Chapter 128: He deserved much better

“You say that the village folk are ignorant rather than being wicked, rather than being evil.”

“Yes, they're good folk really.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They care for each other. They care for me. Do you see the goats in the yard that gave me this cheese? Where is the oven in which I baked this bread? They bring me the food and the blankets. When I get really sick, they bring me herbs and medicines to help me get better. They've even come and helped to rebuild the old chapel.”

He looked down at his plate full of food as though he was surprised to see it there and set it aside.

“When I first came here, I was weak. I had just left the church and I was struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. I couldn't stay with the other soldiers and the other priests. They would tell me that I was injured but I knew the cowardice for what it was. I couldn't bare the pity of the men that I had worked with. I used to hate and berate those men that I had thought suffered from cowardice. I used to loathe them with every fibre of my being, loathe them for the weakness that I was now suffering from and I couldn't bear it.

“So I ran. Proof enough of my cowardice.

“I was still strong then. Much stronger than I am now....”

“And you are far from weak.” Danzig put in.

“Kind of you to say,” the humour was back in Gardan's voice then. “But I can feel the difference in my own body.

“I came here, a small chapel out in the middle of nowhere and I thought I would do it up. Some peace and quiet would do me good. I could live here amongst the, objectively, beautiful and wild countryside. The untamed lands that I had always idolised when I was younger. I still had a bow, arrows and things so I reasoned that I could live fairly well.

“At first that was the way it was. I would hunt, gather food and meet the locals. I took the option of general reminders when it came to my preaching. I would do some odd chores for the farmers, advise people and offer blessings. The heresy in these parts is so entrenched that to come in with ice and savagery wouldn't work, indeed it hadn't worked before. So I just worked and lived as best as I could and when people asked me about Kreve, I would explain to them how it all worked.

“We lived together well.”

“Were “The Hounds” attacking at that point?”

“Oh yes. You could often hear them. It was a good six months before I saw them for the first time. The locals tell me that “The Hounds” have been plaguing these parts for many years and I've been here for the last....” his eyes went vacant as he counted “ten years. Kreve but it's been so long.”

He sighed and shook his head.

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“I'm dying. I'm not sick, there's nothing wrong with my lungs, my heart beats fine and I'm as strong as I can be given that I can't exercise as much as I used to.

“When I first got here I was weak to be sure but I had plans. I wanted to do things and get involved in the lives of the villagers. I wanted to save them from their little and relatively harmless heresy. I wanted to be part of their community.

“But my cowardice got worse and worse. Soon, I could only travel to the nearest village and spend time there. Then I had to make it back to the chapel every night. Not too much time passed from there and I was only going to the village to stock up on supplies before coming back here as fast as I can. Then I started asking the villagers to bring the supplies straight here. Now, I can barely even leave the enclosure around the church yard. It takes me all day, sometimes, to be able to go and get water from the stream. I go there, with every intention of refilling all my water skins, only to be able to refill one at a time and have to go back.

“How long before I won't even leave the enclosure and I'm begging for my visitors to refill the water for me? How long after that before I can't leave the chapel? How long before I can't leave my room? or my bed?

“Kreve but that's all I want to do sometimes, is to lie in bed and let the world pass me by. Or I'll hear something out in the woods and I spend the rest of the day hiding under a blanket, shivering and shaking.

“I hate this. If I had the balls to do it, I would end my life and stand before Kreve to be judged.

“But I'm even afraid of that. Not least because Self-slaughter is the ultimate act of cowardice and how could I be forgiven if I went even remotely close to actions like that.

“But this is going to kill me. I know it. Maybe not today, maybe not even this year or next but I am not long for this world. I recognise the symptoms you see. I've seen this before in other men and it shames me now that I used to look down on such men. Indeed I would still look down on such men. I hate myself for it as it is.”

“It's not cowardice.” I told him. “It's a sickness. I know you've probably been told this kind of thing before, by people that you know and respect more than a...” I let my mouth turn up into the first semblance of a smile, “...a flame worshipping pussy. But I too recognise your symptoms. Something happened to you. I don't know what it is and I'm not going to try and delve into it. But something happened to you and it made you this way. This is not your fault.”

“It's kind of you to say that my friend. It is, but you are young, what twenty one? Twenty two?” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“Twenty one.”

