Chapter 16: Cangaceiros

Euclides da Cunha — 1666

The morning sun rose over Euclides da Cunha, casting a pale golden hue over the ruins of the central square. The monstrous body of Labatut still lay there, cold, swarmed by flies and vultures circling above, waiting for their chance to feast.

Tetanus descended the tavern stairs, the monster’s curved tooth hanging from his belt like a macabre trophy. The pouch containing Al-Yasiin and the Black Cube was slung across his back, and the document about Gume was safely tucked inside his doublet. He hoped to leave without further talk, but the town had other plans.

In the street outside the tavern, a crowd of villagers had gathered. The old man who’d thrown the stone, the woman with the iron pot, the bald tavern keeper, curious children, and even the two guards now merely watching over the town—all stared at him with a mix of admiration and fear.

“He’s the man who killed the demon Labatut!” someone shouted.

“Saved us all!” another added.

Tetanus ignored the comments, but before he could move on, an old man in a wide-brimmed hat approached, holding the reins of a dark brown, muscular horse with intelligent eyes and a thick mane.

“Take him, sir,” the old man said, extending the reins with trembling hands. “He’s the best horse in the village. My name’s Benício, and this is Trovão. He’s fast as the wind and loyal as a dog. Take him as thanks.”

Tetanus hesitated. Horses like this weren’t given away for free, not even out of gratitude. He looked at the animal, which met his gaze with an unusual calm, as if it already knew it was his.

“Don’t need gifts,” Tetanus grunted.

“It’s not a gift,” Benício said, smiling to reveal rotted teeth. “It’s a debt paid. That monster killed my grandson. You did justice. Take Trovão. He’ll carry you far.”

Al-Yasiin grumbled from the pouch: “Take the damn horse, you prideful bastard. Or you planning to walk to Salvador?”

Tetanus took a deep breath and grabbed the reins. The horse didn’t flinch at his scent of blood and sweat, merely snorting in his presence.

“Thanks,” Tetanus said, the word feeling strange in his mouth, unused to gratitude.

The villagers stepped back, some murmuring blessings, others just watching as he mounted the horse, which seemed eager to run, its hooves pawing the dirt as if testing the ground.

“Where’s he going now?” a child asked loudly.

“To kill more monsters!” another replied, eyes shining with awe.

Tetanus neither confirmed nor denied. He simply pulled the reins, turning the horse toward the dirt road leading out of the village.

But before leaving, he glanced back one last time at Labatut’s body. That monster had once been a man. A man with ambitions, now reduced, thanks to him, to rotting flesh under the sun.

“Salvador,” he muttered to himself.

With a snap of the reins, he set off.

Brazilian Empire — Sertão Toward Salvador, 1666

The sun, even dead, burned with a cruel gaze in the cloudless sky, casting a dry heat that made the air shimmer over the cracked earth of the sertão. Tetanus rode Trovão, the horse’s hooves kicking up small clouds of red dust with each steady step.

“This damn sun!” Al-Yasiin’s muffled voice complained from the pouch, irritated. “How does a lifeless world still roast us like this? And your brilliant idea to cross the sertão with a half-assed canteen? Congrats, cyclops, you’ll be a dried-out corpse before you reach Salvador!”

Tetanus ignored him, eyes narrowed against the blinding glare as he held an improvised map he’d stolen from Labatut’s mansion before leaving. It was a yellowed parchment, marked with rough lines indicating dry rivers, abandoned villages, and, far off, the coast of Salvador, where Gume was supposedly held by the imperial army. The journey would be long—days, maybe weeks—and the water in his canteen was already half-gone, warm and tasting of rust.

The heat was relentless, sweat dripping down his forehead, soaking the cracked leather of the saddle. His chainmail, still stained with dried blood and pus from previous battles, felt like an oven against his skin, but he didn’t remove it—the sertão was treacherous, full of bandits, beasts, and worse, and any lapse could mean death. Tetanus kept the silver sword sheathed, the hunting knife strapped to his belt.

By midday, the sun was so high there were no shadows to hide in. Trovão snorted, white foam forming at the corners of its mouth, but the horse didn’t falter. Tetanus stopped near a lone cactus, dismounting with a grunt of pain—his ribs still throbbed from Labatut’s blows.

He sliced the cactus with his knife, extracting the moist pulp and squeezing it against his mouth, the bitter liquid soothing his parched throat. He shared the rest with Trovão, who licked his hand gratefully.

“You’re more useful than that talking head,” Tetanus muttered to the horse, patting its neck.

