My mind was still puzzling over the riddle of Father Gardan's death when we came to the village. So much so that Sir Rickard had to poke me in the ribs when we finally came up to it.

It wasn't a big place.

Sheltered on one side by a rise in the land that formed an almost, cliff face, presumably as part of the mountain range further to the east. On all other sides it was surrounded by wood and meadow land, a place of small fields and tiny little paddocks. This was the kind of farm-land that poets talk about and artists paint. Small patches of vegetables were attached to each house with ivy crawling up the wall and as we watched there were people working them.

That's not to say that there weren't fields that grew the wheat and barley that are essential to the running of places like this, but they were odd shapes. Fitting round the trees and the bits of streams. This was a place that was still lacking the three field system or the more new-fangled crop rotation.

They had a windmill and a couple of large barns. There was also cattle at some distance, a hardier, hairier and more lean kind of mountain cow as well as goats and a few paddocks full of sheep.

I could hear the ring of a blacksmiths hammer and also felt that I could detect the faint aroma of a tannery. It looked....quaint, industrious and gentle. The only thing it lacked was a village shrine or chapel but I suppose that that was to be expected given what we knew about the local practices.

“Right,” Rickard mused, picking at his lower lip as he looked out over the quiet, peaceful scene. “Sergeant?”

“Sir?” the Huge Sergeant of the bastards was a man of enormous strength and astonishing stealth. Skelligan originally he grew up on one of the smaller islands where life is a bit harder than it is on the larger islands.

He's full of stories about his brothers and sisters but is a little shy on specifics so I always assumed that he came from a large family. From a rough overview of what he was saying, I think he ran away from home for one reason or the other and found himself in Temeria where he signed up with the Temerian harriers. He was far too large and independently minded to fight in the battle line, swinging a huge sword that he claimed was once carried by an ancient Skelligan hero named Roary Mac'Ferghus O'Flanagan who had fought against the Temerians and Redanians in ancient times.

He had a vast store of stories that he would tell with relish regarding the wars of the Skellige against the mainland. It seemed that he had no problems in the fact that he often fought alongside those self-same people though. He would often throw out insults the way the rest of us throw out nick-names but he was an absolute professional. As well as his huge sword, he carried a mace and the largest crossbow that I've ever seen carried by a man who walked on his own two feet.

He was indomitable and was always ready with a laugh or a joke, even when the elements were against the men and they were cold, tired and hungry he would exhort the other men onto greater effort and they would always, always rise to the occasion.

“Let's go in careful,” Sir Rickard told him. “Lord Frederick and I with no more than five other men. In the meantime, take the rest of the men and have a look around. See what the surroundings can tell us. Assume that we will have to fight here and that we're going to have to defend this place.”

The Sergeant nodded and started barking orders. Rickard and I were joined by the two youngsters Perkins and Pendleton, presumably on the grounds that as they were younger, they would be less threatening. Also joining us was a man called Taylor. He was Redanian originally and didn't bother hiding the fact that he was on the run from....something. He was a charming man who I suspected to be some kind of nobleman's bastard because of his use of proper speech and his obvious education. He was the best swordsman in the unit and would often be leading the training drills including giving pointers to Sir Rickard on how he could improve his technique. Fiercely charming, handsome and intelligent. He also had a reputation for being something of a ladies man which didn't surprise me in the least.

The twins were the last two that accompanied us into the village. Absolutely inseparable, they did everything together and the only way you could tell them apart was by their equipment. They shared everything, food, drink and some of the other men claimed that they even shared women. A thought that made me shudder with fascination although I couldn't bring myself to ask them more about it.

They didn't talk much but Sir Rickard told me that they joined the army because their father was a patriot and that they had been told to. But after the war, they had gone home to find that their home was one of the places that had been eaten up by one army or the other and their father was nowhere to be found. With their mother long dead and their elder sister married to another man in another village, the twins had decided to return to the army and to the only things that they were good at.

If I had had my head in the game I would have approved of the choices. As five men go, they were more likely to put the villagers at their ease. None of them were among the more dangerous of the bastards. All of them were well-spoken and did as they were told. The only slight danger was that Pendleton and Perkins would need to be held upside down and shaken until anything that they might have stolen fell out of their pockets.

But I didn't want to take my head out of Gardan's death yet. I was still too tied into that. Too many questions to be answered, The big ones, obviously being, Who? And Why? Along with the almost as important, why now?”

“Self-recrimination doesn't work like that,” Sir Rickard told me as we dismounted to lead our horses down towards the village. We had decided to walk on the grounds that it would look less intimidating than if we rode. I still had my dagger in my belt and Sir Rickard wore his sword but the rest of our weapons were strapped to the sides of our horses in an effort to put people at their ease.

“I know,” I told him, “And I will get there. It's just that right now, all I can think about is that I should have brought him up to the castle with us the day before yesterday. He would have been safe then.”

“Would he?” Sir Rickard commented. “Look, your brother strikes me as a fine man despite the fact that he sometimes makes me uncomfortable but for the rest of them? I don't trust them, they all seem a little too...political to me.”

“You make that sound like the ultimate insult.”

“I'm a soldier. It is the ultimate insult. Think about it though. What do you know about these other churchmen that turned up. Two Inquisitors that are bound to have a different view on heresy than Danzig or Gardan would have. Trent seems like a decent fellow but you also have to be ruthless to be as good a diplomat as he is, given that he is balancing those other two egos and as for Danzig....”

He sucked his teeth for a moment.

“He's a militant warrior priest from a militant church full of militant warrior priests. To rise in that kind of environment you have to show that you're just as ruthless and militant as the next guy. Sure he seems like a nice guy but how much of that is a practised mask that he's hiding behind knowing that he would have to work with members of another religion.

“You have a suspicious mind.” I told him.

“True, but I could tell you stories about the number of times that being a suspicious bastard has saved the lives of me and my men.” He hawked and spat by the side of the road. “Where the hell is everyone?”

He was right. The sound of the smith's hammer had stopped as we had begun our journey from the tree-line into the village.

“Must have been your face Taylor,” joked Pendleton. “Scared 'em off.”

The older Taylor cuffed the younger soldier round the ear with a grin.

“Hiding.” I said. “They saw us coming and are scurrying for cover.”

“Why though?”

“Wouldn't you? A village that's lived in fear for it's entire existence who know that they worship a pagan God, they hear there's a new Lord in the area who's brought a load of churchmen with him. I would hide as well. I should have thought this through a bit better really.”

Sir Rickard looked at me in surprise.

“Personally,” he said after a moment, going back to scanning the surrounding area. “I would be sharpening my knives or stringing my longbow. Then I could kill the stupid fucker that comes towards my village and threatens me and mine.”

“That would certainly bring some consequences.”

“Yes, but at the time and the place, thinking in those kind of long term stakes is a luxury that I don't really have.”

We walked into the centre of the little village. More the area where a couple of tracks came together to form a small triangle with a well off to one side. There was a large pole standing in the middle of it so that I could easily believe that this was a place where ribbons could be tied on before the pole would be danced around.

The village looked deserted now. We hadn't heard a signal but one must have been given. I fought an overwhelming urge to march up to a house and kick in the door and shout “BOO!” in the faces of some surprised village.

I mean really, did they honestly thing that we would all just turn around and walk away now that it seemed as though no-one was there?

I could smell bread baking.

We walked through the village to the well, leaving Pendleton and Perkins to look after the horses before drawing a bucket of water and taking a drink.

“Ok, so what now?”

Rickard looked at me before shrugging. “I dunno, tell me to sack it, attack it or defend it. That I know how to do. This bit's on you.”

“Thanks for that.”

“You are quite welcome.”

I sighed and took a breath. “Hello?” I called to the village in my best “oratory” voice, support the diaphragm, take a deep breath and.... “I know that people are there. We're not here to loot, or steal or anything. We want to talk.”

No response.

“My name is Frederick von Coulthard of Redania and with me is Sir Rickard of Temeria. I promise that he's not a demon or anything. The other men with him are his soldiers. But I promise, I promise that they won't steal anything or kill anyone.”

Perkins sniggered and got a cuff round the ear for his trouble.

Movement out of the corner of my eye. I shifted slowly so as not to frighten, whatever it was off. “I just want to talk. I have news of the new Lord Ka...” I realised that the name “Kalayn” might not be the best received mid speech, “....the new lord up at the castle. He's my big brother and a good man.”

The movement was a small girl of about eight, she had long wild hair, skinny but not painfully so. She had a jagged scar down the side of her cheek and the huge eyes of the very small. She wore a formless dress that looked as though it was made out of cheap wool and was clutching a doll made from straw.

I held my hands out from my side in what I hoped was a decent equivalent of “I'm not going to hurt you” and walked towards her slowly.

“Hello.” I attempted. Talking to children is not a skill that I've managed to acquire from my association with Kerrass. I know all the tricks, I know about lowering myself to their eye-level and to not talk to down to them. I know about not being condescending and things but somehow I always seem to upset children and make them angry. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is because they can smell fear.

“Are you a demon?” She asked me.

She did this thing as she spoke. I've seen it before but I've never heard it talked about in any other place. She was holding her dolly in front of her and she was twisting her body on the spot from left to right. Feet and head not moving as she stared at me unblinkingly, body always moving, twisting side to side.

“Nope,” I responded beckoning Taylor over and gesturing for him to turn around. “See,” I said, “Not a tail or pair of horns between us.” Taylor smiled his best and most charming smile and bent down so that the little girl could examine the top of his head gravely.

“Is your mother home?” I asked when I assumed that she had taken enough time to be able to properly examine the soldier.

“Yes,” Part of the problem I have in this situation is that she seemed so serious but I can never tell if they are teasing me or having a laugh at my expense. There's always that suspicion though, deep down, where I suspect that the child is laughing at me.

Probably tells you more than you need to know about my childhood.

“Can I speak to her?”

“No,” and she shut the door. I could hear people talking inside in the way that people do when they want to express how angry they are while also making as little noise as possible.

