It was an hour before we saw any sign of the enemy. We came across a fire, a large smoking mess of a bonfire, made out of a lean-to of new wooden logs. Vast columns of smoke was billowing up from it and blending into the mist so that you couldn't tell where the mist ended and the smoke began. As we got closer and closer to it my vision started to flicker and the edges of my eyes seemed turn red. I smelled sulphur and could hear the sound of someone screaming.
“Scarves up,” came the call from further up but I was already lifting mind into place and breathing deeply of that perfume of herbs that was keeping us safe. Kerrass and a couple of volunteers went closer for a look. Apparently there were buckets of this odd, black goop that they had been ladling onto the fire that would then sizzle and bubble in the flames releasing the smoke. There were signs of people nearby but there was enough of a feeling that we were already being watched.
We didn't wait long before we were being ordered back to the march again.
The pace was steady. Not too fast but also not so slow that people were struggling to keep up. Of those people that were struggling, I was by far the worst and I knew it. I steeled myself for the extra exertion and did my best to fortify myself with daydreams.
I thought about what Ariadne would look like with her hair tousled across her face first thing in the morning. If she slept at all that was.
I thought about Francesca and what was happening to her at the moment, including if what was happening to her was that she was under a layer of earth somewhere, slowly being devoured by worms. It might sound painful or useless but my theory was that the anger that I would feel about that circumstance would give energy to my legs and distract me from the increasingly searing pain in my lungs.
The problem was that I wasn't getting nearly enough air through the scarf across my face in order to run properly. Not nearly enough. But if I took the scarf down then I was susceptible to the poisons and toxins that Cavill's people were pumping out into the air. I went for a mixture in the end. I would keep the scarf down for as long as I could bear it before lifting the scarf into place to provide some measure of relief from the horror that was assailing my sanity.
The poison seemed less potent than it did last time around the village and the castle. I don't know why. It's possible that the smoke was spread over a wider area rather than being concentrated to one place or another. It's also possible that over the time, I had begun to get used to it. There is also the very real possibility that I was in so much pain from old fatigues and pains as well as the effort required to just put one foot in front of the other and to keep breathing in and out that the visions that were dancing in front of my eyes were rather dull.
For the record. It looked as though the world was on fire.
The pain seemed to dull as one thing blurred into another. The dreams and the fantasies that I was trying to use to distract me from what was happening shifted into nightmares. Half fuelled by Cavill's poison and half tainted by the exhaustion that was still affecting me. The pain in my lungs and legs shifted into a dull ache, a never ending sea of pain that I was adrift on. I remember having an in depth conversation with my father where I wept with him for the state of the family and how these things had been allowed to happen. I screamed at the sight of Francesca, Emma, Ariadne, Laurelen, The Empress and more were thrown onto fires of rage that were fuelled by bile and hatred.
I gained a headache as well as the pain in my legs, chest and throat. It felt as though my brain was expanding and the creaking that I could hear was my skull struggling to expand to contain the stillg rowing mass that my brain had turned into.
Then we stopped. I had to be caught as I nearly ran into the person in front of me.
It dimly occurred to me that someone was splashing water into my face and I shook my head to clear my vision.
“Put your damned scarf round your mouth.” A screaming face of flame was telling me. The face resolved into Rickard's expression of concern when I did what I had been told. “Flame's sake Freddie. We're two hours in to it and you're already struggling.
“I just need....” I was panting for breath. “I just need....”
“What you need is a week's rest followed by another week and then a little more rest to make sure.” He told me, not unkindly. “Drink, as much water as you can. It will help.”
“I'm sorry Rickard. I'm sorry.”
“Don't be sorry.” He told me. “Be angry. Be angry at the people that put you through all of this so that you're at a fraction of your normal strength. Be angry at the people that killed Taylor and that are trying to stop us from getting the word out. Kreve's tits but get angry at me if it'll help. You just need to make it Freddie, just get through the next few days and I promise that you can rest and recover.”
“I should be stronger....” I moaned.
“Bullshit.” He told me. “You should be. But blood loss, exposure, malnutrition, exhaustion, shock, anxiety, grief and stress can't just be bounced back from. But if you dwell on it, it'll kill you. You're actually doing quite well considering. Now drink the water,” he smiled with his eyes, his own mouth and nose hidden behind the scarf. “And keep your bloody scarf up.”
He moved off. Calling out to everyone else, “ten minutes.” He did it in Northern speak followed by a bit of heavily accented Elven. “Deg munud,” he said softly to the knots of Elves in stage whispers. Alternating between the two.
The others stood around, stretching legs and arms, bending and walking off the stiffness as well as drinking from out waterskins and passing out small amounts of the dried meat that we had all stuffed into our pouches.
But then someone, presumably Rickard who had clearly gone mad because there is absolutely no way that we had been resting for ten minutes, declared that it was time to start marching onwards again at the part run, part skip, part walking pace that he set.
It was brutal.
Apparently it's called “Quick time.” The speed of Temerian Light troops. Three steps running, three steps walking but I had absolutely no way of know that. No way of understanding that either. I was in pain, lots of pain and what little bit of my intelligence that I still had possession of was dribbling out of my ears and down my leg.
I threw up during the second rest period. I began to feel as though I could taste the poison that was flowing through the sky and it caused my stomach to cramp up which meant that I had to make a choice between keeping down the live giving water that I was consuming, or I could be comfortable.
But our luck didn't hold. How could it? I don't know why we were surprised really. I honestly don't know why I, why we, thought that we could make it through.
The first clues that they were closing on us were felt in the ground as it began to shake. We could hear the hooves drumming against the ground although I will admit that I felt it rather than heard it through my haze of pain and exhaustion.
Somehow, I don't know how, Rickard and the Bastards did it. But they split. Half in the front as led by Rickard, while half fell back to be the rear-guard as led by the Sergeant. Then, and this was the really unbelievable part. They picked up the pace.
I must have groaned or expressed some kind of disbelief because the huge, muscle bound Elf seized me by the collar and began to haul me along. It hadn't registered at the time but someone had also taken my pack off me. I still had my spear and dagger though. I knew this because the cold metal of the spear haft was one of the few things that was keeping me grounded.
I felt the fighting more than heard it. The rear guard fell into their patterns of fighting in pairs. . One sprinting backwards while his partner aimed and shot at another hound. Often aiming for the horses rather than the riders. Bigger and easier targets I suppose but the screams of the injured animals cut through my skull like a woodsaw. The sound seeming to explode from a vision of Francesca being torn apart on the rack.
Another halt was called and, despite a heaving stomach and gasping for air, I pulled the scarf over my mouth and breathed deeply so I could return to some kind of sanity. I was drinking and chewing a piece of meat when The rearguard came up. Somewhere it registered that the Sergeant's partner in combat was Carys, the Elven woman who had taken up Cooper's bow.
“Heh,” the Sergeant chuckled in his broad Skelligan brogue. “That'll learn the bastards.” He said it loudly so that others could hear.
“Sergeant?” Rickard jogged over, the bastard wasn't even breathing hard.
“About twenty of the cunts.” The Sergeant reported. “We dropped a couple and they fell back. They've got crossbows which they seem confident in firing from the saddle.”
“Accurate?”
The Sergeant laughed at him.
“You seem to have picked up a new soldier there Sergeant?” I commented between gulps of water.
