(Part of this chapter was inspired by a visit to Londonderry Rock on the South Island of New Zealand. I needed a place to set a camp-site and it seemed fitting. It really is a place that made me feel very small, very young and incredibly insignificant. Fortunately I found it inspiring rather than intimidating.)

(WARNING: The following contains scenes of extreme mental anguish)

I remember it distinctly. A moment that.....that changed who I was into who I am now or rather, who I am becoming. In sagas and books of history, people often talk about a character's defining moment. Those points of life, those occurrences that shape who we are and how we are going to behave moving forward. Those moments in plays and sagas are often large and epic in scale. The hero defeats the villain by standing on his chest and plunging his spear or sword down into his enemies body. Often accompanied by some kind of speech from both of them. The villain telling the hero that the two of them are not really all that different followed by the hero's vehement denial.

You also hear about the speeches before powerful people or a piece of oratory in the crowd and people look back and say that that was the defining moment. The defining moment for the man, the moment that he will be remembered for for the rest of his life.

But that has not been my experience. For me, those moments that have defined me have been quiet moments. Sometimes a conversation between two people or a moment of sitting somewhere and thinking quietly to myself. These are the moments that define me, that have made me change my mind about something or have shifted my understanding from one thing over to a completely different direction. Not the events themselves but what comes afterwards.

I have been lucky really in that I can look back and remember those times when I have made decisions and deliberately adjusted my own thinking or have made suitable changes to myself or decided when there were things that I needed to work on in order to become.....in order to become a better man in my own eyes. This harks back to a piece of advice that was given to Kerrass by the Wolven Witcher Vesemir in his past history.

That advice being that you need to be able to look yourself in the eye when you gaze into a mirror. If you can do that then you are coming out ahead in the world.

But I can remember those moments.

The first was when I decided to leave home and go to University. To those people who do not know me or did not know my family dynamic at the time, you may find this quite surprising. The Status of the university has improved over time and I am well aware that it is now considered quite a prestigious thing to have a son or a daughter educated, at least in part and depending on the subject, at the university. Some people have even done me the kindness of suggesting that I may hold some of the responsibility for this increase in the University's status.

I can't answer for that but I can well remember the night that I made my decision. Sat quietly in the dark after my sixth betrothal offer had been turned down followed by an hour's lecture from my father about how I needed to buck my ideas up in order to attract a proper lady. I remember being extraordinarily bitter that it had taken an hour of my life for my father to tell me that I was not good enough and at the fact that Father didn't really care enough to get angry about it. That he hadn't cared enough to yell.

I had gone to my room having been ordered to pack up my notes on various topics that I was interested in at the time as well as my books and to have the servants remove them. Where to? I have no idea and I always strongly suspected that my Father didn't care so long as they were no longer his problem. I remember vividly, starting the chore as I had been ordered like that dutiful son that I was before I came to a book on the genealogy of the Kings of Redania.

I still have it somewhere.

But I got to that book and before placing it in a box as I had been bidden, I sat on my bed and opened it, at random and started to read the page there. Before I realised what was happening I had read several pages and when I did realise what was going through my mind, I felt a horrible kind of pressure behind my eyes as though a thing was trying to push it's way out of the front of my skull. I started breathing heavily and became dizzy. I lay back onto my bed and started sobbing as quietly as I could so as to not wake the other members of my family.

I spent the rest of that night in deep thought. Running through options as to what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I remember thinking about how I could make myself more attractive and what I was going to do to fill my time if I wasn't busy studying. In short, I was working out ways to make myself a more attractive prospect for marriage.

The central unfairness was that this time I had been rejected because of an accident of birth. The boy that the girl had chosen, a nice lad a little younger than me, had been of an old noble family and stood to inherit a much larger chunk of his father's estates that I did mine and could thus provide for the comforts that the lady in question was looking for.

So I kept coming back to this point. That I could do nothing about how handsome I was, nor could I do anything about the fact that I was a younger son, literally a spare son in case one of the older ones died, so my inheritance was not going to be large. So how could I improve on any of the things that (in my somewhat naïve experience) seemed to be the reasons that I was consistently being rejected for marriage.

I remember lying there, my face still wet with tears when I felt the first tickling of the idea in the back of my mind, so I sat up and lit the candle next to the bed. I had some kind of half made up decision to go and get something to eat from the kitchen but then I realised that I still had that book in my hand. I remember sitting and staring at it for a long time, far too long really before I looked at the half packed boxes and bags and said “No”.

I lay back and fell instantly asleep.

Don't think that this was too much of a major moment for me. It still took me a good couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to tell my father what I intended to do. I talked about it with Emma first and then targeted Mark on one of his few visits home as he was always encouraging me into scholarly pursuits. After that I spoke to Mother, made sure that my tutors would support me and sponsor my entrance to the academy. Then I tackled Father and dealt with the shouting match that resulted from that.

But I will never forget that moment, sat in my bedroom. Late at night and making my decision as to who I wanted to be.

Another one occurred on the boat north after Kerrass had spent a night talking about his past. It was maybe two nights after that conversation when I was sat with the horses and watching the night sky. I was still suffering the after echoes of some of the things that I had seen with the Beast of Amber's crossing which meant that nightmares were still a thing that I had to deal with on a semi-regular basis. I remember looking out from my make-shift tent on the ship's deck along with the horses, wrapped in my winter's cloak against the cold air and I saw Kerrass standing at the rail, looking out to see. Something about the way that he stood there, his profile silhouetted against the night sky made me realise that he was not so different than I was and that I needed to stop treating him as a “subject” but as more of a friend. Treating him like a person. I buried this piece of information as deep as I could in order to not alienate him.

Small moments where we make a decision that takes our lives and our thinking down completely new pathways.

Sometimes we change without making a decision, at least not consciously. My realisations about monsters. My shifting thoughts about those people who toil in a different social class than myself. The moment when I realised that I loved Ariadne and that I intended to marry her, a decision that I am still trying to track down as to when I made that choice.

Small decisions as the result of small moments of quiet or a small discussion with someone that opens your eyes to a different point of view.

So it should come as no surprise that the most recent of these moments came as part of a conversation that I had with Kerrass around a camp-fire.

In many ways, this is only fitting as it has been Kerrass that has driven a lot of my changes over the recent years. It was travelling with him that I got my first real look at what life is like for those people that I depend on for my food and for the greater share of my families income. It was he that opened my eyes to my inbuilt and trained racism regarding non-humans and what society, in general, refers to as “Monsters”. Without him, I wouldn't even have begun to contemplate any kind of romantic relationship with Ariadne, and I dread to think how I might have reacted to Emma's sexual preferences without Kerrass' exposing me to more of the world. I would like to think that I would have been equally as tolerant and understanding but.... So it was only fitting that I have this conversation with him.

We had left Sam's castle behind us maybe five days before hand and were heading North which meant that, all told, it was roughly eight days since we had taken part in the fight for the defence of the village. I heartily wish that the village had a name of some kind but the people that lived there simply referred to it as “The village” and when asked about any of the other villages and what they were called, it turned out that they were, “That village up in the mountains,” and “That village further away to the North.”

Now that I am a little distant from the place I find myself thinking of it as being “The village with the Cave” referring to the cave of the God.

Our first priority after the end of the battle was to see to the wounded. There weren't many as our casualties were fairly light. All told we lost five villagers to the attack and in each case we could justifiably tell ourselves that the reason that person had died was because they had done something foolish or something that we had outright instructed them not to do.

Such as dump a load of water on an oil fire.

The most serious injury turned out to be the cut that Jenkins had taken, pulling one of said foolish villagers out of the way. As we had feared, the cut turned out to be poisoned. We did what we could, washing as much of the poison out of the wound as we could with the strong Apple Brandy that the village had supplied us with and bound it up. But already there was fierce red lines tracking up and into the rest of his body.

Our other problem was the problem of our captive who was clearly mad and out of his face on whatever drugs and herbs that his former cohorts had been feeding him. But his presence was upsetting the rest of the villagers and so the decision was made that Kerrass, myself and the man who doubled as the Bastard's surgeon, took the captive and Jenkins off to Father Gardan's chapel so that they could be better looked after. Sir Rickard and the other Bastards would remain back at the battle-site to search the bodies and to protect the village in case of another attack but we were confident, now, that the danger had passed.

A couple of villagers volunteered to go and fetch Ella, the Elven Alchemist who was normally responsible for dealing with illnesses in the local area and so they ran off into the night with Perkins as an escort. Not a bad idea as Kerrass quickly confessed that he was out of his element when it came to curing poisons, let alone being able to get a man down from whatever drugs high that our captive was on on the grounds that he was all but immune to both and so, had never learned to bother with that area of Alchemical knowledge. He told Sir Rickard very firmly that although he could devise a blade oil that would do the same kind of damage that was killing Jenkins, as for curing it? He could cure himself but for the dying man, his cure (I'm assuming he was talking about White Honey here) would likely be more deadly than the poison. The same for our captive.

Jenkins died in the night and it took him a long time too.

Poor bastard.

With cold detachment I could force myself to sit with him while he suffered, remembering my own poisoning all that time ago. My own poisoning that had rendered me all but helpless in a couple of hours and morbid curiosity had always made me wonder what would have happened to me if Ariadne had not chosen to cure me, or if Kerrass had not managed to find an antidote.

I suspect, looking back, that I would have taken the White Honey if the pain had got much worse, but Jenkins refused, outright, to have anything to do with that particular form of “cure”.

Especially after we had already taken his arm off.

The unit's medic was a man that they referred to as “Bones” short for “Sawbones.” He liked the nickname claiming that it was much better than his own name and any other nickname that he had been given and so introduced himself as that to anyone that needed to know who he was. Similar to the Sergeant, he didn't seem to have a name beyond his profession. But after cutting the sleeve of the tunic away so that we could look at the injury and he saw the red lines climbing up towards the shoulder, he told Jenkins that if the first aid that we had given him didn't work then we would have to take the arm off. He warned him that the damage was probably already done but...

I was honestly surprised when Jenkins fought us, hard, in order to keep his arm. I suppose that this is one of those things that I will never understand as I would have thought that the loss of a limb is a small price to pay in return for continued survival but I registered the fact that I didn't understand and that Jenkins comes, or rather came, from a different place than I do. As a result, his attitude and understanding was different. He complained that he wouldn't be a whole man if we took his arm off. He said that it wouldn't be right and that he would rather die than to have this happen. He asked what he would do as a cripple and told us that he didn't want to be left out in the cold as a reject of society.

I tried to tell him, over and over again, that I would see to it that, not only would he have a place to live but that we would find him work at the Coulthard estates or with the Kalayn estates or if that didn't work then I would damn well make sure that he would be found employment in Angral when I eventually moved down there after my marriage.

But he spat at me, told me to fuck off and that he didn't want my charity or my pity.

I recognised his pain, fear and anger for what it was though and didn't hold it against him.

What I did do was to assist with the amputation. Helping to tie off the blood vessels and the tourniquets while Bones actually did most of the work. Beyond that, it took another six men to hold Jenkins down immobile and even then he nearly shook free.

I have never heard a sound like it. Not the shrieking that Jenkins made, unfortunately I have heard that before in the various combats that I have been a part of and their aftermaths, but the close quarters sound of a saw cutting through bone is a sound that I will take to my grave.

It did him no good though and two hours after we arrived at the chapel, he took a serious turn for the worst and Bones shook his head and told him that the poison had reached his heart.

Jenkins told him to fuck off and die in a fire.

