Define Murder for me.

Go on. I'll wait.

The Oxenfurt dictionary defines Murder as an “Unlawful and Premeditated killing of a person by another person.”

Having actually done a little research into this, I was shocked to learn that the definition has had to change in the relatively recent past. That was because it used to read as “The Unlawful and Premeditated killing of a human being by another human being.”

Can you see the difference?

There are several variations on this, depending on wherever you go. Temeria still has it down as “The unlawful killing of a human being” and just leaves it there.

I assume that as a result, there is a whole lot more murder going on in Temeria than there is everywhere else.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Not least because I find that I'm still trapped here in my families castle against my will and I have little else to do other than to write, answer the mail and think. I have pointed out to my sister on multiple occasions that Kerrass and I could easily sneak over the back wall until all of this dies down but for some reason she wasn't entirely convinced by my scheme. She seems to be of the opinion that Sir Robart has the bit between his teeth now and the only way he's going to be convinced to leave me alone is if the High Sheriff grabs him by the scruff of the neck and takes him elsewhere.

I'm still not that worried about what's going to happen to Kerrass and I as I think we can successfully argue our case before the magistrate and Emma has promised that she can provide enough money to counter any bribes that Sir Robart and his flunkies might be able to provide to any magistrates.

So the only worrying that I have to do is about the state of my eternal soul.

Did I murder someone? Or more accurately, did I murder several someone's?

I have talked before about the duality that exists inside my head. I can know something is true in my head, but not know it in my heart or vice versa. It's on those rare occasions when both head and heart agree that I manage to get a good night's sleep which is, unfortunately, far from a regular occurrence at the moment. Not just historical nightmares but also the faces of those men that I have killed.

I know that it was the right thing to do. I do. Even now, I'm reliably informed that there are people in that area of Lyria and Rivia that still give thanks for the arrival of Kerrass and I to the countryside. I know that there are people who still grieve for the people that have fallen to the swords of fanatics but we have both been told that they will sleep a little easier for the fact that the perpetrators have been killed.

So why can't I sleep?

Here's the thing. The religious commandment, as passed down by the prophets, says “Thou shalt not commit murder” but what does that even mean?

I would like to think that I am a rational human being. I have been at peace, for years, with the fact that my scientific brain counters my spiritual side on a regular basis and that my spiritual side is constantly telling me to put my faith in the Holy flame, while my scientific side is telling me that the Holy Flame might well be just another aspect of magical power that entered this world through an equally magical phenomenon called the conjunction of spheres.

That argument has been settled and I am at peace with that. So now, I worry enough that I can't sleep. I worry for my soul.

So, let's break it down. Did we kill people? Absolutely. Would do it again. Those people deserved to be killed.

Did we pre-meditate doing it? Again, Yes. They outnumbered us by ten to one. If we were going to do so successfully then we would need to “pre-meditate” our strategy and our tactics carefully.

So were they “persons?”

Eehhhhhh.

I mean technically, I suppose yes. They had four limbs, a head and enough intelligence to be able to form words. Leaving aside the perverse pleasure that they took in the murder and torture of others which I could argue takes away that privilege.

So here's another thing that occurs as I sit here. If Kerrass and I had just killed another group of peasants. If there hadn't been some noblemen's sons in there, then this wouldn't have even come up. So does that mean that there are some people who are more “person” than others?

Probably.

Before you all start. I know that this is something that philosophers and thinkers have been arguing about since the law was first conceived. When a man kills another in the street, we call it murder.

But what about on the battlefield? Fighting and killing someone on the battlefield is also covered by that definition of murder. A whole bunch of persons face of against another whole bunch of persons and you'd better believe that they've been premeditating their asses off, thinking about ways to kill the people on the other side of the field.

But that's ok is it?

Religions killings as well. Which is how these fucks got away with the awful things that they did. I know this because they told me that this was the case. They had been told by their “priest” that the killings were ok, indeed that they would be welcomed by the holy flame which means that the killings were lawful.

But what if that priest is an idiot. Or trying to be political. Or has a strong dislike for the colour of the dead persons skin, the shape of their ears, the colour of their eyes. They tell the impressionable sons of bitches at their command that “The Holy Flame says that this is lawful” and suddenly he has unleashed a pack of hounds.

Ooh, while I think about it. We can also claim that we are defending ourselves. If a man intends to do me harm then the law says that I am allowed to defend myself.

I can also defend others as well. People that I care about as well as children, women, the elderly or any others that might require my protection.

It is through this last that I find that I can most easily justify these recent deaths to myself. Yes I am still filled with doubts about the whole thing. Kerrass claims that this is what makes me a good man, that I keep questioning my own actions. It's that duality again. My scientific brain argues, correctly, that the people that did these things were a pack of rabid dogs that needed to be put down so that they wouldn't do it again.

We couldn't take it to the proper authorities as there was every indication that the “Proper authorities” would let the bastards off for political reasons and they would just go off and continue to do their thing somewhere else. So in the end there was a Witcher's sword. But yes, I still have doubts. My spiritual side screams at me and keeps me up at nights that I killed or helped to kill a set of holy knights and a priest. That way lies damnation.

Another reason that I just want to get out of here. I need something to do, to get on with things so that I'm not worrying about this bullshit. No matter how I turn things around, I could not have walked on by and left these bastards to keep killing and maiming and torturing. I keep turning it around in my head despite the knowledge that the answer will still be the same. I killed them. I helped kill more. I would do it again and I absolutely intended to kill the bastards.

Those bastards who strode into a village at the orders of a mad priest who had decided that the church was going soft in it's newer, more relaxed tone, had been brought there by a jealous man who had been spurned by a woman, and decided to kill the woman and all others who might have had contact with her.

Who might have had contact with her. Even when they hadn't.

I'm getting angry again as I write this and I find that the anger is always useful in pushing my doubts away.

Kareen told us that she had been beaten by a knight because she used to go up to Sally's meadow to pick herbs for cooking. Because this might have led her into contact with Saffron then that meant that Kareen was fair game for the beating.

I say beating but let's call it what it was. They took a whip to her. One of those flails that they call Lamia where there are several tails to the whip, each with a small barb of metal. If the Inquisitor is being particularly nasty, they don't clean the barbs between beatings which means that the injuries can turn sour and leave a person dying in agony.

Kerrass has none of my moral quandaries. What he's struggling with is the fact that he's being cooped up in the castle. I understand that he's exercising his frustrations by mercilessly beating up training dummies and sleeping his way through some of the maids in the castle. He has a group of three that are his favourites although that might need to be cut down to two soon as one of them is becoming jealous. Emma told me to have a word with him about this recently, that she had no objection to him having his way with any willing woman, especially as he wasn't going to leave any of them “in the family way,” and therefore it was a good way for the girls to exorcise their own....”needs” was the word she used. But she objected if it was going to cause a disruption to the running of the castle.

Kerrass had responded with telling me that I should just kill this Robart cunt and then we could move on. I responded with the, now, family joke of “He's not a cunt. A cunt has warmth depth and feeling,” but it still didn't manage to raise a smile to Kerrass' face.

He's bored and I know how he feels.

Emma is busier than ever, handling the transfer of our families trade to Oxenfurt and other ports after Novigrad's victimisation of our families business enterprises. I'm not sure, yet, if Novigrad has realised that Emma isn't bluffing with this. She's already in the process of paying off the various landlords who we have contracts with, on the waterfront so that we can store our goods there while waiting for shipment. The materials and the workmen are already moving into place to extend and overhaul the mercantile docks of Oxenfurt to handle the increased flow of traffic and the burghers of Oxenfurt are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of bringing more trade through the town.

For the record, Emma wants a public apology, in writing as well, for the absurd victimisation of Coulthard trading enterprises at the hands of the customs officials at the behest of Sir Robart de Radford. She also demands the removal of Sir Robart from that post as well as the removal or reassignment of any appointments that he may have made while he was in office.

She also expects suitable monetary compensation for the losses that his false accusations have caused the family enterprise.

