Chapter 69: Scribbler

Kerrass has this game he likes to play.

It is not a good game. He mostly does it because it satisfies three of his basic needs. The first need is because it entertains him. The second need is because it gets him free things. The last need is because it annoys me.

Despite what he might say, Kerrass bears many similarities to the animal with which he shares the name of his school. He is a hunter and spends weeks living in relative squalor, camping by the side of the road or sleeping in barns, stables and lofts. He eats whatever people can afford to feed him and often finds that he gets short changed and over charged by the very people that he risks his life in an effort to save. He does all of these things happily and without complaint.

But sometimes he decides that enough is enough and he wants some proper pampering.

So what he does is to head off to the nearest city of note. That being described as a place that has several taverns and several different places of entertainment. This means that there is more than one Brothel, card playing house and similar such entertainments are a lot easier to find. We march through the gates with enough of a bribe to make sure that we're not going to get into any trouble, leave the horses with a reputable livery stable so that they can get well looked after themselves, then he marches to the most expensive restaurant that there is where he eats so much that he can barely contain it, he does this while ordering the best wine available of which he insists that we drink at least a bottle each. Then he insists that we go to the best brothel/whorehouse/bordello in the city where we spend the night, making best use of the ladies available.

The game starts when we get to the whorehouse and it will take a moment or two to set the scene as it is a little bit embarrassing to me personally.

So picture the scene. We walk through the door. The decent places have somewhere to put our cloaks, weapons and boots so that we don't trail mud and violence everywhere before we go into the entrance area. As we walk in, we are spotted quickly. Possibly as a result of a signal from the person taking the weapons off us, that a Witcher has just walked in. It's not that brothels refuse the patronage of Witchers you understand but they generally prefer to get them out of the way and into a more private area to avoid any of the potential unpleasantness that can sometimes come as the result of Kerrass' presence.

The Brothel Madame, or senior courtesan approaches us and looks us up and down.

Having spent a bit more time in this kind of establishment since my travels with Kerrass started I am now, much more aware of what's actually going on here. The Madame is “cold reading” her clients. What she's looking for varies but in short, the kind of thing she's looking for are:

Apparent wealth as this is often a signifier of how much money the client can spend.

Taste. How gaudy is the clients clothing and jewellery. The gaudier the dress means that the client is more likely to be a one timer. They have got rich suddenly and are blowing it all on one grand night.

General drunkenness. As exhibited by how bloodshot the eyes are and whether or not the client is swaying or not.

Temperament, how are the eyes moving, do their fists clench involuntarily, do they have scars on their knuckles and other such signs.

Mood, because a good Madame, especially of the kind that Kerrass likes to frequent when he's in this kind of mood, tailors the clients experience to suit them.

Cleanliness, for reasons that I'm not going to go into here.

Some people are thrown out on the basis of whatever a madame might see at this point. The really good brothels have bouncers on the door so any of the particularly unpleasant punters have already been filtered out by the time that you get to the stage of meeting the madame in question.

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So after the Madame has had a chance to look you up and down, the next thing that happens is that there is a greeting. If you think that you've already moved past the “appraisal stage” then you would be mistaken. Do NOT try to impress the madame as believe me, she has seen everything.

At this stage, I had actually stopped being surprised at the number of times that Kerrass has walked through the door to be greeted by name by the madame in question. As, again like the cat that he takes the name of his school from, he is a creature of habit.

So we walk in, Kerrass greets the lady in question,

Yes the madame is a lady. I've known more courtesy and good manners in many of the brothels that Kerrass has taken me to over the last year and a half than in some Noble's castles.

Kerrass and the lady exchange a few pleasant greetings before they turn to me.

“Who's this you've brought me?” says the madame, or words to that effect.

Here begins the game.

Another truth is that regardless of whether you call these women whores, courtesans, companions or prostitutes, your visit is not special to them. No matter how much they might claim that it is. This is their job. How many of you reading this, actually enjoy your job? You might be good at it. You might take satisfaction from that skill and doing a good job right. I've even met some prostitutes that enjoy the act that their job entails. But it's still their job and you should not pretend otherwise to yourself.