I sighed and moved away, raising my voice again as I tried a different tactic.

“Does anyone know the priest from the chapel a little way to the East? He told me that he had friends here.”

“Aye, we know him.” Came a voice, from the end of the village. A man stood there and walked into the open area between houses. “Good man that priest.” His hair was long and shaggy, along with a beard that was unkempt. He didn't look especially dirty as some villagers sometimes do, it was more that he looked as though he was a man that worked hard and was beaten down by too much hard work and the requirement to make hard decisions that affected those people around him. He wore a pair of leather trousers and boots that looked well, if simply, made as well as a long tunic that was belted in at the waist by a broad, brown leather belt. He had a woodsman's hatchet that swung from a loop at his waist. As Kerrass had trained me I examined him for details.

His clothes were simple, roughly made but they were built to last. Un-dyed they looked simple. The hatchet looked well used and the way it was carried on the belt suggested that he could get to if quickly and easily. I put him as the kind of man who could fight and would fight if it meant that he had to save someone weaker than himself but that he would rather hide from confrontation. He was a man that faced his responsibilities keenly and felt them pressing down on him.

“Yes, Father Gardan asked me to talk to a man called Edward?”

“That's me.” I saw him relax a little as he visibly decided that I wasn't lying. He didn't trust me yet but at the same time, he was prepared to listen.

“I have bad news,” I told him. “Can we go off somewhere private and talk?”

“You're asking me?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

He scratched his chin as he took some steps towards us.

“Begging your Lordship's pardon but....normally.....uh.....”

I thought over what I had said and felt a small realisation strike me.

“I'm not that kind of man.” I told him. “This is your home, not mine. If you really want me to leave, I will after I've delivered my news. I also have some questions that I would like answering if at all possible and then we'll go.”

“Who's we?” He asked, still not ready to let go of his suspicions. “Just the seven of you or those other men in the woods?”

I pegged him then. The man was cleverer than most and that was why he was in charge. He thought a bit beyond where the next meal was coming from or what to do about things. Where the fences and the walls needed to be built and trees planted.

It is always a mistake, always a mistake to assume that, just because someone hasn't been educated, that they are stupid.

“Those men mean no harm.” I said. “We didn't want all of us to come down and startle you any more than I knew you would already be startled.

He finally allowed a small smile to creep across his bearded face. “We know our little chunk of woodland mi'lord.” He told me, “Anything changes in it and we know immediately.”

“I bet.” I wanted to tell him that he didn't need to call me “mi'lord” but I knew, also from experience, that this would never happen.

The man considered me some more. “So there's a new Lord Kalayn is there?”

“You mean you didn't know?”

“There's always rumour. Always. But, begging your pardon m'lord, if the rumours were always true and wishes were magic then the village would be a lot better fed.”

“Well, hopefully, my brother will be able to help with that. Our family owns some good land from the south and we can show you some modern farming methods that will help you grow more and more reliably too.”

I could see it warring in his face. On the one hand, he was curious and excited by the prospect of being able to raise more food but he was also resistant and distrusting of change.

“You'd better come inside then.” He said, wearily. “We might not be able to provide as good a welcome as we would like but we can still give you something to eat.”

I nodded and moved where he was gesturing. Sir Rickard came with me.

“If I may?” He asked, he'd let some of the newer “rank” fall out of his voice and let his thicker accent shine through. “Where I come from, guests bring something to help with the meal. We can't offer much but.....”

“We won't take charity.” The man snapped.

“Not charity.” Rickard responded. “It's just one of my people's things.”

Edward considered this. “Where you from?”

“Temeria.” Rickard responded quickly.

“You're a long way from home then.”

“I am. And I miss it sometimes. But for now I work with Lord Frederick here, he's a good man.”

Edward nodded.

“Can I bring the rest of my men in?”

Edward thought again. “They won't.......They won't....”

“No, My Sergeant'll keep them in line.”

Edward thought about this a bit more before nodding. Rickard took the horn from his belt and blew the signal that I recognised as “Close up.”

“I'll wait here.” He told me.

I nodded and followed Edward into the larger building that seemed to double as a meeting hall for the village where things got decided.

It was not a large building. A small pit for a fire in the middle of the floor with a metal frame over the top of it to hang a cauldron from. For the uninitiated, this is called “The communal pot.” How it works is that there is always some form of stew bubbling away in the pot attended by the older parts of the village community who stand nearby to make sure that the flames don't get out of control and to make sure that the stew itself doesn't boil dry. Periodically they will call and a new load of vegetables, salt and occasionally meat will go into the pot and be stirred for a bit until the old person attending it decides that the stuff is fit for human consumption again and allows people to go to it.

There is always a small pile of wooden bowls that you sup from directly and you are expected to clean up after yourself before returning the bowls to the stack.

It always, always smells better than it tastes but sometimes, the village has nothing else to go on and it's a good way, especially during winter, for a village to make sure that everyone has a hot meal inside them even if, what it mostly is, is soup.

You can tell a lot about a village from the state of the common pot. In poorer villages, you can find old shoes and bits of belt as well as weeds and leaves and things. The more meat there is in there, the richer the villagers and if a village is particularly swanky then you might get a loaf of bread to go with your stew.

This place seemed to be a middle of the ground kind of village. There was no bread offered but there weren't any major roads for tax-collectors and things so I suspected that the village had a separate store space to hide from the noble Lords Kalayn and their inspections.

We needn't worry though, Edward was seen talking to the older woman who later turned out to be his mother and she nodded appreciatively. This was aided by the fact that Perkins and Pendleton came into the building after a few minutes laden down with what looked to be a substantial amount of the units day rations.

The older woman rose to the occasion and called for some assistants who were set to cutting up the bread, cheese, meat and vegetables that the lads had brought with them. They were still living off the land so the stuff they brought in was mostly the results from the hunting that the Bastards had managed to do in the meantime.

Edward and I settled down to one side.

“So,” He began, taking a pair of cups from a nearby shelf and sneaking a bottle out from under the watchful eyes of his mother. Thus proving that it doesn't matter how old you get, you still live in fear of your mother. He gave me a cup and poured a small measure from the bottle into both cups. “What news do you have for me?”

I sniffed at the cup cautiously. Another game that villagers sometimes like to play is to see what kind of eye-wateringly strong alcohol they can get the visiting noble to drink. My tolerance is a LOT higher than it used to be but even so, I resolved to not drink that much.

“It's made from apples.” He told me, “well, mostly apples.” He hid a smile behind his own cup.

“I take it that you're supposed to sip it?”

“Take it slow, yes.”

I took a sip. Not the strongest village hooch that I've come across but it was still potent. I saw myself visibly achieve some extra status in the village man's eyes when I drank without wincing and did NOT cough.

“Nice,” I told him. “A friend of mine up at the castle would appreciate this. Can I buy a bottle or three?”

“Not your brother?” he asked.

I laughed at the thought.

“He would be mortally offended if he heard me say this but My brother Samuel, the new Lord Kalayn as is,” I was very good, I only put a slight emphasis on the word “new,” “would like to think that he is a rough and ready man of action that drinks with his troops. However he's more of a wuss than he would like to think and this would make him choke.”

“I will remember that.”

“He likes beer.” I told the Village headman. “So if you're looking to butter him up then that's a good start. This is probably a little too sweet for him.”

“I will remember that too. Now, have we gossiped enough?”

I looked him in the eye. “I wasn't coming here today. I came down to see Father Gardan and to continue our conversation from a couple of days ago.” I watched the man carefully. I didn't think he was involved in Gardan's death but it pays to be cautious and to never assume anything. “We found him hanging by his neck from the chapel tower.”

I was further convinced that the villagers were as innocent as you can be given the circumstances. Edward winced in sympathy.

“Poor man, poor, poor man.” He topped our cups up. “We tried to help him you know. We really tried, took him firewood and food and stuff. He set traps and things around the church but you have to move the traps occasionally other wise the wildlife realise what's going on and simply avoid the place. He couldn't go further than that though so we did our best but....”

He sighed and took another drink.

“We tried to get him to come and move into the village. Even told him we'd build him a little shrine to Kreve if that would help him but he refused. Poor man. Wouldn't leave his church you see.”

He nodded to himself.

“Well thanks for telling me. It's a shame and I feel for the man but at the same time, I would be lying if I said that I hadn't seen this coming for a number of years. He was no longer a well man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, he hung himself didn't he?”

“No,” I said shaking my head. “No he didn't.”

There was no way that Edward could have faked his reaction.

“But who could have....? Why would anyone....? He was just a harmless old man.”

“I was hoping that you might be able to help me out with some of those answers.” I told him. I wondered if it was lost on him that my drinking cup was in my left hand ready to throw the liquid into his face while my right hand had drifted towards my dagger. When Kerrass had taught me this trick I had wondered if that was why, when we hold cutlery we hold our knives in our right hands, traditionally the weapon hand, and our forks in our off hands. He laughed and told me that no, that was ridiculous but he did insist that I learn how to drink with my left hand until it was a habit. So many tricks to learn how to keep my weapon hand free.

That was the dangerous question. And it's the most.... risky proposition. Sooner or later you have to ask someone a question which tells them, implicitly, that you suspect that they might have had something to do with the crime. That moment is often the crux of an investigation. The moment when you confront the person with the suspicion that they have summoned a spirit or cursed someone or otherwise caused events to happen in a way that would lead to... death. You build up these moments in your mind, making them larger than they actually are until you get to the point where it becomes this kind of pressure, you feel it behind your eyes wanting to surge out of you. You can almost taste it the questions on your tongue but your carefully constructed line of questioning becomes clumsy and ungainly when you actually come to speak it aloud to the person that you are talking to.

As an example for those people that don't have to accuse people of crimes or investigate hauntings or interview subjects. Imagine that feeling that you had when you were just beginning to realise that you had a crush on another person and you wanted to ask them out for a drink or to see a play or something. You know, the first time that you started doing this in that period before you get used to the probability that the other person will, at best, turn you down or, at worst, not know who you are.

