Chapter 118: Oh... so many friends

“Oh so many friends.” I told him. “So many friends that you wouldn't believe. People see you for what you are now. They've seen you for the evil that you have visited on them and I will watch as they tear you down. I will laugh and give thanks to the fire for everything that they do to you. You will know what hell feels like. You will all know what it's like to go through that hell because my friends and I will show you.”

I screamed then as they took another nail.

“How many friends do you have out there?”

“Absolutely none at all.” I grinned at him. “Everything that's happening to you, I did it all by myself with the help of a Witcher?”

Another toe-nail followed and I convinced myself that I was getting used to the pain.

“Twelve.” I told them. “Twelve soldiers of the Empress.”

Another toe-nail and another scream.

“Five, Witchers all.”

The answers just tripped off my tongue and I laughed with every answer and with every scream I hammered home my victory over him.

In the end they ran out of toe-nails and started on my fingernails. When they ran out of those they started breaking my toes with a mallet.

The pain was starting to mesh together then and it took me a moment to realise that Sansum was asking me a question.

“What?” I asked him. “What do you want?”

“Why do you put up with this?” He asked. “Why do you let this happen? I can keep torturing you all day. I can torture you to death if I choose to so why do you let us do that. Just tell me the truth.”

I was no longer able to laugh but from somewhere I summoned a grin.

“Let me tell you something about me.” I rasped through the pain. “Let me tell you about some of the things that I have been through. I have been tortured by demons. Your little tray of implements isn't that scary to someone who's soul has literally been the plaything of demons. You forget several other things as well. Everything you do to me is fleeting. You take my toes, they will heal. My fingers? A little bit more of a blow, I will admit but at the end of the day, they will heal.

“I am engaged to be married to a Sorceress and my sister in law is also a Sorceress. Take my eyes, take my teeth, carve me up however you wish and I will simply be healed. Take my hands and they will grow me new hands. Take my ears, teeth, nose, genitals, take anything you want and I will grow them all back. You hold no fear of me.

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“Kill me.” I told him. “Whether deliberately or by accident and I know two things. One, I will stand before the holy flame proud of my actions here and two, I know that my friends and loved ones will visit such a vengeance on you and all those that follow you that the world will tremble when your name is spoken. Children will be frightened with the tales of your fate for generations to come and I know, for absolute certainty, that you will freeze in the hell of the eternal frost.”

As I thought he might, Sansum lost his temper then and beat me, knife and other implements forgotten. Yes he caused damage and I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Time passed in a blur.

Finally though, I heard that sound that I had been waiting for for far too long.

It was the sound of the church bell ringing. Dull and hollow, badly maintained and obviously not rung with the clapper. This was emptier. More....shrill somehow.

I waited before I heard another one ringing crash and felt my whole body relax.

Finally.

Sansum was advancing on me again with his knife, but he had also heard the bell tolling as he moved towards me.

“Wait,” I whimpered, a little surprised that I didn't need to pretend that I was at the edge of my endurance.

“Wait.” I said again. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“Well,” he grasped me by the hair and tilted my head back. I could barely see him as one of my eyes had swollen shut and the other was full of the tears of pain. “Have you come to your senses?”

“Would it surprise you to learn that I have already told you the truth?”

“Go on.”

“There is no-one else out there.” I told him. “No-one else. Just me, and a Witcher have been the architects of your destruction.”

“Our destruction?” He laughed. “You are tied to a chair and in no shape to do any destruction and the Witcher is locked in his cell, waiting for when we take him to the nearby villages where we will kill him for all to see. So that they can all see the proper way to destroy mutants and freaks.”

“Oh.” I said. “Locked up is he?”

“Of course. Does that crush you little hopes?”

“Not really,”

“Why not?”

“That idiot with the golden armour. The one you sent off to “check on the other prisoner.” He's been gone a really long time hasn't he.”

I grinned at him, showing all my teeth in what I hoped was a terrifying smile.

Sansum turned his head onto one side and considered.

“No,” he said after a while. “No, I don't believe that. I think you've got more than that out there. I think there's a half a dozen people, peasants most likely, who have been feeding you information and giving you the layout of the place. I think you've suborned our cooks and our servants.”

“Slaves you mean,” I interrupted but he ignored me.

“I think that vampire bitch is out there. You've been in touch with her from the start haven't you?”

He was suddenly at me, holding his knife to my throat.

“ANSWER ME,” he screamed at my face.

“If I was, How am I doing that do you think?” Swallowing past a blade is harder than you might think.

“She's a monster, a sorceress. She has her ways.”

