Chapter 140: The Eternal Flame and The Sky-father Kreve will help us?

I remember it distinctly. A moment that.....that changed who I was into who I am now or rather, who I am becoming. In sagas and books of history, people often talk about a character's defining moment. Those points of life, those occurrences that shape who we are and how we are going to behave moving forward. Those moments in plays and sagas are often large and epic in scale. The hero defeats the villain by standing on his chest and plunging his spear or sword down into his enemies body. Often accompanied by some kind of speech from both of them. The villain telling the hero that the two of them are not really all that different followed by the hero's vehement denial.

You also hear about the speeches before powerful people or a piece of oratory in the crowd and people look back and say that that was the defining moment. The defining moment for the man, the moment that he will be remembered for for the rest of his life.

But that has not been my experience. For me, those moments that have defined me have been quiet moments. Sometimes a conversation between two people or a moment of sitting somewhere and thinking quietly to myself. These are the moments that define me, that have made me change my mind about something or have shifted my understanding from one thing over to a completely different direction. Not the events themselves but what comes afterwards.

I have been lucky really in that I can look back and remember those times when I have made decisions and deliberately adjusted my own thinking or have made suitable changes to myself or decided when there were things that I needed to work on in order to become.....in order to become a better man in my own eyes. This harks back to a piece of advice that was given to Kerrass by the Wolven Witcher Vesemir in his past history.

That advice being that you need to be able to look yourself in the eye when you gaze into a mirror. If you can do that then you are coming out ahead in the world.

But I can remember those moments.

The first was when I decided to leave home and go to University. To those people who do not know me or did not know my family dynamic at the time, you may find this quite surprising. The Status of the university has improved over time and I am well aware that it is now considered quite a prestigious thing to have a son or a daughter educated, at least in part and depending on the subject, at the university. Some people have even done me the kindness of suggesting that I may hold some of the responsibility for this increase in the University's status.

I can't answer for that but I can well remember the night that I made my decision. Sat quietly in the dark after my sixth betrothal offer had been turned down followed by an hour's lecture from my father about how I needed to buck my ideas up in order to attract a proper lady. I remember being extraordinarily bitter that it had taken an hour of my life for my father to tell me that I was not good enough and at the fact that Father didn't really care enough to get angry about it. That he hadn't cared enough to yell.

I had gone to my room having been ordered to pack up my notes on various topics that I was interested in at the time as well as my books and to have the servants remove them. Where to? I have no idea and I always strongly suspected that my Father didn't care so long as they were no longer his problem. I remember vividly, starting the chore as I had been ordered like that dutiful son that I was before I came to a book on the genealogy of the Kings of Redania.

I still have it somewhere.

But I got to that book and before placing it in a box as I had been bidden, I sat on my bed and opened it, at random and started to read the page there. Before I realised what was happening I had read several pages and when I did realise what was going through my mind, I felt a horrible kind of pressure behind my eyes as though a thing was trying to push it's way out of the front of my skull. I started breathing heavily and became dizzy. I lay back onto my bed and started sobbing as quietly as I could so as to not wake the other members of my family.

I spent the rest of that night in deep thought. Running through options as to what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I remember thinking about how I could make myself more attractive and what I was going to do to fill my time if I wasn't busy studying. In short, I was working out ways to make myself a more attractive prospect for marriage.

The central unfairness was that this time I had been rejected because of an accident of birth. The boy that the girl had chosen, a nice lad a little younger than me, had been of an old noble family and stood to inherit a much larger chunk of his father's estates that I did mine and could thus provide for the comforts that the lady in question was looking for.

So I kept coming back to this point. That I could do nothing about how handsome I was, nor could I do anything about the fact that I was a younger son, literally a spare son in case one of the older ones died, so my inheritance was not going to be large. So how could I improve on any of the things that (in my somewhat naïve experience) seemed to be the reasons that I was consistently being rejected for marriage.

I remember lying there, my face still wet with tears when I felt the first tickling of the idea in the back of my mind, so I sat up and lit the candle next to the bed. I had some kind of half made up decision to go and get something to eat from the kitchen but then I realised that I still had that book in my hand. I remember sitting and staring at it for a long time, far too long really before I looked at the half packed boxes and bags and said “No”.

I lay back and fell instantly asleep.

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Don't think that this was too much of a major moment for me. It still took me a good couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to tell my father what I intended to do. I talked about it with Emma first and then targeted Mark on one of his few visits home as he was always encouraging me into scholarly pursuits. After that I spoke to Mother, made sure that my tutors would support me and sponsor my entrance to the academy. Then I tackled Father and dealt with the shouting match that resulted from that.

