What followed was a couple of days of the hardest physical work of my life.

I will hold my hand up now and admit something. I have talked about this before so I'm sorry if I'm going over old ground. When I was growing up, indeed until I met Kerrass, I was not very.... I was not physically conditioned. I had spent time in the practice yards training with sword, horse and lance but I was never talented enough with those things for the conditioning to take with me. I fell off, injured myself, got tired and otherwise struggled with everything that I was asked or told to do.

Many of you know this.

This was largely because I was uninterested in these pass-times. All I wanted to do was to get back to my books, to read, to study and find things out. To get better at something you have to want to get better at it and I didn't want to get better at it so I remained thin, stoop shouldered and gangly which was a body pattern that I kept until I met Kerrass.

Kerrass took me in hand and although, at first, he didn't care enough about me to worry about my physical well-being, he did want to make sure that I wasn't going to get him killed, so he started training me. At first I put up with these drills because it was the only way that I could stay with my subject, the only way that I could continue my research. But then I met the Nekkers and something in my mind shifted. I was no longer training just to become better at something. I was training for my very survival. It had been made clear to me that I needed to know how to fight and how to kill so that I could survive life on the road.

And I wanted to survive, therefore I trained hard.

I developed muscle mass and my posture and stature changed. Although I didn't feel any different in and of myself, the differences became known in the way that people treated me. Suddenly discovering that girls were looking at me with considering expressions or that regular people would move out of my way when I was walking down the street. I hadn't noticed either of those things until someone pointed them out to me though.

I also remember the day at the family castle when I returned home for the first time in years to be with my family as my father died. I remember climbing the towers and not being out of breath when I got to the top. Not something that I had been able to do before.

So I had come to enjoy my new-found physical capabilities. I had strength, stamina, skill and speed that I was unused to. That I had never had before and I liked it.

But I found, in the village that day, as I had learned before but I had forgotten until that point, that there is a difference between being fit enough to ride a horse, to train with your weapons and fight for your life and then being able to put in the hard physical labour that is involved working on the farm or in the villages.

I had learned this lesson before but I had forgotten it.

The other lesson that I found that I had to remember was that there is a technique to everything. Not just spear work. But also the proper use of a wood axe and a shovel.

My hands are well callused now. Toughened skin covers the ball of my thumbs and across my fingers where Kerrass has me fighting day in and day out.

But I had blisters on blisters on blisters at the end of those few days work and one of the village women had to make me a cream that I was forced, on pain of feminine disapproval, to rub into the injuries on a daily basis.

Humiliation is not the word for it.

So here's a little story, a parable if you prefer the term and it will possibly illustrate my attitude a little better.

All of this is by way of my learning a lesson that my father had tried to teach me many years before. Back before the distance had grown too vast between mother and him and when he still took something of an interest in my schooling and activities. We were riding somewhere, I can't remember where now, but we were on our way. I must have been seven or eight or so, around that time and for whatever reason I was riding with my father. As I say, I can't remember the circumstances of this particular journey so bear with me.

We were riding along and I was trying to impress my father with some kind of insight. I had no idea whether what I was thinking was correct. I think I was more trying to say something that he would agree with.

We were riding along a track with some fields on one side and with a wooded area on the other. There were a team of lumberjacks in the area and I remember looking forward to seeing the heavily muscled men in action, swinging their axes and moving their saws backwards and forwards. I was still full of the romantic stories that my nanny had been telling me about “heroic woodcutters” and how they would come to the rescue of young princesses and general folk that need rescuing in those kinds of stories.

We were riding along and we came to the open area and I remember a crushing disappointment to discover that the men were sat down having a rest, smoking some tobacco, having something to eat and passing a large skin of some kind of drink backwards and forwards amongst each other. I remember craning my neck to look at my father's face, fully expecting him to apoplectic with rage and rather looking forward to an opportunity to seeing someone else be the recipient of my father's ire.

Instead father looked over towards the men, shouted a greeting of some kind and made a joke. The woodsmen waved and raised their wineskin in some kind of a salute before we rode on and out of sight.

I began to find the tension unbearable as the waited for and expected explosion failed to materialise.

“Aren't you going to yell at them Father?” I asked.

“What for?” I remember that he didn't look at me. I don't know if he was scanning the road ahead or checking the horse or watching the farmers as we rode but I remember that he didn't look at me and I remember feeling as though that was off-putting somehow.

“For not getting on with the work.” I said. “For lazing around.”

“Those men weren't lazing around.” He told me. There was no anger in his voice, nor disappointment which is why I remember this moment so clearly. Either of those things would have sent me off into tears at that point in my life although I wonder if he kept himself calm precisely so that he could avoid a, to use his words, “an emotional and childish outburst.”

“What do you mean?” Looking back I am surprised that I had the temerity to ask such a question.

I remember that he sighed and rubbed his head, a gesture that would later become a sign that he was becoming exasperated. “They were resting. Cutting down trees is hard work. Hard physical labour and you should be grateful that that kind of labour is not something that you have ever had to do, or will ever have to do if I can manage it.”

He reached for his own water bottle and took a long drink.

“Never mistake laziness for an honest need to take a moment's rest. One is a decision whereas the other is a necessity for a person's health.”

He said no more on the subject although I will mention that when I tried the same line on my weapon-master the next time I wanted to take a break from all the sword play I was thrashed for my trouble.

That's the long way round of telling you that Sir Rickard's bastards threw themselves into a frenzy of work that I would not have been able to keep up with.

They chopped down trees before using smaller hatchets to chop the wood into smaller chunks of varying length. I later saw that they automatically cut the wood into similar lengths so that the lengths of the posts were almost uniform. I asked how that was managed and Rickard told me that the lengths of wood were bow length.

They dug trenches as well. Moving an astonishing amount of Earth in a relatively small amount of time with the equally as small entrenching tools that the men had strapped to their travelling gear. All the while they had their personal arms on, their knives and swords still strapped to their waists, quivers on their backs and their bows close to hand.

I ached just watching them after I had been told that I needed to calm my shit down.

I remember thinking that it was almost rehearsed. That no-one had given any orders but that everyone had just kind of gotten on with it without needing instruction.

I have no intentions of taking up another subject when Kerrass and I part ways as I strongly suspect that marriage to an elder vampire along with the responsibilities that come with that, will take up a significant amount of my time, but I imagine that a man could write a considerable amount regarding the mindsets and the training of soldiers rather than the knights that lead them which is what the majority of texts cover.

While that industry was going on under the direction of the Sergeant of the bastards, Kerrass and Sir Rickard were walking around the village with a piece of paper, a bit of charcoal and Edward the headman who had been found under the village equivalent of house arrest. It seemed that he had argued against the group of men that had tried to keep us from entering the village and doing what needed to be done and although the majority of people were on his side, they were the kind of people that were primarily after a quiet life. It was the loud, belligerent and vocal minority that had met us at the entrance to the village with pitchforks and rakes.

Edward had taken his temporary confinement in good grace and had reminded everyone that he had been chosen as the Alderman for a good reason which was that his instincts were good and that he could normally be depended upon to make the right decisions.

It was soon decided and with the support of the village women, that the vast majority of the non-combatants would take shelter in what they called “The cave of the God”. That place that Edward had described as being a sacred site of Crom Cruarch. The term non-combatant was being defined as women, children and old-folk although I had seen more than one woman protesting at the prospect of being described as a “non-combatant”.

The three men were planning the defences, drawing where the houses were and where the defensive lines were going to be drawn. Where the water barrels going to be located as well as the barrels of the liquid that Kerrass had ordered mixed for us all to dip our scarves into in an effort to keep the Hounds poison out of our lungs. The first time a couple of my blisters had burst, which was uncomfortably early in the process of starting work, I remember looking at their little diagram and being mystified at what I saw there.

What I had expected was some kind of defensive circle. Walls of wood and earth inter connecting the houses with stakes and things to keep the Hounds out but instead what I saw was a kind of maze, a tangled web of lines that I didn't understand or recognise.

Kerrass noticed my confusion. “You alright?” he asked, nodding at the bandages that were wrapped around my hands.

“Flame no.” I told him. “The next time I say that I should pick up a shovel or a wood axe then you have my permission to remind me of this moment and slap me across the face. I should have left this to the professionals, as with so much in life.”

My declaration was met with a smirk from Sir Rickard and Edward.

Kerrass' expression didn't change before abruptly he shook himself as though suddenly being startled. “Sorry what was that? You lost me after saying that I could slap you across the face.”

“Very funny.”

“I thought so.” His hand lashed forward and I had to duck out the way.

“You said I could slap you across the face.” Kerrass protested.

“Why do I hang around with you again?”

“I have often asked myself the same question. Feel free to leave at any time.” He looked down at the paper before his voice turned serious for a moment. “Although, if you could leave off for a day or two please. I have the burning desire to insert my sword in some monsters.”

A confused look came over Edward's face. “I thought you said that the Hounds were human.”

“Probably human,” Kerrass told him, “But that wouldn't stop them from being monsters though.”

“What's the plan?” I asked, gesturing at the map.

“It's about firing lines.” Kerrass told me, beckoning Sir Rickard over who had been drinking from a heavy water skin that one of the villagers had brought over. Sir Rickard passed the skin over to Kerrass who also drank deeply.

“I still don't understand it.” Edward told me. “To me, it looks like we're leaving a hole in the defences for the Hounds to ride into and burn the village down.”

“The village might lose a few houses.” Edward told us. “That's not in dispute here. But you don't build an unbreakable wall around the village as that will negate the one significant advantage that we have.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“That my men are among the best shots in the Kingdom.” He said simply. “I train them hard every day so that they become so. Look....”

He turned the paper over so that he could show me another picture that he had drawn. From the sight of it, he had drawn it, precisely to illustrate this point again to someone else.

“If we just build a barricade around the village.” He pointed to a circle, “Then the Horsemen will use their advantage which is mobility. They will ride around the village at speed, possibly shooting their own bows at our much more stable and unmoving targets and throwing lit brands into the village until either a building collapses and they can come into the enclosure, or, if this was a military installation that we were defending, we try to sally out to attack them. They know that we're made up of civilians and that our food and water is limited, therefore time is on their side.”

“They would leave though, when the fog lifts.” I pointed out.

“That's if they stick with the established pattern.” Kerrass pointed out. “Non-sapient monsters are creatures of habit and can be expected to stick to the pattern. People can change, try something new. It is a mistake to assume that just because something always has been the case, that it always will be the case.”

“Ah.” I said happily, “You're talking about assuming things aren't you.” I nodded sagely. “A valid point.”

Kerrass glared at me.

“For us to use our bows properly against the highly mobile targets we need to confine them into as tight a space as possible and get them to move in a straight line directly towards or away from us.” Rickard went on, ignoring the pair of us. “So that's what we're going to do. We're leaving two openings in the perimeter. Here and here.” he pointed. “That will give them targets to home in on. We're actually going to start some stuff there so that it looks like we ran out of time to properly build walls or ditches there so that they will be even more tempted. Then they will be forced to ride down these gullies.”

Again he pointed.

“During that time Kerrass and yourself will be holding the smaller of the two openings and the Sergeant and myself will be holding the others. Those villagers that are willing to fight will be on the rooftops above those gullies throwing rocks, dirt, human waste, children's underclothes, offal and whatever other unpleasant things that we can think of down onto them. Some of the villagers have hunting bows as well and although they won't bother anyone with armour, that's if the man with armour knows that it's only a village hunting bow rather than a proper war-bow or recurved killing bow.”

“What about the other men?” I asked.

“They will be divided between these killing steps. A couple on the roof-tops to shoot at them while they do surround the village, you never know but Dan might be able to hit something if they move round at pace or something.”

