(Warning. Described scenes of extreme, ritualistic and sexual violence. Clinically described by Watchman as having been done to another person in past tense.)
I had wanted to do this bit myself but Kerrass had argued, correctly, that one of us needed to carry the box that we had found and that person would not be able to fight properly. Also of the two of us, he was the one that could reasonably be expected to take on three to five highly trained church guards as well as the fact that he could probably get away with it given that he wasn't part of the family.
Having said that, it is all well and good to say that you are alright with someone attacking your brother's guards but it is a whole other thing to watch it happen.
My brother had taken up a large office in one of the quieter parts of the keep. He is, after all, an important person in larger church affairs and even though he is away from his home diocese he still gets a large number of visitors and it is useful for him as well as the rest of the family for him to be able to differentiate his visitors from the rest of the people who come to the keep on other errands.
It sits at the end of a corridor before the corridor itself turns a corner which leads to some more guest rooms and it was down this corridor that we strode purposefully. Me with the box in a sack over one shoulder and Kerrass with his sword on his back and the iron bar part of my spear swinging easily in his hand.
“Greetings my friends,” Kerrass called as we came in sight of the room and the guards standing outside. “So good to see you on this rather pleasant morning. My compliments to your master but it is rather urgent that we speak to him.”
The lead guard seemed rather bored.
“Morning Witcher. This game of yours is no longer funny and neither ourselves nor the Arch-Bishop are amused. His Grace has informed us that he is indisposed and as such is not to be disturbed for any reason.”
He fixed his eyes on me, “For any reason at all.” He was sneering slightly.
Some people just seem to fit the stereotype and despite everything you do to try and help them move past that stereotype, they just give up and jump right into it.
“Ah,” Kerrass looked comically crestfallen. “I notice however that he was disposed enough to come to his office which is some distance from his room. But that is not important today. Today I'm afraid that I really must insist that I be allowed in to see the Arch-Bishop. It is a matter of faith, religious learning, family history and his brothers murder. I am sure that he will understand in this case. Please check with him.”
Kerrass made a little 'shoo' gesture with his left hand.
He had warned me earlier that he had done his best to annoy the Arch-bishops guards at every available opportunity. He regarded it as part of a game but also he felt that he had a certain duty to annoy self-righteous pricks who don't know what they're talking about. His words, not mine. Personally I had found the church guards that had come with my brother from Tretogor to be relatively harmless. When not on duty they had passed the time with our family guards and myself and seemed relatively friendly. There were a couple of... more uptight individuals who seemed to think of me as being somehow 'soiled' from being associated with a Witcher and had treated me exactly how you think they might have but for the majority of them, they seemed like reasonable human beings.
“The order stands that His Grace not be disturbed for ANY reason, Witcher. As well you know.”
I particularly enjoyed how the man sneered while he said the word “Witcher” as though it was somehow badly flavoured or that it sullied his lips with the sound of it.
“Darn,” said the Witcher.
Helmets are useful things. They are particularly good at protecting from overhead strokes. That is why Kerrass brought the heavy metal bar up to the offending guards chin with a hard underhand movement. It was hard enough to lift the man almost completely off his feet with an accompanying crack and crunch. He fell backwards between the other two astonished guards.
The guard on Kerrass' left knocked on the door in a pattern that I didn't follow while the remaining guard thrust his shield at Kerrass while struggled to unsheathe his sword.
Kerrass grabbed the top of the shield and tugged at it causing the man to stagger forward. Kerrass then used the momentum to spin on his heel to bring his makeshift club around in a semi circle and clout the man on the back of the head. He fell forwards.
The remaining guard looked a little resigned but he certainly seemed cleverer than his fellow. He dropped his shield and didn't bother going for his sword, instead he drew a dagger from a sheath on his back and used his other hand and arm to take hold of the club and trap it. It was a good plan.
Unfortunately for the guard, Kerrass was unmoved and simply let go of the club, took hold of the man's head and rammed it into the wall. Once, twice before checking for consciousness and then a third time for good measure.
Stooping he retrieved the club, gestured me further back and made a hand gesture.
A golden light seemed to flicker over his body before another gesture made the door explode off his hinges and into Brother Marks office, flattening a fourth guard under the heavy Oak and iron reinforcings. Kerrass stepped into the office, another guard brought his sword down hard onto Kerrass' head from where he had been hiding behind the door. Again, another good plan.
There was a flash and an explosive concussion which caused me to stagger a little but I had seen this before and had been prepared. The guard that had attacked the Witcher was not so lucky.
Kerrass gestured me forward and I followed him into my brothers lair. One guard was struggling up from the remains of the door before an unceremonious boot from Kerrass connected with his chin causing him to slump. The magical explosion had caused the last guard to fly backwards into a shelf which had rained other books and scrolls so that his unconscious form was half covered.
Mark was behind his desk on the far side of the room with an absurdly small knife in his hand. He was plainly terrified and snarled at us in his mix of anger and terror.
I deposited my burden on the floor and checked to make sure that Kerrass hadn't killed anyone.
He knew his craft though.
Never being one to let a good opportunity go to waste, my brother was calling for guards. Red in the face.
“Yes,” said Kerrass grinning nastily. “Bring the guards. Then they can see what happens when a group of trained church soldiers try to prevent an innocent Witcher from fulfilling his contract and duty. Just count yourself lucky that I wasn't a Sorcerer or Wizard as they would have done much worse and they would not be frightened by your little knife any more than I am. They would also want to know what the presumed master of the castle had to hide that he locks himself away from any encroaching person who might be able to ask him questions. Questions that might call into doubt his very inheritance.”
“I have nothing to hide, least of all from you. And your comment on Sorcerers and Wizards is unfair.” Mark showed that he could also smile horribly. “We burned many in Novigrad with only our small and unimpressive knives to help us,”
Kerrass winced. “I had friends on some of those pyres Arch-Bishop. Friends who had never hurt anyone. Friends who had even gone out of their way to help and heal others.”
The two men glared at each other. Kerrass spoke first.
“But that is not why I am here. I also know that you had nothing to do with those deaths and I even know that you protested them in the strongest terms for which I am grateful so I would thank you not to attempt to provoke me.”
