Chapter 101: Sir Rickard came to the rescue

So, as some of you may be aware, Kerrass and I have been forced to take refuge in my family's castle in South Western Redania, a day's ride away from Oxenfurt.

Believe me when I say that I will get to why in a minute.

But first I wanted to thank each and every person that has written to me or my family with your thoughts, prayers and best wishes in our family's time of crisis. Letters from all over the place, from people that I haven't met, from people that I have met once or twice, all the way up to, and including, people that I was genuinely convinced despised me and the ground that I walked on.

It's been both humbling and incredibly touching, to find out how many people's lives Francesca has touched. Along with how much her story has been taken on by the people that are reading about it now.

So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I promise you that the letters and messages are all read and although I may struggle to help out as much as I would like due to current circumstances, my sister tells me that she absolutely intends to respond to each and every letter that has been written. The family appreciates your gestures in ways that I struggle to put into words and although I admit that my written tone can sometimes come across as being sarcastic or ungrateful then please take this. As simple as I can make it and know that I write this with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Thank you. Thank you so much. It means so much to us how much you care.

.

A couple of notes though before we carry on to the topic at hand.

And Oh, how I am looking forward to getting my side of the story out there, in the face of the people that are calling me a treasonous, heretical murderer.

But first, a couple of ongoing and general things to be said about Francesca and her disappearance.

We are not yet in a position to take any kind of legal steps. We all feel it would be wrong to hold any kind of funeral or remembrance service for Francesca until her status has been confirmed. Although my family and I are in the process of coming to terms with what has happened and the fact that Francesca is almost certainly no longer with us.... It is important to us that we hold out hope and do not give up on our sister.

To that end, as I say, we have no intention of holding a funeral service or remembrance thing for her, so please stop asking when that will be. We are aware that you only want the best for us and do not intend any harm or insult but we are finding this increasingly upsetting.

However, the family does intend to hold an annual celebration of my sister on her birthday every year where guests will be more than welcome to come and share stories of Francesca, her goodness, kindness and sense of mischief. More information will be forthcoming when arrangements are a little more certain.

On a continuing note on that regard, as I say, we are more grateful than we can articulate for all the kind gestures of kindness that we have received. However I must ask that the gifts of wine and flowers no longer be sent.

The first reason is that we no longer have the room.

This work is hosted on mananovel.com

The second reason is that the family believes that Francesca would like to be thought of as still making a contribution to this society. To that end we have opened an account with Vivaldi's bank in Novigrad and that account can be paid into in any city where the bank has a branch. Simply ask for the “Francesca von Coulthard” charitable fund and the bank will know what to do with your donation. What we do with the money is a little up in the air at the moment, but we were thinking along the lines of donations to hospitals, war and disaster relief to those worst affected and possibly academic scholarship for those who are unable to pay the university's fees.

The more you give, the more people we will be able to help. So instead of sending flowers, wine or other such expensive gestures. We would ask that you donate what you can to the fund so that we can do something that she would approve of.

My last note is this.

I also want to thank all of those people that have sent in news, sightings or theories about Francesca and her possible whereabouts. I am grateful for these as well, however neither I, nor the rest of our family have access to the necessary resources to follow up on all of these matters. If you do have information regarding Francesca's disappearance or you have information regarding the kidnappers or her current whereabouts then I must ask you to direct your information to the local garrison. If you mark it for the attention of Sir Artur Szostek of the Nilfgaardian security forces as he is the officer who is currently heading up the civilian aspect of the investigation. Your local garrison or messenger service will be able to direct your information so that it gets into the right hands. If you cannot write the information down then, likewise, the imperial garrison will be able to take the message down and take it off to where it needs to go. You will not have to pay to have your message delivered and yes, there is a reward providing the information proves to lead to something useful.

I don't know what the reward is as the family have been ordered not to interfere in that matter. The reward is being offered by the Imperial state and as such is out of our hands.

