Chapter 108: I did not find that reassuring

Define Murder for me.

Go on. I'll wait.

The Oxenfurt dictionary defines Murder as an “Unlawful and Premeditated killing of a person by another person.”

Having actually done a little research into this, I was shocked to learn that the definition has had to change in the relatively recent past. That was because it used to read as “The Unlawful and Premeditated killing of a human being by another human being.”

Can you see the difference?

There are several variations on this, depending on wherever you go. Temeria still has it down as “The unlawful killing of a human being” and just leaves it there.

I assume that as a result, there is a whole lot more murder going on in Temeria than there is everywhere else.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Not least because I find that I'm still trapped here in my families castle against my will and I have little else to do other than to write, answer the mail and think. I have pointed out to my sister on multiple occasions that Kerrass and I could easily sneak over the back wall until all of this dies down but for some reason she wasn't entirely convinced by my scheme. She seems to be of the opinion that Sir Robart has the bit between his teeth now and the only way he's going to be convinced to leave me alone is if the High Sheriff grabs him by the scruff of the neck and takes him elsewhere.

I'm still not that worried about what's going to happen to Kerrass and I as I think we can successfully argue our case before the magistrate and Emma has promised that she can provide enough money to counter any bribes that Sir Robart and his flunkies might be able to provide to any magistrates.

So the only worrying that I have to do is about the state of my eternal soul.

Did I murder someone? Or more accurately, did I murder several someone's?

I have talked before about the duality that exists inside my head. I can know something is true in my head, but not know it in my heart or vice versa. It's on those rare occasions when both head and heart agree that I manage to get a good night's sleep which is, unfortunately, far from a regular occurrence at the moment. Not just historical nightmares but also the faces of those men that I have killed.

I know that it was the right thing to do. I do. Even now, I'm reliably informed that there are people in that area of Lyria and Rivia that still give thanks for the arrival of Kerrass and I to the countryside. I know that there are people who still grieve for the people that have fallen to the swords of fanatics but we have both been told that they will sleep a little easier for the fact that the perpetrators have been killed.

So why can't I sleep?

Here's the thing. The religious commandment, as passed down by the prophets, says “Thou shalt not commit murder” but what does that even mean?

I would like to think that I am a rational human being. I have been at peace, for years, with the fact that my scientific brain counters my spiritual side on a regular basis and that my spiritual side is constantly telling me to put my faith in the Holy flame, while my scientific side is telling me that the Holy Flame might well be just another aspect of magical power that entered this world through an equally magical phenomenon called the conjunction of spheres.

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That argument has been settled and I am at peace with that. So now, I worry enough that I can't sleep. I worry for my soul.

So, let's break it down. Did we kill people? Absolutely. Would do it again. Those people deserved to be killed.

Did we pre-meditate doing it? Again, Yes. They outnumbered us by ten to one. If we were going to do so successfully then we would need to “pre-meditate” our strategy and our tactics carefully.

So were they “persons?”

Eehhhhhh.

I mean technically, I suppose yes. They had four limbs, a head and enough intelligence to be able to form words. Leaving aside the perverse pleasure that they took in the murder and torture of others which I could argue takes away that privilege.

So here's another thing that occurs as I sit here. If Kerrass and I had just killed another group of peasants. If there hadn't been some noblemen's sons in there, then this wouldn't have even come up. So does that mean that there are some people who are more “person” than others?

Probably.

Before you all start. I know that this is something that philosophers and thinkers have been arguing about since the law was first conceived. When a man kills another in the street, we call it murder.

But what about on the battlefield? Fighting and killing someone on the battlefield is also covered by that definition of murder. A whole bunch of persons face of against another whole bunch of persons and you'd better believe that they've been premeditating their asses off, thinking about ways to kill the people on the other side of the field. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

But that's ok is it?

Religions killings as well. Which is how these fucks got away with the awful things that they did. I know this because they told me that this was the case. They had been told by their “priest” that the killings were ok, indeed that they would be welcomed by the holy flame which means that the killings were lawful.

But what if that priest is an idiot. Or trying to be political. Or has a strong dislike for the colour of the dead persons skin, the shape of their ears, the colour of their eyes. They tell the impressionable sons of bitches at their command that “The Holy Flame says that this is lawful” and suddenly he has unleashed a pack of hounds.

Ooh, while I think about it. We can also claim that we are defending ourselves. If a man intends to do me harm then the law says that I am allowed to defend myself.

I can also defend others as well. People that I care about as well as children, women, the elderly or any others that might require my protection.

It is through this last that I find that I can most easily justify these recent deaths to myself. Yes I am still filled with doubts about the whole thing. Kerrass claims that this is what makes me a good man, that I keep questioning my own actions. It's that duality again. My scientific brain argues, correctly, that the people that did these things were a pack of rabid dogs that needed to be put down so that they wouldn't do it again.

