A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

Alas for us, the part of the inn where we were sitting and talking was filling up fast by this point. The news of a Witcher and the Duke of the Pontar sitting and having a gossip had gotten around and people were coming in from the surrounding homesteads to be close to the action. They wanted to know what was going on and didn’t dare be left out by… whatever it was that was going to happen.

I had the feeling that this was one of those times where people would be talking about it for years to come. The village was fairly quiet and not near anything particularly strategic so it is unlikely that the wars had touched them very much in the intervening time. I had visions of them telling the tale of the Duke and the Witcher coming to sit and talk to their children and their grandchildren and I dimly wondered how long it would be before those tales turned into something else… something more sinister.

Folklore begins that way after all.

But as we returned to the inn it was clear that we would struggle to find a quiet corner to sit and talk so we gave up on that idea. Kerrass took the opportunity to go and have a bath and clean himself up again. I made use of the water-trough for much the same purpose as my need was not as great as Kerrass’. Instead I took another mug of the foamy light ale that they seemed to appreciate in the village and returned to our table where I half watched the company grow and half read the bundle of reports that I had been handed when I left the castle.

I should have dealt with them earlier but they were just as inconsequential as I had feared them to be. At the time they might have been really important but in the here and now of the thing…

Farming communities like this one tend to work really hard and then play really hard. Given that this was Autumn and the very beginning of the harvest, the people that were beginning to find their way into the small inn and tavern, would be people that had worked all day and now would party all night. And when they were done with all of that, they would return home to get a couple of hours of sleep before they would be rising with the dawn to return to work. I like to point this kind of thing out to those of the more noble class that like to call the people that work their fields lazy.

When Kerrass emerged from the bath house part of the building, he was drying his hair and saw the growing number of people in the room. He caught my eye and laughed as I shrugged. He took the time to move his belongings into the room that I had arranged for him and when he returned to the company, he was dressed in a simple woollen shirt and his leather trousers and boots. He had left his swords behind in his rooms and had his long hunting knife strapped to his side in something of an effort to blend in I suppose.

We tried to talk but it was clear that such an effort was absolutely futile and instead we shrugged. We enjoyed some cuts from the roast along with some local vegetables and another loaf of the bread that the Innkeeper had baked for the occasion and we listened to the gossip coming from the people around us.

We have been in this position many times over the years and this was no different. A group of men and women climbed up onto the stage with a variety of improvised instruments and started to play various tunes that line up under the dubious title of “jig” and it would seem that the party was in full swing.

It was a good night all told, only slightly marred by the fact that I wanted to continue my conversation with Kerrass.

There was a feeling of things unsaid and I wanted to get back to that. I wanted to draw the poison out of the injury that existed between us so that we could both move onto whatever our friendship would turn into now. I had no doubt that there was going to be something there but I kind of wanted to get it started in the here and now of the situation.

But the village refused to let that go.

The music was pretty good as these things go and I began to feel churlish in resenting their presence. I told myself that I get so few opportunities to spend time in this kind of company, so I should enjoy it while I could.

I am better at setting these thoughts aside now than I used to be and I moved to sit next to the dance floor, helping a plainly astonished farm hand in moving a couple of tables in order to make more room.

I didn’t dance though. I don’t like to unless Ariadne is there and I can dance with her first before accepting other invitations to dance. It is from such things that a man in my position can make or break reputations and if I was seen to be dancing with any number of pretty ladies, even innocently, then my enemies would make rumour out of that with astonishing speed. But the music was good and I clapped and laughed along with the beat, cheering at the close of every song.

Kerrass was a revelation. He danced with everyone that asked, stopping only to take a couple of swallows of whatever drink he had left. He was not short of drinks and nor was I as various people insisted on buying us drinks just as I insisted on putting a certain amount of money behind the bar and just telling the bar staff to keep serving people drinks until my money ran out.

This always makes me absurdly popular. I see it as a proper recompense for being a lord who has taken the business of the place over for a period of time.

But as I say, Kerrass was a revelation. He danced with everyone that asked and took part in every movement as though he knew it. There was more than one occasion where he took centre stage in order to carry out the more complicated manoeuvres that the dance required, that the other villagers couldn’t perform.

I watched in astonishment as he turned down advances from a couple of women. One was a youngster who should have known better, but he whispered something in her ear that made her laugh before he pointed out another youngster in the crowd that was leaning against a pillar, watching her happily, clearly in the early throes of young love. She laughed again and approached the young man and as I watched, the two of them danced and laughed the night away, clearly to the joy of a couple of older people that were watching them.

I also saw him turn down the advances of an older, much drunker woman. Again, he talked to her and her face fell in drunken horror and profound grief. She burst into tears and Kerrass led her from the dance floor where he held her, calmed her and then deposited her with a few of her friends that had been waiting for this kind of breakdown.

Kerrass left them and returned to his dancing where he parried the advances of another woman who was doing her best to upset her husband. Kerrass made it clear that he wanted none of that and told her that her husband still loved her and that she should remember that before she drove him away beyond hope of saving her marriage.

I had never seen Kerrass like this. I had seen him take part in these kinds of events, but here he was the life and soul of the party. I saw him using his Witcher skills and his experience with people to mend broken hearts, match-make and turn down lovers that he would easily have been able to take off to his room for the night.

I have seen Kerrass when he is being celibate and he just avoids such entanglements. Or I have seen him when he was being lusty and dealing with the matter head on, taking on whichever advance he liked the look of. But seeing him take them head on and then divert them was strange to me.

He laughed, he joked, he smiled and he talked. I know that he set up at least three couples and fixed one marriage that night as well as having a grand old time himself, returning to our table with a laugh, only to be called up to dance once more.

I was even more convinced that tonight was going to be a night that the village would remember for generations. Not least because I was pretty convinced that a few women might even get pregnant that night and in future, when the children are born and ask how it all came to be they will be told that “it was the night when the laughing Witcher and the silver Duke came to town”.

The party wound down as these things have to do eventually. The young couples that wanted to sneak off to enjoy each other, the older couples that knew they were in no rush to do precisely that. One by one the members of the band packed up their instruments. The music continued but a key pair of musicians that I think were either lovers or husband and wife got up to leave and that seemed to be the end of that. The remaining musicians joined the throng or went home themselves.

But by that point, people were retreating to their corners to bend their heads together to speak in hushed tones. These were the people that didn’t have as far to go to get home or didn’t need to get up quite as early in the morning. There was now, just a steady background noise. Occasionally someone would laugh raucously, there was a big cheer when one of the bar staff dropped a jug of ale so that the pottery shattered sending the beer all over the floor. He bowed to the assembly like an acrobat finishing a complicated series of movements before pouring another jug and going to fetch a mop.

Kerrass rejoined me, leaning back in his chair and watching the room with a happy little smile on his face. I watched him for a moment, enjoying the sight of my friend seemingly at peace.

“You look happy,” I told him.

“What?” he seemed startled out of whatever thoughts he was in the middle of and then his brain caught up with what I said.

“Possibly,” he admitted. “A nice simple night where I have been accepted. Rare for a Witcher but I have enjoyed the opportunity to be part of it.”

“It looks good on you,” I told him.

“What does?”

“Happiness,” I said. “Peace,”

He laughed, something else that looked good on his face.

“It was hard won, I have to admit.”

“Are you going to tell me how you get there?”

He thought about it for just a moment.

“You don’t have to if…” I began.

“No, I do.” he decided. “You deserve to know as it is part of why I came back. I knew that you change your residence occasionally and I was aiming to come south to find out where you were. But you found me first it would seem.”

He signalled the bar man who brought us over another jug of ale which Kerrass insisted on paying for.

“Do you want to leave it till morning?” I asked. “It’s much later than I had first thought it would be when I imagined our conversation.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and wiping the foam moustache with the back of his hand. “No, I want to get it all out in the open now,” he grinned. “You know, before I lose my nerve.”

I nodded slowly.

“In which case Kerrass, you had camped in the family hunting grounds while you regained your strength.”

He laughed.

“That’s right. And that’s where it all went wrong for me.”

His laughter seemed so incongruous that I was a little surprised. I was not the only one as more than one person turned to look at us to see what was happening.

“I knew it too,” he said as he poured himself another beer from the jug. “I didn’t know what was going to happen but it seemed to me at that moment that I knew that life was going to get much more… problematic I suppose.”

He chuckled, took a drink and again, was forced to wipe the foam moustache from his upper lip.

“I remember that moment very clearly. There were a couple of days beforehand when I was recovering that are a blur of grey pain and righteous anger. And there are days afterwards which are a haze of frustration and sullen, impatient rage. But in that moment, I remember feeling it.

“I had moved to the edge of the hunting ground to see what could be seen so that I could make my decision and I felt as though… I know when I am being watched. It’s an essential skill and talent for Witchers, but it felt to me then that the powers, the Gods and Goddesses if you prefer, were watching me. It felt like a crystallised moment in time and seemed oddly peaceful. As though the entire continent, the entire world even, was waiting for me to make my decision as to what to do next.

“It was a grey morning, I remember that clearly and I could feel the first smell of winter in the air. That deceptive first breath that feels as though ice has been driven up your nostrils. The urge to dig out the winter clothing and wrap up against the coming cold is upon you and yet, there were still weeks, if not months before it would get really, properly cold.

“The clouds were grey and shapeless, not even the lighter patches of sky where the sun fought to come through the overcast nature of things. It was just, shapeless, formless grey.

“The countryside was at war. You could tell, seeing tall plumes of oily smoke that rise towards the heavens, only slightly buffeted around by cool breeze. The scent of burnt flesh was in the air and in the distance, I could hear screams. Men always like to tell themselves that they don’t scream, but they do. The same way that women scream in pain, fear, anger and hate. I could hear that on the wind and it was not just humans. Horses too, oxen and sheep as they were slaughtered to feed the still massing companies that were to make up the army of your brother’s rebellion.

“I could see Coulthard Castle from the place that I stood and I watched as the carrion crows circled the towers. People always say that it is a bird of ill omen but I always think that is unfair. They are just doing what they do to survive, but it cannot be denied that those crow calls, as they call others of their flock to the feast, is a chilling sound.

“And it was worse this time and I didn’t know why. It took me a moment until the answer came to me. It was worse because this time, I knew the people that those crows would be feasting on. They would be my friends, and loved ones. People that I cared about.

“That is one of the benefits of the Witcher’s neutrality. When we are neutral, we can keep ourselves separate from the trials and horrors of the continent. I know that there are some of us that didn’t manage even that, but still… that is what it was that made it worse. I thought of Emma, Rickard, Carys, Padraig and all the rest. I thought of you as I had last seen you, laughing and smiling and now… Were you the food for the crows? Were you one of the other bodies that I had crawled through, over, under or past in order to get to the wall of the killing pit?

“I had no idea and I couldn’t decide what to do about it.

“I stood there, looking out over the countryside and I knew that I had a choice to make. I knew that both of those choices were bad and I knew that I would always regret not doing the other thing. But I knew that it was a choice that needed to be made.

“On the one hand, there was the choice that my heart desired. I wanted to find a soldier, kill them and take their weapons. Then I would find my way into Coulthard Castle and I would find what happened to you and the others that I cared about. I would find a way to free Ariadne and together we would carry the cause on and kill Sam and whoever else was behind all of this.