But I will never forget that moment, sat in my bedroom. Late at night and making my decision as to who I wanted to be.

Another one occurred on the boat north after Kerrass had spent a night talking about his past. It was maybe two nights after that conversation when I was sat with the horses and watching the night sky. I was still suffering the after echoes of some of the things that I had seen with the Beast of Amber's crossing which meant that nightmares were still a thing that I had to deal with on a semi-regular basis. I remember looking out from my make-shift tent on the ship's deck along with the horses, wrapped in my winter's cloak against the cold air and I saw Kerrass standing at the rail, looking out to see. Something about the way that he stood there, his profile silhouetted against the night sky made me realise that he was not so different than I was and that I needed to stop treating him as a “subject” but as more of a friend. Treating him like a person. I buried this piece of information as deep as I could in order to not alienate him.

Small moments where we make a decision that takes our lives and our thinking down completely new pathways.

Sometimes we change without making a decision, at least not consciously. My realisations about monsters. My shifting thoughts about those people who toil in a different social class than myself. The moment when I realised that I loved Ariadne and that I intended to marry her, a decision that I am still trying to track down as to when I made that choice.

Small decisions as the result of small moments of quiet or a small discussion with someone that opens your eyes to a different point of view.

So it should come as no surprise that the most recent of these moments came as part of a conversation that I had with Kerrass around a camp-fire.

In many ways, this is only fitting as it has been Kerrass that has driven a lot of my changes over the recent years. It was travelling with him that I got my first real look at what life is like for those people that I depend on for my food and for the greater share of my families income. It was he that opened my eyes to my inbuilt and trained racism regarding non-humans and what society, in general, refers to as “Monsters”. Without him, I wouldn't even have begun to contemplate any kind of romantic relationship with Ariadne, and I dread to think how I might have reacted to Emma's sexual preferences without Kerrass' exposing me to more of the world. I would like to think that I would have been equally as tolerant and understanding but.... So it was only fitting that I have this conversation with him.

We had left Sam's castle behind us maybe five days before hand and were heading North which meant that, all told, it was roughly eight days since we had taken part in the fight for the defence of the village. I heartily wish that the village had a name of some kind but the people that lived there simply referred to it as “The village” and when asked about any of the other villages and what they were called, it turned out that they were, “That village up in the mountains,” and “That village further away to the North.”

Now that I am a little distant from the place I find myself thinking of it as being “The village with the Cave” referring to the cave of the God. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

Our first priority after the end of the battle was to see to the wounded. There weren't many as our casualties were fairly light. All told we lost five villagers to the attack and in each case we could justifiably tell ourselves that the reason that person had died was because they had done something foolish or something that we had outright instructed them not to do.

Such as dump a load of water on an oil fire.

The most serious injury turned out to be the cut that Jenkins had taken, pulling one of said foolish villagers out of the way. As we had feared, the cut turned out to be poisoned. We did what we could, washing as much of the poison out of the wound as we could with the strong Apple Brandy that the village had supplied us with and bound it up. But already there was fierce red lines tracking up and into the rest of his body.

Our other problem was the problem of our captive who was clearly mad and out of his face on whatever drugs and herbs that his former cohorts had been feeding him. But his presence was upsetting the rest of the villagers and so the decision was made that Kerrass, myself and the man who doubled as the Bastard's surgeon, took the captive and Jenkins off to Father Gardan's chapel so that they could be better looked after. Sir Rickard and the other Bastards would remain back at the battle-site to search the bodies and to protect the village in case of another attack but we were confident, now, that the danger had passed.

A couple of villagers volunteered to go and fetch Ella, the Elven Alchemist who was normally responsible for dealing with illnesses in the local area and so they ran off into the night with Perkins as an escort. Not a bad idea as Kerrass quickly confessed that he was out of his element when it came to curing poisons, let alone being able to get a man down from whatever drugs high that our captive was on on the grounds that he was all but immune to both and so, had never learned to bother with that area of Alchemical knowledge. He told Sir Rickard very firmly that although he could devise a blade oil that would do the same kind of damage that was killing Jenkins, as for curing it? He could cure himself but for the dying man, his cure (I'm assuming he was talking about White Honey here) would likely be more deadly than the poison. The same for our captive.

Jenkins died in the night and it took him a long time too.

Poor bastard.

