Chapter 131: They had an elf with them

“Look, I'll try and explain what I saw. I can see it in your eyes. You don't believe me, you ridicule me, telling me that I'm imagining things and that it's all a mistake and that I can't possibly have seen the things that I have seen, but I have.

“I was fifteen when I finally plucked up the courage. I was late to it too, shamed into it by the fact that all of my friends had done this before I had ever managed it. My Father died when I was eight and so I had the fear for a long time but I was beginning to have people look at me funny and I didn't want to stand out from the crowd any longer.

“You never forget the first time you see one of the Hounds of Kreve. Never. I've talked to many of my friends and family about it and they agree with me. It's like they're more real than the rest of the world. As though they stand out more and the rest of the world seems to fade away around them. As though they are the only things that you can look at, the only things that you should be looking at.

“I'll never forget it.

“I was fifteen and it was autumn. Just when the leaves start to turn from green into yellow and then into red. As the pine needles start carpeting the floor and the air starts to become heavy. The sun sets to the west and the sky seems to burn with red, as though the sky itself hates to look down at the rest of the world. A mist formed, there is always mist when they come. Always.

“When you get used to it, after a while you get to know when they're going to come, you know when there's going to be an attack. We knew that night as children were chased indoors and people shouted to get us to hurry up and leave what we were doing. But the truth is that we weren't doing much. Otherwise rebellious children drop their games and flee indoors.

“This time though, I had made my mind up to see what all the fuss was about. As I was told, I fled indoors. I still had not been betrothed to anyone so I still lived with my mother. She still needed my help with my younger sister and brother who hated us both with a passion. She because she was in danger of growing into a real beauty and had been marked across the face the year before and hated us both for it. My brother because he was young and didn't know where our father had gone and why people were laughing at him because of the lack of that extra parent. So they hated me for what little authority I was supposed to exercise over them and I hated them back for their hatred and because, for all my strength and power over them, I was still ruled by my mother.

“But I waited, I had a bag of salt that I would use to cover the window sill and prevent them from coming in. There was a knot-hole in the wood of our shutters and I sat there, my eye glued to the hole, as my mother sat in the room with the two younger children quaking with fear. To this day I don't know if she knew what I was up to or what I was doing. She must have gone through the same ordeal as I have but I never got up the chance to see it.

“The dogs sense them first. The sheep dogs and the couple of hunting hounds that we have in the village. They began to howl at first, barking at the doors to their enclosures and to tug at the ropes and chains that we use to tie them down in such times. They howl at these interlopers and we know that they're getting closer because then the howls, growls and barks start to change towards whimpers and whines.

“Then I saw them. They stood their horses on the cliff above the village. Eight of them standing their steeds on the edge of stone, surveying the village. Their horses, if that's what they are, paw at the ground and seem restless moving around and pulling at their harnesses. But truth be told, I wasn't looking at the horses.

“My gaze was held by the leader of them. He sat on his horse there, looking down at us and I swear, even all of these years later, that he was looking at me.

“They have wolf skulls for faces under the hoods of strange blue cloth. They look as though they wear these strange robes made out of strips of leather, the leather sewn and riveted together in strange ways. But then they extend themselves and you find out that they aren't robes at all. That they are wings.

“Their horses quieten as they stand there on the ridge, their wings extended and then, as if from nowhere, the wind picked up and pushed through them. Their robes and wings flapping in the wind which is when the smell hit me.”

“The smell?” I asked wanting to check. He was telling his story well, without pause and I didn't really want to distract him. It had the feeling of a well rehearsed story as though he had told it many times before.

“What?” he seemed startled, “Yes, the smell. But that isn't the right word for it. This is like daggers of ice being jabbed up into your brain by means of your nose. It makes you vomit, makes your eyes water and your knees turn to jelly. The smell is the primary thing that lets you know when they've been through the area. When you know that they've passed by. On those times when you find their victims in the woods, torn limb from limb. It's the smell that tells you that it was the hounds rather than a relatively normal Endrega, Ghoul or Wyvern attack.

“But then they came into the village. The smell was getting to me but I was still determined to see as much as I could. I knew it for a lie, all the other times that my friends had told me about how they had stayed up all night to watch what the Hounds had got up to when everyone else was hiding in their homes. I knew that to be impossible as no-one, absolutely no-one could withstand that smell.