“As a matter of fact, she talks to me through the holy symbol round my neck.”

He recoiled.

“The holy symbol that she, not only had made for me, but also had a real arch-Bishop bless for her.”

“Impossible,” he declared. “Impossible. Even approximations of the holy fire are harmful to creatures of evil.”

“Which is kind of my point.” I told him. “But that's not important now.”

“I still don't believe you. Two of you couldn't have done everything that you claim.”

I shrugged at him.

“I can prove it.” I told him.

“How?”

“Send two of your knights to go and check on the Witcher.”

He thought about this for a while. “You,” he pointed at a man out of my line of sight. “You, you and you.”

He turned back to me and grinned. “Only sending two men seems a little bit silly if the man has really escaped, don't you think.”

I would have shrugged but I was tied up. The respite from the pain was allowing my brain to clear so that I could start thinking again.

“Suit yourself.” I told him. “But you're making a bit of a mistake there.”

“Oh yes, and what's that.”

“Kerrass is no man. He is a Witcher.”

“A Witcher,” his lips curled. “A mutated form of evil.”

I laughed but then looked at him as an insight struck me.

“While we're waiting for your people to come back, can I ask you a question?”

He said nothing and I took it for permission.

“Why do you hate us so much?” I wondered. “All the Sorceresses, all the strangers and the creatures. The mutants and the weirdos. All the people that think something differently to you. Why do you hate us so much?”

“Hate you. You condemn us all to hell with your deviancy and your....”

“Yes yes,” I told him. “Religious doctrine and all that, but what drove you to that. Not, what drove you into the arms of the church, that I can understand as I have felt the pull of the church and the security of knowing....Of knowing that you serve the flame. But why? What drove you to this level of extremity? I once offered this same chance to another person that was considered a monster? She sat down and gave me her perspectives and her thoughts and her drives. Fucking hell man, I'm marrying that woman. So use me. Tell me why this has happened to you. And I will record it all for posterity.”

“Record it?” he snarled. “You are going to die soon.” And I saw the fear in him for the first time.

“You're afraid of us aren't you.” I told him. “You're afraid that we might be right. That we might be correct. That the definition of monster is out of date. That knowledge defeats ignorance every single time. That we are all together here in this struggle for survival, that we all came here from other places and we need to be working together to survive. That we are all monsters to each other. That's what you're afraid of isn't it. The change, the differences and the things that we represent. We are the change that you cannot handle,”

“BE SILENT.”

I laughed at him then as I knew that I had won.

“I'm going to cut you,” he snarled, “and I'm going to raise you up for all to see as we burn you for the heretic that you are. First you are going to tell us what you know and then you are going to die.”

“Maybe.”

There was a scream from somewhere a long, drawn out and horrible scream that sounded like it was intentionally drawn out. It seemed as though it echoed down the corridors.

“Maybe,” I said again as the last echoes of that terrible noise died out. “Maybe I might die but I suspect that you will be dying first.”

Then, proving that Kerrass enjoys a sense of the dramatic. A single soldier came walking in from somewhere. I couldn't see him as I was still tied up but men started yelling and shouting and running about.

He walked into the main church room and keeled over where he died on the floor.

Orders were given, weapons were drawn and swords were clashed, oaths were given and men started rushing about.

I could no longer help it. I started to laugh and I laughed for a long time.

What can I say? Sansum's face was a picture.

“No,” he said after a while. “No, I'm not afraid of you. I despise you. You are going to be the end of the human race. You and your freaks and deviants. You are going to destroy us all. The frost is coming for us all and the only thing that can prevent that is the holy fire. We have to obey. We have to obey every order, every tenet every holy law. We have to do it or the frost is coming for us all.”

A man walked up to us and saluted. His hand was shaking.

“They're all dead.” He almost whispered it. “It's like a butchers shop out there. A slaughter yard. There's blood on the walls and on the floors. Bodies are everywhere.”

Sansum didn't look away from my eyes.

“The prisoners?”

“Gone.”

Sansum still didn't take his eyes off me.

“Search the complex. Do it in teams. No one man walks alone, in pairs.”

“Arch-Bishop we....”

“Do it.” He snarled. “One man can't have done this.”

“No?” I asked him. “He's a monster deviant mutant freak. He's a creature of darkness and he can perform magic and all kinds of horrid deviant things. Do you not think that splitting your men up is exactly what he wants?”

“Or,” he told me “Is your arguing for that to get us all in one place so that he can have us all together in one place.”

I shrugged.

“Suit yourself.” I told him. There was more running and shouting.

