We waited.

I knew that my plan was going to work. I knew that everything was going to come together in that one glorious moment. I knew that Raoul was going to play into my hands. I knew that everything was going to happen. I knew it.

It was all one, big, glorious game. I allowed that arrogance to blossom in my head consciously. It was an attitude that I hated in others and I still hate in others. But right there and right then, I needed that arrogance in myself. I needed the confidence that it gave me in advance of what was bound to be a less than entirely pleasant few hours. I needed to tell myself these things so that I didn’t scream, weep or run off into the night, gibbering in fear.

I allowed myself that confidence and arrogance. I allowed it to spread through my limbs and chest in the same way that Ariadne’s various herbal concoctions were warming those same areas. I allowed that suppressed part of my nobleman’s soul to come out and play.

It was all a game. A thing that Raoul and I had been playing against each other. Now we were heading into the endgame where I could arrange for his ultimate defeat. He was the side of the conspirators, the traditional attackers of the story. He was the villain that orchestrated things. The cackling, arrogant presence behind the throne. The advisor, the mastermind that comes up with the plans, who arranges the robberies and plans the murders. I was his opposite on the other side. Always reacting to his actions. Always defending rather than attacking. Coming up with new ways in which we could defend ourselves and each other. Always thinking about ways that I could bring my enemy and my opponent to the final battlefield.

And now we were just finishing our movements. Our troops had marched, our ploys were in play, our agents were poised and waiting to leap forward into the fight. All that was left was to wait to see if he would walk into my trap, and it would be up to me to carry the plan forwards.

It was going to be hard. There was no way around that. It was going to be hard and in all honesty, I knew that I might not survive what was to come. I felt pretty good about it all, but there is always the danger that these things are just not going to work and that I would not survive the effort. But if I was hurt, then I could live with it. If I died, then the plan was going to work anyway and my enemy would be defeated. I told myself that I could rest easy if that was the case and that I would lie in my crypt easily if I had taken Raoul down with me.

I told myself that I had done some good in the world. I argued that my letters, my actions, my journals and the books that I have written will serve to inform and educate those people that are coming after me and following my example. I told myself that in doing my part to bring Raoul and his thugs to justice, that I would be helping to preserve Toussaint and keep the Duchy moving forwards into the new world.

I also told myself the less hopeful things in order to stave off the recriminations. I told myself that Ariadne would find and love someone else. I told myself that Kerrass would carry on without me. That he would go to the Princess Dorne, admit that he loved her and that the two of them would... forgive me for the cliche but I was getting ready to risk my life... live happily ever after. I told myself that Sam and Emma would reconcile so that the Coulthard family would continue to grow in prestige and fame rather than tearing itself apart in self-recrimination and misunderstanding.

I told myself that people would weep for me. I did not spend too much time on that part of the subject, but I allowed myself to picture my funeral for a short period of time. Naturally it was raining and all my friends and family were there. People that I love and have loved. Those people that have broken my heart were particularly distraught at my passing now that they knew of my real quality. I allowed my mind to go down that particular fantasy for a little bit longer than was entirely ,before I ruthlessly brought my imagination back to the present.

I sat alone. I had finished my preparations for what I hoped would come next a little while ago. Even if this didn’t work and I was catastrophically wrong, I would still have needed to make those preparations. I had taken my armour off and put it on again properly. Examining it in the cold light of proper concentration, I had clearly put the stuff on in a hurry. It was awkward, uncomfortable and misshapen. There were a couple of bits of damage left over from the fight against the Witch of Lynx crag and I made some quick field repairs to the thing. Which was always more satisfying than if I had gotten a proper leatherworker to do it.

Yes, use a professional when you have to but at the same time, there are occasions when it feels better to do it yourself.

I sharpened my spear, my belly dagger and my boot knife before oiling them carefully and placing them back where they belonged. I was warm, comfortable and I had done everything that I felt that I needed to do so now, all I had to do was to sit and wait. A couple of people had offered to sit with me. I was surprised at Gregoire in particular. The man seems determined to be my friend. I needed to be alone to focus on what needed to come and they all recognised that.

Guillaume was elsewhere, Kerrass and Ariadne knew me too well and both knew what I really needed. Ariadne had brewed me some more herbal concentration and energy drinks that I had drunk without comment. The stuff is foul when it is brewed so strong and it always exerts a toll later. But right then I needed to be able to think and to move without stumbling around. The medicine also gives this kind of strange sense of nausea that I was doing my best to ignore by focusing on my breathing.

Syanna was pacing. Finding an outlet for her own excessive energy. She was doing her best not to feel the hope that I had given her. Doing her best to pretend that it wasn’t a thing and that she would have to go through with her original plan. As I said last time. Hope can be painful when it comes after despair, so she was doing her best not to feel it. Doing her best to function, to live in the moment rather than to torment herself with all of the things that might have been going on.

I understood that. But if I looked at her right now, if I saw that desperate hope that I had kindled, warring with that equally determined despair in her gaze, then I might break. I needed my centre now. I needed to be alone and to find my focus.

I felt the hoofbeats before I heard them. I don’t know how. Long years of waiting for Kerrass to come back from wherever and whatever he’s doing I suppose. Kind of experienced at this kind of thing. Of sitting and waiting. And I continued to sit and wait, gripping and regripping the cold metal of my spear to keep myself grounded. Keep myself patient.

Waiting… heh. My favourite topic to write about.

The rest of the group turned to look at that portion of the path that Guillaume would come up to let us know what Raoul’s answer was going to be.

Properly fitted and worn armour doesn’t really clatter in movement. It clanks, there’s nothing to avoid that. But properly fitted armour doesn’t rattle as it’s all supposed to cushion against each other. So again, we heard Guillaume come up the path. I stood up to meet him as folk started to cluster about him.

“Well?” Syanna demanded.

I knew what the answer was from Guillaume’s body language, so did she, I thought, but she needed to hear it aloud.

“Raoul said yes.” Guillaume told her.

Syanna nodded before bringing a trembling hand up to her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose.

“He wants to hear it from Freddie’s lips first.” Guillaume went on. “I think he’s a little bit disbelieving but he did say yes.’

“Alright then.” She said, “To horse gentlemen.” She came to me then as other Knights leapt to action.

“Thank you.” She said holding her hand out, which I took. “Good luck, and if the worst should happen then I will see to it that…” her voice shook for a moment. “Toussaint will remember this Lord Frederick.” She told me after a moment. “Men will call you the Scholar Knight.”

I smiled but said nothing. I felt distant from the entire situation. Remote and echoey. As though I was watching events from a distance, watching my own actions as a kind of bemused and curious outsider.

Gregoire and Guillaume were discussing something and they approached me as Syanna left to find her own horse. Both men shook my hand. “If you think that either of us are going to be pried from your side.” Guillaume told me with a smile. “Then you need to seriously rethink your decisions.”

Gregoire’s smile seemed a little more distant. Less optimistic. “You have been a better friend to me than I deserve,” he told me. “I would be honoured to ride at your side. I only wish I could fight there as well.”

“We may get a chance.” Guillaume told the bigger Knight. “It may come to that after all.”

Gregoire brightened at that. “That’s true.” He said. “I do want to see that spear in action.”

“You will certainly see that.” I told him, my voice returning suddenly and without warning.

They both nodded, suddenly serious

“Come on then.” Guillaume said. “Waiting isn’t getting us anywhere.”

I nodded and we walked down to where the horses were kept.

There was another delay waiting for me there. It takes more than just a few minutes to get a troop of people mounted up and into a proper order. Sam once told me something interesting about the logistical military equation that is used to work out how long it would take a group of people to get ready to go and do, well, anything. He said that it was the time it took the slowest person in the troop to mount up and get ready, multiplied by the number of people in the troop.

I told him that that seemed absurdly long to me and I remember that he laughed at me. This was back during better times. He told me that there is a reason that armies do drills about how to get onto horseback, get equipped and get on the road quicker and quicker and quicker. And that this is one of the reasons why the armies of the world are not made up of uniquely heavy infantry or cavalry. Sometimes you need quick, lightly armoured, lightly equipped troops. Troops that will never stand in the shield wall or mount a heavy charge against packed infantry.

It was the same conversation where he told me that the most valuable and underused, disrespected division in any army, is the logistics corps. The people that figure out where different regiments and where different types of cavalry, infantry and the rest camp. Because in order to mobilise, it all needs to be done in a certain order. He claimed that these people had more magic in their heads than the entire Chapter of Mages and Lodge of Sorceresses combined.

I scoffed at the time, but now that I’ve spent a bit more time around armed men and armed forces, I am forced to admit that maybe Sam had been onto something.

These men were veterans. However, even the most inexperienced of them had been trained to work alone. They had been trained that they would sometimes be out in the field, amongst dangerous and unfamiliar terrain and that they might need to be on horseback and moving at speed in order to fight off the bandits that were sneaking up on them.

Each Knight is trained to be self-sufficient and to depend on no-one except themselves.

Can you see where the problem is yet?

Thirty odd heavily armed people, all caring about themselves, all trying to get onto horseback at the same time. It took far longer than it should have done and I spent all of that time fretting. So I waited, Spear butt on the ground in front of me, both hands clasped around the haft, just holding it while I rested my head on the flat of the blade. The cold of the metal was welcome and chill as I waited.

I finally climbed into the saddle when it was clear that most of them were ready. I didn’t show off, I didn’t leap or vault or anything like that. Because such things are showing off and you shouldn’t let anyone ever tell you different. I climbed on the horse's back carefully, in the same way that I had been taught how to do it since I was a young boy.

I looked around to find Guillaume on the right hand side of me and Gregoire on my left.

I don’t know who told them to do that. I certainly didn’t ask them to do that. But I was grateful for the company, even if we said nothing as we rode.

-

“He’ll say no.” Syanna said. “He won’t do it. He is not a stupid man. He will know that there is always a risk that a man could lose a duel. There’s always a risk that the worst could happen. He knows that and he would not allow himself to lose in so graceless a fashion.”

“I think he will go for it.” Guillaume said. “It will appeal to him, I think. He wouldn’t fight Gregoire or myself, but I think he will answer Freddie’s call.”

“He hates me.” I said. “I mean, he hates everyone. But he hates me in particular. He wants to beat me and he will want to do it before an audience.”

Gregoire nodded. “That is true, at least. He has a desire to smash Freddie into a paste that lies at his feet. He wants to see Freddie destroyed.”

“He also knows something else.” Guillaume said. “Even if he gets away with all of this today and over the next few… however long this goes on. He knows that he’s never going to get another proper chance to have a crack at Freddie. There might be other people that he hates as much, if not more than Freddie. He would never fight myself or Gregoire because he knows that he would lose. He won’t get to fight you, Knight Commander, because it is well known that you wouldn’t fight fair and that the Duchess doesn’t allow you to fight duels. Which means that if he challenged you to a duel, he would end up fighting me.”

“Or me.” Gregoire said with a hungry smile. “Now that I’m on the side of goodness and light. I might challenge you for the position of champion at some point.”

“When you are ready.” Guillaume’s answering grin was equally savage.

“Children,” the older Knight admonished. “Now is not the time.”

Guillaume nodded, a little sadly before moving on. “But on all other times? He manipulated events to fight Freddie before. Moving forward? Freddie is an honoured guest of the Duchess. Therefore, if Raoul challenged him, then the Duchess would invoke hospitality and, again, Raoul faces me. Or Gregoire I suppose.”

“So?” I rather thought that Syanna was just being stubborn when she spoke.

“So, this is the only chance he’s going to get to fight Freddie. To really fight him. I think he will take it.”

Gregoire nodded. “I also think that it will make him angry. He will think it an insult that Freddie wants to challenge him on the grounds that he has already proven that he is a better fighter than Freddie. So to be challenged again? That is just insulting.”

“And that’s why I don’t want this to go ahead.” Syanna said. “Even if Raoul says yes. Which I am not convinced about. Freddie is our guest. I know that there’s stuff about Freddie helping us with the investigation and that it can be portrayed that he was arrogant and blah blah blah for not helping us. But the truth is that getting him to help us solve our problems is hardly giving Freddie the proper hospitality of the realm.” She turned to me. “And Raoul did beat you last time Freddie. What if he wins? What if he kills you? I cannot ask you to do this.”

I had been looking her in the eye during all of this. This had been the first time that she allowed my gaze to meet hers.

