Chapter 127: You should be a Kreve worshipper

“Bollocks,” I said with a certain amount of feeling. “Giant, hairy, sweaty bollocks.”

I was standing near the walls of the chapel, looking up at the tower. From which hung the body of Father Gardan the axeman.

The silver slayer, the Axeman of Kreve.

Thick rope made a noose around his neck and as he swung from side to side in the breeze, he seemed to look out at the surroundings. In a lot of cases, when people can see the eyes of the dead, they seem to stare out of their faces accusingly. As though they are angry with whoever had found the bodies. In this case though, that wasn't true.

He looked sad. Incredibly old and sad.

It wasn't pretty either. For all of those people that have never seen a hanging body, you should know this, that it's an ugly, unpleasant death. His tongue lolled out of his mouth but it was also red with dried blood where he had bit down in his agony. The rope had cut into his skin as he had thrashed around. The eyes that were open, staring so unhappily at the world, were goggled and you could see, even through the grey film that had begun to cover them, that there were was blood in his eyes.

He'd also shat himself. Excrement and urine had fallen down his leg and stained the walls that he hung against.

There were scuff-marks against the wall where his feet had beaten against the walls. The old stone was unmoved by what must have been some extreme struggling from the dying man but you could see grey scuff marks where some, more recent, repairs had been done to the stone-work.

“No way for a man like that to die.” Sir Rickard was standing next to me looking up at the body.

“No way for anyone to die really.” I said. “If a death must happen, then a clean death in my opinion. An axe or a sword stroke. Or at the very least, a sufficient drop so that the neck is broken rather than this slow strangulation.”

Rickard grunted. “I have to disagree I'm afraid. Kiddie fiddlers, traitors and rapists deserve everything they get. An old man though? Not least of which a man like that. He deserved better.”

Like Sam, Sir Rickard had been excited to meet Gardan of the axe. Both men had heard stories of his soldiering exploits. Sir Rickard had almost insisted on coming down here to meet one of his heroes the previous day but Sam wouldn't allow it, claiming that he wanted to meet the hero that lived on his lands first. He was honestly cross that he had decided to come back to the castle after the visit with the Aunt Kalayn as that would have meant that he would have met him.

We should have let Rickard come. Maybe then we would have known more or been able to protect him from whatever had happened to him.

“Did he jump, or was he pushed?” I mused aloud.

“He's not tied up.” Rickard said. “A man like that, you would need to tie him up to push him off the tower.”

“You didn't meet him Rickard. He was sick, badly so but he plainly had been for years. If he did jump, why now? But likewise, if he didn't jump.... if he was pushed?”

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“Why now.” Sir Rickard nodded.

I took a deep breath. “This might be my fault. Our fault I should say. But we don't know enough. Can one of your men get up there and lower him down to the ground?”

“I think that can be managed.”

“Also, get Dan to have a look around, see if he can spot any tracks and tell us if anything happened out here. See if anyone other than us visited him.”

Dan was an old soldier. The oldest soldier in the gang of Bastards. I have spoken about him before but it does bear repeating. He had been a poacher, stealing game from the lands of the local lords. Game birds mostly but also the odd boar or deer. He used the meat to feed his family and any of the other families nearby that might be struggling to make ends meet. One night though, he had been drinking and was caught. The Lord that caught him was sympathetic to the problem, Dan's gathering of meat was not that prolific and had not damaged the stock of animals in the lord's lands and so, instead of jailing or removing a hand from the poacher, Dan had been offered the opportunity to join the army.

An opportunity that he took.

He was the best shot with a bow that I've ever seen. He carried a trio of bows. A short bow for what he described as “Short distance work”. This was for when the longer, more powerful bows would be ungainly. In woods or buildings. That kind of thing. Then he had a Longer, medium length recurved beauty which was his favourite bow. He used that in most situations, for hunting, skirmishing and when proper aiming needed to be done. But he also had a Warb-bow. Fully two meters long when unstrung and when he hadn't strung it, it lay almost straight with hardly any bend in it at all. It was a huge thing and would fire vast distances. He used this bow when standing and shooting into a mass of men. When accuracy was less needed and everything depended on the stopping power of the arrows.

