Chapter 120: It was very nearly, very exciting

It's very bad of me, but I had to force myself not to help him with his reading as he still has to track the words with his finger and is often sounding out the words as he reads them. He tells me that he can read military despatches easily where they're deliberately written and worded so that imbeciles can understand them, his words, but some of the works of the poets escape him. He tells me that one of the first things he had to do upon being made a knight was to learn to read and write, an activity which he had considered a waste of time as he could have spent that time killing Nilfgaardians.

But there we were, sat around the fire, Rickard reading, myself making some notes while Kerrass stared into the flames, when I could no longer resist it.

“So how's the Princess?” I asked Kerrass, doing my best to look all innocent.

“What?” he looked startled and I could no longer help myself. There was no holding it back any more and I started to laugh. “Admit it Kerrass, you were thinking of a small woman with thick blonde hair and blue eyes weren't you.”

He glared at me. “If you're going to be in one of these moods then I'm going to go off and sleep somewhere else.” So saying he gathered up his blanket, took some firewood and started his own small camp a little distance off. My giggling didn't subside though.

“What was that all about?” Rickard asked, marking his place in the book he was reading with his thumb.

“He got a letter from “Sleeping Beauty” yesterday, in amongst all the despatches.”

“Oh. You mean the one that you and he....”

“Woke up from the curse yes.”

“The one that he.....”

“That's the one. Despite his best efforts, she's decided that she likes him and wants to see him again. He is resisting.”

“Why?”

“Because he likes her back.”

Rickard's face creased in confusion.

“That makes no sense.”

“I know,” I told him laughing. “That's why I'm having so much fun with it.”

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“You're a bad man,” Rickard told me.

“Yes,” I admitted, “but to be fair, he was the one that set me up with an elder vampire,”

“So, just to be clear, your vengeance for him setting you up with a gorgeous, immortal vampire woman, is to tease him about, and set him up with, a woman who is declared the most beautiful woman in all the land.”

“Pretty much, you wanna help?”

“Holy Thunder, yes.”

So the following day we started off. Just innocent questions, little needling points and questions. Apart from anything else, it was a way to pass the time. We were travelling up the main road so there wasn't a great deal to do other than to watch the scenery go by. The bastards did their best to look villainous and scare the shite out of passing merchants and farmers which I should have been outraged at, but I couldn't help laugh at. But it was also a little heart-warming how they all stopped, spontaneously and without orders given to help a tinker get a new wheel onto his wagon. Also the way they would form up into perfect military order whenever there were other soldiers on the move.

Then they would leer at some perfumed nobleman's wife and her calls of outrage would set the men laughing again. The mood was infectious and it was hard not to enjoy myself.

“So, hang on, let me see if I've....” Rickard scratched his head for the effect. He had asked all of these questions multiple times but kept on asking me to go through it. “She fancies him?”

“Yes,”

“And he loves her?” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“Yes.”

“Then am I being really stupid?”

“Undoubtedly,” Kerrass intoned with dire overtones to his voice.

Rickard and I ignored him.

“Get together with the girl, bang her brains out, get it out of your system, and hers, and then move on. Or, if that actively makes the problem worse then give it up as a bad job and settle down with the girl. I don't understand the problem.” Rickard declared.

“The problem is....”

“Is what?” Rickard did his best to look innocent. “That she's just too good for you?”

“She's a Queen.”

“So? Adds an extra thrill to proceedings.”

I was enjoying myself. Rickard had a gift for getting under Kerrass' skin when he put his mind to it.

“But I'm a Witcher.”

“So?”

“So.....”

Rickard made a pretence of considering it. “No, I still don't get it. You like her, she likes you. Make with the fucking. And always remember that you have to screw her till her ears bleed.” He accompanied the joke with a pelvic thrust.

I groaned and slapped him.

“You don't understand. She will need to marry.”

“So?”

“And produce children.”

“So?”

“And I can't do that for her.”

“So?”

“So I thought that that was quite an important step.”

Rickard considered.

“No, I'm pretty sure that you can marry the girl.”

Kerrass looked at him, somewhat aghast.

“What?” Rickard had been reading my book on the law. “She's the Queen right? So her word is law right? So she says she can marry whoever the hell she likes. Also, if the person she chooses to marry happens to be a Witcher then that's her decision and anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off.”

“But then her neighbours will invade.”

