The Man-Butcher Prize

by Charles X Cross

  ‘Vesta!’ William cried, searching for her in the tussle. ‘Vesta, you need to hide!’

  Red face took the opportunity to tip the scales; he thumped William in the eye and again in the stomach as he reeled.

  ‘Vest-uh!’ William struggled out as the cultist grabbed his open jaw and wrenched him to the ground. Stabbing nails drew blood under the crook of his tongue, needling pain that saw his advantage quickly reversed as Red-face pressed his bulkier body on top of him.

  An elbow crushed William’s throat. The pressure slowly crimped his windpipe closed. Mortal terror filled him and he lashed out with both fists. A few good hits slammed into unprotected ribs, but the mad cultist could not be unseated. Red-face’s knees cinched tight around William’s waist, even as he bucked and scratched and slapped at his attacker.

  A hissing ball with white fiery tails flew directly over Red-face’s head. Instinct pressed William’s open palms to his ears and screwed his eyes tight. He wouldn’t fall victim to another debilitating blast. A market stall eight yards back on the bridge exploded in a plume of purple smoke and green fire. The force threw them across the flagstones like toppled skittles.

  The hard stone side of the bridge slapped William, knocking the air from his chest and a tooth from his mouth. Ears ringing, dazed; noise filtered through the high-whine in his head and he spat out his tooth in a fan of blood. A laboured breath whooped in, then still dizzy, he pushed up with his hands, but couldn’t gain his footing.

  ‘Vezda!’ he wheezed ineffectually and rolled himself over.

  Red-face had nearly been blown clean off the bridge; he was sprawled across the low wall at its edge, his head and one arm dangling into the mist. He scrambled for purchase, afraid as he realised how close he was to falling into the scalding waters. When he saw Vesta had her pistol trained on him, he steeled himself, his hatred washing away any trace of fear.

  Vesta uncurled from her hiding spot, her aim never wavering as a slow and feral smile lit her face. Behind her, hobbling through the smoke, was another entrant of unmistakeable proportions. William tried to shout for Vesta’s attention, but his voice was still too weak.

  ‘Vest- Vesta…’

  Ottilie loomed out of the sulphurous murk, burned and scarred but all the more petrifying for it. She had a glass jar strapped across her back, filled with oily liquid, and connected to her veins with gut-pipes and strapped down needles. Attached to her blackened stump – that looked more like the end of a discarded root-cigar than any living appendage – was a custom-built bomb launcher. It was another wonder of the weaponsmith’s armoury William had denied himself through a lack of imagination. Iron rods, bolts, and belts held it in place, and she supported it with her good hand.

  The foul device was levelled at Vesta and Red-face. She leered as the mechanism huffed steam; a pipe shaped bomb slithered into the barrel.

  ‘Vesta!’ roared William, ‘behind you!’

  Those few awful moments slowed around them, thoughts moving like treacle, instincts bubbling to the surface. As a wisp of river steam curled aside, something caught Red-face’s eye over the side of the bridge – the sludgy island surrounding the pillars, William knew. The cultist slipped over the edge. Vesta didn’t see, she was staring doom in its trollish face, pistol limp at her side.

  Ottilie cackled as she pulled the trigger on her launcher. The mechanism clicked, a shower of sparks burst out.

  William sprinted towards Vesta, the pains in his body temporarily numbed by the thrill of near-death. His body moved of its own accord, his mind completely departed from the idiocy of his actions; they would both be blasted to naught but sinew and slurry in the same moment. There would be no miraculous cures or mechanical limbs at such close proximity to those rockets. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this, but still he ran faster.

  As William enveloped Vesta in the protective shield of his arms, pressing her tightly to him and setting her head to his shoulder, the bomb launcher exploded.

  The blast hit his back as a hot wind. Blood, metal and flesh plopped and clinked in a gory fan around them, drenching William. An animal howled in agony, worse than a bear in a dog-pit. Guttural, blood curdling; the sort of sound that would haunt a man for the rest of his days. It was only then that William realised both he and Vesta were still alive, and for the most part, unharmed.

