A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

“I hear stories Freddie and I can’t claim to understand half of them. I hear stories of the names you have been given. I hear about the butcher of Vergen, the lord of Redania who sneaks through villages at night with his red axe to murder hapless villagers.”

“Vergen and Cidaris Propaganda. I have heard that story and they are sending it to Kovir & Poviss to try and gather sympathy.”

“I heard about the laughing Duke who leads his escort into battle, axe flashing forward.”

“I mean… Yeah. I was little more than a glorified battle standard and my guard would only let me forward when the battle was all but won anyway. That point where our general thought our side needed that little push to get them on the run. They wouldn’t let me within anything close to an actual enemy soldier.”

“I understand that some men call you, “The Witcher Duke now,”

“Yeah, that one is bullshit. We’ve cleared some minor monster nests and we did it by lining up heavy crossbows and emptying heavy crossbow bolts into them, rank by rank so they couldn’t take advantage of the reload time. And two got through. It turns out that Gardan’s axe might have some silver alloy in it or might have been blessed or something. It’s been tested to no avail, but it would seem that life is just not that simple when it comes to this axe.

“When monsters are detected on the lands, I would still rather find a professional. I track you all now and when there is a Witcher locally, I will send for them, tell them what I think it is and ask for an estimate. I confer with Lord Geralt through Lady Yennefer and if that sounds like a fair price then I pay the man, fill his pack with provisions, give him a riding horse if he needs one, the quality of which depends on how he treated the locals. I also get asked to consult on any local issues which is more of an annoyance than anything.”

He laughed.

“So why did you change from the spear?”

I sighed unhappily.

“It’s frustrating really, and a little bit heartbreaking. It’s not about the axe, or the spear, not really. It’s about the hand.”

I waved my left hand for emphasis.

“Yes, Last time I saw your left hand it was made of wood. Did Ariadne grow you a new hand? I have heard of such things being done.”

“Yes and no, it’s not wood. It’s metal.”

“It looks like a man’s hand.”

“And it feels like it. It’s warm to the touch, I can touch the table and feel the wood. I can dip it in my beer and feel the wet. It feels no different to a flesh hand except for two things.”

“I’m guessing that when you punch something with your left hand, it tends to remain punched.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, I clipped Padraig early in our training and we had to get Ariadne down to heal him.”

“Ouch,”

“I was more worried about what Carys would do to me if I had broken her husband. But the other thing is sound.”

I rapped my knuckle on the metal bands that held my beer mug together. Sure enough, it went “plink”.

“Interesting,” Kerrass stroked his chin and then shook his head. “Enchanted?”

“Yeah, Ariadne has to top up the enchantment once a month or so and then it needs to come off so that the entire enchantment can be redone from the ground up. Apparently, extended enchantments like that can become unstable.”

Kerrass nodded.

“Why does that…?”

“Well,” I poured myself another beer but Kerrass declined another top up. “I got my new hand and I was revelling in being able to do things with my left hand again.”

“Jerking off?”

“Kerrass… I’m a married man now.”

“So you were jerking off.”

I laughed. “That might be true for other married men but with me and Ariadne?”

I leered at him, trying to embarrass him.

I was disappointed.

“Yes, you can tell me about that in a moment. But first… spear.”

“Well, now I had a hand again, I wanted to train. I had started running and things to try and get fit again, but I felt the need to remember how to defend myself. So after I got used to the hand…”

“The weight of the metal?”

“No… That’s part of the enchantment apparently, it weighs no more or less to me than a normal hand.”

“Interesting,”

“You’re getting as bad with that as Ariadne is with ‘fascinating’.”

Kerrass grinned.

“But what happened?” I went on. “I don’t know how to describe it. The spear… it feels wrong in my hands. I don’t know how else to say it. In everything else, my left hand is the same as it ever was. I can work, hold reins, eat food, hold a cup… anything with it and it feels fine. But trying to use my spear, even trying to hold it. It feels ugly, awkward, out of balance. I can’t make the spear do the things that I want, what I need it to do,”

Kerrass nodded, he didn’t look surprised.

“Muscle memory is an interesting thing,” was his verdict. “So the axe?”

“I wanted to be able to defend myself with more than just Letho’s dagger. I am still useless with a sword as I get in my own way but Padraig got it into me that I should try the axe. He started me off with a pole and a weight. He told me that he was just developing my arm strength as I was doing manoeuvres with the weight. Sly bastard didn’t tell me he was teaching me how to use an axe, just that he was improving my upper body strength. Then one day, he took the pole and the weight out of my hands and put the axe in them instead and Oh… Kerass.”

“The blade sang?”

“It really did.”

“And you’re famous for it now I understand? What do they call you? The Axe Duke? The Silver Duke. The Duke of the axe?”

I sighed.

“You’re not going to let me forget about that, are you.”

“I’m really not,” he agreed with a grin. The expression was still new enough on his face that it surprised me. But I decided that it suited him.

“Is that why you didn’t get your legs done in the same way?” he wondered, “the awkwardness in everything?”

“Pretty much,” I agreed. “I am forever grateful that my new hand allows me to do things. It is… freeing in ways that I cannot describe. But that awkwardness with the spear. It made me feel… It’s tricky. But it left me feeling dirty. As though the hand was alien to me. In every other way, it felt natural but when I tried to pick up the spear and use it, even just to carry it around, I felt awkward. I wanted to tear the hand off. I felt it was a disgusting thing that I didn’t want.

“And I could not bear to think of that kind of thing happening with my feet. Having wooden legs is sometimes odd and yes, it sometimes makes things difficult like the fact that getting up in the middle of the night to go take a shit is an extended process now. Pissing isn’t as bad, but now I have to put on my legs and go to the hole. Then I go back to bed, take them off and put them in their place but by then, I am fully awake and sleep sometimes doesn’t return the way it should.

“But at the same time, learning to walk on them was difficult and I could not bear to think… What if riding my horse would end up being the same with my legs as my spear was with my arm. What if my feet don’t move the right way for when I’m fighting or making myself safe. What if that awkwardness means I trip when I flee, or stand on the Empress’ feet when she asks me for a dance?”

I shook my head.

“I am grateful for the hand, and I made them help all of the other people hurt during the rebellion before they talked about my legs. But when they came back to me, I just didn’t want it.”

Kerrass gazed at my expression.

“I am looking forward to seeing how you move with that axe in your hands,” he decided. “Let’s run down the rumours,” he said. “You’ve explained the Witcher Duke thing, The axe certainly shines like silver so I suppose that answers that. What’s that thing about being called the Butcher?”

I sighed.

“I was in Skellige and Dreng invited me on a raid. Because of the Brokilon, the warfronts between Temeria and Nilfgaard against Cidaris and Vergen, are so narrow that numbers mean next to nothing. So the strategy is that the Skelligans raid the coast line and as far inland as they can manage to get them to keep their own troops back to protect their own territory. Otherwise, they can just pack the fronts with troops and we can never get in.”

Kerrass nodded to show that he understood.

“So Dreng invited me on a raid to find Helfdan and the Queen a wedding gift. It wasn’t going to be much of a raid and he had a hot tip for a rich trove a little inland. It would seem that the people of Cidaris are quite open to the idea of selling their nation out for money.”

Kerrass chuckled.

“We went, Svein was there, Kar and a few others. We came ashore and although we can’t say for certain it was a trap, the treasure was certainly there after all, but it turned out that there were more warriors there than we expected. We had to fight.”

I shrugged.

“Whatever else can be said of it, Gardan’s axe is quite recognisable.”

“The shape of the axe-head.” Kerrass agreed and I nodded.

“So after a while, that story started to get told. I think I fought no more than eight guys, three of which were killed by other people. They saw my axe, knew who I was and came after me because there is a reward on my head in Vergen and Cidaris. That was five guys out of a total of maybe… Forty warriors that were on the beach when we expected around twenty. A disproportionately large number came after me. We expected them to just surrender and let us raid you know?

I shrugged.

“But now they call me the Butcher. I’m told there are stories about me sneaking through villages at night to scare children.”

“There are,” Kerrass affirmed.

“I am not good at taking pride in such things,” I told him.

“Nor should you be. So you slew a Wyvern?”

“That was a knight down in Toussaint the last time we were there. That is more Toussaint making grand… whatever the fuck, out of a guy that challenged me to make a name for himself. He wanted to defeat the scholar knight and disliked me for some political reason that was to do with… something or other. Guillaume explained it to me later and it was convoluted enough that I was just nodding and smiling along. But one of the problems was that the knight declared an axe to be the weapon of a peasant and a villain. He came at me with his shield and sword, massively overconfident.”

“Young and convinced of his own immortality?”

“That’s the one. Poor fucker didn’t even bother dodging, just put his shield in the way and honestly looked surprised when his shield broke, his arm shattered and the impact drove his armour into his side. I regret that death, he was maybe seventeen and his Father was upset about something to do with the Knights of Francesca and he wanted to prove himself to his Father. A tragedy but he attacked me and I defended myself and that’s how things go.”

Kerrass nodded.

“That’s how things go.”

“And for the battles? I’m little more than a standard bearer. I still hold to the philosophy of leaving these matters to the professionals…”

“Good,” Kerrass toasted me with his tankard again in approval.

“And I have no business commanding armies. I listen to the generals’ advice off the battlefield and I might make some overall strategic decisions when there is no clear “right” decision. But otherwise, they are the men that know what they’re doing, I just work there. But there is always the time when they order me, and my guards into battle. I hold my axe above my head and we all charge down. When that happens, I never get off my horse and have never swung an axe in battle. There was just this one time when a Vergen unit had hidden themselves in the swamps and after the battle was joined, they were behind our lines and came at me. My guard took most of them but a few got through. They were strung out, dirty, tired and it was a death or glory moment for them.”

I shrugged.

“How’s the war going?” Kerrass asked.

I sighed unhappily.

“It’s attrition,” I told him and he nodded. “It’s essentially a siege. We can’t get in over land. We can’t go through the Brokilon because the dryads won’t let us and don’t trust us and who can blame them. So they have two land borders, one of which is flooded for good portions of the year. The Skelligan navy raids their coastline and keeps them from shipping in food and whatnot.

“But Cidaris and Vergen are not without farmland and are not without wealth of their own. And no matter how diligent the Skelligan navy is, ships run the blockade. Weapons and mercenaries from Kovir and Poviss. Food from Hengfors and all kinds of other places that think, while the Empire is engaged here, the Empire is not going elsewhere.”

