(Warning: scenes of torture)

I don't dream that often any more.

Which is odd because I used to dream all the time.

When I say “dream” by the way, you should substitute the word “nightmare”.

Especially at the start of my travels and a significant chunk of that first year until shortly after my father's death. I would have nightmares about all the things that I had seen, or had happened. But gradually, they just seemed to peter off. As though the dreaming parts of my brain had been burnt out by the terror and the regret that most of my dreams were about.

Most of my dreams are dreams about memories. Those troubled thoughts about the fights and the battles that I have taken part in. Or the hopeless moments when it was only by the skin of our teeth that we managed to survive. I dream about what would have happened if I had not managed to parry that attacker's sword, or what would have happened if I hadn't managed to roll under the attacking creatures lunge. I dream about what would have happened if Maleficent the dragon had just decided to eat me rather than talk to me. I used to have many dreams, terrifying dreams, about what would have happened if Ariadne had decided to start a new reign of terror in Angraal and what would have happened to Kerrass and I if she had decided to act on that impulse.

I don't have those particular dreams any more in case you're wondering. On those rare occasions when I do dream about Ariadne, I dream about something else instead.

When I do dream, I dream extremely vividly, so vividly that when I wake up, it often takes me a moment or two to realise that I'm awake and no-longer need to be terrified. That horrible moment where you find that you have climbed out of bed, the cold of the floor seeping into your feet and you have to remember where you are and what is happening. That split second where you wonder if this is the dream.

I recently had cause to talk to Dr Shani about this. She was at the castle visiting with Sir Rickard and we were talking about sleep and it's importance in the healing of someone. I told her about my dreams and she asked what I did when I wake up from those kinds of dreams.

I told her that I often take the time to have a drink and to relieve myself.

“But doesn't that wake you up even further?” She asked.

“Well, yes.”

“But that would mean that it will take you longer to get back to sleep meaning that you would get less rest.”

This is true, but the entire point is to wake myself up, to shock my mind out of whatever thought processes had led me to having a nightmare in the first place. When I do eventually go back to sleep, I don't want to return to wherever the dream left off. To wherever the false memory restarts with the dragons teeth impaling me through the gut, and the first rough caress of it's tongue and the burning of it's saliva.

I want to dream about something else or, more preferably, have no dreams at all, instead leaving me with a quiet and dreamless, infinitely more restful sleep.

Why do I bring this up?

Because when I was knocked unconscious by that knight of the Flaming sword in their small enclosure, I dreamt.

It was an interesting dream and not one that I could remember ever having before. I dreamt about Father Jerome all that time ago.

For the newer readers, this will have been shortly after the adventure with the beast of Amber's crossing and I was struggling to recover from my injuries. Kerrass had left me with a priest named Father Jerome for some spiritual guidance and we would often spend our days getting his little shrine and hospital ready for the winter or sat by the side of the road, watching the world go by and talking.

The subjects of these conversations would shock a lot of people. Before I had been a party to them, they would have shocked me.

You see, the thing that he was telling me was both how to torture someone but also, how to withstand torture.

Father Jerome had once been a Questioner of the Church of Eternal Flame in Novigrad. He had also been really really good at his job but eventually, as happens with many of these people, he had a nervous breakdown of sorts and fled. He now tended a small shrine and did his best to see to the spiritual and bodily needs of the local populace.

I would like to say that it was a horrible topic of things to talk about and I don't know why he chose to tell me about it. I was recovering from being tortured by an otherworldly, demonic entity that had access to my body and soul to use as it's plaything for what had felt like aeons. In our world, the time that passed would only have been a matter of minutes, certainly no more than an hour but the soul's perception of time is not so regimented as our bodies perception of time and it had tortured me to the edge of my sanity and beyond.

I suppose that it could be argued that Jerome was giving me the knowledge of how it all worked so that I would lose my fear of it but I never asked him why he was giving me this particular insight into the mind of a torturer.

As I say, I would like to say that it was an awful topic of conversation but in truth I found the subject fascinating. Not the talk about the implements or the things that you do, or have done to yourself, but the psychology behind the entire process, the interrogation and the questioning.

That I found fascinating.

It was a memory dream. I remembered that time and place so clearly, details that I had forgotten about or not thought about in ages came and went across my vision and brain. The smell of the place, the wood-smoke and the heady smells of the herb-gardens that Jerome kept. I remembered the weakness that I still felt and the incredible sense of fatigue that still racked my body at the time as well as the listlessness and the fog that would drift through my brain at a moment's notice.

At the time I had struggled to concentrate on what Jerome was telling me. But now I could hear it clearly, so clearly that if I just reached out. Just...held my hand out and reached for it.

But my head felt heavy and I could feel it rolling around on my neck.

“He's waking up,” someone said. I had the feeling of being carried, of being dragged along a corridor, my feet scuffing along the ground. I felt my eyes trying to roll up into the back of my head and it felt like an amazing amount of effort to peel my eyelids open and to hold my head up. My head felt like a boulder and I was mystified as to how I could possibly support it on the fragile neck on top of a fragile body. The edges of my vision seemed to rattle, as though my eyes were being tapped by the end of a finger.

I don't know but I might have groaned.

“No Wait,” another voice yelled before I heard, rather than felt, another impact. To my jaw this time.

I will admit to thinking that it was a little bit unfair. I wouldn't have needed much of a blow to send me back to unconsciousness. If you had left me alone then I would probably have dropped off back to sleep with relative ease.

I then proved my theory about needing time to shake myself awake from dreams otherwise I would just return to them where I had left off. I was back, sitting on the stone wall listening to Father Jerome deliver his lecture on the psychology of the torturer.

“It's a truth to remember,” he told me. I could hear him clearly as though he was sat next to me in truth rather than just in memory, “that if you ever find yourself at the mercy of a man, whether on the torturer's table or at the wrong end of a blade. Then hope that you are at the mercy of an evil man.”

I had remembered laughing at this and asked him why?

“Because a good man will do his job. Whether that's in the killing or the torturing. The evil man will want to gloat. He will want you to prove him right because that way you justify his actions for him. The good man know's that he's doing the right thing and does what needs to be done. An evil man, you can normally get him talking. If he's talking then he's not torturing you.”

“So what do you do then?”

“Engage the questioner. Remember that the torturer and the Questioner are not always the same person. The torturer is just a tool, a weapon if you like. It's the questioner that you have to deal with. Also, always, always be the smartest person in the room. Control the situation.”

His face seemed to flicker in front of me as the smell of stale urine washed over me.

“Remember that you have what they want.” Jerome continued talking. “So always remember that they can hurt you but never, ever, let them be in control of the situation.”

I felt liquid hit me in the face.

Jerome was grinning at me as my head started to feel heavy again and my neck rolled around on my shoulders.

“Keep the control and play for time.” Jerome's voice said again.

I was sat down, in a chair. I kept up the pretence of struggling to consciousness for a moment longer while I took stock of the situation. Still had all my arms and legs. All ten fingers and all ten toes. Indeed I was still in the clothes that I had broken into the compound with, so that was a good start. Wooden chair from the feel of the grain under my fingertips.

Ooh, that was a question to work on, how was I tied up? My legs weren't tied to the legs of the chair. I was secured around the waist, and my hands were tied at the wrist. Together not to the chair.

Heh.

Ok, promising start.

“Is he awake?”

Someone grabbed me by the hair and tilted my head back. To try and look at my face. I rolled my eyes back.

“Not quite.”

“More then.”

I got another face full of piss for my trouble. This one was warmer than the last one, the acrid smell was doing it's best to clean out my brain and scour the wool from my thoughts. My body hadn't caught up yet though. It still wanted to slip into unconsciousness and go to sleep. I felt for the aches and pains around my body.

I had a worrying amount of experience now with being able to catalogue my own injuries. A couple of bruised ribs, some stiffness and pain in my legs, left arm numb and then....obviously....my head was ringing.

I forced myself to smile.

“You see?” I croaked before hawking and spitting. “Here's the first lesson in interrogating someone. A free lesson if you like.”

I still couldn't focus very well. There were a number of shapes in front of me, red torso's with pink blobs on top which suggested heads. Just a couple of them.

“Never start with the head.” I told them. “It leaves the subject groggy and confused. You can't torture someone and ask them questions if they keep slipping out of consciousness.”

“We can always wake you up.”

I laughed. Dear flame but it hurt. “No, you can force me back to consciousness, but that's not the same thing as waking me up. Dipshit.”

I got a slap for my troubles and let myself sink back into the warm velvety blackness of unconsciousness.

“What you have to do is to try and figure out what they want from you.” Jerome told me. Do they want information? Or are they just getting off on causing you pain?”

“What's the difference?” I asked him. I couldn't tell if I had asked him at the time or whether I was asking him now. They must have hit me harder than I had thought if I was beginning to lose track of what was real and what was not.

“The difference is simple as it decides how you need to play it. In either case though, it's a case of playing for time. Make them tell you what they want. Not the surface questions that everyone asks to try and ascertain whether you're lying or not. But the real questions, the underlying questions. The one's that they're terrified of exposing, to you, or even to themselves.”

I blinked furiously.

“My name....” My mouth was filled with blood though. “My name is Frederick von Coulthard. Son of Baron von Coulthard and younger brother of Arch-bishop Coulthard of Tretogor. I demand treatment proper and appropriate to my rank.”

“We know who you are, heretic,” someone said calmly. I lifted my head and tried to focus on my tormentors.

“Heretic?” I asked, having to spit again. I didn't want to think about the taste in my mouth. “Who are you to call me heretic?”

This time they hit me in the gut.

I groaned with it, there was no way that I could roll, or compress myself with the blow so it was impossible for me to lessen the impact.

“Play for time,” Jerome seemed to say in my ear.

“Yeah,” I said aloud as though I had just finished considering for something. “I can see how you might confuse violence for some kind of witty and intellectual retort, but to those of us that are more civilised will quickly realise that you haven't answered the question.”

“We will ask the questions here.” A man got close to my face. He was wearing a chain-mail coif and would have been described, by a couple of my female friends as being “pretty.” Sharp nose and cheekbones, large eyes and long eyelashes.

I head-butted him. There wasn't much power to it but suddenly there was this face in front of me that I didn't like and, well, you take these pleasures where you find them.

“Bastard,” he shouted, staggering back, clutching at his face. He pulled his hands away to see if he was bleeding. He wasn't but his eyes were streaming. He stormed up and kicked me in the chest sending me flying backwards.

The only avoidance that I managed was that I kept my head from bouncing off the floor as I landed on my back.

I started laughing as the whole thing was patently ridiculous.

The man that I had head-butted was being talked at by Sansum. My vision was clearing now and I could take a good look around to see where I was. I guessed that I was in the main “church” part of the place. The atmosphere was thick with smoke as there were many fires dotted around the place, including a large pyre that had taken the place of where an alter would be in a normal church. The smoky atmosphere told me that there was a distinct lack of ventilation but also, that they had been burning people here.

There were a lot of people watching, knights and their squires all watching me with angry, sick hunger in their eyes. Most of them looked dirty, covered in soot and a few in blood.

I didn't bother counting. It seemed rather pointless.

“But he hit me.” The young knight complained to the Bishop. Completely independently I noticed that the poisonous little oik's chain-mail was painted gold. “He hit me.”

“And he will be punished my son, but for now, we need to know what he knows. Now go and check on the Witcher as I asked.”

“Yes,” I called over to them. “You can't kill me yet.” I made myself sing the old children's boast. “I know something you don't know,” I grinned at him.

He stormed over to me. “You're going to wish they let me kill you. After the things that they're going to do to you.”

I made a face. “Flame but I already wish they'd let you kill me. The perfume that you're wearing is awful.” I made a gagging sound.

The knight spat again and stormed off leaving me facing Bishop Sansum.

“I haven't forgotten by the way.” I told him. “Having your crony come and intimidate me is still another evasion so I ask again. Who are you to call me heretic?”

This time it was Bishop Sansum that came forward.