Then we waited. No sounds of combat, no sounds of violence or fighting. Just Sansum pacing backwards and forwards in front of me.

“You asked me a question earlier.” He said suddenly. “If I ask you a straight question now, will you give me a straight answer?”

“That depends on the question?”

“Why do you hate us? All we're trying to do is to save the world. We're not as caught up in current problems. We're trying to save your souls, why can't you see that? The church is just trying to keep you warm, keep you safe and keep you away from sin. But then when we do that, you accuse us of going to far or doing the wrong thing. There is no such thing as going to far when it comes to the immortal souls of our people. Even the people that we burn are purified of evil in that burning so that when they die, they can be reborn into the flame's eternal light. Why can't you see that?”

“Because that's not what's happening here.” I told him. “Because it is provably not true. I shall give you an example, a well-known one actually. My fiancee is a higher vampire. So by your reasoning she should be the very height of evil right? If fire purges all evil then why is she immune to flame? She's not alone either, there are plenty of creatures that are immune to fire, Ifrits just off the top of my head. A Shaelmaar wouldn't even notice a fire pit, it would just curl up into a ball and have a nap until the flames died down.

“What's happening here, is that you are persecuting people that you don't like. The Holy Flame is an idea, an ideal that we aim for. It was a thing that they used to hold a new city together in the face of enormous odds against an enemy that we couldn't possibly have defeated without the hope and the security that the Holy Flame provided. But now were in a whole new world. We have tamed the wilderness, there are no more monsters clawing at our gates. We won.

“But now we try and move forwards into that new world and into that new light. People like you, and hierarch Hemmelfart and King Radobid hold us back, keep us in the dark. You try and keep us afraid, of each other and the world and the realities that we find out here.

“I don't hate your knights although I think that they're incredibly stupid and blind and....all the other bullshit that comes with that.

“I don't hate the church either, or the holy flame. I love the flame and when I return home to my families chapel then I will, as I always do, fall to my knees and give thanks for my deliverance.

“But I do hate you you unspeakable wretch. I hate you for your ignorance and your fear and your own hatred that you force onto the rest of us with flame and sword.”

I stopped speaking then.

He hadn't moved.

I shrugged again. “You asked.”

The same knight ran in and came up to Samsum and again, he saluted, “There's no-one out there.” He said.

He said that shortly before his eye seemed to sprout a crossbow bolt. He toppled backwards in almost the same exact way that a tree might fall in the woods.

“That's because I'm in here with you.” Kerrass' voice echoed of the walls.

I couldn't take my eyes of Sansum. He was looking around the church hall in a panic then.

My chair was spun round so that I could see the rest of the hall, the flaming torches on the walls, the firepits on the floor and the huge chandelier that was covered in candles, swinging from the ceiling.

“Show yourself.” Sansum demanded. I could no longer see him but he sounded as though he was a short distance behind me. “Show yourself now, or we kill him.”

A man in armour walked up behind me. I could tell that he was in armour because I could hear his chain-mail jingling. A dagger was drawn and the knight placed his hand on my shoulder and I could feel a cold point of metal pressed against the back of my neck.

I saw the flash of the bolt, a split second before I heard the thunk of the arrow striking flesh. The man's grip slipped away and I heard him crash backwards.

“Any man who touches Freddie, dies.” Kerrass' voice echoes again. This time, it sounded like it was coming from somewhere up in the rafters

“Why?” Sansum moved to stand in front of me, other knights spread out in a circle surrounding us. “Do you love him?” He was attempting to sound as though he was being scornful. The truth was that he was just beginning to sound a little afraid

“He is my friend.” Came the voice. It was definitely Kerrass' voice but it sounded distorted somehow. It sounded slow and drawn out. As though he was taking his time to say the words.

A torch in the corner of the room snuffed out.

“Come out, coward,” Sansum was pacing again, getting his confidence back from the fact that he was surrounded by his knights. “Or are you afraid to show yourself?”

“Fear?” Came the voice as another torch seemed to snuff out followed by another one immediately opposite where the last one had vanished. “Fear is surrounding yourself with lesser men and demanding that they obey you. Fear is victimising those who are not as strong as you. Fear is pretending to be something that you are not.” The sound seemed to come from all around us. As though Kerrass was speaking directly into our ears.

“Why don't you come out?” Sansum taunted. “Why don't you come out and face us.”

But the voice didn't answer. Instead, another torch went out. And another.

“Your little fires won't protect you from me.” The voice was a snarl now. Uncompromising and chilling to the very bone.

“We outnumber you twenty to one,” Sansum called to the room. “How do you expect to fight us?”