“You did not ask, I offered.” I told her. “The fact that he beat me last time is why this will work. He will say yes.”

Syanna took a deep breath. She had just agreed. She might not know it yet, but she had just agreed to my plan.

“So let's say that Raoul agrees to the duel.” She said, “What happens next?”

“We all go out to meet him.” I said. “All of us.”

-

It was not that far to the Manor house. I wish I could say that it felt further or that it seemed to pass by in a moment. But neither of those statements would be true. I spent the journey in my own head. Trying to reach that state of calm that Kerrass had told me about. I couldn’t be angry. I couldn’t allow my distaste for the man to get the better of me. I needed to remain calm. He was going to taunt me. He was going to insult me and the people that I cared about. I needed to stay calm and I needed to be able to keep from thinking about all of the other things that might go wrong.

Not least the possibility that I might just get skewered in the opening moments of the duel.

The Manor house came into view quickly. That did happen faster than it had the last time but there was a perfectly good reason for that. In that the defenders of the place had set fires and torches around the place to keep it well lit. The flat area in front of the main gate had also seen plenty of extra movements. There were objects that had been moved. The remains of a barrel. A hand cart and some other debris that some enterprising soul had moved to be elsewhere.

As we approached, there were many men moving around and getting into position.

And a large number of the defenders had come out of the manor enclosure. That took me a moment in order to master my expression.

We rode up the little hill and Syanna signaled a halt, the other Knights and guards fanned out on either side of her.

“Knight Commander.” Raoul’s voice drifted down the column towards me. I still couldn’t see him but he had pitched his voice so that it would carry and that he would be easy to hear. “Imagine my surprise at seeing you here.”

“I doubt that.” Syanna’s voice was tight and clipped. As though she was biting off every word.

“Oh no, I really am surprised.” His voice became harsh. “What are you doing here?”

“I am here, along with my men, in order to witness the fight and to ensure that the terms of the agreement are met.”

“Why Knight Commander. Do you not trust me?” He was amused again.

“Not even a little bit.” Syanna almost hissed the words. “I notice that your men have come out as well. Hardly fitting”

“They wanted to see me defeat the uppity Northern Lord.” Raoul told her.

“And my people wanted to see a man of honour defeat a man without.” Syanna answered. “And to ensure that dishonour is not used as a weapon to defeat the honourable.”

“You think I would cheat?”

“Definitely. But mostly, I think that if it were to transpire that Lord Frederick was going to get the upper hand, or worse, to look as though he was going to win. Then one of your people would take it upon themselves to have an accident with their crossbow and render the point moot.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Raoul lied, although I wondered if I was imagining the disappointment in his voice. “Oh very well, you and your people may stay in order to witness the final destruction of Northern Arrogance. Although I should warn you, just as you are here to prevent my men from interfering. So too will my men prevent yours from getting in the way.”

“I understand.”

“Also, you can’t help but notice that my people outnumber yours.”

“I have more on the way.” Syanna responded smoothly. “And I would place my money on quality over quantity.”

“I have no doubt. Shame that they will be superfluous.”

Syanna didn’t answer that.

“Then I await my opponent.” Raoul declared in a loud voice.

The men in front of me parted. Gregoire, Guillaume and I rode forwards.

Raoul had walked back and was talking with one of his men who went back into the manor house and called something out. More men emerged and started to join their fellows so that the numbers on Raoul’s side of the field grew. As I rode forwards I could see bottles of beer and spirits being passed around the mercenaries. I also noticed that hardly any of them seemed to be drinking particularly deeply.

Was it an excuse? That my murder would be blamed on the actions of a drunken man? I shook my head to clear myself of the thought. Syanna would punish any that went that way.

Guillaume dismounted and held the reins of my horse while I climbed down. An unnecessary precaution but it was one of those gestures of a man showing respect to his fellows.

“Lord Frederick.” Raoul had come back when I had emerged. “So sorry that we had to meet again under such circumstances.”

I took a deep breath. Raoul had not drawn his sword, nor strapped a shield to his arm. But the duel had started.

“The world moves like this sometimes.” I told him as I looked him over. He was wearing a chain shirt with a breast plate over it. He had gauntlets, greaves and bracers on and he was cradling a helm under his arm. He was not fully armoured though. He had clearly gone for a balance between speed and protection.

“It does indeed.” He admitted. “I must admit that I am a little worried about you, Lord Frederick. Can I call you Freddie? Lord Frederick sounds like such a mouthful. And we are, after all, about to try and kill each other. Full names and titles seem so impersonal.”

“By all means.” I told him. “And why are you worried?”

“I worry that these Knights are taking advantage of you.”

If his intention was to upset my thought processes and distract me from my purpose. Then it worked. I felt my eyebrows crawling up towards my hairline.

“Oh?” I must have betrayed my genuine astonishment as he grinned at me.

“Yes.” He said. “Answer me honestly… Freddie. But are they pushing you into this fight? Are they using you to be able to do the things that they can’t or are unable to do?”

I pretended to consider this. “I don’t…”

“I mean, they are investigating a series of murders, they can’t figure it out so they call in the obviously sick man to do their work for them. When your friend is accused of carrying out those murders, they do not properly investigate, they just throw him into a cell and, again, you have to deal with the matter. And now, here we are. They sent some people in to arrest me… Illegally I might add. And make such a hamfisted attempt at it that they know that they are utterly destroyed. So now, once again, you are here doing your best to clean up their mess. Do you not get tired of it? I notice that Witcher Kerrass is nowhere around. Where is he by the way?”

“He is recovering.” I told him. “Regardless of the fact that he won the duel, he did take some considerable injuries when he fought Alain and as a result, he is resting in order to recover.”

“Ah.” Raoul nodded. “A shame. I would have dearly liked to see his face when I kill you.”

I laughed at him. “You mean when I kill you?”

“You’re not going to kill me Freddie. I am the better fighter and you know it. What are you?” He was letting his hatred show now. “A jumped up son of a jumped up nobody. A scholar with a spear. I am a Knight with years of training. A noble son of a noble son who’s dynasty goes back to the very founding of Toussaint. What possibly makes you think that you can defeat me?”

I pretended to consider this for a long moment but the answer was actually rather easy to come to. “I wonder,” I said. “Are you trying to convince me, to convince your men, or trying to convince yourself of that?”

He scowled, my barb hitting a lot closer to home than either of us had thought it was going to.

“So let us confirm the terms of what is about to happen.” He raised his voice, more formal than he had been. “I want it confirmed so that there is no doubt and no confusion. And so that you know what you are fighting for.”

“Are you suggesting that Sir Guillaume would negotiate the fight in bad faith?” I wondered.

“That’s exactly what I am suggesting, yes.”

“Careful.” I said with a grin, keeping hold of my confidence. “He might want to duel you for that.”

“He is here under false pretences. I refuse to allow such a thing to happen when it is such an obvious attempt to besmirch my reputation and standing.”

I shrugged.

“But let us confirm it.” Raoul snapped. “This is a fight to the death, the inability to continue, or the yielding.”

I hadn’t said anything about yielding. Guillaume had obviously inserted that. I didn’t tell Raoul that though, I just nodded.

“If I win,” Raoul went on. “Then the Knight Commander and all of her so-called Knights will withdraw from this place without complaint. They will remove themselves from my lands and await the judgement of the Duchess. My Captives will remain in my custody to await judgement for banditry.”

I nodded along. Guillaume shifted his weight behind me and I suspected that the banditry thing had been added. Not that it mattered.

“And if you win. Then should I survive, I will surrender to you. My men will lay down their arms and the gates will be opened.”

“Sounds about right,” I said.

‘Well then.” Raoul finally found his smile again. “Then I don’t see that there is any reason to draw this out. I am armed and armoured. I have even reduced my normal amount of armaments in concession to your lightly armoured, untrained state. I would not have it said by others that I kept any kind of unfair advantage.”

I couldn’t help myself.

“Other than the fact that I am a jumped up son of a jumped up nobody. A scholar with a spear. Whereas you are a Knight with years of training. A noble son of a noble son who’s dynasty goes back to the very founding of Toussaint?”

There was more than one astonished snigger from Raoul’s side. Gregoire didn’t even bother trying to hide the fact that he was laughing. Raoul stared at me in astonishment before he too found that he could no longer hold it in any more and started to laugh.

“Ah Freddie.” He said. “I really am going to miss you.”

I nodded. “In which case, I should make my preparations.”

“Oh? Are you not ready?”

“I am a religious man.” I said. “I need to pray.”

“I see. Personally I always felt that religion was a crutch meant to make people feel better about things that they have no control over and as an artificial way of lifting guilt for their false actions.”

“Really?” I said. “I always found that religion, real religion, is a form of spiritual fulfillment. The same way that the world feels like a better place when the sun is shining and the birds are singing.”

He shook his head. “Then I shall wait over here for when you are ready.”

I knelt and watched as Raoul went over to his men and spoke with them. They laughed with him and at his jokes. I liked to think that the laughter was kind of paid for. The kind of laughter and applause that subordinates give their superiors. Where they laugh, clap and cheer speeches, even when what is being said goes against everything that the people believe in.

Syanna was seeing to the disposition of our people. Parts of her fierce speaking drifted over to me. I tried not to listen but there’s only so much that you can do to avoid it.

“Take them alive if you can.” She was saying. “If it comes to a fight, then I want you all to know that I want Raoul the thrice cursed bastard alive.”

There was some murmuring.

“But if it comes to a choice between you and some other poor bastard that’s making the mistake of trying to take you on. Then put the bastard into the fucking ground. Clear?”

There was more firm but quiet affirmative sounds.

“Guillaume, Gregoire, I have something specific for both of you.”

I let the talking fade into the back of my mind as I tried to focus on what I was about to have to do.

-

“I don’t understand.” Gregoire said. “We all go down to watch the duel?”

“Yes.” I told him. “All of us.”

“Why?”

“Why are we going or what…”

“I must admit that I am confused as to that point as well.” Guillaume said. “Surely we still need some people to watch the other entrances and to make sure that no-one will escape.”

“We all go down there.” I said. “The purpose of us all going down there is to make sure that Raoul all but empties his Manor house complex. We need to leave that as empty as possible. We need as many of his people out on the field watching the fight, as we can get. He is not a stupid man. But he thinks that we are. That is a great advantage of ours in that he is underestimating us. He knows that we are honourable men and women and that we will act responsibly and honourably. He also knows that we know that he is not.

“So… If he agrees to the fight, which is the only uncertainty in my mind, he will have people ready to interfere against the possibility that it might go my way. He won’t believe that that will happen, but he has to know that there is always a possibility. After all, The best duellist and swordsman in the land has just been defeated. So he will need to be ready. He will have some people with him when he duels me. Then you turn up with all the troops. He will know why you are there, which is to counter any move that he might make in order to interfere with, or influence the fight improperly.”

“The benefit of that is that it’s true.” Syanna said, she was dancing with her impatience.

“He may even suspect that you are there to do something in the same way that he is. But he will be committed. His own men will have heard him say that he will fight me, therefore he can’t back out. So he has to bring more men out in order to counter all the extra people that you are bringing with you.”

“He surely wouldn’t be that stupid.” Guillaume argued. “If he is in the open ground, then it would be to our advantage. He would lose the advantage of the defensible, fortified position.”

“That is true.” I said. “But he knows that we are the honourable side. He also knows that he is going to win. He will only order the interference if it looks like he is going to lose.”

“What is to stop him from having someone inside destroy the evidence or whatever else while all of this is going on?”

Gregoire wondered.

“No. That’s impossible.” I argued. “If the evidence was easily removable or disguisable, then it would already have been destroyed or got rid of before Damien got here. The gates would have been open and ready and Damien would have been invited to look around. Raoul’s position would actually have been stronger then. There is something there that Raoul needed to defend or this situation would not have come up.”

“So that’s the purpose of us all going down there to watch the duel.” Guillaume tried to get us back onto topic. “The real reason that we are there is so that we can draw the fighters and the soldiers that Raoul has inside the compound into the open. The reason that we can tell him that. When he says, “What are you all doing in front of my gate?” We can tell him that we are all there to ensure that he doesn’t cheat. That we are there to counter his nonsense.”

“Pretty much.”

Guillaume nodded. “So, all of Raoul’s men, or most of them anyway, are out of the compound and in front of us. So what happens then?”