The two men stared at each other. I was fascinated at this meeting of two minds. Mark has been and I suspect will always be a great influence on my life. He was my earliest confessor and as such has had a great impact on my spiritual progression which is still important to me despite my dislike of discussing it too much. To see him challenged so much by another equally as strong personality was.... enlightening.
It was Mark who looked away first.
“What do you mean “presumed” master of the castle? And also, how would my reluctance to talk to a heretical mutant on a matter that I don't agree with have any bearing on the case. I did not kill my brother and I was provably somewhere else on the matter of Fathers death.”
Mark's disdain for Kerrass struck me as lacking a certain something. He seemed tired and more as though he was trotting out the old “heretical mutant” thing as though he had to rather, than if he believed it.
The distant sound of people running came to me in my position by the door.
Kerrass waved his hands dismissively. “Distance is not a concern to a man with wealth and power but that is not something that I am concerned with. But I do have questions, questions that I would be willing to believe that only an Arch-Bishop can answer and that might be able to shed light on. Questions pertaining to what's in the sack that Frederick is carrying.”
Mark looked at me. There was a question there and I saw how well he had been played. My brother is a clever man but like anyone he is susceptible to flattery.
“Show me.”
The guards arrived as I was stooping and Mark gestured for them to wait.
The first thing I did was to move some of the rugs aside that were on the floor and I produced a wooden board that I put in the middle.
Next came a box. Putting it on the floor next to the board I put on a large, thick pair of gloves.
Kerrass was watching my brother carefully but he needn't have worried. Mark was rapt.
Flicking the lid open with my foot I reached inside and took out a Large round wooden stone and placed it on the wooden board.
Mark hissed in anger and rage. “You dare?” he snarled. “You bring that...that thing here. Into my rooms. You invoke her presence here. How dare you?”
“I take it you know what that is then.”
“Of course I do.”
What it was was a round, flat stone that had been smoothed on one side maybe 2 feet in diameter. Upon the surface of the stone there had been carved the pattern of a spiders web. In the centre of which was a large spiders body with the head of a Lion.
“The Lion-headed spider.” Mark hissed. “The Lion-headed Spider. How dare you...?”
Kerrass held his hands up. “The tablet has been desecrated by me as well as someone whose opinion I trust so therefore holds no power. I ensured that before I brought it here as I had no desire to bring her gaze on the house of a friend and afterwards I was hoping that you would help me destroy it.”
Mark was visibly relieved which surprised me.
“Unfortunately that is not the only thing we found,” Kerrass went on nodding to me.
Equally as carefully I reached into the box and pulled out a Silver Ankh symbol. It was heavy, about 2 feet tall. The fact that the size of the Ankh was the same as the stone tablet had not been lost on Kerrass and I.
I placed it next to the stone.
Mark recoiled visibly.
“We found them together,” Kerrass said carefully, “The ankh was strapped to the stone by thin leather straps. I have already burned the straps.”
Mark nodded. His eyes had gone wild and he was visibly sweating.
“Good,” he said. “Good, the Ankh will need to be melted as well.”
“I am having an impromptu furnace built away from the walls for that purpose.”
Mark nodded and visibly made an effort to control himself.
“Where did you find these things?”
“Alas we still haven't told you everything that we have found, perhaps we should sit?”
Mark nodded.
The guards were dismissed, wine was brought and we sat down to talk.
It felt as though years had passed since Father had finally died but in the event it had only been a few days.
We had talked to Emma about things and our plans to make sure that the funeral would leave us enough time to go away and come back. Fortunately even a Barons funeral can take time to organise, for the necessary guest invitations to be sent out, frocks to be cleaned, decorations to be taken down and put up again so there was still some time yet in which I could... “Go and play” as my sister so encouragingly put it.
We rode over to Oxenfurt in that early evening with our family lawyer. He had long been known to me and I had always remembered him as a fierce grey-haired old man with a receding hairline and who's whiskers bristled fiercely when he was annoyed by small children. What I had clearly forgotten, or missed was the way that his eyes would crinkle when he was amused and his great booming laugh which he employed often.
He and Kerrass had struck up some kind of partnership which was the very original version of the old saying about “opposites attracting.” The Lawyer's name was Barnabus Krayt of Krayt, Morgan and associates and although this is not an advert for their services they always did right by my family.
We parted ways at an inn just outside of Oxenfurt. There's an old chess club there where people can sit around and play each other on the provided chess sets for hours at a time while downing a suitable amount of wine and ale and start carousing until the early hours of the morning. Kerrass insisted on pulling us over there and bought Mr Krayt (although he tried to insist, I still can't bring myself to to think of him as Barnaby) a large pint of frothy ale which the old man drank with envious speed. They told many jokes and stories and they even managed to entertain their audience with their witticisms and jokes at each others expense. I was fairly quiet despite their best efforts to get me drunk. In the end Mr Krayt promised Kerrass faithfully that he would be at the watch house in the morning insisting that Kerrass and I be allowed access to Edmund's rooms. I was all for heading there straight away but apparently the people who have the authority to be yelled at by lawyers “simply don't work like that,” so I suffered in silence.
After he left Kerrass took me over to a corner table. He was stone cold sober of course and called over the barman. The company was in good cheer and Mr Krayt had been generous with his money so we were all quite popular and everyone, other than me, was in good spirits but the barman paled when Kerrass spoke to him.
“This is awkward,” Kerrass began with one of his more disarming smiles. “But I was hoping you could answer a question for me.”
“And why would I do that?” The Barman was a tall, thin man but other than that he was fulfilling the stereotype of pub landlord with ease. The question wasn't accusatory but rather an invitation for further jokes and good cheer.
“Because I've spent a good amount of money,”
“Do you intend on spending more?” There was some laughter from some of the nearby listeners who thought that some kind of competition was still going on.
“Maybe,” Kerrass responded quickly. “That depends on whether you answer the question,”
This was met with general applause as though Kerrass had won a point.
The Barman mused but seemingly couldn't think of anything else he could say that would be funny enough to satisfy the audience.
“What's your question?” he said as though he was granting us a huge favour.
“Does the name Eloise Karnak mean anything to you?”
