Chapter 87: Magical Trail (2)

I sensed her grin just before she broke contact.

I kissed the amulet. Both as a prayer to the flame to preserve me until I could see her again, but also as a gesture of the depth of my feeling to Ariadne. So that I could feel it even if she couldn't sense it.

But she was right.

I had work to do.

We advanced slowly and carefully. Half watching what we were doing, half watching the rooftops. The archers were still up there and sending signals to each other, tracking our quarry. It was slow going, and for more reasons than the huge shields. The plan called for us to leave nothing behind us. The entire thing would fall apart if Jack somehow managed to break through the confines of the circle that was slowly closing in around him.

As it was though, we discovered that he had no intention of. Instead he decided to make us hate him all the

more.

I didn't see him the first time. I heard his laughter, calls to watch out and then a dull thump of something heavy hitting the metal of a shield. People started swearing as they recognised the head of one of the archers. Sam called out the discipline though and the men swallowed their anger and marched on.

I did see him the second time. He stood on a roof top looking down at us. His laughter rang out. He had a man, I thought he was wearing a guardsman's uniform, the lighter armour of the archers but I couldn't swear to it. Jack held him without any apparent kind of effort and laughed at us.

He never said a word. I find it odd to think about that now but he never said a word.

The soldier that he held was in a daze, he occasionally tried to struggle a little but his movements were like those of a fish that had been pulled out of the water and left to die on the river bank. There was no strength to the movements and he flopped around. Jack was already laughing but he seemed to find the movements even more amusing.

Suddenly, he kicked out at the back of his captives legs causing the poor man to collapse to his knees before taking a knife from his belt and slashing the soldiers throat. He did it slowly and I hope I was only imagining the look of horror in the man's face. What little strength he had left, fled with the blood coursing down his chest.

Jack chuckled maliciously.

He reached back and proceeded to hack the man's head off. It took him three strikes of the dagger. To separate the head from the shoulders. Then he let the body fall to the sound of even more laughter echoing from the rooftops.

“Hold your file.” Sam bellowed. He could impose discipline in the men and keep them in their ranks. But he couldn't stop the slow murmur of hatred that passed through the men.

These men had wanted Jack dead before, but now they hated him. It was an odd thing to come to realise. Soldiers generally try not to hate their enemies. But after that first spate of muttering, there was silence and a focus that became sharpened to the very point of the sword. It was terrifying.

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But Jack wasn't done pissing us off yet. He still had a way to go on that score.

We had joined up with another unit on our left and were still advancing when Jack came out with his arm round the neck of another soldier in the manner of using him as a human shield. This time the captive had a bit more fight in him and was thrashing around. I don't know many people that would have been able to withstand such a pounding but Jack did. The most that his captive seemed to manage to do was to knock Jack's hat off which elicited a chorus of laughter and cheering from the men. In a fury, Jack again drew his knife and plunged it into the back of the soldier over and over and over and over again until there was no longer blood flowing from the wounds.

“Coward,” a man cried, Jack, bowed ironically as he scooped up his hat and placed it back on his head.

Without his hat, his head was still covered with a sack-cloth mask. It was as though he had put an empty sack of carrots over his head and cut some eye holes.

A few streets later we saw Jack fighting on the roof top with someone. I thought it was a soldier but even I could see that Jack was toying with his prey. It was painful to watch but I forced myself to keep my eyes on the spectacle. The worst thing about it was that the soldier clearly thought that he was doing quite well. The fight went out of sight but we found the poor bastard a couple of streets further on with his head caved in. He looked as though he had been pushed off the roof and landed directly on the top of his head. It looked as though the base of his neck had compacted down and made him look hunch-backed.

Strange the details that you remember.

We saw him more and more often after that.

At one stage we rounded a corner and despite everyone's best efforts, Jack had managed to draw out a knight Errant. The Knight carried a huge sword that he wielded with obvious skill. There was a pattern to it that made every parry a strike and every strike a parry. It almost looked as though he was dancing with the sword as his partner before Jack stepped in like a striking snake. Jack kicked the side of the Knights knee which collapsed under the weight of the man before jack simply stepped forward and pushed his own sword down through the gap in the breast plate around the neck.

