuck yourself, you cunt!’

A burp in reply. Kurt leaves the circle of light and comes towards me. He staggers past me, a few yards away, and continues into the depths of the bushes.

Decide, now.

Clothes. Clothes less filthy than the ones I’ve got on and a purse full of money on his belt.

I creep up behind him, hugging the trees, until I hear him splashing into the grass. I grip my dagger. As Elias taught me: one hand over his mouth, never a moment’s hesitation. I cut his throat before he’s worked out what’s happening. Before I’ve worked it out myself. Barely a faint gurgle and he spits out his blood and his soul between my fingers. I support him as he falls.

I had never killed a man.

I undo his belt and take his purse, take off his jacket and trousers and roll it all into a bundle in his coat. Time to get away now, don’t run, don’t make a sound, holding one arm out to shield� my face from the bushes and branches. The smell of blood on my hands, as there was on the plain, as there was in Frankenhausen.

I had never killed a man.

Heads flying through the air, people praying on their knees, Elias, Magister Thomas reduced to a shadow.

I had never killed a man.

I stop, in the total darkness, the voices are barely audible. My sword in my fist.

What I have to do.

Open wide the maw of hell for all those bastards.

I go back, one step at a time, the voices getting louder, closer, I drop the bundle and the bag, two of them, big steps now, two of them, no time to hesitate.

‘Kurt, where the fuck…’

I step into the circle of light.

‘Christ!’

A clean blow to the head.

‘Holy shit!’

Blade straight into his chest with all my strength, until he spews blood.

A hand reaching for his weapon too late: a blow to the shoulder, then the spine.

He creeps towards the bushes on his elbows, the screams of a pig to the slaughter.

And here am I: ever slower, above him. I grip the dagger with both hands and plunge it between his shoulder-blades, splitting his bones and his heart.

Destroy the horror.

Silence. Just my hot panting breath, visible in the night, and the crackling of the fire. I look around: nothing stirs. Not now.

I’ve done them all in, by the power of God!

19 May 1525

I ride, bearing the device of wickedness.

It’s the device that will protect me, now. Perhaps it’s a shrewd move, I’ve got to get used to it, perhaps. The mask of a mercenary in the service of wickedness, when wickedness triumphs, that” all.

I’ve got to get used to it. I’d never killed before.

Another sunset streaking the fields and hills with purple reflections, blurring outlines, dissolving any remaining certainties.

I’ve travelled many miles, always heading south, towards Bibra, riding on a vague hope. The countryside I have passed through bore the signs of the passage of the murderous horde. Like the remnants of a natural disaster: land that will never again bear fruit; scrap metal and all kinds of leftovers from the vile armies; a few rotting corpses, the carcasses of poor unfortunates who had been standing in the horde’s way; troops of mercenaries moving on from some massacre somewhere to fresh slaughter somewhere else.

Since the darkness swallowed up the horizon and the last shadows, I have been travelling on foot in the undergrowth. Between the trees I see glowing lights in the distance: perhaps they’re more bivouacs. Another few steps and a faint sound comes towards me. Horses, the rattle of armour, reflections of torches on metal. My horse paws the ground, I have to hold its reins tight as I seek refuge behind a tree-trunk. I stay there cautiously, stroking my horse’s neck to ease its terror.

The noise is a river in full flood. It’s advancing. Hoofs and gleaming weapons. A horde of ghosts rides past a few yards away from me.

Finally the commotion fades away, but the night doesn’t fall silent again.

The light beyond the forest has become more intense. The air is still, but the tree-tops are swaying: it’s smoke. I move closer until I hear the crackle of burning wood. All of a sudden the trees open up on a scene of total destruction.

The village is engulfed in flames. The heat blasts into my face, soot and embers rain down. A sweetish stink, the smell of burnt flesh, turns my stomach. Then I see them: charred corpses, vague outlines abandoned to the pyre, while the vomit rises to my throat, taking my breath away.