The presence of an enemy that I could hit as well as the clarity of thought that the scarf and the herbs brought was incredible.
“We have at that.” He commented before turning back to Rickard. “Might have to change the name though Sir. She doesn't really suit being called a “Bastard”.
“Maybe a “Bitch,” Sergeant.”
“Rickard's Bastards and Bitches.” The Sergeant mused. “Whaddaya say lads?”
The surviving Bastards gave a little cheer.
“Do you want to tell her that what her new title is Sergeant?”
Without blinking, the Sergeant turned and informed the woman that she was the Bastard's first Bitch in relatively good Elven.
“When did you learn to speak Elven Sergeant?” I asked.
His huge bearded face creased in confusion. “Can't everyone speak Elven sir?” He turned away from us all. “Right Lads and Lass. Let's have an arrow count.” He was moving off.
It was almost imperceptible but it was there. Now that the enemy was here, we all felt better. We were almost in good spirits as Rickard called for the march to start again.
It wasn't to last though. Because of course it didn't. Constant pressure from enemy attacks will do that.
Not only were they trailing us from behind, getting closer and closer before provoking a shot or two from the rear guard, but we could also see them off on our right flank. Flitting through the trees in ones and twos. Not making any move to come towards us but likewise, always being there. Despite our best efforts.
Then, out of nowhere they charged us. Just turned their horses and started riding at us with some speed. Darts from their small crossbows sped towards us and the line of runners seemed to shiver as some of the bolts struck home. They were painfully inaccurate but even if you shoot badly made cross-bows into a mass of people, some of them will hit home.
The Elves had their bows which were lifted, arrows drawn back to their cheeks in one smooth movement before a split second delay and the arrows spread from the bowstrings. I saw two horsemen fall as they retreated. Two Horsemen either badly wounded or dead. Whereas we were left with mere injuries. Some of the Elves seemed pleased with this but, as we ran on and Rickard came back to check on the state of matters, I could tell that he was furious.
“They can absorb the losses, he told me. Two men? All he has to do is to go into a village and steal some more, addict them to the drugs and then he's replenished his numbers. But every loss hurts us.”
We ran on. Still shadowed behind us and on one side.
The wounded started to struggle with things and we were forced to stop for another rest. But that's when those horsemen that were behind us started to attack properly. To my eyes it was fairly clear that the Horsemen that were part of the “Chasing Group” were the experienced and trained soldiers. Those men off to the side were the villagers and farmers that had been taken. The attackers darted from tree to tree, covering each other and shooting back at us. Again, I don't think that they were particularly trying to hurt us that much. Just to keep us moving. It worked too. I didn't even have time to drink any water before we started to run off again.
The poison in the mist was beginning to get thicker and stronger. I grew more and more grateful that Kerrass had been able to come up with a way of countering those effects as I have no idea how we would do what we needed to do with our brains reeling from the hallucinations.
I had lost track of time a long time ago and the pain was coming back. Could no longer allow myself to sink into the day dreams that I had used before. Now there was the danger that I would have to fight at a moments notice.
I discovered at one point that tears were streaming down my face. I felt them before I realised that I was weeping with fear, fatigue and helplessness.
Even early on during my journeys with Kerrass, I do not ever remember feeling this useless.
The riders on our flanks made another feint at us with exactly the same result. The Elves fired another volley and another few Horsemen fell.
This time though, they let us have a rest. The Riders behind us just sat on their horses, wreathed in the smoke so that even if we weren't being affected by the hallucinogenic smoke, they would look strange, ethereal and sinister. They stood their horses perfectly still. The only reason that we knew they were real at all rather than pictures that our minds invented for us, was due to the restless movements of the Horse's tails.
A group of Elves wanted to attack but Rickard held them back. Swearing at them in their own language that if they tried so foolish a thing that he would shoot them himself before taking their arrows as he could no longer afford the waste.
His comments put what was happening into a bit of context for me. Every time that the Horsemen attacked us, we were firing back at them. Sometimes in one's and twos but other times we were doing so in volleys. How many arrows were we losing in these exchanges? Our one advantage lay in the fact that the Bastards were amongst the best missile troops on the continent and the Elves were no slouches either having had centuries of tradition to fall back upon. But what would happen when we ran out of things to shoot.
I had previously thought it impossible that I could feel any more hopeless than I already felt but I was wrong.
I try, now, really hard to get the order of events in the right order and for the most part I think I've got this right. But after that last rest where the Riders let us drink some water and see to the wounded was the last time that I have a sense of the order of things. I remember individual moments. I remember distinctly tripping over a tree root and giving myself a black eye as I was threatening to lose consciousness while on my feet. There was a moment of intense danger when my legs wanted to just keep running as they didn't seem to realise that I had fallen and could no longer get up. The Elf next to me had to grab to of his friends and between the three of them they physiscally heaved me up to an upright position and dragged me along until my legs got the right idea and started to pump again.
I remember vomiting and not even having the energy to turn my head to one side so that I wouldn't smear it down myself.
I remember having to perform my own rescue of someone else as a woman running in front of me slipped and fell, on something unspeakable. On some kind of instinct she held her hands up and I grabbed one while my companion grabbed the other and we were able to haul her to her feet so that she could get back to running.
I remember the forest around us seeming like it was on fire and that it seemed to ripple and crest in waves like the sea during a storm. That the sky was black with storm clouds that threatened to send oceans of blood down on to our upturned faces. Holes opened in the sky through which a giant eye seemed to peer through and tentacles emerged from other, similar holes. The holes were edged with blue flame. I remember looking at all of these things and crying with despair. But then I was handed a scarf with a fresh herbal mixture and the visions of horror retreated back to wherever they came from. I sometimes worry that those images come from my brain and am left wondering what it says about me that my imagination can summon such waking dreams.
I remember Rickard running beside me for a while although I have no idea why. He was angry about something and that anger waged an eloquent war across his expression with his fear and anxiety and I had to guess that his own herbal mixture was drying out.
“What's going on?” I asked him, wheezing and fighting for breath and sanity.
“They're steering us.” He told me. “Steering us off course towards the mountains.”
I swore as I recall and when I was coherent enough to ask him what we were going to do about this, he had gone. Gone off somewhere to plot the next thing to worry about. I was dimly aware that things were beginning to look bleak and that we had lost people to fatigue and terror already.
One Elf had simply sat down, put his head in his hands and started screaming. Another woman, one of the running wounded had literally died on her feet. We didn't have time to check her to see if any of her injuries were poisoned but she simply toppled over in the middle of the march, clearly stone dead. Dead enough that we didn't even bother to check her but her legs were still pumping.
Someone else, I didn't see who as I lost them in the smoke simply went mad and charged the horseman on our flank by themselves. They were screaming. I certainly heard them screaming, I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine that part.
At some point we were permitted another rest and I felt myself coming back, slowly. With the aid of some medicinal brandy that the Sergeant wafted under my nose.
“They're steering us.” Rickard was telling us. Chireadean was there along with the Sergeant and, much to my pleasure and joy, Kerrass was there, looking alert and taking part. He still looked pretty vacant and was frowning at a point directly in front of his nose as though he was concentrating on something that only he could see. But his right arm was out of it's sling and he was holding onto his medallion. It was the most like himself that I had seen him in what felt like years. Since before we were taken by Cavill's forces in fact.