I shrugged. “We fight. I don’t think we can avoid that. Much though I might want to. Although cheer would you? Make some noise and some shouts of encouragement. Apart from anything else, I might need it.”

-

I was, indeed, not looking forward to this bit. But there was only so much I could do to prolong it any further. I had run through all the prayers that I could think of and made up more than a few that didn’t exist. But there was no getting around the matter. Sooner or later, I needed to stand up and face my enemy.

I stood up, burnt a few more seconds by kissing the holy symbol that dangled round my neck. At some point, Ariadne had had another one made for me even if it isn’t the way that we communicate over large distances. Mark had blessed it for me and I rather felt that I would need every little piece of blessing that I could get over the next few minutes.

There was another crux point here. Another moment that everything hinged on. Everything could fall apart here and now if Raoul decided to just get the matter over with and kill me quickly. A couple of quick movements, batting my spear aside before burying his broadsword in some part of my body.

If he did that, it would all be over. All of this would have been for nothing and I would be left to bleed out on the field in front of the Manor house.

Raoul wouldn’t get away with it. Syanna would find some kind of technicality in order to nail him to the wall. But that would be no consolation to me if I was dead on a field in Toussaint. No consolation to Ariadne, Emma or Mark either. I wondered what Sam would make of it. I rather hoped that he would be sad but given that I had just been involved in the arrest of one of his friends, I could not be entirely certain.

I rose to my feet and looked over to where Raoul was gossiping with his men.

I didn’t think that would happen. I was fairly confident that Raoul would want to enjoy this moment. He would want to play with me. To toy with me and enjoy the discomfort of the people on my side of the field. He would want to hold me at his mercy and gesture to Syanna that she had gotten me killed. There was even a large possibility that he would offer me mercy in order to drive home his superiority.

But it is the smaller possibilities that are the ones that haunt us at night.

It is the nearly missed parries, the mis-timed blocks, the times when something wet and squishy underfoot almost gives way. The times where you turn to see the blade coming towards you and you realise that there is nothing that you can do to stop it. That you are hopelessly out of position and that there is no way that your blade, spear or shield can get in the way of the death blow that you know is coming. Those are the nightmares that keep you awake at night.

I held my spear easily in my hand as I approached Raoul who left his own men to walk towards me.

He stopped as he approached and shook his head.

“Cry off Freddie, I beg you.” He pitched his voice so that it would carry, I will even give him the credit that he sounded as though he meant every word. “This is not how a man like you should die. You cannot beat me, you know it and I know it. Let this go, turn away from these fools that pin all their hopes on you and let us part this way as friends. It would, and I am not lying, grieve me to live in a world that does not contain you.”

“I thought you hated me.” I told him, taking a moment to lean on my spear.

He laughed. “Oh I do.” He said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I have enjoyed our little sparring contests. It is novel to fight with someone who meets you on such a level. There have been few over the years and I would hate to lose even this one. Turn around. Please. I would rather not be the man to kill you.”

I nodded.

“Thank you for the sentiment.” I told him. “But I am afraid that it is not shared. I will fight you, I will beat you and then when this is over, whether I kill you or whether you die with your head on the block. I will watch it and I will be pleased that there is one less man like you in the world.”

He smiled happily at that. “I had no idea that my hate was reciprocated.”

I considered this for a moment. “It isn’t. Not really. I don’t hate you, or despise you. I hate people like you. I hate the entitled nobles that look down on my family for being able to make something of themselves. I hate the fact that you belittle and torment your own people because you think you have the right to do so. That is what I hate. You are just the latest in a long line of people that I am going to destroy for it.”

He nodded.

“Ah well.” He said. “I tried.” And then he drew his sword.

We obeyed all the rules and traditions. We saluted, or rather he saluted and I bowed. We allowed the other to fall into the ready position. There was a moment there where we stood facing each other in our stances. It was a long moment where I wondered if we were going to end up staring each other down in the same way that Alain and Kerrass had.

But then Alain attacked.

By the fire he was fast. And even worse than that, I could tell that he was holding back. Whether the conversation before the duel had been an effort to calm his troubled conscience, playing to the crowd or whether it was a genuine expression of a desire for us to not have to fight the coming duel, I do not know and I suspect that I won’t find out. But now that he was in the fight, he had obviously decided to enjoy it. He was attacking furiously but there was enough of a movement and an arc to his strikes that it became clear that he was going to miss with every strike. Or at most, he would injure me in some small way rather than in the devastating fashion that the world might hope for.

I focused on the defence. Focused on blocking and parrying. The thick metal haft of my spear would more than stand up to the punishment that his sword was dishing out. Indeed, there was even an argument that would say that he was actually doing more damage to his own equipment than he was to mine.

That was not as reassuring as it might sound. He was still using a broadsword and the weight and power of the movements was still driving me backwards. So I focused on the defence. I focused on pushing his blade aside and blocking those blows that could be blocked.

I was holding up well though. Even though he wasn’t really trying.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, it started to occur to me that the people watching were starting to cheer, I did my best to ignore it and focus on what was happening. All of the tricks and the techniques that Kerrass had spent, well, years instilling in me to make sure that I would be able to keep fighting for longer than a few minutes became vital. Breath control was key, in through the nose and out through the mouth.

I was also able to see and understand a few of the things that he was going to do. He was trying to draw me into a rhythm. To set me up so that I could be programmed into a particular way of movement. He was timing his strikes with his footfalls and his movements. The same beat as a dance.

And once upon a time it would have worked.

He pushed me back with these blows, back and back, closing with me at every turn so that in order to keep my spear in the fight, I would need to back off a bit further in order to make room in order to bring my spear into play.

I was waiting for him to run out of breath to see if I could arrange some kind of attack of my own. It was not a bad thought, Sword fighting is hard work and he was using a solid looking shield and a heavy looking broadsword. It takes a ridiculous amount of conditioning to be able to fight for any kind of length of time and he was not using the easiest looking equipment.

It seemed that Raoul had exactly that kind of conditioning.

But I couldn’t let him dictate the fight. I was letting him lead me around like a foal on a leading rope.

I shifted my grip on the spear and started to hold it like a quarterstaff. If he wanted to close the distance with me, then I would let him. Quarterstaff is a close quarters fight and it would allow me to get inside his reach.

I started to push his blows aside and now it was him that had to step back in order to make room. I didn’t follow him. He was still very fast. Far too fast and I could feel it in myself that I was already getting tired. Instead I would parry his strike with one end of the spear before lashing out with the other. It took him a moment or two to get the feel of things but he soon adjusted.

I could feel him smiling. He was not wearing his full, visored Knight helm. It was more of a conical helm with a nose-guard in order to give him the extra field of vision. I wasn’t looking at his face though. I was looking at his shoulders and his chest. Another one of Kerrass’ earliest lessons was that a man can lie with his eyes, but he cannot lie with his chest or his breathing. The movement of the chest can tell you where a man is going to strike, where a man is going to feint and where a man is going to parry.

It was tough going and, as I say, Raoul was absurdly fast and seeing all of this was a challenge.

He had been frowning when he had first leapt to the attack but as he drove me back he had begun to enjoy the combat which, in turn meant that he had begun to smile. He had stopped smiling when I had shifted my grip to a quarterstaff grip and that meant that he had to adjust his own style. But then he started to get into the grips of that as well and his smile began to return.

He struck out with three, lightening first strikes and a lunge. Three programming strikes to make me lift into blocks of the overhead as he rained them down onto where my head should be. They were fast, so very fast. Not as hard as they could have been, but in that kind of arena with that kind of weapon, a thing doesn’t need to have that much strength behind it in order to be deadly.

I didn’t have time to do any kind of parry. All I could do was to block the strikes as they came down and then he lunged. I wasn’t too concerned about that. I had read it in his shoulders and his stance that that was what he intended to do. His sword came forward and I brought the right hand side of my spear down to parry and push the blade off the centre line. Away from me and to my left, his right. With the same kind of movement, I stepped forward.

I was excited by the parry, it would give me a chance to close the range again and be inside his guard.

My mistake was that I had forgotten that his shield was more than just an off handed method of deflecting my strikes. In the right hands, a shield can be a weapon too. Kerrass had tried to teach me that. I had learnt that lesson again in Skellige and in various other small fights around the continent.

Raoul had deliberately kept his shield out of the fight up until that point. It had been left, just covering his side and occasionally his legs or his head when I attacked that side of him.

He had suckered me into attacking and closing with his shield side and he threw his weight into me, shoulder and shield first. It didn’t hurt that much. It was a shock, and a surprise as I realised what had happened and I was stumbling backwards.

Then he attacked with the shield again. It was strapped to his arm and he lifted and all but punched the air with it so that the edge of the shield, the hard metal edge, came towards my eyes.

I all but threw myself backwards, but my footing was wrong, I slipped and fell on my ass. I still had hold of my spear and I desperately lifted it to block the vertical strike that I was certain would be heading towards my head.

The blow never came. Instead Raoul was backing off and laughing.

His followers and mine started to outdo themselves. His side jeered and laughed as Raoul lifted his arms for acclaim while my side howled their encouragement. To get to my feet and to take the fight to Raoul.

All I could think was just how much Kerrass would be angry with me if he saw that.

-

“All of this is lovely.” Gregoire said. “But there is something that I don’t understand. “Why are you fighting at all? Raoul is good. Not as good as Guillaume certainly and he does not know how to defeat me. But that doesn’t make him a bad fighter. All due respect, Lord Frederick, but he could kill you easily. I can understand the need to empty the Manor complex. I can understand the need to delay. But why fight? You will lose.”

I waved him off.

“Later.” I said. “First, I need to check something. He’s basically proven himself the most honourless dog that Toussaint has ever seen, right?”

Guillaume winced. “Not the worst. He is not irredeemable.”

“I have proven that.” Syanna was still frustrated and eager to get underway. “For if I can be redeemed into the service of Toussaint, then most people can.”

“Why do you ask?” Guillaume wondered of me.

“He’s pretty bad though, right?” I insisted.

“Yes.” Guillaume said with a slight smile. “I think that it would be covered by being “pretty bad”. But why is that important?”

“So how honourable do I have to be towards him. We are in the middle of throwing an elbow in the middle of a fist fight anyway. But how dishonourable am I allowed to be? It gets confusing to me.”

“I don’t understand what you’re…” Guillaume began.

“I do.” Syanna took a deep breath. “You have never looked at Toussaint's honour from the outside of it, Guillaume. Believe me when I say that it is not as simple as we all think it is.”

Guillaume and Gregoire looked very confused at this.

“What are you getting at Freddie?” She asked me.

“In normal, day to day life in Toussaint,” I began, “if there is an enemy you are supposed to walk up to them, declare your intent to smack the shit out of them. Wait for them to prepare themselves to get the shit smacked out of them. And then you proceed with the smacking.”

“That’s about right.” Gregoire was enjoying my turn of phrase.

“But you don’t always do that. When we were rescuing Anne’s son, we didn’t declare our intentions. We didn’t walk up to their front gate and say, “Hey in there, we understand that there’s some shady crap going on in there. What are you playing at?” If we lived in the north, we wouldn’t have done that because we would be concerned that the hostage takers would have gotten rid of the evidence, In this case, the hostage. But in Toussaint, we didn’t do that because… Why?”

“Because some people are beyond that line.” Guillaume said. “There is a line where if a person crosses it, they stop being a man and become… well… a beast really. I don’t think there’s really a term for it.”

“There is.” Gregoire said. “We call them villains. Literally that. We call them villains. I studied this because I needed to make sure that I fell on the right side of the divide at all times. To be a villain without it being ok to just sneak up and stab me. You can be as evil as you like provided you don’t break certain rules. You’re not allowed to disrespect the Duchess. You are not allowed to break certain of the rules of Chivalry. You can bend them, but if you break them….?” He shrugged. “You’re not allowed to beat a child or a woman in public.”

“What goes on behind closed doors is another matter.” Syanna said bitterly.

“That’s true,” Gregoire agreed, not noticing Syanna’s bitterness. “And also, anyone of certain status is fair game. There are layers in society and any layer below you, you can do what you like. But women in our society are almost sacrosanct. But only in public as the Knight Commander says.

“There’s more,” Gregoire went on, “But what it boils down to is that if you behave with Honour, then you must be treated with Honour. It gets complicated when you realise that your honour can be different from someone else's honour. But that still counts. So my code while I portrayed the “villain” in the jousts was still a code of honour and others would recognise it. But it would be different from what Guillaume would…”

“All of this is fascinating.” Syanna interrupted. “But what’s the point?”