“I am well into my sixties, so far in that I no longer bother counting. I can accept that this is something that was done to me. I can. I can accept that it is alien to me and unnatural. But what I cannot come to grips with, the thing that I cannot abide, is that I can't overcome this obstacle. I've been afraid before but now my mind simply won't overcome. I can't.....I can't overcome and that is galling and hateful of me.”

I nodded.

“A wise man once told me that a man cannot be brave without knowing fear.” I told him, “When we approached and you didn't know who we were or what we were there for, you got your armour and picked up your axe. You stood in the doorway and challenged us. Given everything that you tell us about how you feel about this, that was incredibly brave.”

He chuckled sadly, and bitterly.

“Did I?” he asked sceptically. “I can't remember. It is a nice thought though.”

“I won't argue with you.” I told him. “But I will visit you if I may. I have been injured in similar ways before now and I would talk to you if I would.”

“You can't possibly know what it's like to feel the way I feel.”

“No,” I admitted, “No I can't. No-one can because no-one is in the exact same place. Maybe I would roll off what you have been through and maybe you would ignore what I've been through but it's equally as likely that what you've been through would have broken me and what I've been through would have broken you.”

I took a deep breath.

“But I have fought darkness. I had my soul ripped from my body and tortured in the dark. I wake up some nights and worry that what I'm doing now, what I'm feeling and seeing now is no the real world. I worry that this is all just a demented figment of that things imagination to be used against me and that at some point, he will pull the curtain aside and show me that it isn't real.

“I resisted, and still resist the fact that I love my fiancée because I am afraid that she is some kind of torment designed by the creature that held me. I still struggle with believing that she is real, or that she isn't some temptation towards evil despite the fact that....as we speak....she is taking instruction to be baptised and confirmed into the faith of the Eternal Fire so that we can be married in a proper ceremony of that same.

“I still wake up having woken myself up with my own screaming. I still shiver in the woods, afraid at the incoming darkness. Not always but sometimes I huddle under my blankets and pray that this is all a dream. I still, I still want some kind of proof that I am not in some kind of hell of that creatures devising. But I am all alone on my path and I don't know where it ends or what will happen when I get there. I'm on entirely new ground for me, any of my friends or my family. There is no-one to tell me that it's ok.

“I am sorry for what was done to you. I am sorry ffor the way it makes you feel. If my brother, the new Lord Kalayn, can do anything for you then you have only to ask and we will do our best to make sure that you have the best care that we can provide. But likewise, if you want to be left alone to your retirement and hermitage then we will do that as well. Simply seeing to it that you have what supplies you need.

“Of all people, sir, if only half of what I have heard about you is true, you have earned your retirement and deserve to be let off the hook for a bit of weakness.”

He stopped looking at me about half way through that speech.

“In the meantime, may I ask a couple more questions and then we will leave you be. I would leave now but this might be important.”

He waved his hand, “Ask your questions.” His voice was small and quiet. If a voice can be distilled into an animal form this was the small and starving mouse that is hiding in it's warren. It can see the cheese but knows that the cat is still out there somewhere.

“You say that the heresy of the locals is harmless?”

“Yes, just some harvest God. It might have been dangerous a few centuries ago or when it was first brought to these parts but nowadays it is a harmless thing.”

“What is the heresy? What is it called?”

Gardan sighed, staring into the fire. “They call the thing they worship “Crom Cruarch”,”

It's an interesting thing to feel your brain switch to a different level of thinking. My mouth went dry and I leant forward.

“Crom Cruarch?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

“Course. You know the heresy?”

“I've heard of it. My cousin, cousin Raynard Kalayn told me about it. Do you know what form of the heresy they used? Was it the crooked man of the mound or was it the....other version of that heresy that they used up at the castle.”

“The other version of the heresy?” The old man asked.

“The inverted ankh.” Danzig whispered.

For those people who need catching up....

When we were investigating the matters surrounding my Father's death we discovered the presence of a cult in the local area. That cult liked to capture young and pretty individuals and feed off them in an effort to take on their youth, vitality and beauty onto themselves. They did this through acts of the worst kind of degradation as they believed that those actions were also sacrifices to another power. That power was signified by the symbols of an inverted ankh symbol atop the sign of the Lion-headed spider.

The idea was that the two symbols, representing life and death, cancelled each other out thus denying the natural order of things. The church believes that this is the representation of a new, or a previously undiscovered, power in the world. They thought that it was the God of Magic or Magic itself. The fact that every mage that we spoke to on the subject is equally as horrified at the thing goes some ways to dispel that theory.

