“This is a really stupid idea.” I told Kerrass. “I know that we've done some pretty stupid things in the past. I know that many of them were my idea but this one? This one takes the cake.”

“This one?” Kerrass was watching the knight's enclosure carefully. “This one doesn't even break the top five stupid ideas that we've acted on.”

I frowned as a question occurred to me.

“There's a top five?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

We watched as the sentry knights, although we couldn't definitely confirm that they were knights, were relieved of duty by another pair of men. Their armour wasn't as ornate and expensive as some of the other “knights” that we had seen and so we had wondered if these men were actually closer towards being normal men at arms, or squires.

From what we had learned about “The Knights of the Flaming Sword” they weren't the kinds of men that enjoyed standing outside, in the rain, watching out for enemies. From what we had learned, the thought that they could be attacked was nowhere near the top of their priorities when stacked against the prospect of a good nights sleep and some warm food in the belly.

So I suspected that they followed their normal pattern which was that they would send their squires to do it. Their arrogance was overwhelming.

“This is pretty bad though isn't it?” I wanted to check. I was fascinated with the idea that Kerrass had been grading our stupid decisions and ranking them in order of our stupidity.

“It's not that bad. It has a fairly decent chance of working.”

“Isn't the plan a little complicated? You're always telling me that the simplest plans are the best.”

“And normally that would be true.”

“So hang on,” The thought just wouldn't go away. “What's the stupidest plan that we've ever come up with?”

“You're kidding right?”

“No. Just curious.”

“This from the man who thought it would be a good idea to try talking to a dragon?”

“Hey, that isn't fair. The dragon thing worked.”

“That doesn't make the plan any the less stupid.”

We watched the four sentries exchange some words, probably updating the new sentries on anything strange that they might have seen in the meantime. You know the kind of thing “Watch that bush, it's a tricky fucker. Could easily hide a man behind it.” and “Wagon train of people passed a while ago, gave us a glare.” and also, the ever popular, “Patrol went out earlier, on their way back.

The new sentries settled into their positions and waited. It was getting properly dark now and as we watched, one of the sentries leaned back into the enclosure to see if anyone was watching before producing a small cloth bag and producing a chunk of what we assumed was tobacco and started chewing.

Kerrass and I looked at each other.

“Definitely not knights.” We said at the same time.

“This is still a dumb idea.” I told him.

“Well, let's run through it again.” He told me backing down from the small hillock that we were laying behind so that he could do some exercises and limber up a bit. “Do you have a better plan?”

“I do actually. You should send me in there first.”

“Now Freddie, we've talked about this. I will do more initial damage, but also, they will want to keep me alive for the torture when they inevitably overwhelm me.”

“I know, I know. I know that the plan requires for one of us to get captured so that the other can run around and cause havoc. I just think that you are going to be better at causing havoc than me.”

Kerrass stopped his exercises and looked at me for a while.

“There's something else though isn't there?” He asked me.

“As a matter of fact there is.” I admitted. “I'm not sure that I can slit the throats of anyone that's still asleep. Killing people in self-defence? ok. I can do that. But murdering them in cold blood? I'm not sure I can do that Kerrass.”

“Even despite everything that we've seen and heard?”

“I'm just....I know all of that but....”

“These people need killing Freddie.”

“I know, I know and I agree.” I told him, and I meant it. “But I'm not convinced that, when it comes down to it. I'm not convinced that I won't hesitate at the worst possible moment.”

Kerrass went back to his exercising. “I can't take them all out by myself.” He told me. “There's too many of them for that. TO do it myself I would need to pick them off piecemeal. I would need to draw them out, isolate them and pick them off one at a time. We both agree that that would make people run off and start spreading the news that someone is killing church knights.”

“I know that but...”

“So we need to kill all of them tonight.”

“I agree with that too.”

“To manage that, we need to keep them all in one place.”

“Kerrass we've been over this and over this...”

“So we'll go over it again.” He snapped. “To keep them in one place we need to attack them. But it's certain that the person that attacks them will be overwhelmed, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, I'm fairly attached to my skin as I assume you are to yours. So we need a way for that person to survive that initial attack. How do we do that?”

“We need them to want to keep the person alive.” We really had been over this time and again.

“Correct. They will want to keep me for torture. I am a filthy mutant deviant freak and they're going to want to torture me for what I know and their own enjoyment. You, why wouldn't they just kill you?”

“Because I am a noble. They would want to keep me for ransom.” I had tried this point before.

“This is true but, also you are a normal human and they are aware of how famous you are. They're not going to want you to get away and start publishing your stories about them. They also know that if they do let you go then you are going to tell people who and what you saw as well as reporting them to the nearest garrison. So why wouldn't they just cut your throat and throw you in a ditch. You have nothing that they want.”

“I might.”

“But we don't know that. So it needs to be me.”

I sighed. He was right of course. We had had this argument several times since we had found the enclosure and I had lost every time. Mostly because, he really was right. There was absolutely no reason. At all. For the knights to keep me alive. If I attacked them, then they would just kill me. But Kerrass had the skills and the talents to really make them mad. Mad enough to keep him alive to torture him.

The plan then went, that I would follow Kerrass into the enclosure while everyone was still crowing over their capture of a Witcher and cause havoc by virtue of setting fire to the buildings, poisoning the well, setting the horses free and killing a few more knights. The idea was that I would get Kerrass' bombs and potions to him which he would then use to really go to work.

My problem was that I just wasn't sure that we could do it.

“Hold on,” I said as a thought occurred. “What about my going off to speak to Jack? Surely that should be the number one, most stupid thing that we've done?”

“Ah, but that was your plan. I had nothing to do with that plan. If we were making a list of stupid things that you've done, separate from me, then this would be a whole different conversation.”

“That's not reassuring.”

“It wasn't meant to be.”

“I still think that this is a bad plan that is, at the very least, going to get you tortured and probably killed.”

“If the things that we've seen and heard over the last few days are any indication. I would be quite happy if we just managed to take a few of the bastards with us.”

“That's not the ideal though is it.”

“No, we need to kill them all. And that Bishop too. That fucker needs to die.”

I thought of some of the atrocities that we had seen and heard about. “No,” I said. “That bastard I could definitely murder in his sleep.”

“Could you?” Kerrass seemed surprised. “Personally, I want him to be awake so that he has the chance to realise what was going to happen to him.”

“Now that's a cheerful thought.”

Kerrass grinned nastily as he came up the hill to watch as it was now my turn to limber up, keep my body warm in the rain and make sure that I didn't get cramp.

Calling what we were looking at “a fortress” was a little bit ambitious. It was more of a....I want to call it a fortified monastery. There was a central church building which seemed to have a large and rambling building attached to it which was also made from stone. Those were the original buildings and had clearly been there for many years but since adopting the place, the Knights of the flaming sword had made some changes.

There was a hangman's scaffold there as well as well as a large stone that prisoners were manacled to. There were also a number of outbuildings.

We had spent the better part of a day scouting the place out, looking through the gaps in the pallisade to see what could be seen and preparing our entrances and how we were going to play things that evening. We had identified the stables as well as several storehouses which we knew stored the food as well as all the bounty that they had looted from the surrounding areas. We had also seen a dormitory for what we thought would be the servants.

The entire enclosure had been surrounded by a log palisade although there were obvious signs that it hadn't been particularly well made. They had also made a ditch round the outside of the fence but this had actually had the effect that it had weakened the wall itself, meaning that the spacing of the logs wasn't entirely uniform.

Several of the weaknesses in the perimeter opened out into enclosed areas where no sentries could easily see into which meant that infiltration would, in theory, be easier.