But I sat with him while he died. Talking to him, giving him water when he wanted it and some of the Apple Brandy when he wanted that too.

Holy Fire but that man had a life. He had been a killer on the streets of Temeria before the war, and a good one. A man who enjoyed his craft and his trade and took pleasure from it. He had killed for the underworld, for the crown and for anyone in between being able to charge extortionate rates. He admitted that he got into it so that he could get medicine for his sick wife but she had quickly realised what was going on after she had been cured as she “wasn't a stupid woman” and had sensed the change in her husband's character. He even admitted that he could have lived in a palace if he had saved his money properly but that he had always wanted to spend the money on wine, women and generally having a good time which was, coincidentally, how he came to the attention of the crown's intelligence services. Never wanting to waste good talent, the crown had used his homicidal streak and had him murder more and more people on their behalf. But his greed got the better of him and he ended up murdering on behalf of the underworld as well.

If he had one virtue it was that he was a patriot and joined the army when Nilfgaard invaded for a third time after the death of King Foltest. His loyalty to Rickard was absolute as he was a “Proper bastard, a real killer” whatever that means but I got the impression that Jenkins had liked him because Rickard had recognised Jenkins skills and given him a proper outlet for his urges.

This meant a lot to a man like Jenkins.

As I say, I could force myself to sit next to him and watch his symptoms develop after my own poisoning. I even tried to contact Ariadne to see if she could help but I got no response which normally meant that she was either resting or in some kind of magically shielded area. Her lab or library were the most common ones although she did the same when meeting with the other Sorceresses or when, in general she wanted some privacy. I don't want the reader to think that this kind of thing was malicious on her part or that I could call her at any moment in order to get aid.

So I sat with him.

He died an hour before Ella came through the door to the chapel. A little wide-eyed herself. Perkins wept when he learned of Jenkins' death but insisted on running back to the village to inform Sir Rickard himself.

It is sometimes easy to forget how young some of these soldiers are.

Ella briefly examined Jenkins corpse before telling us that, without the specific anti-venom, he would have been dead two hours after he had been poisoned and that there was nothing that she could have done. I was not relieved but at the same time, I suppose, it is nice to hear these kind of things.

Then she went to work with our captive. She gave some orders about fetching her things like water and some specific herbs which we brought her, shortly before she told us to stop fussing over her and to leave her the hell alone.

I got some sleep then, having been awake for a full turn of night until day but I was woken by the bad news.

That news being that our captive had died.

According to Ella, his heart was unable to cope with the strain of everything that he had been put through being under the influence of the narcotics that he had been given and so it had just given up. She theorised that there must be some kind of tonic that they take after a raid which brings their symptoms under control but because we hadn't known this, or what to give him, then the long term exposure to the substances had killed him. She asked if she could perform an autopsy to see if she could figure out what had been used in an effort to make sure that next time, we could prevent this from happening. But she didn't look too hopeful.

Edward's permission to do this to his brother's body was asked for and received with him telling us that to him, his brother had died when he first got taken by the hounds and that the shell that wore his face was just that. A shell and none of his concern.

The village was suffering from a generalised sense of anti-climax. They had spent so long under the shadow of the threat of the Hounds, that the relief of knowing that they could be killed and fought off, was suddenly more than many of them could bear. There were many tears and recriminations but most of the folk were just walking around in a daze. Edward was having to force them to work and reminding them of the rest of their responsibilities.

I asked him about it later and he told me that they had expected something more than that. More than what had happened. He asked why things were the way they were and I had no answer for him.

Of far more interest were the remains of those men that we killed. We lay them all together, stripped them of all of their equipment for examination and searched them properly as well as corralling up what horses we could find. The equipment was generally of shoddy quality. The swords and the knives were of typical, mass-produced kind of quality that would almost certainly break if given sustained, hard use and would have been useless under battlefield conditions. It was the kind of steel that would have been given to the PFI during the war although, arguably, these weapons were not as well made as the swords and spears handed out to the “Poor Fucking Infantry.”

They were built for show and for their edge rather than for anything remotely useful but we piled them together for removal anyway. The village blacksmith told us that such steel could have been made out of Iron from any number of small deposits that littered the sides of the mountains before informing me that if my brother wanted to really make some money out of the local area, then he should get some dwarves in and go looking for mineral deposits further up in the hills. The villagers themselves had never dared do anything of the kind.

The same for their equipment and armour. Their leather coats were made from any old scrap of hide that could be found. Again, some of the villagers were able to tell us a bit more. Saying that there was horse hide, Cow leather and deer leather that had gone into making the coats. One person gave the opinion that the work was particularly shoddy and a disgrace.

I didn't comment on that.

Likewise the horses that we did find were cheap, poor nags that were obviously not that well cared for. Many showing signs of malnutrition to my eyes and still more showing signs of other diseases meaning that they were probably only worth butchering for meat or other utility purposes.

There was one exception to all of this though and that was the man who had come up tot he village wall to do the talking.

Even when we had taken the clothes off all of the men. Removed all the clothes and the equipment and put them all into a row neatly, I would have been able to tell who was in charge of the group of riders.

I don't mean to be disparaging to the village folk or to anyone whose life is harder than mine. I don't. As I say, I have every respect for those people who spend their days toiling in fields or workshops or warehouses.

Flame but now that I read that back to myself, that sounds awfully condescending doesn't it. I am so sorry but I don't know how else to put the point across that I am trying to make.

But this man looked different. He just did.

He was.... He was prettier than the men that were lying next to him.

Again, I feel like I want to qualify this point. I have met and have known many beautiful men and women of all different classes. Without being indiscreet I can say that I have known many as, as I say, the aphrodisiac of gratitude in them meets the need for life affirmation in myself. I make no apologies for that. But you can always tell someone coming from the noble-classes from someone from the...

Flame but I hate this term.

...than someone from the commonfolk.

Higher cheekbones, better maintained hair, paler skin, hands and bodies without blemish, darker hair for that matter.

I have often found, especially in remoter parts of the country where it's not just the common-folk (I really hate that term but here it's used with love I promise) that are forced to interbreed, then you meet other such signs. Pronounced teeth line that has the unfortunate effect of making people look like horses or that they look at the entire world through their teeth. While at the same time, often suffering from a receding chin. Large jowels manifest themselves and the men, certainly are often clean shaven on their chins.

I certainly am.

But what this shows is a person who has time to care for their own appearance. Who has access to proper medical treatment, decent food and clean water. Someone who has the luxury of time to spend on things like personal grooming.

As was the case here. He had long hair, pulled back harshly into a tight queue that hung down the nape of his neck. As I say, high cheekbones and clean, almost bleached teeth. A body free of disease which is more than can be said for some of the other bodies that we laid out, lean and well muscled. Someone who rode his horse often and energetically while also having swordsman's calluses.

The differences were also pronounced in the equipment that he had on him which would have set him apart from the rest. He had an, objectively beautiful light cavalry sabre, gently curved for the slashing. Heavy hilted with a piece across the knuckles to protect the hands. To someone with strong wrists it would feel as though you weren't wielding anything at all. It was also razor sharp and unblemished by any of the oils or poisons that we found on the weapons of the other men.

Kerrass and Rickard agreed that this was not a man who had any intention of actually fighting but the other implements that he had on his person suggested that he might get heavily involved afterwards.

His clothes were of good quality and his boots held the makers mark of the cobbler in Novigrad where Father had his riding boots made. Getting them sent this far out must have cost a fortune.

Apparently, his other clothing beneath the long leather coat had been tailored to fit him. Stitched riding trousers, fitted doublet and waistcoat. All well made and must have kept him warm in the colder weather, bless his little silken socks.

Upon going through his gear and comparing it to the equipment of the other riders, I was struck with the suspicion that I would have intensely disliked this man and everything to do with him. It wasn't a feeling that went away over time either.

He was wearing mail. Lighter and less protective than the heavier and denser chainmail that professional soldiers wear and certainly less well made than the stuff that knights wear under their full plate harness but it was there. This, coupled with the leather coat would have been more than enough to protect the man from any errant hunting arrows or thrown objects that might have been sent his way though. It was certainly no match to the cloth-yard arrows sent forth by the highly skilled arms and war-bows of Sir Rickard's bastards.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on who you ask.

But beyond that, we couldn't tell anything about him. Obviously noble-born but beyond that, he didn't remind me of anyone that I might have known. I guessed his race to be Redanian but as that was both where we were and a fairly general combination of colours for the northern parts of the continent. Even people from Kovir and Poviss could be mistaken for men from Redania so it wasn't really that much of a deduction to say that the man came from Redania.

He didn't remind me of anyone who I might have met during my brief attendances at court although I was forced to admit that my time at the Imperial court in Toussaint was mostly spent worrying about other things. Nor was he wearing any kind of heraldry. In normal circumstances I might have suspected some kind of illegitimate son, that had been provided for but was unable to use his proper coat of arms or anything similar. But in this case I suspected that this was a either a younger son, or a son of some vassal family that owed their fealty to one of the other lords of the lands further north.

Kerrass, Dan and one of the men from the village went off to see if they could track any of the horses back to the Hounds' lair or if any of those horses from the men who had been shot out of the saddle might have automatically retreated to a place which could tell us more.

For a while we got all excited when they returned to tell us that they had found a hollow, deep in the woods to the North west. Some kind of sink-hole or an accident of the terrain formed by the rock formations and then hidden by the thick forestry. According to Kerrass there were a couple of tracks leading into the place and that it was ultimately defensible so that the three men advanced cautiously but it had clearly been abandoned.

Kerrass described cook fires and the acrid smell of chemicals being mixed together in toxic combinations but that the place also showed signs of abandonment. He found sacks of horsefeed and mounds of sack-cloth. Several empty leather bags and a derelict weapon stand as well as the remains of some food. Chicken bones and a heel of tough way-bread. That kind of thing.

They had tried to see if they could track anything else but the tracks leading away from the place were obscured by the tracks leading towards the place that had churned the ground into something unreadable. The entrances had presumably been chosen for precisely this reason.

Sir Kristoff didn't take our reports very well.

“Why couldn't you have taken the wretch alive?” He demanded when we all met up again in Sam's castle, bruised, battered and battle-weary. “You claim to have the best archers within a hundred miles....”

“The best archers in the Kingdom.” Sir Rickard clarified dryly. “I have the best archers in the Kingdom Sir Kristoff and I will thank you not to forget it.”

“So why couldn't you have taken him alive then?”

Sir Rickard sighed and sat back. Ignoring the older man and pouring himself a drink while Sir Kristoff's face turned red.

“Settle down.” Sam looked as tired as the rest of us. “Settle down. To be fair Sir Kristoff. None of the rest of us managed to do any better so lets not start throwing stones hmmm?”

“None of the rest of us claimed to have the best archers in the Kingdom.” Sir Kristoff retorted, showing just how angry he was as well as how...stressed isn't the right word.

There was a sense of anti-climax in the air for us as well as the villagers. We had met our enemy, defeated him on the field of battle and yet, the victory was not decisive. Our enemy was not destroyed and we did not know what to do next.

Militarily the answer was simple. The next thing to do was to find the home base of the Hounds and destroy them there but we had no more information on this subject than the last time that we had all sat round this table discussing useless and pointless things.

The other teams had done about as well as we had with similar results. The differences being that they had all followed the plans that I would have designed for the villages. They had erected walls and barricades to keep the enemy out before sallying forth and therefore driving off the invaders. But in all cases the suspected leader of each individual group of Hounds had escaped, being the kind of “Lead from the back” general that was almost custom designed to annoy fighting men.