When we had interrogated my Cousin, the de facto leader of the heresy in the Oxenfurt area, he referred to this new/old entity as being Crom Cruarch.

However. Mark had done some research into the matter and had discovered that Crom Cruarch was originally a harvest God but we knew little else about him. So we didn't know if this was the same thing or if it was something else. That was part of the reason that we were here in the first place. If you would like to know more, I refer you to my earlier essays on the subject of my father's death.

The old man shuddered and touched the holy symbol hanging round his neck.

“No,” he said after a short while. “No, that's not what they do. I've seen it. They get everyone together and burn the first fruits of harvest. I've seen them do it. It's an excuse for a party, one of the few excuses that people have round here. It's harmless if a little wasteful. They tried killing the first lamb a couple of years ago although I told them not to on the grounds that it was sinful. They still did it though as they were trying to invoke the protection of their God.

“It didn't work though.

“Kreve, the inverted Ankh.” he breathed in disbelief.

“You've heard of it then.”

“Of course. It's possibly the only power that's worse that The Lionhead.”

At the name of the spider he shuddered violently despite the fact that he said it himself, and again, scrunched up his eyes in pain but this time the spasm passed quickly.

“The Inverted Ankh. If I had known that that was what was going on up at the castle I might have taken more of a notice.”

“You didn't know?” I did my best to keep my tone from being too accusing.

“No, I swear. If I did I would have sent word. They're dealt with now though?”

“The Kalayn branch is, as far as we know. We're here to see if the cult has any more branches in the local area.”

Father Gardan mused for a bit before shaking his head. “If there are, then it's amongst the nobles. The villagers are too desperate, too.....they depend on each other too much for survival to do that to each other.”

I looked at Danzig who was frowning in concentration. We needed to know more.

“What can you tell me about Crom Cruarch?” I asked.

“Not much.” Gardan responded, “I know that the villagers brought him with them when they first settled in the area. Harvest God, God of farmers, someone for them to get angry at and pray to when the harvest goes wrong. In the same way that women worship Melitele because they can scream and call to her when giving birth gets too painful. They need someone to pray to when the planting happens, over the summer that there is the correct amount of rain and again in Autumn to make sure that the harvest is properly bountiful. It's entirely possible that it was once some kind of spirit or creature that had some kind of control over magic and could legitimately affect the harvest but if it was, the spirit is either no longer strong enough to act properly or it has moved on.”

I nodded. I had taken out some paper to make some notes. The old man was looking tired though.

“Who would I ask if I needed to know more.”

Gardan's hands were beginning to tremble again.

“Local village alderman is probably your best bet. Called Edward. The village is about a mile west of here.”

I made a note and nodded.

“Then I will enquire of Edward, although I should probably head back to the castle tonight. Will you be ok?”

He smirked. “I was fine before you showed up. I'll be fine after you've gone. This thing'll get me sooner or later. But not today and not tomorrow.”

“We're going to be busy up at the castle tomorrow. But we'll be back the day after. We'll just pop our heads round the door to pay our respects and drop off some supplies.”

He nodded and waved us off.

“Thank you.” He said before climbing to his feet and leaving through the door to his bed with quick steps.

Danzig and I stood together as we watched him go. “He never liked charity.” Danzig said. “Hated it.”

We left moving towards the horses.

“What happened to him?” I asked as we started climbing into the saddle.

Danzig sighed.

“It's exactly as you said. He got hurt and we don't know what from and we don't know how to help him. Or people like him for that matter. Are we going to try and get to the village tonight?”

I looked at the sky, the sun was beginning to set and the sky was beginning to turn into it's more interesting shades of red and orange. I had a little giggle to myself as I felt a thread of fear running through me before I turned and examined the mountains to see if there was any mist forming.

There wasn't.

“No,” I decided. “It's getting late. We'll save the village for another day I think. I want to know what Kerrass found and get involved with the search up at the castle.”

Danzig grunted his acceptance of the decision before turning his horses head towards the castle.

“Don't think you've avoided the topic of conversation though.” I told him. “What happened?”

Danzig stared into space for a moment.

“Gardan was a priest of Kreve according to the old school.” he said, it sounded reluctant as though the words came from a great distance away. “I say that with all of the possible nuances and problems that come with that. There's no getting away from the fact that that comes with a certain amount of darkness, the persecution of elves, Vran and magic users are all part of that and Gardan would be the first to admit that he took part in some dark deeds. But that's not what I mean.”