With cold detachment I could force myself to sit with him while he suffered, remembering my own poisoning all that time ago. My own poisoning that had rendered me all but helpless in a couple of hours and morbid curiosity had always made me wonder what would have happened to me if Ariadne had not chosen to cure me, or if Kerrass had not managed to find an antidote.

I suspect, looking back, that I would have taken the White Honey if the pain had got much worse, but Jenkins refused, outright, to have anything to do with that particular form of “cure”.

Especially after we had already taken his arm off.

The unit's medic was a man that they referred to as “Bones” short for “Sawbones.” He liked the nickname claiming that it was much better than his own name and any other nickname that he had been given and so introduced himself as that to anyone that needed to know who he was. Similar to the Sergeant, he didn't seem to have a name beyond his profession. But after cutting the sleeve of the tunic away so that we could look at the injury and he saw the red lines climbing up towards the shoulder, he told Jenkins that if the first aid that we had given him didn't work then we would have to take the arm off. He warned him that the damage was probably already done but...

I was honestly surprised when Jenkins fought us, hard, in order to keep his arm. I suppose that this is one of those things that I will never understand as I would have thought that the loss of a limb is a small price to pay in return for continued survival but I registered the fact that I didn't understand and that Jenkins comes, or rather came, from a different place than I do. As a result, his attitude and understanding was different. He complained that he wouldn't be a whole man if we took his arm off. He said that it wouldn't be right and that he would rather die than to have this happen. He asked what he would do as a cripple and told us that he didn't want to be left out in the cold as a reject of society.

I tried to tell him, over and over again, that I would see to it that, not only would he have a place to live but that we would find him work at the Coulthard estates or with the Kalayn estates or if that didn't work then I would damn well make sure that he would be found employment in Angral when I eventually moved down there after my marriage.

But he spat at me, told me to fuck off and that he didn't want my charity or my pity.

I recognised his pain, fear and anger for what it was though and didn't hold it against him.

What I did do was to assist with the amputation. Helping to tie off the blood vessels and the tourniquets while Bones actually did most of the work. Beyond that, it took another six men to hold Jenkins down immobile and even then he nearly shook free.

I have never heard a sound like it. Not the shrieking that Jenkins made, unfortunately I have heard that before in the various combats that I have been a part of and their aftermaths, but the close quarters sound of a saw cutting through bone is a sound that I will take to my grave.

It did him no good though and two hours after we arrived at the chapel, he took a serious turn for the worst and Bones shook his head and told him that the poison had reached his heart.

Jenkins told him to fuck off and die in a fire.

But I sat with him while he died. Talking to him, giving him water when he wanted it and some of the Apple Brandy when he wanted that too.

Holy Fire but that man had a life. He had been a killer on the streets of Temeria before the war, and a good one. A man who enjoyed his craft and his trade and took pleasure from it. He had killed for the underworld, for the crown and for anyone in between being able to charge extortionate rates. He admitted that he got into it so that he could get medicine for his sick wife but she had quickly realised what was going on after she had been cured as she “wasn't a stupid woman” and had sensed the change in her husband's character. He even admitted that he could have lived in a palace if he had saved his money properly but that he had always wanted to spend the money on wine, women and generally having a good time which was, coincidentally, how he came to the attention of the crown's intelligence services. Never wanting to waste good talent, the crown had used his homicidal streak and had him murder more and more people on their behalf. But his greed got the better of him and he ended up murdering on behalf of the underworld as well.

If he had one virtue it was that he was a patriot and joined the army when Nilfgaard invaded for a third time after the death of King Foltest. His loyalty to Rickard was absolute as he was a “Proper bastard, a real killer” whatever that means but I got the impression that Jenkins had liked him because Rickard had recognised Jenkins skills and given him a proper outlet for his urges.

This meant a lot to a man like Jenkins.

As I say, I could force myself to sit next to him and watch his symptoms develop after my own poisoning. I even tried to contact Ariadne to see if she could help but I got no response which normally meant that she was either resting or in some kind of magically shielded area. Her lab or library were the most common ones although she did the same when meeting with the other Sorceresses or when, in general she wanted some privacy. I don't want the reader to think that this kind of thing was malicious on her part or that I could call her at any moment in order to get aid.

So I sat with him.

He died an hour before Ella came through the door to the chapel. A little wide-eyed herself. Perkins wept when he learned of Jenkins' death but insisted on running back to the village to inform Sir Rickard himself.

It is sometimes easy to forget how young some of these soldiers are.

Ella briefly examined Jenkins corpse before telling us that, without the specific anti-venom, he would have been dead two hours after he had been poisoned and that there was nothing that she could have done. I was not relieved but at the same time, I suppose, it is nice to hear these kind of things.

