The Man-Butcher Prize

by Charles X Cross

  William slid the pistol onto his forearm and clamped it to his belly to cock it with his other hand. He fumbled it back between two palms and rested his ring-finger on the trigger.

  ‘Go on then,’ she wheezed, ‘you might as well do it.’

  William hesitated and his eyes flitted to her pistol, a hair’s breadth from the tip of her finger.

  ‘You want me to go for it, don’t you?’ She sneered. ‘It’s not even loaded, but you want me to reach for it, so when you kill me it feels as though you have to. I knew you weren’t fit to be an assassin, and now you’ve lucked your way to the prize. It makes a mockery of the whole thing.’

  She withdrew from the pistol.

  ‘I’m not doing it.’ She struggled against a coughing fit to set her mouth in a grim line. ‘If you want to win, you’ll have to kill me in cold blood. If you can’t, I’ll just wait you out.’

  William looked into her eyes. She was so filled with hatred; he had killed her son, but she had no remorse for entering the boy as her sponsor in the first place. She didn’t deserve to be reunited with him in the afterlife, but she didn’t deserve to live either.

  William squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit Genevieve’s forehead and killed her in an instant. There was no more screaming, no more blood; just a callous mother dead in the street.

  The last of William’s energy was spent tucking his pistol under his belt, then he succumbed to his exhaustion. As he toppled over backwards, the ground came up to meet him faster and softer than expected. People had huddled around him, four or five of them.

  ‘You, slather him with serum, and you, bind his limbs.’ Barber was lowered onto William’s chest by another of the gathered men. The doctor peered into his eyes and mouth and ripped open his shirt. ‘Pass me that syringe, get a bottle of blood. Don’t let him slip away.’

  A large needle was passed into Barber’s deformed grip and he spared no time in puncturing William’s chest. In an instant, all of his pains came rushing back to him, so crisp and pure that he would swear he had never before felt real pain. He bucked upright, tipping the doctor onto the road. His heart began to race so ferociously that he thought his ribcage might burst. He could feel the blood surging through his veins and the tingling pain at the end of every extremity.

  ‘Bind his arms, I said. Get the damned blood!’

  William was wrestled back to the floor and mounted again by the mad doctor, brandishing what could only be described as a pigs-bladder-come-syringe filled with some foul elixir. William’s head rolled and he spent the next few minutes dipping in and out of consciousness, vomiting, choking, and being wrangled away from death.

  After a time, he stopped fighting and fell into a more wholesome slumber, only drifting back to consciousness once the corral of assistants had retreated, the doctor with them. He lay still for – he didn’t know how long – drifting back as if from a dream. He looked up at the grey swirling sky and listened to music and cheers. It all seemed so distant at first, like he lay in the next meadow from a fête, but then he realised that the jubilation was all around and that the celebrations were all for him.

  Noting that he was ready, two of the doctor’s assistants drifted back to help him. William was hoisted to his feet, and when they released his weight to him, he was surprised that he still had the strength to stand. He was weak, nearly his whole body was dressed in bandage like some southern corpse, but he was certainly a few paces further from death than he had been moments prior. He staggered forwards.

  Surrounded by referees and garishly coloured bunting was the winner’s podium, topped by the mayor in a silk sash and a fabulously tall hat. The bleachers trembled as the crowds roared and cheered the new Man-Butcher. Dazed by the chaos, his head swam from the elixirs, but this was real.

  Two event volunteers trundled past with Genevieve in their arms and hefted her into the swell of the Landslide. Other volunteers were swarming the streets, clearing them of detritus and bodies. More were ushering the spectators closer to get a better view of William’s winning ceremony. He didn’t have chance to call out as Vesta and her brother’s bodies were taken up and carried away. The crowd circled around, enveloping him. He hadn’t a moment to say goodbye to her, or thank you, or any number of unfinished notions in his head. Any ridiculous future he had imagined with her was gone; any thread of happiness snipped off and discarded.

  ‘Presenting our glorious champion!’ the mayor bellowed through a brass cone. ‘The winner of the sixteen eighty-two Man-Butcher Prize.’