As a historian or as a scholar, storyteller or writer or whatever people seem to consider me nowadays you have to do a small amount of research. One of the ways that I have done this is by reading other peoples works. These particular writings from my journals are published in a magazine and so it is meant to entertain as well as to inform so I wanted to make sure that I get this right. But there was one definition that always surprised me. That was when someone is described as having “paled”. It's a simple enough word and yet it conveys so much meaning as well as everyone knows precisely what you mean by it. It describes a person when the red pigment leaves their face. Unfortunately the rest of it lacks a certain something, in other words, why are they losing their colour. Are they sick? Are they in pain? Angry? Sad? Shocked?
This bar man looked as though it was all of them put together as not only did he “pale” but he also staggered, started sweating and his eyes widened.
A couple of the other patrons asked if he was alright?”
“I'm fine,” he snarled back in a sudden fury. “Now fuck off, we're closed.”
I was as astonished as anyone else there as it was still relatively early in the evening (for Oxenfurt) and the crowd seemed more than capable of drinking much more yet.
“Seriously. Fuck off,” He bellowed at them.
A shocked silence fell. Some men looked angry and might have started something but then they realised something that I hadn't which was that the Barman was weeping openly.
A large man, a labourer of some kind I gathered, stood up, finished his drink and loudly said that he would see the barman tomorrow.
One by one the other patrons did the same.
The Barman went and found himself a bottle. It was black and came in a whicker basket which he started taking large swigs from.
I noticed that we weren't offered any.
“Sorry,” he said after a while, “Sorry it's just... It's just that it's been a long time since I.... thought about her.”
He sniffed, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve before looking back up at the Witcher.
“Is that why you're here. Did you catch the bastard thing that did that? Someone once said they were going to put up a notice about that as only a monster could have done something so evil but the Watch claimed that it was a man.”
Kerrass sighed and shook his head.
“I'm sorry but that's not why I'm here. The name came up in this region in connection to something else that I am working on. I don't yet know how the two were connected but I can promise that I intend to find out.”
The man nodded. “Well if they are, and if they do turn out to be connected, then you come and see me Witcher. I'll give you a reward to see that things head or if it does turn out to be a man, I would pay to see the bastard swing. If not, come back and I'll hire you myself.”
Kerrass nodded, “Why don't you start by telling us what happened and how you know that name.”
“She was just a nice girl,” He looked at us with red eyes. I felt guilty then. I had my own grief that was clawing at the back of my mind like a hungry animal, which I knew would break free eventually, but this man's grief was just as real and just as raw. I could no longer look at him and studied the table, looking at the grain in the wood and the patterns it made of the spilled beer and wine.
“She was just a nice girl. Dark blonde frizzy hair that used to stand up when we had thunder storms. It was always a mess and always getting caught in things but she steadfastly refused to allow anyone to touch it or cut it any shorter claiming that she would look like a cloud or a dandelion.”
He didn't say anything for a while.
“She was fourteen when she died. Maybe a little bit younger than me so that puts it at about thirteen years ago when we found her. We all loved her, all of us but she never tried to make us fight for her affections and I would guess that I wasn't the only one who planned to propose when she came of age. That makes me sound all grown up but I was fifteen? Yeah, I think I was fifteen years old.
“Heh
“You have to understand, she wasn't beautiful or anything, not like these great ladies that you see riding past or those Sorceresses that the Holy Flame insisted on scarring before they threw them into the fire but she had this kind of...light in her eyes. Her entire face lit up whenever she smiled and it was like the sun came out from behind a cloud.”
The poor man sobbed.
“She went missing one day. Just went missing. Her mother had died some time before that and her father was always away on the ships. Her uncle was a drunk and her aunt spent all her time working to pay for them all to survive so Ellie had to make do. Most of the older folk decided that she had simply run away. Joined one of the groups of travelling players or nuns or something to get away from it all. Maybe even a mercenary company or something in her general effort to get away but we who knew her best said that she would never do that. She had a sister to look after see? She would never leave her sister. That's one of the things I liked about her otherwise she could have gone off and got work as a maid out at one of the estates or even in one of the whorehouses in Novigrad I imagine, not that she ever seemed to go for that kind of thing.
“We searched the entire island. We couldn't get off our little stretch of land because the guards would stop us so we thought that she would have the same problem. She wasn't that great a swimmer so she wouldn't have tried for the water. The Dock-workers claimed that she couldn't have stolen aboard any of the ships that had stopped at the docks so she had to be somewhere on our little patch of land.
“It was maddening. We would rush through our chores before running off to join the search parties. It was almost a game.
“But then we found her and it was no longer as funny.
“It wasn't me. I was away doing something else but the little lad who did find her was about eight and he killed himself shortly afterwards. He drowned, jumping in the river when it was flowing too quickly for anyone to help him.
“She had been mutilated. Horribly. Torn in places and there were other parts of her... missing. The only reason that anyone recognised her was because there was no-one else like her with that hair of hers.”
The man sobbed again.
“The guards came and got her. Another guard came, asked a bunch of questions. The Holy Flame came to take away her body and then we were told to forget about her.
“Nothing ever came of it. No-one was ever caught. We used to fantasise about what we would do if we ever found out who had done it. What we would do to them. How we would punish them but we never found out what had happened. Never....Never found out what happened”
Silence fell for a long time. But the man wasn't done yet.
“I can't think they tried very hard though. Girl like Ellie doesn't get much notice when she dies. Not like some of those grand high mucky-mucks who go up to the university in it's day. Bet if one of their daughters died then the killer would be found.
“If you find them Witcher. If you find them or find out what happened to them if justice has already found them then you come back and you tell me. You hear? You tell me and I'll reward you. I promise. You come back. I promised myself that if I ever found out I would shit on his grave.”
Kerrass nodded and spent a bit of time soothing the man. I didn't want to hear that part and I went to stand outside where I leant against a nearby fence and stared at the stars. In the distance I could hear the river lapping at the shore and the stone of the bridge where it crossed over and into the city and I felt very small there. A small, lonely and very angry man berating the world for not being a fair place where murderers were brought to justice and good, innocent young girls could live their lives free of any harm or threat.
Eventually Kerrass joined me. It was only a short journey from there into town and I found that I wanted to take the time so we walked the houses.