That feeling.... Not the one about talking to a stranger at a bar or asking a stranger for a drink. Your crush. Your childhood or teenaged crush. You go away and you think about how you are going to set about setting up some kind of situation where you can help them out and ask for them to come for a walk with you. You think of all the things that you can say and all the things that you can do. You probably sound quite witty in your head along with being charming and debonair and things but when it actually comes down to it and you're standing in front of the, to you, most beautiful and wonderful person in the world and suddenly, the words come out in the wrong order.

That's what it's like.

Edward looked appalled, his mouth working in silence. “You don't think....You can't think......I swear we didn't....”

I held my hand up to stop his flow of words. “If I did, I don't now. No, it doesn't make sense. You've lived with him for many years now I understand and despite his world view, he lived with you in peace.” I did see that Edward shot me a sidelong glance as I said that. “So instead, the question would no longer be about....why would you kill him but why haven't you killed him before now?”

I sighed and pointedly took a drink. I was still watching him carefully out of the corner of my eye in case he decided to just kill me on the grounds that one fewer noblemen is a positive step into the new world, but I flattered him that he was a lot cleverer than that. He was the kind of man that would weigh the consequences of his actions.

“Before I do ask any more questions though.” I put in. “I think it's important to say that although my brother is in charge up at the castle and it's the people that used to live up in the castle that are being investigated for heresy. There are two Inquisitors up there along with another Knight Father of Kreve who is seeing to Father Gardan's body as we speak.”

Edward nodded. “I need to....I have to....”

“Take care of a couple of things?”

He nodded.

“Ok,” I told him. “As I say though, I bear you no ill will. I'm trying to solve a puzzle and I don't have all the pieces yet. Father Gardan told me that you could provide more answers or, at least, help me make the questions a little easier. Please don't make a liar out of him.”

He looked me in the eyes and I, again, got the feeling that I was being weighed and measured.

“I won't. I will come back. I just need to.....”

“Take care of a couple of things.” I finished for him. “Don't worry. I will be here.”

He fled.

I offered my services to the old woman preparing the food, boasting that I was a dab hand with a peeling blade. She took my jest the way it was meant and I bent to chopping onions and bits of turnip. It seemed that I wasn't trusted with any of the fresh meat that the The Bastards had managed to procure through fair means or foul.

Edward came back after about an hour but still with enough time that the old woman in charge of the pot was fending off enquiring minds with the aid of a large wooden spoon in the same way that a soldier would defend the breach in the city walls. He did seem a little calmer though so I thought that that was a good sign. He sat back down, picked up his cup, drained the contents before pouring himself another. I declined a top up. I had a feeling that I would need to be thinking with the entirety of my head rather than just one, small, alcohol soaked portion.

“Ask your questions.” He told me after another long drink. Like so many people from his walk of life, his capacity for his villages own alcohol was frightening but at the same time, lacking in the wine front, they need something to drink to purify the drinking water so it's a very real possibility that this village had been drinking their alcohol made from apples since they were being weaned off their mothers milk.

“But I have so many,” I protested. I got the laugh that I was looking for and decided that Edward had visibly relaxed.

“Right,” I began, “let's start with who could have killed Father Gardan and why.” I started. “He was telling us about the local scourge called “The Hounds of Kreve,” now....” I was still watching Edward carefully.

Although I had decided that he wasn't just going to try and kill me out of hand, he still didn't trust me so there was nothing to stop him from obscuring the truth. Edward smiled sadly, almost resignedly when I mentioned the Hounds. “..... this is not my first time trying to figure out who murdered someone.” I went on. “So one of the major possibilities here is that he had more information at his disposal and, given time, he would have told me everything.”

Edward nodded, listening carefully. Once again I reminded myself that this man was not stupid. Probably just uneducated. His lack of vocabulary was not a sign of his lack of understanding.

“The things that he was talking about where you and yours.” I pointed at him. “The Hounds of Kreve, or the heresy that the dead lord Kalayn used to practice.”

Edward nodded again.

“I have to work on the possibility that whoever killed him was preventing me from learning more. Therefore the killer needs to be someone who knew that I had visited, knew that I was going to go back and talk to Father Gardan again. But one of the main things that I'm lacking about this entire situation is context. I don't mean to insult you but do you know what I mean by that?”

I genuinely wasn't trying to insult him. What I was trying to do was to get into the habit of talking to me. Into the habit of answering my questions as once you've started doing those kinds of things, it's a lot more difficult to stop.

“Not really.” He answered.

“What it means is that this area of the world seems to operate on a series of rules and laws that I simply don't understand. For example. I know that my cousins, the former Lords Kalayn were unspeakable shits that I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire and I passed them in the road.”

Another slight smile.

“I know this. I also know that they were heretics and that they followed a very specific religion that any decent person would frown upon....”

Here comes another one of those moments that I was speaking about earlier. “I only spoke to one of those heretics, my direct cousin as it happened and he described the heresy as worshipping something called Crom Cruarch.”

As I expected, Edward's mouth twisted in distaste. Good, I was beginning to get a grip on how this man worked now.

“Since speaking to him I have learned a bit more about Crom Cruarch and have learned quite a bit about his worship that goes against the heresy that I witnessed being practised by my cousin.”

As I watched, Edward subsided a little, it was as though all of his muscles relaxed at once.

“Indeed,” I went on. “Father Gardan himself, someone who reacted violently to what had happened up at the castle,” a small lie on my part, “said that the worship of Crom Cruarch was nothing to do with what we had found and, indeed, what we are still finding up at the castle. He called the worship of Crom Cruarch, and I quote, “a relatively harmless little heresy”.”

Edward's mouth jerked towards a smile which he had to hide in his cup of alcohol.

“So, there are two things. On the one hand, we have a noble family that have abused this area, their populace and each other to the point of destruction and it still remains to be seen whether the area can be saved in this generation. So far, all of this confirms the thought that the nobles had....” I reached for the right word, “adopted the local religion, or heresy if you prefer, of Crom worship with their own sick rites given that they came here, did their established rites and saw results. They thought they were accessing a local power, found out that the local power was called Crom Cruarch and assumed that that was what it was.

“So far so good. Sam has every intention of sorting out the problems up at the castle and helping out with the agriculture in the area before gently bringing in some Melitele worship and a few, more liberal priests of the Eternal Fire.”

I leant towards him as though I was including him in some kind of secret, “Again, I should mention that my brother and I come from a family of followers of the Eternal Flame.” I leant back. If the village did have a history of distrust towards Kreve then I wanted to paint Sam and I as being a little more fluffy and relaxed.

“So that was the plan. But that doesn't reflect what we find. It's as though there is a weight on the countryside. It's a beautiful place that you have here. I don't know much about farming but as I've seen plenty of wild creatures as well as your small herds, I can't think of any reason why the land can't produce food. The Lords who must have inflicted a lot of the pain and misery that might contribute to the kind of weight that I'm talking about but surely that should have lifted since the Lord's Kalayn died nearly a year ago now. Yes, I suppose people could be thinking that the new Lord will be worse but there is, at least, the possibility of positive change. But over and over again I am told that this area is cursed and that I should just ride away and I couldn't figure out why.”

“Then I meet Father Gardan and he tells me something that I did not expect. He tells me about the Hounds of Kreve, both as though this explained everything and also as though this was the answer to all my questions. He himself admits that he knows little about the Hounds and that he questions his own perception of them given his illnesses.”

I turned back to him as though I had been thinking aloud and all but ignoring him. I had actually been watching him closely though, drawing him into my thinking patterns.

“So that's the context of the area. I don't know about the things that you take for granted and I don't know why you think or behave the way that you do. I need to know that if I'm going to unravel this problem. I should also say that if you are afflicted by supernatural problems then, as well as Inquisitors and priests, there is also a Witcher up at the castle who is a good friend of mine.” It is often amazing how much even isolated settlements, like this one, still know of Witchers.

I took care to stare straight into his eyes. “We can help you.” I told him. “But I need to know more.”

He took another deep breath.

“What do you want to know about?” he asked finally, just after I had begun to believe that he was holding his breath until he suffocated to spite me.

“What can you tell me about the stuff that happened up at Kalayn castle?”

“Their heresies?”

I nodded.

“I don't know. They had little to do with us all if I'm honest, as though they didn't really care. They would come round to us and demand their taxes. They would always express disbelief that we didn't ave any more physical money when we tried to pay in skins, metalwork and grain and the like. We don't have money, what would we spend it on?”

He sniffed. I sensed the disdain of a working man for those who clearly don't know that they're born.

“They get cross at our.....what was the word they used?....Insolence, that was it. They search the village a bit but when they fail to find anything of value, they take the taxes that we offer along with a load of food that we didn't offer and ride away, telling each other how clever they are.”

He snorted again.

“If I'm honest, I couldn't tell you what Lord Kalayn looked like. For all I know, you could be Lord Kalayn come down here to play a big prank on us.”

“That's a horrible thought.” I said with a smirk.

He grinned at me.

“Nah,” he said after a while. “Gardan would know the difference and he wouldn't have sent you on if he didn't believe you. Also, I can't see any of Lord Kalayn's men giving us some rabbits for the pot.”

I nodded. “So what they did up there was nothing to do with Crom Cruarch.”

“What did they do up there?”

I told him about the cannibalism, ritualistic sexual assaults.

“No, That's nothing to do with the Crooked Man of the mound.”

“So, that's the next question? You and your village worship and old deity called Crom Cruarch?”

“Not just us, but most of the villages in this part of the world do.” He sniffed again. “At least, the ones that we occasionally hear from and do some trading with. There's a village further north that has some good clay in the ground that they've been making tiles out of and they occasionally trade us some in return for some grain and apples. They have a form of the worship of Crom although it's kind of different to ours. Not by much but they celebrate on a different day. Not that it makes that much difference. They tell us that there are similar villages to theirs that follow the same rites further north and that they have even more contact.

“It's not a small thing. It is not a cult that can easily be snuffed out. Even if your Inquisition comes here and starts burning people, Crom will prevail.”