  Ottilie was on her back, her new limb jagged and broken and her once good arm pulped out of recognition. Somehow she lived, keening with her rage and pain to the ash-filled sky above. Her suffering perhaps protracted by a foul cocktail of medicines denying her the release of death.

  William’s thoughts caught up with time, though his arms would not let go of Vesta, paralysed with shock. He scoured the terrain and buildings around them. Had he imagined the wink of a scope, or the memory of a rifle clap?

  ‘What happened?’ Vesta shivered. ‘And where’s my brother?’

  ‘I think someone… saved us?’ He couldn’t contemplate why or who, but had far more immediate worries, like re-arming himself and being stranded in such an open space. He dragged Vesta to an abandoned fruit stand and they huddled behind it, taking the moment to quickly reload. ‘And your brother, he went over the edge.’

  ‘He’s dead?’ Her face lit up, mouth twitching with shock and giddy excitement. William had expected that when the time came and her brother had been killed, that she might have instantly started to regret her decision to contract his death; it appeared that wasn’t the case.

  ‘Oh William!’ She clutched her pistol to her chest like any high society girl might grip a bouquet of flowers. She was overwhelmed with emotion, tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, happy and satisfied. ‘We did it. That whole sordid chapter is done. I’m done.’

  For a moment William thought she might just get up and leave. She thought her brother was dead and her task was complete, and would have little reason to stay other than the threat of execution for desertion. He didn’t imagine she would fear that threat too much; she had entered the competition readily enough.

  ‘Now we just need to win this thing and we’ll both be free.’ She nodded, resolute. It was the only true way out of the competition alive and it was a relief that she understood that.

  ‘There are…’ William stopped himself. While his initial instinct had been to tell her about the islands in the river, and her brother’s sudden readiness to throw himself down, he reconsidered. Vesta had become increasingly reckless, desperate to kill her brother, and if she believed he was dead then maybe she might be easier to control; easier to keep safe.

  ‘Are you still alive, William?’ Genevieve’s distant shout could be heard faintly over the roaring current. ‘Just step out, my son could use the target practice!’

  ‘Damn.’ William peered out of cover. The smoke from Ottilie’s crater was enough to obscure his view and he couldn’t make out anything beyond. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘What if she’s the one that saved us?’ Vesta’s nerve appeared to be steadying.

  ‘I’m sure it was entirely by accident.’ William looked around for a way to get off the bridge that didn’t involve walking directly towards Genevieve. Fire crackled at their backs, still burning from Ottilie’s rocket; on either side was the torrential river. ‘Stay here and hide, I’ll go out, tell her you’re dead and that I’ve backed out of the competition.’

  ‘You can’t.’ Vesta shook her head. ‘It’s against the rules. There are referees all over the place, all it would take was for one to hear you; you’d get disqualified.’

  ‘Right.’ William thought about exactly what would happen to Vesta should he be disqualified. Death by execution was something very few ever deserved. ‘I’ll go out there, tell her you’re still alive so she can’t shoot me, and you can get away while she’s distracted.’

  ‘If that’s the best you can come up with…’ Vesta grumbled.

  ‘It’s a good plan.’ William squeezed her shoulder to reassure her, glad that they were back tog
ether, even if it was proving to be quite the challenge to keep them both alive. He raised his voice for the riflewoman in her high window. ‘I’m coming out, don’t shoot!’

  He heard no response.

  ‘My sponsor is still alive and there’s a referee here.’ He didn’t think a little lie like that would hurt his position too much, and if there was a referee in earshot he technically wouldn’t be lying. He made his way slowly through the choking smoke. The smell was more akin to roasted pork than sulphur, and there was a wet sheen of innards underfoot.

  As he emerged from the smoke, the first thing he saw was Ottilie’s body. Four yards in front of him, a wreck only clinging onto life by the finest strand.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ William called. ‘You can’t shoot me, Vesta’s still alive, and she’s not going to come out. We might have been dead already if it hadn’t been for you. Did you want all three of our deaths on your hands? Couldn’t bear the thought of Ottilie killing more than you?’