Privately, she tells me that, in the long run, extending and using the docks at Oxenfurt was a plan that she had been working on for a while and would, in the end, actually work out better in the long run. Because we wouldn't be charged for using the docks that we built while at the same time, we would be able to charge people for their use. I did ask if she still wondered why people hate us but she told me that business people admire ruthlessness and so long as we reinvest our money into the city or the land then we shouldn't have too much trouble. Also, apparently, we aren't the only mercantile enterprise that resents the high tariffs that Novigrad charges and she is being cheered on by many.

Regardless of this I asked Sir Rickard to find my sister, Laurelen and Mark some new bodyguards. Several of them and told him that money was no expense on the grounds that Emma would be able to pay for it out of the docking fees. Sam is a soldier and surrounded by his own men so I reasoned that he would be able to look after himself.

Sir Rickard saw my point but enquired about a bodyguard for me.

Kerrass was listening to this conversation and laughed before pointing out that I was so into doing “stupid things” that the odds of me living long enough to be assassinated was remote at best.

I did not find that reassuring.

But as I say, Kerrass is not bothered by my moral problems. Instead, he is of the opinion that what we did was kill a bunch of monsters.

There are times when I envy the simple life of a Witcher.

But, I chose to be a scholar and to analyse everything with moral repercussions and things, so who's the bigger idiot really?

It's me isn't it. It's always me.

But Yes. Kerrass is of the opinion that we killed a bunch of monsters and, when I sit down and properly think about it rather than letting my training in higher ethics and moral systems get in the way....

He's right.

Because of our actions there will be a few fewer people hiding in the dark, there will be a few fewer little old women who's greatest crimes are knowing a little bit of something about something, who will be tied up against the stake and burnt.

It doesn't bring Saffron, or Sally, or Pula or any of those other villagers back. But by the Flame it does make me feel better about it.

There, see. Now I'm in a much better mood.

After burying the three librarians we went down into the village and began the hunt. Because that was what it was. We were hunting them. In the same way that Kerrass would hunt down a creature or a monster, we asked questions about the men who had committed these crimes.

It was tricky at first, even though a number of people recognised us both from the last time that we had come through this area, we were still running up against the problem that a number of the villagers still believed that the knights had spies, or agents amongst the other people that we gathered there. We found no evidence of that but what this rumour had done had been to fan the old-fashioned hate that becomes entrenched in village society. Suddenly, old...grievances and feuds were brought out into the open air.

“Remember what he said about our Neville,” and “Well, he always had a shifty look about him, always said so.” were the kinds of things that were coming up. We found out that there had been fights and abuse thrown and as Kareen had said, people were moving on.

Not that I could blame them.

“Holy” knights, like the ones that had attacked this place....

Ok look. I'm a follower of the church of the Holy Fire and my Elder brother is soon to be enthroned as a Cardinal of the church, but these....individuals....have nothing to do with the word Holy. I've known a number of good and devout men who would call themselves “Church knights,” or belong to “Sacred” orders of knights who would look at what these people did and be disgusted.

And rightly so.

But it would be wrong to deny the fact that sometimes, people of all religions. And I really must stress “ALL” religions, use their scriptures for violent purposes.

So anyway,

Bands of knights like this one, once they've established a place where they know they can get food and other supplies as well as being able to spend a leisurely day or two burning a few people at the stake, will often come back. People, will be encouraged to spy on each other, the better to sell out their neighbours to the flames and thus, hopefully, better prepare their immortal soul for the afterlife.

It's only human to be afraid of whatever comes next but one of the things that pisses me off about these bastards is that they pray on that fear. They pray on the fear of those people that have not had the.... advantages of people like me and people that can afford to spend their time and money on a suit of armour and train to be able to call themselves knight.

The first thing that Kerrass and I did when we went down into the village was that we kicked the burning stakes down. One of them had been embedded deep in the ground so I borrowed a woodsman's axe and cut it down. We pulled apart the remains of the ash and stood in the middle of the village square and started to yell for people's attention. We stood there, loud and proud and insisted that people pay attention to us. It was still raining and people were terrified of the supposed “sacrilege” that we had performed but they came eventually.

We stood up and we told them that what had been done to them was evil. We told them that the knights had murdered the people that they had burned, that they had murdered their village spirit in a literal as well as figurative sense and then we told them that we, the two of us, intended to hunt the bastards down and kill them for the monsters that we knew them to be.

I told them who I was and declared that I considered what had been done to them as being evil. That it was my feudal right as a lord of these lands to seek justice for the dead people. I meant every word although I carefully didn't point out that technically, the lands that I was talking about were somewhere to the North West and only claimed Lordship here by being a Lord of the Greater Nilfgaardian empire. I told them who I was and said that if any of the people listening really were spies for the pox-filled sons of goats that had done these things then they could tell their masters who I am and that I am coming for them.

Kerrass did the same. In turn he told them about the affection that he had for this village and the people that lived in it. He told them about his history here and how, over the years, come to view this village on the hill as a second home. He spoke about the love that he had for the land and for the people and about how he thought it was a shame that a few cowardly bastards had spoiled that for the people that were here as well as the children that would come after them.

We dared any spies to come forwards and kill us. We dared any watchers to leave then and carry word of our declaration to our enemies.

Of course no one left nor did anyone walk out and challenge us.

We then did a quick circuit, walking to every house and speaking to everyone we could find in an effort to leave no-one with the impression that we had been informed on by one person or the other. The only person that I thought we needed to pay special concern about was Kareen herself but we met one of her sons and they were already making plans to take the poor woman a long way away from here.

We left the village in the direction that we were pointed, both of us taking the time to piss up against the tree from which the informant swung. Not because we hated him. But because we wanted to emphasise the point that we were enemies of the knights that had done these things.

It turned out that the man was the village bully. He was a wagon driver by trade and his job was to take all the stuff off for market. He would load up his wagon before making the two day journey into “town” where he would drop the goods off to the merchants, collect the money and the other supplies that the village needed before getting back on his wagon and heading back. The problem with this system was that this meant that he was in charge of who got what kind of supplies. Who got the money and whatever else. The village couldn't afford to send another able-bodied worker with him as that meant that someone else would be missing from the work force where every man was needed.

The pattern of the village was such that they were fairly affectionate towards the three monsters that lived up the hill. Sally was a regular presence, playing with the children and the village had known, for a long time that she was there and had adopted the village as “hers” in the way of her species.

They also knew about Pula's presence and had known that if anyone got really really sick, or really badly injured, then the person to go and ask would be Pula as he would be able to perform “miracles”. I could identify the miracles as being advanced surgical techniques but I decided that I didn't want to take away from Pula's accomplishments.

The village, as a whole, was less enamoured of Saffron until she had been instrumental in seeing off a bandit attack with her horns, powerful legs and fire magic. The village used to accept that, occasionally she would come down to the village and see if there were any eligible men around.

The town bully had never got a look in. She had turned him down flat on two occasions, spurning him for men who he considered to be “Less than him” in some way.

It was not hard to imagine that he had got to drinking in the town and gotten the idea in his head to hand over knowledge of the Succubus to one of the knights that was nearby, encouraging the locals to inform on each other.

We rode hard for about half a day towards this town, intentionally leaving nice, easy to follow tracks before we turned aside and went off road. What we needed was more information. We knew that they were knights and that approximately sixteen of them had attacked the library. What we didn't know was whether or not there were any more knights or where their base was. Was there a chapter house somewhere or did they have any patrons.

That was the most dangerous possibility to me. That this was some kind of politically motivated situation. That some noble, angry at the increasing power of the Sorceresses or whatever. Or even, they had discovered that their political opponents were particularly anti-religion and so had chosen to sponsor a group of religious fanatics in an effort to tell the world that he was better than his opponent because “Look, I'm so religious that I set up this band of church knights.”

For those people that are thinking that this might be a little far fetched then I should point out that I can provide numerous examples of history where this was the case.

I won't give you a blow by blow account of how we hunted the knights though. It involved lots of watching and waiting, sounding out their territory and finding out what they liked to get up to.