“That was what I wanted and despite all of my years on the path, despite all of the lessons that they taught me in Witcher School as to how such things play out. My romantic heart demanded that I do that. Even despite all of the things that were levelled against me. Even though I stand out in a crowd, even though I had no armour and no uniform… My thoughts came up with plans. I could steal the uniform of the man that I killed and make my way that way. But even a cursory examination of the countryside where I was told that the soldiers were moving in groups. Such tricks work in a countryside and castle that is used to being at peace. But when you are in the countryside at war, people are more aware of that threat.

“So I forced myself to consider the other option. I could try and warn people. Find allies. I knew that the Empress’ party was in Vizima which is not so great a distance south from Novigrad really and I could warn them what happened and I knew that Ciri would want to come to your help if nothing else.

“I didn’t want to do that. I just ignored the Witcher solution which was to shrug and turn my face in the opposite direction and walk away, making some plans to come back next year when the Necrophages would be about and again in five to ten years when the wraiths and spirits would be rising up out of the ground.

“So there I was. I was still hurt, Witcher potions notwithstanding, having your neck broken makes a difference to a person. There was still an odd delay where I would tell my limbs to do something and then they would behave in the manner that I expected. I had no potions and no means to brew more potions. I was still dressed in the slimy, filthy rags that I had worn when I had gone to the feast. So I had no armour and although I have gone without and can go without armour when there is a need for it, I was slow, I knew that I was slow and wanted some armour to counter that dreadful lack of speed.

“I had left my swords in my room that night so as not to scare any of the guests and so, for weaponry, I had a hunting knife that had seen better days. I had not been able to find a whetstone to keep it sharp and honed as I would have liked and after a couple of days of using it to do EVERYTHING, it was not in any state to be a weapon.

“I didn’t even have an eating knife for the Goddess’ sake.

“So I knew what the sensible option was. Retreat, regroup, gather allies and then come back. Live to fight another day and there was little doubt in my mind that some kind of daring rescue would result in my death and Goddess only knows what for you.

“But damn me Freddie, I wanted to do the other thing. It took me all morning to stand there to convince myself to do the sensible thing rather than the romantic thing. All morning as I just stood there, watching the smoke curl up towards the heavens and watched the groups of horsemen roaming around the place, rounding up prisoners and people from the local villages. All morning listening to the screams of people and wondering if I could hear your scream nestled in the middle of the cacophony.

“I remember it being like a build up of pressure in my head. The sounds seemed to grow louder. The trees seemed to bend inwards and the sky seemed to press down on my head. There was a buzzing in my ears and a headache started to throb in the middle of my skull.

“Then I turned and walked away from the precipice. It felt like walking away from the edge of a cliff that I had intended to jump off.”

He stopped speaking and finished his mug of ale in a single draught before he went to pour another to be greeted by a single dribble of foam.

“Dammit,” he said, rising to his feet. “Nothing builds up a thirst quite as much as recounting the darker days in your memory. Back in a moment.”

He went off towards the bar with the empty jug and called over one of the innkeeper’s sons to refill the jug while he went off in the direction of the Jacks.

I took a deep breath. I felt as though I had forgotten to breathe somewhere and the air wanted to come slowly. As though there was not enough breathable air around.

The barman came over and deposited the jug with the smile of a long campaigner and left to speak to one of the drunker patrons who was in tears. From the set of the young barman’s shoulders, this was a regular occurrence and that this was just one of those chores that needed to be done once in a while.

Kerrass returned, still tying up his trousers, and looked for the barman who now had his arm around the weeping patron. The barman gestured, Kerrass saw the jug on the table and came back and poured himself a cup before sitting down.

“That’s better,” he said happily. “Although now I’ve broken the seal on the keg that is my bladder, I might need a few more breaks to go to the Jacks. I notice that you haven’t been yet.”

“Ah, but Kerrass,” I said, doing my best to rise to the occasion. “I am an important man now. I have much more practice at drinking while listening to other people droning on. I have developed the skill of making room for such things.”

“You mean you have gotten fat?” he retorted. “I wasn’t going to say anything but…”

I laughed. Sometimes it is better for everyone if you just accept the joke and move on. This is also something that politics has taught me. Your retort might not be as funny, or it might be seen as mean spirited when the original joke was funnier than yours.

Kerrass lapsed into silence, twisting so that he could sit with his back to the wall next to us and hooked over another stool with his foot so that he could sit with legs stretched out.

“So I put my decision into action. All the while, having to work to convince myself that I was making the right one and knowing, deep down in the core of my being, that I was making a mistake. Forcing myself on, driving myself forward so that I could get to where I needed to go.

“I headed south first. South, around the main area of where all the horror was taking place. It went well and it was not too hard to avoid your brother’s patrols and the like. I just… Did what I needed to do. I was able to take a soldier when he left a camp to go and take a piss and I murdered him for his sword. There were three of them, just a patrol going up and down the river and I cursed my weakness given that I couldn’t take all of them. When at full strength I could have done that… Used stealth to get the first, followed by a sign to neutralise a second. Engage the third and with enough time to kill them before I returned to kill the second.

“I wonder if that was when I started to lie to myself. I told myself that I was being careful to avoid… If I killed those men then it was more likely that there would be a search for me whereas one man, alone… It would be more likely to be passed off as someone else. I told myself that I was being stealthy and careful by only killing one.

“Could I have avoided them? Absolutely. But I felt so much better for having a sword strapped to my back. Even with it being the badly balanced, mass produced metal that it was.

“I reached the river and swam across and started making my way towards Vizima.”

Kerrass stared off into space for a moment, his fingers drumming out an odd pattern on the table between us before he took a deep breath and blew the air out through pursed lips so that it seemed to whistle. Then he raised his eyes to look at me.

“I have done a lot of thinking since I went north,” he told me. “A LOT of thinking and one of the more regular topics of thought is as to where it all went wrong for me. There is no easy answer and you can form your own opinions on that matter after the full story is told. For a long time, I convinced myself that it was that decision point on the edge of the woodland as I looked out over the fields and made the choice between travelling to Vizima and going to try and rescue you.

“As I looked back over the wreckage that I had made of my life, that was the moment that seemed to me, the point where I had started to go wrong. It was the romantic part of my soul that thought that. The part of me that longed to go to the Princess’ side and raise her to a state of wakefulness with a kiss of my own. The part that dreamed up that insane rescue plan that freed Amber’s Crossing from the grips of the Darkness. That was the part of me that wanted it to be one single, perfect moment where I had chosen one path and I should have chosen the other.”

He looked down again.

“But since then, the realist in me is forced to admit that the real poison that entered my soul was during the journey South. I was tired, injured, sick and utterly utterly furious. I have hated before but not with that amount of self-loathing. Over and over again, the thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other was the thought that I should have seen this coming. I should have seen the rage in the depths of Sam’s soul and I should have prevented what had happened to you. It was a dark moment.

“There have been others. The moments of realisation that a Witcher’s neutrality doesn’t always work for me after I had left the Princess for the first time and that I needed to stop being a Witcher for a while and seek vengeance. That time, the thing that saved me was the knowledge that the Princess would not approve of me descending into hatred. In my times with you, the passage over the mountains after our visit to Kaer Morhen and our retreat from the cult in Northern Redania.

“But in this journey, I didn’t have you to keep me company and keep my mind moving. So I sank further and further into a darkness that I couldn’t climb out of. So I fought back.”

He shook his head at the memory, his eyes were distant now. Watching himself from the distance of time.

“How I fought back was with the fantasy of being the hero. I told myself that I was carrying the word back to those that needed to hear it. I built myself this big, fantasy scenario where I would be escorted into the royal palace of Vizima, dirty, broken and injured to report to a grateful Empress. I would tell her of the treachery that had befallen you and all that had transpired and then she would marshall her armies.

“I imagined the grand coming together of all of our friends and allies. Indeed, I imagined it just as it happened. I imagined myself resting and recuperating in the halls of the Viziman palace while the armies marshalled.”

He grinned at me, a little sheepishly.

“I may, or may not, have imagined beautiful, partially dressed women being my nursemaids.”

I laughed with him.

“And then I imagined myself leading a squad of Witchers, ably assisted by Svein, Gregoire and a few others in order to rescue you and your sister and all of the other people that you hold dear.”

He shook his head again and for a moment, I saw the shadow of self-loathing cross his face.

“We do what we have to to survive,” I told him.

His head jerked up, startled out of his thought process.

“I know that,” he told me. “I do know that. And if this had been anything else. If you had done the same thing then it would not have been a problem. I would not hesitate to be the first person to tell you that you did what you had to to survive. But we hold different rules for others than what we hold for ourselves and you cannot tell me that you don’t know that bitter pill.”

He smiled as he told me that, accusing me with a finger.

“It is true,” I admitted. “I do sometimes fall into the trap of forgiving my friends for transgressions that I would be furious with myself for if our positions had been reversed.”

“And so it is with me. And for better reasons. During the journey south as I stole food and drink, camping off the beaten track so that I could brew some potions in peace, I bought into that fantasy so much. When we build these constructs for ourselves in order to motivate ourselves, it remains important to remember that they are just fantasies and they almost never come true.

“But me? I bought into it. It was true for me. It was going to happen and as I sank into that fever of self delusion… It was shockingly easy and even now…”

He shook his head again.

“I wonder if you can imagine the sheer amount of let down that I felt when I crested the hill to see the Imperial army already marshalling?”

I shook my head.

“No I can’t,” I told him. Not least because the falsehood would be obvious.

“I had been travelling for a while… I have no idea for how long and I had no idea how much time I had lost while I waited to heal in your Father’s hunting ground. I had been sneaking over farmland and well groomed hunting grounds. I was not starving but I was… sick. I had convinced myself that I was being secretive to avoid your brother’s watching eyes and to keep the intelligence of my survival from travelling back North to your brother’s factions.

“And I remember it clearly. I came over the rise to see that sea of Black. The well organised Military ranks of Black tents with camp fires burning and at first I didn’t believe it. I just assumed that this was a marshalling before these troops headed towards Vergen or somewhere similar. But no…

“I remember that I was in a daze as I moved forwards. Imperial soldiers are not so lax though. I was spotted and taken into custody. They soon realised that I was a Witcher. One good thing about the eyes is that there is no mistaking you for someone else. It took them some time to get my identity out of me. They decided that I had been attacked at some point and summoned one of the military mages to heal me which is when they got my identity out of me.

“I was rushed to the palace. I remember my feet barely touched the ground as I was taken, not into the throne room as I had always imagined but into a back room where I was questioned by someone I didn’t know. They took my story carefully and asked a series of questions. Then they asked the questions again and again. Then again with the presence of a mage to see if I was lying.

“They told me that the Empress had already taken forward positions. The word had been brought to them some days ago… I remember little of those meetings. I just… I remember a daze… That feeling of dissociation. I was watching myself from a distance as I answered the questions and went through the motions. I brewed the potions to heal myself and another Witcher came with a spare sword for me… I think it was Lambert of all people. He had arrived with Keira to join the effort of what was happening.

“But I remember a phrase that was going through my mind over and over and over again.”

“They already knew,” I guessed.

“You know me well,” Kerrass said.

“Not so much,” I admitted. “It was what I would have been thinking.”

“Yes, well.” Kerrass cleared his throat and took a drink.

