Sir Trystan has just come to my cell to tell me that today has been chosen as a culmination of the ritual. As if I wouldn’t be able to tell by the way that the air is positively thrumming, while the rest of the guards are running this way and that way trying not to look as afraid as they are excited.

I am relieved. That might sound odd, but at least this will all be over. I wonder if I will survive and I also wonder if I would even recognise myself afterwards. The growing tension is everywhere in the midst of all of this horror and it will finally, finally all be over. I have no idea what this means. I have no idea why today is the chosen day instead of… I don’t know. Tomorrow, or yesterday. I suppose that I will find out.

Dear Flame, I hope it’s over soon.

Sir Trystan is trying to convince me and everyone around us who might be listening that he is my friend and my secretary, but I am still behind bars and he is walking around free with armour on and a sword at his side. I pointed this out to him as he came to see me and he had the honest-to-flame cheek to look ashamed.

Then he gave me my instructions along with a whole stack of papers that he put on the top of my desk.

I am to look through the extensive pile of notes that I have made over the last … however long it has been since this entire situation started. I am to look through them and decide which parts are important and which parts need to be set aside.

I asked him how long I have to perform this task, examining the, not small, pile of leather bindings, bound together by bits of string that he has given me and wondering how I am supposed to do that and wonder what I am to do with them. He smiled in sympathy and told me that simply splitting them into two piles would be sufficient. He wondered, if possible, if I could provide any context for what had been written and what each of the files might have been. Which is, I suppose, what you are reading now.

As for how long I had. He had no idea. He was told that the longer it took, the better it was going to be.

I asked who it would be better for and again, he looked hurt at the question.

But when the time came, for better or for worse, he or someone like him would come to fetch me to the place where the ritual is going to be carried out, where I am to observe and record what is to be said and done there and then when it is over, Sam has said that he intends to heal me.

Whatever that means.

They are using that now, holding it over my head, as some kind of enticement. A carrot on the end of a stick. The promise of a working hand instead of the infected, rapidly blackening mess on the end of my left arm. And two working feet on the end of my legs that I feel pretty sure do not look all that much better.

I also wonder if, during this undeniable outburst of magic, whether or not Sam will also alter my mind so that I come over to his and their point of view.

I asked this of Sir Trystan as well and he was even more upset that I was asking the question.

Fuck him. He might pretend to be my friend and ally but the truth is that he is a hired lapdog for my brother, no better than any of the others have been.

Whoever reads this might have noticed that I have regained some of my occasionally bitter bravado.

I hope so, that might make all of what is to come that much easier to deal with.

So I have bent to my task. After all, I do not have much better to do.

Even now, it seems that the world as I know it is about to come to an end. I still cannot stop writing and there is still something in the depths of me that demands that I do a good job. Because to attach my name to anything less would be a betrayal.

A betrayal to who I wonder.

Anyway.

This first passage was written a little time ago. I don’t think it’s particularly important but it does provide some overall context to what the feel of the castle has been over the intervening time. The time from when Sam told me the awful culmination of what he had been doing and what had happened. After all, context is King.

I would say enjoy, but I rather suspect that I will hate the person that is reading this.

The madness is spreading.

I don’t know if it’s some kind of magic that is in preparation for this ritual that Sam is preparing for or what is happening with it all. But the madness is spreading.

It seems to radiate out from Sam now, coming off him as though he was a stone thrown into a still pond. Men walk around with wildness in their eyes and nervous energy in their legs. When we do speak, we speak in hushed tones and sidelong whispers out of fear that we will be heard. I don’t know who we are afraid of being heard by. Certainly not Sam as he promptly demands to know what we were all talking about and then when we express our fears and concerns he tells us that the concerns are natural and human and that we should not be ashamed of them.

The hum is now an omnipresent thing. And even if it wasn’t for the discomfort of my shattered legs and the wet, itchy heat that runs up my legs now as well as up my left arm, the hum is pronounced enough and makes people uncomfortable enough that they cannot sleep. There is an audible element to it now. Where before it echoed on the edge of hearing and in the depths of my chest. Now it is audible, a distinct thing. Too low for a human throat to achieve.

According to one of the guards who were still more human than most and could therefore be persuaded to talk to me about some of the things that are going on around the castle, the hum is present in the upper keep and around the first courtyard. He told me that those men that have not been physically manipulated in some way actively avoid the place now and go towards the outer walls to get a good night’s sleep.

I do not have such a luxury. Nor do any of the other prisoners that are kept in the castle of which I know that there are many.

But it means that I haven’t had a proper sleep in… God knows how long. I ache, I itch and I sweat. The guard that talked to me is the one that has been stationed outside of my cell to make sure that I don’t harm myself or misbehave in some other way. He was uncomfortable and frustrated I think. I am still tied to my chair and my chair is turned away from being able to look directly at him. So I only know that he is shifting his weight in discomfort because of the sounds of his chair creaking.

He tells me that he feels nauseous and that he has a headache that feels as though he was back in a place where his Father would beat him with an axe handle.

But he is not ashamed.

I think he was chosen to keep me company because of his talkative nature. I have told him everything that I know. I have talked to him about Sam’s activities and the evil that has been committed here and he makes excuses. It is easy for me to imagine that he is shrugging as he speaks. When there are two of them, they sit and play dice with each other. Never cards, always dice.

Then they argue about the outcome.

According to him, he was a guard at one of the Pontar crossings during the war. His job was to keep people from travelling up from Velen towards Novigrad. This meant that his main job was to prevent the refugees and fleeing villagers from getting through. Not because he was without pity, but because there might have been Nilfgaardian spies and agents in the middle of all of those innocent people. He hates Nilfgaard with a passion because of the way that he was forced to think in that time and place. Because he had to look at the weeping women and starving children and convince himself that every single one of them might be a spy, or a saboteur or even worse than that. He told me stories about soldiers who had given in to feelings of pity and mercy only to have their throats slit by an innocent-looking child.

A child that had been ordered to do so by Nilfgaard because otherwise, the black ones would kill their mother.

He hated the Nilfgaardians with a passion that was worse than Sam’s. I had tried to convince him that what they were all doing was awful and that they should let me go and carry word to the authorities but then he looked at me with an expression in his eyes that I could easily recognise.

He hates me as well. He calls me a collaborator and traitor. He told me that we, meaning Redania, need to be free of “black filth” and that there is no price too high to be paid for getting rid of “That Southern Whore” meaning Ciri. I told him about what had happened and what had been done to Francesca and he shrugged and said something that chilled me to the marrow of my bones.

“If I had a sister, I would have done the same.” He told me.

I nearly threw up.

Not that I have much that I could throw up.

I can barely keep anything down anyway. As well as the bucket for my leavings, there is also a bucket for my vomit. I have tried to keep food down but I just can’t. Along with the soup that they feed me, I feel as though I am drinking in the power of The God that permeates the air. I feel sick all the time and my stomach turns over at the thought of water that only has enough wine in it to keep it clean.

The headache doesn’t go away either.

I have nightmares now. I don’t know if that’s from the magic that’s in the air or if it’s because I’ve been listening to Sam spout this nonsense for… The God only knows how long. Being constantly exposed to those words and those images, is it that that is keeping them all in my dreams? I don’t know.

But I feel as though I have stood on the mountains of glass and felt the ground shake as the vast bulk of The God moves underneath that prison. I have looked up to see the remote stars in the sky that Sam had described and I have looked down upon the hordes of the Vampires that have been performing their sick ritual to…

I don’t know.

It’s enough to make me almost grateful for the other discomforts that mean that I cannot sleep. Sometimes, in those dreams, I am the one that is causing pain to innocent men, women and creatures that I do not recognise and sometimes it is me on the rack.

Sometimes it is me on the rack and it is Ariadne who, laughing, turns the wheel that causes me to scream out in pain.

And worse than that are those dreams where I enjoy the pain.

God, what is happening to me?

I am not the only one either.

Since I last wrote a huge essay, Laurelen came to see me again. My gratitude at seeing that she was still alive was quickly subdued by the sight of her. Like all of the women in my life at the moment, she has lost a lot of weight. Her hair, once golden and shining, is brittle, frizzy and tangled. She was wearing a similar shift to how I had last seen her and she looked at me with haunted eyes.

I tried to console her. I tried to speak to her but I was struck about the head and back. When I tried to push through it, they beat her. She just shook her head at me and we both stopped speaking. She bent to examine my legs and to have another look at my left hand.

“How bad is it?” I asked her. She looked at me without speaking and all the answers that I needed were in her eyes.

“By The God,” she said, “What have they done to you?”

I have never heard Laurelen pray or invoke the name of a God before, I always thought that she would blaspheme in the name of some power or the other, or even do what Lady Yennefer does when she blasphemes by “The Powers.”

The madness is spreading.

They took the metal collar from around her neck and she cast some magic at me which reduced the feeling of bloating, the heat and the sweating for a while. The wet, slimy itch retreated down my limbs and then she was taken away.

And I still can’t stop writing.

Apparently, the time of the final ritual is approaching. I have no idea what that means or what is going to happen when it does. I am informed by those that seem to have the power of life and death over me, that I will be a witness to that great and final rite of The God. I ask what is going to happen in that time and in that place and no one seems to be able to tell me. Sam just smiles and keeps the information back whereas others genuinely don’t seem to know. There is some play about trying to pretend that they know and that I don’t. There is an attempt to make me feel small but there is fear in their eyes as they speak. Not the fear that something bad is going to happen, but more the fear of confusion and the fear of the unknown.

I know that I will be carried from my cell and I will be provided with a pen and parchment and I will record it as Sam “takes on the power of The God and becomes his avatar on the continent.” What that means is not something that I can understand, but I know that the language used is foreboding enough. My imagination has a tendency to run away with itself and I cannot help but imagine the very worst when it comes up.

I have visions of Sam becoming completely absorbed by The God himself, that the person that I call Sam will have died and all that will be left will be some form of “The God” and all of Sam’s pretty speeches about destroying all of the presence of the God, all of the followers and ritual components so that no-one will be able to follow his example, will just be the spent and empty air that they had been before.

And when that happens, any hope that I might have that my brother might come back to me and redeem himself rapidly disappears in the distance. Not that there was much hope of that in the first place.

It no longer hurts me to see Sam. Not that I have a choice in the matter. I am now confined to my chair anyway and the only time that they untie me is when they are carrying me to my bed where they tie me to that, or when they tie me to the stretcher for me to listen to Sam pontificate. I would fight while they try and move me but I have no leverage to attack. I can’t get my weight under me to try and fulfil a proper blow, nor can I swing properly.

And the truth is, that I am beaten. I don’t have the will to fight any more. Instead, I sit in my chair and listen to Sam preach. Sometimes he is speaking to me and sometimes he is speaking to someone else in the room. He still tries to act like he’s my brother and I am sometimes at fault for that. I no longer have the ability or the strength to call him out on the fact that he is back to calling me Freddie again. I am supposed to be recording what he is saying in preparation for some kind of future prosperity but I can’t answer for that. I rarely record anything, I barely even listen any more.

He stands there, sometimes he stands in a dressed down fashion, shirt, trousers and doublet over the top in the colours of Redania. Sword strapped to his side and a dagger on the belt along with the totem of control. He is most terrifying in this particular equipment because there is a confidence in him that I have not found otherwise. In those times, he radiates power, strength and confidence. Sometimes, I wonder if I am imagining that his eyes are glowing blue. Oddly though, it is in these moments that he seems to behave most like my brother.

Sometimes he is the sick man in the chair, with needles and pipes and straps all over his body. He looks pale, and shiny with sweat while his skin is translucent enough that I can see the chemicals entering his body. They leak out of the holes now and his skin is pocked with needle marks while the waste chemicals and blood are captured on the floor with strategically placed bowls and pots.

One of which is Father’s old chamberpot and I am left wondering if that particular choice is deliberate.

It looks awful. It is at these times that the office is quietest around us. Just Sam, me, Emma scratching away at her work in the background, The walking, skin-wrapped skeleton that used to be Ariadne, and Ella who is monitoring her patient.

It is at these times when Sam himself seems to be most afraid, but also the most insane. He rambles on and on about this and that. Plans that cannot possibly come to fruition and that will never work. But he never loses his determination and his insistence that I do the things that he describes.