“Actually,” now the voice was playful. “By my count, it's more like sixteen.”

Something whistled through the air, an object, spinning. I saw firelight reflected of it's metallic pieces. It smashed against the ceiling. Even if my hands were free I don't think I would have been able to shield myself from the bright flash in time.

I heard running feet, a clash of metal on metal and a sound that felt like a razor blade cutting through silk.

Then I heard a man gurgle.

“My mistake.” The voice sounded a bit more normal now. “Fourteen.”

There was a crash, followed by another man who was trying to scream through the blood that was now flooding his throat. I managed to blink the glare away and had time to see one of the men clutching at his neck in an effort to try and stop the blood gushing from it before he collapsed as well.

“Fight us,” Sansum screamed. “Fight us damn you.”

“He is fighting you.” I told him. “Just on his terms rather than on yours.”

There was a pause. The torches continued to go out one by one which left a sooty, oily smell in the air that reached down my throat and threatened to gag me.

“Make him stop.” Sansum snarled at me. “Make him come out and face us.”

“And how do you suppose that I'm going to do that?”

“Everyone knows that you hold his leash.”

I laughed at him.

“Do I hold his leash? Or does he hold mine?

Kerrass ran out. To my sight he looked awful, pale, drawn and tired. But from all the hollering it would seem that to everyone else he must have seemed monstrous. He didn't move slowly though. He ran across the hall and his arm moved. Something flew from his hand. I can't tell you anything about it other than that it glowed blue. There was a massive kind of Whompf kind of a noise, silver dust started to fall from the ceiling.

Kerrass gestured and I saw one of the knights lower his sword, he seemed to shake his head before turning on his comrade and bringing his sword down on the man's head.

It didn't do anything else other than to make a huge clang. But the struck man reacted instantly with all of the training that he could muster, the confused man fell, clutching the huge wound in his belly. He was screaming.

“Thirteen,” called Kerrass. “I tell you what Archbishop. I will fight you on your terms. Are you ready?”

He audibly took a breath and cleared his throat, his voice still echoing off the walls. “To the men surrounding my friend and your, I hesitate to use the word, superior. I am going to make you an offer.”

There was a silence, more sounds of footsteps.

“This is how you do it isn't it, Sansum? You make the people an offer?”

There was an audible chuckle.

“So here's my offer.”

“Heretic,” Sansum growled.

“You are all going to die.” Kerrass told them. “The only way that one of you is going to survive is if you drop your sword, and untie my friend.”

“Don't move,” Sansum snarled at the knights. “Don't you move, not one step. If you even consider doing what this mutant orders then you will freeze in the hell of the eternal frost.”

The knights were looking at each other.

“See that Sansum?” I asked him.

“Be silent.” Sansum screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.

“One more sign that you are beaten.” I told him. “One more sign that you are done.”

“Fuck this,” said one of the knights and turned away. “You can all die here if you want but....”

He didn't get chance to say any more as his friend struck out at him. The dissenter managed to block a couple of blows before another knight joined the fray. The dissenter wasn't that good and soon fell under the rain of blows but he also had friends of his own who decided to join in on his side.

Two more men fell out of the fight.

I laughed for a long time at that.

“That's exactly how it happens in the villages isn't it.” I told Sansum, struggling to contain my mirth. “You turn them against each other. You tell them that only one or two of them can reach eternal salvation and only then if they agree to sell out their friends. You put the fear of pain and death into their minds and they cannot cope with it. They feel the fear, not just for themselves but also for their loved ones. Their wives and children so they sign up to your cause and sell out the old farmer who likes to hedge his bets occasionally and prays to Veyopatis for a decent harvest.”

Sansum spun on me, took two strides and struck me across the face. “Never forget, heretic, that you are still in here with me and I can kill you just as easily. That you will never make it out alive.”

I couldn't stop laughing at him.

“Fear and superstition.” I told him. “That's what you use to keep the local villages in line. Now Kerrass is destroying you with your own tools. Look, Now your knights are looking at each other to see if they can tell which one of them is going to betray them first.” Even I could hear the hysteria in my own voice.

“Stand to your posts.” Sansum called at them.

“Eleven men left.” Kerrass called. His voice sounded a bit stronger now and I guessed that he had used the time to take another potion. “Let's make it a nice round number shall we.”

There was another wet sound. Kerrass was getting really good at these eye shots.

“Ten men.” Kerrass said. His voice had re-attained that echoey sound. “Now that your numbers seem a little bit more manageable. Shall we dance?”

