I find myself in an odd position.

As I write these words I am currently sat in one of the taverns near the Novigrad wharf having discovered that I have missed my scheduled ship to Skellige and now I have nothing to do until passage can be bought on a different craft, or until Emma can move things around until I can find a birth on one of the companies many merchant ships.

Part of the problem is that Skellige is coming up on the biannual festival of the Skeleton ship. What is this and why have I never heard of it before I hear you ask? Well the first thing is that I have no idea. I have never heard of the thing either but apparently it involves an act of supreme bravery that, if successful, means that you have the rite to ask a favour of either the ruling monarch of The Skelligan isles or of the druid council of the Skelligan isles.

I had no idea that this festival even existed otherwise I would have made it my business to go a long time ago. It's supposed to be a big festival that has taken on a more than significant status in Skelligan society.

Apparently it started due to....something happening, the “something” being a thing that no Skelligan that I have asked likes to talk about. But after that, it has turned into a kind of funeral rite for all the sailors that have been lost at sea since the last time the festival happened and then devolves into a Skelligan wake. The difference between a Continental wake and a Skelligan wake seems to be that the Skelligans treat a wake as an opportunity for a decent party where copious amounts of alcohol is had, food is eaten, fights are had, oaths of friendship are given and received and, I suspect as a result of all the alcohol and high emotion involved, a lot of sex is had.

So why has it been secret for so many years? The reason for it is that because the sea and sailing upon the waves is a nigh religious experience for the Skelligans, this festival is actually extremely important. I'm told that no matter how skilled a sailor might be, the sea will suddenly decide to carry them off to the depths and then it will be them that will be mourned when the time of the Skeleton ship is again on the world. So, sailors being superstitious folk, they just don't talk about it as discussing the dead is considered bad luck.

Why no funeral rights before hand if someone is lost at sea? Apparently it's because they still might turn up alive. I'm told it has happened but without a body to bury, burn or give to the deep. The skeleton ship festival is a time for people to say goodbye.

So why are we hearing about it now instead of several years ago. I'm told that this is because of the practises of the New, or at least newish, Queen of Skellige. From everything I've heard she is a sensible lady, another member of Empress Cirilla's knitting circle, and has started to move the isles away from the tradition of a raiding based economy. It's not that the isles have given up raiding and warfare against anyone that they don't like. Which is just about everybody. But that she has realised that trade is good and that the Skelligans run the risk of becoming....obsolete if they don't learn more about how the world works.

She is encouraging farming reform in the isles as well as that, now, foreign vessels, providing they have been given a pass to approach the isles by the Skelligan crown, now regularly anchor at the main harbours and trade their wares.

It should be mentioned that having one of these passes doesn't entirely protect you from the Skelligan raiders. It's just that you are more likely to get off a bit lighter with only some of your goods having been taken and that instead of butchering the entire crew, you all get beaten up soundly and thrown over board with more affection and good cheer before they agree to meet you at port and have a good booze up to celebrate their victory over you. The booze-up having been paid for the plunder that they took from you in the first place. I'm told by extremely wise people that the practice is not entirely foolish. It is keeping the raiders fighting fit and ready for anything while also improving the naval skills of the continental merchant fleets. Although people still have accidents and there are still deaths, the entire thing is good natured and is becoming a bit of a game.

Providing you have a pass.

So the story of the festival began to be carried around the continent by these merchants that have been at anchor in Skellige when the festival occurs. So why is this important to my story? Because, as with all things when there is some kind of festival in any part of the continent, it attracts tourists. This is made even more prominent this year by the fact that one of these tourists is turning out to be the Empress herself.

As a result, not wanting to be outdone on the hospitality front, the Skelligans are importing foodstuff, party favours and all kinds of alcoholic beverage that can reasonably be carried into port, in order to satisfy the expected demand. Because with the Empress coming North, even those people who wouldn't normally bother with going to see what the entire festival is about, want to go to the isles to see the Empress. So that they can discuss all the important things that they want to bring to her attention because “they couldn't possibly discuss these things with anyone else”. I suspect that if she was intending to have a good time at this festival, she should manage her expectations a little bit.

As a result of all this, every ship to the Skelligan Archipelago is full, every berth is taken. Emma has promised me that she can get me a berth in a couple of days time for Kerrass and myself but until then I must be patient.

I am no longer very good at being patient. I regularly go around all the ships at anchor to see if anyone has dropped out so that Kerrass and I could sneak aboard. It's so bad that even the promise of Kerrass' sword and his protection is not freeing anything up.

Kerrass eventually grinned at my discomfort and wandered off to the Passiflora to find himself a woman leaving me here with absolutely nothing to do.

I am more bored than I could feasibly expect to be. So bored that, as I write these words, I am sat at a scribes desk. One of those that you can hire at the rate of a couple of crowns per hour. It's left me feeling oddly dirty as it reminds me of those brothels where you hire a woman and a room for the period of an hour at a time, where the mood instantly vanishes the second the last sand disappears through the glass standing int the corner of the room.

The mystery is, why were we so late? We had left the North in plenty of time, hearing about the Skeleton ship festival was an extra goad to get us out to the islands sooner rather than later, but when Kerrass and I turned up in Novigrad, it turns out that our ship had left two weeks beforehand. I checked with the date and everything and for a while, I thought I was going mad.

We had lost a fortnight.

Kerrass was as mystified as I was but he took it much calmer, he told me that such things often happened when you hang around magic users and magical creatures for too long and that I shouldn't worry about it too much.

Easy for him to say.

But I was genuinely worried. I don't have that much time to waste. As it is, my immediate future is filling up with alarming speed. After the visit to the Skelligan isles, Kerrass wants to take me to the battlefield of Brenna for some reason that he is remaining tight lipped about. Then we're heading over to Angral in the preparation for the winter. This so that Kerrass can investigate the immediate area in search of anything that might be considered “ancient and alien” magic that we can then use to further our enquiries. This in the remnants of whatever the old Lord Angral had used to try and enslave Ariadne. In the meantime I would help him as well as get to know the lands and people of the place that would become my home. Emma had sorted things out so that she and Laurelen would come and spend Yule with us and were arranging matters so that Mark would be able to come as well.

Having a Sorceress in the family is really good for being able to keep in touch over long distances.

Sam is proving difficult on that regard but I shall get to what is happening with him in a moment.

There is also another mysterious “thing” that Ariadne is try to set up that she won't tell me what it is. To say that this is a little frustrating would be an understatement. The two most important people in my life are keeping things from me, in Ariadne's case, she claims that this is because the arrangements might fall through and she doesn't want to disappoint me. In Kerrass' case... He just tells me not to worry about it. Mostly because keeping such things from me is something that he finds amusing.

Bastard.

After that, well....there are several things in the wind. Kerrass has mentioned something about an expedition to the south to consult....something....but we have both agreed that we need some buffer time in case nothing can be found or in case “something” is found or an emergency comes up and we need to rush off in order to deal with that....whatever it may be.

So I feel like a leaf on the wind, being blown about and pushed in different directions. Frustrating? Yes but also a little freeing. It is certainly a release from the darkness that subjected us all from what had happened, and what is still happening to the North.

I will address this first before moving onto other topics of conversation.

First of all, the destruction of the cult is all but complete now. They are calling the cult “The cult of the First-born” which seems as fitting as anything that I have heard suggested. Personally I prefer “The cult of the utter bastards who do despicable things to people that deserve better.” or “The cult of people that I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire,” or “The cult of evil, insane, deviant freaks who murder and torment people for the sheer thrill of it, that needs to be utterly exterminated like the sick fuckers that they are.” I realise that this doesn't exactly roll off the tongue though so I understand why the shorter and punchier “cult of the First-born” is being used.

Also, please notice I specify the “evil” and “insane” part of the “deviant freaks” thing. A little deviance can be healthy and freaks is often defined as something that goes against societies normal state. Freaks are good, freaks are healthy and it is often the freak that gets things done and goes out of their way to make the world a better place. Case in point? Witchers. But as I say, those fuckers were sick and insane and evil.

They have caught all of the significant lords that Kerrass and I have identified and those men, having been interrogated, gave up many more names that were involved who have also since been arrested and questioned. The trials are just beginning now and are being presided over by a court as duly appointed by the Empress' authority. They will be tried by a judicial panel rather than by the church trials that would have been previously used, again by Imperial order.

The churches of Kreve and Eternal Fire are not pleased by this but a Priest of Radiant sun turned up from the South to oversee the religious aspects of things. He was, I'm told, suitably appalled at the cult and was hammering the other two churches into a sense of order.

Mark tells me that his method for doing this was essentially. “Behave, or we will make the “Divine sun” a state religion and have the churches of Kreve and the Eternal Fire declared cults.”

Of course this caused outcry and promises of countryside rising up. The priest from the south had a counter to this as well which went:

“Yes, but you have both spent centuries brutally subjugating the countryside and pissing off the nobles with your antics. All we would have to do would be more reasonable. Which would not be hard. Also, the churches of Melitele, the prophets and the druids would be exempt from these things and the Imperial armies are beginning to look for something to do so if you want to try and raise a holy army to go on crusade then by all means try it.”

In his last letter Mark, who seems to get on with this Southern priest really well, tells me that the Nilfgaardian sat across the table to the representatives of the Northern, more militant religions and literally said, “Your move, Chuckefucks.”

Mark was unable to contain his glee.

But the panels are being convened and the trials are due to start in the next couple of weeks. There is little to no doubt that those people will be executed both because of their crimes but also because Justice needs to be seen to be done. That people need to see the Empress' law in action and that neither money nor rank are enough to protect you.

Mark and I both approve.

All in all, churchmen are still being churchmen and nobles are still being nobles. All the lands of people like Cavill and the rest have already been confiscated and people are now fighting over the scraps. Like wild foxes or vultures fighting over the rotting bodies of a battlefield.

That's unfair, the nobles and the cultists were the part that was rotting while the people and the land are all well spread and deserved much better than what was done to them and much better than what is being done to them.

So actually the metaphor is much more apt than I had previously considered.

Sam is still up in the North. He is one of the people that is arguing for the expansion of his lands. His argument is actually quite strong in saying that he had found the problem and it is due to his leadership (partially true) that the cult was found and routed in the first place. He keeps saying over and over again that he doesn't expect too much but he would like an increase in his domain and maybe a title bump up to the level of Count.

