Chapter 121: Lionheaded Spider

Jenkins was one of the bastards. One of those men who had been heading for he hangman's noose for the murders of multiple people when the recruiting Sergeants had been getting a bit desperate during the last war. According to the gossip amongst the bastards, he had killed four people after he had found out that his wife had been cheating on him with them. He had then presented the removed sexual organs of her former lovers to his wife before asking if she was satisfied as, apparently, she enjoyed the drama of it all. She had married Jenkins because he could provide for her but he was neither particularly handsome or adventurous. One of the ladies complaints was that she could never tell whether or not Jenkins even loved her and upon this rather....extreme....display of jealousy, she had settled down to the life of a soldiers wife.

I met her. A fairly nice woman in all honesty but a shameless flirt. She had come to live in the castle and worked in the kitchens.

For me I found Jenkins a fairly charming man, endlessly funny and able to converse on a variety of topics with some skill but every so often he got this gleam in his eye that suggested that he was considering removing your scalp.

He also had an odd sense of humour. As demonstrated by the fact that he had snuck up behind Johann with his short, wickedly sharp dagger and was just poised to slit the lads throat.

“Sir,” Jenkins complained. “He made so much noise sir that I thought....”

“I know Jenkins but....”

“Can't I....”

“Not NOW Jenkins.”

Jenkins sulked off. I wasn't entirely certain that he was joking.

“It's always best to announce yourself properly.” I told Johann. “Especially when approaching a nervous, heavily armed and experienced band of soldiers.”

Johann swallowed nervously.

“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”

“It's a learning point son.” Rickard added. Kerrass was standing staring into the trees. He had his medallion held in his fist.

“Johann, do you know Sir Rickard of Temeria?”

“I don't sir,” the lad saluted with precision. Sam had always liked a particularly crisp salute.

“Sir Rickard, this is Squire Johann of Nazir, my brothers squire.”

This work is hosted on mananovel.com

“What's the lay of the land, Squire Johann?”

“Sir, The land is heavily wooded for another couple of miles before beginning to open out into a flatter area where there are some farms before the land starts to rise again towards the mountains.”

“Any risk to the order of march.”

“Not that we've seen sir. There are some small colonies of Endregas that our men have been hunting and there are rumours of Elves further to the North. I can't answer to that though sir.”

Rickard nodded, his manner becoming more military. He turned to call for his Sergeant.

“Who's here?” I asked the lad as Rickard started calling off some orders.

“Other than your brother sir? We have twenty men at arms on loan from the Redanian guard sir. Father Danzig has brought a half company of church soldiers from Tretogor and Knight Father Trent has brought a small group of men from the order of the White Rose.”

For those of our readers that might be from the South, as I understand that a number of people from the southern part of the continent have started reading the Oxenfurt magazine, this is how religion works in the North.

I can already feel Mark wincing.

I stress that this is just an overview and is not meant as an exhaustive list but I do think it bears repeating in case any of our Nilfgaardian readers are reading this and saying, “but that's madness.” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

Well, you'd be right but I won't judge.

Whereas in the south, the Church of the Divine Sun has, just about, absorbed and assimilated all other religions apart from some very old, local pagan Gods and Goddesses into the worship of the Sun. The North has done things somewhat differently. The South is mostly Monotheistic, the North is Polytheistic in that we have lots of different Gods. That might not be apparent from what I've been writing as my family and the area around where my family lives is almost completely covered in the worship of the Eternal Fire.

The Eternal Fire has learnt from the Church of the Divine sun and has followed the same model by agreeing with a lot of the local religions and getting them to sign up saying things like “Yes, but don't you see? That means that essentially you're following the Eternal Fire,” and then pretending not to listen to any objections.

But unlike the south, there were still a lot of Gods here first and they had centralised and organised. The Eternal Fire is a relatively recent God, only having been founded at the founding of Novigrad whereas other Gods and Godesses have been around a lot longer.

Melitele is the oft-mentioned woman's God. Goddess of fertility, motherhood, harvest, nature, abundance, peace, Love and Marriage. If there's one God-head that's going to be around long after every other one is disappeared it will be Melitele. Almost, but not quite, exclusively worshipped by women she is at her most prominent in rural areas. Used to also be called Adala in Temeria, I don't know why.