“Not that I think you are wrong, but why do you think that?”

“I know that.”

“Ok, buy why? What is it about Crom that gives you that security?

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I'm not saying that the church, either of the churches that traditionally like to go into the woods and hunt down worshippers of, so-called, evil pagan Gods will come here and start hunting folk down. Mostly because they have bigger problems to think about. They are too busy fighting for their own survival against the South, Magic and all the people that are remembering how much they didn't enjoy being persecuted. But you said, “Even if” my Inquisition came here, that your God would prevail. How do you know that? Why do you know that?”

“It's....hard to....” He reached for the words.

“I don't need to understand.” I told him. “Just tell me your reasons.”

He thought about it for a moment or two, taking the time to have another drink. “Crom is not a thing that we have to believe in. He is not like Kreve where you see him in the lightening and hear him in the thunder. Crom is in the earth. He is in the trees and the leaves and the flowers. He runs with the animals and stands the watch with the shepherds. He helps us in the harvest and he works with us in the barns and the workshops. The smiths feel his strength in their arms and the farmers feel his company when they plant their crops. Woodcutters feel him guiding them to the right trees and the herbwomen look for their herbs where he points.”

It is not your imagination if you think that this discourse became more lyrical and poetic. I got the impression that he was saying words that he had learnt as a child or as a young man. The kind of phrases that you swear by and get spoken at your wedding.

“Tell me about him.” I prompted.

“How does a man tell another about a God? How do you explain colour to a blind man?” The first hints of dismissiveness came into his face and voice. I have seen it before in the faces of people that I speak to. They look at me and see a privileged son of the nobility pursuing a hobby rather than an equal. The first hints of scorn, superiority and pity. I've seen it on soldiers who think that no-one can truly understand what it's like to be a soldier unless they've fought alongside them and gone through the same struggles that they have.

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

In that example, the heavy cavalry disdain the footmen and vice versa. You can't be a footman until you've stood in the spear or shield wall and you can't be a cavalry man unless you've been part of a battlefield charge.

What was happening here was that I was an interloper, invading his space and asking about his things. He was still a little afraid of me but I was trying to probe into his way of thinking. The other problem was that, as I say, he was a clever man but he lacked the education. I guessed that he was struggling to think of the words that he needed in order to get his points across. The danger in this kind of thing is that if a person starts to feel this kind of anger and resentment,they can just dismiss you and shut you down. I find that you need to bring them out of it as soon as possible. You need to be on their level or show them that you know what you're talking about.

“Explaining colour to a blind man?” I asked. “You say that Yellow is like the sun on your face, Red is the heat of the forge, Green is the sound of wind in the leaves and blue is the feel of cool water over your skin on a hot day.”

I saw my point drive itself home but I also needed to bring him back on side. Alienating him was dangerous.

“Tell me what you know?” I asked carefully. “How did this worship start?”

It was a long time before he spoke again. I began to be afraid that I had driven him away and he was staring off into space when, almost as though someone else was speaking through him, he started to speak again.

“Crom has always been here. I don't know whether we brought him with us when we first came to these parts or whether he was already here. Some ancient kind of elven, dwarven or halfling spirit that took up residence here and stayed when the others moved on. Ancient he is. Old and terrible but with his age he learns new things. He watches us and supports us through all things.

“We call him the crooked man, the man on the mound although I don't know why. They say that he hovers, just out of sight in the corner of your eyes as you walk through the path of life. You can only see him in those times when you are at your most tired because that's when he comes through as you need more of his help. Then, if you look carefully, for he is difficult to see, you will find him watching you. Waiting for you to do the next task of the day.

“That's his thing you see. He is a God of work, A God of toil in the fields. He won't do the tasks for you but at the same time, he will help you if you set to with a proper mind and a hand turned towards the work. A farmer will find his fields planted that much quicker, a woodcutter will find his axe cutting that much deeper and the tree falling sooner. But cross him.....Ah, then he will become angry.

“The tree will be rotten, the harvest will fail, the plants will die and there won't be enough to eat for the winter.

“You must keep him in your mind. All the time as you work. As you seek to provide for your people. Keep him remembered and he will help you in your tasks.”

“How do you worship him?”

“We go to our sacred places. Every village, every community has one.”

We were interrupted by a couple of the older women handing out the bowls of the stew. It was delicious. Yes, there were herbs in there that I didn't recognise, along with vegetables and other things but there were several sizeable chunks of meat as well as a large hunk of bread which was reassuringly solid in my hand. During the meal, Edward refused to carry on the conversation. He asked some questions about me and where I came from, things about my recent history and what I was doing.

We made small talk mostly. I met his wife. A pleasant enough woman with her hair wrapped up in a red scarf. Obviously a symbol of prominence within the village as most of the other woken wore their hair in braids or with more drab colourings to the cloth covering their hair. There was a nasty looking scar across her eye.

I suspected that I was being diverted but it rather seemed as though there was some kind of local thing about discussing business when you eat as the take was taken up immediately after the meal was finished.

“As I say, every village has their sacred place.” he said after the bowls had been cleared away. My bowl because I was a guest and his bowl because he was the head man and talking to a guest.

“We have a cave.” He told me. “You go through one of the houses that are up against the wall.” he gestured in the direction of the small stone cliff that the village nestled against. “There's a tunnel in there that leads you down a set of steps, deep into the depths of the earth. We've got a rope that you can hold on to now and there are torches on the wall. But as you go down there you come to a flat space in a cavern. It's huge under there, huge pillars of stone that come from the ceiling and rise up from the floor to meet it.

“There is a lake there and off, into the middle of the lake there is a small rock island. My Great Grand uncle once built a small raft and rowed out to the island to see if that's where the God lives.”

“Did he find the God?”

Edward laughed and I was pleased to see that he was able to laugh at himself as well.

“He would never say apparently. But isn't that the way of these things?” He chuckled again. “The truth is, though, that you would know it was holy even without those little stories. There is a feeling about the place, a sense of of....holiness. I don't know how to describe it.”

He shrugged.

“There is an alter there. You asked how we worship?”

I nodded.

“There is an altar there,” he repeated. “The oldest and hardest wood that I have ever seen. Definitely not stone because you can feel the grain in the wood, but it is so old, it is black. Even despite the damp from the lake, it has never rotted away and is slightly warm to the touch.

“Once every lunar cycle we go down there, light a big fire and have a little party. We take down the first products of the months work and lay them on the alter. If if It's lambing season we put a lamb on the alter, during the reaping we put bushels of corn up there. The offerings in autumn and during the harvest are often larger than they are elsewhere but even if all we've caught are some fish in the stream or some rabbits that have wandered into the snares. That is what we leave an the altar.”

“You sacrifice the animals?”

“You mean kill them?”

I nodded.

“Oh yes. It is by the aid of Crom that these things are produced. If we are using the lambs for food then he gets a slaughtered lamb. If we intend to grow the sheep and use it for it's wool then we would wait and gift Crom with the wool from that years shearing season. We also offer hide, firewood, metal ingots and some of the products of the trade that we have with other villages as well when it is warranted. It is his fair share you see?”

“I think so, but explain it for me.”

He made a face. As though he was being exasperated with my stupidity.

“Ok, think of it like this. We work to get the things out of the land that we need. We take the FRUITS from these things. He is part of that process so it's only fair that he gets some of the benefits as well. It's an offering but also, his just rewards.”

“What happens then?”

“To what?”

“Well, both the offerings but also, then what? DO you pray, ask for things, have a party? What?”

“Oh, I see. We have a little party in tune with the moons success. If we have lots of things to offer Crom then we have a big dance and a piss up. If it's winter and all we're offering is a few nuts and some firewood then we go down there, make our offerings, have a toast to Crom and to the future before leaving.”

“Do you do anything along with that? Funeral rites? Marriage rites, do children get presented to Crom or anything?”

“Marriage happens down there. We go down and offer our devotion, walk round the alter twice, once each and then once again, together, before the party starts. All of this happens in the new moon. Then, it's considered lucky to.....uh.....consummate the marriage on the alter.”

“Isn't that a bit uncomfortable?”

He shrugged. “Are you married?”

“Not yet. Betrothed.”

“Then let me say that by the time you get to that stage, it doesn't matter if you're on the softest bed or on the hardest stone floor. If the passion is there then you don't notice.”

I considered some of my previous exploits. “I suppose that there's some truth to that.”

“Anyway,” he continued. “It all happens at the same time. When the moon finally goes dark. That night we all go down there, preform any marriage ceremonies, present the children, make the offerings, have a party or a toast which is where we also ask for our boons....”

“What do you mean, you ask for your boons?”

“Well, we all stand in a circle. The entire village other than pregnant women or any of those too old, sick or young to properly offer their service.” He realised something “It's not that we think of the old as being lesser, or the sick for that matter but, this stuff can take it out of you. This is a situation of trade. We ask the God for something and we give him things in return. If you can't give anything then it seems impolite to make any requests for anything. In the case of those people then it is the duty of the parents to make requests and offerings on behalf of the children, husbands on behalf of the pregnant wives, the children and families of the old and the village as a whole to ask on behalf of the sick.

“But anyway, we stand in a circle and we pass around a large hunting horn of our strongest apple mead. Similar to what you are drinking yourself only much more potent.”

“More potent than this?” I was shocked.

“Oh yes. Don't ask me how it's made as the women take care of it. They also....add things to it. Herbs and such like.”

“What kind of herbs?”

He grinned.

“Let's just say that a lot of children are conceived on the night of these things. Especially during the spring and autumn festivals when people have more energy.”

I answered his grin with one of my own. “So you pass around this horn.”

“Yes. Then we each pour a bit of the apple mead on the floor before drinking a bit for ourselves. We say what we are thankful for over the last month which is anything from the birth of a child to the continued survival or a venerable old person, to the new and bountiful harvest that has been brought in. Then you make a request, something that you hope that the God will help you with.”

“Not for something that the God will do for you.”

“No, never that. But something that you hope for his help with. Bringing in a harvest, building a house, producing plenty of milk, that kind of thing.”