The problem was that these kinds of places, often have large and complex catacombs underneath them. It's not just cities that are built on the top of old elven ruins. Old shrines, burial sites and old homes are often fair game. There are even many instances where churches and abbeys are built on the top of what I hesitate to describe as “pagan” sites or sites of natural disaster. Shrines to Veyopatis, Melitele, the Lionhead, old mines, caves and more are often re-purposed into churches. The logic goes that the new and imported holiness goes on to combat the old pagan powers.

There's also the theory of “holy coincidence” which is that “Holy events” are often drawn to the same areas and similar circumstances. The Lay line phenomenon is also a thing, that holy builders are drawn to the same places and build their places of worship, by sheer coincidence, are built in the same place. It does happen, more often than we care to believe.

But my concern was that there were more soldiers and things underneath that we knew nothing about. I was also worried that there might be some kind of escape tunnel to it. As well as watching the place and getting the lay of the land, we had spent some time looking into other buildings to see if we could find an exit for a potential tunnel but we had failed to find anything. We had even moved some large stones aside to see if there was anything hidden underneath but no....nothing there.

But it was still a concern.

Seeing at night wouldn't be an issue as the place was all but covered in torches. This is a common feature in places that have been dedicated to the Eternal flame as the practitioners tend to want to keep the fire around themselves as much as possible. As though it would ward off evil. Practically, in this case though, all it would do would be ruin the night vision of all the people in the enclosure.

I also wondered at the psychological aspect of all of that fire. As I say, it ruins your night vision if you're near all that flickering flame, but the other thing that this does is that it makes the blackness outside of the circle of fire all the more oppressive, thus driving home the point that the knights were surrounded by evil and things to fear. That they should be on guard at all times and the only times that they were truly safe was when they were close to the flame, both literally and spiritually.

Our information was that there were a total of twenty five knights in the order with, maybe, another twelve squires and another eight men that were describes as squires but were actually more the kind of armed man that does the kind of jobs that no-one else wants to do. From looking at the behaviour of the current sentries we guessed that they belonged to this particular caste of “squire”. We assumed that they were lower born men who wanted to join but, because they weren't “properly” born, they weren't allowed to be proper knights. But likewise, they were too good at their jobs to behave like the other kinds of squires, who were essentially glorified slaves. So they were made into “men-at-arms.” They did the military jobs that the knights considered as beneath them but needed more expertise than what the squires had.

The knights also didn't enjoy letting the younger, more impressionable squires out of their sight.

The knights themselves slept inside the main building. They slept, ate and prayed in the main building. Training was done out of the main enclosure on one of the flatter fields immediately to the north. Both tilting and fencing. To be fair to them, they did look as though they worked quite hard at their fighting skills but at the same time, to my mind at least, that went even further to reinforce that we were running a huge risk.

The Bishop, Sansum, had his own room in the complex. We had no idea where it was as we hadn't been able to get inside the building itself to have a look around. We made some educated guesses though. We knew, from a couple of sources that he had a large collection of books which he liked to show off to visitors and the other members of his little order. So we reasoned that they would need to be kept above ground where there was less danger of getting damp and rot into the written word.

I also thought it was a bit rich that the library that Pula, Saffron and Sally had protected and maintained, had been burnt while Sansum collected books himself.

Sansum was a thin little weasel of a man. He had straggly hair and whiskers that grew in tufts around the top of his head and he looked like a younger man that had aged before his time. He had a huge forehead and a rapidly retreating widow's peak. He would tip his head forward so that he had to look at people through his eyebrows which also made him seem sly and slimy. He moved around at an incredible pace. The rumour was that he didn't sleep and existed off the power of prayer but I don't believe that. We also heard that he would regularly go off to “study” where he wasn't to be disturbed and I strongly suspected that he used those opportunities to have a nap.

He could regularly be seen around the complex. Preaching to the knights at training, preaching to the prisoners, tied to the stone and exhorting the men onto greater efforts. Whenever a group of horsemen went out, he would come to the gates to bless them all, in turn, before they were allowed to leave.

He worked hard, I'll give him that, but it was the kind of work that made me want to punch him. I didn't see him lift a stone, or carry some goods or even help an injured knight. It was as though he was allergic to doing any kind of physical work for himself.

We were delayed for another couple of days while we waited to have all the knights in the place at the same time as we didn't want to lose one that could turn the whole lot of them into martyrs as that would be the worst possible thing that could happen.

Kerrass' plan was to walk up to the open gates and move towards where the prisoners were and attempt to free them. He figured that would gain him more than enough attention to be going on with as he quickly supposed that people would flock out of the various buildings to try and stop him and he intended to go down swinging.

My own plan depended on what the enemy did from there. They would either assume that Kerrass was alone, in which case they would simply all gather round his capture, laughing and hooting which meant that I could simply walk in through the main gate. The other option was that they would be a little wiser and reinforce the outer sentries.

In theory, this would be better for me. Kerrass could be depended on to kill at least four men but probably a good few more than that which would mean that I re-inforced sentry presence would mean that there would be less people walking around the main enclosure to spot me. I would climb in, using one of the gaps in the defences, before making my way over to the stores which we knew contained lamp oil and start spreading it around the place before setting fire to it. I wanted to aim for the stores, then the stables and the stables before I figured that I would have to start closing in on where Kerrass was.

I secretly wanted to get at the prisoners and burn down the scaffold as well. But the three buildings I was fairly certain that I could set those fires in secret. The scaffold and the prisoners were in the open and I wouldn't be able to help them, or set the fire without being seen.

It was full dark by the time that Kerrass was satisfied.

“Right then, here we go.” He said. “Wish me luck.”

“Kerrass, are you sure that I can't convince you to let me go in your place. You will be far better at the chaos and murdering aspect of the plan.”

“You'll do fine.” He told me, clapping me on the shoulder. “But seriously though,” he said, taking care to properly look me in the eyes. “Thanks for doing this with me. I'm not sure I could have done this alone.”

“Of course you could.” I told him. “You just wouldn't have done it with quite as much class and sex appeal.”

He told me to fuck off and went to walk off.

“Wait,” I called out and he came back, a look of concern crossing his face.

I let him stew for a minute.

“What are the other things in the top five most stupid things we've ever done.”

Kerrass grinned. “Amber's crossing is number one. The thing with the dragon is number two.” He was counting them off on his fingers. “Summoning the ghost of a king is number three although it's possibly tied with that time that we stood up to an elder vampire and told her to behave. So that's three and four. Five? Five was that time we walked into a nest of werewolves.”

“I don't remember that?”

“That was because I lied and told you that we were going in to speak to someone I knew who could tell us about about werewolves in general.”

I felt my mouth fall open.

“I flirted with his wife.”

“Yes, and she thought you were very gallant.”

“So there's a separate list for things that I have done?”

“Oh yes.”

“Go on then.”

“Freddie, I should really get going.”

“Yes, but You might not make it so how else am I going to find out about these things.

“Ok. Number one is talking to Jack. Number two is chasing after Laughing Jack without me. Number three is asking Letho about Witchers and the trials. Four and five are all to do with the fact that you agreed to marry an elder vampire. I know that those last two are technically only one thing that you've done but I feel that it's so important a point that it bears mentioning twice.”

“Yeah,” I mused. “Yeah, but to be fair to me. She is really hot.”

Kerrass turned to go.

“Kerrass wait.”

He sighed and turned back.

“What are your own personal top five stupid things that you've ever done?”