He sighed again, twisting his mouth this way and that. I decided to throw him a bone.

“Hey look. You're talking to the man who follows a cult that likes to burn magic users to death, even if they're only roughly heading down the direction of magic or have a passing acquaintence with it. We define people as being evil if they come from outside of Novigrad and literally have, or had as is probably a better phrase, an arm of the church called “Witch-hunters,” and we still have an Inquisition to hunt out heretics, were we define heresy as being anything that we disagree with. Believe me when I say, that I know what it's like to have a religion with a sordid history.”

Danzig smirked.

“It's not that.” He said, “It's more about our attitudes towards what happened. As I say, Gardan was a priest of the old school. This meant that when he wasn't preaching or training up subordinates like myself he was liberally smiting evil.”

“This evil being defined as whatever the church of Kreve disapproved of.” I commented slyly.

“Pretty much. We, the church I mean, said that there was no greater cause than the fight against evil. We still do but now we have a greater and more nuanced take on the matter despite a few hard-line fundamentalists. But therein lies the issue. If he was still active, Gardan would be considered a hard-line fundamentalist. The old Gardan would still agree that the heresy of the villagers version of Crom Cruarch is relatively harmless but at the same time, he would be in the village, axe swinging, converting the heretic to Kreve whether they like it or not. I would like to believe that he would go against the cult that you describe first as there are degrees of heresy here. The one being much more dangerous than the other.

“But that wouldn't make his condemnation any the less........ intense.

“So he was his normal self. Through both wars with the Nilfgaard which we fought on the belief that the deification of the Emperor of Nilfgaard as the physical embodiment of the sun was a dangerous heresy, notice how politics adjusts what constitutes heresy by the way.”

“I had noticed,” I told him.

“He was the veteran of two wars, he only had that one scar across his eye to show for it. I mean yes, there were cuts and bruises but nothing that would leave a worthwhile scar such as that one. He had sacked and desecrated numerous heretical temples, fought against the Scoia'tael in Kaedwen and had hunted down the cult of the Lionheaded spider to the point of extinction in Kaedwen. There are still odd shrines, and I should say that I have read your account of your brothers description of the Lionhead and his assessment of how she works as part of existence. But the cult that attaches itself to her is often dangerous and evil and we want no part of it.

“But then one day, He goes out to investigate rumours that there was a shrine to the Lionhead in some nearby countryside. He's a priest, he travels there with a pair of his squires but decides, correctly, that the danger to the squires was too extreme and he goes in alone.

“I should stress that all of this is quite correct, he'd done exactly this hundreds of times before and emerged unscathed. But this time? This time, something was different.

“As had been arranged, after a day of his not being found, one of the squires rode back to fetch another priest while the remaining squire remained behind at the camp-site. The remaining squire was checking his traps to see if he had caught any game when he found his former master in the undergrowth. He was shaking with terror, he couldn't see, had soiled himself, was sweating and bleeding from a thousand little injuries that he had done to himself because of his armour's sharp edges.

“The thing with his eye? We later figured out that he had put one of his fingers in his own eyes to try and stop himself from seeing what he had seen. It didn't burst the eye but it damaged it beyond repair and the only reason he didn't lose his other eye was because that hand still had his gauntlet on.

“The squire got his master out of his armour and back to camp, he recovered as much of the armour as he could and did his best to see to the comfort of his master.

“The next priest arrived, investigated the area, found the shrine to the Lionhead and desecrated it. It showed no signs of being attended so it was one of those dangerous shrines that need to be looked out for. They found Gardan's axe and brought it back but Gardan who was still weeping, screaming and shaking, shrunk away from the weapon as though it was going to bite him.”

“Were you that second priest?” I asked.

Danzig shook his head. “No,” I was away at the time. Kaedwen was getting ready for another go at the Pontar valley. This will have been just before King Demanvend was killed. But anyway...

“The party got Gardan back to the local church and saw to his injuries but he was only recovering his wits slowly. It was several days before his tremors and anxiety began to drift away but there was a new problem which was that he could no longer fight. I spoke to the people that were involved later and they said that it was really strange. That he would put his armour on, pick his axe up and then, just as he was about to step up to face an opponent, even a training dummy, he would start to shake, scream and soil himself.