What this means is that they are absolute suckers for some free entertainment.

“This,” Kerrass says, changing his manner from being quiet and charmingly conservative so as not to frighten the madame to a manner more befitting a carnival performer. “This is the noble Frederick von Coulthard. Noble, scholar and gentleman.” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

At this point in the proceedings I generally sigh as though I wish that the ground is settling over my shoulders. It's never nice being the subject of so much appraising attention. Especially when that appraising is being done by beautiful women.

“He doesn't look like very much,” is the most common comment that I get as a result of this exhibition.

“Even so.” Kerrass carries on, by now gathering something of an audience. “His rather plain features, lack of general musculature and posture that wouldn't be unsuitable to the local freak show, hide a most noble character. This man is fearless. Fearless I say.”

By now a couple of people are beginning to cotton on to the show and are cheering Kerrass on whilst openly mocking me.

“This brave man,” Kerrass carries on, “leapt into a den of monsters to save a young girls stuffed toy.”

“Oooh,” go the crowd. .

“This man gave away his last piece of bread to feed starving children,”

Another groan comes from the crowd. By now I'm generally doing my best to snag a drink of some kind.

“But most importantly of all,” Kerrass is now building up to the punchline and the climax of his little show. “Beneath the proud and troubled brow of this most noble of an individual is housed the most perfect lover that any lady in this house has ever known.”

To which every woman there. Every woman there lets out a chorus of protests.

“No no it's true,” protests Kerrass. “No woman has ever, has ever gone a full night with this man here without being utterly and completely satisfied... Lo they tell tales of this man's prowess in Temeria. He walked, alone, into the whorehouses of Vizima and proceeded to pleasure all of the whores of that famed institution “The house of the Queen of the night,” over the course of a week.

“Why a week I hear you ask?”

I swear I'm not making this up. I've heard this speech given on multiple occasions now.

“Because as any true lover knows.” Kerrass turns to me and raises his eyebrows.

Generally at this point I sigh theatrically, knowing the part I'm expected to play and trot out the line “It takes time to do it right,”

“You tell us all these things Kerrass but I'm not sure that I believe it,” the Madame generally opines. “He's scrawny, stoop shouldered and doesn't look as though he would know what to do with a woman if we all threw ourselves at him.”

“Not only would he know what to do, but he is willing to prove it as well.”

“Oh yes?”

As I say, Prostitutes lives are either boring or incredibly terrifying in which case they need to find themselves a better place to work but that's a discussion for another time. In these kinds of places. In the upmarket expensive places that Kerrass chooses when he's in one of these moods. The women are generally bored to tears.

“Yes,” Kerrass says with a sly smile. “I propose a wager.”

Sometimes a chant breaks out at this point along the lines of “Wager, Wager, Wager,” or similar. I'm now glaring at Kerrass who returns my gaze, radiating innocence.

“I propose.” Kerrass shouts the words until he gets silence. “I propose that the lady of Madame's choice, takes my companion off to the room of her choice for the night. The lady of choice can be as jaded or as virginal as the madame pleases. All that I ask is that she be honest of character,”

This condition often gets people jeering,

“In the meantime, I will avail myself of the pleasures of this delightful establishment. Then, in the morning. The Madame can ask the lady if she is completely satisfied.”

More jeering and cheering.

“If the lady says yes. Then the price of our evenings entertainment is cut in half. If not... then we pay in full. As well as say, a drink for everyone currently guesting in this fine establishment. On the house if we win. Paid for by us if we lose.”

“If he fails you mean.”

“As you say.” Kerrass generally bows again at this point.

Normally the madame comes over and makes a show of looking me up and down. The amount of money being wagered here is not small but she knows that she needs to make just as much of a play of it as we did.

“What do you think ladies?” The madame will turn to the girls.