Freya is, essentially, the Skelligan version of Melitele but I would advise you not to confuse the one with the other as Skelligans get quite protective over their Goddess and regard her as being a different entity. They also add that her spirit animal is a cat. Which possibly says something about the nature of cats.

I won't talk about the Lionheaded Spider here.

Each of the local areas seems to have their own Gods and Goddesses. Many are recognisable as being different aspects of the same being, for instance, Verna, Melitele and Adala. For a long time, religious scholars believed that the newly emerging power of “The eternal Fire” was simply an aspect of Kreve, but it was later proven to not be the case.

Which brings us to the reason that I'm talking about Kreve today as he, and his worship come up quite a bit in the next story.

Kreve is much older than the Eternal Fire and much more, extreme in their views. That might come as a surprise to people who went through the Witch hunts but it's true nonetheless. He is the Sky Father and the Lord of Thunder, his symbol is that of a lightening bolt. He is quite an expansive God and would be described as loving decisive action, energy, spontaneity, resourcefulness, expansion and the defence of ownership.

Worshipping Kreve is a remarkably simple affair as his only discernible commandment is that his followers should fight evil wherever they find it. What is defined as evil tends to be up to the definition of the local government of the area which is why Kreve tends to be quite popular with Kings and Lords of men. The first people to acknowledge the existence and the divinity of the Eternal Flame where priests of Kreve. Indeed they thought that the Flame might be an aspect of Kreve which was later shown to be inaccurate, however the influence of Kreve on the early church of the Eternal Flame is prominent.

Both churches have an order of knights which serve as their military arm. The Eternal Fire had their “burning rose” and Kreve had their “White Rose.” The church has been overtaken in Redania and the surrounding areas, by the Eternal Flame. This thanks to the patronage of King Radovid but you can still find Kreve worshippers in the armies of the nations and his worship is a lot more widespread in Kaedwen, Aedirn and Southern Temeria.

The main enemies of the church of Kreve are anything that doesn't adhere to “civilised society” and “the proper order of things”. As examples, they don't like unassimilated non-humans. Non-humans that live in towns and cities that contribute to society are fine though. They also don't like magic users as they were thought to be outside the settled order of things. If you want to look up more about the historical actions of the church of Kreve then I refer you to the books “The extermination of the Vran” by Sir Wilhelm Dothir and “The Aelirenn rebellion” by Tomas de Sande.

They also tend to give their priests, military ranks in an effort to show how much they are “warriors in the fight against evil.”

I used to really look down on followers of Kreve. From a certain standpoint they are relatively good people, their objectives are good in that all they want to do is to fight against evil but I always had problems with the fact that their fight against evil seemed to define evil as being anything that was different from human society where human society was defined as being the average kind of society of the northern Kingdoms. In doing so they were significantly responsible for the final destruction of the Vran and also a significant reason for the endangerment of the Elves.

Oh, and they also persecute magic users.

Once again, I notice that they don't really care about the dwarves and the Gnomes as those two species have the good grace to stay below ground and out of the way.

But now I'm not so sure. I look at the Cult of the Eternal Flame and I kind of see the sins of the past being reflected in my own religion. Again I see magic users and non-humans persecuted to the point of endangerment. I am well aware that the Eternal Fire Cult was driven to those extremes by other factors but at the same time, I look back at Kreve's worship and start to think that my former condemnation of their actions is a bit “dirty pot calling the kettle black”.

I know that the road to the Frost is paved with Good intentions and that there is no excuse for some of the evil actions that the followers of Kreve did. But the Eternal Fire does seem to have been following their lead and I no longer feel that I can just condemn the worshippers of Kreve quite so vehemently.

I have, also, now met a lot more worshippers of Kreve and as has so often been the case I find that I am less able to hate, now that I know the human face underneath the cowl.

Johann led us further up into the trees. He did have a horse with him and there is no more perfect description of his character other than the fact that he mounted up and tried to ride up the slope before realising how hopeless this plan was, giving up and leading his horse up like the rest of us.

Sir Rickard looked at me and had to hide a giggle behind his hands.