You can't tell because this is the written word but I've just blown out my breath in something approaching exasperation.

I would like to think that Sammy is going for an increased title because it will give him more negotiating power over his neighbours. I would like to think that it is an effort to elevate himself and the other members of his family. I would like to think all of these things.

I hope he doesn't want to be a Count because I am going to be made a Count as part of my marriage which is what Kerrass is suggesting. It dismays me that popular opinion among my nearest and dearest is turning against my brother. There was a time when he and I were really close and although our lives have drifted off into different directions I still think of him fondly.

As I say, his argument is strong but I'm not convinced that he's going to get it. I think that there are far too many other people that are clamouring for a piece of that commandeered land for younger sons. There are lots of ambitious Nilfgaardians who want to come north and take advantage of that. There are lots of other siblings of the churchmen present who want to make a name for themselves and above all, it is still well known that Sam is going to be Lord Coulthard as well as being Lord Kalayn. The wealth, power and influence that he will be wielding as is, is still too threatening to certain members of the nobility.

It has been suggested, again by Kerrass, that this is another reason for the, still growing, gulf that has begun to form in my family. That Sam is feeling a lot of the negativity associated with being the Lord Coulthard without actually having any of the benefits. Still being deprived of the land and the money which he is beginning to feel is rightfully his.

I find that I can actually understand his bitterness. When we use the saying “You have to take the rough with the smooth” it is built around the fact that you have to take the bad parts of things along with all of the good parts. It's why we were brought up to understand why people didn't like us and that we should learn to live with the envy and dislike from our peers and it is also why we were not given masses amounts of money or lives of privilege when we were growing up so that we could learn to stand on our own two feet. It was only when Emma told me that I began to learn just how rich we are that I began to realise that I could have been living a much richer life during my time as a student in Oxenfurt and it wouldn't even have caused father to break a sweat.

But in Sam's mind, he is putting up with the rough while having none of the smooth to go with it and he is beginning to blame Emma for this. That is the part of his attitude that I think he is being unfair with. Emma is doing her job, the task that she was left by father which is to continue and expand the fortunes of the family in order to help provide for the people that work for us as well as to secure our future. She was deliberately instructed to keep the money from falling into Mark's hands so that he wouldn't fritter it away in donations to the church and she has extended that to how she deals with Sam.

Is she right?

I don't know. I do think that when he is made Lord Coulthard, that there will be some changes made and I do think that Emma is going to suffer some of the brunt of that. Technically speaking she will still have control of the mercantile aspect of things and her growing friendship with the Empress will protect her from any legal challenge to pull control of the money away from her. But I certainly don't think that she will still be living in Coulthard castle when Sam inherits from Mark.

For my part, I think I am well out of it. Ariadne tells me that Angral is nicely productive and can more than see to our comforts. If there are no dividends from the company then I shall withdraw my investments from it and reinvest them into enterprises for Angral and take things from there.

But I would be lying if I tried to claim that I wasn't saddened by the entire thing.

Still, there have been efforts at trying to patch over the growing split. Ariadne has invited him to spend the Yule feast with us as well as Emma, Mark and Laurelen. He has not responded in the positive but that he will think about it. He says that he might want, or need, to spend his first real Yule after making his lands safe, actually in his lands to take part in local customs which is a not invalid excuse. But on the other hand, Mark's last Yule..... I know that Ariadne told him that teleport gates were invented for precisely this kind of purpose though, but I am now out of the loop on this particular discussion. I may get more letters in the mean time though.

Ariadne thinks she has solved the problem of the medallion though. No, I'm not going to tell you how she did it. We are back to trying to regularly communicate.... but not too regularly. I treasure those conversations and I don't want to get bored of them. She also made me another holy symbol that she had Father Trent and Inquisitor Dempsey bless it. Apparently Father Danzig also threw in a blessing as well despite the fact that he was blessing a symbol of the eternal Fire but he reasoned that every little bit helps.

I am grateful. I felt almost naked without something to hold onto while I was praying.

But I am, by now, well off topic. I was talking about the fact that Kerrass and I had arrived in Novigrad rather late and I wanted to know why. No answer came to mind so, as I so often do, I reminded myself that I had other ways to use the time and I sat in Kerrass and my shared room in the inn and started going through my notes which is when I discovered something odd.

I had many more notes than I remembered having had before. With frantic fingers I checked through them to see if I had been left messages or anything else but no, the strange additions were covered in my own handwriting, easily distinguishable by me, after all, I spend a good portion of my time looking at and deciphering my own handwriting. The script looked as though it had been written with speed as there are several tell-tale signs of ink splatter that show that I was rushing.

With shaking hands I sat on the bed and started to read. Kerrass was out and about somewhere, possibly getting drunk with Dandelion and Zoltan over in the Rosemary and Thyme. He had tried to insist that we stay there as we so often do when we're in Novigrad but I wanted to be near the water in case something came up. He argued that it takes a grand total of ten minutes to walk from the Rosemary and Thyme down to the docks and that he could easily make it back in time but I wasn't deterred. I was half way through reading them when he came into the room, swaying slightly from the particularly strong variety of apple brandy that the dwarf brews in the cellars of the R&T for whenever Kerrass and I visit.

You can ask for it if you wish although I warn you that it is very possibly toxic to human stomachs. Even Zoltan will only drink at a rate of a small cup a time and he only takes small sips from it.

“What's wrong?” He asked me. “You look like your latest dump has tried to crawl back inside your arse after it's just escaped.”

Kerrass is another man who can get a bit poetic when he's in his cups.

I handed him the notes over and he began to read. Ten minutes later he smiled. Ten minutes after that he started to laugh, or at least as much as a Witcher ever does.

“That explains that then doesn't it,” he declared.

“What should I do?” I asked him as he struggled to remove his boots.

“What?”

“Should I write about it?”

Kerrass mused as he won a hard fought victory against his left boot and moved on to the right one.

“Why wouldn't you?”

“I don't want to draw too much attention down on him.”

“Oh I wouldn't worry about that. They're long gone by now.”

“Are you sure?”

The second boot finally popped free and Kerrass laid back on the bed, stretching his legs out with a sigh of contentment. “Tell the story Freddie. You're not hurting anyone and it might even do some good.”

So here it is. After my first shock at discovering that there was a significant amount of my memory that had gone missing I started to calm down and as I read, I began to understand why there was a gap in my memory and furthermore, why it was important that I had forgotten.

It began while we were still marching south with Sir Rickard, the remaining bastards and the Elves that meant to take Emma up on her offer of employment.

As a note, I understand that those arrangements have been confirmed and that even if he wanted to, Sam would be unable to counter their employment. The plans were to do with the merchant side of the family and it was still pretty certain that Sam had little or no interest in taking part in that side of things. He just wanted to enjoy some of the benefits rather than having to put up with it only being a one-sided situation. So they are safe in whatever situation that they find themselves in. I understand that Chireadean has taken over an inn near Coulthard castle called “The Proud Cockerel.” I wrote him back and told him that was an interesting name to be sure but that he may come to regret the choice of words.

I enjoyed the journey south, the atmosphere had relaxed and it was nice to spend some time with these people where we weren't fleeing for our lives. We could take the time to hunt for our food, buying supplies from local villages and merchants as well as getting riotously drunk together.

Unfortunately Rickard's antipathy towards Sam seems to have solidified. Although he absolutely intends to sign up to work for Emma and to do so formally, if Sam starts to throw his weight around and insist that Rickard and his people work for Sam instead, then Rickard intends to quit on the spot. He also told me that he is going to go back to ask Shani to marry him.

I am very pleased to announce that, at the time of writing, I have received word that Shani has accepted his proposal and that they intend to marry at some point after my wedding to Ariadne. This on the grounds that they don't want to feel as though they have rushed things to beat Ariadne and I to the alter and also so that the fuss can have died down in the mean time. But while we were travelling, Rickard was going through all the things that I remember having gone through when I was preparing to propose to Ariadne. That age old terror of the bridegroom as to which of the two answers is worse.

What if she says no?

But what if she says yes?

I will leave you to decide but it is an interesting conversation to have while you're on the road. Another form of the entertainment on the road south was that it seemed that Carys, the Elven woman, was beginning to return the Sergeant's affections.

I, for one, was stunned absolutely rigid and I may say that I lost the price of a slap-up meal and a new horse to Kerrass in wagering on that outcome. It just began to seem that wherever the Sergeant0 went when he wasn't on duty, she would be nearby. Not too close but not too far away either. Then one night as we were sat round the camp-fires. Kerrass, Chireadean, Rickard and I round one fire with the bastards and the majority of the Elves round the other, Kerrass elbowed me in the ribs and pointed.

The two were sat close together. At first I couldn't see it but when one of the others, I didn't see who, passed a bottle over, Carys had to let go of the Sergeant's hand in order to accept it.

I am beyond pleased for the two of them. Although she still hates my guts, I am glad that his gentle and clumsy gallantry did more than just make everyone laugh. She deserves whatever happiness that she can find and one thing is for sure, anyone that wants to hurt her will have to go through a giant hairy Skelligan to get to her and then she would have to deal with the furious elven woman who is more than capable of defending herself.

After the budding romance was increasingly becoming public knowledge, Rickard made the pair of them blush by loudly suggesting that they should have a double marriage. He with Shani and the Sergeant with his Elf. As I say, they both blushed hugely and incredibly endearingly. The laughter was gently mocking but enormously affectionate from the bastards and the Elves both. As I looked around I decided that there might be hope for our two peoples yet.

I remember this. It definitely happened and I can remember the laughter that took place. It makes me feel warm and happy as I think about it.

Trying to plug a hole in my memory is actually quite hard. I reach back to that night. The last night that I know, for certain happened. I'm pretty sure that Kerrass and I stayed with the group for another couple of days before we went off by ourselves.

I bought everyone a meal. I was already doing so for Kerrass anyway and it seemed churlish to not include everyone else. I wanted to give them all one occasion that they could look back on fondly. A time that they could remember from that period where they hung out with a crazy nobleman and his friend the Witcher. We marched into a Tavern and ordered food and drink for everyone. The landlord was a little cross for a while at having to treat the elves amongst us so well but I beat him to death with a huge bag of money.

Figuratively speaking of course. Money is the great leveller I find.

