(A/N: This is it folks. This is the chapter where the really bad thing happens. Or rather this is where a character tells Freddie about the really bad thing that they did. I do not go into explicit detail as to what happened and Freddie has to work out what happened from the clues in what was said. But this shit is bad and if you want to avoid it, just miss out on the bit that starts with the three stars (***) and rejoin when you see the next three stars (***). It was the worst possible thing that I could imagine a person doing when the plot was conceived, and it is still the worst possible thing that I can think of a person doing now. And yes, you can probably guess what it is from the content warning. Do not worry, there is some proper vengeance coming.)

(WARNING IN BIG ASS CAPITAL LETTERS: Contains an inferred account of incestuous sexual assault for purposes of personal advancement. Also contains an extended sequence of suicidal contemplation.)

I still can’t stop writing.

When I came back from the South and the time spent with The Schattenmann I was in a right state. Denial, grief, anger and all kinds of other emotions were going through me at any one time. I was filled with this… nervous energy. I would pace around the place before taking my spear out and beating the crap out of a training dummy until it shattered and I collapsed in sweaty exhaustion and then, inevitably, I would burst into tears.

I would yell at people, shout at people and scream at people before I would feel the incredible guilt settle over me for all of this horrible behaviour and then, sobbing, I would beg forgiveness from the servant that had been on the receiving end of my wrath. I would beg that forgiveness from Emma, Laurelen, Rickard and when he was still here, of Kerrass as well.

God, poor Kerrass.

I would beg for their forgiveness before I would flee from them, literally fleeing until I could find somewhere dark and cool where I could wait for the fit, or the episode or whatever the fuck you want to call it... But I would wait for it to pass and then I would try, again to return to the normal life that was stretching out in front of me.

Ariadne was elsewhere. She did her best, bless her heart, but over time, she spent more and more time in Angral in preparations for the wedding, my eventual residence or the other things that I am still learning about. I now wonder if she was avoiding me or if I hurt her in some way. I have no way of knowing.

But Emma found the cure. One day, she came to me while I was sitting under a tree just outside the castle outer gates. I had finished the main part of my weeping and had reached that awful stage which I hate, arguably more than the weeping itself. I was in that state where I was washed out and just staring into space, barely able to move, head resting in my hands. All of the emotion had washed out of me and I was waiting to see what happened next.

Sometimes, I will recover some energy and be able to move, speak and act relatively normally whereas other times I might start crying again and would need to wait until that passed.

But Emma came to find me and under her arm was tucked a large, leather-bound book and a sheaf of fresh quills. She sat next to me and put her arm around me and pulled me close for a moment. I wept again but the more gentle kind of weeping. Calling it healthier is possibly untrue, but that was certainly how it felt. She held me, waited for a lull in the tears and reached beside her before she put the book in my lap.

“I brought you a journal.” She told me. “You’ve always been writing. Ever since you left for university, you’ve always been writing. But since you came back, I haven’t seen you take up a quill. So I brought you a book and a sheaf of quills.”

I looked up at her and her image started to go watery in my vision.

“I bought you some ink as well.” She told me climbing to her feet. “But I didn’t want to bring that outside. When the book is full, let me know and I shall get you another. If all of the quills break then again, let me know and I shall get some more. If you run out of ink… well…”

I found my voice.

“You’ll get me some more?” My voice was more watery than I would have liked.

She laughed.

“Flame no. Ink is expensive. Use a piece of charcoal or something.”

I laughed for a while. And then I wept for a bit longer.

And so I started to write again. I was not better overnight and it took me some time to recover the speed and grace with the pen that I had once had and I found that frustrating. But that was the moment when I slowly started to get better and recover from the depression that I was feeling after returning from the South and leaving the Path.

It is the same now and I hate it. I can’t stop writing and I could not be further from the place that I was then. What Emma gave me out of love, Sam is letting me do out of… whatever it is that is driving him.

Everything is different now.

I am broken in body and in mind. They are training me. I am still fighting with everything that I have, but what I have to fight with is becoming less and less.

And they still want me to write. I get rewarded when I write and that reward is the absence of pain.

I am broken.

My hand is broken and infected again. I had been warned that the treatment that I had been given might not be enough to permanently banish the infection. But since some of my more recent escapades and attempts to fight back, I am no longer permitted to stay in my relatively clean and luxurious cell. So now, being unable to keep my hand and the finger injuries properly clean, the infection has started again. Not helped by the fact that one of the guards stamped on the still-healing injuries, breaking the skin and…

Well…

Bones were broken. I don’t know which ones, but bones were broken. No, not broken. Some of those bones were shattered.

I can feel the itchy, slimy heat crawling up my arm underneath the skin. I want to scratch it with everything I’ve got but I am tied to my chair and I cannot reach it. And I am punished when I try. I can also feel the slivers of bone, the broken bits of finger and the remains of the hand bones grinding against each other.

But it itches. I want to scratch and scratch and tear at the flesh until all of that feeling comes out. But instead, I sweat and I shiver.

I don’t look at it. I know what I will see.

They moved me to my new cell because I broke the bed. I kicked and kicked at it until it started to break. The wooden frame snapped and I took an extended length of it and used it as a club to try and attack the guards that keep me in my room. I was unsuccessful. They tried a metal bed and tied me to the bed, but after some practice, I found that I could stand with the bed over my back and use it as a battering ram to knock my guards aside.

So then I got put in the new cell.

They have still been coming for me periodically. They come to take me to Sam’s study so that Sam can tell me things. He tells me that he is reaching his zenith and that it is nearly time for me to do my part. He has told me some of what he has in mind for me and my future and if I was ever in any doubt that my brother had lost his sanity, now I was even more certain.

But a little while ago I saw my moment and I attacked. Not Sam as he was too well-guarded.

Familiarity breeds contempt and even though they might have the power of The God coursing through their veins as much as there is blood, guards get lazy. They still bind my hands behind my back because they are more aware that hands are better able to use weapons. But they kept my feet unbound so they could move me around easier.

I was not as able to fight with my feet as someone like Kerrass was. But he did teach me the good places to kick if you got the chance. So the guards were walking in front of me and behind me. So I kicked nice and hard into the side of his knee on the inside.

His leg buckled and he screamed. There were two guards in front and two behind. They would often try to have one on every side of them. But in some of those narrow corridors, that was all but impossible. So I depended on the falling body of the man to shield me as I turned to face the two behind me.

They were only lightly armoured and as I turned to the guard behind me and drove my knee, as hard as I could, into his crotch. Even if he was armoured there, the thought of pain could be more than the pain itself. As I hoped, he bent forwards and I drove my head under his chin. My oldest fighting trick. Used all the way back in the village with the Nekkers.

Two men down and I felt the old rage surge into my limbs. I ignored the pain that exploded in both my knee and on the top of my head. I tried to shoulder-check the man into his friend before turning back to see to the men that had been ahead of me.

But the man was armoured, not much but it was enough. My knee had hurt him, as had my head butt. But not so much that he was disabled. As I turned back he lashed out. Not a heavy blow but with my hands tied behind me, I overbalanced and fell into the wall.

Then they were on me. At some point, one of the blackjacks that they had been beating me with connected with something vital and the world went black.

It took me a long time to recover from that. When I did wake up I was tied to a chair. A man was waiting for me. I was still groggy, so I don’t remember much of it. The man told me that he had been told to wait for me to wake up. He wanted me to feel it.

My legs were tied tightly to the chair and there was nothing I could do. I tried to fight the first one but the ropes were tight.

I tried. I promise I tried. I fought it but there was nothing I could do, they had tied me too tight. The man stepped forward and I saw that he had a large hammer in his hands. He lifted the hammer up and held the head of the hammer before my eyes so that I could see it. It seemed to me to be huge, flat and ugly. I struggled to fight it, my sight was blurry and flickering at the edges. My head wanted to nod forwards and I fought to stay awake.

First, he knelt and put a stone block of some kind on the outside of my foot. It was cold against my skin

The man lifted his hammer and I saw what he was going to do.

I begged him not to. I tried not to, I promise that I tried not to beg. I tried to be brave but it was just not in me.

The hammer whistled around as it slammed into the side of my foot, For a split second I felt the agony. He struck me on the inside of the foot towards the back, striking at the inside curve, heel and ankle of the foot. For a moment, just a moment, I felt a relief that my toes would still be intact.

The things that we think about in the moment, the stupid shitty, foolish things.

But then the agony struck me and once again, my world went dark.

When I woke, I was tied to a different chair, in a new cell. I could not see my feet and lower legs, but I knew that what had happened to one, had happened to the other.

So there I am now. My left hand is increasingly useless and my feet and lower legs are shattered.

Broken.

My feet and lower legs are wrapped in some bandages, cloth or something. I have not yet had the courage to unwrap the bindings and survey the damage. It hurts so much and more than that, my feet feel wrong. Like with my hands, I can feel the small slivers of bone grating on each other inside my feet and legs.

Was this how Kerrass felt in the North? Was this the kind of agony that he knew? I don’t know. We never really talked about it. But if it was even close to what I am feeling now. The sense of helplessness and the sure knowledge that that is my life now.

This is my life.

God… No… Flame preserve me. Legs and feet are broken.

Sam tells me that The God will heal me but I have no belief in his… in his sanity, let alone his honesty.

But I can crawl.

DO YOU HEAR ME SAM? I CAN STILL CRAWL.

Flame but what have I become? I catch myself praying to The God as often as I pray to the Eternal Flame. I swear, I promise that I start with the intention to pray to the Eternal Flame. But then I realise that instead of calling on the Eternal Flame, I am calling out the name of The God. It’s the same prayer, but the one substituted for the other.

I am still trying to find ways to fight. But inspiration is coming to me less and less and it is becoming easier to just submit. I am losing. I know that I am losing.

And I hate it.

I hate the knowledge that I am losing.

I curse myself for being weak.

I tried to end my own life. I found a sharp bit on the end of my cot and I tried to use it to gouge into the veins on my right wrist but it didn’t work. They replaced the bed with a carefully smooth one and bound my wrist with thick bandages. I tried to remove the bandages with my teeth to have another go but they caught me and stationed a guard outside the room. There is always one there now, keeping a watch on me to keep me from harming myself when they are not looking.

I tried to stop eating and that worked for a while as I became weaker and weaker but then guards came into the room, held me down and forced a tube down my throat and poured soup and water into a funnel, down the tube and into my stomach. It burnt and froze by degrees.

Somehow, it was worse than having my feet shattered.

I think it was the helplessness of it. I have had the same procedure done to me before when I’ve been unconscious or at the height of some sickness or another. Certainly, my body seemed to be aware of how it was supposed to behave.

But doing it awake… I just… I can’t face doing that again.