We often commented to each other that it was exactly like hunting a regular monster. We needed to identify it's lair, establish it's motivation or type of madness, we needed to know numbers and how far were they prepared to go.

It took time, it took effort.

But we also kept seeing signs, signs that reinforced that we were doing the right thing.

We saw a small clutch of crosses by the side of the road where a group of people had been crucified. We went to look and although we couldn't tell for certain, there was absolutely no reason for their deaths.

We found a burnt out cottage with the corpse of an old woman outside who had been hacked to pieces by swords and axes. There was a herb garden outside and it looked as though the poor woman had committed the unpardonable sin of being old, knowledgeable about plants and being a woman.

We came across a windmill where two women had been burnt at the stake. There was another village nearby who, similar to the village on the hill, were in a state of shock. It seemed that the two women operated the mill. The mill had belonged to one of the women's father so that when he died, she had simply taken it over.

A couple of the villagers claimed that the two women were lovers but the vast majority of people told us that the one woman was a helper. The owner simply didn't want to marry some....man who didn't know how to look after a mill and would ruin the business that her father had spent his life building up. We had a look inside and someone had taken a hammer to the mill-workings.

“I've seen this kind of thing before.” Kerrass told me. “They're drunk on it. They had a great deal of fun with Saffron, Pula and Sally feeling as though they were strong and doing the work of their God. Then they liked that feeling so they went down into the village to do some more. Now they've become addicted to the feeling and they want to keep doing it over and over again.”

I nodded. I had seen the depredations of the Church of the Holy Flame in Novigrad and this was uncomfortably similar to that.

I felt itchy and uncomfortable in my own skin.

We came to the town where the first wagon driver had made contact with the knights. The trick here is to not think of it as being like Oxenfurt or Novigrad. You need to think of it as being much smaller. Originally a crossroads built around an old stone bridge. It was the kind of place where you need some kind of central town for all the merchants and larger businesses to gather. The countryside needs towns like it once every day or two's ride because otherwise the villages would have nowhere to sell their goods. Every village has a blacksmith, thatcher and a carpenter but not every village has a Tannery, Tavern, Market, Cooper, Inn, Fletcher Forrester, Witch....

By Witch I mean Herb-woman, healer, midwife or whatever. They all tend to get lumped into the same category of “Female knowledges that men don't want to have anything to do with.” They get called the local “Witch” despite the fact that relatively few of them have any kind of magical skills whatsoever.

My point is, you can only go so far before you need a bit more civilisation. Sooner or later you need a place where you can get those, slightly more specialised goods that you might not be able to find in your average, 6-7 hut sized village.

We had stopped off at several villages to make our presence felt and as such, we were anticipated when we got to the town. People didn't exactly flee from us, nor was there any of the attempts to get the children indoors which there can sometimes be when there is pending violence. But at the same time both the tavern-keeper and the innkeeper apologised but told us to seek shelter elsewhere with the legend...

“Look sirs, we're decent folk hereabouts and we don't want any trouble.”

Kerrass was stewing outside so I was doing a lot of the talking.

“I know that you don't want trouble.” I told the poor man. Hollow eyed and nervous. “But let's be honest here my friend. You have trouble, and I'm not talking about myself or my Witcher companion.”

The poor man looked miserable.

“This is what's going to happen.” I told him. “I know because I've seen this before. Neither the Witcher or I (We were avoiding using each other's names. No reason other than it just seemed prudent) intend you, or any of your fellows harm. Indeed, we want to rescue you from what's happening.”

The man just stood there, sweating and shaking.

“In a little while,” I told him. “The knights are going to come back. They will ask you whether my friend and I came through town. I'm not going to hide from you and you can tell them what you like, I am quite happy with that as we intend to head in the direction of the knight's headquarters and we intend to kill every knight that we find there.”

I had been wrong before....Now he was starting to sweat.

“We think that they are burning people and torturing people and generally executing people to satisfy themselves rather than because of any particular order or need. We think that they are evil. Not the people that they are persecuting and we mean to put an end to that. You can tell them all of that if you wish as well as the fact that we made you nervous and that you really didn't want to get involved, so you turned us out of your inn and refused to serve us for the ungodly wretches that you knew us to be.”

He was nodding.

“We really mean you no harm, do you understand?”

He was still nodding and I sighed.

“You can even tell them that I threatened you if you like.” I told him. “All I want to know is if you can tell me anything about them. I can pay you.”

I flashed money but the people shifted away from me and turned their backs.

I sighed and left.

Kerrass was on the back of his horse already.

“Any luck?” he asked without looking hopeful.

“Nah.” I told him climbing into my own saddle. “These people are brutalised. Not only terrified for what the knights will do to them next time they come round but they're also terrified for their immortal souls and daren't speak to the likes of us.”

Kerrass nodded and started to lead us away from town.

“We need to know more.” he said.

“I agree.” I told him, “But what do we do?”

“Well, I all but know where their home base is. The tracks that we've been following head North-East but we still don't know enough. I would also like to see if we couldn't thin their numbers a bit as well as head off any reinforcements that might head their way.”

“Not to mention any other pressures that might be brought to bear.” I commented.

“That's more your problem than mine.” He said with a wry smile. I was glad to see that he was beginning to come back to himself. I had been concerned for him after we had buried our friends but it seemed that he was feeling better with an enemy to hunt. “I'm a Witcher and can vanish into a crowd by simple virtue of taking the swords off my back. But you're a Lord and need to think about your reputation.”

“I don't think it will do my reputation much harm to be seen to kill a few murderous fuck-heads. I'm more concerned about escaping alive afterwards.”

Kerrass grunted. “So long as we kill the bastards.”

“Yes, but I'd like to be alive to deal with a few more bastards after we're done.” I told him.

Kerrass just grunted at that.

“So what do we do?”

“We need to find one or two and ask them some questions.”

“I'm not going to be a party to torture Kerrass.”

He grinned at my slyly, “Murder's Ok though right?”

“For these cunts? Absolutely.”

“But torture's where you draw the line?”

“It has to be somewhere.”

“You're a funny guy sometimes Freddie. Well, anyway. I don't think we need to torture anyone. They're fanatics but in such circles there's always one or two that disagree with the direction of things but are too weak to go against the flow. They're also knights. Can you imagined them doing their own laundry or cooking or....fuck, can you see these....these things maintaining their own weapons?”

“You've done this sort of thing before then I take it.”

“Once or twice. We need to be off the road now I think. These fuck-pigs have carved out their territory now. So we need to scout it out before we start probing into their “headquarters” as it were.”

“I might just be thinking like a Lord of the manor but I'm also, still concerned about their money flow.” I reminded him as I climbed onto my own horse This sort of thing takes money and they won't be able to steal it all from the populace. If we kill them before their patron then another group will spring up and then we're back to where we started. Not to mention having a man who can afford to have us hunted down after we're done.”

“True.”

We left the road. The countryside around there was hilly rather than covered in farmland. It was the kind of place where people reared sheep rather than crops. We saw many isolated flocks and small shepherd huts. Kerrass wondered aloud if there might be anyone hiding in those huts that might be able to help us. We checked a couple, just in case but the thing about those places are that they are designed so that the occupents can keep an eye on the flocks meaning that people could just as easily see us coming and escape out the back.

Instead we took to staying in sight of the road waiting for our prey to fall into our laps.

We didn't have long to wait.

You know how sometimes, just sometimes you can look at someone and see the misery coming off them in waves. A person so comedically miserable that you want to feel some sympathy, and you do, but at the same time you can't help but laugh.

The poor man was walking along the road, barefoot through the mud and the filth that accompanies any road in the middle of Spring. Other than that though he was wearing chain-mail that even from this distance, I could tell didn't fit him properly. He had Greaves on, cod-piece, chest-plate, shoulder-guards and bracers as well as Gorget and helmet. All, much to large for him or, looking at the way that he was walking, too small. He had a sword at his hip, shield on his back and a lance on his shoulder.