“No they won't.” I told him. It was my turn to join in on the argument now. “They're not going to invade. What is there to gain other than the ire of the Empress. Remember that Princess, sorry, Queen Dorn is close friends with the Empress now. If someone invades then all she has to do is to retreat to a border fort and wait while the invading army starves to death in her kingdom that is mostly still covered in blade vines. Then the Empress turns up with one of her southern armies who are bound to be getting a bit bored by now and be looking forward to a stomping and then it's all over.”

“But the Queen would never agree to that. She would owe even more to the crown.”

“You're thinking like a man Kerrass. If that happens she gets what she wants out of the situation which is, one less enemy on her borders.”

“I still can't give her any children.”

“But you can give her orgasms though right?”

“N....what”

“You nearly said no.” Rickard pointed and laughed.

“She needs to provide her Kingdom with an heir.” Kerrass insisted. We were getting to the stage in our entertainment that he would lose his temper and storm off.

“Yes.” I told him. “Yes she does, but there are ways and means of doing that nowadays. She could choose a consort. Or marry some idiot to get her pregnant, then get the Empress to order her “divorced” which the Empress, who's facing a similar problem, would undoubtedly do and then the problem is solved.”

“But she's sixteen.”

“So?” Rickard again. “I lost my virginity at the age of thirteen. One of the older boys in the gang decided that it was time I became a man. The lads spent a day picking pockets for the purposes of buying me a night with Sally.”

“Sally?”

“Local prostitute, she was like an elder sister to all of us really. I think she must have been in her late teens or early twenties.” His eyes unfocused as he stared off into the mists of memory.

But I was morbidly fascinated with this.

“Good memories?”

“Best twenty three seconds of my life.” Rickard told me happily. “It was over so quickly that she took pity on me and gave me another go half an hour later. I'll never forget it. The first few seconds of thinking that there was nothing to this “sexing” lark and that I could carry on pounding away for hours. Ten seconds later I was just holding on for dear life trying not to disappoint her. She was good to me though.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died. Got her throat slit seven months later by a customer for saying something that he didn't like. We always told her that she was pretty enough to go and work in one of the proper houses in Vizima but she didn't want to go. She wanted to look after her old man. A drunken idiot who drank away every penny that she earned. Git.”

A sudden flash of anger crossed the face of the normally relatively placid man. “But we weren't talking about me, we were talking about Kerrass and this “Sleeping Beauty” That I've heard so much about.”

“Look,” Kerrass tried to make his voice a little dangerous. “Just drop this topic of conversation would you.”

Sir Rickard and I exchanged glances as we pretended to consider it for a while.

“Nah,” I said.

“This is way too much fun”

“She's only sixteen.” Kerrass protested again.

“Nearly seventeen.” I pointed out....again.

“And I'm pushing a hundred.”

“You're talking to the man that's about to marry a nine hundred year old vampire.” I pointed out.

“Yes, but to be fair to Kerrass here. That's not a good point.” Rickard put in. “I've met your betrothed and she is a lot better looking than Kerrass is.”

“That is a good point.”

“Look,” Kerrass decided. “It's not going to happen so just drop it.”

He kicked his horse into a canter and went up to join the advance scouts.

This was the pattern for a lot of the time that it took us to head north. Rickard and I tormenting Kerrass as we travelled before Kerrass would take his vengeance out on us when we stopped for the night and we trained.

It was a good few weeks.

“So what is his issue?” Rickard asked me one night before we settled in for the night. “I genuinely don't get it.”

I thought about it as I poked the small fire that we had set up with a bit of twig before checking to see where Kerrass was. “It's complicated.” I told Rickard. “You've read my accounts on the subject right. About what happened between him and her.”

“I have. Don't get me wrong, it sounds all kinds of fucked up.”

“It is, and it was. But I think it's complicated. He loves her. There's no doubt in my mind about that. I don't think there's a day goes by where he doesn't think about her in some way. But there's also a reason why he instantly dropped everything to come chasing round the continent with me in a, probably futile, effort to find out what happened to Francesca. Yes loyalty to me is part of it but it's also an effort to keep himself away from her.”

Rickard shook his head in disbelief.

“I think there's a lot going on there.” I continued. “The Princess once told me that he's the only person who has ever treated her like a normal person and she loves him for it. She knows about all of the horror and she knows about everything that Kerrass did for her and she loves him for it. But when he looks at her, he sees everything he ever did wrong, or everything that he feels as though he allowed to happen to her.

“The other thing about Kerrass is that he has a martyr complex a mile wild. He blames himself for every evil thing that has ever happened in his life along with every bad deed that he has ever performed. While at the same time, he is unable to see any of the good that he's done. So the other reason for staying away from the girl, sorry, the woman that he loves is that he doesn't believe that he has any right to being happy.”