He makes me write down his words when he is like this, and when I try to disobey then Ariadne causes me pain. She gestures and my chest seems to cramp up until I write again. But that is when his eyes glimmer with madness and pain. That is when he scares me the most.

I had written so much about what he had been doing, so much about his history and his plans. But in this state, he tells me things that call into question everything that he has told me so far. Contradictory events that I know, for a fact, did not happen. He claims that Francesca was a willing participant in his crimes. He has told me that Father knew what was happening and that it was, in fact, Mother that inducted him into the cult.

I don’t know which possibility was worse but I believe the first written option that it was Edmund. Mother’s revulsion at these things was real.

The third configuration is when he meets me in his full plate harness. Sword at his side and shield on his arm. He looks impressive when he is like this. His sheer physical presence is greater than anything that I have seen out of him or out of any other person that I have known. He dominates the room when he is like this and people follow him out of devotion. I want to believe that there is magic involved. I want to believe that there is some kind of effect in the castle that makes people believe him…

Makes me believe him.

Most often, it is at these times that I act as his witness, he passes his judgement and makes his decrees where he orders troops this way and that way. His officers attend and I must note down who says what. And all of the times that he has been like that, I am left thinking that if he had taken all of these abilities, this charisma, intelligence and raw determination, what a man he could have been.

I am reminded of the story of Lord Voorhis when he overthrew the first and most significant treason against the Empress. I even used the line on him once.

“Ah, Sam,” I said. “If only you had the courage to be loyal. What a man you might have been.”

He laughed at me and told me that he was being loyal. Just not to the same things that I wanted him to be loyal to.

It was also in one of these times that he gave me his gift.

.

I’ve just had a quick glance through what you have just read. I want to laugh and sneer at the naivete that is on display. I shouldn’t feel too bad for him. He was in the depths of some truly dark despair. I know how it feels, but he did not know that when you come out of the other end of that despair… There is only so much that the human mind and body can endure and despair is one of those things that you eventually just become used to.

I look at it all with a kind of amused, bitter… defeated feeling. I want to laugh. I want to laugh at the guards that are running around full of excitement and fear. I want to laugh at the way that the hum seems to come in waves. The way it seems to throb. And then I want to laugh at those people that are still guarding me in case I do myself any kind of injury. I no longer intend to. I intend to see this through. The people that I have lost kind of demand it. I owe it to Kerrass, Francesca, Chireadean and all of the rest. All of the pe…

Dammit, I would seem to still be somewhat susceptible to that despair after all.

I am choosing the next piece of writing because Sam finally told me about some of the plans that he had for me after the ritual is completed. The person reading these words should not believe these things at all. Not because Sam didn’t mean them, but because he is utterly barking mad.

Like the hum, Sam’s illness and madness seem to come and go. It seems to ebb and flow like any of the other issues. Out of all of the times that Sam seemed to communicate his plans for the future to me, this seems to be one of the more coherent plans that he had, but that doesn’t stop it from being utterly insane. Apart from anything else, Queen Adda is as mad as a box of snakes. While in comparison to her. Sam makes her look positively sane.

Enjoy.

.

There is liquid running down the walls. I have no idea what it is. It is clear and it looks uncomfortably as though the walls are sweating. I have not tasted his liquid, even when I am in a position to get to it. It is clear and colourless but long times spent with Kerrass teach me that you never, ever, touch the mysterious liquid. Let alone taste it.

I can’t smell it. There are too many other smells to be able to differentiate the liquid from anything else.

The more natural thought is that it is my own sweat and the sweat of the people that I am with condensing against the walls.

Even less likely to make me want to taste it, to be honest.

I wonder if anyone is ever going to read any of this. I wonder if… I wonder if I am just wasting my time doing all of this. I wonder…

Will anyone remember my name? And if they do, will they remember me with fondness or will they remember me with hatred?

Sam has told me some of his plans for me now and I honestly think it could go either way.

He wants me to marry Queen Regent Adda, sorry… I am to call her Queen Adda now.

I laughed at him and he was confused.

“But you are in love with her.” He protested. He was in one of his formal guises. Doublet on, sword belted to his side. He paces when he speaks like this. Lots of energy and wild, uncontrolled gestures and when he said this he spun on me with genuine shock.

“Sam, I had a crush on her,” I told him. “I was also twelve when we saw her in a parade. She was travelling beneath us on a white steed wearing a deep green dress that made her stand out in the sea of red armour, further set off by her own red hair. She was wearing a golden circlet around her head and she was riding side-saddle next to the King. She waved, she was smiling and she looked happy. I don’t know a single person in that crowd that didn’t fall in love with her that day. Including you.”

He was genuinely taken aback.

“Further to that.” I went on. “Since that day, I have studied history and I know just how much of a conniving devil she is. I know that she plotted to overthrow her Father with the Knights of the Flaming Sword. Apparently, she was bewitched and misled but that still means that the plot was real and she thought it was real.

“And I know how to read between the lines. She is angry, upset, and hurt and being married to Radovid cannot have been entirely pleasant. No sooner will I have climbed into the marital bed than she will be plotting to kill me. I don’t want to marry that.”

“Yet you will.” He said. “It is only through her that you will have the ability to do what must be done. It is only through her that you will have that power.”

“Sam…” I protested. “Your goal seems to be to make me some kind of King. But I don’t have any royal blood and there is not a single nobleman in Redania, in your rebellion or outside of it, that will accept me sitting on the throne next to Adda. Having me on the Regency council will be a push. And Adda will certainly not want it. She will not allow her power to be diluted.”

“You will be a King.” Sam declared. “Adda and all of those nobles agree. I am telling them that it is the price they must pay for their freedom and the price that Adda must pay for being given her throne back. And although you might not have any royal blood, your children will.”

“First of all,” I argued, “you make it sound so loving. Second of all, Adda is now… what… How old? The time spent as a Striga confuses the matter, but after everything, it is rumoured that Radovid did to her after the church pointed out that she was once a monster and therefore still was a monster, could she even bear me children?”

“There are ways,” Sam muttered darkly.

“And she has always wanted power,” I said. “She will not let me wield so much as a grapefruit spoon.”

“You are being shortsighted Freddie.” He told me. “She is not popular with the nobles of Redania. All they see is a spoiled Temerian Bitch. Which according to the same books that you have read, is not far from the truth. You marry her, your older brother just having freed Redania from the grip of tyranny. I will still be around and able to help prop you up for the first couple of years at least. During that time, you get her pregnant and get her to give birth to a son. After that, you have an heir who is heir to both Redania and Temeria.”

“Her eldest son also has those ties.”

“Yes…” Sam waved his hands dismissively. “He will have an accident as soon as you have an heir.”

“He’s just a child Sam.”

“SO WAS I.” Sam thundered. “SO WAS I when Edmund took me from the castle and put me to work.”

“THEN THAT MAKES YOU AS BAD AS EDMUND.” I roared back.

We had to stop for a while after that, guards came and took me away, slapping me upside the head with an armoured gauntlet for angering their lord so much. The following time Sam was raving about the poison that was flooding his system and the time after that and after that, he couldn’t be brought back to the subject. So it was several meetings later when he took up the thread again.

“Redanians will prefer you,” he said, “because you are not her. So when we take Temeria, which we will early on, we will take Anais captive.”

I snorted in derision. Anais is a formidable young woman by all accounts.

“And then your son,” Sam overrode me. “will marry her so that he is now the heir to twin kingdoms. After a little while, Anais can have an accident as well, or she will be found to be plotting against you and as such, we can have her head removed for the treason that she will have committed. Then you will be King of Temeria as well as Redania.”

“And once again Temeria is an occupied nation,” I told him. “Remember how much of a fight they put up. Whatever else you might say, the amount of stuff they went through to get their free nation back was…”

“And they are tired, Freddie. They are tired and oppressed and would far rather bow to a Northern King than they ever would to a Southern Emperor or Empress.”

“That doesn’t mean that…”

“AND,” Sam was sick of my nonsense. “There is the simple fact that you are Redanian and there are still many of the Redanian nobles that see Adda as nothing more than a spoiled Temerian Princess. At least you are Redanian and that will tilt people in your favour.

“I don’t understand you, Freddie. I am making you a King. You will be married to one of the most desirable women in the North who, according to one or two people that I know, will be able to teach you a thing or two in the bed chamber. And if you don’t like her, all you have to do is get her pregnant once or twice and then you can get rid of her and marry whichever young and pretty noblewoman that you like. Or take as many lovers as you like. You will be King.”

“But no love Sam,” I told him.

“Love,” he sneered. “What importance is Love?”

I shook my head.

“If you have never experienced it,” I told him. “Then you cannot possibly understand.”

“Do not condescend to me Freddie,” I was honestly surprised by Sam’s anger. “I have had enough people talking down to me. You are a nobleman. You have a duty to your people and you have a duty to me. The duty of a younger brother to an Elder and you WILL obey it.”

“Like you obeyed Edmund all the time.”

Then there was another break and I was removed from his presence again.

One of the things that he did do, that was useful at that time, was that he told me about the outposts and pockets of former cult activity. Not only did he tell me about all the cultists alive and dead but he also told me about those places where there were pockets of knowledge regarding the processes that he and his soldiers were going through. He told me about the places where the rituals were kept and how to destroy them.

Those times were important and one way or another, if I do have any kind of power when all of this is over, then I will do that.

If The Empire is victorious then I will tell everything I know to the mages and the priests and get the experts and professionals to deal with the matter. And if Sam does succeed and give me a whole bunch of power that I don’t need or want, then I will do the same.

So that stuff was useful.

I did write it all down so that I could remember it. But those papers were taken away from me and I have no idea where they are. I will try and remember them.

I wonder about that. I do wonder. I wonder if… I wonder if someone in Sam’s entourage is already taking things away. I wonder if someone is editing and taking these notes without Sam’s knowledge to preserve their own power base.

I know for a fact that his ranks are not completely unified.

Sam showed me that himself when he gave me his gift although I am not sure that was the lesson that he was trying to teach me at the time.

-

See what I mean? Absolutely barking at the moon. Ariadne once said that about those people that would seek the means to control the vampires, that they would be howling at the moon mad, and I now see what she means. Utterly gone. If there is anything of the man that was once my brother in the depths of that, he is long gone now.

I find that I miss him.

There are lots of small files like that one. Lots of little bundles of parchment and sets of notes. Some of them are even crazier than that. I suppose that you are wondering if that could be at all possible, but it is.

Sam’s determination regarding me comes from two fronts. He intends for me to be the grand ruler of the world. The fact that I have never had any ambition towards that is immaterial. The plan regarding me marrying Adda is actually one of the least insane things he has suggested.

That plan continues by the way. Later he suggested that after I kill Adda because obviously she cannot be allowed to survive, then I should invade Temeria and marry Queen Anais.

This is even though she is, by all metrics other than raw intelligence and ruthlessness. Still a child. Then after she is married I am supposed to work my way through the female monarchs of the North. Queen Meve and Queen Cerys are not going to avoid my lecherous advances. And then, when I lead the armies of the North across the Yaruga into the greater Empire, I am supposed to take the Empress captive and marry her instead.

When Sam mentioned this I could no longer help but laugh at him. I suggested that I should just write to the woman and suggest marriage anyway. He looked at me oddly and wondered if that would work.

He gets madder than that too. Apparently, I should have designs on the marital bed of Queen Francesca Findabair of the Elves, before I wipe all of the Elves out by flame and sword so that the valley of the flowers can be used for farmland.

Also, in one of his moods, he suggested that he should imbue me with some of the power of the God to make me immortal so that I could rule the Continent forever and ever after he was gone.

That worried me for a bit, because if he could think of doing that for me, then he could think of doing that for himself. One of the few things that I still have to hold onto, under all of those mutations and pieces of nonsense, that my brother still might be under there in some way. That he intends to prevent the spread of The God when this is over. And if I am imbued with the power of The God, then I can’t very well rule if he is going to imbue me with the power of The God, can he?

Anyway.

At some point in the middle of all of this. He gave me my gift. The thing that was going to convince me to come over to his side, or to at least, get me most of the way there or…

I don’t know. Least to say, it was not what I was expecting. I had expected some kind of bribery. Women, wealth, the promise of power. In my darker moments, I considered that he might give me Ariande as my own personal sex slave which I would, of course, reject unless she was freed. Which was never going to happen as Sam still needs her. It was a good try on my part though. If I could convince Sam to do that and he gave those things to me in his madness, then we could flee.