Then she went to work with our captive. She gave some orders about fetching her things like water and some specific herbs which we brought her, shortly before she told us to stop fussing over her and to leave her the hell alone.

I got some sleep then, having been awake for a full turn of night until day but I was woken by the bad news.

That news being that our captive had died.

According to Ella, his heart was unable to cope with the strain of everything that he had been put through being under the influence of the narcotics that he had been given and so it had just given up. She theorised that there must be some kind of tonic that they take after a raid which brings their symptoms under control but because we hadn't known this, or what to give him, then the long term exposure to the substances had killed him. She asked if she could perform an autopsy to see if she could figure out what had been used in an effort to make sure that next time, we could prevent this from happening. But she didn't look too hopeful.

Edward's permission to do this to his brother's body was asked for and received with him telling us that to him, his brother had died when he first got taken by the hounds and that the shell that wore his face was just that. A shell and none of his concern.

The village was suffering from a generalised sense of anti-climax. They had spent so long under the shadow of the threat of the Hounds, that the relief of knowing that they could be killed and fought off, was suddenly more than many of them could bear. There were many tears and recriminations but most of the folk were just walking around in a daze. Edward was having to force them to work and reminding them of the rest of their responsibilities.

I asked him about it later and he told me that they had expected something more than that. More than what had happened. He asked why things were the way they were and I had no answer for him.

Of far more interest were the remains of those men that we killed. We lay them all together, stripped them of all of their equipment for examination and searched them properly as well as corralling up what horses we could find. The equipment was generally of shoddy quality. The swords and the knives were of typical, mass-produced kind of quality that would almost certainly break if given sustained, hard use and would have been useless under battlefield conditions. It was the kind of steel that would have been given to the PFI during the war although, arguably, these weapons were not as well made as the swords and spears handed out to the “Poor Fucking Infantry.”

They were built for show and for their edge rather than for anything remotely useful but we piled them together for removal anyway. The village blacksmith told us that such steel could have been made out of Iron from any number of small deposits that littered the sides of the mountains before informing me that if my brother wanted to really make some money out of the local area, then he should get some dwarves in and go looking for mineral deposits further up in the hills. The villagers themselves had never dared do anything of the kind.

The same for their equipment and armour. Their leather coats were made from any old scrap of hide that could be found. Again, some of the villagers were able to tell us a bit more. Saying that there was horse hide, Cow leather and deer leather that had gone into making the coats. One person gave the opinion that the work was particularly shoddy and a disgrace.

I didn't comment on that.

Likewise the horses that we did find were cheap, poor nags that were obviously not that well cared for. Many showing signs of malnutrition to my eyes and still more showing signs of other diseases meaning that they were probably only worth butchering for meat or other utility purposes.

There was one exception to all of this though and that was the man who had come up tot he village wall to do the talking.

Even when we had taken the clothes off all of the men. Removed all the clothes and the equipment and put them all into a row neatly, I would have been able to tell who was in charge of the group of riders.

I don't mean to be disparaging to the village folk or to anyone whose life is harder than mine. I don't. As I say, I have every respect for those people who spend their days toiling in fields or workshops or warehouses.

Flame but now that I read that back to myself, that sounds awfully condescending doesn't it. I am so sorry but I don't know how else to put the point across that I am trying to make.

But this man looked different. He just did.

He was.... He was prettier than the men that were lying next to him.

Again, I feel like I want to qualify this point. I have met and have known many beautiful men and women of all different classes. Without being indiscreet I can say that I have known many as, as I say, the aphrodisiac of gratitude in them meets the need for life affirmation in myself. I make no apologies for that. But you can always tell someone coming from the noble-classes from someone from the...

Flame but I hate this term.

...than someone from the commonfolk.

Higher cheekbones, better maintained hair, paler skin, hands and bodies without blemish, darker hair for that matter.

I have often found, especially in remoter parts of the country where it's not just the common-folk (I really hate that term but here it's used with love I promise) that are forced to interbreed, then you meet other such signs. Pronounced teeth line that has the unfortunate effect of making people look like horses or that they look at the entire world through their teeth. While at the same time, often suffering from a receding chin. Large jowels manifest themselves and the men, certainly are often clean shaven on their chins.

I certainly am.

But what this shows is a person who has time to care for their own appearance. Who has access to proper medical treatment, decent food and clean water. Someone who has the luxury of time to spend on things like personal grooming.