He treated his bows like his children and had even named them.

But as a former poacher, he was also a skilled tracker. Not on Kerrass' level but Kerrass was still working away up at the castle.

Sir Rickard nodded. “I'll see to it.” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

I nodded and turned away, moving to go inside the chapel. I was angry. Not the formless and all consuming fiery rage that had come on me previously in the wake of Francesca's disappearance. This was something lesser than that. I was angry, to be sure but I was frustrated with myself. Disappointed was the word. I had that sinking feeling that you sometimes get when you realise that you've made a mistake and I was increasingly certain that that was what I'd done.

I had allowed myself to feel pity for Father Gardan and had allowed myself to be pulled away from him. I had told myself that the old man had needed space after the stress that Danzig and I had put him through by turning up on his doorstep without announcement and out of the blue. I had also wanted to see what was going on up at Castle Kalayn. I had wanted to see the halls of my relatives, to see what had happened there and what I might be able to learn from that.

In doing so.... I was very afraid that I had left the old man to his fate.

I wasn't convinced by the idea that he had killed himself. I think he might have liked to, but at the same time I thought that, if he was going to kill himself as a result of everything that he had been through. Then he would have already done it. His horror had already taken place in the past. Now he lived in, according to Danzig, self-imposed exile in the remotest corner of the world that he could find.

I also didn't want him to have killed himself. I wanted there to be an enemy. Someone I could hit. Even though, that made it even more certain that my ignorance was as responsible for this death as anything else.

He had deserved better than this though and I stomped into the small chapel.

It looked, all but the same. There were still the chairs next to the fire pit. Still the same kettle and stew pot. The smell of burnt meat greeted my nostrils. The fire had burned down and the old man's stew had boiled itself dry and that's what I could smell.

The axe, that he had hated and loved with equal passion, was not on the alter though. I couldn't see it anywhere. I spent a bit of time searching for it before deciding that it was big enough and shiny enough that I would have seen it. The priest had not hidden it from view. He had treated it with reverence, resting it on the alter to his God.

It had been taken then.

I started to feel better. There was an enemy that I could pursue, whether it was just an opportunistic thief or whether it was some lynch mob that had come for Gardan, someone else had been here. Someone else had taken that axe.

I now know better than I had before, that there is no point in leaping to conclusions. So I spent a bit of time, searching the small building thoroughly for the weapon. For the first time, I went into his small, sad little sleeping area. As he had first told us, the pallet that he slept on was surrounded by salt. It seemed a well maintained circle and I could see there was a sack of the stuff next to the door where there was another line of salt, and again next to the wall where the sole window was.

The living area was an addition to the structure of the chapel. Half made from wood and thatch, but thoe other half made from stone that looked as though it had been salvaged from the dry stone wall that surrounded the church and the church-yard. It must have been bitterly cold in winter but I found that I could easily imagine Old Gardan, shivering under his blankets, believing that the cold was a scourge for his back.

A just punishment for his sins.

I thought that he deserved better than this and had resolved to convince Sam to be gentle with him. I don't think I would have struggle to do that persuading.

Kerrass has a lesson that he tries to teach. It's a truism of the life that he leads and it isn't a pleasant lesson but it's a lesson that I needed to bear in mind here. That lesson is that it's impossible to save everyone. You can't do it. Sooner or later, something's going to happen. Someone will make a mistake and it might be you, and someone will die.

For those people who lead relatively safe lives then this philosophy might not be for you.

But for him, he says that it's an important lesson to remember. You can't save everyone. Someone will make a mistake and get themselves killed. You can't beat yourself up about this. You can't give yourself grief or let it get to you. All you can do is work on the best information that you have at the time, move forward and attempt to do better next time.

But you also need to be happy with the fact that you might not do better next time.

If you let it eat at you, then it will kill you. One day, you will be frozen with indecision and try to do too much and try to save everyone and it won't work. More people will die and there will be nothing that you can do about it.