“Now the church of Kreve is more enlightened than it once was. But we still don't have a name for what had happened to Gardan other than what we used to call it. Which is “cowardice”. He was suffering from an extreme fear reaction. We recognise it as the same thing that happens to anyone when they're facing the enemy or facing death at the hands of.....something but his reactions were more....extreme. Now, and at the time of Gardan's injury, we recognise it for what it is, an injury. But we still don't have a better name for it.

“In the more....academic branches of Kreve, a part of worship where we still lag behind the Eternal Fire I think as we still spend far too much time looking for evil where there is none, but that's a conversation for another day, they have begun calling this kind of injury “induced cowardice,” or “Manufactured Cowardice”,”

“Still not great names.” I commented.

“I agree but that's what happened to him.”

Another sigh. I flattered him that this talk was a little distressing to Danzig but all of this sighing was a little grating.

“Unfortunately for Gardan, his fall was quite high. From being lauded as one of our bravest warrior-priests he falls to having this done to him. But that's not the difficulty. The difficulty is that our more enlightened approach to treating people with this kind of problem is relatively recent. Indeed it had only been spotted amongst the troops of the, then, most recent war with Nilfgaard. Before that, they would execute people for cowardice.

“To hear Gardan tell it. He himself had summarily executed many people for cowardice and, being a priest of the old school, he couldn't understand why we were trying to help him when we should have been executing him. He just couldn't comprehend that difference. He hated himself for his own weakness. Self-slaughter was a greater sin though as that was, and often still is unfortunately, seen as the ultimate act of cowardice but he didn't want to live like that. He begged us to end his life even as he came to hate himself for his own perceived weakness.

“We tried to help him, we really did but it became clear that out “help” was, in fact, making a bad problem worse. Our care and solicitation was distressing him rather than helping him get better. He wouldn't suffer magic users, and may I say that it would seem that in the intervening time his attitude towards magic has mellowed somewhat, so we couldn't see if what had happened to him was of a magical nature.

“He couldn't stay with us and we couldn't keep him there. It was killing him to be surrounded by combat so we let him go. We found an old church law that said that when a knight is injured then they could “retire.” They would go off, find some old shrine that no-one looks after and live there as best they can so that they can spread the word of Kreve and live out their lives in prayer and contemplation.

“So that's what he did and this is where he ended up. We thought he would recover or emerge from the woodwork when Nilfgaard invaded again as that had made him so, incredibly angry the first couple of times that it had happened but when he didn't appear or make himself known?” Danzig shrugged. “Even as a camp priest he would have been a boon to our troops, but when he didn't appear, we believed that he must have died out here somewhere.”

The narrative petered out there and I let my mind wander, thinking on the castle and what we would find on the morrow but it seemed that Danzig wasn't quite ready to stop the conversation yet.

“You know, I wonder if it wouldn't have been a kindness to let the poor man die there. If we didn't do him a disservice by letting him go.”

“No,” I told him. “No you didn't do him a disservice at all. You and your fellows gave him a chance. Not much of a chance, I'll grant you that much if you want to flagellate yourself a bit but you gave him a chance. More than your predecessors would have given him. More than he would have given himself.”

Danzig grunted but I could tell that he wasn't convinced.

“Loot at it this way.” I told him. “He came here and has been part of the community. He might not have made an impact but he knows people, he's talked to people and when these people have made Kreve into something that, in their eyes is an object of fear and terror that would, in theory, drive them even further away from Kreve into deeper and darker heresy, he worked against that. He presented them with a flawed, human perspective on Kreve. It might not have made much of a difference but on the other hand, that might have saved these people.”

“We'll have to see won't we. Thank you, though, for being understanding and kind to him. It broke my heart to see him like that. He's much worse now than when he left. Much much worse and it's hard not to blame ourselves for leaving him in that state. He deserved better at out hands. Much much better.”

I remembered Danzig saying that as I stood looking at the alter inside the small chapel.

He deserved much better.

I turned and strode outside. The same rage that I had felt before was churning in my gut as I rounded the corner to look up at where one of the bastards was on top of the tower.

“Wait,” I called.

Sir Rickard looked at me strangely as I came closer to him.

“He didn't kill himself.” I said.

Rickard shook his head, “I don't know Lord Frederick. He's not tied up, he could have climbed up there and jumped off. I don't want to believe it either but...”

