Chapter 136: You know what Witchers do?

I did manage to collar Sir Rickard about Sam's thoughts on defeat and wondered if he felt the same way. Whether he would like another crack at the Nilfgaardian's but he shook his head.

“Nah,” he told me after thinking about it for a moment. “I hold the rank of knight, same as he does but I'm not one of them. I'm a foot soldier at heart and I hold the same opinions as all foot soldiers which is that so long as I've got food in my belly and I don't have to march too far or work too hard then this is the good life. Pride has it's place on the battlefield but if you give into it too much then it can become a rod for your back, driving you on to increasingly impossible places.

“The war with Nilfgaard was one such. Think about it. They invaded three times in one lifetime. Even after the first two failed they kept coming on. What does that tell you about their people? Their will to suceed and conquer?”

He shook his head.

“We should count ourselves lucky to not be some kind of slave race to our Southern neighbours.”

“But we were defeated last night.”

He nodded. “We were. Don't get me wrong. I'm just as pissed as you are and I'm looking forward to handing out some bloody vengeance as well.” He drew his lips back into a savage grin. “But that defeat was because we were incompetent and overconfident which is deadly. We deserved that defeat. I'm just angry that it was my men that had to suffer because of that stupidity.”

He wouldn't be drawn further. He was drilling his men at the time and working them hard. I guessed that this was so that he could take their mind off the fact that there was now two of them missing.

He was not alone either. Kristoff was marching the Redanian contingent up and down and inspecting his men's equipment. The church knights and soldiers were praying under the authority of Inquistor Dempsey. Father Danzig's troops were responsible for the security of the keep on the grounds that they were the least injured.

But I had nothing to do. I tried to see if I could join in on the training but everyone had retreated to their units and as such didn't want to train with some upstart noble who didn't wield the weapons that they were used to. Kerrass was busy, off doing whatever it was that he was doing and so I was left to my own devices. Which meant that I was bored.

All the injured were now beyond my capabilities. I had helped stitch wounds and set broken bones but now it was a case of bringing water to the injured as well as cleaning and reapplying dressings wherever needed which didn't take long really and there were far more qualified battlefield medics there to do those tasks than I was.

I found myself an office and tried to get on with some work. Expanding some of my notes on the early part of our excursions into Sam's territories and considering what I wanted to do next. What was worth talking about and what could be done to expand on some of the ideas that I had considered when things were carrying on regardless.

But the truth was that my heart was not in it. The conversation with Sam had reminded me of my feelings regarding the disappearance of Francesca. It seemed a long time ago now, that she had disappeared but it wasn't even six months that had passed since she had been taken from us. The feelings of guilt were still there, the suspicion that I might have been responsible for her disappearance was still there and above all, the rage against the people that had taken her. That was still there as well. I still wanted a target. Something that I could punch. Something that I could rail against.

I spent a bit of time wondering whether I still wanted to pursue the kidnappers. I felt as though I had been distracted since her disappearance. The adventure with Bishop Sansum as well as the legal fallout from that had diverted me from my main purpose. Kerrass had been right to tell me that any kind of single-minded pursuit of our enemies was destructive and dangerous. That I had to remember who I was, was an important lesson that I had had to learn. But now I wondered if I had gone too far the other way. Would it actually be better for me to leave these things to the professionals, the same way that Kerrass is always trying to tell people to do.

The only way I can describe the way I was thinking was that it was like.....You know when you have a tooth-ache but it's still in that early part of being in pain. That part of the sensation where you're not entirely sure whether or not you are actually in discomfort so you spend a bit of time poking around in your mouth with your fingers or your tongue in order to see if you can figure out which part of your mouth is hurting.

Then you find the source of the pain and it flares up and you retreat from it.

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But then curiosity brings you back and you start poking at it again.

It was like that. I had been distracted but the things that had distracted me were still important things. They were still there and needed pursuing. The fact remained that someone had taken Francesca from us and we needed to know why. Even if it was no longer entirely plausible to take her back.