Those people that have been to the university will be able to tell you that there is a strange kind of energy that comes with being in your student city wherever it might be. For many of us it was the place where we grew up, our first time away from home properly and experienced the heady tonic that is being an “adult” for the first time. It was in Oxenfurt that I lost my virginity shortly after I first arrived. It is an action that I now regret as I lost it with undue haste and rushed the entire experience rather than taking the time to properly do the moment justice. I am told that I am not alone in that sentiment. I got properly drunk for the first time, that state that is only achieved after being drunk, where you get to being drunk, AND THEN GO FURTHER.
Where you wake up and thank the Gods that you are in your own bed, or when you wake up somewhere else and wonder how you got there. When you wake up next to someone else and there's that awful moment of... Did we....you know?...Do the...thing? When you all get together the following day still massively nauseatingly head-achingly hungover and you can only communicate through grunting and yet still understand each other?
I got into a proper fight for the first time (I lost). I gambled for the first time. I sampled foods and drinks, discussed religion and politics, history and arts that I had never experienced or even dreamed of. Then I debated them as if I even vaguely knew what I was talking about.
Oxenfurt is a wonderful place, especially if you have lived there for any period of time but you have to be careful. Sometimes it will chew you up and spit you out.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
There is an energy about the place, a strange level of existence. Oxenfurt almost exists on a separate plane of reality.
But then you leave it.
I left to go and find a Witcher to travel around with him for a while and make some notes that I, somewhat naively, hoped that I would be able to publish to get my Professorship or even to be able to publish a book. I recently had cause to look back at the earlier chapters of these chronicles and I wince at the naïve nature of the person that I was with my intellectual and cultural biases. It was like the real world hit me with a frying pan saying “This is what it's really like out here.” Then when I went back to Oxenfurt last winter I spent my time wandering round looking at old friends and professors thinking to myself “How naïve must I have been to look up to these people?” because Oxenfurt had seduced me again into thinking that I was superior to all of these people. These people that have never been out there and looked, really looked at what was going on and how events really were shaping up in the world.
I found that I didn't want to go back to that, I wanted to stay here in the quiet and the dark for just a moment longer.
Kerrass didn't react when he saw that I was leading my horse. Instead he just joined me and we walked alongside each other. The bridge is still guarded after the war by more than just a simple pair of guardsmen that couldn't hold off a group of starving beggars. They knew me though as I had spent some time getting to know the guards last winter and they waved as we went by. A couple offered their condolences.
“Are you alright?” Kerrass said as the walls got closer.
I blew out a breath.
“No, no not by a long shot.”
Kerrass nodded and handed over a waterskin and I drank several strong swallows before I realised what I was drinking.
“Peach schnapps?”
“Yeah, I bought it off the barman as it seemed unfair that we had chased all his custom away. He refused the money but I imagine his wife will make him see sense in the morning.”
I offered him the bag back but he refused.
“You finish it. Drink as much as you can anyway and save the rest. You wanna talk about it?”
“What's to talk about?” I replied quickly.
Kerrass thought about this for a moment. “Plenty I, thought.”
“You're not wrong. Did you know what story he was going to tell us when we stopped there?”
“No. I knew the name, the place and the date but I didn't know what had happened. Then you always ask the barman first as they are the gossips of the world.”
“How did you find out about her?”
Kerrass looked at me for a moment. I thought he was considering something, but then he nodded.
“Your father had a set of notes that he had been adding to for some time. It was in one of the locked cupboards in his study. I don't think even Barnaby knew it was there. It was just a list of names, rough locations and dates. It was one of the things that I was going to look into while we were here as a good portion of them happened around the Oxenfurt area. Barnaby warned me that the watch are likely to be uncooperative and to rebel by making us wait, so I wanted to check a few of them out. As a side project I was going to use it to tire you out physically.”
“Now though?”
“I'm resorting to other methods. Drink your Schnapps.”
I obediently took another large drink.
“Interesting brew this.” I mused, “Doesn't taste like any schnapps that I've drank before.”
“That's because I've drugged it to help you sleep. It should get us to your quarters before you start to feel drowsy though.”
I thought about it for a long time.
“Fuck it,” I said and took a more cautious swallow. “Remind me to get some extra stuff though before bed as it almost feels like it's coating my throat in goo.”
“Fair enough.”
We walked on.
“It's just....” I began. “I've been on the road with you for what, a little over a year now?”
“More than that I would have thought.”
“Yes but we took a break over winter.”
“You're right then, just over a year.”
“I've changed so much from the person who I was when we first met and don't get me wrong I like most of the changes. Then I go home and I'm there for a week and already I need to check my noble privilege. I'm stomping around, yelling at people and generally getting cross but at the end of the day, people die all the time in horrible horrible ways. I'm no different than them but I feel as though I should get some kind of special treatment. He was right you know. If it had been a noble-man's daughter or a rich merchant's daughter, the killer would have been found ages ago.”
Kerrass considered this.
“No they wouldn't. I've seen far too many of those kinds of cases. Give it another fifty years or so when those people who remember Eloise start dying and I come back here, there will be a notice somewhere for a Witcher to come and remove the girls spirit. The Watch, led by the Sheriffs and the under sheriff's of this world are not there to catch criminals. Their job is to preserve the peace and if that involves catching and prosecuting the criminals themselves then that is a bonus. Even if they know who the killer is the likelihood of that person being brought to justice is relatively small. If it would cause more of a problem to arrest, try and prosecute the killer than it would to arrest say, a vagrant, the town drunk who can be persuaded that he saw and did anything with enough vodka in his belly or another local ne'er do well then that's what's going to happen.
“I'm a Witcher and I don't have to abide by those truths or these guidelines of, heh, modern society so I can just go and investigate without strings attached. We would make good private detectives it's just that's not what we're for and no society would accept us as a mutant branch of law enforcement. Correctly too in my opinion as I think people should police themselves so they can understand themselves. But I look at that circumstance and I think differently.
“Without assuming anything else given how we found out about poor Eloise, I would look at that and I would think “Young, pretty, no real family to speak of, regularly unattended. I would expect that she had been watched for some time for this purpose. I expect that if we were to look into it with any kind of depth that there would have been a stranger or three that had hung around on the lead up to her disappearance, who would have hung around afterwards for a bit before moving on and more importantly, they would have a cast-iron alibi for the time where she was missing. This person would have been hired by someone to find someone like Eloise. That would be the way that I would investigate it. That drink kicking in yet?”
