Chapter 135: It's defeat Freddie. That's what you are feeling

It took us a long time to figure out what had happened.

A very long time. Tracking back the attack from when they first made contact with the group of soldiers and churchmen on the way back from visiting Dowager Countess Kalayn and her elven maid Ella. Then we had to follow the track of destruction back to the castle, to the field at the base of the hill that the castle rested on and then up the causeway to the castle itself.

Kerrass had disappeared in the early hours of the morning, declaring to no-one in particular that he had some “things to check out,” before taking his horse as well as some supplies and riding off. He had also left orders that one of the smaller cellars should be left free and empty for his use when he came back but as he had told a soldier to do this, the soldier hadn't thought to ask why and as such, we had no idea what he was doing.

He was seen though, out and about riding this way and that. He was spotted filling a water flask from the puddles in the ground that had been left by an overnight shower of rain. He could also be seen picking the leaves from trees as well as climbing over the leftover ruins from the remains of the buildings that we had slept in when we first arrived in this Flame-forsaken place. Apparently, he wrapped his finds carefully in small pieces of cloth before stowing them equally as carefully in his pack and riding off, peering at the undergrowth as he went.

As for the rest of us? There was work to be done. We had to figure out what happened and it was not easy.

No two men could agree on what they had seen or what had happened. The stories varied from the group being attacked by a wing of Nilfgaardian heavy cavalry. Someone else claimed to see the wild hunt coming for them, complete with the heavily segmented plate mail for which the hunt are known, as well as the hounds that left frozen ground in their wake.

One man even claimed that he thought he was being attacked by a platoon made up completely of his old teachers and drill sergeants. He tried to laugh as he told us this, obviously realising how ridiculous it sounded when he said the words aloud but then he couldn't hold it in any more and burst into tears.

There was a lot of that kind of thing as I walked around. Walking and talking. Asking questions. The only thing that could be agreed on by everyone that had survived the group coming back from the visit to the dower house was that the person that needed to be blamed for the matter was Father Trent. The hate against the man was palpable, so much so that Sam had to place him into protective custody so that the man couldn't be lynched. By Sir Rickard, not least.

We found Sir Rickard's other man, Shepherd, fairly early on. He was lying in a ditch, his bow and quiver of arrows nearby. Thoroughly ruined by the damp in the air as well as being soaked by his own blood. It was hard to tell what had happened to him but we did what we could. The best that we could do was to guess that he had been running down the road towards the castle when a rider had ridden past him before cutting at him with a back-handed blow across the face. Someone told me that this was actually a stroke done by an experienced cavalry man.

Apparently, the way that it works is this. The image of a Cavalryman cutting down a fleeing soldier is that they ride up behind them, sword held high over their shoulder before bringing the weapon down, hard across the soldiers back or neck. However, when the infantry man is carrying a quiver full of arrows or a pack with his belongings on his back, then this stroke can be relatively harmless as the impact is absorbed by the pack or the arrows accordingly. This is one of the reasons why a lot of mounted cavalry prefer to use a heavy mace or the point of a sword or spear rather than using this kind of stroke. This requires a lot of training however.

Another method is for a horseman to ride past the fleeing man before, as I say, using a back-handed stroke to strike at the face and chest. It doesn't always kill the target but the injuries that this leaves behind are horrible.

What had happened to Shepherd was indeed horrible. His cheek and lower jaw had been flensed from the rest of his body and hung loose by a piece of skin. The strike had cut something important though in the neck area and the poor man had either bled to death or had choked to death on his own blood. Neither prospect was encouraging.

He was not the only man with horrible wounds though.

Other men had been cut down. A variety of sword wounds and several shattered bodies that looked as though they had been ridden down by the huge horses. One of the soldiers had been stood on by a horse. His pelvis had been shattered although there was no other injury. It must have been ghastly.

All told that night, we lost fourteen men outright with another half a dozen badly injured. Two of those died in the following days. That might not sound like a lot when it comes to such battles as Brenna, Sodden and the field of the Poppies in Kaedwen but the assault on our numbers was not the only factor here, even if that fact was considerable. One of the major factors here was the massive, huge blow to our morale.