“The point is, if you cross that line.” Gregoire said. “By action or just being who you are, then you become a “villain”.”

“How do you become a villain in the eyes of the public?” I asked. “Is there a meeting, a selection committee? What?”

Gregoire smiled. “It is not clear. You are somewhere across the line if you are a foreigner for instance. Also by being a merchant.”

“Lovely. Explains why certain people don’t like Emma then.” I sniffed. “So where’s the line?”

Gregoire and Guillaume looked at each other uncomfortably. “There isn’t one.” Guillaume said. “It varies, we just all… know. It’s part of being a Knight of Toussaint. You have honour. So does Kerrass although his honour is different. Your brother Sam does not….”

“Oh?” I couldn’t help it.

“He is a martial man.” Guillaume said. “Therefore he has farther to fall than you do. Your family is in a time of crisis and Sam is shortly to be the head of your family. In a time of family crisis, your elder brother’s illness. Where is the heir who should be by his side?”

“Yes but… He has other respons…” I tried.

“This is all very fascinating.” Syanna said. “But why is all of this…”

“Here is my question.” I said, shaking myself free of the argument about Sam. “There is a line. Beyond which it seems we are allowed to do anything we like in order to bring a man to justice or otherwise make his life difficult. Right?”

Guillaume and Gregoire exchanged glances. “That’s right.” Guillaume said.

“So here is my question.” I told them both with a grin. “Has Raoul crossed that line yet?”

Guillaume looked thoughtful.

“I would not hesitate in saying that the man is a wretch and a scoundrel.” Gregoire said with more than a little bit relish.

Guillaume considered for a bit longer before nodding.

“Excellent.” I said. “Then here is why it is important that we actually fight. And here is why I need you to make some noise while I do fight. We will need it.”

-

It was not going well for me. I forced myself to my feet and I was breathing hard. It already felt as though I had been fighting for years and as of yet, there were absolutely no signs that I was going to be able to lay down my burdens. I took a deep breath and then another and another before I lifted my spear and looked to where Raoul was waiting for me.

“One last time Lord Frederick.” He said. “Cry off. Yield. Surrender. It is no cowardice, it is no dishonour to admit to facing a better man. Just admit that and I will let you go to your marriage bed and whatever comes afterwards. Admit that you are being used by those people that need the world to conform to their image of things and I will let you go. I will be happy to do so. A world with you in it is a far more entertaining one than a world with you gone.”

I took a deep breath and lifted my spear into the spear fighter’s equivalent of a mid stance.

“Why?” I wondered. “Getting tired.”

He laughed. “Freddie. I don’t think I can hold back much further. This is how you are going to die if you don’t step aside.”

“In your dreams.” I snarled. I’ve been wittier, but the moment didn’t call for witticisms. It called for defiance.

The Knights and guardsmen of TOussaint cheered my words and roared their approval as I attacked.

I lunged for his face on the grounds that men fear the loss of sight and he avoided that blow by simple virtue of lifting his shield and pushing the spear up.

I did not allow myself to overextend though and brought my spear back for another lunge towards his groin. That target on the grounds that the other thing that men fear is the loss of their manhood.

This time the shield came down.

He was standing easily, his right arm resting with the sword on his shoulder, letting the shield absorb my blows. He was toying with me again. It cost me far more energy to attack than it did for him to defend. What I wanted to do was to ease back myself. Draw him into attacking but there was a possibility that he might not be drawn. I needed the fight, I needed the combat. Ariadne’s herbal concoctions were working wonderfully well but that is a lent energy and when it is used up, it exacts a heavy toll afterwards. Time was not on my side and I had to keep fighting.

I stepped to my left in an effort to get round the shield. I used the spear as a long, two handed weapon against the edge of the shield, trying to knock it out of the way.

It was a flashy move, lots of sound and thunder but it didn’t work. The shield shifted and the blow glanced off. Raoul barely looked as though he had moved at all.

I tried to lunge under the shield in order to target his feet and to lift the shield up and out of the way. He simply lifted his foreleg out of the way so that my spear passed under the shield without interruption.

I growled in anger and went forwards trying to rain blows down on the shield in an effort to just beat the thing into submission. That didn’t work either as he stepped backwards, braced and charged forward with his shield extended. The body check was coming and I was forced to side step it.

I was running out of ideas now. He was refusing to attack me. Not allowing himself to get drawn into an engagement that I might be able to counter or otherwise do something about. He was watching me think and I could feel his amusement coming at me in waves.

I tried a few more tricks, but they were nothing more than that. Just tricks. He knew it and I knew it. Just tricks. I tried programming him with rhythms and patterns. But that didn’t work as he read every movement. I tried to catch him off balance with fancy footwork on the grounds that fighting with sword and shield is a relatively solid stance.

But then he proved that he could move quickly along with me and again, I was having to skip out of the way in order to avoid the coming counterattack.

Which turned out to be a fake. The bully jerk of trying to get your opponent to flinch and I could not help but berate myself for falling for it.

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I breathed deeply. This was getting me nowhere fast. I backed up and my spear must have lowered a little or something because that was when Raoul chose to attack.

And I thought he had been moving quickly before. I have little useful memories of the next few moments. I have no idea how long it lasted. I have no idea what happened and I have no idea what I did. I fought desperately and hopelessly. I parried and blocked and sidestepped and moved and spun and jumped and I was saved, far too often, by last minute jerks to the side.

He chased me clear along the field between the two groups of spectators and back again. He did not let up and there was nothing I could do. If I had had the time, I might even have found it funny that I had been desperate for him to do something. Anything. Anything at all so that I could try and counter what it was and open things up towards being able to fight back. Now he was just attacking and there was no room. No space, no opening for me to do anything other than put my spear between his sword and my body while hoping for the best.

It must have been something to see.

The crowd noise became a solid thing, a noise like the wind in the leaves and the waves of the sea on the shore. It was like a wall that hammered at us both as his side roared their approval and my side howled their encouragement. But all I could do was to hold on and hope that I could survive this.

And then I was falling. It was a strange feeling to be falling, then to realise that you are falling before you figure out what it was that had caused you to fall. As I had parried he had lashed out with a foot and tripped me so that I fell backwards onto my ass.

I managed to keep hold of my spear but that was all that I managed to keep hold of. I certainly didn’t keep hold of my dignity as the breath shot out of me in the same way that it leaves the bellows of the forge.

And Raoul was there. Sword extended and pointed at my throat. I scurried backwards on all fours, trying to get my feet under me into a position of strength so that I could fight back but Raoul was too fast.

He had me.

“I can kill you anytime I want to.” He growled quietly so that none could hear him above the noise. “You are an insect, a bug, a beetle pushing dung and I can crush you under my boot. Yield now or I will humiliate you as I kill you. Yield and make these fuckers the villains and I will spare you.”

I grinned at him. I don’t know when I made him angry. What I had done or what I had said to finally get past his amusement and into the place where I could provoke him. But here we were.

His little speech had given me the time to get some feet under me and I battered his sword away and leapt to my feet, hurling myself forward and into the attack.

I am charged by my brother to talk about how the world really is. I am supposed to talk about the injuries that I have suffered and how it has affected me. In doing so I am supposed to be warning people about the perils that can take place if you come out onto the road. It’s about how there is more than one type of person. Some people are built for this. They can go out onto the road and find wrongs to right and bad guys to slay and when it is all over, they can go home, prop their weapon in the corner or hang it over the hearth, kiss their lovers and their children and go to bed in order to sleep soundly. Some people can do that.

I cannot and there are a whole bunch of people that are simply not made to be able to do this. They are made to do something else. I am one of those people. I am made to be crawling through ruins and figuring out the lives of the people that lived there. I am supposed to be reading books and papers and scrolls and figuring out who they are all connected to. I can put thoughts into faceless and nameless people and assign names and lineages to lost tombs that are standing out in the wilderness.

But I shouldn’t be the one that clears those tombs out of spirits and monsters first. I should not be fighting those people who have been doing horrible and evil things. I shouldn’t be that person. I know that now. Way back when all of this began I kidded myself into thinking that I could do that. But I can’t. I just can’t.

Here is another example of why it shouldn’t have been me before those walls, fighting a man that I hated, to save some people that I didn’t know or, at best, had met a few weeks beforehand. I am simply not meant to be that person.

I’m glad I was there. There were plenty of reasons as to why it had to be me and that no one else could have done it. But I am not made for it. I am not built for it and I shouldn’t have done it.

The fact that I had to do it is immaterial at this stage.

I was fighting a man in relatively little armour and as I fought, I started to see things. The energy of the herbal drinks that Ariadne had made me was still coursing through my body. I was not going to lose my stamina except if i forgot to breathe properly, which is more of a problem than you might think it is. So that was not going to be my downfall.

There was a knowledge in the back of my head that suggested that “I was going to pay for this later” and wondering “what was taking so long?” But somehow I was able to kind of fence that off in my mind. Ariadne claims that such practices are a lot like the false energy of the herbs. That sooner or later, they exact a toll. But for the right there and right then of the thing. I needed that distance.

I was also angry and that anger was fuelling me. But that anger was also struggling to get loose and turn into fury. I could feel it like a fire in my belly and like a fire that is so contained, it threatened to burst loose in an all consuming flame that would devastated the surroundings.

I told it to be patient, to lend me the strength I needed to see it through and then I would give it it’s day. Such are the small deals, the small promises that we make for ourselves in the heat of the moment.

I fought. Consciously, in the foreground of my mind. I was aware that I was fighting Sir Raoul Le Blanc. By now I knew how strong he was and was aware that he was keeping some strength back out of a desire to toy with me. Also to husband that strength against future exertions. I knew what his reach was with his sword and I knew how fast he was.

I had taken careful consideration of the fact that he might be holding back some of his speed as well in case he could step up his actions later.

I knew that he was wielding a solid broadsword so I knew how heavy it was and that it was unlikely to break. And that even if it wore down, it would still be of fair use as a metal club that could be used to batter me to death. But he was the kind of man that would ensure that he had the best equipment no matter what. This would be the kind of broadsword that held an edge despite the abuse he was dishing out to it.

No matter how many peasants he cut down with it.

I had examined his armour. His helmet was laughable. I don’t think he had even strapped it down. The fact that he was still wearing it suggested that it had been moulded to his head so that he could pull it on and pull it off again at will. The kind of helmet that is worn by cretins so that they can take their helmets off to acknowledge the jubilation of the crowd.

Believe me that I had filed away that piece of information for later.

He was not wearing full armour. He had holes under his armpits, around his neck and the elbow joints. Looking further down, there was a skirt that was protecting his upper legs and his groin but there was no armour on the upper legs and groin. And again, the body joints had gaps there, the knee, the hip, the ankle although he was just wearing some leather boots that would stop me doing too much to the ankle.

There were gaps that could be exploited. Kerrass’ opinion on armour was interesting. He said that armour served a purpose which is to protect it’s user from untrained and unaimed missiles and blows. It was for battlefields and so that single fighters could take out large numbers of untrained fighters.

Bandits for example. He preferred mobility but there is still armour that he wears. He once told me that if you are going to wear metal armour then do it properly, don’t take any shortcuts. Wear the damn codpiece and if you need to go in the middle of the battlefield then fucking well go. Better to save your life and have your groin protected rather than having a weakness that an enemy can exploit. Learn to clean your armour properly and move on.

The fight, all that time ago, with William the Ram, had demonstrated the weakness of leaving joints bare to be exploited. Part of the training that Kerrass had given me was teaching accuracy with my strikes. So that I could aim for the throat, the eyes, the hips, groin, knee, elbow and so on rather than aiming in the general direction of the enemy and hoping that I would connect.

So I knew what I was doing, even if it was a desperate situation. I knew who I was fighting. I knew what I was fighting and in theory, I knew how to fight it.

But I wasn’t just fighting him. It was like there was an echo going on around the place as well. So I wasn’t just fighting Raoul, I was fighting that long ago Nobleman on the throne room steps of Angral. I saw it coming. I knew that the vision wasn’t real. But for a split second there I was fighting both men. The long ago knight had attacked without properly protecting himself and my spear had ripped his throat out.

This time he parried my lunge and kept coming. I had to force myself to ignore his attack and focus on Raoul, forcing myself to keep my eyes open in preparation for the coming death.