Alas no.

But instead, what he gave me was somewhat astonishing. For context, it is important to know that this happened before they smashed my feet with a hammer.

Enjoy.

-

The hum is not something that I am imagining. It is a vibration. I can feel it in the frame of my bed and when I lay my hands on the metal bars of my cage. It makes the metal feel furry and if I hold onto it for a long time, it makes my hands go numb. At first, I dismissed this feeling as though it might have been because the metal was cold. But it was not.

The metal was actually quite warm.

The hum is building and when I asked Sam about it, he wanted me to know that it meant that the ritual was coming to its fruition.

But I am falling into the trap of leaving one topic of conversation and moving into another. The primary sin of telling stories out of order.

I was writing about the gift that Sam had got me and how it was all going to work.

They came for me again one day. I say day but I have no idea if that was true. Normally I would be able to guess as to what time it was by looking out of the study window. But this time I was taken into a separate room in the castle. I was surprised because it was the first time in a while that the guards had put a bag over my head to hide where it was. They had not bothered for quite a while given that I knew my way around the castle too well to be easily distracted.

It was a storeroom that they took me to. One of those places where they need to keep the contents dry and cool, well out of direct sunlight. There were torches on the wall, a table and a chair that was set aside as though it was some kind of desk for someone to sit behind. There was also one of the large men, the giants that were standing there.

I used to call them critics.

He nodded to me as I walked in, it was almost respectful and I automatically caught myself nodding back. It would seem that I was included in this in some way. Another chair was provided, the guards gestured and I sat down as ordered, slightly off to one side but still facing the desk. My manacles were put back on and I settled in.

Another critic came, he was carrying one of those fire bowls that you use to heat pokers and pincers and things for the use of torturing people. He carried it, already alight with the aid of some thick leather gauntlets and he set them down in the room before leaving. He returned a few minutes later with a small table that he started to unroll a leather case full of implements.

Sam came into the room after a little while with another man that I did not recognise. Sam was not wearing any armour that I could see. Just his tunic and his sword. He was carrying a sheaf of papers that he placed on the desk and started sorting through them.

As he walked in he was chuckling and laughing with the other man who stood behind him.

I cannot deny that I was shivering with fear in anticipation at the possibility of being tortured again.

“Freddie.” Sam greeted me with some cheerfulness. “Allow me to present…”

I couldn’t hold it in.

“I thought that there wasn’t going to be any more torture, Sam.” I blurted out. Not meaning to.

I have tried to remain stoic since all of this started. Trying to remain brave in the face of all the things that have happened, but I was now at the point where I just… couldn’t do it anymore. I felt awful for just admitting that much. I felt weak, stupid and cowardly.

Sam looked up and seemed to see the crocs and the implements for the first time.

“What? Oh, no no. Those aren’t for you.” He said. Then he looked at me with honest to The God sympathy and understanding. As did the man behind him.

“No Freddie. It is time for your gift.” Sam told me.

“What if I don’t want it?” I asked. “I don’t want a gift from you.”

Sam and his friend both laughed.

“You haven’t seen what it is yet.” The other man said.

“Allow me to present,” Sam began, “My friend, and hopefully soon to be your friend, Sir Trystan Royce.”

“Your servant Lord Frederick,” The man said. “I would offer to shake your hand but…” he gestured and the gesture seemed to take in my state and the bindings and manacles.

“My servant?” I wondered. “Could you untie me and help me get away from this place?”

He laughed.

“That would not be in all of our best interests at the moment.” Sir Trystan said with a smile.

“It is my hope,” Sam told me. “That Sir Trystan will become your advisor in the work that you have ahead of you. For all that I have every respect for your political mind and memory, Sir Trystan is the man that I am selecting as your personal secretary. His mind is extraordinary and as a result…”

“I already have a clerk,” I told him.

“There is a difference.” Sir Trystan said without anger. “A clerk will note down what you say or will transcribe what you write, as in what the esteemed master Johann was doing for you. We hope that I will be your secretary in the same way that the Empress has a secretary. I will keep your…”

“Yes yes.” Sam waved it off. “We can go through all of that later when we have time. If we have time that is. For now Freddie, Sir Trystan is known to have a wonderful memory and is almost physically incapable of lying. His reputation for honesty is unmatched and he is here, both to introduce to you and to bear witness to what happens here.

“What is going to happen here?” I asked.

Sir Trystan laughed. He seemed to be the kind of person that did that often.

“Just try to enjoy it, Freddie,” Sam said with a slight smile. “Now shush. I have some papers to check.”

The two men bent over the papers and shuffled them around a bit.

I did my best to look around the room and try to take things to see if I could ascertain what was happening. I caught the eye of one of the critics while his companion was stirring the fire bowl. The critic saw me looking and shrugged.

I felt unaccountably better.

After some moments, there was a knock on the door, the withdrawn and polite knock of someone wondering if they were at the right place.

“Enter,” Sam said, trying to sound dire. “Try to look concerned Freddie,” he told me with a wink as he sat down behind his desk.

I didn’t attempt that or retort. I imagine that if an outside observer was looking at me, they would tell me that I looked confused.

The door into the room opened and in walked the last person that I had expected.

Sir Robart de Radford walked in and I felt a chill rush up my spine.

Sir Robart de Radford. There are some prime fuck heads that I have met during my travels but he is one of the biggest.

He walked in with a confident swagger and was accompanied by two other men that I did not know. There were now enough armoured men in the room to make it all feel a bit overcrowded.

Sir Robart de Radford. The last time I had seen him, I had been on top of the gatehouse of the outermost wall of Castle Coulthard. He was beneath me, trying to control a horse that was far too large and far too wilful for him. He was wearing Redanian armour at the time although I noticed that he had added some golden threading throughout the tunic to make himself feel more important and his armour shone with a brilliance that suggested much work, probably by some squire.

At the time, he had been sweating profusely. The wax that he used to shape his moustache was melting and one side of that moustache was beginning to droop from its carefully carved position.

At the time we were trading insults as he demanded that I come out of the castle to turn myself over for the summary execution for the crime of treason. A charge that I had already been tried for and found innocent of by higher authorities than him.

He did not look that much different now. Whatever else I could have said about Sir Robart, he was always in good physical shape. The only clue that there is to his occasionally debauched lifestyle is that his nose is large and red but he works hard with his body enough…

Or sweats in his armour enough…

…to lose the implied fat. There are rumours enough that he has caught several exciting venereal diseases and he lacks the breadth of shoulder to be a properly imposing man. He is also a little shorter than is ideal for the heavily armoured knight that he fancies himself as.

His moustache was carefully waxed, his hair was immaculately coiffured and he walked in like he owned the place.

He was not wearing Redanian colours now. He was wearing his family’s heraldry with the coat of arms prominently displayed on the front. His armour had the kind of burnished gold look that the Knights Errant of Toussaint were so famous for. The kind that is made by dwarves for a steep price.

He is the kind of man that wears full armour at the height of summer because it’s what is expected of him and then faints in the heat.

The two men that came with him were dressed similarly. In that, they were wearing armour and their own heraldry. One of them looked like the kind of large, burly men that excels at physical pursuits but doesn’t have any other kinds of redeemable features. This can sometimes be a trap in that Sir Gregoire was a similar kind of looking person although this man was not as tall as Sir Gregoire. He had shaven his hair and had an unfortunate slope brow along with a protruding lower lip. This gave him the unfortunate impression of being a sulky toddler.

The other man was someone that I automatically assumed was kind of the brains of the group. He certainly looked around himself a bit more when he came into the room and was also the only one of the trio that noted the two critics in the back along with the torture implements. He frowned, then his eyes widened and he sucked at his cheeks a little bit.

He did, however, say nothing.

He was a smaller man, only in perspective, to some of the other men that were in the room at the same time. He had long hair that had a kink in the middle that suggested that he tied it back regularly. Like the big man, he had some of the other telltale signs of aristocratic breeding. In theory, he was a good-looking, handsome man. Pronounced chin, high cheekbones and expressive eyes. But when it was all put together, it gave off the impression of something unpleasant.

He was kind of interesting in that he was comfortable in his armour, but was uncomfortable with a sword at his side. His armour was cut thinner with fewer plates. Still pretty ornate though with some interesting paint on the surface.

Having said all of those things, they both walked with one hand on their sword hilts and their helms under their arms.

Sir Robart’s helmet had wings on it.

I don’t know why that’s the kind of thing that I noticed but I did. I was, in no way, surprised when I saw them.

The three came into the room and formed up before Sam’s desk. Robart slammed his right foot down in almost a parody of military marching order. It brought an almighty crash into the room that seemed to echo off the walls.

I was not the only one that flinched.

But my movement caught Sir Robart’s attention and he turned to me. Saw me properly for the first time before his eyes and did a quick glance up and down my body, noting the injured hand and his smile broadened. Then he noticed the manacles and the dishevelled state of me and my generally sick countenance.

Then he noticed the manacles.

Then he looked sideways into the room and saw the two critics that were kind of standing at a rough approximation of parade rest. His quick eyes noticed the fire for the heating of the implements and the table with the blades, hooks and other sharp objects on.

His gaze did the same thing that I have seen happen in taverns. The moment when a man sees the object of his affection from across the room. His eyes hooded and his breathing started to become ragged. The sick fucker literally licked his lips.

“Finally,” he breathed. Then he chuckled before, I swear to The God, he literally cackled. “Finally, I have you at my mercy. Finally, after all of these years, these years of insults, these years of sabotage, of treachery and treason, of… of…”

It all seemed to get jammed in his mouth until he couldn’t get it out, after a while, his outrage and loathing kind of sputtered to a halt.

“I have been waiting for a long time for this, Frederick.” He hissed. “And finally in my mercy. Finally, I will be able to carve every little insult out of your flesh. I will cut all of the indignities that you have piled upon me into your skin. I will remove your manhood and force you to eat it. I am going to remove your fingers one by one and jam them up your ass. I am going to…”

“Sir Robart.” Sam interrupted.

Long hair was rubbing his forehead in what approximated exasperation.

“Yes?” Robart asked in the same tone of voice that Mother used to use when a servant needed to attract her attention.

For a room with a fire basked in it, as well as several men in armour and torches lining the walls, the temperature seemed to fall a little.

To be fair to him, Sir Robart seemed to realise that he had messed up. He plastered a big smile all over his face and turned to face Sam.

“Sir Samuel.” He began with his best kind of ass-kissing voice. “I have come, as requested, with the men that are required to further the righteous liberation of…”

“Requested?” Sam wondered gently.

“Yes.” Robart didn’t realise that he was walking out onto a rocky cliff path that was crumbling away underneath him. He carried on trying to speak.

“As I say, I have brought men to aid in the righteous liberation of Redania from the black-clad tyrants of the south. Tyrants who have subjugated the North and passed the power from the righteous heirs of the North and passed it to uncouth…”

“I have several questions.” Sam interrupted. This time, the look that crossed Robart’s face was one of annoyance. I got the feeling that he had the entire speech carefully planned out and now that Sam was interrupting his carefully ordered vision of what was supposed to happen. He could have ignored one interruption but now that the interruptions were coming thicker and faster, he was starting to become angry.

“What questions?” Robart bit off the words angrily. Slamming his teeth shut at the ends of the words.

“Let us start with a simple one.” Sam began.

Long hair sighed, catching Sam’s tone of voice and pulled himself up so that he was standing upright in an attitude of facing the coming storm. I don’t think that baldhead gave a damn what was going on, even if he knew.

“How many men did you bring?” Sam asked in a deceptively sweet voice.

The story had righted itself in Robart’s mind.

“I have brought no less than two companies of men.” He smiled and puffed out his chest. That statement still left me with several questions and it turned out that Sam had the same questions.

“That’s nice enough to say,” Sam said, “But what does that mean? I ask again, how many men did you bring with you to aid the rebellion effort?”

Robart frowned again. His own internal narrative had been diverted again.

Long hair tried his best.

“Count Kalayn,” he bowed and leaned forward, which I thought was a good touch. “I wish to report that…”

A lot happened in that statement. Not least was the fact that Robart stiffened and grimaced at the reminder as to Sam’s rank. Sam himself sighed.