“A little,” I slurred the words and was minorly horrified at the fact that I was getting drunk so quickly.
“Good, well we're nearly here,”
I don't remember much after that. I do remember waking up the following morning to find a large pitcher of water with just enough wine in it to be drinkable. Kerrass had left a note on it saying “Drink. All of it. You'll feel better.”
I did as I was told and I really did feel better.
I found Kerrass at the tavern just over the way from where I keep my rooms. He was tucking into one of those giant breakfasts that he seems so fond of and he waved me over.
“I really don't know how you can eat that stuff.” I said ordering one of the meat buns and some coffee. Coffee was expensive at the moment but I felt that I needed it.
“Sets me up for the day,” Kerrass commented, “And it looks like it's going to be a long day. Barnaby's already at the Watch house. I offered to turn a few tables over for him but he declined saying that he was too used to playing bad watchmen to suddenly switch to being a good watchman. He's promised that he would leave word here when we can go see your brothers rooms.”
“Why can't we go now?”
“Sealed and guarded. Especially since they know that I want to see inside them. It was one of the first things that I did when you gave me the case but it was still guarded then and so they've kept it guarded. We could murder the two watchmen guarding it I suppose?”
One of the women sat next to us, who was optimistically suggesting that the man next to her should buy her a drink, gasped at Kerrass in horror. He grinned at her showing all his teeth and she fled.
“Probably not, I do want to come back here at some point.” I tried not to laugh as the man next to us shot a grateful look at us.
“But in other news we are meeting someone here while we wait.”
“Who's that?” My food came. It was a roasted pork that had been mixed in a spice mix that I didn't recognise. Food prices hadn't gone down much since the war but at least the supply and quality had improved.
“Retired Watchman. All Watches have a guy like this if they're lucky. Especially the big cities. He's the guy that gets sent to all the murder cases to try and figure them out.”
“I thought you said that the Watch only keep the peace rather than actually solving the crimes.” The Pork was gorgeous and I ate it far too quickly.
“They do, but they still need to solve the odd one. For the look of the thing more than anything else. I'm being cynical but you'd be astonished how many times I've been accused of murder just to say that they have someone in custody.”
I grunted at that.
“But anyway,” Kerrass continued. “I asked a bored looking Sergeant about some of the names and dates in your Fathers journals and I was told to contact a retired Captain Wyber.”
“I know him. Nice guy, gets maudlin when you get a drink or three in him. Tells the most blood curdling stories though.
“Yes, man like him would. He's just got a mind for it is all. They make themselves sick after a while and retire to get a quiet life.”
“Sick?”
“Yeah, they can't stop thinking about whatever case they're working on to the point that it begins to ruin their lives, children and marriages and jobs fall by the wayside as they do everything that they can to catch that one person that got away. Sad really but obsessive personality is one of the things that makes for a really good detective.”
We sat for a bit longer just talking. There was a student protest happening and we watched as the entertainingly colourfully dressed young students walked past to the age old marching song of protests everywhere.
You know the song. It goes:
“What do we want?”
“Dum-de-dum.” (This bit changes according to the protest)
“When do we want it?”
“NOW!”
I have taken part in several of those marches in the past. Mostly because it's a fairly good opportunity to meet girls.
Eventually Captain Wyber managed to turn up.
Now Captain Wyber is a good man and if you find him in any tavern or bar then buy the poor man a drink. But the poor man has had a rough life and has served more faithfully and seen more horror than any one else that I have met.
Yes more horror than Kerrass.
The reason I say that is that Kerrass sees atrocities that are committed by monsters. It is in their nature to do the things that they do whereas men like Wyber see things that sentient creatures do to each other every day. He's also among the smartest men that I've ever met. Not book smart although he can read and speaks several languages and can swear convincingly in several more. But he sees things that you or I would miss. Then he puts the patterns together.
To put it another way I was sat in a pub once enjoying a few drinks when Wyber walked up to the girl that I was hitting on. We were enjoying the game, there was no way I was going to be successful and we both knew it but it entertained us both and for that matter we were still friends for a while until she was forced to leave the university because her father had found her a husband. Wyber walked up to her and started drunkenly leering at her and pawing at her without ever touching her. I saw but didn't hear him say something between drunken lechery, my friend said something about getting the poor man home and we left.
Losing all pretence of drunkenness, Wyber led us across the road to a patch of shadow where we waited until a large group of young sailors left the pub, looked up and down the road before grumbling “having lost her,”.
Turns out that my friend had spurned the advances of one of the sailors two nights ago. He'd gathered his friends while the ship was still at anchor and went looking for her to “teach her some manners.” Wyber had been enjoying a quiet drink, saw the situation and had headed it off.
In short don't judge the book by it's cover.
He's short, maybe 5ft 3in tall, naturally inclined to be heavy set due to the vast amounts of time eating street food and drinking poor quality alcohol. His greying hair is long and unkempt although still short enough to fit under a helmet and he sports a bristling grey moustache. He is old for his mid to late forties and his face seems drawn and pallid. He completes the effort of looking like a tramp by wearing clothes according to comfort rather than fit, fashion or cleanliness. His wife died some years ago and he has long since despaired of finding another woman who would put up with him and now he spends his days fishing, playing chess against anyone foolish enough to challenge him and drinking himself to death. He still does the odd bit of work for the watch when they get stuck though and he resists any efforts (including mine) to get him out of Oxenfurt and into the country away from the things that are driving him mad.
“Now then Cap'n,” I said as he turned up.
“Oh, Flame curse it Coulthard, if I'd known it was you I wouldn't have come. Scruffy little oik like you.” He sniffed hugely.
“I didn't know it was you you scruffy bastard. This is Kerrass.”
Kerrass stood up and shook the offered hand.
“Witcher eh? What you doin' hanging round with this little shit?”
Kerrass smiled.
“Trying to keep him alive generally.”
“Must be a tough job. Never met a snot like this one,”
“He's getting better at it.”
“Is he now? Well you wouldn't think it to look at him.”
