The Butcher
November 5th, 1883
One foggy morning, The Butcher rode through the cobblestone streets of Kendall atop a pale horse, both man and beast heavy with the tools of their violent trade.
All those who recognized John Black as he passed averted their eyes, they dared not catch his icy blue gaze. Behind John The Butcher was a black steed with a white diamond on his head. Both horses had matching black-and-gold saddles, but the black horse carried only one weapon on his back—a charred single-edged steel sword in a worn leather sheath.
John reached his destination near the heart of the city—a doctor’s office, adorned with an electric lamp above the entrance. John climbed down from his horse and hitched both animals to the iron post just outside the door. Leaving his long guns on the pale horse, John adjusted his tattered and shabby black duster and stepped through the door.
He removed his hat, smoothed back his greasy, shoulder-length brown hair, and cleared his throat. The thin-framed, mousy woman behind the counter looked up and froze in terror at the sight of him.
“D-Doctor? Doctor!” she squealed like a frightened animal.
A man with white hair in a horseshoe pattern and a thick mustache entered through the door behind the counter.
“What’s the matter, Dolores? Wha—” he trailed off as his eyes found John.
“I just need a doctor,” John said. “I have money. No one else for three hundred miles will see me.”
“Very well,” the doctor replied. “I’ll take a look at ya. Come on in back.”
John strode across the room, his heavy, black boots with the steel spurs echoing heavily against the floorboards. He followed the doctor into the hall and to an exam room littered with messy tools. He removed his satchel and duster, exposing his black shirt and red paisley vest underneath. Then he slid his black leather gloves off, revealing a sickly black mark across the back of his right hand. He removed his gun belt, adorned with a pair of matching revolvers and a stubby double-barreled shotgun, and hung it up with the rest of his personal effects.
The doctor sat on his stool next to the exam chair, lighting a cigarette. “What seems to be the problem?”
John scratched his trimmed brown beard and fell into the exam chair with a heavy sigh, holding his right hand up. “This.”
As the doctor took his hand and examined it, he asked, “Does it hurt? Itch? Anything like that?”
“It hurts a lot. More than any pain I’ve ever felt in my life.”
“You must be no stranger to pain, I imagine,” the doctor said. As John glanced at him, he nodded. “Oh yes, I know just who you are, Butcher. But rest assured, I take my oath as a doctor quite seriously, no matter who walks through my door.”
“I appreciate it,” John replied, his voice gravelly. He kept a stony expression through the pain, no matter how the doctor poked and prodded him.
Finally, the doctor relented, and let out a heavy sigh.
“What is it?” John asked.
The doctor reached into his drawer, pulling out a bottle of aged bourbon and a glass. He handed a glass to John and filled it, before taking a swig right from the bottle. “It’s not good news. You’re gonna wanna drink that, son.”
John nodded and drained the entire glass at once, then handed it back to the doctor.
“There’s no easy way to put this, son. You’re dying,” the doctor said curtly. “That mark on your hand is an Akiwéian blood curse. It’s called ‘the mark of madness.’ You see, the pain you’re experiencing? As the mark spreads, it will only feel worse. You’ll start to feel your strength going, and eventually, when it reaches your heart, you’ll die. Only, most victims go long before that happens, on account of the pain driving them to madness.”
“How long?” he asked, his expression unchanged.
The doctor thought it over in his head for a moment, rubbing his bald patch out of habit. “A year at most. But I don’t recommend toughing it out. This thing is nasty. If you want my advice…” As his voice trailed off, he looked back at the gun belt slung over his coat stand.
“I understand.” As John rose to his feet, he walked over to the satchel and retrieved over a hundred dollars, putting the bills in the doctor’s hand.
He fetched his effects and strode out of the office, climbing back upon his white horse, Snow. He rode from the city with purpose, disappearing back into the fog.
January 13th, 1884
Like the rest of the State of Nora, the rocky hills north of the mountain were covered in a thick layer of permafrost. John’s horse climbed the snow-covered path at night, following the footsteps of a large group of people.
As he passed through the woods, ascending the hills, the sounds of men and horses filled the air. Sure enough, as he continued along the path, he found a group of six men in white coats with black pants, each wearing the Nova Alresta national symbol—the hawk—on their lapels. They all raised their rifles at John as he approached.
John rode to them with the confidence of a man who did not have six guns pointed at him, and dismounted right before them.
“Hold it, mister,” one of the men shouted. “The Nova Alrestan State Military is conducting an operation here, you can go no further!”
“I promise you can’t stop me. Who’s the officer in charge of your company?” John asked.
A loud, surly voice boomed from the back—“I am!”
The company leader was a man familiar to John—with a captain’s insignia on his sleeve and a saber on his hip, the pale man with short dark hair rode up to the roadblock with a smug smirk on his face.
“Lieutenant Oliver Monroe,” John said. “I see you made Captain.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Black? Don’t tell me you’ve chased a bounty all the way up here.”
“Personal business at the settlement. It’s not the State’s concern.”
Captain Oliver adjusted his worn cavalry hat and sighed. “You realize we’re about to burn that place to the ground, don’t you?”
“All the same, I have business there. I won’t interfere with your operation, and I will not harm anyone who does not try to harm me.”
Oliver nodded. “Stand down. Let The Butcher through. You may pass, Mr. Black, but at noon we begin our attack. Don’t interfere.”