“Conceiving a child?”

“That too. It can be a private thing that you whisper quietly or a loud thing that you speak for everyone to hear. For instance, When I asked for help with asking my wife to marry me.....” He smiled at a private memory.

“I imagine that the party can get started after that.”

“Pretty much.”

“What happens to the offerings?”

“What?”

“The offerings that you leave on the altar. What happens to them?”

“The God takes them.”

“I see.” I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling for some inspiration. “I'm going to ask a question that might be a bit offensive now.” I told him. “I don't want to upset you or make you angry, I just want to understand.”

He nodded, looking wary.

“What happens to the offerings?” I said. “I know that the God takes them,” I said quickly as I saw him stiffen, “but how does that happen? Does a physical manifestation of the God turn up and take them or does some priest or priestess turn up and take them off somewhere.”

“I see.” He said, smiling to show his understanding. “In truth I don't know. Again, this is something that differs from village to village. All I know is that the stuff is still down there when I leave the cave last thing at night and it's gone when I go back. It should be said though that it is not a man's job to look after such things. The women maintain the torches and the fires that are down there so they might do something with it.

“The only people that spend the night in the cave are those couples who consummate their wedding night down there and....when I consummated mine, the offerings were still there when my wife and I left in the morning.” He smiled at the memory again. “Although I will admit that I wasn't really paying attention to them at the time.”

“Is it the same for all the people that follow Crom?”

“No, some villages burn their offerings. Some cast their offerings into pits or into lakes and ponds and things. The method of offering isn't important. It just needs to happen in places that are important to the God.”

“How do you tell whether a place is important to Crom?”

“There are carvings if you know where to look. Mostly, they happen on stones or on the trunks of old, ancient and gnarled trees.”

“Can you tell me what the carvings look like?”

He thought about this for a moment before shrugging. “I can't see the harm.” He took a piece of charcoal from the fire and drew on the stone.

“The carvings look like a hill.” He said as he drew, “A very simple hill, surrounded by trees and mist.”

He drew a hill with wavy lines on either side which, presumably signified mist before drawing some stylised trees on either side of the hill.

“After that, the design varies. One of the names of Crom is “The man of the mound.” Sometimes “The man on the mound” and the carvings reflect this. Sometimes there is a stick figure of a man on top of the hill, sometimes as part of the hill itself or alongside the hill.”

He pointed to different places on his rough design. “But the hill, the mist and the trees are always the same. Apparently so anyway.”

He scuffed the drawing away with his foot.

“Would you let me down into the cave?”

He smirked. “No. No, the only time any of us go down into the caves are for these little parties and even then, I don't have that kind of power. But before you ask, it's the women of the village, led by my wife as she managed to marry the headman of the village so she's Crom's high priestess if you like.”

I looked over to the woman who was marshalling her troops towards clearing up after the communal meal. As I say, she wore a homespun dress and a red headscarf.

“She doesn't look like any kind of priestess that I've ever seen.”

“Well, that's part of the God isn't it. In our neck of the woods, the priests and priestesses work for their living. In working the fields, the land and the trades, they worship Crom.”

“Would she tell me more?”

“Not a chance,”

“Why not?”

He looked at me as though I was suffering from some kind of disease that spread stupidity as a symptom. “Because you're a man.” he said after a while. As though it should be obvious.

“Makes sense.”

We sat in silence for a while after that. “I have another question for you.” I told him. “Another question that might give offence but I need to ask it.”

“This is going to be about the human sacrifices isn't it.” It wasn't a question. He said it with a sigh.

“Yes.”

“I thought so. Father Gardan asked the same question when he first came here.” He offered me a top up from the clay bottle at his feet. I declined, I could just begin to feel the fuzziness at the edge of my brain that suggested that I was beginning to be affected by the alcohol and I didn't fancy the ride back to the castle while my vision was trying to rebel against me.

“Here it is. I'll tell you it, the same way as I told it to him. Life was hard when we first came here. Really hard. I can't tell you much because I don't know that much but the women folk tell us that life was hard when we came here. How did we survive?”

He shrugged expressively. “Crom saved us. As I say, we don't know if we brought him with us or if he was already here when we came. The things that we asked of Crom were vast, far reaching and were not......they were not small. So the things that he asked for us in return were also....not small. The more we give him, the more we get in return. We gave him blood and he repaid in kind. We gave him the lives of children and he repaid us with more births.

“But the most important, the most powerful thing that we could give him was the lives of our first born.”

He sighed and I thought I could hear some sadness and a little grief in the depths of the man's voice. “It is not something that we're proud of. It was certainly never done in my time or my Father's time. My Grandfather used to tell a story where they sacrificed a criminal to Crom at one point, only to be answered with storms. He claimed they were still sacrificing the children in his Grandfather's day. But eventually that kind of thing just....stopped. According to our traditions, it seemed that Crom started to object to the sacrifice of children and I suppose that that would follow.

“We were taking the easy way out rather than being prepared to work for it. “Just sacrifice a first-born son and the harvests'll be fine.” we told each other but that stopped working. Crom became angry with us and gradually, the practice just died out. I don't know if that's true or not. Certainly we don't do it and as far as I know, the other local villages don't do it either.”

I nodded. Saying that I was “pleased” is the wrong word for it. “Relieved” might be a bit better.

“I have more questions.”

He laughed. “M'lord if I may be so bold?”

He waited for me to give him permission to be bold.

“I've known you for a couple of hours and I already know that you would keep asking me questions until one or other of us died of old age if I gave you the chance. As it is, I think one of your men is going to have to pull you away from this place by the hair to get you home tonight.”

“It's possible.” I admitted. “But not set in stone.”

I sighed.

“So that's your religion?”

“Yes.”

“That's not the problem that's affecting this part of the country is it?”

It took him a long time to answer so I kept going.

“This feeling of dread.” I said. “The reason we keep being told to abandon this place. The way it seems to sit on our shoulders and I wake up after every night with a scream in my throat after having dreams so dark that they scare me. It's not because of Crom is it?”

“No,” he admitted in a quiet voice.

“What is it?”

He didn't answer.

“Is it the hounds?”

He stood abruptly and I grabbed his wrist. “I can help you.” I told him. But I need to know the answers to this if I'm going to do so. What are the hounds?”

There was a group of children playing some kind of game with a small ball of leather and some small bones over in the corner of the barn. Edward watched them for a moment.

“Let's talk outside.” He said.

I followed him out of the door and along a little way. I also noticed, much to my amusement that Sir Rickard had assigned Perkins to keep an eye on the two of us and spotted him on one of the rooftops of the village where he was keeping a lookout. Edward led me to a place, just outside of the village and leaned against a fence on the edge of the village. There was an old stump of a tree nearby and I perched on the edge of it.

I waited for a long time for Edward to start speaking. His eyes were moving this way and that.

“Tell me,” I prompted.

“It's because of them.” He said at almost the same time. I smiled at the embarrassment of the situation.

Edward did not.

“It's all because of them.” He said. “I don't know what they are, no-one does. No-one living anyway. They come in the early morning or last thing at night. When the mist comes and the sun turns the sky red. Then you can hear them riding this way and that in the darkness.

“They howl as they hunt.” He told me. His eyes were terrified. They goggled out of his skull and there was real fear there.

“What are they?” I asked again. “Who are they?”

“I don't know.” He said again. “I only know that when it comes to last thing at night, we leave a mixture of salt and sage outside the doors and along the window ledges and that that keeps them out.”

“Why?”

“Crom's breath but I don't know.” he snapped, throwing his hands up in the air. “I don't know.” He said again. “But they are killing us. Every so often they catch one of us. Sometimes a farmer gets caught too far from home and safety when he's out watching his sheep. Sometimes a trader or a peddler that's travelling between villages. Sometimes people just disappear and we don't know anything about why or what's happening. Then we find them. Two days, a week later. In a place where we know that we've searched and we find them. They've been torn apart. Tortured. There are....bits of them missing as though they've been ripped apart by animals but we also find signs that they've been tied up. That whatever it is that's done that thing had some form of intelligence. But that's better than when we never find out what happened. Oh I don't know.”

“So they keep you isolated.” I said. “You can't travel for fear that the hounds come and take you away. You don't travel too far from home in case the hounds catch you.”

“That's pretty much the size of it yes. We're a small village really but we're all closed in. They're killing us.” There were tears in his eyes. “My son has just married and he came to me the other day, in tears because he wanted to know what to do. Both he and his new wife want children but they are terrified of bringing a new life into the land when they might come for the child at any point. He was thinking of running for it. Taking his wife and just running for it. Run west, towards the road and safety. South, towards the river.

“But they won't make it. No-one ever does. These couples or families that try and go off. We find them, the children sometimes, sometimes the wife, in pieces. But we never find all of them. It's as though they're taunting us. That they know that we're here. That they know what we're planning on doing.

“So we take our precautions. We mark the children, we block the entrances with salt and we pray. We pray so hard.”

“Why do you mark the children.?” I asked. “What do you mean by “marking them”?”

“They take the pretty ones,” he said. “The pretty girls and boys. Children, teenagers and young women. For some reason, men are safer. Not safe, but safer. They take the girls so we mark them so that they look uglier.”

“What happens if they don't get marked?”

He smirked. “My uncle tried it with his eldest daughter. She made it to the age of twelve before she was taken. She was a pretty girl my cousin, blonde hair, always smiling. Would have married her myself if she wasn't too close for that.”

“You don't have a scar.” I pointed out.

“Oh, I do. It's one of the things that all of the men in this part of the world do. We all have beards to hide the scar. We have it done down the cheeks or along the chin. I'm lucky in that my beard colour doesn't tell a watcher where it is.”

I nodded. I felt the lack of Kerrass keenly. This was different to talking to Edward about his religion. There, he wanted to talk. He was.... not proud, proud is the wrong word, he was.... passionate about his religion. He wasn't afraid of it. These things, these....hounds. He was afraid of them. Deathly afraid of them. Kerrass would know what questions to ask. He would know what to say or how to put the man at his ease. I was left with the impression that I was beginning to outstay my welcome. That he had already answered all the questions that he intended to answer.