“You're creating a killing ground,” I commented. “I see, but what about what Edward told us about the riders appearing on the ridge top and then “flying” down amongst the village.” I saw a sense of relief in Edward's face and guessed that he had been wanting to bring this up himself but had lacked the nerve to do so. “I'm not saying that we need to guard against flying horses as I don't believe in those either but these folks see something when that happens.”

“A good point.” Rickard commented and turned and bellowed for Taylor who drove his shovel into the pile of earth that he was working with and came running over where Rickard told him about the “flying horses”.

To Taylor's credit, he didn't even blink.

“You're amongst the best horsemen that we have. Presumably due to all that training that you were getting when you were being trained as a dandy. How would you do that?”

Taylor nodded and stood, looking up at the small cliff-face. He nodded to himself again and went to collect his horse.

“This might be good.” Rickard told the rest of us.

As I've described before, but it bears repeating. The small cliff wall that the village was nestled against was not very big. If you jumped off it, I suspect it would not even manage to kill you but would be much more likely to break a limb. I would put it at twenty five to thirty feet high at most, maybe a little higher. The cliff wall was part of the local rock formations as the foothills started to climb up into the mountains that they would eventually become and this was one of the first breaks in the ground where the rock started to show through.

Why a village was here is beyond my understanding. My guess is that it was founded around the holy site that is there. At the base of the cliff is the door that, once opened, leads down a flight of steps and into an underground cavern wherein lies a lake which had been identified by the villagers forebears as a holy site of Crom Cruarch. The village also had a well which sunk down into this same cavern and underground water reservoir.

Taylor rode his horse out of the village and around so that he was sat on the horse on top of the cliff looking down at the village. He rode this way and that for a few moments craning over the side of the cliff, oblivious to the height or the danger, utterly assured in his safety on the back of his horse.

Then he stopped, reaching into the bags that were still tied onto the horse he produced a large blanket which he proceeded to tie around the horses head and covered the animals eyes. Then he steered the horse back from the cliff face for a moment so that we couldn't see him.

I didn't know why he wanted any kind of a run up but I felt sick just watching him.

Then he appeared and rode his horse over the edge of the cliff.

One of the possible reasons for the village to be built there was that the cliff provided a certain amount of shelter from the ferocious winds, as well as the mist that came from the mountain top. I imagined that in the countryside, snow, wind and frozen air currents off the mountain could be sheltered from against the cliff and indeed, many of the older buildings in the settlement were nestled against it. This included the small building that disguised the entrance down to the lake and the holy area but it also protected the communal gathering building where the cooking, and village business was conducted but it was also where the blacksmith worked and where the village goods were stored, not just the food that was set aside for the winter and whatever other circumstances that you might keep things back for but also blankets, firewood, grain and other such things. Some of those buildings were large enough to house livestock against particularly dangerous mountain storms or blizzards.

Some of these buildings were quite tall and towered almost as high, but not quite as high as the cliff-face.

I'm sure that you can guess what he was doing having read it from the safety of your own home. But for me, watching Taylor as his horse leapt out into open air, my heart was in my mouth.

For a perfect moment, it seemed as though the horse hung in the air, perfectly still before it began to fall, front feet first.... Directly onto the roof of the largest of the barns and warehouses.

Taylor brought the horse to a halt before turning it and steering it down the slope of the roof, presumably across some of the cross framing must have been visible through the thatch. Then the horse jumped again and landed on the village gathering building. Then again onto the blacksmiths shop, then again onto a pile of wood before touching down on the ground. Taylor rode the horse to stand in front of us and dismounted.

He wasn't even breathing that hard.

“Flying horses.” He said evenly.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

“No-one of consequence,” he told me with a slight smile.

“I must know who you are.”

“Get used to disappointment.”

“Yes, well.” Rickard was grinning at my discomfort. “Deal with the problem would you. Otherwise we could be having Hounds crashing down around us.”

“Or on our heads.” Taylor was already moving off calling for a couple of wood saws.

“Who is that man?” I asked.

“Buggered if I know,” Sir Rickard told me, not for the first time, “and so long as he does his job, right now, I don't much care. Edward can you set a group of men to spear to death any Hound that falls through the roof?”

“I think that that can be managed.”

Edward said that, but the villagers were very slow to commit towards helping us. It wasn't until well into the second day before a large man came out with a shovel and a pick slung easily over his shoulder strode over to where a group of the bastards were toiling hard and offered to help.

Shortly after that, another group of men went over with wood cutting materials to help build the walls then a couple of the women shyly came round to offer us food and water.

This caused me a little hilarity as I heard the Sergeant delivering a little speech to a couple of the men about “keeping their base desires firmly buttoned up or Sir Rickard would likely be extremely cross.” to much groaning and complaining from the other men.

I remember grinning and thinking that there wouldn't be much trouble. The bastards were kept too busy for those kinds of shenanigans despite the best efforts of one or two of the eligible females. Apparently it nearly became a whole thing as the women wanted to use that as an excuse to escape the local area, marriage to a soldier is attractive towards that kind of woman. The chance to see new lands, to travel with her man and such as well as, or so I'm told, the aphrodisiac of being married to a warrior man.

But as I say, the boys were a little too busy to be able to spend too much time to devote towards pursuing some of the members of the fairer sex.

So gradually, as the hours and days wore on, the villagers began to warm up to the idea of fighting for their future. I found myself in charge of a group of men who needed to be taught how to hold a spear properly and had just enough of a clue to be teaching them basic spear drills. Don't get too excited. It didn't go much beyond the stereotypical instructions of “hold the spear here and here and stick the pointy bit in the bad guy.”

Such sentences are often said in jest in an effort to make fun of a persons capabilities and talents when it comes to using their weapons but when it comes down to it. When you've only got a limited amount of time to be able to teach people these things, then you take what you can get.

We did have one problem though which was that we still didn't know how the Hounds were getting their information. They had to be getting that intelligence from somewhere and so we had assumed that there were agents that were working for the hounds amongst the villagers and the people that we were staying with. For this reason it had been decided that anyone that was in the village, stayed in the village unless they were supervised by one, or preferably more, of the soldiers.

When we arrived in the village we were very careful to point out to Edward that this was a necessary evil and that it was unavoidable. That we didn't want to start some kind of massive witch-hunt and nor did we want to turn villagers against other villages or their fellows. Edward agreed and when it was put to the gathering, we pointed out that these agents could be anybody so the important thing was that we intercept anyone and anything that might be carrying messages off to other parts.

Most, if not all of the people that lived inside the village itself were agreeable to this and were supportive and those people that were not were quickly shouted down under the threat of being perceived to be the agents that we were trying to protect against.

I thought that this was a bit harsh myself but there you go.

We also stationed Dan on the highest building to shoot down any birds that might be messenger pigeons. We can't speak for whether or not he was successful in curtailing the spread of intelligence but we certainly got enough birds for a pie.

The problem with all of this was that we weren't just here to protect the people in the village itself. We were also there to protect the people from the surrounding farms. Many of whom were reluctant to drop what they were doing and run off at a moments notice to a central village. They, not incorrectly, argued that they had things to do. Chores to fulfil and a home to protect. They asked how we intended to protect their homes, not unreasonably, and were understandably upset and angry when we told them that we had no intention of trying to protect their little farms in out of the way places. That our priorities were to protect the people that lived inside the buildings as the buildings themselves could be rebuilt.

Some saw the sense and loaded as much as they could onto carts and carried it into town, prioritising food and other goods that could not be replaced.

Many did not which was where the entire thing clashed of course. You see, how could we tell which farmers were just genuinely angry and upset at the prospect of losing everything that they owned against those people that might actually be pretending to be angry and upset in an effort to remain behind and send messages off to their masters?

We never found an answer to this riddle.

Nor could we, upon giving them the news that we intended to protect the village and the people living in it, leave them behind if they refused which led to several occasions where the occupants of the farms had to be restrained and carried away from their homes with the very real possibility of never returning there again.

The growing good feeling between the village folk and ourselves began to fall off a little from that point.

Fortunately, help came from a surprising place as the head woman, Edward's wife who doubled as the chief Priestess of Crom Cruarch declared that it was time for an offering to the God. Supplies were gathered, more firewood was cut and we all were invited down into the cavern to leave our offerings.

A couple of the more superstitious soldiers complained a little but Sir Rickard glared at them until they subsided. We were told that we didn't need to make an offering if we didn't want to. That the God understood that we were there to help and to, possibly, lay down our lives in the protection of the village and the God's people and as such our “unbelieving ways” would be tolerated. For myself, I took a pragmatic view of the situation. We were guests here. I couldn't prove that the beliefs of the God's existence were false. I didn't know what he was although I will admit that at the time, I thought that he was little more than a local spirit. A more powerful version of those wood and farmland spirits that occasionally adopt patches of land and the people that live on them and give their power to help the people that live there.

So I determined that I wasn't that concerned for the health of my eternal soul and that I wouldn't bother the priests with it. I determined that I would mention it to Mark the next time I saw him and if he felt it was important then I would unburden myself at my next confession.

Kerrass agreed with my course of action and determined to take an offering of a selection of the herbs that he was using to mix up the potion that we would be using to mask the effects of the Hound's poison.

I've never entirely been sure as to what Kerrass' religious beliefs are. I have asked him and when he does answer on the matter, which is not often, he will say that he believes in his own capabilities. He believes in the swords on his back, the signs in his fingers, the skill in his hands and the knowledge in his brain. I can't speak for that. He certainly spends enough time working on all of these things that you might consider that a religion. But I also think that he might be putting me off the true answer.

I've never seen him leave an offering at a shrine, enter a temple or give much more than lip service to religious ritual. However when he swears he blasphemes in the name of a Goddess. Which one? I used to think it was Melitele when I first met him but more recently I have become less sure. When he spoke about the Princess Dorn while she was asleep, he did so with the reverence of a man talking about his Goddess and I have since come to wonder if that was a thing.

But I don't know. As I say, he avoids the subject wherever he can and flat out refuses to answer when he can't.

But regardless, we gathered our offerings. Each of the soldiers offered up a single arrow from the dozens of new ones that they had been making. It seemed that when they ran out of things to do, it was almost automatic that their hands would turn to the craft of fletching. Either straightening and fixing spent arrows or by constructing others.

As I say, Kerrass offered some herbs and berries, Sir Rickard joined his men in offering an arrow. I thought long and hard about what I should offer. It was supposed to be the first fruits of the harvest but as I didn't really harvest anything from my work other than wealth, most of which went to the university as it was with their permission that I was able to use their name, or to our families estate to be disposed of as my father, at first and later Emma, saw fit. I was given a stipend for life on the road but that meant that I had little actual money on me.

The other major things that I had received were a woman that I loved and a friendship that I had not believed possible, neither of whom would be agreeable to be sacrificed on the alter to a local God. Some might argue that I had gained fame and notoriety from this as well, but again, how do you make an offering of that?

In the end I decided that all of these things were the “results” of my harvest. My real crop was in the knowledge that I had gained over the course of my journeys and as such, that would be what I would offer, in the guise of some of my preliminary notes that I had jotted down. Everything that I gave I had already written up and handed off to people, I keep the notes to remind myself of past events and to what I was thinking at the time as well as my reasons for behaving in such a way.

Like reading a diary, it is sometimes interesting reading to go back and read through what had happened all that time ago.

So I was carrying a small folder full of loose leaf paper as we walked through the open building and down the trap door. The building that disguised the trap door was little more than a basic wooden framework that had only the loosest wooden planks nailed to it with a very light covering of thatch over the rooftop. The objective was to disguise the entrance into the cave from outside eyes and it was largely successful. From the outside, the small building looked like little more than a large outhouse for the use of relieving yourself.

