A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

(A/N: Sorry for the delay. This is for two reasons. The first is that Real Life job keeps getting in the way of me hitting the word count but also because I wanted to get to the resolution that I know many of you, and me too to be fair, have wanted to get to. But when I looked up, it turned out that I had written sixty odd thousand words which is far too much, even for me. So I have fallen back on the old trick of splitting it in two. Both are already spelling and Grammar checked, as far as I can, and just need proof reading and formatting so you should be getting the next bit a day or two after you read this.

All the best and thank you for reading.)

Nothing much is happening in the castle at the moment. Nothing that I can talk about anyway so we go straight in with Sir Aleksy’s account of what happened after Novigrad was retaken by Imperial and Skelligan forces.

It was a disaster old boy and at first, it didn’t seem as though it was possible.

Novigrad has never fallen like that. It has changed hands a couple of times and there were a couple of decades there where it was its own separate Kingdom. But those men that have spoken about the fortifications, about the walls and the engines, those men that speak of those things with pride were right to do so. They were right to be prideful and then…

Novigrad was taken.

I don’t know old cock, it seems obvious to me now as I sit here with you. It seems obvious as to why it fell but at the time we received the first men that were fleeing the fall of the city, with incredulity.

The first men to flee are always those self-important bastards that deserve to be slowly impaled to death on spikes that are then slowly heated up so that the fuckers roast from the inside. There are bastards and then there are bastards and those fuckers deserve no… they deserve no safety from me or the people that are on other sides. They are traitors and they know that and we know that and your side knows that and they deserve to die the most horrible death.

Because everything about them, everything… is a lie.

True messengers that are sent with proper backing and orders, ride alone. Proper military messengers have fast horses and sharp blades. They know the land and they have a steadfast determination to make it through. There will be several of them that might be sent if people are concerned that the first one won’t get through and that the first messenger will be taken and diverted. These are those messengers that Foltest came up with and where the method was so good that the Imperials took it on themselves.

I see you know them old cock. I remember reading about your run-in with them. The messenger service during the matter regarding your sister. Ass of leather, head of gold. The real message is in the head of the messenger, not the satchel of papers that they carry as a distraction.

Then there are the small groups of common men, if military discipline has broken down and you are travelling over enemy-occupied territory. Your little trio of two Elves and a Skelligan carrying word of what had happened out of Coulthard castle and into… whatever it was that came next.

You are a good example of that kind of thing, old bean. The flight from the North when you carried word of…

That should have been a clue for us really shouldn’t it? That your brother was black, dressing himself in a pretty cause.

But you did the same, carrying the vital word of something through ambush and attack and flame knows what else. You can be as proud of that action as you can be as proud of anything. When I read and heard about that, I wished that I had been there and fought with your men. I was proud of you, even as I hated you for your politics but the thing that you did there with your Temerian knight and your small group of soldiers, was an immense action old boy and you can and should be proud of that.

So that is carrying a message. I will tell you what a messenger is not though and these are the fuckers that I would slowly lower into hot oil. Not boiling oil. Hot oil, that deceptive feeling that you could get used to the heat before someone adds some more logs to the fire so that the temperature will slowly increase and you don’t know that you’re dying until the smell of your own fried flesh starts to occur to you and drifts down your nose.

A messenger is NOT one of those fuckers that do not travel quickly, with good military precision, in full arms and armour with a cavalry escort through friendly territory to carry word.

Messengers travel with speed or with stealth, they do not travel openly. I might not have explained it properly but I know it when I see it and so does every military man that might come before and after it. You just know it when a man is fleeing under the guise of carrying a message, just as you know when a man is fleeing for his life when he claims to be trying to preserve his men and his command rather than standing and fighting.

The first that we knew about the fall of Novigrad was when one of those bastards came. He thought he was riding quickly but any real messenger would have ridden the same distance in half the time. He rode up and he was already sweating and shaking with fear. He was blown and even though he was not up to the extended march, he told us that Novigrad had fallen and that it was imperative that he reach Coulthard Castle to carry word of the betrayal that had occurred.

I didn’t know what he meant by betrayal my friend, but there you go.

We didn’t know what to make of it and I will admit that I didn’t believe that first one. He was a fat bastard, red-faced and sweating. He could barely move in his armour which is never a good sign. So I looked at him and his escort of twenty heavily armoured men and I thought that that was twenty men that might make the difference between victory and defeat.

Presuming that those men were genuine fighters, old cock. Real fighters and not parade ground fighters. Their armour was certainly very shiny and all of that.

So they were sent on their way and we didn’t know what to make of it. We didn’t want to believe him, nor did we want to let the word of what had happened spread amongst the troops.

The second messengers were of similar kinds of standpoints. They were at least, slightly more militarily minded. They came to us and argued that they did so to meet with a place that would have “better military discipline”. It turned out that I knew that Knight and his retinue and I was called in to ask what had happened. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that much more to offer us.

He had been on one of the gates and had realised that his position was about to be overrun, he had sent word for reinforcement and when the reinforcement had not come, nor even had orders telling him to hold his posts or any of the other military orders that are sent when a person or a unit is being sacrificed to delay the enemy, he had decided that his superiors had lost their minds and decided to keep what men that he could.

Still not what you’re supposed to do, old cock. In the lack of other orders, you hold to your previous orders. We got the chance to speak a bit in private while we all decided what to do, and he told me that we had been betrayed. I asked him by who and he looked at me as though I was stupid.

Not in so many words, he told me that the people had betrayed us. He spun me a story about how Nilfgaard must have infiltrated the city more thoroughly than we had expected so that when the city was attacked, the Nilfgaardian propagandists had convinced so many of the common folk to betray and drive out their rightful Redanian masters.

Remember, I beg of you old friend, that we had no idea what life had actually been like within the city walls and that is the thing that we should have seen coming.

But he told me that and, to my eternal shame old man, I believed him. It was ludicrous to believe that good, flame-fearing men and women of Redania would allow themselves to be coerced and taken in. We honestly believed that the people would be on our side. That they would be grateful for the opportunity to throw off the shackles of Imperial rule.

I was outraged, the same as the rest.

Then another group of men came in and they were not led by any formal officer so they were taken prisoner for desertion and someone ordered a gallows built to start hanging them all.

Then the proper message finally came through and we started to get an idea of the scale of what was happening.

Have you ever had your fundamental beliefs shaken, old boy? Have you ever had the things that you had known to be certain to be true, collapse around your ears so that then you have to start questioning all of the things that you have thought up until that point?

I’ve thought about it since. Lots of time to think when you’re a prisoner waiting for someone to remember you and to make your march to meet the headman. Lots of time to think and I now believe that that was the moment that I started to realise, not only that we were wrong, but that we were going to lose.

The people of Novigrad were supposed to be on our side, so why weren’t they? They should have been flocking to our banner, so why weren’t they?

There were any number of potential answers to that question and I liked none of them. I could believe that propagandists and Imperial agents would have turned some people to the Imperial cause, but not enough that the scale of the uprising that my former colleague would describe.

It was desperately unpleasant. It was not a quick process either, that arrival of realisation. I read the same message that everyone else did. It was a quick message and it described that the harbour had been taken and was being used to disembark Imperial veterans. The report listed Imperial company banners that had been seen. It described how citizens had been seen fighting alongside the Imperials and how, at every turn, it seemed that the fortification efforts to prevent this kind of attack had simply failed due to sabotage. Food had been poisoned, gates had been locked, arrows and crossbow bolts were destroyed and weapons had been stolen. Armour was rusty and at the last, the people of Novigrad had risen against us as well.

The sender of the message, a General Piotr Bujak…

Self-promoted by the way. I never heard of the man and if he was a general, I WOULD have heard of him, old man. I would, I swear to it.

But he saved the worst news for last. The Imperials had also formed a blockade that meant that we were now without provision and reinforcement. Lookouts from the towers had seen multiple warehouses raided by Imperial troops, guided by locals as to where the supplies were and he had seen ships being attacked by Skelligan longships out to sea.

The news was so bad that we didn’t believe it and we mounted an expedition to go and see what could be seen.

Twenty of us went. Twenty of us, mounted and armed. I took a couple of my better men who might see things that I would not as I have often found that… forgive me… common soldiers can sometimes see things that men like you and I might miss.

So we went and we looked and what we saw finished the process that had begun when we received that messenger and heard how the people around me, including me, could not believe that the people of Novigrad had started to rise against us.