“I won’t bore you with what happened after that, you did more than a good job of describing what happened in your more recent works. You described the Empress’ rage, the panic of the Mages and Sorceresses as they realised the scale of what Sam was trying to achieve. You spoke about the planning sessions and there is very little to add to that. I was met by Padraig, Carys and Chireadean and I was more gratified at their joy in seeing me alive. They had not seen my neck being broken so all they had to go on was what you had told them. They filled me in on what you had done and how you had done it.

“I will freely admit that I was furious with you for all of that. That you would sacrifice your freedom for the sake of others rather than making your own way yourself. It was very you while at the same time… I think I would have been happier if I had turned up to find you there with them. I did ask Padraig why he hadn’t simply knocked you unconscious and carried you.”

“I asked him the same question once. He told me that the thought did occur but that there was something in the way that I was speaking that just meant that he didn’t do it. He told me that it was impossible to explain.”

Kerrass grunted.

“He said the same thing to me and I was no less furious to hear it from him. I turned inwards. I retreated from everyone, old friends and comrades. Ciri came back from wherever it was that she had been to make sure that I was alive and that it was not some invention of some sycophant that wanted to curry favour with her.

“All around me were people that were overjoyed to see me. Even Lady Yennefer turned up at one point to tell me that she was pleased to see me before she went off to yell at someone else in that calm way of hers.

“But inside me, there was the surety that coming south had been a waste of time and effort. I could have stayed in the North. I could have fought. I could have gone to Novigrad instead and joined the resistance, finding myself an extra sword and looting someone to get my hands on some silver. I could have made a difference there, I could have done something.

“Or if I had stayed in the countryside to help there. It had been reiterated to me that I wouldn’t have been able to rescue you. We now had intelligence that people were being checked as they got into the castle and I would not have been able to come up with anything.

“So as I waited, increasingly furious with myself for choosing the wrong path, devastated with the fact that I did not have to come south after all… I was just another bearer of bad news where in my own head, I was the hero that brought the news out of the North. But instead… just another messenger.

“I won’t bore you with another story about how everything happened as we came north. The Empress kept me with her while she came. I would have preferred the opportunity to get out and do some other things, travel and fight with Helfdan or any number of things. But those are later thoughts. Instead, I turned inwards and my depression and rage grew. I was not a pleasant person to be around during that time despite a constant stream of people coming up and telling me that it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing that I could do and that I shouldn’t hate myself as much as I clearly was.

“I ignored them and people just saw it as that worsening world view. I was so angry with everything that I was paralysed by it. Instead of finding an outlet such as doing something constructive, instead I found ways that just confirmed my own anger and rage. And as I travelled as part of the army moving up through Temeria with agonising slowness. I had no way to… pull myself out. I just needed to recover.

“So a new dream started to occur. I would be the one to slay Sam. I would be the assassin that made my way into the castle to get to Sam and kill him. I would prevent the darkness from spreading and I would stymy his little dreams. I would do it. I would be his end and I would be the instrument of your vengeance and this time, definitely this time, I would be the hero of the story.

“It was not a righteous dream, it was purely selfish and that is something that I know now. It was that hate that drove me. Not even the hate of Sam or any of the others that might have deserved it, but help of myself.”

He swallowed and wouldn’t look at me for a moment.

“The news that you were alive, that your sister was alive… That was not a goad to get me out of my self loathing. It was not a thing that started to make me feel better. It was a reinforcement of the existing dream and existing doom. It was basically a reinforcement that I should have done everything I could to get you and Emma out. I should have found a way to free Ariadne from the influence that she was under and I should have found a way to get the pair of you out.

“It was quite clear to everyone that Emma and yourself were hostages and being forced to write what you were. Emma was a hero to the courtiers and finance people that were analysing everything that she wrote and messaged to the various trading factors. The Empress issued orders that the Coulthard trading company should be preserved and your various factors should preserve the fortune so that you could reclaim it.

“It became a common sentiment in the Imperial court that “if only Lord Frederick and Lady Emma could be rescued or had managed to escape”. No-one blamed me of course, or at least, they did not blame me to my face. And that just made me angrier. I would have felt better if someone had yelled at me or had otherwise berated me then I might have felt better.”

“Or worse,” I suggested.

He thought about that, turning his head on one side and staring at the ceiling for a moment.

“That is possible I suppose. There are no good answers for whatever it was that was happening.”

He sighed.

“But the long and short of it was that the news of your survival and Emma’s heroism was not a prompt, it merely added to my self-loathing and my fantasy. Now, I would not just kill Sam, but I would rescue you and Emma.”

He shifted on his seat, putting his feet down on the floor and turning back towards me.

“I won’t bore you with the journey north and the various campaigns that were undertaken. Your account is already pretty complete of everything that happened. Or at least my understanding of everything that happened. I did start to put it out there that I would insist on being part of the rescue mission, to get in there and secure the hostages. Meaning you, Emma and all of the other people that were taken along with you. I would be there to save you.”

He sighed and looked up at me, looking in my eyes for the first time in a while.

“I won’t lie to you Freddie, there were parts of this whole thing when it comes to my mental state that I didn’t put together until much later.”

I nodded my understanding.

“The moment of rallying was when there was a conversation about what to do about Ariadne. I remember perking up then and it was as though my brain seemed to come alive. You have already recounted how I told people about how I knew that I could free her and that was largely accurate and it seemed to me that there was a lifting of the clouds.

“It was clear to me what was going to happen. I was going to rescue you all. After everything that you have all done for me, I was going to rescue you and I was going to kill Sam and then I was going to be the hero. I would have earned everything that you have done for me over the years and then I would feel as though we were even. I would feel as though I deserved the friendship of a good man.”

He gestured to me.

“And I would have been able to tell myself that I deserved the love of a good woman. I knew what the Princess was going to try and do when it came to your wedding and I had told myself I would be open to it.”

He shook his head in exasperation, presumably with himself.

“So that was the moment of brightness in all the dark. I was going to be the hero of the story after all. All of that Witcher training about never being the hero, about never taking a side. It was all left by the side of the road. I was going to prove my friendship to you and I was going to prove my consequence and my quality to the continent.”

He stopped speaking for a long moment, just staring at the table again, examining the memory from a couple of different angles.

“It didn’t last.” He told me. “It was a brief respite at that.”

He sighed and rose to his feet, going to relieve himself again. Whether out of actual need or out of the desire to delay the next piece of the story, I was unable to guess.

The tavern area was now quiet. Only the real hardcore drinkers were still there, a few had gone to sleep on the table and it was clear to most that the only people that were really still drinking were Kerrass and I. I caught the eye of the yawning barman and beckoned him over.

“How much,” I began, “would you charge if my friend and I just kept drinking. Assume that the two of us have the capacity to keep drinking, faster than we are at the moment, until dawn and breakfast?”

He blinked a few times and frowned as he did the maths. Not for the first time will I express the sentiment that Numeracy is more well spread in the uneducated than the use of language, reading and writing. And that a lack of education does not automatically mean stupidity.

He quoted me a figure. I doubled it and put the coin in his hand.

“We will not cheat you,” I told him. “But we still have a lot to talk about he and I and we are not going to stop until we have run out of things to say to each other,”

He nodded sagely.

“I’ve had conversations like that too milord,” he told me with all of the wisdom that his nineteen years have given him. I remember being that young. I was that young when a Witcher took me under his wing.

“We will not go mad.” I told him. “Mostly just beer and wine and water. Check with your Father though if it makes you uncomfortable but you should get some rest.”

He nodded and left into the kitchen. Kerrass came back just as the barman and one of his brothers was turning the more local guests out of the door. The Witcher sat back at the table when the barman came back.

“Dad says to help yourself,” he said. “But I have hidden the more expensive spirits.”

I grinned and nodded. The lad yawned wide enough to split his face and nodded again before leaving.

Kerrass watched him go.

“Just how rich are you Freddie?” He asked, pouring himself another.

I just grinned at him. I find it best, in general, not to answer that question when it is asked. The mystery is so much more enticing than the actual figure which I’m not entirely certain of as it is.

“Pretty rich,” I told him. “Rich enough that I don’t need to worry about such things, which is as rich as I ever wanted to be. The feeling of being able to be generous when I want to be, to pay craftsmen and artists what they are worth rather than the false prices that market might insist it is. And to never have to worry about whether I can pay for something. The freedom to not have to worry about the cost of things, or that a bank will ever tell me “No,” when I need some ready cash. Most of my wealth is tied up in public works and funding things to make local trade better.”

“Won’t that just make you richer?”

“It will,” I admitted. “But it will also make my people richer. Also I invest in education and church schools, we’re rebuilding Oxenfurt into the place of learning it should be and Shani is spending a fortune on medical research. We’re helping Velen secure its borders and draining the swampland in Velen so that there can be more farmland. I also sponsor a lot of the poorer Knights of Saint Francesca when it needs doing to keep them going, and the roads in The Pontar valley region between Vergen and the mountains are shocking. I desperately try to spend money as fast as I can but that just means that more money comes in. I also send more tax revenue to the Imperial and both royal treasuries than I strictly need to to keep everyone in everyone’s good graces. But…”

I shrugged.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad problem to have and anyone that claims to have too much money has never had to wonder where that night’s dinner is going to come from.”

Kerrass nodded and toasted that sentiment.

“Where was I?” he asked.

“Hating yourself,” I told him, trying to keep the tone light.

I failed and Kerrass went back to staring through the table at a vision that only he could see.

“The plan was in place,” he began, speaking softly and low so that I had to concentrate to hear him. “It even went really well at first. Carys, Padraig and I. Svein and the others with us. Padraig and Carys led us to the rope and we climbed over the walls and we were in. It was so easy that I thought that it was a trap. But the further and further we got, the clearer and clearer it was that the defences were not geared towards a small team of infiltrators.

“The arrogance of the defence was colossal, they just assumed that no-one would try such a thing. You wrote that the real reason for the coup was to cause as much death as possible, on Sam’s own side, or the side of Sam’s entity was just as valid as the death caused on the Imperial side. I think that was true, I certainly felt that to be the case.

“Carys led us round to the side of the castle keep where we climbed in through a servant’s window. Svein led his men to the gate and set themselves up to prepare, taking that gate and holding it open ready for the attack. Padraig, Carys and I made our way into the castle. Our target was the bag on Sam’s waist which I had told everyone to look for, and to secure the hostages as much as possible.

“We actually found you fairly quickly.”

He sighed and looked down and away.

“The problem was getting to Sam in order to free Ariadne. So although we got to you fairly quickly. There was nothing that we could do until Ariadne was free. None of us were under any illusions, if Ariadne was told to, the three of us were dead the moment she thought about it. And I couldn’t get close to Sam without being able to hide amongst the crowd. Padraig was too big and Carys was too slender. As it was, she was the weak link in our chain. Slender, female and elven. She would not be able to blend in and the moment she was spotted, it would all be over.

“So I had to blend with a group, and such a group that it wouldn’t be examined too closely.

“So we had to wait until the castle started to panic.”

His eyes focused and looked at me.

“I’m so sorry Freddie. We came as soon as we could guarantee victory, but not as soon as we could have got to you. We might have saved Rickard and who knows how many of the others. I’m so sorry Freddie. I could have… I should have…”

I had never seen Kerrass weep. It was awful and it tore my heart out.

“Hey,” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “I knew all of this. Padraig and Carys told me a long time ago. You did what you had to do.”

He nodded and wiped his face.

“You did Kerrass, if you had gone in early then all three of you might have been dead and Sam and the entity might have succeeded. It is easy to look back and think what you should have done but you saved us Kerrass. You saved us.”

