Chapter 67: What did you do with my clothes?

In the end I spent three days with Letho.

I'll say this for him. He is the truest person that you'll ever meet. He does not dilute himself on any kind of level, what you see is what you get and if he doesn't like you or wants you to go away he will say so. His size affects that aspect of his personality. I've heard that old phrase of a Bull in a glass-shop and that is Letho to a tee. Brute force is part of his character. It's built into him. When he moves, he expects you to get out of his way and if you don't then he will knock you down and then wonder why you're angry at him.

As I say, he doesn't try to be something else, he doesn't try to charm you or be nice to you. If he wants something he'll ask you for it and if you ask him for something, if it is in his power to give you that thing then he will give it to you.

You might regret asking, as his method of giving you the thing might not be the way you expected it to be given.

But that blunt force approach to his physical movements is carried over into his character. He is well aware that he looks like a brute and a thug. He describes himself as being ugly but he has crafted that aspect of himself into a weapon. He lets other people draw their own conclusions from his appearance and then gives them enough rope to hang themselves with. It has been claimed that he is one of the principal architects of the downfall of the original Lodge of Sorceresses as he simply let them talk and talk and pretend to be their pawn. But when the push came to it, he proved himself far far cleverer then they had ever even dreamed that he could be.

That is who Letho is.

He is a hard man to like. But if you can take him at his word. If you can take the entirety of him with all of his insults and his lack of manners and wrap your own head around his... around his very direct method of thinking. Then you will find a rare individual.

No I don't like him. But I respect him enormously. The way I feel about Letho is complex and I'm going to need to spend some time thinking about why he makes me so uncomfortable.

He thinks in straight lines which is something that I struggle with. But I need to quantify that.

You might think of yourself as a direct kind of a person. Honest, loyal, the kind of person who looks a man in the eye and shake his hand with a nice firm handshake. But even then, you think in corners and curves.

I'm a Nobleman and I was trained in courtly techniques. I am taught about etiquette, courtesy, sincerity and other such things. This means that my thinking is always along the lines of, “What is going on and how does it affect me? What could go wrong? How does that affect things? What could the consequences of that action be?” and so on.

Letho would just see the solution and move towards it, heedless of the consequences or of who he might be hurting and how that would affect other people. As an example.

When a child draws a picture of someone, in comparison to the paintings of skilled artists, where oils and things have been used. The child's drawing is obviously inferior because, you know, it's a child. But you don't tell the child that this is the case. You say that that drawing is amazing and tell them that they've done really well because that helps the child build confidence.

Letho would tell the child that the picture was rubbish and then, if he liked the child, he would produce a good painting of a person and show the child how their drawing could be improved.

Let's make the example a little more.... obvious.

A Nobleman comes to you. For rendering services to someone they have been given a grant of a new estate in the country. A part of the countryside that is famous for...Oh I don't know....The production of it's cheese.

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One of the farmers there has a method of smoking the cheese that makes it taste unique. And as such your friend is making a fortune. He wants to credit the farmer and his chosen method of demonstrating that gratitude is to add something to his heraldry to say, not only that he is now lord of this new manor but that manor is famous for it's cheese. He brings you the heraldry and he says “What do you think?”

You think it looks ridiculous. A proud shield displaying a cheese wheel along with the remarkable odour that the cheese produces in the form of wavy lines above the cheese wheel. It is making your friend a fortune however and the man is, after all, your friend. In no way is this new piece of heraldry going to affect you in any way.

What do you say?

In Letho's case he would say that it looks ridiculous. When his friend was upset, Letho would shrug and point out that his friend had asked his opinion.

In that way he is the most honest. The truest, person that I've met.

Kerrass changes according to the situation. I haven't seen Letho hunt but Kerrass can change his personality, his behaviour and his use of language according to the situation he finds himself in. I can't imagine Letho doing that. I can imagine Letho talking to children. I can imagine him asking simple, brutal questions that deeply upset the child in question and causing the parents of the child to become angry. Then Letho punches out the parent. Hunts the monster and uses a portion of the reward to buy the child a doll or some sweets.

I can also imagine Letho in a court situation. I find the mental image incredibly funny.

I will change my earlier statement. I do like Letho but he is a difficult man to be around. I do not know that he is my friend but I found his company...refreshing and liberating. Almost relaxing.

He is also startling in his intelligence and his strategic and tactical thinking. If he had joined an army he would have been a general that men would talk about in hushed whispers about how he sacked the most formidable towns and defeated numbers six times his own. His capacity for knowledge was immense and he was always trying to increase that knowledge because “You never know when that little titbit would come in handy.”

We spent that first night playing cards until we were both drunk enough to struggle to see the cards. Then we played dice before passing out. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

He woke me early the following day with a breakfast of more mushrooms and some of the salted pork that he had shamelessly stolen from our packs.

