A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

I examined Kerrass for a bit longer.

“Are you ready to keep going?” I asked.

He nodded slowly.

“I think so,” he said.

(Freddie: Back into Kerrass’ narrative here)

How that carter found me I will not know. I asked him and he didn’t know either. The fact of the matter was that I had found my way to an out of the way road that wasn’t used very often. And by “found my way” I mean that I had crawled there. The Swallow potion had healed me of the pressing damage but I did not have any others, possibly a sign of how bad my state actually was, and I did not have the strength to hunt for the ingredients to make any more. So I had to rely on time, the increased healing nature of the Witcher metabolism and the leftover effects of the Swallow potion that I had drunk.

The carter was a man transporting his goods out of the way and he felt inspired to take the scenic route. He had various different thoughts as to why he had done that… He thought that he might have a more peaceful time if he spent a bit of extra time away from his wife and his children. There had been some problems with the roads themselves with ruts and potholes and that kind of thing.

Obviously not one of your roads Freddie.

And there was, and always is the rumour of monsters that kept him going. But if we pressed any harder on any of those thoughts, it turned out that they all amounted to nothing. His wife would nag him no matter how long he spent away from home, his children would always be mischievous and he loved all of them because of it.

Roads in that part of the world are always bad, one road is just as peaceful as another and taking the more roundabout route was, if anything, more likely to pick up monsters as anything.

I took it as a heartening sign. It occured to me that someone had sent the carter to me to get me where I needed to go and given that no-one else knew where I was, I decided that the person doing the sending was The Goddess.

They say that the Gods move in mysterious ways but I would argue that none do so more than my Goddess. Every single thing she does, every question she asks, every action she takes is to either help you fight, or to set you on the path to the struggle that she feels will help you grow, or to put that struggle in your way so that you must fight. I can absolutely recognise her in what she did to Ariadne and Yennefer in your little account. I am afraid that you were little more than a prop in that struggle my friend.

Yes, I thought you wouldn’t care that much.

So I sat in the back of the Farmer’s wagon. There is no denying that it smelt rather strongly of various farmlike odours but it gave me time to heal, and to think. The Goddess had told me that she had already told me what I needed to do, so I spent the several days that I had with the Farmer, taking apart what she had said to me and trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me.

It was not a pleasant process and forced me to examine myself in ways that I was not really comfortable with. That is not uncommon in dealings with the Goddess of course, but it is never nice. Although I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the two of us had been entirely on top of our game when you had first seen the Goddess. Would we have been able to take what she said to you and what others had said to you and be able to figure everything out?

Yes I know, there is a seduction to those “what ifs” and they can be destructive if we allow them to go that far.

I decided that I needed time to think and the advice of people that I trusted. Someone separate from all of the drama and without too much access to everything that had happened. I also needed some time to rest, to heal and peace enough to think.

So I went to Kaer Morhen.

Strange that that place has more of a feeling of “home” than the keep of the Cats. I had hoped to speak to Eskel but he was not there. Wrong season for him as he prefers to stay there in the Winter, becoming the old Wolf of the Witcher’s school.

But he has become excited by the various projects that you and Yennefer have set. He still walks the path but he was also excited by the thought of studying and learning about things that the Witchers have not really classified before. So he was off somewhere and I must admit that one of the many people that I am hoping to catch up with is Eskel at some stage.

Letho was still there though, and although I am always glad to see him, it is always with a certain amount of… concern and nervousness. A lot like the Goddess, he has a tendency to see through the bullshit that we all surround ourselves with. He holds up a mirror to our faults and will then proceed to point those faults out to us in detail. There are few people who are truer to themselves than Cousin Letho, but sometimes that makes me uncomfortable.

That and the fucker still owes me twenty three crowns from that time with the thing in the place where I saved his life.

But he greeted me without surprise, we cooked, we ate and we did some training. Letho is one of those people that I’m never quite certain as to whether or not he might follow the path of The Goddess as well, but he just carried on regardless, kind of ignoring me except when I wanted to train. He did brew me a Viper healing potion though which made up for a lot of the weaknesses in my own brewing and went some way towards healing me up.

But primarily, I spent a lot of time just thinking. Trying… heh… struggling to answer the riddle that The Goddess had set me.

In the end, perhaps inevitably, I took my problems to Letho. This was my interpretation of the Goddess talking about withdrawing from the action to gather allies and come up with a new plan.

Heh. He made this face, an expression of pain or… almost as though he was constipated. But I was cunning and went to him late at night so it would not be practical for him to ride off into the valley. I told him about my problems, I told him what had happened and in what order and he sat there and listened.

He listened, at first he tried to make some excuses as to why he should get up and do something else and about how he wasn’t good at this sort of thing. But in the end he settled down to listen. Towards the end of it he was nodding and held one of his huge hands up.

“I don’t need to hear any more,” he rumbled before he smiled grimly. “Stupid fucking Kitten.”

He always has an endless supply of nicknames to call people. He named you Scribbler, the Wolven Witchers are a variety of “puppies” with scarred puppy, young puppy and white hair puppy. Apparently, he has a name for Yennefer as well although I’ve never asked either of them what it is. I have a horrible feeling that it might be something like “Bitch” or “Hag”. The fact that I am almost certain that he would say such things with a smile on his face is something that I prefer not to think about.

But he held his hand up, called me a stupid kitten and I kind of thundered to a halt.

“You have forgotten to be a ‘man’ Kitten,” he declared and having delivered his verdict, he climbed to his feet before wandering off, not bothering to explain himself. I didn’t understand his answere to my riddle and I badgered him about it for several days. One of those things which leads me towards wondering if he really is one of the followers of the Goddess. Why does he have to make everything so fucking difficult all the time.

I remember smiling wickedly as a plan came to me. And although it gave me a few bruises to remember it by, the plan worked.

I annoyed him into explaining more. Small things, mostly in training, using some of the tricks that I have learned on the road with you. Leaving his alchemy set up a mess, moving his book marks that kind of thing.

Yes, I know that you would have killed me for that and so would many others but Letho would wait until I was at my full strength. One of those things to go with the fact that we are both Witchers.