“I don't know really,” he mused. “I'm pretty sure I know what number one is though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, agreeing to let you tag along with me on my travels.”

We both laughed.

“Good luck Kerrass.” I told him.

“Good hunting Freddie.”

Then he was gone. I climbed back up to the top of the hill. There was no way that I wasn't going to watch this whole thing happen.

Kerrass had left his silver sword with our main cache of equipment. The bags were buried under a rock about half a days walk from here along with the sword as well as some other letters that might be important. I had told Ariadne where to look for them if she didn't hear from us which was when we had our first proper fight.

Having a fight with a woman that you love is never fun. Having a fight with an Elder vampire that you love, who can also rip your spine out of your back with her bare hands, is even less fun.

In the end though, we went on her way. I would like to say that we did so with her blessing but I'm not entirely confident that that would be true.

Kerrass had his steel sword, I had my spear, his crossbow and his potion box as well as a number of bombs that Kerrass had spent a bit of time putting together with a certain amount of relish. We also had some supplies for the long night ahead. Some water, some food and my first aid kit completed our equipment inventory.

So, Kerrass walked up to the main opening in the fence. He did so openly and without any attempt at stealth. He walked past the two, astonished guardsmen with a jaunty wave and a greeting and just walked past them.

It was almost comical watching the two men do a double take straight from the stage-shows in Novigrad.

They looked at Kerrass, looked at each other, looked at Kerrass again who raised his hand in greeting before walking past them. One of them even partially raised his own hand to answer.

I had the strongest suspicion that Kerrass was whistling. He had that, easy, relaxed posture he had when he had just visited the brothel.

I found that I was smiling in appreciation of the showmanship of the scene.

One of the two guards, presumably finally realising that things weren't going the way that they were supposed to, finally called out to Kerrass who turned and shouted something back before carrying on walking towards where the prisoners were chained up.

The two guards looked at each other again. It was easy to imagine what they were thinking. It was as though they were checking with each other that what they were seeing was real.

One of them drew a sword which was when it suddenly became a lot less funny.

Kerrass ignored them until one of them put their hands on his shoulder. Kerrass spun, the metal of his sword flashed in the firelight and the man who had placed his hand on Kerrass' person, lost that hand. He stared at the stump for a moment, he had dropped his sword to grip the stump and even though it was too far away and too dark for me to see, I knew that the stump would be gushing blood. He stared in what must have been in disbelief and shock before the pain and the awful realisation hit him.

Then he screamed.

The other guard had drawn his sword by now and made a good attempt at a stab at Kerrass' right hand side. Kerrass simply rolled his sword over the blade and disembowelled the poor man.

Yes, these men had done awful things to a lot of people that didn't deserve it. But stomach wounds are horrible things.

Two men down. I knew that it was all but futile to start counting them off as we killed them but it was impossible, not to think, that the situation was that little bit better and that there were two less men to face.

Another pair of armed men rushed round the main church building and ran to intercept Kerrass before he made it to the prisoners. Kerrass feinted one way before leaping up and round to the right with a huge chopping motion to the man's neck. Although he didn't sever the head, he was damn close. But now Kerrass was exposed to the other man. Kerrass rolled away and came to his feet, spinning on his heel to meet the charging man. The man swung his sword before Kerrass used the momentum of his rising to his feet to cut the man up through the groin and inside leg from his knee.

Four men dead or dying. Two of which were screaming horribly.

Kerrass ran towards the prisoners again but I had to shift from my current hiding place if I wanted to see what was going on.

As I moved, carefully and away from the ridge line, the church bell started to ring. The alarm was up now and I could, all to easily, imagine men and knights, climbing from their beds, putting clothes and armour on and going out to do battle against the lone Witcher that had come out of the night with bright sword and cruel eyes.

By the time I could see what was happening again, Kerrass was limping while engaging three men around where the prisoners were tied up. These men were better fighters, able to take Kerrass on on equal terms. Kerrass was backing up which took him away from the prisoners, looking for an advantage. One of the knights, confident that he was well outside of Kerrass' sword range, turned and cut the throat of one of the villagers that was tied there.

I assume that it was to try and anger Kerrass into making some kind of mistake. Trying to provoke him or make him angry.

I know they made him angry but whether that made him make a mistake, I'm not sure I could judge.

They were trying to steer him now. There was another group of men forming up behind him under the direction of someone that I couldn't see. More and more men were coming now, putting on helms and shrugging into chest-plates. A couple of the men that I identified in my mind as being “squires” had produced bows and were doing their best to string them while also being shouted at to help the knights into their armour.

I wasn't sold on the idea of using bows though. It was still dark, with flames flickering and there was only one Kerrass while there were so many other people around that could very easily get caught in the crossfire.

Kerrass saw what was happening.

He made a complicated gesture with his hands and one of the men staggered as though drunk.

Another gesture and a different man was sent backwards with a guest of air. Kerrass fell on a third and after a brief exchange of sword strikes and parries, Kerrass found a gap in the man's armour and, once again, blood sprayed in the firelight.

My count was inaccurate now as I thought, or hoped, that Kerrass might have taken a couple more people down in the time where I had been moving. I told myself to be pessimistic though and counted that as five.

Kerrass jumped on the man that he had knocked over, knocking him back down to the ground. I saw that he must have let go of his sword to draw a dagger and used it to stab the man in the chest, twice before he rolled off, scooping up his sword as he went.

Six men down. The last man that Kerrass had quickly tried to enchant, shook his head but sensibly advanced slowly, sword in a proper guard position. I thought that he called for something and a younger man came over and handed over a shield. A squire presumably.

We had hoped, as we had made our plans, that the junior squires. Those men like the one that we had rescued, we would be able to spare. That they might be open to being rescued.

But needs must. Kerrass stepped forward and decapitated the squire with one smooth stroke.

Seven men down, but Kerrass was visibly getting tired now. Stopping to draw breath. More knights were getting better armoured now. People were calling to the Witcher. I couldn't hear what they were saying but the tone was derogatory and mocking. They were jeering him.

Oh, that was a mistake.

I knew what was coming next though. Now, he was just going to do as much damage as he could before they took him down.

Kerrass very rarely bellows with rage when he fights. I tend to note it down when it happens because it's so rare when he actually does it. He says that it tends to give the game away as to what you're thinking and what you're going to do next.

This time, he bellowed and threw himself into the middle of them, sword spinning in murderous circles. I saw blood blood splattering into the night. I heard men screaming and shouting. I saw one man coming away from the general melee, doing his best to hold his guts in. But it was a foregone conclusion now.

I didn't want to watch any more and I moved off and started to count my heartbeats.

It's a trained response. When you're waiting for something, to start to count. It's also really difficult. I've talked about having to spend time waiting for the next thing to happen before and it's never easy. Some people claim that it's because the anticipation is the worst part of any kind of venture but, now that I've done this a lot more, I'm not so sure that that's the case. Now I find that the worst part of the entire thing is the knowledge of what's going to happen next.

So if anyone ever tells you that the waiting gets easier then I need to tell you now that they are either wrong, or psychopaths.

The more I see, the harder the waiting gets. By some margin. When I first started waiting for the action to start, all that time ago in a small group of trees next to a Nekker nest, I had no idea what was going to happen next. I had seen a child die and I'd seen a man have his head removed by virtue of a very sharp sword. But I hadn't seen the horror that's involved in a stomach wound. Nor had I seen the amount of blood that comes out of a slashed neck, or the phenomenal pressure behind a slashed femoral artery. I had not heard a grown man begging for water and the comfort of a mother's love. By this point though, I had come across all of those things.