“They are not wrong.”

“Yes they are. But that’s not my concern. My thing is to bolster my western borders by supporting Crow’s Reach and Baroness Strenger. She knows what she’s doing with that. Her main problem is improving the lives of her people while also not making Velen so attractive to her neighbours, including the ones that she is at war with so that people come and invade her.”

“Or try to marry her?”

“Oh, she’s married now. She married a Temerian lawyer. Religious man, which was the most important thing, and is about as ambitious on a personal level as I was. He’s personally charming on a one to one level, but he’s not a leader so there’s no way that he’s going to try and usurp her. I like him and the pair of them got on well enough, he makes her laugh which I once thought was impossible. He endeared himself to her one day when she was forced to attend a social thing in Novigrad and someone insulted her, calling into question her legalities and rights and so on. He demolished the accuser in court. Give it a few years and they will be a formidable team.”

Kerrass nodded and leaned forwards, his eyes gleaming and resting his elbows on the table.

“So enough about the unimportant stuff, global politics and the like. I want to know everything. From everything I hear, you and Ariadne are as loved up as we ever hoped that you would be, making moon eyes at each other and sneaking off to darkened corners, behind tapestries and into storerooms where suspicious noises are soon heard. I want to know everything.

“I read your last article. You and she were still hurting each other in your pain, when did it start to change?”

I laughed at the memory.

“There is a good chance that things were already improving by the time you read that. It was maybe a fortnight after that last article was published. Other people tell me that the pair of us were doing better long before that, but in my memory, the moment that I knew that it was all going to be alright?”

I laughed at the memory again. It is still one I keep close to my heart and take out to look at occasionally.

“We were in Angraal at a meeting. It was one of those times that seems to occur more and more often now that I am Duke. You would be astonished as to how much of my time is taken up by pointless meetings where I am not really needed to weigh in. I don’t need to speak or act or anything, my only purpose being there is to be there and be the Duke. You know?”

“Not really.”

“It’s like my presence gives the proceedings extra weight. In this case it was a trade dispute about tariffs that were being applied on goods that were travelling through Angraal. The river is in the south of Angraal’s lands but that part of the river is quite rocky and so delicate goods prefer to use the roads and go around. The best roads go through Angraal…”

“Because you have been investing in roads.”

“Because Emma and I have been investing in roads. But this minor lord wanted to know why it was costing him so much money to travel through Angraal with tolls and taxes and so on. He demanded an audience with the Regency council of Angraal which is still led by Ariadne and asked me to attend. I was local and wanted to show my support for Ariadne and the Count of Angraal so I turned up.”

There was a pause there while some food was placed on the table along with jugs of wine and water so that we could drink and talk at the same time without getting too drunk.

“So the meeting,” Kerrass prompted.

“Yeah, so we’re all sitting there. And the minor lord was essentially wondering if the reason that he was being unfairly taxed and charged for using roads in Angraal was because he had insulted Ariadne at a previous juncture. He was one of those young men that had criticised the pair of us for not not getting married quickly and had queried why the two of us hadn’t just fucked when we had the chance. He had asked her to marry him and had been offended when she turned him down before he lost his temper and sent some… unfortunate insults her way.”

Kerrass laughed and gestured with a leg of chicken to carry on.

“So he was asking if that was the case and then tried to get me and the rest of the council to overrule Ariadne’s decisions because…” I cleared my throat and did my best impression of the idiot in question. “‘After all, she is nothing but a weak willed woman who cannot be trusted to make decisions on this level’.”

Kerrass winced in appreciation.

“I remember it distinctly. Ariadne had improved, she was stronger and had put some more weight on. She looked like a painfully thin woman rather than an outright skeleton by that point, but she still wore a full wimple and voluminous dresses and veils to hide just how painfully thin she was. But she was seated at the head of the table where this buffoon had essentially ignored her and addressed most of his complaints to me, the young Count who was sitting in on the meeting, desperately trying to pay attention. The moron finished his argument and leant back as though he had just finished the matter with this big… satisfied grin on his face.

“I didn’t want to interfere by this point but I was getting annoyed. But then Ariadne just leaned forwards.

“‘Just to be clear…’ she began. ‘You have come here to tell us all that these taxes and tariffs, that anyone could check apply to everyone, are there for you because you insulted me in the past. But in demanding their removal you insult me, the same person that decides the tax rate and the tariff rate, again? Why, just to make sure I got the point the first time? Indeed, it seems as though you expect preferential treatment because you have insulted me, is that the case?’

She waited for the idiot to say anything, offer an apology or something but nothing happened.

“Then she did that thing. She does it all the time, the head tilt thing where she tilts her head onto one side as though she’s a dog, considering an instruction or whether she wants to rip your throat out.”

“I know the very head tilt,” Kerrass agreed.

“Then she said that word. We were all sitting there, waiting for her to eviscerate the fool, verbally of course but instead she just shook her head and leant backwards in her chair. ‘Fascinating,” she said.”

Kerrass laughed.

“What happened to the noble?”

“Oh he left shortly afterwards when the rest of the business was clearly not about him and everyone else there was just ignoring him. But I remember after the ‘fascinating’ comment. I looked over at Ariadne, she saw me looking and she smiled. Just for a moment before she remembered and hid her mouth so that none of us could see her fangs. It was so much like the old Ariadne that I nearly jumped for joy and in that moment, I knew that we were going to be alright.”

Kerrass nodded.

“I’m glad for you Freddie,” he said, pouring us both some wine and water. “The two of you were meant for each other and anyone that has spent any time around the pair of you is well aware of that. I cannot… comprehend how much pain the pair of you must have been in. But I’m so pleased that it turned around for you,”

I nodded and took a drink, doing my best to swallow the lump in my throat.

There was an extended pause while I spread butter on a piece of bread.

“WELL,” demanded Kerrass with a look of outrage on his face.

“Well what?”

“When did the two of you start shagging?”

“Kerrass I don’t think…”

“Freddie, I’ve been watching and listening to the two of you mooning around each other for years. I knew the two of you were going to end up in bed before either of you did. If you remember, I was the one that won the pot on the day you got engaged. I’ve been single for months now and I need to live vicariously through the pair of you. You improved, but now you’re clearly a man that’s happily married and making sex jokes yourself. I am just as invested in all of this as you are, if not more so. When did you start shagging? What a week later, a month?”

I laughed at his indignation, only half convinced that it was being faked.

“It was at Helfdan’s wedding to Cerys,” I told him.

“How was it?” he asked, a shadow crossing over its face.

“What?” I wondered, the time when I finally made love to the woman I married, or the wedding?”

“Both… The wedding first though I think.”

I looked at his face for a long moment, he was both longing for, and dreading the answer.

“It was amazing Kerras. Cerys was radiant and powerful in her full regalia and Helfdan fairly glowed. The only time I’ve ever seen him look comfortable in all his formal armour and tartan. Mostly because he was ignoring it and looking at the girl.”

Kerrass laughed.

“Everyone was there, the Wave-Serpent survivors, the people from the village, Ermion… The tall fucker that you beat in the champion’s duel. Everyone was there. Donar is looking really old now and people suspect it won’t be long before he retires. The new Tuirseach Jarl, Svanrige, is a good man although he seems to be spending most of his time living down his mother’s legacy and the legacy his predecessor in the Jarldom left him.”

“How’s he doing that?”

“Oh, he’s the most loyalist of all of the loyalists. To the point where Cerys occasionally has to tell him to fuck off and leave her alone. He had married on the continent though and seems to be a devoted husband and she keeps his more… Skelligan tendencies in check. Hjallmar is still resolutely single and loving every moment of it. Svein and Yngvild are happy again although somehow they found the time for Yngvild to get pregnant again. Even Kar has found a wife.”

Kerrass’ expression changed from trepidation to horror.

“Yeah,” I went on, relishing the moment. “He married a huge Cidaris woman that they had taken on a raid. She served out her thralldom and married him. She’s twice his size in height and width and he loves every second of it.”

Kerrass laughed before a look of melancholy crossed his face.

“I’m sorry I missed that,” He sighed

“You were missed Kerrass,” I told him. “Helfdan insisted that there be a place left available to you and there were messengers out and about to summon you if they could find you,”

Kerrass nodded and I watched him carefully.

“It was not the only occasion where you were missed Kerrass,” I said slowly.

He took a juddering breath in.

“I know,” He admitted. “By that point, I was…” he lost the thread for a moment, staring into space. “I’m sorry Freddie and when I go back to Skellige and I will apologise to Helfdan and Cerys and all the rest of them in person. I will find ways to make it up to people… I have no idea how I’m going to do that yet, but I will. I swear it.”

“What was it you said about empty promises?”

Luckily, he caught the humour in my voice.

“Fuck off,” he told me with a chuckle. “So the wedding was idyllic. How are things since then?”

I winced.

“All is not well in paradise,” I began, “and no-one knows why. There are any number of suggestions as to why that is. Personally I suspect that they love each other for their devotion to duty, but their respective duties keep them apart. Helfdan is always at sea or at the Imperial court and Cerys is trapped on the isles doing what she needs to do to keep the islands moving forwards.

“There are other darker suggestions that I’m not going to repeat but the truth is that they are drifting apart. It hurts both of them and hurts everyone around them and no-one can figure out a reason.”

I sighed.

“Ciri is determined though,” I went on. “They’re holding a celebration of the Skeleton ship this winter…”

“What?”

“Yeah, Cerys decided, with the advice of her lords, that the cultural aspects of the Skeleton ship’s passage are too important to the islands as a whole. So every other winter or so, depending on the number of people lost at sea, she is going to declare a ceremony of the Skeleton Ship. Complete with the burning of the warning torches and beacons.

But then, when the very first signs of thaw are upon them, there is a giant ship sailing through the harbour for people to throw their offerings to before it docks at the tavern to be covered in flammable oil. Then it’s cast off and sent through the passage where, when the currents take it, it is set alight by an arrow shot from the bridge.

“It’s actually quite moving. We’re going this year, Emma, Ariadne and I. You wanna come?”

“I might. I want to, certainly but…”

“You would be welcome, Kerrass.”

For some reason, he seemed relieved.

“Then I will come.”

I nodded.