A lance. A fucking lance. There's a reason that knights carry them round on spare horses and squires are only really supposed to carry them from the horse to the knights hands. But this poor young man carried it across one shoulder and as far as we could see, had been carrying it like that for several miles.

“Fucking hell.” I said as we watched the wobbling progress of the poor, bedraggled and obviously much put on creature.

“I sense a penance.” Kerrass said pointing. “He's being watched to make sure he doesn't shirk his duties.” There were two knights watching from a short distance away. Which is how we got the first proper look at our enemy.

The thing about Plate mail is that it often makes a man seem taller and broader than they actually are. So when you put them on the back of war horses, then they look even bigger. So from this distance the two men looked huge. The sun was peeping between clumps of cloud so their metal armour shone in the reflected sunlight. There was no getting around the fact that they looked absolutely magnificent. They wore red tabbards and their horses wore red barding. The symbol of a burning sword was prevalent.

At the time I remembered thinking that it looked as though someone was mimicking the order of the flaming rose, who's leader did his very best to overthrow King Foltest before the beginning of the war, the symbols were so similar.

Kerrass was strapping his sword to the side of his horse and taking out his crossbow, quick hand movements assembled the weapon.

“What do we do?” I asked him.

“What would you do if this were any other situation and you saw someone being tormented in the middle of the road?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“I'd go down there and help them.”

“You know what?” He said with relish. “That sounds like a really good idea.”

As we got closer the sense of amusement at the poor man's pitiable state was replaced by my disgust while my enjoyment faded into a shadow of it's former state.

What we couldn't see from the top of the hill was the blood that was running underneath the armour and congealing down the side of his legs, on his arms or across his face. He was all but delirious with pain and only saw us as we stood directly in front of us.

“Woah there friend.” I told him as he all but collapsed in front of me. Shortly before he realised what was going to happen and reared back in an effort to right his balance. “Here,” I got hold of him and managed to take the lance off his shoulders for him as he staggered to a halt.

He was swaying as though he was drunk.

“Help me.” He said, his eyes wide and feverish. I doubt that he could even see us and his words were almost a prayer. “Please help me.”

Kerrass was scuffling around in his saddlebags. “How badly is he hurt?”

“Pretty fucking badly if I'm any judge.” I told him. “Easy there fella, take it slow. Let's get you down to the floor so we can have a look at you.” He was wearing all the armour but what he hadn't done was wear any of the padding or the lining that is supposed to go underneath the armour. The chain mail was rubbing his skin raw, the edges of the plates were driving into his skin and the wounds were opening and re-opening as I watched.

I helped him to the side of the road and lowered him down.

“No,” he muttered delirious. “Have to keep walking.”

“My friend,” I told him. “You're done walking now. Take it easy. Easy now.”

“Unhand that man.” I didn't need to look at the speaker to know that I would intensely dislike him.

I'd felt the ground rumbling as the awesome warhorses had been prodded and poked down the hill and I guessed that the reason that it felt as though the sun had gone in was because they were towering over me.

“Alright.” I said to the poor stricken....let's call him what he was.... victim on the floor. “Let's get some of this armour off you so that I can have a look at you. Come on then.”

I took his shield off him first and then unclipped the sword from his belt.

For those people that have never had to help a man wearing heavy armour, I would just offer this piece of advice. Don't start with the belt. The belt should only come off when it's an actual obstacle to taking off other bits of armour. This is because part of the reason the belt is there is to take some of the weight of the armour off the shoulders so that it can be supported on the waist and hips.

Armour is awful stuff. The only reason we wear it is because it's better than what happens to us if we don't wear armour. Don't believe me? Try sleeping in a suit of chain-mail. Your body will literally rebel against you.

But anyway. I've gotten side-tracked. I'm going to make a rubbish lecturer if I keep going off on tangents like this one.

“I told you to unhand that man.” There was a rustle of metal on metal and the clomping of a horse as one of the knights got closer.

“I heard you.” I told him without looking up from where I was carefully trying to undo the strap that kept the poor lad's helmet on. “I just chose to ignore you.”

“How dare you, you filthy miscreant and heretic.”

I laughed. I thought that people only talked like that in bad street theatre. The kind that you can attend for a penny at a time.

“Draw that sword,” Kerrass interrupted. He was using his most dangerous tone of voice. “And I will shove it so far up your arse that it will pick your nose.”

“What?”

It's worth repeating sometimes because it no longer surprises me, exactly how musical Kerrass' voice is. In that it's like a musical instrument. He can be melodic, charming, quiet, loud and everything in between but in this case it was the shade of voice that bypasses your civilised brain and just tells you that there is horrific danger nearby. It tends to put people on their back foot because no-one expects to have to deal with that kind of nightmare in their normal day to day life. I know that this knight didn't. He just wanted to torment this poor fucker but now he was having to re arrange his brain in preparation for some extreme violence.

I couldn't tell where the other knight was but I wasn't worried. I just kept working on the poor, whimpering child that was sat in front of me.

For child he was. I guessed that he was....fifteen? Maybe? Certainly no older than sixteen and he was well into puberty, judging the amount of body hair that had managed to get tangled into the chain-mail.

We, that means Redania, sent younger men than this to war so I shouldn't be too outraged but at the same time, the look of pain and weariness that had settled over his face. He was just letting me man handle him now, as though he wasn't at home in his own head.

“That man, that....thing.” He gestured at the poor kid. “Belongs to the knights of the Flaming sword. He answers to us and he is being punished for crimes against the order.”

“What did he do?” Kerrass' voice grated like a tombstone being forced into place.

“Oath-breaking.”

“I would be interested to know what Oath he broke.”

“Obedience.”

“Heh. Interesting.” Kerrass was putting them off guard. I had got the kid's helmet off. He was wearing a coif underneath which had been plastered into his hair by sweat and constant movement over his scalp. Blood was running freely which meant that it was going to be a nightmare to try and take off so I moved on to taking off his bracers. They were, at least, uncomplicated in the removal.

“Stop taking that armour off.” The knight thundered.

I continued to ignore him. Instead murmuring reassuring sounds to the lad, in the same way that I would to a stressed out horse.

“Why the “Knights of the Flaming Sword”?” Kerrass asked him. “I've heard of the “flaming rose” but the flaming sword seems a bit extreme isn't it?”

“We are the flaming sword that purges evil from the face of the continent.” The other man finally spoke up.

“Huh.” Kerrass commented. “Where are you based?”

“Why so many questions?” The first knight turned towards Kerrass. His attention drawn away from me which I suspect was the point of Kerrass' questions in the first place.

“Because I want to know a bit more about my enemy so that I can destroy you the easier.” Kerrass told him with absolutely no inflection in his voice. He might as well have been informing the knight that he needed a haircut.

There was a moment of silence as the two knights tried to process what they had just been told.

Now I looked up to see if Kerrass needed any help. I doubted it but overconfidence can get you killed.

One of them drew their sword. He was the first to die as Kerrass raised his right arm from underneath his cloak and shot him in the eye with his crossbow that had been hidden by his side.

It took an astonishingly long time to fall from his horse. Even though he must have died almost instantly, his arm still came up and groped towards the thing that killed him as though some part of him wanted to pull the bolt out.

The other man swore in a most un-knightly way and spurred his horse towards Kerrass who was clearly identified as the threat.

Kerrass gestured and a shower of sparks leapt from his hand. The horse startled and reared at the sudden flash and the heat. The knight, who wasn't properly braced and prepared for combat, fell off the horse with a crash.

I stopped watching and returned to my patient. The fight was already over.

Kerrass walked over to his horse and drew his sword.

The fallen man had managed to roll onto his hands and knees by the time that Kerrass had come back and was futilely struggling with the weight of his armour, trying to push himself up to his knees.

Kerrass just pushed him back over with a solid kick to the side.

I got another greave off my patient.

“I yield.” the knight called to Kerrass who was putting his weight on the man's chest to keep him on the floor.

“So?” Kerrass asked him.

“Ransom will be paid.”