Our kill count was highest but then again, the others had managed to capture more of the enemy. But like our own captive, they weren't expected to survive either. They had all been brought back to the castle and Ella was treating them for their injuries and the poisons that were running through their veins. She was frantically working to try and identify what had been done to those poor men in order to come up with some kind of counter agent, but never looked optimistic on those occasions when one or other of us would go downstairs to enquire as to their progress.

Sure enough, over time, those captives simply died. Similar symptoms to our own captive. Apparently, according to Ella, their hearts just gave up and stopped working without warning.

But at the time of this particular conference, she was still downstairs working hard. Which was when Father Trent asked the question that everyone had on their minds.

“So, what do we do now?” He asked.

Father Trent had been working ceaselessly since I had last seen him and according to some of the gossip going round the castle, he hadn't slept for more than a couple of hours a night. Working with the soldiers and the villagers and everyone else. He had worked on the barricades, fetched and cooked as well as doing whatever chores that he could. The soldier's resentment of him had begun to lessen in the face of his charm offensive....

That's unfair. He was feeling immensely guilty and was struggling to keep himself going. I didn't talk to him about it which is on me....I should have spent some time talking about his problems and I don't know why I didn't. I remember almost wanting to feel cynical about what he was doing. As though I wanted to believe that he was trying to manipulate his way back into everyone's good graces.

But I think that says more about me and where my head was at that period of time than it does about him. I would like to give him the credit and suggest that he was being genuine in his efforts to make amends.

But he was not looking good when he asked that question. Pale faced, huge dark circles under his eyes with blood shot eyes and a slight tremor in his hands. But his voice was steady and even as he spoke.

There were a lot of exchanged glances around the table.

“I think,” Knight Father Danzig spoke up after a long moment. “I think that we have been successful but that our success is a two edged sword and in the long run we will come to look at this whole thing as a mistake.”

“Mistake?” Sam asked.

Danzig leant forward.

“The mistake was an easy one to make and there was no way that we could have predicted it and now the mistake has been made we must learn to live with it.”

“What was this mistake?” Sir Kristoff again, bridling. I sometimes feel that I'm being harsh on poor old Kristoff. He was a good man really and a fine leader of troops but at the same time, he struggled to articulate himself well at these meetings. He was good at....If you gave him a problem and told him to solve it then he would do that. For example, if you told him to defend a village he would look at it for a while before telling you exactly what resources that he needed to do the job. If you gave him those resources then he would perform his task to the best of his abilities.

I suppose that what I'm saying is that he was a good tactical mind but that his overall strategic thinking was less than ideal and I suddenly had an insight as to why he might not have attained as high a rank as his experience might warrant.

He also had a habit at bridling at any, even hinted at, criticisms.

“We turned up. In the open and announced ourselves.” Father Danzig answered. “What we should have done was come in secret. Scouted the lands out and find out what's going on. We should have infiltrated and employed cunning towards the solution of these problems. Now, we run the risk of having driven these “Hounds” underground.”

There were more exchanged glances. I remember thinking that this might all make a lot more sense if we all took a couple of days off to just rest up and sleep.

“Explain please.” Sam said eventually. The most tired looking out of the lot of us.

“We have beaten the enemy.” Danzig was clearly prepared for the question and had his answer ready. “But what happens now? Our success was not total, meaning that it would be foolish to suppose that we have accounted for every target that we aimed our bows and swords against. Some of those men will have fled and been able to report to their superiors.

“So what would I do in their shoes?”

Danzig shook his head.

“I cannot deny the possibility that the people doing this are simply mad and outright crackpots and therefore my guess at their strategy is completely wrong, but I do not think that this is the case. Up to this point they have acted cleverly.”

“You admire these men?” Inquisitor Dempsey. The most energetic of the lot of us, fires of righteousness stoking his energy.

“Of course. While hating them and what they represent. They have done this all very well indeed. They have kept this corner of the continent under their heel with relatively little effort and they have done so for years. Maybe even generations without giving themselves away to the rest of the continent. Either to Kreve or the Eternal Flame, either of those organisations would have gone mad trying to hunt down this entire situation.”

He paused to see if anyone was going to argue the point. I'm not sure that people didn't want to, I'm more convinced that folks were simply too tired to bother.

“Your point, Father?” Sam's words seemed as though he bought them with great effort.

“My point is....That they will not give up their grip on the countryside without a fight. They had to know that something like this might happen and they had to have contingency plans in place for when it did.”

“So what do you think will happen?”

“I think that they will, essentially, go to ground but then, when our vigilance has started to sag whether due to other crisis or overconfidence in our final success then they will start to creep back into Lord Samuel's domain. There will be sightings off in the distance, then the old stories will start to be told again. Then there will be isolated attacks against remote farms and travelling peddlers and so on until the countryside is, once again, living in fear of them.”

“They have to know that I would respond.” Sam seemed dissatisfied.

“They do, but now they know what you're capable of. They will come up with a way to get round your defences, stronger poisons and the like. They weaken you, get some agents amongst your guardsmen or your staff, slip something into your drink or food and suddenly you're a drivelling lunatic who has neither the strength or the influence to take them on.”

“Are we in danger now?”

“No,” Danzig shook his head. “Or at least I doubt it. I think it's much more likely to start in six months to a year and it will be a slow and careful thing, depending on their patience of course.”

Sam nodded but I could tell that he wasn't happy. His frown lines tightened and he stared off into space. It was a long moment of silence before he clenched his fist and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, that's unacceptable. No, I will not simply fortify myself against future attacks. This scourge needs to be rooted out and destroyed now while we've put them on the back foot. I absolutely refuse to be passive on this subject.”

“So what would you have us do?” Someone asked.

“This is heresy isn't it?”

“Oh yes.” Inquisitor Dempsey asserted while Father Danzig nodded. “Of the blackest sort. It might be that this heresy is the tool of political and economic ambition but heresy is heresy.”

“So the churches of the Eternal Flame and The Sky-father Kreve will help us?”

“Most certainly.”

Sam turned back to Sir Rickard. “Is there any chance that these Hounds are still on my lands? Or otherwise based here?”

Rickard thought about it before shaking his head.

“I don't think so. I can't see any of the established places providing the amount of equipment that these people carry. They would need a Forge, a Farrier, a stable, food, alchemy supplies and tannery works. Not to mention a barracks for all of their fighters to sleep when they're not terrorising the countryside. There is nothing like that left in your lands other than at the castle and I'm pretty sure that they're not here.”

“But not totally sure?” I teased him. I thought that the meeting could do with a bit of levity and was rewarded by a slight smile in Rickard's and Trent's face.

“I'm as sure as I can be.” Rickard told us.

“So the truth of the matter is that the Hounds are elsewhere?” Sam asked after giving me a slight, big brotherly glare.

“I'm as sure as I can be.” Rickard repeated.

“Right, combining this with what Freddie discovered I think it's easy to say that these fuckers have some kind of noble backing. Which means that one of my northern neighbours is behind all of this.”

“Or more than one.” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, if this is part of what the Former Lords Kalayn were part of, and there is more of them out there, why suppose that there were only two noble families that were involved in all of this bullshit? One or more and we have to be paranoid and assume that there are more than just one castle full of these fucks. They've got an entire countryside to push beneath their heels.”

“True, but how do find this out?”

“We send scouts.”

“Careful.” Trent spoke up. “I don't mean to shit on this idea but those scouts can't be yours or under your authority Lord Kalayn. I use that title deliberately. Your authority extends to your borders but you can't take it any further than that. If you send anyone further across the borders into other people's territories then you are committing a crime against the law. Not that that won't solve the problems as it will bring proper soldiers here to investigate but all the same, it could mean your life.”

“What about church troops?” Sam asked looking a little despondent.

“I can't speak for Kreve but certainly the Holy Fire can't go into a place until we've either been invited or until there is creditable proof or testimony that something is going on there. The Empress has been very....exacting in drawing up new laws to govern the role of the church in this kind of situation.”

Danzig nodded his agreement.

We all looked at each other a bit more until I realised that Sam was looking at me.

“Crap.” I said as I realised where this was going. Sam can be a devious bastard when he wants to be and I couldn't get rid of the suspicion that Sam had known that this was the required solution back before the conversation had even started. “I can go, can't I.” I said. “Kerrass can go, searching for these “Hounds” as if they are monsters or go looking for legitimate Witcher's work.”

“Of which there is plenty in these parts.” Kerrass said, speaking for the first time in a while.

“And we see what we can turn up.” I finished. “Everyone knows that where he goes, I go and it's perfectly plausible that I would pay my respects towards any noble house that I pass. The risk comes from the possibility that people will connect me together with Sam but at the same time, I am famous and removing me from the field will bring down just as much attention from people that they don't want to attract and so will be resisted.”

Sam nodded although, looking back, I suspect that he was quite surprised by how quickly I agreed to the whole scheme.

“In the mean time. We can fortify here.” He went on. “Fathers Trent and Danzig. I am officially asking for aid to get to the bottom of the matter of the Hounds of Kreve. I will also need to expand my garrison and get some messages out to my family in order to pay for some of the ideas that I have. However, I will not stand for the persecution of the village folk and their devotion to this old “Crom Cruarch”, or whoever it is that they worship. That will not be tolerated.”

Trent and Danzig nodded.

“I, for one, intend to see this matter through.” Trent commented. “I think I owe that much at least.”

“Pleased to have you Father Trent.” Sam added. “So let's get to work. When do you think you can set off by Freddie?”

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen is how one settles themselves down and walks into a trap. A trap that I should have seen coming really as an elder brother sets out to stitch you up into a design of his own making.

Bastard.

But still, what did I expect really. I can't say that I wasn't eager either. The reason that I had volunteered Kerrass' and my services was that I had a burning need for solitude. To get away from Rickard and his men. From Kristoff and his military born arrogance. To get away from Father Trent and his guilt, From Danzig and Dempsey for their growing Fervour.

I wanted to get away from people in general and just feel that sense of quiet that only comes when you're by yourself or, at most, with a good friend who knows when to keep their mouth shut.

A skill that Kerrass has in mountainous quantities.

It was an odd experience and, like so many things in these writings, I struggle to describe them adequately. I've been told by various people that what I say or have said has resonated with them on some level despite my own conviction that I was talking utter nonsense. But for other people, even though I thought I was being quite clear and concise, they have struggled to understand what I was talking about.

But I will try.

It was like the walls were pushing in on me. As though I was being pressed down upon by the sky and the ceilings of the rooms that I found myself in. People were loud and jarring so that when they spoke to me, I found myself wincing as their voices echoed in the back of my skull. I felt like I was swimming against a current and that I was hopelessly lost. My heart would hammer in my chest. I felt short of breath and on the verge of panicking. My chest hurt and when I could breathe, the cold air brought pain to the back of my throat and into my lungs. I got tired quicker. My legs felt as though they wanted to stretch out and be still while also being incredibly nervous as though I wanted to get up and go for a run through the trees. At the same time. I was struggling. I can't pretend otherwise.

I felt like I wanted a really good weep without being able to summon the emotion necessary.

All I knew was that I wanted to get away. Away from the responsibility of being Sam's younger brother. Away from the expectations and the stories and the arguments and having to argue my opinion.

I remembered talking to the Empress when she told me that she missed the simplicity of the Witcher life. Where there is a clear cut right and wrong and on those rare occasions where there was a monster to be slain and children to protect, having an enemy to fight and overcome.

I missed that. I missed Kerrass and I having that hunt and the ability to work according to our own rhythm rather than the orders and time keeping of others.