The traps are there in the silence as you think of all the things that you might not be getting the chance to do in the near future. I might not get the chance to find Francesca, or marry Ariadne or say goodbye to Emma or Mark. I would never be able to go hunting with an Empress or give my first lecture.

That's where the fear comes from. Not the anticipation when you are wondering what could happen and what it might feel like.

But when you know what might happen and what it will feel like.

Yes, I know what it feels like. Any man that has tried to push a man's intestines back into his gut or has comforted a man in the last moments as they wait to die will tell you that they know how much it hurts. It hurts so much that you beg for the death to come to you faster rather than leaving you in agony, or even worse, leaving you as a cripple.

That's the worst thing. As a society, we don't look after our cripples. We leave them out in the streets to starve and beg for the scraps from our passing by. So many of them.

Three wars. Three wars worth of crippled men and crippled women.

.

I'm sorry. It's one of those things that I get worked up about if I don't catch myself.

I sat in the dark and I waited. Counting off the heartbeats.

I lost count somewhere around the three hundred and fifty mark and had to start again.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Then again at four hundred and forty four.

Then I told myself that if I could make it to two hundred then I would go for it.

Which I did on my first try.

The fear coiled thickly in my belly. I took the time to properly relieve myself, took a drink from the water-skins. Strapped the potion box, nice and securely to my back so that it wouldn't come loose, and made sure that the bag containing Kerrass' crossbow was also immediately to hand. I had all of Kerrass' leftover gear on a bandolier that I carried across my chest. I was comfortable with the bombs but precious little else, but the plan needed these things to be inside the circle.

I took up my spear and fitted the two halves together.

I remember a thought that occurred then as I stood there in the dark, listening to the knights and what was left of the squires running around like the terrified, headless chickens that they were. When all of this was over. When I was done with my travels and following Kerrass around like a shadow. What would I do with my spear? Hang it over some hearth in whatever home that Ariadne and I would choose as our home.

I tried to imagine it for a moment, the two of us, sat there, sharing a bottle of wine and reading a book with this weapon fastened to hooks above the fireplace.

I couldn't see it and the image wavered before my eyes.

Last thing.

I took hold of my medallion in a firm grip.

“I love you. So much.” I told it. “Please don't hate me for this.”

As I had suspected that she would be, she was listening and watching.

“I don't hate you,” she told me. “I just wish I was there with you. I love you too. Please be careful.”

I nodded. I had been a lot more afraid of that than I had thought I might be.

Time to get this done though.

I had a cautious look over the rise to see what was going on. It looked as though, if Kerrass was alive, he had been taken indoors. In all truth, I wasn't that worried about his survival. He was right, these fuckers would want to take him alive and torture him for a few days before letting him die. He was also right that they would just kill me unless they thought that I might have some information that they might want.

To tell the truth though, I was also a little surprised that Ariadne had not simply ignored my warnings and come after us anyway, despite the problems with that solution.

But still.

Someone had gone round and lit a whole bunch more fires, which might be a problem. I would just have to trust my disguise in that case. There were also a lot of people walking around and trying to look busy.

They weren't really succeeding though, there was a certain amount of “Make-work” that was happening. People were picking things up and moving them some-place. Then they were picked up again and moved somewhere else. That kind of thing.

I spent a while watching them and plotting what I was going to do. There were guards on the gate again and judging from the way that they were stood, all but vibrating at their posts with suppressed emotion and, I hoped, adrenaline reaction, I decided that approaching the enclosure from that direction was possibly not the greatest plan.

The guards looked young as well which I though might make them jumpy. Which was fine, but I didn't want them to jump towards putting a sword through me.

I backed away from the hill and moved round, keeping low. The riskiest bit was that I had to cross a small road that went past the enclosure. It was almost certain that they would keep their eyes on it. It was nerve-wracking too. I knew that their vision would be reduced by the nearby firelight but at the same time, I could see them clearly.

I could almost hear Kerrass' voice. “Patience,” he told me. “Watch and wait for your moment.”

The sentry that was closest to me was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Nerves, suppressed desire to do something, fear, anxiety and Flame knows what else.

I watched him.

Here's a thing to note down. Good sentries and guard units don't follow a pattern. Wall patrols should be varied and have different deployments every time. Guard changes should happen at different times. Officers should check the sentries to make sure that they're still awake and free of outside influence, that influence sometimes being an arrow in the face, but they should do so at different times every night.

It's a good thing for a sentry to check about himself. It's all well and good to look out from the walls of a castle but if the castle behind you is burning then you're not really doing your job.

This sentry had a pattern.

I don't know how long I watched but I noticed that he would look up the road, then down the road, then up the road then down the road, then he would look at his mate before checking behind him before beginning the pattern again.

It was like he had been told what he needed to do but not how he was supposed to do it.

I watched him for long enough to make sure that it was definitely a pattern and that I wasn't imagining it before quickly dashing over the road when he turned to look at his mate.

“Careful,” I told myself.

His mate, the other sentry, was just checking his quadrant and from that I guessed that he was the more experienced of the two.

I made it over the road and rolled, gently, into the ditch. The ditch itself wasn't wet, but it was muddy from the rains. I guessed that the land was too....absorbent to provide a proper moat. Confident that I was out of sight of the guards now, I climbed up the small slope, careful to keep the potion case out of the water.

I had seen what happened when some of those things got wet.

I got up to the line of logs and found the gap where some of them were beginning to sag away from their upright positions. I tugged on one, gently at first as an experiment. It would kind of defeat the entire objective if, in climbing through, the entire thing came down. But no, I was safe. Just the one log moved and

I pulled it a little more before pushing the one next to it in an effort to widen the gap.

I pushed the spear through first before climbing through myself.

Then I waited, counting off heartbeats and listening to see if anyone was shouting alarm.

I had chosen this gap because it put me behind the storehouse, meaning that I was obscured from view and it was closest to my first objective.

Confident that I was safe now, I turned and pulled through the rest of the Witcher's equipment and secured it back around my person.

Ok, so.....inside the compound now. Objective one complete.

It was a little too much to hope that there would be a back door into the store room to a part of the enclosure that you could only access by scaling the palisade. But I examined the back of the small building anyway.

It was, again, a simple wooden structure. The walls hadn't been planted that deep. I considered digging a hole to see if I could get in through the floor but that ran the risk of both, there being floor boards, but also the risk that, the undermining of the foundations would mean that the entire thing would collapse. With me under it.

I also discounted making a hole in the back of the building as it would make too much noise. Then the thought occurred that there might be someone in the storehouse who would be alerted by either of these methods.

Ideally, I wanted to hold off from outright murder just yet. Moral concerns aside, murder tends to leave bodies and blood around the place which gets spotted a lot easier than anything else. It's hard to pretend that bodies just turn up randomly whereas lamp oil and fires can be started by mistake.

So that left me round the sides, or up over the roof.

I could probably climb up without too much trouble. Kerrass' old observation of the fact that people very rarely look up was...reassuring but I was concerned that that might leave me with nowhere to go. I wouldn't be able to set fire to things or cause mischief from up there.

So that was going to be the last resort.

Ok, so, left or right?

Well, Right would take me back towards the gate. They think that that's where the risk and danger comes from so that's where they're going to be protecting themselves from.

SO I went left.

In the end though, there was no way I was going to be able to squeeze through that gap as the building itself was too tight up against the palisade.

I took a deep breath and decided on a short risk. I pushed my bags and spear through the gap. Took another moment to listen to see if anyone had heard me before, as quietly as I could, scrambling up the corner of the building and rolling over the roof and coming back to the ground.