But one day he had had enough and he came at me properly on the practise yards. He fair batted me across the yard in the upper courtyard.

He pulled a small green cloth from inside his armour and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I will answer your question.” He was sitting on his haunches, staring at me as he spoke, his sword resting across his knees. His eyes were shadowed by that huge brow of his.

“We are Witchers,” he said, “you and I. The oldest joke of our little gathering is that we are Witchers, but can we be other? Or can men who are not Witchers, also be Witchers? You pussy cats and puppy dogs like to debate the point when you’ve got nothing better to do when the answer is very clear. We are not Witchers. None of us are. We are men who were turned into something monstrous by people that couldn’t be bothered to do the job for themselves and clean up their own messes. That is all we are. We even give a perfectly honest vocation a fancy name so that we can lift ourselves above the common rat-catcher.

“We are not Witchers. We are men. Only men. Only ever men. We’ve had some fucked up shit done to us over the years and we’ve done even more fucked up shit to each other. But that is all we are. We are men. We go out into the world and we kill monsters. Once we start convincing ourselves that we are more than that, that is when we die.”

He jabbed me in the chest with his finger.

“Or go mad and become monsters that need killing themselves.”

He shook his head and stood up.

“You’ve convinced yourself that you are more than that. You’ve convinced yourself that you are a WITCHER. Some kind of hero. White haired puppy has the same disease sometimes. Difference between you and him is that he was given extra weird shit that made his hair white and gave him a dick that Sorceresses can’t help but bounce up and down on. Also, you are followed round by a scribbler and he is followed around by a fucking peacock. You want to sort out what your issues are?

“Just…” he spread his hands out wide. “Be a man.”

He left the following day. I am pretty sure that he went up into the hills and watched for when I left and he could regain his privacy, so I deliberately stayed a bit longer, just to fuck with him. He might like to pat my head and scritch me behind the ears like any other kind of kitty cat. But I like to tweak his tail just like I would any other kind of Viper.

But what he said hit home and truth be told, I didn’t really notice him leaving.

I had tried to be a Witcher.

There was the problem, fix the problem. Move straight towards the problem, identify the problem, hunt the problem and destroy the problem, or be destroyed in return. That is the life of a Witcher.

And it makes us arrogant, and prideful.

And it makes all others… lesser than us.

So when your brother emerged that night, telling us all what he was doing and what he had done, it had all seemed to fit into place. As I told you, it all made sense. It was so obvious that I berated myself for not seeing it.

And that hurt my pride. That your brother, a man that I had liked but if we’re honest, I didn’t think that much of, had fooled me. I didn’t blame you, nor was I angry at you. Your blindness towards your brother’s actions is an obvious result of your family relationship towards him. So you weren’t to blame. So who was to blame?

Well obviously it’s me isn’t it. I am the Witcher, I should have seen the darkness in him… the monster in him and I should have dealt with it.

Then as I woke up on the edge of the hunting ground and healed, I wanted to be a Witcher, but I couldn’t because I lacked equipment and potions, so my resentment and hate grew.

The decision about trying to save you or carrying word to the Imperial Court… Although that occupied my mind, that was not really the root of the issue. The root of why my chosen course was so miserable to me was because the Witcher’s course of action was obvious.

I should Hunt the monster. Indeed, the only reason that I believe that I lived with that is that I told myself that I was retreating to gather more information. So again, I cast myself in the role of the Witcher, the hero of the story, carrying the word of everything that had happened to those people that could help me with knowledge, equipment and supplies so that I could come back stronger and hunt the monster.

But I was beaten to it. Other people had carried word of the horror to the people that needed to hear it and people were already mobilising to deal with the matter.

I felt cheated out of my hunt.

I don’t know if I can properly explain how much that hurt and offended me.

But I will try.

You are a scholar. One of the best scholar’s around. You might neglect that part of you with your feudal duties but I bet that deep down, you still enjoy the moment when you are researching a new thing. Or… and this is more relevant. Someone comes to ask you your scholarly opinion on a specific subject that you are known for. But it’s worse than that. You hear about a thing that requires a particular field of knowledge that you are an expert in, you go to the people that are asking the questions and say “I am Frederick, famed scholar on the subject that you are wanting to know about. Use my knowledge. Here it is.”

Then they look at you and say

“That’s alright. We consulted William over here. He is lesser than you in the field but he was faster, quicker and just as accurate as you are. Also cheaper.”

Has that ever happened to you? I see that it has.

Hurts doesn’t it.

That was how it felt. I couldn’t have told you that at the time.

And I am used to being the Witcher. I am used to being the one with the solution, the weapons and the… skills to get the job done. But now I wasn’t. I was just one among many.

I was hugely resentful then. But I mastered it. I recovered from the problems, I brewed up more potions and found weapons and armour. I demanded to be placed in a way that I would be able to carry the fight into the castle. Apart from anything else, to rescue you.

Another role that I have set myself. Your protector.

So I waited, I trained and by the time I got to lead the raiding party through the castle towards your rescue, I was as fit, well trained and healthy as I have ever been.

.

And then I saw you, sitting there in your filth and your squalor. I thought I was looking at your corpse and only the fact that I could see… almost feel the hatred coming from your eyes and directed at your brother. That was how I knew it was you. Only then could I even recognise you.

So I failed you, you were sick, injured, dying even. I had failed you, the client, the customer…my friend and I had failed in my duty as the Witcher, to rescue you from the curse with which you had been… cursed.

Not a great use of language.

I had failed you. There was nothing I could do for you, so I did the only thing that I had left that I could do. I could avenge you and I leapt to the attack.

And Sam beat me when he realised that he could not win as a man, he fought me as a monster. And won.

I could hold him off, but he was better than me. He had the strength, he had the invulnerability and the speed that his God had given him and I couldn’t beat him. I was not surprised that he was immune to my steel sword. If it was just skill against skill, then I would have beaten him. But it was not. It was more than that. So as I fought, I knew that I was going to lose and I hated myself the more.

I’m a Witcher, I don’t lose to this kind of filth.

.