Rickard stared into the flames. “Damn,” he said.

“Pretty much.” I agreed. “Everything he says about him being older than her, along with her needing heirs and her deserving better than him is true and she knows that. But he's trying to make that choice for her which she is rebelling against.”

“Will he break and go to her do you think?”

“I don't know. I hope so. Even if it is only for a little while. Both of them are very damaged souls and they might be able to help each other out there. Plus,” I chuckled at the thought. “I don't know if you've met her.”

“I haven't,”

“But she's very determined. It might get to a point where Kerrass doesn't have any choice in the matter.”

“Serves him right.”

“And that's if the Empress doesn't get involved. The Empress' knitting circle is increasing in size, lots of powerful and important women getting together and realising that they have more influence than they previously thought possible. The world is not going to be the same after this. Not for anyone.”

“No bad thing in my book.”

“Possibly not. But still.”

“How far have we got before we get to your brothers lands?”

“We should be reaching the border in a few days where the main road goes up towards them. The castle itself is supposed to be up among the foothills of the mountains.”

“You ever been there?”

“Once when I was little. I don't remember much of it though as I was five. I remember it being a dark place and spending most of the time there being afraid of things. We weren't there long and I get the feeling that we only went out of some kind of sense of duty but that no-one involved wanted us to stay there for long.”

“What's the terrain like?”

“Rocky, you're up amongst the foothills of the mountains up there. Sheep and goat farming country. There might be mining deposits up there but from what I understand, my Great Grandfather on my mothers side wasn't that keen on getting in the dwarven or magical expertise that would have been needed to find whatever ores or deposits that there might have been up there and so the place has generally fallen on hard times. I get the feeling that there are a few villages there that are mostly holding on through sheer stubbornness.”

“Lovely. Wooded or open?”

“I heard that it's wooded. It's up near the mountains, miles away from any kind of easy route to get decent quantities of lumber down from the hills so I can't think that there would have been any kind of serious deforestation happening.”

“Mmm.” He picked some left over rabbit out of his teeth. We had plenty of rations but the men did their best to live off the land wherever possible, shooting rabbits as we rode and setting traps around the camp for any other stray game that might be picked up. The skill of the bastards was astonishing and there was rarely an evening went by where we were unable to supplement our rations with something a bit more exciting. “What are we likely going to be going up against?”

“The job is two-fold for us, for Kerrass and I I mean. The first job is to clean out the castle. A lot of really dark stuff happened up there and we need to make sure that the remains are put to rest and whatever ghosts and spirits that are flying around are put to rest.”

“You mean destroyed.”

“Yes, unless we can figure out a way to give them the rest that they need. But the other reason that we're going is to see to any remains of the cult that the Kalayn family were part of. From what Cousin Raynard told us, the cult had been falling on hard times, with the older generation dying off and the younger generation beginning to lose interest. However, the very fact that Raynard himself managed to be produced as a devout worshipper of the crooked man by this area suggests that the cult itself is not....entirely dead. So we want to go up and see if there's anything still going around up there and if they might have been involved with Francesca's disappearance.”

“How likely is that to be a thing?”

“We don't know. So we're going to look.”

“Makes sense. Who is the crooked man?”

“Again, I have to ask. But you've read my work on the matter right?”

“I have, and with great interest. But lay it out for me anyway.”

“As best as we can understand the crooked man was an old pagan deity. The kind of spirit where farmers and things used to make sacrifices to him in an effort to make up for bad harvests, diseases in the cattle and things like that. They called him the crooked man of the mound. Crom Cruarch. However the name seems to have been caught up with something else. The historical worship of Crom Cruarch is relatively harmless farmer superstition whereas the cult was dangerous so Mark thinks that one of two things have happened.

“The most likely thing that has happened is that the original cultists realised that things were happening when they slaked their unusual and awful lusts. Then they had a look around for whatever cults or other religions that they could find and adopted the first name that they liked the sound of. This would mean that what they're actually worshipping isn't Crom Cruarch or at least, not the original version of him but they have given their new....deity that name. This seems the most likely explanation as all the cultists that we have heard about so far have been nobles of various different varieties and it seems difficult to believe that they would deliberately choose an old religion of a group of farmers.”

“So they made contact with a power, tried to figure out what, or who it was, and then just picked the first name they liked the sound of.”

“Pretty much.”

“Nobles.” Rickard's voice dripped with scorn.

“I tend to agree. But the other possibility is that the figure of Crom himself has changed in some way. That what we know about him is incorrect. This is by far the more terrifying of the possibilities, however unlikely.”