Which didn’t come.

That was not the only one. Sometimes Raoul himself would transform into one of many bandits, cultists and soldiers that I have fought. Sometimes it even worked to my advantage. There was a cultist that I remembered having been disappointed in not fighting me properly. When his image imposed itself over Raoul I actually grinned in relish and attacked. Raoul did not know what to make of that as I forced him to parry desperately for a few moments.

It didn’t last long though.

The worst thing for me was that due to all the torch light which was fuelled by lamp oil. The smell of that burning oil and the dampness in the air told my body that I was fighting the Goddess again. It sounds funny but believe me when I say that being there and then, it really wasn’t. I would blink and instead of being outside a Toussaint manor house, I was in a circle of fire in a field somewhere. I would blink and instead of fighting an armoured Knight using a sword and shield, I was fighting a naked, powerful woman who laughed as her spear came inches away from tearing at my flesh.

Fear scrabbled at my throat. Anger burned in my belly. The false energy of the herbs sent my pulse racing. I wanted to sleep and to run around screaming. I wanted to fight and flee at the same time. I wanted to drink and eat and fuck and weep and laugh and bellow and shriek and jump up and down like a toddler in a tantrum.

But I could do none of those things. I blinked away the echoes of those memories and forced myself to focus on what was going on now.

Raoul and I fought. The combat felt more even than it had previously. I have no idea why. I suspect that at least part of it was Raoul thinking that I was leading him into some kind of ploy, or a trap. That my fighting with phantoms was a joke that I was playing on him. He did not enjoy that.

So we fought backwards and forwards. I suppose that the correct phrase would be to say “We fell into a rhythm”. We both knew that that was dangerous.

I remember moments of it now that I come to write about it. There is some distance between now, sat here writing, and those events that transpired. So my memories of those more action packed moments are a little less focused and more hazy.

I remember a moment where I came up with a rising slash with the spear and he blocked it by trapping it against his shield and trying to knock it out of my hand with a downward strike of his sword. It nearly worked as it tore the spear from my right hand. Luckily, my left wrist was loose enough to allow the spear to move, the left hand gripped near the butt of the spear kept a grasp. I threw my weight into the shield, counter checking him and he fell back so that I was able to pick up the spear and preserve my guard.

I remember another moment where he attacked overhand and I lifted the spear to block like a quarterstaff. Then I pushed the blade off with my hand before bringing the spear around in a large cut. I have no doubt it looked very flashy but it did fuck all as Raoul hid behind his shield while he recovered his sword.

I distinctly remember the moment where I realised that Raoul was enjoying the fight. He enjoyed it. I felt as though I was fighting for my life.

And the roaring of the crowd got louder.

I began to see why people could get addicted to that kind of thing. It is certainly something to hear a large body of people cheering your name. There is nothing quite like it and a man could get a taste of it.

But I was out of ideas now. I had developed a long repertoire of tricks over the years of travelling with various fighters. Chireadean and Rickard had both had a vast array of things that I could do with a spear that would really inconvenience a man with a sword and shield. The sailors of the Wave-Serpent were likewise skilled warriors. I was a little bit curtailed by the fact that I used a spear rather than an axe or club. But they had lent an extra set of insights to those things that Kerrass had given me.

He gave me several fundamentals which boil down to the fact that sooner or later, an attack is going to come from one of nine directions. So if you learn to parry and block in all of those directions and then respond in such a way that your opponent’s attack leaves him open for your counter, then you will be able to successfully kill around sixty percent of the people that just pick up a club and come at you with it.

Another twenty percent can be dealt with by keeping yourself calm and exploiting the matter when they inevitably lose their temper. Of what remains, another ten percent can be taken out by simply overwhelming them with savagery at the outset of the combat. It sometimes takes time for a man to be able to get themselves ready for combat in the first place. It takes a certain type of individual a specific amount of time to work themselves into that kind of mindset in order to kill someone. So I should exploit that. Strike first, strike hard.

Of what remains, there will always be some that are overconfident and will take their victory for granted. They are better than you, but they will be lax, exploit this.

But eventually, you get a man who’s overconfidence is justified. That has earned their abilities through blood, sweat, tears and long years of experience. With these people, all you can do is to just hold on and hope that they make a mistake.

Raoul was clearly not going to make a mistake. And the sheer hopelessness of the situation was getting on top of me. I couldn’t keep my spear straight. I was taking longer and longer to get to the guard. I was falling back into a defensive standpoint more and more. Leaving openings that he offered and not going towards them on the grounds that they were probably false flags anyway.

I still had that false energy. The stuff that Ariadne had given me would last for a good couple of hours or so yet. I was still angry. But there was nowhere for any of that to go.

The slow realisation that I was waning began to creep across Raoul’s face. He started to showboat a little. Not much, but a little bit. Always when he knew that he was well outside the reach of my spear. But it was there. Just a little bit. He started to get his breath back and he started to hurl insults.

I did my best to ignore them. It is always best to ignore such things but it is also more than a little difficult to keep that up. He questioned my parentage which I ignored as being ludicrous. He questioned Ariadne’s faithfulness to me and wondered whether or not she could be persuaded to marry him after I was dead. I will not lie, this one got to me more than it should have done. I have no doubt as to Ariadne’s loyalty and until we are married, what she gets up to is her business. And we had talked about such things anyway. But it got to me.

He also started to comment on my fighting. He gave me feedback on this strike or that strike, telling me that my lunge was weak and needed work. That this particular strike was clearly a favourite of mine and that he could see why given that there was a distinct snap to it that he appreciated.

He started to step in that bit closer. He was properly toying with me now. His men were laughing and my side was going a bit quiet.

There were two dire moments. One time, I fell in some of the mud. One of those situations. I had been fighting solidly for quite a long time now and although I had plenty of energy, I was tired. The ground had been frozen but the new, light rain and the presence of all the flaming torches had thawed a patch of mud and I slipped in it.

As a result of the slip, I missed my parry and I took a clout to the side of the head. It was quite heavy and my loss of balance meant that it was a flat of the blade strike. I saw a white light for a moment and backed off furiously.

Raoul did not follow through then. It was a decision that I do not doubt saved my life. He even seemed apologetic as he waited for me to recover my wits. But I couldn’t allow an extended break and I leapt to the attack while my ears were still ringing and my eyes still had dots dancing in front of them.

He could have had me then.

Another instance was where I tripped over my own spear. It’s embarrassing when I say it, or write it like that. What happened was that I was trying for a sweep and he parried it with a certain amount of force. This sent the spear round and sending it into my own legs where it fouled up and I tripped and fell.

I have no idea why he didn’t kill me that time. It was an accident and I suppose it was one of those things where, from the outside perspective, it might have looked like a ploy or a gambit or something else. So he might have been guarding his own self against whatever it was it might have been that I was getting up to.

I remember desperately trying to roll in order to turn the fall into a movement and get back on my feet. I was not entirely successful and by the time I did get to my feet. Raoul was grinning ruefully at the fact that he could have had me beaten.

But then he attacked and I was falling back desperately.

We fought. I was tired. There was energy there but my limbs were getting to the stage where they could no longer use that energy. They didn’t feel heavy or any of the other things that I might say about it. They just wouldn’t work properly. The rage that I felt in the pit of my stomach was still scrabbling there, desperately trying to tear itself loose with false promises that it would ensure that I would still be able to stand on my own two feet. Such words are lies and I knew it.

I was falling back when it happened. The moment that I had been waiting for for all of this time. For what had felt like years.

I had struck at Raoul’s left in three quick patterns, high, low, high. All of which were parried by Raoul’s shield, which I expected. I was setting up a counter where he would fall into a rhythm of protecting his left. After that, I would feint low before coming back for a strong high strike.

Raoul chose to use the feint as an opportunity to duck his head slightly and give this great lunge that sent me staggering backwards, again, nearly tripping over my own feet.

It was one of those movements where later, you look back and say, “What I should have done is come across with a parry to push the lunge to one side in order to move inside his reach. Then I could have closed the distance and made him regret it.”

Instead I fell back. On balance it was the right thing to do because it meant that I had room to hear what happened.

“FREDDIE.” Kerrass’ voice floated down towards me from somewhere in the Manor house. “STOP PLAYING WITH THE BASTARD AND FINISH THE FUCKER.”

I felt myself laugh as the crowd went deathly still. Both sides went silent. Raoul moved back cautiously, looking around to see where the next attack was coming from. Crouching behind his shield, ready for anything.

“THAT WASN’T WHAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SHOUT KERRASS.” I yelled between giggles.

“WELL FORGIVE ME FOR IMPROVISING.” He yelled. “GET ON WITH IT WILL YOU. WE HAVEN’T GOT ALL NIGHT.”

The anger in my belly roared as I finally told it that it could have it’s day. I made it promise that it would be a controlled anger, that it would allow itself to be channelled to where I wanted it to go rather than burning freely. I looked over at Raoul who was frowning in thought. He was watching me carefully as I didn’t bother to hide the fact that I was laughing.

“Oh you egotistical bastard.” I told him. The anger fuelled energy ripped through me and I paced to give that energy somewhere to go. “I wonder if they’ll find a crypt big enough to fit that huge head of yours.”

Some of my side laughed nervously, unsure as to what was happening.

“We’ve played by your rules.” I told him. “Now we’re going to play by mine.”

I leapt forward with a huge high, jumping lunge that the Goddess had once used on me. I had never tried it before because there was never a reason to. Raoul did what I was expecting, side stepping so that he could shield bash me when I landed. I knew that he was going to do that though.

I had stopped trying to duel him and had started to fight.

I let go of my spear which fell to the ground. I grabbed the top of his shield and tugged, he was already coming forward in an effort to drive me from my feet. The same discipline that tells me to keep hold of my spear meant that he went with his shield when I tugged. After all, a shield is no use to anyone if it’s away from the body and flapping around.

I stuck my foot out and he tripped and fell sprawling. I stepped forward and kicked him between the legs, under the battle skirt and into the unarmoured gap between his legs.

His squeal as I kicked him in the balls was most satisfactory.

-

I took Ariadne and Kerrass away from the group and down a little bit. I didn’t want us to be in sight of the Manor house, but nor did I want us to be surrounded by Knights. I rather thought that I would need some of them to be as surprised as anyone else when it came to what I had in mind.

“Ok Freddie.” Kerrass smiled, he was still doing that a lot easier at the moment. “What’s the plan? Tell me it’s a better plan than trying to talk to a dragon at least.”

“It’s a better plan than that.” I told him. “I can’t say it’s better than allowing myself to be tortured so that you can cause some havoc though.”

Kerrass considered this while Ariadne gazed at me steadily.

“Ominous.” Kerrass decided after a while.

“But the entire thing hinges on one factor.” I told them both. “And I need to know that the two of you are on board and willing to do this. Because if you’re not, and I would understand if you weren’t, then the entire thing falls apart.”

“Even more ominous.” Kerrass commented.

Ariadne said nothing and just carried on watching me.

“He will fight me.” I told them both. “He will think he can win, he will know it down to his bones that he is better than me and he will want to prove it before all the witnesses that he can. So he will fight me.”

“If it’s a proper fight and not a duel,” Kerrass mused, stroking his chin. “Then I think you could do it, if you were on form. But you are tired and sick Freddie. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

I closed my eyes and considered it for a moment. I felt something bubbling away in my chest. An anger that I had been ignoring for a while and it felt so good. It was warming, energising and stimulating. I opened my eyes and looked back at him.

“I don’t know.” I told him honestly. “I want to say yes, but I am tired. If we go ahead with this I’m going to need more herbal aid.”

Ariadne still said nothing.

“But the truth is that I don’t think it matters if I beat him or not. With a bit of luck, the matter will be moot.”

“Why?”

I told them what I wanted them to do.

“First of all.” I began. “Can it be done? You are injured, possibly badly, and if it all goes to shit, can you fight?” I asked him.

“I think you’re asking the wrong person.” He told me before turning to Ariadne. “Can I fight? Can I do this?”

Ariadne had not taken her eyes off me. “You could do it.” She said, “Your strength will have returned by now, your speed will be the same. Your stamina might be a little off. Your insides are mostly knitted back together even if they are still tender due to the new flesh. The spell is mostly keeping all the internal digestive poisons from eating through the new organs.”

She took a breath.