There are only a few of us left now. Those Witchers who have survived to tell of those first trials. Before the knowledge was lost or destroyed or deliberately forgotten. I had brothers who were better with the sword, better with the sign and better with the potions than me. And all of them are lost now. You ask any of the others and they will all tell you the same thing. We are not the best that there ever was…

Maybe Cousin Geralt…

But why us and not the others?

Eskel once told me that we survived because it just didn’t occur to us to die. Gaetan would back that up as he claims that he just decided not to lose and as a result he never has.

But in that moment, as I tried everything I could, everything that I could think of to break through your brother’s defences, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

I was just getting ready to die, just getting ready to sacrifice my life to end his. I was confident I could do it, it was just that he was hugely strong and I didn’t know if I could get it home. I had made my mind up even. This was the moment, the ultimate moment of my life.

And there was no denying it. This was a monster that was worth ending. No one would be able to take that from me. This was a monster that needed to die so that others might live. The powers that he would command, that he could command are the kinds of things that they use to frighten young mages to sleep at night. Killing him, even as it cost me my life, was a worthy thing.

There was a certainty there. So much of our lives are spent not knowing whether you are doing good or evil. It is the great attraction of the Witcher’s life. After all, it is that certainty that the Empress misses when she sits on her throne and makes decisions that echo through an Empire. This was a certainty of right and wrong and I would die doing the right thing.

I even decided that that was what I was going to do.

Yes, I see you recognise it. It was the trial of death, only a new guise of it. The desire for certainty. For even Witcher’s work is not always so black and white. Clearing out a troll’s cave because the locals want to mine a promising seam of copper that cuts the troll’s bed in half. Freeing the rapist from a curse that was cast upon him by his victim’s sister. Clearing a field for a lord so that he can put more back breaking labour on his local villagers. So this would be a good death. This would be worthwhile. No-one could take this from me.

They would probably even sing songs about it.

Heh.

.

And then I saw you, out of the corner of my eye, I saw you. I had been so focused on your brother that I had not seen how you freed yourself from the chair. I had not been in a position to take advantage of the Elven woman… Ella’s attempted to distract your brother for me. But you, I saw you crawling, inch by agonising inch. And I longed to tell you to stop, to rest, to wait.

I was a Witcher, I could do this, I could slay the monster, I could end this evil and keep you, the innocent, safe from what goes bump in the night.

But I knew that I could not, even if I knew that it was killing you to do this. There you were, my friend, the weak little student that I picked up from the side of the road and taught to be a man. And he was going to kill himself to save me?

I was supposed to be the one that saved you, whether it cost me my life, I was supposed to be the one that saved you.

And we did it. We killed the monster you and I.

.

I couldn’t stay.

I saw that you were still alive and although your life hung in the balance, it was going to be your sickness that killed you. I was elated, overjoyed, walking on air and I was desperate for you to live. And I left that awful basement to find you a healer, and so that I could sink my sword into the bodies of some more monsters.

Slowly though, that elation and the joy of victory leached away from me, leaving me only with rage and emptiness.

Everybody reacts differently to the feelings of combat. That rush of fear and the elation as the fear falls away. Some people piss themselves with it, some people scream and shout. You do something interesting in that when the action is over, you are left depressed and empty in its wake.

Do you still do that I wonder?

(Freddie: I do. One of the benefits of being a Duke though is that I am surrounded by people who will find me work and companionship to take my mind off it. I am rarely alone after an action, whether from the field of battle, or the courtroom skirmishes)

I have never suffered from that. I always want to run towards life. Find a girl, find a drink, find a dance.

But I felt that low then. And the fall was a very long one. I had been ready to die. I was even looking forward to it. No more worrying, no more concerns or pain. No more constant checking of myself to see if what I was feeling was illness or just me being an ass. It would be over. No more fear, no more worry…

I could rest. The Princess would be free to move on…

Yes, I know she would grieve but you are assuming that in the heat of the moment, I was thinking rationally.

So all of that… readiness had nowhere to go. My enemies fled before me and those Vampires that did try to stand before me were no match. That is not pride, that is just…

They were lost. Once Ariadne had freed them, they had no guiding intelligence and they weren’t very clever to start with.

And as I fought and I got further and further from that basement room where I had left you, my resentment grew. I was going to die for you. It was my ultimate gift, I was going to give you everything that I had to give and you had refused it. I was the Witcher, it was my job to do that. After all the times that I had let you down and then you took that from me.

I had to go on living because you took that moment from me.

And as I went on, resentment turned into hate. I pursued the monsters into the hills over the next few days. I heard that you were probably going to be ok, but your life was in the balance. That it had been touch and go for a while but Shani’s skills had been the tipping point. I remember nodding and heading back to the hunt.

Dimly, I suppose, I was aware that I was being an asshat and that I was being unreasonable. So again, in my pride and my arrogance, I chose to be the Witcher. I would be the cold one, the aloof one. I would continue the hunt. And as I went, as I killed and collected trophies…

I don’t know it all. It is not logical and I cannot explain everything.

I hated myself for not being with you. But I was a Witcher and such feelings are wrong. I hated you for robbing me of my ultimate death but that was wrong too. So I chose to be a Witcher.

Neutrality.

Hah.

So I was being a Witcher.

I was genuinely appalled when you summoned me back. The requests to see me were dismissed. What I was doing was far more important than coddling you. I was keeping you safe anyway, in hunting the beasts that threatened you, I was keeping you safe and I was furious that you couldn’t see that. And then you summoned me.

I had thought you would know how I felt about being summoned anywhere. By this point, you had warped into being my employer and I hate it when employers think they can order me around.

So there I was, full of righteous fury and you wouldn’t even let me have that. Your request was reasonable and it is true that it was a far more important request than hunting some Fleder through the marshes, something that any Witcher could do.

Yes, even Lambert.

And it was a task that I was suited to, maybe even uniquely suited too.

But I had not let go of my anger and hatred. So I decided that I would do this, one last Witcher contract for you. I would be a Witcher. Do the job, I wouldn’t charge you for old time’s sake and then I would leave you. I would make a big song and dance about the reward that I was expecting and then I would disappear, leaving you permanently in my debt, both in my mind and your mind.

