Chapter 70: Scribbler (2)

I don't know why Kerrass began to... began to feel the way he did. He's never really talked about it since and I never really asked him to explain it. It seemed, intrusive somehow. I always kind of assumed that if he wanted to talk about whatever it was that was bothering him, then he would talk about it without any kind of input from me although this might have been a mistake with hindsight.

I have a couple of guesses. I suspect that, whoever it was that had died was important to Kerrass. I don't know who it was and I never asked but for whatever reason, that person was important. Friend, teacher, lover or something else but for whatever reason, that loss was a tipping point for Kerrass and what it did was to tip him over the edge towards madness.

Kerrass had often spoken to me about the problems with being a Witcher from the Feline school. That there were problems with the mutations that had been applied to them that meant that they ran the risk of heading towards various forms of psychoses far too easily for comfort. I knew that Kerrass had a temper as I had seen his rage made manifest, aimed at me and at others. I had also seen his depressions. Where he would sink into a pit of despair that nothing could drag him out of.

But this was much slower and more insidious than any of those things. It took it's time and it took that time to build. Slowly. Very very slowly so that by the time I actually realised that something was wrong, there was nothing I could do to try and help him, other than just to be there, ready for him to talk when he needed to talk.

I was waiting a long time.

But as I say, it began slowly and it's only with the benefit of hindsight that I can pick up on clues that might have led me to believe that nothing was ok. But it was small stuff.

I had to remind him to blindfold me, to hide the whereabouts of Kaer Morhen.

That might not sound like much and it possibly isn't but at the same time it had been... it had been important to him when he was on his way in, but now it didn't seem to matter.

He even made a joke of it when we stopped for the night.

“It honestly never occurred to me.” He said after we'd settled down to cook some of the supplies. For those people wondering, the Goat was just as tasty on the second attempt.

“Why not?” I wondered aloud. “You were so determined to remember on the way in.”

“Yes, but I kind of figured that if Letho approved of you then it was kind of alright.”

“Letho approves of me?”

“He certainly seems to.”

“He tortured me Kerrass.”

“Yes, but only in a kind of off-hand affectionate kind of way. If he'd really started torturing you you'd be missing fingers by now.”

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“That doesn't make me feel better about it though Kerrass.”

I was drinking a measure of the larger potion bottle at this point.

“He certainly never apologised for it.” I went on.

“He would never apologise. He once told me that he sees apologising as a sign of weakness. All I'll say is this though, he's never given me a knife.”

“It is a good knife.”

“It would be.”

Nothing else was said on the subject.

I was blindfolded for the next couple of days until we were back on the road again. Another, very nondescript patch of road. Nothing different from that patch of road to any of the other patches of road with the miles of wild countryside on the several days either side of it.

What was the next potential clue?

I beat him in a sparring session. The only time I've ever beaten Kerrass enough to score a point on him was when he was demonstrating some kind of technique to me that he wanted me to learn. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

But that day, I was using some of the techniques that Letho had taught me and I defeated Kerrass handily. I didn't think too much of it at the time on the grounds that I was trying some new things and I was also swept up in the euphoria of the moment. I enjoyed some jokes at Kerrass' expense for which I was suitably punished.

It was like... It was like he just lost focus somehow. As though the carefully polished and burnished lens of a microscope has developed a flaw in the glass. That someone's dropped it somewhere.

He became less talkative. That's not that much to talk about but at the same time it is a factor. Whereas we had spent a lot of time whiling away the miles over the course of one or other conversation. Now it just seemed as though he was responding with one or two syllables. But as I say, it was a slow thing. It didn't happen quickly. After an afternoon of silence we would spend the entire evening talking about vampires (a subject that was still rather on my mind) or on the mating habits of Wyverns.

But then I looked up one day and I realised that the person who was riding next to me was no longer my friend. I don't know what it was or when it had happened but I realised that I was worried for him and

concerned for his health.

I've already talked about the day Kerrass first called me friend and I didn't say the word aloud until he did because I didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable. But I do know that it was in that stretch of travelling away from kaer Morhen that I first realised that I had started to think of Kerrass as my friend. I knew this because that was when I realised that I was worried about him.

I remember looking over at him, there were some Endregas off in the woods further up the hills. Just one or two and in those kinds of cases they only seem to attack you if you get too close to them but I turned to Kerrass to wonder if there might be someone near by who might be willing to pay for the removal of the beasts.

Kerrass hadn't noticed them. They were too far away for his medallion to really have any kind of effect but he was riding behind me (which should have been another clue as generally he prefers to be in front,) his head was bowed, dark circles under his eyes and his eyes were bloodshot.

