“It is true,” I said, “That most curses have been brought upon themselves by the person who is cursed. The problem often lies with the fact that the punishment, by some margin, seems to be more than the crime is worth.”
“It is not a new argument.” Stefan agreed. “The problem with it is that Curses are inflicted by the victims of whatever is going on and the weight of the pain caused by the thoughtless action varies from person to person. In this case, the Schattenmann was disrespected and insulted. We have no reason to believe that the priest’s actions would cause any real harm to the Schattenmann as he, or it is a real monster, creature, or entity. Therefore it is an insult that he has suffered. To us, it would seem to be fairly minor. But to the Schattenmann?”
He shrugged.
“It is why Justice is blind after all,” I said.
“It is supposed to be. Also,” Stefan said. “There are curses that you and Witcher Kerrass have failed at?”
“There are always failures,” I told him. “And I have even tried to have a couple of them published. But the truth is that people don’t want to read about that kind of thing. They want to hear about the heroic Witcher making the world a little better for everyone else. They don’t want to hear that sometimes, the cursed person just needs to be killed in order to put them, and the people around them out of their misery such as with the majority of Werewolves. Or that the solution to curing the curse is too dangerous to be considered or…”
I sighed.
“It is true that we have solved our fair share of nonsense,” I told him. “But sometimes, a swift blade is the quickest way to end a curse.”
Stefan nodded and considered. “Will your friend lend me the silver blade do you think? Steel blades do not work against the magic, but Silver?”
“You can ask him,” I said. “He will not be offended although he is unlikely to lend. He is far more likely to try to perform the deed himself or to wait until after our mission is over. We want to talk to the Schattenmann remember. And offending him by ending his curse might be dangerous.”
Stefan nodded glumly.
“Well, I think we should try and get some rest and I will try again tomorrow.
“You go on,” I said. “I still want to have a bit more of a look around.”
“Dinner at dusk?” Stefan asked.
“Same as always.” I agreed, “have to use the last of the fresh ingredients today otherwise they won’t be usable.”
“Lovely,” Stefan said. “You know, I have been on many missions with larger groups of people, but never have I truly appreciated what was going to happen when it was a small group. The food really does become quite monotonous doesn’t it?”
“You get used to it,” I told him, a little hurt as I thought my cooking had been going quite well.
“How long does that take?” He wondered.
“Well, I’m on year four now. You went to war?”
“We did. Me and my order. We were not at Brenna although young fools, the like of which you can probably imagine, will claim that if we had been there we would have made a difference. But the difference between eating from a commissary tent where there is literally a regiment of men and women who work to cook food for an army, and here where there are just the raw ingredients that we can carry on our backs.”
“It makes a difference.” I agreed.
He went into the stable.
I spent the rest of the afternoon looking around. I didn’t want to go into the houses anymore because, as I say, I felt as though I was intruding on something private. I skirted around the edges of the village, looking in and trying to imagine what it would have looked like as a community, trying to approach my assessment by looking for things that I couldn’t see. Things that weren’t there rather than focusing on what I could see.
I looked for, and couldn’t find a graveyard. Not even earthen mounds covered in grass that would suggest someone is buried without the time to place a proper stone or monument. No fallen wooden sticks or anything. That alone was unusual. People die, accidents happen. But these people had come here and erected several buildings without losing anyone. That said something. I have no idea what it said, but it definitely said something.
I couldn’t find a definite gathering area. Societies need somewhere to gather. Even if it is just a house with a few planks nailed across a pair of boxes, there would always be a place where people could gather and have a drink. There wasn’t one here. Nor could I find a building that looked as though it was imminently going to be converted into one. I suppose that could have been in the second wagon train that had not yet arrived but that suggested that these first people will have led some rather boring lives.
Not to mention that there was no town square that could be identified. No central gathering tree or maypole or any of those things. I guessed that this being a religious village, that such matters would just come together from the church and the mouths of the priest that was in attendance.
The only attraction that I could see to living in this place was that it was genuinely quite peaceful. Now that we had broken out of that treeline and come into the clearing, I felt as though I could breathe. I could see the birds overhead and hear them singing in the trees, contrary to the woodland that we had walked through. The wind blew gently in the tree branches and there was a real sense of peace here.
I found a spot on the edge of the cleared area and sat, trying to imagine the children playing in the fields of grass that were almost certainly going to be turned into farmer’s fenced fields. I imagined dogs barking and cats cleaning themselves.
The rest of the village was much like the things that I have already talked about. There were a couple of store-buildings. A timber yard and a full industry that was constructing thatch for roof-tops. There were doors and roof beams being constructed as well as more than one building that had been built and were standing empty waiting for the newcomers to just move their stuff in.
I found Piotr standing on the edge of town at one point. He was standing, facing the Eastern bank of trees, the one that… presumably, we would all be entering soon. He seemed to be gently vibrating with some kind of… emotion. His jaw was clenched and he was gritting his teeth as he stood there.
I went back to see the priest.
He hadn’t moved and I spent some time trying to talk to him. His refrain hadn’t changed. He still screamed for me to kill him. Demanded help from me in a way that suggested he was trying to use some kind of imagined authority in order to browbeat me into complying. When that didn’t work, he tried to get me to just… go away. To leave and flee and to run away and bring help.
I was trying to talk to him, to see if there was anything going on there that I could engage with and work with. I was pretty sure that I agreed with Stefan as to what the solution to this curse was. This man was tied to this realm by bitterness and anger from him and a sense of anger and justice from the Schattenmann. Essentially, the Priest needed to apologize to the Schattenmann. Forgive the Schattenmann for his supposed crimes and then be properly prostrate before the Schattenmann’s wrath.
I couldn’t see that happening. If the priest was in his right mind, he sounded like the kind of priest that would insist that he was in the right and that his hold calling granted him the right to blah blah blah. So he would demand that the Schattenmann be seen to be in the wrong and that the rest of us needed to back off and back down.
So the other option was to get the Schattenmann to forgive the priest. I couldn’t see that happening either as the Schattenmann would feel that the priest was in the wrong and as such, why should he forgive a man that had insulted and attacked and blah blah blah.
I found that I was kind of on the side of the Schattenmann there. I have been dealing with priests and churchmen like this one for my entire life. The arrogant, superior, and ambitious men believed that they should be allowed to do more, be more than the next priest. That they were the chosen one and wanted to be seen as being… more than the next guy.
They all want to be the next Saint, the next Prophet, or the next Hierophant and labor under the mistaken assumption that to get there, they need to be more famous, more holy, and more… virtuous than the next guy.
In this case, this priest’s arrogance and wilful ignorance had led an entire village to a fate that could not possibly be comprehended.
There was nothing there anyway. He had lost his mind. I would talk to the Schattenmann about him, presuming I got to speak to the Schattenmann in a way that we all comprehended. And I would ask for this priest to be released. To do differently was unfathomable.
That took me until I could see the sun beginning to dip towards the horizon and I went back to the stable to start dinner. I took my time about it. We would not be departing the following day and there would be no rush to get things done. The sudden stop was going to have an effect on us all, as was the occasional scream and bellow from the priest.