I think that's it.

Thanks again for all the well wishes. I do not know how my family and I would have got through without your help.

So anyhow. I suppose that there are a few pressing matters of concern.

So lets cut right to the chase. Yes, Kerrass and I have been accused of murder, treason, sedition and heresy. Yes we dispute these claims. Yes there is a large group of very unpleasant looking men made up of some guardsmen but mostly mercenaries who are, increasingly looking bored, currently camped outside our castle's gates, waiting to arrest and execute us.

They are under orders by the right-honourable Sir Robart de Radford, under sherriff of Redania. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

Yes. That fucker.

For those readers that might be new to my journals, Sir Robart was the insufferable prick that went out of his way to completely fuck up the investigation into the murder of my father and elder brother. During that investigation he did his very best to have me hanged for the crime myself. As far as I could tell, this sentiment was born out of an intense, class based loathing of my family coupled with extreme ambition. He came from the kind of “old money” noble family that could chart their families lineage back to the founding of the nation of Redania. But, despite their lineage, were actually rather cash poor due to their insistence on “abiding by tradition,” promoting for blood rather than intelligence and then got cross when all of the clever people left to go to where their skills would be better appreciated.

My father had been one of the beneficiaries of this exodus of highly skilled and motivated labour.

At the time, my temper was rather short so I may have given voice to some rather choice and juicy insults which did not endear me to the Under Sheriff, he lost his temper and ordered a young watchman to his death despite the warnings of Kerrass who advised Sir Robart of what would happen.

I made no secret of my disgust and called him out for the incompetent and cowardly streak of piss that he is. After my fathers death I made a large gesture to tell everyone that I had challenged him, published that intention far and wide and then, at the appointed time, he didn't show up.

I also informed everyone who would listen that if he was kept from our appointment by more pressing matters, such as duties or the urgent need to shit himself violently, then I would be receptive to an alternative time and date of his choosing.

Needless to say I heard nothing and from that moment on I referred to him, to anyone who asked me about the situation, as an inbred, pox-filled, streak of piss who wasn't even competent to wipe his own arse.

I'm since told that he didn't take it well.

Having looked into the matter since then, by virtue of having several friends who have taken great delight in informing me of what had happened, what he did was this.

After my challenge he fled Oxenfurt to Novigrad but discovering that that was no boundary to the reach of my rage, given that I could easily hire the Novigrad town-criers to holler my challenge out on every street corner, he fled back to the protection of his master the High Sheriff. The High Sheriff was, at the time, appealing for guidance to the Emperor and Empress as to what they wanted him to do with this nation that they had managed to conquer as well as deal with the aftermath of that little adventure and so didn't really have time to deal with Sir Robart's issues.

The High Sheriff found Sir Robart some out of the way town or city in the North of Redania to go and uphold the law in despite the biggest crime that had been committed there in recent years was the stealing of some sheep.

I'm told that he wasn't entirely stupid and sat and bided his time.

Fortunately for him, old blood and noble connections pay off in the long run and the noble classes memory soon turns onto different things. The Empress' coronation, and the scandals that followed that, chased Sir Robart's disgrace from the public view and his father managed to arrange matters so that Sir Robart could return to more important, or more prestigious, I'll let you be the judge, duties.

I'm told that he became a senior customs inspector at the Novigrad city docks. A position that meant that he soon became rich on the taxes and bribes that he was paid to overlook various things, while at the same time being able to victimise those people that he didn't like. Which meant the Coulthard shipping companies and merchant ventures often struggled to ship things out from Novigrad docks. My sister wrote to the merchants guild and the High Sherriff to complain about this unfair treatment pointing out, correctly, that the only contraband that had been found in any of our ships had been planted there by men under Sir Robart's command.

Yes Sir Robart. I just called you a corrupt jack-ass that goes out of his way to ignore real crimes while doing his best to find crime where there isn't any. I call you worse than that even. I infer that you even go out of your way to create the crime yourself where none exists which means that you aren't just a corrupt official. You are also a criminal.