“And I would have to go with you for precisely that reason.” She looked at me. “You realise what you are asking me to do?”

“I do.” I told her. “Can you do it?”

“That is not the issue.” She told me. “Of course I can do it. But there is a difference here. I will not be fighting ancient magical beings on your behalf. These will be flesh and blood people. People that are going to run from us in fear.”

“If you’re not willing…” I began.

“I’m willing.” She said, She still does this thing where she seems to retreat, the life leaves her face and it becomes a mask. “I’m more concerned about what is going to happen afterwards. If I fight these people, it will need to be fast and brutal if we’re going to save the hostages. It will not be clean, it will not be pretty. There will be dismembered bodies and entrails and…”

“These people have it coming.” Kerrass said. “And Toussaint will forgive.”

“It’s not that that I’m worried about.” She said, “I’m worried that once you see that sort of thing. Once you see what I’m capable of…”

She was clasping her hands together in front of her and I rushed forwards to take her into my arms.

“I will still love you.” I told her. “If you are covered in the blood of men that have tortured and killed, that have taken hostages, and you do it in order to save lives. I will still love you.”

“Do you promise?”

I had not realised how afraid she was.

“I promise.” I told her.

She put her head on one side as she considered. An expression that always makes me liken her to looking like a dog. I tease her with that when I’m feeling secure in myself.

“Then it’s as good as done.” She decided. “I will go and prepare you some herbal drinks.” She almost literally vanished into the night.

Kerrass and I watched her go.

“Cousin Geralt once told me.” Kerrass began. “About what it was like to fight alongside an Elder Vampire.”

“What did he have to say?” I wondered.

“He said that he has never felt so pointless in all his life.” He rubbed his hands together with a nasty smile. “Looking forward to it though.”

I nodded, “I need to go and tell the others the plan then.” I told him.

“Wait.” He said. “First of all, thank you.”

“What for?”

“It is rare that I get to fight some real villains. I’m going to enjoy this. But some practical things.”

“Ok.”

“Despite all the complicated words, your plan is that you distract everyone while Ariadne and I sneak in the back and rescue the hostages right?”

“Yeah.”

“No Knights to come with us?”

“Can they move stealthily or will they yell “Stand and fight Villain,” at the first opportunity?”

“Fair.”

We grinned at the image.

“There are still going to be a lot of people in there though.”

I nodded. “If we take all of the Knights down there to watch the duel, Raoul will think that we are threatening to overwhelm him and get into the manor that way. He will bring many of the men out as reinforcements.”

Kerrass nodded, pulling on his lower lip.

“We’re going to have to go in there hard and fast.” He said. “And when Ariadne starts doing her Vampire thing, there is going to be screaming and shouting.”

“Yep.” I said. “But I think I know a way to make enough noise to drown it out.”

Ariadne came back with a small packet. “Add that to a hot drink.” She said as she handed it to me. “We had better get going.”

Kerrass nodded. “There is no time like the present. We will wait until we hear the cheering start to make our move.”

“What’s the signal to say that we have the hostages?” Kerrass wondered.

“I dunno.” I said. “We’re clear?”

Kerrass nodded. Ariadne kissed me fiercely and the pair of them headed down the hill.

-

Silence had fallen now, the only sound that could be heard was Raoul screaming. I thought it was a little overblown to be honest. Every man has been hit in the balls before. It hurts, Flame knows that it hurts. But sooner or later, the knowledge that you are vulnerable overcomes the knowledge of the pain and you force yourself to get over it.

I crouched next to his head and tugged at his helmet.

“You know something.” I told him as he whimpered and feebly tried to protest what I was doing. “Here’s a thing that I don’t understand.”

His right hand flailed at me, there was no strength to it though and the blow was feeble, even if the hand did contain a sword. I briefly stopped struggling with his helmet and batted the hand away.

“You are not the first of my enemies to read my work, my books and my travel accounts.” I told him as I went back to work on his helmet.

“You clearly know enough about Jack to be able to fake his presence, but not enough to know the risks involved in invoking his name and appearance.”

I finally got the helmet free and hurled it in the direction of my side before standing up and giving Raoul room to stand.

“You find out about how ill I have been.” I told him as he rose to his feet. “You figure out how I fight, you even go out of your way to test that under safe conditions. You read, but you did not understand.”

Howling in rage, pain and confusion he came at me, sword swinging. I ducked under the blow, but in doing so, I put the pole of the spear in place so that it would strike the inside of his elbow. The arm folded and he did not come far away from smacking himself in the face with the force of his own blow.

One or two of my side even laughed at it.

“You convinced yourself.” I went on. “That you are the better fighter. You told yourself about all the men that you have faced on the tournament field.”

He was advancing more carefully this time, shield first. Sword ready to stab.

“You told yourself that the thing at the party was a duel. You even told yourself that this was a duel.”

I read the lunge in his chest.

“I bet,” I said as I plotted how I was going to counter the coming thrust. “I bet that you and your Knightly friends have even cackled to yourselves…”

The lunge came. I parried, forcing the blade across his body. My right hand let go while my left kept the spear vertical like a staff, rendering him unable to bring the sword back in a backhand slash which is how you counter these moves. I drew my dagger in an underhand grip and rammed it, pommel first into his jaw.

I could probably have killed him then, but I found that I wasn’t done with this one yet.

I was having too much fun and I laughed horribly as blood and bits of teeth exploded from his mouth.

The laughter sounded like it came from someone else.

“I bet,” I went on, grinning like a fool. “I bet you have laughed and wondered about how much I have over inflated my own abilities.”

He was staggering backwards, spitting and whimpering.

“But the thing is.” I told him as I advanced on him, dagger back in it’s sheath, spear held readily. “You have not understood the first thing that I have said, over and over and over again.”

I attacked and he was on the defensive backing up.

“I am not a duellist.” I told him, my voice becoming less conversational and more angry. As I struck out at his face, the pain had made his eyes tear and he jerked back quickly and clumsily. “I did not learn to fight from some fencing master.”

Again, I read the attack and again, I used the spear like a parrying staff rather than a spear, or a quarterstaff. I blocked the incoming strike and lashed out with my right hand. But instead of attacking his body, or his head, I attacked his elbow where his armour had left a gap. A flat handed palm attack on the bottom of the elbow, at right angles to how an elbow is supposed to bend. I did not have enough force to do serious damage, but it would numb and deaden his arm.

He howled again in frustration as well as the pain.

“I did not learn in a safe, padded room with blunted weapons and padded targets. I did not train with men who were afraid to fight back because of who my father was.”

He backed off again, trying to shake some life back into his arm. I didn’t let him recover and went back on the attack.

“I learnt how to fight in the backwoods and back trails of the continent.” I told him, dodging his shield attack and punching him in the nose. Again he staggered and I split my spear into its separate halves.

“I was trained to fight with real weapons.” I told him. “I was going to be facing men that would not take me for ransom. People that would kill me for my boots.”

He attacked again and I parried and blocked, trying to make him overconfident, waiting for the perfect strike.

“In forcing me to duel, you limited me.”

He attacked. I blocked with my left handed weapon, brought my right handed weapon around the other side of the sword so that it was trapped and then I twisted.

It’s a sword breaking technique. Raoul’s weapon was, indeed, too strong for it to break. However, his grip was not as strong and the sword fell from his already nerveless hands.

“But this is a fight, not a duel.” I told him as I fixed my spear, kicking his sword away towards the crowd. He scrabbled for a dagger but his hands weren’t working properly. “I even made sure that when Guillaume came down here to challenge you, that he made sure that he would stay away from the word “duel”.”

I stepped in and spun the but of my spear into the back of his knee, which folded and he fell on his back. I bent and put the spear haft behind his knee, I grabbed his calve and twisted his leg around the spear until there was an audible cracking noise.

Raoul screamed in an agony that I could only imagine.

“Over and over again, it comes up.” I told him as I stood back, watching as he tried and failed to climb to his feet. “It was among the very first things that Kerrass taught me. This is not a dance, it is not a happy collaboration or a stage fight where the objective of the exercise is to hit the other man’s sword as loudly and as flashily as we can.”

He was trying to get to his knees, his weight on the uninjured leg. I stepped forward and kicked him in the chest. Not hard, more a kind of forceful push than a kick.

“This is a fight.” I told him. It was time to end this, so I stamped on his sword wrist as hard as I could and was rewarded with another snapping sound.

He tried to push himself back from me with his one working leg. How he did it I don’t want to know. It must have been agony.

I put my spear point at his throat and he stilled.

“And I was taught how to fight by a hardened killer.” I said.

When I was sure he was done, I let my eyes close for a moment and let the rage fall back and I looked down at the enemy that I had broken.

“Go on,” he hissed through his pain. “Kill me. Finish it.”

I laughed at him. “Flame, but could you be any more of a cliche?”

And I was back. I felt like myself again. The scary killer that Kerrass had taught me to be had gone again, promising me that he would be there if I needed him.

Raoul forced a laugh. “You don’t have what it takes.”

I laughed again and shook my head. “Killing you is the easy option.” I told him. “It would be for a lesser man. Me?”

I spat, there was an acid taste in my mouth that I didn’t like. “I’ll save you for the headsman Raoul.”

He groaned in despair before raising his voice.

“KILL THEM ALL.” He screamed.

One of the earliest lessons that I was ever taught by Kerrass was that if someone shouts something like that. Or if they shout “Duck” or if there is a warning shout of any kind. The worst possible thing that you can do is to take the time to stop where you are and look for the source of the problem.

In this case, I knew that there were enemies watching. I knew that they had crossbows and I knew that many of those crossbows would be pointing at my face.

So I let my legs collapse under me and rolled away, hoping that those bolts and arrows that would be coming would be aimed high in an effort to avoid shooting their fallen master who was on the ground next to me.

They say that you don’t hear the bowstring that kills you. I always wonder how they know that, so it was with some relief that I listened to the strange buzzing noise of the arrows and bolts passing over my head with a not small amount of relief before leaping to my feet to face what was coming next.

I was not disappointed to see the mercenaries and guards that were running towards me, faces twisted in fear and hate, screaming their battle cries as they charged forward.

I had time to see all of that and think that it was all over, I had no idea where my side was or how far away they were. But it was clear that I was too tired to just turn and run. I felt for the anger and the warrior within me and I leapt to face the man that was running at me first in an effort to get his first kill in.

Neither of us made it.

Of all people, Gregoire was there, swinging his absurdly huge sword in a murderous arc that chopped that first fighter in half at the waist. He had time to scream in horror at what happened to him before he died.

I didn’t see much more as an armoured gauntlet landed on my shoulder and hauled me back and behind a large shield. I stumbled and fell with it, still keeping hold of my spear as I desperately scrambled to my feet and looked around. I saw something, for the first time, that I understand is becoming a large part of the folklore of Toussaint.

I saw Gregoire and Guillaume fighting side by side for the first time.

Gregoire was a force of nature. The closest that I can say is that it was like the Skelligan Sergeant that fought with Sir Rickard. Enough so that I have resolved to introduce the two men the first time I get the chance. But where the Sergeant had been like the fury of the storm, almost seeming to dance in a leisurely way that resulted in people’s limbs and heads and guts being separated from the rest of them. Gregoire was precision, married to an awesome power that was… chilling.

He didn’t miss a strike that he aimed for and every strike carried out its purpose. Whether killing a person, separating a man from his weapon or clubbing them unconscious, men fell around him like wheat falling around a farmer that knows how to use a scythe.

And the sheer power of the man. I saw one man, rather smugly, trying to turn aside the huge sword with a shield and looking confused as his greatest efforts were ignored by the huge Knight. The man seemed genuinely surprised and offended as Gregoire’s blade buried itself in his chest.

And every strike of Gregoire’s was straight out of the fighting manual. It was a flawless, as far as I could tell, technical display.

Guillaume was fighting differently than he had when I had seen him face Jack. He had armed himself with a shield and his purpose seemed to be to keep me safe. So he didn’t get into the thick of things as much as Gregoire did. Instead, those men that tried to circle the huge Knight found themselves facing Guillaume and his laughter.

Yes, Guillaume laughs when he fights. Not the mad cackling of the berserker or the madman. This was the booming laughter of a man having the time of his life. This was the laughter of a man that was fulfilling his life and his soul’s purpose.

He later told me that he was born to do this kind of thing. There was an enemy that was wrong, that was evil. And here he was, a Knight of the realm and his task was to defeat them. And what kind of man would he be if he didn’t enjoy his work.