The priest’s screams had a strange effect. It started that they were jarring. They had inspired a feeling of dread and horror as we had approached, keeping us awake in the darkness, but as time had gone on, the sounds that he had made had become increasingly monotonous to the point that I was increasingly able to dismiss them from my mind. It took a certain amount of concentration on another task. I couldn’t write or make notes while the priest was carrying on, but I could cook and so I took great delight in taking extra care with the evening meal.
It was Trayka who broke first. She was crouched over her father, caring for his injuries with the odd mix of exasperation and affection that seemed to describe all of her dealings with the old man. She was watching him and it must have been some crisis where he was jerking around and towards wakefulness every time that the priest screamed which was meaning that he kept making her attempts to keep her father calm more difficult.
So after one particularly loud set of begging for us to kill him, Trayka stormed from the stable in her shirtsleeves and trousers. She had a bow, a couple of arrows in her hands and was muttering “Fuck this” as she walked. Kerrass, Stefan, and I exchanged glances with each other before, as one, we all moved to the door.
We had time to see her storm up to the priest, inform him that her Father was trying to sleep and that he would, by the Sun, shut the fuck up or she would do something really unpleasant to him. When the priest begged her to kill him. She did exactly that. Two arrows thundered into the priests’ chest with such force that they literally pinned the hanging priest’s body to the wall of the chapel behind him.
I saw the priest look up at Trayka and smile slightly before his head lolled in what I would otherwise assume to be a classic “I’ve just died” pose.
Trayka turned and walked back towards the stable without looking at the three of us as she passed us. Kerrass and I looked at each other before Kerrass shrugged and went back to the brewing of his potion and I returned to my meal prep, telling Stefan to remind Piotr about the food that I was cooking.
Apparently, Piotr hadn’t moved from where had been standing for most of the day since we had arrived.
We were not a unit of people. Not really. If you gave us another few weeks of traveling and either got rid of Piotr or got him to lighten up, then we might have been able to approach the kind of camaraderie that I was missing from other journeys. Up until now, all we had to bind us together was a kind of mutual disgust with Piotr’s attitude…
I remember a conversation with Svein the hard-hand about people like Piotr. Svein was a soldier and he spent most of his time at sea. But he had an interesting perspective. He said that Pearls are formed when a piece of dust gathers into the oyster shell and irritates the oyster until the piece of dust or dirt is covered in stuff that hardens and forms a pearl. He said that some men act like that as well. They are the irritant in the unit that unites everyone against them so that the unit is formed around that irritant. How everyone comes together on the grounds that the one thing that they all have in common is their dislike of this one figure.
He said that the danger is as to what happens when that figure is removed. Either the unit can shatter, or they will find someone else to hate and the danger of that is that it might be you.
That night though, we gathered to eat. Henrik woke up enough to gulp some food down. He needed something solid in his belly in order to properly take in the medicine anyway and so he ate with the rest of us. He was propped up against one of the pillars in the building and seemed like something approaching his old self, even if he was occasionally drifting in and out of sleep.
We ate, Stefan collected and stacked the bowls while I passed out some of the dried fruit we had and it was then that the hanging priest returned from the dead in order to scream out a plea for aid.
He had been dead for a little over two hours give or take a few minutes.
I sighed. “I guess we’re not going to get much sleep tonight,” I commented.
“We can take it in turns to kill him,” Piotr commented. “It can be done.”
“Strange as it might sound.” Stefan began. “But I am not particularly tired.”
We stared at the small campfire that we had going in the middle of the room. More for light and something for us all to look at more than anything else.
I summoned my courage and turned to Trayka. “I would like to know your story.” I said “I know why Stefan is here. Piotr too despite his own best efforts.”
“Hey,” protested Piotr.
“Kerrass is here because I am paying him and I am here because of scholarly interest.”
Trayka looked at me, her eyes reflecting the last of the sunlight as it sank below the western horizon through the entrance to the stable.
“Ask my father.” She said after a minute before going to turn away.
“I did,” I told her. “He said that it wasn’t his story to tell.”
She made to get up and leave but Henrik, of all people, stopped her. “Tell them.” He said. “They deserve it and they are right, it is fair to do so.”
Trayka sighed and settled down. “Where do I start?” She asked no one in particular.
“Generally at the beginning.” Piotr joked badly. It is an old joke. Piotr was rattled by something and I thought I could see the man he had once been in the eyes of the man sitting across from me.
I still didn’t like him though.
“We are here looking for my brother,” Trayka said as though that answered everything.
“Surely there is more to it than that.” Kerrass prompted.
“Come on Trayka.” Stefan tried for lightness. “We have all told the story and I agree with Friend Coulthard. It is going to be a long night otherwise.
Trayka groaned and gestured for the bottle that Kerrass was drinking from.
“I don’t think it’s all the same thing.” She argued but I could see that we had won the argument. People always want to tell their story sooner or later. It is a strange phenomenon and it has been noticed on several occasions. People want to tell their story, they need to tell their story.
“Piotr, the Witcher, and the scholar want to talk to the Schattenmann. Father wants to walk away from the Schattenmann but is here because he owes it to my brother and me. Stefan wants to destroy the Schattenmann as a ‘last bastion of darkness’.”
Her impression of Stefan was pretty good.
“Not true.” Stefan protested. “I mean… well…”
“Come on.” Trayka teased. Once again, she was reminding me of a cat. Standoffish and haughty to the rest of us up until this point with added snarling and claws. But now she was smiling and playful. And anyone that knows anything about cats will also know that this is when they are at their most dangerous. “Are you honestly telling me that if the chance presents itself, you aren’t going to take a swing at the beast in order to save all these souls?”
“It is a matter of last resort.” Stefan sighed. “It needs to be made to see reason. It cannot hold sway over all these lands in the face of…”
“I cannot help but think.” Kerrass broke in. “That humanity has been saying that about Elven lands since humanity arrived on the continent.”
“Also the dryads of Brokilon,” Trayka said.
Stefan looked as though he had been struck by an unpleasant thought. “This is not the same…”
“Isn’t it?” I wondered with a smile in an effort to blunt the barb I was sending his way. “Speaking as a historian, history rarely agrees on everything. But it is true that there is one thing that is always true, Humanity always wants more and they hide that desire behind religion and requests for the people that we are taking those things from to ‘see reason.”
“That’s not…” Stefan frowned.
“You are a clever man Stefan,” Kerrass said. “Who sent you on the mission? If it was your Abbott, then who was visiting with the abbot beforehand, and would they possibly have logging interests in the local area? Interests that would have been helped along with a donation to the abbey’s coffers?”
Stefan opened and closed his mouth a few times before frowning.
“However.” Kerrass turned to Trayka with a smile. “I notice that you still have not told us your story Trayka. It was an artful dodge but it was not unnoticed.”
Trayka nodded unhappily.
“My brother is…” She looked over at her father who nodded unhappily. “My brother is the best of us.”
(Freddie: The following is a version of Trayka’s story. It is not accurate to exactly what was said that night and it is true to say that it is more condensed than what was said. The reasons for that are severalfold. Most commonly is because we were not that good an audience for her. We would interject, make jokes and tease each other. I know that this frustrated Kerrass but I actually quite liked it, it left me feeling as though we were bonding as a group a little bit.