He walked out from behind one of the pillars. He seemed to be moving slowly and carefully, taking his time to place his feet on the ground, each footstep carefully planned and positioned. He held his sword in a ready position and as he moved, his upper body stayed perfectly upright, his arms unmoving. He looked awful.

There was a cut in his temple that was oozing black blood that ran down his face. His skin was paper white with stark black lines running this way and that under his skin. He was still along way away from the cluster of knights but his appearance could not have had a more profound effect on the waiting knights.

“Let's just rush him.” said one. “There's ten of us and only one of him.”

“Shut up,” hissed another.

“Come on,” a third was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “We can do it.” There's only one of him and we can see him coming.”

“Hold to your posts.” Sansum insisted. “Stay where you are.”

“I can take him.” A quiet one said. From the way he held his sword it was easy to tell that he knew what he was doing, or rather, he thought he did. “I can take him.” He said again, not taking his eyes off the moving Witcher.

“Can you?” I thought it was time I added to it. “Can you take him? Be sure now. That is a man who has been practising his craft for the last hundred years. A trained killer and veteran of so many fights that it would make your head spin. He was killing soldiers and knights before you were born.”

Kerrass was coming closer, not taking his eyes of Sansum but he was still some distance away.

“And then you lot, with your misplaced fear and morality made a mistake.” I continued,

Kerrass took another step.

“As Witchers, the other men of the Witcher schools are their brothers. But Kerrass had another family.”

Kerrass took another step.

“A family of good and caring people.”

Another step.

“People that he went to when he was hurting or when he needed help.”

Another step, he was getting much closer now.

“People who loved him.”

Nearly there. I judged that they just needed a little push before they would snap. I waited for Kerrass to take another step.

“And then you killed them.” I did my best to make my voice sound ominous and scary. In truth I was doing my best impression of my father when he was handing out a punishment to Sam and I after we had done something wrong.

It worked though.

One of the knights, I thought it was the one who suggested that they all rushed Kerrass, moaned. There was no other word to describe the noise that came out of the young man's throat. He moaned and started moving forwards his sword coming up. The one that thought he could take Kerrass realised what was happening and stepped forward also,

Sansum finally realised what was happening and screamed something but it was too late. Another two knights moved to join in and so, a total of four knights moved forward to attack Kerrass and Kerrass sprang forward to meet them.

It happened so quickly that I could barely follow what happened so this is just a guess as to what I saw. I should say that I soon lost track of the identities of the men who attacked him.

One knight simply fell over, I guessed from one of Kerrass' signs. Kerrass then spun away from the attackers, taking him across their little group, the spin continued and Kerrass was backing up, but the knights had the scent now and were chasing him. One stooped to help the fallen man, so that in reality Kerrass was only facing two men.

He stopped fleeing in the space of a thought and was suddenly attacking. Driving one knight back into the second so that they knocked each other over.

Sam would have been furious with them, even despite the rest of their mistakes. He would be angry at the lack of unit cohesion and awareness of each other's positioning.

Kerrass killed one while he was on the floor before he was attacked again. I saw Kerrass grin suddenly as he spun in a parry and kicked one of the attackers in the face who staggered back. Then another man died as Kerrass could devote all his attention to him. Then he ran over and killed the other one who was entangled with the corpse of the man who had fallen against him.

The knight screamed in fear as Kerrass ran him through.

The fourth knight, I guessed that he was the one who thought he could take Kerrass but I couldn't be sure as I had got them confused. I thought that he was though as, after making sure that Kerrass was a safe distance away, he checked his ground before checking the distance back to Sansum and his small unit who had been cheering their support for their fellows but now watched in silence. Then the hapless knight checked to make sure that his ground was clear and fell into a ready stance to receive the Witcher.

I've spoken before about the way it works when two decent swordsmen meet so I won't go over it again in too much detail here. Suffice it to say that it never quite goes the way you would think. It's never as long as you would expect for a start. You hear these stories about wide ranging fights that go this way and that way with the combatants going all over the place. But the truth is that that simply doesn't happen.

In this case, the two men faced each other. Kerrass was the quicker but the other man had the armour protecting him. The real mistake in this instance was Sansum's. He was calling the remaining six soldiers closer to him. I don't know what his scheme was, whether he was planning on making a run for it or something but he positioned two men behind me and then kept the last four between him and the Witcher.

What I would have done is order the last six men to surround Kerrass and bring him down before fleeing during the distraction.

Well no, that's not quite true. I would have led those six men to surround Kerrass and bring him down but that's what I might have done if I had been in Sansum's shoes.