  He didn’t know where Genevieve was, so directed his question at the terrace row as a whole. There were multiple windows open and she could be in any one of them, and in all likelihood had been changing location in the building regularly to prevent anyone shooting back at her. Her son would be in there too, though whether they were sticking together or watching from separate vantages he couldn’t tell. She didn’t reply.

  Ottilie groaned as William drew alongside her. Her face was crisp at the edges and moist with blood and pustules of blistered skin around her cheeks and eyes. She had tried twice to kill him, yet he felt only pity for her. She was only playing by the rules of the competition after all; they were supposed to kill each other. Even now, one of her only remaining fingers curled weakly on the trigger of her bomb launcher, flexing the crooked loading-arm back and forth as it repeatedly grasped for, and missed, a fresh bomb. He was surprised to see the ammunition that remained in the device was still unexploded, but saw it as a testament to the skill of the guild weaponsmith.

  ‘When the smoke clears, I’ll take your sponsors pretty head off her shoulders,’ Genevieve shouted, ‘so you might as well save us the wait.’

  William listened carefully for the direction of her voice and narrowed her location to between one of two windows.

  ‘You could never win this, William,’ Genevieve was still shouting, but she affected a more friendly if unconvincing tone. ‘Just let me kill your sponsor and you can go and relax in the stands. Goldin’s there, I’m sure he’ll have a drink waiting for you. I’d rather not waste the shot, Ojo Azul and that undying cultist are enough of a handful.’

  William tensed, but didn’t say anything, not wanting to encourage further talk of Red-face. He knew how blinded Vesta was when it came to her brother.

  ‘I saw him scrabbling up from the riverbank, he was injured but I let him go.’ Genevieve’s tone was unnervingly pleasant now. ‘I heard you have a vendetta against him.’

  William could hear Vesta moving in the smoke, tempted to run by the threat of her still living brother. Any second now, she would bolt from her cover and be killed just like Goldin’s sponsor. A single bullet was all it would take.

  William made a choice. He turned his head downwards to Ottilie. The dying brute grunted under his scrutiny. He wasn’t sure what it meant, or even if she still had the capacity of thought in her state of agony and protracted death, but he did know that she hated the markswoman with a passion and would thrill in her downfall.

  Vesta’s shoe scraped on stone as she broke into a run. William caught sight of two scopes glinting as they flicked to the smoke in anticipation. He stomped on Ottilie’s new pipe launcher, bending the loading arm so that it rocked closer to the next charge, gripped it, and slid it into the barrel. A wheel – rimmed with oleaginous bristles – rotated, painting the back of the rocket. Chemicals fizzed to life and sparks hissed out.

  William dove to the floor, grasping the launcher and angling it to where the rifle scopes winked. The rear of the pipe blasted off in a shower of fire, thrusting it skyward. It screeched like a banshee, yellow smoke pluming as it arced through the air, ending in an almighty boom that erupted from the building where the gunners were hiding. A rainbow detonation of flame and fury curled outwards.

  Ottilie stilled, a jagged grin across her ruined face. She exhaled one last time.

  The building was still falling when Vesta helped William to stand. His ears rang, his head pulsed, but his daze cleared quickly. Their lives were still in peril, and nothing was more sobering. Thankfully, the tell-tale glint of the rifle-sight was gone, Genevieve and her son likely crushed under rubble.

  Vesta patted him down, prodding at every cut and bruise she could find.

  ‘Nothing’s broken,’ he assured her.

  ‘Stop jumping in front of bombs.’ She scowled. ‘Anyone would think you had a death wish. Now, come on, we need to find my brother before it’s too late.’

  She took his hand and tried to lead him away from the bridge and burning wreckage.

  ‘We don’t even know if he’s still alive. He probably drowned in the river, or boiled to death.’ William drew up short, halting her progress and pulling her round to look at him. The focus on this vendetta was in danger of hampering their chances of victory.

  ‘My brother, he’s resilient… and canny.’

  ‘Genevieve was lying to draw you out.’