I imagined you missing me. In my darker, more selfish moments, I imagined you sitting next to camp fires, wondering what you had done to offend me. I imagined arguments and debates that I could have with you but I told myself that I would hold myself above such things. That I would not succumb. I would clothe myself in the armour of the Witcher. I would be aloof, remote… an outsider. I would be… the Witcher of legend.

And even that you took away from me.

I read your account of things later. For a while, I told myself that I wouldn’t succumb and give in to so easy an avenue of self-flagellation. But one day, I realised that I was paying for a copy of those articles that spoke about what you did after the rebellion had been squashed.

I read it and you saw things that I didn’t. This will have been… well before I had this revelation about my own behaviour and even then, I was deluding myself. You described two conversations with me. One where you were basically speaking at me where you described the fire that was in the room flaring up.

I don’t remember that. I don’t remember seeing or feeling that. When I first read about those things, I told myself that you were deluding yourself to… I don’t know. But now I wonder. Those are the kinds of details that I have trained myself to see. Not only as a dutiful Witcher that must look for the signs and portents to tell me when there is a curse on the horizon, but also as a way to identify when The Goddess is watching me.

It was very similar to the way that The Goddess would signify that she was watching me. She doesn’t always give signs as her attention comes suddenly and leaves just as suddenly, and she is all too aware that a man might not be behaving truly if he believes that he is being observed.

But that second conversation. The one where you later admitted that you had come to me in order to say goodbye. That time…

At the time, I saw that as the ultimate cruelty on your part. Because in that moment, you tore the veil away for my eyes for just a moment. I had been rehearsing all of the angry speeches that I could make to you. All of the furious things that I could say. I imagined you retreating from me in tears and I felt exultant in those moments, imagining your retreat from my righteous fury.

Instead, you approached me as a friend. You apologised, maybe not in so many words but you told me how much you cared. You were not angry with me, you were… sad. And you told me that no matter what happened, no matter what transpired, then there would always be a place for me there, with you and with your family. You acknowledged your debt to me and absolutely refused to talk about the debts that I owe you.

There is an old saying that I have long since forgotten who first told me about it, but it remains true and I was reminded of it at that moment. “A good man will say “Can you do me a favour?” before saying “Thanks, I owe you one,” whereas a bad man will say “I’m calling in a favour,” before telling you, “That lessens your debt to me a little, but not completely.”

You made me think of that., can’t think why.

And then you left.

And in doing so, in refusing to abide by the image that I had of you, you tore the image and the delusion away from me and I saw myself as the angry, spiteful, disgusting wretch that I had been. I hated you all the more for it. My determination to remain the Witcher in your life wavered and I was left angry, raw and… I don’t know how else to say it.

I realised all of this while sitting on one of the towers at Kaer Morhen, looking out over the valley. As I say, it was like being hit in the face with a hammer, or a Mage’s lightning bolt. I felt awful but I also saw exactly what Letho had meant. In trying to be a Witcher, I had forgotten to be a man. And even if I was being a Witcher… a good Witcher will have enough in him to be able to put himself in the place of the curse, or the monster that he is hunting. Including the person that has done the hiring.

You’ve seen it. When you are investigating a haunting, sometimes you have to identify why the haunting is taking place. Then you have to identify the fact that the man might have murdered the ghost and that the haunting is based on actually quite justified hatred.

So you have to be able to be man enough to put yourself in that situation.

But I had been a Witcher in all of my arrogance and self-righteousness. I had been a witcher instead of being your friend. Instead of exalting in your survival I was angry that I had not been the one to rescue you. Instead of commiserating with you on the loss of your sister and family, I was angry that I had not figured it out. And when you needed your friend in your darkest hour, and I would argue that that was your darkest hour… For all that you had been victorious and exalted to a rank and status that you had not even imagined… You did so after so much loss. I should have been there. I should have been the man, not the Witcher. Letho was right.

(Freddie: Back to the two of us.)

Kerrass stared into space for a long time after finishing that speech. There had been times in the middle of all of that when he had been more animated than I had ever seen him but there were also times when he seemed so still and quiet that I could have absolutely believed that he had died, or had taken some potions in preparation.

“Letho is right about many things,” he said eventually. “The problem with asking Letho’s advice is that he is right in ways that will only ever cause a person pain. He will allow you no refuge, no way to hide, no way to… pretend that there is anything redemptive to what you have done or what you have thought. His interaction with you is typical of him. He taught you about your dagger by hurting you and inflicting pain on you. He told you about Witchers in a way that traumatised you and caused you even more pain when he could have just described it to you and answered your questions. But instead he pretended to put you through the trials in order to drive that lesson home.

“But he is always effective. He was absolutely right in what he said to me. I had stopped being a man and hidden behind the mask of being a Witcher. It was no wonder that I was becoming so much of a mess. I couldn’t… Because every time I allowed myself to be a man, I was confronted with the fact of just how badly I had let you down.”

“You didn’t let me down,” I told him.

“Maybe not at the moment,” he agreed. “I couldn’t have rescued you and I did come and get you. But afterwards? When you needed a friend and companion and dare I say Champion?”

He shook his head.

“I let you down, I let Ariadne, Emma, Laurelen, and so many others. But primarily, I let myself down. Over the years of our journey together, you have taught me… largely by just being yourself, how to be a better man and a better Witcher. But in that moment, I forgot everything that you had taught me and I became… worse.

“I have no excuses for you Freddie. I am so very sorry. I could have been better, I should have been better but instead, I regressed to my earliest form and in doing so I…”

He shook his head and just sat there, looking miserable.

It is sometimes true that you cannot just… assume that everything is going to be alright. Sometimes, you have to think carefully about whatever it is that you’re going to do next. It is not always easy and when a friend is upset and or depressed, you must be especially careful about that kind of thing.

So I took a moment, I had something to drink and I watched Kerrass carefully while I considered what I was going to say.

“An old tutor of mine,” I began. “It might even have been a weapons master trying to teach me how to fight. It was a situation that… while I was getting to grips with some of the more complicated movements with the sword… In the heat of the moment when I tried to use those movements in an actual fight, I would start to panic and all of the careful movements that I had tried to learn would start to fall by the wayside and I would regress to the instinctual, early movements. Essentially using the sword in the same way that a child might swing a stick at a tree.