The forces of the Knights of Francesca were outnumbered somewhere north of three to one in that initial foray. There were around twenty five Knights and Guards as part of the party being attacked by eighty, ninety odd mercenaries and manor guardsmen.

Raoul’s men never stood a chance. The Knights were angry. It was a moment that I experienced with a thrill that was… unsettling. I wonder if this is how the mob feels when they burn someone at the stake. I hope not. I hope that this feeling was more righteous than that kind of hideous fervour.

I leapt to stand next to Guillaume and defended his right hand side as his shield arm was doing more than enough work to defend his left. He yelled something at me, probably ordering me to get back, but I ignored it, not that I heard it properly anyway.

One attacker came in, the man had a heavy, flanged, nasty looking mace and looked to be bringing it down on Guillaume’s head. I stepped in and drove my spear into his gut. I have no idea if I killed him or not, he staggered away and into the general melee. Either trying to find somewhere quiet to die, or to find an easier kill.

Another man had hurled himself under Guillaume’s shield and had grabbed hold of the knight’s back leg. He had drawn a dagger from somewhere and was trying to work it into one of the joints in Guillaume’s armour. Guillaume was staggering. Not by much but if the bad guys had been more coordinated, then a man could have tried to use his weight to force Guillaume off his feet.

I stepped forward, put my foot on his chest, drew my boot knife and stabbed down. Blood fountained, warming my hands even through the gloves.

Guillaume freed his leg and moved on as I turned to face my next opponent.

I got another of those combat flashbacks. Again, to the throne-room in Angraal.

That death in Angraal is one that sticks with me. I have tried to identify why and I truly don’t know the answer, I had killed men before and after so there should be no reason why that particular killing should stand out. Maybe it was the despair on his face as he ran forward in an effort to try and kill me.

This time would be different though, instead of choosing his throat and thrusting the blade of my spear in to be answered with a fountain of blood, instead I struck in the way that I wished I had struck back then. I reversed the spear and rammed the but of the spear into his nose. He fell backwards, dropping his sword and clutching his hand to his face. There was blood.

Like the fighter in Angraal, this man would almost certainly be executed for treason. But at least I would not be the one that killed him.

A cold feeling washed over me. Looking back, I had only started my journey back from the fury that had engulfed me when I had fought Raoul. Not killing that other soldier was an extra shock that brought me back to myself. I shivered.

I took the next attacker out with a cut on the outside of an unprotected thigh. The opposite side from the artery. He went down, but he would survive. By the time I got to the next attacker the pressure was already falling off us.

And it was all over. Just like that it was all over.

Guillaume took a cloth from the inside of his chestplate and cleaned his sword.

“So,” He said. “How was your first battle?”

“Was that a battle?” I wondered.

“History has claimed that less than that was a battle.” Guillaume said. “And I wasn’t actually asking you.”

“It was…” Gregoire considered the question. “I don’t know. I didn’t enjoy it. But it was not awful.”

I gaped at the big man.

“What?” He demanded. “I’ve fought bandits, seven or eight at a time. But not this many and not with a force on my side. This was my first battle and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” He sniffed.

“You have already fought in several battles according to your works.” Guillaume told me. “Larger, and smaller than this one.”

“The thing with the Nilfgaardian ships.” Gregoire was cleaning his own weapon now.

“And the monsters on the beach.” Guillaume added. “There are probably others and…”

“Lord Frederick?” One of the younger guards had appeared, he was pale and shaking a little. “The Knight Commander’s compliments, My Lord. But you are to attend upon her at the entrance to the Manor house.”

“Compliments huh?” I wondered. A joke I always make when someone tells me that.

“Yes My Lord. She was most sincere.”

“I bet she was.” Guillaume clapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go and see what she has to say for herself.”

We had taken a lot of prisoners and the guards were rounding them up as we picked our way around the remaining detritus. Swords, maces, clubs and axes were abandoned. There were a small number of bodies, the injuries of which were awful. But what wounded there were, seemed to be of the walking wounded variety. People were either fine or had died pretty quickly.

We found Syanna next to the gate. She looked awful. There was not a speck of blood on her armour and I would later find out that she had not drawn her weapon at all in the fight. She was pale, drawn and for a good looking woman, she looked absolutely dreadful.

There was a slamming noise coming from the gate that was still barred. Another nearby Knight was still trying to report.

“Forty Seven prisoners.” He was telling her. “Including Sir Raoul as well as Captain Durand of the Manor Guard and the leader of the mercenaries, Red Raffic who is protesting his treatment.”

Syanna was listening, or at least trying to.

“Sir Raoul?” She wondered aloud as she watched the gate, she spoke absently, remotely, automatically.

“His leg is broken along with a couple of fingers. He is protesting that…”

There was a loud bang that came from the gate.

“He is protesting that…”

Syanna waved the other man to silence as Kerrass opened the gates from within.

He was smiling.

Syanna stormed forward with a murderous look on her face. “WHERE IS…?”

Guillaume stepped forward and caught her, relatively gently all things considered.

Kerrass had his arms up in protection. “He’s fine.” He said. “They’re all fine. There were…”

Syanna groaned and staggered until she was leaning against the wall of the gate house where she stood with her head bowed for a moment while she shook.

“There were eight guards still in here.” Kerrass carried on. “Also some servants who seemed more able to carry…” I went to move past him but he caught my arm and stopped me.

“It’s not pretty Freddie.” He told me. “Be gentle.”

“Where is she?” I wondered.

“In the house next door.” He told me. “Doing her best to clean up and…”

I was moving past him, through the gate and into the courtyard where I stopped as though Poleaxed.

“Holy Flame.” I whispered.

This is a message for all those people that, apparently, want to follow in my footsteps and travel the pathways and the byways of the continent in order to find wrongs to right and bad guys to slay.

If you are a remotely sensitive soul then my best piece of advice is simply, don’t. Don’t do that. It will not end well and one of the reasons for that was this.

You will see scenes of horror.

If you refuse to follow that first piece of advice, then I have something else to say on this exact subject. The thing about it is that you need to really see the horror. You have to see it. This is part of what the world is about. Too often, people walk past scenes of horror and don’t want to do anything about it. They walk past it and tell themselves something about choosing their battles, that this problem isn’t going to make them famous. That this is not a battle worth fighting or it’s going to get into trouble.

The truth is that there are atrocities happening all over the continent all the time. There are still noblemen that think it’s alright to descend on a farm, take the food, rape the women and beat the men when they have the temerity to object. There are still villages that are raised by bandit gangs. There are still monsters that will do this kind of slaughter to small villages in out of the way places.

They will not make you famous, few people will thank you and the best that you can hope for is a few extra scars in order to impress the members of the opposite sex that you are interested in. Because the people that you have saved are the ones that didn’t know that they were at risk.

So you have to see it. You have to look and take it in. You mind won’t want you too. You will want to protect yourself from all of that horror. You will want to turn away, to walk away and blank it all from your mind. Don’t do that. Don’t do it. You need to see the consequences of your actions. You need to see what you did, or what was allowed to happen because people like you, people like us stood by and did nothing.

Or in this case. Allowed others to do our fighting for us.

So let me give you a piece of advice and a bit of an explanation as to what I found was the best way to deal with this. Don’t try and take it all in at the same time, you will fail. Start small, find something that you can fix on and take in the detail, then take in the next detail and the next and the next until it all starts to fit together in your head as a whole image. It’s hard, don’t get me wrong. It really is hard.

And it should be.

In this case, I saw a man who had obviously been running towards the gate first. Something had ripped out his back and he had fallen, he was folded forwards at an unnatural angle until you remember that it was his spine that had been torn to pieces and he had folded around his stomach when he fell. He had a sword in his hand while the scraps of his kidneys and his liver as well as the various bits of his intestinal tract had fallen out of the gaping wound, making more room for him to be able to fold in half.

“He was running towards the gate.” Kerrass told me. “To warn the people outside that there were attackers inside the manor.”

I nodded.

“I wouldn’t have caught him.” He finished. “He had been sent by that one over there.”

There was another man who had been torn in two. There is a subtle difference between being cut in two and being torn in two but it is hard to really articulate what that difference is. Someone, or something, had picked him up and had torn him in half in the same way that a man might tear a piece of paper. The only thing that kept him together was a long sausage of bowel.

I could see his lungs.

“He was a brave man.” Kerrass said. “He turned to face us after ordering the other man to sound the warning. He knew he was dead.”

Behind them from where I was standing were more bodies but that was where it became more difficult to tell the various pieces apart and there looked to be so much blood.

One of those details that caught my eye. On top of a nearby shed that, I think, had been used to house fodder for visiting horses, was a foot and lower leg from where it had been torn off somewhere below the knee. You could see the bone sticking out the top of the boot. It had landed perfectly on the sole of the boot and then stayed there. My mind rebelled when I realised that I was trying to figure out how it got there and how it managed to land so perfectly.

“I could not have done it without her.” Kerrass said. “They were good at what they did, Raoul’s veterans, old family guards whose loyalty was to the Lord and the Manor, no matter the kind of man that was currently in charge. They would have killed those hostages if it had just been me. There was no way that I could have stopped them if it had just been me sneaking over the walls. No way at all.”

I nodded.

“I know.” I told him. “Flame, but I told her to do this. I asked her… This is on me, not on her.”

“Be gentle with her Freddie. And when this is over, be a good husband to her. Otherwise…” He gestured at the courtyard in an effort to make a joke. “I am not sure that they will find all of your body.”

“How did it go?” I wondered.

“I have never felt more useless in a fight.” He told me. “I didn’t even need to clean my sword. I had to parry one strike while she killed the other man. One strike against eight men.”

I decided that I had taken in everything that I needed to take in and turned away to see that Ariadne had been standing in a doorway watching me. Other Knights were coming into the courtyard now and taking in the sight.

I took a deep breath and went to her.

She was still and clean. Strangely still in fact, still enough that I looked again.

She was wearing an illusion.

“This one.” She said, “This massacre I did.”

It took me a moment to realise what she was talking about. Then I remembered a village outside of Angraal and some words that I said in haste.

I nodded to myself and adjusted what I was going to say.

“I want it known.” I said in a loud voice so that others could hear me. “That were we not in a public place, and had we already said our marriage vows before a priest so that all could know that you were my wife and that I love you. I would kiss you most fervently.”

The illusion did not move.

“I would, in fact, take you in my arms and take you away from this place where I would show my gratitude in a proper and fitting way for the service that you have done me, and these others today.”

The Knights and guards were gathering around us.

“However, I can only kneel at your feet.” I did so, “I can only kneel and thank you for what you have done. There is no doubt in my mind, nor should there be in anyone else’s, that you have saved many innocent lives in performing a duty that no other could have done.”

I bowed my head, I was playing my part. The majority of the Knights and the guards had not known what Ariadne’s part had been in this little drama. And so I was telling them in a form that they would appreciate.

“I can only beg for your hand so that I might grasp it in gratitude.” I told her.

“I’m covered in blood Freddie.” She whispered. “And worse.”

“So am I.” I told her.

The illusion tentatively held out its hand. I took a hold, I would have kissed it, but I didn’t want to make her feel more uncomfortable. Guillaume, I think it was Guillaume, but I can’t be certain, shouted out a command and there was a crash. It was a dozen Knights kneeling in salute swords drawn, blades down and hands on hilts.

I felt Ariadne tremble through her hand.

“I add my words of thanks.” Guillaume said formally.

“And I.” Syanna finally said as she walked up. “And fuck all this formality.” She had recovered from her fit of relief and stalked up to Ariadne and threw her arms around the astonished Vampire.

The illusion wavered for a moment, but it had stood up to more than this.

“Now where the fuck is he?” Syanna demanded.

There was a general ripple of laughter from the other Knights and guardsmen.

I felt a small hand creep into mine. “Thank you Freddie.” Ariadne whispered. “I was so scared.”

I felt a sudden sense of mischief. “Do you wanna know what I actually wanted to do?”

She snickered. “Come on,” She pulled me in the direction that the crowd moved. “I want to see this.”

Syanna was stalking towards the main building where a beleaguered looking Captain De La Tour had emerged.

He looked awful.

That he had been beaten was plain, he was going to have a huge black eye, his lip was split and his left arm was in a temporary sling. The ends of his fingers looked blackened. He looked as though he had aged ten years in the time since I had known him. It is worth remembering that Captain De La Tour is not a small man, broad shouldered and impressively built.