I know that this is true. It's a think that I'd already had to tell myself before but nowadays, since Francesca's disappearance. I was finding it harder and harder to keep that perspective. I was struggling with it now as I looked around the small chapel that would become the final resting place of a hero. A hero who had deserved better than the self-hatred and loathing that he had been left with after suffering injuries that he didn't understand.

I should have been here. I should have helped him. But I hadn't thought this was a major problem. I hadn't known that there was a risk. I had thought that I could come back at my leisure. There was no way I could have known that this would happen. But I was blaming myself for it already.

“The Hounds of Kreve?” I had asked him.

He smiled, bitterly. “Believe me, I know how it sounds.”

I could feel my brain rejecting the concept. It's a phenomenon that both the bard and I have commented on when it comes to the work of a Witcher. Commoners, especially farm and village folk are rather subject to superstition. So much so that they often see problems and monsters where none exist. It's one of those things, that if I had more time or more of an inclination to look into, I could probably study at some length but in short. Otherwise perfectly common problems are often blamed on creatures, or monsters that simply don't exist.

Villagers might complain about devils that steer honest men away from their route home. Where the man in question is called out into the nearby fields and woods by the sounds of beautiful singing or the cries of something. The man wakes up the following morning with a thumping headache, several small injuries and an empty coin purse.

The fact that he had stopped off at the tavern, the night before to celebrate payday with his friends is considered unimportant to the case.

A sickness that befalls the children of the village is never something to do with the fact that someone dumped a deer carcase into the river, but is always to do with the fact that the local witch-woman had given her the evil eye.

I've heard stories about giant bat creatures that swoop down and attack farm hands. Spirits and imps that steal tools and belongings. That rip the clothes from people's backs and damage houses so that the elements can sneak through the open windows and holes in the roof to trouble good and decent folk.

The problem is that such things don't exist. There are things that might do those things, but if they were there then there would also be other signs of the creature in question like, for example, the explosively exsanguinated corpse of a cow.

But here's the nub of the matter. The flaw in my argument. The villagers absolutely believe that what they are telling us is true. They are convinced of it. They even spin elaborate tales of sightings of the creatures in question and can produce evidence of the thing's presence.

But it's all nonsense.

Kerrass and I were once sat outside a tavern while Kerrass was talking to a group of villagers. We were just on our way from somewhere to somewhere else and Kerrass had politely enquired as to work. More out of habit than anything else while I saw to provisions for the next couple of days. But I had watched with amusement as the villagers complained earnestly about a man who had gone missing one night after having collected his wages from the quarry. He had gone to the village and had a few jars of the local moonshine before heading home where he had fallen off a cliff to his death.

A tragic story to be sure and it could happen to anyone. Death by misadventure is certainly a valid thing and happens every day. But the village was convinced that the man's death was as the result of some kind of supernatural occurrence. They cajoled and pleaded with Kerrass to investigate the matter but Kerrass was unmoved. In the end another man had been produced who had claimed to have seen something out in the darkness.

They told a story about how the dead man had recently lost his wife to some kind of wasting disease which was why he had been drowning his sorrows but that the ghost of the man's wife had called him off the cliff. They even went on to claim that the dead and departed loved ones of the villagers would often call out to the other villagers in an effort to provoke other such accidents. The people were being called to join the dead, to leave behind their worldly values.

Kerrass had shown remarkable patience, listening to all the stories before telling the people that there was nothing to fear. That they simply needed to be a bit more cautious about their day to day lives and spend some time looking after their neighbours when they had fallen on hard times. He advised them to contact a priest and left directions to the nearest abbey.

I found the experience incredibly sad, that an entire village would prefer to believe in some kind of supernatural interference over the probability that a man had lost his wife, got drunk and wandered off the path.

Early in our association, Kerrass had even spent a day hunting the “Things that lived in the trees” for my benefit. To show that there were some things that just didn't need to be hunted. We spent a day tripping over roots and having our hair and clothes pulled at by brambles before we both agreed that there were no imps in the forest and that the missing tools, damaged homes and lost items were the results of perfectly normal neglect and misadventure.

As I say, I found the entire thing incredibly sad and I was struck by an equal sadness as I sat in the chapel looking at Father Gardan.