“That's an interesting question,” he said, leaning forward so that he could look me in the eye. I noticed that he stayed out of range of any kind of attack that I might make though. “Who am I?”

I grinned at him.

“Very good.” Jerome whispered in my ear. “Any time that he's not causing you pain is time well spent. Keep control. Don't let him get so angry that he starts hurting you, hook him if you can, keep his interest. But also have a look around. It's possible that he's not really the questioner. Are you also playing to an audience? He might just kill you to prove his strength to his followers or this entire display might be for their benefit. That's a risk on his part as it means that he needs to keep them happy. Keep control. Play for time. It's all about the time.”

I considered my approach carefully.

“May I have some water,” I spat again. “I'm struggling to speak round this awful taste in my mouth.”

Sansum considered, his eyes flickered from side to side. I saw him glance at the assembled knights and then back at me again.

Jerome's voice was so clear that if I didn't know any better then I would have sworn it was real. “See that?” he told me. “That's a tell. He's thinking. So try and use that to follow his thought process. He's looking at the knights. Why? Then he looks at you. What's he thinking when he looks at you?”

“He hates me.” I thought back.

“How can you tell?”

“His eyes tighten, his lip curls and he grits his teeth.”

“Very good. So why's he looking at the crowd?”

“To judge their mood.”

“So?”

“So he's considering between what he wants to do to you and what he thinks the crowd will expect.”

I saw Sansum's face firm into decision.

“Of course.” He said with a smile. He gestured and another bucket was thrown into my face. Fortunately this one was definitely water.

“Thank you.” I told him. “So, to answer your question. I know that your name isn't Sansum.”

“Oh?”

“Oh yes.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I hear things.”

“Really, from whom.”

I smiled at him. “Friends of mine.” I grinned in what I hoped was an approximation of cheekiness.

Sansum sighed. “We know that you captured the lad, Maxwell.”

“Freed him, you mean. From his tormentors.” I felt the bile rise in my throat along with my anger. I could feel Jerome shake his head in disapproval.

“He would never have known such a thing. So how did you find that out?”

“You mean I was right?” I asked him before bursting out laughing. “By the holy sacred flame. You are just no good at this at all are you?”

I laughed at him long and hard. He stepped close and another knight came with him to hold my head back by the hair.

“Oh you are quite wrong. HERETIC.” He screamed the epithet into my face. “You are about to discover just how good we are at causing pain.” He nodded and the other man let go of my hair.

I shook my head. “Oh I know that you can inflict pain.” I told him. “But that's not the same is it. Flogging someone, beating someone, raping someone. All of these things I have no doubt that you can do.”

I pretended to consider the matter for a moment.

“Ok, you can do all of those things badly, but the extraction of information is quite different. That, you truly suck at.”

I grinned at him again.

“In fact, you are so terrible at it that you haven't even asked me a real question yet. What kind of torturer are you?”

“Very well....”

“But first,” I grinned at his discomfort and confusion. “You should really answer my question. I asked first after all.”

It was uncomfortably like playing a round of school-yard taunting.

He looked confused.

“WHO ARE YOU TO CALL ME HERETIC?” I demanded putting a good amount of hatred and fury behind my voice. I supported it properly as well. Giving it the strength from the diaphragm as well so that they could all hear me. “YOU, WHO COMMAND MURDERERS. YOU WHO ORDER THE TORTURE AND MURDER OF GOOD, FLAME FEARING MEN AND WOMEN. YOU WHO CONDONE THE ABUSE OF YOUR OWN NOVICES.”

My voice cracked. Too much smoke inhalation.

“You. You shame the cassock that you wear. You contravene the flame's holy laws. Of all people here, you are the heretic. You are the murderer. You are the one that should be burnt at the stake.”

Sansum regarded me for a long time.

“Are you quite finished?” He said after a long time.

I considered the matter for a moment before nodding.

“Then kindly cease with your tantrums.” He told me. He turned to say something to one of his subordinates who brought him a chair. “They tell me that you are a man of learning, heretic and oh yes. I know who you are. I know who your brother is and I also know, that even now, there are many who are looking to see to his downfall and overthrow. He is but a symbol of the churches growing corruption and decadence.”

I laughed at him. “You obviously haven't met my brother. Corruption? You can't corrupt someone like Mark. He made his name by making the church give away a good chunk of it's wealth to the poor. He doesn't need money, he's not interested in wealth, he hardly ever drinks and he's not that interested in women. What would you corrupt him with.”

“Precisely.” Sansum told me. “He weakened the church. He took away the churches power in these things. He saw to it that the church armies were reduced so that we would find it harder to police the countryside. To keep it free from heretics and sinners.”

Jerome again. “Good, keep him talking. You have him engaged now. Keep him there. The longer that he talks, the longer that he isn't torturing you.”

“The countryside would have been free from sin alright.” I answered Sansum. “There would have been no food. People would have been dying in their hundreds, in their thousands. Keeping a church army would have meant that there would have been no-one to farm the fields, no-one to raise the cattle, no-one to hunt the game.”

“The flame would have provided.”

“The flame would have provided.” I mimicked. “That's not the way the flame works. If that was the way it worked then all the beggars, the poor and the starving who go to sleep at night, praying for the flame to deliver them from their trials, would be sleeping on beds with full bellies.”

“But the flame only provides for the truly holy.”

“And who gets to define what is holy?” I asked. “You?”

“Me.” He declared. “Arch-Bishop Sansum and the holy Scripture,” he said it grandly, appealing to his congregation and they cheered on cue.

“Ok, first of all. You've been promoted since I last heard your name and believe me, I would have heard about that. Secondly, let's talk about that scripture shall we. Because I've read my scriptures from cover to cover and I would ask you where you find the justification for burning innocent herb-women at the stake. Women who's only crime was to know a little bit about healing and a little bit about herbs in order to make sure that the villagers under her care might have help to survive the winter. So that they can help women give birth and combat diseases”

“Childbirth is a necessary torment. The trial makes the child stronger as well as the mother.”

“Bullshit. Childbirth is a horrific event, alleviated only by the help of someone who know's what they're doing.”

“By Witchcraft.”

“Knowledge isn't witchcraft.”

“But the use of magic is.”

“Prove that they're using magic then. Go on, prove it.”

“Their own books and herbs and spells prove that they are witches.”

“So?”

“So, does the scripture not say, “Suffer not a Witch to live”,”

“Yes it does. I will admit that. It does indeed say that. You know why?”

“That's beside the point.”

“Because Hierarch Hemmelfart of Novigrad was getting upset at the increased and increasing power of the Sorceresses over the ruling class. He was jealous of the power of people like Phillippa Eilhart over Radovid and Triss Merigold over Foltest and opined that those positions of power should be taken by churchmen.”

“He was right then.”

“That's as maybe, but rather than fight their influence by providing good and honest advice and displaying all the virtues of a holy man and showing the world why that was a good thing. He instead chose to adjust scripture to follow his own ambitions inserting the line into scripture to justify the persecution. Meaning that all of those people died because of one man's ambition.”

“The Hierophant is the final adjudicator of such things and if he decides that Hemmelfart is correct then he is correct.”

“Because the Hierophant is completely free of influence of course. If you want to revert to older traditions then you need to return to the older forms of things. The persecution of the magical class is a recent addition to the church.”

I should say that I was and am aware that I was arguing with a fanatical madman and that there is no way of winning such an argument. But it was also why I was arguing with him. He wanted me to believe him, he wanted to win the argument and the more he tried to convince me then the more time we were taking.

“The rest of the churches disagreed with Hemmelfart. The Hierarch's of Tretogor and Vengerberg protested the orders. The Viziman Hierarch also resisted the orders let alone the Hierarchs of Aedirn and Kaedwen, who's Kings were advised by Wizards and Sorcerors. Not Sorceresses. I notice that the scripture says nothing about “Suffer not a Warlock to live”.”

“Magic is an abomination. It is not a natural thing.”

“Science would argue. What you mean, is that magic is not natural to this world, am I right?”

He visibly brightened. “Correct. Magic came to this world through the Conjunction of spheres and we did nothing to combat it. Instead of refusing it's unholy....”

“Yes yes. I've heard this one.” I told him “But if magic isn't natural to this world then neither are we. Mankind came to this world via the conjunction of spheres ourselves.”

“Lies.”

“The Dwarves and the gnomes who's history goes back, literally, thousands of years, tell us that elves and humans weren't sighted on the world before 1600 years ago give or take. Hell, we only came to the Yaruga basin a few centuries ago. Magic is as native to this world as we are.”

“Blasphemy.”

“Prove it.” I told him. “Prove that it's blasphemy. Prove that I'm lying. Which passage of the scriptures is it that says that Magic is the abomination. I will admit to the passage about “suffer not a Witch to live” but not that one.”

“I don't have to prove it.” Sansum sneered. “I am an Arch-Bishop whereas you are not and it is holy because I say that it is holy.”

“Really?” I did my best to put as much disbelief into the word as I could. “Really? That's your argument. That you are an Arch-Bishop and therefore that makes whatever you say and do holy? Well fuck me sideways I didn't know that that's how it worked. Very well. I'm the Hierophant, did you know that? I got ordained a week ago, voted for by the other cardinals the day after that and ascended to the throne the day before yesterday and I'm telling you that it's bullshit.”

“You are not ordained.” he waved his hands dismissively. “You are just an uppity little heretic who doesn't know what you're talking about.”

“I know more than you. How many other people know that your great collection of books is actually a fake. You have maybe a dozen books in your rooms and....”

“Be Silent...”

“And from what I saw there there was not a single copy of the tenets of the flame or the Catechisms of faith nor was there a copy of “The Life and times of the Prophets,” or “The Letters of St Lebioda,” which are required readings of any priest. You know how I know that?”

“Did you search the entire room? We know that you did not. So don't bother trying to answer.”

“All I'm saying is that if you are going to call me heretic, then I deserve to be shown the proper treatment. A panel of investigation needs to be convened. I get to justify my actions and explain why I did what I did.”

“You are condemned out of your own mouth. We are well aware of you Lord Frederick.”

I'm not often sensitive about my title but the way he said it, with scorn and disgust made me ache to put my thumbs through his fucking eyes.

“You,” he went on, “Who consorts with vampires....”

“Technically,” I interrupted, “there hasn't been any “consorting,” done yet. We're kind of waiting for our wedding night for that sort of....”

“You, who are friends with mutants.”

“Yeah ok, you have me there, but I'm not a mutant myself so....”

“You, who supports your family in their deviancy....”

“Well that's just a case of the fact that Sam doesn't like to wash his......hang on....what?”

“Your sister, lying with another woman, and a Sorceress no less.”

“You're telling me that my sister is a deviant because she prefers the romantic company of women to the company of men? I prefer the romantic company of women to men, so I don't understand the problem. Unless you're still holding to the political practices of Hemmelfart in condemning female practitioners of magic.”

“It's an abomination.”

“Who says?” I demanded.

“The scriptures say so.”

“No they don't.”

“It is an abomination.” He insisted before taking up a position as though he was about to deliver a proclamation. “And lo it was said to them that Man shall not lie with man and woman shall not lie with woman as it is an abomination.”

“No it doesn't. It says nothing of the kind.”

“I....”

“It doesn't say that.” I insisted trying to catch his eyes as well as the other men around them. “I looked it up. What it says is that “You shall not lie with man as with a woman. It is an abomination.” Which is quite an old and vague statement. First of all, who is the “you” in the statement as that might suggest that even women aren't allowed to “lie” with men. Speaking of which, define “lie” for me. Does that mean lying down or telling lies? In short does that mean that I'm allowed to tell lies with, or to, a woman but not another man?....Bit harsh on the woman there. The other verse from the same section that talks about this kind of thing actually says, “If a man lies with a male then both have committed an abomination.”

“Still not a condemnation of what my sister and her lover do. It refers only to what men do to each other.”

“Be silent.”

I ignored him.