I saw Novigrad and where there had, before our rebellion, been flags of Redania and Nilfgaard above those city walls. Now there was only black cloth and occasionally, the signs of a golden sunburst. We stood our horses there for a long time, just watching as the Imperials worked. More of our side were fleeing over the fields towards Coulthard castle and it was then that I started to realise what I was looking at.

The fleeing troops were running headlong. This was not an organised retreat which meant that there was no command structure. I saw the calm cavalry units of the Imperial light troops that were harrying those fleeing troops. Not making an effort to attack or destroy them.

There could be two reasons for that. One was that Nilfgaard did not have the proper troops to box up and destroy those fleeing troops, so they were just keeping those fleeing men moving. Another was that they wanted the fleeing troops to flee and spread panic in our ranks.

Either way, I looked at that cavalry action. I looked at the work that was obviously being done on the walls to prepare the city for some kind of assault. I looked at the organisation of the Imperial troops and I saw the people of the city working amongst the troops and then I looked at the group that I had ridden with.

I looked at the city and the fleeing soldiers… I use the term loosely of course and I looked at the men chasing them. All the fleeing soldiers would have had to do was to turn and stand their ground and there would have been nothing that the Imperials could have done.

But the Imperials knew that, which is why they were harrying in good order and with obvious discipline.

I looked at all of those things and I saw the difference between us and them. There were proper soldiers amongst us and I like to think I was one of them. Proper warriors, but we were utterly outclassed in every sense of the word.

I looked at my friends and colleagues and I knew that the adventure was over. I saw us for what we were. We were a bunch of petulant, spoiled children who refused to grow up. We were complaining that our parents had taken our toys away from us and told us that the time for childish things was past. I knew then that we could have been working to make this new Redania something that we… that I… could have been proud of, but in our childish arrogance we had longed for the glow of childish dreams.

As I looked around I saw us all for what we were. The glow of nostalgia and righteousness was finally torn from my eyes.

Or at least I thought it was. When I saw and heard what had happened at the castle and on the city streets I realised that I had much further to go

I had no intention of surrendering of course. Naturally, you play and you have to understand that sometimes you play and you lose.

But the certainty that we were right. The certainty that we could win the day.

I didn’t know what had happened in Novigrad. But I knew if you understand me. I KNEW what had happened.

We had driven our people away from us and made them our enemies.

We were a far more subdued party as we rode back to our lines.

Lord Roche of the Blue Stripes and General Maxwell of Maecht commanded the retaking of the city from the rebellion and there is not much to say about it. They will not thank me for saying so but the two of them worked well together, even though they have almost nothing in common in the way of methods or personality. The only thing that they have in common was a distaste for talking to me about it. They are both the kind of military man that thinks “I did my duty” is an adequate response to the question “So exactly what happened during the battle?”

Lord Roche was in charge of the street-to-street fighting while General Maxwell directed the unloading and the offloading of the ships. He would send men to the right places to muster and analyse the battle reports coming from the front battle lines.

Helfdan and the Skelligans were part of the fighting and their task was to get through and link up with the cathedral guards of Temple Isle.

There was a lot of heroism in the battle of Novigrad. A lot of heroism and foolishness and most of both were on the side of the Rebellion. Brave men led hopeless charges against overwhelming odds, determined to win the day. Good and proud fighters held impossible positions far longer than they should have done. Many more were sent to their deaths to ensure that the so-called leadership could escape.

Roche’s strategy was lightning strikes to take and hold the big strategic points. The gates and the major, defensible landmarks and after that, he just went from street to street. He had been instructed by the Empress to take prisoners where possible, for interrogation, morale purposes and also because it was clear that many of the common soldiers were ordered to rebel by their feudal masters. But he had also been instructed that there was not much time to “fuck about”. The Empress wanted the matter dealt with and there would be no negotiation with the commanding officers.

They would either surrender or die fighting.

But in that fight and many of the others to come, there were relatively few prisoners taken. Few enough listened to the heralds and those that did were sceptical enough of Imperial mercy to believe that they would even receive the mercy of a quick death. So they chose to fight, even when told that it would mean the death of their families at home and the death of their men in the ranks.

Some of the common soldiery tried to surrender, but it was the lucky ones that made it to the Imperial lines. Their side would often be the ones to cut them down and if they survived that, then the citizenry’s rage was difficult to ignore and those deaths make public execution seem kind in comparison.

Not that the body count outweighs the other that was inflicted on the citizenry. Kar wept as he told me about the piles of corpses in the market squares.

The command structure of the rebels essentially shattered when whatever chain of command there was took their personal, more elite troops and ran for it. The lucky troops of the rebellion were the ones that received the orders to hold their ground. The unlucky were the ones that received no word at all.

So it was a battle of caution. Every house needed to be checked. Every alley had to be guarded to flush out the saboteurs and “death or glory” attackers.

The lack of proper looking after of the corpses meant that the sewers were rammed with Necrophages and it was later proven certain that any rebellion troops that went into the sewers were doubtlessly lunch for a ghoul.

The city fell back into the hands of the Empire in a little over a day. Then there was another couple of days while the Empire consolidated its grip and that was it. Helfdan was left in charge, not least because as a sailor, his skills would be limited on land although he was promised that he could be there at the final battle along with the Skelligan warriors that he had brought. But also it meant that the Skelligans could police the city because none of them would be mistaken for either a traitor or a Nilfgaardian.

Their policing was brutal.

A curfew was ordered and the harshest penalties were instituted for any crime whatsoever. Helfdan and the Hierophant did little more in those few days than organise trials and witness hangings.

The priesthood started the mammoth task of dealing with the huge amount of corpses that the rebellion had left in its wake.

Many of the townsfolk were grieving though. They just stood and watched as the priests and the Skelligans worked.

All the time, more and more Imperial troops were disembarking from the ships in the bay and marshalling outside the city.

Scouts were sent out and the enemy positions were marked and there was some more direct warfare. There was fighting and there were losses on both sides. But without the promised and expected reinforcement from Novigrad’s docks…?

Put brutally, the best military assessment that I heard was that for each death that the Rebellion suffered they needed to take ten men with them.

And that margin was far from existence.

If we’re talking about pure numbers then yes it is true, more Imperial soldiers died than rebel soldiers did. And I will once again refer to Aleksy as to why that might be the case as well as an account of what is being called the battle of Oxenfurt. The problem is that the battle took place nowhere near Oxenfurt, it’s just that Oxenfurt was the nearest landmark at the time.

There is a science to a retreat. Science and mathematics.

The conventional wisdom is that, quote, “Any attacker must have a 10 to 1 advantage when attacking a well-defended and fortified position.”

That formula was based on plenty of experience and evidence and it has been proven to be true according to my experience, old cock.

The Empire and Count Bernier, in two separate engagements, sent far less to attack the river crossing and as such, the crossing could not be made. The difference between the two forces is that the Empire, back during the war, knew that they didn’t have the numbers and so retreated to the point where they could guarantee supplies and were on solid ground.

Meaning that they weren’t going to sink into the swamp.

The problem comes when your defence is not well-defended or well-fortified. The fall of Novigrad to your Imperial Forces is the best and most recent example. It simply didn’t occur to people that there would be an attack by sea. Nor did it occur to us that the people of Novigrad would be so against us.

Of course, I know why that happened now. We were…

No, not we, my side… No, I don't like that either.

The men that took Novigrad in the name of the Rebellion…

Yes… I like that better.

The men that took Novigrad in the name of the Rebellion were drunk with their successes and power. So when they had the power they decided to use it and didn’t know when to stop. So the worst elements of society then went on to use those excesses as an excuse and…

Flame.

I am still so angry about that old man. Nor can I be angry that you got away with so few casualties by using elements that you infiltrated inside the city, because we did the same thing.

I feel that we have got off-topic.

My side? You ask who I consider to be the people on my side.

That is a good question.

No… I know the answer. It is rather simple.

They were the men that stood with me to hold the river crossing.

It is easy to look back on the thing and consider what should have been done and condemn the actions that were taken as the actions of fools and madmen. And there was a lot of both. But it was at this point that it started to become clear that we were not led by men of experience and skill anymore.

Those men that were in command were the ones of the proper rank, meaning noble rank, not military rank. And some were given their position by how many men they had brought to the cause. But that meant that the battlefield and campaign experience of our commanders was all but nothing.