If he had been completely human I would have said that he had been weeping for some reason.

He noticed my looking and straightened in the saddle. Just like that, Kerrass the Witcher was back. Then he noticed the Endrega's although there weren't any villages around. Which is a shame because a good hunt was just what the doctor might have ordered in that case.

I can admit that I do have a number of excuses. I had my own series of thought processes to go over and the moral repercussions of what Letho had talked to me about as well as shown me were rather haunting. But I remember that moment. I remember that moment and thinking, “What has Kerrass got to be so unhappy about?” and then realising that the answer has been in front of my fucking face for the past couple of weeks.

A friend of his had died. Someone that he thought of as being important.

This had been told to him in an environment similar to the one where he himself had been tortured and abused within an inch of his life and probably beyond the limit of his own sanity. All of that and in the mean time the poncey scholar that insisted on being dragged around after him, had vanished up his own backside upon learning that Witchers had been forced into existing because the entirety of humanity had been too cowardly to learn how to deal with their own problems.

I was possibly being a little hard on myself but at the same time it wasn't entirely invalid.

That night as we set up the camp fire and after we had done some training where I had made sure that I had asked a suitably large number of questions to keep his mind on things, I decided to broach the subject in a typically ham-fisted and above all, male, fashion.

“You alright?” I asked him after trying several other conversation starters around in my head until I gave up and decided to just force some words out in the same way that an army sends out a group of soldiers into the breach in a castle first, just to see what might happen.

Kerrass shifted his weight and looked up at me.

“Of course I am, why wouldn't I be?”

I stared at him open mouthed for a few minutes.

“Kerrass, not wanting to be funny but I've just been shown the briefest hint of what it's like to go through the trials. I'm not naïve enough to think that that wouldn't have an effect on someone but at the same time... Letho told me that you'd lost someone.”

If anyone reading this has a friend who has recently lost someone or of whom you might suspect that they're not alright. Take note. This is how you DON'T talk to them.

Or maybe you do. I don't know.

“People die Freddie. Witchers more often than that really.”

“Yes but...”

“That's just the truth of life out on the path Freddie. Write that in your book. No Witcher gets off the path peacefully. We all die, I will, you will and the longer we all stay on the path, the more likely it's going to happen violently and sooner rather than later. Why do you think I've tried to leave it so often?”

I've said it before, Kerrass does rage pretty well but this was a lot quieter than I was used to.

The silence lengthened as I realised how badly I had handled the situation. After a while Kerrass got up and walked into the night.

The following morning I tried to talk to him about it. I tried to apologise for my insensitivity but he waved me off.

“Don't worry about it. I just get like this sometimes. You know how it is.” and we rode on. He seemed fine that day but he was...distant is the word I want to use.

It got worse over the coming weeks. We were heading west as the plan was still, in theory, to head back into Redania before heading south to help with the clearing out of the Necrophages in Velen. But Whereas before Kerrass had been looking forward to what he called the “easy money” that would soon be gathered during that time and place. Now he was... Just not there.

I was the one making the decisions. I was picking up food and cooking at it. I had to remind him to train in the evenings. I had to encourage him to go on hunts.

I had plenty of money left over what with one thing and another but Kerrass' own funds were running short. So I had to encourage him to take contracts.

Which he did badly. I had to care for his injuries again, something I hadn't had to do since the night we first met. Normally Kerrass is happy to take a potion and get on with it but he had run out of potions without telling me so I had to use my own leftover medicine knowledge to stitch him up. I had to ask him what herbs he needed to brew some more of his potions and I spent my time trailing round the countryside looking for the flowers, berries and roots that he needed. A thing that he would have refused to let me do for fear that I might pick up on one too many potion secrets. A task, by the way, that Kerrass could have dealt with in a fraction of the time that it took me to perform the same task as, not being very good at it, I ruined more than one sample by inexpert harvesting.

So I did the next load of inexpert attempts to care for my friend.

It should be mentioned that even given the distance of time from those events, I still don't know what I could have said or done to make these circumstances better. Kerrass was suffering. I knew it although I don't recall any particular time that I realised he was suffering. It was a creeping, insidious realisation that the person that I was travelling with was not alright.

So as I said. In trying to help I messed things up even further.

Another camp later on and I came out with this wondrous line.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

We were sat, in amongst some trees, we'd eaten and were in that stage where we were slowly hunkering down to attempt to get some sleep. Kerrass was doing some repair work to his armour. I say that because he had got all of the stuff out to do the repair work but then he was just sat there, staring at the leather knife in a way that was making me nervous. He was just staring at it and had been doing so for some time.