I cannot tie a noose from my bedclothes. I tried and the guard outside the room stopped me. I even considered trying to drown myself in my own piss and shit but if they stopped me from tying a noose then they would quickly stop me from doing that. And it seems that my body rebelled at the thought.

I did try and dash my brains out against a wall, but it turns out that to do that, you need some proper anchoring and a certain amount of leverage as well as a jagged enough edge on the stone to help cave your skull in. And what with my shattered feet, hand and ankles. I lack the strength and the proper leverage any more. All I managed to get was a lot of blood from a head injury when I tried that.

And then they started to increase the periods that I was tied to my bed or the chair that I now sit in.

They untie me from my chair at the end of the day and I crawl into bed, or towards the bucket that I piss and shit in. My knees still work and I can kneel to do these things. But squatting to shit is impossible. I have found a way to do it but it’s…

In the morning, they wake me to do… whatever it is that they want me to do. Listen to Sam, record something for them and I resist. I make them carry me. There is still an order somewhere that says that my manhood, right arm and hand are sacred. But they are getting used to me now so that when I fight, they simply have to catch my right arm.

They have other ways to cause me agony.

Sam often wants to see me. I can do little now. I sit and try to ignore him while I refuse to write down what he tells me.

But even that form of rebellion has been taken from me. All they had to do was to put a desk in the room that I am in and put the chair that I am tied to in front of it.

Inevitably I start to write.

At first, I tried to write other things. I tried to write out poems and stories that I remember hearing in taverns. I tried to write letters to the people that I love. Whether they are living, dead or I don’t know where they are. The letter to Francesca was long and tear-stained. But then the guards came and took it away.

They take everything that I write away and I hate them for it.

They want me to write about what Sam and I talk about. What Sam tells me. They still want me to write his biography. No matter how often I refuse, no matter how I spit, bite or fight. They still carry me to Sam’s office and then he talks to me.

I have no idea how often. The fever and the despair are warping time for me and I am aware that I am losing the battle. I don’t want to write what Sam wants me to write. I don’t. But I know that I am going to.

But every word that I write that has nothing to do with that is a victory.

The castle seems to thrum. Looking back, I don’t know when it started. Sometime just before the second meeting with Sam, I think. It is possible that the hum started before then but I didn’t notice. I can understand why, I had a lot on my mind at the time.

But it’s this low kind of thrumming. The kind of thing that you feel deep in your chest. I feel the same way when a troll roars. The deep vibrations cannot be heard by the human ear but echo deep in the middle of your chest cavity. It makes my teeth itch and my fingernails ache.

I barely recognise the castle anymore. Armed men are everywhere. I say, armed men. But they are increasingly giants of men. Many of whom stand well above seven feet tall. I remember thinking that Gregoire de Gorgon was tall, but some of these men dwarf him. Both in height and muscle mass. It feels like some kind of factory process. Normal size men go down into the basement… I understand that Sam and Ariadne follow them down there before things happen and then the giant, heavily muscled men emerge. They are terrifying in their power and their stature. They are still men, often quieter than they were otherwise. So they sit and play cards or dice. You can tell the newly grown ones because of their clumsiness. They go down into the courtyard where they train in a way that I would find bruising.

And it was there that I saw Kristoff for the first time.

It was from a distance but even so. What these new giant men were to me, he is to them. Meaning that I would put him at nine, ten foot tall. Sam tells me…

Dammit. Recording what Sam tells me.

Fuck it.

Sam tells me that Kristoff took to the power of The God running through him so well that they put extra power in there. According to castle rumour, which I am still able to listen to, Kristoff doesn’t take his armour off anymore. He wears huge, dark red steel plate mail that seems to cover every inch of him. The old sigil of Redania is etched into the armour itself. He carries a shield the size of a barn door and for all I know, that’s what the shield is made of. On the back of the shield hang his weapons, a mace the size of a great sword, an actual great sword that he wields one-handed and a War hammer.

All I could when I saw him were his eyes in the depths of his helmet and they had a strange blue light. Some might call it a trick of the light but I swear that they were glowing.

I’m running out of things to write about.

Emma is still alive which means that I am confident that Laurelen is also. I have been told that many of the people that I know are still alive but are held captive. Apparently, they are needed.

At the same time, I want to know what for but am also dreading it.

It would be too much to hope that there is a need for hostages.

Ariadne is a figure of terror now. She flies around the castle in her smoke form. Any disobedience that is seen then a form coalesces from the smoke to punish the rebellion. When she is seen in her physical form, the same blue dress that she wore, now hangs in tatters around her and her underclothes are not far off joining her. At first, I know that the guards leered and jeered but now… She grows increasingly gaunt before our eyes. Although she will always be beautiful to me, now she is increasingly frail looking. Her skin is pale and translucent. Her fangs are pronounced in her mouth, even when her mouth is closed. Her hair is brittle and lacking in lustre.

Her eyes just stare ahead of her, unmoving. She reminds me of a Golem… Some animated servant of a mage.

Most often, when she is not patrolling the castle, she is at Sam’s elbow.

I hold onto what I can.

I remember my last true moment of defiance. The last time I threw my rebellion and my anger into Sam’s face.

I remember sitting across a campfire from Kerrass as we swapped a bottle of something alcoholic backwards and forwards.

I remember Rickard’s laughter and Emma’s scolding.

I remember Ariadne’s joy and fear when I brought out the ring.

Flame curse me for my weakness.

After the time that Sam told me about what had really happened to Francesca in Toussaint, I was the one that went to Sam. I wanted to get the chore done and out of the way.

The chair that he sat in behind the desk had been changed. It was larger and more imposing but at the same time, it left Sam looking more pitiable. He was thinner, visibly thinner than he had been the last time that I had seen him even though, at longest, it had been a matter of days since I had last seen him and he seemed to be drowning in the chair.

It was a high-backed chair, heavily cushioned and he sat in it, head resting back on the cushions as the sweat ran freely down his face.

I could only imagine that he was in a lot of pain.

Good.

The dark circles under his eyes were pronounced and his eyes were still bloodshot. He looked… albino pale if the term can be used as a way to describe someone’s skin tone.

Again he was bare-chested and his arms were resting on the arms of the chair. The fit, healthy and solid frame of my soldier brother was gone, visibly wasting away in front of me.

Strange to me that I saw all of that before I properly saw all of the things that were happening to him. There were… tubes coming out of him. I have no way of describing it otherwise. Tubes that were connected to various needles that were inserted into various pulse points around his body. I could see one even going into his neck which must have been incredibly dangerous.

I remembered my time spent with Letho and again, I wondered if they were mutating him into a Witcher, or something like it. But I also remembered how derisive he had been over that idea and had to remind myself that that was not what was happening here.

The tubes were all connected to large, bulbous glass containers that contained various liquids. The childish part of me that lives in the back of my brain was very upset to see that they were not multi-coloured. Two, one in each wrist seemed to have blood in them. One that seemed to have blood coming out of the tube had black, thick and viscous blood in it. The other where the blood seemed to be flowing into Sam was full of bright, scarlet blood.

But the other liquids seemed to be herbal. I know this because I could see the herbs floating around in the liquid in question.

Ella was still there, fussing around the tubes and paying careful attention to the liquids in them. During that meeting, she would peer at the various flasks closely before one or other of them was topped up. Then she would go over to Sam and she would peer into his ear, rest her head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat before taking his pulse.

Another random thought occurred to me which was that if we were going to produce a new type of Witcher, then Ella would have been an invaluable addition to the cause.

Again, funny the things that we think about in the heat of the moment.

Ariadne was there as well, still staring into space as though she was looking at nothing. Periodically, her right hand rose and made a series of complicated gestures in the air towards where Sam was sitting. I didn’t see what she was doing or what kind of effect it was having on Sam.

There were still guards hovering around. As I say, the number of normal-sized and normal-looking guards was decreasing but that also meant that the… for want of better words, class divide was becoming more obvious. It was not the Knights, or at least not all of them, that were being changed. Some men that still wore their standard livery outfits were standing at the war table and arguing with each other. I recognised a couple of them but they wouldn’t meet my eyes. Local lords, or more accurately, the younger sons of local lords. Even, more than one son of a couple of the people was in the central hall when Sam announced the beginning of the rebellion.

They wouldn’t meet my gaze.

I didn’t even consider calling out to them. If they had gone far enough ahead with this lunacy then my yelling at them or demanding that they recognise me was not going to influence them in any way. I wonder what words Sam used to bring them over to his side.

Even though he claimed to be separate from the cult now, there was no denying the fact that he still recruits from the same pool of people. The same types of men that he had before.

And again, there were no women. I don’t know why that was important to m…

Yes, I do. Women provide a different perspective. Queen Calanthe did more, with less, than many of the other so-called great monarchs in history. And she did it by examining the problem from a different perspective. The same with Queen Meve and Queen Cerys. The female perspective is different and a different perspective can change the entire picture of the board. They see things that the rest of us do not and think in ways that we do not. That is why it is so vital to have women at the planning table.

And I think that that’s what frightens the kind of men that don’t want women at the planning table.

So I walked in, shrugging off the guiding hands of the guards that had led me into the room and stomped over to find the chair that I had been using before I picked it up and placed it in front of Sam’s chair.

I had not yet taught the guards that I was someone to be watched carefully. Neither had I arrived at the point where I was actively fighting them. I was still trying to be patient, still trying to formulate a plan and come up with something clever.

I sat down in the chair with a thump before I openly and prominently got up again and stole some parchment from one of the scribes along with a quill and some ink. The scribe in question started to try and protest but he saw something outside of my field of view and subsided. I took my loot and once again, sat down causing as much noise and disturbance to the room as I could. I felt that it was only right that I do this, given the hushed nature of what was happening.

“So,” I began. “You look fucking awful.”

Sam’s eyes opened and glimmered as he recognised me.

“Hello, Freddi… Sorry… Frederick.”

“I hope it fucking hurts.” I gestured to all the tubes and cylinders and swirling alchemical mixtures.

“It does actually,” Sam said with the forced cheerfulness of the very ill. “Like burning ice running through my veins.”

“Awwww,” I told him. “Poor baby.”

I wondered if I was imagining the smirk on Ella’s face.

I took the quill, checked that the point was at least workably sharp and dipped it in the ink bottle.

“So…” I began. “What happened next? After you kidnapped our sister, and we had made a fool of ourselves hunting for a Jack that didn’t exist in Toussaint, what did you do after that?”

Sam thought for a moment. His breath seemed to be rattling in his chest a little bit and he was struggling to draw breath occasionally. He stared at me, his eyes flickering a little bit as he examined the minute features of my face and weighed my gaze. Whatever it was he was looking for, he found it because he nodded and leant his head back against the cushions of the chair.