Someone commented that it was a relatively clean death as things were going.

I wasn't sure that I agreed. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

We were still being pruned. One by one we were still being picked off and I felt amazingly guilty. But then I got angry at myself for feeling guilty as it wasn't me that was out there killing soldiers.

But it was me that had summoned Jack here.

But again, It had been pointed out that I hadn't been the one to cast the spells. I hadn't wielded the blade. But I felt those men's deaths on my conscience regardless.

“Are you happy with what I've done?” He was stood on the rooftops nearby. He held a man's severed arm, nonchalantly in his hand. “None of this would have been possible without you.” He laughed and laughed, I can still hear the laughter sometimes when I'm not paying enough attention.

“What do you think of my handiwork?” Another question came echoing around the rooftops. Around the forest of chimneys and weathervanes. “Not enough blood for you? I tend to agree.”

Someone screamed.

I don't know how long had passed. I thought that it must have been hours and nearly dawn but we came into a large square. It was one of the markets. Near the river in an effort to make sure that there was at least one place where Jack couldn't escape to.

I found that I had no faith in that. I remembered the huge jumps of the older stories. The ones with the burning hoof-prints. That was where disaster struck. Because how could it not.

Jack was arranging heads in a row. There was a stack of bodies nearby and for the first time that night it was clear that he hadn't just been killing soldiers on his rampage. There were several bodies that were dressed in the plainer clothing of the merchant classes in Toussaint, Plain dresses, work aprons and homespun cloth.

There were a lot of them and I wondered how long Jack had been about setting this up. He would go over to the pile of bodies, scoop up his sword cane from a nearby table that was still covered in fish offal from earlier when the workers had been cleared out. Then he would draw his sword and with one, very precise stroke, he removed their heads. The sword would go back into the cane to be replaced on the table before the head would be picked up. Then he strode over to the edge of the water and carefully placed the heads in a row.

He was singing a little song to himself. A cheerful bastardisation of the children's song.

“Ten stupid corpses, lying without a head.” he sang. As the guard formed up in the side streets. We weren't all there as those units from further across were still making their way along but there were enough of us to block all the roads into and out of the square.

“Where was I? Ah yes.” He placed another head down into the row. “Ten stupid decapitated heads,” he sighed suddenly, “not that's not right. Ooh I know,” He went back to singing. “Ten stupid faces, sitting in a row and if one stupid face, should purposefully be kicked into the river....” He took a run up and punted one of the heads out into the water where it made a little splash.

He cackled at the sound before looking at his arrangement.

“Aww,” he complained. “Now there's a gap in the row.” But then his voice brightened. “Never mind.” He scooped up the sword cane. “There are plenty more heads to be found.”

“By the heron no,” a voice rang out. “Fight me demon,” came the voice. I didn't recognise the man, he seemed older than some of the other Knights errant but he was weeping openly. He carried a shield with a rose on the front.

“See,” Jack told his audience of severed heads. “Here comes one to join you all now.” He drew his sword and stepped out to meet the knight. Jack even saluted the knight without a shred of irony or sarcasm. The Knight saluted and then leapt to the fray.

He never stood a chance. A series of quick lunges brought the knight to his knees in less than twenty heartbeats. Jack stood back, settled himself and removed the knights head at a stroke. He wiped his sword and collected the head, carrying it by the moustaches that all of the Knights Errant seemed to wear. I wouldn't go so far as to call it fashion but...

Taking a short run up, Jack drop-kicked the knights head into the river as well. The watching soldiers gave a noise that was almost like a groan.

Jack laughed before chiding himself. “Dammit, I should have kept him for the row.” Something caught his eye, “still there are even more replacements coming.

The Witchers had finally arrived.

Three of them at any rate. Lambert arrived running a little ahead of Gaetan came up, both of them chugging a drink from tiny potion bottles as they came. Another man that I didn't recognise came from the other end of the square. The three men didn't even exchange glances. Gaetan and Lambert just charged straight in, Gaetan running up and using a table as a jumping block to attack Jack from on high where Lambert feinted right before spinning the other way in a low pirouette.