We had made contact with our enemies and we had been found wanting. We had been destroyed so utterly that it was impossible to see how we would ever be able to stand in the face of them again.

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For those of us with a more religious way of thinking, there was another problem. That problem being that faith was clearly not our shield.

Again, you may scoff and say things like “Faith and a copper piece will get you a 1 copper loaf of bread” and you would be right. But it's one of the things that you get told, over and over again when you go to church. That your faith will protect you against magic and evil. But in this case, it so clearly hadn't worked.

Inquisitor Hacha had lasted a long time but had succumbed to his wounds in the cold light of morning. At that point when the sky is mostly still a dark blue and grey before the reds and the yellows start to surface. It was clear that the reason that he had died was that he had been left alone. The people torturing him had gone out of their way to avoid the particularly dangerous areas such as major arteries and the like. They had used healing salves and things on his worst injuries to keep him alive but that wasn't the issue. We didn't autopsy him but my working guess was that his body had just given up. When he had been allowed to slump in pain then that was just it.

The things that had been done to him were horrific. Horrific enough that I won't repeat them all here, suffice to say that the things that I am willing to talk about include having his eyes, tongue, teeth, genitals and ears removed. His knee-caps had been shattered with a hammer. His finger and toe-nails had been removed before the fingers and toes themselves had been removed and stacked neatly to one side.

And those are the things that I am willing to talk about.

If we hadn't known who he was, having seen him from the walls and from his height and build and a general feeling of “who else could it have been?” then he would have been unrecognisable.

It took us a long time to gather him up for proper funeral rites.

As I say. It took us a long time to figure out what had happened. It would seem that the party had been on their way back from the Dower-house when the mist had descended. For whatever reason, they had been hit by the mist a lot sooner than we had at the castle, but they were riding along, minding their own business when they had been enveloped in the stuff quite suddenly and without any real warning. They had been late setting off to come back because they had been caught up in a conversation with Ella the maid about something before turning to come back.

When they were done they set off and were making fairly good time until the mist descended which was when the first of several mistakes were made. The priests, who were ostensibly in charge, froze. The soldiers, without any other guidance, formed a defensive ring in an area that was utterly indefensible and waited to see what would happen. Apparently the logic was that they would wait to see if the fog cleared as they stood there, peering out into the mist to see what would happen. But the hounds came at them instead.

As best as we could tell from the things that we were told. There were no blows struck at this point, but the psychological effects were pronounced. The things that the men started see rattled them, Pendleton and Shepherd couldn't see well to shoot properly and so the group of soldiers just sat there while the “Hounds” would ride up to the formation and threaten them. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

I'm told by Sir Rickard and by Sam that in any other circumstances, if the formation had held, then there wouldn't have been any further problems and if the entire formation had been made out of military men then that is almost certainly what would have happened. Especially if the military people would have been allowed to find a more defensible position to stand on. But these were not normal circumstances.

The effect of the Hounds' presence was such that it wore away at the nerves of the men to the point of breaking but also there were other people in that formation other than soldiers. A priest and two Inquisitors with associated hangers on. People were trying to advise them, the soldiers had sergeants that tried to make suggestions but at the end of the day, the priests had the authority over the men's souls which is a powerful tool in the right hands. The priests were giving the orders and the habit of obedience under fire runs deep. And soldiers are a superstitious bunch.

It started to go wrong when Shepherd and Pendleton were ordered to scout the way out. To scout along the road towards the castle. Apparently, Shepherd tried to refuse the order on the grounds that harriers like him and Pendleton fall back from mounted troops which was how the Hounds were behaving. Again, this advice was backed up by the experienced men in the formation but Trent, who had seniority over the two Inquisitors was in the process of losing his mind to the visions that the Hounds evoked and threatened the assembled soldiers with the loss of their immortal souls declaring that “The eternal frost itself was coming to claim them.”

What was a common soldier to do in the face of that kind of thing?

The two men left the formation and Shepherd was killed almost immediately, Pendleton retreating back to the formation.