But I wanted to. I remembered what Rickard had said, about handing out some bloody vengeance and that was still the case for me.

I wanted to find the people that took her and I wanted to gain some measure of satisfaction from it. I couldn't have told you whether I wanted Justice or vengeance at that point and truth be told I could not have told you the difference in this case.

That was why I was here after all and these Hounds presented a thread that I could pull on to see if the entire thing might unravel.

I grinned at the thought.

Kerrass was gone for the majority of the day. When he did come back he ignored all efforts to try and get him to tell us what the hell was going on and marched past us, snagging a piece of bread and cheese as he went while carrying a large pack over his shoulder as he disappeared into the direction of his commandeered new laboratory.

Which is where he spent the vast majority of the night.

I finally fell into a doze at some point in the early hours of the following morning, maybe a couple of hours before dawn. That night had been clear and crisp, as though nothing had happened the previous day but I was woken by the vigorous application of the toe of Kerrass' boot.

“Bastard.” I greeted him as he stood over me, putting his foot back onto the floor after raising it for another kick. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“Come on Freddie, time's a wasting.”

“What time? It's barely morning yet.”

“Yes, and while some people have spent their time asleep, others of us have been up and running around actually doing something with our time.”

He was giddy and I took that to mean that he had found something. I climbed to my feet, splashed some icy water from the castle well over my face and the back of my neck before following him, bleary eyed, off to Sam's council chamber.

Where an argument was already in full flow.

“What's he doing here?” Sir Kristoff demanded, pointing an indignant finger at Father Trent. “He has no place at this meeting. He is a coward and a fool and has no place....”

“He is here, because I say he is to be here Sir Kristoff.” Sam declared. “I will thank you to remember to whom you are beholden.”

“This man,” Kristoff leant on the table by way of his gauntleted fist. “Got some of my men killed.”

“They were my men too Sir Kristoff and don't forget it.” Sam put some teeth into his words and Kristoff backed down before my brother's authority but I noticed that Kristoff was less than entirely pleased. Nor was Sir Rickard for that matter.

“Father Trent is here at my request,” Sam told the group, “and here he will remain until I say so. Am I understood gentlemen?”

There was some rumbling of assent.

“Good. Now then Master Kerrass, you say that you have something for us.”

“I do.”

Kerrass had his “Witcher face” on meaning that he was being aggressively stoic but I could tell that he was enjoying himself.

“I can tell you all with some degree of certainty that we were poisoned last night.” He said to the room. The results were interesting, lots of darting glances this way and that, accusing looks. Only Sam seemed unsurprised.

“Poisoned?” he asked. “How, and in what way? Are we in immediate danger?”

“Not in immediate danger, No.” Kerrass told us. “In short, that is how the Hounds were able to debilitate us. We were poisoned. This is why I was able to escape the majority of the effects as my natural immunities came into effect. But it was that poisoning that meant that our people were hallucinating and reacting catastrophically. We were poisoned.”

“How?” Inquisitor Dempsey was shifting uncomfortably. I got the impression that he had rather enjoyed the prospect of the lot of us being attacked by sinister and evil forces. A lot of the surviving soldiers credited Dempsey with being able to keep his cool under the onslaught from the Hounds and it was he that hat kept the remaining men together after Father Trent had broken the formation to flee.

“I don't know for sure,” Kerrass told him, “because I would need to get hold of one of the Hounds to be properly certain but I think that it goes something like this. I think it's a gas, an air-borne toxin that we breathe when we are around the Hounds themselves. I don't know how that is delivered. My working theories vary from the possibility that agents of the Hounds come around and set the stuff billowing through the air in advance so that when the hounds do actually attack then we are already poisoned. Another theory is that the Hounds have something on them. Some kind of Censor like priests carry the burning incense inside during church services. They carry that and that takes the poisonous gas to their targets. As I say, I can't be sure.