He nodded unhappily.

“I know,” he said. “But I miss Rickard. I wish…”

He shook his head.

“But that was not the worst of it.”

“Go on.”

“Because in entering that room,” he looked up at me, “In entering that room, I saw what they had done to you.”

I saw his horror reflected in his face.

“Goddess Freddie, I have seen corpses with more life than you had. It astonished me that you were still alive, looking the way that you did at that point. I saw you then,”

He was staring off into the distance, not really seeing me but rather staring at the memory.

“Caked in your own filth, sweating and trembling with fever. The rags that they called bandages were covered in dried and stinking blood and the mangled stump on your left hand looked… Goddess Freddie. I am so sorry. I left you to that. I should have…”

He hung his head for a long moment and the tears fell. Just as I was about to reach forward and try to distract him from his guilt and his grief, he took a juddering breath and looked up.

“I have never been that angry. Never. The stuff in the South with the Princess is the closest that I have been to that level of rage. But that was a slow burning thing that took its time to grow. This was a sudden, filthy, overwhelming rage that I could not control. It was like a fire that threatened to overwhelm me.

“My fantasy shattered. This was not going to be some rescue where I found the cell that you were being held in, found the jailor and his keys before handing you your spear and dagger so that we could carve a path out of there. We were not going to rescue your sister in a show of courage and daring that would be immortalised in song. We were not going to be the heroes that I had envisaged during the long, interminable days and nights with which I came North.

“I knew then that it was just as likely that the kindest thing I could do was to cut your throat nice and quick in order to end it.”

I took that in for a moment, trying to decide what I was supposed to do with that information.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I told him but he ignored my words, just moving onto the next thing.

“So I hid behind the Witcher’s training. I put on the mask of the professional. I could still enjoy ending Sam. I could say all of the lines that I had promised myself that I would say to him. I could tell him how inferior he was and how foolish he was and all of that kind of thing. I locked my emotions behind a wall of Witcher training, other than my hate which I used to focus my concentration, and my anger which I used to give strength, speed and stamina to my muscles and I executed my plan.

“You remember that fight as well as I do, but we didn’t talk about it afterwards so you have no idea just what was going through my head.”

I waited.

“I was no longer trying to rescue you, I was trying to avenge you. I was trying to… I was trying to carry your… I wanted Sam dead. That was the desire now and I pursued it. I located my own swords in the pile. I tried to identify his weaknesses and then when the Sorceresses signalled me that I could kill him, I swept up the silver and went on the attack.

“In my arrogance, I had assumed that it would happen quickly, and that what I could see in front of me was the… final form of your brother as it were. And I was confident that I could beat your brother in a fight, no matter how fast he might have been made by the sorcery and things that he had become.

“And then he became that thing and as I fought, the doubt started to creep into my mind. And gradually, it became clear, at least to me, that I was not going to win this fight. I was being beaten. I was running out of ideas, running out of tricks. Your brother was holding me at arms length and… well…”

He shook his head and came back to the moment for a bit, the two of us sitting in an inn, talking about the things that we had seen and been through in the past. He smirked.

“Cousin Geralt once talked about the fight between him and the mage… Whatshisname.”

He was not asking me for the solution and I didn’t offer it.

“Cousin Geralt can tell a good story when he puts his mind to it. You can’t travel with a famed saga poet without picking up a few things, he just likes the image you know? The image of the stoic Witcher moving through life without worrying about, or being affected by things. He told me that afterwards, while he was recuperating from his injuries and while he was dealing with the pain that he still suffers with to this day. Afterwards, he went over the fight. Over and over and over it, analysing it from every possible angle, thinking about every move and countermove that he had made and that the mage had made. He wanted to find the mistakes that he had made, the tricks that he should have used, the things that he should have done in the heat of the moment rather than what he had actually ended up doing.

“In the end, he decided… or was forced to admit if you listen to Yennefer, that the thing that he should have done when meeting that mage on the field of combat, was to throw his sword away and just run for it.

“That was what it felt like. I had nothing left. It was the same as the duel in Toussaint, only this time I had the magical exhaustion to go with it. I had nothing left. I was tired and I had already drunk more potions than I strictly should have taken and I was just gearing up for the last trick. When all else has failed, take the enemy’s strike so that you can kill him. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was not going to survive this. That I was going to have to take Sam with me and that I was going to die. Right then, I thought that I didn’t deserve to live so… In all truth, I was alright with that.

“And then I saw you out of the corner of my eye, crawling towards your brother with the axe in your hand.

“I couldn’t believe it. You were all but a corpse. This dying skeleton of my friend was crawling towards me, leaving a trail of slime behind him, dragging himself across the floor with his one working hand, whimpering in agony and there you were.

“My body reacted automatically. I steered Sam round so that you had a clear shot at his back, just as we had practised all those times. How you got to your knees I will never know and then you hurled yourself forward in a display of anger and heroism that I could not even dream of.

“And it gave me the opening I needed and I finally killed your brother.”

Kerrass swallowed.

“I couldn’t even look at you. I was so… ashamed. I had meant to rescue you, I had meant to save you and take you away from that place. And in the end it was you that had been forced to save yourself. And the effort that you had put into planting that axe into your brother's back…?”

Kerrass shook his head.

“You very nearly killed yourself in trying to save me. I had failed you so utterly that I had to be saved by you.”

I decided that I had had enough.

“Yeah…” I began. “You know that’s all nonsense right?”

Kerrass laughed abruptly.

“I do now,” he chuckled. “I’ve had two and a half years to think about it all since then. And I’ve had my ass kicked by a pair of Witchers and a Goddess in the meantime until I came to my senses. But that’s getting ahead in the story and I know how you like to keep things in their proper order.”

“I do, I do,” I agreed.

His face stilled and his sudden, astonishing smile retreated from his face.

“But I also owe you an explanation,” he said. “I was not thinking rationally. There was still a rational part of my brain that I had sitting in the back somewhere that was watching everything that I was doing and all of the mistakes that I was making. I may say that he was furious with me but at the time… You once said that you had two things. Your brain thought rationally while your heart thought instinctively.”

“That’s right. Shani agrees as she has been studying such things. She claims that for most people, the two work in tandem and partnership. They work together to get to where they have to go. The problems in people turn up when one thing starts to take over from the other. When the brain is dominant and ignores the feelings of the person, or when a person is ruled by their emotions and doesn’t allow themselves to think rationally.”

Kerrass grunted.

“Sounds a little simple.”

“And it is, it’s far from a perfect theory but as a basis, Shani and her fellows think it has merit. Anyway…”

I gestured for him to continue.

Kerrass thought for a moment.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way Freddie. After that, I fled to bring word to someone that might be able to save your life. And as I performed that task, meeting those people that were coming in and finally infiltrating the castle so that they could carry word that a mage was needed along with medics. And then I charged off to help free Emma and to find some real, honest to Goddess monsters to stick my silver sword into.

“I was terrified that after all of that, you wouldn’t survive. But then… As soon as I had divulged myself of that responsibility, I started to get angry with you.”

He shook his head and looked up at me, with just a ghost of a smile around his lips and in the corner of his eyes.

“Remember… irrational. And if it comes to that, I will keep apologising for as long as it takes. But if I apologise for everything I did, then I would still be apologising in a year's time. So I am saving it all for one big apology at the end if that’s alright?”

“Noted,”

“So once I had passed the responsibility for your life onto someone else, I was free to think of everything else. And I started to become resentful of you.”

He went off to refill the ale mug and I had enough time to wonder if I should have taken out some paper and made some notes about all of this. But Kerrass was back and he placed the jug of ale on the table before a look of mischief came into his eyes. Again, I had just enough time to register the thing and realise what was going on. Kerrass has been many things in the past but his mischief has always been sly and a bit barbed. But I watched in horror and amusement as he snuck into the Kitchen, coming back with a loaf of bread, a block of cheese and a large cured sausage.

Then he went back for another pot of butter.

“All this talking and baring of one’s soul is hungry work,” he declared loudly before cutting off a large chunk of sausage and taking an almighty bite out of it.

“And thirsty,” I agreed, pouring us both some ale. I had guessed some of what Kerrass was telling me after discussing and analysing things with various people over the years. But the opportunity to hear it from the Witcher’s own mouth was making all of the difference.

We ate our snack in silence for a while. I would have interrupted but the art of letting someone fill in the silence with what you are waiting for them to tell you is still one that I practise religiously. Turns out that particular artform is just as applicable in high end politics as it is in Witcher and Scholar work. Kerrass was staring into space as he ate, and I didn’t want to interrupt him. He was half way through an improvised sausage and cheese sandwich when he stopped, sighed and put the food down.

“I don’t want to go through everything that happened there,” he told me. “Your account addresses most of the actual events. After Sam was dead, I took a healing potion and went off to find some monsters to fight. I have since considered whether or not I was looking for something to kill me, but I don’t think that was the case. I think… I think it was just something that would have been less emotional…”

He waved his arm in the air, searching for the words.

“There was a monster, I am a Witcher, I kill a monster, move onto next monster.”

I nodded, gesturing with a piece of cheese for him to continue.

“But the resentment of you for failing to sit there and be rescued grew. I knew that what I needed to do was to come and talk to you, get drunk and let it all out, but I couldn’t do that. I convinced myself that there wasn’t time, there were still feral Vampires and augmented soldiers for me to kill. Yes that could have been left to other people, there were a good half a dozen Witchers in the area, let alone anyone else. But I told myself that in fighting them, I might save more lives so I fought and ignored the growing crisis in my own head.”

He hung his head.

“Resentment turned into anger, which turned into hate and before I knew it, I couldn’t have come back.”

He shook his head.

“I remember the rage so very clearly and I remember the hate. The fear for your safety, twisting my brain around until it became something else. That fear was not released, it transformed… it became…”

He shook his head.

“I don’t understand it all, I certainly didn’t then. You sent me messages asking to see me. You were not alone then and I threw them all in my fire. Requests from you, summons from The Empress, Emma, Helfdan and various others. I was told that you needed me, that my friends needed me. I told them that I was needed out in the field. I told myself that I was needed out in the field, even while I knew that I was lying to them and to myself.

“Word came to me that you were getting better and that made me even angrier. I didn’t know why and that made me angrier still.”

I nodded. Despite his earlier declaration that he didn’t want to talk about this period of his life too much, he was beginning to be sucked into the same thought processes. Shani calls it a spiral of despair. She told me about it after I had enjoyed a similar spiral regarding some self-blame for the loss of Rickard. And after I knew about it, I found that it was quite easy to identify with others. When it happens, experience has taught me that you need to jerk someone out from the spiral.

“And then I summoned you,” I told him.

He did everything that I expected him to. He blinked, looking startled, quickly looked around himself as though reminding himself where he was and his eyes seemed to come into focus. Then he gave a little smile of relief.

“And then you summoned me. Would it surprise you to learn that I do not remember that meeting?”

“It would not,” I told him.

“Well it surprises the fuck out of me,” Kerrass told me with a certain asperity. “I read your account of those times and even at my angriest and most upset, I did not recognise myself in those moments. I was appalled at the way that I behaved and even more appalled that I had not seen the warning signs from the Goddess, the signs and portents that she was trying to give me that I was losing my way.

“But again, hopping ahead in my story.