“Oh yeah? And what am I going to do with that ransom?”

Kerrass re-sheathed his sword across his back and drew a knife. The knight started blubbering something about mercy.

“Mercy?” Kerrass grated. His voice was terrible. “How much mercy did you show a husband while you nailed him to a tree? How much mercy did you show him while you forced him to watch his wife be torn apart by horses?”

“What? Who are you....?”

“You know what sickens me? Is the fact that you don't know who I'm talking about you rancid fucker.”

Kerrass bent down, knelt on the knights chest until he could work the helmet off along with the gorget and cut the man's throat. All the while, the knight was screaming and blubbering about mercy.

“Disgusting,” was Kerrass' assessment. “How's our patient? Reckon he can answer some of our questions?”

He walked over to the two of us.

“What have you done?” The killing of the two knights had finally cut through the lad's pain, shock and weariness. “What have you done?” He asked again wild eyed and plainly terrified.

“Killed a pair of assholes, that's what I've done.” Kerrass told him.

“Flame Kerrass but I almost don't know where to begin? This is a little bit beyond my skill. There are places here where the plate mail has forced the chain into the poor kid's flesh.”

Kerrass came over and bent down to look at the injuries before hissing between his teeth.

“What do we do?”

“Fucked if I know,” I replied. I had managed to get the kids boots off. He was weeping with the pain and looking at the raw and burst blisters that covered his feet, I didn't blame him. “We need a healer. I don't want to move him but he can't stay here. I don't know how to take all this stuff off him without hurting him some more but he won't live long like this. He's going to bleed out from all of these surface little bullshit wounds and that's if the injuries don't turn bad. Holy Flame. I daren't even wrap him in a blanket or something because then we would have to peel it off him when the blood dries to it.”

Kerrass nodded. “Right. Threat assessment then. Will he die if we move him?”

“I don't know,” I looked down at the kid who was sat there staring into space. “Not immediately but he won't enjoy it and it might make things worse.”

Kerrass looked around.

“Right. Get as much armour off him as you can, then we'll put him on a horse and you can take him to a healer.”

“Do you wanna see if you can catch one of the spares then?”

Kerrass got to work and soon captured one of the spare horses. He also went through the knights pockets, working loose some money and gems although I guessed that the gems were probably fake.

He also arranged the bodies so it looked as though one was sucking the other's dick.

“A bit crude isn't it?” I asked him as I helped him get the poor kid up onto Kerrass' horse.

“And petty,” he said nodding. “But it will piss them off. Angry men make mistakes.”

“But will also lash out at anyone who they think might be harbouring us.”

“True, but we can't think about that now.”

I made some kind of disgusted sound. That was now, all that I could think about.

We worked as much of his armour off him as we could and some of it came loose regardless of what we tried. In the end we had to cut a good chunk of his hair away to get the coif off his head and his shoulders looked dreadful. We belted him up as best we could to keep the weight off the top of his body and got him onto the back of the horse which I led. It wasn't that far back to the nearest town where we had to bully our way in to see the local healer who, for a change, turned out to be a man.

Even then we had to use a significant chunk of my remaining funds to get the poor kid seen to.

Taking the chain-mail off him was awful. I won't lie it was fucking awful. It was also clear that the chain-mail that they had given him to wear was the oldest and shittiest chain-mail that they could find. It was literally falling apart with loose rings coming off in our hands. In the end we were cutting it away and taking pliers to pull the bits of chain-link out of his skin, especially around his shoulders. The healer and I worked for the majority of a day and well into the night to get the job done, my working to get the metal out, the healer then applying salves and ointment in an effort to stop the injuries from going bad.

Kerrass was given a list of the herbs that the healer needed to mix the necessary medicines and came back regularly, helping to mix the stuff up.

There was one incident, in the three days that we spent there, where a large group of knights came through the town, looking for the people that had killed their fellow knights. It had the potential to start looking grim so Kerrass went out. Swore at them a great deal and called them the cowardly bastards that they were, before leading them on a massive goose chase before coming back later that evening. In the end we got the kid calm enough to be able to sleep.

He spent a lot of his time being delirious so it was a couple of days after Kerrass had led the knights off before he was able to talk. He also had a martyr complex a mile wide. He was convinced that he was evil and deserved the things that had been done to him.

We got him sat down on a stool. We were constantly applying wet cloths that were soaked through with herbal lotions to his back and shoulders. When one dried out we would have to replace it with another.

“Why don't you tell me what happened?” I tried again for what felt like the fiftieth time.

“What do you mean, “what happened?”. I failed didn't I.” It seemed we were going to be going for an anger series of questions.

“What did you fail at.”

“Being a proper knight.”

“Who told you that you failed?”

“Bishop Sansum. Flame but how many times do you have to be told. I was given orders to follow and I couldn't follow orders.”

“Why not?”

“Because.....Because I couldn't that's why. Because I'm weak and puny and, and too susceptible to evil.”

“That tells us nothing of any use.” I told him. “But also, while I'm on the subject. Who is Bishop Sansum?”

“The head of my order.”

“Never heard of him.”

The boy looked at me horrified. “Everyone's heard of Bishop Sansum.”

I turned to the healer who was busy mixing another soothing solution for the lads back. “Have they?” I asked him.

“I've heard of him.” The man commented. “Ambitious. Thinks the world is being brought to an end by all the filthy female Sorceresses, monsters and other magic users. Mostly though he doesn't like women. Sorceresses, Witches, lesbians, any woman that doesn't do what she's told which means stay at home and put out regular.” He sniffed to show what he thought of that. He was a good sort, despite being a little cowardly.

“Ah, so he thinks the more people that he can brutally torture and kill, the better for everyone right?”

“Pretty much,” The man (No, I'm not telling you his name. I have visions of Robart or one of his sympathisers hunting down the people that helped us and doing their best to make them see the error of their ways. I won't be a party to that.) changed the latest cloth on the back of the poor kid. It came away with a wet kind of sucking sound but his injuries were so numb now that he barely felt it. “Unfortunately,” the healer went on, “he also has a bit of an attitude of “better safe than sorry” which means that anyone who even might be magical are fair game.”

“So he's also not very educated?”

“Not really. I learned my healing at one of the Melitele shrines but, being a bloke, am unable to become a “priestess of Melitele” so I came out here. Unfortunately for me this means that I'm a woman worshipping charlatan as he doesn't trust people that are cleverer than him either.”

“Lovely. Sounds like a real piece of work.” I turned back to the kid. “This is the kind of fuck-pig you're protecting?”

“But he's a priest.”

“So?”

“So, he knows things doesn't he. He knows what's right and wrong because otherwise he wouldn't be a priest. He knows the scriptures, he knows the psalms and the prayers. He's the mouthpiece of the Holy Fire itself. Literally, everything he says is holy. There's nothing he can do that is wrong because he is a priest.”

“Is he though?” I asked. “Also, just because he's a priest, does that stop him from being a fuck-head?”

“Blasphemy,”

The healer snickered.

“Not really,” I told him. “I'm just asking a question. Does being a priest stop you from being a fuck-head?”

“But...But....He's a priest.”

“Yes, you've said. Shall I let you into a little secret? My brothers a priest. Doesn't mean I don't hate the stupid turd basket whenever he steals the last piece of cake over the Equinox dinner table though. Self righteous Wanker that he is.”

The lad gaped at me.

“You wanna know who my brother is? I guarantee you've heard of him.”

The lad was still gaping.

“My brother is Archbishop Mark of Tretogor.”

“Fuck off.” The healer told me.

“No, it's true.” I told him. “My brother who, in a little while, is going to be promoted to Cardinal and called back to Novigrad to serve at the feet of the holy father. Do you wanna know about the giant hairy mole he has growing on his arse?”

The healer was chuckling to himself.

“He was my personal confessor for years.” I told the, obviously still horrified boy, but I thought I could see just a little bit of fascination crawling in to his gaze. “He was ordered by my father to give me penance for stealing boiled sweets from my little sister. He had me flogged for that, with a ruler, twice. Bastard. Still love love him though, puffed up prick that he is in his silly red suit and his even sillier giant hat.”