“What I do know is that massive amounts of the stuff was fed into those buildings before they were set alight. I think it was this that caused the most problems.

“But I am certain that it's a gas of some kind. It's in the smoke that seems to accompany them.”

“You mean the mist that billows up.” Someone asked, I though it was Sir Rickard but I couldn't be sure.

“No, that is a coincidence, or a natural shield that the Hounds are taking advantage of. They can hide in the mists and take advantage of the fact that the mist obscures them, using the it to camouflage the smoke that they are using to spread their hallucinogens.

“Here's the silly question,” I said. “And I know it's a silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do they cause the mist?”

“Not that silly,” muttered Sir Rickard.

“No.” Kerrass kept his face admirably still. “No, the mist is naturally occurring. As is the phenomenon of the red tinge to the mist. In those cases I think that must be the result of a natural, local weather pattern. Or maybe, at the outside chance, it might be a result of the strong magical aura that is in the local area. I can't be sure on that regard but I don't think it's that important to what's happening here. At most, the poison that the Hounds are spreading might make the mist that little bit more opaque to look at.”

“So,” Sam leant forward. “Time for the Million Crown question. Is there an antidote?”

“I don't think so.” Kerrass admitted to a chorus of disappointed sighs around the room. “The poison itself is extraordinarily complex. Well above my alchemical skills to create and is so specific as to what it needs to do that it boggles my mind. If there is an antidote then it would have to be something incredibly specific. Something that would be built into the stuff at the basic level by whoever designed the poison.”

“It is definitely artificial then.” Inquisitor Dempsey spoke up, fascinated despite himself. “Poor Hacha, he would have been fascinated by this.”

“Oh yes. It's far too complex a system to be naturally occurring. The stuff needs to be breathed in. You can't drink it or eat it. Introducing it to the blood stream would do sweet fuck all.”

“Astonishing.” Dempsey leant back into his chair, deep in thought.

“So how do we fight it? Can we fight it?”

“The pessimistic answer is that I don't know.” Kerrass said. “I have some ideas but I can't be certain that it will work.”

“Which is?”

“It's carried in the air like smoke.” Kerrass said. “What do you do to help yourself breathe when you're in amongst the fire?”

“Stay low to the ground,” Sir Rickard said.

“True but we can't fight like that.” Sir Kristoff was frowning in thought.

Sam was smiling though. I watched him as he waited for a moment to see if anyone else had an answer to the riddle before opening his mouth. “You wrap a scarf round your face.” He said. “Preferably after dipping it in water.”

Kerrass nodded. “It's not a perfect solution.” He said. “I would add that we should add some mint, lavender, Cloves, Eucalyptus and some Juniper berries to the water if we can. Also some Sage should be worn about the person to help to ward off the fumes.”

Sam had gone a little paler. “I'm not sure we have any of that.”

“As much, or as little as we can manage. My hope is that just wrapping our faces in a wet scarf will have a beneficial effect but those other things will definitely help when it comes to warding off fumes.”

Sam nodded. “Well it's a chance then.”

“Not much of one.” Sir Kristoff sneered, looking unhappy.

“I'll take what I can get.” Sam told him. “Especially as the Hounds are almost certainly going to attack again soon.”

“Why do you say that?” Inquisitor Dempsey asked.

“It's what I would do.” Sam replied. I could see a couple of the other more militarily minded men around the room nodding their heads.

“What?”

“Think about it. You've just faced the unknown quantity in your lands. The new military presence that you know nothing about. You've tested them out and found that you can walk all over them with ease. What would you do next?”

“Wipe them out?” Inquisitor Dempsey said.

“No,” It took us all a while to realise who had spoken but it was Father Trent. When we had first met him, his voice had been melodious and harmonic. It was the voice of a trained speaker. Someone who knew how to hold a room and speak to all of them. This voice was cold and raspy. Dry and remote. “No you wouldn't. You would dominate the area.”