My hands clutch the saddle, get out of here, headlong into the night, flee the horror and the terrible clutches of hell.

21 May 1525

All around the way station, a coming and going of carts loaded with plunder from the villages; captains scream orders in various dialects; clusters of soldiers set off in all directions; barter and exchange of booty takes place in the middle of the street, between mercenaries even dirtier than myself, and tramps hoping for scraps. The other side of the devastation encountered along the way: behind the lines of a war without a front, the waste-pipe to drain off the fat from the massacre.

The horse needs to rest, and I need a decent meal. But more than anything I’ve got to get my bearings, find the shortest way to Nuremberg and from there to Bibra.

‘It’s not a good idea to leave a horse untended in times like these, soldier.’

A voice to my right, on the other side of a column of infantrymen marching away. Stout and healthy, leather apron and high dung-covered boots.

‘You’ll just have time to get to your lodgings and they’ll serve it to you for your dinner… It’ll be safer in the stable.’

‘How much?’

‘Two crowns.’

‘Too much.’

‘Your horse’s carcass will be worth less…’

The paid-off mercenary on his way home: ‘Fine, but you’ve got to give him hay and water.’

‘Take him inside.’

He smiles: crowded streets, plenty of business for him.

‘Have you come from Fulda?’

The soldier returning from the war: ‘No. Frankenhausen.’

‘You’re the first to come by… Tell me, how was it? A great battle…’

‘The easiest earner of my career.’

The groom turns around and calls: ‘Hey, Grosz, we’ve got someone here who’s come from Frankenhausen!’

Four of them emerge from the shadow, coarse mercenary faces.

Grosz has a scar that furrows his left cheek and runs down to his neck, his jaw cleft where the blade cut the bone. The grey, inexpressive eyes of someone who’s seen plenty of battles, who’s used to the stench of corpses.

His voice echoes as though from a cave. ‘Have you killed all the yokels?’

A deep breath to quell the panic. Attentive faces.

The soldier coming back from the war stammers: ‘Every one.’

Grosz’s eye falls on the bag of money hanging from my belt. ‘Were you with Prince Philip?’

Another breath. Never hesitate.

‘No, Captain Bamberg, in Duke George’s troops.’

His eyes are motionless, possibly suspicious. The purse.

‘We tried to get to Philip and join forces with him, but we were too late getting to Fulda. They’d already left: he made off like a lunatic, the great poof! We got to Smalcald, Eisenach and Salza in a forced march, didn’t even have time to stop for a piss…’

Another one: ‘There were just a few scraps left for us, we joined in with some sacking that was going on. Are you sure there are no peasants left to kill?’

The eyes of the soldier who exterminated the peasants in the plain: glass, like Grosz’s eyes.

‘No. They’re all dead.’

The man with the twisted face goes on staring, thinking about the one thing on his mind right now: how risky it would be to take the purse. It’s four against one. The other three don’t move unless he gestures to them to do so.

He speaks slowly: ‘M�hlhausen. The princes are planning to besiege the town. There’s going to be a good amount of plundering to be had there. Merchants’ houses, not peasant cottages… Banks, shops…’

‘Women,’ says the shortest one, sneering behind his back.

But Grosz, the ogre, doesn’t laugh. Neither do I, my mouth dry and my breath trapped in my chest. He’s weighing it up. My hand on the handle of my sword, hanging from my belt along with the bag full of money. He’s understood. In a fight, my only blow would be for him. I’d cut his throat: I can. It’s written in the expression on his face.

Barely a shiver, the batting of his eyelids is the verdict. It’s not worth the risk.

‘Good luck.’

They pas on, in silence, the sound of their boots sinking into the mud.

*

The fat man sits opposite me, taking great bites from a shank of kid, long draughts from an enormous beaker of beer run down his greasy beard which, with the bandage over his left eye, almost hides his face. His jacket, worn and filthy, barely