If you take offence at these statements you yellow bellied bag of puke then I shall await you in our castle's courtyard with my spear. I would offer to leave the castle and meet you out front but my castle guards have also pointed out those places where you have hidden bowmen. We captured one once, the day before yesterday. He told us that you had ordered him to shoot either Kerrass or myself the instant that we showed our faces. Don't worry about him though. We fed him some proper food and sent him back to his post after having a good laugh with him at your expense.

He told us that you have offered a reward of 50 crowns for Kerrass' head and one hundred Crowns for my head. We warned your man by the way. He is now well aware that there is a better than evens chance that he would be given up, by you, as the ass-hat the killed me without trial.

Also, everyone should know that Coulthard Emterprises can ship from the Oxenfurt docks just as easily which means that the trade tariffs will be paid into the Oxenfurt city coffers rather than Novigrad. Emma has written to the Merchants guild of Novigrad to inform them of this planned change as a result of the victimisation that we have received at the hands of it's corrupt officials. Yesterday, she received a letter from the merchant's guild that made her laugh for a long time, pleading with us not to change our practices as the loss of our trade would, apparently, be a significant dip in city income.

Emma is still enjoying composing a letter that tells Novigrad that we will not ship any business from Novigrad docks until we receive guarentees that neither Sir Robart, any of his subordinates or anyone of his influence (read anyone that he hires or persuades or blackmails) has anything to do with the right and proper customs inspections of our ships. Essentially she's telling them that they either get rid of him or we take our trade elsewhere.

Oxenfurt are more than happy to accommodate Coulthard family requirements, especially as Emma offered to help finance a strengthening and lengthening of the Oxenfurt docks. As far as we know, Sir Robart knows nothing of the political game that Emma is playing at his expense.

But anyway.

Sir Robart had not forgotten his disgrace at the hands of myself and my seconds, Sir Rickard and Kerrass. He couldn't do anything about Kerrass but he set about doing everything he could to disgrace and spread shit about Sir Rickard.

For those people that don't know Sir Rickard, again, we met during the events surround my fathers death where we became friends.

As a result of the lies that Sir Robart spread about him, Sir Rickard also challenged Robart to a duel. When no answer was forthcoming and having no way to defend himself from the accusations and gossip without being able to confront his accuser, Sir Rickard resigned his commission and took Emma up on her invitation to come and work for the Coulthard family.

He didn't care so much. He and Dr Shani have been getting closer in the mean time and his being able to relocate a bit closer to Oxenfurt where Shani resides has been a boon for them both. He and his men have made the roads through my families lands as safe as they've ever been and it has been some time since there was last an attack on one of our wagons.

But, then came the recent events.

Sir Robart came at us with a dozen guardsmen and fifty mercenaries that he paid for out of his own pocket in an effort to bring us in.

However, Sir Rickard caught wind of this effort to take Kerrass and I on the road and came to our rescue.

Rather forcefully I might add.

So now we're at this stand off.

We made it to the castle gates without incident and Sir Robart had to resort to legal means to try and get me out. He insists that he has a warrant for our arrest. We insist that we have already been proven not responsible for the things that we stand accused of and that the High Constable of Lyria and Rivia has told us that we are free to go.

Sir Robart insists that he does not recognise the law of Lyria and Rivia and as such calls us criminal.

We point out that the, supposed, crimes that we committed happened in and around Lyria and as a result, the High constable of Lyria has jurisdiction.

Sir Robart points out that we are all supposed to be of one Empire now and as a result, “Law has no borders.”

We sent for word to the Constable of Lyria who is, as I sit here and write this, either on his way personally or has sent enough people and proof to shout this thing down.

For his part Sir Robart insists that he, as Under Sherriff, out ranks a High Constable because in Redania, a constable is a term for a common Watchman.