“What does that mean, that we're being steered?” Chireadean looked like I felt which meant that he looked fucking awful. He was pale, drawn and was sweating profusely and it took me a moment to figure out why. He was a leader of Elves and those same Elves were dying. His entire job was to keep them alive and he was failing, even if it wasn't his fault.
“I don't know,” Rickard told us but I can guess. “I think that Cavill and the rest of his forces are somewhere further over towards the mountains. I think we're being steered towards them and into an ambush where we can be rounded up and taken alive.”
He coughed and I woke up a bit more. His scarf was off his face and he was blinking furiously. Which was when I realised that my own scarf was missing along with the scarves of the Sergeant and Chireadean. Suddenly Chireadean's condition was a bit more explainable.
“Whereupon we all get carted off for whatever games Cavill's sick brain can get us through.”
“If we're being ambushed?” Chireadean paused for a moment and shut his eyes as he seemed to sway on his feet as though he was blowing about in the breeze. “Forgive me,” he said after a moment, blinking his eyes back into focus. “It's been along time since I kept up campaign pace.”
“We're all getting that way.” Rickard told him despite seeming more alert and ready for action than Kerrass was.
Chireadean grunted. “But if we're being ambushed then we need to break out.”
“We do. Which would be fine if we hadn't already tried that. The horsemen just fall back from us before re-applying the pressure. I would also guess that that's why they're letting us have these breaks.”
I grimaced. “The huntsmasters at home do the same thing. They don't want to completely wind the prey before the guests get to it. They want to leave some sport for the guests to partake of things.”
Rickard nodded.
An Elven woman approached staggering as she came, I didn't recognise her but there is every reason to believe that I was seeing things that weren't there so I wasn't all that worried. She was carrying a large basket and started handing round scarves that were sopping wet and the smell of the herbs was potent.
“Well, at least I won't have to worry about going completely insane for a bit longer then.” I said as I mopped my face with it. I had not realised that I was sweating and the sharp smells cut deep into my nose and cleared my head despite leaving me with a thumping headache.
There were some more chuckles around us.
“So what do we do?” Chireadean asked.
“We attack them,” Rickard said. “We choose our moment and make the bastards suffer.”
“Fuck. Yes.” This time Chireadean's smile was wolfish.
“I don't mean to be the downer here.” It was Kerrass, he was still staring into space while gripping his medallion but his words came through clearly. “But do we have the energy to put up a fight? We've been all but running all day and not many people with us are conditioned for that.”
“It's not a bad point.” Rickard said. “But if we don't do it now then we might never get the chance to at all. Because if we're tired now then we'll be even worse tomorrow.”
“Then I will ask the follow up question.” Kerrass said, his head seemed to move independently from the rest of his body which didn't change at all. “What do we do if this doesn't work?”
We all turned to look at Rickard who shifted unhappily under our gaze.
“I don't know.” He admitted after a long moment. “I really don't know.” He rubbed his brow and I saw that his hand was trembling. “All I know for sure is that if an enemy wants us to do something then we should do everything in our power to not do that thing. They want us to run headlong. Run until we're exhausted and run in that specific direction. So if that's what they want, then we should deny them their desire.”
“The further we run, the closer we get to Sam,” I pointed out.
Rickard nodded.
“It's been a long time since I've been in a room with Lord Cavill.” He told us. “A very long time and even then he will have been on his best behaviour. But it strikes me that he would be the kind of person that would dangle the bone in front of a dog's face before snatching it away at the last moment. Just for the hell of it.”
“You're saying that he will take us when we get to Kalayn lands.”
“Pretty much yeah. If he could, he would take Freddie within sight of Kalayn castle if he could figure out a way to manage it.”
“So let's punch the cunt in the balls while we still can.” It was the Sergeant's first and only contribution tot he conversation. Completely missing the joke in that statement.
We split up then, Kerrass just sat there for a while, staring into space and muttering to himself. Chireadean off to tell the rest of the Elves the plan and the Sergeant to do whatever it was that he did to keep discipline. A skill which seemed to me to come down to shouting and swearing at people although I have no doubt that there was much more to it than that. But I took that time to grab Rickard by the arm.
“Rickard.”
“What is it Freddie, I don't have a lot of time.”
“I know, it's just.....Someone needs to say it and it might as well be me. When do we start talking about offering me up in exchange for....”
“Don't even think it Freddie.” He hissed.
“You don't know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to do a martyr thing weren't you.” It wasn't a question. “You were going to suggest offering yourself in exchange for our lives. Don't even think it.” His eyes flashed with a fury that I found surprising. “If we do that, then everything that we've worked for, bled for and died for will have been for nothing. Don't even think it.” He took a breath to calm himself. “I wish I had the time to console you Freddie but I don't. This is not your fault. Our deaths are not on you. And you need to understand that if you are to survive and if I had time I would explain it to you now and every time that you needed to hear it. But I don't, so fuck off and get your spear ready, you'll need it.”
Much to my astonishment, the sun was beginning to sink down towards the horizon. It was still going to be a couple of hours before the yellows and reds started to come through but the sheer fact that we were on the back part of the day was a little mind blowing to me.
I didn't have time to think about it much as that was when the Hounds at our rear started to harry us forward again. I don't know why they had let us have such a long break. There could have been any number of reasons, perhaps they themselves were getting tired and needed the rest. Perhaps they were playing silly psychological games with us.
It was impossible to tell. But then they were coming at us, hooves thundering, crossbows firing and the buzzing noise of crossbow quarrels shooting through the air followed by the rattle as they hit and gouged into the ground or the oddly wet sound of them hitting a tree trunk. We were all well used to this now and so our gear was picked up and we were back to running.
But this time it felt different somehow. Word had been passed about what was happening and there was a strange kind of hunger in us all now. A longing almost. That desire that comes when you have the stick in your hand and you've set your eyes on the man bullying your friend.
I was still tired, stumblingly weary but I felt as though my head was clear for the first time in that day. My entire body was on fire and my head was pounding but suddenly, the prospect of being able to “pound” some of my own pain into the people that had been tormenting us for so long was an extra spur. An extra kick up the backside that leant me a fire that I had missed.
We ran. I didn't count for how long and I wasn't thinking about the direction of march too much on the grounds that I spent all my time staring at the backside of the person in front of me.
I think that we ran normally, as we had been doing for a while, letting the Hounds to our rear push us while allowing ourselves to be guided by the hounds on our other flank. My guess is that, at his own pace or whenever Rickard judged that the time was ripe for the action, he started to shift our line of march back towards the True South direction that we needed to travel in.
We were under instructions to not react too hard to this. To not seem as though this was too far out of place and to just act as though anything was strange. But I can't have been the only person who tightened their grips on their weapons.
Here they came, riding on their horses, edging closer and closer to us, aiming with their cross-bows hands outstretched.
Incidentally, have you ever held a crossbow at full extension in one arm? I have. There's a reason that military arbalists use two hands.
But here they came. Getting closer and closer and the first crossbow bolts began to wing their way towards us.
They were getting closer and closer too. Closer than they had ever been allowed to get before. I don't know why. I would like to think that it was some measurement of Rickard's tactics that he was letting them get closer so that our counter-attack could cause the most damage but I never talked to him about it. Instead I waited. I saw an Elf in front of me take a crossbow bolt to the arm, the impact of the bolt sending him staggering until his friend caught him and hauled him up, the bolt sticking out at an angle that made it look almost comical.