“It was a couple of days later when I sort of came back to myself. I knew that you had asked me to look for Ariadne and that I was filled with rage and hate against you. I did not know why but as I explored those feelings, I decided that I was still angry and filled with hate. So I made myself a promise. I told myself that this was just another friendship that would fall by the wayside.

“‘I was a Witcher,’ I told myself. ‘Normal people don’t understand us and we don’t mix well. It might have been friendship for a while, but men like him and Witchers like me cannot ever really be friends. I was just a means to an end for him and he was just a meal ticket for me. There had been some good times over the years but it was clear that it was time to move on.’ I felt like vomiting for just saying it like that.

“I told myself that over and over though. I promised myself that I would find ‘your woman’ for you and that then I would leave you. I told myself that you could keep your fee and that would be the last free thing that I would give you or give anyone for that matter.

“That was my mantra for some time as I searched. The search was not hard. Ariadne was fleeing, not really hiding and I could pretty much guess what she was doing. She was leaving, she wanted to hide. The irony that this was exactly what I wanted to do was completely lost on me of course but there you go. The trail was there, finding it was tricky as she would often go into unpopulated areas and then I would need to pick it up again. It was not a matter of finding the trail, it was more a problem of finding people who could tell me where the trail was.

“As you tracked, I did indeed find her final lair by coming through the narrow gulley with the gorse bushes and I knew I had found her almost immediately when the Spiders blocked my passage. I did lie to you when I told you that it was made clear to me that I would not survive attempting to go any further. Instead, I knew I had marked the spot and mostly hid from the spiders, avoiding their webs so they would not know of my approach. I found the other entrance to that area, used it and then I found a campsite to make my plan. It was relatively simple really.

“I returned to you, told you that I had found her and then I took you to that place in order to leave you there.”

“Did you come back?” I spoke carefully. I didn’t want a hint of accusation in my voice. “I remember you standing in the crowd and doing your best not to be noticed.”

“Ah Freddie, I was trying to be the Witcher. A lot of my logic was not clear to me until later when other people beat me round the head with it, but at the time, I had cast myself into the role of the Witcher and I was determined to follow through on that until the bitter end. I was standing in your eyeline. I knew that I had trained you well enough that you would see me, so I was behaving the way that you would expect me to behave, like a servant that you had paid for. I was trying to behave like a Witcher.”

It was the first time, through all of this, that he had hurt me and I was unable to keep that from my face or my voice.

“I am…” I took a moment to calm myself. “I am… hurt that you would think I would ever treat a Witcher, or a servant like that.”

“I know Freddie,”

“Apart from anything else, being a historian has taught me that servants…”

He put his hand on my arm.

“I know Freddie,” he said again. “It is one of those things that marks you different from the rest of your kind. It speaks to your quality that out of all of this, that is the thing that upsets you.”

I nodded, grateful for his words.

“But this is not about you,” he told me. “Nor was it then, it was about me and it was about… how I wanted to treat you and how I wanted you to treat me. The part of me that was still me was in pain at the thought of leaving you and the rest when I knew that you needed my help and my support. But the greater part of me that was angry and hurt and all the rest of it… Well…”

I nodded my head and gestured for him to continue.

“I avoided you on the journey. I wanted to stay angry with you, remain full of that hate and resentment. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do afterwards. Reuniting you with Ariadne was the task at the end of the tunnel. It was the light as you emerged from the monster’s lair. After that, I expected to feel free. And I also knew that if I allowed you to come and talk to me then, eventually, I would weaken and I needed to be strong to carry out the thing that I meant to carry out.

“You came to say goodbye to me. I remember that too. You had a long speech and I have often wondered if you prepared it. I read later that you were galvanised by Carys pointing out how I was behaving and I may say that she was absolutely right in that. And when I get the chance, I mean to tell her the same. But you came to me and…”

He shook his head. At some point, my gaze had lowered as I fought with that thing about being treated like a servant. I looked up and saw that Kerrass was really struggling with this point.

“Freddie, you could not have eviscerated me more completely if you had done it with a dagger. And again, I did not know what happened until much later. But you told me that there would always be a place there for me. And that I would always be welcome, and then you left.

“And my anger and hate came back like a tide.”

“Why?”

“If you had asked me at the time, I couldn’t have told you,” he replied. He did so quickly enough that I thought he had that answer prepared but easily enough that I believed it. “I was relieved that you didn’t come and try to see me again, I don’t know how I would have behaved.”

He took a breath and finished his sandwich.

“After that, it went to plan. There was a brief moment where I thought there might be a problem with Carys insisting on having some guards accompany us to the Spider cave. A thousand and one solutions occured to me including the possibility of being forced to kill a guard or two, or just telling everyone that I am a Witcher and if you are not following my advice then I would go elsewhere.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

“Sorry Freddie, they were just flashes, I hope that I wouldn’t have gone through with any of that, but the thought did occur. Fortunately though, you came to the rescue and just… followed my orders without question. Backing me up to the others.

“We went through the gully, I lied to you and told you that the spiders had warned me not to follow and watched as you climbed into the cave. I set you a little camp ready for when you emerged which I had every confidence you would. Then I made myself scarce through the gorse path.”

I nodded and the pair of us sat in silence for a while. I have no idea what time it was but a lot of painful things had been said in that last little stretch. This time, it was me that went off to relieve myself and collect my thoughts.

It is a time for truth and I will not lie to you now dear reader. I found a jug of cool water and splashed my face a bit before looking at my reflection in the water. As I did so, I wondered if I would be able to go back and continue the conversation. Kerrass had said some things there, about the way that he had viewed me in his madness and I was hurt by that.

Even though I knew that he was not right in his own mind and that he knew that, the thought still hurt. That he could think that of me, even in his lowest point.

Then I laughed bitterly.

I could easily imagine Kerrass thinking exactly the same, coming out here to relieve himself and wondering if he could continue to go through with this conversation. It would not be difficult for me, let alone difficult for him to head out into the darkness, find a small patch of woodland and camp out the rest of the night before making myself scarce in the morning.

Had he come out here to relieve himself? Or was he just psyching himself up for the next round of conversations? There was no way to know of course and the only way that I would find out is if I came out with it and straight up asked him.

I was not going to do that, I felt that we were still on hazy ground. And the truth was that it was impossible for me to leave him like that. Not now, not after all this time.

I pushed myself off the counter top and went back into the tavern room to find Kerrass no longer at our table. It took me a moment to find him but he had taken our things and had pulled over a couple of chairs next to the hearth where he had arranged himself comfortably, legs stretched out towards the fire as he sat there, looking hypnotised by the flame.

I joined him, sitting in the chair next to him.

At first, neither of us said anything, just staring into the flames that were licking around the larger pieces of wood that one of the tavern workers had put in there to keep the place warm and heat the unending pots of water that a place like this needs.

It has always been comforting to me to sit and watch the fireplace. A remnant of my religious upbringing I suppose. It has always intrigued me about how we say that we burn the wood and the oil, but it always seems to me that the fire is below, around and above the fuel that we burn. I like to watch it burn and listen to the flickering and guttering sounds that it makes in the meantime.

Eventually, still staring into the fire, Kerrass started to speak. This was different to how it had been with the two of us sitting at the table. It was… melodic and flowing. I didn’t feel as though I could interrupt, indeed, I rather thought that it would be rude to interrupt. So instead, I listened and stared into the fire.

Although I had not yet been taking notes, this is as close to Kerrass’ words as I, and he, can remember.

I went north.

Of course, you know that. Now that I think about it, it’s not that surprising that you were able to track me so easily. I mean… Yes, you have Imperial Intelligence and I was just a miserable Witcher but if I really wanted to hide I am pretty sure that I could have managed it.

I hugged the mountains, staying as close as I could, hunting and making what passes of a living by helping those remote, mountain villages with their monster problems in exchange for supplies and goods rather than money. I had no intention of heading back to civilization in any way or place that you would be able to find me. It did not go well. I was injured a couple of times. Not badly but enough that I have a few more scars about my face and body that you are not as familiar with. Most of them come from monsters that should never have marked me. But I was careless and arrogant and foolish. All of which are signs that I am not at my best and I should have seen what was going on. But I never do, it is always at the hands of someone else.

At first, I didn’t know why I was going North. What was left of the parts of my mind that were still thinking like a normal Kerrass thought that you would never expect me to go North. I haven’t been further North than when we went for the cult of the First-Born for a long time. And when I travel North, I generally go via Kaedwen and although the passage back into Redania is still North, you would be astonished just how much further “North” there is to go.

So I went North, hugging the mountains and scratching out a living. I even travelled past Castle Kalayn but there was no-one home at the time. I mostly stole through the area. I might not have been able to hide from your or your resources but hiding from a pack of villagers was no real stretch.

I did visit the mound of Crom Cruarch. I think that in our time travelling together, that was my finest moment. Solving a problem with my brains rather than my weapons and my arm. It cost a lot of lives and a lot of… anguish to get to that point.

I sat next to the grave of the old poacher for a long time and I spoke with him. Not literally, but just… me talking to his grave. I wondered what the old man would have made of the legacy that he has developed. People talk about the sunshot all over the continent now and I wondered what he would have made of that. Would he have been happy with his fame? Would he have gotten drunk on it, casting aside his wife and children in exchange for the illusive pleasures that fame and wealth can give you. Or would he have shrunk from it.

Would he even be as famous if he had survived?

I wondered what to do in that moment and I decided, there and then that I couldn’t do it. I was done, this was my moment and that I would go no further.

The people studying that place were asleep during all of this so if they didn’t report it to you, then not to fear. I left again before dawn. I travelled the back trail of our journey then. I found the place where we had spilled into the valley of Crom Cruarch and reversed our trail. I stole a small barrel of lantern oil from the archaeologists and moved with a bit more of a purpose. The place is still littered with the remains of our flight. Even now.

The field and the bowl of ground that contains the mound of Crom Cruarch is well cleared of the remains of those days. But the back trail? I started to collect the weapons, the spent arrow heads and those weapons of our enemies that had not been destroyed by damp and rust. A good sword will survive so that you could still salvage it, even years later if you cast it into the right conditions, it won’t be as strong as it used to be but you would still be able to identify it as a sword.

These swords and knives were not that good but I found enough for my purposes. For good measure I found a bog-hag and killed it as well as a troll that jumped out at me in the mountains. I returned to the area of swampland, do you remember it? The place where Cooper was injured and an infection entered the wound?

Well it was there that I made my circle of fire and built a massive torch to light the way.

Looking back, it was obvious as to what was going to happen.

The ritual components were all there. I intended to summon the Goddess and tell her that I was done. That I was giving up and that it was time for her to take me into her arms so that I could stop my struggle. I didn’t want to do this anymore and that it was time that she took her due.

I can tell what you’re thinking. You’re wondering whether or not it worked.

Oh, it worked. The flames leapt up with a heat that was intense. It was so hot in that circle that I began to feel as though it would dry out the swamp that I had constructed the circle in. The stench was incredible and at first, I thought that the fire wouldn’t take hold and that I would need to try again somewhere further to the North. But no, the flame took and it was so hot, so incredibly hot, so hot that although I have been able to jump through the flames before, this time the flames were so high and so hot that I was trapped in that little circle for over a day.

In the end, I don’t know if you remember how it goes, but in the end, the herald arrived. The little black cat came…

It has never been like that. Normally, the herald of the Goddess is the only cat that likes me. Most hiss and flee or attack when cornered. But the black cats of the Goddess tend towards the friendly and affectionate, rubbing their heads against mine, licking my nose and thoroughly scenting everything.