Luckily, that meant that I was behind some stables.

I crouched down as I was putting my packs back around myself before edging round. I was still hidden in shadow but I needed to have a good look round to see what was happening. Lot's of people milling around. A couple of people were whipping the prisoners. But even then, I could see the door into the church.

Interestingly, it wasn't guarded.

I had a little chuckle as I thought about Captain Froggart back at home. He would have been so angry at that. That a choke point wasn't guarded. You do that to protect against villains like me that have managed to sneak past your outer perimeter.

But you know what the hardest bit was. The hardest part of the whole escapade, for me at least and I want you to bear this in mind when you read about what happened afterwards. That moment, when I straightened up and just walked around the corner.

That was the hardest part of the entire thing. Again, Kerrass had instructed me carefully and I could hear his voice as I moved.

“Just act as though you belong there. Just move confidently and as though you have something to do and people will let you get on with it. It's only when you're doing dangerous things, or things that you shouldn't be doing that people start to notice you.”

“So, when I'm splashing lamp oil around the place?”

“And setting fires.” He had answered.

But even then, it still took me more than a small amount of courage to straighten up and just walk round the corner.

And more than a little bit more self-control to keep myself moving smoothly and evenly, to keep myself walking at a normal pace.

Also, how do you hold a spear casually? No really, I wanna know. In the middle? Over your shoulder? The same way that a Pikeman carries it in the army?

I decided not to go with that last one.

Also, it suddenly seemed as though the compound was so much larger than it had seemed from the outside.

But I walked as easily as I could and with much purpose as I could, towards the front door of the storehouse.

Much to my astonishment, no-one called out to me. No-one shouted my name, not even a “hey, you.”

I propped the spear next to the entrance to the door and tried it.

It was locked. Of course it was locked. I took a moment to look around the edges and did my best to examine the door.

We didn't have a plan for what to do if I couldn't get to the lamp oil.

It didn't look very strong. I could probably force it open. But that would make noise and draw attention to myself. Which I didn't want.

I checked and found a latch, which was a mixed blessing. On the one hand it meant that I could open the door with a knife. On the other hand that meant that there was someone indoors who had put the latch on.

Oh well. It needs to be done though.

I drew my knife and, as quietly as I could, I lifted the latch off and pushed the bolt aside.

It must have worked as I opened the door and walked in.

Inside, I found a room full of boxes and sacks. I thought I could see grain, a few racks of weapons, there was a shelf of armour grease and weapon oil. Several stacks of blankets. I moved through and found the person who was inside.

He was a young man, knelt on the floor praying. He must have sensed some kind of movement behind him as he turned round, rising to his feet and drawing his sword.

You know, to be honest?

Recently, in these little essays, I've talked about murder and what the difference is between murder and killing someone. I am pleased to say that I still know, if not the names, then at least the identities of all the people that I have killed. My number has climbed into the double digits now. It stayed at nine for a long time but it's now started to grow again.

I don't know how that makes me feel. Kerrass has told me not to worry about it but I wonder. I still wonder.

In this case, he was praying and something in me doubts that I could have slit his throat from behind while he knelt at prayer.

Asleep?

Maybe.

On guard, not looking in my direction?

Probably but.... praying?

I think I would struggle with that.

As I say, he drew his sword. Which was where he discovered that the place was too crowded for the proper use of his sword.

He realised it and went for the dagger at his back but I was already on him. My left hand coming up to cover his mouth to stop him from crying for help as I pushed him to the floor. I still had my dagger in my hand. It's not a great weapon for stabbing and he was wearing a chainmail shirt anyway. I couldn't get at his throat or at his face for any of the other, quicker shots.

Instead, I remembered some anatomy and stabbed into, before slashing up his inner thigh.

I only narrowly avoided the arterial spray.

I was still stopping him from screaming and was leaning on his chest to prevent him from drawing the breath that he would have needed for a good scream so I saw the fear in his eyes.

Not a murder. At least I don't think so. He needed to die, but he would have killed me if he had had the chance.

Eight men down.

I quickly dragged him round the corner of some boxes and stacked some blankets on top of him. His funeral pyre would be big enough anyway. I found the bags of Lantern oil at the back of the shed.

“Careful,” I told myself again.

I carried two bags to the entrance before taking the third and doing my best to liberally spray the place with oil, especially around the boxes and those things that I thought would be more flammable, before taking one of the arm loads of torches and carried them, along with the rest of the oil outside. I spent some time ferrying my burdens over to the stables, doing my best to look like any of the other people that were doing their chores around the place.

The stables were much smaller. Also, I have a thing about preferring not to hurt animals if I can possibly help it which changed my strategy a little.

I checked inside to see if there were any grooms that were awake, and or working. I would need to have a good look around the place before I started spreading the oil. From the sounds of things, activities were beginning to calm down outside now which I considered a mixed blessing.

Seeing no immediate activity, I hid the oil, torches and the Witcher's equipment under some hay near the entrance. Propped my spear up along side a rack with some hay-forks on them. Again, Kerrass' words “Hide things in plain sight, or with other things of similar make-up. People notice the strange or the out of place but if it looks as though it belongs, then they won't notice.”

Then I took the time to search the place to see if there was anyone asleep in stable. It wasn't large but a large pile of hay can look like an attractive, warm and comfortable place to catch up on some sleep. There are also some Lords who like to have their grooms and stable-men to sleep next to their horses so that they can be ready to go at a moments notice. Another kind of Horsemaster might sleep near the horses if one is sick and he or she wants to make sure that they are ok during the night. Foaling as well. So I thought it best to make sure.

Some people might think that I was being overcautious. But I was intending to open all the stalls and splash oil around the place. The horses were going to be unhappy about that and would, undoubtedly, make some noise.

But no, there was no-one. Not in the hayloft, not in the stalls and not in the rest of the stable.

I couldn't decide whether I was pleased about this or not. It meant that I could work unopposed and quickly as any noise that came from the stables would be confused with the natural noise that the horses made. But on the other hand, that meant that the grooms were elsewhere and enemies for the future.

But the thing that really got my goat was the fact that I kind of saw this as a bit neglectful. My father's Horse-master would be horrified.

“Careful,” I told myself.

First I went through all of the stalls and brought out the horses. There weren't as many as I was expecting.

We had been told that there were a good forty five fighting men in the compound and I was expecting at least a horse each for all of the knights as well as horses for many of the squires. But no, there were about twenty five horses, all told.

As I think I've said before, I don't know much about horses but I sometimes realise that I know more than I thought I did. I suppose I can thank father for that. You can't live in a hunter's castle and not learn about horses..

The stable was far too small for even that number of horses.

“Careful.” I told myself again

I went through and took them to one end of the barn where the main doors were. When I came back. I intended to set the fire behind me, open the doors and herd the horses out with me.

I really would prefer not to harm the horses if I could possibly get away with it.

After I had got the Horses situated as best I could, I set about dousing the place with oil. I could work quickly here, without needing to be too stealthy so I didn't bother holding back before returning to where my equipment was stored.

All told, I thought that I had about one and a half skins of oil left. I wanted to save one skin of oil for the main church building. A good chunk of that was stone and there was no way that I could expect all of that to burn easily. So I would have to scrimp on the dormitory.

I reconciled myself with the fact that the majority of people that we knew that slept in the dormitory were the younger squires as well as those servants that the rest of the knights couldn't do without. Both of those types of people were the ones that had been beaten and abused by the knights as a whole and so, if there was anyone that I would prefer not to kill then it was the people in this building. But that didn't stop me from berating myself for being wasteful with the rest of the oil.