I told him that he could tell that to the High Constable's face.

Sir Robart seems unwilling to call on The High Sherriff of Redania, insisting on the superiority of his rank and the rightness of his cause despite many of his men looking at each other and beginning to look unsure of themselves.

So that's the stand off as it currently stands.

Sir Robart spends his days screaming at his men who, being mercenaries, ignore him and follow their own command structure. Or he comes to the gate to loudly and prominently demand that I be produced for summary execution. Or he rides around the countryside telling everyone who will listen that the Coulthard family will pay for their insolence.

Heh.

So we're under siege until the High Sherriff hears about this and takes steps, and/or the High Constable of Lyria and Rivia turns up. Either way, Sir Robart is causing a massive diplomatic incident in an effort to get me hanged.

I've never been under siege before. It's incredibly boring. Sir Robart has ordered that no-one is to leave the castle but he has forgotten that we have a Sorceress as part of the family who is sending out our own messages.

So I've begun to do as I've promised Kerrass I would. I have sent off copies of articles on the subjects of what happened at the coronation to my publishers and have been working on the first couple of chapters of my part of the book on “Jack”.

No you can't read it yet.

But that's not the only thing that I promised to do. I also promised that I would help, tell people about what I've been up to and show them a little bit about what goes on in the world.

So, you might ask and indeed, probably are asking. What's this whole thing that I stand accused of? What did Kerrass and I do that someone, even someone as stupid and incompetent as Sir Robart might latch on to, might accuse us of murder, treason, heresy and whatever else it was that people care about?

Well, I'll tell you.

Despite my joking, there is no getting away from the fact that what's going on and what happened is rather serious. Although I'm not particularly worried, there is a risk that Kerrass and I are going to be hanged in the long run.

You see, here's the thing.

We stand accused of Treason. Of that crime we are absolutely not guilty. Theses events took place in the city of Lyria, and we neither know, or care particularly, about the current political situation there. I am dimly aware that Queen Meve likes to split her time between the summer palace in Lyria and the winter palace in Rivia. I know that the Kingdom is called, The Kingdom of Lyria and Rivia as the two countries joined some time ago but beyond that I know very little. I don't even know for sure whether or not Queen Meve still rules there although from what I've heard about the woman, I would be surprised if you could convince her not to rule there without using a headsman's axe and even then I would bet on the Queen's neck rather than the axe.

But I also suspect that that kind of character would appeal to the Empress. I don't recall her being at the coronation but to be fair, I had other things on my mind at the time.

We are also not guilty of Sedition as I rather feel that that is rather covered by my denial of having committed Treason. What we did was talk to some villagers who expressed their dissatisfaction with what had happened. We happened to agree with them.

Heresy is a little more difficult. I maintain that we are not guilty of Heresy. We desecrated no alters, we defaced no images of Gods or Godesses nor did we stand in a large and open space and declare to the world at large that religion is bullshit and that people should run around doing whatever the hell they damn well please in the face of whatever divine retribution that may or may not be coming their way.

We may have killed a priest. I'm not convinced of this though as the person in question was a blemish on the face of humanity and is genuinely better off dead. I also question the legitimacy of his ordination. I say that because the churches as a whole have, somehow, completely managed to fail to protest his death.

You think about it. You think of any situation where a priest has been killed near you. That shouldn't be too hard as, unfortunately there have been loads of deaths of religious people recently. But you think if a priest of St Lebioda, the church of the holy flame, the divine sun or any of the others and think how the various churches react.

They don't react well do they.

We have heard nothing from the official higher-ups in any kind of church organisation. Or at least we didn't until the man's family started to get involved and then applies political pressure to the church to step up. What religious officials that I have talked to seem to be rather embarrassed by the entire affair. Not that I can blame them.

But murder? That we did do. Many times in fact. You can take that as a confession if you like. You can even claim that the reason that I get away with it is because of my rank, status and who my friends are. You can do all of those things and condemn our actions all you like.

