Chapter 111: He must have been evil

“We stopped to listen as he spoke for what felt like hours. He spoke about the dangers from the heretical south, the evils of magic and Sorcery. He decried the existence of monsters and mutants, non-humans and deviants of any kind and about how they all needed to be destroyed so that the holy fire could help keep us warm when the Frost comes.

“I am unashamed to say that I wept as I listened for the images that it conjured. I wanted to help him. To help them make the world a better place.

“We offered our service and our blades to the cause of the Bishop on the spot. My brother explained that I was still in training as I had yet to come into my proper growth. He was tested a little by one of the other knights who soundly drubbed my brother but at least he managed to break a couple of lances against the man but long story short we were accepted into the holy order.”

“Those first weeks were wonderful. Our father had brought us up in the proper faith and the proper way to behave but it felt so good to be part of something that we knew to be right. It felt good to be so....so free of doubt. We were also able to study the scriptures in a way that we never were before and we helped to build our fortress.”

(Frederick's note again. It may come as a surprise to you, as it certainly was to me, that the lad couldn't read.

I did ask how he managed to study the scriptures when he couldn't read and it turned out that this Bishop Sansum could recite them from memory, although he did admit that Sansum had several copies of many holy books in his rooms despite never being seen to read them.

How did the kid know that the books were holy, and how did he know that the scripture was accurate?

Bishop Sansum told him that they were.

I'll let you roll that one round in your brain for a moment.

This is one of the reasons that I don't believe that Sansum was properly ordained. I don't know but I suspect that, at best, he was some kind of Lay monk who had taken the bits of scripture that he wanted before choosing to use those bits of scripture in his own way. I suspect that he left whatever monastery or abbey that he had been part of, because there wasn't enough fire and doom in the sermons and the practices there. I've been trying to track the man down in my spare moments but I can't find him. I assume that he did have some training but I'm also guessing that he changed his name for reasons of his own.

“Sansum” is an odd name for it though. Normally such people rename themselves after saints or famous holy men but I can't find the name anywhere)

“We trained as well. Hard, good training. I know more about horsemanship and swordsmanship now than my father had ever taught us. We had been talented before but now we were getting good. There was a real feeling that we were a group of friends, fighting the good fight against the darkness of the world. We had to depend on each other, we had to live together and we had to trust each other. We fought....We helped people.” He was pleading with us. Pleading for us to believe him.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“I was just a squire, so I didn't really get involved in too many of the missions. They didn't go out for more than a couple of days at a time so I wasn't needed to go with my brother to help him get into his armour or do anything like that.

“Then they made me a knight about three days ago. A mission had gone out and two of our brothers in arms had not come back. “Killed by evil,” is what we were told and they wanted to make up some numbers which was when I started to feel my first doubts. I wanted to be made a knight because I had earned the privilege rather than because there were a couple of empty saddles that needed to be filled.

“I liked being a knight though. I liked the extra privileges and having people do what I told them rather than having to run around after other people. I was able to sleep in my own bed rather than having to be called to some other knights bed as women were forbidden in the order so the rest of us had to serve wherever we could.

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“But then I could hear the stories of the other knights, including the stories about what had happened when those two men had died.

“I don't know. The way the others were laughing and joking about what had happened, made me sick.”

He shuddered.

“They were telling jokes about how someone had squealed like a girl while they nailed him to a tree and about how he had wept as they tore is unholy wife apart. They spoke about the pleading of the villagers while witches were burnt at the stake.

“I had to leave. I get that witches and monsters are our enemies and they need to be destroyed but surely we shouldn't be gloating over that. Surely we don't prolong the suffering. They need to be destroyed, not tortured.

“I took my doubts to Bishop Sansum. He told me that it is only right to enjoy the proper defeating of evil and that I would know the truth of matters when I fought against darkness myself. I left his rooms reassured and began to look forward to my first mission.

“In the end that mission was a day ago. We had heard that enemies were coming for us and that we needed to hunt them down before they came for us. We were to investigate accusations that we had been given that a woman was a witch.

“I don't know what I was expecting. Stories that I've been told, vary from the horrifically beautiful arch-woman who is lewd and overtly-sexual (Frederick's note: I'm pretty sure he didn't know what this meant) to the image of the terrifyingly old crone who is still moving around long after she should be dead. I don't know what I was expecting but I knew that it was more than this.