“I've got some Alchemy things going on today,” he said as we ate. “Kerrass told me that you wanted to know about the Witchers trials?” The food was again, delicious.

I nodded as my head couldn't decide between shovelling the food into my mouth faster or slowing down to enjoy the flavours.

He responded with a nod of his own. “Then if you stay quiet today, I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

That was all he said. He had set various Glassware jars simmering over various small pots of flame that he was muttering over and adjusting in very careful detail. I was again struck, in the same way that I was when I had watched him cooking, at how... careful he was. How delicate and precise he could be with his giant hands and fingers.

I spent the day exploring. I tell a lie, I spent the morning exploring and the rest of the time I spent poring over the Witcher library.

If I wanted to retire and risk the enmity of Letho and Kerrass both, I could have made a fortune by stealing one of those books back to the university. I took two of them down and started reading on the subject of Necrophages. It was dry reading but the level of information that was in there was absolutely beyond anything I had ever come across before.

In the entirety of the rest of the time, Letho and I didn't communicate. He was busy with his mixtures and I was content to leave him to it. At one point he started cooking. I asked him if I could help in any way and he looked at me as though I had offered to take a shit in the cooking pot. I held my hands up in surrender and went back to my book. He did ask me what my tolerance for spices was though and something that may have been approval sparkled in his eyes when I said that I was quite fond of spice.

Then came a point in the early evening when Letho came over with his sword on his back.

“Come on. Kitty cat said you could fight and I don't believe him. A fighting scribbler, heh,” he sneered and had turned for the door before I could get my spear out of my gear.

For whatever reason I had fitted the two pieces together when I walked out the door of the keep. It was lucky that I had because Letho levelled a blow at my head that would have decapitated me if I hadn't blocked it. He drew back and hammered at me again. This time I was better braced for the blow and his sword bounced of my spear shaft. The third time he changed the direction of his strike, mid-movement and swung up on the diagonal line towards my groin. I panicked, pushed the blow aside with the haft of the spear in an old Quarterstaff technique and used that same movement to try and slash the spear blade at Letho's face.

Anyone else would have flinched back. It's not a new move. I've used it before which is why it was ingrained in my muscle memory to the point that I fell back on it when startled. In every other case, men move back from the strike.

Letho stepped inside the curve of it, grabbed the spear just under the head of it and tugged. I could no sooner have fought that tug than I could have turned aside the charge of an angry bull. He pulled me into a head-butt that sent my ears ringing. He then tossed me aside in the same way that a man might toss aside a rotten piece of fruit.

In front of the entrance to the keep at Kaer Morhen there is a wall, about waist high. I assume it was a last line of defence where archers or crossbow men could stand and fire down towards the gate. The force of Letho throwing me, sent me colliding into that wall and tumbling over it. I had enough time to realise what was happening, tuck my head in and roll with the impact.

Letho descended the stairs, no expression on his face. There was absolutely nothing there. I could have been a piece of meat to him. A piece of meat or an animal that needs butchering.

I was winded, bruised and there were tears in my eyes from the stinging blow of the head-butt. I had a dim thought that my nose might be broken.

As has always happened in these situations when I have felt my back against the wall and the terror of....whatever threat is coming towards me, I felt a terrible anger in me then.

I screamed and charged him. Timing my point of attack so that my first blow would land just as he was lifting his back foot off the stair behind him. He had been expecting my attack and knocked my blow aside with a casual swipe of his sword.

But in the game of expectation I still had this one. The first thrust was followed by a rapid series of thrusts aimed at his groin, neck and eyes. Off rhythm and random in pattern. Kerrass would have been proud.

Still his expression didn't change. Again, when he should have stepped backwards. When everyone, including Kerrass who taught me the move, receive that sequence, they move backwards. That's what it's designed for. That's why we had worked it out. It was designed for when I was up against a superior foe. Kerrass claimed that the number of superior foes that I might meet on the byways of the continent was decreasing but I was under no illusion here.

The move was designed to make a person back up or to move sideways and off the thrust-line.

Letho didn't. He moved towards me.

Again he grabbed the spear just below the beginning of the blade and tugged. I was leading with my right hand and I tried letting go with that hand and threw a punch at Letho's face.

He just refused to react how any other man would have done. Another man might have flinched backwards. Letho dipped his head so that my blow glanced off his brow, causing more pain to me than it must have done to him. He gave me a huge blow in the chest pushing me stumbling backwards towards a wall. I tripped over something and fell backwards.

The violence of the man was incredible. So focused and uncompromising. It was also so simple but no less skilful than Kerrass' fighting techniques. The way Kerrass fights displays his mastery of the form and the technique. Now that I am so much better educated in violence than I was when I first started this venture, I can see the skills and the incredible amount of work that went in to his fighting.

