The Butcher and the Butterfly Read Online Free PDF Page A

and exploded out through the back of his skull.
Looking back out over the ridge and into the blackness he couldn’t
see his own killing ground but knew it was there.
    The Black Sorcerer
hadn’t lied so far and had nothing to gain in lying now. Stephen
looked back on his own life and more important into his future and
could see nothing there for him. If he defeated the Marksman then
he would return home and to whatever whim the King required of him.
If the Marksman laid him to waste then he would be walking the
Green Path by lunch tomorrow.
    An hour ago
Stephen had been a man loyal, honest and true, but seeing his
death, seeing his future lay out in two simple paths had changed
all that. This King, this Barnabas; could he be a man to trust?
Could he be the one true King the prophets speak of? He could have
the answers.
    ‘What am I to do?’
Stephen asked.
    ‘Ha!’ The Sorcerer
wheezed, ‘Ha! Shall I take it that you are with us?’
    ‘What am I to do?’
Stephen repeated his voice low.
    The Black
Sorcerers eyes narrowed; the fire light glinting from his sharp
teeth as he grinned.
    ‘Just follow
orders, Stephen. Follow his words, and my own, and you will go
far.’
    Stephen nodded.
‘What do you wish of me?’
    The Black Sorcerer
stood and beckoned his new soldier to do likewise. The man garbed
in shadow pointed to the north.
    ‘Rockfall,
Stephen, to Rockfall you will walk and once there treasures await
you.’
    ‘Speak plainly,
Sorcerer, I care little for riddles.’
    Samson laughed and
the wind blew fierce. ‘To go further, Stephen, to get what the king
wants, you have to go to Rockfall. On the way you shall be told
more but until then you must trust in his word.’
    Stephen looked
back to the horizon following the finger of the Sorcerer. It would
be a hard journey as Rockfall was situated on the far side of this
hellish desert. Stephen knew though that, somehow he would get
there. But what would arrive at Rockfall? Would it be the Watchman
that he was now or would he turn into something like the
Sorcerer?
    The Watchman
turned to face Samson but there was no one there and in the
distance the sun was beginning to rise.
    5
    The Watchman
walked alone in a desert filled with death.
    The sun was high
and hot, the air putrid. He had been walking for days and not heard
a word from either the Sorcerer and it was troubling him.
    At high noon
Stephen stopped and hid behind a large rock, the shade cooler if
only by a few degrees. He threw his bag of wares to the floor and
slumped down. He cared little for food but drank deeply; the water
doing little, but helping none the less.
    To Stephens
surprise a black figure approached from far off on the horizon. At
first he thought it a mirage but as the thin stick figure walked
closer it began to take form. What at first Stephen thought were
long arms; wings now took shape. Its legs were long, bandy even and
its feet looked hooved. Wrapped around this creature’s waist were
two arms ending in sharply pointed talons. Its skin was black,
burned as if it had been in a fire. The figure wore no clothes and
its face was as long as a horses. It had no mouth, no eyes, no nose
and it walked upon the hardpan leaving no trail.
    Stephen stood when
the figure was twenty paces away.
    ‘Who are you,
traveller? Are you a demon come to take me?’
    The creature
stopped its featureless face merely pointing in his direction.
    ‘Again I ask,
traveller, who are you and what do you want?’
    The black thing,
who stood well over eight foot tall, with burnt skin stretched over
brittle bones answered; its voice low, gruff; like the Wastelands
found a voice and used this being as a tool with which to
communicate.
    ‘You have dealt me
out so many times, Stephen, follower of the new King; I find it
hard to think that you cannot recognise me.’ The things wings
flapped and folded behind its back.
    ‘As I have said
time and time again, I care little for riddles. Now, traveller,
tell me who you are and let