Chapter 109: Will he die if we move him?

“I know that you don't want trouble.” I told the poor man. Hollow eyed and nervous. “But let's be honest here my friend. You have trouble, and I'm not talking about myself or my Witcher companion.”

The poor man looked miserable.

“This is what's going to happen.” I told him. “I know because I've seen this before. Neither the Witcher or I (We were avoiding using each other's names. No reason other than it just seemed prudent) intend you, or any of your fellows harm. Indeed, we want to rescue you from what's happening.”

The man just stood there, sweating and shaking.

“In a little while,” I told him. “The knights are going to come back. They will ask you whether my friend and I came through town. I'm not going to hide from you and you can tell them what you like, I am quite happy with that as we intend to head in the direction of the knight's headquarters and we intend to kill every knight that we find there.”

I had been wrong before....Now he was starting to sweat.

“We think that they are burning people and torturing people and generally executing people to satisfy themselves rather than because of any particular order or need. We think that they are evil. Not the people that they are persecuting and we mean to put an end to that. You can tell them all of that if you wish as well as the fact that we made you nervous and that you really didn't want to get involved, so you turned us out of your inn and refused to serve us for the ungodly wretches that you knew us to be.”

He was nodding.

“We really mean you no harm, do you understand?”

He was still nodding and I sighed.

“You can even tell them that I threatened you if you like.” I told him. “All I want to know is if you can tell me anything about them. I can pay you.”

I flashed money but the people shifted away from me and turned their backs.

I sighed and left.

Kerrass was on the back of his horse already.

“Any luck?” he asked without looking hopeful.

“Nah.” I told him climbing into my own saddle. “These people are brutalised. Not only terrified for what the knights will do to them next time they come round but they're also terrified for their immortal souls and daren't speak to the likes of us.”

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Kerrass nodded and started to lead us away from town.

“We need to know more.” he said.

“I agree.” I told him, “But what do we do?”

“Well, I all but know where their home base is. The tracks that we've been following head North-East but we still don't know enough. I would also like to see if we couldn't thin their numbers a bit as well as head off any reinforcements that might head their way.”

“Not to mention any other pressures that might be brought to bear.” I commented.

“That's more your problem than mine.” He said with a wry smile. I was glad to see that he was beginning to come back to himself. I had been concerned for him after we had buried our friends but it seemed that he was feeling better with an enemy to hunt. “I'm a Witcher and can vanish into a crowd by simple virtue of taking the swords off my back. But you're a Lord and need to think about your reputation.”

“I don't think it will do my reputation much harm to be seen to kill a few murderous fuck-heads. I'm more concerned about escaping alive afterwards.”

Kerrass grunted. “So long as we kill the bastards.”

“Yes, but I'd like to be alive to deal with a few more bastards after we're done.” I told him.

Kerrass just grunted at that. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“So what do we do?”

“We need to find one or two and ask them some questions.”

“I'm not going to be a party to torture Kerrass.”

He grinned at my slyly, “Murder's Ok though right?”

“For these cunts? Absolutely.”

“But torture's where you draw the line?”

“It has to be somewhere.”

“You're a funny guy sometimes Freddie. Well, anyway. I don't think we need to torture anyone. They're fanatics but in such circles there's always one or two that disagree with the direction of things but are too weak to go against the flow. They're also knights. Can you imagined them doing their own laundry or cooking or....fuck, can you see these....these things maintaining their own weapons?”

“You've done this sort of thing before then I take it.”

“Once or twice. We need to be off the road now I think. These fuck-pigs have carved out their territory now. So we need to scout it out before we start probing into their “headquarters” as it were.”

“I might just be thinking like a Lord of the manor but I'm also, still concerned about their money flow.” I reminded him as I climbed onto my own horse This sort of thing takes money and they won't be able to steal it all from the populace. If we kill them before their patron then another group will spring up and then we're back to where we started. Not to mention having a man who can afford to have us hunted down after we're done.”

“True.”