“Some men just aren't born to be as handsome as us,” Kerrass' smile was getting broader and more genuine.
Wyber considered this.
“There's some truth in that,”
We all traded insults for a short while and I was able to forget the business that had brought us all here. We bought Wyber some brunch before going somewhere more private where Kerrass handed him the notes. It was two sheets of paper with my fathers precise handwriting, dates, places and names.
He didn't look at them for too long.
“Yes I'd heard that the old man had died. Poor sod.”
“You knew my father.”
“Only a little. Contacts me out of the blue he does, with a few of these names and numbers. Some of the earlier ones at least. I notice that he's added a few though.”
He sniffed again before producing a huge handkerchief and blowing his nose loudly.
“Never found out why he cared though your dad. Don't suppose he told you before he died did he?”
Wyber peered at me over his papers.
“Alas no,”
“Damn, I hate mysteries.”
“Why did you become a cop then if you hate mysteries?” Kerrass asked.
“Precisely because I hate them so much. I want to eradicate them from the world.”
Wyber looked up and down the list again before tossing them on the table in disgust.
“I hate mysteries but real mysteries are actually quite rare. You don't find them very often, even in police work.”
“Why's that?”
“Investigations go like this. If someone has something stolen you go down the local fences and start kicking things over until they give you a name. Money, food and some other things just get stolen and there's rarely anything that you can do about it. Sexual assault is a matter of finding out who fancied the girl and doesn't have an alibi or a quick run of the local perverts. You'd be surprised to learn that even scum have standards and they can't wait to dish the dirt on kiddie fiddlers and rapists. Murders?”
I was surprised. He was drinking but drank in sips rather than the gulps that I was used to seeing him swallow.
“Murders are interesting but are often the easiest to solve. You both understand that I've worked as far as Novigrad?”
We both nodded.
“Well, to be honest, most murders are committed in the spur of the moment, when a person finds out that their significant other is playing around or the victim has recently wronged someone. When you find a dead man with a woman standing over him with a poker bent at right angles, tears in her eyes and screaming something about “He promised me...” then there's only so much you can do to stretch that investigation along past lunchtime. Likewise when you find a known criminal dead then it's a matter of finding out which gang was operating in that area, that night and you soon find that you've got your man.
“These murders though. These murders were always interesting.”
“Interesting?” I was appalled.
“From a professional level.”
He reached for the notes and pulled them back towards him.
“I could never figure them out. They're obviously connected as they have so many things in common with each other and yet in many of them, we caught the guy.”
“Really,”
“Oh yes, beyond a doubt. But their similarities. All young people, all physically attractive or at least they were before their killers got at them.”
He sniffed again and took another drink.
“All of them were mutilated horribly and often sexually. They had also, all of them been raped multiple times, yes including the men.” He caught my look and grinned bleakly at me. “Yes, men can be raped as well.” There was some evidence that they had been held in captivity and the bodies had been dumped in the places that they were found. All of them.”
“Can you tell us anything else?” Kerrass asked.
“Certainly. The first one that I heard of that fit that pattern in the local area anyway happened when I was twenty five. I'd joined the watch out of the army, had solved a few things with help from superiors and I thought I was the shit. The victims father told us that she was missing, sixteen years old, real pretty as they often are being free from menial labour and living on the road with caring parent figures. Went missing in a village north of here while daddy was selling his wares. They assumed that she had been kidnapped by son of local lord but he was well alibi'd. Then it was thought she ran away to be with someone and the case wasn't really pursued.”
He had another drink.
“She was eventually found in one of the horse stables on the edge of town. It's not there anymore as they pulled it down afterwards. Groom found her the next day. She'd had all her teeth pulled out, we know that because although there was no bruising around her mouth, the teeth hadn't been beaten out as that amount of damage would be obvious. She had been raped repeatedly by objects as well as male members and was internally damaged. She had been whipped, bound, mutilated and generally abused. Poor lass. In the end she had died because she had been skull-fucked. We think it happened while she was alive.”
Another drink.
“To make matters worse, there were...bits of her missing. It was the first time I threw up at a crime scene.”
He paused for a long time.
“We didn't find that killer. The next time it was a similar circumstance 2 years later. This one in fact.”
He pointed at another name.
“Similar situation and similar injuries but this time there were signs that she had fled her attackers through some trees so it was suggested that she had escaped to be chased down and recaptured.”
“What about the name between the two?”Kerrass asked.
“Not my beat I'm afraid, I know nothing about that one.”
Kerrass nodded and gestured to continue.
“We caught that bastard and we took great delight in watching the mewling fuck have his neck stretched. He'd been watching and following the girl about at the town where her father had been working. He was a merchants son who thought he had been treated badly by his father and had wanted to “take what he deserved.”
“The next one was a man. Poor kid was raped to death until he, quite literally, burst. Medic said that he had split before bleeding to death internally. He had also been castrated with his own member forced down his throat post mortem.
He looked down the list.
“All of these were the same. Young kid, out by themselves, relatively few people to care for them or watch out for them. Few people give a shit when people like this go missing or get murdered horribly. Sometimes we caught the bastard that did it. Sometimes we didn't. Sometimes we caught the murderers scout...”
“The scout?” I asked.
“Yeah. They send a guy to look for someone suitable. The scout is often poor as muck, starving, desperate or just plain greedy. Once one turned himself in crying of the shame of it after he'd heard about the murder in the pub. He had a knife and was cutting himself as punishment while he confessed making sure that we had everything written down. He signed his confession and then hung himself as punishment in his own cell saying that he deserved death and would see to the matter himself to save us the trouble. Another poor sod who had been taken advantage of by an entitled prick with more money than morals.”
He looked at me. “No offence Coulthard.”
“None taken. I've recently had my noble privilege thrown in my face by the world.”
Wybers face softened a little before hardening again.
“The bastard that did that one was so wealthy he was beheaded rather than hung. Too good for him I thought.”
Another drink.
“The other difference was the mutilations. They were all whipped and beaten but sometimes it was with objects, sometimes with flails, lashes or whips. Also the levels of expertise varied.”
“What do you mean?”
“One lucky girl was beaten with a heavy rope. Cracked her on the back of the head and the impact broke her neck. Everything else happened after she had died. Others were kept alive for hours, some for days we think.”