“Possibly the best day of my life.” He told me.

I felt my jaw clench.

“Elaborate please.” I demanded.

“After everything was over. After the hunt through the streets for Jack, I waited a while to ensure that they didn’t find Francesca and my accomplices. But the longer that I stayed, the longer it was possible that someone would find her. She was, after all, in my travel chest that was still in my pavilion on the tournament grounds. So I made lots of noise about having to see to duty. Fortunately, I had a ready-made excuse for everyone as to why I had done this or not done that. Whenever someone saw me do something supposedly out of character, I could merely tell them that I was still fretting about Francesca and they would always, almost instantly, let me off the hook.

“It was why I could get away with arguing with Emma and shirking my other duties. The only people that were not accepting the loss of Francesca as an excuse were the cult. But now, I could focus on the cult to the exclusion of all else.

“Francesca was taken to my small parcel of land on the coast where she was kept, mostly under the influence of various narcotics until such a time that Phineas and I decided that we needed her. I’m told that she was fairly happy even if she did start to bloat from the lack of movement.”

“Fuck you,” I told him. “You are not going to get a raise out of me by commenting on Francesca. Move on.”

He nodded, gesturing to Ella.

“I need my strength.” He told her. “We will take a break here.”

She nodded. “We are ahead of schedule anyway.”

He nodded his acceptance of her point while she fiddled with all of the tubes and things before pulling out the needles one by one and cleaning the injured area with a cloth that she made wet from a small dark bottle. She applied the liquid to the cloth in the same way that you apply blade oil to a cloth, covering the opening with the cloth and quickly turning it upside down before turning the right way up.

I noticed that Ariadne stopped gesturing.

“So…” I reached for the anger. It was there, tired, small and smouldering, even while it was in danger of being snuffed out under the weight of everything else. “Are you dying?”

He laughed. “No.”

“Damn.” I muttered, “so close.”

“Do you hate me that much?”

“Yes.” I told him with some heat. “And no.” That took some admitting. “Hating you takes effort. I am tired, miserable and incredibly sad.”

“Those two things mean the same thing.” he accused.

“You should have paid more attention to the tutors and then you would know how wrong you are.” I retorted. “So you were in the North making peace with your cult friends.”

“Not friends Frederick. Not friends. They were never my friends. What happened was that I was re-exerting myself and making sure that they were aware of exactly who I was and what I was doing. Now I could attend meetings and things so I spent my time trying to exert my will over various people. Pointing out the logical flaws in their points and calling them out on their bullshit.

“It was liberating in a way. The main part of my plan was still in operation and I knew that there was still more than a little bit of danger that I wouldn’t succeed in that part of the plan. But it was liberating to know that I didn’t need to care quite so much when it came to dealing with these fuck heads.

“So I didn’t have to hold back when I told Cavill’s sons what I thought of them. The elder of the two, the one that one of Rickard’s men shot outside the village that you were protecting, was a slimy piece of work. The younger was scarier but he was convinced of his own immortality which made him overconfident. I took great delight in pointing out just how stupid they both were at every available opportunity.

“Cavill was annoyed with me, but given that I deliberately ensured that my suggestions and comments were well reasoned and truthful, he could not, realistically, say that I was wrong because he knew that I was right. And so I was able to take the reins of my plan back.

“I started to have the funds sent from Emma and things were moving in the right direction. The guards that Kristoff and I had brought with us set up the hall and the huts that we all lived in back then and we spent our time waiting for you.”

Sam stoppedtalking for a while as food was brought and if I thought that Sam had eaten a lot in the previous meals that I had sat and watched him consume, then this was a whole other level. And he wolfed it down. In the time that it took me to eat a couple of mouthfuls, Sam had consumed half of his plate.

My appetite was reduced anyway. The gruel that I was eating had done a bit of a number on my insides and my belly had shrunk. I had undoubtedly lost some weight myself so…

I ate some of the meat and a slice of bread that I had with some butter. I might be trying to be strong in the face of Sam’s nonsense but that bread… It tasted better than some of the cakes that I have eaten on the path with Kerrass.

And the bread wasn’t even that great.

He sat back with a sigh and wiped his mouth with a cloth. I looked up at him and was astonished at the changes that I saw in him. Colour had come back to his face and he seemed to move with energy. It was as though the meal that he had eaten had instantly transformed itself into increased muscle mass, energy and strength. He didn’t look any more than what I would consider being “normal Sam” but to go from the almost skeletal appearance that he had had when I came into the office, to how he was now…

I felt a shiver run down my spine.

And then, because somewhere down there underneath all of the chemicals and even actions he is still my brother. He belched. I mean really belched. When he was done, he patted his belly and sighed contentedly.

“I mean, they say that Hunger is the best seasoning,” he began. “But the people that say that have never had their body broken down and rebuilt.”

“What are you doing to yourself, Sam?”

“It’s complicated,” He told me. “And extremely technical.”

“You don’t actually know do you?” I accused.

“No, not really. I know that specific, complicated and definitive things have to be done in definitive and certain orders. Phineas left explicit, precise and specific instructions as to what needed to happen for our plans to come to fruition and now I need to make sure that all of that comes to fruition.”

I nodded to show that I understood but he kept going.

“I mean, the man gave his life so that we could do this so it seems only fair that I do what he told me to do.”

“So…” I began, unable to keep the frustration from my voice. “You were talking about your plans and building to the best day of your life.

“Yes I was, wasn’t I.” He tilted his head to one side to remember where he was. “So there we were, building the first pieces of our infrastructure in the North. Getting supplies and things while I frantically worried that I hadn’t done enough to convince anyone that I had spent quite a bit of time up there. I spent my days between our camp at the foot of Kalayn hill and scouting out the cult.

“It was suggested by more than one person that I should just move into the castle but your and Kerrass’ warning made me nervous about that given that some of those spirits might remember me and the things that were done to them in my presence, so I preferred to stay in the small village that we were founding at the base of the hill.

“What I was actually doing was making sure that the cult was still where I had left it. I attended meetings and councils. I witnessed rites and I must confess that I even took part in one or two of them in order to make sure that people wouldn’t be getting too suspicious of me.

“We did have a small setback when we heard that you and Kerrass had been caught up on the road with the Knights of the Burning Cross and later because Robart had caught you and was trying to hang you again. Dreadfully inconvenient if you ask me.”

“You should have tried being on the other end of it,” I told him. “Nothing quite like a man in authority hanging out near the castle gates to make yourself feel inadequate.”

Sam laughed and I realised that it was happening again. I was being friendly with my brother. I had to remind myself to hate him.

“That was galling.” He admitted to me, someone had put a jug of something next to his elbow and he poured himself a large cup of whatever it was before downing it in one go, making a face at the taste.

“Sorry that my being ambushed by the supposed law of the land was inconvenient to you.” I commented

He smiled a little and it seemed to me that his eyes glittered in excitement.

“Yes well, not only did it delay my plans, but it also meant that I couldn’t protect my people. Whatever else could and can be said about me, of which you have plenty I have no doubt. I did have the best thoughts in mind for my people. They were held under the thumb of the cult and I looked forward to being able to extract them from that.”

“You are not going to make me feel guilty Sam,” I told him. “You wanted to be the solution to the problem that you yourself were part of. And I was delayed by assholes of my own.”

Sam grunted at that.

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty Frederick. I know who the bad guys in that whole instance were. And you killed them.”

“I have not killed Robart.”

He smiled again.

“But finally the day came. We received word that you were departing from Coulthard castle and with great relish, Kristoff and I took to horse and we rode to… I assume, the same cave that you were held in. There was a meeting of the cult elders coming up and Kristoff and I crashed it. We walked in, fully armed and armoured.

He chuckled at the memory, a chuckle that became outright laughter.

“Oh Frederick, it was glorious. One of the guards in the room tried to keep us out and I smashed his head into a wall. I walked into the middle of the room of standing, shouting, belligerent men and I told them to take their damn foolish masks and hoods off. I stood there and told them that I was done playing their games. That I would no longer be subject to their rules, that I would not bow to them and that I would not accept their leadership.

“It was the single most glorious moment that I can remember. When I can’t sleep at night, that is the memory that I go back to.

“I remember the shrieks of indignation as men protested at my actions. They told me that I was a second son and that I should know my place. I told them that I knew exactly what my place was and that it was to be better than every single one of them. They didn’t like that.

“They were insisting that I should back down and bow for judgement. One got in my face, spittle flying from his lips like every small man, every small streetside preacher has ever done, as he told me that I disgrace the face of The God and that I should bow down and beg for their forgiveness, before I give myself over to his punishment.”

He laughed again.

“I noticed that I was supposed to beg for their forgiveness but bow for his punishment. He was all but groping himself in the anticipation of what he was going to do to me. I laughed in his face before I drew my dagger and rammed it into his belly. He screamed horribly and Freddie… I have never enjoyed killing people… but…

“During the war, it was just part of the job. I hated the bastard generals and politicians on both sides but I was aware enough that the other man was just trying to do his job. I could take pride in doing my job well but I never enjoyed it. There was joy in a fight, rarely in a battle but there was no joy in the killing or the maiming.”

I remembered Rickard had once expressed the same sentiment and listened as Sam carried on to speak.

“I have fought bandits and rebels but there… that joy comes from knowing that those things would not impact the people around anymore.

“Yes, I have taken part in rites to The God and have felt the artificial pleasure that comes with all of those things. But that is not real joy. That is the gift that is bestowed upon us, by The God, for serving him. And I never wanted to serve The God.

“But, I swear Freddie. I enjoyed that murder. I made sure that he would die hard as I ripped my dagger out of his guts. I knew that Phineas was nowhere around so there was no way that the fucker was going to be healed and I left him screaming and whimpering. At a stroke, I had removed the sense of immortality that the inner circle had. I had fed them fear and confusion. There I was, one of the small, mistreated and lesser parts of what they were doing and I had arrived before killing one of them without mercy.

“I hope it shook them, they certainly looked terrified and they just kind of sat there in shocked silence while the man that I stabbed was writhing around in agony on the floor. I stood over them. The blood dripped from my dagger while Kristoff stood at the door to prevent anyone from leaving or anyone from entering. It was one of those points and places where neither of us was in any real danger. At the most, these men had small daggers that they would cut food up with. We were wearing our full armour and they could no more kill us than they could have killed a Golem.

“When I was done, Kristoff stepped forward and it was my turn to stand in front of the door. I think it was one of his older brothers that were in the room. As I told you, Kristoff was the younger son of one of the families involved with the cult as well. His scorn and disdain for the cult were equal to mine. He never really wants to talk about his family and after I had asked and he had evaded the question, I didn’t ask any further. Seemed only fair.