“I was asking your commander,” he told Long hair, “and… I expect an answer.” He turned back to Robart. “How many men did you bring?”\

“As I said…”

Sam sighed and gently rested his head on his palm as Robart carried on talking.

“I have brought two companies of men and…”

“Very well,” Sam said. “As it seems that this relatively simple question is too complex for you. How are these two companies of men equipped? Are they properly equipped for battle?”

“Oh yes.” Robart agreed. “They are properly equipped.”

“Which means what?” Sam asked. “Are they lightly armed? heavily armed? swords? shields? Pikes? Do they have proper provisions for the coming campaigns?”

“I…” Robart looked at Long Hair who was watching the destruction of his master with sad eyes.

“DON’T LOOK AT HIM.” Sam thundered. “LOOK AT ME.”

Robart’s rage rose to meet Sam’s

“HOW DARE YOU SIR?” He demanded. “I AM A NOBLE OF THE KINGDOM OF REDANIA SIR.”

“OF WHAT RANK SIR?” Sam replied. “I am a knight Commander in the Redanian army and an anointed Count of the lands of Kalayn.”

“As confirmed by the Nilfgaardians.” Robart retorted before he could stop himself. “And before that, you were one of those jumped up little…”

“As confirmed by her majesty Queen Adda,” Sam replied. “I am the commander of this uprising against the South, as well you know sir, despite your choices to forget it.”

Robart was skewered. Long-hair knew it and he sighed.

“Your compatriot knows, don’t you?” He asked.

Long-hair nodded.

“How many men have you brought?” Sam asked.

“One hundred and forty-eight.” Long-hair said with the resigned sound of a man that was doomed and knew it.

“Less than a fraction of what was promised,” Sam replied.

“The rest…” Robart began.

“Hold on,” Sam told Robart. “You can respond in a moment where you can explain exactly why you have fallen so short of the promised amount. But I am asking questions of your far more qualified and efficient subordinate.”

Robart was turning red.

I felt embarrassed and was trying to squirm into my chair. I loathe Sir Robart. Absolutely loathe him. But it is never nice to watch someone’s destruction like this. Especially as it was clear that we were learning nothing new here. Everyone knew that Robart was incompetent and entitled, it didn’t need this extra evidence to show just how bad it was.

“Let us hope.” Sam began. “That the quality of the men makes up for the lack in numbers. How many of these men are veterans of the armed forces?” He had turned back towards long hair.

“My men are veterans of many conflicts…” Robart tried to redeem himself a bit.

“Not only,” Sam was rubbing his head in exasperation. “Was I not asking you? But I was specifically asking about how many veterans of the armed forces there were. How many served in the army? I don’t need to know how many people stood guard over some out-of-the-way garrison that has barely seen an elf, let alone a Nilfgaardian?”

Sam said it with such scorn and judging by the way that Robart’s mouth curled back into a snarl, I had a good idea of what Robart had done as part of his war service.

“Less than twenty.” Long hair said.

Sam leaned back in his chair while Sir Trystan, who I had taken as a man who knew how to be kind and charming, had a face of stone.

Bald head still couldn’t give a damn.

“Further to this.” Sam began carefully, showing that Robart was not the only person that knew how to bite off words with some anger. “I would wager that these men are also the oldest serving men. Maybe those men that are struggling with some kind of old injury, or are crippled in some minor but important way?”

Long-hair said nothing.

“Answer me this.” Sam began, leaning forwards again and resting his elbows on the desk. “If I were to inspect those, less than twenty men, how many of them would be wearing eye patches.”

Long hair didn’t have to say anything. Sam just nodded.

“I see. And my question about equipment?”

Long hair looked over at Robart.

“You are speaking to me now,” Sam told him gently.

“The equipment is… very shiny, Lord Count.” Long hair said.

Sam seemed to know exactly what was meant by that and he nodded before he scratched behind his ear.

“And I know that this is a silly question.” Sam said, “but I must ask anyway, what provision have you brought with you when it comes to ration and food?”

Long-hair kept a diplomatic silence.

“I see. Tell me, who ordered the march before all was ready?”

Long-hair still said nothing.

“The men and I are hungry to meet the enemy,” Robart said. “We are keen to meet them upon the field of battle and we shall take what food we have from the taken supplies of our enemies. And should that fall short, then there is no reason why we can’t live off the land so to speak.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Sam couldn’t decide whether to be angry or amused.

“So let me get this straight.” He asked. “You mean to take the food from the people that we are going to be liberating. People that will then hate us more than they hate the Nilfgaardians.”

“We can hunt,” Robart protested. “We can forage.”

“In winter?” Sam asked. “The hunting beasts are gone. The harvest is taken in. So you really do mean that we take it from the villages who we are depending on for our levies? The instant that we start taking their food, our army will melt away like mist being banished by the sun.”

“Disciplined troops desert sir?” Robart was outraged. “Nonsense.”

I must have audibly sighed. Even I knew the answer to this one and I am not, under any circumstances or any stretch of the imagination, am I a military man. It’s also a typical way that genuinely military men catch out armchair generals. In the same way that courts have their established gambits and the way that they do things, so too do generals.

And Sir Robart had fallen straight into Sam’s trap.

But Sam held off hanging the man just yet. He wanted to give the poor fucker more rope.

Robart had heard me and spun on me.

“Is that funny Sir… sorry… scholar. You have no idea what we’re talking about here. Surely you would be wise enough to keep a civilised tongue between your teeth. There you are, manacles around your wrists and ankles, tied to a chair with the instruments there to await my pleasure. You would do well to remember what is at stake for you Lord Frederick, before I…”

He literally raised his fist to shake it under my nose.

“Are you threatening my brother sir?” Sam hissed.

Out of sight of his master, Long-hair shook his head in despair.

Robart spun on Sam in a fury.

“I was promised,” Robart demanded. “After all of the years of insults, humiliation and personal attacks, not to mention the treachery, treason and disdain with which this man has shown the proper order of things, you care to go back on your word now. I was promised that this man, this… blemish on the face of Redanian nobility would be handed over to me for the proper punishment. I am going to extract a confession from him for all of the sins that he has committed and then I am going to take him to a proper, public place of execution where I can show him what happens to those people who seek to carry out treason against their betters. I am going to…”

“BE SILENT SIR.” Sam roared in his battlefield commander voice.

One of the critics stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it about a bit as a comment on the volume.

“You will… Be silent.” Sam breathed.

Robart was appalled.

“Let us start with the fact that even though our nobility and professional soldiers are ready and keen for another go at Nilfgaard, the average man in the field does not care if there is a red flag that waves above the castle or a black one. All they care about is whether they have enough food for themselves and their families, followed by enough ale to keep them warm during the night. If you push them they will ask for enough money to pay their taxes easily with enough left over to go to the local whore house occasionally.

“The moment, the very instant that we threaten any of those things, then they will be gone. Vanished. POOF. Just gone. And the same goes for our soldiers as well when we stop paying them.

“That’s a point.” He turned to long hair. “Did you bring enough money to pay your troops for the coming campaign?”

Long-hair said nothing.

“You promised that you would have a way to augment the troops.” Robart accused.

“And I do. But that process takes time. Which I have never hidden. And you and others promised that you would take steps to ensure that things would be workable in the meantime. Not least by DELIVERING THE TROOPS THAT WERE PROMISED.”

There was a pause as Sam’s words echoed off the walls.

“So let us talk about broken promises.” Sam finished leaning back and turning to Long-Hair.

“You may go,” he said. “Report to Sir Gregoire and ask him to inspect the troops that have been brought. Inform him that I say that it is your command now, that their state is not your fault and that I am dealing with the matter of fault. Tell him to find places for them and that later this evening, the three of us will have a meeting to discuss the future of those men.”

Long-Hair nodded while Robart was spluttering in outrage.

“Come along Gathis,” Long-Hair said, which I took to be the name of Bald man.

“Stay where you are.” Snapped Robart. “I am in command here.”

I did not feel sorry for Robart as my sense was that he had done some things and was now getting the consequences of his actions. Long-Hair however looked lost.”

Sam nodded to him and Long-Hair decided that discretion was the better part of valour. He grabbed Gathis and the two men left, leaving Robart seething.

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.” Robart tried and turned for the door.

“Detain Sir Robart please,” Sam ordered. One of the critics did so by the simple virtue of moving to stand in front of the door. His vast frame fairly obstructed the entire thing.

“Move,” Robart ordered.

The Critic in question, who was also the one who had caught my eye earlier, just shrugged.

“We were talking about broken promises,” Sam said, conversationally. If I had more of my wits about me I might have warned Robart to be wary.

“You signed the charter of the Rebellion…” Sam said.

Robart went to draw his sword and there was a pause as the critic that was standing to obstruct him just reached forward and took hold of his forearm. For just a moment, the sweat stood out on Robart’s forehead as he strained against the vast might of the critic. Then he stopped and tried to recover his dignity.

“You signed the charter of the Rebellion,” Sam said again, gesturing at a piece of paper. “The piece of paper that we all agreed was necessary to stop one or other of us from backing out. The piece of paper that guarantees that none of us will just cut and run to the Imperials when things start to look as though they might just be getting a bit too hard or too dangerous. The piece of paper that, if we fail, means that none of us can back out and hang each other out to dry. You signed that, didn't you?”

Robart said nothing. He was red in the face and his eyes were darting around frantically. Sam waited for an answer for a couple of moments before he moved on.

“That charter set out our goals. It set out our methods and it named this castle as the forward marshalling point of the Rebellion and it stated that I would be in command, given my understanding and knowledge of all of the resources that we have available that others, such as yourself, would be unfamiliar with. I am also a Count and a military veteran which meant that I was among the higher-ranked nobles as well as more capable of leading.

“And the entire rebellion was my idea in the first place.”

He kept leaving gaps in his little speech to allow Robart to interject by saying something. Instead, Robart was taking the time to try and remain calm

“I daresay,” Sam went on in the same lighter tone of voice. “That one of the reasons that I was placed in command was so that if it all went wrong, you all had someone to blame. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am in command and that you agreed with that decision. Others voiced concerns about my name, the heresy attached, and the fact that I was one of the sons of Lord Coulthard, but none of those people was you. Why was that?”

Robart said nothing, his eyes were still looking this way and that.

“The other rules that were noted down in the charter were that we would be absolutely loyal to each other and the Redanian crown. This rebellion would not be able to move forward if these rules were not abided by. So we all agreed. We agreed that I would be in charge and for the record, I would have had no problems with stepping aside should someone more confident or comfortable step forward. But no one did. We said that we would devote our all to this effort to throw off the heel of the tyrant from our necks. Do you remember all of this Sir Robart?”

Robart said nothing.

“So let’s talk about broken promises. You promised me that you could raise five hundred men. Fully armed, and equipped, veterans of the war. I even remember checking your language because you and I probably think of veterans as two different things. I mean veterans to be men that have actually fought in battles. You mean men that have stood on the wall at a garrison that has never seen a sunburst banner. You promised me full provision and logistical support.”

“The rest are on their way,” Robart said, trying to weasel out of it. “I have not broken my promise.”

Sam shook his head. “You lie reasonably well, I will admit that. But shall I tell you what else I know?”

Robart frowned, obviously thinking that the worst was over.

“I also know that you have been trying to gather allies against me,” Sam said.

Robart’s face spoke of the realisation that he was caught.

“Before Freddie starts to think that you might be a sympathetic creature,” Sam said getting up from behind his desk where he moved towards me. “I should tell him that I don’t mean that you were a secret collaborator with the Nilfgaardians, more that you were waiting for me to succeed and then you meant to see to my death. You have said phrases like ‘Not properly fit to lead,’ and far, far worse than that. You have been telling people that I am not a proper noble and that I am a disgrace to the Redanian flag.”

Sam bent and started to undo my shackles.

“The one that I know wound me up the most, just as I know that people who speak like this aggravate my brother too, is when you wrote, quote ‘I should know my place and bow down before my proper superiors’ end quote.

Robart looked up and I saw the real hate there.

“You should.” He said. “Both of you should. You should never have been allowed to…”

“You see, we are still talking about broken promises.” Sam interrupted before turning back to me. “Rub some life into your limbs, Freddie.”