I also bought Kerrass a new horse. Kerrass is not a massive horseman but he knows a good horse when he sees it and can tell the difference when he is riding a good horse versus when he's riding a tired old nag. Our current horses were taken from Sam's stables and as such they were military cast-offs, not really suitable for what we were doing and our old saddles and tack had been confiscated and destroyed by the cult.

So one morning I found a horse trader, haggled a bit and bought Kerrass a beautiful black Gelding. Amazing he was, proud, powerful and full of character which is just how Kerrass likes his horses. He once explained to me that Witchers spend a lot of time on the road and often, the only friend that they have on the road is their horse so they need a horse with a personality and intelligence. A good horse, he claimed, has saved his life on more than one occasion. I also bought him a full set of gear to go with the horse. Beautiful black leather with silver ornaments. I thought that it would add to his love of theatrical moments and I was well rewarded by his surprised and happy face when he met his new horse.

I was especially amused as the horse was called “Imp” due to it's “Impish” nature and sense of humour but the beast whickered in protest when it heard itself being discussed in such a fashion. Kerrass was stroking it's nose at the time getting to know the beast and said “Don't listen to him baby” and that was it. The horse is now called Baby. A giant black, muscular horse called baby.

For myself I bought a mare that had caught my eye. Not for any particular reason but she seemed to get on with Baby and sometimes that can be more important than anything else. She's a piebald, built for speed and distance rather than strength and I bought some tack to go with it. New saddles as well for both of us. It is sometimes better to wear in a good saddle rather than make do with a shitty saddle that you have had for a while and again, we were using old military gear.

I named my horse Cassie. I don't really know why but I'm really pleased with her. The horse trader told me that she runs like she has wings and she really does fly.

But, according to the notes, saying that we went off by ourselves is a little misleading. What actually happened was that Kerrass stopped by one of the many signposts by the side of the road to which people attach their notices. The notices that are the bread and butter of a Witcher's trade.

For the reader, what I'm doing here is that I'm annotating my existing notes so if it seems a little disjointed then that is the reason. As I think of these times and read about these events, small nuggets of memory start to float to the top. I struggle as to where I should put them in the grand order of things but the memories come and I have to put them somewhere.

As I say, Kerrass stopped to pick up a notice and came to tell me that he wanted to “get his hand back in”.

We said good bye to the bastards and the Elves, there were many hugs and words exchanged and the entire thing was rather bitter-sweet. Even Carys gave me a hug. She looked me straight in the eye before telling me that she still hated me with heavily accented Northern before throwing her arms round me to the cheering of the people there. I thanked her, because it was true and because I couldn't think of anything else to say.

Rickard knocked aside my offer of a handshake with a sneer and embraced me like a brother.

I miss him.

But it was good to be back on the road, just the two of us. Kerrass and myself riding into the unknown in order to do....whatever it was that we found.

We sat and watched as the rest continued to march down the road towards Southern Redania, towards Castle Coulthard and Oxenfurt whereas we turned west.

“Where are we going?” I asked Kerrass and he just handed the notice over.

It was a standard notice, you can see dozens of pieces of paper like it wherever you go on the continent. A group of Necrophages including, but not limited to, some Ghouls and Alghouls had moved into a nearby Crypt. Nearby villagers had tried to turn them out without success and now that the monsters had run out of food in the crypt, the Necrophages were beginning to attack livestock and terrorise local villages.

It's exactly the sort of thing that I don't normally write about on the grounds that it's rather boring. It always goes the same way. Kerrass scouts the area to identify what he's going up against before properly oiling his silver blade and taking a number of potions before descending into the crypt and destroying the creatures. On average it takes 1.3 visits to the crypt to deal with the creatures inside before Kerrass is satisfied that they are all dead. Then he goes back in with his skinning knife in order to properly harvest any alchemical ingredients that he might be able to get hold of from the bodies. Then a day to rest up and properly recover from any of the after-effects of the potions before we move on.

It's of absolutely no interest to a scholar at all. It was the same pattern as the very first account that I wrote. Yes that one was about Nekkers rather than Necrophages but it amounts to the same thing.

The Necrophages in question are relatively easy to escape from, very many of them have been captured and dissected and as such, it holds no real interest. But Kerrass wanted to do this one. Personally I thought it was because he was having a little crisis of confidence, not that he didn't deserve having a little wobble after everything we had been through but I did feel it was unfounded. I prepared all the usual little speechs about him having properly healed and about him still being good at his job in case he completely lost his confidence, but I needn't have worried. Kerrass performed the hunt and pocketed the fee with relatively little fuss and we moved on, continuing to head south with a gentle progress. After the Necrophages Kerrass took on a mating pair of Wyverns that were decimating local flocks and then we reached the coast where he dealt with an Echidna.

We weaved through the countryside, zig-zagging from travelling east to travelling west, moving from one contract to another. If the notices we saw during that time are any indication then the new school of Witchers are going to have plenty to do when they are finally formed.

I spent the time writing up the notes from when we were in Sam's lands and sending them off by Imperial dispatch to Oxenfurt in order for them to be published. I wanted to make sure that there was no confusion and that my side of the story was told. I was not having another situation where I was going to be held up as an example as to why, what had happened to these people, were wrong and that Kerrass and I were at fault. It was vital that people knew that.

I didn't ask Kerrass what was happening. I figured that he knew what he was doing and truth be told, I was enjoying myself. The quiet rhythm of travelling from place to place, killing monsters and solving problems. Of gentle camaraderie with Kerrass, quiet jokes by camp-fires and the simple satisfaction of confounding many years of learned prejudice from the people that we were dealing with. All of this without fearing too much for our lives beyond the normal kind of perils that we went up against with the monsters that we were facing.

I was stunned when I realised what was happening. I was happy and I was sleeping like a baby.

I'll never forget it, just being grateful for that couple of weeks, so much so that I lost track of time which was when my memory of this period starts to get hazy.

So we were riding through this woodland track. Kerrass was throwing out schemes that he had for what he was going to do to me for my stag do. He was in the process of negotiating with Ariadne about precisely what he was aloud to do on the grounds that he didn't really want to piss off the ancient elder vampire or make things awkward between the two of us before we had a chance to make things awkward all by ourselves. Primarily he wanted to know who I wanted to invite but as well as that, he was tormenting me with ideas. Trying to make me disgusted and wince and kind of dread what was going to happen. He had some kind of idea about taking me to a dwarven brothel.

I'm really really sorry, but if there are any dwarven readers of these journals then I'm afraid that it's my duty to tell you that dwarven women are simply not attractive to human males. I know, I know that to dwarven eyes, the sight of long, flowing and soft, two foot long, plaited braids are attractive but I'm afraid that it just doesn't do anything for me. I'm really sorry.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Kerrass knows about my tastes when it comes to this kind of thing. My theories that the entirety of my time spent with him was one long Bachelor party was considered and dismissed with aplomb.

I suspect though, for the curious, that it's going to devolve into a list of my friends sharing a day or two drinking an obscene amount of alcohol followed by my being humiliated in some brothel to the amusement of everyone involved. Which reminds me, I really must discuss this whole situation with Ariadne, I really don't want a situation where I tell her all about my Stag party and then she turns around and asks me why I didn't make proper use of the truly staggering amount of women that Kerrass keeps throwing at me. But nor do I want a situation where I take advantage of all of the women that Kerrass is throwing at me, only for my lovely and beautiful wife to be angry with me.

Both possibilities are equally likely I think and I do want to make sure that our marital life starts off on the best possible footing so I must remember to discuss it with Ariadne, just so that I know what I'm aloud to do.

But I'm digressing again.

We were riding down this woodland track while Kerrass was enquiring as to whether or not Mark would put a damper on a night of drunken debauchery when we came across another one of those noticeboards. Kerrass had just driven off a Griffin, managing to not kill it but by driving it off and teaching the locals how to ensure that it doesn't come back and attack the herds. Something to do with a combination of parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme along with a good helping of Puffball. I don't know the exact formula but apparently, according to my notes, you mix the stuff together with a particular kind of vinegar and the stuff is overwhelmingly unpleasant to Griffins.

So Kerrass drove the thing off, got the farmers to only grow wheat and barley in those fields and to move the herds elsewhere and then they would never have a problem again. The fact that Kerrass could deal with the problem, pocket a fee and not have to slay a noble and proud beast that had done nothing wrong other than to get hungry in the wrong part of the world, had left him in a good mood. A good mood that was letting him needle me incessantly. But I was glad. We had both been through a lot and I was happy to see him enjoying life.

But, as I say, we came to a noticeboard and Kerrass dismounted, throwing the reins of his horse to me and went to have a look. I tied up both horses to a nearby bush and wandered over myself. I find these notices fascinating insights into local situations and many a good giggle can be found in amongst the complaints about missing rakes, broken wagons and monster contracts.

I know I keep digressing but it's nice to talk about something that isn't so fucking awful for once.

I once found a notice on one of these boards where a man went off on a rant about how he was pretty sure that his wife was cheating on him. That wasn't the funny part but it seemed as though she had added a note on the end to say that the original writer was just tired and being afraid. That if he actually did all of the things that he was supposed to then he wouldn't be so scared. There was a whole series of these where a husband and a wife seemed to have an entire conversation about all of the problems regarding their marriage on a public noticeboard.

Some of it was touching, some of it was terrifying, some of it was hilariously funny as the wife in the story complained about her husband's flatulence, or he complained about how she was always seeming to want sexual congress at all the strange times of the day followed by her telling him that if he did what she wanted him to do and actually gave her a good hard......well ok, I won't finish that. But the fact that they had this whole thing where they went through it in public rather than having a conversation in private..... I found it hilarious.

Kerrass actually suggested that it was a hoax, precisely for the reaction that I gave. I was kind of left feeling as though I didn't want the truth. I wanted to believe that this strange couple had managed to sort out their marriage by conversing through notes on a noticeboard.

But this noticeboard was relatively boring really. There were a few notices about missing items, someone looking for some help with a particularly busy planting session, some more people offering free firewood in return for “coming here and taking the damn stuff away”. I was relatively disappointed until I heard Kerrass beginning to laugh next to me as he took down a notice.

He was really laughing and I turned to him in amazement.

I've talked about this before but it bears being reminded of. Kerrass is a Witcher and as such, Witchers don't express very much emotion. It tends to be of the more subdued and quiet variety. A slight curl of one side of the mouth instead of a smile, a snort instead of laughter and a slight frown to go along with a slightly more clipped sentence structure instead of yelling.