Jack ducked under Gaetan's strike and spun away from him while at the same time, somehow managing to parry Lambert's strike. Lambert was forced to recover to a cross-body parry before Gaetan could recover enough to renew his attack.

All of this happened in the fraction of a second and I struggled to see what was happening then because that was when the third Witcher arrived with a vertical figure of eight spin that I guessed was designed to drive Jack back to where Lambert was waiting for him.

Jack sniggered.

It was blindingly fast. So fast that I could barely see the Witcher's blades move in the reflected torchlight. Jack's blade was nothing but a flicker. There was a shimmering in the air as other Witchers began to arrive. I recognised Geralt of Rivia by his white hair, I didn't see Kerrass although he must have arrived and I began to believe that this might work.

But it was then that disaster struck.

It's easy, sat here looking back with the perfect vision that hindsight gifts us with, to say that we should have seen it coming. We should have seen it.... We all should have seen it coming.

But we didn't.

It was that moment, just as gates were beginning to form to allow the other Witchers into the square that Jack's blade flickered out and badly caught Gaetan in the side. He did his best. He even tried to hold on to the blade in an effort to trap the weapon against himself but he wasn't quite fast enough.

The Knights Errant had been pushed to breaking point and this was the thing that sent them over the edge into madness. That's unfair really. They were already there really after watching Jack punt the knight's head into the river but it was the flash of bright Witcher blood that was the first stone that launched the avalanche.

They had had so much heaped on them over the last few days. They had been ground down by the disdain of the Imperial guard, by the open scorn of the Empress and that most dangerous of scourges. Guilt. Guilt that they had allowed the office of Knight Errant become so tarnished that they had failed Toussaint as a whole. They were hungry for a cause, hungry for some means, any means, of redemption. They had a longing, a hunger even for it. A desire to set themselves right. To reaffirm themselves.

They should never have been allowed onto the mission in the first place.

But it's easy to see such things looking back. At the time, we needed their swords. And who's to know what would have happened, or how things might have gone if they hadn't been there.

All I know is that as Gaetan staggered away from the combat. Some instinct getting him out of the way of his fellows and that same trained muscle memory caused him to sheathe his sword before snatching a potion from his belt as he fell to his knees. Pain written on his face.

The other Witchers weren't there yet, the gates not yet fully formed and a snarl formed in maybe half a dozen throats. It turned into a growl and forceful expulsion of air as Jack purposefully steered the fight over towards where Gaetan was trying to lever himself to his feet. Jack called to the stricken Witcher, taunting him and begging him to come on and die. Jack wanted his head.

It started with a single knight Errant. A young man, secure in his strength and still possessed of that conviction that he was invulnerable screamed out a negative noise. Not quite an order, not quite a plea. He sprinted forward and put his body between Jack and the falling Witcher.

I never learned that Knight's name. His example was followed by another two men in the shining golden armour that told of their rank but that first knight was already dying hard. Jack rammed his blade into the young man's gut, slanting up under the breastplate and into his digestive tract.

Sam was swearing at the charging Knights to hold their lines, to hold their ranks, his voice echoed by other guard officers but the Knights ignored the orders and ran on.

“Fuck,” Sam swore violently before rattling off some orders. He saw it before I did. By the time I saw what was going to happen it was too late and all I could do was to watch impotently.

The Witcher's fighting style is built around movement. The average Kikkimore spits acid and possesses claws that would make mockery of even the best made plate. So they are trained to move and to stay mobile. They trained together and work together. They know how each other thing even though Gaetan and Lambert were trained in different schools. There was enough....communion there that they knew what was needed and how to attack.

Gaetan had been hurt and he had chosen to get out of the way to make room for the incoming Witchers which he knew were due to arrive at any moment by magical means. That was the point, the Witchers needed room to move, room to act. And the Knights Errant took that advantage away from them.

The square was suddenly full of large, heavily armoured men, crashing into each other, trying to strike out at their target that moved like quicksilver. That moved like the fastest fish in the sea, lashing out and striking wherever he pleased.

Jack sounded as though he might even rupture something, he was laughing so hard.