Don't get me wrong. There was an enemy here and he was undoubtedly a bad guy that needed to be destroyed for the protection of innocents but the pressures of finding him while at the same time arguing with everyone else as to the best way to go about that was getting to be too much.

So I leaped at the chanced to leave with a pair of horses and a weeks worth of supplies. Father Trent gave me a blessing although I declined his invitation to hear my confession and we set out a couple of days after the end of the battle.

We stayed for the funerals of those few men that we had lost during the engagements at the various villages. We also attended the more private ceremony that The Bastards held for Jenkins. The men had a simmering anger amongst them. A formless, impotent thing and I did not envy Sir Rickard maintaining discipline over the next few days.

So Kerrass and I snuck out early one morning. I say that we “snuck” because I was trying to avoid any undue ceremony and I also wanted to leave Sir Rickard behind. He was still under orders from Emma that he wasn't allowed to let me out of his sight but I felt, in my opinion, correctly, that a troop of soldiers following us around would draw too much attention to us. The other side of things was that Sir Rickard was one of the people that I was wanting to avoid.

So we snuck out. Kerrass was agreeable. We didn't really talk about it but I got the impression that he was just as glad as I was to get out from under the thumb of all of that nobility. Another similarity between him and his namesake animal was that he has something of a wanderlust. The way he describes it is that when he's out in the wilderness, he longs for the comforts and uniformity of society. But then when he's in a city, he wants to be out amongst the trees and mountains.

Have you ever picked up a cat? Picture that moment when you are holding them against your chest and they can't decide whether they are comfortable there, against you being all snug and warm, against the possibility that there might be mice to chase nearby.

Kerrass is like this far more than he would care to admit.

We headed North and slightly West along the ridges of the foothills. We would take on some more supplies at the last village on Kalayn lands before crossing the border into areas that we weren't familiar with. It would hardly be the frontier but there was no way of knowing what was there. I had not studied any maps of the area before coming to help Sam as we had believed that we would be investigating purely in the area of Kalayn castle. And Kerrass habitually didn't work in this area for reasons of his own.

I suspected, and this was borne out by various comments from the man himself, that this was roughly in the area where his home village had been when he had been born. Although he had told me that the original site had changed beyond recognition, there was something about the lay of the land that had made him uncomfortable for years, so he just got out of the habit. He also hinted that this area was quite thoroughly worked by other Feline Witchers before the decline of the Witcher class. And he had never felt the need to explore in this area.

But still.

We got some supplies and some information from the last village. They were generous and giving of their time which I remembered finding surprising. Normally when I have been involved in saving a village, the villagers tend to want to put the entire thing behind them as soon as possible which includes forgetting their previous offers of generosity, but these people hadn't. They tried to keep us for a day and throw us a feast but we were having none of it, still wanting to push on. This had been the village that Sam and Sir Kristoff had been defending and they were still fortifying the place against future attacks. Reinforcing the barricades and putting things by. They had taken up archery practice and, apparently, a man was expected to practice with his bow for at least an hour a day.

I remembered wondering what Sir Rickard would make of their efforts and whether or not Sam would actually approve of their efforts.

But who am I to comment.

As I say, they were generous with their food and their gossip and we moved on. Taking the high roads out of Kalayn lands.

We took the high roads, the ones just below the tree line before the foot hills became the mountains. The idea was that we wanted to look down at the countryside so that we could see what we were getting in to. Trails of smoke and clearings of the trees.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Things came to a head with my problems when we came to a local landmark that was called Baleberry Rock. I don't know why it was called that, I really don't, although I did ask around at the time. But what it is is this huge boulder that has come off the mountain due to some kind of storm or melting ice. Flame only knows how long ago. It fell with a thump and formed a small dip where it embedded itself info the ground. It's a huge misshapen thing with moss and small plants covering it with lots of loose stone and earth around it. In the time since it came to rest, the forest has grown up to surround it so that it forms this little clearing amongst the trees.

It was raining I remember. Coming down hard as it often seemed to in that neck of the world, Kerrass and I were cold, wet and although we weren't really regretting the decision to make our own way off into the world, the weather was awful and we were looking for a place to find some shelter, build a fire and make something warming to go with the last of the fresh bread that the last village had given us two days ago and we found what we were looking for in that large boulder.

You have to understand just how large this thing was. It took me ten minutes of scrambling to walk round the thing. It was far too slick from the rain to climb but had we wanted to, there were no immediately obvious hand-holds to provide leverage and Kerrass would have had to stand on my shoulders to get anywhere near the top of it. But I suspect that even then, we might have struggled to get someone on top of it. We certainly saw nowhere to attach a rope or a grappling hook.

It was the kind of place that makes you feel really young and insignificant against the age and turning of the world. I don't know if that had any effect on what happened or not, I'll leave you to be the judge.

What it did have was a small area where the water had eroded it over the centuries that it had been there so that there was a small overhang. I say small, but it was only small in comparison to the entire boulder itself.

We were able to fit both bedrolls in as well as both horses.

We stopped early so that we could properly enjoy our shelter. I spent some time building a fire which took quite a long time despite the dry wood that we had stored in our saddlebags, so it took a lot of attention and work to get it going. When it was, I went out looking for dry wood which was, at the same time, easier than it might have been, but rather time consuming.

In the mean time, Kerrass had made a shelter with one of the oilskins that we kept for when we had to camp out in weather like this and was in the process of digging a rain channel so that the waters running off the mountains would be kept out of our little shelter. Moving back to the fire I lay out the bedrolls so that we could take proper advantage of the warmth and erected the cast iron tripod over the fire from which I hung the small pot that would contain our meal as well as the grating on which I rested our kettle. I, for one wanted to clean myself up with some hot water a bit after the day we'd had.

Kerrass came in and started working on the horses. Rubbing them down and draping them with a blanket, making sure that they had food and water nearby before sitting next to the fire with the horse tack and going over it to make sure that the rain hadn't damaged it too much. I had mulled one of the bottles of cider over the fire while he worked and handed him a cup. It was growing quite warm in our little shelter now and I changed into clean and dry clothing, leaving the wet clothing to dry near the fire. The steam that came off them did much to warm up the air.

While the food warmed up we took our time to maintain our own equipment. Oiling and sharpening is vitally important, then as always.

There was a sense of something building in the air. A moment of crisis.

We took our time about the tasks. I can't speak for Kerrass but I was enjoying the simplicity of them. The need to concentrate on what I was doing without having to worry about what else was going on in the world. Without having to be concerned about other factors, while doing so in the fresh air.

My mental state had not really improved over the course of our five day journey.

The problem was that, and again this is another thing that I find hard to describe, even though I was enjoying the simplicity of the tasks of making camp. This simplicity and the steady sound of the rain against the oilskin was sending my mind down a spiral of dark thoughts that I was finding it increasingly difficult to pull myself out of.

Three times, while working on my equipment, I realised that I was sat, just staring into space. Now, at the time of writing, I couldn't even tell you what I was thinking. What the thoughts were that were going round my head. All I can say is that I felt myself getting worse and worse.

My eyes felt hot, like I hadn't slept for several days and again my legs were feeling like they were wanting to run, sprint really, frantically for several hours. My entire body seemed as though it was fighting me. My muscles clenching and unclenching leaving me shivering. I felt like I had a fever, that feeling of being cold but also sweating freely in the air. I gritted my teeth

A thought has just occurred to me as to what I looked like.

You know how you boil a kettle of water, whether for tea, cleaning, purification or any of the other reasons that you might boil water for. It was like that. At first I was still and then gradually, as things built up, the steam started to come. Just a trickle of steam at first until it came out in an almost steady stream.

But then things started to get violent.

At some point I had closed my eyes.

Kerrass said my name. I must have done something to prompt this but I have no idea what that was, something that I had done or said had alerted him to the fact that I was struggling. Or maybe he had been watching for this kind of thing for days. I don't know.

What I do know is that he said my name and it was like somebody had driven a cold metal spike up my arse.

I shot off my seat and ran out into the rain. I didn't go very far, I certainly didn't pick a direction. It was more that I just wanted to be in the general direction of “away”.

I was shaking, trembling violently as I sprinted through the trees, slipping on the loose rocks that had tumbled off the mountainside and careening from tree to tree.

I stopped abruptly in the space between a few trees. I paced for a minute or two, my breath whistling between my teeth as I tried to contain and tamp down the overwhelming....things that I was feeling. I felt like a boat on the rapids being bounced from rock to rock with the occupants of the boats having no choice but to hold on for dear life and just pray that they find safe harbour.

I felt hot. So hot that I honestly believed that steam was rising from my now sodden shirt and from my hair that was plastered to the side of my skull.

There was a small rock pool nearby. I saw it and suddenly it seemed like the best idea in the world to go over to it and plunge my head into the water in an effort to cool off. I know, I know that this isn't really the best idea but some part of me thought that it was. I would tell anyone who is reading this that I wasn't thinking rationally.

I plunged my head in. The relief was instant, but as was the pain. Mountain wash off water is no joke and it must have been freezing cold, but I forced myself to keep my head under water for as long as I could bear it before lifting my head out. I stood there trembling for a moment or two before I plunged my head back into the water.

The violent motion had all but emptied the small pool now, so I tried the next best thing of throwing what was left down my back and across my face, rubbing the back of my neck with my, now, cold wet hands. My legs buckled under me and I slumped, sliding down the rock until I was in a kind of crouched ball.

I took a deep breath and screamed my lungs out. I screamed and screamed until I could no longer manage anything and my throat was sore. But no sound emerged, just a quiet kind of tortured rasp.

The pressure in my head was indescribable. It felt like my head was trying to explode or for my brain to forcefully pull itself from the body that encapsulated. My hands clutched to my ears in an effort to try and contain everything as though bits of my brain were trying to escape.

I felt like I was watching all of this happen, calmly from inside my own skull. I was certainly not in conscious control of things but I felt as though I was watching and taking note of everything that was happening.

I was still breathing heavily and despite the water in the air, I was sweating profusely. Rivers of it running from my scalp and down my spine and stinging in cuts and scratches that I hadn't registered previously.

I don't know how long I lay, or crouched there for. I imagine that it wasn't as long as I felt as though it was but I suspect that it was longer than was entirely healthy, either mentally or physically but I remember being surprised as it stopped just as suddenly as it started.

Abruptly I stopped sweating, the trembling stopped and I felt my mind return to my body. I was suddenly in control of my actions and could move, think and act rationally again. I climbed to my feet with some difficulty as all of my muscles had seized up and I felt stiff. As though I had been training hard for several days.

I still felt ungainly though and it took me some time to walk back to the camp where Kerrass was waiting for me. I noticed that he had set the stew aside and was stirring a pot of something else on the fire. He looked up on my arrival and taking a dipper and poured a liquid into a cup before handing it too me.

“Strong and sweet.” he said, gesturing towards my stool as I took the drink from his hand. I peeled my wet shirt off and hung it from the drying set up next to the fire before carefully lowering myself back down to a seated position. Kerrass passed me a towel which I used to wipe the worst of the water from myself.

“You stink.” He commented, not unkindly.

“Cold sweat'll do that to you.” I told him. “I'll dunk my head in the next river that we pass.”

He grunted, taking the towel off me and draping the blanket roughly around my shoulders. I would have commented something about being mothered but I doubt that that would have ended in my favour. Instead I placed the blanket around my shoulders a little more securely and drank my drink.

It was indeed, strong and sweet.