As was the case here. He had long hair, pulled back harshly into a tight queue that hung down the nape of his neck. As I say, high cheekbones and clean, almost bleached teeth. A body free of disease which is more than can be said for some of the other bodies that we laid out, lean and well muscled. Someone who rode his horse often and energetically while also having swordsman's calluses.

The differences were also pronounced in the equipment that he had on him which would have set him apart from the rest. He had an, objectively beautiful light cavalry sabre, gently curved for the slashing. Heavy hilted with a piece across the knuckles to protect the hands. To someone with strong wrists it would feel as though you weren't wielding anything at all. It was also razor sharp and unblemished by any of the oils or poisons that we found on the weapons of the other men.

Kerrass and Rickard agreed that this was not a man who had any intention of actually fighting but the other implements that he had on his person suggested that he might get heavily involved afterwards.

His clothes were of good quality and his boots held the makers mark of the cobbler in Novigrad where Father had his riding boots made. Getting them sent this far out must have cost a fortune.

Apparently, his other clothing beneath the long leather coat had been tailored to fit him. Stitched riding trousers, fitted doublet and waistcoat. All well made and must have kept him warm in the colder weather, bless his little silken socks.

Upon going through his gear and comparing it to the equipment of the other riders, I was struck with the suspicion that I would have intensely disliked this man and everything to do with him. It wasn't a feeling that went away over time either.

He was wearing mail. Lighter and less protective than the heavier and denser chainmail that professional soldiers wear and certainly less well made than the stuff that knights wear under their full plate harness but it was there. This, coupled with the leather coat would have been more than enough to protect the man from any errant hunting arrows or thrown objects that might have been sent his way though. It was certainly no match to the cloth-yard arrows sent forth by the highly skilled arms and war-bows of Sir Rickard's bastards.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on who you ask.

But beyond that, we couldn't tell anything about him. Obviously noble-born but beyond that, he didn't remind me of anyone that I might have known. I guessed his race to be Redanian but as that was both where we were and a fairly general combination of colours for the northern parts of the continent. Even people from Kovir and Poviss could be mistaken for men from Redania so it wasn't really that much of a deduction to say that the man came from Redania.

He didn't remind me of anyone who I might have met during my brief attendances at court although I was forced to admit that my time at the Imperial court in Toussaint was mostly spent worrying about other things. Nor was he wearing any kind of heraldry. In normal circumstances I might have suspected some kind of illegitimate son, that had been provided for but was unable to use his proper coat of arms or anything similar. But in this case I suspected that this was a either a younger son, or a son of some vassal family that owed their fealty to one of the other lords of the lands further north.

Kerrass, Dan and one of the men from the village went off to see if they could track any of the horses back to the Hounds' lair or if any of those horses from the men who had been shot out of the saddle might have automatically retreated to a place which could tell us more.

For a while we got all excited when they returned to tell us that they had found a hollow, deep in the woods to the North west. Some kind of sink-hole or an accident of the terrain formed by the rock formations and then hidden by the thick forestry. According to Kerrass there were a couple of tracks leading into the place and that it was ultimately defensible so that the three men advanced cautiously but it had clearly been abandoned.

Kerrass described cook fires and the acrid smell of chemicals being mixed together in toxic combinations but that the place also showed signs of abandonment. He found sacks of horsefeed and mounds of sack-cloth. Several empty leather bags and a derelict weapon stand as well as the remains of some food. Chicken bones and a heel of tough way-bread. That kind of thing.

They had tried to see if they could track anything else but the tracks leading away from the place were obscured by the tracks leading towards the place that had churned the ground into something unreadable. The entrances had presumably been chosen for precisely this reason.

Sir Kristoff didn't take our reports very well.

“Why couldn't you have taken the wretch alive?” He demanded when we all met up again in Sam's castle, bruised, battered and battle-weary. “You claim to have the best archers within a hundred miles....”

“The best archers in the Kingdom.” Sir Rickard clarified dryly. “I have the best archers in the Kingdom Sir Kristoff and I will thank you not to forget it.”

“So why couldn't you have taken him alive then?”

Sir Rickard sighed and sat back. Ignoring the older man and pouring himself a drink while Sir Kristoff's face turned red.

“Settle down.” Sam looked as tired as the rest of us. “Settle down. To be fair Sir Kristoff. None of the rest of us managed to do any better so lets not start throwing stones hmmm?”

“None of the rest of us claimed to have the best archers in the Kingdom.” Sir Kristoff retorted, showing just how angry he was as well as how...stressed isn't the right word.