Someone behind me screamed. Someone else shouted in fear and with another emotion that I didn't immediately know.
I was watching the riders. Riding close, firing their bolts before drifting away to reload having obviously learnt to respect the range and the power of the Elven Longbows and the Bastard's Warbows.
Dear Flame though, Rickard was letting them get close.
But finally and mercifully, the signal came in a bellow that echoed out, easily drowning out the sounds of people's pain. Muffling the hoof beats and the constant sound of feet on the ground. Even managing to cover the sound of the blood pumping in my ear.
It was the Sergeants voice. Trained in the Skelligan isles in how to project a proper bellow before being refined on the battlefields of the continent over the course of at least two wars and numerous raiding parties. I could hear his voice clearly.
“Halt,”
I literally saw some of the riders obey. It was a primal feeling that circumvented any sense of civilisation and just ordered our legs to stop moving.
“Draw,”
All of those of us with Bows nocked arrows to bowstrings and drew them bag. Another noise that I had never heard before, the simultaneous creaking of bows as they came to their proper extensions.
“Steady now, choose your targets.” It was a warning call, not an order. “Steady.” And we waited.
Some of the riders realised what was going to happen. As I say, we were pretty sure that the people on our flanks were the drug addled conscripts that had been kidnapped from the villages and forced to work for Cavill and his sick cult. Some tried to kick their horses into moving off. Other's tried to close the distance, dropping their crossbows and beginning to tug their bladed weapons out of scabbards.
But it was too late for them.
“Fire,” Came the order and the arrows leapt from our line, many, if not all finding targets in the flesh of our enemies.
Words cannot begin to describe the feeling as we did so. Not only did we send our barbs into their flesh but we sent our hate and our fear. Our pain and our anger at these fucks, no matter how helpless they might have been in their choice of a side, crystallised in that moment and we flung them into the faces of our foes.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“CHARGE!”
I had thought that the Sergeant's previous calls had been loud but he had clearly saved this until last.
The sound that emerged from our mouths, from Elf, Human and, for all I know, Witcher was not human. It was bestial and raw. It was the sound of longing and joy as well as the anger and we sprinted forward. Pain and fear forgotten in the face of the sheer release of emotions that we had been holding onto for so long.
I ran with the rest, looking for a target and I found it in the person of a rider who had fallen from his horse. He must have thrown himself out of the saddle as the horse was dying a short way away from him, thrashing it's hooves in the ground as it died. He was still drawing his weapon from the sheath as I ran him through at a full run. The impact carried him off his feet and he fell backwards. The speed and the impact as well as my death grip on the haft of my spear carried me past him and pulled the spear blade out of his flesh. I was looking for my next target.
At some point, the protective scarf had fallen from my face but I didn't care. I had been unleashed and it felt so good.
I was screaming as I looked for my next target.
One of the horseman who had realised the danger and had pulled away from the column was coming towards me, sword out and held ready for the strike in that classic pose. But I still had enough of my senses to remember Kerrass' instructions for facing a horseman. Don't aim for the rider, aim for the horse.
As he had taught me I darted across his line of charge so that his sword was out of position. I doubt he cared about me, he had plenty of other targets but I had reversed the spear and slammed the butt of the weapon into the horses mouth.
It screamed and reared up, spraying blood and teeth from it's face.
I always feel faintly guilty after the fact for doing this to an innocent horse. At the time I'm just glad that it works but I always feel guilty afterwards.
The rider fell because they always fall.
I ran over, the smoke was affecting me now but the rage that I now know as some form of a berzerkers rage was on me and I stamped on his neck until he stopped moving.
We were through the line and our enemies were fleeing before our sudden offensive and I bellowed my triumph to the heavens that were aflame before turning for another target.
But then the ground shook again and the horsemen that had been chasing us were coming up behind us. Someone was sounding a horn and I felt the fear return as I pulled the scarf back up to cover my mouth and nose.
“To me,” the Sergeant's voice and I turned and sprinted towards it. “To me, Elves and Men,”
Remember the Elf that had been assigned to me. The large one with the heavy muscles that had picked me up and all but carried me when my exhaustion had become too much.
That's when he died. Saving my life as it happened.
I was running towards the sound of the Sergeant's voice. We had broken through the line and killed any number of Hounds but I had committed the cardinal sin of infantry when fighting cavalry. I had lost sight of my ground and a horseman came up behind me.
I had no idea. Kerrass would have been furious with me, positively apoplectic but as it is, he could not be more angry with me than I would be with myself.
Whether it was the poison still in my lungs or the blood pumping in my veins, I simply didn't hear or notice. But my bodyguard had.
He must have stayed with me all through the wait for the Sergeant's signal. During the arrow volley and during the charge. He hadn't been carrying a weapon but he had stayed at my side as though we had been glued together and when I had turned to run towards the Sergeant's rallying cry, he came with me. Not being a fool he had kept his scarf around his face. Also not being a fool he had not brought a weapon and so, I suppose, his mind was not clouded by a desire for blood. He saw the horse behind us.
He saw the rider hold out the crossbow and aim it at me and he was already moving as the bolt left the bow. The bolt struck him in the chest while he was knocking me aside and out of the way of the charging horse so that I didn't get trampled.
I spun, tucked and rolled in the way that I had first learned when Kerrass was teaching me how to evade. By some miracle of anatomy or emotion or chance, the Elf was still standing but he could clearly do little more than that. He took a step and another step but the horseman was coming back.
I was screaming again as I came to my feet, charging forwards, charging frantically. Screaming as if I could push away the inevitable by force of sound alone.
The horseman simply rode the Elf down, trampling him under the hooves of his horse.
I stepped close while he was still making sure of his kill and stabbed upwards with my spear. I was aiming for his throat, his hand dropping his sword and going to the injury. I wasn't clear but I think I missed the arteries as he was still hooded and I was aiming in the rough area. But I might have got under the chin or something and it still did the job.
He slumped and fell off the horse and I stabbed him again in the chest to make sure of the matter.
The Elf was still alive when I reached him. I could see his ribs sticking out of his side and the side of his face was horribly mangled. Pink foam bubbled from his mouth and nose but I thought I saw him smile when he saw me. I gripped his hand and he squeezed. I thought it was the least I could do really.
“To Me,” came the bellow again and I looked up to see where it was. I had been turned round at some point and the voice was coming from behind me. By the time I had looked back down, the Elf had died.
I never even found out his name.
I picked up my spear and ran on to find the others.
I wasn't the only person running. I found an Elven woman trying to haul an injured man to his feet. He was clutching a Quiver of arrows like they were made from Gold and right now. They very well might be. She was sobbing in a combination of fear and frustration as he steadfastly refused to be helped, keeping his hand over an injury as well. She was screaming and pleading with him at the same time.
I ran over to him, broke her grip and passed my spear to her before grabbing the arrows out of his hand and passing those over too. She was still screaming though but it was suddenly vitally important to me that I manage to save these two Elves, some element of me wanted the redemption for the loss of the big man earlier. I got my head under his arm and bellowed at him to “fucking stand up.”
We got to our feet and started running towards where the Sergeant was still calling out for everyone to go to his location.