Another reason that we made jokes and teased is that Trayka was nervous. Although I do think that she wanted to tell us all her story, she was not comfortable with the public speaking that was happening as part of that. So the teasing and the jokes helped her along and diffused the tensions. So this is as close to what she said in a linear way as I can manage. There were also factors of dialect and slang that have been replaced with words that we might use. Not ideal from a historical standpoint but it’s the best I could do.)
My brother is the best of us.
I am an ugly, anti-social bitch that people only ever want for my skills or because I happen to enjoy fucking. My Father is an equally ugly drunk that rarely, if ever, gives a shit about anyone other than himself.
But my brother?
Everything that he ever had that I didn’t, he deserves the lot. Where I am… average height, he was tall and broad-shouldered. Where I am… charitably, described as “comely” he was beautiful on the eye. Where I am in this shape because my work requires lots of physical exercise, he would put on muscle mass easily. Where I pick fights and avoid the company of people, he… I’m sure you get the idea.
In all ways other than the courage of his convictions and the love that he showed for his family… Where I was my Father’s daughter, he is our Mother’s son.
I should explain that.
My mother was a beautiful woman. I don’t know who she was before or where she came from… Lots of theories have been suggested about her including that she was some Lord’s bastard daughter. Some product of magic or had some kind of Elven blood in her veins… I don’t know. I don’t remember her parents and there weren’t any that tried to help Father after she was gone, so they were either already dead or had left the village where I was born.
Father will tell you that the people of our village tend towards the darker skin, darker hair, and light, blue-green eyes. We tend to be shortish and round of figure. If I stopped training with my bow and running around the woods and chasing men through the night, I would soon blow up to the proportions of a melon. But my mother was tall. She was straight-backed with long blond hair.
Her eyes were blue and were said to be able to stare into a man’s soul. I can see where the assumptions regarding her potentially noble blood might come from in that she was described as having high cheekbones, a narrow nose, and a certain attitude where she seemed to glide through the village.
To my continuing astonishment, my loathing of my mother is a rare thing. The people of my village loved her and insist on telling me stories about how wonderful she was. Someone like that in a working village could expect to marry the most handsome man in the village and never have to work. But she got her hands as mucky as everyone else according to those people that knew her. She would wield a shovel to help dig an outhouse pit. She would help deliver children, make dinners, peel vegetables and do all the work that a woman of the village was expected to do.
(Freddie: Trayka spat off to one side when she said that. It looked like an automatic response and reaction. Like my making the sign of the flame to ward off evil. Even though I know that such a thing doesn’t actually work.)
According to those anecdotes, everyone loved her and there were suitors beating down her door to get at her, but she would always laugh and turn them down and if there was any resentment towards her, it was that she seemed to be a little bit dismissive towards those men that professed their love and affection for her.
Father was older than her. He had already been married once and she had died in childbirth of their firstborn. A girl who didn’t survive the winter. Father is and was a woodsman and after his wife’s death, he turned to drink. His friend is, or was, the brewer of the village and Father never found it difficult to get his hands on some ale or something stronger.
According to village legend, Father vomited at mother’s feet, but instead of the usual pity or disgust that people would normally display in the face of Father’s drunkenness, she helped him home, helped him clean up, and essentially put him to bed.
Apparently, he sobered up that day. Began to recover his standing in the village and reclaimed his standing as the pillar of the community. Everyone was astonished when he proposed marriage to our mother and even more astonished when she said yes.
I have heard the story many times. He went to her with a bunch of flowers in his hands, his beard was closely shaven, he was freshly bathed and carefully groomed. His clothes were clean and unstained. He got down on one knee and offered her the flowers. He has never told me what he said to her but according to people that saw it, she listened, considered for a moment before nodding.
She was not as overjoyed as you might expect a woman to be after being asked to marry the love of her life. She laughed when he picked her up and spun her around and she embraced him readily, accepted his kisses without complaint and there was never any challenge to suggest that my brother and I are anything other than our Father’s children. Not even the rumour of infidelity. Which is rare enough to be almost astonishing.
Within a year of their marriage which was, as far as anyone has ever told me, a happy one, I was born. My mother will have been maybe nineteen or twenty. Five years after this, my little brother was born and I hated him on sight.
It’s true, I did. I really did. He was loud and perfect and… everyone was paying attention to him and I didn’t… I didn’t understand it.
Two years later a nobleman came through our village. He was tall, handsome, and had a group of friends with him. He was hunting something and stopped to water their horses and have something to eat before they rode on. As I say, I only have this information from the other villagers. The village was concerned. A roving band of noblemen does not often bode well for the continued survival of the village or the virtue of the women. But these men were courteous.
They paid for some food, made no demands or anything. They were just passing through.
And then mother went to get water from the well.
According to the people that were there, the lead noble looked at her, said something, and simply held out his hand in order to help her onto his horse. She took it and their party rode off into the rest of the day.
I never found out what happened to her.
Do I care? I used to. I used to make up stories to say that she was kidnapped or she had been taken and that this noble was her long-lost brother or something. That she had forgotten who she was or what was going on until she saw someone that she recognized. I have no idea.
The truth is probably something much more boring. I remember ours being a mostly happy home but we were never rich. The village was well built and Father’s skills were only rarely needed and we made more money when my Father would hunt. I think that she married Father because he wasn’t as brutal in his courtship of her. I think she saw lust in the eyes of the younger men of the village and saw affection and respect in Father’s eyes. But I don’t think she loved him. Not really. I think there was affection there, but not love. And I think a young, handsome man with the offer of a better life. A woman who saw her youth and her beauty beginning to drift away… I don’t know.
I used to hate her. I still do sometimes. But other times, when I particularly hate myself, I wonder what I would do in her situation. The offer of a better life with a nobleman. The opportunity to eat better food, sleep in soft beds and wear better clothes. Even if it did mean having to have sex with someone that I might not necessarily like. What would I do? What WILL I do when my eyesight starts to fail and my hands start to shake?
I have decided that I will no longer care. I’m not sure I would recognize her if I saw her anyway. I certainly have no idea where she is.
(Freddie’s note: Kerrass and I have suggested the theory that given the rough, geographical location in the world. It is more than likely that Trayka’s mother was either a former citizen of Sleeping Beauty’s realm where the appearance and character of the people that lived there was still dictated by the romantic dreams of a sleeping princess. Or that the illegitimate child theory was an accurate one. And that she was a daughter or granddaughter of one of Sleeping Beauty’s children from when she was still asleep. That would certainly match up with the physical description of the lady in question. There is little desire to look however and I am left with the feeling that this is one stone that is better off not being turned over.)
After she left, our lives kind of fell apart. Father despaired as, for all intents and purposes, he really did love his wife, my mother, and now she had left him. So he turned back to the bottle, leaving me and my brother to all but fend for ourselves.
I was seven. He was two and he had little memory of our mother when he was taken from us.
It was clear that Father wasn’t able to properly take care of us. There were no Aunts and Uncles on my mother’s side that we knew of to do any taking care of things and My Father was the youngest of three, all of which had moved away. The village mucked in and did their best, but it soon became clear that they just expected Father to get over things and pick up the slack. He was the one that was guilty of neglect and that was that.