The boy laughed despite himself.

“Let me tell you about this trick he does.” I went on. “He likes to hold out his finger. He's done it so many times that we all know it's coming but my sister falls for it every time. I had a theory a little while ago that she's in on the joke and is just playing along to annoy us all. But he holds out his finger after a particularly large meal and demands that someone pull his finger for him. After which he lets out the longest, rudest, most obnoxious fart that you've ever heard. Much to the amusement of everyone watching and the embarrassment of the person who pulled the finger in the first place.”

“My brother used to do the same trick.”

I nearly cheered in joy. He was finally engaging with me.

“My point is,” I told him. “Priests are people too. They make mistakes. Fuck, the last Hierophant is responsible for the decimation of the magical class which meant, amongst other things, that the Nilfgaardians walked all over us in the last war. There are other reasons for that but nevertheless, that is a significant point.

The only reason that you or I are allowed to worship the Holy Fire, because I do, and the only person that the healer here is allowed to worship Melitele or the Prophets or the Holy Fire himself...”

“I like the Prophets myself.” The healer interrupted. “At least that way, I'm following the teachings of people that genuinely existed rather than some mystical power that I've never seen or heard.”

“But the only reason that the three of us worship who we like is because the Empress has a lot of fondness for the Northern Kingdoms and their religions. Otherwise there would be followers of the Sacred and Holy Sun stomping up and down the paths and byways of the North telling us to worship the sun like good and proper little Imperials.”

I took a deep breath. There had been some long restrained sentiment in the middle of all of that and I needed to take a minute or two to calm down.

“Wait,” the healer was staring at me oddly. “Are you Freddie Coulthard?”

“Errr, yes?”

“Then that Witcher must be the Kerrass of Maecht?”

“That's him, moody fucker isn't he?”

“I'm a huge fan,”

I looked at him as he produced a copy of my collected works and got me to sign it.

Yay, fame.

I looked back at the young man who was staring at me open mouthed.

“What I'm trying to tell you is that, priests are people too.” I told him. “Some of them are good people doing their best to do The Flame's work. Others are unscrupulous bastards who use the church and the influence it gives them for their own ends. Both of these things are true but sometimes, just sometimes, you get some real lunatics, men....or women because lets not forget that women can be really unpleasant too, but people in general can go completely bug-fuck insane and these are the people that we need to protect each other against. I don't know if this.....Sansum creature is one of these last but.....”

I left it hanging, hoping that he would be able to insert his own thought processes into the mix without any further help from me.

“Why don't you tell me about what happened?” I asked him after a while when I could see a tear start to crawl down his face. “Let's start with your name.”

The poor kid took a moment to shed a few tears for which I had every sympathy. I have, in the relatively recent past, been confronted with the truth that everything that I had believed about the settled order of the world was incorrect. But to me it happened over the course of several years. It started when I went to the university and has continued throughout my association with Kerrass and, I had no doubt, would continue until long after I marry a vampire. Nowadays I look forward to the challenges of this entire process of self-education as to how the world really works but I do remember the first time I realised that the world didn't really work the way I thought it did.

For this kid, it had all just come crashing down. Probably over the course of the last week or so.

I could relate.

The following account from the lad is severely edited as if I told you every question that I asked or that Kerrass or the healer asked then you would still be reading the account next week. The lad was not that well educated and didn't know how to talk like I do in any kind of narrative structure. He would often leap ahead into his own story while at the same time forgetting things that were of importance and so we regularly needed to ask questions to bring him back to the point. He was also in a lot of pain, both physically and emotionally. But don't make the mistake, as we sometimes did, that just because he was uneducated, doesn't meant that he was stupid.

I should also say that I have changed the lad's name and the name of his family for fear of reprisals against them.

“My name is Maxwell of Tarth.” He told us after wiping his nose on a piece of cloth that the healer provided.

“I'm the youngest son of Sir Eustace of the same. I have, or rather had, three brothers. The first is to inherit the lands that my father won on the field of battle and, as far as I know, he defends it against my fathers enemies and our nations enemies still. The black ones claim our family lands as theirs but we took it from them in the first Nilfgaardian war so it's ours.

“My father is not a wealthy man. Like any peasant or commoner, our house is made from timber and the roof is thatched rather than tiled. The only thing that keeps us distinct from the common folk is that my father had a wall built around the manor with logs and our house is slightly bigger than those of the surrounding village. What I'm saying is that we're not rich and if my other brother and I were going to make a name for ourselves we had to do it with the only thing that our family was good at which was that we knew how to swing a sword.

“We couldn't afford tutors or anything to come and teach us about anything else so our education was entirely overseen by our father. Mother had died between the second and third war when I was little and I can barely remember her now. Father didn't like to talk about her. I never found out why.

“But I've been learning how to ride, hunt, tilt and fight since I was five.

“But the war is over, we lost and my father's often predicted “rising of the north against the tyranny of Nilfgaard” has not happened. My family is poor and as a result my brother and I, having no prospects of our own, have struggled to attract potential brides and are therefore unable to bring in any large dowry's so we were forced to leave to make our names in some way, using the only skills that our father had given us. I am, or rather was, a few years younger than my immediate elder brother and I haven't yet attained my full growth so our plan was that I would act as squire to him while I was still growing and we would be able to make our own way accordingly.

“We were young and all we wanted to do was to help make the world a bit better, the same as our father did.”

The narrative stopped here for a while as the poor kid had a sobbing fit. Kerrass came in at this point as it was starting to get dark and he felt confident that the pursuing knights were long gone. We took the opportunity to have something to eat which was a rabbit stew that Kerrass had managed to catch while leading the knights around in the darkness.

The lad continued his story as we were mopping up the last of the juices with half a loaf of hard black bread between us.

“We were heading north and looking for a nobleman or something that might take a couple of us on. One of those people that might be getting the courage together to fight of the Nilfgaardian oppression. We wanted nothing more than to sign up with them and help in that regard but no-one was taking anyone on.”

(Freddie's note: This is an increasingly common thing. People are honestly surprised by the way things are going in the world at the moment. They keep expecting the iron heel of oppression to come crashing down on the neck of the north. But it hasn't. So there are a whole lot of lords that are milling around in confusion.

They've been fighting,or preparing to fight, Nilfgaard for nearly the entirety of everyone's living memory and now that they're no longer fighting, they don't know what to do with their spare time. The thought that no-one is going to raise some kind of rebellion is ludicrous to them.

I suspect that, at some point, someone, or a series of someones, are going to raise their banners in rebellion.

This will probably result in the greater Nilfgaardian empire laughing for a short while before one of the greater Nilfgaardian armies turns up to thrash the upstart. Most lords that I know are beginning to settle into the idea of paying fealty to client kings and on towards the Empress of Nilfgaard. This has been made easier by the Empress' former association with the North.)

“Then one day we came to a field where he was giving a sermon. It was just outside a village that I never learned the name of but oh, it was like a light shone down from the heavens. There was a line of them stood on their horses on the edge of the field. Armour shining in the sun as he preached. They were like the statues that you see in the greater cathedrals of the lands. Tall, almost godlike, warriors of the Holy fire. Red Tabbards resplendent in the sun. The fire, that was sewn into their tunics, was so realistic that I could almost feel the heat coming from it.

“We stopped to listen as he spoke for what felt like hours. He spoke about the dangers from the heretical south, the evils of magic and Sorcery. He decried the existence of monsters and mutants, non-humans and deviants of any kind and about how they all needed to be destroyed so that the holy fire could help keep us warm when the Frost comes.

“I am unashamed to say that I wept as I listened for the images that it conjured. I wanted to help him. To help them make the world a better place.

“We offered our service and our blades to the cause of the Bishop on the spot. My brother explained that I was still in training as I had yet to come into my proper growth. He was tested a little by one of the other knights who soundly drubbed my brother but at least he managed to break a couple of lances against the man but long story short we were accepted into the holy order.”