“But I was getting really frustrated with it and the tutor took me aside, gave me something else to do while he worked with Sam for a while. But I was really upset and I asked him why I couldn’t keep the stuff in my head and my mind. He smiled and told me ‘What we learn to do first is what we do in a crisis’. I didn’t entirely understand it at the time. It was only years later that it all made sense to me.

“Oddly enough it was when you started telling me about spear-craft that I worked it out. You taught me how to kill with a spear and that was all you taught me. You did not start with basic movements or anything like that. You taught me how to thrust and kill. Pick a target that will kill a man, or a monster and thrust with it.

“So in those moments where I was stressed or in a crisis, I fell back on that. Thrust forwards and even then, I would sometimes fall back on using the spear like a quarter-staff.”

I leant forwards, using the movement to startle Kerrass.

“You were in crisis Kerrass,” I told him and I waited until he looked up at me. “You were in a moment of crisis and you regressed to being the Witcher you were taught to be straight out of Witcher school.”

Kerrass nodded unhappily.

“And like with me and the spear,” I went on, it is likely that it will happen again. You will regress again back to that state of mind. But instead of berating yourself and being angry with yourself, instead… listen when other people call you out on it.

“I am a professor of Oxenfurt and you do not teach people by yelling at them or telling them that they are wrong. You understand the point that they are making but then point out how they are wrong and what they need to do to correct their behaviour and thinking. You can always tell those that will make the good students by the way that they take on the new orders and instructions.

“You were a Witcher for upwards of eighty years Kerrass and now you are learning to be a better man. A lesson that we must all spend time learning. You will get it wrong and it might be true that you will hurt people with that. But when you make those mistakes… it is how you recognise that and how you make forwards that becomes part of that very same journey.”

“You are right of course.” Kerrass agreed. “And you are not the first person that told me that. I had to work up to coming to see you. I could not have come straight from Kaer Morhen to your front door as I was still…”

He ran out of words.

“Broken?” I supplied.

“It fits.” He agreed.

“So what did you do?”

I was tired but Kerrass had bared his soul in front of me. Now I needed to rebuild him a little bit so that he didn’t shatter the rest of the way. And if he had recovered a little in his process and travelled before coming back south, I thought he might do well to be reminded of that process.

“I left Kaer Morhen… I realised that Letho had gone as I had been oblivious to his presence and his departure after my series of revelations. Now that I was looking around a bit, I could easily see where he was. There’s an old lookout post up in the mountains, well away from Kaer Morhen where Witchers can watch the road for people coming and going. It's rare but people have been known to wander into that place accidentally. I guessed that Letho wanted his own solitude back and was waiting for me to leave,”

“Why does he stay there?” I wondered.

Kerrass laughed and it was good to see that he was returning to a form of his old self.

“In all truth… I’m not sure he knows himself. If you ask him, and I have, he will make noises about him being told that he could. He always threatens to leave, to cross the desert and go and look at some new lands but he never does and I don’t think he ever will. I think…

“I think that Letho… I think that Letho wants something. We know about all of the things that he did to try and rebuild his Witcher school because it was the only thing he had ever had that was close to being a family. Viper Witchers were always supposed to be a much more close knit group than the rest of us and I don’t know… Maybe he feels some ghost of that feeling in Kaer Morhen.

“Kaer Morhen’s a fascinating place. It was not the birth-place of the Witchers, but even those of us that do not belong to the Wolven school… even those of us that traditionally hate the Wolven school… Kaer Morhen is a place of romance to the Witchers. Most of us have lost our keep to man-made disaster or natural ones. But Kaer Morhen endures and what Vesemir once told me is true. The old divisions are more and more redundant with every passing of another Witcher. Saying that we’re from different schools is becoming redundant now. We are either Witchers, or we are not and Kaer Morhen is the last bastion of Witcherdon on the continent.

“So maybe Letho just feels at home there.”

“You know that we are going to rebuild the Witcher schools right?” I asked.

“Yes, and I want to be involved in that if you’ll let me. It needs to be done right this time. But even if it happens, it won’t be the old school. Something will be lost the day the last of the old Witchers dies. Maybe sooner if we all hang up our swords.”

I shook my head.

“That is why I went out to record and study Witchers,” I told him. “So it won’t be lost.”

“Ah but Freddie, there is a difference between something dying and being forgotten. You can prevent us from being forgotten but you cannot prevent us from dying. But anyway…”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but anyway.”

“So I left and I was determined to indulge my more human side. I was determined to treat being a Witcher as being a profession, rather than the character and the heart of what I was. I rescued a peddler and his wife from being overrun by bandits. They reacted the same way as they ever would. He threatened me with a crossbow that was not particularly scary as the weapon had clearly been neglected and I was not sure that it could launch a bolt, let alone do so with enough force to injure me and the woman was shrieking. I let them do it and rode off a little way before following them a little stealthily to make sure they made it to civilization without mishap.

“They did.

“They didn’t thank me and they were clearly terrified of me but I would be lying if I tried to say that it didn’t make me feel a little better.

“I lived off the land a little bit, I shaved my head as a crude disguise because I still wasn’t ready to face anyone that I knew and I thought that would obscure my identity. I did a few odd contracts, small stuff, nothing complicated. Clearing a nest of Endregas here, rescuing a child carried off by a hag there. I even hunted a couple of things that I would not have bothered with previously. Including a rabid bear.

“That one was quite interesting actually. The bear had attacked a farmstead and massacred the people in it. The locals agreed with me when we said that bears don’t do that but the lord was paying so I tracked it anyway. It turns out that it was a bear, but it was a bear that had been poisoned with an arrow to send it mad. Then it was steered with spears until… mad with rage and pain it had killed anything in front of it.

“The Lord’s huntmaster identified the man who had made those arrows and it turned out to be regarding a local land dispute. The farm was on my customer’s lands but the man on the other side of the border wanted it. So he was going to argue that my customer couldn’t protect his people and use the death of the farmers as an explanation. I remember wishing that you were there because I thought you might have got a kick out of that story.”