“Believe me,” he said after a while. “I know what it sounds like. I do. I didn't just study the blade when I fought for Kreve. I know about monsters and magic and theology and I know that there's so much wrong with the name and so much wrong with the existence of such things.

The very fact that he was shaking and sweating with fear as he told us these things did much to calm me.

“I know,” he went on. “I know that Kreve is a warrior God. I know that he's a soldier and a ruler, so why would he have hounds?”

He shook his head in disgusted bemusement of himself.

“But you haven't seen them.” He said. “You haven't heard them howling in the dawn. You haven't seen their shapes in the distance as they stand on the edge of the hill, looking down over all that they survey and all that they own. You haven't felt your flesh crawl as they move through the mist or the screams as they hunt down their victims throughout the countryside. This land doesn't belong to the Lord Kalayn, whoever that is, nor does it belong to the people that live here. It belongs to them.”

He sobbed.

“I tried. I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried. But I can't help them. These poor people. These poor poor people.”

There is nothing sadder than the tears of a broken man.

“We know you did.” Father Danzig looked as though he was on the edge of tears himself. It can't be easy to see your heros broken down to a shadow of their former selves. But for this man, it was the wrong course of action. He didn't want sympathy. He didn't feel as though he deserved sympathy. He wanted rage, and somewhere, in the depths of his belly I think. He found it.

“No, you don't,” he snarled, throwing off Danzig's hand. “How could you know? I should have done something. I could have done something. I even managed to strap my armour on once. All of it. I had sat up late that night in prayer and as the red sun began to set, I could see the mist slowly falling down the mountainside like water. A tide of mist that crashed over us with the violence of falling into a pillow.

“I have never really examined the way mist spreads before. I had always thought that it rises out of the ground. From the water that stands in the grass and has fallen during the night. I imagine it lying over the land in the morning, in the way that it seems to smother everything into a dead kind of lethargy before the sun comes out to chase it away. Like a blanket that we are reluctant to leave when we wake from our own slumbers.

“But the must here is different. It creeps around the trees and through the lanes. It's more like smoke in that way. You can see it billowing out through the breeze and the air currents. Especially that night.

“I don't know why I did it that night. I still do sometimes. I still try and exercise the way that Kreve taught us to exercise. I go to my armour and place each part on me, carefully strapping it into place before I take up my axe. Ah, my axe. My constant companion throughout so many battles. My truest friend. My oldest friend. I used to be able to make that weapon sing in the morning air as I swung it round. The air whistling as it moved out of the way.”

He shuddered violently.

“Another one of the little pleasures that have been taken from me. I can't even take the pleasure of my craft any more. Just the training for the training's sake. I can't even do that. Martial skill was the only thing that I was ever good at that and then it was taken from me.

“But that night I had intended to go out and do some training. I had little more planned than to run some laps around the chapel walls but something made me pick up my axe that night and I took it outside. I can still touch it, can still do things providing I don't think of violence or ponder on it's use. It's still sharp and oiled to the best of my abilities and should someone take it then it will still work in the hands of a skilled soldier.

“I took it outside and I stood out in the churchyard and I stood to watch the sunset.

“The villagers had told me about the Hounds. Of course they had, they're not bad folk as heathens go. They don't worship the Lionhead or any of the especially evil heresies. Just a slightly watered down version of their old harvest God that they brought with them when they settled here from where they had been before. I stood out in the yard and I felt myself stand ready.

“I was afraid. I cannot tell you what it's like if you don't know it. I was a soldier all my life in one form or another. Soldier first, then knight, then general and I know that a soldier without fear is a soldier without sense. Without wisdom. I knew fear of every hour of every day throughout my career. I've seen the horrors that men do to each other on the battlefield and I've seen the awful things that my own axe have done to people much younger than me. Much weaker than me and I have often wondered what would happen when I was wounded like that.

“That fear though. That fear is manageable. I can do things about that fear. I can, or rather I could, survive it. But that's not the kind of fear that I'm talking about here.