Because he proved another truth there. In a fight, with lots of heavy men with heavy armour and heavy swords swinging around. A quick man, light on his feet and well trained, doesn't need to strike out at his enemies. He just needs to stay mobile and his enemies will strike out at each other for him.

Because then there were wounded that needed to be removed from the equation. Gaetan himself was tugged clear by the first of Sam's unit. A brave young man who Sam had ordered to ditch his gear and carry the wounded Witcher out. But now there was more. More bodies, both alive, dead and at every stage in between. Entrails and innards spilled out onto the floor. More than one man slipped on some bodily fluid that was supposed to be on the inside of the body.

It was chaos.

Then Jack screamed in triumph.

“I've got a Witcher, I've got a Witcher, I've got a Witcher.” How he found the space in the swirling melee I don't know, but he had managed to trap the third man, the one I didn't know, between the bulk of another knight and the fallen body of another. The Witcher tripped and jack was on him. Jack simply ran him through, a twist and a tug and most of the Witchers entrails exploded out of the hole. Jack chopped down and scooped up the head and threw it at another knight.

“I'll kick that one later. Unless I can get another.” The laughing just wouldn't stop.

I watched in horror as the plan disintegrated around him. Guardsmen ran in to try and pull injured and killed men out of the melee but Jack would steer those men that were still trying to fight him into those guardsmen.

It wasn't long before a guardsman was knocked cold by a knight's back-swing. As I watched, Jack rolled under the blow from the knight and killed the guardsman with a slice across the throat. The knight, realising what had happened turned with an expression of horror and roared, raising his sword above his head. Jack calmly stepped in and stabbed the knight through his open mouth before giggling at the confused expression that the knight wore as he died.

It was awful. It was a mess. The plan had worked. We had him in the open and the Witchers were coming in, swords out and primed ready for the fight ahead. But Jack had goaded these men and on top of everything that they had suffered over the last couple of days and they could no longer contain themselves.

A lot of the blame for what happened that night has fallen at the feet of the knights Errant and don't get me wrong, they do deserve a certain amount of the blame but I find I am sympathetic towards them. Yes, they should have held their ranks and yes, they should have followed orders rather than running into a situation that, although dangerous, was part of the plan. But I also find it far too easy to put myself into the place of those men. Far too easy.

Not four days ago they held a position of privilege and respect. They were servants of the nation and proud servants at that. There was no denying that there were some bad apples among their number but at the same time, many of the Knights that I have met were driven by duty. They genuinely wanted to work towards making their small Duchy of Toussaint into a better place. They had done these things as well before becoming overcome by the pageantry and the atmosphere of the whole thing. But most of them were good men, painfully naïve and as impressionable as a warm ball of wax but they were good men all the same.

But suddenly they were the ridiculed villains of the piece. A knight Errant could expect to walk down the street and where before they would be cheered and greeted with respect. Now they were jeered at and the subject of jokes.

Along with the deep down feeling that they deserved this treatment. It must have been awful. So here was their chance to make it right.

But they failed and made a bad situation immeasurably worse. I don't know what the final butchers bill of that second major engagement with Jack was. What I do know is that only one Knight Errant made it back alive and unwounded from those knights that we had started out with. He was an older man, hair and moustache white as snow and had been chosen for his level-headedness. He had shown his level-headedness.

He had called and screamed and ordered and cajoled his fellows to fall back. He wasn't with Sam and I but I'm told that he wept openly as he watched what happened and spent days afterwards apologising. I'm told that he retired, his nerve shattered after that. When I left Toussaint they were trying to convince him to help train the next generation of knights.

I also know that fewer than twenty Imperial guardsmen made it back alive and unwounded. Just about every man was hurt in that melee and the unhurt men were mostly the archers that were still running towards the fight from the more remote parts of the city.

There were eight Witchers working that night. Another two were with the Empress. Gaetan was badly hurt and we managed to get him out. Another two died. Another Cat Witcher and another from a different school although I never caught his name.

It was a disaster and we watched with impotent fury and frustration as it just continued to happen before our eyes. Our shouts and orders were being ignored, if we sent more men into help then we would just be making the problem worse.