I laughed with him. He was right, I would have enjoyed being part of that.

I went back to Kovir & Poviss. Witcher’s work up there is not plentiful but it is there and it’s not that there’s no monsters, it’s more that the population is quite centralised so the monsters are not really a problem. The descendants of the woman that I had rescued all remembered me and made a huge fuss over me. To the point that one of the daughters of the clan made a significant attempt to seduce me.

“I would be lying if I said I was completely immune to her charms even despite the fact that I knew her Great Grandmother. I think I disappointed her a little though. Far from being a man out of the family legend, she found herself loving a broken, unhappy man and she left me for a stable groom. Bless her, I hope she’s ok.

“I prayed regularly although I didn’t try to summon the Goddess again. I was not sure I would be able to survive her wrath, but it became clear, even to me, that I was putting off travelling further afield.

I was comfortable there. I was safe in that little corner of the world. The locals knew me, even loved me. I never lacked for anything to eat or drink, I had no shortage of long or short term romantic partners. I tried to pay my way and work off what was, to me, quite the appearance of debt but they wouldn’t have it.

I was comfortable, I was safe. And that was not getting me anywhere.

There was this awful temptation in me. I could have just stayed there, for years even. Until the events of your brother’s rebellion are forgotten. I could live quite well up there, and just wait until everything had blown over. Start a new life, even as a Witcher.

You understand that I am talking about the profession there, rather than the… name of the mutation that I am.

It was so very tempting Freddie to leave it all behind. Even when I knew that… That was the giving up. Whether to live in misery or to live in relative happiness, to not confront what had happened would be giving up everything that I had worked for… Goddess, for as long as I have been on the path.

I had to work up to it though. At first I would spend a couple of days away, then a week, then a couple of weeks and then finally, I worked up the courage to leave and head South. It has been hard. I won’t lie to you, it’s been really hard doing this. It is easy, far too easy to slip into the persona of “The Witcher” and just stay there. I have still had to do that on occasion as working as a Witcher still needs a certain amount of detachment from events and neutrality is sometimes a survival mechanism. What I was learning to do though, and what I am still working on, is the difference between wearing the mask of being a Witcher and being a Witcher. I need to learn how to set that mask aside at the end of the hunt.”

He frowned in thought, brows coming together.

“I used to be able to do that,” he said. “I used to find that really easy but now? I lost it somewhere, I don’t know where.”

He shook himself.

“And now, here I am.”

“And here you are.” I agreed.

The two of us sat in reflective silence for a moment or two. Through the windows, I could see the first signs that dawn was beginning to happen. The colour of the sky was lifting from the black of night to the deep blue of the early dawn.

I can’t speak for what Kerrass was thinking, but I was thinking over his story. He was clearly a man that was struggling out of the hole. Dr Shani invented the term and she uses it to refer to those people that have been through a period of darkness in their minds. Sometimes that darkness is due to external factors but sometimes, it is just the person going through some stuff. Then one day they have a moment where they realise that they are in the hole and that they must make some changes in order to climb out.

I am not sure about the theory but it seems apt in a number of cases.

In this case, what I was wondering was whether or not Kerrass’ story had changed my opinion or my determination about what happened next. Would I be able to forgive him based on the things that he had told me? I was thinking it through, trying to weigh the words and struggling to get my thoughts to line up in the order that I needed them to when Kerrass startled me out of my thought process.

“Well?” He wondered. “What happens now?

It was my turn to shake myself and rub at my face.

The answer was obvious, both to my personal quandary and the immediate answer to Kerrass’ question.

“It’s late,” I told him. “Or rather, it’s early and I am struggling to keep my thoughts in order. Let’s get some rest and we can talk more in the morning if you like?”

I rose to my feet, a little unsteadily whether through fatigue or the sheer amount of alcohol that I had drunk, I will let you be the judge.

“Wait Freddie,” there was genuine fear in Kerrass’ voice. “Wait, are you?” He took a deep breath. “Will you still be here in the morning?” He asked calmly.

And as I looked at him, I could see the mask of the Witcher. The emotionless mask, the remote detachment of it. I saw the shield that it was and everything that it hid and everything that was hidden behind it. I saw the years of horror, the years of pain, suffering and fatigue. And I saw the loneliness too.

Letho once told me that the people that created Witchers had used monstrous methods to create Witchers and in doing so, they had created monsters. But I think it’s easy to forget that for all of their mutations, all of their potions, skills with a sword, esoteric knowledge, magic and whatever else, there is still a person there. A person that hates, loves, laughs, rages, hopes, weeps, gets drunk, makes love, has sex, dances, sings, shouts…

And sometimes, when they have gone into a disgusting, dark, dangerous cave out of need of money and at the behest of ungrateful villagers and entitled lords, they are scared and alone.

I thought of Geralt, who has admitted openly, that his “code” is a means to not answer questions that he would rather not answer. Who lives with a dry sense of humour and an awareness of the ridiculous situations that he finds himself in, who plays Gwent, Dice and who knows how many other games until he becomes a master at them and then leaves them to find the next game. I thought of his love for his common law wife and his all but adopted daughter. If you took away the fact that he was the most famous Witcher on the continent, that could be a description of anyone.

I thought of Lambert and his bitter, cutting sense of humour. There is rumour that he didn’t have much of a choice about becoming a Witcher and that he hates the lot of them as well as hating himself. That he faces everything with a biting remark and a cutting insulting comment as he tries to drive people away while at the same time forging friendships outside of his inner circle with a loyalty that few could comprehend. And he is now one half of the most scandalously odd couples on the face of the continent. A relationship that all of the people that knew both of them predicted that the entire thing would fall apart in moments, and yet it endures to this day.

I thought of Eskel, who I don’t know very well. The last Wolven Witcher that returns to Kaer Morhen every year despite the fact that the others only return out of sentiment now, holding to a tradition that is dying, partly because he is helping it die, but is unable to let go of it. Disliking crowds but loving his brothers and his adopted niece.

I thought of Letho who risked everything for those that he loved like family, up to and including his soul but despite that, he lost and is now hated by a significant portion of the continent.

And with good reason.