“But Ciri, who either goes by Swallow or Imperial Majesty in the islands now, depending on her mood, has decided that if they haven’t sorted the matter out by the time of the Skeleton Ship, which she is also attending by the way, then she is going to “deal with the matter”. I mean, Ciri has known the pair of them since they were all young so if anyone can figure the pair of them out then it’s her in her ‘Swallow’ persona rather than her regal one.”

Kerrass nodded.

“Well on that matter, I would love to help.”

“It might take more of us to get that done. No-one has figured the matter out yet and it’s getting to the point that people are discussing who the Queen should marry when she decides to set Helfdan aside. Or the other way round…”

“Can they do that?”

“Apparently so, much easier to divorce from an unhappy marriage in Island society. Not a bad system but still. They don’t mention it in the presence of the Queen, Helfdan or any of the loyalist courts as Hjallmar gets violent whenever it’s brought up. He regards Helfdan as a younger brother now but he has taken to drinking heavily with the unhappiness of his sister.”

Kerrass nodded before finishing his drink and pouring himself another with a decisive movement.

“But we are off topic. I must live vicariously through you and Ariadne. So how did the two of you get over your nonsense and get around to fucking each other’s brain’s out.”

I laughed.

“It took us a long time to get there. I was back to full strength and libido relatively quickly after that moment that we shared in the meeting with the cretin. Ariadne also started to recover more quickly physically so the truth is not, how did it happen that way but more a kind of… why did it take us so long? It was like there was this… barrier between us. Intelligence… I’m looking forward to introducing you to Intelligence by the way, I think the two of you are going to get on.”

“I am looking forward to it,”

“But he said it was like watching two virgins dancing around each other, waiting for one or other of us to just say ‘so… you wanna fuck’. I can’t say he was wrong looking back. Ariadne claims that she was waiting for the right time and I have no idea what I was waiting for but I remember the moment distinctly.

“Helfdan and Cerys had left but according to Skelligan tradition, it is the duty of the groom’s shipmates to remain as the hosts of the party. One of which, I apparently count as. So we were still part of the party till people were at that stage where they are either sleeping on or under the tables or gathered around tables talking quietly.

“We started to slip out and Hjallmar told us that he would keep an eye on things. As shipmates of the groom, we slept in the keep of Kaer Trolde itself but even then, it was a royal wedding and there were lots of people to quarter. So we were in the same room. I told Ariadne that I would sleep on the floor if needed and she didn’t answer. Again, she claims that she had no designs on the matter.

“But we got through the doors to our chambers, the fire was lit, we were both a little drunk and I just remember looking over at her…”

I shook my head at the memory.

“She was wearing red. It’s a kind of joke amongst the Skelligans now, to dress Ariadne in red and give her red clothing and jewellery when we visit. But she was wearing a red dress in the Skelligan style. She had her hair done and as I looked at her in the firelight it was as though the light just caught her in a different way. I just remember staring at her for a moment and she stopped and turned to stare at me.

“I distinctly remember thinking that I had never seen a more beautiful woman in all of my life. I remember that she smiled at me, a little shyly and then there was a pause. I remember her lips parting slightly and her eyes hooding in a way that I can only describe as being hungry and then we were moving towards each other, pulling our clothes off in an effort to get to each other.”

I finished my point and the silence between us lengthened.

“WELL?” Kerrass demanded, loud enough to turn other people’s heads towards us. “HOW WAS IT?”

“A gentleman never tells.”

“Fuck that Freddie, I have been watching the two of you for long enough, getting metaphorical blue balls waiting for the two of you to fuck each other’s brains out. It might not be lost on you that I was much more careful about who I slept with until you and she started your merry fucking dance around each other and then I just needed a bit more… You can’t leave me like that, how the fuck was it. I want details dammit Freddie?”

He looked so indignant that I laughed at him.

“You are right. We were both so pent up that it was over for us both, almost before it started. I think we both wished it had lasted longer. She wouldn’t let me use my normal tricks and although she got there, if you know what I mean, I think we would both have preferred to enjoy the journey a bit more for our first time.”

He nodded, a little disappointed.

“We did better when I woke her getting up to go use the chamber pot in the middle of the night.”

He smiled.

“And we did better again when we woke properly in the morning for the next day's festivities.

Kerrass chuckled.

“Later, Svein and Hjallmar would both comment that it was more as though Ariadne and I were the ones that had gotten married, the way we kept sneaking off and the way we were staring at each other for the duration.”

Kerrass outright laughed.

“Glad for you Freddie, glad for you. So how is it, being married to a vampire?”

“It’s… uh…”

“Come on Freddie, be honest.”

“It’s everything I thought it was going to be, only more. Just as I think I’m getting used to it, or I sink into the mistaken impression that she’s a normal woman, she will do something or say something that reminds me that she’s well… not one of those things.”

“Such as?”

He grinned while he jammed a huge piece of cheese into his mouth.

“Sleep,” I told him. “She doesn’t sleep. Or rather she does, but she kind of saves it up. She tells me that she sleeps an average of two and a half hours a night. But she saves it up until she decides she wants to sleep. She can also bank sleep away. So if she has nothing to do, or is about to embark on a weeks-long magical project in her lab or something, she will sleep for like… fourteen hours straight before getting down to it, then when she’s done she will sleep for another sixteen hours before going back to check her results.

“And when she does sleep, I mean she sleeps like the dead. She just decides to sleep, lies down and then she’s dead to the world. You know how you and I need to take the time to lie down, get comfortable…”

Kerrass was laughing,

“And then we need to relax, maybe take a piss, get settled and only then, after some time, we manage to fall asleep. Not Ariadne, she just lies down, arranges herself how she wants to lie and then just… sleeps.”

“The bitch,” Kerrass mocked.

“I know, how dare she. Sometimes it takes me hours to get to sleep. Literal hours, starting at small noises in the castle, but she just,” I snapped my fingers as emphasis.”

“So how does that work with you?”

“Well… we’re both so busy with our various nonsense that we have to schedule our time together. So that generally falls into… beginning and end of day. We have breakfast together and eat an evening meal together and if we are separated by geography or intense magical study we speak most nights. But when we are in the same place. There is this big rigmarole where the two of us “retire”. We both get ready for bed and she climbs into bed with me.

“Occasionally there is erotic adventures and then, when I lay down to sleep, she cuddles up to me until I do sleep. But then she has no guilt about rolling away, getting redressed and tucking me in like a child before going back to whatever it is that she’s doing for the rest of the day.”

Kerrass had not stopped laughing.

“On those nights where she decides to sleep, she will just sleep and what I enjoy about those days is that Ariadne is definitely not a morning person.”

Kerrass had to put his drink down; he was shaking with laughter so hard.

I waited until he was done before continuing.

“But otherwise, she approaches everything like a scientist. Including matters of the bedchamber. She wants to try everything three times and it’s like a science experiment. She suggests that she wants to try something, often over dinner where I think she secretly enjoys the expressions on dinner guests and the sniggers of servants. Then we try it three times so that she can get “proper results,” then she comes back again to check for corroboration later.”

“Are you sure she’s not teasing you with all of that?”

“No,” I admitted with certainty. “I think she enjoys my expression and I notice that when I don’t like something, she doesn’t try to corroborate the result.”

I stilled my face for a moment.

“The other thing is… she warned me all the way back when, when Vampires love, they do so intensely and feverishly. There are times when she is playing or experimenting. Which she is genuinely doing by the way, for all that she might be teasing as she does it… I’ve literally caught her producing a notebook from beside the bed and noting things down after certain activities.”

Kerrass stared at me.

“It’s true. Including ratings as to how powerful her orgasm is, what type of orgasm she has and how quickly she achieved orgasm.”

“How does she rate her orgasms?” Kerrass was horrified and fascinated at the same time.

“Out of ten. It’s a good time for me when I break the ten barrier. She reassures me and I am secure, now, enough to know that’s not all down to me, the type of act, mood and other things contribute. But still… I remember with glee, the time where she had to admit that I had broken the scale. And she also rates my orgasms in the same way.”

Kerrass started to recoil.

“And she has charts, Kerrass. There are graphs.”

“I didn’t need to know that Freddie.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

I let the laughter subside.

“But then there are other times. Times when we love each other for comfort, or because one or other of us needs the other for any number of reasons. And then there are the times when it overwhelms her.”

I shook my head.

“Sometimes Kerrass, she just gets this look on her face and I know that I need to extract myself from whatever it is I’m doing and find somewhere private before she jumps on me.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It is when you’re in conversation with someone important at a banquet. At all times of the day, the most warning I will have is a red mist will descend and then I will be whisked off somewhere, or when the feeling of… need I suppose is the closest word we have for it… I mean, she says it’s a matter of Vampire love and that our language doesn’t have a word for it. But when her love is so total, she… needs me. It’s instinctive and all consuming. The closest I can say is that feeling when you took me to Dorn where the Princess dreamed erotic dreams. I remember Marion looking at me as though I was a piece of meat. It’s like that, only there is a longing in Ariadne’s eyes that is almost heart-rending to see. But when it is too much, she’s torn my clothes off there and then. That is when I have seen her look… the least human.”

I shook my head before laughing at a memory.

“Let’s just say that if you hear stories in the local area about two ghosts keening or screaming or something… If you know that Ariadne and I are in the local area, just make sure that it wasn’t us before you start oiling up your swords.”

Kerrass laughed. He seemed to be doing that a lot.

“It doesn’t sound so bad,” he said.

“And it’s not. Except when the fear gets her. She worries that she scares me when she’s like that and I admit, it can be a bit intimidating when this screaming… naked… thing comes out of a mist and fastens herself around you before you can think. And then there’s the times when she does that just for fun in order to tease me, or play with me… her words.”

Kerrass nodded, now seeing the serious side.

“What happens when she gets like that and you’re… I don’t know how to put it, not in the mood, struggling with your own… problems.”

“You mean when I am struggling with my own mental demons?”

Kerrass nodded.

“It’s not an invalid problem,” I said. “Ariadne is pretty good at reading my mind in that kind of situation. She explained that she has a kind of alarm spell sitting on the link that exists between us. So when I need a hug or when my mood is dipping in that way so that I need a hug or extracting myself from the situation that I am in. She will either turn up with said hug or mobilise the elements of my entourage who can act in that way for her.

“It is nice when she is doing it for the fun, or the love of the game or because she wants to, or she’s feeling randy. But…”

I took a deep breath.

“I think it was the third time it happened. She was… frantic and it was by far the most… inhuman I’ve ever seen her. I mean, again, I’m not averse.”