“What’s happening here, Sam?” I asked.

He just winked before he turned back to Robart.

“So…” began. “You break your promises. You break our rules. You lie to your commanding officer's face and you do your best to create a mutiny against him while we are at war. A war that has been confirmed and endorsed by the highest offices in the land of Redani which I serve and you claim to. Just so we’re clear, the head of the Regency council, Queen Adda. There’s a name for that action, isn’t there Sir Trystan?”

“Treason, Lord Count.” Sir Trystan said in dire tones.

“Now wait just a minute.” Robart protested.

“And what is the punishment for people doing these things while we are at war?” Sam asked.

“Death,” Trystan said.

Robart started to realise what was happening here then and he hurled himself at the critic watching the door.

Who simply caught him by the right arm and twisted the arm until it was behind Robart’s body.

Robart squealed.

“And who gets to pronounce this sentence?” Sam asked.

“You do,” Sir Trystan said before he grimaced. “Sorry, it’s supposed to be done by the traitor’s commanding officer, which in this case is you.”

“Lies,” Robart said, trying a different tactic. “All of this is lies. I am loyal, I swear that I am loyal. I can raise the men, I will be able to find the arms and the armaments. I will be your most loyal lieutenant. I apologise for any insult that I might have given you or your most noble brother. But anyone who told you that I have been raising a mutiny against you is lying to you.”

Sam nodded.

“I swear, my Lord.” He went on. “I swear, I did not. I DID NOT do those things that I am being accused of.”

“It’s alright Sir Robart,” Sam said in a soothing voice. “It’s alright.”

Robart sobbed in relief.

“You don’t need to try and convince me.” Sam went on.

“Thank you, my lord, thank you.” Robart fell to his knees.

Sam leaned over to him and whispered into his ear.

“You see, I have proof.” He said

Robart’s eyes boggled out of his skull.

Sam walked back around the desk.

“Leaving aside,” Sam continued, “the stories from various people that have been approached by you to make this rebellion within a rebellion happen,”

“Including mine,” Sir Trystan put in.

“Including Sir Trystan’s,” Sam agreed, “which is laughable because Sir Trystan is the most honourable man that everyone in this room knows and his word is his bond. Leaving aside those accounts, which you could claim are ‘lies from lesser men that you do not need to answer for’.”

Sam’s impression of Robart was terrible, but it got the point across. I could hear Robart saying that.

“I have the letters that you sent,” Sam told him. “I also have the words from your own diary.”

Sam turned to me.

“Remember when you found me in Robart’s study?” He asked, “I was going through his journals and burning bits.”

I nodded, feeling faintly sick.

“So Robart, I know that you are guilty of treason and as such, it falls to me, your commander, to sentence you to death.

Robart finally moved.

He darted forward. He was fast, it was worth remembering that whatever else he was, he was a duelist and as a result, he was very fast. He scooped up all of the papers on the desk and tipped them into the fire bowl before standing back with a look of triumph.

“You have no proof.” He declared. “I have made my promises and I am going to keep them. Now I demand that you keep yours. You promised that you were going to turn Frederick von Coulthard over to me so that I could extract confessions out of him before passing judgement as is my right as an officer of the High Sheriff of Redania. I demand that you fulfil your promise.”

He turned to me.

“That’s right. Your brother promised to sell you to me in return for the money, influence and troops that I can offer him. Your brother sold you to me.”

I looked at him, as square in the face as I could manage.

“He has done much worse,” I told Robart.

Robart turned back to Sam with a look of smug triumph that made me hate him all the more. Only for that triumph to sink a little.

Sam was shaking his head.

“I’m sorry Sir Trystan.” He said. “You are going to have to redo all of those troop and logistical assessments.”

“Darn,” said Trystan.

“The proof is in a safe place,” Sam told Robart. “And it has been shown to others inside our rebellion. The charter is obviously not here but is in an otherwise safe place. You have been tried before you turned up. Do you have anything to say in your defence?

Robart gaped.

“You… You can’t do this. I will write… I will…”

“You are going to die in this room Robart,” Sam told him before turning to the critics. “Take him, strip him and hold him.” He told them.

“What? But… but…” Robart protested as the critics caught hold of him. He pulled his arm out of the grip of the first one. “Unhand me.” He snarled.

He literally said that I’m not making it up.

The critic cuffed him in the head, hard so that Robart lost control of himself for a moment.

“To be clear Freddie,” Sam told me. “There was no promise made that said that Robart here, could torture you and execute you according to his whim. That was never the plan and you should know that.”

“You lie,” Robart screamed. “You promised.”

Sam shook his head and turned on Robart. “Even if that was true, which it is not, There is another promise that supersedes yours because it was made first. I promised Freddie here that I would help him see to your destruction.”

Sam was getting angry now, up until this point he had been relatively calm and collected, but now, his indignation was beginning to show through.

“I made that promise back when you threatened to murder him for the crime of killing his brother. Which has since been proven innocent.”

Robart didn’t get to say anything to that because the critics were tearing pieces of armour off him in chunks.

“Save the armour,” Sam said. “We might be able to get some use out of it if we melt it down or something.

Robart snarled at this, it seemed to be one insult too far and he hurled himself forward trying to get at Sam. He did better than I thought he would. Again, the critics grabbed him and dragged him to his knees, one of my guards bent and started to help the critics to keep order.

“As I was saying, Freddie.” Sam went on. “There was no promise that was given. Robart was brought in by one of his companions. We were promised that Robart here had been saying something about ‘isn’t it time that something was done about the Nilfgaardian tyranny and he did have some influence, some personal wealth and he did command the loyalty of several troops. I warned his friend that there was some previous antipathy between our two families but I was given assurances that this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I wanted to know.

I couldn’t decide where to look. On the one hand, I wanted to look at Sam because he was speaking, even while I was appalled at what else was happening. But I also wanted to look at the destruction of my enemy.

I decided, in the end, to look at Sam. Watching Robart get destroyed was what I wanted to do, but that desire made me feel kind of sick. It struck me that this was what The God wanted me to do and as such, I should be determined not to.

“Because I want you to know that I am on your side,” Sam said. “And you are on mine. Yes, I pulled the wool over your eyes and yes, I lied to you about things and yes, I have done things that you will hate me for. I can’t pretend otherwise. But I did that so that you would have plausible deniability while you were talking to your friends and the people that you love.”

I nodded.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Robart came to our meeting. He was informed that I was in charge, it was still at the stage where we took considerable precautions to ensure that prospective joiners of our cause had to jump through some hoops to see our faces.”

“Masks, hidden cloaks, secret handshakes.” I tried to joke.

“I see you get the idea. Also special knocks on doors and code phrases. It would have been fun if it wasn’t so serious and didn’t remind me of the cult too much. Although, it has to be said that my time spent with the cult was good preparation for running a conspiracy.”

“I can imagine.” I lied. I couldn’t imagine it at all.

“In the end though, we met, and he signed his name to a treasonous document so that we had that over him before we revealed all of our faces. When we did so, he expressed some disappointment in meeting me and knowing that I was in charge. He told me that he would not have followed me if I was styling myself as Lord Coulthard, but as Lord Kalayn, that was something that he could get behind.”

“Was he ever part of the cult?”

“What? No… I don’t think he was even considered. He’s just… well… he’s an idiot, isn’t he? He’s the kind of person that would give the game away far too quickly. He would start bragging about it to the wrong person and then we would have Inquisitors knocking down the door.

“Wasn’t that a risk for the rebellion as well?”

“Yes and no,” Sam said. “By the time that he became involved, we needed the things that he had to offer and all the people that he was surrounded with were with us on this. There is a big difference between keeping a secret because you like to do perverted things to young people and doing something secret and illegal out of patriotism.”

I felt my mouth start to smile.

“So I take it that now, he has given you everything that you need, or want and you can get away with getting rid of him.”

“No,” Sam said. “No, the news about his trying to betray me did come a little while ago, but we could not have gone after him without giving our game away to him. Then he would have fled or taken other steps to protect himself or any number of other things.”

“How long…” I cleared my throat. “How long have you been working with him?” I could feel a rage bubbling in my throat. I realised that I had been watching the critics as they manhandled Robart around. I was enjoying watching someone else being beaten and abused.

There have been many moments recently where I have hated myself. For not being strong enough, for not realising what my brother was or had been becoming. For not seeing the threats and the warnings for what they were. This was another in the time but it stood out.

“Not that long Freddie. I promise you. Not that long. A couple of months at most.”

I nodded in acceptance of that.

Robart had recovered his senses a little bit after being struck about the head a couple of times.

]“You can’t do this.” He was whimpering, he was trying to make it sound stronger but he was failing. His voice kept cracking and breaking with the strain. “I am Lord de Radford.” He kept saying that over and over again. “I am Lord de Radford and I demand treatment appropriate to my rank. Ransom, I am worth ransom. I can be ransomed. You can’t do this.”

Sam lost his temper a little bit.

“I can do this.” He stalked over to Robart. “I can do this and I am doing this. I have authority from the Queen, your agreement and the agreement of everyone else.”

Robart protested wordlessly, something between a shout and a screech. There was some moaning in there as well. I was trying not to enjoy the entire process.

“Why did?...” I had to clear my throat. “Why did Robart believe that you had promised that he could do what he liked with me?”

Sam spun on me and there was genuine hurt, as well as anger in the depths of his eyes.

“You don’t believe me?” He demanded.

I had to swallow my immediate retort to that. “No no,” I said, holding my hands up in supplication. “I’m more asking, why does he believe that? Was there something that he might have misconstrued, was there something that one of your subordinates might have said that may have given him the wrong idea?”

Sam subsided and wandered back towards me.

“I don’t think so.” He mused. “I would need to check but I don’t think so. I think it’s much more likely that this is the case of a deluded and spoiled nobleman hearing what he wants to hear rather than anything more sinister.”

I nodded. I had seen that very thing happening before where a person just shuts down and ignores what had happened in front of their eyes because it is impossible and goes against everything that they believe to be true about the way that the world works.

Sam was speaking.

“I got news of it a while ago. The man that had introduced Robart to me to induct him into the rebellion told me what was going on. He came to me and admitted what was happening, which was that Robart was going around to those people that he thought of as his friends and was trying to convince them to turn on me. Apparently, all of the old quotes came out, all of the old grievances against the Coulthard family, you, Father, Emma and the rest. All the old stuff about how it was a shame that this wasn’t being done by someone with proper bloodlines and proper lineages. They were mortified and expecting some kind of vengeance on my part.

“But we have what we want now, we have access to what remains of his money after Kerrass kindly let me come along on a raid into his home during your stag party so we know where all of his investments and properties are. We can hang him on some of those details alone.”

“And that was what I walked in on when you were in his study.”

It was not a question but Sam answered it anyway.

“Pretty much,” he nodded. “That and I thought that there might be something there that you or one of your friends would find that might give the entire game away.”

I nodded. I felt sick. There was still a guard standing over me so the thought of doing something drastic never entered my mind. I would have closed my eyes but the vibration was strong enough where we were that that would make the nausea worse.

“Well,” Sam said climbing back to his feet. “It looks like we’re ready.”

I looked back over at Robart. He had been forced to his knees and the two critics were holding him there so that he had both arms stretched out on either side of himself. His head was raised as he was looking up at Sam, at Sir Trystan, at the guards.

“I can pay you,” he told them. “If you let me go I can make you rich men. Wealth, power, women, you name it.” It was said with a whimper.

“Well, Freddie,” Sam said as he pulled a sheathed dagger from his belt. “Here it is, your gift. This man’s life is yours to take. He has been tried by me, his martial commander, he has betrayed his oaths and as such his life is forfeit. He cannot be allowed to survive. But I know how much you hate him and how much you have longed to be the one that ends him. Well, here it is. Here is your chance. Come and kill your enemy.”

Robart started to struggle again. He was complaining all the more, telling everyone that could listen that we couldn’t do this, that we had no right. But it seemed to come from a long way off.

I realised that I was no longer bound and tied up so I rose to my feet slowly and shuffled forward. Robart had switched and he was pleading with me now. I didn’t hear him. My vision was a tunnel and pointed at the dagger that Sam held out in front of me.

I reached out and took it.