It took us a while to get everyone down there. The doors over the cave were large and well made. Edward later told me that they were the third set of doors that had been constructed by the village to guard the place. As they gained more knowledge and experience in how to build larger and more sturdy doors, the old ones would be taken down and the new ones would be put up.

As I say, these ones were extremely large and very heavy to look at. I did struggle to understand how they might keep people out but there was a large cross-beam propped against the wall as you went through and examining the back of the door showed that there was an area where this could be fitted into place.

It took us a long time to climb down the stairs to get into the cavern, filing down the slick stone steps, presumably worn away by many years of people climbing down them and although I tried to be sturdy and steady on my feet, I found that I had to clutch onto the guiding rope with one hand as I moved down.

I remember being surprised by how far down into the ground we ended up going until the walls, almost abruptly, vanished on either side opening out into a wide cavern with a large bonfire in the middle where people were already dancing around and having fun.

Food was also being passed around along with many bottles of the fermented apple drink that they liked so much and it showed the promise of a heady gathering. Sir Rickard was telling the men that, although they were free to enjoy themselves that they should refrain from getting drunk as “The Hounds” could come at any time. He promised them that when victory was assured then they could get as drunk as they like but until then they were to remain sober. He also told them that providing the lady gave explicit consent then they should feel free to enjoy themselves providing that they were ready for duty later on that night.

Such a declaration was met by a somewhat half-hearted cheer but they were soon drawn off by various people into the dancing circle and I didn't see too many unhappy faces.

I found myself on the edges of the gathering, clutching my folder of notes and looking on, watching the people dancing and laughing until I found myself wondering how many of them would soon be dead when the Hounds themselves finally did attack.

I missed Ariadne deeply. I didn't know why but I felt sure that she would have been fascinated by this gathering.

After everyone was down in the cavern and had taken a bit of time to see everyone, shake everyone's hand and hug loved ones or close friends then the priestess stood up. I knew it was her from the red scarf that had not been taken off from round her head but her entire attitude and body language was different. She seemed to hobble into an open area with the aid of a long walking stick as she was bent over, almost bent double with the effects of extreme age and the signs of a long and physically taxing life. If I hadn't known who she was, I wouldn't have recognised her. I looked around for Edward who was standing nearby, watching his wife perform. He hid it well but his eyes were shining with pride as he watched her work.

She came forward and threw her arm up in the air and brought her staff crashing down onto the floor. The sound was deafening, a metallic crash that echoed throughout the cave. I wondered about that for a while until Kerrass pointed out a small group of women who had some crude cymbals in the darkness. I grinned to myself, enjoying the theatricalities of the entire thing.

“Welcome, my children.” She said, her voice disguised and sounding old and decrepit. “Welcome strangers from distant lands as we stand here at this time of offering. Where once again we offer the first fruits of our labours for the crooked man. The man of the mound. The ancient one. We offer these things and then we ask for his blessings upon us all so that we might better survive the struggles ahead.”

She scanned the assembly and there was real power flashing behind her eyes but I sensed that it was benevolent.

“Bring forth your offerings.”

With a sweep of her arm she gestured towards the wide flat table nearby. As Edward had first described to me it was dark wood, almost black in colour and it had a feeling of being old. Very old, to the point where I wondered how old it was.

I should explain a little bit of context here. The cave that we were in was wet from the lake that we were on the shore of. The cold and damp was banished by the large and open roaring fire that was there but it was inconceivable to me that that blaze was a constant fixture here. The amount of wood that would need to be consumed alone made it almost impossible to picture. Also, although the smoke was being taken off somewhere it was impossible to tell where, but if the fire was constantly burning we would run the risk of suffocating in all the smoke. But without that fire I could not help but think that the cave would be cold and clammy and anything made out of wood would be given to rot away in relatively short order. It was inconceivable to me that the table could have survived so long down here without rotting away but it was not a small thing and I also struggled to conceive how anyone could have got it through the relatively small entranceway.

One of life's little mysteries and another that I don't think I will ever have the opportunity to solve.

We all lined up and moved forward to lay our offerings on the table. I was surprised by how lively the gathering was. I am used to religious ceremonies being calm and staid affairs that take their time and are done in reverent silence with maybe a bit of light chanting or singing to accompany prayers. But here, people were laughing and joking, trading insults and compliments with cheer and relish.

When it was my turn I found a part of the table that hadn't been covered in goods. There was already a stack of arrows in one corner as well as numerous stacks of firewood, straw and several carcasses of meat. I found a place and tucked my small folder of paper somewhere out of sight next to a small bunch of flowers that looked to have been offered by a child. I took the moment to place my hand on the table itself. As Edward had warned me, it was indeed slightly warm to the touch and the feeling of age increased. The grain was deep and pitted by time and hardship. If the surface of the wood had been the skin of a human then that human would have been an aged warrior, tired and old now but still standing and prepared to weather the storm, standing upright before his enemies.

That might sound like a strange thing to say but it was the image that leapt into my mind as I lay my hand down on the surface.

I realised that I was holding up the line and moved on, going to stand with Sir Rickard who looked as though he was feeling just as out of place as I was.

Kerrass, on the other hand, was laughing and joking with the rest of them. The very life and soul of the party exchanging words and all kinds of comments with the other villagers, offering advice and analysis while accepting the same in return. Not that I suspected he would ever need to know exactly how to grow the perfect apple but then again, what do I know about such things.

When all had placed their offerings the Priestess came out again and with another expansive gesture of her arms we were ordered to form a circle. She stood in place as part of the circle with her husband on her right hand side. More women were bringing bottles forward, one of the older women who bore enough of a family resemblance to the Priestess that I guessed that she was either an elder daughter or a sister of some kind, emptied a bottle of some kind of amber liquid into a large drinking horn. I remember thinking that the symbology of this was a little odd as the “Crooked man of the mound,” Crom Cruarch was a god of the harvest whereas a horn is more often a symbol of the hunt.

Another little mystery that I didn't expect to get the answer to.

The priestess stood in the circle and lifted the horn aloft.

“Thank you Crom Cruarch for everything that you have given us and everything that you have helped us to bring forth from your lands. All I ask, at this time of offering is that you help us bring an end to this torment so that we can live our lives without suffering at the hands of our enemies.”

She took a drink from the horn which was then passed to her left away from her husband. The horn came around the circle and as it went each person would give thanks for something from their immediate past, most commonly for good food, the companionship or the love of a friend, the food and produce that had been grown and the signs of a better than average harvest. But they all asked for the same thing which was a happy resolution to the issue with the Hounds of Kreve.

I also noticed that they had all been carefully coached in what to say. They were very careful in precisely what to ask for in that, they all agreed that they wanted an ending to their torment but they also specified, carefully that they wished to survive the experience. A very prudent gesture in my mind. We've all grown up with stories about having to be careful of what you wish for and it would be all too easy for a wish for “an end to our troubles” to be answered with the flash of a blade or choking on a fish bone.

The horn was topped up occasionally by ever present attendants who followed it round with more bottles of the mysterious amber liquid under each arm. When the horn was getting towards empty one of the women would reach round and add some more until they themselves had run out of the stuff when they would leave to join the circle themselves a bit further round, standing with people that, again, I guessed to be their families.

Some made silent toasts, including Sir Rickard. I noticed that the bastards all wished for the same thing which was for “Good yew, a spare bowstring, a quiver full of arrows and a worthwhile target.” Sir Rickard later told me that this was, essentially, the harriers prayer. He also said that they were missing a couple of sentiments which included, “a belly full of rum and an enthusiastic woman”

The Skelligan Sergeant said something in his own tongue that I didn't follow, knowing only a few words of that strange and musical language but Kerrass was the one that I was waiting for.

He thanked the God for the return of something that he had lost without knowing it and asked for the strength to fulfil his promises.

Then he passed the horn to me. I hadn't planned on saying anything in particular, not thinking in advance that I might want anything special, I found that I wanted to live in the moment and say the first things that came into my head, but when I had the horn in my hand my mind went blank.

“Thank you.” I said, startling at my own words. “Thank you for a love that I didn't look for, friendship that I didn't know I needed and the knowledge that showed me a better way.”

I thought for a moment longer.

“I would ask for a road forwards. I would ask that I be shown a way to find the answers that I need. That is all, just a branch to cling onto for I feel as though I am lost.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Kerrass turned away from me.

I took a sip from the horn, no more than that and believe me, I am glad that all I took was a sip for I am not sure that I could have handled much more.

Holy flame that was strong stuff.

I watched the horn go further and further round the circle, more and more people asking for a safe deliverance from the trials that beset them. But rather than feel some kind of catharsis at this, I found that I was feeling more and more guilty. Guilty at the fact that we hadn't offered these people any more securities or really any kind of promise that we could actually fix things.

The circle broke apart once everyone had had their little drink and said their little prayers and made their requests. It seemed that that was when the party started as a small band of musicians struck up a tune and the dancing started. Sir Rickard led a small group of Bastards up the steps and back out into the night air to guard against any attacks that might come but I was moderately confident that this wouldn't be the case. These people lived here and seemed to have some kind of “Sense” as to when a mist, or an attack would come and they were confidently predicting that everything was find for now.

I tried, I really tried to be the life and soul of the party. I had a little dance, I drank more than was possibly prudent of the potent apple brandy that the village seemed to produce and I joined in with some of the story telling and the gentle teasing that seemed to be going on between people. But at the end of the day, my heart just wasn't in it and I found myself retreating from the assembly and off into my private little cocoon of solitude, sitting on the edge of things and watching.

I was sat playing with my medallion for the majority of the night.

“You should have fun,” I sensed Ariadne telling me. “We are not married yet and I am not jealous.”

“No, we are not married,” I told her. “But we are betrothed. And to me, that's as good as for that kind of thing.”

“Silly man.” She laughed but I could sense that she was examining what I said to see if there was some kind of hidden meaning behind it. “Why so sad?” She asked after a while.

“I don't know,”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I don't know that either. I miss you.”

“And I miss you too.” There was a warmth to her, for want of a better word, voice that brought a lump to my throat. “But is that all that's wrong?”

“I don't know,” I said again. “And I'm sick of not knowing. I feel a bit like I'm being distracted from things. Like something is holding me back or trying to distract me from what's going on but I can't see a way out.”

She didn't say anything but I had no sense that she had withdrawn from the contact.

We sat in silence for a long time. I would say that we were enjoying each other's company but that seems a bit ludicrous given that we were at different ends of the continent. I retreated to my sleeping area as soon as I started to see people leaving and got my head down for a restless and uncomfortable nights sleep.

As a result though, I did gain some measure of amusement from watching everyone doing the work in the morning nursing their hangovers, no matter how slight that hangover was. Apart from Kerrass' insufferable smugness at being able to dismiss those things with the consumption of a potion, the other bastards were all suffering a bit, much to the amusement of the villagers as, I suspect, it showed the villagers that the soldiers were human too.

But that didn't make the work any the less hard or urgent and to be fair to everyone involved. We bent to the work with determination and gusto.

All told it took us five days to get the village into a state that Sir Rickard was happy with it. Another two days after that and he declared that he could hold this place through anything.

Then came the boring bit.

Regular readers of mine will be well aware that if there is a running theme throughout all of my writing, that theme is the one of waiting. Waiting for the inevitable action and when I sit and think about it or go over old notes over and over again, it is easy to spot this pattern. That I spend far too much of my time talking about what it's like to wait before some kind of intense and terrifying activity and I've spent a bit of time wondering about this.