Letho makes violence look easy. It's direct, bruising and uncompromising. But also, because he doesn't behave in a way that you expect him to. He's also utterly terrifying, implacable and utterly unstoppable. Like an avalanche that is filtered and focused against you specifically.

I had fallen and struggled to roll backwards to my feet. I botched the movement and covered my head with my arms to protect myself from the attack that I expected.

“Not bad,” he drawled from where he was standing. Just out of range of any blows that I might aim at him.

He was leaning on my spear. “At least, not bad for a scribbler.” He sneered again. “Kerrass told me that he had done his best to give you some general survival tricks but that was honestly better than I was expecting.”

“You must have set your expectations incredibly low then.” I commented as I examined the couple of scrapes and things that I had received.

“I had, to be truthful. The Kitty cat has set you in good stead. Let's head back up. He turned and walked away, still carrying the spear. I spent a bit of time making sure that I was still relatively uninjured before following him. I found him next to the door drinking from a water-skin which he threw at me when he was finished.

“Hydrate,” He ordered and I did as I was told. The water was a little bitter. “I put some herbs in it to purify it. Better for you than adding alcohol to everything but it does compromise flavour a little. Drink it.”

I did as I was told. Letho was playing with the spear.

“You've had a good teacher,” he commented. “I would have given you a sword,”

“I knew some Quarterstaff before he started.”

Letho took that without comment. Twirling the spear around a bit so that the sunlight glinted off the blade.

“A Quarterstaff wouldn't bother someone in armour though.”

“Hence the blade.”

“Hmm. But using a spear falls apart when you know how to beat a spear.”

“Which is?”

Letho grinned at me. “Don't you know? I've already shown you. Would you like me to demonstrate?” He threw me the spear which I caught.

His sword was out and flashing towards my head. I leaned out of the way so that the blow passed me although I felt the wind of it. Returned to an upright stance and used the added momentum to swing a blow on the opposite side to where Letho's sword was, aiming for his neck.

He parried, because of course he parried, but then he turned the parry into a turn and he was inside my guard and his blade was next to my skin.

Again I had the opportunity to learn that Letho's breath smelled like mint.

Once he had given me enough time to realise that his blade was next to my neck he pulled back.

“Do you see it now?”

“I think so. Once an opponent is passed the blade there's not a great deal I can do.”

“There is,” Letho sneered. “You could bruise my ribs with a pommel strike or with the haft of the spear. But beyond that. You could fall back.”

“But once you start falling back...”

“You never stop.” Letho finished for me. “At least he taught you something.” He grunted.

“So how do I protect myself against that. I'm never going to be that good with a sword, as Kerrass said, correctly in my opinion, my brain keeps getting in the way.”

“He's not wrong. I can almost see your brain working. Get yourself a knife. A decent dagger, like these.” He patted the two blades strapped across his belly.

“I was going to ask about those. Kerrass doesn't have them and I've never heard of another Witcher using them.”

“You have,” Letho commented. “You're just being polite.”

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, we're talking about you now. Look. I'll show you.” He reached out and plucked the spear from my grip and gestured with it to some training swords that were propped against the keep door. They were lighter than the ones that I had found in the courtyard the previous day.

“People are designed and built for self-preservation.” Letho said testing the spear for balance a little. “A lot of your fighting is designed, presumably by the Kitten, to keep your enemy away from you. But the real way to kill a man is to get close to him. So if you find someone who knows that. Who has trained himself to avoid that then, you're fucked. So you need a back-up. Now...”

He readied the spear.

“Attack me, and close with me. Don't jerk back, get closer.”

I swung a movement at his head but diverted to his feet. He knocked my blow away easily and brought the spear down in a vertical strike towards my head.

Of course I jerked backwards. The spear stopped, dead, just above where my head at been.

“Pussy,” Letho hissed.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. Again, same movement, this time step inwards.”

We ran through the movement. This time I managed to overcome my flinch and stepped into him. He grunted his acknowledgement of my doing what I had been told.

“See. I am now in range of your sword and what can I do? Stand still.”

He struck at me a couple of times with the spear. As far as I could tell, he was only pulling the blows a little bit but they still hurt. But he was right, the spear was blocked by his hands or his arms and body got in the way.

“You see?”

I nodded, rubbing at a bruise on my ribs.

“Awww,” he drawled, “Is the little Scribbler hurt?”

“A little.”

“Heh, So here's what I would do. Again.”

He took up the stance. I swung my attack, he blocked, I stepped in. He let go of the spear with one hand and drew one of the knives at his waist.

I swear I could feel the cold of the metal despite the fact that it wasn't touching me.

“You see how it works.”

I looked into his eyes. Still flat, still dead. Again I was being weighed and measured.