I remember it distinctly. I had stolen a loaf of bread from a neighbour for my brother to eat on the grounds that he wept less when there was food to eat. The neighbour had complained and had expected Father to give me a thrashing. But Father had simply wept in the face of his neighbour’s complaint and opened another flask of moonshine, prompting the neighbour to leave in disgust.
I remember looking down at my Father, vomit staining his shirt as he lay before the hearth, tears running down his face. Then I looked at my brother who was sucking on the remaining heel of the bread. I remember being angry because my brother, all of two years old, had not left me any of the bread to eat.
Yes, it’s funny now, but I remember being so angry with him.
Then the logic of the fact that he was only two and I was seven hit me in the face and I turned to look at my Father and my hate passed over to him. People often criticise me and tell me that I can’t possibly know what it’s like or how my Father was feeling as I have never really been in love and as such, I cannot know what it is like to know what it was like to have my heartbroken.
Those people are correct. I have never been in love, or at least, I don’t think so. But I do know that I would not have succumbed to the amount of self-loathing and… whatever it was that was happening to my Father.
I remember it distinctly. I looked down at my brother, picked him up and put him to bed. I found where the milk was stored and took him some. I remember it so clearly. I was seven and I was looking down at my little brother and I remember saying to myself. “You and me brother. You and me from now until the end of the world”.
After that, I sat down and thought about what I would need to do.
I became the Father and the Mother of the house. I got the locals to teach me how to fish and how to catch small animals. I was not yet strong enough to pull the bow but I practised with my slingshot until I could bring down birds for pies.
I have always felt drawn to woodland and the like and I knew which berries to eat and which ones to leave alone. I ignored Father. As far as I was concerned, he had given up on us so I had given up on him. Some people claim that this is harsh but again, I was seven and I didn’t know the answer to that.
When I became better at tracking and hunting small game I taught myself how to skin the rabbits and the squirrels that I was catching and I was able to trade them for the other things that we need. Looking back, I was given a lot of condescending little bits of advice and pats on the head. I am kind of angry now, but on the other hand, it kept my brother and me in milk, cheese, bread and medicine. I taught myself how to make clothing out of the skins I was taking and I clothed my little brother and me.
Father continued to drink and after a while, it became impossible to just ignore him. I went before the village council… I must have been about Eleven, and I asked for a house for my brother and me to share on the grounds that I had enough to do looking after my brother without having to look after a drunken Father.
They laughed and again, I remember being really angry about that despite the fact that they let us have a small cottage near the woodland that was probably once a shepherd’s hut.
And that was how we grew up. When I was a little older and my brother started to properly grow, he needed more hearty meals than the rabbits and things that I was feeding him, so I saved up and bought my first bow. I was now able to add Foxes, boar and eventually deer to our diet. Becoming a better archer, I was paid to watch the village flocks and I was astonished when, the first time, I shot a wolf I was paid six silver pennies for the head of the wolf as well as having the rights to the wolf’s fur coat and the meat.
I remember finding the meat a bit chewy but the pelt made a warm blanket for my brother that winter.
When I was around fifteen, Father came back into our lives. He was clean and sober and invited us back to live with him. I had heard tales that he had been a drunk for a year or two after my brother and I had left, but then, I understand his sister had visited with a tribe of grandchildren, and he had started to sober up and sort himself out. He had left town for a while before returning and getting back to work.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
I had been aware of him in passing but I never talked to him. Then one day he decided that he wanted us back. He came and talked to us. He apologised properly and promised that he would never again become the man that we had known. The truth was that the shack that we had was old, and containing two young people, it was beginning to become a little crowded. So I extracted an oath from Father to say that he would never get drunk again and where possible, he would avoid drinking altogether.
(Freddie: In that kind of place and at that time, it is all but impossible to go without alcohol. Beer often carries less disease than water after all.)
He was as good as his word but now there was a new problem. I had been both the man and the woman of my own household and I saw no reason to obey his rules. I was no longer a virgin and I had decided that I quite enjoyed having sex with whomever I pleased, something that I know Father disapproved of. He persisted in trying to get me married off, but I would get quite cunning in avoiding the matter. It was good for my brother to have a Father in his life, but the gap between Father and I was never going to be crossed easily.
Taking the money from the killing of the wolf, I soon found that there was more money in hunting wolves as well as for food and after that, it was not much of a step up from that to be hunting outlaws for the local lord. I didn’t allow myself to travel too far from the village. Working for the local Lord, a Baron de Belleme, who was definitely not the man who had taken my mother with him, gave me a steady income and access to a better class of bed partner. But I wanted to make sure that my brother would get that which he was owed.
He grew up to be a good looking young man and was already setting the village girl’s hearts aflutter. I don’t know whether he was a virgin when he was taken, but it would not have surprised me if he wasn’t. As I say, he was tall, broad-shouldered and easily able to put on muscle. He was the village young wrestling champion for two years running and everyone loved him. I didn’t have that nack and I know that the village was a happier place when I was not in it. I didn’t care though. I loved my brother by then and I looked forward to the day that I could stand next to him on his wedding day.
We had already made a deal that, should I ever get married, then he would be the one to give me away, not my Father and should he ever get married, then I would be the best man for him.
Great Sun but I miss him.
I was nineteen and he was fourteen, maybe fifteen, and I was arranging for him to try his hands at various trades. He had tried hunting but he didn’t like that. He was soft-hearted really and didn’t want to kill the animals. It was for that same reason that he didn’t work out when I took him to try out being a guard. He excelled in all other areas of guarding. His physical conditioning was excellent, but he could not bring himself to strike something in anger.
Wrestling? Sure. But not striking.
He could shoot at targets but not at animals. So that wasn’t going to work. He didn’t want to be a tanner for obvious reasons.
(Freddie: Probably the smell as a result of all of the horrible things that need to be done in order to tan a hide. It is not a pleasant profession to be part of. Also, the thing about working with dead animals might have been a factor.)
He had spent some time working with Father, but he found the process boring and unstimulating. He enjoyed working with horses, but his desire not to hurt, let alone slaughter, animals kept him from the farming of cattle. So his final choice was between working in the stables or working with the blacksmiths. He had yet to make a choice when he was taken.
So that was my Brother. As fine a young man as ever you could meet.
It’s also important that you know about our village.
The heart of the Black Forest is an oval shape. Its upper reaches peter out somewhere in the realms of Sleeping Beauty and the bottom edge… well… isn’t really important. We are somewhere towards halfway down the western side of the oval and piercing inwards. My village was on the North Eastern Bounds of the Schattenman’s territory snf we had a similar relationship with The Schattenmann as Piotr’s village has.
(Yes there was an argument here. Piotr tried to complain, on the grounds that he didn’t see it as being his village, but as the village didn’t really have a name and we all thought of it as that, then that was what it was. He was unhappy with this but… hey ho. He did seem… he was arguing for the sake of it I think. I don’t think he meant any of the real anger that he was showing. He was arguing because he was used to arguing. I’m not going through it as it would be pointless. The argument died down although the raised voices woke up the priest. Drawing straws, it was agreed that the next person to put the priest out of his misery was Kerrass. He took his silver sword and a box for him to stand on in order to do the deed and he came back shortly for Trayka to restart the story)
As best as I could tell, our arrangement with the Schattenmann was even more reverential than that of PIOTR’S village. We still did not worship him as any kind of God and we were more than a little bit convinced from various signs that we saw, that he was just as reverential of the great Sun as we were. After all, trees themselves require sunlight to be able to grow so we were left with the impression that the Schattenmann was just as religious as we were.