So I asked the question. I don't know why or what possessed me to do so but there it was. The words were out of my mouth now and in the open air.

“Talk about what?” he asked.

“It. Whatever it is that's bothering you.”

“Nothing's bothering me Freddie. Get some rest, long day tomorrow.”

“You keep saying that Kerrass but it isn't going to be is it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I'll wake up in the morning and you'll have gone off somewhere. I'll spend some time packing up camp, making breakfast and things but you still won't be back. I'll come find you, which I will because you won't really have been paying attention and call your name whereupon you will. Turn around, sword half out of it's scabbard with a face that looks as though you're in pain. In the end we're not going to set off until mid morning at best. Then, we're going to ride down the road, ignoring any kind of monster sign until you declare that it's time to stop in the early evening when we could have clearly gone on for another several hours.”

“All right Freddie that'll do.”

“But then, after I've made camp, which I admit is part of my job, but after you've stood there, watching me do all of that, you just sit down when we should be training.”

“I said that'll do.”

“Because the person that taught me that constant training and practise is the person that no longer seems to care about it.”

“So?”

“So that's my point. Something's bothering you. I don't know what it is but I want to help so I'm seeing if you want to talk about it.”

“Don't you think that if I wanted to talk about I would have done so by now.”

“It certainly doesn't seem that way,”

“Did it ever occur to you, Freddie, that the reason I'm not talking about it is because I don't want to talk to you about it only for you to publish it in one of your papers for random members of the public to comment and nitpick over.”

“All you have to do Kerrass, all you've ever had to do is say, don't publish this bit Freddie, and I would do it. Have I not proven that enough by now?”

“That's not the point.”

“You MADE that point Kerrass. Have I not proved that you can trust me by now. I reminded YOU to blindfold me on the way back from Kaer Morhen remember.”

He stared at me open mouthed.

“What's wrong Kerrass? What happened there? Because you're not yourself.”

“I'm fine.”

“No you're not,”

“I said I'm fine.”

“If you were fine, we wouldn't be arguing about this. I would already be asleep due to the exhaustion that you would have inflicted on me due to your overly zealous training regime.”

Kerrass got up.

“Where are you going?”

“Going off where I can get a bit of peace.”

He stalked off into the trees. At first I was concerned that he might not come back but he had left his other sword, horse and bags at the camp site. I tied a rope from his bags to my foot and got my head down.

I was worried and I didn't know what to do.

I had seen Kerrass sink into depressions before. Normally they lasted for a week or ten days at the absolute worst. He became close mouthed and frowny faced. He became even more exacting in his expectations and one would almost call him....petty in his thinking.

But this was something else.

This was like...It was as though he had forgotten how to be Kerrass and had to keep being reminded as to how to do it. Whether that was by me or by some other force or event. But more and more those events were getting more and more serious. His losing to me during a sparring contest, completely missing a group of monsters on the road. These kinds of things were coming up more and more often. When I pointed them out to him he would get frustrated and snap at me.

But his frustration only grew.

I had decided on a slightly different strategy to deal with him. He was waspish and snapping with sudden outbursts of anger at me. Outbursts for which he was nearly always apologetic but they were happening more and more often. Several times a day I would decide that I should just leave him to it. That I should just turn my horse for home or for the university to get away from him. I privately thought that I had more than enough material for a masters thesis or three and no-one could fault me for calling it quits in the face of so hostile a subject, but at the same time I was worried. Kerrass had once looked after me when I had been seriously ill with a malady of the brain and heart and I felt that I was duty bound to do the same for him.

So I persevered. I toughened my skin a little bit and just left him to it.

I stopped reminding him that we needed to train and instead I would just go through my own set of exercises.

Doing my best to push myself to the limits that had already been established.

I sorted out food, negotiating with merchants for many of the things that I knew that we would need. I decided to pay for a herb-woman to collect a lot of the medicinal compounds that I knew that Kerrass needed or could use as part of his own potion and alchemy craft. But other than that, I just left him to it.

Days would pass when we wouldn't speak. We just headed across the mountains and then turned our horses towards the south. Our only engagement was when I would check the direction of travel with him.

Things finally came to a head when we met the Grave hag.

We came across a notice by the side of the road. A huge tree stood in the middle of several roads and attached to it were various notices, some were talking about the need that this person or that person needed to be captured or killed for the crown. There were also some notices of things for sale but one notice that finally caught my eye was a notice that help was wanted from a nearby village which was losing children. It was a wooden board into which the words had been carved with a chisel or a knife and it had been hung off another nail that had been used to hang a notice about a missing plough.

I wordlessly handed it over to Kerrass. I had given up trying to talk to him by that point as he was finding something to get irritable with in everything that I said. He took it off me and nodded.