Kerrass was walking along with a vacant expression on his face, head tilted to one side as though he was listening for something although he didn't once tell us to quieten down. He had his medallion clenched firmly in his fist.

We came to the top of the ridge where the path then led downhill into a bowl of, to be fair, rather picturesque land. If you ever have romantic ideas about what it would be like to try and settle some kind of unsettled frontier, then that's what it looked like. It seemed to be a land of valleys and hills, topped with large piles of stone. Huge trees were everywhere and a gentle mist seemed to roll off the mountains and to fill the valleys and the dells. You could see farms at various intervals where they had cleared small patches of land from the all consuming forest and there were several small villages where smoke could be seen rising from chimneys. It looked, it looked idyllic and unspoiled. Even though I knew that people had been living in this part of the world, probably longer than they had been living around Novigrad and Oxenfurt.

“Is it always so misty here?” Kerrass asked Johann.

“Couldn't say sir,” Johann was still enough of a product of his upbringing that he was a little put out to be addressed so familiarly by Kerrass, even though the two had met before. So he took refuge behind formal military language. “There is often a mist last thing at night as the land cools and again first thing in the morning but the sun often burns it off.”

“Mmm,” Kerrass grunted and went back to staring into space.

“Something?” I asked him quietly, wandering over.

“I don't know, maybe. There's a large amount of background magic here. That, in and of itself is not unusual, or at least, not unusual enough to cause comment but the fact of what we know used to happen here?” He shrugged and pulled a face. “I hope it's not telling.”

As we climbed down into the valley and we were able to mount our horses again, I saw the Kalayn family castle for the first time in what must have been years.

I had only been to these lands once before when I was young, maybe four or five when our two families were relatively friendly with each other. Before Cousin Raynard had got his hooks too far into Edmund. I remember staying here for only a couple of days and not liking it very much. I remember it being cold and dark and a general kind of oppression to it all. Since then though I had found out a lot about what had gone on in Castle Kalayn and I now wonder whether modern knowledge has tainted past memories.

But now, I looked up and saw it above us.

It was indeed dark, remote and almost austere in it's appearance. I wasn't as big as Castle Coulthard or Kaer Morhen. But then I don't think it was meant to be. If it was a military outpost it would have been the kind of watchtower or fortified position that was meant to hold the enemy up. It was high up the beginning of the mountains and I suspected that the views from up there would be spectacular so I imagined that it's builders had constructed it so that the occupants could keep an eye on things. It was certainly not the kind of a place that would hold or house an army and I definitely had problems imagining that it would be big enough to be some kind of royal residence. It would be far too much hard work to get any kind of luxury up the path towards it, apart from any other reason.

However I could imagine it being the kind of place where a small, but elite force spent their time, marshalling and sallying forth to patrol a large swathe of countryside, where it could protect and monitor a mountain pass before other, easier, routes were opened up.

I certainly struggled to imagine how you would set about taking the place easily. We could see the path to reach it snaking up around the mountains, sometime with steps cut out of the rock to facilitate but the path was narrow, far too narrow for anything wider than a small, two horse wagon. It was the kind of place where military men say things like. “Give me a score of good men and I could hold that place through an invasion of the Gods.”

They probably could to, even though it now, had no real strategic significance to speak of. I tried to imagine where you would site siege engines, getting anything more than the most rudimentary battering ram up the slope would be all but impossible. Siege towers woud be a laughable thought. I could only see one direction where you could get ladders up against the walls and to get there you would still have to climb the path.

“I would climb.” Rickard had guessed my train of thought. “It's a beast, there's no doubt about that but you're not thinking about one military advancement that we've made in the mean time.”

“Which is?”

“Modern War-bows.” He told me. “A couple of dozen good archers up on that plateau up there,” he pointed, “and you could rain arrows down on any defenders coming up through the pass. Then anyone defending the gates would also have to be careful to avoid getting skewered.” He grunted as he worked the problem. “It was an all but impregnable place. Now? It would cost the attacker, a lot, but the attackers would wear the defenders down eventually. I also struggle to see where the defenders would store any supplies for a protracted siege. The gap works both ways. A couple of dozen attackers could block anyone trying to get out, just as easily as the defenders could block anyone trying to get in.”