Our village was old. Very old, I have no idea how old. Father used to think that we were a logging camp originally and that was certainly how we made the majority of our income for the village.
There was something about the local type of wood that made it particularly prized for use in Ship-building. Our trees were taller, straighter and had that peculiar mixture of rigidity and flexibility that is needed for masts. The taller the masts then the more sail that could be fitted to do them, or so I’m told.
So we made offerings. We danced and we performed a certain number of rites that were built around the reverence to the Schattenmann. The biggest of the lot that I remember was that we would not hunt, we would fell no tree, nor would we even venture beyond a line in the trees.
I have no idea why and if I do manage to speak to the Schattenmann then it is one of the things that we could answer. But anything beyond that line was the Schattenman’s. That was final. No questions about it. If I was hunting an animal and it went beyond that line, then that animal belonged to the Schattenmann. If it ventured back over the line then it was fair game, but otherwise?
No tree, no bush… It all had to be left as we could see it.
We marked that boundary with a line of ash. The tree logs that we felled, would be cut and stripped of branches that would then be used to feed fires of all kinds. The ash from those trees would then be used to maintain the line of ash. It stretched for several miles along the edges of the woodland. On one side was the village’s territory, the other was, well, you know. We had begun to farm the trees the same way that other men might farm wheat and raise cattle. We would plant trees in careful lines in order to maximise growth potential and all kinds of little things. We would rotate this woodland, allowing trees to grow for several years until they grew to the correct height and then they would be harvested. We literally used that word. Harvested.
So on one side was carefully cultivated woodland and farmland. Our village and surrounding homesteads. On the other side was as wild a patch of woodland as you will find in any place on the continent.
The line stretched for miles in either direction. On one end it ended in a cliff that was unclimbable and the other end seemed to go on forever until you reached woodland that was not ours to worry about.
It was not an idle taboo either.
In good years, we would hire some outside loggers to help us bring in the harvest. On more than one occasion, one of these loggers would get drunk on our mead and ale before wandering into the woods, never to be seen again.
I can see the Witcher shaking his head and I am sure that he knows the same thing that I do. That when drunken men go travelling through thick woodland, bad things are bound to happen and it is only superstitious fools that might put that down to the presence of some kind of… monstrous thing that might live out there. It is much more likely that a drunk fool gets lost and falls asleep somewhere, only to die of the cold or other elements. Accidents could happen and so on. All of that is true and I will not deny it. There is even some probability that this actually happened to more than one person that we are talking about.
But there was a feeling of the place. I liked it. As I say, I have always had something of an affinity for woodland and I am never more at home than when I am moving through trees. My regular employers in the Imperial forces have even joked that when I am sent after a person, I am more likely to find them in woodland than in open fields. And it is true.
But I was never so stupid to go past that line. I would stand there for long hours, looking into the darkness of the forest. I could hear things, all the things that you would expect to be there in that kind of woodland. You could hear deer barking, Pheasants and other game birds calling. You could hear the wind in the leaves and birdsong. But it was so dark.
But the really strange, really unsettling thing about it was the fact that there were pathways in the woodland, and they were not made by any kind of animal.
How do I know this? I can see that Piotr knows, as does the Witcher. Animals and beasts move through the trees in certain ways. They are dictated by two things. They need to move from one place to the next but also to do so without harming themselves. They don’t want to go through a thicket of thorns in case they get trapped. Even the more aggressive of animals, the predators won’t risk injuring themselves or tiring themselves out.
Animal paths are built over time and much use. There is a feeling to an animal path and these paths did not have it.
And remember that I hunt people for a living. This means that I know the difference between a path made by an animal and a path made by something, or someone else.
Someone moved through that forest. Something made those paths. And if you stayed there long enough, you would start to have the feeling that something was looking back at you. You would almost begin to feel the eyes looking back at you from under that fallen log or behind that tree. From the depths of that thicket or from just over that little dip in the ground.
It was an unnerving feeling to stand there and watch for a long period of time. It was even more unnerving to turn your back on the things that were there. I liked that feeling. People could even say that I thrived on that feeling and that… love of being in the woodland and love of that feeling of being unnerved might be the root of why I am so good at my job.
There was a game amongst the young people of the village. You would be taken into the woods to the line of ash and you would be stood in the middle of the line and you would be turned so that you had your back to the primaeval woodland.
This would mostly take place at night.
So you would be there and then your friends would leave. The object of the exercise was to stay there for as long as you could and from that long wait was decided your quality. I found the answer to the trick easily which was to embrace the feeling of fear and discomfort. In the end, I fell asleep on the ash and someone’s parents had to come and get me. The few people that passed for my friendship circle were terrified that I hadn’t emerged from the trees and ran to fetch their parents who found me, lying there, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.
I was furious with myself. I had jeopardized my brother in risking my life in the face of the Schattenmann’s anger. But there was no harm to come of it.
I was never invited to play the game again and what few friends I had left me after that. The boys didn’t like it that some girl had bested them at their own game and the girls hadn’t liked it that I was so much better at all of these things than they were.
My village either bred pretty girls with the flowing dresses and the braided flowers in the hair, or they were all tomboys. There was nothing in between the two. Guess which one I was. You are wrong. I actually quite like the idea of flowing dresses and flowers in my long hair that I would braid with daisies. The problem is that it’s impractical. Skirts get trapped on brambles. Hair too. Flowers and other splashes of colour where there shouldn’t be any can give your location away.
I was fourteen when I performed that little ritual. It’s supposed to take place just before a person chooses their trade or starts to accept suitors for marriage.
We’re not that backwards. I wouldn’t be expected to choose a suitor until I was sixteen at the least and if you wanted to get married before being Seventeen then the parents of the couple and the Elders of the village had to agree. In broad terms, this was to stop people who just wanted to have sex from getting married in order to have sex. The truth was the same as it is the world over. If two people want to have sex with each other, they will normally find a way, adults be damned.
(Freddie: She stopped for a long time after this point, staring into the fire until we thought she had stopped. The bottle of alcohol was still passing backwards and forwards. We were teasing Stefan when he refused his turn and there was a bit more male bonding going on. Trayka would take regular swallows from it, but otherwise, it went on. At this point though, she suddenly shook herself and stole the bottle out of Kerrass’ hands. I think he let her take it, he certainly looked amused enough. She took the bottle and finished it. It was some feat. Several long swallows of some fairly harsh, apple-based drink. She did cough which was the only evidence that we got that she might have been human after all)
This is the point where Father and others like him get angry with me and start calling me stupid. My brother’s disappearance was my fault. Don’t worry, I’m not going to weep, or shed tears or anything like that. I have admitted to it and I own that. It is why I have come so far to go into the depths of that forest and bring him out.
The game changed after my “trial”.
It was a game. People did it multiple times. Especially those who couldn’t last there very long. People would practice in daylight. I certainly did. But I was the last one who only did it by time. After my “trial” the amount of time that a person had to stay on the line of ash was standardised. It was made so that a person had to last at least five minutes. After that, they were brave enough to be accepted. The task was made trivial. People would stay there and watch, cheering on the teenager that was standing there, shivering with fear.