What happens here is varied. There is often a chorus of disbelieving giggles and whispered conversation. I don't blame them. It bears reminding the reader of what I actually look like.

I'm not handsome. I'm not well muscled in any way. I've put on weight in certain areas but there's relatively little muscle definition that you would see in someone like Kerrass or any of the strong men that you might see by the side of the road and in carnivals. I'm gangly and although people have, very kindly, commented that I've grown in confidence, poise and grace over the months that I've spent on the road with Kerrass, I have no illusions.

I don't look like much is what I'm trying to say.

I'm not ugly. I no longer have the squint or the stoop that I used to have but nor am I going to turn many heads at court when I go down there in a couple of days time.

So I can generally forgive the ladies of these establishment for their assessment. If I haven't done so previously, I normally take this opportunity to snag a drink from a passing tray.

Then comes the sacrificial lamb.

It's not unknown for the madame herself to take up Kerrass' challenge but regardless, a woman steps forward. This has happened often enough that I can normally spot which lady it is that will take me up on Kerrass' offer.

She's generally an older lady from the pack. I try never to guess a woman's age but she's definitely a bit more jaded, a bit more experienced than the other giggling girls. She's also, generally, a little more aggressive with her sexuality without any kind of hint of shyness. I won't lie that I sometimes find such women frightening which possibly says something about me.

I'm not sure what but it does say something.

She steps forward. Looks me up and down and says something like.

“I will take him,”

At which point the game is on. Kerrass and the madame shake hands in the manner of two professionals coming to a formal agreement. I set my drink aside and bow formally over the ladies hand which I gently brush my lips against.

“Your servant milady.” I say.

Never let it be said that I don't enjoy rising to the challenge.

I hadn't meant to write a pun there but now that I've written it, I'm going to leave it.

I don't know why Kerrass finds this so amusing. Although he may say that one of those reasons is that I have yet to disappoint him.

I remember when it started too. The first time he took me into town it was maybe a week after the incident with Sir William the Ram and old Annie the troll. We went into town and I was mortified and embarrassed as I realised that he was leading me towards a brothel. I stammered something about finding an inn or something to spend the night and that I'd meet him in the morning.

Kerrass was having none of it though and took me firmly by the arm and escorted me into the building. At the time I remember that the jests he made at my expense were a lot sharper in their tone. He played the part of a man of the world who had taken a young and foolish boy under his wing for which I should be suitably grateful. I was given a girl and told to go off and enjoy myself.

So I did.

The girl that had been selected for me was one of the more experienced ladies of that particular house. I'll never forget her as she was very kind to me as I was still a little wide-eyed and very wet behind the ears. I was still having my day to day prejudices and opinions about the world shaken on a daily basis and I was rather taken aback by the overt sexuality on display as well as the... well the wanton decadence that that particular house was known for. Her name was Rose. I doubt that this was her real name as some of the other names that I heard that night were Daffodil, Daisy, Tulip and Hyacinth.

As I say she was very kind to me. She asked if I was a virgin, which I wasn't, before enquiring about why I was so uncomfortable.

Yes, I had visited a brothel in Oxenfurt a couple of times with friends. It's a discreet kind of place that caters to.... well I suppose that it caters to people like me. It's a place that you can go, have a drink with a beautiful woman and then, if she agrees which is an important part of any arrangement that I might enter into with a woman, we go to her room and...well...

I'm sure you get the idea.

But I remember that first night with Rose. She was doing her best to get something going but then something in me snapped and I took control of the situation.

The following morning an astonished Kerrass greeted me as Rose came out to wave me off with a kiss on my cheek and a dreamy smile.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded as we rode away.

“What the hell was what?” I wondered.

“That was Rose,” he said. “She gets given all the inexperienced men but I heard her when I was walking past your room last night on my way to get more wine. She, NEVER does that. She came to see you off. She never does that either.”