I don't care.

You see, the thing is this.

Those bastards had it coming.

Even if the penalty is the ultimate one which, as I say, I think is unlikely then I will march to the scaffold or the headsman's block with a smile on my face knowing that Kerrass and I made the world a better place. Even knowing everything that I know now, I would still do it again.

That's a big statement I know. I am a lord and a member of the ruling class and as such I am supposed to uphold the Empress' laws all over the empire.

This is correct. The reason I'm pretty sure that we're going to get away with this is because that is what I think we did.

Here's what happened and I'll let you be the judge.

-

I've just taken a break from my desk. The realisation that I haven't eaten anything for a while has started to pray on my mind and I went in search of something to eat. Then I came back and have spent the last....I would say half an hour or so staring at the piece of paper in front of me and I can't think of where to start. There are many layers to what has happened and I'm not sure where it all begins as there is also a lot of context. So this may be a little confusing.

-

As you are probably aware, Kerrass and I were heading north from Toussaint. Our long term goal was to meet up with Sam in Kalayn lands in the North Eastern chunk of Redania so that we could help him investigate the Kalayn family holdings. We needed to see if there were any remnants of the cult that our cousin had run and maintained, while also cleaning out the keep of any monsters or ghosts that might have taken up refuge there in the immediate aftermath of the greater part of the cults destruction. There was also the matter of seeing whether there was any knowledge of what might have happened to Francesca in that place. Cousin Kalayn had claimed to worship “Ancient powers” and to have access to magic, knowledge and power that existed prior to the spreading of the greater part of humanity and the ascendancy of the prophets and the eternal flame.

Sam has, quite sensibly, built himself a temporary series of cabins for him and his men to stay in while he was waiting for the castle to be properly investigated and dealt with. The church, under Mark's orders, had sent a couple of Inquisitors, church knights and more benevolent priests to help council and stabilise the region while Emma had released funds to have a few simple churches built around the place as both a physical sign, and a psychological sign that the land was now under new ownership and that the new lords were substantially different from the old ones.

But Sam wanted to wait for a professional to come and help with the castle as he didn't “want to put all his faith in Inquisitors and holy knights” to help him clean the place out. He had jokingly told me that most of the knights were happy and understanding about this but the Inquisitors were chomping at the bit. Sam had had to have a couple of them restrained so that they didn't march into the local villagers to roust out heretics.

I hope he was joking.

On the way north Kerrass wanted to talk to a few people about what had happened and to set some other investigations rolling. One of the people, or rather places that he wanted to go and visit was a small homestead in Lyria and Rivia.

No I'm not going to tell you where it is. It's not entirely unlikely that people will want to go there afterwards for less than savoury reasons and they will not do so by my...mistakes.

What we were visiting is the largest library that I have ever heard of. The single largest collection of written documents that has ever been collected into one place.

That is not an exaggeration either.

Wherever I go I try to see the local libraries and centres of learning. I've been to the great library of Novigrad. I've visited the Academia de Vizima and the royal libraries in Toussaint, Tretogor, Vengerberg and Maecht city but that is by no means an exhaustive list of places that I've been to.

This place dwarfed them all and unless you've been specifically let into the secret then it's doubtful to me that you will have ever heard that the place exists.

To go there you have to have been specifically invited by someone else that was already aware of it's existence. When you are there you are allowed to ask questions of one of the three attendants who will look the matter up for you if they don't know it off the tops of their heads but there is always a price.

Always.

The price tends to vary upon what you want to know. If it is a simple thing then the attendants might ask for whatever written pieces of paper that you might have on you. It doesn't matter if that's a bill of sale or a love letter or some correspondence between family matters. Or they might ask for the price of a good meal. For you to do some simple chores around the place or the performing of a simple favour. When I met them I was once told that a bard went there once and he was charged the performance of a ballad that one of the attendants hadn't heard before. The more serious or in depth the question then the more the attendants will ask for.