This time, the cat walked into my eyeline.

I was preparing to die and I reached out to that little cat, hoping to have a last piece of affection from something other than the Goddess. Something warm and soft that I could hold.

It hissed at me before it leapt at me. I nearly fell into the flames, I was so surprised. It clawed and bit and did its best to claw my face off.

Yeah, you can laugh and it is funny, looking back. But at the time, I was distraught. I didn’t understand what was happening. This small creature was angry with me, there had been times where that was the only creature that had been kind to me in the space of several years and now it was attacking me. I loved that little cat and now it was turning on me in a fury. I didn’t understand why. I fell back, losing a… not small chunk of my hair to the flames and yes, some of the scars that you can see are from that cat.

In the end, I got hold of the cat and flung it away. It landed on its feet and inside the circle of flame of course and it crouched, ready to pounce. Then it stopped, peered off into the darkness and licked its paws. Doing some kind of small grooming routine before it scampered off. Leaping through the flames without a problem.

Then the flame died.

I had not seen anything like it before and for a while, I lay there, seeing to my burns and wondering where I had gone wrong.

It’s easy to look back and examine your own behaviour. It is so obvious to me now as to what the problem was. But at the time, I was hurt, angry and I didn’t know what to do. I felt as though I had been deserted by my last refuge, my last… armour and my last… friend, Goddess and lover had turned away from me. I felt awful and small and so… very alone.

I sat there for a long while, learning to look after my burns before I took up my belongings and once again, returned to the journey. I had decided what I was going to do. I was going to go North and see if I could find something to kill me.

I have not been North for a long time. North, as in towards Hengfors, Kovir & Poviss and those smaller nations beyond it. Do you remember why?

That’s right. There was the matter of a woman that I rescued and looked after before taking her back to her family where she was cast out for being spoiled. I killed her former husband and her father so that her mother could take her in and so that she could get some of the money that she had been owed. When I had left the place and come back South, I had done so with the King’s men hot on my heels.

I intended to go North, I had no doubt that I would be recognised. After all, you have made me famous. I would go North and I would be arrested and then I would be tried, convicted and executed. That would solve all of my problems.

Yes, I can see you laughing. You knew exactly what happened.

No, they didn’t forget me. Much worse than that.

I had become a local hero to them.

(Freddie: Long term readers will remember that once, while on his travels, Kerrass had found a woman being… abused I suppose is the politest term I can use in print, by a group of bandits. Cutting a long story short, the woman had stopped to defend a child from a similar fate when the child’s father, her husband, had deserted them. The woman had stayed behind to ensure the child’s escape and for this extraordinarily brave action, she was rewarded with her Father declaring her dead and a “ruined woman”. The husband had already remarried, having come to a business agreement with the poor woman’s Father.

Kerrass had rescued her, arranged her healing at a local shrine of Melitele before trying to take her home where she was chased off with hurled stones, dung and the threat of a whip. Kerrass had lost his temper, murdered the husband and the Father before stealing the full value of the woman’s dowry from the husband and Father who had split the resulting amount.

Kerrass had fled, chased by the local guards and hadn’t been back to Kovir & Poviss since.)

But I had a quiet exploration around to see what I could find.

Much to my horror, I found myself the subject of folk melodies and quiet songs sung in the back rooms of taverns. It hasn't spread although I am sure you are going to hunt out the song and see to it that it is played everywhere I go. But at the time it had been suppressed by the nobility who had been outraged by the behaviour. But the local women had loved it and when they made their feelings known on the matter to their sons and husbands the matter began to take root.

One of the Queens of that Kingdom heard the story and openly expressed her admiration, both for the woman and the “monster slayer” and the matter continued to grow in notoriety. The King was publicly displeased and had to exile the Queen to what passes for the country estates up there for a while before she returned to court looking suitably chastened. So although there was technically a price on my head, no-one was inclined to collect on it.

I found that the woman had remarried and that the child that she had rescued and she, had flourished in the trade of scribing and notarising. There is not a court in that Kingdom that has an attached note taker or scribe that is not, in some way, trained or employed except by that woman and her schools.

(Freddie: I have attempted to obscure names but I rather think that those people who know the woman and the company in question already know who was involved by now)

Eventually, inevitably, I was spotted and there was a big, joyful moment where they all had a grand pantomime of ushering me to safety where they got my story out of me. I was appalled and fled, fighting my way clear of the well wishers and the people that longed to thank me for the deeds that I had undertaken all that time ago. They were confused, hurt and felt much the same way that you did I suspect.

I became a terror for a while then. I had been stymied in that attempt to die and so I tried all kinds of things, none of which went the way that I wanted. I picked fights with strangers and warriors. When that didn’t work because I was either recognised and praised, or they were afraid of my two swords, I tried attacking groups of them.

I tried just standing there and letting them strike me, driving swords and daggers into my flesh, taking run ups and plunging their spears and axes into me. But always, just as I open my arms to accept my death, something would move in me, my sword would be in my hand and then the blood would flow. It would be a good day when some of that blood was my own.

Later, I tried the same thing with Monsters. That didn’t work either. At the last moment, some innocent would run into the path of the angry monster and I would be forced to intervene to save the child. Or I would see the dire straits of the farms that had hired me… Not good farming land in that country after all… and I would act.

I’m too much of a bleeding heart. Sucker for a sob story.

So I gave up on that. I tried to end it myself, hurling myself from a cliff or opening my veins with my dagger. But always, at the last second, I would turn away or cast the dagger away from myself in a fury.

It was all on me as well. As far as I know, the Goddess didn’t interfere. Nor did I see any sign of someone else interfering or influencing me, and believe me… I looked. I so… wanted it to be someone or something else. But it wasn’t… I just lacked… the courage I suppose or any of the other things that would drive a person towards ending themselves. There was still something there that made me want to fight, want to live.

My lowest point was after I had left Kovir & Poviss. I went into the countryside wilderness. I crossed the mountains into Northern Kaedwen. I found a small cabin and tipped all of my potions into a pit. Then I settled into the cabin and waited for the madness to take me.

I had decided that if the Goddess would not accept me telling her that I was giving up, then I would SHOW her that I had given up.

I won’t lie, it got pretty bleak and it was a long couple of weeks. I was every image of the mad mountain hermit, caked in my own filthy and stinking of piss. It is a strange thing to feel yourself sinking into madness. I remember your time with Jack when he told you that the hardest part, the moment of the most fear, was the moment between knowing that you are dying, and actually dying. When the blade slams into your belly and you realise that there is no way that you can survive that injury and you just hope that death comes quickly.

It was like that.

I think I lasted a couple of months when I woke up one day and realised that my mind was clear, or rather it was clearer than it had been. It took me a moment to look about myself and realise that I had, in my madness, brewed some of the rudimentary potions to keep me sane and I had drunk them.

That was another low point.

I cleaned myself up a bit, strapped my swords to my back and went to try and summon the Goddess again. Some bandits were my sacrifices along with a Royal Wyvern that had spectacularly failed to kill me, and when the fire raged I stood in the middle of the circle of flame with my sword drawn and I demanded that she come to me.

(Freddie: Up until this point, Kerrass’ voice had been fairly conversational. He was a man talking with a friend, exchanging news and gossip. Up until he reached this point which is when he changed. Once again, stared into the middle distance, into the heart of the flame while his eyes glazed over into the attitude of a man gazing at events long passed. He spoke quietly and perhaps it was well fitting that we sat next to the fire. His Witcher’s eyes seemed to shine in the firelight.)

This time she came herself. She turned up almost immediately, normally she makes me wait but this time she turned up straight away. There was no herald, no storm. She just stepped through the flames, beautiful, terrible and regal. You once wrote that if she hadn’t done the things she later did, you would not have believed that she was a Goddess. This time, if you had seen her like this, she would not be mistaken by anyone watching as being anything other than what she is.

She was tall this time, well over six feet tall although I couldn’t tell you exactly how tall she was in the light from the flames. Her hair was black and slicked back from her face, the top of her face was bloody and her hands were dripping in gore. You see faces like that on surgeons when they forget themselves and push their hair out of their eyes with hands that have been desperately trying to pinch off arteries. Only I knew that she had done it so that she could see her next victim. The blood dripped from the end of her long hair and her eyes were flames. She was naked although she wasn’t nude. Her body was caked with various things. As well as the still drying blood, there was clay, mud and war paint underneath all of the blood.

This was no travelling woman, this was the Queen of Battle, standing forward in all of her glory.

You know what she is like and what it feels like to be in her presence. I wanted her, I wanted to fight her and I wanted to beat her. I also wanted to fall to my knees and worship her. I pity those that do not feel that… visceral about being in the presence of their Gods.

I made to step forwards towards her, to worship her as I wanted to. To throw myself into her arms in this, the culmination of my life. Only to find the point of that awful spear pointing at my belly. I was shocked as I looked up from where I could feel the heat rolling off that spear. The heat from all of the blood that had covered it, all the lives that the spear has ended. I looked up at her, in question as to what was happening.

I did not understand, but as I looked at her, her face was a howling mask of fury. It has been a long time since I have felt that kind of physical fear. I am a Witcher and my body is trained to fight and kill. Courtrooms make me nervous, social situations make me nervous and I feel jittery in my belly at the thought of being part of some formal ceremony where I might mess up the entire thing for everyone else that attends. And like most people I suppose, I feel fear in the face of a beautiful woman.

But although I feel a careful, cautious fear in the face of combat or battle, after all, to not be afraid is to be arrogant. It has been years since I have felt that level of primal… terror. Not even standing before the swooping dragon had I felt that level of fear. Always there is the confidence of knowing that I could still fight back. But here, I suddenly knew that there would be nothing I could do to fight back and I knew that the Goddess was so furious, that she wanted me dead.

“You summoned me?” she hissed. “You demanded my presence with sword drawn and fury on your lips? Well I am here. What do you want?”

I have always known my Goddess to be an informal woman of passionate action and word. There was a formality to her speech here that, frankly, terrified me all the further. It made me feel like I used to when I had been caught out in some mischief back at the Witcher school and I stood before an Elder Witcher. I can only imagine that it was like what you felt when you stood before your Father’s desk, having been summoned.

And the feeling of death was in the air. Violent, awful, painful death.

I swallowed several times in the face of this.

“ANSWER ME,” she demanded. I swear Freddie, that she didn’t raise her voice but it seemed as though the ground shook with her voice.

“I…” I began and the words dried up in my throat.

She sneered.

“Even that little scribbler of words that you travelled with has more balls than you,” the scorn dripped from her words, just as the blood dripped from her lips and chin. I felt sure that she had torn someone’s throat out with her teeth.

“I’m done,” I said, closing my eyes. I convinced myself that this was some kind of test, she would stand before me with doom on her face but at the end, she had once told me that when my strength and my will had given out, when I could fight no longer, she would take me in her arms.

“I’m done,” I said again. “I can’t do this any more. I have nothing left to give, no weapons to fight with, no… desire to go on. I am done. I am finished. I want to stop, I just want it to stop.”

My head sank into my chest and I sobbed. The feeling of grief, frustration and shame washed over me and I just sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. At some point, I let the sword fall and sank to my knees, put my head in my hands and just sobbed.

It took a long time to stop and in its place was left an odd kind of piece. You have spoken about the peace that is found at the end, found in the sound of guttering flame.