We were led by men that, during the war, had been guarding wagon trains, leading garrisons in out-of-the-way border forts and cities too far north to see any action.

Flame burn me for the fool that I am, old cock, but I hate those men. I hated them then and I hate them now. Men who claim to have fought for Redania who did nothing in the war other than march up and down. Men who only trained against troops that were terrified to fight back and would convince themselves that they were…

But after the fall of Novigrad, we made mistake after mistake after mistake. I’m not saying that we would have won if we had NOT made those mistakes, but we would have made you pay for your victories in blood rather than just handing you victory after victory.

What we should have done was to lay siege to Novigrad. We would never have taken the city but we would have kept you from coming out while your brother carried on with his rituals.

I mean, we now know that your brother was mad and the rituals that he was performing were not worth the cost, but at the time, that was what we were waiting for as over and over again we were told that his rituals would provide us victory. We should have taken proper action to delay the enemy, but we didn’t. We sat there and watched as your side just did whatever it was that you needed, or wanted to do.

One of the rules of warfare is that if your enemy wants to do something, then you must make every effort to see to it that he cannot, or at least, finds it difficult.

Instead, the orders came and my boss, a man named Windham. Not of noble enough lineage to get a proper command, but he was a patriot and had sense. We were ordered to hold the river.

Our scouts watched as more and more Imperial troops came out of Novigrad and still, we were ordered to hold the river.

Other scouts from over the river returned to tell us that another, much larger force was coming up from the south and we were ordered to hold the river.

Finally, Windham received word that a detachment of Imperials was coming from Novigrad to clear the river crossings. There were no fortifications to stop them and they were well reinforced. So we faced annihilation from Novigrad if we stood our ground, or we could cross the river and find ourselves in Velen with all the problems that come with that and the upcoming armies from the south would smash us against the river.

We were the metal trapped between two hammers and there was no way that we would salvage our forces. We would either be killed, or taken prisoner to a man.

Windham, quite rightly, told the messenger to fuck the orders and we retreated down the river towards Oxenfurt. We only just made it too without being cut off.

Our commander in chief, who always seemed to be different people as orders came from different men every time we received a new order. At first, they were furious at us for abandoning our posts. Then someone realised that this meant that there were more troops to put in the field.

Then began the soldier’s dance….

Oh, of course, I should have realised that you don’t know it. Forgive me old cock, I just thought you would…

That’s right, you served in Logistics and intelligence, didn’t you? Can’t deny that I feel much the same way about that as you did. Back then I looked down on your lot during the war. But now that I’m older and have more idea of the vital nature of Logistics. And also I’ve seen what happens with war when you are…

When you are on the wrong side.

Losing was bad enough when you are on the right side, but losing and knowing that you are the villain of the piece. I have to admit old man, I do not care for it at all.

I believed, and still believe in the cause of Redania, but… I would not have liked to live in the Redani that your brother wanted to build.

But I was talking about the dance of armies. It’s boring, tedious, frustrating and utterly exhausting.

You march, and they march to counter your action. You march to try and anticipate the best possible response to that. Again, they march to counter you. You get ordered to a defensible position and you start to dig in. But then it turns out that the other side anticipated your decisions and has moved so that your formerly defensible position is no longer as defensible as it was and you need to retreat again to another position which would have been more defensible if you had gone straight there and started digging in rather than all the fucking about. But now you don’t have enough time to do anything because the enemy is already coming over the hill so then again you must retreat. Always looking for a way to take the initiative back from the enemy.

My own opinion is that the rebellion was over when we lost the river crossing. Our ability to hold the river was essential to all the plans. But that is the knowledge that is bought with hindsight.

We marched and countermarched for far longer than we needed to. The enemy man was good but he was cautious. As well he might be. We still hoped that we could snatch a victory out of it if we had been able to properly bloody the Imperial forces, as that would have encouraged more people to help us. But not doing anything just gave them victory after victory.

We fell back and back and back. All the time Windham was sending messages back to the castle and Oxenfurt begging for reinforcement. We were smaller which meant that we moved faster as well and there were several times that if we had serious numbers, we could have HURT the Imperial Forces. Windham would be furious as we ate our rations.

“Where are the troops with the magical strength and speed that we were promised?” He would snarl into the night. “Where are the monsters that were supposed to be harrying them, destroying their wagon trains and keeping their sentries awake at night? Where are the holes that we can exploit and where is the magic that terrifies our enemies into submission?” We all commiserated with him and I asked those questions myself on more than one occasion.

But reinforcement never came. Only orders to move us further back.

And those messengers that we sent, when they would come back at all would come back pale and trembling with fear. I didn’t speak to any of them. Windham accepted the messages and orders once and, being the reasonably adept leader and decent man that he was. He asked the messenger what the matter was.

The messenger told him and was stockaded for telling lies. Then the next messenger was interrogated and the first was released under orders not to tell anyone. Even so, there was no hiding the state of the countryside from the men by this point and rumours abounded.

Then came the news that Oxenfurt had surrendered into Imperial hands without a fight.

-

An interlude while I explain this.

Once again, it is worth reminding people that Oxenfurt is not built to withstand a siege. It can barely withstand being a city to tell you the truth. It is an island of mud and silt where a few ancient Elven buildings were built on the only stable bits. Oxenfurt was founded by scholars that wanted to study the buildings and by the artists that wanted to be inspired by the buildings. Then enterprising merchants and townsfolk erected tents and built houses to service these scholars and artists so over time, Oxenfurt was built and then it began to grow to the point that it started to outgrow the island that it was built on.

Masons are constantly having to rebuild houses and the city walls and all sorts of things to keep the city standing let alone being able to withstand a siege.

Aleksy’s account of the rebel forces retreating from Novigrad rather tells the story accurately, even if he does write off some important history with a single line of speech

The Imperial army came up from the South. They waited until they had received the word that Novigrad had fallen and then with a display of logistical management and secrecy, the army moved out and headed North. The Empress wanted to lead the force but I’m told that her parents, meaning lord Geralt, Lady Yennefer and Lord Emhyr, essentially sat on her to prevent it. Instead, Lord Voorhis got his old armour out and led the efforts alongside Lord Natalis of Temeria. They made a lot of noise as they went but what that meant in real terms was that everyone…

And I do mean everyone.

… heard them coming, including the rebels. As Aleksy and his comrades left the river crossing behind, it was not long before a lighter armoured division of the force coming north was able to retake the crossing by simple virtue of just walking over it and meeting the force coming south from Novigrad to do the same. Now having that area taken, it meant that the Skelligan raider ships could get down the river, Imperial troops could reinforce the new garrison of Novigrad and help bring order there and the fight could be taken to the rebels properly.

They say that there is no greater praise that a warrior can receive except from an enemy and it would seem that one of the greatest sentiments among the Imperial forces is that the only military mind that the rebels had that was even remotely worth thinking about was General Windham that Aleksy speaks about. I can’t find much about his service during the war and a lot of the places that I could go and look are now destroyed or the witnesses are dead or waiting for execution. Aleksy claimed to have heard of him before and been told that he was the kind of man who needed initiative. But he wasn’t very politically minded, nor was his blood that noble.

But he led a blinding series of moves and counter-moves against the Imperial forces that were supposed to catch him.

They did not until he was ready for them but as I say, I will get to that.

A couple of officers have expressed the sentiment that if Windham had been properly supported then there would have been a far higher chance that something would have gone badly for the Imperial forces. Casualties would have been higher and… although they are confident that they would have won, it would have been more of a meat grinder.

So while Windham kept the Northern forces at bay, the Skelligans came down the river and started to erect temporary jetty’s into the river to disembark troops further in land. Another crossing was constructed out of pontoon boats and Windham was forced further and further backwards.

In the end, Oxenfurt was surrounded.

For those that have never been to Oxenfurt, the city is on an island in the middle of the river. The river, by this point, is roughly flowing almost North-south, therefore there is an Eastern entrance which is how you get to my family’s castle, and there is a western entrance which is how you get to Velen.

These are the descriptive points that I will be using for everyone’s ease.

The Imperials from Temeria arrived on the Western bank first. Skelligan longships, far more capable of making the river navigation quickly, ferried the lumber and cargo needed and the Imperial forces started to construct their siege weapons. When those forces that were chasing Windham around had forced the avenue for troops on the other bank to be able to close off the Eastern bank of Oxenfurt, they did so.