“So what they get up to in the privacy of their own homes is actually ok according to the scriptures.”

“The scriptures tell us that such things are evil.”

“No they don't. They tell us nothing of the kind. By the way, if homosexuality is a sin, then I saw one of your knights committing that same sin with someone as I came through the cloister earlier. I told you about it earlier and you said nothing then either. Not very moral of you there. Sounds a bit like....One rule for us and another rule for everyone else. So, now that we've cleared up the fact that what my sister gets up to is absolutely fine, according to the scriptures, then we can move onto your next point please?”

“The church has long said that a woman's proper place is to please their husbands. Not their wives, their husbands.”

I laughed at him again. He was trying to fight me on my battlefield. Kerrass knows about swords and monsters, Emma knows about Boardrooms and mercantile meetings. But this? This is my place. The debate of ideas and what people said historically and why.

“Yes they did. They did indeed. They told women that for many years, that their place was to be seen and not heard. You know why? There are three reasons. The first reason is that for a religion to spread then it needs more followers, the quickest and easiest way to do that is for children to be born into the religion and so they want the women to be little baby making machines to pump out the next generation of fire worshippers.”

“This is blasphemy,”

“The second point is that most of the other early religions. The ones that predate the holy fire and the landing at the Yaruga. Gods and Goddesses like Veyopatis, Melitele, even the Lionhead.”

“Say not their name here.”

“Don't worry, I won't but I don't think that there is much desecration that I could do that you scum-fucks haven't already done.

“But Melitele is a female religion for women. Veyopatis is well known to have many priestesses.”

I laughed at a sudden thought.

“For the ignorant in the audience that's the word for female priests.”

“Oh you are going to burn in the purifying fires of...”

“The only religion that is almost exclusively male is the worship of Kreve. I find it interesting that that's the one that has been adopted by the eternal fire and the same, vice versa. The priesthood of Kreve probably wanted some kind of ally against all the women that were hanging around, being all divine around the place.

“That's another reason that women are told that they're second class citizens so that they don't get ideas above their station and start to believe that they might be able to start becoming important people in the church. The senior priests want the priesthood to be a boys club where they can all sit around and jerk each other off with how powerful and wealthy they are.”

“A priesthood that includes your brother.” Someone shouted. I craned my neck to try and see who it was but they were behind me.

“Yes. Brother Mark is considered a progressive which is why Sansum here doesn't like him very much. He likes doing things like, giving all his money away to provide food and shelter for displaced war refugees and allowing anyone who has a calling to support the church.”

“Arch-Bishop Sansum,” One of the knight's in front of me insisted. Sansum had retreated from my constant stream of words and was examining the implements of torture.

Jerome came to me again as I saw Sansum pick up something that looked like a vice. Jeromes voice drifted to me from out of the murmuring in the crowd.

“Pay no attention to the revealing of the instruments. Torturers use it as a method of intimidation. They will take out a table and from some kind of bag they will take their time setting out knives, bodkins, thumb-screws, needles, bottles of unidentifiable stuff that you won't recognise, syringes, hooks, straps, gags, funnels, tubes and all kinds of other things. This technique works on men of excessive imagination. Men who like to feel as though they're in control of any given situation. Men who inflict pain and like to feel as though they are the boss. Nobles who beat their servants, priests who abuse their congregation, wife-beaters and child-abusers.

“They know the horrible abuses that can be done to a person and they see, in the displayed implements, everything that they have ever done to other people and they are afraid of having it done to themselves. Ignore them. Most of them are for show. Proper torturers have methods and they only need one or two individual methods of causing pain or discomfort. Good torturers rarely need anything more than a knife or a hot piece of metal.”

I nodded my acknowledgement of the point and tore my eyes away from what was happening.

“Now where was I, ah yes. My third point. This goes back to the founding of the eternal fire. You have to have studied this kind of thing to find it out. I'm a historian so I spent a good amount of time looking into the historical basis for some of the more.....wacky parts of scripture but I was interested in. But in this case we're going to talk about the founding of the cult of eternal fire.”

Someone had brought one of those fire-bowls up to where Sansum was setting himself up. I watched as he put a poker deep into the hissing fire.

“Don't look at it.” Jerome told me. “It is only pain. You've known pain.”

“So yeah.... When we, I mean humanity. Came to the mouth of the Pontar we found the Elven ruins on that place that we now call Novigrad. Yes, I'm sorry to the doubters, Novigrad is not purely the product of human ingenuity. The Elves got their first in the same way that they did for a lot of the “great” cities of mankind. Vizima, Trotogr, Vengerberg, Nilfgaard City. Toussaint doesn't even bother hiding it. But anyway back to the story.”

Sansum gestured to one of the knights who drew a dagger and came towards me. I had already been stripped of my leather armour. He took hold of the collar of my shirt and used his dagger to strip me of the garment.

“That was a good shirt,” I complained. “Not that I object that much.” I told him, “but at least buy me dinner first.”

Not the greatest joke in my arsenal but you work with what you've got.

“The colonists came to Novigrad and they climbed up through the city and across the bridge up to where the cathedral now rests. Most of the colonists were establishing camp and it was only a few of the settlers that had chosen to explore. Nor did it happen at the point of landing. They didn't land and then walk up the road to see what was going on, they needed to make sure they had somewhere to sleep first and that there were proper supplies laid in for when times got a bit harder as they always do in these early settlements.”

Sansum had pulled on a huge leather glove. The type that blacksmiths use when they had to hold onto hot metal. He drew the poker from the fire and examined the end. It was certainly hissing smoking but he didn't seem satisfied. I assume that he wanted the metal to be red or even white hot before bringing it over. A bit of a ridiculous hope to me as the little firebowl was certainly hot, but it takes real heat to be able to make an iron poker glow red.

“So anyway, the colonists were mostly sorting themselves out when a small group of kids, young kids, no more than sixteen at best, got bored with all of the endless chores that go with establishing a new settlement and decided to go and explore.”

My lips were getting dry and I had to lick them so that I could continue speaking.

“Off up the hill they walk and they came to the ruined elven building, probably a temple, that had been deserted for some time and they saw a bright, warm glow emanating from it. There, they found a large fire pit, huge it was, easily ten feet across.”

“The scriptures say that it was fifty feet,” someone called.

“Does it now?” I answered with a smile. “The only person that would say that the “Bowl of Flame” was that large would be someone who hasn't actually seen it. I have, I was taken to Novigrad by my parents at a young age so that I could be baptised into the faith. I had already been baptised in my families shrine but they kind of just wanted to make sure. I've been back and seen it many times. Even describing it as ten foot across is probably a bit of a stretch.

“But....the scriptures say nothing of the sort. The scriptures describe a bowl, but mostly they are too busy talking about the fire rather than the bowl that contained it.

“Also,” I went on. “The whole point of the eternal fire is that we need to keep it alive. It isn't an entirely supernatural flame, it needs fueling. Can you imagine how much wood and oil it would take to keep a fire burning where the bowl was fifty feet across. My understanding is that, as it is, the church has to maintain several forests of it's own in order to make sure that the fire never goes out.”

I was babbling now. Sansum had withdrawn the poker again and was advancing on me.

“Continue please, heretic,” he told me. “I am interested in hearing the remains of your story.”

“Which story?” I asked him. “The one about the founding of the church of the eternal fire? Very well. So this small group of children went into the temple and they found the bowl and the flame. They found that there hearts were gladdened and they felt a sense of security that they had not felt before. That they had not seen before....”

I screamed as the hot metal was touched to the side of my arm. It wasn't held for long but it felt like it took for ages as my flesh started to cook.

Again my brain went somewhere else. I was still conscious now but at the same time I could see Jerome sat on a chair watching the whole thing.

“There are several ways to deal with the pain.” He told me. “First of all, you have to understand that the use of pain is there for several reasons. One of the main ones is so that he can exert control over you. He wants to show you who's in charge of the situation and that he can do anything he likes to you. The pain is a means to an end. So what is his end? Remember that he hasn't asked you any questions yet.

“Secondly. Focus on what you want out of the situation. Never believe that you have no power as you sit in the chair or are strapped to the table. You have everything that the questioner or the torturer wants. As I say, it's about power. He wants something from you. Whether that is information, a confession, or an acknowledgement of power. He wants you to beg for him to stop, is the most common example. That's the point when the questioner asks his questions or pushes the confession over the table for you to sign your name.

“So you have to decide what you want out of all of this. If you wish to survive then you must play for time until he starts to get desperate. Then you start to give him what he wants, but in stages. Think about what information that you can give him and in what order. What's the least important piece of information that you can give him? Can you get away with lying? But ration the truth. Don't spend the coin of truth in one go, other wise he will think it was all too easy and just jump straight back into hurting you. So what do you want from him?

“But above all, don't let him take charge of the situation. Be in control, be smarter, be angrier, be stronger than he thinks you are. Fight him. Remember that he can only see and hear what you show him.”

I nodded my thanks to Jerome's apparition and wondered if I was losing my mind.

Then I wondered if it mattered.

I looked up at Jerome who was standing over me. He was examining the small part of my skin that had stuck to the hot metal of the poker. I drew my lips back in a snarl.

“But then.” My voice came back. “But then they looked over and they saw a man, or at least they thought that it was a man, scripture certainly said that it was a man, but he was sat next to the fire as though he had been tending to it. They greeted him warmly and asked who he was and he told them, “I guard the Eternal Fire; so long as it will flame in this place, so long this city and your kin will endure” The kids ran off downt he hill to tell the people about this, other colonists went up to investigate the fire and indeed found it there but the man who told them about this had disappeared and although they searched for him, he could not be found.”

It was as though Sansum had listened to my story for a moment as though he had been caught up in it before he nodded, and pressed the poker back to my flesh. At first I tried to clench my jaw against the pain. I tried to show them that it wasn't affecting me. I looked over at Jerome's face.

“I was talking about combating pain.” he told me. “Remember that what he is doing is torturing your body to get at your mind. Your soul doesn't care, he can't touch your soul, but that's what he's doing. Hurting the body so that the mind rebels. Your body is a complex system full of nerves and veins and capillaries. Instinct and intelligence all wrapped up in a giant, leather bag, mostly made up of water. So how do you combat pain?

“Your body knows what it's doing. Let it get on with the business of being hurt. Right now it is flooding your body with adrenaline and other chemicals to help combat the pain. Help it. Get angry. Get more endorphins flowing. Let your body scream if it wants.

“But always remember that he is hurting your body to get at your mind. He can't touch your mind so he's going for your body.”

I looked away from Jerome and back up Sansum. I let myself smile.

“So,” I said clearly. “These kids told of what they'd seen far and wide. They spent their time tending the fire and spreading the word of what they had seen.”

Sansum turned and went back to the fire-bowl before pushing the poker back into the hottest part of the furnace.

“Eventually,” I went on. “Followers of the warrior god Kreve came and listened to the children's tales of what they had seen and got together and agreed that what the kids had seen was an aspect of their God Kreve. This, in the biggest example of different religions joining with each other in an effort not to get wiped out. Hell, even the traditional “enemies” of Melitele and Kreve got their shit together when they were threatened by the eternal sun from the south. But I digress.”

Sansum had taken the poker out of the fire again and was examining the end unhappily. I could see that he was arguing with someone about it but neither side seemed particularly happy about it.

“I've completely gotten turned around with this and lost my point.” I told my audience. “Ah yes. I was talking about women in religion. Here's my point. Something that I learned from the study of history over scripture.

“Scripture tells us that there were two founders of the Cult of the eternal Fire and that they were friends called Samuel and Terrence.”

Yes, long time readers, my brother was named for one of those two men. One of my points of gratitude towards my parents was that I wasn't named after Terrence. Frederick is bad enough as it gets shortened to Freddie but I'm not sure I could cope with being called Terrence.

No offence to anyone out there called Terrence.