“This woman was middle aged. She was happy and smiling, a large fat woman with rosy cheeks who was cradling a baby in one arm and chasing another grand child through her garden.

“She reminded me of old mother Gammer in the village near where my father used to live. I looked for signs of magic. I looked for obscene beauty, I looked for the black cat and the demonic sigils daubed in blood against the walls. I looked for obscene rites and anything else that I could think of. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“She just seemed like an old woman who knew quite a lot about herbs.

“I told the leader of the three of us that had been sent on this mission together that I couldn't find any signs of witch-craft and he told me that I wasn't looking hard enough. He sent my brother in and he came out holding a book and a cockerel. Telling me that the Cockerel was a sign of demon's work and that the book was a book of incantations.

“I had seen the book, it had pictures of berries and leaves in it. The woman claimed it was a recipe book. Our leader claimed that that was proof enough. That it was the recipes to her demonic brews that she had written down and ordered her flogged and burnt.

“She had a son nearby. I know because he tried to protect her, despite her telling him not to. He ran at my brother when my brother moved to take the woman and tie her to a stake that another of my fellow knights was already erecting. My brother killed him with this horrible grin on his face. It looked like....It looked like lust. His eyes were hooded and he was breathing heavily.

“I felt sick.

“They stripped her and tied her to the stake and ordered me to flog her as I needed to prove my devotion to the holy flame.”

The next words were a long time coming. We all thought that he had stopped talking but, as it turns out, he was screwing himself up to get to the point where he could say it.

“I refused. I couldn't do it. She just looked like an old woman.

“I was weak.

“They chained my wrists and took me back to the fortress where the Bishop declared my penance. That I was to be flogged and that I should complete a circuit of our holdings wearing only armour.

“It was my brother that laid the first lash. He told me that I was weak and that he would not be. That he needed to prove that our bloodline was better than that. He told me that he wasn't my brother any more. I didn't recognise him as he said the words. As he hissed the words.

“Then they put the mail over my body and loaded me up. I don't think they expected me to return alive. They were making jokes about me and wondering if I would....What I would be willing to do if it would keep me alive.”

Then he stopped, the tears falling freely.

I felt dirty and sick. The healer was mixing up a drink for the kid. “You weren't weak.” The healer told him as he handed over the drink. “You were strong,”

“Much stronger than I would have been.” I told him. I hope it wasn't true but until we're in that moment, do any of us really know what we would do in that moment. “You should be proud.” I added after a moment's thought.

He drank what he was given and fell into an exhausted sleep.

We spent the next couple of days interviewing him between the three of us. Kerrass did most of the talking. He had questions about layout of the buildings, patrol patterns and training. He asked about deployment and equipment and thought processes.

But still the lad fought us for every answer. He just didn't want to answer us. We would confront him over and over again with the things that he had told us. The things that he had told us, as well as the state of his own body. It was sickening.

But the way he said it, the way he described that time that he spent with those knights. As he described it he had been there for six months at most. Six months. But I don't know whether the scars will ever leave him. If the scars can ever be truly healed. Not my area of expertise.

It reminded me of Cousin Kalayn in a way. The way that my cousin had been so convinced that he was right, so sure that everything was the way it was for a reason. It was the first time that I started to feel a certain amount of sympathy for my long departed cousin, thinking of him being brought up in the poisonous atmosphere of bitterness and anger as well as the declaration that they were in the right.

We didn't ask the lad about his childhood and what that was like. I like to think that we didn't ask because we didn't have time to ask. That there was so much other things going on but at the same time, how much of what was done to him in his order was only possible because of whatever had happened to him at home with his father and elder brothers?

He was convinced, convinced that he was in the wrong. That the what had been done to him was fair and justified. He told us, time and again that he had been wrong to challenge the authority of the knights over him. That he should have burned the witch for what she was but even as he said those things, you could see his youthful innocence warring against it. His....His disbelief at what he could hear himself saying.

We had to be careful, as well, because he was also very, very weak and exhausted beyond reasoning. The healer, regularly had to stop us from carrying on our questions so that the lad could rest.

It was awful.