Which broke. Dashing for home with all speed under the orders of Father Trent. This is where things get more confused. The fear and the visions were overwhelming them by now. At some point, Inquisitor Hacha and a couple of soldiers got lost. A couple of people had said that he wasn't a good horseman and the two men with him were his personal guards.

It became a rout, the soldiers running headlong for the castle, falling off or getting picked off by the Hounds accordingly. When they did get to the castle, Inquisitor Dempsey, although not immune to the effects that the Hounds were having on everyone there, realised that the rout was becoming headlong and uncontrolled and exerted some of his authority ordering a man to render the panicking Father Trent unconscious. He then ordered the reformation of the defensive ring until relief could arrive from the castle.

This was a good idea and the same men that condemn Father Trent, praise Inquisitor Dempsey for realising that the churchmen needed to get out of the way and let the soldiers do their jobs. It would have worked too. At this point, those of us at the castle had seen that relief was needed and were mounting up. But then, Father Trent regained consciousness and, raving mad, he broke through the formation and fled for the safety of the castle. Thus breaching the formation which created the hole that the Hounds could exploit. It also meant that that fragile discipline that was being held inside the formation broke as people saw the priest fleeing for his life and if the priest was fleeing then why should they stay behind?

As I say, the formation broke and this is where the vast majority of the deaths occurred.

Sir Rickard led a number of men out to see if they could read the tracks and try to figure out how many of our enemies that there were. He did report that it was hard to get firm numbers as the Hounds clearly knew their ground and were well skilled at hiding their numbers but that what probably happened was that the group were ambushed by only a small number of men. Estimates ranged from as few as four Hounds up to around a dozen although Sir Rickard did admit that the higher estimates were taken from those men that were trying to protect themselves from accusations of incompetence. He thought that it was more likely that there were around six hounds.

These six harried the group back to the castle where they linked up with a much larger group of Hounds that were watching the castle. Numbers were impossible to guess at from there but all told, it was generally thought that we didn't fight any more than twenty hounds.

Twenty hounds. We outnumbered them, four or five to one and they trounced us. Whether we injured or killed any of them, it was impossible to say as there weren't any bodies left behind but even so...

That fact was terrifying.

We all spent a bit of time walking round in a daze. Father Danzig came back with his group, his normally cheerful face and loud jokes turning to ash before his eyes as he surveyed the bloody ruin that had been done to us. He shook his head before ordering his men to relieve the guards so that the assaulted could get some rest.

It astonished me that no-one really wanted to talk about the entire thing. Everyone was wandering round in a daze, not weeping although I suspect that more than one man snuck off behind the stables or into a cellar or something for a quiet weep away from prying eyes. Kerrass was nowhere to be found so in the end I went off to find Sam.

I found him on top of the tower where he had watched the small battle from. I don't honestly know whether he had come down from that perch all night, even to sleep. Somehow he had managed to stay awake and looked relatively healthy and refreshed. There must be some kind of military trick to it, to be able to get rest where you can and at a moments notice so that you can rub everyone else's face in it and make yourself look superior.

He was being yelled at by a couple of people, notably Sir Kristoff and Sir Rickard, Father Danzig was trying to play mediator though, standing in the way and trying to keep everyone calm. He wasn't doing very well to be honest. This was largely because out of everyone he had had the most sleep and had not seen what had happened. He was shocked by the outcome to be sure but at the end of the day he hadn't been here and hadn't had anything to do with it. Rickard especially was trying to exclude Danzig's opinions from consideration on the grounds that he didn't know what he was talking about. A little unfair of him but I can see why he thought that.

The subject of discussion was Father Trent.

“He should be hanged for negligence and that's the end of the matter.” Sir Kristoff was in full flow. “The chain of command exists for a reason. It was a military matter, he is not military but he took command of Redanian troops, against all sense, and got them killed. How many men would now be alive and better able to serve, had Trent not gone off and lost his nerve.”

“Now there's no way to know that,” Danzig tried. “There's no possible way you can know that that would be the case.”