We were getting close when I heard hooves behind me. This time I was not so foolish as to not be paying attention to what was going on behind me. I almost bodily threw the man into the waiting arms of the woman along with someone else who had come to help us and I snatched my spear out of her hands spinning to face the attacking horseman.
Again he had his sword raised and I felt my lips curl back into a snarl.
An arrow from nowhere punched him out of the saddle and I heard Dan's voice from behind me in the direction of the Sergeant's rallying call. “Got 'im,” and then another hand grabbing me by the shoulder and hauling me into the protective group where I found the survivors taking shelter in a tight cluster of trees.
Rickard was standing beneath one of the larger trees. Chireadean had scrambled up in an effort to see what was going on and Rickard was calling up questions. Kerrass was there as well, still muttering and holding onto his medallion, while the Sergeant was directing the defence.
“More horsemen coming from the North and the West.” Chireadean called down.
“How many more to the West?”
“Not a small number.” Chireadean told us. “I hate to use the grand words but I would suggest that we were looking at a couple of score of them. They're riding better too. Better trained than the line we broke through.”
“Fuck,” Rickard swore with some heat. “To the North, any chance we could double back?”
“Not one that I like. That's where the conscripts are coming from. It would seem that the beaters that were keeping us going have caught up with us, summoned by horn call no doubt.”
“Fuck,” Rickard said again before spitting. “So that leaves the only way of escaping?”
“TO the South East.” Chireadean jumped down. “Yes.”
“ Fuck. Precisely where they want us to be going.” Rickard said. He just stood there for a moment shaking his head, frowning in intense thought.
“FUCK!” He bellowed, slamming his fist into the tree. “FUCK, FUCK, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” He paced as he swore.”
“I'm sorry my friend.” Chireadean told him. “You brought us further than I thought possible but I think....”
The Elf looked at me. Huge eyes seemed shiny with tears. “I think that this might be where we die.”
Rickard looked up sharply. “Like fuck it is.” He snarled. “I will be damned if I die where that bastarding fart lipped shit stain wants me to.” He slammed his fist into his head for a moment. “You never do what the enemy wants. Never.”
“So what do we do?”
“These riders are mostly conscripts right?”
“So?”
“So we have to make ourselves scarier than their masters.”
“How do we do that?”
“We choose our ground. We want a hill or a valley or something. Something that we can defend. The only reason that we're not dead already is because those bastards aren't ready to kill us. They're saving us for their master. We should use that time to entrench and fortify.”
“Why not here?” I asked, the thought of going back out into the chaos of charging horses, flying arrows and singing blades felt like more than I could handle at that point.
“We can't defend this place.” Rickard said. “There's cover but we're too confined to work. Only half a dozen of us can fight and the rest are useless. There aren't any clear lines of fire and.....”
“Alright alright I get the picture.”
“Follow me,” For a moment I didn't recognise the voice. It sounded strange and almost alien in my ears. “We go this way. South and a little West.” Kerrass was pointing
“Why what's there?” Rickard's not unreasonable question.
“I have no idea. Something though.”
“Then what possible reason do we have....” Chireadean's temper was beginning to fray at the edges.
“You're an Elf.” I realised what it was about Kerrass' voice that I didn't recognise. He was excited. “Can't you feel it? There is magic in the air, magic happening all around us and it's happening now. We need to go that way.” He pointed again.
Rickard's eyes darted between the two of them before coming to rest on me. I had no idea what to do and I simply shrugged.
“What the hell,” Rickard sighed. “Lead on Witcher.”
We ran. Once again, I was surprised by how things worked. It was the bastard's that led the formation. Such as it was. I don't think that there was many more than thirty or so of us left by this point but it was the bastards that led. I was so used to having them in the back of us, acting as our rear-guard that I almost felt naked without them there. I found myself looking over my shoulder all the time. Chireadean had taken up some of the slack, keeping back some of the bowmen and doing his best to instil some form of military discipline. He wasn't entirely successful. The Elves were pouring their anger and hate out at the chasing riders. Not just the generalised background anger that Elves all over the world have towards humanity but also the specific hate that these Elves have towards Cavill's followers.
To be fair, who could blame them.
But it meant that the rear of our group was getting strung out but it did mean that I could see what Rickard had meant. One concentrated charge could have wiped us off the map but the Hounds seemed almost reluctant to charge home. Instead they were just harrying us until one of the Elves careful arrows would pluck a horseman from his saddle which would send a group of the Hounds into a rage and they would charge after us.
I couldn't see much though. I had been pushed towards the middle of the cluster of Elves and was held there. There were two women behind me that almost literally snapped at my heels in order to keep me moving where there was more men on either side of me that kept me going so all I could do was to keep moving forwards.
Kerrass was off with the bastards up front leading us off to wherever he was taking us.
We seemed to come over a lip of a valley into what almost looked like some kind of crater. You can see them occasionally in the North where some meteorite or another has crashed into the ground flinging up these kind of curved walls and it was like we were running and scrambling down the sides of one of those. The slope was still heavily wooded but the addition of gravity stole whatever cohesion and discipline we had left. We ran on, some of us, including me, spent more time tumbling down the slope than we did running but the effect was the same. I lost my guardians as I fell and scrambled to my feet. I had twisted my ankle at some point and pain was shooting up my legs but looking behind me I could see horsemen coming to the lip of the crater and fear leant me speed. I scrambled on, all but using my spear as a walking stick as I ran.
Some of the more enterprising hounds dismounted from their horses and started to come down the slope after us. I suppose that they had realised that their horses would not do well coming down the slope and I also guess that they had begun to realise what was happening and were doing their best to goad us into some kind of foolish action.
I saw an Elf dump his pack and draw a sword, turning to face the coming Hounds behind me. His face almost seemed serene and I swear that he was singing as the Hounds headed towards him.
Another Elf beside me fell with one of the small crossbow bolts in her back. I bent to help her but my leg screamed at me and I nearly fell. She waved me on, sobbing, face wracked with pain and grief. She spat blood from her mouth and drew a knife.
I didn't see what she did with it. I like to think she took a Hound down with her.
I ran, or hobbled onwards until I came to the edge of the tree line. There was an open band of grassland that stood between the edges of the trees and what, I assumed, we were running towards.
The grass was about 1000ft across. Just further than bow-shot and it was all but flat, still tilting slightly towards what was in the middle of the crater which turned out to be a small hill.
Calling it a hill, was even too much really, more of a mound, perfectly round and rising out of the ground as if the ground itself had bubbled up to form it. On the hill itself, which I could see was largely grassed, was a series of trees, some of which were already swaying and falling from where the bastards seemed to be chopping them down frantically.
The remaining Elves and I ran towards this mound. I saw Chireadean stand with a group of Elven Archers stop in the middle of the grassland before turning to fire over the heads of those of us that were still straggling behind me back to the tree line but even from my distance I could hear the Sergeant bellowing. I risked stopping to see.
The Sergeant was standing at the foot of the hill and pointing to the east and I looked and could see an area where the ground was flatter than the slope that I had tumbled down and there were already horsemen coming down it. Then he pointed to the west and where there were still more Hounds coming from the treeline and I saw the meaning of the Sergeant's warning.
We were surrounded now and the horses were coming. Chireadean's little band of Archers would not stand up to the coming cavalry and they turned and ran towards the hill.
I was too far from it though and I gritted my teeth, willing my legs to move faster. I managed to get up to a jog and then a run. Pain shot up my leg, through my back and into my skull but I told myself that this was nothing compared to the pain that I would feel if the bastards caught me.