The only way that you are allowed into the library itself is this.

First of all you must be accompanied by one of the three attendants.

Yes, there are only three of them.

The second thing is that you must bring them an academic piece of writing that they don't already have. This is not easy as their collection is vast. I mentioned the Academia de Vizima. A wonderful place of practical learning in the directions of engineering and practical sciences. Their library is give over to mathematical texts about projectile weaponry, tensile strength of metal wood and the use of different materials in the building of siege weaponry.

I asked one of the attendants of this secret library how big their collection of works was on this subject and the answer would have made the lecturers at the Accademia blush.

What we wanted to do was to go and see if they could tell us anything about the magic involved in kidnapping Francesca. Or if they had any more information about Jack and his children so that we might be able to investigate further. We were pretty sure that Jack was not responsible. We knew that we had banished the beast of Amber''s crossing which we had begun to call by his more proper name of “The Darknes.”

We had a list of other names that might fall into this group of beings. Kerrass wanted to refer to them as a Pantheon but I didn't like the term as it suggested that there was something Godlike about them all. I didn't like that.

Right now there are people all over the continent spitting with rage at the fact that they didn't know about this place. That such a centre of learning had been there for all of this time and that it hadn't been exploited and the knowledge shared freely or handed out indiscriminately.

I'm not going to take part in that debate. I'm not going to argue whether all of knowledge should be free or what should be done with it or who deserved to have access to this or to that.

I'm not that guy.

What I will say is this.

Kerrass and the three attendants all swore me to secrecy about where they were and what they had kept. After having met them and seen how they worked then I could absolutely understand their desire for privacy and solitude. Unfortunately though, their privacy has been forever made redundant.

I first met those attendants several months after I had first started travelling with Kerrass. For long term readers, these events took place after the adventure with Sir William the Ram and the death of Tom the Troll but my encounter with the beast of Amber's crossing was still a couple of months away.

Kerrass was much more comfortable with me by this point and I with him. We were not friends, he knew nothing about my family and I knew less about his past. We were still travelling south on our way to cross the Yaruga and head into Nilfgaard and Kerrass had taken a contract that he wasn't entirely certain of.

The contract in question isn't important to our story but just briefly. What it was was that a large winged beast was terrifying a group of villagers roughly a day away. We had sat and watched it from a distance, flying and swooping in amongst the trees and hills of the local area and Kerrass had become frustrated.

To all intents and purposes it looked like a form of Siren or Lamia. The only problem was that sirens and their more powerful cousins Ekhidnas only occur by the sea or occasionally in large bodies of water.

There might have been some small streams nearby but nothing large enough to warrant their presence.

The other thing that it reminded Kerrass of was a Lamia. Lamia are very similar to sirens in size and shape but they primarily occur in desert environments and this was anything but. Kind of a more lush and relatively fertile farm land despite the lack of farmers in the local area.

So Kerrass was confused and this kind of confusion was not doing his temper any good. As has previously been mentioned, the secret to being a Witcher is preparation. It was no good for Kerrass to prepare for a siren, only for the beast to turn out to be a Lamia and the same vice versa.

There was also the possibility of some kind of mutation happening.

So Kerrass wanted more information. He told the people that had hired him to spread their herds out so that the beast couldn't utterly destroy their food-stocks. That the men should not stand and fight but that the use of hunting bows might drive the creature off and that otherwise, they shouldn't allow themselves to be drawn out. Then he told them that he would be back in a few days with a hopeful solution.

That was when we consulted “The Library.”

It was unlike anything that I had ever seen or experienced.

Kerrass found what he was looking for in that place, destroyed the beast and we moved on.

That was where we were heading. Kerrass was of the opinion that if any single collection of knowledge would have some information about what we were looking for then it would be this place. I tended to agree.