“So Kristoff, punched his elder brother in the face, smashing his nose and one of his cheekbones if I am any judge, before pulling the hood of the robe down and dragging him into the centre of the circle and cutting the blubbering idiot’s throat for him. Kristoff held his brother’s face so that he could watch the life leave his brother’s eyes.”

Sam shuddered.

“There are many people that I hate that are still alive.” He admitted. “Vernon Roche being one. Him and the other fuckers that conspired to kill our king and sell us out to the South. I don’t hate Ciri, I actually quite like Ciri, but the office of the Emperor of Nilfga… I am being distracted.

“But even if Vernon Roche was in front of me. Cruelty in death serves a purpose and should only be done if that purpose is served. And before you start talking to me about the cult corrupting me in some way. Then I would point out that it was the war that taught me that. The man I killed could have been any in that circle of upper cultists other than Cavill and his sons…”

“Why?” I asked. “Why not kill Cavill?”

“Because he was the known factor. I knew how he and his sons would think and act. The other danger was that there was a not small possibility that the cult would… kind of go to ground if Kristoff and I went overboard. We wanted the cult united, we wanted them to come after us. If we went too hard then the cult would splinter. Some of those surviving Lords would go home, burn their cultist robes and take steps to ensure that we couldn’t implicate them. I wanted them to feel shocked and scared and then I wanted them to come after me.

“So Kristoff killed his brother. That was the price for his obedience. His brother had already taken steps to disinherit Kristoff. I think he had sons of his own or something and the two hated each other. The brother was another of the old guard that protected strategically unimportant castles and garrisons in the North during the war rather than actually fighting. I’ve never been but he tells me that his family land is an old, broken-down, drafty old castle that is essentially a keep without an outer wall because the villagers stole the stone. There is one village that pays its dues to the family and that was all but deserted.

“His life was Redania and the army. And the conspiracy to assassinate the King took that from him. I was always left with the impression that he could have been quite a charming man if things had gone the other way.

“So yeah. When his brother was finished with dying, Kristoff came and took his place by the door again. I told each of the cultists who they were. I told them that I knew everything and that if they came after me, I would destroy them.

“At the end, I told Cavill that his headdress looked fucking stupid and that he should take it off. I laughed at him. He did not enjoy that.”

Sam laughed at the memory.

“Oh, it was glorious. We barred them into that chamber and simply left. We knew that it would be several hours before they were discovered. They liked to be left alone with that kind of thing. There was another door further in that would lead to where the slaves were kept for their pleasure during these meetings, but there was no way out that way. So we barred them in, blocked the door and left them to it.

“When we got out of the caves, we were a little way off and down the path before I realised that I was weeping with happiness. The sheer relief of what I had just done. Even if my plans failed and I was killed in one form or another. I was free of those bastards because I was never going to serve them again. I would never have to bow and scrape. I would never have to… give of myself to them. I was… Literally free.

“It was wonderful.”

“I do believe that I sat down by the side of the road and wept with the release of it. Kristoff didn’t understand it of course and I even think he thought a little less of me than he had done when we first met, but… At that point, the sun was shining bright in the sky. I could see rainbows and I felt… for the first time… free.”

“That would have happened… I think… maybe a week or so before you arrived. It was the freest that I have ever felt. The Inquisitors were just in the process of arriving along with the church troops. We met and brought in the Redanian troops under Kristoff’s command and brought them in and then everything started to just fall into place.”

Sam shook his head at the memory.

“And then, that early part of the plan worked splendidly. It was amazing. Everyone acted and behaved according to my predictions of how it was all going to work. I literally couldn’t have been happier with the way that it all turned out. You arrived and started to exercise your curiosity. There was a brief moment of concern when Aunt Kalayn tried to tell you that I was evil, but other than that, things went as well as things could have gone. The cult was being cautious, overly so and it was a while before they started to show themselves.”

“Why did they wait so long?” I asked. “You weren’t in their circles anymore but of all people, you know more about the way that they worked than anyone else. Why did they wait so long?”

Sam tilted his head to one side for a moment.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I think that they were taking stock. Kristoff and I shook them. Neither of the two men that we killed was particularly important. Phineas would later tell me that they did some kind of internal witch hunt. They were certainly planning on getting rid of me when things had lined up in the right ways. As I say, land, title and wealth through Emma were what they were after. But despite that, they expected, literally, that I would just roll over and die, or retire to some life of permanent cult work in the same way that Arthur and his like did. They expected subservience.

“And then Kristoff and I, two younger sons that were trusted by the higher-ups simply walked into the higher councils and murdered two of them. That shook them. They were used to expecting some kind of betrayal from each other. Elder sons were watched carefully for signs of independence and freedom of thought. But even then, people like Edmund and Cousin Kalayn split off. That kind of behaviour was expected, at least partially. But to have two younger sons rebel and go against the wishes of the council. That was unheard of.

“So I think that they had themselves a little Witch Hunt. I do not doubt that the population of the younger sons in the cult was significantly reduced after those days. The cult was now a wounded animal and it was retreating on itself to figure out just how wounded it was.

“That and Cavill was a cautious man. I read about your meetings with him and you certainly seem to have him down. He was a bitter man but also very controlling and cautious. His sons, both of them that I knew and met, hated him. They thought he was overly cautious and resented how tightly he held onto his purse strings and prevented them from having their head.

“He was right of course. But that didn’t help both of them not be angry and jealous when they saw their peers running around, getting drunk, getting high and generally having a good time.

“So Cavill was cautious. He, mostly, put his own house in order and then came after us.

“And it all went so well and largely according to the way that I wanted it to go.

“Some churchmen died, specifically a prominent Inquisitor which meant that I would have all the resources that I might want when it came to destroying the cult. Kerrass figured out the smoke that they used. His counteractive agents were less than perfect but at the same time they did the job. From there we bloodied their noses… Once again proving to them that they had underestimated us and that they could have their noses bloodied and leave me alone. The joy of joys, we, and by that I mean you, Rickard and whichever one of his lads shot the bastard, killed one of Cavill’s sons.

“I entertain myself at night, sometimes, thinking about what Cavill’s reaction to that must have been,

“They retreated again, you went after them out of your desperate and endearing desire to help people. You found them and then they had no place left to hide when we destroyed them.”

I had to grit my teeth while noting down what Sam was saying.

“There were a couple of places where things didn’t go well. The first was that they came and killed old Father Gardan. Ella sent that word that you had visited him which led to his death, and I punished her for that when she came to work for me and not for the cult. I knew that he was there, but had not met him yet. I intended to take him in and make a fuss of him. I wanted to become his patron.

“The other thing was that I wanted my men to find you when you were fleeing from them. I wanted it to be my people that destroyed the people that I knew would follow you and hunt you and I wanted to be the one that rescued you. I wanted to be your brother at that moment.”

“Wait…” I wanted to yell at him and shout and scream and throw a tantrum. But I told myself that that wasn’t going to achieve anything and so, in the end, I took a deep breath and formed a question.

“What were your contingency plans?” I asked. “You’re as much a student of military history as I am and I know the same things that you know. Have a simple plan and then spend all of your time on contingencies. So what would you have done if Kerrass hadn’t figured out the smoke?”

He opened his mouth to speak but I carried on speaking.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t helped? If Kerrass and I had cleared out the castle before moving on which, I might add, I strongly suspect that Kerrass wanted me to do? And then, what would you have done if I had dug my heels in, listened to the advice and not gone north? Which I definitely should have done. I was already struggling and getting sick. I should have gone home.”

Sam nodded his agreement. “Yes, you probably should, given what I know of how sick you got later.” He took a breath and scratched his chin while he thought of his answer.

“Also,” I put in. “What would you have done if Cavill hadn’t ordered the cult to attack?”

Sam nodded again

“I was confident that you weren’t going to leave. I was convinced that you would stay and help me. But you are right, I did have contingencies. If Kerrass hadn’t figured out the smog then Kristoff’s people would have captured one of the “hounds” and “interrogated” him for information.

“If you had moved on, things would have gone the same way. Kristoff and I both knew about the cult, its whereabouts and the makeup of the cult. Instead of you, we would have used the church troops and the Inquisitors that were intent on the matter in the first place. Danzig or one of his fellows would have gone in your stead and I would have steered them in the right direction. It would have been the equivalent of sending a sledgehammer to perform careful surgery rather than the scalpel. And there would have been more chances of some of the fringe elements of the cult vanishing into thin air, but they would have been hunted down eventually.

“I may say that I was more confident that Cavill was going to attack than I was confident that you would have played the part that I needed you to do. He was careful but he was also a prideful man. I had hurt him and he was going to come for me.

“As for the smoke? We had a dim and small idea that if Kerrass had not figured that out, then we would have “found” some examples of the smoke causing things in a camp somewhere as well as some examples of how the cultists themselves protected themselves from the smoke.”

He stopped and cleared his throat.

“I may say something else though.” He said cautiously. “I know that you hate me and I know that you have every reason to do so. But if I had known what state your head was in, or if I had known how sick you were becoming, I would not have let you go. But we don’t know how bad things are getting with our comrades until after the fact. I am sorry that I didn’t see that in you Frederick. I really am.”

Despite my own best efforts, I found that I was moved and for a moment I didn’t know what to do. Do I accept the apology which, although it might be genuine, was also a way for Sam to get back into my good graces. Or do I rebuke the apology and become the churl in the matter.

I elected to ignore what he said and took a couple of deep breaths.

“So, after I got captured, what was the plan?” I asked.

“Phineas contacted me when you turned up at Cavill’s castle. I was a little surprised that they didn’t do anything up to that point, but I rather think that Cavill wanted to see to your destruction himself. I think it would have annoyed him if you had just been killed by some, seeming, bandit attack. He knew that the plan would be to take you alive.

“So in the same way that Phineas removed a way for the slave to track you. He did provide a way for me to track you. He was also instrumental in convincing Cavill not to just murder you outright.”

“Cavill claimed that it was his hate that motivated him to use as part of some kind of rite.”

“Yes and no. Phineas elevated and amplified that aspect of Cavill’s character so that he decided to send you out on a hunt. So the plan was that you would flee, my people would find you, work out some form of miraculous rescue and then we could proceed to systematically destroy the rest of the cult.”

I took a deep, calming breath before I decided what words I was going to come out with next.

“So what happened?” I demanded. “We could quite have done with some kind of miraculous rescue.”

Sam grunted at that, a little sadly and with some chagrin on his face.

“It turns out that you out-thought all of us. But also that Cavill lost his temper in smashing Kerrass’ arms. If he had not done that then Kerrass would have been in charge of your flight and if that had happened… well, we could have found you as I think you would have been more likely to head for the road. But instead, Cavill smashed Kerrass’ arms, thus disrupting the rite by the way, and so you played the cautious game and headed for the high passes.