I looked over and the horses were getting closer. A cross-bow bolt hummed as it went past my ear.
From somewhere I managed to find enough energy to sprint and I ran on. I was still limping but I kept my eyes on the bastards on the hill that were calling me on, calling all of us that were still in the valley between the tree line and the hill on.
Those men and Elves that had made it to the hill were working frantically, chopping down the trees and digging pits with the Bastard's little entrenching tools. Tugging trees into place and forming crude barriers.
Much to my dismay, I discovered that the ground of the grass was not entirely flat as it started to slope upwards. The long day of running and the longer days of hiding and physical deprivation and fear as well as whatever it was that Cavill and his fucks had done to my while I was asleep were taking their toll now and tears of pain and fear streamed down my face.
I nearly gave up. I don't mind admitting it. I nearly gave up but an Elf caught me up from behind. The swordsman that I had seen singing as he swung his blade earlier. Blood ran freely from his left arm and he must have dropped his blade and ran for it. He caught me under my arm and we ran on but hope left me. I could hear the hoof beats behind me. I knew that I should dodge to the left or right. That logical part of the brain that knew this was screaming at me but I just ran on to get to the barrier and the waiting arms of the Elves that were screaming and hollering for us to come on.
We were getting so close now and I could barely move my legs.
Mercifully the pain and fear had turned to rage now and I growled at myself as I pushed myself on and on. The distance between us and safety got smaller and smaller. The hooves got closer and closer.
“Freddie Down,” Someone yelled to me. Don't ask me how the noise carried, but it did and the Elf and I fell to our knees as a hail of arrows buzzed over our heads.
I heard horses scream but the Elf was already up and hauling me to my feet although even he looked far from perfectly healthy himself.
On we ran. I was being dragged now before two of the bastards. Dan, I think and someone else, a red head, jumped over the barricades and bodily carried me to safety. The Elf coming in just behind us as I fell.
We were the lucky ones.
All told, it had only been an hour or so since Rickard had told us to attack the Horsemen.
There were maybe six Elves that were still running towards the hill as the Horsemen came among them. I didn't see it as I was too focused on getting to safety and I didn't hear it as my own breath was echoing in my ears along with my snarls and gasps and moans. But as I collapsed, just the other side of the barriers that the Elves and Rickard were frantically erecting around the bottom of the hills, I could hear them as the Horsemen rode them down.
I think someone might have had the courage to ensure that they didn't get taken alive but the rest were taken. The Hounds then spent some time trying to goad us into leaving the protective circle of the hill and the system of barriers and trenches that people were setting up. Already the top of the hill was looking less and less forested.
But I lay there as the Horsemen tortured those remaining Elves to death. I couldn't even lever myself to any kind of sitting position, I was just too exhausted so I had that guilt as well. I felt that, somehow, I should have sat up and watched as those people died for me. Died to make sure that I could get a bit further along my road towards my goal.
So instead I just listened as they were tortured. I heard the wet sounds and the grinding noises and the screams that were torn from those broken bodies.
At the beginning, bless them, those Elves fought it. They knew what was happening. They knew that we were being provoked into attempting to leave our relative safety and they screamed at us to stay where we were, to protect ourselves and to do everything that we could to stand firm and strong.
It was heart-breaking.
But no-one's sanity can survive that for very long and gradually they stopped telling us to stay where they were and started to beg for help. Beg for rescue or beg for an end to it all. All I could do was lie there and listen.
Then the screams started to become less and less coherent and one by one, they just died.
Dan brought me water. I was so tired and in so much pain that he had to carefully prop up my head so that I could drink it
I could do nothing but lay there for far too long as the night began to fall.
Someone else arrived although I didn't see who, I was in a nightmare state of pained dozing and they started to massage some life back into tired muscles. It was agony but eventually, that agony began to turn into relaxant and I dozed. How I managed that I will never know.
When I woke up it was fully dark and I was woken by the sounds of distant screaming. I tried to sit up without thinking and gasped at the pain that shot through me.
There were a couple of Elves sat crouched behind a barricade near me that were looking out over a barricade, little more than a fallen log that had had a small trench dug behind it. One of them saw me moving and came over to help me into a sitting position.
“Still alive?” He asked me in Elven.
“Just,” I answered in that same. “What's going on?”
“Look,” He was talking simply to me, in the same way that you might talk to a child.
With my entire body screaming I managed to pull myself up so that I could see over the top of the tree and I gasped.
We were surrounded now. Moving around in the tree line. Occasionally lone sentinels of the Hounds would walk out from the edge of the trees and just stand there, staring out at us, carrying torches that guttered and shone in the darkness. But mostly it was the lights in the trees that caught my attention. Constantly moving and swirling around. Like fireflies on an autumn's day. Each one of them carried by a Hound in their full regalia.
It was oddly beautiful. I thought that it might have been intended to be some kind of intimidation technique but if it was, the Hounds had miscalculated. We were no longer the badly-educated and superstitious village folk that normally made up the majority of their prey. Now they were facing Elves and I could see a sense of wonder in the Elven eyes as they watched the chaotic patterns as they danced in the darkness.
A sense of peace had settled over the valley, only occasionally shattered by distant screams that I almost resented, but they seemed to echo in my ears and I could taste smoke as my vision started to redden. The Elf must have noticed because he passed me up a freshly soaked scarf and I quickly rapped it round my face and the echoes seemed to recede.
I nodded my thanks and enquired as to the state of Rickard and Chireadean. I crawled up the hill, using the trenches and bits of cover wherever I could after being instructed to keep my “Filthy human head down,”
He said it with a smile though so I decided that he called me “D'hoine Filth” in the same way that I might call Kerrass or a friend a dirty bastard when greeting them with a smile. Either way I decided to take it that way and grinned back.
“Why?” I wondered.
“Snipers.” I was told.
“Fucking wonderful.” I said as I crawled off. My body complaining with every movement. I was so tired that I had to stop and catch my breath every few meters.
As it turned out though, I found Chireadean first. He was a little way further up the hill. It wasn't that big a hill really. Not that it was that big a hill. It was more a kind of mound. He was sat with his back to a log and his legs stretched out in front of him. At first, I thought that he was asleep, he looked so peaceful, but he called out to me softly as I passed and I settled in next to him.
“You look done in.” He told me with a slight smile.
“I feel it as well.” I told him. “I've been tired before, especially when I was first starting out and Kerrass was in charge of my training and he pushed and he pushed and he pushed but this is something else entirely.”
“I've read your journals.”
“It's always nice to meet a fan.” I told him.
Chireadean chuckled. “Was he really that bad to you when things started out?”
“In all truth, he was probably worse.” I answered. He was still trying to drive me off I suspect but at the same time, it meant that I was better prepared for the future, so, possibly a little bit of both. Both being too harsh but also, I needed driving.”
I winced as a muscle in my leg began to spasm.
Chireadean reached beside him and passed me a wine-skin. I lifted it up to my lips and spluttered as I discovered that it contained wine rather than water. Chireadean laughed at me as I started coughing. “I've been saving that for a special occasion.”
“What is it?”
“Elven home brew.”
I grimaced as I drank some more. “It's fucking awful.”
“Stupid human, unable to properly take in the awesome majesty of proper Elven wine-making.”