Thank the holy flame that I wasn't, that I'm not and that I will never be.

The knight fought well. There were several exchanges of sword play. The knight trying his best to probe Kerrass' skills to see where the openings were. My guess is that he became a little overconfident and that Kerrass took advantage of his thinking as I think that the knight thought he was probing Kerrass' defences before the duel actually started whereas Kerrass was already fighting. I also suspect that the knight was expecting some kind of “formal duel” situation where there are rules and things.

Regardless of what happened, you can always tell the opponents that Kerrass feels some measure of respect for as those are the men that he kills quickly.

Those and the men that he feels sorry for.

The knight moved forward in an effort to engage Kerrass' blade. There was an exchange before Kerrass grabbed some part of the knights forearm and pulled him forward, off balance. Then Kerrass spun and decapitated the man cleanly.

I doubt that the knight even had time to realise that he was dead.

Kerrass was breathing heavily though as he cleaned his sword on one of the tunics of the fallen men and as he stood back up he seemed to be swaying on his feet. He took a deep breath and started walking towards us again.

Sansum had started to laugh.

“And you say that I am beaten.” He said. “You, who can barely stand. You say that I am beaten.”

Kerrass straightened and moved so that he was stood facing us all.

“Yes, I think you're beaten. Also, that you are no longer as scary as you were. You wanna know why?”

Kerrass was breathing hard, limping and dragging his feet.

“Because two of us.” He forced a smile, even though it looked as though it hurt him. “Two of us, took down your entire operation. Your supplies, your men, your home. All of them burned to the ground. Two of us. One of us isn't even a combatant, not really. The only reason that he agreed to this plan is because of how ridiculously monstrous you are. Two of us took you down.”

“But you haven't taken me down. Look at yourself. One of you is tied to a chair after hours of torture and you're barely able to stand, let alone fight and there are still six knights to fight you. My most disciplined, my most fierce and loyal men. How do you intend to get through those six men to get to me?”

“Would you like to know how?” Kerrass took a step towards us and the knights flinched. “Would you really like to know how?” He took another step and dragged his sword up into the ready position.

“Go on then, I shall indulge you. How do you intend to get past six of the most highly trained men in the continent.” He gestured and the two men that were stood behind me moved to be in front so that a line of six men stood between Kerrass and Sansum. They looked at each other and started to move to surround the Witcher.

“Because I've already got past them.” Kerrass said, his face a rictus of death, his eyes not moving from Sansum's face. “Our very first trick. The same trick that we've used over and over again on you. You fell for it at every stage and you've fallen for it again. I'm distracting you.”

“Distracting me? From what?”

Kerrass' weariness vanished “From the fact that Freddie has just worked his hands free from his bonds.”

I stood, shrugging off the rope that had held me back in the chair and held it in my hands. By the flame but it hurt as I lunged forward and screamed as I put all of the pain and fury into that last convulsive leap. I nearly didn't make it as I was still tied to the chair by my ankles.

But I got him, I held onto the back of his robes as he began to turn towards me. With a flick, I got the rope around his neck and then let my weight drag me to the floor with Sansum on top of me.

First he scrabbled at the rope digging into the flesh at his neck, then he clawed at my hands as I held onto that rope and pulled, and squeezed until I felt that I was at the very end of my strength. Then, when I couldn't take any more, I thought of Saffron's torn corpse, and the figure of Sally with her skull caved in and I found an extra ounce of strength from somewhere and squeezed even harder.

The knights panicked, some attacked Kerrass but others ran back to try and free Sansum from my clutches. It was the only opening that Kerrass needed as he showed that he was not nearly as exhausted or injured as he had been pretending. Their distraction and their inability to free Sansum from me without hurting him provided that confusion and so Kerrass was in amongst them, cutting and spinning.

But I didn't see that. All I could feel was the rough rope as I pulled and pulled.

All I could see and feel was Sansum and the desperate desire to end that sick fuckers life.

I squeezed and I squeezed so hard that I didn't realise that the fighting had stopped. Nor did I realise that Sansum had stopped moving.

“It's ok Freddie.” Kerrass' calm voice. He was drinking two potions in quick succession. He would later tell me that it was the “White honey” potion that would clear the effects of the vast majority of the potions from his system and then a potion that would help his healing process.

“It's over. You can let go now, the bastard's dead.”

It took a long time for the words to come through to me. And when it did I could no longer feel the pain or the fear or the awful awful rage that had been burning in my gut since we had discovered Sally's body. I just felt so sick and tired.

“You know the sad thing?” I said to Kerrass. “The sad thing is that I really can't.”