I realised that I was still shivering. It felt a lot like battle fatigue or battle reaction whatever you want to call it and it took me a long time to come back down to earth. It was odd. As I say, I was completely in command of my faculties, thinking clearly and everything but sudden bursts of shivering and trembling would take hold of my body and I would be absolutely helpless before them.

Kerrass went on about his camp-site tasks. He had put the pot of stew back over the fire, added a little water and some wild garlic that he had found before adding a bit more salt and pepper. He prefers his food with a bit more seasoning than I do. Then he settled back with a knife to work on some part of the horses tack that needed some kind of superficial repairs.

It was a long time before either of us spoke.

“Do you mind if I talk to you about something?” I asked him after a long while

“Do you want to talk about it?” He said calmly while examining a hole that he had just pushed through the leather strap.

“Flame no.” I told him. “But I think that I need to. In much the same way as sometimes, I need to train.”

Kerrass said nothing. Just blew through the small hole in the leather strap.

It took me a long time to start talking. A very long time.

“Right.” I said. Then I hesitated and leant forward. “Right, here it is.”

I took another deep breath. This was hard, much harder than I thought it should be.

“Here's the thing. If it wasn't for Francesca's disappearance. If it wasn't for that. Then I think that it would be time for me to go home.”

Kerrass' eyes seemed to flicker in the firelight but otherwise his face didn't change expression.

“It's a thought I've had, on and off, since we left Nilfgaard and started coming north.” I told him. “In fact, I've actually made my mind up to leave for home, or Angral three times now.

“The first time was about a week after we did that hunt after we left Toussaint. You remember?”

“I remember knocking you off your feet.”

I grinned at the thought.

“Yes, I remember.” I sub-consciously rubbed my jaw. “It was about a week later. I was tired and we were travelling north. We had taken the contract for you to deal with that Wyvern. You had told me to remain behind and keep that farming family indoors. I remember looking over at the old couple and their eldest daughter who was shepherding the younger children, presumably her children, under the table. I remember looking at that elder daughter and thinking of Emma. I was just beginning to lose that element of righteous anger that had kept me going through the pass out of Toussaint and I was beginning to get tired as my anger at the situation with Francesca was burning itself out. I found myself thinking that I was running around after a ghost when I should be at home looking after those siblings that I still have

“The second time was when we stood in the ashes of Pula, Saffron and Sally's home. I decided then that I was done and that I needed to head for home. I promised myself, and you, that I would help you do what needed to be done in the immediate aftermath of that. I remember looking at the ashes of the woman that I had loved, however briefly and the corpse of the man and child like creature that I had liked and respected and thought to myself that I couldn't do this any more.

“I remember it clearly as we laid out their bodies for their funeral rites and I remembered the moonlight in Saffron's smile and the strange lop-sided smile that Pula gave me when I got confused at his marriage arrangements. I remembered how much I had liked Sally and felt both, nurturing and in awe of the power of the being that just wanted to sit and read a book. I saw what the world had done to the three of them and I felt sick to my very stomach. I remembered thinking that I would see this hunt through and then I would turn for home.

“The third time was just before we set off to come north and meet up with Sam. I remember standing on the walls of my families castle and thinking that I didn't want to leave. I made my mind up not to go.”

I sighed.

“But every time. Every time, I change my mind, or I almost forget that I had promised myself to stop and I saddle up my horse, strap my weapons to my side and I head out.”

Kerrass continued to say nothing.

“Partially, it's this thing with Francesca that's got me freaking out. That's not what's got to me but it's built off that. It's certainly the reason that I'm still here, traipsing around after you.”

“OR having me traipse around after you.” Kerrass gave me one of his lopsided smiles.

I acknowledged his point with a nod. “But it sometimes worries me how much of my....of my thinking, how much of my brain, thinking about Francesca takes up and it doesn't seem to leave room for anything else.

“I spend my days going over the circumstances that led up to her disappearance. I remember the social fuck-up that Ariadne and I made of our engagement.” I smiled at the memory, “And although, at the time it was one of the happiest moments of my life, I criticise myself because I worry that, being so self-involved, that I missed some important clue. Some sign that I should have seen and would have seen if I had had my wits about my.”

Kerrass opened his mouth to object to this and I held my hands up to forestall him.

“I know, I know,” I groaned. “I know that it's foolish to think that and that I couldn't possibly have known, especially after the teleport lag.....”

As a note for those people that don't know what I'm talking about when I say “time lag.” Teleport lag is a thing that occurs when you teleport around the continent a bit. When you go from one place with it's own distinct time of day and climate, to another. You can, sometimes find the change jarring in ways that you don't always understand. It can lead to you being sub-consciously confused or unaware. Changes in diet, weather as well as exposure to the local people in general can be jarring if you haven't gone through the intervening landscape which allows you to become accustomed to the changes as you go. Apparently, this is one of the reasons that Kerrass doesn't like to teleport anywhere.

But anyway. Back to my breakdown.

“But I recriminate myself about this. I look at all the steps we took during the investigation. I think about our last exchanged conversation before she went off to sleep that night. I think of all the things that we did and about how I charged off in the pursuit of Jack both literally and figuratively, so obsessed about the idea that he must be to blame rather than it be something else. I think of all of these things and I get angry at myself for not looking at the other options. For not seeing that Jack was just a smokescreen designed to lead us, to lead me off the scent of where I should be looking.”

I reached into my bags and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“These are my notes. The ones I didn't offer up to the God. Not just from the time spent at Toussaint. I've got copies of all my journals with me. I had to go out and buy a copy of my own books and my own travel journals, therefore paying royalties to myself and to the university publishing press. I read through them all, over and over and over again. Trying to relive the moments from before the coronation to see if I can remember some kind of sign. Some kind of clue that might lead to the proper identification of what happened. Of suspects who might have conspired to take my sister away.

“Again, I know that there was no way to know. I'm also well aware that the odds are good that this is a thing targeted at her, separate from me. I know that it's probably due to her actions at court or her deeds on behalf of the Empress. I'm even aware of how arrogant it makes me to think of her disappearance as being connected to me over all of these factors.

“But that doesn't stop me for looking for clues that probably aren't there. We have, after all, killed a lot of the enemies that we have left behind us....”

“Sir Robart?” Kerrass suggested.

I shook my head. “I don't think he has the capability, the resources or the intelligence to pull off something like this. If it was him he would have taken credit for it or rubbed her disappearance into my face a bit more when we saw him last. Besides, he is someone that I know the Imperial investigators are going after.”

“The former vassals of the former Lord Angral?” Kerrass tried again. “People who resent being ruled over by a vampire. They can't attack her but they might come after you.”

“Possible, but again, it seems a little far fetched. There are easier targets and they were nationalists. Wouldn't they go after the King of Angraal? (Note for the reader: The Duke of Angraal. Calling him the King of Angraal is a local tradition that the Empire tolerates). It's possible, I suppose but again I understand that both Ariadne and the Empire are pursuing that line of enquiry. The same goes for the brothers of that “William the Ram” knight that you killed and then I mocked in prose.”

“What about that guy, you know the one....”

“I really don't.”

Kerrass glared at me. “The one that nearly made me kill him. The one on the docks just before we sailed north and I told you my life story, bits of it anyway. You certainly did a number on him in your writing.”

“Oh him. Didn't I tell you. He got his throat slit in a Vizima back alley. Emma looked into it for me. He took one too many debts which didn't return enough of his investment in time and he got murdered for his trouble, is the common theory. Another suggestion was that he wasn't local to the area and went out drinking in the wrong part of town. Either theory was perfectly valid but they didn't prove it one way or another.”

Kerrass grunted. “Shame. I would dearly have liked to murder him myself.”

I decided to diplomatically ignore that comment.

“There is also something about our freeing of the Princess Dorn and the way that it upset the local power balance in the area. But again, the Empress is all over that.

“But even despite knowing that far more capable, experienced and influential people are on the case. I am going over the details, over and over again to see if I can see something.

“I resent that I don't know what I'm doing. We've talked about this before. We're here, because we have no other ideas as to where to look. That the conspiracy that killed my father were the people with the most magical capabilities that would have a motive. We haven't found them yet though and we're walking forward into what may very well be a trap. We have no choice other than to turn aside and send someone else that might be fobbed off or ignored. Or we continue to walk forward and wait for the jaws of the trap to close around our necks. And I know that that's what I'm doing. It's that thing with Jack in Toussaint all over again, rushing into a situation without knowing what's about to come down.

“Any way that I look at, this is a stupid thing to do. I'm honestly angry at Sam for putting me in this position, for exploiting my desire to help him and my desire, my.....my need to find these people and ask them questions in order to help him deal with this problem and yet, despite knowing how stupid it is, I can't turn aside.”

“It's not that stupid.” Kerrass argued before reconsidering. “It's a little stupid, but one way or another, someone has to go out there and scout out the area. We are, by far, the best qualified to do that. The church either of them, will announce their presence as church soldiers and church officials are absolutely incapable of travelling incognito without giving themselves away by being so aggressively holy and self righteous that it would drive everyone away. The military guys might be able to go incognito but at the same time, they wouldn't really know what they're looking for. It's not, strictly speaking, Witcher's work but I do feel as though I'm hunting down monsters. The fact that I'm also helping you is an extra bonus.”

“Ok.” I said after listening to that little speech. “I feel a little better but you won't be able to convince me that you wouldn't do better by yourself.”

“I can argue that point, but we're not talking about that at the moment.” Kerrass told me.

I let him have that.

“I'm so obsessed with it Kerrass, so obsessed that I can't think of anything else. I just can't. You were right when we left Toussaint. I need to think of other things. I need to continue working, writing, thinking, learning and educating. But I can't bring myself to care. I've tried, I really have. I've tried to write things. I talked about the thing with Bishop Fuck-face and I wrote about the child beneath the Watchtower. But I feel as though I'm just going through the motions. Marking time until we find the next clue, the next step forward.

“So that's the second thing that's got me so.....so fucking.....”

“Tied up?” Kerrass suggested. “Wrung out.”

“I was thinking “fucked off” to be honest but your things would be true too.”

I sighed and rubbed my head with a hand that trembled. Kerrass passed me another cup of liquid and told me to drink.

“I've....” I clutched the cup in my hand, staring deep into the liquid in an effort to try and find inspiration at the bottom of the cup. In the dark, swirling liquid that was there before lifting my gaze to stare out of the opening and into the woods. I noticed that the rain was beginning to lessen. Bleeding typical. The rain stops shortly after I have a breakdown and run out into the weather.

“I've lost the joy of all of this.”

“All of what?”

“All of this,”. I said, waving my arms round at the little, make-shift cave. “I remember during the roughly two years that we travelled together. I loved every minute of our time on the road. Every. Last. Minute. Every new creature that you showed me was fascinating to me. The people were interesting, the food was inspiring, the women were beautiful. The culture, architecture and....and “life” was fascinating to me. From everything to the way that villages were built to the way that they were the same. From Southern Imperial lands, all the way up to Northern Redania and Kaedwen. The differences in diet. The different way the different whore houses worked. How in some places you pay up front and some places you pay afterwards. The way merchants work. It was all so interesting to me.

“That wasn't to mention the main reason that I was out there. I remember hounding you with questions. Waking you up with questions, distracting you with questions and sending you to sleep with questions. I remember you having to tell me to shut the fuck up or you'd knife me, to stop me asking you questions.”

“Which lasted all of five minutes as I recall.”

“But that's my point. When was the last time I asked you a question about Witcher's work? When was the last time I talked to you about potions, techniques or Witcher philosophy? I can't remember but it was certainly before Toussaint. I just don't care any more Kerrass.”