I wish I could hate the Knights Errant for their part in the disaster. I wish I could but they had been pushed to breaking point.

I will admit to the possibility that I am not entirely objective here in my sympathy as I too was pushed to my breaking point and beyond it.

My own point of breaking came. The fight had got to a lull in the action. There were so many dead and so many wounded that it was hard to separate the one from another. There were three knights that were still standing and they looked around themselves in horror at what had happened. Our men, what men who had kept their nerve, were busy pulling away wounded to make room for the next phase of the fight. The remaining Witchers had stepped past the line of knights, brandishing their weapons. I saw Kerrass there and I thought I saw him snarl something at one of the knights but I couldn't make it out.

Jack laughed at them all, he didn't even seem to be breathing that heavily, ironically saluting them with his absurdly slim sword.

“What?” He yelled, “party over? Can't have that.”

He walked over to the row of heads that he had laid out and punted a few more into the river with little comments to himself.

“No,” he said. “It's not quite as satisfying as I thought it would be.” He pantomimed thinking. The Witchers closed in on him carefully. “I know,” he called, he reached under a piece of sacking and produced another head. It was a woman with long dark hair by which he held it up, the eyes had been removed and the jaw hung slack.

It wasn't Francesca. It was the wrong shape and the hair was a different colour.

But it could have been and I was far from thinking clearly.

“What do you think Lord Frederick?” Jack called to me, “Remind you of anyone?” He lifted up the bottom of his mask enough so that he could spit into the poor woman's face before heaving it out over the water.

I lost my shit.

I should have stayed calm, I should have waited, I should have held my place and let Kerrass, Geralt,

Lambert and the rest do their job. But suddenly I couldn't.

I felt as though the walls of the square were closing in on me. I couldn't breathe, the edges of my vision turned grey. I could hear my own breathing as though I was panting after a long run or a hard ride.

Then I screamed.

Hands tugged at me, tried to hold me back but I ignored them.

I think someone called my name but I ignored them. I was just consumed by the desire to kill this...this thing that suddenly seemed to be the author of all of my pain.

He laughed at me, turned and ran.

He leapt into the river, still holding his cane and his hat wedged firmly on his head.

I didn't hesitate, I didn't even pause. It was only luck that had kept my spear in my hand as I charged and dove straight in after him.

The water was icy cold but I didn't feel it, I surfaced, looked around and saw Jack splashing his way downstream. I still had my spear and I charged off after him.

I don't think I could have done it in cold blood. I'm not a swimmer, not really but I followed. Still holding my spear which I held in front of me in an effort to cut through the water. I must have been partially successful because I followed. I even managed to gain a little although that might have been because Jack was toying with me a little.

We came to the edge where the ground began to rise out of the water and back into the city. This wasn't the main docks but it was near there. A place for locals to do their washing or for small boats to be pulled ashore so that they could load and unload goods.

Jack stood on the bank and waved his ass at me.

“You can't catch me,” he taunted.

Some left over common sense told me not to follow him straight up the bank where my feet would be fouled by water and he would be free to do as he wished.

He laughed as he watched before his head jerked to one side as he caught wind of something. He sketched a salute,

“Ta-ta,” he called and took to his heels.

“No, you bastard.” I snarled and charged after him.

I could no more help it than I could help breathing. He looked back when he realised that he was being chased and laughed even louder. He jumped onto a low wall and ran along the top until he came to a house which he vaulted up to the roof.

I swore and looked around. If I jumped onto that table there and then onto that window and then I....

Don't think about it, just do it.

I ran, jumped, swung over, vaulted up and climbed up until I was on the roof.

“Did that tire you out?” Jack's voice came to me then. “This doesn't look like your kind of game Lord Frederick,” he sniggered. The bastard had been waiting for me. He charged off running lightly along the tops of the houses. I was not as graceful, putting my feet through tiles and through plaster, fighting to keep my balance as I ran, not entirely successfully.

“You know something?” Jack called over his shoulder during one of those times that he stopped, seemingly to wait for me. “I haven't had this much fun in years. I really should think you for this.”