“Monster fetish,”

“Exactly and I’ve never shied away from admitting that. But she came at me and I was caught up in the moment but afterwards… After we had both finished, and we did both finish, she looked at me and she burst into tears. It can be kind of funny when you look back at it but at the time, I was really worried. But you have to imagine that I was in a field, discussing some matters with a delegation of farmers. I felt Ariadne coming to me and I was able to extricate myself and one of my advisors, a man named Pilank who has forgotten more about farming than people that have spent years studying it, was talking to them and I got two dozen paces away before Ariadne descended on me.

“So picture us in a field, having broken down some of the corn around us, lying in a pile of my ragged clothing that she had torn off me in her desperation and I’m holding this sobbing woman.”

Kerrass said nothing, it was clear that this moment was not funny to him. I was oddly grateful. Many people find the story funny, especially when Ariadne tells it.

“It turned out that her Vampire emotions had gotten into her. She had been walking somewhere and had seen a painting or something. Something that had survived the siege and she had no idea what it was. But she saw that and as she went about her day, increasingly she was imagining me the way she had seen me then. The painting reminded me of that and all she could see was the form that I had become…”

“I remember it well,” Kerrass whispered.

“So the more she worked, the more she did in an effort to banish those images, the more certain they became. And by the time she came to me, she was full of terror that I was back to being that… emaciated…”

“I remember,”

“So she went to find me. To convince herself that I was alright, that our lives since then had not been a dream and that everything was alright. So then when she was hovering nearby, seeing me looking strong and healthy, it all rushed in on her and she was so afraid that she needed me then, in every sense of the word. She was terrified that she was going to lose me, that I was going to… I don’t know.”

“I do, Freddie. I know.”

I took a juddering breath.

“I was so worried for her then Freddie. We both have good days and bad days, but she was so fragile then, and I was worried that she was going to be ill again. We had to ride back to the castle after that and she held onto me fiercely that night. Nothing erotic or sexual about it, but she held me tight. I don’t think either of us slept until the early hours of the morning.”

Kerrass just nodded.

“In other things… I don’t know Kerrass. We’ve been married for two and a half years. And it’s wonderful. We both have bad days and good days where the memories of what happened start to intrude and it can take time to get over that, but those times are growing less and less. I love her more now than I ever have and she tells me the same. We are a team and I have never had a better support.”

“Good, I am glad Freddie, you both deserve it. I am sorry about your wedding, both the one that you should have had and the one that you did have. I am sorry that it wasn’t what you wanted.”

I surprised him by grinning at him.

“Don’t worry, you can make the next one,”

“What do you mean?”

“We both agreed that it wasn’t the wedding we wanted. So the following year, after Cerys and Helfdan were done and on our anniversary… We did it again. Same thing, big reunion of all of our friends and loved ones. We renewed our vows to each other, and had the party the way it was meant to be. Portraits of the fallen were there as we had intended, we even found Chireadean and got him to come back for a month.”

I stared at him for a while.

“We sent messages Kerrass, you would have been welcome.”

“I got them, I didn’t read them and tossed them on the nearest fire. I assumed you would still be angry and I didn’t want or need that. I was still in the throes of… well…” He stared at the table for a moment, drawing patterns in the spilled wine there before he shook himself and looked up at me with a smile that looked a little fragile on his face. “I notice that you just put them locally where I would find them rather than have a messenger deliver them to my hand. I also notice that you put several copies of the messages in different places so that I would think you didn’t know where I was. Cunning work Freddie.”

“I thought it was important to give you the space. If you felt that I was keeping tabs on you then I thought you would have run a mile before hiding so thoroughly that you would never be found.”

“Not unfair. But go on.”

I nodded, he wasn’t ready to talk about himself yet.

“So we had a big party. And it was everything I had hoped that my wedding day would have been. I still regret that though. I still wish it had been like that on my actual wedding and as I looked around, there are still faces that I miss and missed then. Mark, you… Sam. But it is getting better. We did it again this year although on a smaller scale. Much more of a general kind of feast thing where we just had lots of food around the place and the denial of rank so that Ariadne can dance in the fields with the peasant women and I can get drunk with the locals. I don’t get to do that any more now. One of the perils of carrying around a famous looking weapon means that I can’t just nip down the local tavern for a pint without someone recognising me.”

Kerrass laughed.

“So how’s everyone else? Carys seemed the same as she ever has been so I have to assume that Padraig is still in charge of your soldiers.”

“He is and the two of them seem as happy as they can be. They are enjoying being married now so they are looking forward to raising children. Samantha and her husband live in Angral now so you will be able to see them soon, presuming you end up coming with me of course. Samantha’s sister Charlotte is now my personal cook and she travels with me and lives wherever I am in residence. She’s not in the back of the tavern though, but she’s either in Coulthard Castle or in Angral villa. She seems happy and has remarried after Bishop Anchor granted her a divorce from her husband.

“I have no idea where he is now and neither does she. She married a guard that Samantha introduced to her as being quote “everything that your husband was not”. She seems happy.

“Speaking of the devil. Anchor and his wife Tulip are thriving. Ariadne examined her and found the lack of her physical development to be from childhood malnourishment and illness and so healed her. She is still thin and I doubt that she will ever be fat. She threatens her husband with it occasionally when he is being stupid and male. She is currently spending time arguing with powerful churchmen about whether or not women should be able to be priests, and the possibilities of allowing Eternal Flame priests to be married.

“I sometimes worry that she might upset someone important and rich enough to hire assassins, so Carys has chosen the pair of them some guards that are not church guards and therefore answer to me, not some church higher up.

“Anchor himself is beginning to tend towards being fat as his increasingly elevated position means that he spends too much time around powerful people drinking wine and eating fine food while they try to convince him to get me to follow this church rule or that church rule. He sticks to his guns though and he hates the fact that he can’t spend more time “tending his flock” although his wife and I spend time trying to convince him that he is tending his flock. That’s what this is now.”

Kerrass nodded.

“Dr Shani and I… That’s more difficult. I think there is a friendship there, but we will never be as close as we used to be. She still sees Rickard whenever she sees me or comes to the castle. I have funded the medical school in Oxenfurt and she is now dean of Medicine at Oxenfurt. Not only the first woman that attained that rank but also the youngest. She has not shown any interest in anyone new though. She used to be always looking for someone who could make her happy while being self-aware enough to know that she had impossibly high standards.”

“I remember. She wanted a man who would not only allow her to continue her crusade in medicine and not try to control her or turn her against it. But would support her, and be there for her when she needed it after a day of patients dying under her hands. While at the same time also knowing that in her life, any husband of hers would always know that her work came first, no matter what.”

“There was a time where I wanted to be that person,” I sighed. “But she is no longer looking or hoping that such a person will turn up. I hope she finds someone to sweep her off her feet. But she is no longer looking for that. She says that she found it once and has no hope that she will ever find it again. That is one of the biggest tragedies for me. That a woman like that, who deserves to be loved will forever remain…”

I ran out of words and shook myself. Shani would be angry with me if I was being sad on her behalf.

“But she is really throwing her heart into studying the mind and how it can affect the body and vice versa. She has some interesting theories.”

Kerrass suppressed a look of interest but then he shook himself.

“I will have to go and talk to her when I am next in the local area.”

He took a deep breath. Like he was getting ready for a fight.

“And how is Emma?”

I sighed as I considered the question and how to answer it. I mean, I knew that the question was coming but I didn’t have an answer until that moment.

“Emma struggles,” I told him. “She was getting better. It took a long time and things got really dark. She was so bad over the Autumn of Cerys and Helfdan’s wedding that she couldn’t go. Ariadne and I felt awful because we were getting happier and happier and everytime we tried to speak to Emma she was becoming frailer and frailer. She was this thin, bent… old woman. Old, long before her time and there was nothing that anyone could do. Shani saw her regularly, finding different herbal remedies that we could try to help her but nothing worked. Or rather, it worked for a while and Emma would seem to start to recover and then she would get sick again. Or she would get better and better but the physical side-effects would get worse and worse until there was a fear that the medicine would kill her more surely than her actual illness would and we would stop.

“There were several dark moments where Emma would be sobbing, begging us not to take the medicine away so that she could stay in the light rather than sink back into the darkness. I won’t lie… Life is pretty good for me but Emma…”

I shook my head.

“And then it was winter and one point in the spring… this would be last year… She just started to perk up. The same way it happened for Ariadne and I she was just… getting better. She got stronger, she was able to take care of herself better, she emerged from her sanctuary and she started showing real signs of recovery. By the height of summer, she was all but back to her old self…”

I shook my head again, staring off into space.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.” Kerrass told me.

I smirked at the inevitability of it.

“Yeah, there is a but. Autumn came and she started to sink again and by the time she got to winter, she was back to being really ill and although she has shown some signs of improvement over this year, she did not get back to the point where she was last year. Shani suggests that she is wobbling about and finding her ‘new normal’ but not like this.”

Kerrass nodded with a sympathetic look on his face.

“Laurelen, Emma, Ariadne and I are trying something new this year. We are all going to Angral over the winter months and we can return to Coulthard Castle in the spring. I am totally abusing the fact that I have a wife and a sister in law that can teleport me to wherever I need to go, Emma can do the same but we think… we hope that unfamiliar territory will give Emma a break and mitigate the reminders of everything that happened.”

“Does she… Do you know what’s wrong with her? Why is she struggling so much?”

I shook my head, not in a negative way but more out of a kind of despair.

“Like all of us, she blames herself for everything that happened. She never really liked Sam. They had nothing in common so where she and I had a firm relationship, she never had that with Sam. She didn’t see every way that Sam was a victim of Edmund and Father in the same way that she saw it with me. So when he came to her to tell her the things that had happened… She saw it as jealousy and a jealous younger son telling tales about the elder. She had been taught to be wary of knightly boys that would tell lies to steal her away so she kind of disliked all kinds of “martial men” and so she instinctively distrusted Sam because that was what he was becoming.

“So she didn’t believe him then. She admitted once that if I had come to her and said the same thing, then she would have believed me automatically. But Sam? She didn’t believe him. She says that she went to Mother with it once but Mother dismissed it and Emma, who was younger than she was when I would have been… heh… more developed, told her to “pay no attention to Sam’s fanciful ways’.