He laughed and looked at me with something close to pride. It was a strange feeling for me. People don’t often look at me like that.

“It was absolutely the right thing to do as you didn’t know where the rescue force was, but it also meant that Cavill’s cultists were between my forces and agents and you. We could not cut through them without it being an all-out war which would, again, result in the cult shattering and that was the last possible thing that we wanted to happen. They needed to be kept whole so that we could destroy them all at a stroke.

“But the die was cast by that point. All we could do was wait. You were too far from where I had any influence and we waited and hoped and watched while you made your last stand with the Elves.

“It was my first proper argument with Phineas. We met in secret in case anyone recognised him. I was not concerned that things would go wrong. But it was more that… Someone like Kristoff might think that I was playing both sides off against the middle.

“I demanded to know why Phineas couldn’t extract you, and Kerrass… and the rest to be clear. I bore Rickard, Chireadean and the Elves no ill will. But he refused. He argued that you would kill him on sight.”

“Not unfair,” I muttered.

“And he refused to leak the way that you could be tracked to Ariadne as well because he didn’t think that he could do that and preserve his identity and privacy.”

Sam lapsed into silence for a moment and neither of us said anything.

“We spent a long time at that argument.” Sam said, “before he told me something that finally, gave me a weapon against him. He told me, ‘I am a man for The God and he is the only one that I would place above my own survival’. I didn’t know how I was going to use that in the future but I knew that he had just given me his weakness.”

He lapsed into silence again for a long time before he shook himself and started to speak.

“What I did do was to station some people as close on my borders to where I knew you to be. The Inquisition and the other Redanian and Imperial forces that had arrived by that point were limiting what I could do. I couldn’t…” he made quotation marks with his fingers “cross the borders, but I could mount patrols against cult incursions on that part of my lands. I couldn’t go into the connected lands because of feudal Redanian and Imperial law. Not without cause of course and although the Inquisition was doing their hunting for the cult we hadn’t found anything outside my lands yet.

“My worry, Emma’s worry and Ariadne’s insistence that she couldn’t sense you were not adequate justification for me to invade my neighbours. Even if the place where I knew you to be was a backwater part of my closest neighbour that he hasn’t bothered to work in generations.

“But when you started the smoke plume, I ordered the crossing.”

He sighed again.

“I rather think that the issue was already decided by the time I got word, let alone could give the order, but there we are. I am sorry Frederick. That last part was bungled. I know it and I know that some good men were lost and it is, not least, because of the bureaucracy that tied my hands that all of that happened.”

“Or you could have told everyone where the cult was and what was going on.” I pointed out

“Not without…”

“If you talk about compromising your safety again Sam…”

I sighed and made an effort to let go of my anger.

“You cannot tell me that there weren’t ways that you could have got around that Sam. You preserved yourself against the preservation of your brother and the ELVES that helped me.”

His face hardened.

“You are missing something there Frederick. My first, and by far, the most important objective was that we destroy the cult. That was more important. And yes, that was more important than a handful of Elves and soldiers. And yes, it was more important than the life of my brother. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but we were at war with those people and they had to be destroyed. The cult was evil Frederick. Even though you might say that what I have done since is worse… what I am doing is a relatively small rebellion. Wars have been fought throughout history. The Cult was a blight, a cancer and it needed to be cut out.

“I would have hated that it cost you your life, of course, I would. But if it meant that the cult was destroyed because of it… Then that is a sacrifice that I would be willing to make.”

“But you wouldn’t sacrifice your own life,” I told him. “Which makes your conviction worthless. Any man that would send another to die in his stead is worthless. You sent me to die rather than sacrifice yourself.”

Sam nodded, a little thoughtfully before he took a breath and started to speak again.

“In a moment,” he said calmly. “When you have calmed yourself, you will ask me what my contingency was for your not making it back. What would I have done if Cavill and his cronies had destroyed you.”

He was right, that would have been my next question.

“The contingency, Frederick, was that I was the contingency. I knew where the cult was and I could tell them what I knew. But if I had gone to confess, which I would have done, then not only would I have gone to the flames, but there s no way that ambitious men in the church, Mark’s rivals and Emma’s enemies, wouldn’t have seen to it that Emma would have joined me on the pyre and the Coulthard trading company would have been cut up and destroyed. Thus leaving all of our workers at the whims of some Imperial or Redanian court bureaucrat. A courtier that has always hated us.

“Mark would have been doomed, his words and the work that he was doing would have been condemned and his efforts to return the cult of the Eternal Flame to one of service, shelter and guidance would be undone. The Inquisition and the Witch-hunters would have had the power again.

“Now I would have done it if I couldn’t find any other way. But there is also the possibility that the Inquisition would not have believed me and killed me before I could have told them much. And it is also true that the Inquisition is not above corruption. Whatever else he was, Cavill was relatively wealthy and more than capable of bribing a few churchmen. You were not, and are not, my only brother Frederick. And I was thinking of my brothers of arms as well as my family in blood.

He was becoming passionate now, his anger rising.

“I love you, Freddie… Sorry, Frederick. But there is something that you do not understand because you are being naive. Whether your life had continued in the way that you had wanted it to go, if I am defeated and you are allowed to continue, or whether you take up the gauntlet that I intend to lay in front of you, you are going to be a Lord of Men. When that happens, there is a lesson that you need to learn.

“You have been allowed to fuck around in the Empire for the last several years. Before that, you were a student. You have spoken to other people about the duties of the Lords to their people and everything you said was right. But here is the part that you have missed. Now, whichever way this all turns out, you must bear this in mind. There is a difference between doing things, as a Lord, for the individual, or the greater. To quote the philosopher, the needs of the greater outweigh the needs of the few. And you need to take that in. You will need to make decisions that mean that some villagers get the aid and some do not. You will decide who lives and who dies because you can save some but not all.

“You will kill yourself with it, you will stay up at night to try and think of some kind of middle ground where you can make everyone happy and keep everyone alive. Your advisors and comrades will do their best to help you but sooner or later, that decision needs to be made by you and only you. You cannot save everyone and sometimes, what that means is that you must sacrifice a few people that you love, for the ability to save everyone. That is the reality of it Freddie… and you need to come to terms with it.

“Could I have just mounted an armed force and ridden to your rescue? Absolutely. But if I had done that, then people would have asked how I knew where you were as well as mounting a counter invasion. And then the entire thing falls apart. Not just the cult, but us as well. We are suddenly the Coulthard family that doesn’t think that rules apply to us.

“And there is even a path there, where I rescue you only for the Inquisition to come for both of us and while the Inquisition was in the process of burning us, the rest of the cult was getting away, entrenching further or any number of other things that they could have been doing.

“That was what I was weighing up. It was a shitty decision, but in the long run, the cult was destroyed and our friends and family lived to fight another day.”

He finished and slumped back into his chair, plainly and clearly exhausted and breathing hard.

I waited for my breathing to calm down and then I sat back.

“So…” Sam began. “No words of judgement?”

“No,” I said. “I hate the decision and the way you did things. You were the man in the moment and you made your decisions accordingly. Of course, I judge you for what you did, but you know that and you know how I feel about all of that. So I’m not going to go into it any further. It’s a waste of my time.”

Sam nodded, a little sadly.

“But…” I began. “I need to ask about what led you to ostracise the Elves at the castle gates. Why did you not support the men… the people that had saved me. Why did you let Kristoff tear down Rickard and Kerrass and Chireadean in those trials? And how did all of that lead to… all of this?” I gestured around us.

Sam nodded and he rested his head back and I think it was the first time that I saw real despair in his eyes.

“It’s obviously more complicated than this and I will go into some of it. I think that, if you really want to pursue things, you could take some of what I am telling you now and combine it with the transcripts of everything that happened in Kalayn castle after you left and the full might of the Redanian, Imperial and Inquisitorial forces turned up then there could be quite an educational book written about all of that awfulness.

“The short answer is ‘politics’. I know that you are a relatively pro-politician and I can understand where you are coming from. The courtiers and ambassadors and people that run the world are invaluable and I will not deny that. It doesn’t stop me hating them but it is the ingrained dislike of a soldier against those men that choose to serve in a completely different way.”

Then he leant forward with a real feeling of fire in his eyes.

“But those fuck-heads that play at politics, purely to increase their own power. With no other end in sight other than “power”. Those people can die in a fire. You know the people that have no other goal for themselves other than to accrue more power but without any kind of set idea of what they want to use that power for. I want more power so that I can throw off the Imperial tyranny. I can understand those people that want the power for a purpose, to improve the roads or to improve the state of Education in Novigrad. Or those people that want to increase the power of the church for fear of everyone’s souls, or those people that want to decrease the power of the churches so that we can govern ourselves instead of being beholden to some absent and nebulous power. But power for power’s sake? Or even worse, power because they think that they deserve it? Are entitled to it?”

He shook his head.

“I always want to ask what they’re going to do with it. And when they don’t have an answer, I always want to slap them.

“And that was what was happening in the castle at that point. And once again, although I didn’t tell you, I saved your life.”

I tried to fight down the fit of scorn that I felt. “In what way.”

Sam took a moment to order his thoughts before he leant forwards and started gesturing on his desk as though there was some kind of map, or list drawn on there. He was pointing at the table, gesturing at the table and occasionally prodding it.

“We sent out word that we had found the cult along with rough estimates of the scale of the problem. I made my ‘estimates’ as close to what I knew the strength of the cult to actually be without leaving myself open to suspicion. And words cannot express how, very suddenly, my small and quiet part of the continent, suddenly seemed crowded with people who were hungry to turn events towards their own benefit. It was the kind of situation that was so bizarre that although it was awful and stressful and horrifying at the time, I find that I look back on it and laugh at how ridiculous it all was.

“One of the things that we would laugh about, bitter laughter you understand, and by ‘we’ I mean myself, Kristoff, Dempsey and Danzig, was that not one of them, not a single one of them, were there out of a desire to destroy the cult, purely for the sake of destroying the cult. They all wanted to destroy the cult, but they wanted to do it for a reason or to secure their own power or their own influence, or the influence of their religion or their faction.

“There were so many factions that it’s hard to keep track of. But there was the hardline, Eternal Flame, and Inquisition faction who were there because they felt that they had lost too much power. They were angry Frederick, really angry and if you weren’t in their firing line, then I would have found it a lot more fun than it was.

“Mark is the leader of the traditionalists in the church hierarchy and he was gaining traction in the church, I know that you had spoken about some of this. But because he was becoming popular, with the Hierarch as well, he was an enemy of these Inquisitorial fucknuts. And then you and I, his brothers, had found a pocket of the blackest heresy under their noses.”