Somewhere in the back of my head I realised that I was getting upset again and I forced myself to take a deep breath in an effort to calm down.

“I hope I didn't insult you there.” I told him. “That's not to say that you aren't interesting it's just....”

“I know what you meant Freddie. I'm not insulted.”

“That stuff was so important to me. So important and now I just can't bring myself to care. I've worked really hard to keep going with that kind of stuff since we left Toussaint. Don't get me wrong, you were right when you told me that it was important and that I should continue working on it. You were right and you are still right.....

“Heh.” I chuckled. “I didn't tell you this but I got a letter from a friend when we were back at Coulthard Castle.”

“You mean that you got a letter from a fan don't you?” Another one of Kerrass' smirks.

“I do, so help me I do. But he complained that I wasn't talking about you as much anymore. He said that he still enjoyed the stories and spent time learning from them but that he missed hearing about you and your history.”

“Nice to know I'm popular.”

“You are. But what to tell him? I just haven't learned anything new about you in ages.”

I sank into silence. Staring down into my cup and swirling the liquid about.

“But that's not the real reason that you're upset is it.” Kerrass prompted. It was not a question and he was not wrong.

“No,” I admitted. “No it's not.”

Kerrass said nothing. I couldn't look at him any more and I felt the shame that I had been feeling for a while start to climb up my throat like Bile.

“I'm....” I began but it caught in my throat. “Dammit it all to hell.”

I took another deep breath as though I was taking a run up against a tricky jump.

“I'm angry all the time Kerrass. All the Flame cursed time. You used to mock me for it. You'd tease me and tell jokes to other people about how violent I could get. I used to get really upset and really offended about it but you're right.”

I turned away as I felt hot wetness behind my eyes.

“Remember that Hound that I fought in the village?”

I didn't wait for an answer.

“I was disappointed in that fight. There wasn't enough of it for me. I wanted more. I wanted the blood of those assholes that were victimising those people. I wanted to fight. I wanted to show them just how wrong they are and how they should run from people like me. I was so angry then that I scared myself and it's not the first time either.

“I murdered Bishop Sansum. I snuck up behind him and I choked the life out of him. I could feel his life dribbling past my fingers and still I squeezed. That guy is the closest I've ever come to hating someone. Anyone really although I wonder whether I'm going to feel worse when I....when we actually find the bastards that took Francesca. I hated Sansum and I squeezed the life out of him. I remember his tongue lolling out of mouth and slobbering everywhere. I couldn't see his eyes but I could feel the desperation in his movements. The way that his arms and legs were jerking and frantically tearing at me. Grinding and scrabbling for air but still I squeezed until the last vestiges of life came out of him and there was nothing left. And I was disappointed that I couldn't do more to him.

“When did I start doing this Kerrass?” I looked at him for the first time in a while. He was sat, unmoving, the firelight reflected in his eyes.

“When did I start enjoying fighting. When did I start looking forward to it and only feeling alive in the middle of a battle. I've tried, Flame knows that I've tried, but all I can think about is how angry I am at everything. I'm angry at myself for feeling this way. I'm angry at you for not magically and amazingly being able to conjure up an answer to the mystery of Francesca's disappearance. I'm angry at Sam and Emma and Mark for returning to their lives as though everything is normal when it's not fucking normal. We've lost our sister, flame damn them and they're doing nothing about it.

“I know that that's not true and I know that I'm being unrealistic, I know that but that just makes me angrier.

“I'm angry at Mother for not telling everyone about this cult which might have solved this problem in the first place, furious really despite absolutely understanding why she didn't. I'm angry at Edmund for being weak enough to fall for their schemes. I'm angry at Father for being stupid enough to die in the first place. Not just for his dying at Edmund's hands but also for being a stubborn, ignorant prick that drove me away from the family in the first place.

“I'm angry at Mark for not sorting himself out and seeing to his illness in time. I'm angry at all the Sorceresses, including Ariadne, for not being able to figure all of this out. I'm angry at the Empress for giving up. I'm angry at Toussaint and the Imperial guard as a whole for not properly protecting my sister. Literally, I blame an entire people for that and would not shed a tear if dragons came and set the place ablaze.

“I'm angry at the Princess Dorn for being upset with me before we departed. And I'm really angry, so fucking furious with Francesca for being foolish enough to let herself get taken.”

I felt a bitter chuckle escape me.

“And that's just the people that don't really deserve my anger.

“I would cheerfully murder Lord Voorhis for not knowing who took my sister and why. I would take great delight in fighting Sir Robard de Radford until he bled to death from a thousand tiny little wounds that I would inflict. Slowly, over time.

“I'm angry at these, so-called Hounds of Kreve and the people that are behind them. I'm angry at Sam for preying on my general desire to be a “good person” and harness that desire in order to get me to do what he wants. Manipulative bastard that he can sometimes be. I would have told him to shove it up his arse if it wasn't for the fact that this is one of the best chances that we might have of finding out what happened to Francesca. As it was I was honestly tempted but I'm a sucker for someone asking me for help. Back home I have to deliberately leave money at home so that I don't buy drinks for all my mates rather than having a drink myself. I was so angry with Sam for getting me to do what he wanted. But I was so tempted to tell him to stuff it. If it wasn't for Francesca....”

“No.” Kerrass told me. “No you wouldn't. You would have done it anyway, regardless of Francesca. You would have helped him if he'd asked. I once preyed on that same instinct to help people of yours.”

I sighed.

“I know.”

I brushed some tears from my eyes.

“Flame Kerrass. I'm so angry that I am genuinely frightened.”

“Of what?” Kerrass asked softly.

“Of what I might do.” I answered swiftly. “I used to pride myself on being a calm man. A man who thought things through and took proper care of what the consequences of my actions might be. But I don't do that any more. I rush in, spear flashing depending on you and luck and my own idiotic sense of self worth to carry the day and even worse than that....

“So far it has. What happens when it's not enough, or you're not there to save my ass but I don't notice or forget. Or my running into the fire means that you come in with me and then I get you killed. What happens then?”

I laughed again, bitterly and I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. Which of course made me angrier.

“Princess Dorn was right to be afraid for you.” I said after a while. “She was right to warn me and she will deserve her vengeance if I get you killed.”

Kerrass continued to say nothing.

“When did I start getting so angry?” I asked, somewhat pointlessly. “When did I start looking at the world like this. I considered....I consider myself as a man of learning. A man of respect and....and peace. But I look out at the world looking for people to fight. People to start things with. I look for ways to start violence. I would prefer that to be against people that deserve to get a ballistic spear to the face but if I'm honest with myself, any poor fucker will do. Any one, if they pick a fight with me then they deserve it.

“I worry that I wanted to come with you to help you destroy Bishop Sansum. Not because of the injustice or to help you or to right a genuine wrong. Not because I wanted to clean a human stain off the face of the continent or to combat the appalling acts that are done using “Religion and faith” as a shield as though the Holy Flame tells people to torture children and burn law abiding citizens. I worry that I didn't do that, I didn't walk into that compound and set fire to the place because I was right and they were wrong, or that I was worried that the “proper authorities” wouldn't deal with the matter properly.

“I went with you because I wanted to feel something. I wanted to fight something, and get angry with someone. To kill someone. I was just grateful that there was no moral quandaries. There were evil people that I could kill and then defend my own actions with vigour and right being on my side.

“I don't know their names any more Kerrass.” I wailed. “When did I stop caring? I remember when I've walked past them and it's days later and they're already ash on the wind or buried in the ground and the chances of identifying them is getting remoter and further away with every passing second. When did I stop caring?

“When Did I start looking forward to this? When did I start wanting to fight? When did I stop caring? When did I stop worrying about the outcome of my actions? How many people have I killed, either with my own hands or as a result of what I've done and said? And why don't I care?

“Flame but what have I become? Why am I angry all the time?”

It took a long time but I realised that I had run out of words.

The rain had stopped. The only sound was the occasional glooping sound from the stew and the occasional crack from the wood in the fire.

I felt empty. Drained of energy and spark, I felt exhausted and I was trembling slightly. Caught between tears and the absolute and utter exhaustion that prevented that from happening.

Then Kerrass moved, breaking the spell. What he did was scratch the side of his head.

“Yeah,” he said, as though he was answering a question that he'd asked himself. “Yeah, if it wasn't for the fact that we were hunting for Francesca....If it wasn't for the fact that you would look for her anyway, regardless of what I said. If it wasn't for those things. I would agree with you. It is time for you to go home.”

He paused for a moment to let those words sink into my ears. I suspect he was telling himself that same truth.

“There might even be a case to be argued for you to go home. You should go home. Regardless of Francesca or what's going on at the moment with your brother and his lands and his enemies. You should go home. You should start preparing for your wedding and getting ready for your new life over in Angral. You should go home and start rebuilding your life. It is the first step towards you moving on from everything that's happened.

“But let's be honest with each other here Freddie. Would we even be keeping each other company at all if Francesca hadn't been kidnapped? Or would we both have been moving on with our lives.

“I would still be following Princess Dorn around like some kind of lap cat while at the same time doing my best to reject her romantic advances and not hurt her too badly, at the same time as gently pining away for her. You would very likely already be married. To be honest I'm surprised that you're not already. My understanding of the noble classes is that they like to get on with things. But that's by the by. You should either be getting ready for your wedding or learning what married life is like with the added little spicy nugget that you're married to an insanely powerful, ridiculously strong and equally ridiculously beautiful immortal inhuman being.

“By now we would be friends who say hello when we bump into each other. We would have made plans for me to winter with you occasionally and at the same time, you would meet me for some drunken debauchery whenever I was in the near vicinity where I would get you drunk, you would get me drunk and I would try and convince you to come to the whore house with me.”

“Which you would fail”. I commented.

“You say that now but wait until you've been married for a few years.” A thought occurred to him. “On the other hand though, she can conjure an illusion so that she can look like anything she wants. Or that you want for that matter.”

He smirked.

“Lucky bastard.”

He sat staring into the fire for a moment. Poking it with a stick and thus showing that universal truth that when you sit a man in front of a fire, then he must play with it.

“But I'm not going to send you home or insist that you return there. I think that that would be cruel in your current state. I recognise your longing for your sister and as well as there being a “need” for you to go home for your health and well being but I also think that you are not yet ready to do so. You walk along a sword edge, very possibly the sword edge of destiny where the edge you walk on is you and the other edge is death. Where one way is your need to carry on and find your sister and the other is your need to go home and rest.

“Both needs are jealous spectres on your shoulder that threaten to tear you apart if you listen too deeply to one or the other. So instead I will say a couple of things to you. You may not like some of them but I think that we're getting to the point where they need to be said.

“The first thing that needs to be said. Something that you need to hear and that you need to come to terms with is this. Anger is not new to you. You have always been angry. Always, from the moment that I first met you. I saw it flashing in your eyes when we sat down for our first breakfast where you gave me your proposition. I saw it before that when you were angry at how I spoke to you when I ordered you around to give me the right potions and before that when you were getting worried that the innkeeper would send me away before you had the chance to talk to me.”

I shifted uncomfortably on my stool. It is not pleasant to have your best friend talk to you about your character flaws.

“You have always had a deep-seated rage in you Freddie.” Kerrass went on. “i recognised that in you, it's part of the reason that I liked you so much because a lot of that rage was directed against the flaws of the world. You were angry when you heard those bandits raping that girl and you were angry again when she fled from you after you had helped rescue her. There are even several cases in your own stories where your anger overwhelmed you and you went off and did something stupid. The time you chased into a villagers cottage when the Nekkers were climbing up through the floor. The time where you made jokes and attacked the men who had blades at your throat in the same village.