I suspect that part of the reason for this is that it's during these periods of waiting that I get to make up my notes. When there's nothing else to do other than to sit and wait, that's when I reach for my journals to note things down and to comment on various observations and things. So later, when I'm sat in an inn for a day or two, or in one of those other forced periods of laziness or recovery after our various adventures, I go back to these notes to write up the things that I have found or that I want to talk about and I find that lot of what I have made notes on is the subject of waiting for things.

Was this time different?

Yes and no.

I am well aware that that is no real answer to speak of.

On the one hand it was exactly like every other period of waiting that I've ever had the misfortune to be part of, where I was waiting for action of the hard and physical variety. Where my life would be on the line and only the speed of my spear and the quickness of my feet stood between me and a horrible death. I did all the routines that many of my regular readers will be aware of. I did some brief maintenance on my armour such as it was. I ensured that the edges of my spear and various knives were honed to a razor's edge and I ensured that those same blades were as well oiled and cared for as the could be. I was already obsessive over those details as I was well aware that I could have to make use of those weapons at a moments notice. I made sure that I was always well fed but not to the point of bloating myself up which meant that I spent a good amount of my day snacking rather than having some kind of large meal. I also made sure to drank plenty of water with only enough alcohol in it to make sure that I would catch no disease from it.

But there were differences too.

This was an enemy that I had faced before, and lost, and I was surprised how much it had made a difference in my own mind.

I had done things that were similar of course while travelling with Kerrass. I have faced similar monsters, Griffins, Ghosts, Necrophages and so on but in each case we had found the creature in question before defeating it and all the circumstances were slightly different meaning that the fight and the wait themselves were slightly different.

This time, we knew what we were facing and had faced them before which meant that I knew precisely what I had to be afraid of. I remembered the visions that I had seen at the foot of Sam's castle, the things that I had heard. I remembered the smell and the choking sense of raw terror as well as raw....wrongness is the right word. To know, somewhere that you can no longer depend on your sense of sight, hearing or smell. I found that I was terrified of this and as a result there was more of a sense that I had to keep myself busy in an effort to banish these fears.

There was plenty of things for me to do. I was still involved in helping to prepare the villagers. The village itself was as prepared as it was going to be but the villagers still needed work. Like me, they were feeling the fear in the coming situation and coming to dread what was going to happen. It was different for them and far more difficult because they had been trained to back down. Trained to be afraid of what was coming for us all and as a result they were attempting to overcome years, and indeed, generations of terror and trained cowardice.

They say that bravery cannot exist without fear. If that is true, and I believe that it is, then those villagers were amongst the bravest people I have ever met.

So we kept on training but it was also important occasionally to set the villagers down and get them to take a break. Like me they longed to do things, to move stuff to straighten things out. To rearrange defences that had been in place for days and had already been rearranged multiple times and now, could not possibly be in a more efficient way.

Sir Rickard did come up with a partial solution in that he came up with an odd version of tag. The children's game where the objective is to touch a person without being touched yourself except that in this version a tag is delivered by grabbing the person and forcing them down to the ground. It was a good way to alleviate some stress and certainly got the blood pumping.

It might have been my imagination but I noticed that the game got particularly brutal whenever Sir Rickard or myself joined in and I ended up nursing more than one bruise.

Got my revenge though.

Kerrass, just so you know..... I hope it hurt.

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The other thing that we had to do was to continue to train. Why? Try fighting. Now try tying a scarf over your mouth and nose. Now make sure that that same scarf is wet.

There is an old saying by the fencing masters which is that “If you cannot see, you cannot fight. If you cannot hear, you cannot fight and if you cannot breathe, you cannot fight.” This scarf over the air-ways didn't mean that you couldn't breathe but it did make things more difficult. I won't deny that most of that difficulty was in my head but at the same time that was something that needed to be overcome in order for us to continue.

Also there was a smell that came with the solution that Kerrass gave us to use. A knife edge kind of smell. Not entirely unpleasant but at the same time, it took some getting used to. It was a distraction that we didn't need but that we couldn't possibly do without.

So we trained, we fiddled with our defensive layout and deployment, arguing things out until there was nothing new to be said and nothing new to be done. But we argued anyway.

Every evening, after the evening meal had been served and people were beginning to settle down. Kerrass, myself, Sir Rickard and Edward the headman would get together on the lookout platform that was up on one of the roofs of the larger buildings. The idea being that the really good archers which were Dan and a man called Harris, would be able to lay in some shots wherever needed. In the meantime we kept a lookout there to let us know the first signs of a mist, or whether there was anything else that was strange going on in the undergrowth. Dan, the old poacher, was particularly skilled at this. There were multiple times where he would send a small group of hunters off into the undergrowth to go looking for a stag, some boar or some game birds that his old eyes had managed to spot, deep in the undergrowth. All other times, he would just stand there, cradling his War-bow and alternating between singing softly to himself and chewing a large supply of tobacco.

Harris was a good man, quiet and dependable. He was utterly unremarkable in his manner or his outfit. Polite to a fault unless he'd been drinking. He didn't do this often but when he did, he had a thirst that was all consuming and would, or so I'm told, be found having blacked out on his way to wherever he was due to spend the night. Rickard described him as the best “killer” in the unit. When I asked him what he meant he looked me in the eye.

“There are some people in this world who are just good at killing. That is their talent and they are good at it. The rest of us need to be taught how to kill. We have an instinct to not kill and then we have a tendency to pull our blows at the last moment.”

“Kerrass has told me something similar.”

“And he would be right. That man,” Rickard pointed at Harris who was chatting amiably with a villager. “Is a killer. He's not a bad man, he's relatively moral. He likes his women willing or he would rather do without. He doesn't steal, he only argues with people if he knows that he is correct or if he doesn't understand something. He is the most open to new knowledge person that I've ever met, including yourself, and if he'd been born in a slightly higher social position in life then he could have been your peer in the scholarly art. He's always asking questions and shuts up when what is really needed is his obedience. But there is not a better killer in the unit. He goes from quiet to man of violence with a speed that is bewildering and there is no man that is better at it in the squad.”

“I don't get it.”

Sir Rickard considered for a moment. “Dan is a better shot. But if I really want someone dead and the shot isn't that difficult, I would rather get Harris to do it. Jenkins is a better knife man and has a thirst for the killing but if I need a sentry taken out quickly and quietly then I send Harris. I can't explain it better than that. Taylor is a better swordsman and teaches all of us how to be better with the sword but if it came to a straight fight then I would put my money on Harris. I can't say fairer than that. It's not a talent for violence, it's a talent for killing.

“Most soldiers have this kind of explosive reaction to a battle or a fight.” He went on. “The release of all that fear, doubt and anger can leave a person feeling fairly light-headed and it's this that leads to the stereotype of a soldier getting drunk and hitting the brothels hard after a battle. That confirmation of life. But one of the things that they do is to tell each other stories, bragging up their capabilities and telling each other how many men they killed and how many they fought off. Most of this is bragging and the proper maths to figure out what each man accomplished is to take that number, halve it and then make adjustments according to the soldiers experience and character. The scary ones. The ones that you need to keep an eye on and avoid, are the men who walk back into camp. Clean their weapons and gear carefully before walking off and being carefully quiet for a few moments. They're the scary ones.”

I still didn't get it but I didn't push it any further.

But the four of us, Kerrass, Rickard Edward and myself would gather, giving Harris and/or Dan the opportunity to go to the Jacks or to get themselves something to eat while we discussed the state of the situation. We were as ready as we were ever going to be but I think that we needed to get together to discuss matters as much as anything else. For our own piece of mind.

By this point we were onto discussing contingencies.

There are several great military minds that have put their thoughts down on paper over the years but our thinking reminded me of one piece of advice from a book that Father had given me when he was still trying to turn me into a military man. “Be wary of making your plans too complicated.” The general said, I wish I could remember his name now as I would like to give him the credit that he deserves. It goes on to say that “No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy and this is the reason that plans should not be too complicated. Keep your plans simple and to the point but then spend all your time on contingencies for when your plan inevitably goes wrong.”

So that's what we did. Dreaming up more and more creative ideas as to what we were going to do if and when things did go wrong. It wasn't all pointless. We had filled barrels full of water and had stacked more buckets for the carrying of said water for if the Hounds brought fire. Then Rickard had asked what would happen if the Hounds used burning pitch which isn't put out by fire so we also had boxes of dirt ready for the smothering of the flames as well.

We actually got quite creative, up to and including what we were going to do if the Hounds turned up with some kind of battering ram to knock down the walls (we deepened the ditch, added stakes of wood and loose rock and built a slope of earth up to our palisade.) and had even wasted far too much of our lives discussing what we were going to do if the enemy turned up with siege towers.

Note the plural there.

But generally we would all agree that nothing was going to happen tonight before retiring to our beds letting Dan or Harris resume their watch.

I remember that I was the first one up there on the platform that day. I was in my shirtsleeves, sat, watching the sun go down while reminding myself, not for the first time, that this really was a beautiful patch of countryside.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Kerrass asked as he perched next to me.

“You wouldn't get your moneys worth.” I told him. I offered him the water bottle which he took taking a long swig. “They're taking their bloody time to get here.” I said. “I thought that we would have been attacked days ago.”

“Give them time.” Kerrass said, passing the bottle back. It was not a new conversation and this was one of the things that was adding to my general sense of depression. “Give them time,” he said again. “It's only been a little over a week and we're heading into summer now, the mists are going to get fewer and fewer and they are probably waiting for the next real one.”

“Not a nice thought.” I said. “I want to move on Kerrass.”

“Where to?”

I shrugged. “That's the problem though. I want to move on. I want to feel the road between my feet and to have a lead to follow but I honestly cant think of a single thing to do or to say or to get on with. I can think of no new questions and no places to go and the pursuit of the remnants of this cult are the best chance I have towards finding out what happened to Francesca which means that I have to stay here. But I don't have to like it.”

This was still not a new conversation. We went over these points on an almost daily basis where I would suggest new things to do and Kerrass would shoot them down, or he would suggest other ideas and I would shoot them down. This was a relatively tame version of this argument.

This time though, Kerrass chose to sit in silence.

“Any other news?” I asked him.

“Nah, Sir Rickard is pleased with the progress of a couple of the villagers and their shooting and even dared to suggest that he could make decent archers out of them in another week or so. It put the fear into a couple of the mothers hereabouts as they thought that the lads would run off and join the Bastards on some kind of adventure.”

I nodded. “Will they?”

“Nah, I think Rickard was buttering them up to be honest.” He scratched his chin. “Oh and he made a run for it again.”

“Again?”

Kerrass nodded.

He was a farmer from one of the outlying farms. He was relatively new to the area and was, as far as anyone was in this area of the world, relatively well to do. He had brought in a number of fairly new farming innovations and as a result was better able to work the land that he had been given and so was better off than many of his neighbours. He would still be looked down on by many of the gentlemen farmers around Novigrad and Oxenfurt as well as Temeria and Aedirn but in this case, wealth is relative. His farm buildings were extensive and he was able to employ a dozen young men to work his fields which made him something of an important man. Most of the local farms were entirely family run by the father and maybe an uncle or two with their wives sons and daughters. This man had employees.

He was the man who had complained the loudest and with the most venom when the orders had been given that people needed to move out of their homes to come to the village. He had tried to sneak off with his sons on several different occasions to see to the farm rather than to help protect the village. He was a little stymied by the fact that his wife, who was equally well-to-do in the local area was good friends with Edward's wife and heavily involved with the worship of Crom Cruarch, was on our side. His first escape attempt had been thwarted by an argument with his wife on the subject, she had told Edward's wife who had passed it onto Edward who had, in turn, passed it on to Rickard.