I heard her footsteps and sensed that she was close.

I opened my eyes and looked up at her.

Her beautiful face was fixed in a sneer.

“Fool,” she told me before kicking me hard in the chest

Then she kicked me in the crotch.

I vomited.

“I’m not even going to give you the honour of staining my spear,” she told me, plunging it straight down into the ground which bubbled and turned red as it melted.

She came back to where I was curled in a ball as I fought for breath and against the pain in my centre. She grabbed me by the ear and lifted me until she could look me in the face.

“You disgust me,” she said before hawking and spitting in my face.

Then she punched me in the jaw.

“I have seen arrogance in the hearts of men,” she declared, picking me up by the hair at the back of my neck and staring into my eyes. “Women too, but I have rarely, if ever, seen a pride as brittle and all consuming as yours. You disgusting,” she slapped me with her other hand. “Wretch,” backhand, “of an excuse,” slap again “of a man.”

She stood up, leaving me spitting blood and teeth onto the ground. I had bitten my tongue and inner lips at some point and a wad of that flesh came out.

She stood up and moved off

“I have waited,” she snarled, blood and venom dripping from her chin. “And waited for you to come to your senses. I have waited for you to remember the man you are supposed to be and at every stage, you stepped further and further towards…”

She stumbled over her words with a fury that I struggled to comprehend. Instead, she took a small run up and kicked me in the mid-riff which lifted me from the ground and sent me sprawling.

I could feel something grinding in my chest and it began to become difficult to breathe. I could hear a rattle of fluid in my breathing.

“At every step,” she growled, low in her throat in a way that reminded me of the Panthers that prowl the countryside around Toussaint. “At every step, you have chosen the path of arrogance and self-righteousness.” I focused on her, and she was shaking her head.

“What else could I have done?” I wondered. I could not draw my breath properly and it came out as a wheezing whisper. “What else should I have done?” I thought of all of the choices that had led me to this point. I thought of that moment on the edge of the hunting ground. I thought of the leadership tent where I offered to take the fight into the castle against Sam. I thought of the night on the top of Crom Cruarch’s hill when I decided that I had enough and I didn’t want to do this any more.

She saw me thinking and kicked me in the face, breaking my nose with the heel of her foot.

“NOTHING,” she screamed at me before falling to her hands and knees in front of me so that her nose was inches away from my own. I wanted to kiss her but I couldn’t find the strength and her face was a sneer.

“Everything,” she said.

“I can’t do this any more,” I told her, trying to find strength. “You said that when I couldn’t… you would take me in your arms.”

“FOOL,” she bellowed, leaping to her feet and standing before me again. “Idiot. Cretin. You are a warrior. You are MY warrior. I said that and it was true then and it is true now. The difference is that you CAN do this. You NEED to do this. Your body even does it when you are not looking. YOU CAN keep doing this. You CAN keep fighting and struggling. You just don’t want to. You think life is unfair. You think that life has treated you badly?”

She stalked off.

“Even now, as we sit here and waste time… Your friend, the one you deserted in his hour of need… The one that saved your life multiple times over. Even now he fights. He struggles to save his love, save his family, his friends and his people. Would you compare yourself to him?”

“I had to leave,” I whimpered. Meaning the time on the edge of the hunting ground when I went south rather than trying to save you. “I could not have saved him.”

She screamed in fury so that my ears felt wet.

“THAT WAS NOT WHEN YOU DESERTED HIM.” She told me. “THAT WAS NOT WHEN HE NEEDED YOU THE MOST.”

She was breathing hard now.

“Oh Dana,” she said, appealing to the heavens. “Why do I bother?”

Her fury seemed to cool as she stood there in the glow of the firelight staring down at me.

“You are not invincible Kerrass,” she told me. “You cannot defeat all enemies. You cannot meet every problem with sword and sign. There are some battles that must be fought in the mind and there are some battles that must be fought in the heart. If you were invincible, if you were perfect and you succeeded in every battle then it wouldn’t be a struggle.”

She examined herself for a moment, shaking her head in disgust.

She stepped out of the circle for a moment, ignoring the flames and when she came back she was wiping the muck from herself with a cloth before she pulled out a robe and draped it around her shoulders.

“Then listen,” she said, sitting down on the ground. “And listen well. The hardest battle to be fought is the battle against yourself. The world changes all the time, all around us… even to people like me, the world changes and we must change with the world or be destroyed. Your circumstances change and new battles, new fights and new struggles occur. As we learn to overcome old battles, new struggles come into view and we must grow and adapt in order to face them in return. Your friend, for he is still your friend no matter how hard and how often you have tried to drive him away over the years, is doing this now. And that is the fight that you have lost.

“The difference between a warrior and a coward is that a coward will run away from these struggles, these new, terrifying, unknown struggles whereas a warrior will fight them. Whether they fight them by losing and coming back with new weapons and new techniques…” She gestured at me. “New potions and new blade oils and new knowledge in your brain. Whether they come back with allies or find a different way to fight. Even if that way is to retreat and regain your strength.

“And a madman tries the same thing over and over again, even when he fails.”

She shook her head.

“I said… I promised that I would help you be a warrior. I would give you the strength to keep fighting and that all you had to do to keep that strength was to keep fighting. I warned you that there would come a day when you could fight no longer and when that day came I would take you in my arms as the fallen warrior that you are and I would love you as such.”

The anger returned to her voice, the regal tilt to her chin returned and she rose.

“You can still fight Kerrass. You are choosing not to out of arrogance and stupidity. You cannot even hide behind the mask of madness. If you could not fight you would have leapt from the cliff without stopping to think. The Wyvern would have eaten you, even as you kept trying to kill it. Even your instinct still fights, brewing potions so that you can survive.

“And if you choose not to? Well. I don’t even want to know you. If you are choosing not to struggle then I really will turn away from you. Your death will not be quick. You will die, months from now, if not years. You will survive through the kindness of strangers as they take you in, heal your wounds and keep you safe and try to make you strong. And all of that time, you will feel the madness beginning to return.

She was getting angrier and as she rose to her feet, the robe fell away from her.

“You would spurn my gifts and my charge? Well I shall spurn you. Your serums will stop working, you will go mad and become a danger to the people whose only crime was to try and help you and then, one day, you will be injured and helpless in the grip of people who will still try to help you. And after all that, you will die, howling in the madness that you have got there because you chose to stop fighting. You chose to stop being the man that you needed to be. You chose not to help your friends and the people that love you and you made that choice because you were too arrogant to do things any other way.”

Her anger had properly returned by now. I tried to find my own anger and my own sense of hurt. I wanted to find the betrayal and the… outrage that I had felt that she was going back on her word. But it wasn’t there. I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t get there.

I tried to find an answer for that. At some point I opened my eyes to see that she was watching me.

“Better,” she decided. “Not much, barely above a slug’s trail of slime. But progress.”

“What must I do?” I asked.

Her eyes blazed.

“There are no answers here with me.” She told me. “The deal was always that I would help you fight, I wouldn’t do the fighting for you.

“You must fight… worm. You must fight.

“I can’t…”

“DO NOT LIE TO ME.” She thundered and the lightning cut the sky. “YOU CAN FIGHT. You have ALWAYS been able to fight.”

She ran over and stamped on the side of my knee as I tried to roll away from her.

“You are fighting even now.” She told me as she stamped on my hip and my lower body went numb. “Your body is wiser than you are. Fight back damn you Kerrass. Fight back.”

“AGAINST WHAT?” I screamed, no longer able to move.

“Can you not guess?” She reached over to me, taking hold of my head in the same way that a lover would. “I have told you the answer, same as I told that friend of yours when he was looking for things. I told him the answer too, only he did not have the wit or the wisdom to listen. I would be angry at him, but he has never claimed to be my follower.

“But in the end, he fought and he defeated his enemy. Both inside himself and outside of himself. He has never claimed to be mine and yet he behaves more like a follower of mine than many. Even you. And when he ran out of enemies to fight, he found other things to struggle for, to fight for. You are my follower. You claim to be a warrior and a fighter. You have your battle. Fight it.”

She moved her hands, one to the bottom of my chin, and the other to the back of my head. She twisted and I felt a wet, snapping in my neck.

I blacked out. It cannot have been for long as when I woke, she was no longer there, and the flames had died down. It was dawn and the sun was shining down. Standing on a small boulder, just inside my eyeline, shining and glistening in the sunlight, was a small, clear bottle with a red liquid in it. I knew exactly what it was the moment I saw it. It was the same potion of swallow that Ariadne had forced into my mouth.

I could only move my right arm and the bottle was just out of reach. I pulled myself towards it. I could move, but especially when I moved my head, the edges of my vision turned grey and I could feel a pit of unconsciousness try to suck me in and drown me.

I found a handhold and I pulled myself towards the bottle.

I once read a line from a poem where the poet described themselves as being afloat on a sea of agony. I always thought that the phrase was ridiculously poetic until that moment but there and then, that was exactly what it felt like. I felt like I was floating on a river, the currents of which were trying to carry me off to a place that I did not want to go. Almost certainly carrying me to my death and now I had to fight the current and get to shore.

I blacked out three times and each time I thought that it would be the last but I fought my way back to consciousness to find that I was a little bit closer to the bottle and then. I could feel it in my hand.

I could only get the stopper out with my thumb and I had to twist with my agony to drink the stuff and it burned as it went into my throat.

I woke up in the back of a farmer’s wagon.

I had listened to this narrative in the half daze that I used to record people’s interviews and that I now use in order to pay attention in long and drawn out meetings when the original purpose of the meeting has long since passed and I am waiting to find out if there is going to be anything else that is going to be useful to come up.

Normally it doesn’t and as such, I can spend some time thinking about other things. But it has come up often enough that I do need to pay attention. Sometimes, someone surprising will offer an opinion or a way forward that no-one else will have thought of so I can’t just get up and wander off.

So there I was, half dreaming, mostly listening and processing what was happening and what Kerrass was telling me when I realised that he had come to a halt, all but in the middle of the story as it were.

I blinked a few times and looked up to realise that he was looking at me with a sceptical expression. If he was any older, the expression might have been described as “shrewd”.

“Tell me Freddie,” he said. “The way you have listened to all of that would suggest that you knew more of that than I would think or be entirely comfortable with. How much of that did you already know?”

I stared at his accusing face and laughed at him.

“You’ve spoken to the Goddess haven’t you,” he accused.

“No,” I told him. “Not the Goddess. I have spoken to your Goddess.”

“Oh good, you’re making jokes with semantics and my religion.”

He saw the funny side of things though and his eyes were shining with amusement.

I looked at him for a long moment and decided that he wanted a break. Flame knows that discussing these kinds of moments are hard on a person. I have done that kind of thing myself and it is never easy.

“I knew your movements of course,” I told him. “And then there were areas where you would disappear into the wilderness where our agents couldn’t follow you,”

“Good,” he looked a little smug.

“And they had more important duties to attend to rather than following some vagabond Witcher.”

He nodded and accepted the point.

“We caught up with you when you were heading North through Kaedwen.”

Kerrass nodded.

“So how did you come to speak to the Goddess?” He wondered.

I took a moment to check and decided that Kerrass still wasn’t ready to continue his account.

“We did it down in Toussaint,” I told him. “Ariadne, Yennefer and I. We went to the tournament grounds as a place of battle. We kind of hoped that, given that it would be warlike, but not that warlike, we would get a friendlier version of the Goddess.”