I saw a different route and ran along, jumped, ran again sending ceiling tiles to shatter on the street below. And I caught him. On the edge of a rooftop.

Fortunately it wasn't a very high rooftop. He laughed as he fell I remember.

I don't remember if I screamed.

People were calling my name now. I was struggling to breathe as the fall had knocked the wind out of me. I looked for my spear and forced myself to scramble towards it.

By the flame it hurt.

I didn't know where Jack was. I levered myself to my feet, my ankle threatened to give out and shooting pains shot up my leg and into my lower back. I tasted blood.

Sounds of fighting came to me then, Two men in guardsmen uniform had been drawn there by the crash and my yelling and Jack was on them.

He sidestepped one, parried the second before spinning. He still had his cane, using the stick he tangled it in the first man's legs and brought him crashing down.

“No,” I yelled, already seeing what was happening. The man still standing was Sir Thomas. “No you bastard.” Anything I could do to try and distract Jack. I hefted my spear and took a step forward, and another step but then my leg gave out again and I fell.

Jack had quickly dispatched the man on the floor by braining him with his club. He advanced on Sir Thomas. Thomas had a shield and he fought very well. He was good, far better than I had hoped. I climbed back to my feet and advanced a bit more slowly. It was getting easier as I went.

Sir Thomas, at least, was still fighting with his mind rather than his heart. He just concentrated on keeping his shield between his body and Jack. He had dropped the earlier siege shields in favour of his more normal kite shield. He was confounding Jack as he steadfastly refused to step to the attack and concentrated on parrying and screaming his bloody head off so that we could be found.

I remember that I was nearly there, so close, so very nearly there, I was walking steadily by that point, not quite running but certainly not at my normal strolling pace.

Then came the mistake.

Someone called Thomas' name, he turned his head to shout an answer and like lightening, Jack struck. I don't know how he found the gap in Thomas' armour but he did. Past the shield and into Thomas' left side, he pierced a lung and did untold other damage as he twisted his slim blade.

Thomas groaned horribly before coughing blood.

Jack withdrew his blade and stepped aside, holding his blade in a salute.

“See to your friend,” he said to me.

He was no longer laughing.

He turned and ran up the street a little way.

I hobbled the rest of the way to Thomas which was when I learned that his lung had been pierced. Pink foam formed on his lips which only means one thing.

He looked so sad but when he saw me he tried to pull in some breath.

“Kill the bast...” His eyes widened in a sudden wave of panic and agony. He couldn't breathe and he was terrified as he died.

“Mother,” there was no breath behind the word and I had to read it off his lips. He looked his sixteen years of age then.

So young.

He died hard. It didn't take long but it was an end full of agony.

I had thought I was angry before.

I rose to my feet. Jack was a little way up an alley. He was looking back at me, expectantly, cane in hand. Half turned away from me. Ready to run.

I came out of my crouched position like a sprinter from the starting blocks. Pain lanced up my legs but I ignored it. I chased him and he ran. There was no time for laughter anymore. Only speed and violence. He ran and I chased him, my lips drawn back into the same expression that I used to see on my fathers hunting dogs.

I chased him and he ran. He did not resort to the tricks that he had used before. He didn't climb the walls or up to the rooftops. He just ran and I chased him.

I was dimly aware that we were, in turn, being hunted ourselves as we ran. Signal arrows were being fired. Shouts were being given, names were being called. Jack didn't react and so, neither did I.

We ran, up the hill towards the palace. Jack, seemingly choosing side streets at random. I ran after him, nipping at his heels but never quite managing to fully close the distance.

He ran and I chased him.

I don't know how long it took us. It can't have been very long. Toussaint town is not that large, all things considered and it doesn't take that long to walk from place to place.

I chased him into the graveyard near the top of the town. I don't know why he chose that place to turn into. There was nothing keeping him from running on. A little bit further than that was the gate that leads to the upper countryside and towards the palace gardens. There was only a couple of men on the gate by that point and Jack could easily have escaped. There was no way that I would have been able to catch him if he had escaped to the countryside. Instead he turned to the side and into the graveyard.

A dead end.