“I think so,” I said, dimly screaming at myself not to say the words that came out of my mouth next. “Could you show me again though?”

I saw something flicker in his eyes then. I don't know what it was and never got the chance to ask him. We squared off and the manoeuvre repeated itself.

“I see,” I said. “Thank you for the tip. I shall certainly take the opportunity to pick up a dagger when I'm next near a blacksmiths stall.”

I then turned my back to put my practice sword back on the rack.

“Can I ask a couple of questions now?” I said turning around and back to him. I thought I saw, I can't swear to it but I thought I saw amusement in his eyes.

“Sure,” he said, picking up the water skin and drinking off another large amount of the water before passing it back to me.

“So, the knives?”

Letho grunted. “We call them “The Vipers fangs”. All Witchers of my school had them and we considered them to be just as vital to a Witchers survival as our silver and steel swords. Here, put these on.” He reached behind the practice sword rack and produced a pair of thick leather gloves, the kind that you might use to work at Alchemy.

I did as I was told and he passed one of the daggers over.

It was heavier than I had first though it was, much more weighted towards the handle than I had been expecting. As I held it in the light I could see that the steel looked it was wet and then when I tilted it towards the light there was a rainbow sheen to the blade.

“Is that in the oil?”

“That's not oil,” he said, equally as carefully taking the dagger off me and slotting it back into it's sheath. “The Pussy cat will have told you about the stereotype of the Vipers that the other schools all hold which is that we've forgotten more about Alchemy than the rest of the schools put together?”

I nodded. “I had heard.”

Letho grunted. “Well that's true, but a little simpler than the full truth. The real truth is that we've forgotten more chemistry and forging than the rest of them ever knew. Those daggers were designed by one of ours. The forging method is lost although the Silver haired puppy dog tells me he found some documents that might shed some light on things relatively recently. But the method of making them means that they never need to be oiled. Not for monsters humans or beasts.”

He sniffed, hawked and spat. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yes we know alchemy. But I've never once had to use a blade oil on any of my weapons. The poisons were baked into the metal when they were forged.”

“An impressive feat of engineering.”

“That's one word for it. Others might say different.”

“But why daggers as well. Other than the flowery name.”

“Heh. I honestly wonder that no-one else uses them. The thing with spears is not peculiar to spears but also swords and shields and maces. If you close with an enemy then their weapons are vastly reduced in efficiency. So then you pull a dagger.” He shrugged again. “It makes sense to us.”

“I suppose it does at that.”

“Anyway.” He stood. “Got to check a couple of the potions. Dinner'll be a couple hours. We talk about the trials tomorrow.”

“What about Kerrass?”

“He took some supplies. He'll be off moping somewhere. Witchers are good at moping.” He lumbered through the door.

Once again, I offered to help with dinner. This time though, Letho simply ignored me and I felt that my duty was done and returned to my book. All too soon though Letho called me back to the table and put down a spiced Lamb dish that he described as being called Lamb Curry. It was delicious and I fell into bed for my second night spent in Kaer Morhen.

I woke up when a bucket of icy cold water was tipped over me and I leapt up to consciousness with a yell and a jump out of bed.

“Time to wake up Scribbler,” Letho drawled in a flat tone.

“But it's still d...” I nearly bit my tongue as Letho cuffed me round the ear.

“You wanted to know about the trials. Well these are the trials. Welcome to your first day of the choice Scribbler.”

“But...”

He cuffed me again.

“When I want to hear your voice, worm, I will ask for it. Until then dress. Breakfast is ready and if you're not there in one minute I shall assume you're not hungry and we will start the day as I mean us to go on.”

He turned and left.

I stared at his retreating back for a moment until he called “fifty seconds” over his shoulder.

I leapt to my travel bags where I opened the top to find myself a clean and a dry shirt. Except the bags weren't there. There was just my boots and my spear.

“Where are my things?” I yelled to no answer.

I put my boots on and caught up my spear as I dashed over to the table where Letho was putting a kind of porridge mixture into a bowl.

“What did you do with my clothes?” I demanded.

Letho ignored me. “Your foods getting cold.” His voice was flat and dead. “You've got two minutes to eat it.”

“Where are my things?”

He looked me up and down. “You're wearing them aren't you? Eat. One minute forty five.”

As sometimes happens in moments of high stress, my body decided that I had lost my mind somewhere and rushed me over to the table where I started shovelling food down my throat where it burnt my mouth. It was porridge, much like you might eat elsewhere. What I didn't recognise were the berries that were mixed into the porridge which left an odd burning sensation in the back of my throat.

When I had scraped the bowl clean Letho pointed at a large bucket of water.

“Clean your bowl, put it away and then come back.” He fished a cloth bag out from somewhere, from which he took a long, straight razor which he started stropping against the leather.

“Quicker.” He rumbled.