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“But I fastened my eye to that knot hole and watched for as long as I could.”

He groaned at the memory. “I wish I had looked away now.”

He took a long drink and it occurred to me that by now, looking at his rate of consumption. There was a good chance that he was getting pretty drunk but his words were as collected and clear as they had ever been.

“I swear that two of them rode their horses off the cliff as though they flew down off the top of that cliff. I swear that was what happened. The others came in on either side of the village, sweeping round on both sides as though they were hemming us in and cutting off our escape. Not that we would ever try and run for it but that's what happened.”

For those military people paying attention, that's a pincer movement with a thrust up the middle.

“They rode through, howling. They barked at each other and screamed. Occasionally I can hear words in their howling, sometimes it seems like laughter, I don't know but to hear it, freezes the blood.

“They had an elf with them. A woman.

“There are a few non-humans in the area. There's the herb-woman up at the castle, or she used to be. She's down at the dower-house now though isn't she?”

I nodded. I thought it odd that he hadn't connected the movement of the elf with the death of Lord Kalayn but then again....

“She comes down occasionally to sell medicines and some of the rarer herbs that don't grow in these parts. The women of the village know what they're doing but she know's all of that plus a bit more so they like to call her in when there's a particularly difficult birth and things.” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“How often does she come here?”

“Once a week to ten days.”

“And the other elves”

“They roam around a bit. We won't see them for a long time but then they'll come in. We were not the only people who lost during the war and not all Elves want to fight as part of the Scoia'tael. Some of them just want to hunt, and live amongst the trees, same as anyone really. Occasionally they come in wanting to trade for bread and things. They leave us alone though mostly and we do the same. No point in making each other miserable.”

I nodded, filing that piece of information away for later. “So, they had an elven woman with them.” I prompted.

He had lost the rhythm of the story somewhere “They tied her up in the middle of the village and did....things to her.”

He shuddered.

“In the end they tied her to their horses and simply rode their horses off in different directions, howling. We found her in the morning, or at least what bits of her we could find and buried her as best as we could. Ella, the herbalist, told us that the body was just an empty sack of meat and that we should throw those remains out into the trees so that she could rejoin the great cycle of life. But somehow, we just couldn't bring ourselves to do that.”

I nodded and motioned for him to continue. “What else can you tell me?”

He shrugged. “What more is there to say?”

“Think,” I insisted. “Even the smallest detail might be significant. Do they wear armour?”

“Not that I could see although they do clink as they move.”

“You see, there's a point. Do they walk like men? Do they move the same way that people do?”

“No,” he shuddered again. “Not like people. They writhe and move about. They butt heads and growl at each other.

“What else. Do they use weapons? Swords, bows, maces?”

“No. They have claws that grow out of their hands?”

“They grow?” I couldn't help myself. I was struggling to believe him. Don't mistake me though. I absolutely believed that he believed what he was telling me but I just couldn't make what he was telling me make sense.

“Yes.”

“How do they look for things. Do they sniff the air like dogs do? Or do they look around. Do they tilt their heads if they hear a sound?”

“Both, Either.”

He groaned. “They saw me, they looked straight through me. I could hear it laughing at me. I heard no words but I was convinced that he recognised me. That he knew me and that he would come back for me.” His face scrunched up in remembered fear, pain and remembered terror.

“That was when I pulled back from the window. As he was coming towards me and he rattled the shutters but he pulled back from the line of salt and howled in pain.”

“He howled?”

“Yes.”

I nodded. I was pretty sure that I was coming to the end of what the poor man could tell me now. The best thing to do now would be to head back to the castle and talk to Kerrass. I had no doubt that he would have an opinion on what was happening as well as all the things that I should have done better and simpler. I leant forward and put my hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him.

“It's ok.” I said. “We'll deal with it. We will.”

“Don't,” he said, shaking my hand of his shoulder. “Don't make promises you can't keep. You can't fight demons.”

“Oh you can.” I told him and decided that it was time for a bit of swagger. “I have. You can kill them too. I have one last question for you though before my men and I leave.”

“What is it?” He signed, resigned and weary beyond his years.

“Why do you call them “The Hounds of Kreve”?”

“What else could they be?”

I looked as deep into his face as I could. He had decided that that was what they are and judged that there was no way that he would be turned aside from that.