Time to break it down. Time to ask for some specifics.

“So,” I said. “They come in the early hours of the morning or last thing at night?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a pattern to it?”

“Eh?”

“Once a week, twice a week, once a fortnight?”

“No, they come when they come. Sometimes months will go by before we see them. Then, just when we're beginning to believe that they're never coming back we hear their howls on the wind and we realise that it's not over. That it will never be over.”

I nodded. Now was not the time to tell him that we were going to fix this for him. There was no way that he would believe me.

“When did they first start coming? When did they first start attacking?”

“They first came here, to this village in my grandfather's time, before I was born.”

“Did they come here from elsewhere?”

“They started off further to the North, or so I've been told. Then they would only come once or twice a year but then they came more and more often. We started to believe that we were being punished for something. That this was Crom's punishment for lessening our devotion to him but no, Crom's displeasure comes in the form of storms, disease and failed crops. He wouldn't send this kind of plague against us.”

“So they started in the North but they expanded south.” I was talking to myself in an effort to remember the answers. I was confident that Kerrass would be furious with me if I forgot any details.

“As far as I know, that's right yes.”

“Are they riders? Men? Creatures? Non-human?”

“They ride horses. But not like any kind of horse that I've ever seen before.”

“In what way.”

“They breathe fire.”

In case you, dear reader, aren't sure. There is no such thing as a fire breathing horse.

“They breathe fire?” I checked.

“I know how it sounds but you haven't seen them. You haven't seen the rippled in the air from the heat that spills out from their nostrils. You haven't had the awful stench of them in your nose. You haven't seen the green fire rippling across their skin as they move.”

He let his head fall into his hands and let out a sob.

“My people depend on me to keep them safe,” he moaned. “And these things come out of the mist to carry us off one by one. Every time, every fucking time we hope, we dare to hope that that was the last time and that maybe they will leave us alone after that. But every time they come back. Every time.”

I waited for his anguish to spend itself out.

“We're going to fix this.” I told him. “We are.”

“How?” He demanded. His pain and the pressure that he had been under for so long turned into rage and I was an easy target. “Do you think it hasn't been tried. No-one comes here. No-one, and they are right not to come here. The only reason my family is still here is because they will catch us if we run.”

I let him be angry with me, maybe it helped him.

It took him a while to calm down.

“I'm sorry,” he said after a bit of time. “I'm not angry at you, I'm just so very tired.”

“I know, I understand. I do, so don't be too hard on yourself. But I've got a Witcher, priests and soldiers who are just itching for something to hit.”

“Do you not think it's been tried?” He asked. “My father stood up to them once. He was a hunter, he would take his spear out into the woods and use it to hunt boar. Strong as an ox my father was. Easily winning any village wrestling match that we ever had and he got together with a couple of his friends and my older brother who felt the same way. That something needed to be done and the next time the hounds came through, they went out to face them.

“They screamed horribly.

“In the morning my father lay in the middle of the road having had his right arm hacked off by something. He'd tied it off with his belt and was delirious with the pain. One of the friends was dead, trampled underneath the horses. The other had made it to the safety of his house. We never found out what happened to my brother. Never found out.

“We tried to keep father alive but at the end of things, his wound quickly turned bad and he died soon afterwards. He died badly, ranting about how the wolves were coming for him and that he could hear the howling of wolves.”

He stared at me for a long time. “You can't fight them.” He said. “You can't do it. There's no fighting things like that. How do you fight things that can't be killed.”

“Who says that they can't be killed?”

“You can hear of hunters, good men, that have shot arrows at them. Traps have been laid. We are not cowards, we have fought back over the years, but not once, not once has anyone ever managed to hit one let alone kill one.”

“Why?”

“They say it can't be done.”

“What? Why?”

“Even the surest arrow goes astray. It's like the bodies of them ripple and the arrow passes straight through them. They know where the traps are and no weapon can pierce them.”

“I see,” and I did. That line of questioning was going nowhere.

What have I become. That I would listen to a man's anguish like this and pass comment on what he was saying.

“But what do they look like?” I tried, going for an alternative approach.

“I don't know,” he was getting frustrated now. “What can I tell you? They have wolf skulls for heads. They wear long flowing clothes but they clink when they move as though there was metal underneath. Their breath doesn't steam in the cold. They don't talk to each other except in howls. Is that what you want to hear?”

He shook his head.

“All of us try it. All of us disbelieve the stories at one point or another and, dared by our friends, we stay up at night and peer through the shutters to try and see what's happening. It's not an official thing but for many of us it's the difference between being a child and being an adult.”

He sighed in frustration again.

“Look, I'll try and explain what I saw. I can see it in your eyes. You don't believe me, you ridicule me, telling me that I'm imagining things and that it's all a mistake and that I can't possibly have seen the things that I have seen, but I have.

“I was fifteen when I finally plucked up the courage. I was late to it too, shamed into it by the fact that all of my friends had done this before I had ever managed it. My Father died when I was eight and so I had the fear for a long time but I was beginning to have people look at me funny and I didn't want to stand out from the crowd any longer.

“You never forget the first time you see one of the Hounds of Kreve. Never. I've talked to many of my friends and family about it and they agree with me. It's like they're more real than the rest of the world. As though they stand out more and the rest of the world seems to fade away around them. As though they are the only things that you can look at, the only things that you should be looking at.

“I'll never forget it.

“I was fifteen and it was autumn. Just when the leaves start to turn from green into yellow and then into red. As the pine needles start carpeting the floor and the air starts to become heavy. The sun sets to the west and the sky seems to burn with red, as though the sky itself hates to look down at the rest of the world. A mist formed, there is always mist when they come. Always.

“When you get used to it, after a while you get to know when they're going to come, you know when there's going to be an attack. We knew that night as children were chased indoors and people shouted to get us to hurry up and leave what we were doing. But the truth is that we weren't doing much. Otherwise rebellious children drop their games and flee indoors.

“This time though, I had made my mind up to see what all the fuss was about. As I was told, I fled indoors. I still had not been betrothed to anyone so I still lived with my mother. She still needed my help with my younger sister and brother who hated us both with a passion. She because she was in danger of growing into a real beauty and had been marked across the face the year before and hated us both for it. My brother because he was young and didn't know where our father had gone and why people were laughing at him because of the lack of that extra parent. So they hated me for what little authority I was supposed to exercise over them and I hated them back for their hatred and because, for all my strength and power over them, I was still ruled by my mother.

“But I waited, I had a bag of salt that I would use to cover the window sill and prevent them from coming in. There was a knot-hole in the wood of our shutters and I sat there, my eye glued to the hole, as my mother sat in the room with the two younger children quaking with fear. To this day I don't know if she knew what I was up to or what I was doing. She must have gone through the same ordeal as I have but I never got up the chance to see it.

“The dogs sense them first. The sheep dogs and the couple of hunting hounds that we have in the village. They began to howl at first, barking at the doors to their enclosures and to tug at the ropes and chains that we use to tie them down in such times. They howl at these interlopers and we know that they're getting closer because then the howls, growls and barks start to change towards whimpers and whines.

“Then I saw them. They stood their horses on the cliff above the village. Eight of them standing their steeds on the edge of stone, surveying the village. Their horses, if that's what they are, paw at the ground and seem restless moving around and pulling at their harnesses. But truth be told, I wasn't looking at the horses.

“My gaze was held by the leader of them. He sat on his horse there, looking down at us and I swear, even all of these years later, that he was looking at me.

“They have wolf skulls for faces under the hoods of strange blue cloth. They look as though they wear these strange robes made out of strips of leather, the leather sewn and riveted together in strange ways. But then they extend themselves and you find out that they aren't robes at all. That they are wings.

“Their horses quieten as they stand there on the ridge, their wings extended and then, as if from nowhere, the wind picked up and pushed through them. Their robes and wings flapping in the wind which is when the smell hit me.”

“The smell?” I asked wanting to check. He was telling his story well, without pause and I didn't really want to distract him. It had the feeling of a well rehearsed story as though he had told it many times before.

“What?” he seemed startled, “Yes, the smell. But that isn't the right word for it. This is like daggers of ice being jabbed up into your brain by means of your nose. It makes you vomit, makes your eyes water and your knees turn to jelly. The smell is the primary thing that lets you know when they've been through the area. When you know that they've passed by. On those times when you find their victims in the woods, torn limb from limb. It's the smell that tells you that it was the hounds rather than a relatively normal Endrega, Ghoul or Wyvern attack.

“But then they came into the village. The smell was getting to me but I was still determined to see as much as I could. I knew it for a lie, all the other times that my friends had told me about how they had stayed up all night to watch what the Hounds had got up to when everyone else was hiding in their homes. I knew that to be impossible as no-one, absolutely no-one could withstand that smell.

“But I fastened my eye to that knot hole and watched for as long as I could.”

He groaned at the memory. “I wish I had looked away now.”

He took a long drink and it occurred to me that by now, looking at his rate of consumption. There was a good chance that he was getting pretty drunk but his words were as collected and clear as they had ever been.

“I swear that two of them rode their horses off the cliff as though they flew down off the top of that cliff. I swear that was what happened. The others came in on either side of the village, sweeping round on both sides as though they were hemming us in and cutting off our escape. Not that we would ever try and run for it but that's what happened.”

For those military people paying attention, that's a pincer movement with a thrust up the middle.

“They rode through, howling. They barked at each other and screamed. Occasionally I can hear words in their howling, sometimes it seems like laughter, I don't know but to hear it, freezes the blood.

“They had an elf with them. A woman.

“There are a few non-humans in the area. There's the herb-woman up at the castle, or she used to be. She's down at the dower-house now though isn't she?”

I nodded. I thought it odd that he hadn't connected the movement of the elf with the death of Lord Kalayn but then again....

“She comes down occasionally to sell medicines and some of the rarer herbs that don't grow in these parts. The women of the village know what they're doing but she know's all of that plus a bit more so they like to call her in when there's a particularly difficult birth and things.”