“What the fuck is it made from?” as I swapped it for a proper water skin that he offered me next.
“I have no idea. One of the others in the band made it and passed some skins out a while ago. I'd been saving it, as I say, for a special occasion.
“It's awful.” I was drinking deeply from the water skin in an effort to wash my mouth out.
“That it is, but when you don't have access to anything else it tastes better than others.”
“So what's the occasion?”
“Dying.”
His good mood fled and our fit of giggles seemed to abate.
“Are things that bad?”
“I hate grand words.” He told me. “I always worry that the situation doesn't properly merit it but if it wasn't for that I would use words like “Doomed” and “Hopeless”.
I stared at him for a long time.
“Can I have some more of that wine then?” I asked and he passed the bottle over and I managed a couple of swallows.
“We're surrounded on all sides.” Chireadean told me. “You can see from the summit but there are people all around us amongst the trees. The one thing that we've got going for us is that we're better shots than they are but we can't possibly shoot down that many of them. They're going to come at us in a stream, probably in the morning and we're going to start shooting but we might as well be pissing into the storm. Even if we drove some of them away, what are we going to do when we run out of arrows which isn't that far away. I think we've got maybe a dozen arrows per archer left. At best. We're tired, hungry and there is absolutely no hope left.”
He let the words hang in the silence for a while
“I am so, so sorry Chireadean.” I said as I passed the bottle back.
“Don't be. We were dying anyway although none of us could have put that into words until we were actually confronted with the situation. I think we've been dying for some time to tell you the truth.”
He took another swig from the wine-skin.
“Also, I rather prefer dying here to some other place. Objectively, it's rather beautiful here. The Witcher was correct. There is something about this place. A peace that I haven't felt since coming to this part of the continent. I almost wonder why I haven't been here before. Also, we were right. We were being steered somewhere and who knows just how much further it was going to be before they came for us. At least, tomorrow I might have more of an opportunity to take one or two of the bastards with me when I die.”
I saw that he was trying not to weep as he said it and I put my arm round his shoulders as he allowed his tears to fall.
“Go on,” he said after a moment of getting himself back under control. “I'll be alright. Rickard wants to see you as well.”
“Where is he?” I asked and Chireadean waved further up the slope.
I left him there with his pain and his sorrow. I think it would be fair to say that I felt Flame-damned awful.
On the top of the hill I found a very different scene. Rickard was ordering the remaining bastard's around. Dan was sat on the edge of things keeping watch. Four of them were asleep but the rest were working with Elves, chopping firewood and removing trees. The top of the rise was all but clear now.
“Still alive Freddie?” Rickard greeted me as I approached before turning to his men. “No, I want it bigger. I want a huge fire. Huge and I want it to smoke like a bastard. I want plumes of smoke reaching to the sky by the time the sun is up.”
An Elf wandered up and asked him something that I didn't quite hear. But I heard Rickard's response.
“No, Piss down hill. Everyone, Piss over the edges of the barricades so that that last dozen or so paces is a mire of piss and filth and water.”
The contrast between the two leaders was startling.
“You sound cheerful?” I told him. I noticed that he was almost standing out in the open, daring any snipers to pick him off.
“They're going to regret coming up here.” Rickard told me happily. “They're going to feel every fucking step and by the time I'm done they're gonna wish that they've never been born.”
“So what's the plan now then. Chireadean says that we're surrounded.”
“We are.” Rickard chuckled. “So here's the thing. They have two advantages. Numbers and horses. So we have to take that away from them. They can't get the horses up that slope, not easily anyway and certainly not with enough speed to be frightening and now that we're here and digging further in with every passing moment, that kind of assault is unlikely. So then they have to dismount to get here. All the while we're peppering them with arrows and they're dropping like flies. So when they get here, climbing up the slippy foot of the hill....”
“We're fresh.”
“That's right.” Rickard was a man happy at his work. “So we make assaulting this hill more scary and more intimidating than they can understand and they'll fall back. All they know is fear. All they know is the dread that Cavill and his fuckers are whipping them from behind so we have to be more terrifying than that. We have to break them and crush their hope.”
He clenched his fist in front of me as if to demonstrate and in the meantime. The fire we're building sends a plume of smoke up into the air. People'll be seeing it for miles around and what would you do if you saw a plume of smoke?”
“I would go and look, but I am not the....”
“And your brother and Goddess knows who else is out there too looking for us. A big fucking smoky fire would be a good clue don't you think.”
“There is an awful lot of them though.” I commented. “and we don't have that many arrows. Less than a dozen per archer, is my understanding, and not all of those are going to hit and not all of those are going to kill.”
“We can do this Freddie, don't lose hope.”
“Really?” I wondered. “How? How are we possibly going to even survive this let alone actually achieving what we set out to do here?”
My voice was rising and I got louder and louder.
“We're surrounded by relatively fresh troops which means to say that we're outnumbered as well, by my count, substantially more than the conventional ten-to-one odds that are required against a “well seated defence” and we are far from well seated. How the fuck do we get through this? How the fuck do we....”
Rickard had grabbed me by the elbow and steered me away from the groups of men and Elves that were beginning to look over in question as to what all the hubub was about.
“Get a hold on yourself Freddie.” Rickard snarled. “Pull yourself together. We don't have time for that kind of bullshit as I've told you before. I know, I know that you've been through a lot and that you're struggling but right now, you're not just you, Freddie von Coulthard you are LORD Frederick von Coulthard of Redania, scholar, gentleman and mad bastard extraordinaire. You are a man and a leader and you are the hero that everyone on this hill is looking towards to keep us together.”
He all but threw me into a sitting position against the stump of a tree before crouching in front of me so that he could talk to me and that I couldn't ignore him.
“Don't you think I know how bad it is? Don't you think I'm terrified too?”
He shifted his weight a little so that he could be more comfortable.
“I'm tired, and my headache hasn't stopped in about a week. I haven't slept for more than a couple of hours a night and I desperately, desperately want to get drunk. All this time with people looking to me for answers, you, Chireadean, the lads and now the Elves looking to me as though I'm some kind of miracle worker that's going to pull their fat out of the fire. I can barely see straight let alone think straight and I'm at the very end of my tether, all the time knowing that you and Kerrass have been captured, starved and tortured so I know that you guys have had it worse.”
I said nothing.
“Don't you think I know how shitty it looks? I'm an experienced soldier and I've fought in wars, even losing wars look better than this because at least in war, you can normally depend on the other side treating you with decency and honour which is more than I can say for these cock-bags. Don't you think I know that there's very little to stop them from rolling over us. I'm even left wondering why they haven't already. They could, very easily.
“But you never say it Freddie. Never. You never say it. It's all right for others to say it. It's ok for Chireadean and the lads to wonder how we're going to get out of this but the instant that I start behaving like that. The very moment that I start believing in that kind of thing is the very moment that the entire thing crumbles. These people look to us for their courage and they follow our example, whether we want them to or not. They do it over and over again.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm their knight. And you're the man who came out of that mountain alive and because you can deliver them from the danger that they face. So you never say it. No matter how much you might want to. You always act, always behave as though the ending is a foregone conclusion. That we are going to win and that we are going to make the bastards suffer. We have to believe it. We have to because otherwise, the entire thing folds in on itself and collapses and we might as well not bother.