I let him off after that. I didn't want to push my luck too far. We stayed for a bit longer in the village. Not quite long enough to eat our dinner there but long enough to spend some time getting to know folks before we headed off and collected Father Danzig on our way back.

I was falling for what Kerrass sometimes called “The compassion trap.” This happens when you've spent some time in the local area and have gotten to know the people there. The thing that you're after turns out to be a clever bastard, hiding it's tracks well and is proving difficult to track down and destroy. Maybe it flees at the sight of you or maybe it disappears when wounded, but whatever....you end up spending some time in the local area. Eat their food, spend time among them, maybe have a few drinks and a tumble in the hay with a willing partner and before you realise what's happening, you find that you're making plans. You want to stay for the market day or the festival that happens over the weekend.

Or you promise that you're going to help out with fixing the old woman's roof. Or meet the girls sister, or help them hunt some food. Or even worse than that....

You find that you want to help them. I will admit to struggling with this quite a lot. The Coulthard family is a wealthy one. While travelling with Kerrass I have often found myself in areas of the most utter, abject, back-breaking poverty that can be imagined. I find that I want to spread my money around, buy supplies or food or the goods for the merchant or.....or.....or......the list goes on and on.

Kerrass had to warn me not to though which was when he started to tell me about this problem. You see, the flip side of things is that compassion is good, but sometimes the village needs to realise that it's dying and the people need to move on. The people need to go elsewhere and find work in more prosperous regions.

Witchers deal with those monsters and creatures that run contrary to nature and civilisation which is why, if the creature can be spoken to, they leave it alone because then it can be part of the natural cycle of things.

It may seem harsh to say this, to say that sometimes the village needs to be left to die but the way Kerrass said it was this. “Sometimes a forest needs a fire. Sometimes the farmer burns the field.” I don't like it and I struggle with it but then he told me something else.

If I gave these people all my money, even what I had on me was worth a good amount then there were a couple of possibilities. The first being that a passing noble might see the money and assume that the villagers had stolen it. The same thing with any goods that might have been given by me. At best the things would be confiscated leaving the villagers back where they were or at worst, the villagers would be punished for an imagined crime.

The other possibility is that no community exists on an island. No single place is all alone and completely self-sufficient. There is always the need for a peddlar or a merchant of some kind. Especially in arable communities, someone needs to fix the pans and bring in the metal that the smith might use. No-one village has everything that they need. So even if they don't have that much contact with the rest of the outside world, they depend on each other for trade, inter-breeding, mutual protection and various other things. They know things about each other as well. Gossip gets traded and news gets spread.

So if I gave a village a load of money or rich goods that they would be able to go on and sell, then it might breed resentment, or even worse, it might make the village a target for nearby bandits.

What I'm saying is that it's very easy to upset the balance of such areas. Witchers exist to remove things that might upset this balance anyway so it would be hypocritical to do anything that might make a problem worse.

I knew all of this, but I found that I wanted to help these people. I was determined to help these people. I still wanted to find out if there were other cultists in the area that might have had something to do with Frannie's disappearance, but I had put a human face on the problem now.

The elf, Ella had complained about this part of the world being oppressed by something that she didn't want to talk about. She had been through a lot though and by herself, she could potentially be dismissed as someone that had been through a lot and was imagining evil when she had been subjected to very real sinister forces.

The priest, Gardan. His story and then his death had cut me deep. I felt for that old man and I still felt a certain amount of responsibility for his death. I couldn't help but feel as though it was no coincidence that he had died shortly after he had spoken to me. He had spun a tale about The Hounds of Kreve that had caught on to my brain and wouldn't let go. I had tried to dismiss it as the potential ramblings of a madman but there was something about the pain and fear in his eyes that had caught hold of me and wouldn't let go.

Then there was Edward the villager who had a similar story. Similar but different enough. He seemed like a reasonable man. Not too crazy and certainly a victim to the superstitions that plague a small rural village like the one in which he lived but his story was backed up by the whisperings of the village. By the fact that they deliberately scarred their children to make them ugly and therefore of no interest to the Hounds.

That night I took my evidence and the stories that I collected to what Sam used to jokingly call his “council meetings.” He joked but those were really what they were. He gather the priests, Fathers Danzig and Trent, the Inquisitors Hacha and Dempsey, Kerrass, Sir Kristoff the head of Sam's small unit of soldiers, Sir Rickard leader of the bastards and myself.