I have spoken to some of the leaders of Oxenfurt about this event and I’m told that in the same way that there was an exodus of rebels that left Novigrad to escape the Imperial forces, there was a similar group of rebels that fled Oxenfurt towards the relative safety of Coulthard Castle.

Enough remained to hold Oxenfurt and the Imperial forces put forces on either bank of the river and just stood there.

The rebels, in the meantime, had made a few small efforts to fortify the city. They stood men on the walls and forced the citizenry into arms and armour. They had also spent some time sending conscripts to destroy the bridges with pickaxes and shovels. They were not as successful on that second part given that one bridge was an old elven bridge from before the land was settled by humans at all. And the other was an old dwarven bridge, often reinforced by the best engineers that the University can produce.

They damaged it some though and I wonder if they were feeling smug as they watched the Imperials line up.

The Imperials stood their ground. The Skelligans manned their ships and then, when the siege engines were ready, a watching Lord Voorhis gave a nod and a lone Imperial Herald left the lines on the Western bank. He was lightly armoured in contrast to the herald that had announced the rebellion at the gates of Oxenfurt what must have seemed like years before, and he carried a spear with a white cloth hanging from it. He walked his horse calmly to the end of the bridge where he dismounted and walked onto the bridge, calmly taking his time as though he was out for a stroll.

When he got to the point where the bridge was damaged he stopped and waited.

An armoured man met him. I wish I could find out who that was but there is no record of who it was and it is all but certain that he died shortly afterwards.

I did speak to the Herald though and he answered my questions with the kind of careful, factual responses that make for poor reading and frustrated scholars.

The rebel man was struggling in his armour. It was cold by this point and apparently, he was well-insulated in the armour which gave the unfortunate impression that he was fat. This was almost certainly unfair.

“I see you carry a white cloth.” The rebel shouted. “Very well, I accept your surrender.” According to the Herald, he seemed to think he was being very brave and witty when the truth is that this is a standard gambit and the Herald was unimpressed.

The herald smiled at the rebel and gestured towards the walls. He was close enough that he could see the people looking at him, just as they had all once looked at the huge knight that had announced the beginning of the rebellion. The Herald turned and indicated, with a large, sweeping gesture, the siege weapons. At that arranged signals, the trained siege engineers went to work around those engines like Endregas on a troll’s corpse. There was militarised shouting. Flags were raised, ammunition was rolled into place, signal flags were lifted to signal readiness and the workers fell back, leaving one man next to each engine with a hammer, ready to fire.

The herald turned back to the city and then to the rebel before nodding.

“So?” demanded the rebel.

The herald apologised to Lord Voorhis when he returned to the Imperial lines. Why? Because he could not keep himself from smirking at the idiot rebel.

Lord Voorhis was magnanimous and simply didn’t invite the herald to dine with him that evening. I don't know why but apparently, this is a terrible fate in the Imperial forces. A herald sometimes, not often but sometimes, does not come back from meetings like this. It is naturally bad manners to execute the messenger, but at the same time, when talking to rebels, bandits and other men that are using cruelty and their psychotic nature as tools? Sometimes, the life of a herald is a dangerous one and the tradition is that the herald dines with the officer, general or Noble that sent them upon their return.

The rebel in question did not understand what he had seen. But the people of Oxenfurt did. As I say, Oxenfurt is built on an island that is made almost completely out of River mud and silt. Some buildings are solid, but if you buy a house in Oxenfurt, you are signing up for a lottery as to whether or not the next rain storm will simply wash your house away.

The townsfolk know this and when it happens, the entire community comes together to help out the family that has lost their home and business.

When you bombard a castle or a city wall such as Novigrad or Vizima, you can expect a properly built wall to stand for days if not longer. There are houses and walls in Oxenfurt that, if struck with only a relatively small boulder, would collapse. That collapse could well start a chain reaction that sends the entire city into rubble. The people of Oxenfurt, as taught by the academics and the students of the university, realised this relatively quickly.

And the rebels had forced the townsfolk into weapons and armour to stand up to the Imperial forces. Some debate as to what started the fighting but commonly, the credit is given to a Bookbinder. He was one of those men that made his living by rebinding books that students have worn out. When the book has been read so much that the spine is cracked and the entire binding is about to fall off, you go to this man and his wife and they will rebind it for you. I may have used his services, myself, over the years.

According to witnesses he turned, levelled the spear he had been given and rammed it forward into the gut of the nearest rebel. He didn’t do it properly but I doubt that he’s upset or offended by that critique of his technique. We know this because he couldn’t pull the spear out of the dying man’s body despite putting his boot on the man and trying to heave it out. In the end, he gave up and drew a shorthand axe that he had been given and spat at the man before chopping it down into the rebel’s neck. When he was sure that the rebel was dead, he spat again and screamed in the dead man’s face that “I FUCKING LIVE HERE,”.

Someone nearby followed his example and on it went. Oxenfurt surrendered to the Imperial forces less than a day after the herald had crossed the bridge. It was also our largest trove of prisoners given that many surrendered rather than be subject to the wrath of the people of Oxenfurt and a few more tried to escape and break out of the eastern gate towards safety.

The Imperials moved in and Oenfurt became the rearmost Headquarters of the Imperials while they advanced towards Coulthard Castle. It was also there that Lord Voorhis began to have some idea of the problems that he was up against.

The people of Oxenfurt were well aware of what was happening at Coulthard Castle. Where previously he had been able to dismiss the rantings of some of the captives that had been taken and the messages that had been sent to the south from the Northern Kingdoms, increasingly, this was no longer possible to ignore.

Orders were sent and Imperial Forces circled Coulthard Castle and advanced to take Flotsam. The Skelligans aided massively in this effort and as a result, there is now a permanent Skelligan presence there. Truth be told, it was not much of a battle as the rebels saw that they were outnumbered and retreated. Intelligence tells me that it is likely that the rebels that we are still having problems with are from this action.

Not that the Imperials did anything wrong. But it was impossible to encircle and therefore contain them. To encircle them would have taken longer than Lord Voorhis was willing to commit. The Empress had ordered him to get the job done and as such it was just important to secure that area to prevent too many people from escaping and to prevent supplies getting to Coulthard castle.

Before we get to the conclusion of Aleksy’s account. It’s also worth saying that it was at this time that a furious Empress was gated into the Redanian court by an equally irate, if somewhat smug, Lady Eilhart. At the time of writing, I have yet to meet Queen Regent Adda. Nor has there been a meeting of the Regency Council so, as yet, I have not taken up my duties.

If you would like to draw a comparison between the two, then far be it from me to argue.

But I am told that she played the situation perfectly. Whether she was speaking as a true and loyal servant of the Empire, or whether she was covering her own back to preserve her own life and the life of her son, then she could not have done so more perfectly.

She fell to her knees, sobbing in gratitude at the feet of the Empress, professing nothing but her most devout loyalty. The Empress took her in her arms and raised her before turning on the Lords of the Queen Regent’s court and letting them have the full force of her fury. Lady Eilhart was given full authority to weed out the traitors in the court and that she would present her report to Lord Voorhis, The Queen Regent and the Empress.

In private, she was ordered not to act summarily, for which I am pleased but that bit was not added to the Empress’ declaration in the courtroom. Many of those courtiers either knew of Lady Eilhart’s reputation from the reign of Radovid or his Father. Or had been brought up with the tales of those efforts from their parents.

Back to Aleksy’s account of the battle of Oxenfurt.

Well, there we were. We were retreating, always retreating. And it felt awful. We had been betrayed, old man and that’s the thing that always galls in your bladder. We had been beaten and not a sword had been swung in that defeat. It was a similar feeling to the way we had been beaten by the Imperials the first time. We had been beaten and we had not had any say in the matter.

The only consolation was that in this case, we had been beaten by a better soldier. We were betrayed. We didn’t know by whom and that resentment was one of the only things that kept us going. The anger that we felt as we sat around campfires and speculated as to who it might be that had messed us around and destroyed all of our efforts. Who was it?

It seemed ludicrous to us that Novigrad had fallen so easily so the most logical answer to that question was that we had been betrayed. We had no idea by whom but we told ourselves that when all of this was over, we intended to find out.

The ironic thing is that we guessed the right answer. We guessed that the soldiers that had taken Novigrad on our behalf had overindulged and as the people had risen against them, they had opened the gates, or whatever the naval equivalent of that was, to the Imperials.

But that excuse was too… too boring. Not least of the problems with that was that it portrayed US in a bad light. And by “us” I mean the rebellion and those folks that were working to bring down the Empire.