We all took a moment to look at each other. Saying that Father Trent looked dreadful would be an understatement. It was clear that he hadn't slept and was, pretty understandably, feeling awful for his role in the military disaster that had taken place earlier. Guilt, grief and a certain sense of “not being good enough were bound to be warring for space in his mind. He took our silence as a desire for more information.

“This has consistently been a battle for hearts and minds.” He went on. “They're not conquering the area they are terrorising it. They want to control it and subdue it. If you left them alone and agreed to stay out of their way and let them get on with things in the same way that the Former Lords Kalayn probably used to do,”

“That's if the former Lords Kalayn weren't involved in the Hound's activities.” Father Danzig put in.

“Quite so.” Trent went on. “Then I think they would have been happy to leave you alone. You are right. Last night was a test. To see how you would react. Well they know how you're going to react now, how we're going to react. So the next stage is to remind everyone that they are in charge. Not just us, but everyone.”

I found myself nodding. “The villagers”.

“Precisely. The people in the villages that had just been beginning to feel hope for their survival. Hope for their continued existence. They are the ones that need to be reminded that the real rulers of this small part of the world are The Hounds.

“If they destroy us. If they kill every soldier here and hang us from the castle walls then the villagers will panic and will migrate to friendlier locales. Not to say that such an action will call attention to the area. What would happen if Lord Samuel or Lord Frederick suddenly vanished?”

“I know one Vampiric Sorceress who would get quite cross.” Kerrass muttered.

“And that's not including Emma, Mark and their other friends at court.” Sam was pulling at his lip in thought. “Like the Empress for example.”

“Precisely.” Father Trent said. “They will come. I don't think there will be anything that stops that now. But they won't come against you. They've made their point in that case in what they did to Inquisitor Hacha and the rest of us. That was the equivalent of a hound pissing up against a fence post to let the others know who's territory they are in. Now they will want to re-exert their authority.”

Sam was nodding in agreement. “I agree,” he said after a long while. “Anyone else wanting to disagree?”

There was a lot of shaking heads.

“Right then. In which case, here is what we are going to do. Someone pass me that map.”

We talked for hours. Talked and planned and strategised. At some point, Kerrass left to get a bit of sleep and to rest up after his exertions. He simply said that he would go to wherever I went and left it at that.

I won't bore you with the details as to what happened in the next couple of hours worth of discussion. We talked around the points rather a few times and I remember thinking, several times in fact, that there were occasionally merits to the military chain of command where one person decides what to do in a crisis and then that's what happens.

But, as Sam told me later, even the best generals listen to advice and opinions from everyone that they can before they make decisions. Politicians do the same thing, or at least they should, and so Sam wanted to hear what everyone had to say.

Over and over and over again.

But we got there in the end. That's not to say that there weren't some problems involved.

What was decided was based on the opinion posited by Sir Kristoff that ten well trained men would be able to hold the castle. This combined with the common opinion that the Hounds wouldn't attack the castle itself meant that we left those proverbial ten men at the castle and the rest of the fighting men that were still under Sam's control would split up to defend the four major areas of population. The long term goal was to use Kerrass' methods of protecting ourselves and to give the Hounds a bit of a drubbing. To make them afraid of us.

The hope was that this would all but break the back of the assaults from the enemy which would mean that we could then send messages out of the lands to bring help in to properly turf these bastards out.

As a secondary goal, we wanted to try and capture one of these people. There was still more than a little bit of superstition flying around about the so-called “Hounds” and that they might not be people and were, on some level, monsters. It was one of those strange sentiments that crop up occasionally in my instinctual self.

For example, I knew that magpies are just birds and that it didn't matter whether or not there were one, two or fifteen of them flying in a row, but I still tug my forelock when I see one. I know that black cats are just black cats in that they are still utterly evil and absolutely adorable but at the end of the day, they're just animals. But I still avoid them.

In the same way that I avoid walking under levels, take care to spit and throw salt over my shoulder when I hear people talking about evil ghosts and monsters.