I describe these things as laughter and whatnot because I don't believe the common theory, the common prejudice that Witchers are emotionless. I think it's more complicated than that and if you want to know more about why I think that then I refer you to the earlier chapters of this work. Specifically the conversation with one Letho of Gulet. But I describe them as the Laughter and sniggering they are because that is now what I see and hear when I'm with Kerrass. I see his slight smirk and know that this is his version of grinning from ear to ear and so I write it down as him grinning ear to ear.

I have been informed that this has resulted in people becoming confused when they actually meet Kerrass and he turns out to not be the expressive and funny man that I have described. I always say that there are two reasons for this. The first is that it is extremely likely that you met Kerrass when he's working or putting on some kind of professional “Witcher” front. The other reason is that I genuinely see the grins and the guffaws and the smirks. Witchers are as expressive as the rest of us, it just takes some practice to be able to know what you are looking at.

But it remains surprising when Kerrass actively laughs outright. And now he was doing so.

It was one of those amazing outbursts of laughter. The one that causes spontaneous laughter in the people around the person laughing. A kind of snort crossed with a cough as the laugher seems surprised by the outburst themselves, followed by a gasp and a wheeze as they have forgotten to breath. Then a side shaking tremor that just seems to set the person shaking.

Kerrass was doing that. Laughing so hard that he was holding on to his sides, bending double in the middle of the road.

“Kerrass what is it?”

Kerrass, his face still creased up with laughter simply waved the notice at me for me to read. There genuinely seemed to be tears in his eyes at the joke.

“HELP WANTED,” the sign read. “YELLOW EYED DEMON TERRORISING THE VILLAGE OF CRAYTON. REWARD OFFERED.”

Kerrass had managed to get himself a little more composed as he stood facing me. We said nothing for a long moment.

“Yellow Eyed demon?” I said softly which caused Kerrass to dissolve into gales of laughter again.

“Kerrass,” I sighed. “Much though I enjoy seeing you set off into fits of laughter. What's so funny?”

“Yellow....the eyes are yellow.” He snorted and started giggling a bit more.

“Yes, I get that. Why's it funny?”

“Because....” He did his best to compose himself. He straightened himself up and looked me in the eye.

“Because Yellow.” And he was off again. Full on having to lean against the signpost in order to keep himself upright.”

“You need to explain to me why that's so funny Kerrass.”

“Oh,” he wiped his face, still giggling a little bit. “I will. Come on then.”

“Come on where?” He was walking back to where the horses had been tired.

“To Crayton. Haven't you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“There's a yellow eyed demon.....” He couldn't hold it in any more and was still laughing as I climbed back into Cassie's saddle.

“Demons.” He snorted. “Fucking demons.”

“Kerrass, is this important?”

“It might be.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Have you ever seen a yellow eyed demon before?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. And I find I want to meet a yellow eyed demon.” And he was off again. Gales of laughter drifted in his wake as I turned Cassie's head to follow him.

“I fucking hate it when you do this.” I told him as I kicked her into an effort to keep up.

We still rode gently for the rest of the day. We bought some supplies in a village that I can't remember the name of and continued a little way along before finding a nice patch of woodland in order to get some rest and have something to eat.

Kerrass had been giggling the entire way.

We did ask about the village of Crayton in the one that we passed through. We learned nothing useful though, just the normal kind of inter village squabbling. You know the kind, “Ah well, we don't like them folks over there from Crayton we don't.”

“You don't do you,”

“Aye,”

“Does that mean you do like them or that you don't like them?”

The old man had looked confused. “They're twisty folk they are.”

“As in they turn around often?” Kerrass was not helping matters.

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“They like to keep things to themselves they do.”

“They do do they?”

“Aye, they do.”

“What kind of things?”

“All kinds of things.”

“Yes. But what kind of things.”

“Things of importance that they don't want anyone else to get involved with.”

“You don't know anything do you?”

“I'll have you know that I've been a village elder for night these last twenty years.”

“Meaning that he's the oldest, not necessarily the most clever.” Kerrass put in, having far too much fun.

“Shut up Kerrass.”

But that's how it went. No-one could tell me what it was about Crayton that everyone found so shifty and nor could they tell me what it was that anyone had done to make people so uncomfortable.

We set up camp with Kerrass still walking around chuckling every so often. Periodically I could hear the words. “Yellow eyed Demon,” Drift across the camp-site towards me. He was in such a happy mood that I even beat him during training by simply looking him in the eyes and mouthing “Old yellow eyes” at him causing him to crease up.

He made me pay for it of course but it was totally worth it.

“What do you know about demons?” Kerrass asked as we sat across from each other waiting for the food to cook. The traps had caught some rabbits and so we were baking them in little clay balls in the fire along with some wild garlic. A skin of Redanian lager was the accompaniment along with a couple of loaves of bread and some barley soup. It was a good meal, simple, rich and filling.

“Next to nothing at all.” I told him. “I know enough to say that they all but don't exist. That they are so close to not existing that even calling them anything is a little bit of a misnomer. I think that they come from another dimension but that could just be a story.”

“That's about right.” Kerrass told me. “But despite the fact that they happen so rarely as to barely be classified at all, they are possibly the most dangerous things on the continent.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. The first is that they promise power and knowledge for those that can master them.”

“I take it that it goes without saying that hardly anyone can actually master them then?” I asked as I stirred the pot.”

“As far as I know, no-one has actually managed it. But that doesn't stop mages or whatever stupid people that come across the right spell book from trying. It's called Goetia, the art of summoning and binding demons. The problems with it as an art is first, that any bugger can do it and second, that you need to summon it before you can control it. Trying to convince a demon to sit still and shut up while you bind it with powerful magics is.....”

“Tricky?” I offered.

“I was going to go with, bone smashingly difficult but there you go.” It seemed that Kerrass was still having the occasional fit of too much hilarity.

“The other reason that Demons are dangerous is actually nothing to do with the demons themselves.” Kerrass went on.

“What do you mean?”

“One of the ways that Demons can be controlled is to get them to inhabit a person's body. To possess it if you prefer. They do all the moving, the speaking and the acting. They can see and hear and taste and feel everything that the human can but without any of the relevant horror about whatever it is that they are feeling. So they can eat raw human flesh and feel the instinctive human revulsion of that and enjoy it. Or they can have bits of them gouged out and register the pain as an intellectual and sensual experience. Or should I say, they experience the body's reaction to the pain as the intellectual and sensual experience. One of the things that you have to remember about Demons is that they come from...elsewhere and as such they operate according to different rules.”

I felt myself begin to get excited. “Does this mean that there's a possibility that they could be involved in Francesca's disappearance?”

“No, sorry Freddy but I've considered this already. There was no signs of any use of Goetia happening at the palace of Toussaint or in the local area. If there had been then the Lodge would have found something. It's one of the first things that you check when you come across strange magical happenings. Up there with, “Are there tentacles?” and “Has the magical field been affected in any way?” Also there were none of the other signs of demonic possession.”

“Which are?”

“Blood, entrails strewn around the place. Cannibalism, general horror.”

“But there were. The thing that caused that teacher to look and act like Jack.”

“But there was still no signs of Goetia Freddie. It's a specialised thing and the mages have been even more strict about containing that than they were about Necromancy. For it to be a proper demonic possession it needs to have both. The horror and the Goetia. Also, if it was Goetia, the body count would have been much higher since long before we even arrived and there would have been no way that that Knight Errant could have kept things quiet.”

I subsided.

“But that's the part that everyone knows.” Kerrass said. “Everyone knows that Demons possess people and drive them to do awful, awful things. Which means that whenever people do awful things the problem is dismissed as being a “Demon possession” without it actually being the case. They don't look past it and discover that the person that committed the atrocities was forced to do it by someone or something else. They don't see that the poor person is sick or has a growth in the brain or something.

“But these occurrences of people going mad and killing lots of people are much more frequent. They get blamed on demons and everyone assumes that it is demons. But it never ever is.”

“What's the rate of demon attacks?”

“Freddie. I've been on the path for around ninety years now, give or take and I have never found an actual case of demon possession. The most that I have ever heard of any other Witcher coming across was Cousin Geralt who has had two encounters with Demons. In both cases he says that he found that there were mages involved and that they had lost control of the thing that they were trying to interrogate. The poor wretch that went on to be possessed then needed to be killed like the monster that they had become and the demon could escape to go back to wherever it was. I have, however, been called in to investigate several other cases of demon possession and it always, always turns out to be someone masquerading as a demon in order to hide other motives. Demons don't need motives to cause horror. They just cause it.

“That's another reason that Demons weren't involved with your sister. There is a reason for what happened, there was thought and plans implemented. If it was a demon she would just have been found dead. I'm sorry.”

I stared into space for a while. “This conversation got serious all of a sudden didn't it.” I commented.

“Yes. But that's not what happened here. It's not a demon.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of the yellow eyed comment. There are absolutely no external signs of demonic possession. No glowing eyes, nothing.”

“So if it's not a demon, then what is it?”

“I don't know,” Kerrass grinned and rubbed his hands together like a man happy at his work. “But I can't wait to find out.”

We approached the village the following day. I would like to say that it was a unique place of startling beauty and wonder but the truth was that it was a fairly standard village for this particular part of the world. I find that I begin to classify this kind of place in my own head whenever we approach a place. If I'm honest, it's a bit of a dangerous habit as what I should do is to take each place that we visit on it's own terms. Whether that's the huge cities like Novigrad, Tretogor, Vizima or Vengerberg, down to the smallest village that is merely a small collection of buildings that are there so that the people that live there get some kind of social company in order to hold off the terror of the night with some good company.

Even if they secretly hate each other.

And it's interesting as well. There are many different kinds of city and everyone knows this. Whether it's the huge capital style cities that I've said earlier which are full of the trappings of government. Whether that government is religious based in nature or whether civil. Huge bureaucracy's full of little civil servants running this way and that way with arms full of paper, all but running along the corridors of power, absolutely convinced that without them and that particular errand that they are carrying out that day, the city, the country, nay, the Empire itself would collapse.

For all I know, it very well might. But these cities are different from the trade hubs that sit around the large natural harbours, or those smaller cities that hold other buildings or places of import. Oxenfurt is one such place.

We all know this. That cities are different and have different purposes. Some of them have many purposes and you must approach them with that in mind.