“Really?” I shrugged, trying and failing to play it cool but deep down I was being ridiculously and childishly pleased with myself.

The next time we visited a brothel he was morbidly fascinated. In that place we were guided to a private area where we were served wine. I saw Kerrass speak to the woman in charge and he watched with mounting horror as I made my courtesies to the selected woman. Again, the following morning I saw him talk to the madame and him staring at me with wide eyes. His opinion in me rose sharply after that.

(**)

The truth is that I've never found it that difficult to please women in the bed chamber. Those same prostitutes have admitted that I am far from massively endowed, the most I have been given was that I was “pleasingly average”. But as I say, I've never found it difficult to please a woman.

Getting a woman into the bed chamber? That is something I find much more difficult. Hugely more difficult. So much so that I have sometimes wondered if I might be deficient in some way.

Once they're there though?

Nothing to it.

I've sat having excruciatingly funny/embarrassing conversations with some of my female friends as they have described their own sexual escapades and I've been left honestly astonished as to how my gender can honestly be so utterly useless at giving pleasure to women.

It's not even that difficult.

You wanna know the secrets?

Read a book.

Specifically, read a book on female anatomy. Pay close attention to those areas that will be clearly marked as being sensitive to the touch on a woman's body.

Once you have learned which areas are which, see how your chosen partner reacts to having those areas touched.

Be gentle at first as the scale of sensitivity runs from ticklish, through pleasure to pain and that scale shifts according to the ladies mood.

Always check for consent. I cannot stress this enough. It might shock you to learn this but people talk and you will be surprised how quickly reputations can be made or torn down.

But above all, there are two tricks....

I never thought I'd be writing these things down.

The first trick is this... Be patient. Take your time. It can sometimes take a long time for a lady to get.... worked up and different women react differently. So be prepared to put the work in

The second thing is this..... Learn how to give really good head.

Trust me.

If women are reading this then first of all....

You're welcome.

Secondly....

Tell your partner what you like. If they are not willing to do that then you might want to consider why. You might even surprise each other.

But enough of that.

I won't lie though. Part of why I'm telling you all this is so that I can see my sister's face when she reads it.

Either sister for that matter.

Or brother.

I don't need to worry about Ariadne. I already know that she will read the above with interest and curiosity.

Why do men normally not bother with this kind of thing?

Wiser people than me have been asking that question for centuries and I'm not going to bother get into it

here.

Why do I do it?

Because it's fun.

Enough of this kind of talk.

(**)

So why am I telling you about this game of Kerrass'?

Because a month or so after we had left Kaer Morhen, Kerrass took me to a brothel. We had come down from some of the wilder and rockier countryside that marks the northern borders of Redania after a couple of hunts. We were grimy, tired and we wanted some civilisation. Kerrass had been working hard for the last couple of weeks and we had plenty of money and an urge to spend it. We rode into a town and went straight to the bathhouse where we spent a long time soaking our cares away before eating a huge meal and then we went to the local brothel.

It looked like a nice enough place. Music was playing, the sun was out and there were flowers everywhere. The place was also expensive and powerful enough that they didn't have to send their women out into the streets to try and draw in the punters. Instead there were well dressed men who invited you in.

We thanked the footmen at the entrance who took our gear. The party seemed to be going full swing. A younger girl, clearly an apprentice of some kind, brought us some wine and we sipped for a while before a well to do woman of middle years, (remember I never guess a lady's age,) came forward and asked us how she could serve us.

I couldn't tell if she knew Kerrass or not but I did notice that she didn't flinch away from his gaze which is much more than some people manage.

Kerrass opened his mouth to begin his speech and I was steeling myself for the coming show.

But then Kerrass stopped, mouth open and he turned to me, he closed his mouth and I saw a strange thought cross his face.

“No, you know what?” he said quietly. “My friend here gets the best that you have. Whatever he wants for the night. On me. All of it. I wouldn't mind some time with Alanis if she's available but otherwise. Treat my friend here like a King.”