  William moved slowly towards the podium, his limp far less pronounced. The thought of Vesta was pushed from his mind, postponed until a later date, when her death could join his myriad regrets.

  He stepped onto the podium with the mayor; the referees made a half-circle behind them.

  ‘You’ve done it boy.’ The mayor slipped his arm around him. ‘You should be proud. You’re one of the best, better even than Ojo Azul and my old pal Beechworth. It takes a lot to come out on top with assassins of that calibre competing, but you did it, and you’re going to go down in history for it. What’s the name, by the way?’

  ‘William.’ He broke out into a smile. Somewhere out there, he knew that Ojo would be proud of him. ‘William of Fairshore.’

  ‘Bring out the prize!’ The mayor accepted a golden flintlock from a velvet cushion presented by a referee. ‘I hope that it sees you right in your new found prominence amongst our community!’

  The mayor proffered the flintlock to William. It had wild flowers etched down the sides of the barrel and looked eerily familiar.

  ‘It’s a golden replica of the Man-Butcher’s very own pistol.’ The mayor smiled as William took it wordlessly in both hands. ‘I hope that you treasure it always.’

  William turned the pistol over in his hands. The resemblance to his own flintlock was uncanny, so much so that it reinforced his irrational fear that this all was some dying fantasy. How could it be that his own flintlock and this one were identical, down to the last leaf on the etching?

  ‘And now for one final treat!’ the mayor thundered to the crowd before digging his elbow into William’s ribs and lowering his voice. ‘You’re going to like this Will, the bloodthirsty Butchers always do – ladies, gentlemen, elses and otherwises! As you know, we in the prize committee like to change things up here and there to keep it fresh. This year has seen the biggest shakeup since the competition began, what with the introduction of sponsors. As such this has created opportunity for one final deathly revel.’

  The mayor was brimming over with excitement, gesticulating wildly with the arm that was free of the brass-cone amplifier. ‘Bring out the deserters!’

  The referees parted and a line of men and women were led onto the stage, each shackled at the ankles and wrists, linked together with a thick chain.

  ‘These prisoners, ladies and gentlemen, are the sponsors my referees found fleeing from the competition. They have earned themselves a most untimely death. This could have been undertaken in private of course, but we in the committee are not ones to be outdone by the imperials when it comes to the spectacle of public killing.’ The mayor pumped his fist. ‘And we have the new Man-Butcher himself for executioner!’

  The mayor delved his hand into his pocket and retrieved a handful paper cartridges. He counted out ten in his palm and thrust them towards William.

  ‘Use the prize pistol.’ The mayor winked. ‘They’ll go wild for it.’

  William looked from the line of defeated sponsors, to the gunpowder parcels in his cupped hand, then the rabidly cheering crowd. It didn’t feel right; killing was a necessity of his life, the way he got by, but nothing to be celebrated or cheered for. He actually hoped this was a death-dream, and this living hell would soon fade to nothing. But the world stayed as vivid as ever.

  ‘Left to right,’ the mayor instructed quietly, ‘the first one might leave a sour taste, but it should be forgotten once the tenth man drops.’

  William made his way down the l
ine of kneeling deserters, wondering exactly why the mayor found the killing of one man any more unpalatable than the other nine. It all seemed equally sickening to William.

  He shuffled like a spoiled child forced into his first chore, slowly and sullenly loading the first cartridge into the spectacular golden pistol. He felt like an imposter, an outsider who had stumbled his way to the very top of the guild, and somehow more out of place than when he had been an obscure laughing stock. He stopped at the end of the line and forced his gaze upwards. If he was the new Man-Butcher, he had to be able to kill these innocents without flinching, but as he found the first he was meant to despatch, his breath stopped in his chest.

  ‘You want me to kill him?’ he spluttered.

  The clothes were singed; his eyes were deathly and bloodshot. One leg was broken at an uncomfortable angle and the heavy chains dragged him down into a spiteful stoop, but Genevieve’s son was still very much alive.