But the same has to also be said for the villages that we pass in the world. This is a trap that I feel many of the people from the social strata that I was born into, fall into. They see a distant collection of buildings as they travel from one place to another and then dismiss it as “just another village”.

Don't even get me started on where the boundary is between something being a “village” and being a “town”. People have tried to explain it to me over and over again and I still don't get it.

But with villages, as I have come to learn, they have just as much variety in them as cities do. That's not taking into account racial make-up or manufacturing process' used.

The most common kind of village is the small gathering of huts that provide little to nothing more than some form of social contact between a few families so they aren't completely isolated from the world. There is almost never an inn in this kind of place and it almost never has a name. Instead it is called after the senior and most important resident of the area. In other words, the man with the biggest house. So when you're asking after someone that lives in a place like this you would be told “Ah yeah, 'im. He lives in one of those places over yonder near Bates the farmer.” Bates being the owner of the biggest building.

The next most common collection of houses are those places that service all of these many and far-flung settlements. They exist to provide the smaller settlements with everything that they need. So as well as the houses that people live in, it's places like this where you find a blacksmith which is by far the most common kind of service that a man who lives off the land needs. There is also, nearly always, some kind of building for travelling merchants to sell their wares. It's kind of like a small, empty house that the merchant can sleep in before setting their stall out, outside the house for people from the village to examine and bargain over.

There's also, nearly always, an inn. Sometimes people call it a tavern instead but I always think of these places as inns because you can generally stay “in” them for a relatively small amount of money. Taverns always make me think of places to go drinking in cities where you have to go home at the end of the night.

Every place needs a place for folk to go and blow off some steam. Whether if it's with some alcohol, some dice or cards. Whether you like to have a dance or listen to some music, seek some attentions from your gender of choice, or simply enjoy the luxury of having some food that is cooked for you by someone else. Fighting tournaments, archery tournaments, horse-racing and all kinds of entertainments fall under the province of the local inn and it's a vital part of countryside life.

Absolutely vital.

After that, it starts to become more about the different terrain factors that might have an effect on the local area. First of all, is there a river or stream going through the village. Is it wide enough for a bridge to be needed. If there isn't a bridge, is there a ford, a weir or some other form of water feature that might be used to help the village. If so? That means that there might be a mill. These things happen in arable farming country. Where the primary crops are wheat, or barley, the kind of stuff that needs to be ground down to flour. That tells you that you're dealing with farming country.

By far, the more varied options come with when you are dealing with different forms of cattle, then you need livery stables, grazing lands for when the animals come to market. Pens for sheep, cows, goats, pigs and other things. But this often comes with the need for a butcher's yard and a tannery. The people that live in this kind of area tend to smell. Not because they aren't particularly clean but you can't work with animal waste products without getting used to the smell, which means that you don't notice it when you're knee deep in offal and as such you automatically learn to live with it and lower your standards. I've spoken to these men and women and they claim that it seeps into your skin so that no matter how much yous crub, you just can't get rid of it.

It's for the same reason that Kerrass doesn't notice when he's still stained with monster gore and why I don't notice when I'm spattered with ink and covered in blotting sand.

The more farming things that crop up, the more there are other services, a cooper, a thatcher, a herbwoman, a healer of some variety.

Then it's about servicing the people involved. A school, a post place, maybe some kind of messenger service or a garrison in order to watch the local roads.

So I find myself looking at villages with these things in mind. We were near some dense and overgrown woodland. That meant that lumber was probably not a main crop or export of the village because if it was, then the woodland would be more ordered and have been cut back rather strongly. I also reasoned that there wasn't a lot of local farmland. The lands that we passed through was mostly marshland. There was some fishery buildings and what I could see as some kind of smoke house.

But overall, the main feature of the town was a road. It was wide and well worn. Worn enough that the path down the middle of the road which is stereotypically covered in grass, was relatively bare. That told me that this was the kind of village that exists to service travellers. Probably built around the local inn that would then have sprouted a blacksmith to shoe the horses of the travelling horses. A carpenter to fix wagons and a cooper that would be able to sort out any kind of storage problems that might have occurred while people were on the road. There might be a small chapel or a church school of some kind as well.

I was born out as we rode into the village.

At times like this, when we have been brought to a place because of a notice, Kerrass likes to ride into town, slowly and with a certain amount of pomp and circumstance in order to be seen so that people aren't surprised when he turns up on their doorstep in order to ask them questions. It's when there hasn't been a notice posted that Kerrass waits on the outskirts of town to see if he is wanted rather than just ride in. This time we had a notice so....

The inn complex was quite large and backed onto the tree line which had been cut back to a couple of hundred yards away from the town limits. As well as the inn complex there was also a bath house and a separate livery stable. The stable itself was quite large, large enough for it to be kept separate from the inn which told us that they often had quite a bit of traffic passing through. There was a small tannery and I saw a fletcher bent over his table as we walked in. You can tell a fletcher by the barrels of feathers that sit outside of the building as well as the bundles of long, thin sticks. We had also passed a small artificial copse of yew trees.

There was also a hunting population here. That was how they provided for the village as well as being able to feed the travellers.

I also saw a spire towards the edge of town, a building that looked much newer than some of the other places.

This was further emphasised by the fact that there was an archery range round the back of the buildings. Some of the targets were obvious targets but there were also straw men, straw animals and I could see boars and deer. Also frames for swinging targets and arrow buckets that were left out.

Rickard would have been furious. Arrows left out in the rain where they could warp. I doubted that they had been properly waxed to protect them from the damp.

But there was something else happening here as well. There was a shabby air to the town. As though people didn't really.... care for it any more. They just....existed here. They didn't live here. I actually found it a quite melancholy place. It felt like the village was dying. My feelings were borne out a little bit by the fact the livery stable was all abut empty and the village was full of people...not really working.

That was a difference here. In every village that I have ever travelled through there are signs of some kind of industry. Back when I first started travelling with Kerrass and we rode into that first village I remember being surprised by the noise that there was in that place. I remember being surprised at the industry and the frantic nature of the week that was going on.

Here, there was still industry, but it was kind of subdued and desultory. As though they were working because they had nothing else to do. They were just not....energised. They reminded me of a ship that was coming into port. You take down the sails but the inertia of that movement keeps it moving. It was the same with these people. They didn't need to work so hard, but they kept doing so because that was what they had always done.

It felt....It felt like the kind of place where the children that are born here wait until they can grow up and leave home rather than staying to try and make the place work.

Kerrass always enjoys the ride into the village. I've never really figured out why, I've asked him and he claims to not know the answer. You can just see it in him. Normally he rides with a relaxed and easy pose. Both hands on the reins but when he's riding into town having looked after his armour and polishing the metal in his armour and his weapons until a mirror sheen, he rides upright. Scanning the horizon with a steely gaze with his left hand holding the reins and his right hand resting easily on his lap. It was made even worse now by the fact that Baby sensed his rider's mood and pranced into the town. He always looks like the Witcher of legend, the Witcher of a story book and I think he enjoys the effect that this has on the countryside.

We dropped the horses off at the livery stable and paid an astonished groom his minding fee with orders that the horses should be fed with oats and needed to be brushed properly. Then we took our belongings, slinging our bags over our shoulders and carrying our saddles (never leave your saddle with the livery stable. Things happen to them and proper saddles can be expensive, then you have to break in a new one and it all goes horribly wrong. The first time it happened to me I had piles for a week) we marched off to the inn who met us with equal astonishment.

Kerrass hung back, leaving the bargaining with me. We generally ask for separate rooms when we're staying in an inn, we share when we have to but if Kerrass decides to get amorous after a hunt then I don't want to be having to listen to that happening in the next bed over. Here there was no question, the inn was clearly dead. I reasoned that it might pick up a bit later when the hunters, farmers or if there really were any wagon trains due to come in, then the place might liven up a little bit. But as it was, being able to pay up front for rooms for several nights along with dinner and breakfast, the innkeeper was more than happy to accommodate anything that we asked for.

Kerrass told him that he was enquiring about the notice and that he would appreciate the opportunity to speak with anyone that might be able to tell us more. The innkeeper nodded, telling us that it had been “a right terror that had been affecting the town” and gave us a tankard of ale each on the house in anticipation of our successful defeat of the demon.

You can also tell a lot about a town from the state of the innkeeper. This was one was relatively thin. A friend of mine from back in Oxenfurt once told me a piece of wisdom that went “never trust a thin cook or a thin innkeeper” and when I asked why? He told me that it's because they don't care to sample their own product.

A proper innkeeper or cook should always be drinking their own beer and eating their own food on the grounds that they should enjoy the stuff that they offer. If they don't enjoy it then that means that it's shit and you should reconsider eating or staying there. As theories go it's not entirely bad. It's often been borne out by circumstances but personally I think it's more important for a place to be clean, or as clean as you can get in these circumstances.

Also, if the place is busy then that can tell you that there's a lot going on as well.

But this man was thin and his inn was all but empty. He was a very unfortunate looking man with a pronounced jaw as though his teeth bulged out from his face, his eyes bugged out of their sockets and they moved constantly giving him the impression of an insect that had just landed on your food. If he had rubbed his hands together then I might have lost control. Having said that his voice was warm and friendly if a little rough and contrary to my old friends opinions, the beer was excellent.

“Any idea what's happening here yet Kerrass?”

“Nope. And I refuse to guess.”

So saying, we took our gear up to our rooms, ordered a bath to wash the dirt of the road away and settled in for the evening to wait to see what Kerrass' enquiries turned up.

There are few things as good as a hot bath and a good meal that's cooked by someone else at the end of a days journeys and a few days sleeping out on the side of the road.

A few more people did come into the common room of the inn that night but it was, by no means, busy, which meant that we got the majority of the attentions of the waiting staff. Although Ariadne has told me many times that we are not yet married and that I shouldn't feel beholden to her, I remain faithful to her in these kinds of things.

In contrast Kerrass actively goes out of his way to entertain the women that he meets. It's even arguable that his libido has increased recently. It had certainly done so since we had come out of the north and there was rarely an evening that went past where he wasn't accompanied by a willing woman. I suppose that it's part of the whole “enjoying being alive” thing but also, I think that he's deliberately not thinking about Princess Dorn. He aggressively changes topics whenever I bring her name up. He's also increasingly got this kind of wistful expression in his eyes as he sits down at the end of the day. He thinks I don't notice but every so often, there is a certain....bite to his teasing when it comes to my future with Ariadne that makes me wonder.