“With respect Father,” Rickard was pale with grief and rage although he spoke quietly. “You can shove it up your arse. You didn't lose men, you weren't here. I don't blame you for that and I'm not angry with you but at the end of the day you weren't here and you don't get to decide what happens.”

“But I....”

“Even rank amateurs know that light troops fall back from cavalry.” Rickard thundered. It was strange sometimes. In most ways, Sir Rickard was a genial man, self deprecating, funny and charming. Well aware of his social failings and not really caring about them one way or the other. I had yet to see him in a fight but I had been told by a couple of his men that it was a sight to behold. That a towering rage would possess the man and there weren't many people that could stand in the face of that anger. I had laughed and assumed that I was being messed with by the military men, not an unusual thing to happen while I spent time with those men but at the same time I would look at the man who was rapidly becoming one of my closest friends and I found myself being skeptical. But now I saw the first signs of that sudden and explosive rage and I wondered if I might have misjudged him.

“It's one of the most basic rules. Light troops snipe at heavy troops and disrupt the formations of enemy infantry. They are good at hunting down fugitives and fighting in rough terrain where horses are useless but their advantage is speed. Horses remove that advantage. He ordered my men to break formation which put a gap in the ranks that the Hounds exploited. At best that's negligence that led to the loss of men. At worst, that's the kind of bullshit that gets called cowardice in the face of the enemy. I've seen men executed for even being suspected of that kind of thing.”

“As have I,” Kristoff rumbled. “And that leaves aside the question of what he thought he was doing, a churchman taking command of a military formation.”

“Some of those soldiers were church soldiers.” Father Danzig tried to remind them.

“Even more of the problem,” Rickard responded with heat. “Church soldiers,” he sneered, “Church soldiers. When was the last time that church soldiers fought in a proper battle or was the last time they “fought” against people that could actually fight back.”

Sam stirred himself as the colour left Danzig's face. “That'll do.” He said simply.

There must be some kind of trick to commanding military men although damned if I can figure it out. Some kind of quiet voice that means that people listen to you even when their blood is up and the need for violence is in their hands and hearts. Sam used two words. Just two words but Sir Rickard backed off and turned away, taking a couple of steps off to regain his composure.

“I am sympathetic to your thoughts Kristoff, yours also Rickard and there is no doubt that your men bore the brunt of Father Trent's obvious incompetence.”

All three of the men facing Sam opened their mouths to speak but Sam simply held his hand up. “However,” he went on and again I was amazed at the fact that they all subsided. “However there remains a factor here that we do not understand. Something was happening there that we need to figure out and come to terms with. Father Trent, like many of the people down there, lost his mind. He says this and admits this. If he was under magical influence then we can't punish him for that.” Again people started to protest and again, Sam raised his hands to forestall the objections. “We don't know what it was that caused the madness. It is being investigated. But I will not condemn a man for not being in control of his own thoughts.”

He took a moment to make sure that the others had taken on what he said. He nodded when he was satisfied.

“That being said, there are some things that we need to adjust, some changes that need to be made so that we don't come across this kind of problem again. This begins with unit cohesion. Sir Rickard, I have no command over you so you and your men will be reunited and can work with Freddie to your hearts content.”

Sir Kristoff opened his mouth to object but Sam overrode him.

“The same with your men Kristoff as well as Danzig's knights of Kreve and the soldiers of the Holy Flame. All will serve under their own officers who will, in turn, answer to me. That is final.” He looked at all three men. “Any questions?”

“Yeah, I have a question.” Sir Rickard snarled. “What's to stop me from rapping Lord Frederick over the head with a billy-club and making a run for it with him tied to a saddle?”

Sam was very calm. “No reason at all.” He said after a moment. “Although I wouldn't be in your place for all the world. Freddie will wake up sooner or later.” There was a slight smile on his face as he said that. It was well done, the slight hint of humour doing much to disarm the angry soldier.

“Kerrass is working on figuring out what happened down there, what they did to affect our people so strongly.” Sam went on. “When we know that we can strike back and break the bastards. I also would have thought you might want to be in on that Sir Rickard?”

Rickard pretended to consider. “That might be nice.” He admitted. “Some good hard vengeancing might do us all a bit of good.”