We found out where the village was in question. It was utterly ordinary for that part of the world. It had a mill to go with the river that it had been founded next to, an inn and a blacksmith. The mayor was the mill owner and told us, or rather told me about the problems that the village had been plagued with over the last little while. I listened, passed the knowledge onto Kerrass who grunted in response.

We asked around to see if we could find anything out. Spoke to some of the parents who had lost children to see what kind of upset they were.

In these cases, especially in the more famine stricken, poorer corners of the world after the war, when winter's hard and there isn't going to be enough food to go around, sometimes parents make the impossible choice, how do they want their children to die. Long and slow from starvation or nice and quick, flash of a blade, bite of a bear or wild dog... I'm sure you get the idea.

This time, as it turned out the villagers were quite well off with respect to food. They had managed to get that sweet spot of being slightly too far from the war front to have been stripped of ALL of their supplies and had a bit put by. A lot of the men of the village had gone off to war so there was a little more child labour than was strictly ok with me but I am no longer quite so naïve as to believe that children are not just as capable of making the hard choices when it's a choice between ploughing the fields or starving.

But a few children had gone missing.

There are any number of reasons that children might go missing and as we investigated in an effort to try and figure out what it was that had taken these children, oh joy of joys, I began to see Kerrass return to his old self.

It was a slow thing at first. I first thought I saw a glimpse of that old Witcher when I saw his eyes glinting while talking to a woman who was openly weeping at the prospect of a lost son. Then again when he found a track on a patch of ground outside the window. Then again when he found another set of tracks leading from a house that had lost a girl child.

I remember the moment when I started to think that everything was going to be ok. He was looking at the ground and I saw his head look up at the tree line a few hundred yards away and I saw a kind of hunger cross his face, along with a righteous anger that I had missed.

Never let it be said that Kerrass is completely immune to the lure of being a hero. The prospect of children in peril is strong and the urge to rescue them came upon him then.

The following day we went into the woods. We had a couple of places to try to find signs of any of the beasts that might be praying on the children. There were some local caves, the old charcoal burners huts and an abandoned witches hut, abandoned because some of the more zealous members of the church of the holy fire had been through and dragged the woman out to die screaming on the fires of the priests fury.

We found nothing at the cave and the hut of the old witch had been burned down so that nothing useful could be left there, Kerrass' amulet failed to even twitch so we moved onto the charcoal burners huts.

That was where we found her.

But what I had thought was Kerrass finally coming back to himself was something else entirely. It nearly went oh so catastrophically wrong.

One of the things that you have to remember about Grave Hags is that they are not completely stupid. They do have some small vestiges of intelligence. Some of them have even been known to talk in small ways and can be communicated with. They set themselves up, often near Grave yards or other areas where large numbers of otherwise well decomposed bodies can be found before eating those same bodies. However they are occasionally known to capture people and kill them in stages so that they can decompose properly to be suitably palatable to the foul wretches.

They seem to mimic human behaviour in many ways. They live in abandoned huts and near grave sites or the sites of mass burials. They also may bear some kind of distant relation to vampiric species as some of the potions (according to Kerrass) that injure vampires also injure Grave Hags although there has never been a proper scientific study of this and so it might just be similarities or coincidence. The important part about this in the case of this tale is due to the fact that they are able to reason enough to be able to recognise the wisdom of “setting stores by” for harder times.

In this case the Grave hag had been systematically capturing young children and keeping them in cages so that they could be her “winter stores.” We learned this through talking to the children afterwards. She fed them and looked after them but didn't understand why the children didn't want to eat decomposing rat as the Grave hag in question seemed to consider such things a delicacy.

The children told us that she would take a child from the dark or when they were gathering firewood in ones and twos, lock them in the cellar to the charcoal burners hut and then kill them, one at a time, one every two or three days. That wasn't including those children who had died of starvation or dehydration.

Now...

In these cases it is foolish to underestimate the monster. A grave hag is one of those opponents that if the monster hunter is properly prepared for such a beast, then the grave hag poses minimal threat.

If, however, the hunter goes in under-prepared or is taken by surprise then an angry Grave hag is not a creature that can be taken lightly.

So we approached the Charcoal burners huts cautiously as it was the last place that we were looking in as next we would have been forced to comb the woods systematically. But as we approached I felt, rather than heard, Kerrass begin to growl.

There is no other word that really does justice to the sound that emanated out from Kerrass' throat. It was a low growl of rage and hate and a pain that can no longer be silenced.

He drew his silver sword and charged in towards one of the huts.