Sam leant forward and jabbed the desk for emphasis.

“That they. Had. Not. Found. It had been under their noses all this time and they hadn’t found it.

“At first they wanted to disprove the cult’s existence but the cult had killed Hacha while Dempsey and Trent were both witnesses to the horror. Then they wanted to prove that this meant that their services were still needed, while we argued that what we needed was proper investigators, not blood-crazed lunatics. Then they threatened to withdraw their support where the Inquisitorial arm, or their equivalent, of Kreve, offered to take up the slack. So then they wanted to be at the vanguard, but the Imperial and Redanian troops didn’t let them.

“The Redanian troops wanted a successful war. Our fighting spirit had taken a kicking at the end of the war and we wanted someone that we could stomp on. BUT… some of the cultists were Lords and men with power and influence. The common soldier was looking forward to having a crack at some of the fuckwits that they all remembered talking down to them and generally carrying on. But the Knights and officers were reluctant. They saw it as an effort by ‘new-blood’ nobility, meaning you and me, to destroy the old order. So they dragged their feet and looked for faults in our conduct.

“The Imperials were keen to show the common man that soldiers in black armour were not to be feared. The same with the Great Sun cult people that turned up. That still meant, that to some of the nobility, the Imperials were coming up from the South to destroy the established Redanian order.

“You have to remember that the only reason that the soldiers and militaries knew that there was a cult here was that we had told them there was one. We had already driven the “hounds” away and they dismissed the ravings of the Inquisition as just that, ravings. Even when the raving was coming from men of sense like Dempsey and Danzig.

“And Kreve… Kreve were there to be able to return to the position of power that they had once held. The followers of Kreve had indeed lost their former ground to the general worship of the Eternal Flame, so here was a situation where they could return to prominence at the expense of their friendly rivals. I know that you liked Danzig and I agree that he was… is a good man I should say, as far as I know, he’s still alive and kicking. But at the end of the day, he was a churchman first and there is little doubt in my mind that some of the things that he did were to support the way the church worked and to maintain a friendship with you, the known and famous chronicler who has an awful lot of influence on the world stage.”

He took a breath and started to regroup before continuing.

“And that was just the larger factions. All of those factions had smaller factions within themselves. And despite my disdain and despair, some of those people that were there were there for reasonably good reasons. But those sub-factions had alliances, friends, enemies, family, and friendly and unfriendly rivalries. All kinds of things.

“You noted one yourself which was the knight that got to you first who disobeyed orders to do so I might add, was the nephew of one of the powerful and fire-breathing churchmen.”

He looked at me slyly,

“Believe me, we’ll get to them.”

He leant back again.

“But that example was replicated all across, and up and down, the forces that had been sent to “help” us. And all of them thought that they outranked Kristoff and me. They would be very patronising, clapping me on the shoulder in the same way that you pat a child on the head after they’ve managed to shit in the jacks rather than in their hand, before telling me not to worry and that they would take it from there. Then they would argue, and fight, about who was in charge.

“It was a fucking mess and I thank The God that that mess has moved on past my lands now and is mostly disbanded.

“But one of the things that they all had in common was that they didn’t like me, they didn’t like Kerrass, Emma, Laurelen, Mark or Ariadne and most of all, they didn’t like you.”

“Why?” I asked. I was surprised by how much the comment hurt.

“Because, like Mark, you persist in using your position to call out their bullshit. And all the worse, from their point of view even if they don’t know why they’re angry. You’re not setting out to shoot them down for power and your own advancement. You’re doing it for perfectly good, logical and thought out reasons, and without meaning to hurt them specifically, your efforts aren’t personal, they’re just… what you’re doing.

“You are, pro-non-human, pro-magic and you believe that nobles should work for the benefit of the common folk over their own. You believe in science, history and education over superstition and you believe that religion should be a guide, not a rule. These people hate that kind of person and some of them were there, specifically, so that they could take shots at you and the slave.

“So then you come home,”

Sam sighed.

“This is another one of those situations where you just don’t know how much the Coulthard family are hated. You don’t walk in those circles, you don’t allow yourself to hear the naysayers. You tell yourself that they are hate-filled parasites and that this makes them wrong, but you don’t even listen to the reasoned debates.

“That Kerrass saved you and all of the others by invoking ancient magics, I cannot say that that was the wrong thing to do. I am not so deluded as to say that you should have waited for reinforcement. Nor am I so deluded as to re-litigate the entire situation. We were not close enough. As soon as the plume of smoke was seen, we were mobilising. That is true, but a proper force that could relieve and recover you were not close enough to make a difference. That is the military truth, no matter what our critics might say of it.

“But everything that happened after that, everything, was a disaster. Not entirely your fault, you did the best that you could, knowing what you did at the time, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a disaster and that I had to spend an enormous amount of political capital to keep you, Kerrass, Rickard, Chireadean and the rest of the soldiers and Elves alive.

“And it started from the moment that that Knight showed up. The one that you all told to fuck off.”

“I remember him as having a very punchable face,” I said and Sam laughed.

“I remember him and you’re right. It was a very punchable face. And I know why you, Chireadean and Rickard and everyone behaved in the way that you did. You had been through something awful and you were tired, angry, upset and terrified. In many cases, yours not least, you were sick and wounded as well. So I know why you did it. But that Knight was there for political reasons in that he needed, and wanted, to elevate himself.

“As I recall, in your diaries, you admitted that you had made another enemy and then you dismissed him from your mind. Well… that family even took that as a mortal insult.

“That Knight had been too young to fight against Nilfgaard but knowing that he was at home, tied to his mother’s apron strings, his Father and Elder Brother went to war, secure in the knowledge that it would be a noble and just cause and given that it was a noble and just cause, they absolutely expected to survive. They were among those that assumed that it would all come together in another grand battle like the second war. They wanted a grand battle like Brenna. They imagined noble banners, snapping in the wind and bright sunshine glinting off armour and spear points. I’m being derisive as, from what I understand, they were fairly good men. But they froze to death during Radovid’s winter war after not taking proper precautions going over the mountains.

“So that meant that the Knight in question fell under the influence of his Uncle, the churchman with one arm that you remember. He was a… I don’t have a word to describe him. But he was a Knight that you fought the likes of with the burning sword fuckwits. He lost his arm during the fighting. He always claimed that it was part of the war effort but, again, according to my contacts, he was more into fighting Elves and so-called ‘heretics’ as he was one of those that conflated the two into being the same thing.

“And although those two were not the most powerful types that were against you, what they saw, what you did, and the way that EVERYONE behaved, meant that they were able to give your enemies, and our enemies, the ammunition that they needed to destroy you and therefore us.

“If I played the line of things out. They were thinking short-term. They had forgotten that you were a favourite of the Empress and had underestimated just how powerful Mark was. If they had taken you and burned you on the spot. Then yes, you, Kerrass, Emma, me, Rickard, Chireadean and the rest would have been burnt. The Slave would have escaped as they were just the kind of ass-hats that would underestimate her. But the vengeance of the Empress would have destroyed the church of the Eternal Flame. But they didn’t see that. They would be telling their followers that it was a holy crusade, that the Flame willed it and this time, the Imperial Forces would not have stopped and simply wiped them off the face of the continent.”

“Just as they will with you,” I told him.

He smirked a little, but otherwise, he didn’t rise to the comment and simply continued with his narrative. Which I admit, was fairly compelling.

“So the Knight and his uncle made it back to Kalayn castle and stirred everyone up. Our enemies were poised to strike and were just looking for any excuse they could to slam you in front of an Inquisitorial tribunal, which was already waiting by the way. And you walk in, hug a “monster” and defend an Elf and then we were off.”

“So why didn’t they burn me?”

Sam grinned.

“Because big brother Sammy saw it coming and saved your life.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Explain,” I told him.

“I knew what they were doing. And I had ordered Kristoff and the guards at the gate to bar the entrance to the castle so that the Elves couldn’t come in. When Rickard and yourself got angry, as I expected you to, there could be a confrontation where I could be the one to stay, putting myself on the side of the aggressors so that I could calm them down and you would retreat outside the castle.

“I had already arranged that Danzig, your closest ally, would be one of the people to help escort you back to the castle. And so Kristoff and I could be the ones seen to be your enemy when in fact we were your friends.

“I should say, that you were arguing that it was my castle and that I could do what I want. But I’m afraid that too was naive. The enemy was inside the castle and there were more of them than there were of me. If the forces of the Inquisition had wanted to, they could have destroyed all of us. We would not have survived. They would have just started the fires and the, relatively speaking, a small number of Redanian troops and Imperial Troops would either have supported the Inquisitorial troops or been otherwise destroyed.

“Remember that soldiers are superstitious and in the face of priests standing there and screaming at them that their souls are forfeit for attacking the church in the performances of their good and holy mission in the blah blah blah, then who knows what they’re going to do?”

He subsided.

“It wasn’t my castle anymore. There was a war on. Literally a civil war. The armed forces of Redania and Nilfgaard against the forces of a whole bunch of lords combined together into a cult. And Kalayn castle had been chosen as the rear guard. There were soldiers and Knights there that outranked me. And there were Lords there that were of higher noble rank than me. And not a small amount of them didn’t like me and didn’t like the Coulthard family. And not one of them would have lifted a finger to help us or help you.

“Some would have stood aside because they were religious men and were concerned about the knock-back from the church. Others would have stood back out of hatred for us and the knowledge that the church killing us all would mean that they could keep their hands clean and just say to the Empress or whoever that the church had killed them. There were even some who would have stood back to give the religious people enough rope with which to hang themselves.

“It was not my castle anymore.

“And in the tribunals where you, correctly and accurately, say that I sat back and allowed people to just attack you, Kerrass, Rickard and Chireadean. I told Kristoff to do that so that there was an attack that I could control. But at the end of the day. I was mitigating things as much as I could. And regardless of what you think, I did save your life.”

I nodded for a while. I didn’t look at Sam, I had no idea what he was thinking and I had this horrible feeling that he was waiting for something from me. Something that would lead towards me to forgive all of the stuff that had happened then.

“So all of the stuff happening between you and Emma was just…”

“She was just someone else that was wanting to take control of my castle and my lands from me.” Sam hissed. I think he would have said more but I held my hand up to forestall him.

“Sam…” I began, rubbing my head. “I have to accept what you say on face value. Everything that you say is perfectly feasible. I can see how all of that could have come about. I really can. But at no point did you come and tell me any of this.”

“I was ensuring that the secret of the cult was preserved and…”

“You could have done all of that while telling me nothing about the cult.” I interrupted, sure of my ground. “While talking about what happened there and then, you have not mentioned, once, The cult, The God, or your involvement in anything that would have upset me or called suspicion down onto you. You could have told me, or written me, or any number of other ways that you could have explained away your behaviour. But you didn’t. You behaved, and you allowed your men… even ordered your men, to behave like racist assholes.”