“I heard that, you maggot!” Al-Yasiin shot back from the pouch. “At least I know where you’re going! Want a tip? There’s a dry well about two leagues from here, but sometimes nomads hide water in the rocks. If you’re not a complete moron, you might find it.”

Tetanus raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply. He stored the map, mounted again, and rode in the direction Al-Yasiin indicated, senses sharp. The sertão was silent but not empty. At times, he saw distant shapes—maybe bandits, maybe mirages—hallucinations of a paranoid mind.

Tetanus carried on like this for days, sleeping with his hand on the sword’s hilt, waking to nightmares of his past and guttural voices.

Days dragged on, the water ran out, and Tetanus survived on what he could: fibrous roots, small lizards roasted over makeshift fires, and dew collected from leaves at dawn.

Trovão held strong, but even the horse began showing signs of weakness. Al-Yasiin, to his surprise, occasionally offered useful advice, like avoiding certain paths where “the air smelled of death,” though not without a dose of sarcasm. The decapitated head also started spending more time “sleeping,” exhausted from the long journey and Tetanus’s company.

Tetanus spotted the glimmer of the sea in the distance, a silver line marking Salvador’s coast. The fort where Gume was held couldn’t be far. But as he drew closer, it still felt so distant.

The sun sank toward the horizon, painting the sertão blood-red, as if the color seeped from the cracked, dry earth. Tetanus dismounted Trovão, legs stiff from hours of riding, body aching from the weight of the chainmail and accumulated exhaustion.

He chose a spot near a cluster of gnarled rocks, where the wind wasn’t as fierce, to set up camp. The horse snorted, exhausted, and Tetanus tied its reins to a rock before getting to work.

With precise movements, he gathered dry twigs and cactus spines, lighting a small fire with his flint. The flame crackled weakly, casting dancing shadows on the surrounding rocks. Tetanus sat, chewing a fibrous root he’d dug up, its bitter taste nearly unbearable but enough to stave off hunger.

As twilight approached, he looked up at the sky. A dozen vultures circled above, their black wings silhouetted against the purpling sky. Vultures weren’t uncommon in the sertão, but something was off about these.

They flew in perfect circles, slower than normal, as if not searching for carrion but watching something—or someone. “Bad omen,” Tetanus muttered, spitting the chewed root onto the ground. He drew the silver sword, resting it beside him, and checked the hunting knife at his belt. If something came, he’d be ready.

Exhausted, Tetanus lay near the fire, using the pouch as a pillow and keeping his hand on the sword’s hilt. The fire’s warmth was a faint comfort against the sertão’s biting night cold. He tried to stay alert, but fatigue won, and his eyes closed, dragging him into uneasy sleep.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

The dream came like a fever, hot and disorienting. Tetanus found himself in a different sertão, where the sky was a black void, devoid of stars or moon, just a liquid darkness that seemed to drip onto the earth. He stood, but his feet didn’t touch the ground—he floated, trapped in a space that defied the world’s laws.

Then, he saw a hunched figure, clad in black leather that absorbed the scant light around it, soaring through the sky like a predator, a giant vulture. It was tall, gaunt, with long, disproportionate limbs ending in curved claws. Its face was a pale blur, but from a distance, he could see eyes glowing like distant embers. Its mouth opened in a smile with seismic canine teeth, unnaturally longer than normal, like bone needles.

It was a vampiric creature, but this presence was something older, wrong, as if torn from a primordial nightmare.

The hunched creature kept circling, like the vultures he’d seen earlier, its tattered leather wings flapping soundlessly.

Tetanus tried to draw his sword, but his hands were empty, his body heavy as if submerged in mud. The creature descended, hovering inches from him, the stench of old blood and rot filling his nostrils. Its face was wrinkled, deformed to the point of being unrecognizable, strands of white hair hanging to the sides, bloodshot and swollen eyes, and a pointed nose.

Tetanus woke with a start, body drenched in sweat despite the night’s cold. The fire had dwindled to embers, and Trovão whinnied softly, restless, eyes fixed on something beyond the rocks. Tetanus grabbed the sword, standing quickly, his yellow eye scanning the darkness.

The sky was still full of vultures, more now, perhaps two dozen, their circles tighter, as if waiting for something.

Al-Yasiin frowned, his eyes glinting in the ember light. “Sleeping again, are we? From the way you’re shaking, it’s not something you want to meet awake. Better hurry to Salvador. Whatever it is, it’s probably after you…”

The night dragged on like a corpse pulled by ropes. Tetanus stayed awake, the silver sword resting across his knees, fingers twitching toward the hilt at every suspicious sound. The vultures didn’t leave—they lingered, black silhouettes against the starry sky, as if they knew death hadn’t finished its work.