He was unprepared. There were no oils on his blade, no potions in his system and it was only because I had reminded him to that he was wearing his silver sword as well as the steel one. A state that time after time after time was a thing that Kerrass warned me against.

“Always be prepared Freddie,” he would say over and over again.

To make matters even worse. It was beginning to get dark which is when the Grave hag is at her most powerful.

I swore but I didn't have time to think too much. If I had stopped to think then things might have gone a lot worse.

I ran in after Kerrass. I saw him kick down the door into the hut and rush inside.

On some kind of level, I registered the thing that Kerrass had heard which was that we could hear children's voices. As I got to the hut the side of the hut exploded outwards as Kerras and the hag came tumbling out. I later learned that the hag had heard Kerrass coming, had flung some kind of goo into his face which had blinded him before making a powerful leap at him which carried them through the thin, wattle and daub, walls of the hut.

Now the screams of the children could plainly be heard. I ran in, saw the hole in amongst the filth and dirt and dashed over. I could hear Kerrass roaring something and the monster screaming. I fell to me knees. The hole was just deep enough that the children couldn't climb out themselves. I jumped down and lifted up one of the larger boys to the top to help the others out. Fortunately he was a solid lad and seemed to have taken some form of charge of the others so I was able to quickly hand the other children up and he helped them out.

I could still hear Kerrass although he was no longer shouting, now he was screaming. I couldn't hear the monster.

I picked up the couple of remaining children and almost bodily threw them out of the hole before I used my new dagger which I plunged into the side of the hole to lever myself out. Not the use that Letho had intended it for I have no doubt but at the time I wasn't thinking of that. It didn't break under my weight though and I still have it so that says something about his skill at forging. The children were frozen and milling around in terror and I had to herd them out of the door.

I smelled burning but I didn't have time to check. I grabbed the eldest lad, demanded to know if he knew the way home. He nodded and started leading the other crying children away with my chasing after them.

I didn't look back.

We broke through the tree line so that we could see the village down below. By now mothers and grandparents had begun to see us and were running up towards the children. Deciding that they were safe, I turned and ran back to see what had become of Kerrass.

He was standing over the remains of the Grave Hag. He had forced the creature back against a wall and was now intent on hacking it into pieces.

He was screaming. Spittle flying from his mouth in thin streamers of slime.

The thing was dead. As dead as a thing like that can be but Kerrass kept on chopping at it. The sounds that he was making were like the sounds of a wounded animal. Formless rage and pain.

As I approached he made a gesture and a stream of sparks sent flames to lick up against the creatures body. I thought that might be the end of things but Kerrass just kept chopping. Just hacking down, both hands on the hilt of the sword.

I approached slowly. I had dropped my spear which might have been foolish but I judged that Kerrass had lost his grip on his senses and if he saw a man with a spear then he might take that as a threat and react without thinking.

I approached slowly, gently calling his name.

He just kept screaming. Visibly tiring before my eyes. The blows were getting clumsier and cruder. I saw him gesture to cause more sparks but whatever was in him that he used to throw those sparks had left him and nothing happened.

Instead he just kept chopping and chopping.

I called his name again, inching closer but I couldn't tell if he had heard me or not.

He was getting really tired now. I was under no illusions, Kerrass could easily split me in half without really trying, even exhausted as he was. He couldn't lift the sword any more even with both hands.

He had one last burst of violent energy where he kicked the Hag's corpse a few times, such as it was by this point, but by that point I was close enough to catch his sword arm and take it off him before he did himself an injury with it.

He tried to get angry at me but he was too far gone.

Instead he kind of collapsed into me and howled into my cloak as I caught him.

I'll never forget the sounds that he made that day as we stood there in that little clearing that the charcoal burners had made. They were animal, primal sounds...

I...

Flame burn me...

It was fully dark by the time that he stopped keening.

I don't know how long after that but a tiny small voice came from him “Freddie?”

“I'm here Kerrass.”

“Take me away from this place.”

It wasn't easy. I lit a quick fire and fed it some fuel so that I could find the place again before I slung Kerrass over my shoulder and carried him to the abandoned cottage of the old herb woman on a bed made from my cloak and his. I quickly lit a fire in the old hearth and headed back out into the night.

I went to the village first. They had heard Kerrass' shouts and cries from as far as that. There was an adorable little blockade of men, women and children with rakes and scythes keeping a watch out.

I mock but those people did right by Kerrass and I.

The children had made it back safely. They gave me the payment that they'd promised as well as several bottles of apple brandy and some food. I tried to pay them for it but they insisted that I take the money instead. I also managed to get a small bottle of lamp oil from them and the rest of our belongings.