He ran in, through the twisting mausoleums and the stone statues before he came to an open place and turned on me. He twisted and with a jerk he caused the sword to leap out of his cane in a very similar way to how Witchers cause their own swords to leap from their scabbards. But that observation came to me much later.

I didn't pause, I didn't stop to think or to steady myself. I just charged him. Spear whirling.

There is no way. No way at all that I should have survived.

There may have been other factors in place. Luck is possibly part of it. I might have been helped by magical means from the citadel or from other sources. There might have been some other factors as well, things that I have no idea about it.

But I charged him. Spear twirling like the quarterstaff that I had used when I first started my journey. I ran in, firelight glistening off our blades. I did not have any thoughts I just wanted the bastard dead with a white hot hatred that I could no longer control.

I rained blows down upon him as fast and as hard as I could.

He blocked them.

I unleashed a flurry of quick, hard thrusts at multiple targets on his body. Groin, neck, eyes.

He parried them.

I tried all the tricks that I had. I tried to trip him, feints off centre, snarl up his legs and cause him to fall.

He dodged them.

I felt myself getting desperate. The heat of the hatred that I had felt up until that point had begun to evaporate. The cold from my still sopping wet clothes began to leech away my strength and I began to feel the first pulls of fear at my soul.

I began to swing wildly, trying to push him back. Give myself room to think. Room to consider, he ducked and weaved, jumping over my strikes. The fear came on me stronger then as I realised the truth. I wasn't good. I wasn't lucky. He was toying with me.

I redoubled my efforts. Trying to find the fury that had carried me through the earlier parts of the fight.

For just a moment, I thought I might even have had him.

Then he laughed.

It was shocking with it. He had been silent for quite a while by this point and to hear him laugh after so long silent...

It didn't put me off my fight. It put him onto his.

Suddenly I was defending. Parrying like a bastard, desperately trying to keep him back, to keep the ground clear. He pushed me back and back and back. There was no doubt any more. I was going to die here in the graveyard.

Now he had started again, there was no stopping him. He laughed and laughed and laughed and it made me angrier and angrier.

His guffaws ran on and on and on.

And I fell back and back and back.

I tripped and fell backwards. I don't know what on, probably a root or the back of some raised grave. Jack's club lashed out and struck me on the hand, not hard but it numbed the bone enough to mean that I dropped the spear.

He stood over me, almost helpless with laughter. I thought to use his convulsive hilarity to make some kind of escape but his sword never wavered. Instead he advanced on me slowly, only between laughs. Every time another laugh caused him to escape he would stop and wait as though he wanted to savour it.

He advanced and slowly, painfully, awfully slowly, he pushed his razor sharp sword into my chest.

It was agony and I tried to breathe in enough to scream. I tried to move and escape but I was pinned.

But then Jack withdrew the sword and he was twisting away. Desperately away, his sword rising to parry. There was a clash of steel and then I saw as Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf himself stepped over me to engage the madman.

I had seen Geralt fight before. Kerrass claims that Geralt is the better swordsman between the two of them although he said so without jealousy or anger. It was just a statement of fact. Truth be told, I am not good enough to be able to tell the difference between the two as to which one is better. It's not something I can even reach for. The difference between this fight and the fight down in the market place was that this time, it was clear that Geralt had been prepared for what was going to happen.

He was glowing slightly with the sign, I think Kerrass calls it “Quen”, as he charged in. He ducked and parried with an ease that was deceptive and a speed that hurt the eye, but even as he did so, even Geralt of Rivia took an injury, first the golden glow exploded outwards with a wave of force that knocked me back to the floor after an abortive attempt to climb to my feet and then I saw just the tip of Jack's sword graze the Witcher's face causing a small spray of blood. I felt myself disbelieving what I was seeing. It seemed impossible to me that Geralt of Rivia himself might have been outclassed.

But then another figure jumped down from one of the higher mausoleums. I recognised Lambert from earlier. Geralt was calm as he fought, almost placid with an utter lack of expression. Lambert fought with a wordless and soundless shout of fury on his lips.

This is what was missing from before. The teamwork of the thing. As Jack spun to deal with Lambert, Geralt had time to re-establish his Quen shield and then joined Lambert in the fight. Jack was laughing again, confidently and easily but I felt the first fluttering of hope in my chest.