Most of the talk was what was going on up at the castle.

There had been a flurry of spectral activity when they had started to remove the various bones and remaining bodies which had kept Kerrass busy. He claimed that it wasn't particularly hard work but that there was so much of it that he was finding it tiring. When we did retire to our small enclosure he would often throw himself into bed and be asleep almost immediately while I stayed up long into the night making notes and thinking.

But they were coming to the ends of his side of the work now. The remains of the victims of the Kalayns had been removed, taken a short distance away and had been buried with all the traditions and compassion that a pair of priests could manage.

Father Hacha's report was possibly the most extensive. The difference between the blustery, arrogant and smug man that I had met when I first arrived in the area and the cold, clinical logician that he became when he was talking about his work was marked. He told the assembly what had happened with cold, minute and emotionless detail. He told us a tale about how Lord Kalayn had access to, and seemed to use extensive narcotics of various kinds. Both as recreational substances for himself and for his friends but also there were other sedatives and stimulants that could be used on potential victims or family members but all he laid out were the things that he had definitely found. He didn't speculate on what those substances might be used for.

He was also mercifully clinical when he came to describe the obvious horrors that the bodies of the dead had undergone. Performing the investigations with compassion and understanding. Recording his observations clearly and concisely.

I won't go over them. Suffice to say that they were everything that we had feared they would be.

After a bit of discussion it was decided that inquisitor Dempsey would travel out to the dower house to talk to the former Lady Kalayn as best he could and to ask Ella a few questions, including if she could identify some of the more....esoteric narcotic substances that had been identified. Father Hacha would go with him to ask for some of the more clinical details. As both of the Inquisitors would be going, Father Trent also decided that he would go in an effort to “keep the peace”. Sam joined them and told them, in no uncertain terms that Lady Kalayn was a victim of her husband. As was Ella the maid and that both women were under his protection. There was some argument about this point as both Inquisitors insisted that their work not be curtailed. But Sam declared that he was going to go and visit his Aunt on the morrow and that the Inquisition could come with him, or not as the case may be.

It was only then that the talk turned to me and what I had discovered.

“I still don't understand.” Father Danzig began. Slamming his cup of watered ale down on the table. Sam had taken some of my advice by seeing to it that there was something to eat on the table and that we were all sat down. “I don't get why they call these things “The Hounds of Kreve.”

“I would have thought it was obvious.” Inquisitor Dempsey piped up. I hadn't seen much of Dempsey and had yet to be sure what to make of him. He was supposed to be the “people person” of the two Inquisitors but hadn't spent a lot of time talking to him. “The answer is that the villagers in question don't have any current equivalent of modern ethics and morals.”

I noticed that Father Hacha was nodding as well.

“What do you mean?”

“It means,” Inquisitor Dempsey leant forward and rested his elbows on the table. “That if what Lord Frederick is telling us is accurate and I see no reason to believe that it isn't. What we have here is a “pre-church” society.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“It goes like this. All of humanity has a spiritual need. They need a belief in something greater than themselves or an explanation as to why the world works in the way it does. They need someone to blame for why the crops fail or why the lightening falls and they want to know where the sun goes at night. People fill this need with whatever occurs to them. Soldiers join the army, priests join the church. Some people, I'm told, find Atheism a great comfort although I struggle to see why.

“These people have this.....Crom Cruarch. Whether that's a God, spirit, power or maybe it was an ancient ruler from before mankind came to these parts of the world that has since been deified. It's unlikely that we will ever know for certain but here he is. It's only natural that, as a pastoral group of people, they have decided to worship a God of the harvest, which is what it seems to me this thing is.”

“Yes, ok, but that doesn't explain why they have decided that Kreve is the bad guy here?”

“They're being attacked. They want someone to blame.” Sir Rickard piped up. “They wonder who it could be. They've been told that Kreve hates heretics. They know that he would think of them as heretics therefore he is the enemy.”

Again, I was astonished as Father Hacha spoke up.

“You have to remember that Evil is in the eye of the Beholder.” He said pouring himself a cup of wine. “To us, these people are backward, in-bred, uneducated and stupid. To them, we are elitist, arrogant, threatening magicians who have come to disrupt their way of life.” I hadn't noticed this about him but Inquisitor Hacha had a lazy eye that would occasionally spasm. He would rub at his eyes, especially when he was tired.