He cursed himself for his weakness over and over again, telling us that he was weak, that we were evil and that we should have let him die. That we should have let those knights mete out the punishment that he deserved.

I remember this conversation that I had with him. Kerrass was outside keeping watch, and the healer was also asleep so it must have been in the early hours of the warning. We had to keep a watch on him because he had told us that the only reason that he didn't end his own life was because the Holy Flame declares “self-slaughter” to be a sin. Having known despair myself I knew that even the threat of damnation cannot keep the....the pressure of staying alive from being unbearable and the healer had agreed.

“Why don't you hate me?” He asked me.

“What?” I had been writing up some notes. I can't remember on what. “Why don't I hate you?”

“I am weak, I am....unclean and base. I am damned. I tried to let a creature of darkness go.”

“No you didn't and no you aren't.” It's really hard to not sound as though I was getting frustrated. This was not a new argument between us all. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that you can tell an upset person that they shouldn't be upset and they will look at up at you and say something like.... “Of course you're right, how stupid of me to be upset. Of course, now that you point it out to me I will perk up directly.”

That thought process assumes that the person that you're talking to is acting rationally.

I got up and approached him, pulling my chair over with me.

“You didn't let a creature of darkness go. What you tried to do was to appeal to common sense. You asked them to really look at what they were doing. You asked them not to leap to conclusions and run the risk of flogging and burning an innocent woman.” I thought about it for a moment. Trying to look for another argument. Another way in to a debate that had been had over so many occasions to try and point out what had happened. Another argument that we hadn't already tried.

“Let me ask another question?” I asked him. “Why did they order the woman to be flogged before they burnt her?”

“To purge the evil from her body.”

“Ok,” I said, “let's assume that that's true, that that's what flogging does. But isn't that what the burning's about?”

He just stared at me.

“We're supposed to burn Witches aren't we? Flame knows why. I assume that it's because we worship the eternal fire, therefore subjecting a witch to the fire is to purify her. But isn't that what the other knights were trying to get you to do by flogging her? They were trying to purify her weren't they.”

“They were trying to purge her of evil.”

“Which means that they were trying to get rid of all the evil in her right?”

“Yes.”

“Isn't that what purifying someone does?”

“Ummmm.”

It is sometimes a far too easy trap to fall into to assume that ignorance means stupidity. His education was rather lacking although this was clearly not his fault.

“So why did they want you to flog her as well?”

“To make sure.”

“To make sure of what?”

“That all the evil had definitely left her.”

“Ok. Have you seen another witch-burning? Other than the one that we're talking about?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“Good.” I said aloud as I wondered how many times “many” meant. I also wanted to know how many people this kid had seen burnt. My family had gone out of there way to keep the younger members of the family from seeing the more horrific aspects of the worship of the holy fire. What kind of situation leaves a kid saying that he had seen “Many” burnings. “Was there ever anything left?” I asked him, “After the fires had finished burning.”

“Well no.”

“So all the evil must have definitely gone then right?”

He stared at me blankly.

“If there was nothing left to contain the evil then the evil must have gone in the flame. Right?”

He reluctantly nodded.

“So, why flog her as well? You even question yourself whether the woman was guilty.”

“Evil is evil, there are no degrees of evil. Evil is Evil. If you are possessed of evil then you must be destroyed.”

Those weren't his words. I could recognise a quote when I saw one and I wondered who it was had made that quote.

“It is, is it? Oh how I wish I still believed that there weren't simply shades of grey.” I tried to take another approach. “What else destroys evil in a person?”

“What?”

“Ok, answer me this. What is it that makes us evil?”

“Sin,” he answered promptly, I wasn't surprised. It was a common question answer process in basic theology, the kind of thing that is preached from the pulpit at every available opportunity. “Sin, is the root of all evil.” he told me.

“Very good. So if you and I sin, how do we expunge that same sin?” I winced as I realised my mistake.

“We confess. Then we do penance. But I was doing my penance to cleanse me of my sin of disobedience.”

“Yes you were. But was the objective there to kill you? or to get rid of your sin?”

“To get rid of my sin, even if it did kill me?”

“What is the ultimate measurement of goodness?” I asked him, beginning to see a way through.

“Service.” He told me. Again, as he should. “Service to the flame, to the church and to our fellow man.”