He had tried three times since then. On average once every other night. We were still fairly suspicious about this kind of thing on the grounds that it could be some kind of attempt to make contact with the Hounds or some of their other agents so Kerrass and a couple of the bastards had arranged to let him go and follow him. He made it back to his farm and spent a bit of time moaning about non-existent attacks and beginning to nail wood over the windows before and the other bastards scared the crap out of him and all but carried him back to the village.

We were pretty confident that he was as innocent as a man can be about this kind of thing but at the same time.

“Does he not realise that we're doing this for his own protection?” I wondered aloud, not for the first time either.

“Believe me when I say Freddie, that they never realise that kind of thing.”

We sat together in silence watching the sun go down and passing the water bottle between us. It was oddly peaceful.

“Where is Rickard?” I said suddenly turning around to look around the village. “I'm beginning to get the feeling that nothing's going to....” happen today was what I was going to say. Another of our little traditions that we had picked up over the last few days. We knew that we weren't going to be attacked after the sun had gone down and so the next point of danger was going to be when the sun was coming up. I normally said this infamous phrase just as it was becoming clear that there wasn't going to be anything happening that night and so I was getting ready to get my head down and get some rest to get ready for the early morning wake-up call that was normally administered by the toe of Kerrass' boot.

This time though, this was not going to be the case.

Like it had last time, I felt the wind change and smelled dampness on the air. It was almost exactly the same as the previous time that I described it so I won't go over it again here. The difference? This time I knew what was going to happen and I felt a surge of adrenaline.

I spun, Kerrass just a split second ahead of me and we stared at the mountainside above us, looking for that first telltale wisp of cloud that told us that things were beginning to happen.

I turned back to look at the setting sun to check the colour. If the sun was yellow then the conventional wisdom was that we had nothing to fear.

It wasn't though was it. It was reddening almost visibly as I watched.

I spun back to stare at the mountainside and as I did so I had the sense that the entire village, almost the entire world was watching with me to see what was going to happen.

Then we saw it. It didn't form on the side of the mountain like it had the last time I had been in this place and watched the mist begin to form. This time it seemed to rise out of the ground. Like a slowly rising water level, lifting itself up and up until it swallows the stone, stone sand and bits of shell on the shore.

It looked oddly peaceful and reminded me of the way that a thick blanket would lie across the body of a naked woman on a cold day.

I smirked. If ever there was a time to not be thinking of things like that then this was it.

Then the edges of the mist began to take on that kind of silvery red hue that we had been waiting for with almost a sense of dread and excitement.

It was finally here. We would finally have the chance to try out Kerrass' remedy and, if it worked, get some catharsis.

If it worked.

I wanted to scream and shout. I wanted to ring the alarm bell and scream a warning at the top of my lungs. “BLOOD MIST” I wanted to yell, my voice cracking as I tried to project those words as far as they would go.

But that wouldn't work. Indeed, we had deliberately not installed an alarm bell for precisely that reason, a suggestion of mine even. An alarm, or the sound of one of the outsiders that had come here to keep them all safe running around like a chicken with his head cut off would be just the kind of thing that would cause a panic resulting in our doing half the hounds job for them. The Bastards could run about and shout orders but it was imperative that Kerrass, Rickard and myself appear calm and unruffled.

With a stark grin Kerrass clapped me on the shoulder and climbed down from the platform. He was on his way to take on a, probably, dangerous number of Witcher potions. If his remedy didn't work, it was only Kerrass who could be depended on to fight with any kind of effectiveness.

I watched the mist for a suitable amount of time so that it would appear that Kerrass was all but taking a nonchalant stroll before descending from the platform myself. Dan climbed up the ladder after I got to the ground before Harris and he hauled up a couple of bags of arrows up to the platform. I nodded at Jenkins who had been hanging around, practically dancing from foot to foot with excitement at the prospect of finally getting some action. He was pale and sweating, reminding me of a man who was starving for something to eat.

I managed to keep myself from shuddering.

“Combatants to their posts please Jenkins.” I told him. He nodded and carefully marched off. Keeping to the calm military cadence that I guessed these soldiers learned on the parade ground. Arms swinging, Legs marching.

He whistled as he went and I shook my head.

Harris chuckled at me. “He'll be alright once he gets a couple of scalps.” he said as he tied a rope onto another bag of arrows for Dan to haul up to the platform.

“Scalps?” I swallowed.

“Yeah, not literally though.” He seemed to consider this. “Although he has been known to take other souvenirs.”

This time I did shudder.

“Wait a second.” I commented after a moments thought. “You think you could tell me anything and I'll believe you don't you?”

Harris shrugged. “It's worked before.”

I told him to fuck off and left at my own carefully moderate pace to the sound of Harris' laughter. Another thing that the villagers could do with seeing and hearing. Laughter is the enemy of fear after all. Or so I'm told.

I went to the small area of the communal hut that I shared with Kerrass. He was knelt on his sleeping mat, legs tucked under him. His swords were laying flat on the ground behind him and he had four potion bottles within easy reach of his right hand. Two were green although one of those had silver flecks in while the other was cloudy. There was a purple one and one where the bottle was made out of some kind of pottery. He was already wearing another harness which had several other potions in. I recognised the bottle he used for what he called “White Honey,” that almost magical substance that could remove all poisons and intoxicants from the body.

Contrary to popular belief, it isn't that Witchers are immune to poison and toxic substance, it's just that their tolerance is far higher than that of normal people. Put enough in their bodies and they will still be overwhelmed so Kerrass was taking proportions.

I chose not to disturb him. He was pale, sweating profusely and was absolutely rigid. So much so that I honestly believe that if a couple of men came and picked him up then he would keep his current kneeling shape without his other limbs falling out of his current stance.

I noticed that he had a towel near by as well as a large bottle of water.

For many of you, I have no doubt that you have been reading my journals since they first began being published but there is a point here that bears repeating. Look at what we made of the Witchers. Look at what we expect of them and look at what we made them expect of themselves. Look at what we made them do. How would you feel if you had to take a bunch of drugs, both relaxants and stimulants before going to work?

Actually that doesn't sound too unpleasant now that I write it down but then imagine that those self-same drugs are also poisoning you and you still have to function well enough to do your job well otherwise you would be killed. Doesn't sound as pleasant now does it.

For my part. I needed to dress in my own armour and strap my equipment about myself. I had carefully prepared everything only that morning, ensuring that my weapons were sharp and oiled and that I had everything that I wanted. But I always want to check. Apparently this is a soldier's habit and a soldiers anxiety. The sure knowledge that your equipment being in a properly working and maintained order will save your life is a bulwark of confidence that you badly need when you know that you are about to put your body in the way of extreme danger.

There are times when I look at the sort of man that I am becoming and wonder if those self-same changes are not necessarily for the better and there and then, I resolved that once the matter of Francesca's disappearance is resolved, I will prop my spear up in the corner. Hang my dagger above the hearth and have my armour converted into something useful. I will settle down with Ariadne and help to run our estates while devoting myself to scholarly work and to the happiness of my wife.

As I say that though, I know it for the falsehood that it is. I will no longer trust that I will be safe and I will, except in those circumstances where I will be unable to carry personal arms with me, always have my dagger in my belt and I will always, always know where my spear is.

I will even take steps to ensure that it is never too far from me any given time.

Part of me registers that this change is quite a sad thing.

But not now. Now I had enemies to kill and answers to find. I felt my lips draw back into a snarl of readiness and a hunger for action that I had to ruthlessly quell before it threatened to become overwhelming. I wondered if we were already being gassed and whether or not it was affecting me.

But now wasn't the time to worry about that.

I stepped out into the evening air to find that the mist was already beginning to creep into the village surroundings. I marched over to one of the water buckets and took the scarf from around my neck. Gave it a thorough soaking in the barrel before tying it around my neck in a way that would make it easy to lift up into position with relatively little notice or warning.

The smell was overpowering. Not a bad thing, not by any means but it was still strong enough to make my eyes water and I found myself wondering if the local smell would be enough to deter whatever fumes that the Hounds would be putting out.

Probably not. No such luck and all that.

The village was gathering beneath the look-out platform. Sir Rickard was on the top of it. The bastards milled about in amongst the crowd. I had expected them to be taking up positions already but then I noticed the pattern. They were standing next to the more opinionated villagers. Those men and women that thought that they were right and that things were going wrong.

Rickard was protecting himself from troublemakers.

I saw out of the corner of my eyes that Kerrass had emerged from the house that we all used. He did so furtively before slipping off into the deepening gloom. I can't say that he was wrong to do so. His face had taken on the chalk white, black-veined palour that was familiar to me but I couldn't imagine any of the villagers taking the sight of Kerrass' visage too well when they were already expecting eldritch creatures from hell to come and get them. I thought I saw him slink off in the direction of his post before I turned back to watch Rickard.

Edward had climbed the ladder to join him and was talking in his ear.

Rickard nodded before looking up and seeming almost startled at the presence of so many people. He nodded and stepped towards the edge of the platform looking out at the assembly and waited until everyone was quiet.

It didn't take long and I again I thought that the reason that he had been lifted from the ranks of “common” (not my words. Such men are anything but common) soldiery and knighted was because it was impossible for such a man to stay in the ranks. He dominated the area.

He looked like he was going to make a speech. If this was one of the bard's sagas then that would be what happened. A rousing speech to stir the hearts of the watching villagers and soldiers and prepare them for the coming battle. A few last minute instructions maybe but no.... Rickard looked out over everyone and simply nodded his satisfaction as if to suggest that he was pleased with what he saw.

“Good hunting,” he said simply. Then the bastards themselves along with their huge sergeant were the ones that started to give the instructions. Chasing the non-combatants to safety and pushing those villagers who had chosen to fight into their places.

A thought struck me and I have no way to back it up or to prove it. I have heard that many generals give a speech before battle, some crack jokes and lead by knowing the names of every man under their command. Still others are cold and remote, expecting the highest of standards before leading their men to victory. I know this but at the time I remember thinking that “Leaders know when to make a speech. Good leaders know what to say. Great leaders know when to say nothing at all.”

I reminded myself to write it down later.

I wasn't alone in being surprised at the lack of speech though. I heard more than one villager comment that they had expected more when it came to this kind of thing as they allowed themselves to be ushered towards the cave of the God and relative safety. I rewarded myself with a quick smile before turning towards my post where Kerrass would be waiting for me.

I could feel the beginning of combat readiness wash over me. That strange state of mind that is driven by the fear of what is about to happen coupled with the body's reaction to it. Since beginning these journeys, and something that I may have mentioned before, I have acquainted myself with the science of what is happening to the body at times like this. I know the names of the hormones and chemicals that are flooding my system. I know the emotions that I am reacting too, fear, anger and a certain amount of....no I will say it...lust for the release of it. I realised that I was beginning to enjoy this feeling and look forward to it.

Another sign that I needed to begin thinking about setting aside my spear.

All of these thoughts and feelings were being amplified by the chemicals that were in the air of course. It was slightly different from last time at the castle. I don't know why, a couple of people have suggested that the reason for this would be my own state of mind and combat readiness. My bodies reaction to the knowledge of knowing what was about to happen.

I can't answer for that. All I can tell you is what it felt like.

I had a strange feeling that time was becoming elongated, almost stretched. Sounds began to feel as though they were coming to me from a long way off and they echoed inside my head in an odd way. I realised what was happening when I began to see the edges of my sight begin to quiver and the strange smells started to assail my nostrils as well. The odd scent of rotten eggs combined with wood smoke and something that made me think of hot metal and boiling vinegar as well as chewing nuts. The kind that they serve in Toussaint as part of their every day hospitality.