Next I went back to the place where Kerrass had fought the Hag. Using the oil I set a good sized fire both in the hut and over the body of the hag itself which I shoveled up and threw into the burning building. Just for surety I covered the body with salt as well. Not that that's going to do anything against a hag but it made me feel better.

I spent enough time there to make sure that the fire wasn't going to spread from the old hut to the surrounding trees before I turned our horses back towards the abandoned cottage.

Kerrass was asleep but woke when I entered. He looked like I had startled a wild animal. His eyes were wild and his ears were tilted backwards. He looked terrified.

With slow and careful movements I went over to the fireplace and started making some food. I wasn't foolish enough to try and give it directly to Kerrass but I put it down next to him and was pleased when I saw that he had started eating.

In all we spent three days in that abandoned cottage. On the morning of the third day I woke to find that he had left his bed roll. Worried, I went out to look for him and I found that he had built a huge fire in the clearing near the cottage. There, stripped down to his trousers he was working the sword forms. Slowly, his movements were stiffer than I guessed he would have preferred but he was getting through them. He would grimace at the mistakes before moving on. Later that day I took my spear outside and we ran through some basic exercises.

On the fourth day we rode out.

It wasn't until the night that we visited the brothel that Kerrass talked about those few days again.

I was having a rest from all the debauchery.

While entirely pleasant, debauchery is a lot of hard work. Endlessly amusing and rewarding work it might be but at the same time, it can be exhausting. I had gone in search of some liquid refreshment as I was in danger of falling asleep and I wasn't quite ready to give up on the evening just yet so I had decided to leave the room, relieve myself and get some more wine as well as some water. To all intents and purposes the brothel that we were at was having a relatively quiet night and so Kerrass' decree that I should be treated like a king meant that the best party was in my room.

I had already had a good time and was determined to have some more when I was walking past a small alcove which opened out onto a balcony when I saw Kerrass. There was another woman who was lying asleep on a nearby couch where someone, presumably Kerrass, had covered her with a blanket and placed a pillow beneath her head. Kerrass had a glass in one hand and was sipping from it as he watched the night sky. He was dressed in his shirt and trews but his feet were bare and propped up on the railing around the balcony.

“You alright?” I asked.

He smiled up at me. He looked better, the bags under his eyes were no longer as large or dark and he seemed relaxed, almost content. “You need to stop asking me that Freddie.”

“Call it habit.”

Kerrass waved me towards a chair next to him and offered me a glass.

“Taking a break?” He asked.

“Something like that. The royal treatment is very....” I rotated my hand in the air, lost for words.

“Royal?” suggested Kerrass.

“That's the very word I was looking for,”

Kerrass clinked his glass against mine.

“Well you deserve it.” he said.

“If you say so,”

“No need for modesty now Freddie,”

“Ok.” I shrugged and took a drink. The wine was excellent. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“This again?”

“This again.”

“You know one day you're going to run out of questions to ask me.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. Still I won't pry if you don't want to go into it.”

Kerrass heaved a huge sigh and settled in.

Truth be told I had just made up my mind to get up and return to my own chamber to wake up the other women were were waiting there when he started speaking again.

“You saved me from the final trial.” He said quietly.

“What trial is that?”

He looked over at me as though he was surprised to have spoken.

“The trial. The ultimate trial. The final trial.”

“I didn't know there were any more trials. So far I've got the trial of Choice, The trial of the Grasses, the trial of Dreams and the Trial of the Mountain.”

“Yes, well. There are two more trials that we generally don't like to talk about.”

“Two more? Those trials sound harsh enough as it is. Hells but Letho showed me some of them and I'm still terrified of it.”

Kerrass smiled again. It was a sad smile. “Yes, I was angry with him about that for a while but, I dunno. He was right. I do look back upon those times with fondness. I do look back and think about the other teachers and the other students. The wizard that stood over us maintaining the proper flow of chemicals into our blood streams. At the time it was a nightmare from which I could never wake up. But now, I look back and I find that I am grateful to those people. Heh,”

He poured himself some more wine and offered me the jug.

“When I say it aloud like that, it sounds psychotic. That I am grateful to them for abusing and changing me in the most unnatural ways. That I am happy with that history and can remember the good times with fondness and the bad times I find that I skip over in my brain. But those aren't the trials that I'm talking about.”

“Oh?” I passed the jug back.

“These are the trials that we don't talk about. They're not coded in any book that I've ever read and other than the old man who talked to me about them once when I returned to the keep after a particularly long year, I've never heard anyone talk about them. Not even to each other.”

I said nothing. I had the sense that Kerrass was working up to telling me something important and I just wanted to let him speak while at the same time trying to drag my own brain out of whatever alcohol soaked bath it was in at the time so I could pay attention.