Yes, despite the fact that I travel with a Witcher and I know, in some detail, what that all means.

I know that all of these things are simple superstitions born out of childish fear and the amusement of my elder siblings and nurses....

But I still obey them.

It was like that. I knew that the Hounds were just malicious humans that were taking advantages of the people that happened to live on their “supposed” territory and their fears and history. But I also feared what might be under the hood, under the mask so to speak.

And I was not alone in that. So we were going to aim to capture one. The reason that we gave for this was so that we could interrogate the person in question and see if we could find anything out. But I know the truth and I guess that Sam knew it as well along with, I think, Father Trent.

There was an argument about who would go where. After the previous debacle, Sir Rickard insisted that his men went together as a unit.

Sir Kristoff argued that trained archers and scouts would be useful at all sites but Sir Rickard put his foot down and, once again, played the card of saying that he would be quite willing to properly fulfil his duty of protecting me in Novigrad, or Oxenfurt or even “Fucking Vizima” which were his words. He said that he and his men could be ready to go in minutes and that I would be tied over my saddle in considerably less time, which he had the authority to do.

Sir Kristoff threatened that he could be prevented from doing so.

Sir Rickard told him that he would be interested to see Sir Kristoff try.

I said nothing and just allowed the two men to get on with it. Once again thinking about what Sam had said earlier about the pride of soldiers.

In the end though. It was decided that Sir Rickard, Kerrass (who also refused to go anywhere other than with me) and the rest of the bastards would be coming with me to protect the first village that we had visited near the church of the unfortunate Father Gardan. Sir Rickard had given the opinion that he and his men could defend that place against a much superior force and as such he was told to prove that boast.

Sir Kristoff would take the Redanians off to protect another village. The soldiers of the eternal flame would follow Sam's commands and protect a third while Father Danzig who had military training would take the knights of Kreve to protect the last village.

There was a brief argument that Father Danzig shouldn't be leading a group because churchmen were being removed from the command chain. This was countered by the fact that Danzig also held military rank and had an understanding of the proper strategy which was considerably more than Trent or Dempsey had.

For those people wondering. It was Kristoff that had made that objection.

Another point was made that the locals thought of the Hounds as being “The Hounds of Kreve” so they might be a little bit afraid of being protected by “soldiers of Kreve”.

It was Dempsey that made this point. A much more reasonable point than the first but Danzig told him not to worry about it. That dealing with the fear of the common man was not a new problem that he had had to overcome in the past.

So the matter was decided. We all took our supplies, made some preperations and headed off to our assigned positions.

I slept badly that night. Dreams that kept me restless that meant that I couldn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time. To the point that I don't remember actually sleeping. I must have done though as there is no way at all that I actually saw the entirety of the night. I seem to have some kind of recollection of running through a forest of some kind. Maybe a flashback to the visions that Jack had sent me but I can't answer for that. All I know for certain is that when I was shaken awake and told that it was time to move, I felt as though I had been hung out on a line before being beaten with a stick like village women do to clean rugs.

It was the early hours of the morning that we set out, packing things into our saddle bags and setting out into the cool and crisp morning air. The sky was clear and a deep, burnished blue with just a hint of the orange of the sunrise climbing over the mountains to the east, glinting off the snow that still crested the tops of them despite the growing warmth of the seasons.

It was going to be a beautiful day and I felt strangely sad as we set out. Not a sense of foreboding but almost the sense of saying goodbye to something. The same feeling that you get when you are leaving home for an extended period.

We rode gently as well. Not too fast, and I noticed that the bastards had their horse-bows out and strung with other weapons easily to hand. These were not the laughing, joking and singing men that I had travelled north with. These were the veterans of several battles and more quiet skirmishes in the dead of night and the quiet of the roadside than could easily be counted.

There were ten of them now, with Rickard and his Sergeant making a total of twelve. Kerrass was with us as well which meant that, to my mind, we made a formidable looking group of men.