The cold metal settling into my palm was like a splash of cold water and I swear that I almost felt a thump as I landed back in my body again. It was a good dagger, shorter than mine which is, The God only knows where. Thinner too as well as being made more for stabbing than mine was which is built with the virtue of a large slashing edge.

It fit in my hand like a rapier, the hilt not long enough for the pommel to stretch out beneath my hand while it was wrapped in gold wire.

For a moment, I wondered if it was Sam’s eating knife.

I could hear a roaring in my ears. Roaring like the tide smashing itself against the cliffs. I was losing myself again as I looked down at Robart who was kneeling beneath me.

I didn’t have to work to picture what I was going to do to him. I had been in this position so many times in my dreams. The man that I had met when I smashed my boot into my helmet. The man who had accused me of murdering my brother when I was still getting to grips with the fact that my Father was probably dying. The man had gone on to accuse me of heresy and witchcraft as well as being directly responsible for the death of a good and decent young watchman of Oxenfurt under his command.

The man that had chased me across half the continent to level charges of treason and murder against me after I murdered the priest that had been torturing me, charges that I had already been exonerated from.

This man had used all of his contacts and all of his friends to discredit Emma. Who had abused his minuscule authority to order extra searches of the Coulthard wagon trains and Coulthard ships? Who had dared to have the temerity to suggest that we were guilty of corruption and graft when he gave bribes and received bribes from those who had wanted an easy way through the Novigrad customs docks?

This man had accused Sam and Rickard of cowardice even though both of those men had fought at the front of the wars. I might hate Sam now for everything that he has done but I cannot take that away from him in any kind of good conscience. He had fought, bled and lost friends to the winter campaign over the mountains against Kaedwen and he had fought on the front for Redania. While Rickard had fought the same for Temeria on multiple occasions, including against the South when they attacked, beneath the lilies of Temeria.

This man had hired assassins to come against me and wanted to call that death justice. This man who had called my sisters, both of them, whores. This man who claimed that my Father and Grandfather had stolen their wealth and their standing from better men who deserved better than to be robbed by jumped-up peasants and thieves.

There have been few people that I have hated in this world. Sam is new to that list after everything he has put the people that I love through and the lies that he has told me. I hate him for all of those things.

Many others I hated in the heat of the moment and have worked to let go of that hate, or they have not survived meeting me. Some of them, I don’t even remember their names. I remember Dorme who poisoned me to the point of death, but that fucker introduced me to the woman that I love so I find that I cannot hate him as much as I used to.

That merchant had tried to provoke me into a fight on the docks of Some southern city after that first year.

I certainly hated Bishop Sansum when he was torturing me but he was a weak, little man who did not survive. I hated Cavill in the North but in recent times, call it the current circumstances, his crimes have paled.

There was that little fucker in Skellige who tried to guilt me into saving his life at the expense of all the people that would freeze to death in Skellige and that Knight who liked to dress in white in Toussaint.

But at the top of all of those lists was Robart. Sam might take that spot eventually, but that hatred needs some time to properly mature and grow. It needs time and then I might be able to go that far with Sam.

I didn’t have to work to picture what I was going to do. It was more a case of deciding which particular course of action I wanted to choose.

Using the knife alone, I could puncture both his eyes, cut out his tongue, remove his ears and if I was feeling particularly strong in the stomach, I could cut his balls off and feed them to him. I had promised him that I would do that to him once.

I could also take my time and just start stabbing him. Carving him apart like a sculptor until all I was left with was the central lump of meat that had been my enemy. I could remove fingers and toes although I might need something bigger to cut his hands off.

But Sam had provided me with the potential for so much more. There were torture implements nearby. Cleavers, hooks, other blades, thumbscrews, pliers and clamps.

For a while, I wondered if I could pull his teeth out.

I had dreamed of this moment for so long. The moment when I would finally have this execrable excuse for a human being at my mercy.

I saw myself do it as well. I saw myself pull his head back by the hair before I would rip his throat out with the dagger. I saw myself reverse the dagger in my grip so that I could jam it into his eye.

I felt myself crouch down in front of him before I rammed the dagger into his belly and disembowelled him like a fish.

But when I blinked he was still there in front of me, on his knees whimpering gently. At some point, he had lost control of his bladder and it was clear that he had pissed himself. He was weeping and I could see the disbelief in his eyes. I could almost hear him thinking it, hearing the words in amongst the whimpering as he told himself, over and over again that this couldn’t be happening.

I have dreamt of this moment. Like we did with Dorme, Kerrass and I used to while away time around the campfire by talking about how I was going to kill Robart and in what way. Some of those conversations got quite dark.

I hefted the weight of the dagger and I looked up and away from him to catch my breath. I realised that I was feeling dizzy and faintly sick. I looked up at Sam who was standing behind the desk. It was one of those moments where I hadn’t realised what I was thinking until I was already taking the action to do it.

I wanted to kill Robart. I really really did. He deserved it too and at that moment, I wondered if he knew that he deserved it. Probably not. Robart was not that self-aware.

My mind was catching up with my body now. I was armed, but I was unarmoured. There were two critics in the room as well as two fully armed and armoured guards. Sir Trystan was an unknown quantity and I had no idea how he would react. There was no way that I would be able to get to Sam with so little a dagger and I felt myself snort as I realised that he had probably already thought of that.

I looked down at Robart again. I could smell his sweat and the urine that was leaking from him and I realised that although I still hated him, the immediate bloodlust had run its course.

I turned and handed the dagger, hilt first, to one of the guards.

“No,” I told my brother. “No, I won’t kill him.”

Robart burst into tears behind me.

“But Freddie,” Sam was confused. “I know you hate this man. I know that you’ve fantasised about killing this man. What?...”

“I have,” I admitted. “I have fantasised about all of those things. I want to kill him so badly. So very badly. But not like this. I want to face him on the field of honour. I want to hold my spear in my hand and feel my dagger at my belly. I want him to be armed and armoured according to his own whims. I want there to be witnesses and I want there to be people watching. I want seconds and judges and I want a man with a heavy crossbow ready for when he tries to cheat.

“I do want to kill him. But I want to kill him there, on the field, in front of people. I want to kill him so I can hold him to account for all the crimes that he has committed against my friends and family, including you Sam. That would be a good killing. That is how a man, how a person I should say, how a person of honour is supposed to kill their enemies. Or if they cannot, they are allowed to send a champion. Or they do it through the courts. But I want to kill this man that way.

“But this…” I gestured towards the kneeling man. “This is just murder. This isn’t an honourable killing. You claim to have the right to do this by royal whatnot and all the rest of that bullshit that you described earlier.”

Sir Trystan shifted uncomfortably while Sam remained impassive.

“But if this was legitimate,” I continued, “then all of this would have happened in the open. There would have been a trial and then an execution. You might have offered me the axe or the sword or to pull the lever or give the order or whatever way it would be decided that that killing would be done. But even then I would have refused.

“No. This is not the way I want to kill a man. This would be murder.”

I stood back and gave myself over to whatever was going to happen next.

Sam was thinking about that very course of action. Then he took a breath and pushed himself to his feet.

“Interesting.” He said. “I will argue the point. I will argue that I am a battlefield commander and that as such, I have the right to perform a battlefield trial and summarily execute a man in any way I deem fit.”

“Then why not in front of the men? Making an example and all that.” I wondered. “Or is your alliance too fragile for that?”

Sam smirked a little and I wondered how close to the mark I had managed to strike.

“Ah well,” he said after a moment. “Guards?”

The two armoured men came to attention.

“Take my brother back to his cell, would you? I do not doubt that his sense of honour is very admirable but we do not always have the room for that kind of thing in the face of the enemy.”

I wondered who that remark was for, but I went over to the guards and held my hands out for the bindings that were placed around my wrists. My emotions were swirling around in my head and I had no idea what to do with them.

“Take that piece of filth away.” Sam told the critics, gesturing at Robart “And put him with the other disposable captives. Maybe he will still be useful and we can find a use for him when it comes time to perform the ritual.”

I opened my mouth to ask about that, automatically.

Sam saw.

“Later Freddie.” He told me before nodding to the critics who dragged Robart away.

-

So there you have it. Sam’s gift to me was the opportunity to murder one of my enemies. Not him though, never him.

It was after that little conference that I made my attempt to break free that got my lower legs shattered. I don’t know why I did that and I’ve spent a good amount of time since then remonstrating with myself about it. It was absolutely stupid but then again, I have never had a better chance and it seemed that if there was going to be a moment where I needed to do that and make a break for freedom. Then would have been as good a time as any. On reflection though, I might have done better with the dagger in my hand with Robart as a potential ally, no matter how helpless.

It was a few days after that that I was carried into the room to see Sam. I was still in a lot of pain at that point and I was unable to perform enough conscious thought to actually do anything or concentrate on whatever anyone was saying so it was decided to write off that day as a bad job.

Sam looked me in the eyes. There was a look of such disappointment and exasperation there. He reminded me of Father so much that I wanted to punch him in the cock, even through the pain. I was weeping with that agony at the time and I felt… so helpless and so… pointless.

Sam didn’t yell at me, he didn’t ask me what I’d done or why I had done the things that I was doing. He just looked at me with frustration, hurt and upset before those things were replaced with anger and disappointment. He told me not to worry and that when the ritual was done, he would heal my injuries with the power of The God. I used the pain to fuel my anger and told him that he could shove the power of The God up his ass for all I cared. He was in one of those moods of his where he seemed to just feel as though he was above everything else and he found my anger and defiance kind of amusing.

I dearly wanted to punch his face in.

But yes, the ritual. I have a record somewhere where Sam told me about the ritual in question. It was during one of those times when he was being pumped full of whatever poison Ella is using on him so I have no idea how… reliable this information is.

I was being carried around by this point and I could feel my body wasting away. The madness in the castle was growing. The nightmares were strong and I could hear people screaming in the distance. I have no idea if those screams were real or if they were just the distant sounds of my dreams coming back to haunt me in the cold light of day.

There were other factors too. The stench of unwashed humans was growing. I could smell myself in sharp contrast while I could also smell urine and faecal matter. I was losing my appetite by stages and I knew that I was getting weaker.

I say all of these things to point out how weak I was becoming.

Every day, I would wonder of my guard or Sir Trystan would come to speak with me of the glorious future that he had in mind for the North and the part that he and I were going to play in that future.

The problem with him was that he came across as a really nice guy. If I had met him in any other circumstances, then the chances are that we could have become good friends and spent time with each other. But as it was, I couldn’t get away from the fact that he had been part of the faction that had been part of the downfall and the death of those that I hold most dear.

But, as I think I’ve said before, Hatred requires energy. You have to work at it and consistently put energy into the matter. Because if you don’t, then the sentiment kind of moves on. There are new injustices, new pains and so on.

Even he was made uncomfortable by some of the things that were going on in the castle. Not the actions. He took care to remind me, on several occasions, that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. I told him that I knew that old saying and it is quite true. But it’s also true that anyone that equates people’s lives and livelihoods with eggs deserves a smack in the balls.

He tried to call me out for that and wonder why I wasn’t talking about smacking a person in the teeth so that I could include the female of the species. I told him that, by far, the people that use that expression in terms of sacrificing people, were male. That meant that women didn’t think like that, or that when they did, they were too sensible to say it out loud where people could hear it.

He didn’t take that well.

But he too was commenting on the effects that the ritual was having. I mean, we assumed that it was the ritual that was affecting the world the way it did. The ground shakes occasionally. I can hear voices and so on and so on. It is getting quite tedious. I don’t know that I am going mad. I certainly feel as though I am going mad, but who is to say? Someone, I can’t remember who, once told me that this meant that I was actually quite sane. That to go mad meant to feel saner in an increasingly crazy world.

In this case, I hope to become mad really really soon to make sense of all of this nonsense.

But I was talking about the ritual.

I was summoned to Sam’s office. It was nighttime, this time. Normally, he summons me in the middle of the day. It’s one of the few benefits of being summoned by him or going to see him. It means that I get to see the sky over the castle and feel the sunlight and a fresh breeze while also hoping to have a look out and see the encroaching armies of the Empire. Something that I am certain is not that far away now. I am sure of it. Increasingly sure. It seems impossible that they are not coming.

Now though, they will be too late.