“So as well as all the horror that she went through, she blames herself for what happened to Sam. And she draws a line from everything that happened to Sam, to what happened with the grand total of the rebellion and therefore to all the suffering that everyone went through. Everyone, you, me, Ariadne, Laurelen, the people on the street…

“We think, we don’t know and neither does she, that the reason she is alright, relatively speaking, when it comes to her work, is because in working, she gets to make the world better for all the people that she hurt. Or rather that she feels as though she hurt. She can keep Laurelen in the manner to which she wants. She can make me rich beyond my wildest dreams and if I am rich she knows that I am going to invest that money in making the lives of the other people in our lands better as a result.”

Kerrass was nodding along with my little speech as I went.

“Poor Emma,” he said.

“Yes, poor Emma. Just as much a casualty of everything that happened as those people that lost their lives in the process. She told me to tell you to come home, that she misses you.”

Kerrass looked away for a long moment before he turned back, having to clear his throat a couple of times before he could continue to speak.

“You mentioned that Chireadean came back?”

“Briefly. He left again shortly after that reunion while promising that he will come to future ones. He is in the south now, in a place where Elves are more welcome than they are in the North. He’s trying to be a banker, working for a dwarven bank. Apparently he takes great delight in being charming when his dwarven colleagues are brusque and to the point. So he is finding some success in those matters. His problem is that he likes his women large…”

Kerrass laughed. “Yes, he once admitted to me that he doesn’t understand this obsession that you have for slim women.”

“I don’t have an obsession with slim women. I like all women…” I protested.

“Yes yes, you said. But when I look at the women that really captured your heart. Ariadne, Marion, Shani in the past, Anne and the rest. They all tend towards the slender.”

“You didn’t know me back in my student days.”

“No I didn’t. But Chireadean told me that he always liked the idea of being smothered by a pair of truly gigantic breasts or being crushed by a pair of huge thighs, and he can only find that thing by hanging out with humans. "Elves just don’t have it," he told me once.”

“Didn’t he once have a crush on Yennefer?”

“Or so the bard claims,” Kerrass agreed.

“Do you want to be the one that tells Yennefer that Chireadean thought she had giant breasts and thick thighs, or shall I do it?”

“Neither of us would survive,” Kerrass declared decisively. “Although there is a thing to suggest that we could describe her as being well toned and muscled with it. She was spending a lot of time on horseback at the time or so I recall. So Chireadean’s alright. And speaking of Yennefer and Cousin Geralt in Toussaint? How is Toussaint?”

I laughed.

“Toussaint is Toussaint is Toussaint. I don’t think that they will ever change to be honest. Lady Caroline is in the Imperial Court ‘learning how to be a devious bitch’ for when her adopted mother calls her back to Toussaint, the lady herself told me that. She is doing well and is now enjoying the fact that she knows more about sex than a lot of her peers in the court. She is gathering friends and influence amongst the Imperial court ladies who are trained to be demure by advising them on matters of the bedchamber. I think she will do well when she goes back to Toussaint. The Empress is looking for a husband for her from the Imperial lines. Not to usurp or annex Toussaint properly, but as something to firm up the alliance.

“Damien and Syanna still dance around each other. If it were me, they have been playing the game so long now that they would be boring me, but the people of Toussaint love it. They seem to think of it as some kind of grand romance. Part of the problem is certainly the fact that the pair of them must set aside everything personal in order to defend the realm.

“Gregoire and Anne are pretty much the same. The most loved up couple that you could ever imagine to meet. Anne was pregnant the last time I saw them and Gregoire is the most ridiculously over the top, protective Father figure that you could imagine. It’s both funny and endearing at the same time. Anne’s first son Henri is studying to be a lawyer, much to the confusion of Gregoire and I think that the two men struggle to get on with each other sometimes.”

“Nothing in common?” Kerrass commented.

“Pretty much, but Gregoire pays for the tutors and clumsily encourages the lad. I think he just wishes that the youngster would be less interested in books and more interested in his weapon studies. He did find success though when he hired the boy a fencing tutor rather than a weapon’s master. The boy enjoyed the intellectual puzzle of fencing.”

Kerrass nodded, slicing himself an apple.

“Guillaume and Vivienne are the same although they too have a daughter now and again, Guillaume is a doting Father. Palmerin and Natanis continue to scandalise proper Toussaint society and life continues.”

“How is the Duchess? I had heard that she is becoming more eccentric.”

“She is becoming that which we warned her about. Jack’s trap of the wine is working away at her mind. She read the book on Jack and I was asked some more questions about the wine that he gave her and on the subject of the gifts that he sometimes gives people.

“I told her to store it carefully. I told her to store it in an out of the way place where no-one could get at it and where she would be able to easily forget it. But to be careful with it so that it could not fall into unsuspecting hands. I kind of meant that she buried it in a box in the garden, or tied it to a rope in a place that only she knew about, or that only a trusted… squire or something, and just throw it in the river.”

Kerrass groaned in dawning horror.

“She put it in a special room didn’t she. She had a little room in the castle with guards on the outside of it that are dressed in special armour that she ordered from the local armour smith didn’t she. I bet she even held a tournament to decide who gets the privilege of guarding the bottle so that only the best of the best could guard the bottle.”

“Close,” I told him with a sad smile. “All true other than where the bottle is being kept.”

I watched as Kerrass’ mind worked and then a look of horror crossed his face.

“It’s not…”

“It’s in a tower in the castle. The highest tower no less. And she has to walk past that entranceway every day. She took me to it as though she was bestowing this grand privilege on me. It would be very easy for me to see how that entrance way, with the spiralling stairs leading up, would draw her eye so that she gets sucked up those stairs to where the chamber is. It’s all shadowed and mysterious.

“It’s literally on a pedestal in the centre of a room. She’s draped it in a white cloth with a golden trim and all the windows of the palace are shuttered.”

Kerrass groaned.

“She sends servants up there to light torches, doesn't she,” he moaned.

“She doesn’t do that. When she visits, which her sister tells me she does often, she goes with her own torch and lights the torches on her own and lets them burn out. There’s no other hangings in the room.”

Frustration and anger crossed his eyes for a moment and then he sighed. “Toussaint, I don’t understand why Cousin Geralt is so happy there. It’s a nice place to visit but I think it would drive me mad.”

“I feel much the same,”

“Did you ever find the bottle of wine that Jack gave you?”

I laughed.

“Yeah, it was salvaged from the ruins of the castle. It would seem that even Sam didn’t want to cross the Jack entity, so he locked it away in a metal strong box. I have a dim theory that he intended to produce it at some point, as some gesture that he really did care about me.”

“Have you drunk it yet?”

“Yeah, Ariadne and I drank it on the night of our ‘proper’ wedding. When the feast was done and we retreated to the ‘bridal’ suite. We had a slow bath together and after we had made love, as we had intended to do on our actual wedding night, we lay together and drank it.”

“How was it?”

I laughed.

“It was a really nice bottle of wine. No more or less than that. I have often wondered since then if that is part of the joke. The best wine I have ever tasted? I don’t know. I am enough of my Father’s son to know that different wines work for different occasions. What works with cheese is not what you drink with fruit or a dessert. Chicken and beef require different wine. But was it the perfect bottle of wine to be sharing with the woman that I love in the aftermath of a lovely day and some equally lovely lovemaking? For that, the wine was perfect. Enough alcohol that I went to sleep in my wife’s arms but not enough that I was hungover in the morning.”

Kerrass nodded and smiled at the thought.

“Are the Knights of Francesca working?” He asked.

“They are. I have to be honest, Kerrass, I didn’t think they would but they’ve been phenomenally successful. There’s even been an effort in neighbouring places that want to take up the model. They will have to be careful so that the method doesn’t become corrupted, but it’s working. The Empress is wanting to trial it in other provinces to see if it can be made to work elsewhere. One of the Northern guys that’s on the advisory Witcher council spent some time with the knights and wondered whether we could use that method with the new Witcher schools. Meaning that what the Knights of Francesca are to non-monstrous or non-magical problems, the Witchers would be to Monsters and Curses. There’s even word that maybe the two orders could work together and be linked intrinsically.”

Kerrass raised his eyebrows in interest before stroking his chin in thought.

“I’m not sure that would work,” he said. The one thing is far more numerous than the other and there would be a risk that people would start saying that we don’t need Witchers at all.”

It was a valid point.

“So politics then Freddie, you’re an important man now. Is the world on fire yet? Or on the verge of freezing over depending on which metaphor you prefer. How is Ciri?”

“In which guise?” I laughed. “Cirilla the Empress or Ciri the person?”

“Both,”

“I think she’s settling down. The main problem is that at the moment, she is the only thing holding the North and South together and keeps Vergen and Cidaris as the enemies. So if she dies or goes off somewhere, then it all falls apart. So she needs to marry and produce an heir… But who is that going to be? The time in Skellige is not the only time Lord Voorhis has summoned me to court in an effort to try and convince The Empress to do things that she doesn’t want to do but has to do anyway.”

“So you’re an advisor to the Empress now,”

“Oh no. I have a new title. ‘Special’ advisor to the Empress.”

“Oooohhh. Well la-de-da.”

“I know, isn’t it fucking awful?” I put my head in my hands.

“Run Freddie. Just run.”

“Mostly, I just answer her questions and we all get on with things. It’s not great but still. She asks questions and we talk about the North and what’s going on up here. What is the eye on the ground doing? Are Temeria and Redania still at each other’s throats, is Aedirn recovering and is Kaedwen centralising again?”

“Yeah…” Kerrass chuckled. “Are they?”

I winced. Aedirn is recovering but by dint of the people, not by anything that the nobility have done. If any Northern Nation is going to rebel now it’s going to be Kaedwen. They just hate everyone indiscriminately and that would be a messier war than everything else put together. It would be the kind of thing where winning the battles would be the easy bit.”

Kerrass nodded.

“Temeria?” I sucked my teeth. “Temeria’s problem is also its greatest strength in that Queen Anais is becoming a really great ruler. The problem is that she has a temper. And I mean a temper.”

“Oh?”

“And she hates Redania.”

“Why…”

“Because of Adda. The pair of them have met on three occasions and on each occasion, Adda has tried to exert her will over Anais and Anais has risen up to meet the challenge. It is obvious to everyone watching that the two women are sisters, even if there are decades between them. But Anais is clinically averse to anything that discusses her gender. I mean she’s what…” I counted on my fingers “Thirteen now? Relatively recently, the last couple of months or something, someone suggested to her that she should start looking at suitors. She told the courtier in question that she was far too young to be thinking of that kind of thing, someone else pointed out that she was old enough, according to herself, to be on the battlefield and someone else said that in times past, thirteen was a perfectly adequate age for women to start taking suitors.”