Which might have contributed towards the fact that the reaction we got from the village when we arrived was absolutely not the one that we were expecting.

To be fair, I couldn't tell you what it was that I was expecting. All I know for certain was that it wasn't this.

We were met by a line of men with pitchforks, one or two with hunting bows and one man had a rake. The display was laughable really if it hadn't been so tragic as there was also a line of women behind them men who looked as though they were cowering. Notable by his absence was Edward the headman or Alderman if you prefer, that I had come to know from my previous visit. We weren't really in any danger except from the archers but from this distance, even I could tell that the aim and the grip of the men holding the bows was very shaky indeed.

We walked our horses down the hill and out of the woods until we were facing the line of men. We were about ten metres away at best.

“Go back.” Someone shouted but I couldn't tell who it was that had called. Having travelled with Kerrass for some time I had seen versions of this story several times before. Indeed, our very first interaction, the village with the Nekkers had had a group of belligerent men who had tried to prevent Kerrass from doing his job and I had a sneaking suspicion that if this situation was pushed too far then it would end in exactly the same way.

I looked at Sir Rickard who shrugged and turned to give some orders to his men. Kerrass was staring at the sky, ignoring the entire situation.

“Go back?” I called back, “I've only just got here.”

I think I got a bit of a snigger out of one or two of the bastards but that was about it. Sir Rickard was pointing and a couple of his men dismounted, pulling large woodsman's axes from their saddles as they went before trotting off in the direction of the treeline.

I dismounted myself.

“Go back,” the voice said again, calling from the meat of the crowd. “You are not welcome here.”

“And again, I point out that I've only just got here.” I called out, scanning the faces in front of me to see if I could tell who it was I was addressing. I stepped forwards again.

“Go back to your castle.” The voice called.

I sighed theatrically. I was tired and grumpy and I could possibly have handled it better. Certainly, looking back I can think of several other ways that I could have done things without upsetting people but at the time...?

“Ok, first of all,” I said. “Who is it that's speaking? It's incredibly rude to give orders without showing your face. I notice that, as is so often the case, that the person doing the speaking and saying the dangerous things to the heavily armed men, is stood at the back, well out of harms way. Pushing braver men to the front so that they can face whatever problem that it might be leaving the speaker, better able to run away. But let me ask a question in turn?”

I waited for a response. “Go away, or what?” I said into the silence.

The intellectual that I was speaking to was clearly ready for this. “Go away or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or we'll stop you.”

I laughed at him. As I said, I could have....I should have handed things better.

“What, you lot? You could stop us coming into your village if we really wanted to?” I said.

It was an odd feeling that stole over me, the same kind of feeling that I got when I confronted Ariadne all that time ago and laid out the political situation of the world. The kind of feeling of....head down, just go for it.

“Oh for fucks sake,” Kerrass called out. “Let's just move past these idiots anyway. It's not like they can stop us.” I couldn't tell without looking at him whether his anger was real or not. It certainly sounded real but Kerrass is good at that kind of thing.

“We would stop you.” Said the man with the spear. He stepped forward to bar my way. “We will stop you.” He declared.

Poor man, he deserved better than what I did to him.

“Not holding your spear like that you won't,” I commented. My hand shot forward with all the speed that Kerrass had spent hours training into me. I took hold of the haft of the spear and simply tugged, not even that hard. The poor man simply let go and fell over, seemingly in shock.

I felt disgust then, so much that I wanted to vomit and go bathe. Not at the fallen man, the village or even the man standing behind them all, goading them all on. I was disgusted with myself. I felt like a bully and the worse kind of man who used his strength over those men weaker than himself. I sighed and tried to spit out the horrible taste that was in the back of my mouth.

I held my hand out to the fallen man who took it out of reflex before allowing himself to be helped to his feet.

“Here's the thing.” I said to the assembly. “We are here to help. We are here to help you protect your village so that no-one ever needs to be carried off again. No-one needs to be tortured in the streets or abused in the forests. You want to live your lives the way you want? Well we're here to make that happen.”