“I can go on and on.

“Pulling a knife on that merchant by the docks after he belittled you. The rage that you had against Lord Dorme of Angral was terrifying, even to me, despite the obvious provocation and that he deserved your anger and your hate. It was that anger and a healthy dose of fear that made you stand up to Ariadne. Your raging at your father's death bed and your anger at the fact that the rest of your family didn't want to investigate. All of these examples. You've always been angry Freddie. Always. Since long before your sister disappeared.

“I've joked about this before, mocking and teasing you about your anger and I've suggested to you that you are a berzerker. I may have mocked you in the past but sometimes the truest words are said in jest. You are a Berzerker Freddie. I don't know how much of one you are and I have no particular desire to find out. I've said it before in jest, well now I say it with certainty. If you were born on any of the islands of Skellige you would have been taken off and trained how to use that aspect of yourself in battle for the good of your people. You would have been given mushrooms and herbs to bring that out of you until you could do it at will rather than with herbal aid.

“Given your intelligence there is also a good chance that you would have survived and they would have ended up training you as a druid, either after, during or instead of training you as a berzerker.

“Again, I have always known this about you Freddie. As I say, it is this anger that spurs you on. It causes you to act. On the doorstep of the inn where you were angry at the innkeepers treatment of me. In your account of that episode you claim that you offered to take me in without thinking but it wasn't that. It was that your anger spurred you to action.

“It is this quality that makes you a berzerker. For some people, even most people, anger is a paralytic before it is a goad to action. They freeze until the situation makes it impossible to stay still. You don't. You get angry and then you act.

“I saw it again when I cast the Axii sign at you that first time. For many, if not most people, the effects of that confuse the mind. For you, it sent you into a killing Frenzy. I had already decided that I knew what you were and this confirmed it.”

He paused in his little speech. My gaze had sunk to the floor and I was staring at my feet. As I say, this was not an easy thing to listen to and I was feeling absolutely dreadful.

“Look at me Freddie.”

I didn't respond at first.

“Freddie, look at me.”

I lifted my head. I had expected judgement in Kerrass' eyes, some kind of scorn, condemnation or even worse, pity. But instead I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. No pity, concern, nothing. Just Kerrass' blank emotionless face. The fire dancing in his eyes. When he finally spoke again he did so in a calm, methodical voice.

“The fact that you get angry is not a bad thing. Anger is not bad and it certainly does not make you a bad person. You have every right to feel the way that you feel and at all the things that you get angry about. Every right in the world.”

“My parents and tutors would tend to disagree.” I commented. I don't know why but I suspect that I was trying to divert the conversation away onto something else.

“Yes,” he said. “Parents do that, but that's because the people that we are angry with when we are young is often out parents and teachers.” His mouth twitched towards a smile. I guessed that a memory was occurring to him.

“But anger is not bad. I'm not going to tell you that anger is not dangerous because it is, especially when you hold it in and can't let go of it as you have been unable to do recently, which is again, not your fault. Or when it rages like an out of control fire, consuming everything in it's path. But it certainly isn't evil and it doesn't make you a bad person.

“It's what you do with that anger that makes a person evil.”

He shifted his own weight again. “Goddess but don't I know that.”

He sighed and rubbed his brow again. Making him appear more human at a stroke.

“It's what you do when you get angry that makes you a bad person. That's not aimed at you as much as it's aimed at myself and at the world, just to be clear. You can get angry at babies for shitting themselves. But yelling at, or striking the baby is wrong. You can get angry at the wild animal for biting you, or the starving man for stealing your food, or at the man who attacks you when he mistakes you for an enemy. But it's how you use that anger and how you react that makes you bad.

“As is how you deal with that Anger and how you express that anger. Which brings us back to you Freddie.” He said that last part with a slight smirk.

“For me, as an observer, your problem is not that you are getting angry all the time, it's that you are getting increasingly violent with that anger. You go from normal, withdrawn, calm and snarky to full on Firestorm of death and violence within seconds. That is the thing that worries me.”

He sighed.

“And partially, if not mainly, that it is my fault not yours.”

“What? Why? Errrrr. What?” That moment when you feel your own chain of thought breaking apart and shattering.

“Because I gave you that extra tool. That extra outlet. That extra way to express your anger.”

He sighed again. “Can I ask you a question here Freddie? and I want an honest answer.”

“Uhhhhh.” I mean honestly, what are you supposed to say when someone asks you something like that.

“Before you met me.” Kerrass carried on regardless. “Had you ever really been in a fight?”

He paused for an answer and I felt my mouth open as I searcher around for something to say.

“And I don't mean one of those staged practice duels that they do in the training yards at the university where fencing is taught alongside ethics, poetry and philosophy. Have you ever been in a fight? Where a punch was thrown and then another punch was thrown and then more punches or weapons were drawn or thrown. Has that ever happened to you?”

“I....”

“I also don't mean where someone just hit you and you went down. That's not a fight, that's an attack. A fight requires someone to fight back and to be able to fight back. If you're on the floor already then you can't fight back and it's not a fight. Also, it doesn't count if a fight starts around you and you flee. That's not being in a fight if you escape. You can be in a war like that but not a fight like that.”

I stared at him for a while. “I....I don't know. Maybe with Sam when we were growing up.”

He nodded his satisfaction. “That means no then. Don't be ashamed. The world would be a better place if more people could answer no to that question or say that the only fights that they've been in involve family. Even if you had been in a fight, I would bet money that you would never have started one. This is because you are an angry man but you are not a violent one. Before you protest, you aren't. I know the difference believe me. If you were a violent man then you would have promptly and simply answered that you had been in a fight. Many, many times.

“You would also not be feeling the way that you do now. You would not see your current feelings as being anything that you need to be ashamed about but that is something that we will come back to. We are talking about my culpability here.”

“Or rather, you are talking.” I tried to lighten the mood.

“Precisely so sit there and stop talking.” He told me sternly.

“You've always been angry Freddie, but before you met me and I started training you, you dealt with that anger in different ways. You might go somewhere private and weep private tears of rage. You might get into a really fierce debate with a rival. You might grab some friends and go down the tavern to have a good bitch and moan about all the things that have pissed you off lately. You might go off to the brothel and get laid. But now I've not only taken a lot of those things off you by walking through the wilderness with just the two of us and it's hard to bitch about me, to me. But I've also shown you that there is something else you can do.

“You can fight a fool.

“You can stab an idiot.

“You can kill the person that is pissing you off.”

He sighed.

“And I was the one that taught you how to do that and I feel awful about it. When I look at the man you are now and see your anguish over the things that you have done and the things that you have seen. I see that as my fault and I mourn the loss of your sheltered innocence as it was me that killed it. Even as I hated that part of you when I recognised it all that time ago.

“I made you a killer. I didn't teach you to defend yourself, I taught you how to kill the other person because I don't know any other way to fight. I don't know any other way to teach.

“I do read your works, I do and I notice how much you underplay your own combat skills. You count yourself down because you cannot beat me in a straight fight. I've told you this before as well but perhaps you have forgotten. There are maybe half a dozen fighters on the continent that could be confident of beating me in a straight fight if all other factors are equal. Most of those are Witchers. Geralt, Eskel and the Empress amongst them which is why I take every opportunity to train with them when I get the chance. There are maybe a score of others where it could go either way.

“Before you think I'm being arrogant, there are always ways that a man can fall, he can be overwhelmed by numbers, be under prepared or taken off guard. He can be sick, tired or not looking in the right direction. All of these things are true and anyone of them could end me which is why I do my best not to get overconfident. There are also ways to supernaturally increase a persons speed and skill which could end me if I have not taken them into account. A Witcher's potions for example.

“I tell you this so that you do not give yourself a negative view because you feel outclassed by me.

“You are not a fencer or a stage fighter or a....a practice ground fighter. These are the times that you hold yourself back because you are always thinking. You are always working the angle but in a fight...in a real fight? then you are deadly. When the fear and, yes, the rage are upon you which means that you either stop thinking about it, you skip the part of your brain that makes you over think and you just act which is when you become deadly.”

He stared into the fire for a moment or two before scratching his chin.

“Do you remember back at Castle Kalayn when we were all training and Sir Rickard got cross because he was outclassed by everyone else there with a sword. You two didn't face each other because I engineered it that way as neither of you needed that at that moment. But you asked about it and I told you that he would be a much more fearsome opponent on the battlefield.”

“I remember.”

“Then let me say this. If Kristoff, Danzig or...or even Sam who is a better fencer on the practice field than Rickard, took offence at Rickard's attitude and called him out for a duel. Then Rickard would kick their ass. The only one who would give him pause is your brother who is younger than either of the other men and has the benefit of the finest weaponmasters that money could buy. Rickard would eat them alive if his life was on the line and that's the difference. Rickard would no longer be fencing, he would be fighting and he learned his fighting in the gutters of Vizima.

“You are the same as he. I didn't teach you how to fence with your spear, I taught you to fight. I taught you to kill and if your life was on the line then I'm pretty sure that you could take Sir Kristoff, Danzig would be at a disadvantage and only Sam would be able to face you.”

I was appalled at this assessment but Kerrass was relentless.

“The problem, or rather the benefit for killers like us, is that you hold back on the practice yard. It's even more perfect because you don't know that you're doing it which is why people aren't as wary around you and challenging you on the practice yard.

“Don't get me wrong. You are not so advanced that you can walk around and expect to take on all comers. You will never beat someone like Sir Rickard who is a lot like you in this respect except that he was fighting for his survival since the day that he was born.

“The perfect fighter has three things. The first is a talent for combat, a talent for violence. They can pick up any weapon and be reasonably skilled with it in a short while. But this is by far the least important quality of the perfect fighter as it promotes overconfidence and as a quality, it perishes with age. Sooner or later, it can be defeated by the man that knows the counters to your favourite move if you depend on the talent for violence. Or the person that is clever enough to avoid your blows which leads me on to the second thing.

“The second thing is that they have the right kind of mind for it. Weaponscraft is an easy thing to learn, for example, the pointy end goes in the other man, but try that against a master and you would struggle. That's where the thing about people saying that high level fights are a contest of mind and will rather than skill comes from.

“The last thing is that they have a thirst for it. Not a thirst for violence but a desire to be better. A desire to train and learn how to use these weapons.

“After everything else, the rest of it is experience.

“What you have.” He jabbed a finger at me. “Is the second and third parts of that. Most people have one or two parts of it. You have the analytical mind for it. For example, when you fought that knight in the throne-room of Angral, you saw the gap in the man's guard and armour and simply stabbed forward. You even wrote it yourself when you fought your cousin in the woods near Oxenfurt, you wrote “That you were already planning his death,” until we diverted you from that plan. You have the brain.

“You also have the thirst. That thirst is that you have needed those skills to survive. It wasn't natural to you and we had to instil that....that need into your character. But you have it now. You are the one that reminds me to train and you're always hunting out new people to train against and to learn new tricks with your spear. You stood up to Letho until you properly understood what he was teaching you. How many people would have had the balls to do that? Not many.”

He shook his head.

“Your brother has all three of those things although, by his own admission, he is losing his desire to learn. He resents the constant need to train. I will tell you what I told him. If he stops training to better himself as he desires then he will start to see an erosion of his skill in about a year, eighteen months at most.

“Rickard has all three. Kristoff has the first only and depends on his armour and his experience to carry the day. Danzig has the first two but his mind is often on other things.”