“The kind of fear that turns your bones to jelly. That literally causes the sweat to stand out on your head as though you are forcing your way through ice or fire or both at the same time. When your breath comes in gasps or when you can hear your own heartbeat echoing inside your chest. When you can feel it beating and the blood shooting round your arms and legs to the point where you become honestly concerned that you might explode.

“When every movement is pain. When the light gets too bright and your axe becomes to heavy. When even the slightest sound splits your ears and sears itself into your skull with bolts of fire and thunder.

“That is the kind of fear that I'm talking about. It almost drove me to my knees.

“You have seen this place now. You have seen how beautiful it can be. How wondrous and marvellous. Even in the rain or the depths of the deepest snows of winter, this place is beautiful but no painter or poet would be able to capture the real feeling of living here. The constant fear of what is coming. What you know will one day claim you unless you manage to gather enough strength to break out.

“I had only just arrived. I had been warned but I did not know what I was facing. I had gone out into the yard to see the sun and to give thanks to Kreve for letting me see the end of another day. Anything else seemed a little churlish. I went out and I saw the mist beginning to creep round the trees to the east, towards the mountains. I felt it inside me then, the first flutterings of “The Fear”.

“I tried, I really tried. I knew that I was facing danger. I knew it. You can't spend a lifetime on the battlefields of the continent and not get some kind of instinct about when peril is descending over you. So I knew it, that tonight, the mist was different. That there was something else coming, crawling down from the mountains. Or maybe it was the mist itself that made the land....able to support such monsters.

“I stood, in my armour and with axe in hand. In the same way that I have stood, facing down armies. But it was different this time. This time, my knees were shaking so that I could barely stand. My mouth was dry and I couldn't breathe.

“You hear them first, the Hounds of Kreve. You hear them in the thunder. I heard the thunder echoing out over the landscape. It was a distant thing at first, in the same way that you can sometimes see a storm away at sea but know that you are relatively safe from it even though you can see the shadow that it casts and the forked lightening descending from the clouds.

“Then, after the earth has shaken with their thunder. Then the howling starts. Remember that the mist is still creeping in over the grass and the trees, the stream, a little distance away from the chapel was now more, sound than sight and over coming it all was the howling. First one voice, Lower and deeper than any wolf that I've ever heard. The kind of sound that you hear in your chest. It thrums in your belly like the deeper feeling that makes you want to shit yourself after you've eaten some bad camp food.

“The first howl came from the same kind of distance as the thunder. It sounded for a long time, deep and mournful. I've heard that howling many times since, both real, memory and dream and I have wondered if there are words in those calls. But it sounded for a long time, the echoes never dying away. But then another voice joined the first. Another noise, another howl. Rising, calling and shrieking across the red glow of the evening.

“The red light seemed to infect the mist. Reflecting it and absorbing it until the land itself was tinged with red. As though it was tinged with blood.

“A man came then, well, I say a man, he was actually an elf. I don't know much about elves except when they are attacking me. But this one was dressed like any other villager or wild man of the local area, plain trousers, cheap boots and a woollen shirt. He ran past me, almost without seeing me. He was almost on top of me when he did finally see me and he almost staggered backwards.

“Help me,” he pleaded. He begged. “Help me.” He turned back to look the way he had come and screamed, the primal voice of terror that both our people's share. We both know that same terror and he had it that night and I felt it myself as I saw that the elf was injured. Blood matted the hair on the back of his head and had long since dried on the back of his shirt making it sticky and stiff with the stuff. How he was still standing I don't know, let alone running for his life. As that was what he was doing.

“Running for his life.

“I count myself fortunate for what happened next. If he had pleaded again, I don't know what would have happened. I would like to think that I would have helped him. That I would have tried to defend the poor thing against the evil that was coming for him. For again, there was no doubt in my mind that the thing that was coming for him was evil. I fear that it would be much more likely that I would have fled. That I would have fallen to my knees in terror and wept as he was taken.

“But that wasn't what happened. Because as he looked back. He saw the thing that was chasing him and he carried on with his flight.

“I was frozen to the spot then. Frozen, utterly unable to move. But my eyes moved to look in the direction that the elf had come from, my eyes working to pierce the murky, blood red fog that was still sinking like a blanket over the place.