“My thoughts precisely gentlemen. So let's crack on shall we. I can see that my brother is positively vibrating with the need to speak to me.”

He turned away, dismissing them. I suddenly had a vision of what kind of Lord the new Baron von Coulthard was going to be.

I shivered.

“You ok?” Sam asked as I approached. He produced a small hip flask from a pocket, took a swig and offered it to me. I took it and the fumes that curled up and into my nostrils from the opening made my head swim. I took a swig before I lost my nerve.

“Flame no,” I said after having a small coughing fit. “Flame, but I'm not ok.”

Sam nodded as he took the flask and turned out to look out over the treetops that covered his lands. I spent a moment or two trying to think of something to say, thinking about how to properly articulate the way that I was feeling.

“Why do I feel this way Sam?” I said after a while. “I've fought before. Although I can't be sure about all of what happened down there I can say that I have been subject to supernatural happenings before. I've seen things that man was not really meant to see. I have fought those things and destroyed them.”

I moved to stand next to him and leant on the parapet.

“In more mundane circumstances I have fought and killed men. I have fought and killed monsters. I have been injured and nearly killed. I have faced creatures of unimaginable power and I have also faced men and women over whom I have no authority and could extinguish me with a thought. I have lost people too, Sir Thomas died in my arms. I lost Father and I lost Francesca and I was the one who sent our mother away.

“But this. This seems different somehow and I can't put my finger on why. Why do I feel so utterly dreadful?”

At first, I couldn't tell whether Sam had heard me or not. He just stood there and stared into space. Truth be told, I was about to turn and walk away when he started to speak.

“It's defeat Freddie. That's what you are feeling. It's the feeling of being defeated.”

He sighed and scratched his head before looking at me sadly and a little ruefully and I was reminded of the younger man that I had once had to help with his maths and calligraphy homework.

“You're turning into a warrior Frederick.” He said with a smile. “Who would have thought it but that's what's going on. But defeat is the ultimate insult to a warrior's pride.”

“I don't follow.”

He laughed. “Bless you. Even I think of you as a warrior. It goes like this. At the end of the day, when you strip a fighter down to his bare components, all that is left is his pride. We are taught to believe that we are the baddest motherfuckers on the continent and that all the other soldiers are evil, ass-sucking cowardly flakes who barely know which end of the sword to hold. The reason for this is that we need the confidence that this gives us so that we will stand in line and do as we're damn well told on the battlefield without quaking in fear. Every time we fight, every time we kill someone it re-empahsises that pride, that confidence is reinforced until we come to believe in our own invincibility. We have to have that otherwise we would just flee, or fold up and cry.

“As we become more experienced and we start to realise that we are not immortal and that the swords and arrows are sharp and deadly. When we have seen the horror that those things can inflict on a man we begin to feel the fear. The way that we overcome that fear is pride. Pride in ourselves. Pride in our skills and pride in our nation and what we are fighting for.

“Defeat hurts that. Defeat proves that we aren't as good as we thought that we were. It shows us that we are mortal, that we can, and will, die.”

He turned away from me and went back to staring into space.

“I'm probably not explaining this very well.” He said, bending his head and looking at something on top of the wall.

“So defeat is an injury to our pride. The ultimate injury to our pride. It calls into question everything that we had believed and held dear.”

“But this feels worse somehow.” I said. “We were defeated when Francesca was taken as well and although my rage was, and still is, a towering raging inferno over that... This feels worse somehow. I want to run away and cry. I was more than half way tempted to take Sir Rickard up on his threat to carry me off. I won't say that it's worse than with Francesca but it is different. But why does it feel like that?”

“Because Francesca's disappearance was out of your hands. That issue was decided before we even knew that it was a problem. You weren't defeated there, you were side-stepped. You were tricked and everyone else was tricked with you. There was absolutely nothing you could have done there. You didn't see an enemy there, there was no-one for you to hit.