“Those first weeks were wonderful. Our father had brought us up in the proper faith and the proper way to behave but it felt so good to be part of something that we knew to be right. It felt good to be so....so free of doubt. We were also able to study the scriptures in a way that we never were before and we helped to build our fortress.”

(Frederick's note again. It may come as a surprise to you, as it certainly was to me, that the lad couldn't read.

I did ask how he managed to study the scriptures when he couldn't read and it turned out that this Bishop Sansum could recite them from memory, although he did admit that Sansum had several copies of many holy books in his rooms despite never being seen to read them.

How did the kid know that the books were holy, and how did he know that the scripture was accurate?

Bishop Sansum told him that they were.

I'll let you roll that one round in your brain for a moment.

This is one of the reasons that I don't believe that Sansum was properly ordained. I don't know but I suspect that, at best, he was some kind of Lay monk who had taken the bits of scripture that he wanted before choosing to use those bits of scripture in his own way. I suspect that he left whatever monastery or abbey that he had been part of, because there wasn't enough fire and doom in the sermons and the practices there. I've been trying to track the man down in my spare moments but I can't find him. I assume that he did have some training but I'm also guessing that he changed his name for reasons of his own.

“Sansum” is an odd name for it though. Normally such people rename themselves after saints or famous holy men but I can't find the name anywhere)

“We trained as well. Hard, good training. I know more about horsemanship and swordsmanship now than my father had ever taught us. We had been talented before but now we were getting good. There was a real feeling that we were a group of friends, fighting the good fight against the darkness of the world. We had to depend on each other, we had to live together and we had to trust each other. We fought....We helped people.” He was pleading with us. Pleading for us to believe him.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“I was just a squire, so I didn't really get involved in too many of the missions. They didn't go out for more than a couple of days at a time so I wasn't needed to go with my brother to help him get into his armour or do anything like that.

“Then they made me a knight about three days ago. A mission had gone out and two of our brothers in arms had not come back. “Killed by evil,” is what we were told and they wanted to make up some numbers which was when I started to feel my first doubts. I wanted to be made a knight because I had earned the privilege rather than because there were a couple of empty saddles that needed to be filled.

“I liked being a knight though. I liked the extra privileges and having people do what I told them rather than having to run around after other people. I was able to sleep in my own bed rather than having to be called to some other knights bed as women were forbidden in the order so the rest of us had to serve wherever we could.

“But then I could hear the stories of the other knights, including the stories about what had happened when those two men had died.

“I don't know. The way the others were laughing and joking about what had happened, made me sick.”

He shuddered.

“They were telling jokes about how someone had squealed like a girl while they nailed him to a tree and about how he had wept as they tore is unholy wife apart. They spoke about the pleading of the villagers while witches were burnt at the stake.

“I had to leave. I get that witches and monsters are our enemies and they need to be destroyed but surely we shouldn't be gloating over that. Surely we don't prolong the suffering. They need to be destroyed, not tortured.

“I took my doubts to Bishop Sansum. He told me that it is only right to enjoy the proper defeating of evil and that I would know the truth of matters when I fought against darkness myself. I left his rooms reassured and began to look forward to my first mission.

“In the end that mission was a day ago. We had heard that enemies were coming for us and that we needed to hunt them down before they came for us. We were to investigate accusations that we had been given that a woman was a witch.

“I don't know what I was expecting. Stories that I've been told, vary from the horrifically beautiful arch-woman who is lewd and overtly-sexual (Frederick's note: I'm pretty sure he didn't know what this meant) to the image of the terrifyingly old crone who is still moving around long after she should be dead. I don't know what I was expecting but I knew that it was more than this.

“This woman was middle aged. She was happy and smiling, a large fat woman with rosy cheeks who was cradling a baby in one arm and chasing another grand child through her garden.

“She reminded me of old mother Gammer in the village near where my father used to live. I looked for signs of magic. I looked for obscene beauty, I looked for the black cat and the demonic sigils daubed in blood against the walls. I looked for obscene rites and anything else that I could think of.

“She just seemed like an old woman who knew quite a lot about herbs.

“I told the leader of the three of us that had been sent on this mission together that I couldn't find any signs of witch-craft and he told me that I wasn't looking hard enough. He sent my brother in and he came out holding a book and a cockerel. Telling me that the Cockerel was a sign of demon's work and that the book was a book of incantations.

“I had seen the book, it had pictures of berries and leaves in it. The woman claimed it was a recipe book. Our leader claimed that that was proof enough. That it was the recipes to her demonic brews that she had written down and ordered her flogged and burnt.

“She had a son nearby. I know because he tried to protect her, despite her telling him not to. He ran at my brother when my brother moved to take the woman and tie her to a stake that another of my fellow knights was already erecting. My brother killed him with this horrible grin on his face. It looked like....It looked like lust. His eyes were hooded and he was breathing heavily.

“I felt sick.

“They stripped her and tied her to the stake and ordered me to flog her as I needed to prove my devotion to the holy flame.”

The next words were a long time coming. We all thought that he had stopped talking but, as it turns out, he was screwing himself up to get to the point where he could say it.

“I refused. I couldn't do it. She just looked like an old woman.

“I was weak.

“They chained my wrists and took me back to the fortress where the Bishop declared my penance. That I was to be flogged and that I should complete a circuit of our holdings wearing only armour.

“It was my brother that laid the first lash. He told me that I was weak and that he would not be. That he needed to prove that our bloodline was better than that. He told me that he wasn't my brother any more. I didn't recognise him as he said the words. As he hissed the words.

“Then they put the mail over my body and loaded me up. I don't think they expected me to return alive. They were making jokes about me and wondering if I would....What I would be willing to do if it would keep me alive.”

Then he stopped, the tears falling freely.

I felt dirty and sick. The healer was mixing up a drink for the kid. “You weren't weak.” The healer told him as he handed over the drink. “You were strong,”

“Much stronger than I would have been.” I told him. I hope it wasn't true but until we're in that moment, do any of us really know what we would do in that moment. “You should be proud.” I added after a moment's thought.

He drank what he was given and fell into an exhausted sleep.

We spent the next couple of days interviewing him between the three of us. Kerrass did most of the talking. He had questions about layout of the buildings, patrol patterns and training. He asked about deployment and equipment and thought processes.

But still the lad fought us for every answer. He just didn't want to answer us. We would confront him over and over again with the things that he had told us. The things that he had told us, as well as the state of his own body. It was sickening.

But the way he said it, the way he described that time that he spent with those knights. As he described it he had been there for six months at most. Six months. But I don't know whether the scars will ever leave him. If the scars can ever be truly healed. Not my area of expertise.

It reminded me of Cousin Kalayn in a way. The way that my cousin had been so convinced that he was right, so sure that everything was the way it was for a reason. It was the first time that I started to feel a certain amount of sympathy for my long departed cousin, thinking of him being brought up in the poisonous atmosphere of bitterness and anger as well as the declaration that they were in the right.

We didn't ask the lad about his childhood and what that was like. I like to think that we didn't ask because we didn't have time to ask. That there was so much other things going on but at the same time, how much of what was done to him in his order was only possible because of whatever had happened to him at home with his father and elder brothers?

He was convinced, convinced that he was in the wrong. That the what had been done to him was fair and justified. He told us, time and again that he had been wrong to challenge the authority of the knights over him. That he should have burned the witch for what she was but even as he said those things, you could see his youthful innocence warring against it. His....His disbelief at what he could hear himself saying.

We had to be careful, as well, because he was also very, very weak and exhausted beyond reasoning. The healer, regularly had to stop us from carrying on our questions so that the lad could rest.

It was awful.

He cursed himself for his weakness over and over again, telling us that he was weak, that we were evil and that we should have let him die. That we should have let those knights mete out the punishment that he deserved.

I remember this conversation that I had with him. Kerrass was outside keeping watch, and the healer was also asleep so it must have been in the early hours of the warning. We had to keep a watch on him because he had told us that the only reason that he didn't end his own life was because the Holy Flame declares “self-slaughter” to be a sin. Having known despair myself I knew that even the threat of damnation cannot keep the....the pressure of staying alive from being unbearable and the healer had agreed.