I got my still damp scarf up and around my face fairly quickly then. The smells were quickly masked by the perfume of the stuff that Kerrass had mixed together but I could still taste those odd smells on my tongue. I had a brief and ridiculous urge to suck some of the moisture out of my scarf and gargle with it in an effort to clean these poisons out of my throat but I settled for quickly lowering the scarf to hawk and spit by the side of the path.

Kerrass was crouched on our little step, still as a statue. He was hiding below the parapet so that he could see what was going on but, hopefully, remain unseen by any of the people who were doubtlessly approaching the village even as I watched. Hidden to allow our foes to enter the village before we would close the way behind them to cut off their retreat. He was poised on the balls of his feet, unmoving, barely breathing and utterly still and calm. Nothing that I could ever imagine being able to do, both swords on his back and ready for anything.

I felt myself grimace in anticipation of finally seeing some action. A facial expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl with a little bit of a sneer thrown in there for good measure. I took a deep breath, through the scarf, taking in the herbal smell in the hope that this would allow me to know the difference between what I was feeling and what the Hound's poisons were making me feel.

I climbed up onto the step behind Kerrass so that he could leap forward without being hindered by me and settled in to wait.

“After all this preparation,” I began, more of a way to hear myself speak than anything else. Like all other sound, my voice seemed to echo and come from a long way off. “They'd better actually be coming.”

At first I didn't think that Kerrass was going to say anything but then his voice came, grating out like steel scraping across flint and showering the ground with sparks. The best kind of sound he can make when full of potions.

“They are coming.”

I waited to see if anything else was going to come forth but nothing did.

But then they did come. Three Hounds walked their horses from the treeline and approached the village slowly.

They looked....different. So different that I wanted to laugh aloud. How I could ever have mistaken these....these things for anything other than human beings wearing elaborate costumes was suddenly a mystery to me.

Bipedal and blatantly riding horses they visibly had two arms and two legs and a head. All limbs present and accounted for in their proper configuration. I guessed that their sense of “otherness” came from their clothing and their weapons. They were wearing odd, leather coats with voluminous sleeves and hoods. So much so that I wondered how they could possibly do anything without the hoods falling over their eyes. The coats were sewn and riveted together from an almost patchwork of different cloths and skins. Some were obviously leather but I could also see fur patches and cloth patches. The fur seemed to be across the shoulders mostly where there were also fringes of long, hair that hung down the backs of the coats.

There were, to be fair, odd shapes as part of the cloaks which pronounced their limbs oddly. They had elbow spikes for instance and long, rounded shoulders much higher than the sides of their heads. There were similar spikes on their knees and the ends of their shoes were pointed on both ends which inspired me to get one of the Hounds off his horse and see how he fought with those ludicrous things on his feet.

Their horses were strange as well, there was something dripping from the horses hair and their coats which seemed to burn as though fire was rippling across their bodies. They wore odd shaped barding and strange plates and a hodge podge of armour that added to their otherworldliness. Looking back I find that I felt sorry for those horses. That stuff can't have been pleasant to wear.

As I say, in my heightened emotional state along with the herbs that the Kerrass was using on us all and the poisons that the Hounds were pumping into the atmosphere. I was almost giddy and found the sight comical.

“Well,” I commented to Kerrass with a smirk. “Your herbs are working then.”

Kerrass said nothing.

The three horsemen stopped a short distance from the village with one horseman coming a little closer.

As it transpired, I was still not entirely immune to the effects of the Hounds. His voice seemed to come from all around us, as though he was speaking to me directly. It sounded as though he was calm, almost quiet and collected and utterly without rage.

“Children,” he said. “Poor children, playing without your parents permission.”

He let the words hang in the air as though he had sent them out into the air that they might bury themselves into our ears and our brains.

“Children, all of you, just children. Not realising that your hands are getting closer and closer to the flames. Not realising that you are about to feel the utter agony of being burnt.”

The voice became harsh towards the end of that little speech and I felt a shiver of the promised agony rippled down my spine.

“Children,” he said. “Just children,” scorn now but not a small amount of pity. “But do not fear. We are here to save you from harm. Just as we always have, shielding you from the outside world. You have forgotten the terms of our agreement and we have taken our just dues to protect us all. But now you have turned from the light of Kreve and you must be punished.”

It was this moment that took me out of the moment of theatre. I dimly felt a tickle at the back of my brain and reached for that thought. The thought turned out to be a dim wondering of how Father Danzig was going to deal with being told that these... people represented the light of Kreve.

I found a smile on my lips again.

“But there is still hope for a reprieve,” he said. The kindness in the voice was like a balm that settled and calmed the nerves so that I was no longer afraid. “All you must do is step aside. Give us these dogs, these vermin that have come and disrupted the careful balance that we have kept for so long. Give them to us and we will remove them for you. We will destroy them so that you never have to worry about them ever again.”

He paused, again for the words to take root and for people to discuss them.

“Give us the soldiers. They cannot protect you. They can barely protect themselves. They pissed their trousers when we came to them. Shivering and sweating in fear as they rejected the teachings of the Sky-Father.” The voice had taken on a lordly tone. Remote, regal, cold and utterly hard. Unyielding like Granite. “They, like you are sinners. But unlike you, they are beyond redemption and are only fit to be thrown into the fires of the underworld. Give them to us, I beg you, and you will be allowed to return to your former lives without further interference from us.”

Another pause.

“Give us the soldiers. Give us the strangers and the people that tell you how you should be living your lives. Give them to us and we will remove them from here. Give them to us and we will kill them for you so that you may return to your homes and families without fear of reprisal.”

He was convincing. Very convincing. Enough so that I felt a new fear and started to look around. What if the villagers actually listened and did throw us to the Hounds.

In the cold light of day and with suitable distance from these events, I know this to be as stupid as it sounds. We were, all told, a dozen highly trained fighters and me. The villagers could no more throw us out than they could prevent the moon from rising if we put our mind to it. Even if they were that way inclined. To be fair, that wasn't the risk. The risk came that if the villagers tried to throw us out and that combat made us vulnerable to the Hounds attack.

But that wasn't what I was worried about. What I was worried about was that the villagers would throw us our and I was looking around to see where the first stone would be hurled from. I was suddenly convinced, the thought was there even that Edward would walk out into the ground between the village and the Hound sitting on his horse. “He will go,” I thought although I have sometimes wondered if I said it aloud. “He will go and we will be lost.”

As it turned out though, I needn't have worried as Sir Rickard had a simple and elegant response to this little speech. So simple that I kind of wish that I'd thought of it myself.

His voice rang out across the village. It sounded much harsher than the relaxed, elegant and tutored tones that the “Hound” had used. It must have been the same voice that he used when he was shouting orders on the battlefield because I heard it despite the distance and the strange echoey feeling in my ears.

He shouted two words.

“Dan, Harris.”

Two little words followed by a sound like a plucked, out of tune harp. A strange buzzing noise and then a wet thumping noise as two arrows buried themselves into the Hounds body. One taking him in the rough area of where a man's heart should be, the other taking him in the throat.

I'm not an archer. I don't know how good those shots were but from a man, looking at them from the outside? They were pretty impressive looking.

As responses go, it was lacking something in eloquence but at the same time I felt as though it said everything that we needed it to say.

The Hound struck with those two arrows sat on his horse for a long moment, he had jerked when the arrows struck but after that he sat there for a moment, his head tilted forward as though he was looking at the arrows sticking out of his chest in astonishment and disbelief. One hand rose to the arrow in his neck before he slowly just, toppled off his horse to one side with a thump.

Silence reigned for a moment until someone, and I never found out who it was, yelled in triumph. It was a pure sound of utter joy and exaltation.

The other two horsemen could also not believe what was happening. I've seen shows where jesters and clowns do a routine where something surprising happens and those professional performers couldn't have acted the scene out better. They looked at each other. Then down to the fallen man. Then back up at each other. They began to look as though they might retreat into the treeline, but then they looked back down at the fallen man whose life was slowly leaking out into the grass.

It was at some point here that the dangerous facts of where they were must have hit home as they were suddenly hauling at their reins, forcing their protesting horses to turn away before kicking them into motion.

Another arrow flew and took one of them between the shoulder blades as he rode off. He went some distance into the mist and smoke but from where I stood there was no way that he could have survived an injury like that.

Cheering broke out among the villagers. I can't blame them, no matter how premature that cheering might be. I tightened my grip on my spear and counted.

I heard the Sergeant shouting for people to be quiet and to be ready. I know his name, he has told me himself many times but I can't think of his name being anything other than Sergeant.

I had time to wonder how he made his voice carry like that. How he managed to get it to just the right pitch and volume.

But then came the thunder. But again, with the benefit of being protected by Kerrass' herbs, I knew what this was now. It wasn't some ominous and unknowable thing off in the distance. It was the hooves of horses drumming against the ground.

Out of the woods they came in a stream, I didn't get a chance to see how many there were as I had to duck my head below the wooden palisade although Kerrass kept his post, unmoving in the hail of things that they threw and fired at us. Even though Kerrass had found a way to protect us from the worst of the Hounds poisons I would be lying if I said that they were not formidable. The tassels that I had seen before streamed out behind them and now that I was looking for it I could see the smoke billowing behind them making them look as though they were on fire and I wondered how much of that was designed to intimidate and how much of it was for the utility of spreading their poison.

But as I say, then I had to duck back down below the wall as they started throwing and firing things into the village.

I got very little sight of them but they threw these flaming balls of clay, not unlike the kinds of hand held bombs that Kerrass uses in his alchemy, but before we knew it, bits of the village were bursting into flame. One very brave villager ran out with a bucket of water and threw it over one of the pools of burning liquid which then exploded.

His scream was horrible, if mercifully cut short. The bows of Sir Rickard's men started to sing their answers, spitting their pointed death at the riding horsemen, but I didn't know that as the horsemen had found the gap in the wall that we had left for them and were beginning to stream into the village.

The smoke was choking now and I had lost the scent of Kerrass' herbs. All I could smell was the smoke and that awful scent of rotten eggs that I remembered from before. I grabbed at my scarf and twisted round, hoping that some of the rest of the scarf might have retained it's dampness and therefore would be better able to protect me from the worst of the effects of the Hounds toxic fumes.

I can't answer for how successful it was as I began to feel my grip on reality lessening.

I have wondered. When a man goes mad is it a benefit or a hindrance to know that you are going mad? Is it helpful to know why these things are happening to you or not?

I have no answers for you here. Nothing quick, insightful or otherwise glib. Just some food for thought there.

In this instance though, I will admit to finding it useful. I knew that the Hounds weren't on fire. I knew that the light emanating from their eyes and their mouths were not hellfire and I knew that they were not winds of torment, but rather that they were perfectly normal horses painted in some kind of alchemical mixture that made them look as though they were.

Their swords would not steal my soul. I was not surrounded by the tormented screams of damned souls. Instead, they were the perfectly normal, fear filled shouts and bellows of men in combat.

As well as the burning clay balls, they threw knives and other darts. More than one javelin was thrown as well although, as far as I could tell, they didn't hit anything with any of these missiles and I felt my smile broadening.

These fools were far too used to the advantages that their potions and poisons gave them. They were not used to enemies that had the will and the drive to actually fight back. The first feelings of confidence flooded my system and I felt energy flood my being.

We were going to win.

The Hounds found the gaps that we had deliberately left in our defensive perimeter and started flooding into the village. Kerrass held his hand out to prevent me from leaping into the fray as I surged forward to the fight. How he knew to do that I'll never know but we had our place in the plan and this was not it. The object of the exercise was to let the bastards in, to confine them and remove the advantage of their horses.

I let him restrain me and crouched next to him as though I was a sprinter getting ready to start the race. Six riders past us, hooves sending up small tufts of grass and dirt. Billows of their poisonous smoke wafting towards my waiting nose. I wanted to gag and vomit. My brain felt as though it was being squeezed in a vice. Seven, Eight. I wondered how many there were and found myself hoping that there would be more. Nine, a pause.