We left the road. The countryside around there was hilly rather than covered in farmland. It was the kind of place where people reared sheep rather than crops. We saw many isolated flocks and small shepherd huts. Kerrass wondered aloud if there might be anyone hiding in those huts that might be able to help us. We checked a couple, just in case but the thing about those places are that they are designed so that the occupents can keep an eye on the flocks meaning that people could just as easily see us coming and escape out the back.

Instead we took to staying in sight of the road waiting for our prey to fall into our laps.

We didn't have long to wait.

You know how sometimes, just sometimes you can look at someone and see the misery coming off them in waves. A person so comedically miserable that you want to feel some sympathy, and you do, but at the same time you can't help but laugh.

The poor man was walking along the road, barefoot through the mud and the filth that accompanies any road in the middle of Spring. Other than that though he was wearing chain-mail that even from this distance, I could tell didn't fit him properly. He had Greaves on, cod-piece, chest-plate, shoulder-guards and bracers as well as Gorget and helmet. All, much to large for him or, looking at the way that he was walking, too small. He had a sword at his hip, shield on his back and a lance on his shoulder.

A lance. A fucking lance. There's a reason that knights carry them round on spare horses and squires are only really supposed to carry them from the horse to the knights hands. But this poor young man carried it across one shoulder and as far as we could see, had been carrying it like that for several miles.

“Fucking hell.” I said as we watched the wobbling progress of the poor, bedraggled and obviously much put on creature.

“I sense a penance.” Kerrass said pointing. “He's being watched to make sure he doesn't shirk his duties.” There were two knights watching from a short distance away. Which is how we got the first proper look at our enemy.

The thing about Plate mail is that it often makes a man seem taller and broader than they actually are. So when you put them on the back of war horses, then they look even bigger. So from this distance the two men looked huge. The sun was peeping between clumps of cloud so their metal armour shone in the reflected sunlight. There was no getting around the fact that they looked absolutely magnificent. They wore red tabbards and their horses wore red barding. The symbol of a burning sword was prevalent.

At the time I remembered thinking that it looked as though someone was mimicking the order of the flaming rose, who's leader did his very best to overthrow King Foltest before the beginning of the war, the symbols were so similar.

Kerrass was strapping his sword to the side of his horse and taking out his crossbow, quick hand movements assembled the weapon.

“What do we do?” I asked him.

“What would you do if this were any other situation and you saw someone being tormented in the middle of the road?”

“I'd go down there and help them.”

“You know what?” He said with relish. “That sounds like a really good idea.”

As we got closer the sense of amusement at the poor man's pitiable state was replaced by my disgust while my enjoyment faded into a shadow of it's former state.

What we couldn't see from the top of the hill was the blood that was running underneath the armour and congealing down the side of his legs, on his arms or across his face. He was all but delirious with pain and only saw us as we stood directly in front of us.

“Woah there friend.” I told him as he all but collapsed in front of me. Shortly before he realised what was going to happen and reared back in an effort to right his balance. “Here,” I got hold of him and managed to take the lance off his shoulders for him as he staggered to a halt.

He was swaying as though he was drunk.

“Help me.” He said, his eyes wide and feverish. I doubt that he could even see us and his words were almost a prayer. “Please help me.”

Kerrass was scuffling around in his saddlebags. “How badly is he hurt?”

“Pretty fucking badly if I'm any judge.” I told him. “Easy there fella, take it slow. Let's get you down to the floor so we can have a look at you.” He was wearing all the armour but what he hadn't done was wear any of the padding or the lining that is supposed to go underneath the armour. The chain mail was rubbing his skin raw, the edges of the plates were driving into his skin and the wounds were opening and re-opening as I watched.

I helped him to the side of the road and lowered him down.

“No,” he muttered delirious. “Have to keep walking.”

“My friend,” I told him. “You're done walking now. Take it easy. Easy now.”

“Unhand that man.” I didn't need to look at the speaker to know that I would intensely dislike him.