Kerrass nodded, keeping up with the story.

“Three heads rolled,” I told him. “And she has warned all of her advisors, including me, that if anyone talks to her about marriage again, until she’s ready to discuss it, then our heads will join the first three. She could be a great ruler, but for that temper. And it is far too easy for foreign dignitaries to rile her up. And if she gets to the state where her advisors become afraid to talk truth to power, then Temeria could be in real trouble.”

“Are you in danger?”

“Nah. Natalis, Roche and the other members of the council all know that if she tries to kill me then the Empire will just squash Temeria and they remind the Queen of that on a regular basis. I make it my business to know the Queen well and be friendly with her. I talk to her in the same way that I talk to Emma and Ciri, slightly irreverent, humorous but respectful and she reacts well to that. But if she feels as though she is being condescended to…”

I shook my head.

“I have warned her about this problem and she seems to accept it but… after I am gone to go and deal with the other court, I hear about someone goading her into a temper by suggesting that the thing that would really settle her down would be a marriage to a good man.”

“Someone from their chosen faction no doubt.”

“I see you remember how this kind of thing works. Someone who will represent their rights and then they can argue that the husband should be in charge and they will make that person King in a big grand ceremony and then…”

“Anais will be relegated to the role of baby maker.”

“Pretty much. The other members of the Regency council are well aware of the risks. Natalis especially is doing everything he can to reinforce the Queen and Lord Roche is a steadfast ally to them all, unearthing treasonous plots that are not really treasonous unless you look at them in a bad light and squint a bit…”

“Or have Lord Roche’s sense of paranoia,”

“Exactly. That’s the problem, it’s all well meaning, if manipulative so the Queen just having them all killed is bad and is in danger of turning her into a tyrant.”

“What about the other side of the Pontar?”

“Redania?”

Kerrass nodded.

“It’s almost the exact opposite of the problem. Once we actively started meeting in person with each other, it turns out that Adda and I get on quite well. She and Emma have hit it off as both of them have a history of bad things happening to them at the hands of people that should know better. To the point that some have even suggested that the two of them have become lovers.”

“I had heard that rumour. I dismissed it as ludicrous.”

“Which it is, Emma would never betray Laurelen but I think that Adda likes the scandal. So here’s the problem with Redania…”

I took a long drink, it was not the first time that I have made a speech like this one.

“The problem is that now that she is allowed to be a ruler without the threat of military nonsense happening on her borders or within her own realm, it turns out that Adda is actually pretty good at it. She has a sound strategic and tactical mind militarily which, presumably, she inherited from her Father. She knows plenty about money and how to use it and she seems to genuinely care about her people. She’s ambitious for herself, that is true, but that ambition also translates to Redania. She still pursues the idea that she is the rightful Queen of Temeria as well and that her son should be the King, but that’s where it all falls apart of course.”

“Oh of course,” Kerrass pulled a face and I laughed at him.

“Not following Kerrass?”

“Politics was always your arena, Freddie.”

“The point is that Adda is not Queen, she is the Queen Regent. And if she was Queen of Temeria, and Anais wasn’t a thing, then she would still be Queen Regent. The simple fact of the matter is that when her son hits eighteen years of age and is old enough to be crowned, her services are no longer required. At best, she will marry some remote Redanian lord where she will travel to his estates to live a life of ‘comfort and ease’ while her husband remains at court using all the influence that his new wife will exercise. At worst, she will be shipped off to some abbey as a nun for the Eternal Flame, to spend the rest of her life in spiritual contemplation.”

“She will hate both of those things.”

“And both of them are prisons and she will escape both within days of getting there. And then we will be back in danger of civil war. She will raise armies to wrest her son from the grips of those nobles that are her enemies… and she will do that, she has the charm and the charisma. And to be fair to her, her son is in the grips of nobles that want what they want rather than what’s best for Redania.

‘Because that’s her weakness. She loves her son. Young King Radovid is the only reason that she has survived this long and she loves him. She spoils him and gives him everything that he could ever want while mothering him to the brink of his insanity. So other nobles get in his ear and tell him about how he is King and that his Mother shouldn’t be treating him like this and on and on it goes.”

“How is the kid, will he be a good King?”

“He could be. I am trying to get him out of the capital and away from the court. I want to go and have him taken down to Toussaint, or the Imperial Court or FUCKING SKELLIGE if I can manage it where he will be allowed to be young while he can. Where he can have a sense of right and wrong instilled in him by good people that don’t have a vested interest in what happens in the Redanian royal court beyond trade.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because Adda won’t allow it. To be clear, she knows that I think this and she knows that I want to do all of this, but she won’t allow it. She worries that he will want to fight and climb trees and hurt his little toesie-wosies.”

Kerrass laughed.

“But the more tightly she holds onto him, the faster she brings about her own doom. She knows that too and it makes her a rather… melancholy woman.”

“It sounds like you pity her.”

I thought about that.

“I do,” I decided. “I really do.”

“Not all that long ago, you thought that she was complicit in the movement of the Rebellion.”

“I did and I think she was, in the early stages at least, it was only later that she realised just how much it would destroy her apart from anything else.”

Kerrass nodded and drew some more patterns in the grain of the wood before sitting up suddenly.

“You should get her married,” he told me. “Get her married in advance of this retirement that she dreads but seems inevitable.”

“And how do you propose…”

“Take her to the next tournament of Toussaint that you’re invited to. I can’t remember, does the Redanian court still shut down for the Winter? Or is it the Summer.”

“It’s the Summer, too much disease and bad smells from all the courtiers in the summer.”

“Fine, then take her to Toussaint, or Skellige I suppose, and have some noble knight or warrior treat her like the Princess that she is. Get them to shower her with poetry and roses and gifts and whatever the fuck else. Have him sweep her off her feet and then arrange with the Duchess and the Empress that it will be ok for the two of them to marry. It will be impossible for anyone to argue that this new marriage could make the new husband a King. He will be able to intervene in the education of the son and while she is in court, you have this giant of a Knight or Skelligan warrior, vibrating with the desire to do violence on behalf of the woman that he married and adores. And you can’t tell me Freddie… You can’t tell me that neither Skellige or Toussain has enough romance in them to not fall for that kind of melancholy beauty.”

He threw the back of his hand to his forehand in the parody of stage melancholy.

“Oh the brutes,” he made his voice high and feminine. I was aghast, I had never seen Kerrass so theatrical and I was also astonished at the thought that this might actually work.

“Oh the brutes, preventing me from being a Mother to my son as they force me to be a Queen to a shattered nation. Here I stand, withering away when I am a woman in my prime…”

“Alright Kerrass, that’s enough. People are looking…”

“Will nobody support me in this… my darkest hour while life is so frustrating. Will no-one find me a man when I am so very lonely…”

“Kerrass, you are embarrassing me.” I told him firmly. “Also, I am pretty sure that she has no trouble finding a man when she wants one. She is still a beautiful woman.”

Kerrass grinned.

“It would work though, wouldn't it.”

“It will,” I admitted. “Or it will put fear in certain factions of the court enough that it might as well have worked.”

I laughed at the image.

“Imagine her with someone like Gregoire standing behind her.”

“There are only so many people like Gregoire.”

“True.”

“So Freddie, I do have a question. Is there any likelihood that Queen Anais, and King… whatshisname… It’s Radovid?”

“Yeah, named after his father.”

“Why not get them married. Or betrothed at the least. That would solve many of the problems wouldn’t it.”

I put my drink down carefully.

“It will never happen,” I told him.

“Why not? That would mean…”

“I mean, yes, it would get the two of them married. But Adda will never permit her son to marry the Queen of Temeria, a throne that she believes him to have a right to. But also, the courts of Temeria would love it. It is no secret that Radovid the younger is… well… a younger mother’s boy. Anais would rule over him and suddenly they are ruling over Temeria. The Redanian people would hate it because they remember all the invasion counter invasion nonsense from the rebellion and the Temerian people feel the same.

“I actually think it’s a good idea. Radovid would make a good courtier while Anais could lead her people. They are both well suited to that kind of situation. But the real reason that it would never work is because we’re all citizens of the Empire now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do not worry, you are not alone in that effort. The idea has been suggested on a semi-regular basis by various different people. Including me before The Empress herself, in one of those moods where she moves between being Ciri and The Empress Cirilla, explained it to me.

“If Temeria and Redania ally, the only model that the continent has for how that would work is the two times that it has happened before in the North. Anais is QUEEN of Temeria in her own right. So that would mean that we would have another twin Kingdom situation. Like Kovir and Poviss, or Rivia and Lyria. One King, Queen pairing reigning over two countries until they become one country. The number of times I have heard people refer to them as KovirandPoviss for example. But there is no… similarity.

“Redania and Temeria would be a kind of super-state. Over the last hundred years, both nations have absorbed several smaller nations so it would not be too much to argue that they are empires in themselves. But then you add that they would be the single largest nation in the North. They would house all of the learning in the North from Oxenfurt, the Temerian military academy and Aretuza AND they would have dominion over BOTH of the great rivers that split the continent. It would not be long before they annex and take over Novigrad either.

“The only reason that Novigrad has been independent for so long is because Redania and Temeria spend all their time fighting each other rather than just having one side take the place.

“So they have the trade centre of the North and govern most, if not all of the river trade and the sea trade as they govern just about all the coastline.”

Kerrass was nodding along.

“So let’s game it out a bit further. What happens then? You have two nations, both of which are really powerful militarily. Most of the men in the Imperial armies that occupy the places are Northern men now, it’s part of the effort to spread Imperial control. But all those men owe loyalty to Redania and Temeria first. Now they are this great nation. They reach across the border to Kaedwen and form an alliance, Aedirn joins in because why wouldn’t they and suddenly there is another rebellion against the Imperial throne.

“And this time, when the Empire comes North, they will exterminate the people. It is in the Empire’s, and the North’s interest, for Temeria and Redania to be at odds with each other.”

My words sank into the silence like a stone. Like when Ciri had made that speech to me and I had had to pass it onto both courts and onto my own advisors. Kerrass saw the picture that I was painting and saw the possibilities, and he nodded.