  ‘He’s a guilder isn’t he? He knows what he signed up for. Do it quickly, I’d rather not linger on the child. Kill four or five, then you can draw out that one’s death; the big bastard.’ The mayor pointed to a large muscle-bound sponsor halfway down the line, who looked no less afraid than the small woman next to him. ‘The crowd loves to see a big one go down.’

  ‘Right…’ William took a step forwards and aimed his gun at the young boy. His finger massaged the trigger, felt its smoothly buffed curve, but refused to inch it back. The crowd cheered, buoyed on by the spectacle, urging him to do his duty for the guild.

  The referees waited in pensive silence, blank faced and impartial to the task at hand. William swallowed phlegm, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His mind started racing for any excuse.

  ‘These are deserters?’ he asked as he watched tears make tracks in the young boy’s soot marred face.

  ‘Yes.’ The mayor scowled at William as if he had gone simple.

  ‘And that’s why I have to kill them?’

  ‘Yes.’ The mayor was getting annoyed. ‘Just hurry it along, it’s what the crowd wants.’

  ‘This boy didn’t desert,’ William reasoned, seeing his way out of the foul deed. ‘He was trapped under rubble; look at him. He doesn’t have to die, he’s not a deserter. I know, I was there; he was Genevieve’s sponsor.’

  ‘Genevieve’s sponsor?’ one of the referees piped up, his tone needlessly aggressive.

  ‘Yes?’ William half turned to look at the referees, worried that he might have said something wrong. ‘A house he was in fell, he must have got trapped. He’s no deserter.’

  ‘You killed Genevieve,’ the stern referee asserted, exchanging glances with his fellows.

  ‘No, no, no.’ The mayor waved his hands. ‘You can’t just disqualify my winner.’

  William realised what he had said. His finger went lax on the trigger, his jaw fell slack. Only moments earlier, he had been praying for anything to come between him and having to slaughter a line of innocent people, child included. Now, he realised, that he hadn’t quite meant anything.

  ‘William plainly killed Genevieve before her sponsor had perished. We all saw it,’ the referee reiterated. ‘This boy was her sponsor, she did come second after all. We can still have our Man-Butcher.’

  ‘Wait…’ William tried to think of something else to say, but his mind and mouth had become arid. He croaked out something indecipherable.

  ‘We have to be seen to be upholding our rules,’ one of the committee members chimed in, with an accompanying grumble of agreement from the others.

  ‘But- well…’ The mayor shook his head. ‘You’re right.’

  A signal was flashed to someone behind William and he was grabbed about the shoulders by two large men. The golden pistol was snatched from his grip and passed to the mayor, then he was dragged from the podium. His natural instinct made him fight to stay, but he was thumped in the side. The strike hit his numbed wound and made him retch. He still struggled, but his efforts were less.

  ‘Somebody get this boy up, get those chains off him,’ the mayor was frantically instructing his referees and assassins. ‘Barber can heal him after we’ve presented the prize; I’m not accepting any more delays.’

  William was bundled into the crowd by the two brutes, left without recourse to watch his stripped prize presented to Genevieve’s sponsor.

  ‘Due to unforeseen circumstances, William of Fairshore is no longer our Man-Butcher.’ The mayor resumed his presentation, booming through his brass cone. ‘What’s your name boy?’

  ‘William,’ Genevieve’s son replied quietly, ‘William Cholmondeley.’

  ‘Please everyone give it up for this… new William! William Cholmondeley, the new Man-Butcher of eighty-two. The youngest ever Butcher!’

  William was ejected from the grip of the two heavies. He staggered back, barely keeping his footing. Now the elation of the win had worn away, his limbs were hanging heavy, and a great hunger had built in him despite the sickness stirred by the elixirs. He sneered away into the crowd, and though they had cheered for him only moments before, hardly anyone paid him any heed. All were too distracted by the new winner and the prize presentation.

  Those that did see him, averted their gaze in embarrassment or mocked and laughed when they thought he wasn’t looking. This far back, they couldn’t be sure of the reasons he had been so unceremoniously stripped of his prize, but ambiguity only flared their imaginations. To them he was a liar, and a cheat, and the perpetrator of any number of offences that invited disqualification. Shame hung over him like a cloud.