  ‘No! He’s still alive, I know it.’ Vesta scowled into the middle distance before affirming to herself, ‘I know he is.’

  1675

  A shot punctured the simple wooden target; the second of three to land in the crudely drawn bullseye.

  ‘I win again!’ Cathal, the Giant of Gael kicked out one leg and looked as though he might have burst into dance, but a swift coughing fit hampered his celebrations. This far into the old tunnels the mildew seemed to addle him.

  ‘God’s blood!’ He spluttered, collapsing into a worn armchair and swaddling himself in his vast fur lined coat. He hadn’t bothered to take off any of his outer wear when he had arrived in the guild outpost and even refused to remove his hat during the shooting competition. Not that the wide brim had hampered him in any way, he had won after all.

  William set down his silver pistol and eyed the two targets sullenly. A collection of lanterns flickered over rubble and rotting crates, casting strange shadows over the painted rings. His first shot had shattered a glass lantern and a damp breeze had quickly snuffed it. The last two bullets had barely clipped the wooden target on opposing sides of the widest red circle.

  ‘Would you prefer them on or off?’ Cathal propped his boots up on a small table. He had bet a gold piece in the unlikely occurrence William won their competition, and as the boy had little in return, allowed him to stake a shoeshine should he lose. ‘It might be easier with my feet in them, else they’re a bit limp, and you might not get that sheen I’m looking for.’

  He tossed William the coin he had offered as his stake.

  ‘Give that to Marilyn; ask for some brown polish and a cloth.’ Cathal was still wheezing from his fit of coughing.

  He was a large man and a well-respected assassin, and though he had been retired for some time, was still allowed to frequent the guild’s establishments. He claimed the early retirement was due to a gunshot that had collapsed one of his lungs, but William found the tale a little tall given the vastness of his barrel chest. Surely if an organ had perished it would have drawn him in; made him look hollow.

  ‘Leave them on.’ William scowled, noting the thick road dust on the tattered boot, annoyed to have lost.

  He had been practising every day since the botched assassination – mostly to avoid Ojo who had been in a foul mood – and though he had improved dramatically, he still couldn’t compare to any of the life-long killers. His shot was consistent when he was alone, but in competitions with stakes his nerves got the better of him. It was precisely why he had accepted Cathal’s challenge, to steel his resolve, but it seemed he still needed practi
ce.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ He picked up a lantern and sloped off.

  The shooting range was far beneath the ground, even lower than the guild outpost itself, and located at the far end of a collapsed catacomb. Rumour and speculation varied; some said the passages had been part of an ancient tomb, while others claimed they were long abandoned mine shafts. William suspected from the vaulted block ceilings that it was the former. Either way, he was glad for the shooting range and its secret location; it meant he could practice without leaving the city or drawing the attention of any guards.

  He dawdled through the passages, reluctant to return to the tavern where he might cross paths with Ojo. Nor was he in a rush to get back and polish Cathal’s boots. He tramped up slick steps, holding on to a wooden rail that had been secured to the wall with heavy bolts. Slow as he was, it wasn’t long before he reached the outpost proper.

  Suspiciously, he eyed a clutch of newcomers in much the same way the regulars had regarded himself and Ojo when they first arrived. He understood why now; there were those amongst the guild who liked to cause trouble, and since William and Ojo had been staying here, he had seen two good assassins killed by callous madmen. The newcomers seemed well intentioned enough, a pair of bright eyed Gierans who dipped their heads at his appraisal. He nodded back.

  Ojo nursed a glass of dark spirit in a shadowy corner. His blank eyes followed William’s progress through the tables, but he didn’t call out. William hurried by without a word, grateful to be spared his master’s ire a little longer.

  He had taken to reading all of Ojo’s correspondence since the assassin had accused him of doing just that, but what he had discovered was disappointingly mundane. It turned out that the man Ojo referred to as his patron was merely his father, not some overbearing crime lord as William imagined, and the story of his illness rang true. He had read a few letters between Ojo and the supplier of his father’s medicine, so knew the costs and the cause of the assassin’s woes.