“These are the trials that mark the change of someone from being a young Witcher. Just sent out on the path with the shine still on his medallion. Still carrying the swords on his back proudly and getting ready to fight anyone who looks at them badly. The first of the two trials is this one and believe it or not, you've passed this trial yourself.”

I still said nothing although my eyebrows may have raised.

“I once heard a fencing instructor refer to is as “The trial of the sword,” or “The trial of the hero,”.” Kerrass went on. “What happens is that the young Witcher goes out. He's at the peak of his trained skill. He's passed all the tests, his mind is full of Monster Lore and Herb Lore. The lessons of his training are still fresh in his mind and in his body. He has a sword on his back and he knows how to use it which is a considerable distance from the skills of all the people around him. He looks around him in his brand spanking new Witcher armour and thinks that he's better than the lot of them.

“Then something happens. It might be that someone bumps into them on the street or someone sneers at them when they are enquiring after contracts. The White Wolf tells a story about his first monster where he rescued a girl and her father from a r@@ gang before the girl and father fled after the attackers.

“So sometimes the trial comes in the opportunity to be a hero when you shouldn't. You see a situation and you think to yourself. “I have a sword and I know how to use it. I don't need to be afraid of these people, they should be afraid of me.” Then that arrogance gets you killed. To pass this trial you simply have to survive it. Survive it, realise how utterly stupid you were, realise that you are not immortal and adjust your own thinking accordingly.”

“So in my case. That time I ran into a clearing to rescue that girl and those bandits could have skewered me.”

“Precisely. You survived. You're going to be much more cautious and considerate in the future aren't you?”

“Yes,”

“So you passed your “Trial of the sword.” History is replete with examples of this if you know what you're looking for. The perfect warrior at the peak of his training and his conditioning. Dripping in plate and chain armour and then he gets run through by a farmer with a pitchfork. Another favourite story of mine is of the farmer and the swordsman have you heard this one?”

“Is this the story about Geralt and the...”

“No no. It's one of those stories that gets told to warn people of being arrogant. The story goes that the soldier takes a fancy to the farmers wife. Invents an excuse to challenge the farmer to a duel the following day. The farmer goes off to town and finds an ancient master of the sword and says “Master what do I do? I need to protect my wife from being killed by this soldier.”

“The master laughs and shows him one move. Sword held nice and high then bring it crashing down on the enemies head. The master makes the farmer practice the move over and over again until he literally performs the move in his sleep.

“In the morning the farmer asks the master “When should I use the strike?” and the master tells him. “Start the fight with the sword held high. Then when the other man runs you through with his own sword, he will be exposed and you can kill him.”

““But won't I die?” the farmer asks, plainly terrified.

““But your wife will be protected,” says the master.

“The farmer is terrified but he goes to the site of the duel. Lifts his sword on high into the stance that he has been taught. The soldier arrives. Takes one look at the stance and surrenders to the farmer.”

“It's an interesting story.” I said. “I have heard it before and thought it was about having the will to succeed against all odds.”

“But it's also about, not rushing into a situation without getting all the facts and circumstances correct. But anyway. That's the trial of the sword. It's the moment when you stop being an “Apprentice Witcher,” and start being a Witcher.

“The last trial though.” Kerrass went on. “The final trial. That is the trial that separates the Witcher from the Master Witcher. I don't remember the circumstances that led to my passing that trial but I remember returning to Feline keep. I will have been on the path for maybe ten years or so, somewhere around there, anyway.... I walked into the keep and got myself cleaned up. The other Witchers were talking, rolling dice, playing cards, bullying the students and the for some reason, I didn't want to join them. I wanted some peace and Quiet and I left them to it. I got some food and went to sit outside somewhere where I could smell the fresh breeze rather than the stale smell of unwashed Witcher.

“I was sat outside and a Witcher came to me. I had never spoken to him but he was old. Still hale and hearty. I had seen him around but never talked to him as he had nothing to do with apprentices. He gave me a bottle of apple brandy and told me about the last trial.

“He called it “The Trial of Death.” I remember wanting to laugh at him for such a melodramatic name but he was absolutely serious and I found that I didn't want to laugh any more. Instead for the first time since I had been given my medallion. Indeed for the first time since I had passed the trials, I found that I wanted to weep. My tears came in a while and he watched me for a long time before telling me that there is no shame in those tears. That all Witchers feel that feeling at some point in their lifetimes. He told me that I would be able to recognise it in the others. That I would see it in them when they have their own experience with the trial of death. He told me that mastering that trial was the difference between being a Witcher and being a Master Witcher.