“We know that the two friends became very protective of the flame. Scripture tells us that they had two ideas and therefore that the cult of the eternal flame should have two branches to the church. The first branch should be martial and proactive in the protection of the flame. This was headed up by Samuel as he was the more martial of the pair. He told his friend that in order to keep the fire burning then it needed to be protected from anything that might cause it and the city harm.

“He would go on to travel the surrounding lands, hunting out those monsters that might grow to threaten the growing city of Novigrad. He had some luck at the pursuit before he tried to take on a dragon and got eaten for his trouble.”

My audience rumbled their discontent at this statement. Sansum was coming back with his poker. “St Samuel was martyred protecting the city from monsters.” He intoned, “we should all be so lucky to martyr ourselves in such a way.”

“In which case, Witchers should be saints too as they regularly die, protecting areas of civilisation from monsters.”

“Which they charge the people for.” Sansum protested.

“Who is going to give the Witcher something to eat then. You?”

In place of a retort, Sansum pushed the hot metal against my other arm. This time he dragged the metal down my arm.

I let my body scream. A scream that left me panting for breath when it was done.

“What's the matter?” I snarled as the pain began to recede back to the agony of burnt flesh. “Couldn't come up with a better retort?”

This time he went for my shoulder.

I found some laughter in the depths of my belly when he was done.

“Every time,” I told him. “Every time you fail to respond to one of my arguments. You prove me right in the face of your followers.”

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

He examined the metal again before turning back to the fire.

“So Samuel got eaten by a dragon. We don't know much about him really as it was Terrence that tells us most of these things, including the fact that Samuel got eaten by a dragon when it's much more likely that he died shitting himself to death by the side of the road, given the time that he was travelling around. Terrence had stayed in Novigrad and wrote his famous letters to the various Kings and Queens of the continent, preaching the good word of the eternal flame.

“It's from his writings that we know about Samuel's martyrdom at the hands of a dragon. It's from these writings that we get the commonly held tenets of faith, including the thing about Homosexuality and the hatred of monsters. He told us that the holy flame keeps us safe from monsters which is why it must be protected at all costs. It's from these things that pricks like you find their justification from committing appalling acts. He preached protection. It was him that set up the two arms of the church, the knights and the priests. It was him that ordered the fires built and he was the first Hierophant of the Church of the Eternal fire. Stealing the term of “Hierophant” from the druids as he went.

“What he didn't mention was his sister.”

Sansum had withdrawn the poker from the flame again and was advancing on me.

“That's right,” I told him. “Saint Terry had a sister. It wasn't just two male friends that went up to the fire it was also Terry's sister. We don't know much about her because her brother spent a good amount of his time ignoring her and having her name taken out of the records.”

This time I didn't even try to stop myself from screaming.

“Because Terrence and his sister didn't get on.” I continued after a moment. “She would tell everyone things like “We need to see the fire as a welcome, as the warmth of comfort and a beacon in dark places.” and “We need to use it to guide people towards their homes and make Novigrad a place that they would want to travel.” She used to preach that “The fire is not literal. The fire is not something that only exists in the church but also in ourselves, that we are the flame and we need to carry that warmth of hope and compassion and comfort every where we go.” As Terrence got more and more tyrannical and extreme in his views, his sister got more...”

I screamed, and screamed and screamed.

“How dare you speak against St Terrence, the first of the saints?”

“But he wasn't though was he. There were plenty of saints before him. I think you might have meant to say that he was the....”

I was cut off again as the agony ripped through me. The earlier burns were throbbing in the heat of the place, the salt of my sweat was getting into the injuries and making them hurt even more.

“She told us that The Fire needed our help. That it was meant as an inspiration, rather than a scourge. But Terrence was the one that wrote to all of the important people. His sister walked among the poor and the dispossessed, doing her best to help those people less fortunate than herself. Other records of what she did were destroyed. That's why women are kept down and haven't been allowed in the clergy. It's because Saint Terrence wanted to stop people from listening to what his sister was saying and listen to him instead. He wanted his sister to know her place.”

“You condemn yourself out of your own mouth. There was no such person. The Fire protects us from monsters and keeps us from harm. It is sacrilege to even suggest otherwise.”

“It hasn't done a very good job of it has it.” I pointed out. “Three wars, the last one of which, we lost.”

“No.” He grinned, “It's not the flame that has deserted us. It's we who have deserted the flame. We use magic. We consort with monsters and allow the use of magic.”

“Yeah, about that. Here's an interesting thing, and again I quote from actual scripture. “And the flame shall cast out and condemn all those monsters who mean us harm.” A bit vague I will admit but at the same time there is a second passage. “We shall protect ourselves and our great city from those monsters that seek to destroy Novigrad and extinguish the flame that keeps us safe.” That is what the scripture says. It condemns those creatures that mean us harm, although the term “us” is variable but the second passage says that only monsters who attack Novigrad are actually fair game.

“Do you deny,” I coughed on the smoke and the smell of my own roasting flesh. “Do you deny these passages?”

“I don't....”

“Then tell me, you twisted fuck. Where does it say that a little girl who likes to read books is a threat to Novigrad. Or a Woman that happens to need the act of sexual congress to survive. How is she a threat to Novigrad?”

“They are monstrous deviants who....”

“Who don't threaten Novigrad. They lived miles and miles away. By any stretch they would have to travel through two countries to even see Novigrad let alone threaten it's existence. And as for Ariadne, the woman I intend to marry. She is currently studying the scripture of the holy flame before we get married in a ceremony conducted by a priest of the Flame. She told me that she wants to know what all the words mean.”

I screamed again. The metal had cooled a little since he had been standing with it in his hand for so long. The burning lasted a long time.

When it did, finally end. I allowed myself a little whimper.

“Where does it say that?” I asked him. “Where does it say that you get to strip a boy naked and make him wear chainmail before marching through the countryside wearing armour that even properly grown men struggle with, all for the crime of expecting a fair trial for the woman he was told to torture?”

“The Scripture says, suffer not a witch to live.” He bent close to my face to deliver the line. “You are right in saying that the Flame has deserted us. We must prove our devotion and there is no room, no room at all for even the smallest hint of doubt, either in our minds or in the minds of those people that follow us. The countryside must be purged. Not just of evil but even the temptation towards evil for we are wicked and the temptation towards darkness is strong.”

His face changed and he became almost gentle and fatherly.

“I pity you Lord Frederick. You have studied the ways of false knowledge and are so far into the teachings of evil men and women. I do not doubt that you were a good man once and that you wanted to serve the flame in the best way, but you have been corrupted. It is not your fault that your parents were heretics and went against the proper order of things. You were right to flee from your home but instead of running to the church for proper guidance you were caught by the snares of that most insidious place of decadence and heresy. The University of Oxenfurt.”

I can recognise a man who has set off on a sermon and I left him to it. In truth the rest from the pain was good although my burns and blisters were increasingly on my mind.

“Don't misunderstand me.” He went on. “I know the reason. That's how they get you. They promise you all the secrets of the universe and those truths that can soothe your troubled soul. There might even be some truth mixed in with all of the lies, but then the lies take their hold and then they follow them with more lies, and more and more until a man that could have been one of the foremost warriors of the flame is turned into the heretic that is sat before me. Betrothed to a monster, in service to another one,”

“Just to check,” I interrupted. “But you're talking about the Empress there with that last one right?”

He smiled at me gently without saying anything.

“I thought so.” I commented.

“But do not worry.” He told me. “We can purify you. You will burn in the fires of purification and your mutant Witcher freak will burn next to you.”

I gave myself the gift of a wry chuckle. He had just confirmed, again, that Kerrass had to still be alive if he was going to be burnt alongside me.

“Just a point.” I commented after a moment. “a small one. I notice you still haven't condemned or even mentioned the Homosexual acts committed by your own knights on their squires. You tried to divert me from the subject when I talked about it earlier. Twice, but I have not forgotten. What about your condemnation for those men who forced those horrific acts on those in their charge?”

“Men are sometimes weak. But the work they do outweighs the evil. They can be forgiven their sins and they confess their.....”

“So just a point. Why can't all of these people that you condemn also confess or serve in some way?”

“They are too far sunken into sin.”

“I'm not so sure. Homosexuality is an abomination remember? Also, is it not a greater evil to force another to commit evil acts. Which is what was happening that I saw. There was no way that....that child was enjoying what that knight was doing to him.”

I grinned at him.

“Ah but you are not an Arch-Bishop,” he countered.

“I'm pretty sure that you aren't one either.”

“Oh yes. And why do you say that.”

“Because I would have heard of you.”

He laughed and I wondered if I had miscalculated. “So arrogant.”

“But also because you so manifestly get the scriptures wrong.” I told him. “You keep quoting passages that are simply not true. Tell you what. You go and fetch a copy of the scriptures from your quarters and we'll see if it even matches.”

“I don't have to play your game.” He straightened up in front of me.

It was my turn to laugh. “You can't even read can you?” I laughed again. “Flame but if there was any other proof that we needed to prove that you aren't what you say you are, you can't even read. Required for the ordination of a priest let alone a Bishop.”

He returned to the fire bowl where he put the metal back in.

I did my best to just keep the laughter coming. It was not easy. I looked around for a bit and decided that it was time to change tactic. They weren't rising to the attacks regarding their faith but maybe they might respond if I challenged them on a military level.

“Tell me.” I said. “What's the plan?”

I waited for a little while. “I mean, here you are in the middle of nowhere, terrorising a few villages and killing a few people that you have arbitrarily decided are monsters. What's next? Gather more followers?”

“We will do the asking of questions around here, heretic.”

SUCCESS!

“And yet I notice your utter failure to ask me any questions at all. Holy flame but you're bad at this entire thing aren't you.”

He ignored that comment.

Jerome was nodding. “Good. Now we're getting to the heart of the matter.”

“But seriously,” I continued. “What are you going to do next? I'm not an unimportant man. People are going to come looking for me. Some very important men in the church not least. You think you're going to hold them off with your twenty five knights, a few squires and a handful of actual soldiers.”

I thought I heard someone snigger but I couldn't be sure.

“I mean, I managed to sneak past your perimeter and cause a whole bunch of damage and I'm nothing but a lowly scholar. What are you going to do when actual trained killers start coming for you. Do you think that they're going to be frightened off by your silly little stockade that is sinking into the ground that you put it in?”

“More will flock to our banner.” Sansum intoned.

“No they won't. These people are terrified of you. Who's going to come and help you?”

“We have friends. Powerful friends.”

“Not as many as you might think.” I told him. “If you're talking about Lords Barton, Polis and Telisson, then you should know that Kerrass and I have already paid them all a little visit.”

I left it intentionally vague there.

There was some shifting in the men watching. I could hear them shifting their weight from foot to foot and guessed at the sidelong glances.

“Suddenly, your men don't seem as confident as they had been before.” I told him. “So you face the very real possibility of a church army and an imperial army on your doorstop in the very near future. What are you going to do then? Preach at them? yell at them? Depend on harsh language and the threats of eternal damnation? Soldiers are taught that their Sergeants are the flame personified and that to disobey their superiors is to commit the blackest heresy. You will not convert them to your cause.”

Sansum came back, no implement of pain in his hands.

“I think you're bluffing. I don't think you've had the time to visit all of our friends, but despite that, how do you know that you got them all?”

“Simple.” I said. “I asked them. They told me where to find you, how many you were and where you got your funds. They told us everything. You see, unlike you, we actually know how to ask some questions.”

“I do not believe you.”

“Yeah? Lord Polis was the first one that we went to speak to. Tall man, thin red hair. We talked to him on the back lawn outside his house where he was practising his archery and getting increasingly frustrated. He admitted to us that he was ill with something and none of the healers could figure out what was going on but he knew that he was dying. He had no children as his sons died fighting against Nilfgaard when they crossed the Yaruga. He had decided, in the way that such men often do, that he must have lived an extremely sinful life and so deserved all the calamity that had occurred to his family. As such he wanted to make amends to whatever God he had angered and pledged the remainder of his fortune to the foundation of the knights of the burning sword.