“You can't help us.” The initial speaker stepped forward. Presumably because he felt that the threat of violence was passing and as such it was becoming safer to step forward and to remind everyone that he was in charge. “No-one can help us. This scourge was brought down on us by our own wicked and sinful ways. We brought this on ourselves.”

“No,” I said. “No that's not the case. These things are men, they are tricking you into doing what they want. That we can help you with.”

“Help us? you can't even help yourselves.” He howled into my face. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt and grant him the belief that he actually believed what he was saying, but I couldn't help but look at him and see everyone in every village, town and city that I have ever travelled through who profit and benefit from the status quo. Every time that change might be positive for the future there is always one man, sometimes more than one man who benefits from the hardships that others are under.

There is always someone who has to sell weapons to the army. There is always someone who is benefiting from the victimisation of others. The best example was always the sword-smith in Novigrad who shouted loudest against non-humans because his competition was made up of elves and dwarves. Suddenly, the church soldiers were good and decent men who were doing the work of the Eternal Fire.

There is always someone who profits.

This man, for all I know, was just someone who was afraid, but I couldn't help but think that he was someone who was taking advantage of the way that things had always been.

But then again, he might have been an agent of the Hounds. One of those men and women who had secreted themselves amongst the people of the land in order to feed intelligence off to whoever commanded the hounds in return for their protection. It was one of the things that we would have to be careful of when we worked.

I didn't like him.

Can you tell?

“The hounds came for you didn't they.” He spat at me. “They came for you and attacked you on the road. Couldn't protect yourselves then so why should we believe that you can protect us?”

He was playing to the crowd and he knew it.

“The mist descended. The same as it always does. The mist descended and these fools were on the roads. Unprotected and alone. The Hounds fell on them for the unclean heathens that they were.”

Say what you like about the man but he was a gifted speaker.

“The Hounds fell on them and crushed them. Taking one of their vaunted churchmen. One of their holiest men, their holiest heretics and torturing him until the ground ran red with his blood. The Hounds killed them, slaughtering them in their dozens and leaving their broken bodies on the field. Which of you want to lose your lives, or the lives of your sons, brothers and husbands to the wrath of the Hounds. Because that wrath is coming. It is and there's nothing that we, or these fools can do to stop it.”

He looked around the people and far too many of them couldn't meet his gaze.

“The only way, the only way to prevent the Hounds from taking us. From taking our loved ones in the night and into the mist. The only way is to mark their faces and surround yourselves with salt as you sleep. That is the only way that you can protect yourselves from these demons. The only way that you can protect yourselves. That's what I'm going to do tonight and I would tell you all that that's what you need to do to. Salt, around the windows and doorways with an extra circle around your bed.

“It's the only way.”

I lost my temper.

So many ways that I could have handled this entire situation better.

“Listen friend.” I stepped in close to him and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “You can surround yourself with salt, soot or fucking sausages for all I care. Men or Demons, they have to be dealt with. You see that man?”

I spun and pointed at Kerrass.

“That man there. That's a Witcher. You know what Witchers do?”

There was some mumbling.

“Witchers destroy monsters. He's decided that these things are monsters, whether they're human or not. You say that we were attacked? You are right. We were attacked but you wanna know what else? He was immune to the effects of the Hound's presence and he has taught us how to protect ourselves from them. So we're going to fight them. We're going to fight them and we're going to kill them and make them afraid of us. So that they will never come back.

“How many of you want to fight. How many of you want to live your lives in peace. How many of you want to take back your land and control it and say what you want to say and do what you want to do. How many of you have looked at things and found away to take the fight back to the bastards that make you scar your children. How many of you want to do that?

“I would. I would want to fight.”

“We have fought before. We always lose.” someone said.

“Before, you didn't know how to fight back.” I said, a little quieter but with as much force as I could muster. “But I can show you.”