We couldn't take it to the proper authorities as there was every indication that the “Proper authorities” would let the bastards off for political reasons and they would just go off and continue to do their thing somewhere else. So in the end there was a Witcher's sword. But yes, I still have doubts. My spiritual side screams at me and keeps me up at nights that I killed or helped to kill a set of holy knights and a priest. That way lies damnation.

Another reason that I just want to get out of here. I need something to do, to get on with things so that I'm not worrying about this bullshit. No matter how I turn things around, I could not have walked on by and left these bastards to keep killing and maiming and torturing. I keep turning it around in my head despite the knowledge that the answer will still be the same. I killed them. I helped kill more. I would do it again and I absolutely intended to kill the bastards.

Those bastards who strode into a village at the orders of a mad priest who had decided that the church was going soft in it's newer, more relaxed tone, had been brought there by a jealous man who had been spurned by a woman, and decided to kill the woman and all others who might have had contact with her.

Who might have had contact with her. Even when they hadn't.

I'm getting angry again as I write this and I find that the anger is always useful in pushing my doubts away.

Kareen told us that she had been beaten by a knight because she used to go up to Sally's meadow to pick herbs for cooking. Because this might have led her into contact with Saffron then that meant that Kareen was fair game for the beating.

I say beating but let's call it what it was. They took a whip to her. One of those flails that they call Lamia where there are several tails to the whip, each with a small barb of metal. If the Inquisitor is being particularly nasty, they don't clean the barbs between beatings which means that the injuries can turn sour and leave a person dying in agony.

Kerrass has none of my moral quandaries. What he's struggling with is the fact that he's being cooped up in the castle. I understand that he's exercising his frustrations by mercilessly beating up training dummies and sleeping his way through some of the maids in the castle. He has a group of three that are his favourites although that might need to be cut down to two soon as one of them is becoming jealous. Emma told me to have a word with him about this recently, that she had no objection to him having his way with any willing woman, especially as he wasn't going to leave any of them “in the family way,” and therefore it was a good way for the girls to exorcise their own....”needs” was the word she used. But she objected if it was going to cause a disruption to the running of the castle.

Kerrass had responded with telling me that I should just kill this Robart cunt and then we could move on. I responded with the, now, family joke of “He's not a cunt. A cunt has warmth depth and feeling,” but it still didn't manage to raise a smile to Kerrass' face.

He's bored and I know how he feels.

Emma is busier than ever, handling the transfer of our families trade to Oxenfurt and other ports after Novigrad's victimisation of our families business enterprises. I'm not sure, yet, if Novigrad has realised that Emma isn't bluffing with this. She's already in the process of paying off the various landlords who we have contracts with, on the waterfront so that we can store our goods there while waiting for shipment. The materials and the workmen are already moving into place to extend and overhaul the mercantile docks of Oxenfurt to handle the increased flow of traffic and the burghers of Oxenfurt are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of bringing more trade through the town.

For the record, Emma wants a public apology, in writing as well, for the absurd victimisation of Coulthard trading enterprises at the hands of the customs officials at the behest of Sir Robart de Radford. She also demands the removal of Sir Robart from that post as well as the removal or reassignment of any appointments that he may have made while he was in office.

She also expects suitable monetary compensation for the losses that his false accusations have caused the family enterprise.

Privately, she tells me that, in the long run, extending and using the docks at Oxenfurt was a plan that she had been working on for a while and would, in the end, actually work out better in the long run. Because we wouldn't be charged for using the docks that we built while at the same time, we would be able to charge people for their use. I did ask if she still wondered why people hate us but she told me that business people admire ruthlessness and so long as we reinvest our money into the city or the land then we shouldn't have too much trouble. Also, apparently, we aren't the only mercantile enterprise that resents the high tariffs that Novigrad charges and she is being cheered on by many.

Regardless of this I asked Sir Rickard to find my sister, Laurelen and Mark some new bodyguards. Several of them and told him that money was no expense on the grounds that Emma would be able to pay for it out of the docking fees. Sam is a soldier and surrounded by his own men so I reasoned that he would be able to look after himself.

Sir Rickard saw my point but enquired about a bodyguard for me.

Kerrass was listening to this conversation and laughed before pointing out that I was so into doing “stupid things” that the odds of me living long enough to be assassinated was remote at best.

I did not find that reassuring.

But as I say, Kerrass is not bothered by my moral problems. Instead, he is of the opinion that what we did was kill a bunch of monsters.

There are times when I envy the simple life of a Witcher.

But, I chose to be a scholar and to analyse everything with moral repercussions and things, so who's the bigger idiot really?

It's me isn't it. It's always me.

But Yes. Kerrass is of the opinion that we killed a bunch of monsters and, when I sit down and properly think about it rather than letting my training in higher ethics and moral systems get in the way....

He's right.