Al-Yasiin kept “sleeping” in the pouch, occasionally muttering obscenities in his dreams. Trovão, meanwhile, stayed alert, ears twitching at every nocturnal rustle.

When the sun finally rose, painting the sertão a decrepit orange, Tetanus was already up, brushing dust from his doublet and gathering his few belongings. The fire had reduced to cold ashes.

“Let’s go,” Tetanus muttered, mounting Trovão with a grunt. The horse snorted, eager to move, as if it too felt the weight of that endless night.

They set off, leaving the makeshift camp and the vultures, which finally began to disperse.

The sun was high when Tetanus spotted a dark shape in the middle of the path. At first, he thought it was a fallen log or a dark stone, but as he drew closer, the form became clear: a body.

A man’s corpse, to be precise.

He wore tattered leather and wool, worn boots suggesting he wasn’t just any traveler—perhaps a mercenary, bandit, or messenger. But what caught Tetanus’s attention was how he’d died.

His head had been severed.

Cruelly and hastily, as if the killer had been in a rush. The neck was mangled, the spine exposed at a grotesque angle. The rest of the body was looted—pouches turned inside out, money taken.

Tetanus dismounted, examining the corpse carefully. The blood was still fresh, dark and sticky, but there were no signs of a struggle around it. No footprints or tracks.

“Someone didn’t want him talking,” Al-Yasiin observed, voice muffled by the pouch. “Or just wanted to borrow what he was carrying.”

Tetanus nudged the body with his foot, searching for clues. Nothing. Just a crumpled piece of paper tucked under the corpse, stained with blood. He picked it up, unfolding it carefully.

It was a fragment of a map, showing part of the coast near Fear Island, a dreaded isle in the Bahian archipelago. Something was marked in red ink—a treasure, perhaps, or a hideout.

“Interesting,” Al-Yasiin murmured. “But we don’t have time for this.”

Tetanus silently agreed, tucking the map fragment into his boot. He looked at the corpse one last time, the vultures already circling lower, one landing in front of Tetanus, as if waiting for permission to feast.

“Whoever did this…” he began but stopped. It didn’t matter anyway—a dead man left in the sertão was nothing unusual.

Tetanus mounted Trovão again and rode off, leaving the corpse to the vultures, red dust trailing behind the horse’s hooves. He held the reins with one hand, the other resting near the silver sword’s hilt, senses sharp for any sign of danger.

Suddenly, Trovão whinnied, ears twitching nervously. Tetanus narrowed his yellow eye, spotting dark shapes on the horizon. At first, they seemed like mirages, but they soon resolved into mounted figures, moving fast, their silhouettes stark against the blazing sky.

There were at least fifteen, riding in formation, circling like predators closing in on prey. Al-Yasiin cursed softly, recognizing the pattern. “Shit,” he grumbled from the pouch. “Cangaceiros. And not amateurs. This is gonna suck. Nice knowing you.”

Before Tetanus could respond, the first shot rang out across the sertão. A bullet whizzed past his head, kicking up dust a few meters away.

“Hit and retreat,” Al-Yasiin muttered. “An Arab Bedouin or Moorish tactic, used to wear down the enemy without direct engagement. Bastards copying my people.”

Tetanus spurred Trovão, trying to break the circle, but the cangaceiros were fast, their horses agile and well-trained. They fired muskets and crude pistols, the sound of shots mixing with hoarse shouts and wild laughter.

Tetanus dodged a second shot but wasn’t quick enough for the third. A searing pain exploded in his left thigh, hot blood streaming down his leg as he grunted, clinging to the saddle. Before he could react, another shot hit his right shoulder, the impact nearly knocking him off. He gritted his teeth, vision blurring, but kept Trovão moving, reaching for the sword.

Then something hissed through the air—a lasso, thrown with deadly precision, wrapped around his chest, tightening like a snake. With a violent yank, Tetanus was ripped from the saddle, hitting the hard ground with a thud, dust rising around him.

Trovão whinnied, rearing, but one of the cangaceiros already held its reins, calming the horse with a skill that irritated Tetanus. He tried to stand, hand reaching for the knife, but the pain in his wounds made him hesitate.

The cangaceiros closed in, their horses forming a tight circle. They wore worn leather, wide-brimmed hats adorned with coins, medals, and animal bones, and carried bandoliers full of ammunition. Their weapons—muskets, pistols, and machetes—gleamed in the sun, and their faces, partially covered by scarves, showed cruel smiles.