  He emerged from the rear of the throng without a bronze bit or bullet to his name. No longer an obscure laughing stock, he would be the most publicly derided man in the whole empire. His boots slapped through the heavy mud as he made his way down the street and away from the celebrations. He would be at the edge of town soon, away from the stink and death and bitter memories. Ash fell from the sky in thick flakes, colouring the pristine bandages dark as his mood.

  ‘Excuse me?’ A large thin man in a suit and cloak grabbed William by the shoulder and spun him around. ‘I wondered, might I bend your ear for a moment?’

  ‘What is it?’ William huffed and eyed the little pig-nosed boy at the man’s rear. He’d seen these two before, in the farmer’s cart on route to Blackbile.

  ‘My employer asked me to come here and beseech the prize winner to take on a very important contract. As the new Man-Butcher is a little on the inexperienced side, and taking into account your performance over the past few days, I elected to offer the job to you instead.’ The spindly man offered a hand to shake. William could see now that the white ring he spied on the journey to Blackbile seemed to be made out of porcelain. ‘I would love to give you further details, should you accept.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ William tried to walk away, but the slender man skirted around him to block his path. The man’s insistence made William all the more certain. ‘No thank you. I don’t want another contract.’

  ‘Just come with us back to our hotel, we can discuss it all there. We pay very handsomely.’ The man offered his hand to shake again. ‘I really must insist. My employer needs a certain calibre of assassin, and though the commoners don’t see it, we have an eye for these things.’

  The pig-nosed boy’s wall-eyes blinked separately, one fixed on William.

  ‘No,’ William asserted. He moved to leave, but the tall man stopped him with a firm hand. ‘I’m not interested.’

  A chunk of brick arced through the air and cracked the pig-faced boy right between the eyes, toppling him over in the mud with a squeal.

  ‘Did you not hear him the first time? Piss off.’ Goldin casually waved a blunderbuss in the direction of the tall man. ‘Is the greatest assassin in the land not deserving of a damned rest? Leave him be.’

  ‘No offence meant.’ The tall man raised his hands and backed off with a bow. He knelt down and pulled his little friend gasping from the slurry. ‘Not now then, I’ll leave you to rest. Come
find me should you need work. Life can be ever so hard for a disgraced man; you might need what I offer.’

  ‘I said piss off. I’m not averse to killing a man, so you’d be wise to go now.’ Goldin ushered them away with another wave of his blunderbuss, then turned to face William with a quivering smile. ‘Are you alright, Mr Man-Butcher?’

  A giggle burst through the little man’s pursed lips.

  ‘You can piss off as well if you’re just going to laugh.’ William tramped away.

  ‘It is quite funny.’ Goldin hopped through the muck to keep up. ‘You should have seen your face when you realised you’d lost the prize to that little brat, priceless! Prize-less!’

  ‘Please, just, stop.’ William kept marching until he reached the promenade.

  ‘Alright.’ Goldin stifled another giggle. ‘Where are we going then? I was thinking the Silken Coast might be nice, it’s quite clement there.’

  ‘We?’ William tried his best to maintain a grimace, but the little man’s good mood was catching.

  ‘I was thinking I might tag along, now you’re all famous. I might be able to ride your coat tails to a small fortune. I think it’s only fair, you wouldn’t have made it to the town without me.’ The little man raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You should have just left me on the roadside.’ William was trying his best to be downbeat about the whole thing, but the thought of having the little man’s cheer at his side made his outlook less dire. He had been so long on his own, five years without anyone, and was warming to the idea like a pan in a fire.

  ‘Don’t be like that.’ Goldin threw his arm around William’s hip, unable to reach his shoulders. ‘Our Gertrude, well, her name’s Goldie now too. Y’know, the gorgeous one at Melting Moments? She baked a cake for my travels; red velvet, the type you like. I’ve a slice of it here in my satchel.’

  The little man patted the bag at his hip.

  ‘But it’s only for travelling companions and the like.’ His tooth poked out of his split lip as he smiled. ‘What say you then, Mr Man-Butcher? Will you lead me to the coast for a well-earned rest?’