“So we are going to make it.” He told me. “you hear me Freddie? We are going to make it. I am going to go back to Redania and I'm going to tell Shani just how much I love her. I'm going to tell her that I will be there for her whenever she wants me to be and that, even though I know that I am always going to be second most important to her patients and her callings, that at the end of the day, I will be there to hold her and to soothe away her troubles.
“Then I'm going to talk to her and see if she would be happy with me taking your sister's offer of being the Captain of your families guard when Captain Froggart retires. If she agrees I will talk to your sister to get that confirmed so that we can start moving forwards with that. I will arrange for the Sergeant to start learning to read and write, although I think he can already and just pretends not to be able to so that I can't arrange for him to be knighted in the mean time, so that he can be my second. So that I can make your family guards and soldiers the scariest guards that part of the world has ever seen.
“I'm going to arrange matters so that you can get back to your beloved and that the lads and I can hold our swords over your and your wife's heads as you walk out into the courtyard. I'm going to be there when she scolds you for being so foolish as to let yourself be captured and I'm going to devote a good amount of time to making sure that Kerrass and that Princess get their shit together and have at least one night of frantic fucking so that neither of them have anything to regret.
“But most of all, I'm going to see to it that you, Kerrass, Chireadean and I can piss on Cavill's corpse. In fact, I'm going to have a hole dug into which we can throw his corpse and the corpse of that son of his so that we can all use that hole as a latrine. No one's going to want to dig him up because of the awful stench that we're going to leave him with. We'll charge admission even. We'll charge people to be able to defecate over their corpses with the proceeds going towards the care of the people that they've hurt.
“Those are things that are still in my future Freddie. So that means that they're in yours as well. I'm not going to let you die so you can also get rid of any stupid thoughts that you might be having of giving yourself up so that the rest of us can get away as well. Just put it from your mind. We are going to do this and we are going to win. Don't let anything else enter your mind because, as I say, if you do. Then we're already dead.
“Besides.” He grinned suddenly. “You and I, we're just far too pretty to die here. Far too pretty.”
I nodded but I wasn't convinced and he knew it too.
“Get some rest Freddie, you've earned it.”
He turned and was already shouting at someone to get a move on before saying something about there being enough time to sleep and complain when we're all dead.
I sat there for a long time, not really keeping track of things really. I may even have dozed after some time before drifting back twards a more wakeful situation. I heaved myself to a more upright posture and set off in search of Kerrass. At the end of the day. If I was going to die soon then I wanted to do so in the presence of the man that I had known longest, no matter what his state of mind.
Truth be told, I suspect that I was feeling rather lonely. Rickard was a friend but he had made his feelings clear. I wanted to moan and to spend a bit of time grieving. But Rickard didn't want to do that. Chireadean did, but he wanted to do be by himself and we weren't that close yet. Rickard was right on that score, that the men looked to us to provide leadership and that if we were falling apart then the entire thing could come crashing down.
But I didn't want to be alone. Not for the first time I was feeling the loss of my amulet keenly. I was missing Ariadne intensely. I was happier, now, that we were closer on a psychological level. But it had been a while since we had been together physically and I was left to wonder what my physical reaction to her presence would be now. We had not been too intimate with each other yet and although I knew and agreed with her declaration that it was potentially dangerous to ignore societies feelings on that matter just yet I had wondered if there was anything else going on. I certainly thought that there had been on my end.
But now I regretted that. I regretted that I hadn't been able to make love to her. I notably didn't promise myself that I would do that the very instant that I saw her. Mostly, I suspect, because it didn't occur to me that that situation would even come to pass.
I had lost hope. I resolved to pretend for the sake of Rickard who, I suspected, was struggling with such feelings as I was and needed to see someone else with confidence. And for the sake of the men as well. If they needed me to be strong then I would do so.
But I so desperately wanted to allow myself to be weak for a while. Just for a little while.
So I went looking for Kerrass.
I found him on the edge of the camp, sat, largely by himself. I think there were a couple of people sat nearby, working to dig the trench a little bit deeper and to keep an eye on him. Making sure that he didn't go completely off his rocker but he was by himself. Right arm in a sling but his left arm was out and he was playing with a stick, drawing odd shapes in the dirt.
“Ah Freddie,” he said when he saw me approaching in exactly the same tones as a professor greeting an errant student who was late to the seminar. “Just in time. I need your help.”
I sat down next to him.
There were odd shapes that he had been drawing in the dirt although I couldn't tell what they were. They seemed oddly familiar though.
“This place reminds me of something.” He declared as though it was some kind of stupid little riddle that he hadn't quite managed to nail down in his own head. Like doing a puzzle and you can see the shape of the answer in your mind but can't quite get the final notes of it down.
“How can I help Kerrass?” I asked him. I suspect that I was humouring him in some way. Just coming out with something that would keep him entertained. Keep him moving in some way. So that I wouldn't......fold.
“I'm trying to remember,” he said as he sketched the patterns in the ground. “What was the shape that the villagers used to say was the sign of a holy place?”
“Ummm,” I tried to search my memory for the required pattern. “It was a hill. A hump in the middle with wavy lines all around it.”
“That's right. A hump, wavy lines and other shapes that looked like arrows all around it, but I can't for the life of me.....Freddie? Whatever's the matter?” It was his utter mystification that got to me in the end. His wonderment that I could be feeling anything.
“I don't want to do die.” I told him. “I don't.....” But I couldn't get more out than that.
“Oh Freddie.” He shuffled over. Levering himself by virtue of his legs and his buttocks rather than trusting his weight to his arms.
“I don't want to die here.” I told him. “You're losing your mind, Chireadean's given up hope, Rickard's ignoring the problem and all I want to do right now is to see Ariadne again and to hear her voice....”
Kerrass gently put his arm round me. A mark of how out of his character he was by that point, that he would do that.
“And I'm so sick of weeping my problems away. I'm so sick of being weak and tired and in pain and dizzy and....”
Kerrass just sat there, holding me tight, tighter than he should have if I'm honest, given his injuries.
“Why can't I stand up like he does?” I asked. “Why can't I be strong now? I don't want to die.”
Kerrass said nothing.
“I've brought you all here.” I went on, dismayed at my own weakness and ashamed of my own tears. “Without me, all those Elves in the woods wouldn't have died. Taylor, Cooper and the rest would still be alive but I had to drag them into it. I hdt to bring you up here and make you....”
“Stop it Freddie,” Kerrass said softly. “Not a single one of us is here without making our own choices. Not a single one of us. Chireadean is the leader of his people but not one of them would have come out here without making that choice. Rickard would have led his people away. And we're not dead yet.”
“How can there possibly be any hope left? How can we possibly survive this?”
He grinned at me, teeth shining in the darkness. “Watch Freddie, and I will show you. Survive for just a bit longer. Just a bit and I will show you. I promise. You've brought us this far. You've done everything you could have done. You, Rickard and Chireadean. More than you could have done. More than you should have been able to do. I'm so proud of you for doing that. But now it's my turn to do what need to be done. Witcher's work. Time to lift a curse.”
He squeezed my shoulder again.
“Just a bit longer Freddie. Just a bit. I promise. Just a bit longer.” He picked up his stick and went back to work. “It's the first born. That's the key. I just need to figure out how to turn it now.”
He was back to muttering again and I realised that I had lost him. Whatever moment of sanity and clarity he had had. He had gone away again.