“Here, there were enemies and you couldn't beat them. You couldn't defeat them. I don't know, but I think that that's the difference. But also, it was a defeat of your ideals, a defeat of your responsibilities. You are a nobleman through and through. You felt sympathy for the people here, same as I do. You want to protect them and save them from what's happening to them and were utterly confident in your ability to do so. Then these Hounds showed you how wrong you were and how utterly misguided you were being. That's another difference. Frannie's disappearance was a personal attack on you, on our family but you were not responsible for her safety. You would have felt much worse if you have been.”

“Does it always feel like this?”

“I remember asking you the same question.”

“Yes, but as I recall, that was about waiting to go and fight the monsters.”

“True.”

Sam sighed again.

“Honestly?” He blew out a huge sigh. “Don't think badly of me for this Freddie.”

“I won't,”

“Don't make promises that you might not be able to keep.” He told me. “I fought in the Redanian armies under King Radovid and we were unbeatable.” His eyes shone. “We fought the Nilfgaardian invasion to a standstill. Some argue, nor incorrectly, that we did so with the help of the Pontar and some other clever use of the terrain. Still others will talk about how we took advantage of Kaedwen's weakness in a rather underhanded manoeuvre and I wouldn't disagree with you. But we kept Nilfgaard out of the north and out of our lands. It was hard fought and cost us a lot of men but we kept the bastards in check.”

He rubbed his eyes and I thought I could see water standing in his eyes.

“We fought so hard Freddie, so very hard to get to that point. Then some poxy group of malcontents go and assassinate the King.”

The rage and hatred in his voice was horrifying.

“It was the King that held us together and with him gone, the entire thing shattered. We watched as the politicians moved in. Djikstra and his cronies went in and did paperwork and ignored the sacrifices that our people had made in order to get them to that point. They sold us out, sold out the good men that lay, still rotting in the mud of velen and gave away the land that we had fought for. That we had bled and died for.

“That was my defeat Freddie. That was the moment where I stopped....enjoying this as much. When I realised that no matter how good a knight, no matter how good a soldier I would ever be.....Everything that I did would, and could, be undone by a politicians quill. We had been defeated by Nilfgaardians politicians. They couldn't beat us on the field so they beat us on the treaty table.”

He shook his head, his eyes shining.

“Bastards.”

He wiped his eyes again.

“Flame but it still hurts.” He shook his head. “Sorry, sorry. But this reminds me of how I felt back then.”

“I'm sorry for bringing it up.” I told him.

“Don't be, we've never really talked about this stuff have we?”

I shook my head.

We stood in silence for a little while.

“That was the day I was defeated Freddie and I will never forget it. In comparison, this is just a setback. But to just put it in perspective for you....”

He turned back to me. His eyes were dark and bleak and I didn't recognise him.

“I am aware of how powerful our family has become in the new world order.” He said. “I know that we are stronger and richer and more influential than we ever would have been under King Radovid. I know,” he tapped the side of his head for emphasis “that King Radovid was a bastard that would have run his country into the ground by pursuing his paranoia and persecuting anyone he didn't like the look of. Which would have included the Coulthards in the long run, while he was carrying out his genocide of the non-humans. I am also aware that Imperial rule has benefited the North as a whole and in the long run, the world will know a firmer and more lasting peace as a result.

“I know all of those things.”

He paused.

“But I would give anything. Anything at all for another swing at the bastards. Just once more. To prove to them who the better fighters are, who the better men are. Just once.” He said it with a grimace on his face, half way through a grin and a snarl.

“That's why it feels this way Freddie. We were defeated. Our pride was damaged and we were hurt. Wait for another few hours, a day or two at the most and that denial, pain and fear will be replaced by rage. We will harness that and take the fight to the bastards. We just need Kerrass to figure out something that we can use.”

He stopped talking then. I turned and left him there so that he could be alone with his thoughts and so that I could think about what he said.

Not for the first time in my life, I found myself with nothing to do. There were lots of people bustling around, running this way and that way but I just wandered between them with absolutely nothing to do. I attended the memorial service of the fallen. Both the larger one for the church and Redanian soldiers as well as the smaller one for Shpeherd and Pendleton. Both were filled with grim faced and sullen eyed men and after Sam's words I found myself wondering about the emotions that I saw there.