He laughed. One of his small bursts of Witcher laughter. No more than a wry chuckle and it burst some kind of dam in me so that I finally started to weep.

Kerrass went off and found his satchel and some of the medicines that he kept there and helped me to peel the rope out of my hands. Salve was plastered over the worst of my wounds before bandages were wrapped and new clothes were found but even despite all of that, he still mostly carried me out of there.

The pain was indescribable but somehow it wasn't too bad. Nothing compared to what the Beast of Amber's crossing had left me with. Those injuries were psychological and spiritual whereas this? Somehow this felt righteous. I could look at my injuries and tell myself that they would heal over time.

There was quite a lot of aftermath that happened next. At my request, Kerrass deposited me on the hillside where we had watched the compound. He went off to find our things and made me a drink to numb the pain.

He told me about how he had freed the prisoners as well as chasing off some of those men and women who were forced to work in the compound. He described how, after being captured, Sansum had ordered that Kerrass not be harmed so that he could be properly interrogated at a later date and they had thrown him into a cell in the basement. A part of the compound that I had not had the chance to see and after Kerrass' descriptions of the place, I found I was glad of it.

In the morning, still far too energised to sleep, I watched the sun rise as Kerrass got back to work. He was helped by some of the “servants” who had started started to come back as well as some of the local villagers after they had heard about what had happened and seen the flames.

First the bodies were laid out. The knights and all of those others that had died were laid out in one of the more flammable parts of the remaining compound and a work crew spent a good amount of time cutting down the wooden pallisade and making a huge fire out of it. At first there was some argument from some of the villagers that wondered why the soldiers should get such a decent funeral. But I thought of the corruption that had gotten into the head of young Maxwell as well, I will admit, as the brain fucking that had happened to Edmund and my mother and so I insisted.

Other than Sansum. Also at my insistence, Sansum was taken a little way away and buried in an unmarked grave. Two men did that work and I told them that the grave shouldn't be under a tree or any other kind of identifiable landmark. That, if possible, even they should struggle to find it if they went looking for it. I told them to bury him under a field that would grow crops to feed the locals or, even better, to feed the livestock. I didn't want him to be a martyr with a grave that could be visited.

The knights had gathered a not inconsiderable amount of wealth. After conversing with the other villagers it was decided that Kerrass and I should take the more identifiable pieces, the ornaments and jewellery and turn them in. Any reward that we might get for those things should then be donated to something. A real church or shrine or something. The smaller money, or things that the villagers could realistically sell without drawing attention to themselves were divided equally among those people that came to help, on the understanding that they would be used to help the villages worst struck by the knights.

Kerrass and I also took the paper that had been in Sansum's rooms. It was soon re-emphasised that Sansum couldn't read as the majority of the letters that he had received were unopened but had been carefully hidden away so that no-one could call him on that. We also took what books there were, those that wouldn't be of use to the villagers themselves.

As we left, having ransacked the place of anything useful or of worth, Kerrass doused the place in oil as we had found another store place of it in the basement, and brought me a lit torch to start the fire. I hadn't wanted any kind of ceremony for the burning. I had just wanted the signs of this place to be obliterated but the other villagers seemed to want something.

So I stood, only slightly leaning on Kerrass and told them that the Holy Fire keeps us safe from evil and as such it was fitting that fire would destroy a very dark point in the history of this strip of land. I spun and threw the torch into the pyre and it went up most satisfactoraly.

Kerrass and I stayed and watched it burn for a while as the rest of the villagers started to drift away.

“Thank you Freddie.” He told me.

“What for.”

“You didn't have to come with me to do this. In fact, there's a significant part of me that is saying that you shouldn't have come with me. When you are so desperate to hunt down what happened to your sister, you didn't have to come with me on this. But I am grateful that you did. I'm not sure I could have done this without you.”

“It was rather special though wasn't it?” I told him with a grin in an effort to change the subject. “How many distractions was it?”

“Let's see,” he started counting on his fingers, “I distracted them so that you could get in and start causing destruction and mayhem. So that's one.”

“Then when I've done that, I get myself captured to distract them from you getting free and making with the killing. That's two.”

“Then I distract what's left of them so that you can get free and kill Sansum, so that's three.” He smiled in triumph.

“Ah no, because in turn, that killing distracted them so that you could get amongst them and kill them. So that's four.”

“So a distraction within a distraction within a distraction within a distraction.” Kerrass mused. “That's a lot of distraction.”

“And you say that you don't like complicated plans.” I teased him.

“Hey, it was your plan.”

“True.”

There was another pause as we watched the place burn.