So instead, we dreamed up elaborate schemes and conspiracies and we promised ourselves vengeance when it came time to find out the truth.

But we were always retreating. We spent our nights in increasingly cold, increasingly wet and increasingly wintery camps. We whispered our anger so that we could hide from the riders going this way and that along the roads we had no idea who they were. Were they Imperial scouts, or were they our scouts who were looking for us to reinforce us? We had no way to know of course and as such… That left us in the dark. Afraid and trembling.

The thing you have to remember about the night, old man, is that it’s black. And the thing that you have to remember about the armour of the Imperial soldiers and scouts was… that it was black. So we couldn’t look out, we couldn’t guess or hope that it was our side. We just hide and hope that we would find some sign in the morning that they were on our side rather than…

The other side.

We would arrive at our ordered position and Bailey, the leader of what we laughingly called our field engineers, would declare that he could hold through the frost if he was given enough time. Then we would receive orders to move on and leave the fortifications barely begun. Then the next location and the one after that.

I was there the night when an exhausted Bailey lost his temper at no one in particular and screamed at Windham that if we had just retreated to the third position in the first place, the blood, sweat and tears that he had pissed away in trying to fortify that hill with the old ruined manor house on top of it could have been spent here instead. Making it properly defensible. Windham was sympathetic but you don’t let that sort of thing slide under military discipline do you?

Our morale was in the cesspit and I was not the only person wishing that some force of the enemy would just catch us and we could get it all over with.

Then we came to the ridge. I don’t know if you know it, old man. It’s… Oh, I don’t know… Maybe half a day's ride from your castle and it was Windham’s turn to lose his temper. Our gathered troops got to the ridge and climbed up the slope and stood there looking out. In the distance we could see the Oxenfurt tower and further to the South we could see a tower of smoke which we knew to be where Coulthard Castle was.

“Right then,” Windham declared, rubbing his hands together. “Here. We offer battle here.”

“Will they go around us?” Someone asked. There were maybe a dozen other Knights and even more hangers-on at that point.

“No,” I remember saying. “They will not want to leave us out. If they go around us to get to the castle they would need to encircle us. And if they encircle us they run the risk of us breaking out. They could come at the flanks though?”

“That will be Bailey’s job.” Windham declared. “Both flanks Mister Bailey and I don’t want horse or foot to be able to get to us that way. I want them to climb the ridge to get us.”

“Yes, Lord.” Bailey set off to shout for his shovel.

“Are we sure this is the spot?” Some idiot asked. Windham just glared at him.

This was another of our problems, old man. When a military superior gives an order you follow it? You don’t question it, you don’t second guess it. You nod, figure it out and then make your best effort to carry out those orders. The superior might be asking for an opinion and a good one will expect you to point out the flaws in their plans. But any man that cannot tell the difference between a request for opinion and advice, versus an order…

They have no business on a battlefield old man and I think you know that. Even though you’re not a military… Or you weren’t…

I know you served in your own way and anyone that says that you didn’t… Well, they obviously didn’t serve either. Not really.

But those people whose every decision is life or death…

Windham gave the idiot a glare. There were too many idiots in our ranks. Too many by a long way.

“If we go further, we are not enough to be of any use,” Windham explained in the tones of a man keeping his temper. “We might as well just retreat to the castle and be done with it. At which point we are all subject to the commands of Kalayn and his cronies.”

We had all developed a small distrust of your brother’s assistants. We were fairly sure that although your brother had started this and had a good plan, he didn’t know what he was doing on the battlefield. We had convinced ourselves that it wasn’t his fault but that somewhere between us and him were men that only had their own self-interests at heart and as such, were not advising him properly.

Little did we know that he knew exactly what he was doing and viewed us all as expendable of course.

“There are other concerns,” Windham went on, who is still my opinion of the best military mind that the rebellion had hold of.

“If we retreat to the castle, then we are only… however many more men that we have, as extra men to stand on walls and consume supplies while the Imperials lay siege. Out here… We have the initiative and can decide what we want to do and how we mean to fight the Black One. Dig in gentlemen. Here is where I mean to fight them unless I have orders to do otherwise. Gentlemen?”

That last was a signal and the few of us that it referred to knew who we were. We were the closest core group of officers and Knights. The real chain of command was that he knew who the men looked to for leadership. Who the other knights respected. We had a variety of names, old men. We were called the Ass-lickers by more than one of the sorry lot. But we knew our worth. Windham called us his aides and we would often be called to stay behind after the formal planning things were done for Windham to rant about how incompetent everyone else was and how furious he was that we weren’t being used properly. He would also take this opportunity to tell us his battle plans and what he intended to do when it came time for the battle. This is so that people wouldn’t make disastrous, indecisive mistakes when it came down to it.

I felt privileged to be in that group of men, old boy. It was an honour to be included as such.

There were four of us left by that point as others had been caught out or were still catching up with this or that. We didn’t leave anyone behind, but there were still casualties. Small units that would realise they were being cut off with nothing they could do about it and so on.

There were even some desertions. Not many. Certainly not as many as were in other places that I knew of or have since heard rumour of. But there were some.

But none of us… None of the aides deserted, gave up or fled. We fought and we stayed till the end.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen that end.

“I am going to the castle,” He told us. “I am going to demand to know where our reinforcements are or where they were. And I am going to tell them that if they had supported us, we could have bled the Imperials before they got anywhere near the castle. It would be THEM with low morale and already beaten before they came up against the trenches and the Flame knows what. I want to see what it’s like there and to personally see whether or not they have the capability to hide these men because…”

He looked us each in the eyes.

“I for one would rather die with a sword in my hand and a horse between my legs than to starve to death in a siege.”

We all nodded.

He took one of the others with him. The rest of us organised and bullied and cajoled and praised. We made speeches and told those soldiers that they were the cream of the Redanian army and that we were proud to serve alongside them.

Windham came back that evening and he was pale. He went into the general’s tent that we had provided. A place where a general could watch the battlefield. We had reports ready for him to read. We wanted to brief him and let him know exactly how much we had in place to help fight the Empire.

And yes, we wanted the approval of our Father. For in an army, the general is the Father of us all. Armies are like families. Huge, wondrous, chaotic families. And the man in charge is the patriarch. I have never served with a female general but I am told that even under the command of Queen Calanthe, Queen Meve or Pretty Kitty, the General is still a Patriarch.

He wanted nothing to do with us.

We went to the other man that went with him, a man by the name of Kilian. He was a younger man, with a prodigious memory, who would follow Windham around to remember all the things that Windham would forget. He was younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Was the younger brother of… someone. I can’t remember who it was. He was a good man as things went.

Windham went into the tent and Kilian took his horse off. We waited to make sure that Windham didn’t need or want us, then there was some time where we made sure that the men who were here didn’t need us and were not discouraged by the General’s vanishing. Then two of us got together, collected the third and went to find Kilian.

We found him in his horse’s stable. He was calm, there was no sobbing or anything but suddenly we were reminded of just how young he was.

“What happened?” One of my friends asked him. He had his head bowed against his horse. He turned and looked at us.

I swear old bean. There is a look that men get when they have seen things that you’re not supposed to see. You have that look sometimes and I saw it in him then. He seemed startled and then he seemed to remember who we were.

“I tell you, boys,” he began. He had to swallow a couple of times to get the words out. “I tell you now. Die here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Die here. Die well and with a sword in your hand.” He told me.

“I don’t…” One of the others.

Killian grabbed him by the breastplate and pulled himself in.

“Die here.” He hissed, desperately. “Die here and cleanly.” He let go and then he sobbed. “But if you can’t do that. Then I tell you, lads… I tell you.” He shook his head. “If the choice is between retreating to that castle, or surrendering to the Empire. Choose the Empire. At least there, you will die clean.”

I have no way of telling you old boy, no way of making you understand just how much of a statement that was. Kilian hated the Empire. He HATED them. His Father and brother had died on some battlefield I think and his Uncle had all but dispossessed him, marrying his mother and stealing all his land because he was too young and weak to inherit.

Obviously wanting his own heirs to inherit the noble title and lands and things.

Now you or I might think that the Uncle was the villain in that, and rightly so. But Kilian will have been… twelve, maybe thirteen when his Father died and he raged against the Empire for all the bad things that had happened in his life. He was a good lad. But for him to tell us to die at the hands of the Empire rather than fight for the Rebellion, or live to fight another day?