“But the similarities are the same.” Kerrass prompted.
“Oh yes. The victim is attractive, poor, with few people to miss them, certainly no-one of influence. They are beaten, flogged, restrained in some way before being mutilated with their eyes being put out and their teeth being pulled out before they are raped repeatedly until they die from that or from other injuries that are performed during or post those rapes.”
“Did you ever think that these killings might be ritualistic?”
“Course we did but what kind of ritual? Also there were no accompanying magical events that went with them. Once, the watch could afford a Sorcerer to come and look at the bodies and when he had finished puking up his breakfast he told us that there was no vestigial magical presence that he could see or recognise.
Also the bodies are always dumped elsewhere. In the river or the cess-pits or the pig pens. We never find the place where the death took place and the killers, when we do catch them refuse to admit where they took place. Even under... persuasive methods.”
“Interesting,” Kerrass mused.
“That's one word for it.” Wyber scorned. “Anyway. They are connected but we could never figure it out.”
“Why did Lord Coulthard contact you?”
“Buggered if I know, I was hoping that you could tell me.” Wyber shifted his weight and scratched himself. “He got in touch with the current commander who put him onto me. I wrote down what I knew and sent it off.”
“Is there anything else that you told him that you haven't told us?” Kerrass asked.
Wyber considered for a bit. “No. Just a note that if he does figure it all out that he should let me know. Same goes for you by the way. Let me know yeah?”
We both nodded.
“But,” Wyber added. “I'll add this warning. I'm an old street copper, and sometimes you get this feeling you know? Like you should just leave it all alone and let someone else deal with it. Of course that's when men like me dive in with both feet but for you Witcher, or you young sir? Stay out of it. This has got the feeling of a rabbit hole that goes deep and far. I know that sounds cryptic and as though I'm keeping things from you. I'm not, but it's just a feeling. I told him that too.”
“When did you send him this information?” Kerrass asked.
“Few months back. Why?”
“Because he only died recently.”
A strange look came over Wyber then. A cross between curiosity, hunger and a strange kind of self-loathing.
A friend of mine was a fisstech addict. He eventually managed to get to the medic who gave him some herbs to help wean him off the stuff and after a few months he managed to get himself straight. He came back to the university to take up where he had left off just before I left to find Kerrass. He was fine, had lost a little weight but was roughly his old self. It was just that when we went out he would drink milk or heavily watered wine and every so often he would pale and get a look very similar to the one that Wyber was wearing now before he would insist that we all leave and escort him home. It would always turn out that there was fisstech nearby. How he knew? He didn't know the answer to that and the rest of us never asked.
We thanked Wyber by buying him a bottle of whisky and he left.
We sat in the bright sunshine and watched the throngs of people walk past. Colourful, beautiful and wondrous in their variety.
I felt cold.
“Kerrass, do you know what's happening?”
Kerrass just looked at me.
“You do don't you. You know what happened.” I was not asking questions.
Kerrass sighed. “This is why I warned you about my taking the job. I don't know. But I'm pretty confident. Details aren't in place yet but I'm pretty sure.”
“Tell me,”
“No,”
“Dammit tell me,”
“No,” he insisted. “I will tell you the lot when it's done.”
“Fuck you Kerrass.” But there was no strength behind my anger. I found that I was tired. Locked into the habit of going on.
The Watch came looking for us. We were taken to Edmund''s rooms first and if I had to imagine what Edmund's rooms in Oxenfurt were. If I'd laid out, point by point, what Edmund would have looked for in a set of rooms in a city such as Oxenfurt I would have chosen almost the complete and total opposite of the building that we were taken to.
It was relatively small, out on the outskirts of Oxenfurt, well away from the university and the amenities of the centre of town. There was even an outside toilet for crying out loud meaning that Edmund would have had to get out of his nice warm bed, put some clothes on if it was cold (he insisted on sleeping nude and would entertain himself by “forgetting” to put some clothes on in the morning) and run down through the mud and probable rain if he needed the toilet urgently. Of course there might have been a chamber pot but even so, despite the obvious evidence that there was more to Edmund than I had previously thought possible, I couldn't imagine him living with that stench for more than a minute or two.
It was a small house, that stood out by itself in the end of the island that Oxenfurt stands on. Largely timber construction with the odd bit of stone at the base. There was also no chimney, meaning no fire, meaning that it would be freezing cold at the height of winter. The owner was an oldish fisherman's widow whose husband had been lost at sea some years ago. Another shock was that the poor woman had obviously been beaten down by life and as a result she walked with a stoop, had a squint and was less than attractive to a man like Edmund.
By her own admission she made her living by fixing fishing nets, renting her upstairs room to students of the poorer persuasion and off the charity of her husbands former shipmates who still felt a sense of responsibility towards her. She was the kind of a woman who never complained about things, would wear an extra scarf if it was cold rather than burn some more firewood and would rather starve than admit she was hungry. When asked about this she told us that there were plenty worse off than she was and that she had no cause to complain.
She also kept pigs in a small fenced off enclosure near the house.
We spoke to her briefly about her tenant but she told us that he had his own entrance up a set of steps to the side of the house and as a result she had very little idea of what he would get up to or when he would arrive other than the fact that the rent had been paid promptly, without complaint and up front to the tune of six months. She also expressed some surprise that such a fine lord would want to rent such a small room from a woman such as herself. I couldn't agree more but didn't want to say that out loud in front of her.
We climbed the stairs, greeted the young watchman who was stood “on guard” although Kerrass later commented that the poor lad was clearly asleep on his feet and was being hazed by his fellows.
The room itself was just as underwhelming as the rest of the situation. A small bed that wouldn't have looked out of place in a monastery although the sheets and pillows looked a little more expensive. A bedside table with a copy of “The Holy Flame” on it that looked as though it had been well read, over and over again, the pages stained and crinkled. There was also a wash stand with a basin and jug standing on top of it. A chamber pot under the bed that looked as though it had never been used. A wardrobe and chest of drawers.
That was it. If we were hoping for clues this place looked as though it was not going to provide us with what we wanted.
Kerrass walked in and scanned the room.
“Well shit,” he said after a while and scratched the back of his head. “I don't suppose you've got any ideas?”