At some signal that I didn't see or hear, Geralt and Lambert broke off and a third figure emerged from between two gravestones. This man was small, stockier and although his swords were still on his back he wielded the twin daggers of the Viper school. It shamed me that I didn't know who he was. Where Kerrass, Geralt and Lambert are all lithe grace, this man was compact, like Letho only on a much smaller scale.

He drove Jack back with his furious assault, ignoring the wound that sprung up over his eyes and the sudden burst of blood that exploded out of his side. He drove Jack backwards. Lambert and Geralt on either side.

I saw what was happening then.

They were steering Jack back, keeping him confined. Military people would say that they were boxing him in so that the only thing left to do was to close the lid. I managed to lever myself to my feet and I could see beyond the melee a fourth figure who was crouched on the floor, sketching something with his hand. A purple glow sprang up to reveal Eskel, the large, heavily scarred Witcher from the wolf school steeped back and allowed the other three men to push Jack back.

The purple light sprang up again and it seemed as though Jack was trying to move through deep water. Eskel joined his four compatriots and the box was closed.

“Now,” came another voice from high up, again from the top of one of the mausoleums.

The four Witchers drew back and gestured.

I felt the buffeting from the air blasts of the Aard sign from where I was. Rationality had returned to me with the blood that ran down my chest and I stayed well back, out of the way. Let the professionals do their job. We all should have done that from the very start. Guardsmen, Knights errant, amateurs all of us.

Twice more the four witchers blasted the now, struggling Jack with cannons made from air and he fell. I thought I saw blood.

“Back,” came the same voice from above the mausoleum.

The four Witchers on the ground spun backwards and a net came down from the mausoleum and covered the staggering Jack.

Kerras jumped down and joined the other four as they piled onto the now captured man. At one point I saw a sword and cane skitter away.

Then a knife but he was still struggling.

“Get his hands,” someone growled. I thought it was Lambert.

Then the laughter just stopped. The struggling fell away and the five Witchers fell to their work, ropes being tied down. At one point Lambert pulled himself off and kicked the squirming bundle hard before falling back to work.

Kerrass detached himself from the group and approached me. I held my hand out to him and was astonished as I realised that I was suddenly looking up at him from where I had fallen back down to the ground.

“You stupid bastard.” He snarled as I realised that he had punched me in the face. “You stupid fucking bastard. Have you got some kind of death wish?”

“Kerrass I....”

“What did you think? Did you see what he did to a whole company of guardsmen and a good dozen Knights Errant, but oh no. “I'm Frederick von Coulthard and the rules don't apply to me,” what were you thinking?”

“I...”

“Don't answer. Just let me rant. If you say something then I might hate you the more you stupid fucking.... Goddess Freddie, I don't want to have to tell your sister and you fiance that you died. Don't make me do that Freddie, don't make me tell them that I couldn't save you.”

“Kerrass.”

“Don't say a word.”

An inhuman wail came from the bundled and trussed up form of Jack. Lambert had pulled his hat and hood off.

“Fucking hell,” he commented.

Despite his anger Kerrass turned away from me and went back to where the other Witchers were clustered around the prone figure.

I climbed back to my feet and limped over to them, rubbing my bruised jaw and trying to shake off the ringing in my ears.

Then I saw “Jack's” face and turned away to vomit up the bile that was churning in my stomach.

I didn't recognise the face. I'm not sure anyone could have recognised the face. It was covered in gashes and cuts. One eye was just a weeping sore from where the eye-socket had caved in. His jaw was broken, teeth splintered and the way he wailed we could see into his mouth that his tongue had been torn out. Not cut out, torn out.

He had one working eye and it was rolling back into his skull as he wailed out an awful anguish.

“We didn't lose sight of him did we?” the viper Witcher was sat on a nearby gravestone, pouring a potion into the injury at his side. “That is the same guy that we chased through the city.”

“No that's him,” said Lambert. “I saw him fight, the clothes match and this is where he led us. This is him.”

The Witchers just looked at each other, and then at me.

“Poor Fucker,” Eskel said.