We sat him down and started to ask questions.

To my shame, I didn’t believe him. It was only later when Windham backed him up that I began to realise that maybe, we were on the side of the bad guys in this story.

I remember it quite clearly.

We all filed into General Windham’s tent. He was pale and his eyes were bloodshot at the time I remember thinking that if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that he had been drinking.

Knowing what I know now, he had almost certainly been drinking, and I do not blame him for it.

Flame guide us my friend but what your brother and his cronies did…

He got us all in, not just his aides but all of us. The Knights, the officers and so on. He waited till we were all there and then he spent a bit of time looking each of us in the eye.

There weren’t any tears in his eyes but there were not many of us that could meet his gaze.

“Here is where we fight them.” He told us. “The order is that for every second that we can buy the people at the castle, the more certain their eventual victory will be. If we just fall back to the castle… there is not enough room, there is not enough supplies, medical, food and clean water, for us to be anything other than just another mouth to feed. All they need now to win and win decisively is time. And we are going to give it to them.”

There was some general nodding but I could feel a hole in the pit of my stomach. A hole dug by growing knowledge and guilt as I realised that Kilian must have told us the truth about what he had seen. Windham wasn’t weeping but I certainly wanted to. I resolved that before I died, I would see to it that Kilian heard my apology.

“We are going to give the people in the castle the time they need and we are going to bloody the nose of the Empire. We are going to fight. We will put fear in the hearts of the Imperial troops and we are going to put anger and courage into the hearts of the men defending the castle. The Empire will know that they have been in a battle by the time we are done with them. If any of you wish to flee then feel free to do so…”

There was a chorus of negative noises but the General held his hands up.

“We are surrounded by the Imperials on each side now and they are coming for the castle. Even if you flee, you will be in the hands of the Empire and it might even be true that the people of the castle will be forced to turn us away. But at this moment, at this end, I want the people beside me to be the people that WANT… That NEEDS to be here. So if men want to go and try to return to their families, then let them. That’s all.”

“I know the spirit of the men, sir…” One of the Knights called. A man called Trestav who I didn’t like as he could be pedantic and fancied himself a little bit too much of a man of the people. Couldn’t fault his courage though. “And they will be determined to fight to the last.”

There was some determined murmuring in the group. I even suspect that some of them were still a little confident that they could snatch a victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Windham nodded and dismissed everyone.

He caught our eyes, the aides amongst us and we stayed behind.

He reached into his trunk and laid out some cups before us before pouring some good brandy into each of them. We exchanged glances with each other as I don’t think some of us had realised quite what was going on. He had often shown us that bottle of brandy and told us that he was keeping it for our eventual victory. He passed the brandy out to us all and waited until we had all had a good sniff and a good roll around of the cup in our hands. I think he was waiting for the realisation to hit all of us in the face.

“First of all,” he said quietly, “I think by now that you should all realise that you all owe young Kilian an apology.”

I made sure that I was the first to walk over to Kilian who still looked very pale and very young and I took him by the hand. His lips were trembling as he looked at me.

The others looked in askance at me. Another one of us got it, and the third understood later.

“I should also tell you gentlemen that, for the first time in my life, I am disobeying the orders that I have been given.”

This was new and I carefully set the brandy aside so that I could pay attention.

“We are ordered back to the castle to aid in the defence. Our men are to make themselves available to be part of the upgrading process that Lord Kalayn is advocating to bolster our forces and we are to make ourselves part of the defence. I am disobeying those orders. Have no fear, I will tell you why.”

There was a wry chuckle from one or two of us, including me.

“Leaving aside the disrespect that they paid us, the scorn that was heaped on us… Every man there thought that they could do a better job than we have done and every single man there was among the first to flee Novigrad and seek the shelter of Coulthard Castle. Leaving aside the fact that I would rather bow my head NOW to the whore-bitch Empress than I would serve alongside those execrable excuses for soldiers… Fortunately, Lord Kalayn seems to know all of this and is well aware of who he can trust and who he can’t… But leaving that aside…”

He shook his head.

“I tell you, gentlemen, I have been to Coulthard castle before. I doubt that Lord Kalayn will remember me as I was but a lowly aide to someone who was attending upon the King when he went to remind Lord Coulthard to who Lord Coulthard owed fealty.

“I remember when I saw the castle and the lands around it that, although I understood the importance of our mission, I thought that people were taking the wrong approach with Lord Coulthard. As I looked around his lands and met his people, I began to think it possible that he knew something that we didn’t. And when I saw Castle Coulthard itself… I remember thinking that we would be in a much better position if more of the castles of Redania were kept up to that standard.

“Then I met the man himself and recognised his bitterness for what it was and the work on his land for the raised middle finger towards the King that Lord Coulthard had made it.

“This time, as I went to Castle Coulthard and I looked at it I thought that it was grotesque. I thought of the Lord Coulthard in his castle and I knew that, even though he did the things he did out of bitterness, he would have been appalled at what I saw.

“Militarily, it is now a terrifying structure. But that is not the thing that haunted my dreams last night or flashes before my eyes in unguarded moments.

“It will be the pens of people that are kept in the courtyards and the fields where they are in danger of freezing to death. It will be the huge, grotesquely muscled men that carry logs and boulders into place that it would take three men to do the same. Mindless brutes they are, drooling and soiling themselves even as they wield huge broadswords that they drag behind them. It will be the sight of grinning men raping and torturing captives, jeered on by their friends. It will be the pall of smoke that hangs over the place. It will be the groom with the broken leg, staring at me with vacant eyes where his mind has been driven from him by pain and exhaustion.

“It will be the screaming woman with blood flowing from black eyes that floats around the place, surrounded by red smoke as she moves, this way and that way, almost faster than the eye can see as she looks for victims that she can take.

“It will be the piles of bodies that they simply haven’t got around to and can’t be bothered to burn. And to my horror, these were not just captives. There were men in that pile that wore the colours of Redania in those piles as well. Desiccated corpses that look like withered old husks of people and when I enquired about who those people were, I was told that they were necessary sacrifices.

“And lastly, there were the vampires. It is one thing to know that you are going to be fighting alongside monsters and then there is another thing that happens when you see those monsters in person. Huge, batlike things that were hanging off the walls. Slim female shapes with hardened skin and muscles that were feasting from the open stomach wounds of a dead girl.

“I tell you, my friends… I tell you now. That I believe in Redania. I will die for Redania but I will not die for that Redania. I will not go back to that place and let them… let them turn our men… Men that have bled and killed for this rebellion already. Men that have already fought and killed more Imperial soldiers and Temerian scum than any of those imbeciles back at the castle can even dream of. I will not put them in the hands of that… whatever it was and I will not have their lives thrown away on the altar of those men’s ambitions. I don’t care how well those… grotesque… things fight.

“Given the choice between having those men die here, in the cause that I believe in, cleanly at the end of an Imperial lance or otherwise. Rather than on the altar of…

“Flame preserves us my friends but what have we become? I wanted to serve Redania but Redania is not that. It is NOT… that.”

There was some muttering and we shifted around a bit, not looking at each other.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“We fight.” Windham seemed to shake himself. “Yes… we fight. We pretend that what I said to all of those men is true. That we are ordered to delay the Imperials with everything that we can manage. We fight and we die for the Redania that we believe in. Believe me, boys, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I knew that Kilian could not hide this from you. Believe me that I very nearly allowed you all to keep your illusions.

“But in this case. I wanted people to know…”

He sighed and sat down.

“The chances of all of us dying on the battlefield is slim. Do not retreat, do not surrender and we might mean it, but the Imperials are good soldiers and good men. I do not hate them nearly as much as I hate the Temerian filth that sold us to them those years ago. They may decide to take prisoners and there is nothing that we could do to stop them if they put their minds to it. And it is almost certain that they have infiltrated us and know that the four of you, and I, are the leaders here

“So I am telling you this so that when you see them, or I see them, then you can tell them what I told you. Tell them that we die for Redania. But what is happening at Coulthard Castle, what I am certain happened in Novigrad and probably Oxenfurt too… That was not the Redania that we fought for. We die for the Redania of our dreams and when your time comes if they let you live, which I doubt, but if they do, then work for Redania as it should have been. And if you are taken to the block, know that you fought for Redania and that you fought with honour.

“Unlike those pukes back at the castle… Oh, how I curse them.