He lost the letter from the princess somewhere and he won't talk about it. I wonder if it was one of the things taken by Cavill when they were captured but again, Kerrass isn't talking about it and I find that I don't want to push. I still think he loves her and that he should take steps to bring the two of them together, or at least write to the poor girl. But he's not taking the bait.

He just sits, eats his meal and talks about other things until he starts to get a little melancholy towards the end of the evening. Then he seems to shake himself and look around the room. If there is a serving girl, another word that I try not to use is “wench”, that is being suggestive towards him then he will pursue her, otherwise he will see if there are any willing eyes looking in his direction. If there aren't he will leave and do some “training”.

Tonight though he was in luck. A pretty young girl, blonde curls, blue eyes and generous curves made a point of bending over our table to an extent that I found a little over the top but I saw that Kerrass had something of a need in him and pointedly looked away. Which meant that I was unsurprised that he followed her up to her room in the rafters rather than going to his allotted room.

After he had gone I decided to stay up a bit longer, enjoying the warmth of the open fire and some more of the innkeepers undeniably excellent beer. We weren't short on funds and if this was going to be my last period of time on the road before marriage took me away from tramping round the country then I was determined to enjoy it. As such it was to me that the innkeeper brought the message that the village council would meet the Witcher in the morning. He scowled up the stairs to where Kerrass and girl had gone and I wondered what that was about.

But I stayed up for a while longer before climbing into bed whereupon I couldn't sleep. Not an uncommon phenomenon. After a few days on the road, your body gets used to the hard floor and suddenly, the prospect of a soft bed is almost too much for your body and mind to handle. I drifted off to sleep in the early hours of the morning.

Kerrass was up before me. I tend to sleep late the first time I sleep in a real bed after an extended period of time on the road so I came down to find him eating a huge breakfast. He was looking a little...disquiet, almost guilty. Another reason that made me wonder if he was thinking about the Princess again. But I sat down and a different woman came and brought me breakfast along with some honeyed milk that they served here in place of any kind of hot drink.

The woman was older but similar to the girl that had taken Kerrass off to bed. She smiled at me sweetly but looked as though she disapproved of Kerrass. I guessed at the girl's mother, which might explain her attitude but, from everything I had seen, the girl had been willing enough and old enough to know what she was doing so I saw no reason to chastise Kerrass. He just ate in silence, seemingly oblivious to the antipathy.

“So what's the plan?” I asked as I pushed my platter aside.

“Same as always. Go and see the head man or the council.”

“They did leave a message to say that they would come and find you in the morning.”

“Good, that'll help. Then we'll go round the village and ask some questions about what has actually been seen and take it from there.”

“You still don't think it's a demon though?”

Kerrass looked around to make sure that we couldn't be overheard. “I am more convinced than ever that it's not a demon.”

“Why?”

“Because the village isn't painted in blood for a start.”

We stopped talking as the innkeeper came over and enquired as to whether we were happy with our breakfasts which we were and asked us to wait for the council to arrive. When they did, they were almost comically stereotypical. The innkeeper sat down along with the smith who we hadn't met yet. He was a tall man, not overly muscled as smiths go but it seemed as though his strength was lean rather than overbearing. I got the impression of him that he tried to work carefully rather than being full of brute force. He was balding with a rapidly retreating widow's peak and huge drooping moustaches. He looked like an incredibly mournful man, the kind who looked out on a rainy morning and accepted it as though he deserved it.

Then there was a thatcher. These men always seem to be old, wiry and gnarled like a tree root. I always feel as though they burst into life fully formed rather than having gone through any kind of childhood. They always seem like bitter old men to me, often widowed and live alone. But the simple fact of the matter is that you have never seen anyone clamber up the side of a building faster than these bent and gnarled old men. This man was no different from that.

There was also the livery stable owner. A heavy set, younger man that seemed to smile often and want Kerrass and I to ignore him but the thatcher called him into place and he sat towards the back of the group and didn't talk unless he was invited to do so.

And that seemed to be it. The innkeeper bustled around, pushing tables and chairs together so that Kerrass and I could sit on one side of the table and they could all sit on the other side. Not for the first time when I have come across these circumstances, I felt like we were on trial for our lives. Drinks were brought and distributed.

“So,” Kerrass began after taking a cautious sip from his tankard. “How can I help?”

The four men spent a bit of time looking at each other. As though Kerrass had done something that they hadn't expected and now they needed to figure out where they were supposed to start.

“So Witcher,” began the Thatcher. He seemed to be the leader of the quartet, such as there was one. “You'll understand that we want to establish your boner fidays.” Yes, I know he meant to say bona fides but I thought I should spell it the way that he actually said it.

Some of you may be thinking that I am mocking this town council. That's not an unfair question.

“My what?”

“Well,” the Thatcher went on. “We need to establish your.....” He seemed to run out of words. As though he had learnt the first line of his opening gambit and hadn't bothered to think about what would happen if someone asked for any clarification.

“Your ability to perform the task,” supplied the innkeeper.

“Yes, Quite right.” There was something about the way that the Thatcher spoke that made me think that he was tasting the words, as though he wasn't quite pronouncing them right as he was unused to them. But that he had heard how a man in his position was supposed to speak and wanted to speak in that way to exert his control over the situation.

Kerrass stared at the four of them coldly, I noticed that the Livery operator couldn't meet his gaze. The smith hadn't bothered trying in the first place and just went on staring at the table.

“Gentlemen,” Kerrass began in his best, “cold killer” voice. “My name is Kerrass of Maecht. I am a Witcher from the Feline school of Witchers.” It depends on his mood as to whether or not Kerrass uses the term “Cat Witcher”, or “Feline Witcher”. I think he uses the line about Feline Witcher when he wants to show that he, too, knows how to use longer words. “I am here at your invitation. If I can't do the job then I won't and that will cost you nothing. If I can do the job then I will do the job and I will expect payment.”

“Yes, but how good are you?” The Thatcher insisted. “We don't want to hire you, only for it to turn out that you are unskilled.”

Kerrass sighed and stood up. “It seems that we are wasting our time here Freddie. Come on, we can be well on our way by night fall.”

“What?”

“I do not have to prove myself to you.” Kerrass snapped, putting a bit of steel in his voice. “You notice the two swords on my back? You notice the vertical slits in my eyes and the medallion around my neck? I am a Witcher. I have been alive and killing monsters since the best part of all four of you dried up on your mother's thigh. I did not come here to be insulted or to have my expertise questioned. Good day gentlemen.”

“What? How dare you speak to me....” The thatcher began again. And again, I had the thought that he didn't really know what he was saying, but that he was mimicking someone else who had said those words in a similar tone of voice. Fortunately, the Smith put his hand on the older man's shoulder.

“We did not mean to insult you.” The smith's voice was oddly quiet, if raspy.

“You might not have meant to,” Kerrass suggested, eyes gazing over them from on high. “But you did.”

“Yes, we see that now. Don't we?” The smith seemed to exert just a small amount of pressure on the Thatcher's arm and the old man subsided mumbling something about “Knowing who their betters were.” The smith ignored him though.

“Anyway,” the Smith continued. “Please accept our apologies. Since the demon came we have all been rather on edge, terrified and chasing our own shadows.”

Kerrass made a play of considering the matter but I knew it was a pretence. If he had actually intended to do anything other than sit back down then he would have already been on the way to get his horse. “I can understand that.” He sat back down. “But understand that those of us who aren't masters of our crafts are dead, either in a ditch somewhere or sitting in a monster's belly. Would any of you accept someone questioning your skill?”

“No, we would not.” The innkeeper put in. The dynamic of the four men was beginning to come to the fore. The smith was actually in charge although the Thatcher was still there out of deference to his age and his seniority.

“So,” Kerrass said, sitting back down. “Why don't you start at the beginning. Tell me what is happening here.”

The four men exchanged looks with each other. Or rather, The Thatcher, the Smith and the Innkeeper exchanged looks. The Livery man just looked at his three elders. I wondered if Kerrass had noticed the younger man's being ostracised and resolved to mention it to him. I also wondered why there wasn't a priest in the room. There had been a spire of a chapel in the village skyline when we had been riding in but there wasn't any religious representative at the village council.

That meant two possibilities. The first, and by far the most likely was that the council was keeping the priest out of these negotiations, because the priest would have disapproved of the action. Either on the grounds that hiring a Heretical mutant was heresy or because the priest believed that the power of faith and prayer was more powerful than the monster that lived in the woods.

The other option, the slightly more sinister of the two option was that the men that we were sat across a table from were actually not the village council and that they were a group of “concerned citizens” who were taking matters into their own hands. None of these options were good as all of them suggested that there was going to be some form of a confrontation at some point down the line.

“First of all, how does this work?” The innkeeper wanted to know. “I'm not doubting you, but I would like to know what we're buying with our money. For someone like me, you would know that I offer a bed, food and drink. The Thatcher would promise to fix your roof and the smith would shoe your horse. We all know how that works but....other than slaying the Demon, what do you charge us for, what does that look like? How much will it cost and how long will it take. We are not so ignorant as to assume that you are just going to walk into the woods and just lay about you.”

“Not an unfair question.” The Witcher asked, “and I am pleased to know that you know that much of my craft at least.”

“The bard's tales of the White Wolf have reached us, even here.” The Livery man added his first words to the conversation. The Thatcher glared at him furiously.

“On the trade roads no doubt.” Kerrass said, smiling slightly. “Well, the bard's tales of Cousin Geralt often like to inflate and amplify how it works. I normally start by asking the clients, that would be you, what you want me to do. Fortunately we already know the answer to that. You want me to slay the demon that is terrorising the village.”

The four men were nodding. Kerrass was working. I had seen this many times before and sat back and watched.

“Then it's a case of narrowing the problem down to specifics.” Kerrass went on. “Just as I'm sure I realise that Thatching a barn is different from Thatching a house, or crafting a horse shoe is different from crafting a sword or axe head, one demon is different from another.”

There was more nodding. For those who are curious as to the Witcher's methods... Notice how Kerrass puts it in terms that the villagers can understand. What he's doing is drawing them into the process in almost the same way that a bard, or even a lecturer draws in their audience.