He was tired, he had sunk in on himself somehow. Pale, dark shadows under his eyes.

And Syanna walked up and punched him in the face. And I mean really hard as well.

How he managed to keep his feet under him is one of those mysteries that I will never manage. I can only guess at how lucky he was that Syanna had taken her gauntlets off.

“What the hell was…?”

“You stand there looking at me with that face.” Syanna snarled. “How dare you? How dare you come here and let that unspeakable moron?...”

She shook her head.

“You stand there as if nothing has…. We have fought, men have died. Blood has been shed and you just stand there with your poor arm in a sling. Who are you? The Captain of the guard or a fucking?...”

She shook her head again.

At first it was funny. At first, but then it became clear that this was a woman on the edge of… I dunno, hysteria or something.

“You had to go and get yourself caught didn’t you.” She was bellowing. “You had to get caught and then you had to allow yourself to be a hostage, not caring about who or what might have been happening. You walked into an ambush like some kind of stupid fucking amateur. Like a new Knight or warrior except you’re supposed to fucking know better. You’re the one who teaches others that…”

She ran out of words and hit him again. And again, and again. Now with less force, less direction and with open hands.

“I gave you up for dead. I was going to come over those walls and Raoul was going to be standing there with you in front of him and a Knife at your throat and he was going to cut it when he was sure that I could see. I was going to have to watch you die and…”

She shook her head for a moment before she hit him again, and again.

Some of the Knights were now finding other things to look at or do as Syanna lost control of herself. I would argue that she had the right to, but still…

She was still hitting him, the blows were coming with less force and precision now as the relief that he could stand there and be hit was overcoming her anger.

But it seems that the fiery temper of the ducal family will not be put down.

“How could you have gotten caught?” She screamed and carried on. “How could you have let that happen? How could you have been so blind until…”

Then it was Damien’s turn to lose his temper. And he did so in a way that I could not have guessed at.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her.

As ways to stop her in mid tirade go, it was an effective one. Not a very romantic gesture, more the pushing of lips together, but she staggered with it as though he really had hit her. She looked around the courtyard in horror at all of us that were watching, some of us trying to stifle the spontaneous cheer that had nearly erupted. The venom in Syanna’s eyes suggests that if she caught any of us watching then she would find us all new duties. Something that would involve touching human excrement with our hands.

But Damien had not let her go.

“I heard that he was trying to bargain with our lives.” He said. “He took great delight in telling us that that was what he was going to do.”

Syanna said nothing. Just stared at the Captain of the guard.

“I told him.” He said. “I told him that you wouldn’t give into his demands. I told him that you would not negotiate and that I was comfortable with the fact that I would lose my life for the duchy. He laughed. He told me that he knew how you felt and that, as you were a weak woman, you would give in to your heart’s desire and negotiate for our lives. I told him that he could go and fuck himself.”

Syanna nodded.

“Did you really refuse to…” He swallowed, his throat thick with emotion. “Were you really going to refuse to negotiate for our lives? Were you going to let us die?”

“Yes.” Syanna admitted in a small voice.

“Including mine?”

“Yes.” She answered, a little more forcefully. “We do not negotiate with hostage takers and blackmailers. We were all agreed when we…”

He kissed her again, just quickly.

“Proud to serve,” he said before kissing her yet again. Properly this time. And she let her hands reach up and hold the man that she had come to love since beginning her redemption.

It must have hurt his injured arm but he didn’t seem to mind.

This time we did cheer, I don’t think we could have held it back if we tried.

When they finally pulled apart, Damien was grinning like the cat that has realised that the meat is undefended. Syanna had the glassy eyed expression of a person that has come back to the ground after being in heaven for a moment or two.

I have worn that expression myself on more than one occasion. I looked over to find Ariadne watching the newly minted couple and her face was shining, even despite the illusion. I gave her a little shoulder bump and she turned to me and smiled.

Syanna recovered first and turned to her men. “You all have work?” She demanded in a tone that allowed no argument while men, even men like Guillaume and Gregoire hurried to find things that needed doing elsewhere. Syanna turned back to Damien.

“Flowers.” She told him. “I want flowers. Lots of flowers.”

“And you shall have them.” He told her trying to gently pull away but it seemed that now that she had held him, she wasn’t going to let go.

“And I want to be properly courted.” She went on. “There are going to be picnics, walks by the river, fancy meals in fancy places where we are both going to wait for the other to start eating so that we know which cutlery we’re supposed to use and which bits of the dish we are actually supposed to eat.”

“And I will agree to all of that but…”

“Poetry Damien.” She snarled. “I want troubadours outside my window singing my praises and I want lines by your own hand to declare my beauty. I’m going to wear dresses and carry parasols. You are going to wear shiny armour that you can see your face in. We’re going to need chaperones and intermediaries and…”

“Syanna…” He tried. I could see the war in his face. He had given in, he had allowed himself to enjoy what was happening and allowed himself to love the woman… Or at least, to admit that he might be open to such a thing, which might have been closer to the truth. He had decided to entertain the possibility and he was clearly looking forwaard to the process.

But there were other things on his mind.

“There is something that you need to see.” He told her before turning to me. “You too Lord Fr… Freddie. You need to see this.”

“It was Freddie’s plan.” Syanna wasn’t being distracted yet. “It was Freddie that came up with the scheme to make sure that…”

“And I am grateful.” He told her. “And I will shake your hand Lord Frederick. Do not think that I am anything less than grateful for the chance at life that you have given me. But I have found something that… I don’t know what to make of it. Madame La Comtesse? Witcher? You come too please.”

The seriousness of his tone had finally gotten through to Syanna and she cast aside the giddiness that she had been feeling in the wake of Damien’s survival and the tentative declaration of romance. She straightened her armour, adjusted her sword and shouted a few orders. Disposition of the prisoners. Ordering others to “police the bodies” and things of that order.

For the record, I might know many things. But I have no idea why that is the phrase. I have no idea why people say “police the bodies”. One of those little mysteries that I keep meaning to look into but always get distracted by other issues.

We saw the prisoners being brought into the courtyard. They had made some of them carry the wounded including Sir Raoul who was loudly complaining about the fact that I had cheated. That I had not fought the duel properly and words to that effect. I got the feeling that no-one was listening to him anyway and even if they were, I was so… utterly and provably in the right that there was nothing that anyone could do about the matter.

Damien watched as Syanna saw to the disposition of everyone involved. He had an odd expression on his face, a combination of pride, affection, impatience and determination. If I had to guess, I rather thought that Syanna might live to regret her determination to have as romantic a courtship as she had declared. Now that he had made his choice, I wondered if Raoul might not surprise everyone involved.

He also had other places to be and was all but dancing from foot to foot in dismay at the delay.

“There are several buildings.” He told us as he led us into the Manor house. “And like all of the houses from this particular period in Toussaint history, the main manor is not one house but rather several different buildings that have been joined together with passageways and the like. This way.”

The entrance hall to the Manor house was a nondescript thing. It was, not badly put together. The art was tasteful, the decor was not unpleasant and the stands of armour and the display cases for the weapons were well kept, clean and entirely too believable that if someone really wanted to, they could stride to one of those displays, take down a weapon and demand satisfaction there and then.

The feeling I got was not that it was a bad place or that someone had done anything wrong. It was as though it was all there for a purpose other than to be enjoyed. It was a display. A show. I won’t call it a sham because I think there really was some taste here. But that was not what it was for.

It was as though the Manor house was like an old actor, trying to play a young character on stage. Hiding their wrinkles with too much makeup and badly made costumes. A consumptive heroine being played by an old fat man because he was the only one who could remember the lines.

But all of that was unfair to the building. It could have been a nice old place really. A rambling, old lodge where people could have been very happy here. It would have been easy to imagine children running around the halls, playing silly games, waging wars against monsters that only they could see.

But instead, there was this… mask of respectability.

“We didn’t get that far in before they ambushed us.” Damien was telling us the story about how his group got captured. “I think they knew that we were coming.”

“An informant?” Syanna wondered having managed to get her head back in the game a little although she kept reaching out towards Damien before catching the gesture and pulling herself back from the brink.

“I don’t think so.” Damien told her. “I think that he saw through the duel gambit. Congratulations by the way Witcher. I didn’t think Alain could be beaten with a blade.”

“He wasn’t.” Kerrass told him. “I lost. I am sure there are plenty of people that will tell you the full story.”

“Heh.” Damien laughed at a thought. “I look forward to it. But we got here and we were ambushed so easily that it was more than a little bit off putting. We were taken into the cells underneath the house where they beat us. Raoul didn’t want us killed as he wanted us to be healthy and recognisable enough to be kept against your good behaviour. He really was convinced that you would negotiate for our safety.”

“What was his strategy?” Syanna wondered.

“I have no idea.” Damien said. “It seemed to be a delaying one. He would regularly tell his people that they only needed to hold for a little while and that everything was going to be alright.”

We were all nodding.

“But anyway.” Damien went on, leading us through some corridors into what could only have been the servants quarters. “We were all kneeling there, bound and manacled and things when we heard some screaming. You all know the kind, the sort that is cut off in a bubbly, unpleasant, choked off kind of way. And the door opens. Our jailors have enough time to get half a sword out, register the Witcher standing in the doorway before a red mist enters the room, there are some flashes and shadows in the smoke, that were a little distressing to those of us that were in Beauclair the night of the Long Fangs… Forgive me for saying so Milady.”

He sketched a bow towards Ariadne who accepted it with a nod.

“And the guard's head came off. The second guard lost his throat just as quickly and then the smoke moved on.”

Damien’s voice shook a little as he said that.

The servant’s area was a little bit, more of the same as the rest of the manor house. It was well laid out, organised and the like. But it seemed almost too clean. As though it hadn’t really been used. As though it was here in case it was ever needed, but then it didn’t get used that often.

Damien led us through a door and down a flight of stairs.

“So the Witcher came in and freed us with the keys taken from the dead guards and told us that we were rescued. That he had to go and give a signal that we were safe and then ran after the smoke. We started to look around and that was when we found it.”

We were in some cellars now. It being Toussaint, there were shelves everywhere that had been constructed in order to hold bottles and wine casques. What bottles that were there were dusty and the majority of the shelves were empty.

The general air of disuse continued.

“The Cells were down that way.” Damien waved to a door but led us down another corridor where we found another man in his shirt sleeves, standing guard over another door. “In here.” Damien said, pushing the door open with his foot.

It was a store room. Just one of those rooms that everyone has in every house that I’ve ever been in. From the richest castle or palace down to the lowest hovel in the poorest village on the continent. There is always a room, or an area where you just put things that don’t have anywhere else to go. Spare blankets. The broken stool that you keep promising yourself that you’re going to fix. Fishing rods and nets that need mending. Thick blankets in the summer and thin blankets in the winter. Stuff that you need to keep hold of but have nowhere else to put it. Most of the room was in fairly good order but some of the boxes and bundles had been moved aside.

We all shuffled inside to see what the newly released captives had found.

“We saw a foot.” Damien said. “Some of the boxes had obviously been moved aside quite quickly and things had been dumped there. I don’t know why. Maybe some of the captives can tell us what was happening. We thought it might be something that they smuggled but… well… see for yourselves.”

It was the body of a woman. Naked. She was a small woman, shapely and pale of skin although that would have been due to the fact that she had clearly been dead for a couple of days. Blonde haired, nice face. It was a kind face. The kind of face that you could imagine giving out alms to the poor.

When I had last seen that face, she had been greeting me in the line at a party and promising that we would become better acquainted.

It was the face of Madame Duberton.

And she had, very obviously, been dead for a couple of days.

“Hang on,” Syanna said. “Isn’t that..?”

“Yes.” Damien said.

“But isn’t she..?”

Syanna trailed off.

“Very.” Ariadne answered.

I felt the world start to make sense. I cannot describe it in another way. It was as though there were bits missing from my view of the world and suddenly, things fell into place. Like the moment that you realise that you love someone, or the time you decide that you are enjoying yourself.

“I know what happened.” I whispered.

“What?” Syanna demanded sharply.

I realised that I had spoken aloud.

“I know what happened.” I said again, a bit louder. “We need to get back to Beauclair.”

“What? Why?” Damien spluttered.

Kerrass was already running out the door.