I felt a small mewl of disappointment in my throat.

Ten horsemen.

I was behind Kerrass so I don't know if he could see something that I couldn't but he turned to me and nodded. I was prepared for the sight of his face, but it still sent a shiver down my spine. Pale with the black veins under the skin. I could tell that I was being affected by the gas. I could see the fangs distorting his mouth as well as the slight elongation of the nose to form a snout. His eyes were glowing.

We leapt to work though. Pulling the cart out of the side alley so that it blocked the entranceway. Kerrass pulled the sides down so that the wooden stakes poked out into the village while I put the blocks of stone into place so that they wedged the wheels to prevent them from moving the barricade easily. There had been some talk about whether it might be easier to simply knock the wheels off but Kerrass had quite calmly asked how it was intended to move the cart after we had won.

Also, it didn't look as though we would have time. What Sir Rickard had called the “Fire alleys” were proving mercilessly effective. The sound of bow-strings twanging along with the constant buzzing of the arrows flying and the rhythm of the arrows striking flesh was a constant musical accompaniment to the screams of the dying. It was overwhelming and I had to fight to overcome the urge to stuff something in my ears. I was already struggling to see through the smoke, mist and hallucinations.

Kerrass grabbed me, taking hold of the scarf and moved it round my face which provided some relief. I hadn't realised that the patch of cloth immediately covering my mouth had gone dry but the “fresh” part of the scarf let me feel a little bit better.

The rearmost horsemen had realised that they were charging into a killing ground now and were straining to get their horses to slow down and to turn around. I don't know how many had already fallen to the horrifyingly accurate and magically fast arrows of The Bastards but it can't have been a small number. But I gripped my spear and danced from one foot to the other, eager for combat and the kill.

I didn't have long to wait, although in all honesty, calling it a “combat” was a little bit of an exaggeration.

You see, the thing about plans, when they're carefully made by people who know what they're doing, especially against an unsuspecting enemy, work.

This was particularly true in this case.

We were up against a relatively small force. At best estimates there were twenty of them, certainly no more than that. Up against the best that the Temerian army had had to offer back when there was a war being fought, led my a man who knew how to use the men under his command. Our foes were used to having the run of the land and having people flee from them when they came calling. The prospect of having someone, anyone, actually standing up to them was laughable. They had spent literal generations teaching these people to be afraid of them, to cower when they approach.

Couple this with the fact that they relied on their poisons and theatrics. Furthermore they thought that they had faced us in battle before and had used these tools effectively to see us off. It was unfeasible that we would stand against them.

We had a Witcher that showed us how to neutralize this advantage.

So what we were facing was twenty schoolyard bullies who barely knew what they were doing. They could probably fight on the practice grounds and could lay in extremely accurate sword strokes against static targets and, to be fair to them although I don't really like being “fair” to these unspeakable fucks, that was all that they had been required to do up until that point.

Now they were up against highly trained, skilled and experienced killers.

Oh, and me of course as I don't really count.

They were also up against the awful, awful rage of the villagers.

So we come back to me. A half crazed lunatic, drunk on the combination of the “Hounds” hallucinogens and Kerrass' herbal concoction, my own sense of rage, grief, fear and relief. Those riders charged towards us.

There were four of them, at most, facing us. They never stood a chance.

Kerrass was in front of me. This was among the drills that he had started learning almost as soon as he had started training me. First it was all about giving me the skills to make sure that he could be comfortable believing that I wasn't as much of a danger to him as I was to myself and then he started to train me to compliment his fighting style.

While I had been placing the wedges to keep the cart in place, he had been painting some of his purple magical signs on the floor. This is the one that I always forget the name of but what they are are essentially magical traps. They don't do very much but they are absolutely devastating. What they do is to slow you down. Not by much, maybe a third to a half as slow as you would normally be. Having had it used on me I can tell you that it doesn't feel as though you are moving slower, to you it looks as though the rest of the world has suddenly sped up.

He had placed two of these traps across the way and the two of us stood beyond them. Kerrass in front and myself behind.

The first horseman hit the trap and started to slow down. The second one, not realising the danger and still trying to flee the murderous storm of arrows from behind, charged into his back, the third and fourth saw what was happening and were pulling on their reins to bring their horses to a halt.

Which was precisely when Kerrass attacked.

He surged forwards to the edge of where the traps lay and gestured. A huge shower of sparks leapt from his outstretched hands. I've seem him use this trick as a stream of burning....stuff towards an enemy or, as in this case, as a wave emanating out from himself.

The front two horses, the ones ensnared in the trap, reared. In exactly the same way as they always do whenever Kerrass uses this trick. Kerrass charged forwards, going between these two riders. He lashed out at one enemy, his steel sword flashing on the grounds that you never move past an enemy without taking at least a swing at them and I saw a spray of blood. But then he was past them and engaging the third and fourth man. My job was to follow him in and dispose of the two men who were being thrown from their horses.

Luckily for me, they were still crashing to the ground under the influence of the trap. One man, clearly the better horseman, rolled free uninjured, but the other fell with his horse.

I ran over to him and stabbed down in his throat, making sure that I saw the required fountain of blood before I allowed myself to move on.

Don't think I was too far gone though. I made sure that I could still see the man who was waddling towards me and righting his clothing and equipment about himself making sure that all his pouches and things wouldn't get in his way.

He would be better off taking the time to remove his boots.

The biggest thing that I remember about that short fight is how disappointed I was by it.

Kerrass might be right. I might be becoming a little bloodthirsty in all of my dealings. Something to think about there. But I remember wanting something more from this man. Something more than the few exchanges of blows. The one parry and a lazy riposte.

It was the first time that I ever remember realising that I was better than someone in a fight. I mean actually better than someone.

Don't worry, I can hear you thinking it already. “But Freddie. Your kill score is in double figures, many of who were experienced swordsmen and fighters. Men in armour who have been trained to the killing.”

This is correct but I have a counter argument. Both points that I have been over before.

I am not that skilled. I have trained with men who are “skilled” and they leave me panting and outclassed. What I do have are a number of advantages over all the opponents that you might be thinking of.

The first was a deliberate choice on Kerrass' part which was that he taught me to fight with a spear. Not many people know how to deal with that as most people fight with swords and maces on a skirmishing basis and as such, they only train to fight against people with swords, maces and axes. Spears tend to only be deployed in military formations where the object of the exercise to defeat the spearman is to get past the point of the spear.

But what if you face a spearman who knows how to counter that?

Men who have faced me have found this out to their cost.

The second point is the one I have talked about the most and it is not a small thing which is why I am not shy of talking about it again and again. I was taught to fight by a trained killer. Not a fighter or a fencer, not a soldier or a mercenary. I was taught to fight by a killer and over and over again, this has been shown to make a difference. What this means is that, in a very real sense, I wasn't taught how to fight. I was taught how to kill.

Those people that you are thinking of. The knight in the throne-room of Angral, Cousin Kalayn and the rest. All of those men simply underestimated me and so I could kill them with impunity.

For those people who might argue that I fought Jack and survived I would tell you that he was toying with me. Also, if you go back and read that sequence again I think you will see that he could have killed me at any time he wanted to.

But here?

I wanted a fight. I wanted to prove that I was better than these fucks. I talked to Sam about this later and he reminded me about the earlier conversation about defeat. These people had beaten me before, they had fed me hallucinations and craziness. They had forced me to retreat because of trickery and as a result I had that “Warriors need” to prove that it was a fluke. To prove that I was better than that.

Again I can't answer for that but all of these things were things that I need to start thinking about. Now and in the future.

But at the time, I advanced on my target. He held his sword out in front of him in a rough approximation of a “ready” position.

I already knew how to beat him. He was a horesman, his ludicrous boots meant that he would overbalance, his blade was a curved thing designed for hacking down at people from horseback. His entire outfit was manifestly unsuitable to fighting on foot.

So I advanced on him. Jabbing forward to see how he would react. The correct thing to do in his place would be to parry, sidestep and advance pushing the point of the spear past your body and closing with the spearman. That I had a counter to this trick is unimportant.

This man retreated.

I was astonished.

I tried again. He ducked and moved backwards. Shuffling his feet to maintain his balance.

There was a genuine moment there where I thought it was a trick. That he knew something that I didn't, so I backed off, well out of reach and so that I could hear him if he chose to advance or attack, so that I could have a good look around to assess the terrain.

Nope, nothing there. Kerrass was in the process of dealing with his own opponents. One of who was retreating from him while the other was unleashing a blistering flurry of attacks. I won't say that they were threatening to Kerrass but he was having to defend, clearly waiting for the man to tire himself out.

I checked the roof-tops. No, no-one was in the process of sneaking up on me.

I checked up and down the street but the only activity was that a couple of the horses were struggling to their feet.

The man was refusing to attack me.

“What are you?” I jeered at him. “Cowardly in the face of a man that can fight back?”

His mouth opened, the poisons in my brain telling me that spectral light escaped from them. I heard a snarl.

I sighed and ran up towards him. I darted left, then right followed by a feint back to the left before jumping high and hammering the point of my spear home into his chest.

The pressure across my skull was beginning to lessen now as I looked down at the man I killed.

Kerrass came up behind me. “You alright?” he asked.

I jerked away from him reflexively and blinked furiously for a second.

“You're not hurt?” he clarified his question.

“No,” I managed. I had to focus to get the words out. His face was truly looking demonic now. As well as all of the normal features that his face took on when he was potioned up to the eyeballs, I found that I was imagining horns on top of his head. “No,” I said again clearing my throat. “It's not my blood.”

I shut my eyes for a moment which turned out to be a mistake as a wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me. Feeling around my neck, I discovered that the patch of scarf over my mouth and nose had gone dry again.

“Remember that we want one alive to question.” Kerrass told me.

“I wish you'd reminded me of that sooner.” I laughed bitterly.

The expression on Kerrass' demonic visage shifted into a grimace that might have been concern but he beckoned me on and I followed him into the village.

“Give me your spear.” He ordered.

Part of me wanted to argue, part of me wanted to ask how I was supposed to defend myself but another part of me wanted him to just take the damn thing away from me.

I felt dirty and badly in need of an opportunity to go and bathe, or find a dark and quiet place to weep for about a week.

Kerrass had realised that I was crumbling under the pressures of everything that was going on because he physically took control. Grabbing me by the shoulders he shuffled me into the middle of the path, turning me around until he was satisfied.

“Wait there,” he ordered. “Don't move.” Then he grabbed the scarf around my face and yanked it off. “Trust me Freddie,” he said as he vanished from sight.

The protection of the scarf and it's fumes had obviously already been vastly reduced since the beginning of the fight but now that even that small layer of armour was removed.... It was like a curtain was torn away from my sight and the full horror of what lies behind conscious thought was exposed to me. I tried to stagger away, to flinch and to flee but Kerrass' voice came to me as though it was drifting on the wind.

“Wait here,” I heard. “Trust me.”

What else was I to do but to stand there and go insane.

Everything around me was on fire. As well as the buildings I could see people moving amongst them, melting and bubbling in the flame and the heat. I could hear people calling to me. The voices of everyone that I had killed or maimed, including the voices of the two hounds whose lives I had just ended. I saw Francesca writhing in torment over the flames on a Witches pyre.

Even closing my eyes against the sights didn't help as the visions played themselves out against the back of my eyelids.

Then I heard the thunder.

It might sound strange to you, reading this in the comfort of your own home, maybe in a chair next to a cheerful flame with a glass or cup of your favourite comforting drink at your elbow. It might seem strange that an educated and, dare I say it, intelligent man such as myself might be taken in by all of these sights. These visions, let alone to be taken in by the sound of thunder.