There was a sense of anti-climax in the air for us as well as the villagers. We had met our enemy, defeated him on the field of battle and yet, the victory was not decisive. Our enemy was not destroyed and we did not know what to do next.

Militarily the answer was simple. The next thing to do was to find the home base of the Hounds and destroy them there but we had no more information on this subject than the last time that we had all sat round this table discussing useless and pointless things.

The other teams had done about as well as we had with similar results. The differences being that they had all followed the plans that I would have designed for the villages. They had erected walls and barricades to keep the enemy out before sallying forth and therefore driving off the invaders. But in all cases the suspected leader of each individual group of Hounds had escaped, being the kind of “Lead from the back” general that was almost custom designed to annoy fighting men.

Our kill count was highest but then again, the others had managed to capture more of the enemy. But like our own captive, they weren't expected to survive either. They had all been brought back to the castle and Ella was treating them for their injuries and the poisons that were running through their veins. She was frantically working to try and identify what had been done to those poor men in order to come up with some kind of counter agent, but never looked optimistic on those occasions when one or other of us would go downstairs to enquire as to their progress.

Sure enough, over time, those captives simply died. Similar symptoms to our own captive. Apparently, according to Ella, their hearts just gave up and stopped working without warning.

But at the time of this particular conference, she was still downstairs working hard. Which was when Father Trent asked the question that everyone had on their minds.

“So, what do we do now?” He asked.

Father Trent had been working ceaselessly since I had last seen him and according to some of the gossip going round the castle, he hadn't slept for more than a couple of hours a night. Working with the soldiers and the villagers and everyone else. He had worked on the barricades, fetched and cooked as well as doing whatever chores that he could. The soldier's resentment of him had begun to lessen in the face of his charm offensive....

That's unfair. He was feeling immensely guilty and was struggling to keep himself going. I didn't talk to him about it which is on me....I should have spent some time talking about his problems and I don't know why I didn't. I remember almost wanting to feel cynical about what he was doing. As though I wanted to believe that he was trying to manipulate his way back into everyone's good graces.

But I think that says more about me and where my head was at that period of time than it does about him. I would like to give him the credit and suggest that he was being genuine in his efforts to make amends.

But he was not looking good when he asked that question. Pale faced, huge dark circles under his eyes with blood shot eyes and a slight tremor in his hands. But his voice was steady and even as he spoke.

There were a lot of exchanged glances around the table.

“I think,” Knight Father Danzig spoke up after a long moment. “I think that we have been successful but that our success is a two edged sword and in the long run we will come to look at this whole thing as a mistake.”

“Mistake?” Sam asked.

Danzig leant forward.

“The mistake was an easy one to make and there was no way that we could have predicted it and now the mistake has been made we must learn to live with it.”

“What was this mistake?” Sir Kristoff again, bridling. I sometimes feel that I'm being harsh on poor old Kristoff. He was a good man really and a fine leader of troops but at the same time, he struggled to articulate himself well at these meetings. He was good at....If you gave him a problem and told him to solve it then he would do that. For example, if you told him to defend a village he would look at it for a while before telling you exactly what resources that he needed to do the job. If you gave him those resources then he would perform his task to the best of his abilities.

I suppose that what I'm saying is that he was a good tactical mind but that his overall strategic thinking was less than ideal and I suddenly had an insight as to why he might not have attained as high a rank as his experience might warrant.

He also had a habit at bridling at any, even hinted at, criticisms.

“We turned up. In the open and announced ourselves.” Father Danzig answered. “What we should have done was come in secret. Scouted the lands out and find out what's going on. We should have infiltrated and employed cunning towards the solution of these problems. Now, we run the risk of having driven these “Hounds” underground.”

There were more exchanged glances. I remember thinking that this might all make a lot more sense if we all took a couple of days off to just rest up and sleep.

“Explain please.” Sam said eventually. The most tired looking out of the lot of us.

“We have beaten the enemy.” Danzig was clearly prepared for the question and had his answer ready. “But what happens now? Our success was not total, meaning that it would be foolish to suppose that we have accounted for every target that we aimed our bows and swords against. Some of those men will have fled and been able to report to their superiors.

“So what would I do in their shoes?”

Danzig shook his head.

“I cannot deny the possibility that the people doing this are simply mad and outright crackpots and therefore my guess at their strategy is completely wrong, but I do not think that this is the case. Up to this point they have acted cleverly.”

“You admire these men?” Inquisitor Dempsey. The most energetic of the lot of us, fires of righteousness stoking his energy.