John tipped his hat to the captain and passed through the military camp, built around a creek. He followed the path along the creek up the hill, to the village. An array of dilapidated, round-roofed long cabins and cone-shaped buildings filled the landscape, and between the buildings were many tents and other temporary shelters. The people, distinct from the pale-skinned Alrestans, had reddish-brown skin, coarse black hair, and coal eyes. Most were old, sickly, and frail, and the few who weren’t took up a solemn watch around the settlement with old rifles, bows, hatchets, spears, and clubs. Their fur and leather clothes would offer no protection from the Alrestan rifles. They were hopelessly outmatched and outgunned by the Alrestan State Military.
Twenty men responded to John’s casual sauntering up the lonely trail by gathering at the village entrance with their weapons.
“The Butcher is here!” one called.
Another shouted, “Death’s Bounty Hunter!”
A hunched-over old woman with long, stringy gray hair tied in a braid and using a cane carved from a pine branch hobbled over to the front line, passing the men and standing at their front.
“The man who slayed a thousand people, I’ve been expecting you,” she said with a wry smile.
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine,” John corrected. “I have questions for the village shaman, I take it that’s you.”
“You want to know about your cursed hand,” she said. “Walk with me.”
John obliged, walking up to the old woman and letting her take his arm. Together they strolled through the village, the horses following closely behind.
“I’m surprised your people haven’t fled, or at least tried to,” John said, looking around.
“The Revali clan has done enough running, believe me. There’s nowhere to go, and those of us who are left have no strength left to run. No, Butcher, this is where it all ends for us,” she said.
“Your people can see the future, surely there must have been some way for you to survive.”
“Not against yours,” she retorted. “Your people, who grow stronger for every life you take. Who could survive against such overwhelming force? But you didn’t come to ask about that.”
“The curse on my hand, it’s Akiwée magic. Who did it?”
She let out a sharp exhale as they climbed up to the highest hill in the village, where lay a meadow of herbs.
“I did, of course, or rather we did. It took all the magic our people had left, but we did it. I used your blood—it was old and rotted away to a mere stain, but it was enough. With that, we were able to curse you. Will you take revenge on us?”
John simply shook his head. “No, I don’t plan to hurt anyone else. I don’t even know why I came here. I’ve been content to let death have me when it so chooses, but now that I’m dying, I feel lost. I don’t know what to do now that I’m at the end. I’m so tired of this life, yet too stubborn to end it, and I have no desire to add any more ugliness to the world.”
“It’s a bit silly to come to the woman who killed you for advice on what to do with your life, isn’t it?”
They stopped at the peak of the village and looked out over it. “I had a hand in bringing the Akiwéian people to this point too, so it’s only fair that it is your magic that finally kills me. But killing is the only thing I’ve ever known, and I don’t have it in me anymore.”
“And what is it that you feel inside when you think about all the evil you’ve done?” she asked. “What are you looking for, salvation? Forgiveness? I promise you I have none to offer,” she said.
He shook his head. “No, of course not. I have killed far too many people for that.”
“How many people have you saved?”
John didn’t have an answer to that. Probably none, would be his best guess. “I can’t stop what’s going to happen today, you know.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. One man can’t save an entire culture. But you can save one person. This curse could be your gift, your chance to be someone other than ‘The Butcher.’”
She parted from him and stepped back into the herb patch. She drank from a waterskin at her hip, and slowly lowered herself to the ground.
“I’m curious,” John asked, watching her sitting among the plants. “Where did you get my blood?”
She grinned. “One of our great warriors wounded you once, at the battle for the lakeside fort.”
He nodded to himself. “I remember now.”
She laid back and looked up at the clouds, colored by the dawning sun, and watched them as she drifted away. With only the mildest resistance, her breathing ceased, and her body remained still and oddly peaceful.
John watched as the sun hit the village. Most of the women who remained followed in their shaman’s footsteps, and within the hour, a third of the population had died peacefully. He looked back at the shaman’s cold corpse for a moment. There John remained until, at midday, the sounds of shots began. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a lone figure disappear down the hill on the village’s far side—someone small, by the looks of it. A girl? Perhaps the only one who didn’t partake in poison.
With a heavy sigh, he climbed atop his horse and rode down the hill off the beaten path, losing sight of the village. He had no desire to bear witness to yet another massacre.
The slope down the hill was steep, and the horses had to descend slowly to avoid falling. As John made his way down, he noticed four soldiers up ahead, following a path through the snow. His route down the hill intersected with theirs, and he found himself passing them as they surrounded a runner.
A girl of thirteen cowered at the foot of a pine tree, hiding beneath the low branches. She was skin and bones and had a sallow, sunken look to her face from malnutrition. She screamed as two men gripped her kicking ankles and dragged her out into the open.
This would not be near the worst atrocity of war he had seen; at fifty-six years of age, he had seen plenty. John couldn’t say what made this different, or what made him spring to action, except that the words of the shaman haunted his mind.
He jumped from his horse onto the back of the first soldier, slamming his head hard into a stone hidden beneath the frost. Before the other three could react, he rushed the second soldier, ripping the rifle from his hands and smashing him into a tree to knock him unconscious.
The two who grabbed the girl both took aim and fired at John, but he was much faster than they expected and both shots missed.
He grabbed the first man and shoved him with inhuman strength so that he soared back into a tree and collapsed, knocked out. He grabbed the last soldier by the throat, lifting him off of his feet with one hand.
The man looked back into John’s stoic eyes with absolute terror, and John dropped him to the floor and kicked his face, shattering his nose and knocking him out as well.
The young girl stared up at John, shaking and wide-eyed.
John walked up to her and offered his hand. “Let’s go.”