It's easy to say, here, sitting in my own relative comfort writing up notes that I took at the time, that what I was seeing and hearing was the product of emotional context, and the conflict between the poisons that the Hounds were putting out and the protective herbs that Kerrass had given us. I know now that the thunder that I heard was the sound of a galloping horse. I know that the flames and the screaming and the voices of the tormented were all in my head. I know that now.

But at the time?

I felt like I was finally seeing these things for the first time. That I was seeing the souls of those that I had killed. I believed that they were following me around, waiting for me to die so that they could punish me for ending their lives. I believed it.

The following line is a direct quote from my own notes. I wrote this line in something of a feverish flurry of writing in the night after these events as my body still worked to expel everything that I had taken in.

“It was like I finally saw, with astonishing clarity, all of the things that we convince ourselves could not possibly exist. We do this collectively and as a species so that we can function and survive in a world that claws at our minds. It was like I finally saw the truest version of the world.”

At some point, when I get back to “civilisation” and by that I mean Oxenfurt I intend to hunt down the next quote as I suspect I'm getting it wrong.

“To know whether or not a person is going insane is easy. The truly insane believe that they are getting saner and that it's the rest of us that are insane.”

That was what it was like.

Anyone who might argue that I should have known that I was drugged and poisoned would be correct. But that's not how it worked.

I heard the sound of thunder and I staggered backwards. I turned and I saw the Demon coming towards me. A being of flaming blue cold, (yes I know that that makes no sense but that's what it looked like to me) his hand raised with a blade of steaming ice ready to cut me down. The ground shook with the thunder of the hoofbeats.

I shut my eyes and turned away.

There was a crash.

A horrible scream split the air and I clapped my hands over my ears. I felt hands on me and I struggled, something wet on my face and I fought to breathe.

“Just breathe Freddie, nice deep breaths.”

In the back of my throat, the cool scent of the lavender seemed to trickle down my throat.

“Don't try to open your eyes yet Freddie, just breathe it in. In and out that's it. In through the nose, hold it and then blow it out through your mouth.”

The recovery was fast as I came crashing back into my body with a thump.

I tried opening my eyes to see a relatively normal looking Kerrass standing over me. Just a hint of Fang about the face but I could tell that he had taken one of his detoxing potions. He always complained that those things took it out of him and that he would pay for it later but he was self-aware enough to know that sometimes you need the ability to think.

“You alright?” He asked again, looking down at me.

“I've been happier,” I told him. “Did we win?”

“Yes we won, all told the fighting lasted about five minutes.”

“Flame,” I swore, heaving myself into an upright position. “It felt like years.”

“Mmm. Intoxicants can do that to you.”

“Did you take a captive?”

“I did.”

I nodded again, holding out an arm which Kerrass took to help me to my feet and we staggered towards the main meeting house.

“Kerrass?”

“Mmm?”

“Did you have to take the scarf off my face?”

“Yes, I'm sorry. He needed to think that you were helpless. If we'd taken someone alive in the early stages of the entire thing then we might have been ok but he was getting desperate and fleeing from the other soldiers. And he was the only one left. We needed to give him an easy target or he would have fled from us.”

I nodded. I didn't like it but he was probably right. I was certainly in no position to give tactical appraisal.

“Did we lose anyone?”

“A couple of villagers who lost their minds and left safety to be cut down. Also the man in the fire. Jenkins has a scrape and we're worried that the injury might be poisoned. The women are looking after him but we'll know more in an hour or so.”

“It's getting dark.”

“It's late.”

“It feels like we were fighting for years.”

Kerrass paused.

“Are you sure you're up to this Freddie? You always react badly to these kinds of mind altering things, whether gas or magical, no-one would think any less of you if you go and lie-down somewhere.”

“No, I need to see this through.”

Kerrass nodded and helped me through the door.

The noise washed over me like a wave.

Every single person that could speak and stand upright in the village was there and all of them, every single one of them was shouting. Some of them were shouting at the soldiers who were standing shoulder to shoulder in a line blocking off one corner of the room. The couple of them that knew how to fight with shields had strapped them to their arms and were using them to push back the more irate villagers. I should say that most of the women and children were still down in the cavern below us but somehow that felt as though it gave those people that were still here, more permission to just scream and shout.

Some other people were shouting with each other. Still more were trying for peace and calm amongst the gathered people.

After the poison and the battlefield reaction it was just too much for me and I lost my temper.

There's a proper technique to projecting your voice. I had been trained in such a technique in order to help my voice carry when I was presenting papers back at the university. Also in proper enunciation and elocution lessons that my father paid for while my family was trying to see if I might have some kind of musical talent or be able to use proper oratory skills and thus be useful to the family on a political basis.

I've no doubt that The Sergeant could tell you much more than I could but I suspect that he wouldn't know what words to use.

The proper way to do it is to breathe from the belly, support with your stomach muscles and then speak from there. Don't try and use your throat to amplify things because all that that will achieve is to hurt your throat.

“SILENCE,” I bellowed although seeing it written down doesn't really do it justice. It was more like:

“SIIIIIIIILLLEEEEEEEnce,”

Or at least that's how it sounded in my head.

The effort sent my head spinning and I had to support myself on the side of the door.

“Honestly,” I said, “What with one thing or another it's difficult to hear myself think.” I had gone into one of those states that I sometimes achieve. Kerrass has talked about it before, the most prominent times that I can think of getting there is the moment when I first stood up to Ariadne but there are other times as well. It comes when fatigue, fear and anger combine to a place where my mouth and body decide that my brain has had enough and isn't doing what it's told, so they just start talking and all I can do is go along for the ride.

I stalked forward and Kerrass came with me. I don't know for certain but I suspect that Kerrass was grinning from ear to ear as I stomped up to Edward.

“Right,” I said, leaning heavily on my still bloody spear. I had forgotten in all truth, certainly didn't mean it to be so and whatever else anyone might say, I wasn't trying to intimidate the man but then he couldn't seem to take his eyes off it. All I could think was that I was tired and needed something to lean on. “What's going on?”

“Uuuhhhh.”

“Edward, I'm really tired.”

“They have the captured Hound.”

I looked over and sure enough, the Hound was sat, his hands being tied behind his back. It was obvious to us now that he was wearing a leather hooded, sleeved robe. He had a mask over his face. Sir Rickard was searching him for hidden weapons and so far there was a stack of knives piling up next to him as well as several pouches.

“So they have.” Apparently my voice almost sounded surprised. “So what's going on?”

“uuuhhhh.”

“Okay. You.” I pointed at one of the redder faced men that was standing nearby. As it turned out it was the same man that had tried to bar our entry to the village. Or more accurately it was the guy that had led matters from the back of things, hiding behind his fellows. “What's going on?”

“Those bastards won't let us have the Hound that you captured.”

“Right?”

He looked at me as though I was being particularly stupid. “Right.” He agreed.

“I'm sorry,” I said pinching the bridge of my nose. “Your point being?”

“We want him.”

“And?”

“And what? We want him.”

“I'm too tired for this. What do you want him for?”

“Justice.”

“Ah.” I felt the light come on in my head.

“Quite right. So you order your men to hand him over.”

“Ummmm.” I honestly had to think about this for a moment. “No.”

“What?”

“No.” I repeated. “Nope. Definitely not. Not going to happen. Not in the slightest.”

“But....what have you got him for then? We demand that you...”

“You demand?” I hissed. Suddenly the situation was no longer as funny. There was a general sense of people moving away from us. “You demand?” I asked again. I could feel myself struggling to remain calm in the face of this arrogant stupidity. The bastards reacted and I heard the sounds of weapons being reached for. It all had the potential of boiling over into a situation that we wouldn't be able to control.

I felt Kerrass' hand on my shoulder.

It was like a bucket of cold water being poured over my head. I closed my eyes and tipped my head backwards.

“Edward.” I whispered,

“My Lord?” I shouldn't have been surprised that he heard me. Nor that he was so clever. Two little words that reminded everyone listening, including me, of my position. I suddenly had an inkling of what it had been like for Sir Rickard being knighted and elevated into a position much higher than he had ever known before. I could get on with these people. I could talk to them and even be “friendly” with them. But I was not one of them. We would never be friends and I needed to remember that. I was “My Lord” to them and I needed to act like it.

“Edward, I have every respect for everything that you and the rest of your village has been through. It can't have been easy. But this captive is required so that he can be questioned so that we might end this threat once and for all.”

“But...” The other man began.

“But nothing.” I snarled. “This is bigger than your village and it needs dealing with accordingly.”

“I agree.” Edward said loudly, overwhelming the other man. Showing the leader that he was. “The next election is at midwinter. Seven months away. Until then you will respect my authority.”

He faced down his rival who finally retreated.

“Good,” I said and turned to Sir Rickard. “Sir Rickard?”

“My Lord?” He saluted smartly. His eyes were twinkling though and I got the feeling that he had enjoyed that little confrontation.

“Seal the building please?”

“My lord.” He gestured and Taylor moved to stand next to the door.

“What?” Edward paled.

“One of the first questions that we are going to ask is how the riders always know what's going on in the villages.” I told him. “There is a distinct possibility that one of the people in this room will be implicated, whether by conscious choice or something more sinister and I don't want anyone escaping to let others know that we have a captive.”

Edward nodded his acceptance of this argument.

“Right then.” I stepped through the line of soldiers to face the man who was tied up and slumped against the wall of the building. “Hello,” I told him. “You little demon.”

A soldier who was standing nearby, obviously ready to intervene in case the man still had some kind of trickery up his sleeve, sniggered.

“He has no weapons?” I asked him.

“None, no.”

I nodded. “Right then,Let's see what you look like then.” I stepped forward and pulled the Cowl down and tore the mask from his face.

“Huh,” I said after a shocked moment. “Wouldn't you know it. Human after all.”

Of course he was human. Of course he was. Felled by perfectly normal swords, axes and arrows. Kerrass had even been using his steel sword. Dwarves aren't that tall and elves wouldn't fight wearing all of that leather and foolishly misshapen boots.

Of course he was human but until that mask had been removed, I had been afraid.

Not that he looked like much of a human. Unshaven, greasy, dirty and an incredible body odour that could have cut through metal. His eyes were wild and staring, extremely bloodshot and a pupil so small that I had difficulty seeing it. He licked his lips and stared about, sweat pouring from his head, breathing heavily.

Someone in the crowd shouted in astonishment while a woman was weeping.

“Does...Does.” I licked my lips again as I found myself recalculating. The man was so wretched that I found the first flutterings of pity stirring in my chest. “Does anyone know this man?”

Of all people, it was Edward that stepped forward. “This man is James.” He said, his voice quiet with horror. “My brother that the Hounds took from us, what? Ten years ago. In the God's name, I recognise him still.”

He took another step forwards and crouched next to my brother. Rickard stepped close, ready to restrain either of them.

“James?” Edward tried. “James? What happened?”

A sudden rage took Edward and he seized his brother by the shoulders and shook him violently. “James, Look at me. Why have you done this?”

I nodded to Rickard who stepped forward and with surprising gentleness, pried Edward back. “He doesn't even know me?” Edward wailed.

I turned, “Kerrass?”

Kerrass shook his head. “High as an eagle.” he said. “It's going to be hours before we can ask him questions. If then.”

I nodded and looked around at the villagers. Shock was written on every face. So much so that I decided, right or wrong, that the agents of the enemy were not in this room.

“Let them go.” I said, turning back to our captive. “Look at him,” I breathed in astonishment. “He's terrified.”

(A/N: Sorry, not sorry for the Princess Bride reference)