“Of course. While hating them and what they represent. They have done this all very well indeed. They have kept this corner of the continent under their heel with relatively little effort and they have done so for years. Maybe even generations without giving themselves away to the rest of the continent. Either to Kreve or the Eternal Flame, either of those organisations would have gone mad trying to hunt down this entire situation.”

He paused to see if anyone was going to argue the point. I'm not sure that people didn't want to, I'm more convinced that folks were simply too tired to bother.

“Your point, Father?” Sam's words seemed as though he bought them with great effort.

“My point is....That they will not give up their grip on the countryside without a fight. They had to know that something like this might happen and they had to have contingency plans in place for when it did.”

“So what do you think will happen?”

“I think that they will, essentially, go to ground but then, when our vigilance has started to sag whether due to other crisis or overconfidence in our final success then they will start to creep back into Lord Samuel's domain. There will be sightings off in the distance, then the old stories will start to be told again. Then there will be isolated attacks against remote farms and travelling peddlers and so on until the countryside is, once again, living in fear of them.”

“They have to know that I would respond.” Sam seemed dissatisfied.

“They do, but now they know what you're capable of. They will come up with a way to get round your defences, stronger poisons and the like. They weaken you, get some agents amongst your guardsmen or your staff, slip something into your drink or food and suddenly you're a drivelling lunatic who has neither the strength or the influence to take them on.”

“Are we in danger now?”

“No,” Danzig shook his head. “Or at least I doubt it. I think it's much more likely to start in six months to a year and it will be a slow and careful thing, depending on their patience of course.”

Sam nodded but I could tell that he wasn't happy. His frown lines tightened and he stared off into space. It was a long moment of silence before he clenched his fist and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, that's unacceptable. No, I will not simply fortify myself against future attacks. This scourge needs to be rooted out and destroyed now while we've put them on the back foot. I absolutely refuse to be passive on this subject.”

“So what would you have us do?” Someone asked.

“This is heresy isn't it?”

“Oh yes.” Inquisitor Dempsey asserted while Father Danzig nodded. “Of the blackest sort. It might be that this heresy is the tool of political and economic ambition but heresy is heresy.”

“So the churches of the Eternal Flame and The Sky-father Kreve will help us?”

“Most certainly.”

Sam turned back to Sir Rickard. “Is there any chance that these Hounds are still on my lands? Or otherwise based here?”

Rickard thought about it before shaking his head.

“I don't think so. I can't see any of the established places providing the amount of equipment that these people carry. They would need a Forge, a Farrier, a stable, food, alchemy supplies and tannery works. Not to mention a barracks for all of their fighters to sleep when they're not terrorising the countryside. There is nothing like that left in your lands other than at the castle and I'm pretty sure that they're not here.”

“But not totally sure?” I teased him. I thought that the meeting could do with a bit of levity and was rewarded by a slight smile in Rickard's and Trent's face.

“I'm as sure as I can be.” Rickard told us.

“So the truth of the matter is that the Hounds are elsewhere?” Sam asked after giving me a slight, big brotherly glare.

“I'm as sure as I can be.” Rickard repeated.

“Right, combining this with what Freddie discovered I think it's easy to say that these fuckers have some kind of noble backing. Which means that one of my northern neighbours is behind all of this.”

“Or more than one.” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, if this is part of what the Former Lords Kalayn were part of, and there is more of them out there, why suppose that there were only two noble families that were involved in all of this bullshit? One or more and we have to be paranoid and assume that there are more than just one castle full of these fucks. They've got an entire countryside to push beneath their heels.”

“True, but how do find this out?”

“We send scouts.”

“Careful.” Trent spoke up. “I don't mean to shit on this idea but those scouts can't be yours or under your authority Lord Kalayn. I use that title deliberately. Your authority extends to your borders but you can't take it any further than that. If you send anyone further across the borders into other people's territories then you are committing a crime against the law. Not that that won't solve the problems as it will bring proper soldiers here to investigate but all the same, it could mean your life.”

“What about church troops?” Sam asked looking a little despondent.

“I can't speak for Kreve but certainly the Holy Fire can't go into a place until we've either been invited or until there is creditable proof or testimony that something is going on there. The Empress has been very....exacting in drawing up new laws to govern the role of the church in this kind of situation.”

Danzig nodded his agreement.

We all looked at each other a bit more until I realised that Sam was looking at me.