“Why unlikely. Isn't one spirit or “power” the same as any other?”

“It would be, but the symbols this cult use are the denial of the natural order. Crom was a God of the harvest, or at least that's what we think he was. Also, Crom has his own symbol, and we know what he looks like. He looks like a foul misshapen lump of a man, a kind of limping hunchback. It's entirely possible that those ancient villagers saw some kind of creature with some kind of power. Not unlike a Godling. Then, when they mistook it for a God, then it behaved like a God in turn. I can't answer for that, it's just a theory, although in dong so he would be very similar in appearance to the Nilfgaardian “Rumplestiltzkin”. Regardless, he wasn't a very nice creature. The villagers were supposed to sacrifice their young to the creature. Baby's at first but later it became lambs and other small animals.”

“Still sounds pretty unpleasant.”

“Oh don't get me wrong, blood sacrifice is still awful but in this case, the rites don't track. Crom worship was about the sacrifice of the one for the good of the many. A child or three in return for a bountiful harvest for all the surviving children as well as the rest of the village. What we saw was the sacrifice of many to slake the lusts of a few and to empower.....something. Not for the sake of sustenance out of some kind of misguided desperation but to slake lusts and desires and the need for taboo. The cultists belittled and tortured those that they saw as being lesser beings than themselves.

“Both religions were bloody and unpleasant but the one is not the same as the other.”

Rickard grunted. “They both sound pretty bloody and unpleasant to me.”

“Who do you worship?”

“Me? I don't really know. Like most soldiers though, I suppose that if I follow anyone it would be Kreve. I like Kreve, he's a remarkably un-complicated God.”

“That doesn't surprise me. I'm told that he is the God of Soldiers.”

“Mmm,” he grunted. “The God of fighting, decisiveness, risk-taking and and defence. What's not to like? But still, I'm not that religious. It's not that I don't believe it's just that it's really hard not to pray when you're under heavy fire from an enemy, or you have to charge the breach of a fortress or....”

“I get the picture. My tutor once told me that it's the same reason that Melitele is so popular. It's really hard for a woman to not blaspheme when she's giving birth so it helps if she has someone to blaspheme against.”

Rickard grunted his agreement.

We spent the next few days climbing as the road started to rise up towards the mountains. We had travelled alongside the river since Blavikan, there not being that many ports further up river which meant that the possibility of catching a barge up river was impossible. The roads were also, not the greatest quality being as most of the roads were simply there so that people who lived further inland towards the mountains, could come down towards Blavikan and the road in order to get to other, more civilised areas. The roads to get over the mountains into Kaedwen were easier to use a little further north so most merchants and serious travellers went that way rather than trying to pass over the mountains.

So the thing that we were using to travel was becoming less of a road and more, what would charitably be called, a track. You know the kind, with wheel ruts down either side of a central grass line that went down the middle. We travelled with the river on our right. We could see the odd fishing boar as well as an occasional, rather optimistic ferry crossing that looked unused to us and the southern banks of the river were well covered in farms and small villages.

North of the river though, civilisation was a lot sparser in it's coverage of the countryside. There were villages and farms but they were ruined or deserted as often as not. There were still men working in the fields but a lot of the ground had been abandoned to tall grass and wild-flowers. In comparison though, the game was plentiful and we lived well.

Although the war was now long over and the resulting wave of famines, diseases and banditry had all but died out, we could still see small groups of bandits here and there but they were small groups, no more than three or four desperate men who had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. And for whom there was no other solution other than to flee into the countryside. But they didn't look that frightening to me and the bastards didn't even twitch when the brigands came nearer.

Something else had stolen over the bastards. Although we were eating well and still taking our time in the growing heat of early summer, a sense of uneasiness began to creep over us. The men rode with bows strung and arrows nocked. That might not sound like much but you have to bear in mind that these men could draw and knock and arrow to a bowstring in a fraction of a heartbeat. In nocking the arrows they had saved themselves moments, not even that but they rode, like that. Eyes scanning the undergrowth and the treeline for any signs of enemies.

“What's that all about?” I asked Sir Rickard who still rode as though he was relaxed and enjoying himself. It was a lie though. He was just as tense as his men but he was hiding it better for their benefit.

“Mmm?”

“Why are they all on edge so much?”

Rickard looked around. “Tall grass, near a river, no common folk, plentiful game. Why is there no-one living out here?”

“Because most people have gone to where they might get some more money out of things. Because they can't make crops grow. Bandits? Any number of other things.”

“Precisely. There's no-one out here. There has to be a reason so we're ready for those reasons.”