The woman's eyes widened in surprise. A surprise that must have been mirrored in my own face.

“Is it your friends birthday?”

“Mm?” Kerrass turned back to her as if he hadn't heard. “No, no it's not his birthday. He saved my life recently.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “Enjoy yourself Freddie. Marilyn here will look after you.” He turned back to the party and was downing his drink.

Marilyn looked at me.

“You saved his life?”

I shook my head. Not in a negative but more in surprise. “It's not been a great month. You know Kerrass?”

She showed me through to another room where there was a large bath and a massage table. She gestured for me to strip and started bundling up my clothes that I assumed would be taken off for cleaning. She gestured to a series of cubby holes where I found folded robes and some warm and soft slippers.

“Does anyone really know a man like that,” she said as I dis-robed. “Better than some but worse than others. I first met him ten years ago when I still worked as one of the girls. I was going to take over the running of the place and was learning how to do it from my predecessor. We were the first place in this part of the world that dared,” she said that with a smile and a wink, “to take a man to the watch for beating on his girl. The locals didn't like that and they chose to make their displeasure known by beating up whores all over the city. As a result, all of our girls made it known that girls could work here free of that kind of fear. We were packed to the rafters with girls in a couple of days and soon we were the only open brothel in the town. Men started to queue up to get in. Master Kerrass was here one night having paid a good amount for some time with a girl when someone decided to “test our mettle”,”

She smiled at the memory.

“Kerrass pulled him off the girl, wrestled him to the ground and knocked him out. Then he offered to allow the girl to kick him a few times before Kerrass threw him out. He was dead drunk and swaying as he did so but it struck all of us at the time that he was being surprisingly courteous to whores.”

She put my clothes in a bag.

“We like Kerrass here milord you can rest assured about that.”

I nodded. It sounded like Kerrass.

But as I say, it hadn't been a good month.

Not since we had left Kaer Morhen anyway.

-

In the end, I decided not to drink from the small bottle that Letho gave me the afternoon after I had woken up from Letho's approximation of the Witcher trials as I found that I didn't really want to sleep.

Letho had wandered off somewhere and I spent a long time looking at the ceiling. I felt... oddly calm. I realise that I should have been angry. I should have been absolutely furious at the fact that I had been drugged, hypnotised, beaten up and abused but somehow I found that I wasn't. Instead I needed to pee rather desperately.

My saddlebags had been returned along with the rest of my belongings so I got dressed and went outside to piss off the walls of the fortress and down to the valley below. The sun was setting and I saw something that objectively I had already known. Kaer Morhen valley was a beautiful place. I couldn't bring myself to believe that a person would come here to retire or just spend the time looking out over that valley, but I could understand old Witchers coming here to retire, to watch their remaining years stretch out in front of them in an endless stream of training new students.

Not that they ever did. Kerrass had told me time after time that Witcher's don't retire. They might take some time off the path to train or find themselves something else to do like run a tavern or become a killer for here, but sooner or later, the path calls them back until they are there in the darkness, a flash of silver, a roar of a beast and then....

An unmarked grave at best or, at worst, an unmarked pile of monster droppings.

I felt my thoughts turn towards the maudlin and went back inside to fetch a bottle of spirits that I had seen on the shelf of the Witcher's pantry. While I had been outside I had heard the sound of metal being worked. A hammer on an anvil and went off to investigate where I found Letho working at the forge.

I found a box to perch on and watched him work.

“Not tired Scribbler?” He asked after a while.

“It's not that,” I said taking a long drink from the bottle. I strongly suspect that on any other day, the contents of that bottle would have scoured the insides of my throat clean. “It's just,” I felt a smile start to grow on my face. “You'll forgive me if I don't really fancy taking any more of your potions just yet.”

I swear, I swear that I saw a flicker of a smile across Letho's face at that point before he turned away and plunged the metal that he was hammering into one of the barrels for quenching.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Practising mostly.” He grunted. “Alchemy and forging is like any kind of craft, skill or art. If you don't practice it you're never going to get good at it and if you're good at it you need to keep practising to stay good at it.”