“At first I saw nothing, but I kept looking. Elven sight is much better than our poor human sight so I waited. I would like to say that I was being patient but the truth is that I just couldn't move I was that scared.

“Then I saw them. Three of them. They stood their horses on the top of a hill nearby.”

“What where they?” I asked. It was the first question that I had asked in some time. I couldn't help but be spellbound by what he was telling us. He had the gift of oratory that you get in the truly great tale-tellers, a skill that is sometimes necessary in educators, priests and soldiers as well as minstrels and bards.

He shrugged. “I don't know.” He said. “I could barely see them, and the truth is that my own fear distorted a lot of what I could see and a lot of what I can remember. Their appearance was vast and demonic to me and I couldn't comprehend them. My mind just refused to allow the sight to be properly taken in.”

“But they were definitely mounted?” I asked, I was reaching for some paper so that I could make notes. I was fairly convinced that Kerrass would be furious with me if I couldn't give him some kind of information.

“Oh yes. What they were mounted on, is anyone's guess. Certainly I couldn't tell you. They looked like horses but I could also see that they seemed to breathe fire and that their eyes glowed red. Trick of the light? Maybe. Sweat and terror misting my eyes so that I didn't know what I was seeing? Even more likely. but I spoke to other peasants that have commented on their appearance that have suggested that they saw the same thing. But the rhythm of the hoof-beats. You can't be an old soldier like me without knowing what cavalry sounds like. It was awful.

“But there they stood. They had the skulls of wolves for heads and it seemed as though their bodies were burning. They seemed to have wings you see, wings from which flame and smoke seemed to come from. As they sat on the hill top. They seemed to sit there for a long moment before their wings came up and one of their number, I don't know which one, leant his head back and howled.” He shuddered again.

“Could that be all there is to it?” I asked. “Could they just be cavalry that have done things to themselves. Could they be trying to instil fear and....?”

“I don't know,” he wailed. “Maybe.”

“It's just....” I tried.

“I don't know.” He yelled and his face sank forward into his hands. Danzig gestured for me to back off a little and I did as I was told. The man was beginning to lose it. We'd already pushed him rather hard but I got the sense that he really wanted to tell us these things.

“They thundered down the hill though. Their wings flapping with the wind of their passing. You could see the smoke billowing from them and the haze of heat that they left behind themselves like....like a cloak billowing in the wind.

“They split out and rode around the chapel walls twice. Still howling. I let the axe fall to my feet but I still couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but shake in terror.

“It was like being visited by evil itself. But then it looked down at me. The evil, it looked at me and it was as though it didn't even deem me worth the effort of killing. It scorned me. It lessened me because I was so worthless. They rode round the chapel twice before riding off in the direction that the Elf had fled. When they were out of sight and that horrible smell that accompanied them began to lessen, I finally felt myself unbend, as though my muscles had been clenched up in a way that kept me from moving. That kept me from acting. I bent down, scooped up my axe and fled inside. I couldn't do anything.

“So I was inside when I heard them catch the elf. I don't know how far away he was. The mist deadens the sound and it meant that his death could have happened next to us or it could have happened miles away. The poor lad had no chance though, injured as he was. He did well though I think. I couldn't have run as far as he did.

“He took a long time to die though. A very long time. I could hear his screams for hours as I lay there, just inside the entrance way.” He pointed with a shaking hand. “I curled up into a ball and tried to block the sounds of his screaming out. Closing my hands over my ears in a desperate effort to block it out. I was even screaming myself by the end of it. I don't know why.”

He laughed at himself.

“Fucking coward that I am.”

“What could you have done?” Danzig asked but Father Gardan was having none of that.

“What could I have done? What could I have done? Anything. That's what I could have done. Anything else. I could have gone after them. I could have stopped them, I could have fought and yes, I probably would have died but I might not. I might have given that elf a chance. I might have delayed them for just a bit of time. I might have given him a chance. That's all he would have needed, just a chance at survival. But no, I stayed in here didn't I. I stayed in the protection of the chapel and waited for the screams to stop.

“It took him all night to die. Poor little fucker.”