His name was Terraince. He was a little older than me. Not by much but he had done his stand at the line of ash some time ago. He was everything I hate about Men. Self-righteous. Handsome, arrogant, entitled and a bully. Or at least he was to me. He liked to steal kisses from girls and grope them before claiming that it was an accident. He got away with it because the other boys weren’t strong enough to stop him, let alone the girls.
He stopped doing that when the Elder Brother of one of the girls that he tried things on with heard about it. He gathered a couple of the other older boys who were a couple of years older than Terraince. They took him into the woods, away from any prying eyes and thrashed him. It worked, he never did it again and when my brother was taken, Terraince was thought of as a good young man.
What really made me cross was that he got married to one of those girls that he assaulted. A pretty dark-haired girl called Della.
But that was still several years in the future from when our story takes place.
Terraince was angry that I had stood at the line for longer than him. He loudly declared that he was going to do one better than me by taking a step over the line of ash and standing one step deeper into the forbidden woodland than anyone else.
I wasn’t there, but I’m told that he was still, essentially, standing on the line of ash. The traditional place to perform the trial was at a tree stump. What he did was to take a step off the tree stump and into the woodland. So there was still ash on, and under, his feet. But now, according to the rules of the game, he was actually in the woodland itself.
He stood there for all of half a minute before running back to his cheering friends. The first one to take that dreaded step.
He was not the last.
The second lasted maybe a heartbeat longer than Terraince and the two got into a big scuffle as to which one of the two had actually been longest. The next guy lasted a minute and Terraince changed his attitude and started to try and make a big fuss over the fact that he had been FIRST SUN CURSE IT.
I am a little bit proud of the fact that the first person to take the second step over the line was a girl named Katie. She was not a friend of mine as she was a year younger than me and her parents loved each other, and her, very much. Which in turn meant that she had much more leisure time than I did.
Did you ever know someone when you were younger where the two of you had nothing in common and could barely stand the sight of each other? But your parents or their parents would spend a lot of time trying to convince the two of you that you were friends. Katie was that person for me.
I didn’t hate her, nor did I like her. We just had nothing in common. We couldn’t even talk about boys as she wanted the whole, romantic marriage thing, saving herself for her one true love when it came to their wedding night. I had already discovered the joys and the, more frequent, disappointments of the bed-chamber and thought that she was being silly, depriving herself like that.
I now think that I was being a little unkind there. If that’s what worked for her, but I was fifteen and…
The game had changed by now. The game was no longer about how long could a person stand there, on the edge of the darkest heart of the Forest and the home of the Schattenmann? But rather, it became about how far could a person go into that darkness before they would chicken out and come back.
Then came the day of my brother’s attempt. I wasn’t there. Not that I think I would have done anything about it. It was a rite of passage and the rules of the game had changed. If I had been there, I would have cheered him on when he came home. And when I did hear about it, I was proud of him for what he did.
I was nineteen at this point, give or take the usual boundaries of not knowing when, specifically, I was born. I was leading a scouting party of soldiers for the local magistrate to a haven of smugglers. Six men, but more than I could have taken by myself.
It was later that I found out what was going through my brother’s mind.
It was my fault, all of it. It was my fault. Do not try and tell me differently
He was my younger brother. The younger brother of the girl that had changed the way that the game was being played. He had been teased about it. He had been insulted, cajoled and belittled. All of the usual things… the bullying that is hidden behind the veneer of so-called “banter” and friendship. He was also bigger, broader and stronger than many of his cohorts. He had the “gentle giant'' problem of that he had to be really careful that he didn’t hurt people with his movements. He was quick, strong and heavy back then. The Sun only knows what he looks like now.
My brother knew all of this. He was very conscious of it and he was determined to make his own mark on the juvenile history of the village.
I wasn’t there and I’m not sure what I would have done if I had been.
According to witnesses, he marched up to the traditional spot where the youth of the village would stand in order to challenge the darkness. Then he stood, facing the darkness as witnessed by his friends. Then he turned to them and said.
“It is only woodland.” And he marched into the trees. How far he went varies according to the person telling the story. Some say it was a good fifty paces. Some claim it was as long as two hundred paces.
I have been to the spot since then a number of times and I think it was around seventy-five. These things are traditionally done at night and for people to be able to see him in order to see where he got to and when he decided to turn around and come back… I don’t think it could have been longer than that.
He marched into the woodland. Easily seven or eight times further than anyone. Turned, stretched his arms out wide and stood there with his back to the forest. Then he shouted for the Schattenmann to come and get him if he dared.
(Freddie: Our group shuddered, Trayka just continued to stare at the fire.)
It was my fault. A relatively harmless game had turned into a dangerous pastime. Who could hold onto the burning brand for the longest? Who would stick their arms into the hornet’s nest? Who would face down the angry charging bull the longest?
I had been the first to take that step on the journey. I had robbed the Schattenmann of his fear. And later, when the village Elders exiled me from my home. That was the reason that they gave. My actions had endangered all the children that had come after me.
(Freddie: We all chimed in there. Even Piotr was outraged that a group of Elders would blame someone for a childhood incident when others had taken things too far. The Elders were just looking for someone to blame rather than themselves for not taking firmer steps to protect the children from a very real threat. If I was being particularly cynical, I would say that the Elders, and the local lord, was actually pleased with the increasing proof that the old superstition was becoming exactly that. It was a superstition.
Those children were the equivalents of the rat cage that is lowered down the mineshaft by the dwarves to see if there is poison gas down there. If Trayka’s brother had not fallen to disaster, it might even have been true that the first logging expedition into the heart of the Black Forest would have been authorised.
We, all of us tried to convince Trayka of this but she wasn’t having it. She agreed with the Elders. She also needed someone to blame and in the lack of everything else, she had chosen to blame herself.)
My brother was the most famous young man in the village. When I returned he was still living off the tale and I was proud of him. Parents were communicating with Father about arranging for marriages to take place. Girls were simpering at him, as were more than one young woman. He was a handsome young man and I cannot begrudge him that. If he hadn’t lost his virginity before then he would certainly have been able to in this period. It made me sick but I was so proud of him. He had thrown the expectations of the rest of the village back in their face. He had gone further and done so longer than anyone else. Not only that, not only had he not been afraid, but he had hurled that lack of fear into the face of the Schattenmann and had laughed at it.
I was so proud.
The Scchattenmann came for my brother three days later. Why three? I have no idea. It is one of the questions that I mean to ask him when we find him. Why three and not one, not five or a dozen.
I don’t know if the story that was told about the Schattenmann’s vengeance on the priest of Piotr’s village was the same story that Lord Frederick was told. But if it was, then I will admit that it sounds very familiar to what I have seen for myself.
It started with a storm. I have since collected many of these kinds of stories while I planned my mission to rescue my brother and the Schattenmann’s wrath always starts with a storm. Huge storm clouds gather over the depths of the Black Forest. Then there are flocks of ravens and Crows that swirl and circle as though they were part of the storm clouds themselves.
Then there are wolves howling in the distance.