“But thank you Freddie. I owe you.”

“No you don't.” I told him. “I loved them too and besides, that's what friends are for, remember?”

As we watched the central roof beam of the church building collapsed inwards.

“Let's get the fuck out of here.” Kerrass said after a long moment.

I sincerely wish that that was the end of the story.

The kid, Maxwell, never made it to Tretogor. When my hands had healed enough so that I could write, (it wasn't that long,) I wrote to Mark to tell him to keep an eye out for the kid but he never showed up. We received word that, after some time, genuine church soldiers went out to search for him. In the end they found him hanging from a tree in Northern Lyria with his hands tied behind his back. A search was made for the killers but they were never found.

We did find out who Sansum was though. He was an illegitimate son of a bishop of Rivia. His mother had been trampled to death under the feet of the panicking masses during the Pogrom against the non-humans. The same incident that had supposedly killed Geralt of Rivia. His father, not being the stereotypical, remote father of a bastard had arranged for his son to be taken into a local monastery but his disdain for what he had called “the dimming of the flame” under the leadership of people like brother Mark had caused his hatred and disdain to boil over. In the end, the abbot had been forced to kick him out in the face of the churches move towards tolerance after the end of the more recent war.

The supporting Lords, the men who had supported Sansum in his crusade protested their innocence and swore to work towards the betterment of the countryside.

The thing that got Kerrass and I in trouble was that a couple of the knights had important fathers who had been quite proud of the fact that their children had joined a holy order and protested at the summary execution of their darling little children while also refusing to believe what they had gotten up to, citing their disbelief in a ragamuffin Witcher and some minor son of a Northern Lord.

The thing was that the Constable of Lyria and Rivia was well aware of Sansum and his knights but was not authorised to do anything about it because there were “bigger problems” closer to home. It seems that Sansum had been cautious enough not to anger anyone too important and as a result, the people that held onto the Constables leash wouldn't release him to deal with it. He was actually quite grateful. Grateful enough that he sent us on our way with a few spare horses and enough money to get to the river and catch a boat to Oxenfurt but, as you know, we didn't manage to outrun the protests.

So what's left to say. As I write this, Sir Robart is being escorted North which means that Kerrass and I should be safe to leave the day after tomorrow. The slight delay is due to the fact that Captain Froggart and Sir Rickard want to do a sweep of the local countryside to ensure that there aren't any mercenary hitmen that are waiting behind in an effort to pick us off and collect some kind of bounty.

It has been decided, by people other than myself, that Sir Rickard and his gang of Bastards are coming North with Kerrass and I. According to Sam's letters there is a considerable problem with ghosts and other “things” for which the Bastards would be most useful. Sir Rickard is looking forward to it claiming that his men are getting fat on all of the lazing around and getting paid for it. But I suspect that the extra escorts are my sister and Ariadne conspiring against me for my own good. I can't say that they are wrong to be concerned, but don't tell them I said that.

This doesn't feel like a proper ending to the story. Instead I will say this.

A number of people have contacted me with anti-flame sentiment. They point to the Witch-hunters and the questioners and the burnings of non-humans and anyone that the church took offence to. They point out the depths that the knights of the burning rose sunk to after they had been all but wiped out at the hands of Radovid's displeasure. There have even been calls for banning the worship of the Holy Flame altogether.

To them I will say this.

For a start, I still follow the tenets of the Holy Flame and I have been tortured by fanatics.

Some things to bear in mind.

The Witch burnings and the pogroms were encouraged by two men. The Hierarch Hemmelfart and King Radovid of Redania. The two most powerful men in Redania. Provably, both men had reason to hate magic users. The first because of political ambition and the second because of his resentment at the way he had been brought up. In such cases, the bad rise to the top.

It was a political purging and such things will always attract the psychopaths. But they are the rarity rather than the main.

Yes I know that Mark is my brother but....

There is a movement in the church at the moment which is dragging the Holy Flame into the modern era as the continent as a whole moves back towards Polytheism. Priests are being encouraged to be more tolerant and understanding as scholars like my brother and others argue for progress and to work together with magic users and the other religions. Change is coming but change is always painful.

There are also, always, people for whom change is terrifying. Mark is one of these people.

There are also people for whom the old ways gave them an outlet for their old prejudices and hatreds. Sansum was one of those.

So I will just say, there are people who give the church a bad name. But there are also plenty of people who do sterling work looking after the poor and the sick and the hurt.

What I'm saying is, don't blame the whole thing for the actions of a relatively small number of ass-holes.

Yeah, that's a better ending.