But that night I was summoned and although the windows were open and there was rain falling. They had left the windows open and the carpets and rugs that my Father had spent a fortune procuring were becoming increasingly soaked through.

I can’t go and look out the window any more.

I was carried in a sling, like a hammock that you see on ships but carried by two men instead with a pole stretched between the two. There was no real effort for my comfort and I would regularly feel my backside bounce off the cold stone floor. The guards were not inclined to work towards my comfort after my escapades, but there was also no denying just how much agony I was in. Every bounce meant that the impact from the tailbone jarred all the way up the legs and made what remains of my lower leg and feet scream in agony. They are bound up now. More to keep them together rather than any kind of effort to provide any kind of healing. And like my left hand. I hardly dare look to see what the final damage is.

But that is the way that they move me around. I was carried into the study that day before being placed on the ground and unwrapped from the hammock. Then they picked me up and placed me on the chair. They tie me to it, making sure that I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m not sure what they expect me to do, but if I have achieved one victory during my time as a captive in my Father’s castle, then that victory is that I taught my captors to be cautious.

So they tie me to the chair which is normally when I get the opportunity to have a look around.

My memory of these situations is not perfect and when I read what I have written it feels and reads like some kind of fever dream or hallucination that happened to someone else . The combination of the infections in my feet and hand mean that my memory is not what it was. So please, whoever is reading this, take this with a pinch of salt. But I seem to remember that Sam wasn’t doing very well.

He was sunken in his chair, the skin looking like it was stretched to the point of tearing. There were needles attached to tubes attached to the bags and glass vials that were hanging all around his body.

He looked like a living corpse. The closest that I remember anyone like this was… He reminded me of the Unseen Elder. Skeletally thin. Papery dry skin, brittle greasy hair.

He looked awful.

Ella was there, fussing around her apparatus as she always is when Sam is like this along with her ever-lasting partner in crime in this instance which is Ariadne. Even more skeletally thin than Sam was. Someone had thrown a sack or something over Ariadne now with arm holes cut for her head and arms. I didn’t know what to make of that when I first saw it. It made me feel… On the one hand, I felt a certain amount of hope. This meant that someone cared enough to feel awkward about the fact that she was looking so awful.

On the other hand, no one cared enough to give her some actual proper clothing.

She is always holding her hands out towards Sam and the apparatus. At first, she would just make occasional gestures towards him, but now, she basically just stands there with her hands outstretched. From reading the works of the bard all that time ago, I am guessing that this is similar to what Yennefer did when they were using the Witcher's secrets to heal the Elf during the attack of the Wild Hunt. She was regulating the flow of the chemicals.

I wondered what would happen if I punctured one of the bags or could make more of one chemical flow into the body but less of the rest.

Then I remembered that I didn’t have any feet. Nor did I have anything to puncture the bags with. Or the strength to do these things given how sick I was increasingly getting, what with everything that was going on in and around my body.

Then I got angry with myself for the fact that I hadn’t thought of doing that before.

Onto the official record.

-

It was several minutes after I was set up in my chair that Sam opened his eyes to look at me. He is pale and his eyes seem faint. He looks like those old people that are just on the edge of losing their minds. His eyes were vacant and remote, as though they are trying to see through a thin sheet of cloth before every so often, they just give up and decide to look in the rough direction of where they know you to be.

Everything seems to be an effort for him when he is like this. It makes me want to hang on to every word that he says as though it must be more important. The fact that it takes him so much to say these things must mean that the words are so much more important and considered. I remember the Schattenmann and thinking the same things there.

But it is not the case. Sam has been provably less reliable when he is like this. Spinning me tales about how he and I will live in a God-created paradise where we will have beautiful women at our beck and call to do whatever we like. Where the narcotics will flow freely and where pain will be a memory in the distant past.

The first time he said that I laughed at him. I pointed out that one of the few consistent things about his God was that it enjoys the pain and that there was, therefore, very little chance that it would allow peace and pleasure to exist.

Sam did not like that.

But now he opens his eyes and looks at me. His eyes are sunken behind huge, yellow and blue shadows that remind me of the worst kinds of bruises that I have ever seen. If I was so inclined, I could count his ribs and watch his heartbeat. I would worry about his health for two reasons, the first is that I know that tomorrow, or the next time that I see him, he will be full of health and energy.

The other reason is that I hate him.

“Look at us Freddie.” he wheezed at me. “Look at the state of us. Both of us doing things to ourselves out of some adherence to…” He took a deep breath as he gasped in pain. “Out of some adherence to an ideal that we cling to in the certainty that… that it is what will salvage our souls.”

“You like to get poetic in your ordeals,” I told him. “The difference is that you are doing this to yourself. At any moment, you could order Ella and Ariadne to stop.”

“Call her ‘slave’.” Sam insisted but without strength. He knows that I will never do that and the argument has lost its strength. I just ignored him.

“... And, I had this done to me by your people. I did not do this to myself.” I finished.

“You would not have been harmed if you had not tried something stupid,” he said with some power before his strength failed him a little and he sank back into his chair. “And the truth is that I couldn’t stop now. The only salvation for me lies in the ritual.”

“The ritual.” I mocked. It never works though, my mocking. Sam always smiles and ignores it for the lashing out of a child that my mocking of him really is.

“Yes, the ritual.” He said. “The ritual is what all of this has been building towards really. I just want it to be done with it now.”

“I can sympathise with that sentiment,” I told him. “I too would like to be done with all of this nonsense.”

He sighed.

“Not nonsense Freddie.” He flinched at some pain that I could not register and could not see. “Not nonsense. But rather an honest and sincere effort to save the North.”

I tried to make myself comfortable in my hard wooden chair. It’s really hard to do if you have no lower feet with which to lever yourself around and take some of the weight of your body. The loss of one of the hands that you would use also doesn’t help with anything.

“‘Sincere’ I believe,” I told him. “But honest? Sam, the entire thing is built on lies and deceit. It is far from honest.”

“But the sentiment is honest.” He replied. Like it always does, no matter how hard I try, Sam always manages to draw me into the debates. It is my weakness. I want to defy him and refuse to record the things that I have been doing, seeing and hearing. But Sam, being my older brother and the man that I spent most of my time with, knows exactly how to draw me out.

“I honestly hate the South,” he went on, “and I honestly want to see the Black hordes fleeing from our armies.”

“The fact that so many of those hordes are Redanian nowadays,” I replied. “Say what you like about the Imperials, but they pay well. I know, given how much they’ve tried to pay me to go and work for their intelligence services.”

Sam smirked. “Yes, I remember you talking about your various job offers. I may say that those times when I have heard about you telling Lord Voorhis where to shove it have made me prouder of you than I have ever been.”

“The fact that you manage to say that without sarcasm or even a hint of condescending language astonished me.” I retorted.

“Ah, Freddie.” Sam shook his head. He looked like a priest that I had just talked back to while I was going through my confirmation lessons for the Eternal Flame. One of those times was when I pointed out the logical fallacies in the scripture and make everyone angry or upset.

“Ah, Freddie.” He said again. “Nothing would have made me happier than if we could have worked together on this, but you were rubbing shoulders with the enemy and as such, I could not tell you what was going on because there would be a chance, no matter how small, that our enemies would have figured it out.”

“They are not ‘our’ enemies at all.” I retorted. “I have no problem with the South at all.”

“That is because you have not seen their true horror.” He retorted. “Not least of which…”

“As opposed to the horror that you are committing even now. To the Elves and the others that have served this family for…”

“Not least of which…” Sam repeated. “Would be the subversion of those traitors that have taken the Imperial coin and marched in their ranks. Those traitors will not be shown mercy when we capture them on the field.”

“Not all that long ago, you were lecturing Robart on the need for people to be able to work the fields and things,” I replied. “And now you are going to kill people because they need the coin to be able to feed their children. Will no amount of bloodshed make you happy? The world will be…”

‘It’s not going to be that bad.” Sam replied, overriding my objections. This will not be as destructive a war as the last three have been.”

“Why not?” I demanded. “All wars are destructive.”

“Because the frontline troops will not be men…” He began, gesturing to the vampire-controlling totem, meaning that our ranks would be increased by monsters.

I deliberately misunderstood him. “That’s not a nice way to talk about those men that have been adjusted by your magical… whatever it is.”

Sam ignored that. “Second of all, the people will rise against the hated black ones.”

“People don’t hate the black ones,” I told him. “They just want to…”

“And finally,” he finished. “There is the ritual that reduces all of those things to pointlessness.”

“Ah, the ritual,” I said. “The thing that people have been promising to talk to me about for so long.”

Sam smiled. Whatever else was going on in his body. Whatever poison was being pumped into him, his rain still worked. It was even possible that he was actually thinking with greater efficiency.

“Questions that I brought you here to talk about.” He said. “Questions that I would have answered by now if you didn’t just keep drawing me into these debates which you know that you cannot win.”

“No,” I agreed. “I will never win. There is no arguing with a fanatic.”

“Or someone who knows that they are right.” He countered.

“What is the difference?” I wondered.

He smiled and leaned his head back against the chair. “I think it’s a matter of perspective.” He had to take a break to cough for a little bit. “And I suspect that history will decide that. If you are right and I am destroyed and overthrown, then I will be called a fanatic. But if I win, which I will, then I will be called a freedom fighter and a visionary.”

I snorted at this while Sam just smiled sadly.

“Anyway,” he said, doing his best to straighten up himself. It occurred to me that with all of the metal in his arms, he might be as uncomfortable as I was. He still had some muscle under there though. The human muscle and I could see them moving around under his skin. It made me want to vomit.

“Dear Flame Sam,” I said, echoing what he said earlier. “Look at the pair of us.”

He chuckled a bit which turned into a wheezing cough. Then he frowned, “Do not blaspheme Freddie.”

“Oh fuck off with your God,” I told him.

“He is your God too Freddie.” He told me. “He has to be.”

“And not for the first time,” I told him. “Or the last it would seem, that I might have been slipping on some of the various things. But he, or it, or whatever, will never be my God. You can take your God and shove it up your ass.”

Sam looked angry for a moment and I decided that I needed to divert him.

“Tell me about this ritual,” I told him. “What is actually happening?”

“It will be glorious Freddie.” He told me.

“I have no doubt. But what does that mean? Is it a magical ritual where we are going to summon some aspect of The God before you have sex with it, or allow it to have sex with you? Is it the kind of ritual that we all used to go to at Church where we are supposed to invite the Eternal Flame to warm us when are cold and guide us towards safety when we are lost? What is involved, when does the ritual start, and what do you get out of it, I need details, Sam. Details.”

“It is closer to the second option of the two presented,” Sam said. “This has never been done before and we are working from the notes that Phineas left for us.”

“Because this is supposed to make me feel better is it?” I wondered.

“Freddie. I know that this is your little way to try and make yourself feel as though you are defying me and forming some kind of rebellion against me, but if you would just sit there and shut up, I might have given you the answers by now.”

“I would say that I’m sorry but…”

“The ritual has already started,” Sam said. “We started on the night of the Equinox.”

“Ok, what? I thought you kicked everything off then because that was when you were expecting everyone to be in the local area with their guard down. That way you could take advantage of the situation that much easier.”

“No,” Sam frowned in confusion. “What an absurd thought. We were not strong enough to be able to take on the Empress at the time.”

I sighed and gave him a second. Sam occasionally gets lost in these moments, especially when he’s taking on those poisons.

“Phineas’ writings were very clear,” he went on. “The Autumnal Equinox is the time when the boundaries between the Spheres are at their weakest. That is why the Conjunctions of the Spheres always happen around then.”

“I thought that the last one, the one that the Empress prevented from becoming too disastrous, was in…”

“Do not interrupt.” He snapped. “But the Equinox is when things are at their weakest. Therefore we could begin. The first stage of the ritual began that night. We were drawing the gaze of The God onto ourselves and then we began to empower that ritual.”

“What’s involved in that?” I asked, making notes.

“It was little more than preparing the area. The vast majority of the antics of the Cult were pointless surface activities, they didn’t really do anything of serious note. In this case, we went to a room in the depths of the castle, and we prepared it for what is to come.”

“Which room?”

“The biggest. I don’t know what it was called, but my understanding is that it was where we stored all the feasting tables and chairs for those occasions when Father decided that we needed to have a feast or whatever. Or the stuff that we had ready for when he wanted to hold court or something.”