“I was protecting you, Mark and…”

“And I think it’s a bit sad that you clearly believe that. But…”

I paused and looked out of the window.

“This has the feeling of revisionism to me,” I told him. “This feels like… You know that you fucked up and that in the aftermath of the situation you have been working to justify your actions. To yourself, even if it wasn’t for me. So you have spent the… what the fuck is it… spent the year since those events telling yourself that everything you did was to protect me and the people with me when the truth is that you were protecting yourself. You are protecting yourself even now.

“I can absolutely agree that those events got out of hand and out of control. I know… Recent events have shown me after all.” I gestured at him. “That I have been blind, wilfully so, to the faults of my friends and family. So I am well aware that I was not properly political with how we all handled the aftermath of all of that.

“Looking back, I should have allowed myself to go with that Knight whose name I can’t even remember, but then who knows what would have happened. I know that my version of events would be more believable than his, or his uncles so… maybe that would have calmed matters down.

“Or made them worse.

“But we’re not talking about me. I can see that was all a fuck up. But I think… you have worked hard to ensure… I think you acted in the moment, doing what you saw is best. It is not lost on me that there is no way that I could check those events or what happened.”

He was squirming in his seat and I went for the kill.

“I’ve been watching you since we started this entire preposterous exercise,” I told him, gesturing at the notes. “You’ve told me about how you were assaulted by Edmund and about how you gave yourself to cultists. That’s nothing to be ashamed of but I know that some men would not be able to do that out of shame and embarrassment. You have told me that you manipulated Edmund into killing Father. You have repeatedly expressed your disdain for women. You have killed my best friend, enslaved the woman that I love, killed our other older brother, kidnapped our sister and been responsible for untold numbers of deaths. Both through negligence in not taking the cult's activities to the proper authorities when you could, but also directly through the Jack debacle in the South as well as the further cult business in the North when you could have warned us.

“There is a huge number of things that you could be ashamed about in there. A huge number. But I think that those moments, the time when you kept the Elves, Rickard’s men, Kerrass and me from re-entering the castle. Where you allowed men to attack innocent women and children in your castle and your locale. I think that’s the thing that you are ashamed of. That’s the thing that haunts you. And you’ve been spending all of your time since then rationalising it in your head until you can come up with a version of the story that you are comfortable with. A version of the story that you can tell people aloud without flinching.

“It’s called revisionist history Sam. The facts are the same. You allowed the endangerment of the people that saved your younger brother’s life. You cast out those people that brought the news of your victory to everyone’s attention. And then you allowed people to attack Kerrass, Rickard and Chireadean in the face of all of the evidence that those men… A human, an Elf and a Witcher were heroes.

“That is the thing that you are ashamed of.”

Sam nodded, not in affirmation but it was more a nod of thought.

“Again though.” He sighed and rubbed his temples. “I don’t know if that’s true and I will need to think about it. You have certainly given me some things to examine in myself there. But even if that was the case. Another truth is that I did those things to protect you, I do believe that and that is something that I am not ashamed of. But also to preserve my own power. Not to pursue this rebellion as that had not entered into my mind yet. But so that Kalayn lands could remain in my hands and so that Coulthard lands would do the same. People were still looking for excuses through Redanian and Imperial courts, looking for excuses to strip all of our lands, wealth and titles from us.

“If I had protected you, whatever the outcome, that would have been another excuse that they would have had to destroy us.

“If I am ashamed, and now that I think about it, you may be right in that, then I would still make the same choice. As I told you, as a Lord you sometimes have to make shameful decisions to protect the greater part of things against protecting the small. And you do these things to protect the whole. Sometimes, you must do the shameful thing so that others can survive.”

I could see that this was a debate that would not end and I let it go.

“Moving on then,” I said. “When did the idea of rebellion enter your mind?”

I’m going to go over to Sam’s direct narration on this bit because he presents quite a compelling version of events. He started speaking after a long moment of what looked like contemplative thought.

Whatever else we can agree on, we can, at least, agree on the fact that Kalayn lands are objectively beautiful.

.

I don’t know when I first made that choice that I was going to rebel. I know that I had been angry from the moment that we had been told that we had been sold out by Vernon Roche, Djikstra and all of their different confederates. When I saw the Witcher Geralt across the halls in Toussaint, I had to physically restrain myself from going over there and smashing his fucking face in for selling out the North to the South.

I mean… I know that Witcher Geralt could probably tie me into a knot without particularly thinking about it, or at least, he could back then, and I know that his involvement in the assassination is only rumoured and is more than likely an effort by various people to ensure that their favourite historical figure was at every major historical event in the last fifty or so years.

But just the rumour that he might have been there is enough to make me want to smash his teeth down his throat.

So I’ve always been angry at the South. If I had my way, Redania would invade Temeria as well because they were the stupid fucks that properly sold us out. Djikstra was involved but I can’t help but notice that Temeria is the place with the status of being its own sovereign state whereas we get the dubious title of being a “client kingdom”. I know that the words are simply that, words. Just air on the wind but at the same time, I feel it… here, in my heart.

God but I hate them…

There are two moments that I can think of. Two moments that kind of… solidified the idea in my head. I don’t know which one was first in time and it was only a month or so after they had both occurred that they tied together in my head and became something new.

As I say, there was so much happening at the time that it is difficult to know which moment I need to pull out and tell you about. I don’t know when it was that they said these things or did these things. All I can remember is that I was so… fucking angry about it all that… Well.

I’ve told you about the situation as we moved against the cult. It was a mess. How we got the job done, I am not entirely certain, but it was a mess. The analogy of there being too many generals and not enough soldiers would put it best.

I had found that my job was increasingly becoming… It was all but the same as what my job was for the cult. I would sit in on meetings that I had no authority to speak at, even when I was well aware that what people were saying was nonsense and would just get a load of people killed. When I did try to bring things up I would be told that my presence in that meeting was a courtesy, bestowed upon me because I had been the one that had brought things to their attention.

The only difference between these new meetings and the meetings of the cult was that in these meetings, I wasn’t required to suck anyone’s dick while I took notes and poured wine.

Yes. I was the newest in rank and the newest in the situation which meant that I was the lowest-ranking person there and that meant that I was the one required to make the toasts, provide the food and pour the wine. My job became a political one. Even though I had more proper military experience than most of them. Even though I, through you as well as my efforts, had provided most of the information and the intelligence that we were using…

They were, again, the kinds of armchair generals and officers that aggravate you, and me. They were church men and although there were some military people there, they were the kind of people that had not served on the front line. That had protected…

You know what… fuck them. They hadn’t seen any of the real fighting. Either through direct cowardice where they had run away from the Nilfgaardians or because they had not even bothered to turn up in the first place.

Or they were church soldiers, men looking for glory and trying to buy their way into whatever heaven they were aiming for by being seen to be at the forefront of the battle against heresy.

It was… exactly the same as attending those cult meetings. I found myself playing faction off against faction and person off against person. Only it was all the more frustrating because what I needed to happen was that these people needed to DO THEIR JOBS. I wanted the cult destroyed and these were the cretins that had been sent to do it.

I wasn’t the only one that was getting frustrated either. There were good men involved. Good soldiers and good leaders who were obviously just as frustrated as I was.

I guarantee that if the overall command had been given to any of those people, including me or Danzig for that matter, then the entire thing would have been over in weeks. But oh no, that would have been too easy. One faction would have been angry that their troops weren’t the ones climbing the barricades at the main cult hideout.

Incidentally, the people that had that dubious honour, then complained that we should have warned them that they were walking into a trap. Which we did, multiple times.

God but it was a mess.

And then one day the Nilfgaardian man turned up. This was several weeks into the overall campaign. I think that you had just left which means that we had assaulted the main caves and were in the process of making sure that we had cleaned it out properly. So we were arguing about how we set about making sure the cult was properly destroyed in the surrounding areas. Various people wanted to send Inquiristors into the local villages, but that would have started a new reign of terror for the Inquisition and we all knew it. I would no longer have had the authority to stop them from forming a witch hunt and even… what did you call them? Quoting from Father Gardan?

That’s it, the ‘relatively harmless little heresies’ would have been dragged out from their homes, tortured and burnt at the stake.

Some people wanted to do a full cleanse and burn. Remove all the Lords from the authority because the cult was mostly a nobility-based thing and start again with nobles that they all supported and would then owe them favours. There was also the danger of those cultists that were not in the caves and that might have fled or had been unaccounted for in the field where you slew them. There were so many bodies there that it was almost impossible to properly police that field and identify everybody there. They were already rotting by the time you had been picked up.

So there we were, back to arguing. The mages had representatives there as well now, as well as all of the church people and although I distrust magic users, to be fair to the magical contingent, they at least delivered on their promises.

But that was another faction which riled up the church folk even further.

There was, honest to The God, another civil war brewing there.

Then Nilfgaard showed up. Two men and a small army worth of soldiers and priests. You wrote about the Nilfgaardian priest and I will admit that it was fun watching him sit all of the other church factions down and tell them to behave. He told them all that he was in charge now, according to Imperial remit and instantly, and without hesitation, he handed over the military side of the entire situation to the Colonel that he had come North with.

The Colonel was the kind of solid military man that warms the hearts of soldiers everywhere. He was a Count of someplace that I’d never heard of, and he spoke Northern with a carefully clipped accent. I remember that he came to one meeting and listened to every report and then simply decided what he wanted us to do.

The priests went into the local villages and started relief efforts after the various privations of the cult. It was exactly the kind of back door missionary work that the church of the Eternal Flam has been dreading for centuries and you mark my words, Kreve and the Eternal Flame will never die out but in the decades to come it will be the sun and Melitele that will be the primary religions of the Northern Kingdoms.

Then the Colonel gave his instructions to the more military men, including the church troops. Someone protested and informed the Colonel that he didn’t listen to those orders but only the orders of Kreve. I would love to be able to tell you that the moron worshipped the Eternal Flame, but the soldiers of the Eternal Flame are more politically savvy after they saw what Radovid did to Siegfried and the Flaming Rose.

The Colonel ordered that the disobeying man was guilty of disobeying orders in the face of the enemy and ordered him summarily hanged and his men disbanded.

On the one hand, I wanted to cheer that someone decent was finally in charge.

He came to me, clapped me on the shoulder and thanked me for all my hard work before he just set about the rest of things with his own command structure.

Dammit.