But still.

“Careful.” I heard myself say, “Not too fast, not to slow.” Again, I took out my equipment from the pile of hay that I had carefully not covered in oil.

“Careful.” I said again before wondering if I had been saying that for a while.

I stepped back out into the night sky and tried to judge what time it was.

Earlier than I thought, but later than was ideal.

I walked over to the dormitory and noticed that the rain had eased off while I was inside the stable. Too caught up in my own bullshit to notice

There was absolutely no way that I could go inside this building and start splashing the oil around without sounding the alarm. No way at all.

I had another look and found that I could squeeze round the back of the building and started splashing the walls with the oil. For a while, I considered trying to put some into the thatch on the roof as well but I didn't know what kind of state of repair the roof was in and there was a risk that some oil would get through and splash onto someone giving the game away. I did pull some of the eaves of the thatched roof out so that, in theory, the flames that would be licking up the side of the building would catch against them and the roof could catch fire.

The side of the building furthest away from the stables was also obscured to general sight and there was some more hay nearby so I splashed some oil there as well, pushing the hay up against the wall of the building.

Ok. So....what's next?

I took a minute to think about my handiwork now and just to reassess what order I wanted to do things.

The spear caused a problem. On the one hand I wanted to keep it with me but I recognised that for the fear that it was. I wanted it as a security blanket. I wanted it with me in case I needed to fight.

But.

If I did carry it with me then that meant that I would be seen as a threat. Knights are special creatures at heart and they assume that if you aren't carrying a weapon then you aren't a threat. They only register other knights on the battlefield but a man with a spear? Especially as odd a spear as I used?

The other thing was that the next part of the plan required speed. I had already decided that I would need to ditch the potion box and crossbow and I had chosen my spot next to the entrance of the spear. There was just too much weight there and it would slow me down. The spear fell into a similar category. It was large, heavy and unwieldy. I would need both hands and be able to move through confined spaces.

The spear would have to stay.

The church entrance, or rather, the entrance to the larger complex was stone. It made a short corridor, the entrance of which was a wooden door that looked as though it was kept permanently open. There were certainly plenty of people going in and coming out. I walked past the entrance in an effort to see if there were any guards inside but I couldn't see any.

That was just a risk I was going to have to take.

I dumped my stuff next to the entrance. There were some other crates there as well before taking out the handful of torches.

It says something about the security of the place that it wasn't until I was walking over to put the torches down that I got challenged by someone.

“Oi.” Someone shouted. “Who are you?”

I did my best to assume that they were talking to someone else.

“You. Stop.”

I felt a mailed hand drop onto my shoulder and spin round. I blinked into the face of the man that had grabbed me.

“What's your name?” He demanded. I couldn't tell whether he was a knight or one of the more experienced fighting men. I guessed at the latter due to a large cut across the top of one of his eyes that was seeping blood.

“Uh, Samuel sir.”

Sorry Sam.

“Samuel is it? Never heard of you.”

“I'm new sir, from the village?”

“And what are you doing Samuel?”

“I'm, uh, restocking the torches sir.” I gestured to the bundle on my shoulder. “In case we need more light sir.”

“Hmmm,” he grunted. He was a little wide eyed and I guessed that he was still dealing with all of the adrenaline from the fight with Kerrass. Probably just looking for an excuse.

He looked me up and down.

“That's a nice looking knife.” He said, drawing it from where I kept it across my belly. “Very nice.”

He leered at me, as though daring me to take offence. “Where'd you get it?”

I struggled to keep my fear and anger down. I had been depending on that knife now that I had left my spear behind. Truth hurts though, if I had needed to depend on the knife then I was already done for.

“My father gave it to me.” I told him. “It was his in the last war.”

“Hurm,” he grunted again. “It is a nice knife.” He examined the blade before checking around him. “Can I have it?”

It wasn't really a question. If I said no then I suspected that my throat would be slit in short order and the death blamed on Kerrass.

“Errr. Yes sir. Yes, of course.” I did my best to stammer a little as though terrified.

“Good.” He snatched the sheath out of my belt.

He seemed almost dissappointed to be deprived of an opportunity to commit murder.

Ah bless. I did my best to remember his face as he walked off. I wanted that knife back. It was indeed a good knife.

I still had my boot dagger as well as one in the small of my back which was little more than an eating knife but it would do at a pinch.

Truth was though, that if I needed to fall back on either of those then it was already all over.

I walked off to the fire-bowl closest to the stables as that was the middle building of the three that I intended to burn. I carefully stacked the torches, keeping one back and lit it before doing my best to walk calmly towards the store-house..

I didn't think about it at the time but this was probably the most dangerous bit of them all. There was no need for light in the enclosure. There was plenty of fire around already and therefore there was no need for someone, least of all the scrappy little peasant that I was pretending to be, to be carrying around a lit brand.

But no-one called out.

I walked to the store house, opened the door and walked in. The smell of lamp oil was almost overpowering. I tossed the brand over to where one of the blankest had been scrunched loosely and waited to make sure that the fire definitely caught.

I had visions of throwing the torch and walking off for it to just gutter and die before the fire caught properly.

I needn't have worried. As it was, I nearly lost my eyebrows along with some of my hair.

I did my best to close the door calmly and walk back to the bowl to take up another torch and lit this one too.

Into the stable which was a lot closer. The horses noticed the fire though and started to get upset, I threw the fire into one of the hay piles that I had made sure was well doused with oil for exactly this purpose before running over and opening the larger gate so that the horses could escape.

I was about half way through fighting my way through all of the horse flesh when someone noticed the smoke and the flames' licking from the storehouse wall and through the eaves of the roof.

“Hey, is that smoke?” someone called.

“I don't know,” another voice called. The stable fire was well caught now so I kind of shrugged to myself as I pushed the main gate open. “Fire.” I yelled. “Fire.” The more intelligent horses got the idea and helped me to push the door open. The stupider ones just stood about and needed to be pulled bodily from the building before they started to panic as well and follow their herd mates.

By this point, other people had seen the danger and had come to help me get the horses out of the stable. Someone clapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was a good man. Someone else said “Brave of you,” the sentiment was spoiled by the next man who told me to man up and go and help with the other fires.

As I led the horses out and went to the fire-bowl to collect the next torch, I saw my greatest piece of mischief in action. At the time I had no plans for it. I certainly had not intended it.

Someone had opened the door to the store-house to see what was going on to find the raging inferno, presumably before staggering back from the heat.

Someone else had, rather optimistically, got themselves a bucket of water and threw it through the door.

Have you ever seen a load of water thrown onto an oil fire.

I have.

The results were impressive and almost exactly the opposite of what the water-thrower had intended. I don't think he survived the explosion though. Poor man.

I tried not to giggle as I caught up a third torch. I took up the call of fire and ran round the side of the dormitory. I didn't want to trap myself in so I forced my way behind it to light those fires first, setting light to the oil as I went along before throwing my last torch into the remaining hay next to the dormitory and taking a moment to step back and admire my handiwork.

Not bad, even if I do say so myself.

This bit was going to be dangerous. Now I needed to get inside the church buildings. But everyone that was inside those self-same buildings, wanted to get out and if they saw me, armed, then they would want to know why I wasn't running towards the fire.

And I didn't have my dagger any more for close work.

I moved over and stayed next to the entrance as people were rushing out. There were far too many people in the compound now for me to try and take them on. I needed to do damage now. I needed to make them hurt and if I just took the one nearest to me followed by the one nearest to him and on and on, I would be lucky if I got through three soldiers or knights before I would be overwhelmed.