“My learned brother is correct.” Inquisitor Dempsey spoke up again. “It is no surprise to me that these people have come to view Kreve as their “devil,” their version of evil. From Lord Frederick's account we know that there was an attempt to convert this part of the countryside to the worship of Kreve a long time ago. I don't know because I wasn't there but I would suspect that the priests that they sent here were of the fire-brand, sword-waving, damnation promising variety. With this “Crom” worship being so entrenched the common-folk heard this man or men telling them that they would be damned and punished by Kreve for their ways. Ways which had worked for them for many years. So naturally they saw themselves as being against Kreve.

“Then, strange “things” start attacking them for no readily apparent reason and so they blame Kreve. I would also suspect that if we start looking into things we would discover that someone, somewhere planted the idea into their heads that these “Hounds” were sent by Kreve.”

Father Hacha leant forward again. “It would also make sense from the perspective of the Former Lord's Kalayn. They didn't want a widespread religion in their territory that might see what they were up to and call a crusade against them. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed the locals into that direction as well.”

Dempsey nodded.

“So these people are not evil?” Sam was taking on Father's habit and model of leadership. He listened to everyone's opinion before asking any questions that might be left over in his head and then making his decision. I wondered how long this question had been sat in the back of his head.

Hacha shook his head.

“Flame no!” Dempsey exclaimed. “No, evil is in magic and demon worship when you do those things knowing that they are wrong. Everyone knows that magic is dangerous...” I had to hide a smirk behind my own cup and I also saw Kerrass' lip twitching in his version of amusement. “... so the only reason to practice it is to further your own selfish power. I know that some of the more modern magical practitioners are becoming reasonable people and I would agree that some of our immediate forbears went too far in Novigrad and the local area but that doesn't change the fact that magic users study magic for their own ends. Not in service to anything else.”

I, very carefully, looked at the ceiling. Fortunately, the priests were talking to Sam, whose face had gone carefully blank so they didn't notice my expression.

“These people are heretics, yes. But they are heretics because they have never been taught any better. Their sin is ignorance but it is hardly their fault. In your place, Lord Kalayn I would gently discourage their religious practices and apply to the church for some missionaries. Obviously I would recommend some followers of the Eternal Flame but also of Melitele which would have the other added benefit of raising the standards of health-care in the local area.”

“Not Kreve then?” Father Danzig almost snapped but he did so with a slight smirk.

“With all due respect to yourself and the Sky father.” Father Trent said. “But the damage there has been done. These people will automatically distrust any priest or missionary from the church of Kreve and it might even push them further down the path towards heresy.”

Sam nodded. “Right then. But that sounds like a plan for the reasonably distant future when things have started to settle down a little more.”

There was more nodding.

“I want to know more about these “Hounds”,” Sam went on. “Whether they belong to Kreve or not it would seem that they are keeping my small patch of countryside in fear. Thoughts? Master Witcher, I'm looking at you here.”

Kerrass shrugged expressively. “There's no such thing as a Hound of Kreve.” He said. “No monster or creature looks like that or behaves like that. The fact that they only come out in the mist is suggestive but nothing that depends on mist would ride a horse or any other kind of steed for that matter and what those things do is kill to feed. I haven't examined the situation in any detail so I may be wrong but I think we can be pretty sure that we are dealing with something mundane here.”

“I agree,” said Father Danzig, feeling a bit safer now that he was talking about things on his own level.

“Hounds though?” Inquisitor Dempsey spoke up. “Hounds suggests hunting. Might they be riders of the Wild Hunt?”

Kerrass shook his head firmly. “The Wild Hunt was a separate thing. I say was because, as far as we know, they were defeated. But separate from that, the Wild Hunt wore heave armour, not these robes and leathery wings that have been described. They were also accompanied by deep and oppressive cold. Cold enough to actively freeze the bodies of their victims. The Wild Hunt also had literal hounds. Not creatures that Lord Samuel would want to take hunting but that's what they were none the less.”

“So, not the Wild Hunt then.” Sir Kristoff sounded relieved.

“That's not to say these things aren't dangerous.” Father Danzig piped up.

“No,” Kerrass agreed. “I could dismiss Father Gardan's ravings as the hallucinations of a self-confessed mad man but what the man Edward described was a lot more forceful. Much more unpleasant and reliable.”