“Why don't you hate me?” He asked me.

“What?” I had been writing up some notes. I can't remember on what. “Why don't I hate you?”

“I am weak, I am....unclean and base. I am damned. I tried to let a creature of darkness go.”

“No you didn't and no you aren't.” It's really hard to not sound as though I was getting frustrated. This was not a new argument between us all. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that you can tell an upset person that they shouldn't be upset and they will look at up at you and say something like.... “Of course you're right, how stupid of me to be upset. Of course, now that you point it out to me I will perk up directly.”

That thought process assumes that the person that you're talking to is acting rationally.

I got up and approached him, pulling my chair over with me.

“You didn't let a creature of darkness go. What you tried to do was to appeal to common sense. You asked them to really look at what they were doing. You asked them not to leap to conclusions and run the risk of flogging and burning an innocent woman.” I thought about it for a moment. Trying to look for another argument. Another way in to a debate that had been had over so many occasions to try and point out what had happened. Another argument that we hadn't already tried.

“Let me ask another question?” I asked him. “Why did they order the woman to be flogged before they burnt her?”

“To purge the evil from her body.”

“Ok,” I said, “let's assume that that's true, that that's what flogging does. But isn't that what the burning's about?”

He just stared at me.

“We're supposed to burn Witches aren't we? Flame knows why. I assume that it's because we worship the eternal fire, therefore subjecting a witch to the fire is to purify her. But isn't that what the other knights were trying to get you to do by flogging her? They were trying to purify her weren't they.”

“They were trying to purge her of evil.”

“Which means that they were trying to get rid of all the evil in her right?”

“Yes.”

“Isn't that what purifying someone does?”

“Ummmm.”

It is sometimes a far too easy trap to fall into to assume that ignorance means stupidity. His education was rather lacking although this was clearly not his fault.

“So why did they want you to flog her as well?”

“To make sure.”

“To make sure of what?”

“That all the evil had definitely left her.”

“Ok. Have you seen another witch-burning? Other than the one that we're talking about?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“Good.” I said aloud as I wondered how many times “many” meant. I also wanted to know how many people this kid had seen burnt. My family had gone out of there way to keep the younger members of the family from seeing the more horrific aspects of the worship of the holy fire. What kind of situation leaves a kid saying that he had seen “Many” burnings. “Was there ever anything left?” I asked him, “After the fires had finished burning.”

“Well no.”

“So all the evil must have definitely gone then right?”

He stared at me blankly.

“If there was nothing left to contain the evil then the evil must have gone in the flame. Right?”

He reluctantly nodded.

“So, why flog her as well? You even question yourself whether the woman was guilty.”

“Evil is evil, there are no degrees of evil. Evil is Evil. If you are possessed of evil then you must be destroyed.”

Those weren't his words. I could recognise a quote when I saw one and I wondered who it was had made that quote.

“It is, is it? Oh how I wish I still believed that there weren't simply shades of grey.” I tried to take another approach. “What else destroys evil in a person?”

“What?”

“Ok, answer me this. What is it that makes us evil?”

“Sin,” he answered promptly, I wasn't surprised. It was a common question answer process in basic theology, the kind of thing that is preached from the pulpit at every available opportunity. “Sin, is the root of all evil.” he told me.

“Very good. So if you and I sin, how do we expunge that same sin?” I winced as I realised my mistake.

“We confess. Then we do penance. But I was doing my penance to cleanse me of my sin of disobedience.”

“Yes you were. But was the objective there to kill you? or to get rid of your sin?”

“To get rid of my sin, even if it did kill me?”

“What is the ultimate measurement of goodness?” I asked him, beginning to see a way through.

“Service.” He told me. Again, as he should. “Service to the flame, to the church and to our fellow man.”

That's nearly what that passage of scripture says. So close but again, I decided not to set him right just yet. I also decided to leave aside the fact that that self-same saying separated the Holy flame from the church and again from our fellow man.

“So let me ask another question.” I told him. “If service is the ultimate measure of goodness. Why is that woman, learning about herbs to heal her people in the village a bad thing?”

“But you see. That's how evil gets in.” He told me. “It starts off with something simple. Something that seems as though it is a good thing and then it turns it's deeds and changes them until it becomes evil.”

That small pit at the bottom of my stomach opened up under me again. I was going to lose another argument because, again, I was assuming that the lad was thinking rationally.

The priest, his older brother and, I guess, his father had taken a good and decent young lad and turned him into a fanatic. It was only by dint of something extraordinary within him that he wanted to resist that evil.

That he saw the evil for what it was, even for that briefest of moments when he tried to resist all of the awful conditioning that had been done to him.

“Service.” I told him. “How does it serve mankind to kill all of humanity?”

“The few that are left will be the best of people.”

“But who will do all the things that needs to be done. Who will plough the fields and hunt the animals?”

I scratched my head as I tried to think of another approach. “Was the man evil? The man who your brother killed when he tried to defend his own mother?”

“He must have been.”

“How do you know?” I demanded. “Can you tell by looking at him?”

“No. But he must have been evil.”

“Why?”

“Because he attacked the knights of the church.”

“So? If a man attacked my mother I would do my best to defend her as well. Wouldn't you?”

“Yes. But that makes me evil too.”

He sobbed for a while and I saw that I had pushed him too hard and did my best to comfort him. I told him the same things over and over again, that he was a good and decent young man with a long future ahead of him. I did so in an effort to make him believe them but I doubt he listened. I doubt that he even heard me.

Here's a truth for you. Something that I have seen in my own life. If you tell a young person something, over and over and over again. Especially if you are in a position of power or authority over them such as a parent, teacher or priest. Then sooner or later you will get through to them and they will start to believe it, even if you are telling them something cruel and unpleasant.

I still have a lot of rage against my father. A LOT of rage for this very reason. I believed that I was wasting my life for ages. I believed that I was becoming a scholar for my own purposes in an effort to try and rebel against my father's authority but that isn't the truth.

Now, I believe in knowledge and I believe in debate. I believe in studying our past so that we can learn from it and I believe in the betterment of ourselves through the taking on of new ideas and new concepts. So I became a scholar because that's what you do when you believe in those kinds of things, almost because there is nothing else in life that will take these sentiments. Maybe politics, but I don't think I could live with myself.

This lad believed in the holy fire so hard. So very hard, that people had used that belief and turned it into a form of self-loathing.

As I've said before, I believe in the Holy Flame as a guiding light through the darkness that guides me towards a better future and a form of safety. I see it as a beacon, something to be aspired towards rather than as a scourge to drive us.

And it sickens me when people take the same scriptures that I have read and reread a thousand times and turned them into a doctrine of hate.

Which is ironic because I looked at this poor kid, lying on the bed before me and I felt my own hatred against the people who had done this to them redouble.

We couldn't stay for much longer though. There was a danger that we would draw the knights down onto the head of the healer. He was confident that he could move a sick, damaged....young man around with the help of some of the neighbours but the presence of “the Witcher” and “the Man with the Spear” was getting harder and harder to keep secret. He had some plans to flee to the hills anyway so that he could remain safe in the face of the knights potential wrath. He had friends and he knew that the knights were more likely to pursue a woman in his line of work than they were a man. A man is a doctor, a woman is a healer. The one is science, the other is Witchcraft and there were still plenty of “Witches” around in the countryside before they got to him.

I wrote the lad a letter of introduction to Mark. We weren't that far geographically from Tretogor and my brothers seat of power. I would have written the lad himself a letter but I as I knew he couldn't read it, it struck me as a futile gesture. I told the healer what to do though, that he should be sent off to Tretogor with my letter addressed to Arch-Bishop Mark and I also left some money for the journey.

But Kerrass wanted to move on anyway. You see the lad had also given us some other interesting information. Namely the name and the location of the lord who supported the “Knight's of the flaming sword” and he wanted to pay the fucker a visit before moving on.