There was a village near to the library. It was a mining village that Copper and some tin from a nearby group of rocky hills. They weren't massively wealthy as the mine had long since been played out but they still made enough to get by. They prospected quite a bit and spent their time looking for other veins to be exploited. There was also some gold in there somewhere. Not enough to be properly exploited but there was enough to keep the village alive and crouched next to the nearby stream, sifting through the grit and dirt that was washed down from uphill.

On our previous visit they had been friendly enough not to be unpleasant to the Witcher anyway, which can be rare sometimes in that part of the world. Lyria and Rivia seem to have something specific against Witchers although I don't know why. I have heard suggestions along the lines that something had happened between a Witcher and their Queen but I didn't pry and know better than to listen to that kind of rumour.

We didn't see the village first. We smelt it.

You always read about the fact that travellers see the smoke rising from a stricken village first before anything else. I can't answer for it in this case. All I can say is that we were riding down the road to the town before we would follow the path up to the library. I was looking forward to the hospitality of the attendants, a good meal and a bath, despite the fact that I would probably be sleeping on the rug rather than the bed that night, so at first I didn't notice it when my horse shook it's head in protest and refused to go any further down the road.

Then I smelt it. You never lose that smell after you have first got it into your nose. You never lose it. It cloys at you. The sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh.

If you don't catch yourself you find yourself thinking something along the lines of “Oh, I could just do with some roast pork,” before you realise what's happening and are overcome with a desire to vomit.

I looked at Kerrass. He was alert, left hand on his sword strap, head cocked to one side, listening.

“I can't hear anything.” He told me before taking a deep sniff of the air. “I think that, whatever happened here is over.”

“Do you want me to stay here?”

“No,” he said, dismounting. “Lets go in. Cautiously though, and put your spear together.”

We walked the horses into the village. It wasn't burnt to the ground which was what I had feared but it was certainly not without it's scars.

I've seen it so often. So very often but I never get used to it. I hope I never do either. It would be awful if this was something that you could get used to.

There were four stakes in the middle of the town with piles of ash around the base. A couple of the piles were still smouldering.

“Oh no.”

I wanted to rush down there. I could already feel my feet, arms and hands wanting to start moving. I wanted to be down there already. But as I say, I've seen this kind of thing before. Living in Redania around Novigrad especially. I'd seen my first “Witch” burning at the age of eight when my family had gone to Novigrad for some important occasion. To meet some local dignitary or to appeal to the officials about something my father wanted to be done. Even then I remember looking at the crowds and noticing the differences between the people. Onlookers were either watching quietly or they were cheering. But then Emma saw what I was looking at and turned me away.

This is not a new story. We all know someone who has had this happen to them. We all have. We've all either lost someone or we know someone who has lost someone to this kind of thing. Hell, I'd even been responsible for a number of people being burned at the stake which had robbed me of a lot of innocence on the matter.

I will say that if you're going to execute someone, I think it's kinder to use an axe or a noose rather than the flames. But the more...extreme of the priests that I've heard of would argue that the flame is to purify the person responsible.

I once asked Mark, in one of my more cynical moments while he was at home for Yule one year whether the purpose of the flames was to purify the body of the person or whether it was so that we would indelibly remember it happening.

He was skilful enough to turn it into a joke but I was quick enough to see his discomfort. Father was much less subtle and suggested a strict penance from Mark for my... wilfulness.

.

I really am struggling to talk about this. Even as I sit here writing I feel an anger as well as an incredible sadness as to what I saw that day. So much so that I struggle to bring things to the point.

.

So I wanted to rush into the village but I stayed calm. I couldn't see any armed men so I took my spear apart and put it away. These villagers would not want to see any more armed men coming attacking them. They had already been through too much.

Kerrass agreed with me. He took his sword from his back, he was only wearing the steel one anyhow, and tied it onto the horses' saddle. He kept on the same side of the horse as the sword though but there is a difference. He had left it to hand but it wasn't on his person as it were.

The things that we think about.