“So I will need to know the full story from your own lips. I will ask questions about when did you first learn about the problem....no don't tell me that now. There is an order to these things and I need to get my thoughts in a line. After I am satisfied with knowing as much as I can from you, I will ask some questions from the villagers.”

There was a little bit of shifting in seats as again, the main three men looked at each other. There seemed to be a feeling of confirmation. As though Kerrass had just given them some bad news. They had known that it was probably coming but they felt no better for that fact now that it was here. I was beginning to get the theory that this was an offshoot of the council, or that there were factions in the village which would explain the reasons as to why the priest wasn't present.

“After that,” Kerrass was still talking. “Depending on what I've found out so far....”

“Depending?” The innkeeper. I subconsciously labelled him as “The Brains”.

“Yes. Sometimes the problem is obvious from just the stories of you and the villagers. Often it isn't but sometimes it is.”

The innkeeper was unconvinced but he let it go.

“So then I would scout the problem out by having a look at where the Demon tends to have the most effect. The object of the exercise here is to ascertain what we are dealing with. During this time I simply ask for food and lodging for myself, my apprentice,” He gestured at me, “and for our horses.”

I noticed that the Thatcher was impressed by the big words, especially the thing about “apprentice.” For a certain kind of tradesman, the possession of an apprentice is like a badge of honour or a guarantee of quality.

What is it about Thatchers? No matter where I go, it often seems as though the Thatcher is the most un-trusting but also wilfully stupid member of the village. They are often the people that get angriest at Kerrass' presence and tend to be the ones that whip people up into a frenzy of hatred against magic, mutants, non-humans, education, smart people, pretty people, young people, women, the list goes on.

Maybe it's something to do with the advent of tiles increasingly being used to make roofs and they can sense their inevitable demise. They've still got a way to go before that happens though and for me, there will be enough work for them and their sons to keep them going. Their grandsons might need a new career but still.

“So what happens then?” It was the innkeeper who spoke. The Smith had gone back to leaning back and letting other people do the talking.

“One of three things will happen. The first is that I decide that more research needs to be done. This is actually quite rare. Normally, the creature is identified and I can begin the process of planning it's eventual demise. By far the most common result is that I can identify what the problem is and come back to the village with a quote as to how much the destruction or removal of the creature will cost. You can then either agree to my terms, or you can decline at which I time I climb on my horse, wish you the best of luck with your demon problem and go on my merry way. The third option is, again, very rare. The third option is that I decide that the hunt is too risky for me to contend with, I make you a recommendation and then I move on.”

“How often has that happened?” The Livery keeper again. He seemed genuinely curious.

“Rarely, but not so rarely that it doesn't bare mentioning. It happens when it turns out that the village has been built on top of an ancient burial ground and that the spirits from the burial site have been disturbed. That kind of thing Then there is very little to do other than to evacuate the village. Also, in the presence of a dragon, the best thing to do is to just drop everything and flee for your lives, regardless of what you might want to do.”

“Do Witchers not hunt dragons?” Another glare for the livery man. Poor guy, unable to contain his curiosity.

“Not as a rule, no.” Kerrass answered.

“What happens then?” The innkeeper wanted to know. “What happens if you refuse to fight the thing and just get back on your horse and ride away?”

“Then I consider the room and board that we have used in the mean time to be adequate payment for my time and effort as well as any goods, herbs and tools that I may have used in the meantime. But, as I say, that is rare. Not unusual but the balance of probability is that, if there is a beast out there and I can do something about it, or help you do something about it then I will do so.”

“What happens?” The smith leaned forward. “What happens if....during the initial scouting of the target and the thing leaps out to attack you? What happens then?”

“Then I defend myself and attempt to get away.”

“But if that fails?”

“Then I would normally be dead. Do not misunderstand. In monster hunting, the unprepared hunter is a dead hunter. Even the smallest monster, something like a Nekker, Ghoul or Drowner can be dangerous if you do not have the right tools to face one.”

“And if, during the course of your defending yourself, the creature dies?”

“I see. You want to know if you would still have to pay me?”

The four men looked at each other before the Smith nodded.

The Thatcher licked his lips.

“On the very rare occasion that that sort of thing happens, then I would quote a flat fee based on the identity of the monster in question.”

“But you would defend yourself?”

Kerrass stared at the innkeeper flatly. “No,” he said after a long moment. “When I am being attacked by a monster I'm just going to let it rip my head off. Now....” He was letting a little bit of anger and irritation creep into his voice now. All of it an act. These were not the most stupid questions that I had ever heard someone ask him, by a considerable margin even. But they were telling. “....Is your next question going to be what will happen if you refuse to pay me? In either these circumstances that you describe or in similar circumstances?”

The four men said nothing.

“In which case there are two options and most of it depends on your method of refusal. If your method involves assault and attempted murder then I would warn you that both my apprentice and I are skilled with the weapons that we carry and would be considered, by many, to be deadly with whatever other objects we find close to hand. If you choose to simply refuse, or to claim that you have no money to pay me against whatever else you had just promised me then I would take....steps.”

“What steps?”

“I would prefer not to say. Both because I would like to let your imagination run riot but also because I don't want what I say to be misconstrued as a threat. All I will say is that such things do occur and the client always always comes to regret their decision.”

The four men said nothing.

“But that's not going to happen is it.” Kerrass said with a more friendly tone of voice. “So instead of talking about worst case scenarios. Why don't you start at the beginning and tell me what the problem is so that I can see if I can help.”

“Where do you want us to start?” It was the innkeeper. He seemed to have been nominated as the opening speaker. I always struggle with this question. I once asked it myself when I was making a presentation to a Professor and he answered with a gently mocking laugh and a piece of wisdom that I follow even to this day. “Start at the beginning and work your way through until you come to the end.” I always think of him when I hear someone asking that question or when I find myself wondering that same thing.

I hated the bastard.

“When did you first know that there was a problem?” Kerrass said calmly.

The innkeeper closed his eyes.

“It was a couple of months ago.” He began, speaking softly. “It was at some point in the morning, I know this because we had served breakfast and were clearing up after the day's travellers had moved on. The sun was shining, there were some clouds over to the East that suggested it might rain later on in the day, or maybe during the night but for right then and there, we weren't concerned about the weather. My wife came in through the back door and pulled me out of the cellar where I was taking stock inventory and she pulled me out into the yard. As I climbed out of the cellar I realised that it had gotten dark.”

“Not like nightfall you understand.” The Thatcher cut in. “But like a cloud had covered the sun.”

“Yes, I follow.” Kerrass said. He had leant backwards in the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him as he listened. He stared at the group, or rather in a kind of middle distance of the group so he was actually staring into space as he listened but at the same time, I knew from experience that all four of them felt as though he was speaking directly to them. “Please continue.”

“So I get pulled out into the yard and I remember shivering.”

“Was it cold?” Kerrass asked, “or was it something else?”

“I don't know. But there was a shadow over the sun. A huge dark cloud of black smoke had billowed up from somewhere and had covered the sky, blocking out the sun.”

“How fast did it move?”

“Not slowly, like steam from a bath, but more like smoke from a damp wood fire,” The Smith cut in.

“Did it billow?”

“Yes.”

“Did it move in the wind?”

“No, in fact it moved against the wind.”

“Interesting. One final question then if you please before we move on to another topic. Other than it being black smoke, was there light inside the smoke, like lightening flashing in the sky above the cloud, only it would have been red, green or maybe yellow.”

“Yes,” Breathed the Innkeeper. “Yes, there was a yellow light beneath the smoke.”

Kerrass grunted but he leant forward as though he was excited. “What happened then?”

“The smoke billowed round the town as though it was looking for something before my wife, just screamed. I spun towards her but she was looking up at the cloud only the smoke was shooting towards her and it possessed her.”

“How?”

“What do you mean how?” The Thatcher demanded.

“I mean, what did it look like?” Kerrass asked. “Did it just vanish above her head or did it go in through her nose and mouth?”

“It went in through her mouth, that was open because she was screaming.” The innkeeper told us. He shivered as he said it. “Then she turned to me, her mouth was watering as she leapt on me, knocking me to the ground before she kissed me hungrily. As though she was devouring me.”

“I've heard of worse things happening,” The Livery man muttered in a tone that he probably thought was under his breath but I caught it and I wondered if Kerrass had as well.

“I had enough time to see that her eyes had turned a kind of murky yellow. No pupil or whit of the eyes. Just a murky kind of yellow. But then she was off me. Bounding to her feet with an energy and strength that my wife does not possess. Then she leapt at one of my helpers. A good lad called Darron. She ripped his throat out with her teeth.”

The thatcher patted him on the shoulder in sympathy. Sympathy that I couldn't help but think that it was false.

“There was blood everywhere. I served in the war although I didn't really see action as I was part of the sea garrison. But I can't say I didn't see some unpleasant stuff. But there was nothing I ever saw like my wife, the woman I love, standing over the corpse of the man she had just killed, blood running down her chin and a hungry grin on her face. Then she spun, a peddler and his daughter had just come through the gates to seek lodgings. She pulled Darron's eating knife out of his belt and leapt at the pair of them. Cutting the throat of the older man she declared him to be “too old,” before she gutted the girl who was screaming now and bent to start eating the entrails.”

He shuddered.

“We were just about to get at her when she reared back, her mouth opened again and the black smoke poured out of her leaving her unconscious.”

Kerrass nodded. “Was that your wife that I met this morning?”

“It was.”

“Does she remember these events?”

“She does. She says it was like being a prisoner in her own body and that there was nothing she could do to stop it. She has mostly repressed it now though.”

“Probably for the best, but I would like to talk to her later.”

“I will let her know.”

“What happened then?”

“That's where I take up the story,” The Livery stable owner spoke up. His story was an interesting on and the way he spoke made it all the more interesting. When he had interrupted the earlier conversation he had been excited, curious and his speech flowed with proper....well.... flow. But the way he spoke here was stilted and wooden. Like.... Have you ever seen a street play where young children have had to be involved, or amateurs are pulled out of the audience in order to fill in the gaps or because it's a nobleman's birthday or something and he wants to take part because he's noble and he thinks that this gives him the right to. That's what it was like, wooden and stilted, unformed and as though he was reading the words from a sign or a piece of paper.

I felt so sorry for him.