“But he didn't did he.” I said. “Look at him, tongue lolling out, soiled himself. I can't remember how long it takes a body to soil itself after death but I know that it isn't straight away. Something like that.....” I pointed to the caked on dirt. “Happened during the struggling for his breath. I think we;'' find other injuries. I think we'll find he was tied up or knocked unconscious or that he was drugged or something. If he jumped off the tower he would have broken his neck wouldn't he?”

“I don't know, maybe.”

“He's old but he's not light. Still got a lot of muscle mass on there so that extra weight would have surely added to it. If he jumped off the tower his neck would have broken but if he jumped off a lower thing to strangle himself then where's the thing he jumped off. He would have either kicked it aside or something when he leapt or it would have been leaning up against the side of the tower from how he got up there.”

“My man climbed the tower.” Sir Rickard wanted to be convinced.

“Yes, but your men climb trees and all kinds of things. But this older man. Strong? Yes, nimble enough to climb to a roof without aid?”

“The rope that was already there would make for a good climbing aid.”

“Same difference but there was no rope here the other day. Also, where's his axe? He was the axeman of Kreve. Surely it would be somewhere around here?”

Rickard nodded. Finally letting himself be convinced. “Jenkins? Pendleton?”

The two youngest members of the bastards came running up and saluted. Street thieves both of them but it didn't matter if they were moving through city streets or through the forest, they were quick and could move through terrain that I would struggle with.

“Up to the castle.” Rickard ordered, I was only half listening. “Compliments to Father Danzig and he's needed down here.”

“Sir,” The lads answered in unison before pelting off.

“Castleton, Barnsley.”

“Sir,” two men called.

“Dig a grave in the church yard. I would say that the old man earned it.”

I nodded my approval.

“What next?” He asked.

“I've honestly no idea. We need more information. Has Dan found anything yet?”

Dan was summoned. “Well?” I asked him.

Dan was chewing on a chunk of tobacco. Same as he always was.

“No way the old man killed himself.” He decided with finality. “There was a fight here. Quite a large one.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, there's relatively fresh blood on that grave stone,” he pointed.” Also, someone went through the fire inside. I think that several people died here, not just the old man. Poor bugger died hard. They tried to hide it and, to be fair, I can't find any other tracks. So much so that this place was cleaned. I haven't finished looking yet though but that would take some effort.”

Rickard nodded and Dan went back to work.

“So, someone went out of their way to obscure the tracks or,”

“Something supernatural happened here.”

“Not reassuring, either way.”

“We should have told the boys to fetch Master Kerrass down here as well.”

“He wouldn't have come.” I told him. “Kerrass is busy with things that are definitely Witcher's work. He's in the middle of a contract, that being to help clear out the castle. He won't leave it half done.”

“So what next?”

I looked up to gauge the progress of the day. I also checked to see if there was any mist on the side of the mountainside.

“It's still early. Let's.....Let's finish the grave and bury the priest. I'll do a quick examination but nothing to invasive. We'll wait for a bit for Father Danzig to see if he can perform last rites or something else to help put the old man's spirit to rest. Regardless, at midday we'll carry on our way and head to that local village. I understand it's more of one of those places where they could build a group of houses together but there will be people there. We need to know more.”

Rickard nodded and strode off

We waited for an hour. As I had expected we found sign that someone had hit Father Gardan on the side of the head until he fell unconscious.

Danzig arrived looking stricken and we performed a quick funeral over the body of the old man before laying him to rest. Danzig remained behind to tidy up and do a few things but I suspect that he wanted to be alone with his grief and who can blame him. We told him that we were on our way to the local village and that he should send any stragglers that turned up to follow us.

I couldn't help but find myself grateful, as we rode away. But by the grace of a Witcher, a priest named Jerome and the care of some fine women, that might as well have been me that we tipped into the hole. It might still be me yet.

I don't talk about my injuries very often. I now have a small collection of them and although many of them have been healed so that, theoretically there will be no lasting damage from those injuries, they have still left scars.

I don't talk about them because I still feel it in myself, a learned disgust at a perceived weakness. Every single person that caused me harm is dead and my physical injuries have been healed through magical means, but that doesn't mean that I am not scarred.

I find it difficult to trust knights in full armour. Men like Lord Dorme who poisoned me to the point of death in return to coerce us into performing him a service. I like to pretend that I can't remember his name on the grounds that saying his name gives him some kind of power over me. But, every so often, I see someone with dark, dyed hair, wearing their full plate mail and I get an overwhelming urge to smack them in their stupid smug mouths. It's that or to run away screaming. I didn't write about it at the time but I actually really struggled with some of the time spent in Toussaint for this exact reason. Even though many of the men in question were coming to me to offer their condolences on the loss of Francesca or their congratulations on the engagement to Ariadne. Good men all, but something about them made my fists itch.

