Chapter 3

The Witchfinder threw some more dried stalks of ryegrass over his small fire and looked with some considerable unease toward the western horizon. The early spring weather was fairly warm, relatively speaking, and its feeble warmth slowly melted the light dusting of snow that had fallen the night before. The skies were clear, also relatively speaking. The sun remained lost as usual behind the dark orange sky. Hidden behind those endless clouds of light volcanic dust that endlessly circled the earth, trapped seemingly forever from the great explosion and eruption that had so nearly ended all life on this world. The survivors, even the Witchfinder, now found survival a daily chore that must be endured

Something to the west gave him a sense of unease ... a feeling of wrongness that was felt more in his gut than by his eyes or nose.

He had stopped early for the night yesterday not more than ten miles from his old village. Like last night, today he was still full of excuses as why he should not place another ten miles or even more behind him. But something kept bothering him, both here and elsewhere, like this ill-omened sky from the west.

His horse had been rather ill-fed as of late with rib bones that were quite pronounced. The former master of this superbly fine creature had not been quite an unfeeling brute, but the horse ... Blackhawk he had taken to calling it, had been pressed hard as of late and without enough rest or nourishment. Now that he was the new master of this once fine beast he was determined to correct some of these past abuses. This was a good patch of wild ryegrass and he had set Blackhawk free to graze at will.

This confused the beast to no ends. He had accepted his new master and rider without hesitation or complaint and this new peculiarity of being 'fussed over' quite confused him. His previous rider had called him a different name, a name of less fondness, so being called by a new name was confusing, but it was an easy lesson that he quickly learned. Oddities or not, this new master seemed to be a considerable improvement, so he was willing to accept some minor eccentricities regarding their new working arrangement.

Something else also seemed to keep the Witchhunter fixed to this area. He kept sniffing the winds but felt no distant storms to the west or other obvious ill-omens. Still something seemed to be wrong somewhere. He wasn't at all certain, but it seemed that something relatively near was calling to him, and once he could find the direction he needed to go, then he would.

In the meantime, since he was near the old great highway of the old ones, the Witchhunter amused himself by doing a little bit of excavation. As a boy, he had always relished the scarce opportunities to travel away from his small town to search for lost treasures abandoned by their dead former owners from the time of the ancient disaster. His old friend and mentor 'Old Grampy' had been a boy when the great Yellow Stone exploded, or did whatever terrible harm it had done in those far off days. Grampy had been born some great distance away in a further off corner of this great land that had not suffered as much from the great falls of smoky hardening rock that covered all of the poor land here, and often at a considerable depth. Still, the old ways had began to die there as well and his parents had taken Grampy to other regions where they hoped to rebuild their former pre-disaster life of comfort. They never found any such place.

It was from these tales of wanderings by the old man that the boy, now the new Witchfinder, had learned of cars and trucks, and the goods that they might have carried in those last dreadful days of panic before tragedy overtook them. A slight bump in the otherwise flat volcanic rock, especially here on a big roadway, often indicated a buried car. Often full of what those doomed former occupants had considered to be valuable and essential supplies.

The old pre-disaster paper money was only interesting today as a curiosity, but sometimes good gold or silver coins could be found. This sort of money was just a valuable today as it was then. More importantly, old firearms or ammunition were just as treasured now. In the possessions of the late, dead Witchfinder, he had found a gun of modern manufacture, albeit a weapon of a very old classic design. If he could find a few more vintage weapons he could then have them repaired for use or else trade them in for food and other essentials. Witchfinders lived a life out on the road apparently, but he was not unprepared. He already had a stash of good coins and other trade material, but in these dangerous and very uncertain times gathering some extra trade stock at every opportunity was just prudent.

Not to mention that since he was quite new to a life alone in the wilderness, it was better to move a bit slower and more cautious. It would certainly be better to add to his limited supplies at any and every opportunity.

While his hungry horse grazed, he decided that this was a better than average spot to conduct a quick bit of prospecting.

The first two mounds he broached didn't contain much of any interest. The cars had been abandoned before they were buried by volcanic ash and the occupants had fled away on foot when their car would no longer go. They wouldn't have gotten far in the rain ash, stone and poisonous fumes downwind of the great eruption, but it would be madness to dig up the hundreds of tons of harden rock to find their pitiful remains buried underneath. Someday, a more civilized society of men would dig up all of those feet of hardened volcanic rock to reach the formerly good soils underneath, or else in another hundred years or two, the ground could be forced by wind, rain and aggressive plant roots to soften enough for farming. But not today.