“True words.” I said as I watched. I found that I liked it out there. It was cold despite the time of year. We were still high up and the sky was clear and getting darker. The wind was beginning to come off the mountain peaks and I was beginning to get cold. But I found that I relished that cold and enjoyed the shivers.

“I do have one question though,” I said as I took another swig from the bottle.

“Only one?” Letho rumbled holding his hand out for the bottled while he pumped the bellows that worked the forge.

“For now.” I tried for a smile. I knew that my eyes hadn't changed shape but I wondered if any of Letho's other concoctions would have a lasting effect on me. “I've read everything that has been written on the subject of Witchers.”

“Including the lies?” Letho handed the bottle back.

“Especially the lies. My tutor once told me that you can learn a lot that is true from blatant falsehood.”

“Heh,” Letho wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It seemed to be some kind of habit. A nervous gesture or...something.

“But I've read everything that I can find and although I've heard of the trial of Grasses many times, the choice occasionally and the Trial of Dreams rarely....”

“Sometimes they get called different things. I know that the Manticore used to mix the trial of Dreams and the Trial of Grasses together as they believed that that might mitigate some of the problems.”

“Interesting.... But that's not my question. My question is this. What's the trial of the mountain? I've never heard of it before. I stress that I'm not going to drink anything else that you give me voluntarily.”

Letho grinned.

“It's not that exciting to be honest. You won't have heard of the Trial of the Mountain because it was actually a lot rarer than the rest.”

“Why? What did it do?”

“I thought you said that you only had one question Scribbler?”

“I'm a scholar. It's part of the job. In the same way that being a dick head is part of yours.”

Letho looked at me for a long time.

“I like you Scribbler.”

The way he said it made it seem like high praise. Which I suppose it was.

“The trial of the Mountain was for the failures.”

“You make it sound so warm and fuzzy.”

Letho said something obscene.

“What it was was this. On those batches of students, when the mages and the Witcher elders could afford to be...benevolent...heh... when there was one student or a couple of students that had taken some or most of the mutations but not quite all of them stuck. You know, maybe they had a non-fatal allergic reaction to one of the more important ingredients of the Witcher potions so he could never use.... I don't know, he could use the potion that we called “Swallow,” but couldn't use “White Rafferd's decoction,” or something similar. Maybe his Iris control was still a little bit too involuntary for the comfort of the elder Witchers or he had a childhood injury or illness which meant that some bits of him never worked properly. In short, someone would come out of the trials and they weren't quite up to where they wanted him to be.”

“Failures,”

“We never called them that. They were still Witchers but... Another example would be, maybe they had an attitude problem. Maybe they had passed the trial of choice but then would run away from the keep and had to be pulled back every single time. Maybe they had a habit of not paying attention in the class to do with Necrophages. The trial of the Mountain was then administered.”

Letho spent some time working the bellows before taking the metal out and hammering at it again.

“The trial of the mountain varied but it was, in short, a test. Sometimes the student would go out with a more experienced Witcher, or they would spend time with an elder. They would be sent off to hunt a troll or something to see if they could live up to the requirements of the rest of the school.”

“Sounds brutal.”

“Have you not figure this out yet Scribbler? Witcher schools are fine places to be if you're a guest, or if you have passed your trials and you wear your medallion proudly. But for the students?”

He took a cloth and wiped some of the soot from the forge off his head.

“You're a religious man Scribbler.”

“I am.”

“What's your idea of hell?”

“I don't know. I don't really think about it. The world is supposed to end in cold and ice so I always thought about hell as being like endless snow and ice.”

Letho grunted.

“My idea of hell is having to go back to Witcher school. That I have to go through more mutations and more tests.” He took the piece of metal that he had been working on, poured an oil on it and started working it against a grinding wheel.