“Not me.” I told him. “If this hadn't been the place where we had sent his letters and other things for years then I would assume that he didn't live here. Where are the flowers and things so that he didn't have to smell the stench? Where are the masses of clothes all over the floor? Why would he live here where, with all due respect to the land lady, he might as well be sleeping outdoors?”
Kerrass smiled at my joke.
“Let alone where are all the letters that you kept sending him.”
I smiled at that. “You are not wrong.”
We stood there for a minute looking at the ceiling, the walls and the floor whilst at the same time trying not to look at each other.
Kerrass spun on the poor unsuspecting watchman who had brought us here.
“And there's been nothing removed?”
“No sir,”
“Nothing added?” Kerrass asked hopefully,
“No sir,” The watchman seemed a little smug. Enough so that I wanted to punch him.
“Were there any personal effects?”
“No sir,”
“What about the rent?”
“Paid for for the next two months sir.”
Kerrass nodded and then sighed.
“Ah well. I suppose we'd better do this properly.”
We set about the place.
Kerrass propped his sword up in the corned, pulled his medallion out and held it by the chain as he examined the ceiling, walls and floor minutely. In the meantime I had the dubious pleasure of examining the things that were still here. The chamber pot (sorry to go on about it but it does kind of stick in the memory) was clean and made out of a relatively cheap tin. The bed itself was a sturdy wooden frame with some planks across it making up the bed itself. What passed for a mattress was filled with straw and it had been wrapped, presumably by Edmund, by several large and fluffy sheep skins in an effort to make it more comfortable. I could find nothing of interest or particularly lumpy in the mattress.
The blankets were rich and thick and they were the one thing in the room that was wealthy in appearance. They were well made, sturdy and although not particularly decorative were certainly warm. Again, I could find nothing that wouldn't normally be found in a blanket.
We moved the bed aside so that Kerrass could examine that patch of floor.
The wash stand was next, four legs and a top. Basin and jug were made out of the same cheap metal that the chamber pot had been made of. I suspected that if I tried to I would be able to bend it or damage it with my fingers.
The bedside table was similar to the wash stand in that it was simple to look at.
I had a look through the book of scriptures. They were the kind that you could find in any small book shop or that get handed out by missionaries in the optimistic hope that people will read them rather than use them for toilet paper. I guessed that it had probably been left there by some previous tenant and Edmund had never bothered to get rid of it. Having said that I did check the spine for hidden papers, read a few bits that were known to me to make sure that it really was a book of scripture and flicked through the pages to make sure that there wasn't anything hidden between pages.
The chest of drawers then got moved before it's contents, including the drawers were emptied onto the bed.
Spare socks, underwear and shirts greeted my efforts. The drawers themselves failed to have anything stuck to the back or the bottom and the main body of the thing was just a shell and annoyingly free of secrets for me to find.
The wardrobe contained two cloaks and a pair of trousers. They were well made enough to have probably have belonged to Edmund. There was also a pair of old boots in the bottom of the wardrobe that were caked in dirt. Another thing that chimed with what I knew of Edmund. He would rather go out and buy new boots rather than clean an existing pair of boots. That's if they were even his. They looked rather cheap for a pair of Edmund's old boots.
I laid them out for Kerrass' inspection when he was done.
He looked at it all thoughtfully from a distance before diving into it all with his medallion in hand. I watched feeling my own frustration mount.
“Is there anything in all of this that stands out to you?” He asked.
“Plenty. None of this feels right.”
Kerrass grunted.
“This isn't a room where someone lives. This is a room where someone comes to stay occasionally. Does that fit with your brother?”
“It might, but no not really. He might depend on finding someone good natured enough to keep him in hearth and home for a certain amount of time but for extended periods? There's just none of the normal....detritus that comes with Edmund's long term residence.”
Kerrass grunted again.
“Kerrass?”
“Mmm?”
“You've read the will. Did father disown Edmund, or was he going to?”
Kerrass put down one of the cloaks that he was examining minutely and stared into the middle distance.
“I did think of that. You're thinking that your father disowned your brother or put him on some kind of notice and as a result your brother was active in your fathers death?”
“That's what I'm dreading.”
Kerrass nodded. “Look, I can't say that you're right or wrong. But I can discount that motive. There are provisions in the will for him predeceasing Edmund and all kinds of conditions and sub-clauses to keep everything safe. Barnaby is going to have to spend some time putting together a draft to declare who gets what and under what circumstances because as far as we know Edmund didn't leave a will or an heir.”
I felt relieved.
“Did Edmund kill Father?”
Kerrass looked at me for a long time. “I don't want to answer that.”
“Please Kerrass... I,”
Kerrass held up his hand to stop me.
“I know Freddie. It's eating you up worrying that your brother killed your Father. I've been here before with other people who long to find that some monster was responsible for someone's death and not their nearest and dearest.”
He blew out a breath, as he picked up one of the mud encrusted boots. “You've even been with me on some of these things and so you know that it doesn't work like that. I think that your brother was involved in some way. That is almost certain but we don't know to what extent, on which side or why. He could have been trying to save your father, he could have been trying to protect something or Edmund could have found out something about those murders and was working with your father to sort them out.”
“That sounds a little far fetched to me if I'm honest.”
Kerrass looked at me with some sympathy.
“To me as well, I'll be honest. But what little I know of your brother from what you've told me and what I've gathered from other sources is that your brother was not capable of coming up with the plan that killed your father by himself. He was too impatient, too headstrong and...too lazy. He would want a simpler, easier, more certain method rather than the chain of events that led to your fathers death. There is someone or something else involved here but...”
He threw the boot at the wall with a sudden snarl.
“Damned if I can think of...”
He stopped, mid sentence.
“Kerrass?”
“Shh,” he took a deep sniff, shut his eyes and sniffed again. “Do you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
Kerrass got up and walked over to the boot that he had thrown against the wall. Some of the mud that had been caked onto the side had flaked off, the dust from it floated through the air. Carefully Kerrass picked up some of the dirt, crumbled between his fingers and sniffed it. Before picking up the boot and the area where the mud had broken away. He turned back towards me, eyes blazing and holding the boot like it was the holy flame itself.
“Pig shit,” he said.