“All of this after you, in the guise of a Bishop, promised him that you would “personally see to his moving into grace,” in the event of his death. He had been under the impression that the knights would be a roving band of do-gooders. That they would travel the roads, saving villages from bandits and monsters in the same way that the old knights of the flaming rose used to do before they got absorbed by politics.

“He told me that you invoked the name of Sir Siegfried in speaking to him and about how that good and noble man was an inspiration to you in doing your part.”

“Take not the name of Sir Siegfried in vain. St Siegfried was a good and noble man.”

“He was. I won't deny that. He was a good man who worked hard to save the common folk from all that might be done to them. He just made the mistake of following the wrong master is all. But we were talking about the men who you expect to come to your aid. We told Lord Polis of what we had seen and what we had heard. He rode with us, despite his failing health, to see some of the things that we talked about. To be fair to him, he didn't want to believe that you would betray him in such a way.”

“We have not betrayed....”

“I use his own words you fuck.” I spat. “He was a sad, sick and broken old man and you took advantage of him when he was at his lowest.”

I got a smack across the jaw for my trouble. I must have bit through my lip and needed to spit some blood mixed with phlegm onto the floor.

“Don't worry though.” I told the room. “We left him at his notary's house changing his will so that you won't get any support from his death.”

The majority of our audience didn't even know who Lord Polis was, was my guess. They just knew that they had powerful friends. But I saw a couple of people shifting their weight uncomfortably.

“So let's move onto Lord Barton. Nice man I thought. Married a bit beneath himself though.”

“Lady Barton is a good and holy woman and....”

“And a clear fifteen years younger than Lord Barton who is clearly devoted to her. I can see why. She struck me as a good woman, don't mistake me and she was the very light of Lord Barton's eye. He hung on her every word and we soon found out that he was paying into your coffers in a manner to keep her happy. But you miscalculated.”

“Did I now.”

“Oh yes. This time it wasn't Lord Barton that we needed to convince, it was his wife. We talked to her about the cruelties that had been inflicted and she was horrified. Absolutely horrified. And as fast as the money started to flow into your coffers, it soon started flowing out again as Lady Barton fluttered her, entirely sincere, eyelashes and wept her anguish into her husband's face. She pleaded with him to stop supporting you. Pleaded with him. What's an older man to do in the face of his young and beautiful wife's tears?”

“Lord Barton is a true follower of the flame....”

“Lord Barton loves his wife.” I snarled. “As is right and proper. He was swearing to build a hospital to help all the people that you have hurt when we left.”

Sansum was grinning at me.

“But not Lord Tenisson. You won't convince him so easily.”

“No we didn't.” I said. “You mistake me. We didn't convince him. And you would know about that if you would patrol properly. When we went to him we found his people in misery and he had surrounded himself with guards who shared his tastes. It was him and his friends that would stay in your little guest chambers wasn't it. He would stay there and torture whatever little heretics you found for him. You turned his already natural sadism into a religious fervour that was not being sated despite him spending his rage on his wife, his children and his household staff. His wife was broken when we found them. His children were cowering and his household staff let us in.

The chief cook told us where to find the kids Grandfather and we took them there after we burned Lord Tennison and his entire manor house to the ground. If you checked your surroundings properly you would have seen his funeral pyre from the top of your tower.”

“You lie.”

“Why would I lie?” I retorted. “I am going to destroy you. I'm going to destroy you and everyone that follows you. I am going to take your name and drag it into the sewer where it belongs. I am a flame fearing man and I know, I know that my deeds are going to be judged when I stand before the scales of fire. There are things that I am not proud of in my past and names that weigh on my conscience. But you, you and your little rabble of torturers and murderers....

“I will have to answer for what I've done but if I had just walked on by, I would have had to answer for that as well.

“You don't know it yet but every single one of you is dead already. Your only hope is to throw down your weapons and flee from this place and beg the holy flame, Kreve, Veyopatis, Melitele or the divine Sun for their forgiveness because I will not forgive you for the women's tears, the ruining of good and pure souls and the corruption of people's love for each other that you have perpetrated you unspeakable, unholy fucks.”

I was out of breath and panting with a dim kind of feeling that I was approaching the end of my tether.

Sansum turned around and headed back to the table with all of the torture implements on it. He spent some time looking them over, picking up this one and that one, turning them over in the light to examine the way the firelight shone of the sharp edges.

It's an odd feeling when you start to disassociate with yourself. That moment when your body and brain is on the verge of just giving it all up as a bad job. Panic and adrenaline were prevalent in my system, I was tired, stressed and exhausted and knew that I was only going to be heading for more pain, the longer this went on.

But I sat there, the hallucination of Father Jerome sat next to me as we watched Sansum take his time choosing whichever sharp and unpleasant blade he was going to use to torture me with. I could see it from a distance, as though through a long tunnel. If I thought about it, I could almost see it happening from Jerome's point of view, along with his thinking on the subject.

“He's re-exerting his dominance over the room,” I thought to myself. He's telling everyone who is watching, me not least, that he's in charge and that he's going to take his own sweet time over doing whatever it is he's doing. He's telling his followers that they shouldn't be afraid. After all, he isn't afraid and therefore, why should anyone else be afraid.

In the end he selected a small knife, no longer than the length of my thumb. I was reassured by the fact that it looked relatively clean.

“Do you know why we chose to keep you alive?” He asked me.

“Finally,” I said, doing my best to infuse the words with as much sarcastic relief as I could muster. “You're finally going to start asking me questions. It's about fucking time. What was all that other bullshit that you were talking about.”

Sansum considered this.

“You are not incorrect.” He told me. “We have been giving you the time that you might be hoisted on your own noose. To someone as well trained as I am, it was always obvious that you are a heretic so awful and black that to not kill you would, in and of itself, be a sin. However, my average follower hasn't had my level of training and as such they need to be convinced that you are as evil as I say you are. You have spent the last hour or so convincing them all of that. Therefore they know that all of the things that we are about to do to you are entirely justified.”

“Ah, so you're justifying your acts to yourself. Trying to convince yourselves that you're not the scum-fucks that I know you to be.”

“Quite. I have not explained the rules to you yet. To be fair though, you haven't stopped talking for long enough to let me get a word in edgeways. But here it is. I'm going to ask you a series of questions. You are going to answer them. If you lie to me, or if you try to hide anything from me then you will be punished. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I know how torturing works.”

he smiled thinly.

“You know? I imagine that you do don't you. But still, are you ready for your first question?”

“There's more than one question?”

He sighed, before turning to one of his colleagues. “Pull out one of his toe-nails. One of the smaller ones.”

It's an odd thing when I think about it. In my time I've been beaten, stabbed, slashed, burnt, poisoned, bitten, screamed at, posessed, fallen, bled and all of the other kinds of pain that I could think about. I've even had my soul removed from my body and had it used as the plaything for an otherworldly demonic entity which, quite frankly, made the torture that I was undergoing under the hands of Bishop Sansum, seem quite....tame.

But despite all of that, I still get squicked out by the thought of someone pulling my nails out.

I don't know why.

Even the thought of having my teeth pulled out is less terrifying than that.

You know what? It was agony, but on balance, it wasn't that bad.

“Did that hurt?” Sansum asked me, sarcasm dripping from every word, after I had finished screaming and swearing and promising every pain that I could imagine on the person holding the pliers.

“I don't know.” I told him after sucking down a few extra breaths in preparation for what I knew was going to come next. “Could you do one on the other side, just to see if it could be balanced out?”

Yes it hurt, but the joke was worth it and I was still laughing as I finished screaming.

“Flame but you're bad at this.” I told them.

“I see you take the point as to how it works.” Sansum told me, still playing with the knife, turning it this way and that.

“Of course I fucking have.” I told him, “Will you just get on with it and ask me some fucking questions already so that I can get on with refusing to answer you.”

“I can see that you are eager for it. Some part of you still hoping for redemption I suspect.”

“I think, as far as you're concerned, that ship has sailed. Why haven't you killed me yet? We both know that you can't afford to keep me alive. If I survive this, I'm going to use my time to systematically destroy you. If you tried to keep me captive then I would need to watched day and night. So why do I still survive?”

“You are correct. We can't kill you, yet. Because we need to know who helped you.”

“Who helped me?”

“Yes. How many friends do you have in the darkness. There is no way that you could have done this alone so we need to know who the traitors are in our midst. I would remind you of the consequences of a lie or a misleading answer.”

I closed my eyes and did my best to hide the victory in my thoughts.

Kerrass had been right.

In that moment I went back to Father Jerome's chapel listening to him speak. I was weak then as well, horribly tortured in body and mind at the hands of another monster. A thing that was worse than the so-called Holy man that was stood over me.

“Interrogation is an art form.” Jerome told me. “Don't get me wrong, it's a sick and twisted art-form to be sure but an art-form nevertheless. But one of the misconceptions about it is that the main part of that art is the torture. Torture is merely one of the tools in the collection of a proper interrogator and by some margin, it is the least effective. At best, torture is a means to an end. You use torture when you just need to extract a confession despite whether or not the person that you are interrogating is guilty.

“It's the blunt instrument of that aspect of the work. You just going and going until they beg you to stop. You tell them that they can stop as soon as they make their mark next to the confession and, sooner or later, they will.

“But you learn nothing from that. You don't learn whether or not they actually did it. You certainly don't learn anything new and more times than not, that kind of interrogation is just a political one. We need to execute this person because they disagree with the King or one of the other people in charge, but he's quite popular with the rabble so we torture him until he confesses to something so utterly horrible that even the people on the street will agree that he's a bastard and we can have him killed. It was primarily what we had to do when we were working against all the magic users in Novigrad. Torture them until they admitted to plotting against the King and then we could burn them.

“But torture is all but useless as a method of trying to extract information from a person. This is because, sooner or later, the persons sanity will simply snap and they will tell you anything that they think you want to hear, simply in an effort to get the pain to stop. That information is very rarely reliable and will always, always need verifying by another source before it can be acted upon.

“Real interrogation though. Real interrogation happens in the mind and that's the bit that is fascinating.”

“Can you give me an example?” I had asked, trying to show some interest.

“Certainly. The most common form of it is having someone present during the interrogation who is pretending to be the subject's friend. “Tell me what I need to know,” he will say, note the use of the word “need” in that sentence, “and I can help you.” Practice has shown us that a friendly approach is much, much more effective than shouting, screaming and torturing has ever been. Pretending to be the subjects friend works. Not all of that torture, or the causing of pain and most interrogators know this.

“But torture is a tool to extract confessions. It's also well known that people in power don't want to believe that torture doesn't work. They see the confessions mounting up and they think to themselves, “Ah well, if it's having such a massive effect then it must be working”.

“What they don't know is how many innocent people those confessions sent to the flames, or how much false information that we were forced to swallow just to satisfy their lust for blood.”

He had seemed so sad, I remember thinking at the time. So very sad.

“What should I do, if I ever find myself in the torturers chair?” I asked him, trying tot urn him back towards a more positive topic of conversation.

Strange how that seems like an odd sentence to say right here and now.

“Think it through. Plot your strategy.” He told me without hesitation as though he had already been thinking along those lines. “The simple fact of the matter is that no-one can withstand torture forever. No-one can. Everyone has their limits. That part of them that they cannot bear to allow it to go any further so that sooner or later, something inside them will just snap and they will start spewing information out at a rate that is overwhelming, both to them and to their questioners.

“There's a reason they call it “breaking” after all.

“So here's the trick. Stay in control. When you feel as though you need a break, or if you can't take it any more, then reward yourself. Give them something. Something small, something that they could probably figure out anyway. Ration the truth that you have to give though. Don't give them it all at once or they will think that you are lying to them. Take your time with it. Just a little bit of truth before returning to silence.”

“Should I lie to them?”

“You can, but be careful. If they catch you in a lie then the consequences are dire. So wrap it up in truth if you can.”

I nodded to myself and opened my eyes.

Maybe a second had passed. Not even that, and Sansum was looking down at me, his face twisted with scorn and hate.