“I wake up some nights Scribbler, and if any other Witcher claims that they don't then they're either lying to you, or they're a cat Witcher who's already gone mad. I wake up nights and I can hear the scream in the back of my throat. I dreamt that I was back there in Viper keep, in the cages that they used to suspend above the forges so that we could breathe in the fumes and the mutagens. That was their method of helping us get used to it. They wanted us to breathe it in. I wake up and just for a moment I think that I'm about to be put back in the cages.”

He shook his head.

“Go back inside Scribbler. It's going to get cold. I understand you're leaving tomorrow so if you're going to read any of the books then you need to do it now before the Kitten comes to take you away.”

I did as I was told.

Roughly two hours later Letho came back into the keep dragging a huge sack behind him. It turned out that he had been slow roasting a mountain goat in an earthen ware oven that he had built in a pit out the back of Kaer Morhen. He'd done it in a mix of herbs and spices and it was so mouth wateringly tender that it seemed to melt in my mouth as I ate it. Along with some more of his fresh bread, root vegetables from his vegetable patch and some fruit to finish up. My mood was even more improved when it was obvious that we would be taking some of the left over meat with us when we departed in the morning.

We spent the evening playing cards. Letho's mood had shifted and much to my astonishment I found that he was also the possessor of a fine, bone dry wit. He told me the story about how he and Kerrass had met in a tavern in Vizima where a case of mistaken identity had meant that each of them had been hired to kill a monster that had turned out to be the other Witcher. One tavern brawl later and the two of them had become friendly enough that they both blamed the other for the initial misunderstanding.

I traded him that story for some other stories about Kerrass that I had come across as well as the story about how I had met Ariadne which caused Letho much amusement.

But the trials of the day began to tell and eventually I slumped into sleep. As I drifted off to my chemically enhanced slumber, my last sight was of Letho working the piece of metal that he had been forging earlier in the day.

I woke up the following day after a surprisingly blissful nights sleep to the sight of Kerrass and Letho catching up over a breakfast made up of last night's leftover goat, bread and a spirit so strong that I was surprised that the two men were getting into it so early in the day. They greeted me as I sat down and Letho pushed over a breakfast far larger than I would normally have in the morning before Kerrass started making noises that it was time to go.

It wasn't hard to figure out that they were having a bit of fun at my expense so I thought it was my duty to ignore the bastards.

Even so, Kerrass had packed our provisions and my belongings so that no sooner had I finished my breakfast than it was time to leave. I saw the two Witchers embrace fiercely before parting with the kind of bruising hug that people give each other when they're trying to make the other person seem weak.

Letho came to me next and took a dagger off his belt and handed it over. Not one of the crossed ones but it had been jammed in his belt next to them.

“There you go Scribbler.”

“Is this the one that you were working on last night.”

Letho shrugged.

“Take care of it. It's not a proper fang but it'll do the job.”

I looked down at the tall, bald brute of a man from the back of my horse as I tucked the dagger into my belt.

“Take care of yourself Letho,”

“You too Scribbler.”

He turned and walked back into the keep without another word.

I watched carefully as we rode out of the castle and back onto the road but Kerrass didn't look back. I kept my thoughts to myself after that.

But it wasn't that easy. Kerrass spent the next little while.... I don't quite know how to describe what happened then. I suppose it could be argued that what happened was that he spent the next little while losing himself.

I didn't notice what was happening until the process had already begun. At first I just explained his silence away as the fact that he might have nothing to say. I had enough experience of him to be aware that when he's like this, you can't get him to talk just by wishing it, or from hoping that he's going to snap out of it. You have to wait.

It's a lot like trying to tame an animal. You have to teach it that it can trust you and that takes time. You sit there, give it food and as time goes by it learns not to be afraid of you. It learns that you aren't going to hurt it or damage it in any way. Or at least that's the way I always thought about taming animals.

No, that's not right. It's nothing like taming animals. What it's like is trying to make friends with someone who has been betrayed by the closest of friends.

That's what it's like.