I won’t go over it all, piece by piece. It was so similar to what happened to Piotr and his people. Except that, instead of it being like an invading army of woodland creatures… It reminded me of the Lord coming into his own. He is heralded by the Crows and their screams coming from the treetops. Then his soldiers come next, wandering this way and that way, scouting out the way to see if there is any threat to their lord and master. Then came the Bears, the personal guards of the man himself as they stride into their halls. Heavily armoured. Powerful and frightening. Just looking for an excuse to show their devotion to their king.
Or at least, that’s what it reminded me of when I saw it.
And yes, Friend Scholar. I have read the works of the bard. Don’t look so surprised. Of course, I can read. I have to in order to be able to read the wanted posters and to ensure that I am not being cheated out of my just rewards.
(Freddie: This last was aimed at me. The description of the coming of the King is taken from a poem of that name by a poet that is only remarkable for not being Professor Dandelion. He was a court Bard for King Radovid before Radovid had him executed for a particular verse that Radovid presumed to be insulting to his person. It is a shame because according to Professor Dandelion, the man’s work showed that he did have talent and that if he had been properly nurtured by a patron rather than being so tightly confined to a theme, then he might have done great things.
I was more surprised that Trayka knew the poem on the grounds that it is very much a Northern piece although I suppose that there is something that is said for its longevity. Apparently, the Emperor read a copy upon arrival in Vizima and quite liked it. He took to calling his Bodyguards Bears, his guards wolves and his Heralds as Crows, which seemed a bit on the nose for my tastes. He soon tired of the game as it was supplanted by other concerns)
I was staying with a shepherd that night. In theory, I was helping him protect the flocks but the flocks needed very little watching. He was lonely out on the watch and his younger wife was at home with the children and was less interested in matters of pleasurable company since giving birth a couple of times. We had an arrangement that if I was in town and wanted some company then he would be willing.
Father was at home and my brother was staying with the Smith and his family. It was all but certain that my brother was going to be a Smith and he was just having a taste of what Apprentice life was going to be like.
Then the crows came.
I hid with my Shepherd lover. The sheep fled and I cannot say that I blame them. The wind was high and the rain was heavy meaning there would have been nothing my shooting could have done as the wolves came out of the wild woodland. So the Shepherd shouted and screamed and the flock fled.
I don’t want to go through it too much. It was one of those nights where I go over it and over it. I have, accidentally, let horrible criminals escape my gaze because of mistakes made and I have killed otherwise good men for money. But this is the night where I should have gone further and done more to save my brother.
We watched as the storm broke high above us, wind tearing at the houses of the village pulling thatch and tile free. We heard the rain hammering down on the ground so hard that it could bounce. So much of it that we could barely see the edge of the village from where we hid, clutching each other in terror.
Lightning ripped across the sky and the sound of the thunder struck us like hammers. I remember trying to scream against the noise of it, trying to drive the noise away with the power of my own voice.
Over all of this was the sounds of the Crows bellowing and the wolves howling. The birds circled above us and we watched as the Wolves trotted into town. They circled the village, prowling the alleyways and the paths. Jumping over fences and onto the rooftops of sheds.
I remember being astonished, even as I screamed and wept, that I saw a Wolf stalk past a chicken coop without even looking at it. Another came up to where my Shepherd and I were hiding, it sniffed us, growled, barked for a while, dancing around in front of us in a show of dominance before it growled again before leaving.
I thought I was dead then.
Then HE came. There was a bear on each side of him, striding along. Huge things they were. Huge furry masses of muscle, teeth and claw. These were not the bears of the trail which can be controlled and distracted if you know what they were doing and what to do in those circumstances. These were red-eyed slathering beasts.
And in the middle was him.
The Schattenmann.
I know you all want me to tell you what he looked like. I wish I could tell you. All I can say is that the name Schattenmann is well chosen. The man of shadows. He would be better off called “The absence of light.” He towered above the eaves of the houses, eight-foot-tall, nine even. As for his form?
Have you ever looked into a cave and it seemed to just be blackness. Or have you looked into a whirlpool and seen the water swirling as it went down the hole.
It was like that. Except instead of water, it was light and the swirling, rippling effect was… You know the way the edge of your vision flickers and trembles when you’re tired.
There was only one part of him that had any form which was that he wore a skull as a helm and faceplate. To my eyes, it looked like the skull of some mighty deer, much larger than any I have ever seen and the antlers on the top of the helm were huge, vast and they glinted in what light there was as though they were made of steel.
He strode through the village like the King returning to his halls after being away at war.
And even from the distance that I was, I saw that he looked over at me with the face of bone.
It was the only time I have ever soiled myself in fear.
Then he turned away and strode towards the Smith’s house.
(Freddie: I thought of all the times I have seen this kind of symbology. The helm with the crown of antlers. I thought of the Cult of the first-born and Lord Cavil wearing a helm like that as he tortured Father Hacha and the day that he ordered his drug addled horde to destroy me. I shivered and tried not to think of the implication.)
I have heard many theories as to who and what the Schattenmann is, I have heard the stories about him being the first Leshen, the oldest Leshen and the most powerful Leshen. I have also heard the same thing about him being the first, oldest and most powerful Spriggan in the history of the continent.
I don’t know about any of that. I have never seen a Spriggan so I can’t comment. I have seen a Leshen and know enough about them to know that running away from them is the best solution to any problem that involves a Leshen and you don’t have a Witcher travelling with you.
And yes, that is also the best solution even if you DO have a Witcher with you.
It didn’t look like a Leshen to me. Leshen’s have roots and branches and tendrils. This thing had none of those. It moved like a man.
But.
It had powers similar to that of a Leshen.
It walked up to the Smithy where my brother was staying and waved its hand across it in an almost leisurely way. Remember when I said that it had powers a lot like a Leshen. Well, a huge tentacle-like flow of roots and branches seemed to shoot out of the end of its hand like a whip that tore the front of the Smithy’s shop away.
I could barely hear the screams over the echoing of the wind and the calls of the crows.
The Schattenmann waited for a moment as two wolves ran into the shop and then the Schattenmann itself followed, ducking to go beneath the eaves of the roof.
I remember howling with anger. Up until that moment, it had still not occurred to me that my brother was in that house and then I realised that that was why the Schattenmann was here. It was here to take his vengeance on my brother.
I tried to get up. I tried to charge towards the man of Shadows but the Shepherd that I was with knocked me down and held me still. I struggled, of course, I struggled but he held me back desperately.
He would claim that he loved me, something that caused him no end of grief with his wife but I never spoke to him again after that.
The Schattenmann came out of the Smithy, dragging my brother behind him by the ankle. I could see my brother struggling and fighting to get free and his struggle gave me new strength. I remember ramming my head back into the face of my captor before stamping on the shin of his leg. It didn’t break, but it must have hurt because he let me go and I charged across the village to try and rescue my brother.
During the scuffle, a bear had come and laid down next to the Schattenmann. Using the root… I dunno… rope… whip… cage…. Whatever it was, the Schattenmann picked my brother and started to lash him across the back of the bear the same way that I would lash a prisoner to a cart.
It wasn’t the same as lashing a prisoner across the back of the horse. That was very different. A bear is much larger than a horse after all.