“I was working away,” he began. “Just working away, I hadn't noticed the smoke as I was too busy. As Master Corran says,” he indicated the innkeeper, “it was midmorning and we knew this because we had just had to say good bye to a bunch of travellers and I had been really busy. Still was by that part of the day,” noticeably, his speech picked up when he was talking about his work. “as you have to be when you've just a load of travellers leave the stable.”

The Smith cleared his throat noisily.

“But anyway, the smoke burst through the door, knocking the doors open as if a....a giant had struck them and forced them open. So powerful that it knocked me down on my arse if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Kerrass interrupted. The poor young man was obviously not used to talking in front of people. It's a tricky skill and it can take a while to pick it up if you're not sued to it.

“But the smoke rushed past me and shoots down the throat of one of the horses that we still had there. It was a cart horse. Big thing.....Hooves the size of dinner plates. It reared up and started thrashing about. Knocked the brains out of my lad Collin who helps me muck the horses out and beat another mare to death with it's hooves. All we could do was to get the other horses out. Then it just stood there in the middle of the barn shivering, it's eyes were yellow as well, before that smoke came out of the horse again and shot off to the west....”

The smith cleared his throat again.

“East.” He corrected himself. “Towards the trees.”

“I see,” said Kerrass after a while. He frowned and stared into space, after a while of this his hand came up and he tugged at his lower lip for a moment or two. He was thinking.

Or rather, he looked as though he was thinking. The two are important factors. I once asked him about this and he told me that it was important that a craftsman let the customer think that they were doing something. That they were getting something that they were paying for. It's the equivalent of a restaurant sitting you down and providing you with a jug of water, or a brothel where they sit you down with a beautiful woman on your arm and a glass of wine so that you can feel as though you're getting something for your money.

In this case, apparently, you need to look as though you are thinking so that the client is given the impression that that Kerrass is thinking about the problem that they have brought him. He tells me that he is often genuinely thinking about the best way to approach the situation. In other circumstances he is just thinking about what he's going to have for dinner in order to appear as though he is doing something with his time.

Then he leant forward again.

“Did anything unusual happen before the arrival of this black smoke?” He began. “Any cold spots in the houses or around the village?”

“Why's that important?” Asked the Smith.

“I just need to check everything. Anyone notice the smell of Sulpher, like rotten eggs?”

They all shook their heads.

“Did anyone notice what the moon was doing at the time?”

“Sir?” The livery man whose name we still hadn't learned to keep his peace.

“Well was the moon full the night before it arrived? was it waning? Waxing? A new moon? What colour was it? Yellow? Red? Or something else?”

“Is that important?” The thatcher asked.

“It might be.” Kerrass responded quickly. I got the impression that he peered at the four of them closely for the next passage. “You see demons are tricky bastards, you've probably heard that.”

There was some general nodding before Kerrass continued.

“But one of the important things that you have to remember about demons is that they are all individuals. But you can figure out which demon it is from the signs that are given before hand.”

“Can you?” Even the Thatcher seemed fascinated by this particular piece of information.

“Indeed. Demons come in all shapes and sizes, obviously, I mean we all know that.” The council was nodding again while I was struggling to contain my mirth as it was obvious to me that Kerrass was just stringing them along and it was baffling to me that they didn't seem to realise this.

“But the really scary ones,” Kerrass went on. “The really terrifying ones, the ones with names. The powerful ones that we tell stories of to frighten children. Those demons. There are signs that crop up before hand. The Mages that study this kind of thing call them “signs and portents”.”

“That's what the priest called them,” The Livery lad piped up again before he was, again, shushed.

I felt, rather than saw, Kerrass' reaction. I know this because I had a similar reaction which was “did he now.” Not a question that we both realised needed asking, but more a kind of....realisation that there was more to the story. Of course, we knew that that might be the case anyway but....

“To be fair,” Kerrass went on, admirably being able to keep his reaction out of his voice. “The priests of the various religions probably came up with the phrase but it was the Mages that properly applied it in these cases and gave the term proper meaning. In this case, the signs and portents that tell us that there is a demon coming. These are the clues that can tell us what kind of demon we are dealing with, if not the name of the demon itself. If we can figure this out. That will lead us a good way towards knowing how to get rid of it.”

The smith was frowning. “I thought that you simply attacked them with that silver sword of yours.”

“In the majority of cases of monster hunting, that would be true, but one of the things that you have to remember is that demons are closer to spirits than they are to creatures that can be cut with a sword. If the demon has possessed someone and anchored themselves to that person then I won't deny that that might be a problem that would need to be solved by the sharp edge of a sword.”

The four of them seemed to relax in some way, as though a breath had suddenly been expelled after being held for a moment or two.

“But even if that were the case, the demon would still be in the area and would need to be banished. Exorcised if you will.”

“Can you do that?”

Kerrass smiled thinly. “Probably. But I was asking about any signs that there might have been beforehand. Can anyone remember the state of the moon.”

They looked at each other. The Thatcher looked as though he was counting on his fingers.

“The moon was waning.” He said after a moment.

“What colour was it?” Kerrass asked.

“A kind of dirty yellow.”

That colour again. Yellow.

Kerrass nodded. “That is good. At least it wasn't red.”

“What would red mean?” This time it was the innkeeper that couldn't contain his curiosity.

“Arguably the most dangerous kind of demon and very possibly the King of Hell himself. They are deal makers. They offer you things in exchange for your soul. They are dangerous because they are insidious. You don't know that they are there until they turn up and offer you something that you want, something that you need and by then, it is already too late.”

The livery lad....he wasn't young but it was hard to think of him as being older than twenty. He was probably my age or maybe even older. But he was so clearly out of his depth that it was hard to think of him as being anything other than a teenager,....couldn't contain a shudder.

Kerrass paused in the telling for effect.

“But the fact that the moon was yellow is an important factor. It matches up with the thing about the eyes of the demon.”

I swear, I swear that the Thatcher preened in pride.

“If it was a red-eyed demon,” Kerrass went on, “I would already be gathering my things and running towards my horse while yelling at you all to do the same. So we have some other clues. A yellow moon, yellow eyes and the violence with which it struck.”

“What do you think this might mean?”

The livery lad and the innkeeper were fascinated despite themselves, the Thatcher was listening but the Smith seemed bored.

“Yellow suggests one of the Princes of hell.” Kerrass went on.

“Princes?”

“Yes, demons model themselves after human society. They're fascinated by it and seek to emulate and mock it accordingly. There are four Princes all told and they rarely come through. They are dangerous, I won't lie and it might mean that you have to evacuate after all until it moves on.”

“Isn't there anything that you can do?” The Thatcher asked.

Kerrass sighed. To my mind he was pushing the theatricality a little bit. “I will try. The important thing is to try and ascertain which one of the four it is. Were there any earth tremors before hand?”

The four of them looked at each other before they shook their heads.

“Then it wasn't Dagon. Then was there storms in the lead up to the appearance of the smoke?”

More head shaking.

“Nor was it Ramiel.” Kerrass sucked his teeth. “A rain of blood?”

More head shaking but I noticed that the Livery keeper and the Innkeeper were looking at the smith sidelong.

“Then it wasn't Asmodeus. That is good. How about...” he seemed to muse. “How about a swarm of insects?”

The Smith leant forwards. “There was some swarming flies out towards the marshland. Does that help?”

“Azazel.” Kerrass breathed. I had to pretend to take a drink to keep from laughing. “This is going to be rough.”

“What do you need from us?”

Kerrass considered. “I need to know more about what has happened since he first appeared.” Kerrass told them. “I need to know what he's done, what he's planning, anything that you can think of, anything that people have been dreaming of.”

The four of them were tensing up again.

“Then,” Kerrass shook his head. “Then, I suppose that I would need to go into the woods themselves and see what is to be seen.”

There was another moment when the four council members seemed to noticably relax.

“When will you go into the woods?” The Smith asked.

“Today maybe, depending on what you tell me or what I find, but more likely tomorrow. Demons are weaker during daylight hours and by the time you have told me everything that I want to know, it will be getting dark.”

There was more nodding.

Kerrass shook his head in thought.

“But before we do any of that, my apprentice needs to train and I have some tasks for him to do. Apprentice work, you all know how it is.”

There was more nodding and mutual understanding about the problems involved in training an apprentice.

“If you'll excuse us.” Kerrass climbed to his feet. The smith and the Thatcher did so as well but Kerrass waved them back to their chairs. “No, no. I must talk to my apprentice privately. As you will be aware, we Witchers guard our secrets closely.”

Kerrass led me outside into the inn yard before he carefully looked around and turned away from the inn. Then he started to laugh so hard that he was shaking.

“Oh,” He gasped after a while. “I haven't had that much fun in ages. I do believe those people want to kill us.”

“I take it that that was all nonsense then.” I was grinning with him.

“All of it. Absolutely all of it.”

“I thought so. I thought that “Demon” is just a catch all term for beings summoned from other worlds.”

“That's right. And they could generally give a crap about human society.” He sniggered. “Did you notice how keen they were to get us to go into the woods?”

“I did. They were visibly relieved when you said that you would have to do that.”

Kerrass nodded. “I think, I think that there's someone in those woods that these people want dead and they want me to kill them. Did you notice the questions about my defending myself?”

I nodded.

“I think....” Kerrass went on, still sniggering occasionally. “I think that they will follow us into the trees, we will have to defend ourselves from whoever is in there and that they will fall on the victor. Probably a criminal of some kind and they want the ransom money, or the bounty or something.”

A suspicion crossed my mind. “Do you know who it is?”

“I might.” He grinned at me.

“Who is it Kerrass?”

“Yellow eyes Freddie. Yellow eyes.”

“I fucking hate it when you get all mysterious.”

He pointed a finger accusingly. “Admit it though. You're enjoying yourself.”

“I am, the beer's good anyway. What do you want me to do in the meantime?”

“We still need information. Have a wander round, go and talk to the priest if there really is one. Also see if there's a healer or a herb-woman. Talk to people, make friends. You know the drill by now.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“Listening to all the bullshit that they tell me. Probably interview a couple of the demons “victims” and seeing how long I can go before I laugh in their faces.”

“Enjoy yourself,” I told him.

“I will,” he waved as he went back into the inn.

(A/N: This story arc is NOT, in big ass capital letters, a Supernatural crossover. But when I conceived the story of “The Yellow eyed Demon” I couldn't resist throwing in a load of references. As always. Thank you for reading.)