“How often does she come here?”

“Once a week to ten days.”

“And the other elves”

“They roam around a bit. We won't see them for a long time but then they'll come in. We were not the only people who lost during the war and not all Elves want to fight as part of the Scoia'tael. Some of them just want to hunt, and live amongst the trees, same as anyone really. Occasionally they come in wanting to trade for bread and things. They leave us alone though mostly and we do the same. No point in making each other miserable.”

I nodded, filing that piece of information away for later. “So, they had an elven woman with them.” I prompted.

He had lost the rhythm of the story somewhere “They tied her up in the middle of the village and did....things to her.”

He shuddered.

“In the end they tied her to their horses and simply rode their horses off in different directions, howling. We found her in the morning, or at least what bits of her we could find and buried her as best as we could. Ella, the herbalist, told us that the body was just an empty sack of meat and that we should throw those remains out into the trees so that she could rejoin the great cycle of life. But somehow, we just couldn't bring ourselves to do that.”

I nodded and motioned for him to continue. “What else can you tell me?”

He shrugged. “What more is there to say?”

“Think,” I insisted. “Even the smallest detail might be significant. Do they wear armour?”

“Not that I could see although they do clink as they move.”

“You see, there's a point. Do they walk like men? Do they move the same way that people do?”

“No,” he shuddered again. “Not like people. They writhe and move about. They butt heads and growl at each other.

“What else. Do they use weapons? Swords, bows, maces?”

“No. They have claws that grow out of their hands?”

“They grow?” I couldn't help myself. I was struggling to believe him. Don't mistake me though. I absolutely believed that he believed what he was telling me but I just couldn't make what he was telling me make sense.

“Yes.”

“How do they look for things. Do they sniff the air like dogs do? Or do they look around. Do they tilt their heads if they hear a sound?”

“Both, Either.”

He groaned. “They saw me, they looked straight through me. I could hear it laughing at me. I heard no words but I was convinced that he recognised me. That he knew me and that he would come back for me.” His face scrunched up in remembered fear, pain and remembered terror.

“That was when I pulled back from the window. As he was coming towards me and he rattled the shutters but he pulled back from the line of salt and howled in pain.”

“He howled?”

“Yes.”

I nodded. I was pretty sure that I was coming to the end of what the poor man could tell me now. The best thing to do now would be to head back to the castle and talk to Kerrass. I had no doubt that he would have an opinion on what was happening as well as all the things that I should have done better and simpler. I leant forward and put my hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him.

“It's ok.” I said. “We'll deal with it. We will.”

“Don't,” he said, shaking my hand of his shoulder. “Don't make promises you can't keep. You can't fight demons.”

“Oh you can.” I told him and decided that it was time for a bit of swagger. “I have. You can kill them too. I have one last question for you though before my men and I leave.”

“What is it?” He signed, resigned and weary beyond his years.

“Why do you call them “The Hounds of Kreve”?”

“What else could they be?”

I looked as deep into his face as I could. He had decided that that was what they are and judged that there was no way that he would be turned aside from that.

I let him off after that. I didn't want to push my luck too far. We stayed for a bit longer in the village. Not quite long enough to eat our dinner there but long enough to spend some time getting to know folks before we headed off and collected Father Danzig on our way back.

I was falling for what Kerrass sometimes called “The compassion trap.” This happens when you've spent some time in the local area and have gotten to know the people there. The thing that you're after turns out to be a clever bastard, hiding it's tracks well and is proving difficult to track down and destroy. Maybe it flees at the sight of you or maybe it disappears when wounded, but whatever....you end up spending some time in the local area. Eat their food, spend time among them, maybe have a few drinks and a tumble in the hay with a willing partner and before you realise what's happening, you find that you're making plans. You want to stay for the market day or the festival that happens over the weekend.

Or you promise that you're going to help out with fixing the old woman's roof. Or meet the girls sister, or help them hunt some food. Or even worse than that....

You find that you want to help them. I will admit to struggling with this quite a lot. The Coulthard family is a wealthy one. While travelling with Kerrass I have often found myself in areas of the most utter, abject, back-breaking poverty that can be imagined. I find that I want to spread my money around, buy supplies or food or the goods for the merchant or.....or.....or......the list goes on and on.

Kerrass had to warn me not to though which was when he started to tell me about this problem. You see, the flip side of things is that compassion is good, but sometimes the village needs to realise that it's dying and the people need to move on. The people need to go elsewhere and find work in more prosperous regions.

Witchers deal with those monsters and creatures that run contrary to nature and civilisation which is why, if the creature can be spoken to, they leave it alone because then it can be part of the natural cycle of things.

It may seem harsh to say this, to say that sometimes the village needs to be left to die but the way Kerrass said it was this. “Sometimes a forest needs a fire. Sometimes the farmer burns the field.” I don't like it and I struggle with it but then he told me something else.

If I gave these people all my money, even what I had on me was worth a good amount then there were a couple of possibilities. The first being that a passing noble might see the money and assume that the villagers had stolen it. The same thing with any goods that might have been given by me. At best the things would be confiscated leaving the villagers back where they were or at worst, the villagers would be punished for an imagined crime.

The other possibility is that no community exists on an island. No single place is all alone and completely self-sufficient. There is always the need for a peddlar or a merchant of some kind. Especially in arable communities, someone needs to fix the pans and bring in the metal that the smith might use. No-one village has everything that they need. So even if they don't have that much contact with the rest of the outside world, they depend on each other for trade, inter-breeding, mutual protection and various other things. They know things about each other as well. Gossip gets traded and news gets spread.

So if I gave a village a load of money or rich goods that they would be able to go on and sell, then it might breed resentment, or even worse, it might make the village a target for nearby bandits.

What I'm saying is that it's very easy to upset the balance of such areas. Witchers exist to remove things that might upset this balance anyway so it would be hypocritical to do anything that might make a problem worse.

I knew all of this, but I found that I wanted to help these people. I was determined to help these people. I still wanted to find out if there were other cultists in the area that might have had something to do with Frannie's disappearance, but I had put a human face on the problem now.

The elf, Ella had complained about this part of the world being oppressed by something that she didn't want to talk about. She had been through a lot though and by herself, she could potentially be dismissed as someone that had been through a lot and was imagining evil when she had been subjected to very real sinister forces.

The priest, Gardan. His story and then his death had cut me deep. I felt for that old man and I still felt a certain amount of responsibility for his death. I couldn't help but feel as though it was no coincidence that he had died shortly after he had spoken to me. He had spun a tale about The Hounds of Kreve that had caught on to my brain and wouldn't let go. I had tried to dismiss it as the potential ramblings of a madman but there was something about the pain and fear in his eyes that had caught hold of me and wouldn't let go.

Then there was Edward the villager who had a similar story. Similar but different enough. He seemed like a reasonable man. Not too crazy and certainly a victim to the superstitions that plague a small rural village like the one in which he lived but his story was backed up by the whisperings of the village. By the fact that they deliberately scarred their children to make them ugly and therefore of no interest to the Hounds.

That night I took my evidence and the stories that I collected to what Sam used to jokingly call his “council meetings.” He joked but those were really what they were. He gather the priests, Fathers Danzig and Trent, the Inquisitors Hacha and Dempsey, Kerrass, Sir Kristoff the head of Sam's small unit of soldiers, Sir Rickard leader of the bastards and myself.

Most of the talk was what was going on up at the castle.

There had been a flurry of spectral activity when they had started to remove the various bones and remaining bodies which had kept Kerrass busy. He claimed that it wasn't particularly hard work but that there was so much of it that he was finding it tiring. When we did retire to our small enclosure he would often throw himself into bed and be asleep almost immediately while I stayed up long into the night making notes and thinking.

But they were coming to the ends of his side of the work now. The remains of the victims of the Kalayns had been removed, taken a short distance away and had been buried with all the traditions and compassion that a pair of priests could manage.

Father Hacha's report was possibly the most extensive. The difference between the blustery, arrogant and smug man that I had met when I first arrived in the area and the cold, clinical logician that he became when he was talking about his work was marked. He told the assembly what had happened with cold, minute and emotionless detail. He told us a tale about how Lord Kalayn had access to, and seemed to use extensive narcotics of various kinds. Both as recreational substances for himself and for his friends but also there were other sedatives and stimulants that could be used on potential victims or family members but all he laid out were the things that he had definitely found. He didn't speculate on what those substances might be used for.

He was also mercifully clinical when he came to describe the obvious horrors that the bodies of the dead had undergone. Performing the investigations with compassion and understanding. Recording his observations clearly and concisely.

I won't go over them. Suffice to say that they were everything that we had feared they would be.

After a bit of discussion it was decided that inquisitor Dempsey would travel out to the dower house to talk to the former Lady Kalayn as best he could and to ask Ella a few questions, including if she could identify some of the more....esoteric narcotic substances that had been identified. Father Hacha would go with him to ask for some of the more clinical details. As both of the Inquisitors would be going, Father Trent also decided that he would go in an effort to “keep the peace”. Sam joined them and told them, in no uncertain terms that Lady Kalayn was a victim of her husband. As was Ella the maid and that both women were under his protection. There was some argument about this point as both Inquisitors insisted that their work not be curtailed. But Sam declared that he was going to go and visit his Aunt on the morrow and that the Inquisition could come with him, or not as the case may be.

It was only then that the talk turned to me and what I had discovered.

“I still don't understand.” Father Danzig began. Slamming his cup of watered ale down on the table. Sam had taken some of my advice by seeing to it that there was something to eat on the table and that we were all sat down. “I don't get why they call these things “The Hounds of Kreve.”

“I would have thought it was obvious.” Inquisitor Dempsey piped up. I hadn't seen much of Dempsey and had yet to be sure what to make of him. He was supposed to be the “people person” of the two Inquisitors but hadn't spent a lot of time talking to him. “The answer is that the villagers in question don't have any current equivalent of modern ethics and morals.”

I noticed that Father Hacha was nodding as well.