That wasn't the point about what was happening here. I needed to make them hurt.

Everything depended on it, which meant that I had to go inside the buildings. Funnel their numbers, taking them on on my own terms.

I crouched next to the entrance of the buildings where I had left the rest of Kerrass' goods and did my best to listen to what was going on, while strapping the goods around my body.

A group of people came running out. There was shouting and orders were given. Then there was a pause before another group of soldiers or knights came running out, swords drawn, shortly before they realised how stupid it was to have swords drawn in this situation.

Bucket chains were forming now. Say whatever you like but at the end of the day, they were still getting organised. But I had done my job well and the buildings were now well and truly up in flames.

Another pair of knights, followed by a small number of single men. Then another pause.

I counted. I had set myself the target of a hundred heartbeats before I would make a move.

I was going to have to remove the bottom part of my spear to go into the abbey itself. I hated to do it but it was necessary and I knew it. A spear was no good in the confined corridors, even the blade and pole was probably a bit too long for proper use.

Another pair of men ran out.

Fuck it.

I ducked round the entrance and moved inside.

There was no help for it here. My earlier pretence of moving like I belonged, calm and slow, was not going to work now. I was armed with something that wasn't standard issue, carrying boxes that people wouldn't recognise and there was no way that I wasn't going to be recognised for the intruder that I was.

The first room was a guard room. Nothing fancy. There was a table with a few cups on it, some leftover food and a rack of weapons.

Most importantly to someone like me, there was nothing there that was particularly flammable.

I moved on. The next few rooms were sleeping rooms. They looked....boring, standardised as though people used whichever room was closest and unoccupied. Each room had a bed and a bucket. The scent of unwashed human was....oppressive.

The main church area was still ahead of me.

If they followed any kind of standard human psychology then Kerrass would be beneath me somewhere. In a cell. So I was looking for a way down as well.

I did consider trying to grab someone for some information, to try and get the layout of the buildings. The Kid that we had taken had been unforthcoming on that regard. His memories of the place were unreliable, still so tied up in his indoctrination and the other people that we had interrogated could not give us anything useful.

I had to duck into one of the side rooms when a group of armed men came running past. They were calling to each other that the compound was still under attack, an unknown number of attackers. That they didn't know where they were coming from or who they were.

I allowed myself a little grin of triumph.

Still, realistically, nothing to burn. There was also the other concern which was that if I started setting fires at the entrance to the building then my escape route would be cut off.

Our escape route would be cut off, I should say.

I came to a crossroads. The corridors went left and right. I still didn't have time to stop and think, or to survey anything. I had already had a couple of lucky escapes while people went this way and that. I was listening, trying to pick out something useful. I knew that the main church building was to my left. If this building followed any kind of standard building practices then that meant that there would be more rooms to the right. That corridor would then come round to form a square. That was if the entire place hadn't been re purposed during the occupation by the knights though.

I wasn't interested in normal cells. I wanted the important areas. I wanted the guest rooms and the offices. I wanted the hospitals and the store-rooms.

I wanted the priest. Bishop Sansum.

I wanted to look him in the eye and I wanted him to know who it was that killed him and why.

I was carrying too much bulk though. I needed to explore.

I picked one of the cells at random. Not the ones closest to the crossroads but close enough for my purposes. I hid Kerrass' crossbow and potion box and the other bombs under the bed. Along with the last of the oil. I couldn't afford to just start spreading the oil around indiscriminately. I needed to find the place where it would do the most damage.

The kid had told us about Bishop Sansum's room of books and I thought that that might be a good start. But there was still something in me that suggested that the burning of holy books was a bad idea. I wanted to check them first and leave myself open to other ideas.

I also needed to start killing people. It was an unpleasant truth but there it was. Damaging the place wasn't just about damaging the buildings or the possessions of the knights. It was also about damaging the knights themselves. I was being too dainty.

I needed to get my hands dirty.

But I still had objectives.

I changed my mind and went right. Down the line of the cells.

An interesting piece of trivia for you. Most monk cells have hatches in the doors. This is so that the priors and under-priors can keep an eye on the lay brothers. To make sure that they're not getting drunk or partaking of some of the more recreational herbs and medicines that the average monastary grows in it's gardens. In other words, they needed to make sure that the other monks weren't having fun.

As I walked down the row though, it turned out that the majority of the hatches had been covered or nailed shut by the new occupants.

With good reason too, judging by the fact that one of the hatches that were still open allowed me to see one “knight” sexually abusing a young squire.

There was no way for me to get in there and kill just the knight though and after talking to the other young man, I wasn't sure how the squire would react. He could thank me, but he was just as likely, if not more likely to sound the alarm.

I couldn't risk it and did my best to ensure that I would remember the knight's face so that I could make sure that he died.

I moved on.

I was beginning to get nervous though. I was running out of time. Sooner or later the fires were going to go out.

I killed another man. I don't know what had called him from his bed but he was just in the process of coming out of the door, pulling his chainmail over his head and over the woollen gambeson that he was wearing. I was lucky, he didn't even get the chance to pull his sword out of his scabbard as I ran him through, pushing him back into his cell where I left him.

I moved on.

I came to an area where the doors were more evenly spread out. I tried the first one but it was locked. The second one turned me into a large guest room. Rugs on the floor, wide, four poster bed and tapestries on the wall.

There was a rack. And a series of hooks that contained various whips and chains. There were blood smears on some of the straps.

I started to find my anger again. I had needed that.

The next room was....well there's no other word for it. It was a treasure room. Boxes of treasure, coin, jewels and other such things. There were also other things that we might not think of as treasure but that were clearly precious to someone. Children's toys. Glass baubles. A stack of skins and several stuffed toys.

There was a rocking horse.

Even if I had had the rest of the oil on me, I'm not sure that I could have brought myself to burn it.

Then there was another guest room.

Then another.

The fourth had a girl in it. I don't know how old she was but she wasn't old. Filthy blonde hair and a grubby face where startling green eyes peered out at me, wide with fear. She was wrapped, or had wrapped herself in a filthy blanket in an effort to cover her modesty. It was a vain attempt as it didn't come close to covering her. She yelped as I opened the door, quickly throwing the blanket from her bod and moving towards the bed, before realising that she didn't know who I was.

She opened her mouth to do something. I don't know what, Scream? Yell?

I held my hand up and put my finger across my lips and just prayed that she would understand.

I could see her rib-cage under her skin.

Thank the holy fire. She nodded and pulled the blanket around her.

I backed out of the room, not wanting to push my luck.

The next room was a kitchen. There were several people working in it. Hollow eyed fatigue looked back at me from sunken, shadowed eyes. They barely noticed me.

I had gone too far and retraced my steps, coming to one of the side corridors and going down it. Coming round the other side of the square, the gardens, or what used to be the gardens on one side. More cells on the other.

I was getting really worried about time now.

They were going to find that there was no-one attacking them before too much longer leaving them to the inevitable conclusion that the person doing this had either fled, or moved inside the complex.

I came to a T-junction and chose right.

The first door I opened was a hospital of some kind. There were beds and things along with the more..torturous versions of the more modern versions of medical implements that I had seen in Oxenfurt. There was a reassuringly large number of men in the beds, nursing recent wounds. I considered going inside and moving a number of the injured men onto the next stage in their journey. But injured men weren't the problem. They weren't the people that I needed to be afraid of.

I moved to the next one.

I was screaming at myself now, that I needed to calm down. That I needed to take my time but somehow, I just wasn't listening to myself any more.

I found what I was looking for. A room full of books.