“But when you get to the block, go well. Shake the headsman by the hand and when invited to speak your final words, tell the world that you condemn those horrors, but that you die for Redania. Let those be your last words and know that I will be there to meet you as we walk, together, towards wherever the Eternal Flame will guide us.”

He lifted his cup in a toast and one by one we joined him.

“For Redania,” was the toast. We drank and then we went to do our duty.

Then we waited.

It was tricky, old cock. Keeping the men satisfied and hungry over that period. You can’t just tell everyone to wait and then trust that that’s what they’re going to do. You have to do things to keep their spirits up. So we played games, we told stories and we reminded each other of exactly why it was that we were doing these things. Why we hated the Empire with such a violent and all-consuming passion. We did it deliberately. We worked at it. And then, in the end, we just sat and waited.

One thing that I want you to note down old boy is that we had the best scouts. I swear that General Voorhis couldn’t take a fart without us knowing about it. Not that he ever did. I met him and he rather had the look of a man that had had his backside sewn shut so that he could say that he never farted.

I didn’t like him.

I certainly wouldn’t have followed him into battle.

But that was on the last day, the day before the battle. We knew that enemy troops were encircling Coulthard Castle. Even though for those of us in the know, the line between enemy and opposition troops was becoming increasingly blurred, we knew that the siege of Coulthard Castle was being invested as we sat around with our thumbs up our asses.

And then we watched as the Empire started to file into place in front of us. They took a long time over it too. Really taking their fucking time to march into place and start to hack down trees to make shields and construct ladders and things for the eventual siege.

I know why they did it. The science of the mind is compelling indeed and that was what they were doing. They knew that it would cost them to wipe out our last, insolent little force and they didn’t want to do it. And when I say “cost” I don’t just mean in lives. Arrows and crossbow bolts cost money after all.

So we watched as they lined up. We sharpened weapons, checked and maintained armour and… yes… and we prayed. I didn’t necessarily pray to the Eternal Flame either. I prayed to Redania. I prayed that I would die well and that when my time came I would do as Windham ordered. I would do as Radovid would have done.

Help me do that won’t you old cock. I know that you and I fought on different sides on this and I will admit that were my time given to me again, I might have done things differently but all the same…. I still hate the Empire and I still hate what Redania has become so I don’t think that you or I would have been friends back then. But we might be friends now. Will you help me when the time comes? I want to be able to lay my head on the block and for them to not need to tie me. Will you be there?

Glad of you old boy. Glad for you.

So the Empire marched into place and I knew that it was going to come down to it when the banner of your General Voorhis came into view. He just turned up and as I watched him, the cold-hearted bastard just examined his lines as though it was a dreadful bore for him to be there. As though all of this generalling was beneath him and that he had better things to do.

And knock me down with a feather as we could visibly see those men preen, puff out their chests and stand even further to attention than they had before.

I don’t understand that old cock. I don’t

But he rode out with a few others, one of them had a white flag.

Naturally, we went to meet him and that was how I met General Voorhis.

I remember someone telling me… It might even have been in your diaries old boy, that at one stage there was a question of whether or not that man loved the Empress and intended to marry her. Well, I wouldn’t marry him. Dead-eyed, slimy, fishy-looking kind of man. Made me shudder just to look at him. It was the way he looked at us as though we were already dead. As though he didn’t care if he died or if everyone he knew died.

As I say, he was a cold bastard. I didn’t like him.

I suppose he does his duty, the same as anyone, but I didn’t like him.

He stared at us for a moment and as I looked into his eyes I remember shivering. I was not the only one either according to my fellows.

“Surrender,” he said quietly. “I can promise you that your deaths, when the time comes, will be clean and that the lives of your men will be saved. After their arms and armour have been stockpiled, they will be taken from here to a camp, south of here, where they will stay until this matter is decided. After that, they will be released to go home to where they should have been all this time.”

“And where is that?” One of my fellows asked.

“Collecting the harvest,” Voorhis said. “As it is, this rebellion is going to cause yet another famine that the North can ill afford. One of those things that you all forgot when you declared this foolish little rebellion.”

I won’t lie, old mucker, that one struck home in my heart.

“A man does not think clearly when he is reaching for freedom.” Windham declared.

“Maybe not,” Voorhis agreed with a slight smile. It was a courtier’s smile, not a warrior’s smile and I disliked him even more. “Nevertheless, you are all guilty of treason. The terms that I offer are generous and you all know that. You are guilty of treason and a quick death is the most merciful thing that I can do for you. Take the offer, and save the lives of your men. Let this be an end to it.”

“Treason?” Windham asked. “Treason? How can I be guilty of treason when Nilfgaard is foreign to me?”

For a moment I thought I saw the mask slip from Voorhis’ face and I saw a cold fury behind his eyes. Then he covered it with an emotion that I didn’t recognise.

“It never ceases to amuse me that this is the argument that rebels make, every time that someone does it. You are not the first person that has made that argument, in some cases you are not the first person to make that argument to my face in identical circumstances to this. Fortunately, in this case, it is far easier to counter the argument.”

His horse reacted to his feeling by shifting underneath him.

“We will start with the fact that this time, the Empress is one of your own. She was a Princess of Cintra before she was the Empress. There are numerous witnesses and signed declarations that have been given under magical and religious portents that she is the princess of Cintra. If she wasn’t the Empress of Nilfgaard she would sit the throne of Cintra…

At least.”

That last was said with a flat stare.

“She also has a claim to several other duchies, and Kingdoms, several of which would be considered “Northern”. Now the counter to that argument from Northern folk is that now that she is an Empress of Nilfgaard she is no longer Northern. And that is the argument of a fanatic. So I will allow you that one.

“Nor will I point out the peace that the Empire brought to your lands. The order, the law and the settled nature of things. Northerners can travel to the learning centres of the south while the Northern Universities like Oxenfurt are still recovering from the privations of zealous men who do not understand that learning is only a benefit and not something to be afraid of.

“The North has been fighting against itself for so long that they forget the benefits of peace and it would only be so long before one of you grew strong enough to conquer their neighbours. There has been war as long as any of you can remember. Even when it was not with the South, Aedirn has fought Kaedwen and Temeria has argued with Redania and so on and so on. Is it not true that you actively hate Temeria more than you hate us?”

I had no answer to that. There were some uncomfortable truths there.

“So I will not argue that point.”

His tone had been conversational while his eyes had remained cold and hard. But now he let a sliver of anger into his voice. I never got the knack of using your voice like that which is why my sister was sent to court and I was sent to the army.

“But no man, who has walked through Novigrad since we LIBERATED it from your hands. No man has walked through Oxenfurt or listened to the stories of men, women and other non-humans. No man who has read the reports of what is happening at Coulthard Castle even as we sit here and you keep me from going and putting an end to it. No man who has looked at what you have done TO YOUR OWN PEOPLE WOULD DESCRIBE THAT AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN TREASON.”

His face turned purple from his sudden rage and the spittle splattered from his lips as he screamed that last.

“I love my country,” he began after a long moment. “Just as I am sure that you must love yours. I have been proud to carry the Golden Sunburst onto battlefields here and there and I have been proud to serve the Empress and the Emperor before her. And in all that time, I will admit that I have seen some horrific things and I have done some horrific things. But the stories I have been told and the things that I have seen were done, to your people, by your side and you were doing them before your side and mine even met on the battlefield.

“What you are doing is treason. The courtiers will claim that what you are doing is treason against Nilfgaard. But what soldiers like you know, what the men and women of the gods and the people on the streets and everyone else will know, is that you are traitors against Redania and your people.

“I am a courtier. I rose high enough and I was born high enough to be both soldier and courtier. Just as some priests are courtiers too. And good men must learn to spot the difference. You are a soldier sir, I know who you are. You are on the wrong side of this and now it is time to leave it.”

He peered at us all in turn. And just as with Windham, I could not meet his gaze as in that moment, I saw that he was right.

“You all know it too,” Voorhis decided. “There is a reason why you are out here and not at the castle. There is a reason you are not fighting on the walls there and that you weren’t inside the city at Novigrad. You know what is happening there and you cannot join them, nor can you bring yourselves to surrender.”

“We cannot,” Windham said, his voice shaking.

“Very well.” Voorhis nodded before turning to his own aides. “Mark these men well gentlemen. If any survive, they will dine with me before they move towards their captivity. We have finally found some honourable foes.”

They saluted. Voorhis nodded to Windham who nodded back.