He shook his head, as though dislodging a thought from his brain.

“But I'm going off on one.

“You have the last two, but after those three things. It comes down to experience and you already have more experience of fighting than most people.”

“Oh come on Kerrass. There have been three wars in living memory.”

“Yes, but those weren't fights. Those were battles where it's often decided in the deployment, the training, the equipment and the morale of the thing. I'm talking about fighting. Down, in the dirt, fighting for survival.”

He sighed.

“And I gave you that. I made you do that.

“Now you have an extra option when you are confronted with a....heh....when you're confronted with a confrontation.” He started counting off his fingers. “You used to have, tell a joke to diffuse the situation, make a reasoned argument to sway the other person to your point of view, leave the site of the confrontation, admit defeat.” His hand lowered. “But now you have a fifth which is to begin violence. This is made worse by the fact that in travelling with me you have seen, over and over again that violence gets the best results and is, often, the best choice.

“So now, you default to violence as your first response. You get angry, you're in a confrontation, and then....violence.

“I did that to you and for that I am eternally sorry. I am so sorry.”

I had nothing to say to that. What does one say?”

“You remember when we were coming out of Toussaint?” he asked. “That conversation that we had on the tower when I explained why I was so angry at you. I told you that you were responsible for the best part of me. You had taught me that we needed to help people. Well, as it turns out, I, in turn, am responsible for the worst part of you. I have taught you to be violent. But you would not have survived without it.”

I had nothing to say to that either.

“But what I can say,” he said after a while. “Is that I recognise the rest of what you're going through.”

“Oh?” I felt the first flutterings of hope, somewhere deep in my chest.

“Yes. I once told you about the trial of Death?”

I struggled to remember for a moment before it came to me.

“We were in a brothel when you told me about that.”

“Yes, and I was drunk and you were in a sexual daze. On balance, I probably shouldn't have told you about it as it really is one of the Witcher's secrets that we don't talk to other people about. But still..... You are going through your own version of the trial of death.”

“You said that it was something that only Witchers go through.”

“Which is correct. I'm not telling you that you are a Witcher, far from it. I think it's more likely that this has come about because of the accident of your circumstances.”

He grinned at my confusion. To my credit, I was tired and grumpy. “Don't worry,” he told me, “I will explain.

“You have surrounded yourself with death. When you first joined me on the path, that death was the means to an end. You were using the death and the hunts to gain knowledge which you then published. It was a means to an end and you could leave the journey at any time that you wanted to.

“But now?

“You are surrounded by death and it is now the point of the exercise rather than being the means to an end. Your desired end, at the moment, is to find your sister or the people that took her. That end will also be violent, or more precisely, you intend it to be violent and result in the death of your enemies. The pursuit of the knowledge is no longer the desired goal but is now a by-product of what you are doing.

“So you are going for death. You have become deadly, your friends are equally, if not more, deadly. You leave death behind you and in front of you there is only death. And by your own admission, you cannot leave this path. The desire to find out what happened to your sister is your stick that drives you and your carrot that draws you on and you cannot ignore it.

“All around you there is death and you are becoming fascinated with it. But you are also human and do not have the benefit...heh...or curse of Witcher training which means that this is all coming to a head sooner than you are strictly comfortable with as you don't have the defences against it.

“You are becoming addicted to the adrenaline of combat. You glory in being deadlier than your opponent. This is all signs of the Trial of Death. Before long you will start to become fascinated by your own death. When it will come, how it will come and what will that lead to. Have you started imagining what your funeral will look like yet?”

I said nothing.

“As I thought.” Kerrass said softly. “You are beginning your dance with death which ends in deaths final embrace.”

“You make it sound so hopeful.” I tried for a joke.

“Don't cheapen this Freddie.” He almost snapped.

“I thought you said that only Witchers go through this.”

“In most cases that would be true, and when I told you about the trial of death, I thought it was true, but what you describe is so close to the things that I was feeling when I went through the trial of death that it may as well be the thing. The reason that I thought that only Witchers can go through the trial of death is that, at the end of the day, everyone else can lead the paths that they are on.

“But now you can't. Can you?”

It was not a question so much as a statement but I thought I detected that he was hoping that I could answer in the positive.

I thought about it for a moment. Moving the idea around in my head. The trial of Death. I remember being appalled at what Kerrass was talking about. Appalled at the prospect that he described, that a person would have to go through that.

Was he right?

Some of the things that he had talked about were far closer to the bone than I had previously thought possible. I was becoming addicted to that feeling that occurs in combat. That moment where the fear melts away and it's between me and the person that I'm facing. The impact of weapon on weapon and that glorious exultation when I realise that I would live for another day.

That I would live to fight another day.

I was living for the fight now. Kerrass was right. I was living, to find the people that had taken Francesca from us and to slay them. I was familiar with the philosophical danger of that though which was the question of what would happen if I didn't find Francesca, or what would happen if I did find Francesca. Would I be satisfied with that or would I look for the next fight and the next fight?

I could see the slippery slope stretch out ahead of me and I wondered if it was already too late for me. Then I thought about Ariadne and wondered if she would still love me despite all that. I had time enough to register that thought before I felt panic flutter in my chest and the first tendrils of fear beginning to claw at my throat. I didn't want to die like that. I wanted to live. I wanted to marry Ariadne and live with her. I wanted to watch the sunrise with her and make love to her and with her. I wanted to see if it was true what she said about her “erogenous zones being similar enough to humanities to give and receive pleasure.” I was looking forward to that. I wanted to see what sounds she would make when she lost control. If I could make her lose control.

But I couldn't do that if I went down this path. Would she even love me if I was as self-destructive as all of that.

But I couldn't leave the path that I had set for myself. I had tried this before. I had tried thinking about turning aside from my mission and returning home and the very thought had made me physically ill.

“What did you say?” Kerrass asked me.

“What?”

“You said something.”

“Did I?”

“You said. “Halp me.” Or I think that's what you said.”

It was so ridiculous that I laughed and that laughter brought the tears again. But for some reason these tears felt healthier than the others. I wept for myself and I wept for Francesca and the loss of innocence. I had realised that I was looking at the world differently now. I wasn't looking for new things that might surprise me or educate me into some new kind of insight into the way the world works. I was looking for things that might kill me or that I might have to kill. And I wept for that lost sense of wonder.

“Help me.” I said after a while. “What do I do?”

“If I were you?”

I nodded.

“Are you kidding.” He grinned nastily. “If I were you I would drop everything and run, probably without thinking about it enough to get my horse. I would run to the nearest bar and drink it. Then I would go to the local alchemist where I would show them a sack and tell them to fill it with all kinds of recreational herbs including several aphrodisiacs and ways to make a man last longer before I would march into a local brothel and make use of as many of the women as could handle me.”

He mused for a moment.

“Possible a bit different in your case. You would head off to pick up Ariadne and show that woman how much you love her. You know, if our situations were reversed.”

His smile faded a little, “But I'm not am I.”

He sighed again and reached into his own bag and brought out another of those bottles of strong apple brandy that he likes so much.

“I can't advise you on this Freddie, I'm sorry but I just can't. I can tell you how I did it and you can form your own determinations from that.”

I nodded. “That's better than nothing.”

“I found a small piece. Just a small thing that I could build on. A foundation stone that I could take forward. A small thing to look forward to. In my case it was the bite of a fresh apple. You know the kind that makes your mouth twist with the almost sour sweetness of it. So juicy that it almost spits in your eye when you bite into it. I became obsessed with finding an apple like that until I finally bought one off a merchant who looked at me in bemusement as I stood in front of his stall and ate the thing in several mouthfuls. I remember him laughing as I asked him in a small voice as to whether or not he had another one and overcharged me for that one which I took my time over.

“Why do you think I insist that we go out and get drunk after several days worth of work and sleeping in ditches and eating shit food and wallowing in filth where people talk down to us and we're surrounded by rudeness and lies. I take us to a place where we can get clean, enjoy good food and be surrounded by beauty. So, I need to pay for the privilege of being loved but, I tell you, that I don't begrudge that money for the way that they make me feel.”

I carefully did not point out to him that there was a person out there that would love him without being paid for it. I decided that Kerrass was not receptive to that right now. He was trying to help me and I thought it was rude if I had tried to distract him from that.

“So that's what you need to do Freddie.” Kerrass went on. Seemingly oblivious to the direction that my thoughts had taken. “Find the small things that make you smile away from the combat. The things that are different from your job, or your self imposed task. You have something long term to look forward to which is to marry a woman that loves you. But now you need something small that has nothing to do with combat, fighting, righting wrongs or educating the masses. You used to get excited about the small pieces of trivia that you would learn on the road. Can you pick that up again?

“I don't need an answer for now Freddie, Just think about it.

“Pick a drink, pick an item of food. Look at the scenery that we travel through. Enjoy the companionship of friends. Feed your horse an apple, watch the sunrise or the sunset and smell the summer rains and the crisp mountain air.

“This is not easy. I won't lie to you and tell you that it is. I struggled with it for a long time but that's how I climbed out of that hole the first time I found myself in it. You also need to vary your techniques, but it can be done.

“But I have one more thing to say.”

I felt drained. Enormously tired and wrung out. “What's that?”

“You were worried by this Freddie. You were concerned by your shifting attitude and you didn't like your hunger for violence or revel in your rage. If you had, this conversation would have been very different and would have happened a long time ago whether you were ready for it or not. You can be proud of yourself Freddie and if you can't do that, then you should know that you don't need to be ashamed.”

I nodded and the two of us sat there, staring alternately into the fire and out into the deepening gloom while passing the bottle of apple brandy between us. We put the pot back on the fire and ate.

“Wow Kerrass,” I said after a while. “Why so wise?”

He smirked. “Don't get too impressed. That's not a long way away from the conversation that I had with an elder Witcher when I was in a similar state. I've been thinking about some of that for a while.”

I nodded.

“So,” Kerrass said after we had stacked the dirty pots and leant back against the stone, “Speaking of the small pleasures in life. Is it time to call them in?”

I chuckled a bit. “Don't you want to do it?”

“Nah,” Kerrass smirked. “It'll be funnier if you do it.”

“Well, as you insist.” I got up and leaned out into the night.

“COME OUT YOU NOISY BASTARDS.” I yelled into the night. “I can hear you breathing.”

There was a delay of a couple of minutes before Sir Rickard stepped out from behind a large tree a short distance away looking sheepish. He put his hands to his mouth and blew making a bird call.

“You can't blame me for following you.” He told us as the other Bastards came out from behind the trees. “Your sister ordered us to escort you everywhere you went and I'm more scared of her than I am of you.”

He walked into our little enclosure and sat on the stool that Kerrass vacated for him before accepting the bottle of apple brandy from me.

“You heard us?” A combination of shame and scepticism in his voice.

“To be fair,” I said. “Kerrass saw you the day we departed. It took me until the day after.”

Rickard nodded muttering something about getting soft.

“So,” he said after a while as I could hear the Skelligan Sergeant ordering a new deployment of sentries. “What were you talking about?

He looked really cross when Kerrass and I started laughing.

(A/N: And to think I worried that that conversation wouldn't take up an entire chapter.)

(Further A/N: In comparison to the chapter regarding Father Gardan, this chapter regarding Freddie's mental state has been coming for a while. Having said a lot about this kind of thing after Gardan's chapter, I'm not going to go over old ground here. Just to say that if you need to talk to someone about any of the stuff discussed in this chapter, them please feel free to get in touch.)