We waited for a while. Danzig had been forced to turn away by the pain in his hero's face and voice and was stood a short distance away, staring towards the open door. But I could tell, just from his body language, that both of us wanted to help the poor old man. We wanted to do something, anything that we might be able to alleviate and lessen the anguish that the old man was feeling, desperately thinking of some kind of comfort but I couldn't think of anything and Danzig must have been the same.

“I went to find him in the morning”. Garden carried on his tale, some time later. “I took a shovel with me to bury him. I don't know what his people would have done or what their beliefs are on the subject but I didn't want to leave him there. I thought that he had fought to survive and fought hard, and so, deserved better than to be left for his tormentors and for the wild things that live out in the woods to fight over and desecrate. So I went out to find him with a shovel.

“I said the prayers for him too. He died hard and even after it took him all that time to die, they had still....spoiled him. Even the animals wouldn't go to him to worry at his face. Even the beasts wouldn't go near those injuries.

“Poor sod. Not even a knife ear deserves that. Not even them.

“Stupid pointy-eared cunt. Poor, stupid bastard.

“So I said my prayers and I buried him. Not much for an elf but it was the best I could do. I came back to the chapel and I read my book and I prayed like a motherfucker but three nights later I heard the sounds of howling in the distance. And again, a week after that.

“Sometimes they stop for a month. Maybe even two months but sooner or later they come back. Sometimes they come every other day. Sometimes even the same day, but it's always the same. Red sky, mist off the mountains. The sound of thunder and the howls of wolves.”

I waited for a bit, to make sure that the old man had finished his story. But then he kind of eased off. My guess was that it had cost him to say so much in so short a period of time. It looked like he had been living in isolation for some time here and I thought that it might be the most that he had said to another human being in some time. When I was sure though, I asked my questions.

“Why are they called “The Hounds of Kreve?””

“I don't even know that that's what they are. The peasants call them that. They scare their kids with it only the thing that they're warning them against will, actually, come for them. But I know it makes no sense.”

He seemed to be coming back to himself now that the conversation was moving a little bit more towards the theology side of things. Stuff that he knew rather than the things that he was afraid of.

“Kreve doesn't have hounds. He's a soldier, a king, a general. He isn't a god of the hunt he's a god of the fight against evil. That's his thing. When you say “hounds” you think of hunting hounds. You think of them as aids in whatever it is that you're doing. Kreve preaches that a man should stand up and do the labour himself.”

He sighed again and got up, he began to pace.

“Personally though, I think it's my fault.” He looked at us, a little slyly and I was glad to see a little humour in his eyes. “Not just my fault you understand, but also any priests that came before me, and the people that built this chapel. I think we have quite a lot to answer for in this regard.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I think that my predecessors were lazy in spreading the good word of Kreve. I am weak, and a coward and exiled from the gaze of the God, but my predecessors? This could have been a bulwark against the encroachment of those Fire worshipping pussies from further south.”

“Careful,” I told him with an answering smile. “I'm one of those fire worshipping pussies.”

He stopped and stared at me for a moment, his mouth hanging open in surprise. “You?”

“Me.”

“But you're a fighter. A killer.”

“So?” I shifted my weight in the chair. I don't mind being described as a fighter but being described as a “Killer” left me feeling a little uncomfortable.

“So? That's everything here. Don't get me wrong, at least you're not a Melitele worshipping woman....” He said that with a kind of affectionate scorn. Priests of Kreve are well known for their disdain of Melitele and that feeling is reciprocated but it's interesting to note that the two churches close ranks against interlopers with astonishing speed. “...or a heretic. Let alone one of those dirty sun worshipping bastards from the south. Talk about worshipping the egg when the chicken is still wandering around after laying the thing. Anyway...

“Flame worshippers are passive. They wait behind their walls, telling everyone the blatant untruth that the flame will keep them safe and protected from the monsters, all the while the monster roam the streets and prey on the less fortunate. Last time I was in those parts they used to torture people for questioning the holiness of the Eternal fire when all the person was doing was bringing attention to the fact that they had seen a drowner wandering about down at the docks.”