Kerrass laughed at me.

“Yeah I know,” I told him. “But it worked after a fashion. We lit the fires and made the offerings up and all of that kind of thing and nothing worked. The herald didn’t arrive although it is true to say that Toussaint is not particularly short of cats, and the flames burnt out almost immediately. I knew what that meant and Yennefer and Ariadne between them, although separately, had done enough research to know that this meant that she wasn’t going to turn up today. We returned to Corvo Bianco”

I laughed at the memory.

“I always forget just how busy Corvo Bianco is,” I told Kerrass, who had settled back into a guise of listening. “Despite the fact that it’s Yennefer’s and Geralt’s method of escape from the wider world, it is still a working vineyard and olive production facility. So in many ways it is a working farm and there are always people working on it. Not just in the fields but also around the buildings and in the gardens. The buildings are old as well so there are often people up on ladders, painting and hammering at things.

“So it’s a noisy place, full of people. There are places of peace and quiet, there is a garden out the back that seems to be the couple’s refuge and I know that no-one goes into certain parts of the cellars of the place without the express invitation of the lady of the manor or their head of household. And you can normally find peace in the main hall. But during the day, especially during the height of the season. The place is full of people working, laughing, yelling and carrying on.

“I think they like it. I think they like the noise and the bustle even though Lord Geralt occasionally escapes into the countryside to “consult” on this or that. But he likes the feeling of coming home to something. I can completely understand the feeling as I feel the same whenever I return to Coulthard Castle after a time away.”

“Have you lost your fear of Yennefer yet?”

I laughed.

“Yes and no, she likes to keep me on my toes just as she likes to keep Lord Geralt on his toes. The difference being that I can just walk away when she is being a bit sharp. I understand her better I think, I hope.”

“I have to admit that I have never understood how Cousin Geralt stands it.” Kerrass grinned, pouring us both some more beer. “I like to know where I stand and I make sure that the women in my life always know where they stand with me.”

I toasted my agreement with my mug.

“I know a bit more about Lord Geralt now,” I told him. “I doubt that the two of us will ever be close friends but we know enough about each other to be friendly. I feel that he is a man attracted to his opposite. He is a quiet, thoughtful man and yet his best friend is Professor Dandelion and I think it’s the same with Lady Yennefer. I think he would be bored with the quiet… demure woman. He needs some excitement in his life.”

Kerrass laughed at the image.

“Are there points when he would prefer some peace and quiet?” I continued. “Absolutely and I can’t help but wonder if the reason that he occasionally has cause to go off and “consult on the local Kikkimore problem” coincides with those times when Lady Yennefer has been particularly… Lady Yennefer like.”

Kerrass was laughing and I continued.

“One of the benefits of being me though, is that I come with a Sorceress wife. The two of them gossip and talk about things and when Yennefer is winding me up about something, I can normally depend on Ariadne telling her off for being cruel.”

“I bet that goes down well,”

“You would be surprised. Especially as Ariadne only intervenes when she feels as though Yennefer is going too far. Ariadne is of the opinion that I occasionally need to be challenged on my nonsense and Yennefer is, by no means, shy of doing that.”

Kerrass laughed.

“So anyway, we went back to Corvo Bianco and we were having a drink out in the garden, discussing what we were going to do next when it came to this or that and was it even worth trying to contact the Goddess again. I was really angry about it later that we didn’t see her although both Ariadne and Yennefer told me to stop worrying about it.

“As I say, there are always people working and there are many small streams that run out of the hills near there and run down to the river, or on to the pond that makes up the lake of the knightly virtues.

“There were people everywhere, doing their work and things so it was not surprising to me that there were people in and near the stream cleaning things, cleaning clothes and the like. One of those women was wearing black,”

Kerrass sighed and shook his head in mock condemnation.

“Careless Freddie,” he said. “Very very careless.”

“Yeah I know.”

For the reader, black is not a common colour in Toussaint. People like to dress in bright colours and so, even the field workers do their best to dye their clothing with whatever they can get their hands on. Black is not a common colour unless it is a time of mourning.

“She was cleaning some bloody clothes in the stream,” I went on. Not unusual in that part of the continent. People are always finding new and exciting ways to let each other’s blood out. I saw it and imagined a fight over a girl, or boy, a duel, a training accident, a working accident. Any and all things could have occured.

“So the three of us were talking about this and that. The Goddess was one of the things that we were talking about and our future projects. It is true to say that the most exciting project is always the “next” project after all and we were talking about the potential success of Eskel finding and speaking to the Rumplesteldt and I expressed a desire to speak with the headless horseman. Something for which Ariadne and Yennefer always tease me on the grounds that… how is he going to answer me back if he has no head.``

Kerrass laughed.

“But then the old woman in black, stood up and stretched before walking towards us. I was aware of her out of the corner of her eye as she walked up to us. Yennefer looked up and I turned away as I know how angry I get when someone tries to order around the people that might work for me, or around the castle or something.

“‘So what’s a Goddess to do to get something to drink around here?’ She asked with a smile in her voice.

“I looked up and gaped as she cackled at me. Then she stretched a bit, a great big, back popping stretch before she stood there, hands on her hips and grinned at the three of us. At some point, the old woman that I am prepared to swear that she had been, turned into the young, hard and beautiful warrior woman that I remembered. Only now her hair was white blonde. She tightened the sash that was holding everything together around her waist and just stood and laughed at us.

“I may say, even though Yennefer will deny it, that Ariadne recovered first. My wife rose and bowed before the Goddess who laughed and gazed at the vampire critically.

“‘I am fairly sure that I should hate you,’ the Goddess said bleakly and suddenly serious. ‘Your ancestors fought many wars against me and mine.’

“‘But I did not,’ Ariadne told her calmly.

“‘Too true,’ The Goddess laughed. Words can never describe just how quickly her mood changes can they,”

“They cannot,” Kerrass agreed.

“So the Goddess laughed and embraced the astonished Vampire. I always like it whenever Ariadne is astonished. It reminds me, and her I think, that she doesn’t know everything and for all her age and wisdom, there is still a person under there.

“The Goddess pulled away and examined Ariadne head to toe, ‘Not a follower,’ she said, ‘but still one of mine I think,’

“‘I will take that in the manner that I hope it was meant,’ Ariadne replied.”

Kerrass laughed.

“The Goddess laughed at that before a strange look entered the Goddess’ eyes and Ariadne backed away from things with a weird look on her face.

“‘Maybe later,’ The Goddess told her before turning to me. ‘Freddie’ she seemed to shout with genuine enthusiasm before seizing me and kissing me soundly. I was as helpless before her as I was the first time and I can only remember being grateful to her that the kiss didn’t last long. I nearly panicked as I looked over at Ariadne to see an odd hooded look on her face that I have not seen in a while. There was a challenge there and a rising sense of something.

“‘Oh simmer down,’ The Goddess told Ariadne, ‘besides, if I wanted him, I could have him.’

“‘You are very cruel,’ Yennefer told her crossly.

“‘Only when I need to be,’ The Goddess replied. ‘Unlike you, who think that only you have the right to be cruel to people and yet are the first to leap to the defence of those same victims when others try to take your place.’

“I have never seen Lady Yennefer speechless before. The Goddess pulled me in for a hard hug, nothing sexual about it this time though as she whispered in my ear. ‘I am very proud of you,’ she told me before pulling away and turning back to Ariadne.

“‘Oh simmer down,’ she told my wife. ‘I would only borrow him… and if you are really lucky, I might even let you watch, besides…’ She went serious. ‘I am proud of you too. It is not an easy struggle to change yourself to fit new circumstances. It helps that you have the best of reasons as to why you should change.’ She gestured to me. ‘And anyway… where’s my drink? Isn’t it the task of the hostess to offer wine?’”

Kerrass laughed some more.

“Oh, I wish I had been there to see that,” he said, “It sounds as though Yennefer met her match.”

“And she did. It was not long before the three of them were the best of friends and they argued and debated long into the night. It was not like any friendship I have ever been a part of and I am not sure that I would stand for being talked to in the way that those three women talked to each other. And I eventually felt like a spare part as I tried to keep up with the discussions of magic and politis and all kinds of other things that I could not understand. I relegated myself to the part of the man that would fetch the snacks and the drinks and I was rewarded with thanks from all three.

“Dinner was served by Corvo Bianco’s chef who the Goddess greeted with great familiarity although the poor old woman had no idea who it was that had visited her and it was over dinner that the Goddess spoke to me about you, telling me of her disgust. She pointed out the ways that she gave signs and spoke of your conversation. She told me that you were fighting back and that she was pleased to see that and she wished us well.”

Kerrass nodded, looking away.

“Did she…” Kerrass rubbed his face. “Did she get up to any other mischief? Did the others make any other mistakes?”

“They did,” I admitted. “Ariadne later admitted as such, but she felt obscenely territorial over me. She gets like that around other women that sniff around me occasionally. They know that I am married but start making polite noises about whether or not I might be in need of a mistress of some kind. I mean, they are more diplomatic than that and dress it up in nicer words. But that’s the long and short of it. I often find that the night immediately afterwards involves some considerable sexual escapades. But later on that night, I saw the Goddess watching the pair of us while talking with Yennefer and I knew what was going to happen. I tried to disengage from Ariadne and I reached for her mentally to warn her as to what was happening but it was too late.”

Kerrass nodded, looking worried. “How bad did it get?”

“It could have got a lot worse.” I admitted. “The Goddess manipulated Yennefer towards letting her spend the night which of course, Yennefer agreed. Then as Ariadne and I went to bed, Ariadne all but quivering with frustration, The Goddess joined us in all her glory. Both of us were helpless before her. And I think I will draw a discrete veil across what happened after that.”

Kerrass made a slight teasing noise of disappointment.

“Was Ariadne ok in the morning?” he asked.

“Yeah, she was quiet until the following day. It turned out that Yennefer had paid for her earlier transgressions by being tied to her own bed which is underneath the guest room in Corvo Bianco… So she heard… everything. So when we came down in the morning, she had already left in an effort to find Lord Geralt and get rid of some pent up frustration. Ariadne and I left when we had eaten breakfast and when we arrived home, she hugged me and told me that she was sorry. I asked her what she was sorry for and she said… ‘I forgave you for what happened between you and The Goddess the first time, but I did not understand it and I was hurt by it, I will admit. But now I know there was nothing that you could have done. There was nothing that I could have done. I saw her with you and I was so jealous that this woman thought that she could have you and she reacted to that challenge didn’t she?’

“‘She did,’ I replied to her. ‘Kerrass would know more of course but that was my reading of it’.

“‘I know that you enjoyed the moment, in the moment’ Ariadne went on, ‘but I am sorry if being between the two of us was painful or upsetting in any way,’

“‘It was not,’ I reassured her. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it is not an experience that I would want to have every night, but knowing what she was capable of…’ I shrugged.

“Ariadne giggled. ‘Yes, it was very… intense wasn’t it.’ Then she nodded as though she had reached a decision. ‘Next time I share you with someone, I shall have to choose the partner with more care,’”

Kerrass gaped at me before he looked sly.

“And you accuse Yennefer of being the one who likes to keep men on their toes.”

“Oh Ariadne likes to do it as well. And shocking sexual conversation is one of her chosen ways of doing that. She enjoys skewering the learned prudishness of people on the continent.”