I thought of Gaetan, mind scrambled by the mutations who barely ekes out a living because to do so means that he has to deal with people, but without which, he would starve.

I know that there are more of them than that. But not that many. Roaming the highways and the byways. Still pursuing the strange profession that we had driven them to because we refused to do those dirty and hard tasks. I know that they are still out there, lone horsemen with strange, inhuman eyes and considering gazes. Swords carried on their back rather than at their sides because they need to preserve their sense of balance and avoid giving away their position with the risk of a dangling sword glancing off a rock.

For that moment, as I stood there in that little tavern in that nebulous area that exists between Temeria and Redania where neither claims it because to claim it would mean war between the two. I stood there looking down at the figure of my best friend, seeing both the Witcher and the man within the Witcher, it seemed to me that I could see all of those Witchers and instead of seeing “Witchers” I saw men, just doing their best to survive with the tools that they had been given.

That is what it is to be a Witcher and that is why they hide behind their emotionless masks and their codes of neutrality which are, in truth, made up from Witcher to Witcher in an effort to preserve what is left of their sanity.

I saw that mask settle over Kerrass’ face as he became the Kerrass that I remembered from all that time ago as I looked up at the Witcher sitting on the horse's back, pale with pain and blood loss and the rain plastering his hair to his skull.

I also remonstrated with myself a little bit. I had been following Kerrass around for several years. I have met and spoken to more Witchers than perhaps anyone else that isn’t a Witcher themselves except maybe Dandilion and he never set out to see many of them. I had spent all that time on the road and I had not seen this. I had not come to this conclusion.

It struck me that maybe it was one of those things that I had always known on an instinctive level but had just never had a reason to articulate it. It was not a Witcher that spent the time to keep me sane after Amber’s Crossing. It was not a Witcher that had done his best to set up a fractious nobleman with a lonely vampire. It was not a Witcher that had dragged a grieving young man out onto the path to help look for his sister and it was not a Witcher that had stood on the shores of Ard Skellig, watching the group of men who had accepted him for what and who he was without reservation or thought, and weeping as he wondered what he would do next.

And it had not been a Witcher that had castigated himself, had ranted and raved and raged at himself for not doing better in an impossible situation.

It was just a man.

I saw all that and I did my best to reach past the mask to speak to the man beneath it.

“Of course I will still be here Kerrass,” I told him. “I promised, remember.”

I tried to smile as I said it, but I don’t think Kerrass saw or heard that. His face sank.

“For a moment there,” he nearly sobbed, “I thought you were going to…”

“Hey,” I strode over to him and hauled him up into a hug. “I’m your friend,” I told him. “Even when you’re being an idiot. I’m just tired, is all.”

He pulled away, nodding and turned towards the window so that I couldn’t see the tears on his face.

“It is getting late,” he admitted.

“Then I shall see you for breakfast in the morning, Kerrass,” I told him. “Will you be here?”

“I will,” he said.

I nodded.

“Then Good night Kerrass, get some rest.” I smiled at a thought. “We have a Ghoul nest to clear tomorrow.”

He laughed and I knew he was going to be alright. For that night at least.

I went to bed but I did not sleep for some time. I was tired, emotionally drained, a little drunk and I had a lot to think about. It was the early hours of the morning and Ariadne had long since bid me good night. It was even possible that she had gone on ahead to Angral to start setting things up for the arrival of all of our goods. Her equipment and library had been as secure as they were going to be and as such, all she was doing in worrying about them was making the Wagoneer’s lives a hell of her own making.

So she had gone on ahead to prepare. I didn’t know that was the case but it felt about right.

So instead, I stared at the ceiling and went over everything that Kerrass was saying to me.

It was one of those nights where I didn’t remember going to sleep, I just… woke up.

There is a strange phenomenon that I have noticed and I have sometimes wondered if I am the only one it happens to. This phenomenon is that I sometimes actively feel better if I have only had a few hours sleep rather than just having an hour or so short of a full night’s sleep. Considerably less sleep often leaves me feeling as good as a full night’s sleep but a few hours less sleep can really mess me around.

I can’t keep up that level of pace any more though but that morning, I woke up fairly early and felt pretty good. I felt manky though and I am self-aware enough to realise that I was probably hungover. I went and made my own use of the bath house again as it might be a while before I could have a proper bath. I dressed and packed my goods apart from one particular satchel which I took back down into the tavern’s main hall and dumped it on the stool next to me as I sat at the table at which Kerrass was eating his customary huge breakfast.

I wanted to laugh, his sword was propped up against the table in easy reach, he had his back to the wall and was in the corner so that every element of him was protected. He was shovelling the food into his mouth with a speed that made my own belly ache and he had every image of a man enjoying the process immensely.

It could not help but remind me of the first time that I had come downstairs from a night in an inn to find Kerrass eating his breakfast. The stance was the same, he was sitting at a similar style table with the sword on his left. Of course now, I know that these are the practised routines of a man who has been involved in combat and knows how to place his sword so that he can get to it as fast as possible. Sitting against the wall so people can’t sneak up on him, eating a huge breakfast because he doesn’t know when he is going to be able to eat next, if at all.

It was a moment of reflection, not just on him, but on me as well. I often sit in the same way where possible with my axe close to hand and my back as protected as it can be whether by a wall or a good friend standing behind me. Often it is not such as in formal situations, or if you are eating with a friend or a lover, and I know that Kerrass will settle for other stances should the occasion occur such as among friends or when you know the environment, but when you are in strange places, the urge is to take as much as you can to secure your personal safety as you can manage.

But he looked at my bag, the one that was so familiar to him and he raised an eyebrow, even as he was lifting a large piece of the streaky bacon that he loves so much up to his mouth.

“Something you want to write down Freddie?” He wondered, chewing sceptically.

I’m not sure how you chew something sceptically, but Kerrass found a way.

“I do as a matter of fact, but that can wait until after breakfast.”

He nodded.

“That’s good,” he said. “No soul searching on an empty belly.”

One of the various bar people noticed me and my nod and disappeared back into the kitchen.

I looked at Kerrass. He looked good as he bent down and carefully dipped a piece of bread into the runny yolk of his fried egg. I had the strangest feeling of life being back to normal.