The Witchfinder was a bit disappointed. He had just recently learned that he possessed at least a spark of new magical power. Had he 'taken' this power from the dead Witchfinder when he killed him as he ravished his nominal 'wife', or had he instead gained the power solely by taking the cockring from his limp dead and bloody member and for some unfathomable reason piercing his own cockhead with it. Or perhaps the mere act of donning his costume was enough, the clothes making the man.

It was all very confusing. He had certainly channeled and used a great deal of magical power when he had burned down his old home in his former town and also much of his former crop beds. It had come easily to him, focused instantly by his will when he had needed and wanted it, but since then he hadn't felt the slightest trace of that flowing power.

Was it gone? Or would it come back again when properly focused by his will? He didn't know, but he very much wanted to find out. Perhaps a slight experiment was possible.

Walking to the next of the slight mounds that covered one of the ancient automobiles he rested one of his hands on the top of the hard packed rock and another hand upon his gun, willing his magic to detect anything similar. He did feel an odd feeling for a moment but nothing that obviously indicated success. He decided to try it all over again at the next mound. This time there was a much stronger feeling inside of him where somehow he could felt that there was another gun, or perhaps just some old ammunition, buried underneath.

With his good rock pick and some scraping with a shovel the top mound of hard rock was pealed off of the old car metal quite easily and the front window soon shattered to allow him to search the abandoned vehicle. He did indeed find several guns and a good bit of stored ammunition. There was also a good stock of canned goods but after touching each in turn in inspection they felt 'bad' or dangerous to his senses and he discarded them. A few cans felt 'safe' and he added them to his saddlebag stores. There were also a few very old silver coins, once perhaps valuable for their age and rarity but today they were just good silver, suitable for trading to merchants.

One of the guns held special interest to him and he wrapped it up carefully in his saddlebag. At first glance it appeared to be a sawed off double-barreled shotgun, cut down nearly to the pistol handle, but as he examined it more carefully he noted that this gun was once the work of a very careful and skilled craftsman. An engraving said the piece was the work of a company called 'Ithaca' but that meant nothing to him. It took standard 20-gauge shotgun shells which he had not acquired any of earlier, but included with this odd weapon were three boxes of ammo, each containing one hundred rounds of these shotgun shells and would last him a long time. One box each of 00-buck, #9 birdshot and single slugs. All would be extremely useful, he was certain.

A further search of seven more nearby buried vehicles did not reveal any more hidden weapons caches, but when he repeated the search of all ten mounds holding both a silver and a gold coin, three of the mounds revealed that they would contain some buried treasure. Two of the caches were rather slight, just a handful of silver coins each, but the third vehicle revealed a nicer reward for his digging efforts, nearly a hundred and fifty old silver dollars of an ounce each. Some traders and travelling merchants valued the old antique dollars higher than the modern trade dollars due to the pure nature of the silver.

With this new thought in mind, he now compared the two types hand in hand, and he could tell at a feel that the 'new' trade dollars were of a much lower purity. In some cases, the newer pressings of some of the modern trade dollars, like the ones he had in several rolls were only of about 50% pure silver content.

He decided that he would spend these more debased dollars first and hold on to the ancient ones.

The day's activity done, both horse and rider settled down into the night's camp, both with full stomachs and each with a rising awareness that tomorrow they would return to the road.

With the rising of the hidden sun, the Witchfinder awoke at last with a sense of purpose and after allowing Blackhawk to enjoy a short early morning graze, he saddled up the horse and left the area of the old great roadway, still heading west but a bit to the south. If there had been any sort of hill, he probably could have looked south to see his old village as he passed by it but he didn't have the slightest care. He had disowned and disavowed his alleged 'wife' and his anger towards most of the villagers he had known for his entire lifetime was still powerfully strong.

Still he seemed headed towards some sort of definite destination. There was something of a slight taint in the wind and it drew him for some reason towards the source of it. He didn't find what he was looking for until nearly dark, but when he arrived at another small village he knew at once that he had found what he had been seeking.