We drank in silence for a bit.

“So how are you doing Freddie?” He asked.

We both laughed.

“I’m alright,” I decided after a long moment. “I won’t lie to you Kerrass, there are dark days and there are good days. Today is a good day and it has been good for the last few weeks. I don’t want to count how long it’s been since it’s been bad because past experience is enough to warn me that if I dwell on that, then it is more likely to make me feel bad.”

“What’s the difference between the two?” Kerrass asked gently, but with a bit of curiosity as well.

Fortunately, it was not a new question for me.

“Good days are brighter. I can feel my mind moving and acting on things. I am interested in things, fascinated in things, aroused by things… Not just the presence, the mind and body of my wife, but I am roused to passion against the incompetence and the corruption of my fellows in what we laughingly call “the noble class”. I want to read the reports and write the letters, read the books, go outside ....”

I laughed.

“I chafe at all of the responsibilities that I have because what I want to do is go outside and walk in the sunshine with the woman I love, even if she too would rather be doing something else. On the good days, I am excited by the challenges that I face. I have ideas and strategies on what to do about this or that or whatever it is that I need to do. I want to ride for Nilfgaard to yell at the Empress which even she would admit, sometimes needs to happen. I want to ride to Novigrad to support…

“I want to do those things. It feels as though all my life is interesting and I am pulled in all of those directions but more than that… I want to be pulled in those directions and I am excited by those possibilities.”

Kerrass nodded along.

“On bad days?” I shrugged. “I am not those things. I just want to stay in my room and not do very much. I struggle to listen to the advice of the people that I pay vast sums of money to so that they can advise me on things. I try to read books, or reports and I can just… feel my eyes sliding off the things that I should be paying attention to and then I have to start all over again.”

I considered things, looking for an example.

“A few months ago,” I began, “I was having a bad time. It had been a couple of weeks and the only thing that I could do was just tell myself that sooner or later I was going to come out of whatever it was. It was pretty bleak even if it was the height of spring. I was on the way back from somewhere… One of those times where it was better to be travelling over land rather than using some kind of transport gate. Someone had explained it to me but I can’t remember why. I was bad enough that Ariadne wouldn’t leave my side. Even when I slept, which I did a lot, she was there when I woke and there when I lay down and she held me until I slept.

“I was jumping at shadows, full of over-vigilance stuff. Having to carry my weapons with me when I went into meetings and then just drifting off, you would have been furious with me.”

I looked at him, fishing for a reaction to that but he didn’t indulge me.

“I remember riding along and I saw a man being whipped. I have no idea why it was happening or what was going on. But I saw him being whipped and I saw a woman nearby watching it with tears in her eyes. The man was tied to two pieces of wood that had been lashed together. It wasn’t a military punishment or anything like that, it was just… He was being whipped and I stopped my horse to watch.”

There was more to it than that. In my memory, it was raining even though the other witnesses to the event tell me that it was only a little cloudy and that the day was bright and fresh. I remember muddy floors and pigs squealing in the street, the clucking of hens and the far of cry of the pheasant.

I distinctly remember hearing the whimpering of a child that was watching from one of the nearby buildings and I could see the tears streaming down the woman’s face, even as the man did his best not to make a noise.

“I had no idea what was going on,” I told Kerrass. “I just watched and because I had stopped to watch, the column of guards and advisors ground to a halt in the middle of this row of fields and people. It was so… strange that the flogger stopped and looked up at us to see what was happening.”

I shook my head at the memory.

I remember the eyes of the whipping man being dead from boredom and fatigue. They were the eyes of a man doing an unpleasant job. A hard physical job that just needed doing. There was no anger in his face, no justified rage, or gleeful joy in inflicting pain. It was just something that needed to be done.

“There was this moment as I sat on my horse, watching this tableau and I knew I should care. I knew that I should be angry, or sad or… something. I should want to know what this man had done to receive such a punishment. I should want to know the circumstances that had led to this place. I should be angry and demand that the punishment stop. I should ride on, allowing the punishment to continue… I was in foreign lands and little to no jurisdiction. I am furious when other nobles interfere in such things when it is in my territory, so there is no reason to suspect that they would be doing anything else. I should offer medical assistance so that the man could survive his punishment. But instead, I just sat on my horse and watched it, struggling to just feel something.”

I was caught in the memory for a moment. The sound of the whip seemed to come to me from a long distance, echoing as though it came to me through a cave. I could hear the grunts of the man using the whip and the whimpers of the man being flogged.

I shook myself and forced another activity. Long practice means that I know what to do now, and change what I am doing. Do something else. Get up and walk round the room, have something to drink, go for a piss… do something to change your passage of thought.

In this case, I poured myself another drink.

“So those are the bad days. But on the other hand, a few nights ago, I slept in a small clump of trees and I slept fine, lulled to sleep by the movement of the wind in the leaves. I no longer rest my hand on my axe pommel when I see a man wearing Redanian colours and I no longer get unreasonably angry when people talk about Sam.”

“What do you think about Sam now?” He asked.

“It’s inaccurate,” I told him. “But it works for me. There are two people now… both in my head and in history. There is Lord Samuel Kalayn, traitor, murderer and heretic. And then there is Sam, my brother. I miss Sam while I still hate Lord Kalayn. That is the only way that I can come to grips with it. I know Emma works towards the same although she struggles to separate them more. Laurelen just hates them both… as does Ariadne although she pretends not to for my sake. But that’s the only way I can think about them and rationalise it. To think of them as two different people.”

Kerrass nodded and stared into space for a moment.

“Sorry Freddie, but I must join their camp I’m afraid. I don’t think I can separate the two. Looking back I can see all of the things that your brother did, all the things that he said and I dismissed them then because he was your brother and I wanted my Witcher neutrality. But I should have brought those things to your attention. I should have said something, or done something, but I never did. To me, they are the same person and I won’t be able to separate the two.”

“It’s alright,” I told him. “You are not alone in that and I cannot hate you for it.”

Kerrass accepted that with a nod before he frowned.

“What happened with the man being flogged?”

For a moment there, I wondered what he was asking about.

“Oh… nothing really. Ariadne touched my arm, told me that we should move on. Padraig sent someone to enquire what the case was and it was exactly as bleak and common as you would expect. The man had accused one of his fellow villagers of stealing pig feed. Two sacks worth. The problem was that the accused’s wife was friends with the wife of the Alderman and got to the matter first. The alderman found in favour of the accused and had the man flogged for his lies.

“Everyone knew he was innocent and who was really at fault but the Alderman wanted a quiet life at home and when the Alderman wants a quiet life…”

“He gets it.” Kerrass agreed.

Some hot food arrived at our table. We had been talking for a good long while now and someone, probably Carys, had decided to order some hot food on my behalf. Some slices of roast pork with a rosemary crackling. Some kind of berry and wine juice and some apple sauce. There was a loaf of fresh bread between us and a hunk of butter and some cheeses. Predictably, Kerrass made himself a sandwich with the meat and ate it so that the juices ran down his chin. I like to think I was a little more decorous but I would almost certainly be lying.

We spoke of small things for a while after that, small reminiscences about people that we had met. I told him about the surviving bastard’s efforts to find a wife before one of the yuki-onna got him when he was unprepared and Kerrass laughed at my stories of Kar’s mischief at Helfdan’s wedding.

Then we ran out of food and the weight of the moment hung over our heads. I know we both felt it. When we found a topic of conversation to talk about, the words flowed freely but there was an obstacle there.

Kerrass sighed, caught my eye and I saw it, the permission to ask my questions.

“How are you Kerrass?” I asked. “What have you been up to these last few years?”

He nodded and rubbed his forehead.

“What happened you mean?” he asked with a sad smile.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

He stared into space for a long moment.

“I remember it so very clearly Freddie. The night that was supposed to be your wedding. I remember worrying about you and making sure that my proper place was by your side. I had resolved that I was not going to be far from your elbow other than at the feast where propriety was going to take over. I knew that I could not control that but otherwise, I intended for you to be drunk. I intended to ensure that you laughed at every joke, even if you were laughing at me mocking the people that had made the joke, or whatever. I remember being too hot in my costume and I remember seeing your expression. I remember being proud of you in those moments when you were so determined to let everyone know that you were happy and having a good time, but for those of us that know you better, we could see that you were fighting for your life.

“Rickard and I commented on that and he was my ally that night. If I got distracted, then he would be by your side…

“Poor Rickard…

“Anyway. I remember it. I remember fending off the woman sitting next to me because I thought her too fat and too caked in makeup in an effort to hide it. I have no objection to larger ladies, or older ladies but I prefer those ladies that wear their age and their size with pride or an indifference to that age or size. I remember being bored with the other person sitting next to me and I remember being resolved. I was going to enjoy myself that night and I was going to make sure that you enjoyed it too, even if it killed me.

“I remember your brother walking into the room with his uniform on and I remember… I remember thinking that this was a joke. Some last joke that he was playing on you as it was supposed to be your wedding night. Some last joke. I was even confirmed in that theory when he went to the front of the room and called for silence. He did it so well. Everyone was looking at him when he did that. Everyone was looking, even me. So I didn’t see the other soldiers sidling in through the door after him.

“Later, I would blame the drink. I would tell myself that I would have seen it if I hadn’t been drinking. I didn’t want to believe that I could have been… beaten by one such as your brother. I didn’t want to believe that I had been so effortlessly fooled. So I blamed the drink and for a while, I promised myself I would never drink again.

“But the truth? He had me and I fell for it. Completely fell for it. So completely that it is obscene to think that anything else happened.

“I remember leaning back in my chair to watch as he moved along the room. I toasted him ironically which he accepted with a smile and a wave. I made a joke although I can’t remember what it was and he smiled, the woman next to me laughed a little too loud in an effort to charm me and I remember the smile crossing my face in anticipation of what was going to happen next. He stood there and raised his hands for silence and all the time, I was waiting for the punchline.”

Kerrass stopped talking for a moment, staring at the table between us. I recognised that expression. I had been wearing that expression only a few minutes earlier when I remembered the flogged man.

I remained silent.

“I was still waiting for the punchline when he ordered Ariadne to kill me. Sorry,” he grinned savagely. “When he ordered her to snap my neck.”

He was lost in the memory now. I have seen this state many times when I have been talking to people or interviewing them on this subject or that one. The moment when they are so much part of the memory that they are watching it through their own eyes. I have been in that state myself, more times than I am entirely comfortable with.