I took the time to take a couple of calming breaths. I couldn't rush this. I needed to do it right.

I checked so that I knew the route to get back here and entered slowly. I had my shortened spear out and ready. It was a larger room though, big enough for some proper spear techniques so I attached the lower part of my spear into it's proper position. I instantly felt so much better.

Our information was that when he wasn't in the church building then Sansum could be found here asleep. I couldn't see him immediately though. I carried my spear in my left hand, holding it upright in case the “Bishop” jumped out and struck at me. I searched the room slowly and as methodically as my dropping patience would allow.

As I had privately suspected though, the books on the shelves were worthless. Most were hollow, leather and wooden, bindings that didn't even have any paper in them. If my luck held and I could get in here, do the deed and kill Bishop Sansum then there was absolutely no guilt at all in setting this room on fire.

Shelves and areas were curtained off, making alcoves that couldn't be seen beyond and I guessed that if there was a sleeping area then it would be found behind one of those areas.. More evidence that Sansum cared even less about the written word was easily found as an open, roaring fireplace was there, not guarded against stray sparks. A comfortable chair was set out against it.

I nearly giggled with it.

As I say though, it was all a sham. Shelves that looked as though they were full of books were covered in books were actually covered in a kind of painted cardboard, made to look as though they were books. The effect was convincing from a distance but as you got closer there was no weight or depth to it. It would easily fool people though if the room was kept dark and full of the flickering shadows of a fire.

I moved round a shelf and cautiously pulled a curtain aside.

I found more treasure there. Not the kind that you would be able to sell though, nor the kind that glitters. I found paintings, tapestries and finally, finally I found some books. I selected one at random and opened it up to find that it was a recipe book.

For cake.

I carefully placed it back on the pile, still making sure that it wouldn't make any noise.

The next alcove was made up of similar kinds of stuff. The next was full of ornate looking armour. Ancient and ornamental by today's standards rather than actually useful. They might hold interest for collectors and antique dealers but for the average soldier, metalwork and armour crafting was immeasurably superior to where it had been in the past.

The next alcove had what I was looking for. It was bigger than the others for a start. A small bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, just about filled it.

There was a figure on the bed, wrapped in a blanket, although I couldn't see his face. I had heard about this kind of thing before though and waited for a moment, almost holding my own breath while I watched for the figure on the bed to start breathing.

I almost sobbed in relief when I saw that the figure was indeed breathing.

A part of me just wanted to do the deed now. To get it over with. To have the man killed but there was also another thought. What if this wasn't Sansum? What if it was some kind of double? I would have to be sure. I propped my spear against the wall, keeping the curtain back with it's weight so that I wouldn't tangle myself up in it if I had to flee.

I drew my boot dagger. It was longer and more made for stabbing than the shorter belt knife. I did have to remind myself to never hold a stabbing blade in an under-fist grip though.

I edged forward, as slowly and carefully as I could manage, until I was up around what should be the neck and face region. I reached out with my left hand and started to pull the blanket up until the figure started to move.

No more time for stealth. I pulled the blanket back.

To stare into the eyes of a young knight, armed with a crossbow that was pointing at me.

“Well done.” Came a voice from behind me and I heard the sound of armour clanking and moving along with weapons being drawn. “You got further than we would have expected.”

I didn't take my eyes from the knight that was slowly straightening from the bed. His face was beginning to bloom into a smile of triumph.

“You still fell for the oldest trick in the book though.” The voice said companionably. “The old, decoy in the bed, trick.”

“I did consider that.” I said, as calmly as I could, risking a glance sideways to see who I was talking to. Bishop Sansum, it seems, couldn't resist the opportunity of a good gloating session. There were also a number of other armed men in the room although I couldn't count them easily. Sansum licked his lips, his skin looked dry and cracked.

I could hear Kerrass' voice again. “Immediate threats. Concentrate on the immediate threats. Live in the moment. One target at a time.” I turned back to the knight with the crossbow.

“Is the Witcher still alive?” I asked aloud

“Why worry about that deviant freak?” Sansum asked conversationally before giving out an odd, dog-like bark of laughter. “When it's yourself that you should be concerned about?”

“Indulge me. Call it a last request if you prefer.”

“A last request?” Sansum laughed again and I wondered if I could hear the madness in the back of the man's laughter. “Heh, very well. The Witcher lives. He is too valuable a heretic to be killed out of hand. He will be tried publicly for the crimes of being a mutant and a deviant before we draw, quarter and burn him as should happen with all deviant magical creatures.”

“So what happens with me?”

“Well, we can't be quite so public with you.”

I felt myself grin then and allowed myself a small burst of laughter. Kerrass had been right and I let that triumph be heard in my voice.

“But we can't kill you just yet you see? We need to know what else is out there? That whore -bitch of a vampire for instance. I know who you are Frederick von Coulthard.”

I did let myself laugh then. “Actually,” I said, still not taking my eyes off the knight in front of me. “It's Doctor Frederick von Coulthard now.”

He laughed as well. “I apologise.”

“Also,” I told him. “I want you to know that I'm going to kill you for that.”

“For what?”

“For calling her that. I'm going to kill you for referring to Ariadne as a “Whore-bitch,” She is neither a whore, nor a female dog, but for that insult I am going to close my hands round your neck and squeeze until the life leaves your eyes.”

“Big talk from a man about to be tortured.”

“Big talk for a man about to die.”

He laughed again.

“Take him alive.” He told the other soldiers. The movement in the corner of my eyes told me that he left. I was still staring at the knight in front of me. He gestured with the crossbow that I should move out into the main room.

“You would have been better off with a knife.” I told him.

He frowned at me in confusion.

Here's another little learning point for you. There is a brief delay between pulling the trigger on a crossbow and the bolt actually leaving the bow. This is because of the changes in mechanism and as a result, ideally, you want to have fired your bolt before someone comes within arms reach of you.

I knocked the crossbow aside with my left hand, listened to the thunking sound of the bolt leaving the bow and drove my dagger into the smug little fucker's neck. I remembered to twist and brought the knife back out before pushing myself away.

I made it to my spear and managed to bring it to bear before the first club was swung at my face.

There were quite a lot of them though and there wasn't quite enough room to use the spear properly so instead I used it like a quarterstaff.

I ducked under that first blow and drove the butt of the spear into the man's gut. He, rather gratifyingly, doubled over wheezing but I didn't have time to focus after that. Instead I pushed the spear head forwards and into the groin of another attacker. I thought I saw him fall back but I didn't have time to check.

When fighting I normally prefer to fall backwards from my enemies to give myself room to think and plan. But there was simply no room for that. Instead, I charged them.

The most stupid of things to do but I eanted to make these people hurt.

I did my best to move. I did my best to eave and I know that more than one man staggered backwards from my whirling spear with broken bones and horrible gashes.

Like Kerrass, this wasn't about calm and precise kills now. This was about doing as much damage as I could. It wasn't going to last though. It was an enclosed space and I am no Kerrass. A club blow landed on my left arm numbing it meaning that I lost the strength for the proper use of the spear. Another blow on the back of my knee caused my legs to buckle and a second blow to my back sent me sprawling. I lost my spear then but

I still had my knife which would, arguably have been a better tool for the close quarters work.

But the men were in chain-main and I don't think I did that much damage with it although a couple of men did call out in protest.

The blows started to blur together so that I could no longer distinguish the one from another.

“Turn him over,” someone ordered. I know that it wasn't Sansum. This was a rougher voice.

I had enough time to see a boot descending towards my face.

Then I knew nothing more.

All according to plan.