“Crap.” I said as I realised where this was going. Sam can be a devious bastard when he wants to be and I couldn't get rid of the suspicion that Sam had known that this was the required solution back before the conversation had even started. “I can go, can't I.” I said. “Kerrass can go, searching for these “Hounds” as if they are monsters or go looking for legitimate Witcher's work.”

“Of which there is plenty in these parts.” Kerrass said, speaking for the first time in a while.

“And we see what we can turn up.” I finished. “Everyone knows that where he goes, I go and it's perfectly plausible that I would pay my respects towards any noble house that I pass. The risk comes from the possibility that people will connect me together with Sam but at the same time, I am famous and removing me from the field will bring down just as much attention from people that they don't want to attract and so will be resisted.”

Sam nodded although, looking back, I suspect that he was quite surprised by how quickly I agreed to the whole scheme.

“In the mean time. We can fortify here.” He went on. “Fathers Trent and Danzig. I am officially asking for aid to get to the bottom of the matter of the Hounds of Kreve. I will also need to expand my garrison and get some messages out to my family in order to pay for some of the ideas that I have. However, I will not stand for the persecution of the village folk and their devotion to this old “Crom Cruarch”, or whoever it is that they worship. That will not be tolerated.”

Trent and Danzig nodded.

“I, for one, intend to see this matter through.” Trent commented. “I think I owe that much at least.”

“Pleased to have you Father Trent.” Sam added. “So let's get to work. When do you think you can set off by Freddie?”

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen is how one settles themselves down and walks into a trap. A trap that I should have seen coming really as an elder brother sets out to stitch you up into a design of his own making.

Bastard.

But still, what did I expect really. I can't say that I wasn't eager either. The reason that I had volunteered Kerrass' and my services was that I had a burning need for solitude. To get away from Rickard and his men. From Kristoff and his military born arrogance. To get away from Father Trent and his guilt, From Danzig and Dempsey for their growing Fervour.

I wanted to get away from people in general and just feel that sense of quiet that only comes when you're by yourself or, at most, with a good friend who knows when to keep their mouth shut.

A skill that Kerrass has in mountainous quantities.

It was an odd experience and, like so many things in these writings, I struggle to describe them adequately. I've been told by various people that what I say or have said has resonated with them on some level despite my own conviction that I was talking utter nonsense. But for other people, even though I thought I was being quite clear and concise, they have struggled to understand what I was talking about.

But I will try.

It was like the walls were pushing in on me. As though I was being pressed down upon by the sky and the ceilings of the rooms that I found myself in. People were loud and jarring so that when they spoke to me, I found myself wincing as their voices echoed in the back of my skull. I felt like I was swimming against a current and that I was hopelessly lost. My heart would hammer in my chest. I felt short of breath and on the verge of panicking. My chest hurt and when I could breathe, the cold air brought pain to the back of my throat and into my lungs. I got tired quicker. My legs felt as though they wanted to stretch out and be still while also being incredibly nervous as though I wanted to get up and go for a run through the trees. At the same time. I was struggling. I can't pretend otherwise.

I felt like I wanted a really good weep without being able to summon the emotion necessary.

All I knew was that I wanted to get away. Away from the responsibility of being Sam's younger brother. Away from the expectations and the stories and the arguments and having to argue my opinion.

I remembered talking to the Empress when she told me that she missed the simplicity of the Witcher life. Where there is a clear cut right and wrong and on those rare occasions where there was a monster to be slain and children to protect, having an enemy to fight and overcome.

I missed that. I missed Kerrass and I having that hunt and the ability to work according to our own rhythm rather than the orders and time keeping of others.

Don't get me wrong. There was an enemy here and he was undoubtedly a bad guy that needed to be destroyed for the protection of innocents but the pressures of finding him while at the same time arguing with everyone else as to the best way to go about that was getting to be too much.

So I leaped at the chanced to leave with a pair of horses and a weeks worth of supplies. Father Trent gave me a blessing although I declined his invitation to hear my confession and we set out a couple of days after the end of the battle.

We stayed for the funerals of those few men that we had lost during the engagements at the various villages. We also attended the more private ceremony that The Bastards held for Jenkins. The men had a simmering anger amongst them. A formless, impotent thing and I did not envy Sir Rickard maintaining discipline over the next few days.

So Kerrass and I snuck out early one morning. I say that we “snuck” because I was trying to avoid any undue ceremony and I also wanted to leave Sir Rickard behind. He was still under orders from Emma that he wasn't allowed to let me out of his sight but I felt, in my opinion, correctly, that a troop of soldiers following us around would draw too much attention to us. The other side of things was that Sir Rickard was one of the people that I was wanting to avoid.