Because of our actions there will be a few fewer people hiding in the dark, there will be a few fewer little old women who's greatest crimes are knowing a little bit of something about something, who will be tied up against the stake and burnt.

It doesn't bring Saffron, or Sally, or Pula or any of those other villagers back. But by the Flame it does make me feel better about it.

There, see. Now I'm in a much better mood.

After burying the three librarians we went down into the village and began the hunt. Because that was what it was. We were hunting them. In the same way that Kerrass would hunt down a creature or a monster, we asked questions about the men who had committed these crimes.

It was tricky at first, even though a number of people recognised us both from the last time that we had come through this area, we were still running up against the problem that a number of the villagers still believed that the knights had spies, or agents amongst the other people that we gathered there. We found no evidence of that but what this rumour had done had been to fan the old-fashioned hate that becomes entrenched in village society. Suddenly, old...grievances and feuds were brought out into the open air.

“Remember what he said about our Neville,” and “Well, he always had a shifty look about him, always said so.” were the kinds of things that were coming up. We found out that there had been fights and abuse thrown and as Kareen had said, people were moving on.

Not that I could blame them.

“Holy” knights, like the ones that had attacked this place....

Ok look. I'm a follower of the church of the Holy Fire and my Elder brother is soon to be enthroned as a Cardinal of the church, but these....individuals....have nothing to do with the word Holy. I've known a number of good and devout men who would call themselves “Church knights,” or belong to “Sacred” orders of knights who would look at what these people did and be disgusted.

And rightly so.

But it would be wrong to deny the fact that sometimes, people of all religions. And I really must stress “ALL” religions, use their scriptures for violent purposes.

So anyway,

Bands of knights like this one, once they've established a place where they know they can get food and other supplies as well as being able to spend a leisurely day or two burning a few people at the stake, will often come back. People, will be encouraged to spy on each other, the better to sell out their neighbours to the flames and thus, hopefully, better prepare their immortal soul for the afterlife.

It's only human to be afraid of whatever comes next but one of the things that pisses me off about these bastards is that they pray on that fear. They pray on the fear of those people that have not had the.... advantages of people like me and people that can afford to spend their time and money on a suit of armour and train to be able to call themselves knight.

The first thing that Kerrass and I did when we went down into the village was that we kicked the burning stakes down. One of them had been embedded deep in the ground so I borrowed a woodsman's axe and cut it down. We pulled apart the remains of the ash and stood in the middle of the village square and started to yell for people's attention. We stood there, loud and proud and insisted that people pay attention to us. It was still raining and people were terrified of the supposed “sacrilege” that we had performed but they came eventually.

We stood up and we told them that what had been done to them was evil. We told them that the knights had murdered the people that they had burned, that they had murdered their village spirit in a literal as well as figurative sense and then we told them that we, the two of us, intended to hunt the bastards down and kill them for the monsters that we knew them to be.

I told them who I was and declared that I considered what had been done to them as being evil. That it was my feudal right as a lord of these lands to seek justice for the dead people. I meant every word although I carefully didn't point out that technically, the lands that I was talking about were somewhere to the North West and only claimed Lordship here by being a Lord of the Greater Nilfgaardian empire. I told them who I was and said that if any of the people listening really were spies for the pox-filled sons of goats that had done these things then they could tell their masters who I am and that I am coming for them.

Kerrass did the same. In turn he told them about the affection that he had for this village and the people that lived in it. He told them about his history here and how, over the years, come to view this village on the hill as a second home. He spoke about the love that he had for the land and for the people and about how he thought it was a shame that a few cowardly bastards had spoiled that for the people that were here as well as the children that would come after them.

We dared any spies to come forwards and kill us. We dared any watchers to leave then and carry word of our declaration to our enemies.

Of course no one left nor did anyone walk out and challenge us.

We then did a quick circuit, walking to every house and speaking to everyone we could find in an effort to leave no-one with the impression that we had been informed on by one person or the other. The only person that I thought we needed to pay special concern about was Kareen herself but we met one of her sons and they were already making plans to take the poor woman a long way away from here.

We left the village in the direction that we were pointed, both of us taking the time to piss up against the tree from which the informant swung. Not because we hated him. But because we wanted to emphasise the point that we were enemies of the knights that had done these things.

It turned out that the man was the village bully. He was a wagon driver by trade and his job was to take all the stuff off for market. He would load up his wagon before making the two day journey into “town” where he would drop the goods off to the merchants, collect the money and the other supplies that the village needed before getting back on his wagon and heading back. The problem with this system was that this meant that he was in charge of who got what kind of supplies. Who got the money and whatever else. The village couldn't afford to send another able-bodied worker with him as that meant that someone else would be missing from the work force where every man was needed.

The pattern of the village was such that they were fairly affectionate towards the three monsters that lived up the hill. Sally was a regular presence, playing with the children and the village had known, for a long time that she was there and had adopted the village as “hers” in the way of her species.