“I had a fraction of a heart-beat,” he went on in a soft, dreamlike voice. “No more than that. A fraction of a second and I could see it. I read your account of what he told you and what he said about how he got to the point that he had. About how he had turned from Samuel Coulthard into… that. And I recognised every word that you said about it. I recognised it. I knew it. Like that sense of things happening again that had already happened.

“I saw everything that I had missed, everything that I had dismissed and everything that had been said or not been said. All of the little clues that should have fallen into place and just for that second as I saw Ariadne’s silent tears with the realisation of what was about to happen as she rose from her seat and started to move towards me.

“And I had just enough time to begin to hate myself for not seeing those things when I felt her take hold of me.”

He shook his head and seemed to come back to the room for a moment.

“She broke my jaw, you know,” he smiled as he spoke. “Swallow potions are not small bottles. I still keep a couple close at hand for emergencies and of course Ariadne knew where they were. I felt that sharp stabbing pain in my forehead as she grabbed me and forced my jaw to accept the bottle, then as she grabbed my jaw to break my neck, it forced the bottle to shatter. They’re only fragile things anyway and then as she broke my neck, she set it again.

“The pain was indescribable, not because it was worse or better than anything I had felt before but because it is literally indescribable. There was just a sudden flare of agony but then it was gone, a dull sensation as though I could feel it but not. Like there was a sheet of plate steel between you and a noise being made. The noise makes the steel vibrate but you can’t hear it, you can only feel the vibrations with your fingers.

“I can honestly say that my jaw and mouth hurt more than the neck breaking did. Then everything went black. I think I was unconscious before my head hit the table to be fair. I don’t know if it was some… delayed shock to having my neck broken or if it was some spell of Ariadne’s… To keep me still while the potion did its work.

“I woke slowly and my neck… hurt. It was like that feeling you get when you wake up in a new bed and you were sleeping funny. Like that only much, much worse. So much worse.

“I was buried in a pile of bodies. Not the first time I’ve been in that position but it was by far the most injured I had been. We did not smell of lantern oil though and there was no wood that had been spread amongst us. Bodies need fuel to burn, you can’t just expect to put a lit brand in the middle of the pile of bodies and expect them to go up in flames. But there was none of that… Yet. I suspected something more to do with some kind of quicklime or something which was going to be even more unpleasant.

“I found that I could move but I was very stiff and there was this strange kind of delay between when I would tell one of my limbs to do something and then it would actually respond.

“I could not hear the voices of anyone watching us and with a bit of experimentation I found that it was dark. I could hear screams in the distance, the sounds of fire burning and horses running around. Men were yelling at each other. People were screaming.”

“I had no weapons, I was still wearing my posh clothing from the feast although someone had taken my boots. I started to push my way through the bodies to find an edge to the pit. It was like moving through a nightmare. Bodies pressed against me, some still leaking fluids, many still warm and I struggled to see. I had a fear then that whatever had happened to me had been permanent. I would need more potions to make me well again even if I could feel that my mouth and tongue were most of the way healed.

“I pulled myself along, hauling my way beneath bodies where I was strong enough to do so, moving them aside in slow movements so that it wouldn’t attract attention because if I was in charge of a body pit, I would ensure that there were people watching in case someone was still alive. Much the same way that I was.

“I found the edge of the pit. It took a long time and although pain is no stranger to me, I wept with it. Not just it, but the frustration that my stubborn limbs wouldn’t obey me the way that I wanted… the way I needed them to be. I wept in anger at the things that I knew were happening in the keep and that I had no doubt were happening in the countryside all around us and I wept with hatred.

“Not at your brother or any of the people that had done this, but at myself for not seeing it all falling into place. It seemed so obvious to me now. So obvious, all the things that had happened and all of the things that had carried us to this point, It was inevitable really. Or so it seemed to me at that moment.

“I came to the edge of the pit and it was clearly newly dug. Still loose dirt, roughly and quickly cut into the earth. I tried to listen out and look around to see if there was anyone watching. I had done my best to head away from the noises and away from the glow of the firelight, but after that, I could make no determination.

“So in the end, all I could do was go for it and hope that there was enough light to ruin people’s night vision and that I was smeared in mud and blood enough to be camouflaged in the darkness.

“I climbed out of the pit and found myself not too far away from a treeline. I crawled forwards, more slithered through the ground, still wet from the storms the last few days until I was in the undergrowth. There were plenty of leaves, the night was not cold and the potions were still doing their work.

“I slept. I tried not to but I slept.”

He sighed and finished his drink.

“No more rational, or sensible, than the way you behaved on that night,” he was trying for levity.

“No,” I admitted. “I could have kept running. Ariadne tells me that she was indeed the one that found me for Sam under his orders. Apparently, he flew into a rage when it turned out that I had escaped. It is easy to look back and see the rightness of this or that choice with cold blood and the benefit of hindsight. The correct thing for me to do was to stay with Padraig and Carys, to cross the river with them and travel south rather than fucking about. Ariadne’s sight was not infinite and if I hadn’t drawn everyone’s attention by stealing the clothes and killing…”

I took a deep breath. It still affects me too, even when I am listening to other people recount that night. Nearly three years ago now.

“All I can say to you Kerrass, the same as I’ve told Emma when she scolded me for my choices that night, Ciri as well who made her opinions on that matter very clear. I could not have done anything other than what I did. It is easy to sit here, well fed and strong, healthy and… dare I say completely sober.”

Kerrass smirked at that.

“And say that we should have done something different,” I finished. ‘But in the heat of the moment, we did what we could.”

Kerrass nodded his acceptance of that.

“It sounds like you have had to tell yourself that a lot,” he commented.

“I have, just as I have also told others that and have needed those same people to tell me the same thing.”

Kerrass smiled as he nodded.

“I can easily imagine that to be the case. I uh…” He cleared his throat. “I might need you to tell me that as well.”

“I can do that Kerrass, just as I know some other people that will be happy to tell you the same.”

“After they’re through slapping me and yelling at me I assume?” He was trying to inject some humour.

“You might be surprised. Anyway, finish your story.”

“I woke in the dawn and I looked out over a blasted landscape. It was true that the potion that Ariadne had palmed into my mouth had done it’s work but it was also true that it hadn’t finished it’s work. I strapped myself together a bit better and I went to your family’s hunting reserves. I needed the advantage of home ground if I was going to evade capture and I waited there for several days. It was not a pleasant time. Lots of pain and self-recrimination but I was in no state to leap to your rescue, nor leap to assassinate Sam or Kristoff or the rest. I still had my Witcher’s pendant but that was about it. I found the hunting stores to find out that it had been looted. They had forgotten a knife though so I was ok. A good, well made, hunting knife will take the place of many weapons if you use it right and whatever else

Can be said about your Father, he did make sure that his hunting equipment was top notch.

“So I hunted and I camped in the game reserve. I expected it to be much worse than it was but it seemed that your brother was already being let down by people. He had told people to patrol and spread out, but they had forgotten to search the local area to be sure of stragglers. There were a few competent searches but one of the benefits of your stag party was that I knew the ground of the hunting reserve pretty well.

“I was there for several days, recovering my strength. I lit no fires, ate the food I caught raw and drank stream water. One of the benefits of Witcher metabolism is the ability to eat that stuff and not be poisoned but it was not pleasant. I waited for as long as I dared to recover my strength.

“Then came the decision to move.”

He shook his head and went to relieve himself. I took the same opportunity and we waited a little. I got the feeling that he was working up to something. He had decided that he was going to speak but he didn’t want to and he was nervous. When we got back, he wanted to exercise and asked if he could see my axe in action. We found a small paddock that was not currently in use and we did some training together as we had used to do.

It was similar but so utterly different. I had to teach him what drills I needed him to do so that I could practise some of the movements that I had to do to work the axe and there were some of the things that I would once have done with a spear that I could no longer do. I did take my spear with him and demonstrated the problems that I was having with it and at the end, we had a little spar, my axe against his sword. I did better than I expected but he is still a Witcher and I am still a nobleman that doesn’t get to train as much as I would like.

I was pleased to see that he was out of breath by the end though.

“Well,” he told me with a grin. “You are a far better axe-man than you ever were a spearman.”

“More time to work it,” I told him.

“You are more in the moment with the axe,” he went on, putting his sword away. “I remember with a sword, you were always getting in your own way with things, always approaching every fight like it was a puzzle and as such, refusing to let instinct and skill take over. I went the other way with giving you the spear, in that you could use that. There are so many options that you could use with a spear that you can’t with the sword. The axe went in the other direction, in limiting your movements… I don’t know, I am probably talking nonsense.”

“No, I get it,” I told him. “One of the things that I have found with the axe… or one of the things that I had to get over was that… you have to commit to the swing. It’s heavy and once you start swinging, you have to follow through and have your next movement in mind or you are going to hurt yourself trying to wrench it back into the right position. There is no time for fear or hesitation, just movement. You have to commit and live in the moment. I find I like that.”

“Strength training will help with that.”

“And it has, but there is only so much you can do with that.”

“I like that reverse strike you did,” he told me. “Not many axes work like that with the blade on the other side as well. Most axes that I have fought are the bearded axes or ones that have a spike or a hammer on the other end for a counter balance.”

“Yeah, I have found that that catches people out. Also the lunge,”

“The raised spikes from the blade?”

“Yeah, no-one expects the lunge from an axe, and just as people don’t expect the slashing from the spear. The axe’s pommel is just as effective a weapon as a sword hilt. Also there is the ability to disarm someone if you catch the blades with the spines of the axe and twist.” I demonstrated with a twisting action before putting the axe back in its sheath.

Kerrass laughed. “Yes I saw that danger.” He laughed again before he got solemn.

“I’ve missed you Freddie,” he told me. “I’ve missed this. I was a fool and I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’ve missed you too, Kerrass,” I told him. “And although I have forgiven you… a long time ago actually, it is going to be…”

“I know,” he forestalled me with a sad expression. “But I will prove that my apology is sincere and that I mean it when I tell you that I have changed. There is still work to do but I mean it.”

I nodded.

“Back inside for some more to drink and so I can finish my story?” Kerrass suggested.

“Something with apples in it?” I wondered.

Kerrass laughed.

“I see you remembered.”

“How could I forget.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and we moved inside.

(A/N: Yeah… Now we’re here, I kind of don’t want to stop. More epilogue to follow)