I am a religious man. I started to become so after my run in with the beast of Amber's crossing as I was confronted with the existence of my immortal soul and the proof of powers greater than I was used to. It was a sobering realisation that there were greater powers in the world that I couldn't run away from if it got it's teeth into me. That couldn't be stabbed with my spear or struck with Kerrass' sword but even though my faith has grown, along with my need to believe in something greater than myself. I no longer trust priests. I can thank “Arch-bishop” Sansum for that. I know he wasn't an Arch-bishop and that his name wasn't Sansum but that's who he was to me. I know that not all priests are bad. I like many priests and there are many good and holy men who do their best to help the people of the continent with their spiritual needs. I like individual priests. Jerome, Mark, Danzig is a good man, Father's Trent and Inquisitor Dempsey are both reasonable human beings even though I don't know them very well. Father Hacha is not a person that I like but I can see that he has his uses. But I struggle to trust priests. A random holy man met in the streets or on the roads of the Continent. I distrust them, I withdraw from them.

I really struggle to be alone in the woods at night. Caves? Fine. Mines? No problem. But amongst the trees? Fuck that. Often I can manage it and overcome my fear. It's not so bad if there's a fire, or if Kerrass is there. Warm food in my belly after some hard training will often send me to sleep easily. But when I am alone for some reason and I can hear the wind blowing in the branches?

Especially in winter.

I check my horse equipment obsessively now. I always, always know where my spear is. Always. I also always have at least two knives on me. My eating knife which is now much sharper, better balanced and pointier than an eating knife ever should be, and my boot knife. My fighting dagger is often taken off me in polite gatherings but the other two are always on me.

I started keeping my dagger in my hand while I slept. At first Kerrass tried to tease me about it to try and diffuse my fears but he stopped when I exploded in rage and terror at him. It took him a while to calm me down and he looked incredibly sad as he did so. He looked at me with pity in his eyes. It is hard to accept that but it was there.

I've already talked about how my feelings towards Ariadne have been tempered by these problems so I won't go into those things again here.

These feelings have even tainted my home. I don't talk about this either, but I even struggle with being at home now. Castle Coulthard is home to me and, I hope, it always will be a home despite the home that Ariadne and I will build in, presumably, Angral. But after discovering our family secret and knowing that such things were going on behind my back for all that time? I occasionally find myself looking around at those people closest to me and wondering if there's anything else that I don't know. Any other secrets that I might have missed or might have....not been looking for.

As I said to Gardan, I still wake up screaming and sweating after nightmares. Sometimes Kerrass wakes me up if we're by the side of the road or I am woken up by a servant or the innkeeper of whatever tavern or inn that I am staying in.

I recognised Gardan's struggle. I have not walked down his road, but I might have. If not for, as I say, the care of some good people, that might have been me that was tipping over the edge into madness.

So why am I saying this. It might seem a little heavy-handed but the reason is this.

A little while ago, Kerrass called me out for no longer writing these journals and sending them off to the Oxenfurt papers. He said that I had lost sight of my most important duty which was to educate others and to use the insights that I have gained on the road to help others learn from my experience. So that's why I'm talking about this now. To hopefully spread a bit of understanding. My doing this might only be a small drop in the ocean, or rather a small drop falling in the desert but every little helps.

So here's my preaching. My “moral” if you prefer.

Like many people I was brought up and told, over and over that I need to “be a man,” that displays of emotion are signs of weakness. That self-slaughter was the ultimate act of cowardice and shame.

I no longer agree.

I feel as though I don't have the correct words to talk about this properly. Ariadne would call it “a lack in the modern languages of the continent” but I look at someone like Knight-Father Gardan. Yes, I use his full title and rank as I feel he earned it. I look at him and some people, including him, would see weakness and cowardice. I see astonishing bravery.

Bravery cannot exist without fear and his fear was colossal. So large that it caused him physical pain. But when he felt threatened he managed to find something inside him that made him pick up his axe and stand before Father Danzig and I. He stood before us and challenged us to face him.

He later had no memory of doing that but I think that that was astonishing.

He fought when they came to kill him.

I will never forget Knight-Father Gardan and I will remember him in my prayers. I hope you will join me.