I'd felt the ground rumbling as the awesome warhorses had been prodded and poked down the hill and I guessed that the reason that it felt as though the sun had gone in was because they were towering over me.

“Alright.” I said to the poor stricken....let's call him what he was.... victim on the floor. “Let's get some of this armour off you so that I can have a look at you. Come on then.”

I took his shield off him first and then unclipped the sword from his belt.

For those people that have never had to help a man wearing heavy armour, I would just offer this piece of advice. Don't start with the belt. The belt should only come off when it's an actual obstacle to taking off other bits of armour. This is because part of the reason the belt is there is to take some of the weight of the armour off the shoulders so that it can be supported on the waist and hips.

Armour is awful stuff. The only reason we wear it is because it's better than what happens to us if we don't wear armour. Don't believe me? Try sleeping in a suit of chain-mail. Your body will literally rebel against you.

But anyway. I've gotten side-tracked. I'm going to make a rubbish lecturer if I keep going off on tangents like this one.

“I told you to unhand that man.” There was a rustle of metal on metal and the clomping of a horse as one of the knights got closer.

“I heard you.” I told him without looking up from where I was carefully trying to undo the strap that kept the poor lad's helmet on. “I just chose to ignore you.”

“How dare you, you filthy miscreant and heretic.”

I laughed. I thought that people only talked like that in bad street theatre. The kind that you can attend for a penny at a time.

“Draw that sword,” Kerrass interrupted. He was using his most dangerous tone of voice. “And I will shove it so far up your arse that it will pick your nose.”

“What?”

It's worth repeating sometimes because it no longer surprises me, exactly how musical Kerrass' voice is. In that it's like a musical instrument. He can be melodic, charming, quiet, loud and everything in between but in this case it was the shade of voice that bypasses your civilised brain and just tells you that there is horrific danger nearby. It tends to put people on their back foot because no-one expects to have to deal with that kind of nightmare in their normal day to day life. I know that this knight didn't. He just wanted to torment this poor fucker but now he was having to re arrange his brain in preparation for some extreme violence.

I couldn't tell where the other knight was but I wasn't worried. I just kept working on the poor, whimpering child that was sat in front of me.

For child he was. I guessed that he was....fifteen? Maybe? Certainly no older than sixteen and he was well into puberty, judging the amount of body hair that had managed to get tangled into the chain-mail.

We, that means Redania, sent younger men than this to war so I shouldn't be too outraged but at the same time, the look of pain and weariness that had settled over his face. He was just letting me man handle him now, as though he wasn't at home in his own head.

“That man, that....thing.” He gestured at the poor kid. “Belongs to the knights of the Flaming sword. He answers to us and he is being punished for crimes against the order.”

“What did he do?” Kerrass' voice grated like a tombstone being forced into place.

“Oath-breaking.”

“I would be interested to know what Oath he broke.”

“Obedience.”

“Heh. Interesting.” Kerrass was putting them off guard. I had got the kid's helmet off. He was wearing a coif underneath which had been plastered into his hair by sweat and constant movement over his scalp. Blood was running freely which meant that it was going to be a nightmare to try and take off so I moved on to taking off his bracers. They were, at least, uncomplicated in the removal.

“Stop taking that armour off.” The knight thundered.

I continued to ignore him. Instead murmuring reassuring sounds to the lad, in the same way that I would to a stressed out horse.

“Why the “Knights of the Flaming Sword”?” Kerrass asked him. “I've heard of the “flaming rose” but the flaming sword seems a bit extreme isn't it?”

“We are the flaming sword that purges evil from the face of the continent.” The other man finally spoke up.

“Huh.” Kerrass commented. “Where are you based?”

“Why so many questions?” The first knight turned towards Kerrass. His attention drawn away from me which I suspect was the point of Kerrass' questions in the first place.

“Because I want to know a bit more about my enemy so that I can destroy you the easier.” Kerrass told him with absolutely no inflection in his voice. He might as well have been informing the knight that he needed a haircut.