We waited as we watched Voorhis return to his lines. One or two of the aides split off from the general’s party to join their own companies.

Windham waited for a while with his head bowed.

“What happens now?” Kilian asked.

“We go back to our lines and when we get there, he will order the attack. We will be pelted with bolts and arrows and then he will mount an attack. He will not charge, he will just advance while we wait at the top of the ridge.”

“Coward.” Muttered one of them.”

“No,” Windham sighed. “He is no coward. If Radovid was served by more men like that instead of Dijkstra and the rest. Then we would have won.”

“I still don’t like him,” I said.

“No,” Windham agreed. “He strikes me as a difficult man to like.”

“What do we do then?” Kilian asked.

The General laughed.

“The only thing we can do son,” he said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “We charge.”

And so we did.

We waited for as long as we could but the sheer weight of fire from the bows and crossbows meant that we were losing men at a rate that was not sustainable. Voorhis did indeed advance and then, when we could not wait any longer. Windham ordered the charge.

We did well that day But not so well that the Imperials were delayed more than a few hours.

I fought on foot with my men as it seemed churlish to fight from horseback. I remember being overwhelmed, my better armour meant that I survived longer than most but sooner or later, the weight of numbers pulled me down. I woke up in an Imperial Medical tent with my arm in a sling and a headache that felt as though the maces and the war hammers were still raining blows down on my helmet.

I did indeed dine at Voorhis’ table. I was welcomed by the other officers and if I closed my eyes and just listened to the talk, I would not have known the difference between their company and the company of my friends.

Voorhis was there and he ate quietly before retiring early. I won’t say that I dined with him but the point was well made. You know the rest, old boy.”

And I do. The battle of Oxenfurt was bigger than Aleksy’s account might imply. But it largely happened as Aleky suggested. The Imperials rained down arrows and bolts onto the rebel focus which reduced their number. The Imperial Infantry advanced in good order under the arrowfire of what was left of the rebel archers. And when the Imperials approached the ridge and the ditch before it along with the stakes that had been erected started to break the enemy formations, then the rebels charged.

Voorhis calls it a pointless waste of life and the simplest battlefield he has ever commanded. But crucially, he told me that it was also a tragedy. He said that he understood Windham and why he did what he did and chose his end the way that he did.

And in turn, it was also the only place where the Rebel dead were treated with respect. Priests were brought from Novigrad to lay the dead to rest and a monument was raised listing the names of the confirmed fallen. Voorhis has asked me to maintain that monument as the only monument to the rebellion and I intend to do so. And when Aleksy dies, I will personally pay for the smith to carve his name alongside those others that fell there.

I would do it myself but I lack the left arm to hold the chisel. That causes me no small amount of pain.

There are ongoing delays to the work.

And this is the first time that I have had to wield the sword of my duty against enemies. It was not easy and I hope, with all of my heart, that I will not have to do it again. Even though I know that such a hope is naive and that when the time comes again, as it will, then I must be cold, hard and ruthless.

There are times when I have enjoyed the duty that the Empress has lain upon my shoulders. But there are other times when I wish that she had given that duty to others and unfortunately, it means that I must leap ahead in the story. After the fall of my brother, many efforts were made by many men to divide Coulthard lands and the lands around it, up amongst themselves.

Nobles that have looked at my Father’s and my sister’s works and rather than put the work in themselves, they decided to take that land for themselves at the point of a sword.

These efforts have not stopped.

What has happened is that, at first, people gave me some time to settle in and then they tried to undermine my rule. There were raids on my borders and raids into the lands of my neighbours, an effort that I understand from Intelligence is called a “false flag” operation. I keep forgetting to ask him what the origin of that term is. Presumably, it’s from the fact that the forces in question raised someone else’s flags above their forces.

But anyway, people have been raiding and killing when they should be preparing for the planting and the harvest to come.

Those lords that, essentially, raided their lands using Coulthard colours, complained most devoutly to the Empress and the Queen Regent, not checking with me. They used all the old lines that courtiers have been saying about my family and me for years. About how the role of Duke should have been given to someone of proper experience with the right noble background.

The messages were sent suspiciously quickly after the raids, meaning that the noble in question didn’t even bother to investigate. Intelligence’s scorn was considerable. He told me that such a ploy needs more time to work. He laid out an extended plan as to how he would do it if it had been he that had been setting such a thing up. He talked about friendly meetings with me, insistence and then demands for action before the matter should have been taken up with the Queen and the Empress.

He was also amused that the person in question didn’t realise, or had misunderstood the fact that I answer to the Empress, not the Queen Regent of Redania.

Who I still haven’t met by the way. Queen Anais and I have started by getting on quite well.

The Empress read the demands for action, and sent it back to me with a little note on the bottom saying “Deal with this would you?”

Fortunately, I was already on the case.

Another thing that my adversaries had forgotten is that the Captain of my guard was trained by one of the best anti-raiders on the continent. Indeed, many of the bastards that formed the model and the foundation of my growing guard under Knight Captain Padraig were thieves and bandits themselves before Rickard took them in and gave them what passed for honest work. Intelligence and Padraig had already seen the raids for what they were and didn’t do much more than tell me what was going on and that they were pursuing it.

A couple of weeks later they came in for another meeting and told me that I could write to the Empress and tell them that I was in the process of solving the matter. They explained what was happening and I remember nodding before staring into space for a while.

“So what do I do?” I asked the room full of advisors.

“This is not the last time that this is going to happen.” Intelligence told me. “Others are watching to see how you respond. You cannot afford the luxury of being merciful.”

“Put them down,” Padraig said forcefully. “The bastard was raiding his own people in our name and raiding ours accordingly. I agree with Intelligence.”

“The people deserve better from their lords.” Mother Iona told me. “Be uncompromising with the men. You must be harsh with the wife but let her live…”

I raised my hand for quiet.

“No, I understand that,” I told them all. “I more meant… ‘how’, I mean I have an army now. Do I send them to do it or do I just send Padraig and a hundred men to arrest the bastard?”

“If you send the army, that might suggest insecurity.” Captain Price is one of my military advisors. I have a number of them now.

“Act as though you expect to be obeyed.” Intelligence nodded. “Bear in mind that if he refuses your order then he is in active rebellion. Invite him and his family to Coulthard castle to… Oh, I don’t know…” He waved his hand in the air vaguely. “Discuss the raiding and matters regarding the future. I can write the message if you like and I will make it seem as though you need his help or are asking for his advice or something.”

Iona laughed. “A man like that, his ego will not permit him to refuse such an invitation.”

“Then I will lead men to take his home out from under him,” Padraig said. I got the feeling that this plan had already been made before I got involved.

I took a deep breath.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Intelligence said. “I can arrest the fucker, or one of the officers can or… whoever. But you should be just treating it as any other day. Then order his execution for treason, of which he is guilty. Have it done somewhere quiet where he can’t make a big gesture and again, just don’t turn up. It will insult him and will send the right message.”

“You should be the one that speaks to the wife though,” Iona added. “Be firm with her. You should travel with Padraig’s men and then go and talk to the wife. She might be the one behind it all, or she might be an innocent along for the ride.”

I nodded, feeling a bit sick as I realised I was about to order a man to death.

“Is there…” I cleared my throat. “Is there a standard execution method?” I wondered.

“The Emperor liked to have people pressed or torn apart by horses.” Intelligence sniffed. “Personally, a good old-fashioned drawing and quartering will do. He will complain that he is noble and should die by the sword and again, that sends the right message. He should die a peasant’s death.”

“I don’t like that word.” I snapped. “Sorry,”

Intelligence smiled gently. “The first one is hard.” He told me.

“I have killed men before…”

“In fights.” He told me. “This is different. It’s not even a murder.” He unfolded his legs. “You are sending others to do your murdering for you. It should sit wrong.”

I nodded and looked up at him and Padraig. I glanced at Carys and Captain Price and then finally at Iona. They all nodded.

“So ordered,” I told them.

They started to leave.

“Iona wait.” I began and she stopped. I waited for the others to leave the pavilion. “I thought you would argue for mercy?” I asked.

“He is killing farmers and wives and children and livestock for greed. Even his people.” She shook her head. “My mercy is for the people that he terrorises.”

I nodded, unable to hide my unhappiness.

“Shall I send Father Anchor to you?” She asked.

I nodded.

“Yes please,” I told her.

How I miss them, Kerrass, Rickard… Ariadne.