I knew the one. I had once played hide and seek in that room with Francesca when she was younger. I got into loads of trouble because if we had disturbed any of the furniture then the entire lot of it could have come tumbling down and crushed the pair of us.

“What did the preparations look like?”

“It’s essentially the drawing of a big circle.” Sam wheezed with laughter. “I won’t tell you exactly, not what the ingredients for the paint were although one of those ingredients was my blood. No one but me knows the entire ritual and as I say, I do not intend to survive to see everything succeed. But in this case, the power was in the paint, not in the way that the circle was created.”

I nodded.

“The drawing of that circle as well as the proper incantations was what started the ritual properly. It was what will draw the gaze of the God down upon us and will entice him to fill that circle with power.”

“Sounds ridiculously stupid.” I commented.

“Oh, it will work.” Sam said. “You might even have felt the growing attention of The God in the castle yourself. The thrumming and things.”

“I wasn’t commenting on the ritual itself.” I told him. “It’s just that the thought of summoning the gaze of a God of madness, pain and perversion does not exactly sound like the smartest idea that anyone has ever had. Certainly not the smartest idea that you’ve ever had.”

“Nevertheless.”

I took a deep breath and performed the funny little twisting dance that I used to scratch the left side of my body. Not having fully working limbs has challenges that I had not anticipated.

“What happens next?” I asked. “I assume that that isn’t all there is to it. It sounds more like there are stages and then some kind of climax.”

“Which is true.” Sam said. “We leave it for as long as we can, as long as we dare really. The longer we leave it, the more power The God will put into the circle. But we also don’t want him to put too much in case what you fear comes to pass.”

I nodded. “Finally, a sensible decision.”

“Get fucked, Freddie.”

I felt myself smile. It’s always a small victory when I manage to wind Sam up to the point where he shows frustration.

“I would.” I told him. “But you’ve removed my left hand and both feet so I would find that increasingly difficult. I can’t even go and fuck myself?”

“Why not?” Sam wanted to know, his big brotherly instinct suggesting that there was an opportunity here to mock his sibling. “You still have one hand.” He wheezed. “Surely that is enough to do, as the philosopher said ‘Love thyself’?”

“Yeah, you would think that,” I told him. “In all ways than that, I am right-handed dominant. Don’t ask me why.” I deliberately made my tone of voice go serious. “Also, you would be astonished as to how much the pain of getting your legs smashed will debilitate your mood when it comes to that kind of thing.”

He grunted at that.

“As I say, Freddie. All you had to do was to remain calm and none of that would have happened.”

“In the one instance, you had just told me about… dammit, I still can’t say it… you told me about the horrific things that you did to Francesca. How did you expect me to stay calm after that? And the other time, I was confronted with just how far you had fallen. And I didn’t want to join you down there.”

“Would it be so bad?” He wondered.

“The very fact that you have to ask the question should answer that for you.” I retorted, wincing as I absentmindedly shifted my weight, causing agony to shoot up my legs.

“So what happens then?” I asked.

“So we leave the ritual for as long as we can,” Sam told me while taking a drink from one of the bottles that Ella handed him. “Erring on the side of caution of course.”

“Oh, of course.” I agreed.

‘Freddie, I know that you are trying to be flippant and using humour as an effort to distract from all of the other things that you are going through, but at the same time, you need to accept that these things are…”

“Yes yes.” I waved him off with my writing hand. “You wait for as long as you dare and then what?”

“And then I stand in the middle of the circle. I draw his gaze upon myself and then… And then The God empowers me.”

“What happens if there is too much power?” I wondered.

“That is what all of this is for.” He gestured with his head to some of the apparatus that was surrounding him. “The power that he gives me will alter me. I earlier told you off for equating everything with Witchers. I told you that Witchers are not the most important thing in the world and that I wasn’t trying to turn myself, or my people into proto-witchers. That was true, but I might have been a little bit harsh when I talked about all of that. When I think about it, the method is fairly similar. In the same way that the Trial of the Choice prepares a nascent Witcher for the trial of the Grasses, so too does this whole process prepare me for the power of The God.”

I nodded. “And will you be able to keep your own mind in the entire process?” I wondered.

“Why do you ask?” Sam asked in response. “I mean, that’s what the notes of Phineas say.”

“Ok,” I said. “Let’s just for a moment, say that I trust you. Which I don’t, you have betrayed everything that I stand for and everything that I believe in. But just for the moment, let us say that I believe and trust you.”

Sam nodded with a slight smile.

“Then why are we trusting Phineas with this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… Phineas was a fanatic of The God. You say that yourself. He was willing to risk his own life for this situation. You told me that as well. I mean, that sounds like an awful lot for just… helping you get to where you want to be on the world stage.”

“Get to the point Freddie.”

“But I do so like talking around the subject.”

Sam laughed at that.

“Yes.” He agreed. “Yes, you do. So many people when they are complaining about you talk about how much you just whitter on. More than one person has wondered if the Oxenfurt magazine used to pay you by the word.”

“They don’t actually,” I replied. “I am writing the kind of diaries that I would want to find should I be a historian looking back and reading someone’s diary. The amount of shite that I put in those entries is just what a historian would want. Context, questions and so on.”

Sam grunted but he didn’t seem happy.

“You were going to get to the point.” He said, a little coldly.

“Yeah… What if this is a long con by Phineas? He has given you the ritual and now he wants you to follow through on it. Is this how The God gets into this realm, through you? Phineas was willing to die for this to happen after all. As martyrdoms go, that would certainly make a splash as it were.”

Sam shook his head.

“The God cannot exist on this plane of reality.” Sam dismissed.

“He doesn’t need to. Is that just his physical form that cannot, or its mind? You already talk about his power coming and inhabiting you so that you can work and fight against the Lady of Time and Space. Why not its mind? Why wouldn’t it just leave a suggestion?”

“Freddie.” Sam warned.

“Why wouldn’t it put that in your head?” I went on. “At the moment you have all of the best intentions to push things through, to do what you need to do and then retreat from it, ensure that no one can use the same path that you have in order to do… whatever it is you want to do. You want to destroy that knowledge. What if it just puts a little suggestion into your mind so that you change your mind and all of a sudden, you are an agent of The God in this space? Then you change your mind and you are empowering more people with the power of The God, you make yourself King and the worship of The God becomes the primary religion of the continent. After all, Power corrupts doesn’t it.”

“Yes, it does.” Sam agreed and leaned his head back. “I cannot deny Freddie, that you have given me some things to think about. But there is one thing that you are potentially forgetting, which is that a lot of other men, and more than one woman, have signed up for my cause based on the promise of this ritual being carried out. Leaving aside my life, would you condemn their lives as well? They will be lost if this ritual doesn’t work. Would you condemn them?’

“Yes.” I told him. “Absolutely yes. After everything that they have been party to, after everything that you and they have done to me and mine. I would absolutely condemn them to the gallows, or worse. Yes, you will not get me to feel sorry for those people.”

“Yet you didn’t kill Robart.”

“No, I didn’t and stop trying to equate the two. As I said at the time, I want to kill Robart on the field of honour before proper witnesses. I will settle for a trial before magistrates and judges followed by a nice execution. But a man’s life is not a gift Sam. And you should have known that. And do not think that you have diverted me from the point by throwing that at me. There are a lot of holes in what you are doing. You are following the instructions of a man that told you to…” I took a deep breath. “Sacrifice our sister. It does not encourage me to trust, or believe him.”

Sam looked thoughtful.

“You have given me some things to think about, I cannot deny that.” He admitted. “But although you can dismiss the lives and the wellbeing of the people that have sworn themselves to my cause, I cannot. We need what the ritual can provide in order to survive. The ritual will be carried out, no matter what.”

-

And I was dismissed after that.

I made a mistake during that entire conversation and I have spent a good amount of time kicking myself, proverbially of course, for not thinking of it at the time. Sam is a far better debater than I ever gave him credit for and he has a gift for diverting me from topics of conversation that he doesn’t want me to pursue. I wonder if he did that deliberately at the time to prevent me from asking one of the follow-up questions.

How does he focus the power of The God on to himself?

The circle is about drawing the eye of The God. But that is not how he focuses that gaze.

I am imagining it like a beam of light from a spotlight lantern. There is a target circle on the wall and I move the lamp until I can cover as much of that circle as I can. That’s what the circle is for that is drawn on the floor. But then, from the way Sam is speaking, we need to focus that light on a single point. In the case of the ritual, that light is focused on Sam, but for the purposes of my thought experiment, you would do that with shutters and lenses to make that light more powerful.

This means that it’s more like how you take the light of the sun and focus it by using a magnifying glass to get those things to that point.

That’s how you would do it with a lantern or to focus the sun's rays.

How does Sam intend to do it with the power of The God?

I asked him in a future conversation and he wouldn’t answer me. Which in turn makes me suspicious. That’s the thing that he doesn’t want me to know the answer to. That’s the thing that he’s nervous about. I find that I don’t really… I want it to be over with. I want it to be done. My imagination is the worst thing here and I cannot imagine the horror that he might be preparing to visit on various people during the performing of that ritual.

But… Sir Trystan seems to be of the opinion that it’s all going to be happening today. So I will soon find out.

Sir Trystan is an odd duck. He seems to be a good man in all aspects other than the factor that he’s a party to all of this madness.

Anyway. If the time is approaching when they want me to witness the performing of this ritual after which, “All my injuries will be healed” then I can stop worrying about it then. But knowing my luck, they will just find something else for me to worry about.

I am so… So very tired of all of this.

Ok, what else have I got in this vast bundle of notes that might be relevant…

Here’s one. This was a conversation that happened in Sam’s office when there were a good number of other military people hanging around at the same time. If the future people of the world are wondering why the people of the continent have done their best to exterminate the vampiric race then this is why. Or, if Sam is victorious if you are wondering why Echidna and Fleders and Bruxae and whatever else are the secret police that patrols the local area then this is why.

-

“So Freddie.” Sam began as he often does. There was something of the feeling of a party in the local area this time. There were other military men in the room, lounging around and stalking over the maps. As I say, there was a relaxed feeling about it all and I guessed that some threshold had been passed. That there had been a victory or a particularly powerful ally had signed up to the cause with a significant number of men.

It was inconceivable to me that this, relatively minor military force would have achieved anything against one of the greater hosts of the Nilfgaardians. It takes months, if not years to marshall a force that size.

“So Sam,” I answered.

“What would it take to get you over to our side?”

A couple of people perked their heads up to hear the answer.

“You would be an invaluable source to us.” Sam argued. “You could change the face of this war.”

“You are assuming that I would want to turn it in your favour.” I told them. Some of them laughed.

“Surely there must be something Lord Frederick?” Someone I didn’t know asked.

“Money?” Another suggested, “Title, women, drink…”

Each of the suggestions met with some uproarious laughter.

I was being bullied. You never forget what that feels like, even if it is years away from the practice field where the bullies used to torment you.

“There is one thing.” I said. I wanted it to be something that Sam would never ever give me.

“Name it.” Sir Trystan said. Not Sam, he would not fall for so simple a trick.

“Give me back the woman that I love.” I told them. “Release my friends and the rest of my family. Let us go and then I will be on your side.”

I was greeted with laughter of course. The only person that wasn’t laughing was Sam. He knew that I meant every word of it, while I knew that he was never going to allow that to take place.

“No Freddie.” He said. “I need those people. Ariadne will be my general. She will lead the armies of Vampires that I will have at my disposal into the nighttime camps of the Nilfgaardians and when she is done, they will fear the colour black as they will know, with certainty, that anyone that wears black will die horribly. And then she will gather more and more vampires for my army. And that way, our troops will be spared. It will be the Vampires that do our killing. Who knows? Maybe we will even be viewed as saviours to the South after the tide of Vampiric flesh just rolls over them and we rescue them from the darkness.”

There was quite a bit of laughter from that.

This time, it was me that wasn’t laughing.

-

See what I mean?

I don’t think there’s much time left now. Guards are running this way and that way. People are getting nervous. I can hear things…

I don’t know what else I will be able to keep from all of these piles of paper on the desk. They are coming for me now.

There is a rhythmic thumping in the ground. I can feel the ground beneath me shaking. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Good night, good luck and may the Flame guide you home.