“How many friends do I have in the dark?” I asked him. “Is that what you want to know?” I said it through gritted teeth.

He nodded at me.

“Oh so many friends.” I told him. “So many friends that you wouldn't believe. People see you for what you are now. They've seen you for the evil that you have visited on them and I will watch as they tear you down. I will laugh and give thanks to the fire for everything that they do to you. You will know what hell feels like. You will all know what it's like to go through that hell because my friends and I will show you.”

I screamed then as they took another nail.

“How many friends do you have out there?”

“Absolutely none at all.” I grinned at him. “Everything that's happening to you, I did it all by myself with the help of a Witcher?”

Another toe-nail followed and I convinced myself that I was getting used to the pain.

“Twelve.” I told them. “Twelve soldiers of the Empress.”

Another toe-nail and another scream.

“Five, Witchers all.”

The answers just tripped off my tongue and I laughed with every answer and with every scream I hammered home my victory over him.

In the end they ran out of toe-nails and started on my fingernails. When they ran out of those they started breaking my toes with a mallet.

The pain was starting to mesh together then and it took me a moment to realise that Sansum was asking me a question.

“What?” I asked him. “What do you want?”

“Why do you put up with this?” He asked. “Why do you let this happen? I can keep torturing you all day. I can torture you to death if I choose to so why do you let us do that. Just tell me the truth.”

I was no longer able to laugh but from somewhere I summoned a grin.

“Let me tell you something about me.” I rasped through the pain. “Let me tell you about some of the things that I have been through. I have been tortured by demons. Your little tray of implements isn't that scary to someone who's soul has literally been the plaything of demons. You forget several other things as well. Everything you do to me is fleeting. You take my toes, they will heal. My fingers? A little bit more of a blow, I will admit but at the end of the day, they will heal.

“I am engaged to be married to a Sorceress and my sister in law is also a Sorceress. Take my eyes, take my teeth, carve me up however you wish and I will simply be healed. Take my hands and they will grow me new hands. Take my ears, teeth, nose, genitals, take anything you want and I will grow them all back. You hold no fear of me.

“Kill me.” I told him. “Whether deliberately or by accident and I know two things. One, I will stand before the holy flame proud of my actions here and two, I know that my friends and loved ones will visit such a vengeance on you and all those that follow you that the world will tremble when your name is spoken. Children will be frightened with the tales of your fate for generations to come and I know, for absolute certainty, that you will freeze in the hell of the eternal frost.”

As I thought he might, Sansum lost his temper then and beat me, knife and other implements forgotten. Yes he caused damage and I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Time passed in a blur.

Finally though, I heard that sound that I had been waiting for for far too long.

It was the sound of the church bell ringing. Dull and hollow, badly maintained and obviously not rung with the clapper. This was emptier. More....shrill somehow.

I waited before I heard another one ringing crash and felt my whole body relax.

Finally.

Sansum was advancing on me again with his knife, but he had also heard the bell tolling as he moved towards me.

“Wait,” I whimpered, a little surprised that I didn't need to pretend that I was at the edge of my endurance.

“Wait.” I said again.

“Well,” he grasped me by the hair and tilted my head back. I could barely see him as one of my eyes had swollen shut and the other was full of the tears of pain. “Have you come to your senses?”

“Would it surprise you to learn that I have already told you the truth?”

“Go on.”

“There is no-one else out there.” I told him. “No-one else. Just me, and a Witcher have been the architects of your destruction.”

“Our destruction?” He laughed. “You are tied to a chair and in no shape to do any destruction and the Witcher is locked in his cell, waiting for when we take him to the nearby villages where we will kill him for all to see. So that they can all see the proper way to destroy mutants and freaks.”

“Oh.” I said. “Locked up is he?”

“Of course. Does that crush you little hopes?”

“Not really,”

“Why not?”

“That idiot with the golden armour. The one you sent off to “check on the other prisoner.” He's been gone a really long time hasn't he.”

I grinned at him, showing all my teeth in what I hoped was a terrifying smile.

Sansum turned his head onto one side and considered.

“No,” he said after a while. “No, I don't believe that. I think you've got more than that out there. I think there's a half a dozen people, peasants most likely, who have been feeding you information and giving you the layout of the place. I think you've suborned our cooks and our servants.”

“Slaves you mean,” I interrupted but he ignored me.

“I think that vampire bitch is out there. You've been in touch with her from the start haven't you?”

He was suddenly at me, holding his knife to my throat.

“ANSWER ME,” he screamed at my face.

“If I was, How am I doing that do you think?” Swallowing past a blade is harder than you might think.

“She's a monster, a sorceress. She has her ways.”

“As a matter of fact, she talks to me through the holy symbol round my neck.”

He recoiled.

“The holy symbol that she, not only had made for me, but also had a real arch-Bishop bless for her.”

“Impossible,” he declared. “Impossible. Even approximations of the holy fire are harmful to creatures of evil.”

“Which is kind of my point.” I told him. “But that's not important now.”

“I still don't believe you. Two of you couldn't have done everything that you claim.”

I shrugged at him.

“I can prove it.” I told him.

“How?”

“Send two of your knights to go and check on the Witcher.”

He thought about this for a while. “You,” he pointed at a man out of my line of sight. “You, you and you.”

He turned back to me and grinned. “Only sending two men seems a little bit silly if the man has really escaped, don't you think.”

I would have shrugged but I was tied up. The respite from the pain was allowing my brain to clear so that I could start thinking again.

“Suit yourself.” I told him. “But you're making a bit of a mistake there.”

“Oh yes, and what's that.”

“Kerrass is no man. He is a Witcher.”

“A Witcher,” his lips curled. “A mutated form of evil.”

I laughed but then looked at him as an insight struck me.

“While we're waiting for your people to come back, can I ask you a question?”

He said nothing and I took it for permission.

“Why do you hate us so much?” I wondered. “All the Sorceresses, all the strangers and the creatures. The mutants and the weirdos. All the people that think something differently to you. Why do you hate us so much?”

“Hate you. You condemn us all to hell with your deviancy and your....”

“Yes yes,” I told him. “Religious doctrine and all that, but what drove you to that. Not, what drove you into the arms of the church, that I can understand as I have felt the pull of the church and the security of knowing....Of knowing that you serve the flame. But why? What drove you to this level of extremity? I once offered this same chance to another person that was considered a monster? She sat down and gave me her perspectives and her thoughts and her drives. Fucking hell man, I'm marrying that woman. So use me. Tell me why this has happened to you. And I will record it all for posterity.”

“Record it?” he snarled. “You are going to die soon.” And I saw the fear in him for the first time.

“You're afraid of us aren't you.” I told him. “You're afraid that we might be right. That we might be correct. That the definition of monster is out of date. That knowledge defeats ignorance every single time. That we are all together here in this struggle for survival, that we all came here from other places and we need to be working together to survive. That we are all monsters to each other. That's what you're afraid of isn't it. The change, the differences and the things that we represent. We are the change that you cannot handle,”

“BE SILENT.”

I laughed at him then as I knew that I had won.

“I'm going to cut you,” he snarled, “and I'm going to raise you up for all to see as we burn you for the heretic that you are. First you are going to tell us what you know and then you are going to die.”

“Maybe.”

There was a scream from somewhere a long, drawn out and horrible scream that sounded like it was intentionally drawn out. It seemed as though it echoed down the corridors.

“Maybe,” I said again as the last echoes of that terrible noise died out. “Maybe I might die but I suspect that you will be dying first.”

Then, proving that Kerrass enjoys a sense of the dramatic. A single soldier came walking in from somewhere. I couldn't see him as I was still tied up but men started yelling and shouting and running about.

He walked into the main church room and keeled over where he died on the floor.

Orders were given, weapons were drawn and swords were clashed, oaths were given and men started rushing about.

I could no longer help it. I started to laugh and I laughed for a long time.

What can I say? Sansum's face was a picture.

“No,” he said after a while. “No, I'm not afraid of you. I despise you. You are going to be the end of the human race. You and your freaks and deviants. You are going to destroy us all. The frost is coming for us all and the only thing that can prevent that is the holy fire. We have to obey. We have to obey every order, every tenet every holy law. We have to do it or the frost is coming for us all.”

A man walked up to us and saluted. His hand was shaking.

“They're all dead.” He almost whispered it. “It's like a butchers shop out there. A slaughter yard. There's blood on the walls and on the floors. Bodies are everywhere.”

Sansum didn't look away from my eyes.

“The prisoners?”

“Gone.”

Sansum still didn't take his eyes off me.

“Search the complex. Do it in teams. No one man walks alone, in pairs.”

“Arch-Bishop we....”

“Do it.” He snarled. “One man can't have done this.”

“No?” I asked him. “He's a monster deviant mutant freak. He's a creature of darkness and he can perform magic and all kinds of horrid deviant things. Do you not think that splitting your men up is exactly what he wants?”

“Or,” he told me “Is your arguing for that to get us all in one place so that he can have us all together in one place.”

I shrugged.

“Suit yourself.” I told him. There was more running and shouting.

Then we waited. No sounds of combat, no sounds of violence or fighting. Just Sansum pacing backwards and forwards in front of me.

“You asked me a question earlier.” He said suddenly. “If I ask you a straight question now, will you give me a straight answer?”

“That depends on the question?”

“Why do you hate us? All we're trying to do is to save the world. We're not as caught up in current problems. We're trying to save your souls, why can't you see that? The church is just trying to keep you warm, keep you safe and keep you away from sin. But then when we do that, you accuse us of going to far or doing the wrong thing. There is no such thing as going to far when it comes to the immortal souls of our people. Even the people that we burn are purified of evil in that burning so that when they die, they can be reborn into the flame's eternal light. Why can't you see that?”

“Because that's not what's happening here.” I told him. “Because it is provably not true. I shall give you an example, a well-known one actually. My fiancee is a higher vampire. So by your reasoning she should be the very height of evil right? If fire purges all evil then why is she immune to flame? She's not alone either, there are plenty of creatures that are immune to fire, Ifrits just off the top of my head. A Shaelmaar wouldn't even notice a fire pit, it would just curl up into a ball and have a nap until the flames died down.

“What's happening here, is that you are persecuting people that you don't like. The Holy Flame is an idea, an ideal that we aim for. It was a thing that they used to hold a new city together in the face of enormous odds against an enemy that we couldn't possibly have defeated without the hope and the security that the Holy Flame provided. But now were in a whole new world. We have tamed the wilderness, there are no more monsters clawing at our gates. We won.

“But now we try and move forwards into that new world and into that new light. People like you, and hierarch Hemmelfart and King Radobid hold us back, keep us in the dark. You try and keep us afraid, of each other and the world and the realities that we find out here.

“I don't hate your knights although I think that they're incredibly stupid and blind and....all the other bullshit that comes with that.

“I don't hate the church either, or the holy flame. I love the flame and when I return home to my families chapel then I will, as I always do, fall to my knees and give thanks for my deliverance.

“But I do hate you you unspeakable wretch. I hate you for your ignorance and your fear and your own hatred that you force onto the rest of us with flame and sword.”

I stopped speaking then.

He hadn't moved.

I shrugged again. “You asked.”

The same knight ran in and came up to Samsum and again, he saluted, “There's no-one out there.” He said.

He said that shortly before his eye seemed to sprout a crossbow bolt. He toppled backwards in almost the same exact way that a tree might fall in the woods.

“That's because I'm in here with you.” Kerrass' voice echoed of the walls.

I couldn't take my eyes of Sansum. He was looking around the church hall in a panic then.

My chair was spun round so that I could see the rest of the hall, the flaming torches on the walls, the firepits on the floor and the huge chandelier that was covered in candles, swinging from the ceiling.

“Show yourself.” Sansum demanded. I could no longer see him but he sounded as though he was a short distance behind me. “Show yourself now, or we kill him.”