I charged towards the Schattenmann. I tried to shoot first but the wind carried my arrow wide and my second arrow simply missed. So I threw my bow and arrows aside and drew my hunting knife as I charged towards my brother, bellowing in fear and anger.
The Schattenmann turned and saw me. Fucker didn’t even move.
Something hit me in the side and I was sent sprawling. I rolled, not the first time that I have been taken out by a flunky that I hadn’t seen before. As I fell, I rolled and lashed out with my knife in an effort to drive my assailant back. A foot of razor-sharp steel in my fist as I came to my feet and looked for my enemy.
I had never fought a wolf-pack before.
One wolf clamped its jaws around my wrist that was holding the knife. Another rolled into the back of my legs and knees while a third jumped and hit me in the chest, bowling me over so that I fell backwards.
There comes a moment in any fight where you know that you have been beaten.
I still fought though, if I was gonna be eaten alive then the least I could do would be to try and fucking give them indigestion.
But they didn’t, they just held me there.
The ground shook when the Schattenmann approached though I could only see that sucking shadow and that awful skull.
It… He… came towards me and leant down to peer at me in the eye. I could hear it move. There was a… creaking noise. If it is a Leshy, then it was as though parts of him were snapping and regrowing as it moved to come down to look at me.
It seemed to look at me really closely. I could see through the eyes of the Deer skull and I looked for something in the depths of those eye sockets. Something, anything. Stars maybe, small pools of light. Reflections of deep amber from the tree. But there was only darkness and I could feel that darkness sucking at the edges of my eyes as though my own eyes were being pulled out of their sockets in order to replace his.
The wolf on my chest left me. Then the one holding my wrist and I did what I wanted. I slashed at him. I wanted to hurt him and get to him.
My blade lodged into his arm lodged deep and it felt like wood that I was cutting,
The Schattenmann’s hand slammed into my throat and lifted me up. It was still looking at me as the branches seemed to wrap around my throat. It looked like… It looked like a man picking up a kitten and looking at it, the kitten scratching about as it tried to work itself free from the grip of the man, but the man ignored it as it peers at this kitten to see how it works.
Then he threw me away negligently. He didn’t even care. He just tossed me aside like so much garbage, as though I was no threat to him and that I had nothing to offer.
Which was true I suppose.
He tossed me aside and I flew into a nearby house, the wind rushing out of me so that I could not land properly. I fell and my ankle broke. Even despite that two wolves lay on top of me. A third came over and fastened its teeth around my throat and growled. Just enough to let me know that ripping and tearing could be an option for the future if I made a nuisance of myself. What with the pain and the water running into my face and up my nose so that I couldn’t breathe,
I passed out.
I woke up the following day.
She seemed to run out of story after that and we all sat around looking at her before we started to look at each other in the awkward silence.
Kerrass cleared his throat which seemed to act as the tension breaking movement.
“What happened then?” I asked.
Trayka shook her head as though waking up from sleep.
“Not much to say,” She told us. “I woke up to find that I had been exiled. Apparently my attack on the Schattenmann, as well as the fact that it had been my “standing at the stump” that had started people taking “liberties with the Schattenmann”. So I was blamed.
“My brother was not the only one that had been taken. Anyone that had actually been over the line of ash was taken that night. A dozen people all told. A dozen children. Most of the children left behind had been content to just stand at the stump and didn’t feel the need to prove their courage. They were the lucky ones.”
“Or the wise ones,” Piotr commented.
“That’s what I said.” She snapped. “So Terraince was not taken. He was still on the line of ash technically. He told a story for a while that the Schattenmann had come to see him. He told a tale about how he stood his ground and stared into the eyes of the Schattenmann. I didn’t believe him for a second. It reminded me too much of the Terraince that he used to be. The man that would pretend to trip, trapping me beneath him before he would pretend that it was the tripping that would push his mouth into mine.
“People argued my case, including my father. Curse him.”
Kerrass clutched his medallion at that. It never pays any cause to curse someone offhandedly. Sometimes, you might actually curse them. He didn’t seem too unhappy though so that seemed to finish that.
“But he and others argued that I was defending my brother and that no-one should have been angry that I had beaten everyone when it came to be my turn to stand on the stump. It was not supposed to be a race, nor was it supposed to be a contest. It was a test and I had passed it. I had not forced others to insult the Schattenmann.
“My shepherd former lover also put his thoughts in. Not that I wanted him to. I was furious with him for holding me back. Even despite arguments that he saved my life.
“Still others argued that my work for the Baron brought prestige and wealth to the village and that that should not be thrown aside so easily. That might have won the day except for the fact that I told them all to fuck off.
“It was my injury that kept me in town. I had broken my ankle and banged my head against the ground and it took me some time to heal. The local herbwoman insisted that I was not well enough to travel and that if they wanted to sentence me to death then they should just slit my throat then and there.
“Father rose to the challenge though and nursed me back to health. Damn him but he took every ounce of my disgust and anger in the face and let it wash over him. I daresay that he knew that I wasn’t angry with him. But Sun damn me if I didn’t want to make him feel it.
“When I was well enough I went to work for the Barony and built my name as a bounty hunter. In reality, though, I was travelling. I wanted to find out what the Schattenmann was. I looked for similar stories about him and when he had been angered and tried to take the stories to local scholars. Only to be told, most often, that the Schattenmann is a myth and a peasant superstition. I wanted to destroy him and find out where my brother is. I refuse to accept that he is dead. I refuse it.
“And then, a few weeks ago, a little over a month. I received a letter from my father asking me to meet him. Apparently, there was a Witcher looking to mount an expedition into the Black Forest. The first Witcher to try it in living memory. Word was that he wanted to speak to the Schattenmann rather than destroy it and so Father and I set out to join the party. I have questions for the Schattenmann. Why not come for us all straight away when we started to go against the tradition that he had set out. Why not come immediately. Where was my brother? Why was he taken? Why wasn’t I taken? What happened to my Knife?”
She shook her head. “I have so many questions for the man of shadows. Like why does my village have a line of ash and so many other villages don’t? Did the tradition of standing on the stump come from him or from others? Was it just boys playing games.
“But above all. I want my brother back.”
She had got angry and upset during that little speech and she glared around the stable into all of the shadowy corners rather than looking at us.
I desperately looked for a way to calm her down and to break the tension. If she was anyone else I might have offered a drink, a hug or some kind of physical gesture, but I was moderately confident that Trayka would take my hand off. Then a joke occurred.
“So wait.” I began. “You want to go all of this way, through all of this hardship and danger. In order to ask an ancient monster about your old hunting knife?”
A bark of laughter escaped her mouth and the tears flowed down her cheeks as though I had burst the dam.
Kerrass saw what I was doing and laughed himself. Stefan was next and Piotr joined in eventually.
“Hey,” Trayka smiled at me, she actually smiled at me. “It was a good knife.”
“It would have to be.” Piotr joked. Another sign of the old Piotr showing through.
We all laughed again.
“HELP ME.” The hanging priest cried out. “PLEEEEAAAASSSEEEEE. KILLLL ME.”
“Oh for FUCK’s SAKE,” Trayka screamed as she launched herself like an arrow from where she was sitting. She stole my spear as she went and we listened as she gutted the priest with it.
The brief moment of hilarity and companionship had passed.