There was something foul in the air here. A taint, an odor like decayed raw sewage that affected not just his nose but the very pit of his stomach. There was something wrong here ... something only a Witchfinder could sense or handle. The polluted infestation of someone corrupted by magic. A Witch, contaminated to the core by evil and perhaps unworldly powers that they could not hope to handle or control. A scourge from the fallout of the great eruption that even decades later still poisons the hopes of men and women that just struggle for survival.

This was a cancer, to be cut out either by the gun or the sword, or to be burned by the fire of a Witchfinders cleansing fire. This is what Witchfinders did; this was their sole purpose of existence, to keep the remnants of humanity cleansed from this corruption. Why the Witchfinders could handle this pure and good magic while everyone else was corrupted at the touch of this foul magic no one knew. Not even Old Grampy had an explanation for this and he had met several Witches and Witchfinders in his travels. The just seemed to be good magic and evil magic, and they were forever now locked into conflict.

This was the dutiful office of the Witchfinder, even apparently that of a fake Witchfinder who had murdered in cold and very repentant blood his predecessor and assumed his costume, if only for show. The idea now that he really was a true Witchfinder and apparently bound to their mission and tasks, was more than a bit disconcerting ... but oddly not an unwelcome one.

He now had a purpose. A true mission in life other than fleeing his old life and his perhaps unpardonable crime. Debating the morals of his past actions was now unnecessary and a waste of his will. He had a duty now to perform; a stern and unforgiving responsibility, and before the weak traces of the sun would disappear for the night at least another soul would be added to his list of crimes. There was only one penalty for the crime of Witchery. Death.

Under the darkening and brooding baleful sky the Witchfinder rode boldly into town. He knew that he had been seen and most would know at once why he was there. The stench of Witchery was impossible to long conceal; the corrupted soul had been infested by this unnatural withering - yearning as did thirsty men to quench their thirst by spreading their evil to others, ideally at length creating an entire town of possessed and remorselessly evil creatures that could no longer be called human. Their other worldly appetites being too terrible and unwholesome to exist in the honest world of men.

Already he could see the local villagers running towards the main street to await him. The reek of fear and the stench of hidden corruption was everywhere. The Witchfinder smiled.

Like what had happened in his own village, the local headman had ordered for the church bell to be rung to assemble all of the villages into the center of town. They were now waiting for me, to be inspected. They hoped to hide their misfortune, believing that the problem would go away of its own accord ... but it wouldn't. It would stay and fester, seeking to grow its own colony of evil corruption.

Now that a Witchfinder was here it would fight for the souls of these people ... but instead it would die, burned in fire.

Once he road into town and stopped on the edge of the town center, the Witchfinder hardly had to glance about to find the nearest source of corruption. There was an obvious taint that came from one of the young women of the town. Married, I could tell by her woven troth-knot and the style of her hair, but no husband seemed to be near her to protect her or hold her hand. Not that it mattered whatsoever at this point.

"Bring the infected woman to me. She has the seed of corruption within her and she must be cleansed." This was an order to the headman who hesitated to obey. Still with a glance at her he had betrayed that he had known of her infection. The Witchhunter was not pleased. Perhaps it would soon be necessary to create a new vacancy for this position.

"Now!" He ordered.

This time there was compliance. Somehow, without anyone actually touching the infected woman, she was 'pushed' forward and everyone close to her sidled slowly away. No one had any doubt what was going to happen next. They were certain that in just a moment the young wife was going to become just a pile of ashes on the dark rocky ground.

Except that the Witchhunter now hesitated to raise his burning hand to commit the deed.

With his terrible eyes staring through her, the Witchfinder could tell that her infection was very recent. She had been hurt, wounded on her arm and infected by someone more deeply infested with the evil taint, but so far the dark strands of evil only barely ran through her arm. They had not yet reached her heart or her brain, either which would have permanently sealed her fate and removed her slim contact with humanity.

As of the moment, her will was her own and no evil had yet been done. It was a shame to end the life of a still innocent women who was but a victim of this grim tragedy. The infection would spread, often quite fast and soon possess her ... but it hadn't yet. Perhaps there was a way that this evil could be removed or drawn like Mother Turner would have cured and lanced a boil back at home. He resolved to try.