“Could he have been conditioned though?” Father Trent asked. “Communal suggestion is a powerful thing. If everyone sees something and you have believed that you will see something in the dark then you will find something to see.”

“Possible. Either way, we need more information.” Kerrass put in. “Either way, things at the castle are still going to take a couple more days.” He smirked slightly. “I would say that Freddie has the project on his back now. I would suggest that he pursues it accordingly. Go back, ask more people. Talk to other villagers. Are these riders local to Father Gardan and that village or are they more spread out. Is it the entire countryside? Because I notice that Ella the elf didn't tell us about them and she could be referring to some other “fear” that is keeping the countryside under it's boot heel.”

“I agree with the Witcher,” Inquisitor Hacha spoke up, again surprising me. He hated Kerrass on a personal and profound level but there was a respect for Kerrass' professionalism. “However there is an extra factor here.”

“Which is?”

“Regardless of whether or not these “Hounds” are supernatural entities or whether they are merely human enemies that take advantage of the superstitions of the locals, I think it would not be unfair to say that they are, at least, aided by mundane means.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, looking concerned.

“He means Father Gardan's murder?” Sir Rickard piped up. “That and the isolation of the villagers.”

“Yes.” Hacha nodded approvingly in Sir Rickards direction as though he was a teacher bestowing a rare compliment. “Lord Frederick meets Father Gardan, spends a day here and then goes back to find the priest dead. That is not a coincidence. Father Gardan has been here for many years and has been tolerated without issue but the moment that he speaks to another person then he is killed. Even worse than that there was, I understand, some efforts to make it seem as though it was a suicide. That kind of thing is human, not supernatural.”

I noticed Kerrass, Inquisitor Dempsey and Sir Rickard nodding.

“Then we have to read things into the fact that the village strongly believe that they need to stay indoors to protect themselves from these “Hounds”. Indoors and they need to remain in the local area. Loose travellers and people moving between villages and trying to escape the locals don't make it and are hunted down by the “Hounds.” That is the oldest form of Human strategy, military as well as politically. Divide, Isolate and conquer.”

There was some more nodding.

“I would also like to know more about these “Elven settlers” that the village described.” Said Knight Father Danzig. “They must know something and you can never trust them anyway. Individual elves are fine but when they start getting into groups then they have a tendency to form Scoia'tael commandos and try to disrupt things.”

“Possible,” Hacha admitted. “But there is another factor. There are two ways that these nebulous “enemies” might have known about Lord Frederick's visit to Father Gardan. “The first is that they were watching the chapel. Or there is someone here who heard what Lord Frederick said and decided to take steps.”

Sir Kristoff and Father Danzig stiffened in indignation. Trent and Dempsey looked thoughtful.

Kerrass didn't give a shit and looked as though he was nodding off in the corner.

“That's enough.” Sam spoke up. “Let's not start accusing each other or spark a witch hunt here. I won't have it. I know all of you and I trust all of you so we are not going to break apart and start accusing each other until we have more evidence.”

He fixed everyone with a glare, I tried to convey how.....amused isn't quite the right word but how....wry I was feeling about what had just been said. But he didn't react.

But Sam started to speak again. “It is, indeed, more than possible that there are people that are feeding information up to the Hounds. That would certainly give us something to pursue but it is quite correct that we need more information.

“Freddie, would you mind carrying on with that. There's a map of the local area somewhere which will tell you where you can find other villages to speak to.”

I nodded.

“Sir Rickard?”

“I will continue in my duties of keeping Lord Frederick safe Sir,”

“Good. But you also have my authorisation to save him from himself if he gets too uppity.”

Sir Rickard grinned nastily.

“Also, is it safe to stay in the castle yet?” Sir Kristoff asked.

“Mostly.” Kerrass roused himself to wakefulness. “If We don't spread out and I can place wards, traps and people do what I tell them.”

“Well, if there are enemies out there then this small collection of huts is indefensible. I don't think that we've had a serious mist with a red dawn or dusk yet so that might be significant but I don't want us sleeping in the open.” Sir Kristoff said before abruptly realising that he was giving orders. “Or at least that's what I would recommend Lord Samuel.”

“Then that is what we shall do.” Sam nodded. “Anything else?”

There wasn't.