“He was right too. I found that I could see that feeling in the other men at the keep. I saw it in the Wolven keep as well when I went to visit and have seen it in the other Witchers on the path as well.

“As far as I know it's a thing that's unique to Witchers. I've never seen that look in the eye of any other man or woman from any species. It's a Witchers gaze and it might have something to do with why people think that we are emotionless.

“Our job is death. It's all there is. It's our task, our calling and our profession. It's our reason to exist. Without death and the occasional need for that death to be visited on the monsters of this world then Witchers would not need to exist.

“This is complicated stuff so bear with me as I tell it.

“In all aspects of our lives, we walk beside death. The oils that we pour on our swords are caustic and corrosive. The potions that we drink are poison. We are all made using a process that brings death, far more often than it brings life. Our tools are weapons of death and we bring that death with an efficiency that would terrify most men.

“Then as well, when we are given our prey. We stalk our prey in the same way that someone might woo a partner. We look at them. We study them. Trying to guess how they think and what they feel. Trying to guess how they are going to react. But then we go further than that. A suitor can walk away if they decide that there is no compatibility whereas we have to find that compatibility. Then, on the night of the hunt. We dance with our intended. We lock swords with claws in the same way that lovers might link hands and lips. But then, different to lovers again, one of us dies. Whether our betrothed in death, or ourselves. Then we move onto our next dance partner.

“And we know that that death is going to come for us. Sooner or later some monster is going to get lucky. Sooner or later we are going to jump left when we should have jumped right and the monster will have us. We become addicted to that feeling. That excitement. That... That challenge of making sure that we are the ones that survive. To make sure that we are the superior hunter, the superior predator.... the superior.....

“Letho has a line that he likes to use. He once said to me that “What was done to us was monstrous and they turned us into monsters?”

“Yes, he did use that line.”

“Well it's true. We have to be the superior monster. Every hunt is our dance with death and after a while, that sense of feeling that you get when you're locked in combat with a monster. That.... That rush. It becomes addictive. So even when you might try to leave the path. The path draws you back into your dance with death.

“But then something changes. You begin to get tired. You've been on the path for years. Time after time after time it goes the same way. You approach the village. The village throws cow shit at you, you move on. You approach the village, the village throws horse shit at you, you move on.

“You approach the village, they have a contract. You negotiate a price. You perform the hunt. The village tries to swindle you at best, kill you at worst and then you ask yourself.... What's the point. Killing these monsters for ungrateful people who work far too hard for ungrateful lords who refuse to lift a finger to help them leaving all the dirty work to you and yours. So why are we out here, in the dark, alone, terrified and waiting for the feel of the monsters jaws to close around your leg.

“It's a slow insidious feeling. You know all the reasons why people are the way they are. Why they are prejudiced the way they are and why they behave the way they do. But at the same time, you find that you hate them for it.

“But still you dance because there's no other option.

“But isn't there?

“What if... What if there was another option. What if... instead of bringing death to some monster who doesn't know any better what if... What if they brought death to you instead?

“You banish that thought. “We are Witchers,” you think to yourself, “It is our duty to go into the dark and to fight the fear and the terror and to stare death in the eye and spit in his face.

“But you're so damn tired. Your friends are dying now. Maybe they weren't quite as good as you but suddenly there are only two out of the five of you that survived your class still standing. Good men all. Better than you even. What made you survive and them die? What's it like anyway, to die?

“Slowly, it becomes all you think about. You're tired. You want to stop. No-one will blame you. No-one will think twice about it. You just...you were unlucky this time.

“It will be so easy after all. Just go down there, step into the blow rather than away from it and no-one will ever know. With enough potions in yourself you probably wouldn't even feel it.

“Then. When you're at that point. That point when you want death. When you pray for it even. You turn away, kill that monster and force yourself on to the next village and the next and the next until the end of the year and do the same again the next year and the next.

“That's the trial of death. You will never face that Freddie, you can walk away from these things at any time, back to your life and your family. Soldiers know that the war will end eventually. Mercenaries can retire so they don't feel this. This feeling is reserved for Witchers.

“That is the final trial. If you can survive that trial then you are a master Witcher. Do you understand?”

“No,” I said simply.

Kerrass nodded. “Precisely.”

He shook his head. “Don't mind me, Freddie, I'll be fine tomorrow. Go back to the women, they'll be wondering where you are.”

I left him on the balcony that night and sure enough, he was fine the following morning although I was tired and sore. Pleasantly so as it had been an incredible evening.

Three weeks later we received word of my father's death.

It's a long time since that night in the brothel and I still don't understand what to make of it all and I suspect I never will. Perhaps that is for the best.