“What do you mean?”

“It means,” Inquisitor Dempsey leant forward and rested his elbows on the table. “That if what Lord Frederick is telling us is accurate and I see no reason to believe that it isn't. What we have here is a “pre-church” society.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“It goes like this. All of humanity has a spiritual need. They need a belief in something greater than themselves or an explanation as to why the world works in the way it does. They need someone to blame for why the crops fail or why the lightening falls and they want to know where the sun goes at night. People fill this need with whatever occurs to them. Soldiers join the army, priests join the church. Some people, I'm told, find Atheism a great comfort although I struggle to see why.

“These people have this.....Crom Cruarch. Whether that's a God, spirit, power or maybe it was an ancient ruler from before mankind came to these parts of the world that has since been deified. It's unlikely that we will ever know for certain but here he is. It's only natural that, as a pastoral group of people, they have decided to worship a God of the harvest, which is what it seems to me this thing is.”

“Yes, ok, but that doesn't explain why they have decided that Kreve is the bad guy here?”

“They're being attacked. They want someone to blame.” Sir Rickard piped up. “They wonder who it could be. They've been told that Kreve hates heretics. They know that he would think of them as heretics therefore he is the enemy.”

Again, I was astonished as Father Hacha spoke up.

“You have to remember that Evil is in the eye of the Beholder.” He said pouring himself a cup of wine. “To us, these people are backward, in-bred, uneducated and stupid. To them, we are elitist, arrogant, threatening magicians who have come to disrupt their way of life.” I hadn't noticed this about him but Inquisitor Hacha had a lazy eye that would occasionally spasm. He would rub at his eyes, especially when he was tired.

“My learned brother is correct.” Inquisitor Dempsey spoke up again. “It is no surprise to me that these people have come to view Kreve as their “devil,” their version of evil. From Lord Frederick's account we know that there was an attempt to convert this part of the countryside to the worship of Kreve a long time ago. I don't know because I wasn't there but I would suspect that the priests that they sent here were of the fire-brand, sword-waving, damnation promising variety. With this “Crom” worship being so entrenched the common-folk heard this man or men telling them that they would be damned and punished by Kreve for their ways. Ways which had worked for them for many years. So naturally they saw themselves as being against Kreve.

“Then, strange “things” start attacking them for no readily apparent reason and so they blame Kreve. I would also suspect that if we start looking into things we would discover that someone, somewhere planted the idea into their heads that these “Hounds” were sent by Kreve.”

Father Hacha leant forward again. “It would also make sense from the perspective of the Former Lord's Kalayn. They didn't want a widespread religion in their territory that might see what they were up to and call a crusade against them. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed the locals into that direction as well.”

Dempsey nodded.

“So these people are not evil?” Sam was taking on Father's habit and model of leadership. He listened to everyone's opinion before asking any questions that might be left over in his head and then making his decision. I wondered how long this question had been sat in the back of his head.

Hacha shook his head.

“Flame no!” Dempsey exclaimed. “No, evil is in magic and demon worship when you do those things knowing that they are wrong. Everyone knows that magic is dangerous...” I had to hide a smirk behind my own cup and I also saw Kerrass' lip twitching in his version of amusement. “... so the only reason to practice it is to further your own selfish power. I know that some of the more modern magical practitioners are becoming reasonable people and I would agree that some of our immediate forbears went too far in Novigrad and the local area but that doesn't change the fact that magic users study magic for their own ends. Not in service to anything else.”

I, very carefully, looked at the ceiling. Fortunately, the priests were talking to Sam, whose face had gone carefully blank so they didn't notice my expression.

“These people are heretics, yes. But they are heretics because they have never been taught any better. Their sin is ignorance but it is hardly their fault. In your place, Lord Kalayn I would gently discourage their religious practices and apply to the church for some missionaries. Obviously I would recommend some followers of the Eternal Flame but also of Melitele which would have the other added benefit of raising the standards of health-care in the local area.”

“Not Kreve then?” Father Danzig almost snapped but he did so with a slight smirk.

“With all due respect to yourself and the Sky father.” Father Trent said. “But the damage there has been done. These people will automatically distrust any priest or missionary from the church of Kreve and it might even push them further down the path towards heresy.”

Sam nodded. “Right then. But that sounds like a plan for the reasonably distant future when things have started to settle down a little more.”

There was more nodding.

“I want to know more about these “Hounds”,” Sam went on. “Whether they belong to Kreve or not it would seem that they are keeping my small patch of countryside in fear. Thoughts? Master Witcher, I'm looking at you here.”

Kerrass shrugged expressively. “There's no such thing as a Hound of Kreve.” He said. “No monster or creature looks like that or behaves like that. The fact that they only come out in the mist is suggestive but nothing that depends on mist would ride a horse or any other kind of steed for that matter and what those things do is kill to feed. I haven't examined the situation in any detail so I may be wrong but I think we can be pretty sure that we are dealing with something mundane here.”

“I agree,” said Father Danzig, feeling a bit safer now that he was talking about things on his own level.

“Hounds though?” Inquisitor Dempsey spoke up. “Hounds suggests hunting. Might they be riders of the Wild Hunt?”

Kerrass shook his head firmly. “The Wild Hunt was a separate thing. I say was because, as far as we know, they were defeated. But separate from that, the Wild Hunt wore heave armour, not these robes and leathery wings that have been described. They were also accompanied by deep and oppressive cold. Cold enough to actively freeze the bodies of their victims. The Wild Hunt also had literal hounds. Not creatures that Lord Samuel would want to take hunting but that's what they were none the less.”

“So, not the Wild Hunt then.” Sir Kristoff sounded relieved.

“That's not to say these things aren't dangerous.” Father Danzig piped up.

“No,” Kerrass agreed. “I could dismiss Father Gardan's ravings as the hallucinations of a self-confessed mad man but what the man Edward described was a lot more forceful. Much more unpleasant and reliable.”

“Could he have been conditioned though?” Father Trent asked. “Communal suggestion is a powerful thing. If everyone sees something and you have believed that you will see something in the dark then you will find something to see.”

“Possible. Either way, we need more information.” Kerrass put in. “Either way, things at the castle are still going to take a couple more days.” He smirked slightly. “I would say that Freddie has the project on his back now. I would suggest that he pursues it accordingly. Go back, ask more people. Talk to other villagers. Are these riders local to Father Gardan and that village or are they more spread out. Is it the entire countryside? Because I notice that Ella the elf didn't tell us about them and she could be referring to some other “fear” that is keeping the countryside under it's boot heel.”

“I agree with the Witcher,” Inquisitor Hacha spoke up, again surprising me. He hated Kerrass on a personal and profound level but there was a respect for Kerrass' professionalism. “However there is an extra factor here.”

“Which is?”

“Regardless of whether or not these “Hounds” are supernatural entities or whether they are merely human enemies that take advantage of the superstitions of the locals, I think it would not be unfair to say that they are, at least, aided by mundane means.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, looking concerned.

“He means Father Gardan's murder?” Sir Rickard piped up. “That and the isolation of the villagers.”

“Yes.” Hacha nodded approvingly in Sir Rickards direction as though he was a teacher bestowing a rare compliment. “Lord Frederick meets Father Gardan, spends a day here and then goes back to find the priest dead. That is not a coincidence. Father Gardan has been here for many years and has been tolerated without issue but the moment that he speaks to another person then he is killed. Even worse than that there was, I understand, some efforts to make it seem as though it was a suicide. That kind of thing is human, not supernatural.”

I noticed Kerrass, Inquisitor Dempsey and Sir Rickard nodding.

“Then we have to read things into the fact that the village strongly believe that they need to stay indoors to protect themselves from these “Hounds”. Indoors and they need to remain in the local area. Loose travellers and people moving between villages and trying to escape the locals don't make it and are hunted down by the “Hounds.” That is the oldest form of Human strategy, military as well as politically. Divide, Isolate and conquer.”

There was some more nodding.

“I would also like to know more about these “Elven settlers” that the village described.” Said Knight Father Danzig. “They must know something and you can never trust them anyway. Individual elves are fine but when they start getting into groups then they have a tendency to form Scoia'tael commandos and try to disrupt things.”

“Possible,” Hacha admitted. “But there is another factor. There are two ways that these nebulous “enemies” might have known about Lord Frederick's visit to Father Gardan. “The first is that they were watching the chapel. Or there is someone here who heard what Lord Frederick said and decided to take steps.”

Sir Kristoff and Father Danzig stiffened in indignation. Trent and Dempsey looked thoughtful.

Kerrass didn't give a shit and looked as though he was nodding off in the corner.

“That's enough.” Sam spoke up. “Let's not start accusing each other or spark a witch hunt here. I won't have it. I know all of you and I trust all of you so we are not going to break apart and start accusing each other until we have more evidence.”

He fixed everyone with a glare, I tried to convey how.....amused isn't quite the right word but how....wry I was feeling about what had just been said. But he didn't react.

But Sam started to speak again. “It is, indeed, more than possible that there are people that are feeding information up to the Hounds. That would certainly give us something to pursue but it is quite correct that we need more information.

“Freddie, would you mind carrying on with that. There's a map of the local area somewhere which will tell you where you can find other villages to speak to.”

I nodded.

“Sir Rickard?”

“I will continue in my duties of keeping Lord Frederick safe Sir,”

“Good. But you also have my authorisation to save him from himself if he gets too uppity.”

Sir Rickard grinned nastily.

“Also, is it safe to stay in the castle yet?” Sir Kristoff asked.

“Mostly.” Kerrass roused himself to wakefulness. “If We don't spread out and I can place wards, traps and people do what I tell them.”

“Well, if there are enemies out there then this small collection of huts is indefensible. I don't think that we've had a serious mist with a red dawn or dusk yet so that might be significant but I don't want us sleeping in the open.” Sir Kristoff said before abruptly realising that he was giving orders. “Or at least that's what I would recommend Lord Samuel.”

“Then that is what we shall do.” Sam nodded. “Anything else?”

There wasn't.