He sniffed derisively and I began to see the figure of the man that he must have been. Strong, charismatic and clever. It was a lot easier to imagine him as a leader of men.

“I had hopes for them when I heard about them founding that order of knights, what were they called?” He snapped his fingers as he tried to remember. “Flaming rose that was it. Even that they copied of our order of the white rose. Pompous ass-hats that those bastards used to be. But even then, instead of dealing with the problems that beset the world, they turned on Foltest and tried to lead the world into a brighter future where that brighter future is whatever the knights decided it to be. If they had been proactive, and actually helped people rather than trying to get involved in politics then they would still be around today.

“But no.....

“Then when Nilfgaard invaded....Again.....the flame worshippers turn on their own people. Those people that could have been drawn into their service. Don't get me wrong, I hate the Magic users as much as the next priest of Kreve, but setting aside that advantage on the eve of war? Ludicrous. But They like to stay in their places of power, that's why I'm so surprised to find out that you're a silly fire worshipper. You're a fighter, you're here in the middle of nowhere and you're fighting the source of an evil.”

He gestured to Danzig. “You should convert him to our side.”

I hid a smile with a cough. “I thought that Kreve and the Eternal Fire got on.” I commented.

“As I say, you could be worse. But I was talking about our faults in this area and why we're at fault here.” He got up and started to prepare some food. To my mind it looked astonishingly basic, some hard bread and harder cheese along with a hunk of salted meat that looked as though, if you gave it to a cobbler, some perfectly good shoes could be made out of it.

“I would offer,” he told us, “but I'm an old soldier and you're probably used to much.....nicer fare.”

“Oh you might be surprised.” I said. “After some of the things I've eaten by the side of the road.”

“See,” he exclaimed with glee. “You should be a Kreve worshipper.”

“But you were saying.”

“Yes, I was saying. Kreve came here and built this place. A small chapel in an effort to try and convert the local folk from their little heresy. They worship a harvest God in these parts. They believed that they had to sacrifice their first born in return for a decent harvest. Pleased to say that the practice has been somewhat diluted since those earlier years so that now, it's more about sacrificing the first fruits of the harvest. So the first lamb to be born, a portion of the first crop gets burnt that kind of thing. Better, still not ideal but better.”

He sniffed, biting off a huge chunk of cheese. The cheeses crunched audibly.

“So then we came here. Built a church and started wandering round telling everyone about the good word of Kreve. But for whatever reason they gave up. I spoke to a couple of the elders and it would seem that those early missionaries were quite lazy about it. They would wander into a villager, all proud and upstanding like, where they would tell the people there about Kreve. The villagers would listen politely before calmly stating that they were ok for Gods thanks and politely told them to piss off.”

He snorted in derision of those historical priests.

“The missionaries came back, built this chapel and spent their time “praying for Kreve to intercede.” I think, that whatever happened, happened and these things came these, “Hounds of Kreve” came and started terrorising the countryside and some idiot said words to the effect of “Well, we told those priests of Kreve to piss off. They told us that there would be consequences and now they are here”.”

The old man made the voice sound comical. As I sit here, looking back over my notes I find it surprising that he was able to go from terror, shame, bitterness and sadness to being a happy, humorous and charming man in the space of minutes, but at the time, it seemed to be quite natural. As though this was just how it worked.

“So, I think that that's why. That's why they call them the hounds of Kreve. That and the wolf-skull heads.”

“Do you think that they're human under there.”

He winced and a shadow crossed his face.

“I don't know. I really don't. I've only seen them the once. I've tried to go out many times. I might not be able to fight but maybe I could help the locals defend themselves. Maybe I could show them that Kreve is not some arch-punisher of the ignorant. We punish the Wicked, yes, but the ignorant? They need to be taught the error of their ways, not hounded like this. So maybe I could help them get into shape. Help them defend themselves. But I can't. I just can't. I stand at the gate into the church-yard and I try to step over the threshold. When I start to see the sky turn red and the beginnings of the mist on the mountainside, I try. I've tried so many times but before I know what I've done, I've turned and I am hurrying back inside, pouring salt over the threshold.”