There was a moment of silence as the two knights tried to process what they had just been told.

Now I looked up to see if Kerrass needed any help. I doubted it but overconfidence can get you killed.

One of them drew their sword. He was the first to die as Kerrass raised his right arm from underneath his cloak and shot him in the eye with his crossbow that had been hidden by his side.

It took an astonishingly long time to fall from his horse. Even though he must have died almost instantly, his arm still came up and groped towards the thing that killed him as though some part of him wanted to pull the bolt out.

The other man swore in a most un-knightly way and spurred his horse towards Kerrass who was clearly identified as the threat.

Kerrass gestured and a shower of sparks leapt from his hand. The horse startled and reared at the sudden flash and the heat. The knight, who wasn't properly braced and prepared for combat, fell off the horse with a crash.

I stopped watching and returned to my patient. The fight was already over.

Kerrass walked over to his horse and drew his sword.

The fallen man had managed to roll onto his hands and knees by the time that Kerrass had come back and was futilely struggling with the weight of his armour, trying to push himself up to his knees.

Kerrass just pushed him back over with a solid kick to the side.

I got another greave off my patient.

“I yield.” the knight called to Kerrass who was putting his weight on the man's chest to keep him on the floor.

“So?” Kerrass asked him.

“Ransom will be paid.”

“Oh yeah? And what am I going to do with that ransom?”

Kerrass re-sheathed his sword across his back and drew a knife. The knight started blubbering something about mercy.

“Mercy?” Kerrass grated. His voice was terrible. “How much mercy did you show a husband while you nailed him to a tree? How much mercy did you show him while you forced him to watch his wife be torn apart by horses?”

“What? Who are you....?”

“You know what sickens me? Is the fact that you don't know who I'm talking about you rancid fucker.”

Kerrass bent down, knelt on the knights chest until he could work the helmet off along with the gorget and cut the man's throat. All the while, the knight was screaming and blubbering about mercy.

“Disgusting,” was Kerrass' assessment. “How's our patient? Reckon he can answer some of our questions?”

He walked over to the two of us.

“What have you done?” The killing of the two knights had finally cut through the lad's pain, shock and weariness. “What have you done?” He asked again wild eyed and plainly terrified.

“Killed a pair of assholes, that's what I've done.” Kerrass told him.

“Flame Kerrass but I almost don't know where to begin? This is a little bit beyond my skill. There are places here where the plate mail has forced the chain into the poor kid's flesh.”

Kerrass came over and bent down to look at the injuries before hissing between his teeth.

“What do we do?”

“Fucked if I know,” I replied. I had managed to get the kids boots off. He was weeping with the pain and looking at the raw and burst blisters that covered his feet, I didn't blame him. “We need a healer. I don't want to move him but he can't stay here. I don't know how to take all this stuff off him without hurting him some more but he won't live long like this. He's going to bleed out from all of these surface little bullshit wounds and that's if the injuries don't turn bad. Holy Flame. I daren't even wrap him in a blanket or something because then we would have to peel it off him when the blood dries to it.”

Kerrass nodded. “Right. Threat assessment then. Will he die if we move him?”

“I don't know,” I looked down at the kid who was sat there staring into space. “Not immediately but he won't enjoy it and it might make things worse.”

Kerrass looked around.

“Right. Get as much armour off him as you can, then we'll put him on a horse and you can take him to a healer.”

“Do you wanna see if you can catch one of the spares then?”

Kerrass got to work and soon captured one of the spare horses. He also went through the knights pockets, working loose some money and gems although I guessed that the gems were probably fake.

He also arranged the bodies so it looked as though one was sucking the other's dick.

“A bit crude isn't it?” I asked him as I helped him get the poor kid up onto Kerrass' horse.

“And petty,” he said nodding. “But it will piss them off. Angry men make mistakes.”

“But will also lash out at anyone who they think might be harbouring us.”

“True, but we can't think about that now.”