Kerrass chuckled at the conversation. I was used to his changes and his sudden adjustments in his gear and equipment for completely arbitrary reasons so it was almost a surprise to notice that he was wearing both swords now whereas he'd only been wearing his steel sword up until quite recently.

I laughed aloud at myself.

“What?” Rickard asked me.

“City boy, last person to notice.” I said pointing at myself.

Rickard grinned in response.

We came to the fork in the road that Sam had told us about in our lest letter. The....okay the “path” went off to the left and that's when the climbing really started as we headed into the treeline. I saw Rickard Nod to the Sergeant who barked out a couple of orders and most of the men dismounted and headed into the undergrowth. A few were left to lead the horses along the path but there was no way that we would be able to ride. It was slow going and what had been a relatively pleasant journey so far turned into a slow going trudge. The ground was loose with scree and the trees closed in around us. At one point, Kerrass tugged on my sleeve and pointed, just in time for me to see and Endrega worker slipping off between the trees.

“Lovely,” I commented.

The other thing that contributed towards our sinking mood was the fact that it had started raining. The slow, kind of early summer, late spring kind of drizzle that left us feeling wet and grumpy. We slept carefully, propped against the evergreen trees on beds of needles that were surprisingly comfortable when you spread a blanket over them. Conversation became shorter and more to the point as well although there was some amusement.

Sir Rickard had decided that it was time that he wrote his first letter to Shani. It was an agonising process, although I had a slow suspicion that he was stringing it along deliberately in an effort to entertain Kerrass and I along with the rest of his men. Asking for suggestions as to what he should say and what he should write, various lewd things were suggested along with some occasionally, surprisingly sweet and sentimental lines that would have brought a tear to my eye if it hadn't immediately been followed up by some kind of joke.

As we climbed we were hailed from the treeline by a young man who looked as though he had been camping there for several days.

“Lord Frederick.” He shouted from his post. “Lord Frederick.” I looked up and recognised Sam's squire. I'd only met the lad a couple of times. Since Sam's inheritance of the Kalayn estates he had warrented a proper, full time squire and had been presented with one by the Redanian court.

I should talk about Sam's position a little bit so that people are up to speed. Now that Sam was a Lord in his own right, rather than “just” a knight, it was considered a little bit....off colour for him to still be serving in the Redanian client military on the grounds that, and I quote, “We don't want the common folk thinking that it's regular for the proper nobility to be serving in the military do we.”

If you're imagining that sentence being spoken in tones that would cut glass then you are doing a suitable imitation of how Sam claimed that the news was given to him. After that he had been given a squire from the more remote parts of Nilfgaard. I understand it was some kind of “cultural exchange” so that men of the south could find out what it's like to live in the North and vice versa. It's a nice idea in theory as it's a lot harder for me to hate Nilfgaard now that I've got to know a few of them. So if the future nobility of the North and South know each other and get on reasonably well then there is less likely to be future conflict.

Also it meant that both sides had hostages in the event of their adversaries getting a bit uppity.

Sam still served but he did so under his own heraldry and devices rather than in the more general forms of Redanian colours. He finally resigned in good order shortly after the Empress was crowned so that he could properly look after his own lands.

The Squire's a nice lad named Johann who, I suspect, is a little too interested in women and wine than he is in martial prowess, and rather likes the ideal of reading poetry to pretty maidens from underneath their balconies while sitting astride his noble steed. In short, he likes the romantic ideals of knighthood rather than the realities and I once teased him by asking him what he would do after declaring his undying love to the maiden. He seemed a little mystified by this as, as far as he was concerned, there was nothing more to it. He would declare his undying affection for the lady and then she would reciprocate “with ardour.”

I checked. He didn't really know what “Ardour” meant. In either his own language or in ours.

Still, he's clever enough and Sam was telling me that he was, much to his chagrin, beginning to find the lad irreplaceable. Apparently Johann has the head for figures and bureaucracy that Sam himself had always struggled to achieve. The kid was thirteen years old and I liked him a great deal. I thought it was doing Sam some good to be responsible for a young persons development.

“Lord Frederick,” he crashed down through the undergrowth towards us, announcing his presence for miles around.

“Easy Johann.” I told him, “Where's the fire?”

“What? Oh.” He grinned sheepishly at his enthusiasm. “Sorry, it's just it's been really boring waiting for you up here.”

“It was very nearly, very exciting.” Rickard said, approaching with a smile and a certain look of admonishment.

“Sir?”

Rickard kept eye-contact with the poor kid.

“Not now Jenkins.”