I hated him for that. I absolutely hated him. I wish I could tell you why but that made me so angry. It was the dismissive attitude I think. But I was dismissed. It was like he was telling me that the grown-ups were in charge now and that I didn’t need to worry about whatever was going to happen next. I could just… rest assured that he was going to deal with it all and that I didn’t need to worry my pretty little head about it. It made me so angry and I looked around at all of my fellows.

We were a conquered nation. I had known it before. It had even been driven home to me before. But in the right there and right then of the situation, suddenly it was all the more pronounced that that was the case.

I was right as well. After that Colonel arrived, and suddenly, it was his men that were giving the orders and directing people. The fact that the orders that he was giving were the same orders that I would have given in his place was beside the point. But it reminded me that we were a conquered people.

And since then? For his actions in the North against the Cult, he was recognised by the Imperial Court. I doubt that he came to the Empress’ attention. She had her things to worry about, first with the Skeleton Ship and the problems in her own house from that and later with the growing problems in Aedirn. But someone noticed and he was given a prestigious posting which will mean that he is a young general while the rest of us wallow.

It rankles. It does. It might sound petty, and it is. But it drove home the fact that we lost, they won and now they expect us to live with it. For all that the Empress speaks about us all being united in the face of blah blah blah. It’s not true. They are the conqueror and we are the conquered.

And I won’t stand for it.

.

And then the other thing happened.

What was the other thing?

Phineas came to see me. I thought you would have realised these things by now that whenever I have made an important decisions, Phineas comes to see me.

I was back at Kalayn castle. I can’t remember why, it was all a messed up situation anyway so for all I know I was back carrying important dispatches or seeing to this or that. The castle was still the campaign's rearmost staging area. It was where the wounded came and the less important supplies were stored. It was still a hotbed of politics and scheming though so don’t think that it was all ok.

As I say, Kalyan lands were beautiful. It was Autumn by that point. Still fairly warm, especially if I dressed properly for it and I had found a place, up on the walls, where I could get a bit of peace. It wasn’t the lookout point where we spent our time looking down over the valleys, this was a place of peace and beauty. You couldn’t see anything important, it was of no strategic use, it wasn’t a lookout point or a big enough meeting area. There was no way that you could assail that particular patch of the wall and there were many other routes that would be easier, if not much easier to attack.

What it was, was peaceful. There was a strange effect there that sheltered it from all of the wind. You could still hear the wind echoing around the place and moaning through the gaps in the walls and the battlements. You could hear the trees rustling and the birdsong but somehow, that small hollow was masked from it. In turn, this meant that when the rain fell, in that particular hollow, it fell gently and calmly rather than with that driving element that makes everything uncomfortable.

I like that little hollow and those that were closest to me in the grand scheme of things soon learned that if I couldn’t be found in my office, or lookout, or meeting areas, then I could be found there. I went there when I was looking for a bit of peace in the world. I could look out across the treetops that, by this point, were in the process of turning yellow, red and gold. I could see the mist falling off the mountain and now that we all knew that it wasn’t created by the cult, the mist was losing its sense of foreboding and fear which meant that it increasingly looked like a warm blanket that was draping itself across the countryside in the same way that a blanket can be pulled over a body to keep it warm.

I liked it up there. Ideally, despite all other factors, I kind of want to be there when I die. I mean, that’s highly unlikely now, but it’s kind of what I want.

There were some signs that I was not the only person over the unhappy history of Kalayn castle that has liked that small patch of the wall. There was a small shed that was built, leaning up against the wall that held an old desk and a chair as well as a kind of collapsible shelter that you could sit in to protect yourself from the falling rain.

There were also some old blankets that were dusty and ragged, having been obviously eaten by rats or some other kind of blanket-eating pest.

I had gone there that day for the same reason that I always go there. I had wanted a bit of peace in the face of all the idiocy that I was having to deal with regularly. There were Imperial forces there that were dealing with the logistics of carrying out a distant campaign. There were walking wounded that were trying to ignore the fact that some of them would be returning to the front while some others of them would be cast out onto the streets in their newly crippled states.

I was angry. I remember that. It was all supposed to be over by this point. The cult was all but dead and I wanted my home back. I wanted to start moving on with my life and begin to build a future. I wanted to work at letting go of my hatred of the cult and all of the things that had come with it. I wanted to reconnect with my family, you especially, and I wanted to start to make some real friends. Maybe reconnecting with some of my old war comrades and things.

But most of all, I wanted to start settling into the castle that was supposed to be my home. At the time, I intended to leave Coulthard castle for Emma. It’s mostly a trading waypost as it is and she needs the guest rooms and facilities to run the trading company. I would go there when I needed to meet with people that needed to be impressed but otherwise, she could have the damn place.

I wanted to turn Kalayn castle into my castle. I wanted to make a home out of it.

But I couldn’t do that, and, not the smallest reason for that was because the military action was still using my castle as their home base and staging area. I maintain that they didn’t need to do that. The main force and the front were miles away. Several days ride away at least. You took longer to do it but you were being careful and evading things. So why did they still need my castle?

What I thought at the time and what I still feel now, is that they had decided that they were using my castle because they thought that they were entitled to it. It had been the starting point of this adventure, I had got the ball rolling in asking you and Kerrass to get here and because of that. I was the person that had brought the inquisition and therefore, I had found the cult. They wanted to keep their dominance over me so that even though the campaign had moved on, they still wanted me to know my place.

I had been the first base and now they wanted to keep it. I remember sitting there and seeing the future unspooling in front of me. Castle Kalayn would always be an Imperial garrison now. Contrary to the ways of the North, the troops that were kept here, would be Imperial first and Kalayn second and I hated that. I had fought men in black armour. I had been taught to hate the men in the black armour and here I was, following the orders of men in black armour in my own castle.

I was not aware that I was angry or if I was, it was a remote thing, distant and buried under all of the other things that I was dealing with at the time.

So I sat there in the late evening, watching the sun go down over the treetops of my land. I had a skin full of wine and I intended to drink it before staggering to my bed and sleeping until I could no longer put off returning to my duties.

That’s it, that’s how I want to say how it felt... I had a list of things that I wanted to do for my people, for my lands and for my castle. But I would get up every day to find that the Imperial commanders, the church commanders and various other people had filled my time for me and all of the things that needed to be done for the land and people were being put further and further back in the service of the ambition of those other men.

The Imperials wanted to show the North what they were capable of and that they were not to be feared.

The church forces of Kreve and the Eternal Flame as they were just as bad as each other, wanted to be seen to be rooting out the harmful heresy that had existed under their very noses.

The leftover Northern Forces wanted an enemy that they could hit and wanted to show the Imperials what they were capable of.

I could see it all, the campaign was never going to end and I had no idea what to do about it.

Which was when Phineas found me.

If he was still alive, I would ask questions as to how and why he always seemed to turn up at these kinds of contemplative moments, these pivot points in my life. I would worry about that but then he… well… that is still to come in the story.

Was he manipulating me? Almost certainly but at the end of the day, he had a purpose in mind and his purpose served my purpose, even when I didn’t know what my purpose was.

So Phineas came to see me.

After he had done the deed with what Cavill had required with you and Kerrass, he had come to see me and let me know how I could track you through the wilderness. But after that, he had gone into hiding somewhere and I didn’t ask him where. He knew that one way or another, the cult was done. So he had already prepped for the thing and had built his little flesh Golems to be able to carry his equipment through a portal to where he wanted it to go and then I hadn’t bothered asking.

The portal opened and he stepped through. I was already in a foul mood.

“You should warn a person before you do that kind of thing,” I told him.

“For what purpose?” He wondered. He had gone to the shed to find another chair to sit in. It was not lost on me that he seemed to know his way around.

“So that I don’t just spin around and skewer the person that comes through the gate. You made me jump.”

He was amused. “And what message could I send that wouldn’t.” He told me. “If I sent a bird to drop an envelope, opened a smaller portal to send a message through? Or how about I invade your mind to pass the message on? Would any of those sudden and intrusive things make you jump any the less?”

“You shouldn’t be here.” I grumbled. “Someone could recognise you.”

“No, they won’t.” He told me and that seemed to shut down that particular line of conversation.

I sighed, I was self-aware enough that I was taking out my frustration on one of my closest allies, even if he wasn’t my friend. I held out the wineskin and he squirted a considerable amount into his mouth and he made a face.

“Soldiers wine.” He told me.

“Enough to get you drunk but not tasty enough to make you want more of it,” I told him.

He laughed at that and looked around himself with at least the pretence of some interest.

“Nice place you have here.” He told me.

“Shame about all the black everywhere,” I commented without intending to and he laughed again.

“All the black and the red and the fire and the lightning.” He added.

Some leftover patriotism from the war stirred in the depths of my chest.

“I quite like the red.” I told him. “Red and white, those are the colours that should be on a flag.”

“Ah… Redania.” He said. “I will drink to that.” He pulled out a bottle of good wine from inside his cloak, pulled the cork out and passed it to me.

“Here.” He said. “If you’re going to get miserable drunk then the least you could do is to get drunk with some good wine.”

“You say that,” I commented, taking the bottle and lifting it to my lips. “But I always thought that if you were miserable, you can’t properly appreciate the wine.”

“Snobs say that.” Phineas took the bottle back. “Speaking personally, I would say that a good bottle of wine can lift the spirits of even the most depressed man.”

I didn’t have an answer to that and we sat together in silence for a while.

“So what brings you here?” I wondered.

“I was just wondering what you wanted to do about the other thing.” He commented. “I mean, it’s all over now isn’t it, bar the shouting of course. Give it a few years and I can do some real experimenting without all of the fuckwits interfering with it all. I can start work on making you more powerful and you can bring your efforts to bear. We don’t really need the other thing any longer do we.”

We never referred to Francesca by name.

I took a deep breath. Whatever else you might think of me, I did still love Francesca. I would sacrifice her in a heartbeat if it meant the furthering of our goals, but…

“The safest option,” Phineas told me. “And arguably the kindest is to slit her throat, row her out to sea, put her in an iron box weighted down with chains and then dump her…”

I felt my weight shift as he spoke.

“But I sense that that isn’t something that you will go for.” He finished. “All the way through to the possibility that I could rewrite her memory in some way so that she can be found and rehabilitated. The danger there is that memory is physical, it is something that happens in the brain. So there is no guarantee that she will entirely forget where she has been and what she has been through. And even if she did, her personality might be completely different to what it was.

“But at the moment, she is a tool without a purpose is she not?” He said. “And when there is a tool without a purpose, you either repurpose that tool into a different tool or you throw the tool away.”

He let me stew in that for a while.

“After all.” He told me standing. “You don’t need her any more do you?”

He rose, patted me on the shoulder and after a long moment, he smiled and held out the bottle.

Which I took.

He nodded and summoned another transport portal and left through it, leaving me to brood with my thoughts.