That's nearly what that passage of scripture says. So close but again, I decided not to set him right just yet. I also decided to leave aside the fact that that self-same saying separated the Holy flame from the church and again from our fellow man.

“So let me ask another question.” I told him. “If service is the ultimate measure of goodness. Why is that woman, learning about herbs to heal her people in the village a bad thing?”

“But you see. That's how evil gets in.” He told me. “It starts off with something simple. Something that seems as though it is a good thing and then it turns it's deeds and changes them until it becomes evil.”

That small pit at the bottom of my stomach opened up under me again. I was going to lose another argument because, again, I was assuming that the lad was thinking rationally.

The priest, his older brother and, I guess, his father had taken a good and decent young lad and turned him into a fanatic. It was only by dint of something extraordinary within him that he wanted to resist that evil.

That he saw the evil for what it was, even for that briefest of moments when he tried to resist all of the awful conditioning that had been done to him.

“Service.” I told him. “How does it serve mankind to kill all of humanity?”

“The few that are left will be the best of people.”

“But who will do all the things that needs to be done. Who will plough the fields and hunt the animals?”

I scratched my head as I tried to think of another approach. “Was the man evil? The man who your brother killed when he tried to defend his own mother?”

“He must have been.”

“How do you know?” I demanded. “Can you tell by looking at him?”

“No. But he must have been evil.”

“Why?”

“Because he attacked the knights of the church.”

“So? If a man attacked my mother I would do my best to defend her as well. Wouldn't you?”

“Yes. But that makes me evil too.”

He sobbed for a while and I saw that I had pushed him too hard and did my best to comfort him. I told him the same things over and over again, that he was a good and decent young man with a long future ahead of him. I did so in an effort to make him believe them but I doubt he listened. I doubt that he even heard me.

Here's a truth for you. Something that I have seen in my own life. If you tell a young person something, over and over and over again. Especially if you are in a position of power or authority over them such as a parent, teacher or priest. Then sooner or later you will get through to them and they will start to believe it, even if you are telling them something cruel and unpleasant.

I still have a lot of rage against my father. A LOT of rage for this very reason. I believed that I was wasting my life for ages. I believed that I was becoming a scholar for my own purposes in an effort to try and rebel against my father's authority but that isn't the truth.

Now, I believe in knowledge and I believe in debate. I believe in studying our past so that we can learn from it and I believe in the betterment of ourselves through the taking on of new ideas and new concepts. So I became a scholar because that's what you do when you believe in those kinds of things, almost because there is nothing else in life that will take these sentiments. Maybe politics, but I don't think I could live with myself.

This lad believed in the holy fire so hard. So very hard, that people had used that belief and turned it into a form of self-loathing.

As I've said before, I believe in the Holy Flame as a guiding light through the darkness that guides me towards a better future and a form of safety. I see it as a beacon, something to be aspired towards rather than as a scourge to drive us.

And it sickens me when people take the same scriptures that I have read and reread a thousand times and turned them into a doctrine of hate.

Which is ironic because I looked at this poor kid, lying on the bed before me and I felt my own hatred against the people who had done this to them redouble.

We couldn't stay for much longer though. There was a danger that we would draw the knights down onto the head of the healer. He was confident that he could move a sick, damaged....young man around with the help of some of the neighbours but the presence of “the Witcher” and “the Man with the Spear” was getting harder and harder to keep secret. He had some plans to flee to the hills anyway so that he could remain safe in the face of the knights potential wrath. He had friends and he knew that the knights were more likely to pursue a woman in his line of work than they were a man. A man is a doctor, a woman is a healer. The one is science, the other is Witchcraft and there were still plenty of “Witches” around in the countryside before they got to him.

I wrote the lad a letter of introduction to Mark. We weren't that far geographically from Tretogor and my brothers seat of power. I would have written the lad himself a letter but I as I knew he couldn't read it, it struck me as a futile gesture. I told the healer what to do though, that he should be sent off to Tretogor with my letter addressed to Arch-Bishop Mark and I also left some money for the journey.

But Kerrass wanted to move on anyway. You see the lad had also given us some other interesting information. Namely the name and the location of the lord who supported the “Knight's of the flaming sword” and he wanted to pay the fucker a visit before moving on.