A man in armour walked up behind me. I could tell that he was in armour because I could hear his chain-mail jingling. A dagger was drawn and the knight placed his hand on my shoulder and I could feel a cold point of metal pressed against the back of my neck.

I saw the flash of the bolt, a split second before I heard the thunk of the arrow striking flesh. The man's grip slipped away and I heard him crash backwards.

“Any man who touches Freddie, dies.” Kerrass' voice echoes again. This time, it sounded like it was coming from somewhere up in the rafters

“Why?” Sansum moved to stand in front of me, other knights spread out in a circle surrounding us. “Do you love him?” He was attempting to sound as though he was being scornful. The truth was that he was just beginning to sound a little afraid

“He is my friend.” Came the voice. It was definitely Kerrass' voice but it sounded distorted somehow. It sounded slow and drawn out. As though he was taking his time to say the words.

A torch in the corner of the room snuffed out.

“Come out, coward,” Sansum was pacing again, getting his confidence back from the fact that he was surrounded by his knights. “Or are you afraid to show yourself?”

“Fear?” Came the voice as another torch seemed to snuff out followed by another one immediately opposite where the last one had vanished. “Fear is surrounding yourself with lesser men and demanding that they obey you. Fear is victimising those who are not as strong as you. Fear is pretending to be something that you are not.” The sound seemed to come from all around us. As though Kerrass was speaking directly into our ears.

“Why don't you come out?” Sansum taunted. “Why don't you come out and face us.”

But the voice didn't answer. Instead, another torch went out. And another.

“Your little fires won't protect you from me.” The voice was a snarl now. Uncompromising and chilling to the very bone.

“We outnumber you twenty to one,” Sansum called to the room. “How do you expect to fight us?”

“Actually,” now the voice was playful. “By my count, it's more like sixteen.”

Something whistled through the air, an object, spinning. I saw firelight reflected of it's metallic pieces. It smashed against the ceiling. Even if my hands were free I don't think I would have been able to shield myself from the bright flash in time.

I heard running feet, a clash of metal on metal and a sound that felt like a razor blade cutting through silk.

Then I heard a man gurgle.

“My mistake.” The voice sounded a bit more normal now. “Fourteen.”

There was a crash, followed by another man who was trying to scream through the blood that was now flooding his throat. I managed to blink the glare away and had time to see one of the men clutching at his neck in an effort to try and stop the blood gushing from it before he collapsed as well.

“Fight us,” Sansum screamed. “Fight us damn you.”

“He is fighting you.” I told him. “Just on his terms rather than on yours.”

There was a pause. The torches continued to go out one by one which left a sooty, oily smell in the air that reached down my throat and threatened to gag me.

“Make him stop.” Sansum snarled at me. “Make him come out and face us.”

“And how do you suppose that I'm going to do that?”

“Everyone knows that you hold his leash.”

I laughed at him.

“Do I hold his leash? Or does he hold mine?

Kerrass ran out. To my sight he looked awful, pale, drawn and tired. But from all the hollering it would seem that to everyone else he must have seemed monstrous. He didn't move slowly though. He ran across the hall and his arm moved. Something flew from his hand. I can't tell you anything about it other than that it glowed blue. There was a massive kind of Whompf kind of a noise, silver dust started to fall from the ceiling.

Kerrass gestured and I saw one of the knights lower his sword, he seemed to shake his head before turning on his comrade and bringing his sword down on the man's head.

It didn't do anything else other than to make a huge clang. But the struck man reacted instantly with all of the training that he could muster, the confused man fell, clutching the huge wound in his belly. He was screaming.

“Thirteen,” called Kerrass. “I tell you what Archbishop. I will fight you on your terms. Are you ready?”

He audibly took a breath and cleared his throat, his voice still echoing off the walls. “To the men surrounding my friend and your, I hesitate to use the word, superior. I am going to make you an offer.”

There was a silence, more sounds of footsteps.

“This is how you do it isn't it, Sansum? You make the people an offer?”

There was an audible chuckle.

“So here's my offer.”

“Heretic,” Sansum growled.

“You are all going to die.” Kerrass told them. “The only way that one of you is going to survive is if you drop your sword, and untie my friend.”

“Don't move,” Sansum snarled at the knights. “Don't you move, not one step. If you even consider doing what this mutant orders then you will freeze in the hell of the eternal frost.”

The knights were looking at each other.

“See that Sansum?” I asked him.

“Be silent.” Sansum screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.

“One more sign that you are beaten.” I told him. “One more sign that you are done.”

“Fuck this,” said one of the knights and turned away. “You can all die here if you want but....”

He didn't get chance to say any more as his friend struck out at him. The dissenter managed to block a couple of blows before another knight joined the fray. The dissenter wasn't that good and soon fell under the rain of blows but he also had friends of his own who decided to join in on his side.

Two more men fell out of the fight.

I laughed for a long time at that.

“That's exactly how it happens in the villages isn't it.” I told Sansum, struggling to contain my mirth. “You turn them against each other. You tell them that only one or two of them can reach eternal salvation and only then if they agree to sell out their friends. You put the fear of pain and death into their minds and they cannot cope with it. They feel the fear, not just for themselves but also for their loved ones. Their wives and children so they sign up to your cause and sell out the old farmer who likes to hedge his bets occasionally and prays to Veyopatis for a decent harvest.”

Sansum spun on me, took two strides and struck me across the face. “Never forget, heretic, that you are still in here with me and I can kill you just as easily. That you will never make it out alive.”

I couldn't stop laughing at him.

“Fear and superstition.” I told him. “That's what you use to keep the local villages in line. Now Kerrass is destroying you with your own tools. Look, Now your knights are looking at each other to see if they can tell which one of them is going to betray them first.” Even I could hear the hysteria in my own voice.

“Stand to your posts.” Sansum called at them.

“Eleven men left.” Kerrass called. His voice sounded a bit stronger now and I guessed that he had used the time to take another potion. “Let's make it a nice round number shall we.”

There was another wet sound. Kerrass was getting really good at these eye shots.

“Ten men.” Kerrass said. His voice had re-attained that echoey sound. “Now that your numbers seem a little bit more manageable. Shall we dance?”

He walked out from behind one of the pillars. He seemed to be moving slowly and carefully, taking his time to place his feet on the ground, each footstep carefully planned and positioned. He held his sword in a ready position and as he moved, his upper body stayed perfectly upright, his arms unmoving. He looked awful.

There was a cut in his temple that was oozing black blood that ran down his face. His skin was paper white with stark black lines running this way and that under his skin. He was still along way away from the cluster of knights but his appearance could not have had a more profound effect on the waiting knights.

“Let's just rush him.” said one. “There's ten of us and only one of him.”

“Shut up,” hissed another.

“Come on,” a third was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “We can do it.” There's only one of him and we can see him coming.”

“Hold to your posts.” Sansum insisted. “Stay where you are.”

“I can take him.” A quiet one said. From the way he held his sword it was easy to tell that he knew what he was doing, or rather, he thought he did. “I can take him.” He said again, not taking his eyes off the moving Witcher.

“Can you?” I thought it was time I added to it. “Can you take him? Be sure now. That is a man who has been practising his craft for the last hundred years. A trained killer and veteran of so many fights that it would make your head spin. He was killing soldiers and knights before you were born.”

Kerrass was coming closer, not taking his eyes of Sansum but he was still some distance away.

“And then you lot, with your misplaced fear and morality made a mistake.” I continued,

Kerrass took another step.

“As Witchers, the other men of the Witcher schools are their brothers. But Kerrass had another family.”

Kerrass took another step.

“A family of good and caring people.”

Another step.

“People that he went to when he was hurting or when he needed help.”

Another step, he was getting much closer now.

“People who loved him.”

Nearly there. I judged that they just needed a little push before they would snap. I waited for Kerrass to take another step.

“And then you killed them.” I did my best to make my voice sound ominous and scary. In truth I was doing my best impression of my father when he was handing out a punishment to Sam and I after we had done something wrong.

It worked though.

One of the knights, I thought it was the one who suggested that they all rushed Kerrass, moaned. There was no other word to describe the noise that came out of the young man's throat. He moaned and started moving forwards his sword coming up. The one that thought he could take Kerrass realised what was happening and stepped forward also,

Sansum finally realised what was happening and screamed something but it was too late. Another two knights moved to join in and so, a total of four knights moved forward to attack Kerrass and Kerrass sprang forward to meet them.

It happened so quickly that I could barely follow what happened so this is just a guess as to what I saw. I should say that I soon lost track of the identities of the men who attacked him.

One knight simply fell over, I guessed from one of Kerrass' signs. Kerrass then spun away from the attackers, taking him across their little group, the spin continued and Kerrass was backing up, but the knights had the scent now and were chasing him. One stooped to help the fallen man, so that in reality Kerrass was only facing two men.

He stopped fleeing in the space of a thought and was suddenly attacking. Driving one knight back into the second so that they knocked each other over.

Sam would have been furious with them, even despite the rest of their mistakes. He would be angry at the lack of unit cohesion and awareness of each other's positioning.

Kerrass killed one while he was on the floor before he was attacked again. I saw Kerrass grin suddenly as he spun in a parry and kicked one of the attackers in the face who staggered back. Then another man died as Kerrass could devote all his attention to him. Then he ran over and killed the other one who was entangled with the corpse of the man who had fallen against him.

The knight screamed in fear as Kerrass ran him through.

The fourth knight, I guessed that he was the one who thought he could take Kerrass but I couldn't be sure as I had got them confused. I thought that he was though as, after making sure that Kerrass was a safe distance away, he checked his ground before checking the distance back to Sansum and his small unit who had been cheering their support for their fellows but now watched in silence. Then the hapless knight checked to make sure that his ground was clear and fell into a ready stance to receive the Witcher.

I've spoken before about the way it works when two decent swordsmen meet so I won't go over it again in too much detail here. Suffice it to say that it never quite goes the way you would think. It's never as long as you would expect for a start. You hear these stories about wide ranging fights that go this way and that way with the combatants going all over the place. But the truth is that that simply doesn't happen.

In this case, the two men faced each other. Kerrass was the quicker but the other man had the armour protecting him. The real mistake in this instance was Sansum's. He was calling the remaining six soldiers closer to him. I don't know what his scheme was, whether he was planning on making a run for it or something but he positioned two men behind me and then kept the last four between him and the Witcher.

What I would have done is order the last six men to surround Kerrass and bring him down before fleeing during the distraction.

Well no, that's not quite true. I would have led those six men to surround Kerrass and bring him down but that's what I might have done if I had been in Sansum's shoes.

Thank the holy flame that I wasn't, that I'm not and that I will never be.

The knight fought well. There were several exchanges of sword play. The knight trying his best to probe Kerrass' skills to see where the openings were. My guess is that he became a little overconfident and that Kerrass took advantage of his thinking as I think that the knight thought he was probing Kerrass' defences before the duel actually started whereas Kerrass was already fighting. I also suspect that the knight was expecting some kind of “formal duel” situation where there are rules and things.

Regardless of what happened, you can always tell the opponents that Kerrass feels some measure of respect for as those are the men that he kills quickly.

Those and the men that he feels sorry for.

The knight moved forward in an effort to engage Kerrass' blade. There was an exchange before Kerrass grabbed some part of the knights forearm and pulled him forward, off balance. Then Kerrass spun and decapitated the man cleanly.

I doubt that the knight even had time to realise that he was dead.

Kerrass was breathing heavily though as he cleaned his sword on one of the tunics of the fallen men and as he stood back up he seemed to be swaying on his feet. He took a deep breath and started walking towards us again.

Sansum had started to laugh.

“And you say that I am beaten.” He said. “You, who can barely stand. You say that I am beaten.”

Kerrass straightened and moved so that he was stood facing us all.

“Yes, I think you're beaten. Also, that you are no longer as scary as you were. You wanna know why?”

Kerrass was breathing hard, limping and dragging his feet.