Then, one cangaceiro stood out, advancing slowly. He was tall, lean, with a presence that silenced the others. A black cloth completely covered his face, even his eyes, making his features impossible to discern. His hat, decorated with jingling coins and dark feathers, swayed with each step of his horse. Bandoliers crossed his chest, packed with bullets, a pistol rested in its holster, next to a coiled lasso at his waist.

“Careful, cyclops. This one’s not just a bandit. He reeks of a pact too…” Al-Yasiin said.

He dismounted with almost feline grace, left hand on his hip, right hand holding the pistol, pointed directly at Tetanus’s forehead. A vulture, as if summoned by some supernatural signal, swooped from the sky and perched on his shoulder, its red eyes fixed on Tetanus, claws digging into the cangaceiro’s shoulder.

“What’s a guy like you doing in the middle of the sertão?” the leader’s voice was deep, muffled by the cloth, but heavy with authority. He tilted his head, as if trying to see through the black veil. “Chainmail, silver sword, good horse… you’re no ordinary traveler. And that pouch…” He pointed the pistol at Tetanus’s pouch, lying a few meters away in the dust. “What’s in there that’s worth two bullets and still keeps you alive?”

Tetanus spat blood onto the ground, pain throbbing in his thigh. “Just a mercenary,” he grunted, voice hoarse.

The leader laughed, a dry sound that made the vulture on his shoulder flap its wings. “Mercenary, huh?” He took a step forward, pistol still aimed. “Nobody crosses the sertão alone without a reason. And you smell like trouble, one-eyed man. You know where you are, old-timer? In Meia-Noite’s territory. The liveliest devil in the sertão…”

“Heading to Salvador. To save a friend… from the imperial army. Don’t want a fight.”

Tetanus clenched his teeth, the Anti-God’s spiral mark on his chest burning like embers. If he resisted, he’d take lead until dawn.

The leader was trouble, no doubt: his calm, his presence, the vulture on his shoulder—all suggested he wasn’t just a common bandit.

Tetanus spat blood again, the metallic taste filling his mouth. Meia-Noite’s pistol didn’t waver, the black barrel aimed at his forehead like a third eye. The vulture on the cangaceiro’s shoulder pecked at the air, eager.

“Save a friend, huh?” Meia-Noite laughed, voice muffled by the black cloth. “And what’s a mercenary stinking of hell want with an imperial soldier?”

Tetanus didn’t break eye contact. “He’s not a soldier. He was forced in. And I’m getting him out.”

The cangaceiros exchanged glances, some murmuring among themselves. Meia-Noite tilted his head, as if studying a chess piece.

That’s when Al-Yasiin decided to intervene.

“Hey, scarf-face!” the decapitated head’s voice echoed from the pouch, making several cangaceiros step back, crossing themselves. “How about a deal? You want to rob a bank in Salvador, don’t you? This idiot here’s gonna cause a hell of a stir at the imperial fort. Distracted guards, open gates… almost like someone planned it.”

Meia-Noite froze for a moment. Then, slowly, he lowered the pistol.

“Interesting…” He walked to the pouch, lifting it with the tip of his dagger and staring at Al-Yasiin. “And why would a… decapitated head scheme with bandits like us?”

“Because I hate the Empire more than I hate you,” Al-Yasiin said, flashing yellowed teeth. “And this cyclops here is dumb enough to be useful.”

Tetanus growled but didn’t retort. The pain in his wounds throbbed, and he knew he didn’t have much choice but to go along. Meia-Noite spoke calmly, but couldn’t hide a hint of surprise.

Meia-Noite laughed, a hoarse sound, almost internal. He gestured, and one of his men tossed a canteen and a roll of dirty bandages at Tetanus’s feet.

“Drink. And stop that blood,” he ordered. “We’ve got a fort to break into and a bank to rob. And you, mercenary, are gonna be the sacrificial goat this time.”

Tetanus grabbed the canteen, pried off the cap with his teeth, and poured the burning liquid down his throat. It was cheap cachaça, mixed with something stronger. It didn’t matter—the alcohol seared like fire but cleared the fog of pain.

As he bandaged his wounds, he stared at Meia-Noite. The cangaceiro leader was already back on his horse, the vulture still perched on his shoulder, watching Tetanus with hungry eyes.

“We ride in one hour,” Meia-Noite announced. “Grab your horse and move before I change my mind.”

Tetanus took a deep breath. He’d entered the sertão to rescue a friend. Now, he was tangled in a potential bank heist, a pact with the Princes of Hell, and carrying an artifact that could end the world.

Meanwhile, Al-Yasiin, inside the pouch, chuckled softly, as if already foreseeing the bloodbath to come.