They also knew about Pula's presence and had known that if anyone got really really sick, or really badly injured, then the person to go and ask would be Pula as he would be able to perform “miracles”. I could identify the miracles as being advanced surgical techniques but I decided that I didn't want to take away from Pula's accomplishments.

The village, as a whole, was less enamoured of Saffron until she had been instrumental in seeing off a bandit attack with her horns, powerful legs and fire magic. The village used to accept that, occasionally she would come down to the village and see if there were any eligible men around.

The town bully had never got a look in. She had turned him down flat on two occasions, spurning him for men who he considered to be “Less than him” in some way.

It was not hard to imagine that he had got to drinking in the town and gotten the idea in his head to hand over knowledge of the Succubus to one of the knights that was nearby, encouraging the locals to inform on each other.

We rode hard for about half a day towards this town, intentionally leaving nice, easy to follow tracks before we turned aside and went off road. What we needed was more information. We knew that they were knights and that approximately sixteen of them had attacked the library. What we didn't know was whether or not there were any more knights or where their base was. Was there a chapter house somewhere or did they have any patrons.

That was the most dangerous possibility to me. That this was some kind of politically motivated situation. That some noble, angry at the increasing power of the Sorceresses or whatever. Or even, they had discovered that their political opponents were particularly anti-religion and so had chosen to sponsor a group of religious fanatics in an effort to tell the world that he was better than his opponent because “Look, I'm so religious that I set up this band of church knights.”

For those people that are thinking that this might be a little far fetched then I should point out that I can provide numerous examples of history where this was the case.

I won't give you a blow by blow account of how we hunted the knights though. It involved lots of watching and waiting, sounding out their territory and finding out what they liked to get up to.

We often commented to each other that it was exactly like hunting a regular monster. We needed to identify it's lair, establish it's motivation or type of madness, we needed to know numbers and how far were they prepared to go.

It took time, it took effort.

But we also kept seeing signs, signs that reinforced that we were doing the right thing.

We saw a small clutch of crosses by the side of the road where a group of people had been crucified. We went to look and although we couldn't tell for certain, there was absolutely no reason for their deaths.

We found a burnt out cottage with the corpse of an old woman outside who had been hacked to pieces by swords and axes. There was a herb garden outside and it looked as though the poor woman had committed the unpardonable sin of being old, knowledgeable about plants and being a woman.

We came across a windmill where two women had been burnt at the stake. There was another village nearby who, similar to the village on the hill, were in a state of shock. It seemed that the two women operated the mill. The mill had belonged to one of the women's father so that when he died, she had simply taken it over.

A couple of the villagers claimed that the two women were lovers but the vast majority of people told us that the one woman was a helper. The owner simply didn't want to marry some....man who didn't know how to look after a mill and would ruin the business that her father had spent his life building up. We had a look inside and someone had taken a hammer to the mill-workings.

“I've seen this kind of thing before.” Kerrass told me. “They're drunk on it. They had a great deal of fun with Saffron, Pula and Sally feeling as though they were strong and doing the work of their God. Then they liked that feeling so they went down into the village to do some more. Now they've become addicted to the feeling and they want to keep doing it over and over again.”

I nodded. I had seen the depredations of the Church of the Holy Flame in Novigrad and this was uncomfortably similar to that.

I felt itchy and uncomfortable in my own skin.

We came to the town where the first wagon driver had made contact with the knights. The trick here is to not think of it as being like Oxenfurt or Novigrad. You need to think of it as being much smaller. Originally a crossroads built around an old stone bridge. It was the kind of place where you need some kind of central town for all the merchants and larger businesses to gather. The countryside needs towns like it once every day or two's ride because otherwise the villages would have nowhere to sell their goods. Every village has a blacksmith, thatcher and a carpenter but not every village has a Tannery, Tavern, Market, Cooper, Inn, Fletcher Forrester, Witch....

By Witch I mean Herb-woman, healer, midwife or whatever. They all tend to get lumped into the same category of “Female knowledges that men don't want to have anything to do with.” They get called the local “Witch” despite the fact that relatively few of them have any kind of magical skills whatsoever.

My point is, you can only go so far before you need a bit more civilisation. Sooner or later you need a place where you can get those, slightly more specialised goods that you might not be able to find in your average, 6-7 hut sized village.

We had stopped off at several villages to make our presence felt and as such, we were anticipated when we got to the town. People didn't exactly flee from us, nor was there any of the attempts to get the children indoors which there can sometimes be when there is pending violence. But at the same time both the tavern-keeper and the innkeeper apologised but told us to seek shelter elsewhere with the legend...

“Look sirs, we're decent folk hereabouts and we don't want any trouble.”

Kerrass was stewing outside so I was doing a lot of the talking.