“Because two of us.” He forced a smile, even though it looked as though it hurt him. “Two of us, took down your entire operation. Your supplies, your men, your home. All of them burned to the ground. Two of us. One of us isn't even a combatant, not really. The only reason that he agreed to this plan is because of how ridiculously monstrous you are. Two of us took you down.”

“But you haven't taken me down. Look at yourself. One of you is tied to a chair after hours of torture and you're barely able to stand, let alone fight and there are still six knights to fight you. My most disciplined, my most fierce and loyal men. How do you intend to get through those six men to get to me?”

“Would you like to know how?” Kerrass took a step towards us and the knights flinched. “Would you really like to know how?” He took another step and dragged his sword up into the ready position.

“Go on then, I shall indulge you. How do you intend to get past six of the most highly trained men in the continent.” He gestured and the two men that were stood behind me moved to be in front so that a line of six men stood between Kerrass and Sansum. They looked at each other and started to move to surround the Witcher.

“Because I've already got past them.” Kerrass said, his face a rictus of death, his eyes not moving from Sansum's face. “Our very first trick. The same trick that we've used over and over again on you. You fell for it at every stage and you've fallen for it again. I'm distracting you.”

“Distracting me? From what?”

Kerrass' weariness vanished “From the fact that Freddie has just worked his hands free from his bonds.”

I stood, shrugging off the rope that had held me back in the chair and held it in my hands. By the flame but it hurt as I lunged forward and screamed as I put all of the pain and fury into that last convulsive leap. I nearly didn't make it as I was still tied to the chair by my ankles.

But I got him, I held onto the back of his robes as he began to turn towards me. With a flick, I got the rope around his neck and then let my weight drag me to the floor with Sansum on top of me.

First he scrabbled at the rope digging into the flesh at his neck, then he clawed at my hands as I held onto that rope and pulled, and squeezed until I felt that I was at the very end of my strength. Then, when I couldn't take any more, I thought of Saffron's torn corpse, and the figure of Sally with her skull caved in and I found an extra ounce of strength from somewhere and squeezed even harder.

The knights panicked, some attacked Kerrass but others ran back to try and free Sansum from my clutches. It was the only opening that Kerrass needed as he showed that he was not nearly as exhausted or injured as he had been pretending. Their distraction and their inability to free Sansum from me without hurting him provided that confusion and so Kerrass was in amongst them, cutting and spinning.

But I didn't see that. All I could feel was the rough rope as I pulled and pulled.

All I could see and feel was Sansum and the desperate desire to end that sick fuckers life.

I squeezed and I squeezed so hard that I didn't realise that the fighting had stopped. Nor did I realise that Sansum had stopped moving.

“It's ok Freddie.” Kerrass' calm voice. He was drinking two potions in quick succession. He would later tell me that it was the “White honey” potion that would clear the effects of the vast majority of the potions from his system and then a potion that would help his healing process.

“It's over. You can let go now, the bastard's dead.”

It took a long time for the words to come through to me. And when it did I could no longer feel the pain or the fear or the awful awful rage that had been burning in my gut since we had discovered Sally's body. I just felt so sick and tired.

“You know the sad thing?” I said to Kerrass. “The sad thing is that I really can't.”

He laughed. One of his small bursts of Witcher laughter. No more than a wry chuckle and it burst some kind of dam in me so that I finally started to weep.

Kerrass went off and found his satchel and some of the medicines that he kept there and helped me to peel the rope out of my hands. Salve was plastered over the worst of my wounds before bandages were wrapped and new clothes were found but even despite all of that, he still mostly carried me out of there.

The pain was indescribable but somehow it wasn't too bad. Nothing compared to what the Beast of Amber's crossing had left me with. Those injuries were psychological and spiritual whereas this? Somehow this felt righteous. I could look at my injuries and tell myself that they would heal over time.

There was quite a lot of aftermath that happened next. At my request, Kerrass deposited me on the hillside where we had watched the compound. He went off to find our things and made me a drink to numb the pain.

He told me about how he had freed the prisoners as well as chasing off some of those men and women who were forced to work in the compound. He described how, after being captured, Sansum had ordered that Kerrass not be harmed so that he could be properly interrogated at a later date and they had thrown him into a cell in the basement. A part of the compound that I had not had the chance to see and after Kerrass' descriptions of the place, I found I was glad of it.

In the morning, still far too energised to sleep, I watched the sun rise as Kerrass got back to work. He was helped by some of the “servants” who had started started to come back as well as some of the local villagers after they had heard about what had happened and seen the flames.

First the bodies were laid out. The knights and all of those others that had died were laid out in one of the more flammable parts of the remaining compound and a work crew spent a good amount of time cutting down the wooden pallisade and making a huge fire out of it. At first there was some argument from some of the villagers that wondered why the soldiers should get such a decent funeral. But I thought of the corruption that had gotten into the head of young Maxwell as well, I will admit, as the brain fucking that had happened to Edmund and my mother and so I insisted.

Other than Sansum. Also at my insistence, Sansum was taken a little way away and buried in an unmarked grave. Two men did that work and I told them that the grave shouldn't be under a tree or any other kind of identifiable landmark. That, if possible, even they should struggle to find it if they went looking for it. I told them to bury him under a field that would grow crops to feed the locals or, even better, to feed the livestock. I didn't want him to be a martyr with a grave that could be visited.

The knights had gathered a not inconsiderable amount of wealth. After conversing with the other villagers it was decided that Kerrass and I should take the more identifiable pieces, the ornaments and jewellery and turn them in. Any reward that we might get for those things should then be donated to something. A real church or shrine or something. The smaller money, or things that the villagers could realistically sell without drawing attention to themselves were divided equally among those people that came to help, on the understanding that they would be used to help the villages worst struck by the knights.

Kerrass and I also took the paper that had been in Sansum's rooms. It was soon re-emphasised that Sansum couldn't read as the majority of the letters that he had received were unopened but had been carefully hidden away so that no-one could call him on that. We also took what books there were, those that wouldn't be of use to the villagers themselves.

As we left, having ransacked the place of anything useful or of worth, Kerrass doused the place in oil as we had found another store place of it in the basement, and brought me a lit torch to start the fire. I hadn't wanted any kind of ceremony for the burning. I had just wanted the signs of this place to be obliterated but the other villagers seemed to want something.

So I stood, only slightly leaning on Kerrass and told them that the Holy Fire keeps us safe from evil and as such it was fitting that fire would destroy a very dark point in the history of this strip of land. I spun and threw the torch into the pyre and it went up most satisfactoraly.

Kerrass and I stayed and watched it burn for a while as the rest of the villagers started to drift away.

“Thank you Freddie.” He told me.

“What for.”

“You didn't have to come with me to do this. In fact, there's a significant part of me that is saying that you shouldn't have come with me. When you are so desperate to hunt down what happened to your sister, you didn't have to come with me on this. But I am grateful that you did. I'm not sure I could have done this without you.”

“It was rather special though wasn't it?” I told him with a grin in an effort to change the subject. “How many distractions was it?”

“Let's see,” he started counting on his fingers, “I distracted them so that you could get in and start causing destruction and mayhem. So that's one.”

“Then when I've done that, I get myself captured to distract them from you getting free and making with the killing. That's two.”

“Then I distract what's left of them so that you can get free and kill Sansum, so that's three.” He smiled in triumph.

“Ah no, because in turn, that killing distracted them so that you could get amongst them and kill them. So that's four.”

“So a distraction within a distraction within a distraction within a distraction.” Kerrass mused. “That's a lot of distraction.”

“And you say that you don't like complicated plans.” I teased him.

“Hey, it was your plan.”

“True.”

There was another pause as we watched the place burn.

“But thank you Freddie. I owe you.”

“No you don't.” I told him. “I loved them too and besides, that's what friends are for, remember?”

As we watched the central roof beam of the church building collapsed inwards.

“Let's get the fuck out of here.” Kerrass said after a long moment.

I sincerely wish that that was the end of the story.

The kid, Maxwell, never made it to Tretogor. When my hands had healed enough so that I could write, (it wasn't that long,) I wrote to Mark to tell him to keep an eye out for the kid but he never showed up. We received word that, after some time, genuine church soldiers went out to search for him. In the end they found him hanging from a tree in Northern Lyria with his hands tied behind his back. A search was made for the killers but they were never found.

We did find out who Sansum was though. He was an illegitimate son of a bishop of Rivia. His mother had been trampled to death under the feet of the panicking masses during the Pogrom against the non-humans. The same incident that had supposedly killed Geralt of Rivia. His father, not being the stereotypical, remote father of a bastard had arranged for his son to be taken into a local monastery but his disdain for what he had called “the dimming of the flame” under the leadership of people like brother Mark had caused his hatred and disdain to boil over. In the end, the abbot had been forced to kick him out in the face of the churches move towards tolerance after the end of the more recent war.

The supporting Lords, the men who had supported Sansum in his crusade protested their innocence and swore to work towards the betterment of the countryside.

The thing that got Kerrass and I in trouble was that a couple of the knights had important fathers who had been quite proud of the fact that their children had joined a holy order and protested at the summary execution of their darling little children while also refusing to believe what they had gotten up to, citing their disbelief in a ragamuffin Witcher and some minor son of a Northern Lord.

The thing was that the Constable of Lyria and Rivia was well aware of Sansum and his knights but was not authorised to do anything about it because there were “bigger problems” closer to home. It seems that Sansum had been cautious enough not to anger anyone too important and as a result, the people that held onto the Constables leash wouldn't release him to deal with it. He was actually quite grateful. Grateful enough that he sent us on our way with a few spare horses and enough money to get to the river and catch a boat to Oxenfurt but, as you know, we didn't manage to outrun the protests.

So what's left to say. As I write this, Sir Robart is being escorted North which means that Kerrass and I should be safe to leave the day after tomorrow. The slight delay is due to the fact that Captain Froggart and Sir Rickard want to do a sweep of the local countryside to ensure that there aren't any mercenary hitmen that are waiting behind in an effort to pick us off and collect some kind of bounty.

It has been decided, by people other than myself, that Sir Rickard and his gang of Bastards are coming North with Kerrass and I. According to Sam's letters there is a considerable problem with ghosts and other “things” for which the Bastards would be most useful. Sir Rickard is looking forward to it claiming that his men are getting fat on all of the lazing around and getting paid for it. But I suspect that the extra escorts are my sister and Ariadne conspiring against me for my own good. I can't say that they are wrong to be concerned, but don't tell them I said that.

This doesn't feel like a proper ending to the story. Instead I will say this.

A number of people have contacted me with anti-flame sentiment. They point to the Witch-hunters and the questioners and the burnings of non-humans and anyone that the church took offence to. They point out the depths that the knights of the burning rose sunk to after they had been all but wiped out at the hands of Radovid's displeasure. There have even been calls for banning the worship of the Holy Flame altogether.

To them I will say this.

For a start, I still follow the tenets of the Holy Flame and I have been tortured by fanatics.

Some things to bear in mind.

The Witch burnings and the pogroms were encouraged by two men. The Hierarch Hemmelfart and King Radovid of Redania. The two most powerful men in Redania. Provably, both men had reason to hate magic users. The first because of political ambition and the second because of his resentment at the way he had been brought up. In such cases, the bad rise to the top.

It was a political purging and such things will always attract the psychopaths. But they are the rarity rather than the main.

Yes I know that Mark is my brother but....

There is a movement in the church at the moment which is dragging the Holy Flame into the modern era as the continent as a whole moves back towards Polytheism. Priests are being encouraged to be more tolerant and understanding as scholars like my brother and others argue for progress and to work together with magic users and the other religions. Change is coming but change is always painful.

There are also, always, people for whom change is terrifying. Mark is one of these people.

There are also people for whom the old ways gave them an outlet for their old prejudices and hatreds. Sansum was one of those.

So I will just say, there are people who give the church a bad name. But there are also plenty of people who do sterling work looking after the poor and the sick and the hurt.

What I'm saying is, don't blame the whole thing for the actions of a relatively small number of ass-holes.

Yeah, that's a better ending.