My breakfast arrived and I saw Kerrass’ eyebrows rising as he looked at my well stacked plate.

“That’s new,” he said.

“Not really,” I told him as I drew my eating knife. “I started heading towards your taste in breakfast at some point when I was travelling with you.”

I started to build an egg and bacon sandwich.

“There is now a team of people that watch what I eat,” I told him. “Apparently, my mood for the day can be pretty accurately guessed by how much and what I have for breakfast that morning. I think Ariadne helps them and I have yet to figure out their formula, but apparently, small breakfasts tell them that I am feeling low. Porridge means that I am spoiling for a fight and there are various other variations.”

Kerrass was laughing.

“What does a big breakfast like that mean?” he wondered.

“That I am recovering from a night of drinking and debauchery, or that I am about to set off on a journey, or that I am going to get into some violence.”

Kerrass nodded sagely.

“It is always better to do violence on a full belly,” he agreed.

“I mean,” I swallowed the mouthful. “I try to mess with them so they don’t know what I’m going to do or what I’m going to say or how I’m going to behave. But I have noticed in the past, that what appointments I am expecting in my diary do seem to change when I decide to change my existing breakfast plans.”

“More people that you dislike when you have had a big breakfast.”

“And more friendly people when I’ve just had porridge.”

Again, Kerrass laughed.

We didn’t say anything for a while after that. Kerrass finished first and he was leaning back and stretching. I finished my meal and leant back in my chair, stretching my arms above my head and giving in to a huge belch that seemed to emerge from the depths of my boots.

Feeling better?” Kerrass wondered with a raised eyebrow.

“You have no idea.” I told him.

He nodded and his face straightened from the smile into something more serious.

“So what have you got that bag out for?” he wondered.

“What this bag?” I gestured to it, all innocently.

“Freddie,” his tones were dire. “You might be more of a warrior now than you have ever been and I will admit that I have yet to figure out a counter to that axe of yours, but I am still pretty sure that I can kick your ass if I want to.”

I let that one go for now. I am more of a warrior now and one of the ways I knew that was the change in myself. I heard the threat and the challenge in his voice and I wanted to rise to it, take him outside and thrash him. While also being secure enough in myself to know that Kerrass could probably still take me.

But I am a warrior now and I wanted to know. After all, ‘probably’ is a big word. Like ‘almost’ and ‘nearly’. As in, “I almost managed to jump across that gap” and “I nearly managed to maintain my grip on that cliff edge” and my favourite, the probably apocryphal final words of General Chaumier of Temeria:

“Don’t worry, they probably can’t hit a barn door at this dist…”

So I swallowed that and returned to an… earlier form of myself as I reached for the bag.

“So,” I began as I unpacked and unrolled parchment. “When all of this began, I was just a lowly little scholar.”

I made a play of rooting around in the bottom of the bag for a quill.

“And I was sent out into the world in an effort both to see what was actually out there, but also to find out about Witchers.”

I carefully put the quill, as well as the spare quill, next to the parchment which had rolled up again out of embarrassment.

“At first, I set about the task of recording your adventures and travels, your methods and your way of life most diligently.”

I pulled out the ink bottle and checked the seal which was, of course, still secure.

“Later on though, after my sister was taken, this subject fell by the wayside and my work became more about a chronicle of our adventures and a commentary on the continent as I found it.”

The small bag of blotting sand joined the ink, along with the small knife that I use to trim the quills.

“This never impacted the sales of the magazine so no-one kept me in line, but it transpires that… occasionally…”

I was examining my chosen quill and shaving off just a small part of it to make it more suitable for writing.

“Just occasionally, it occurs that there might be a question that has not been answered.”

I checked on Kerrass to see how he was taking all of this. He was smiling slightly at my pantomime so I decided that things were going well and that I wouldn’t have to argue with him to get what I needed and wanted.

“Naturally, one of the other charges that I have been given is to record what happened during the rebellion and your account on that matter has been most helpful…”

“What’s the damn question Freddie?” he asked with mock anger. He was trying to stifle a snigger though. “As before I shall warn you that I will answer questions about mood, tradition and method, but I will not give away a Witcher’s secrets.” He was getting into the pantomime now. “I would sooner die than give those out and as such, I would have far fewer qualms about murdering you in your sleep.”

“My question,” I said, posing with the pen in the pantomime of attentiveness and ignoring the threat as being unimportant. “Is this. Why do it?”

“Why do what?” he answered not unreasonably.

I laughed, I couldn’t hold it in any more.

“Why be a Witcher?” I asked. “I don’t know the proper usage. “Does a Witcher Witch? I don’t know…”

Kerrass laughed.

“But seriously,” I began. “I’m talking about the job now. Not the mutations or the ‘what’ of who and what you are. I’m talking about the job. Why do it?”

“To make a living,” Kerrass answered promptly and exactly as I had expected.

“I don’t believe you,” I told him before holding up my hands. “No no, I believe that you think that and I believe that if I ask any other Witcher on the continent that same question, I would get the same answer and I wouldn’t believe them either.”

Kerrass frowned at me, but his eyes were curious.

“If you wanted,” I had put my quill down at some point and I pointed at him. “If you wanted, you could have left the path any number of times, just over the few years that I knew and travelled with you closely and your own accounts of what happened in the North confirms it.”

I started to tick the points off on my fingers.

“After you identified the murderer of my Father and elder brother, Emma would have paid you a ridiculous sum to consult on the safety of our wagon trains and ships. She would probably have done that anyway for all the times that you have kept me alive, but you refused and accepted a payment of a favour from me. Speaking of…

“You woke up the Princess, young crush aside, you could still be living quietly in her Kingdom, guiding people through the thorns and helping those people with the monsters that had moved in. You would be fed, watered, there would be enough luxuries to live well… even love if you wanted it, but you moved on. Yes, you can feed me an excuse about coming to help me, but you could have gone back, you still might be able to,

“Ariadne feels as though she owes you a debt. She loves me, but she has just as much affection, if not of the romantic variety, towards you. You could have stayed on her lands and opened a business concern with the protection of the lady of the manor.

“Helfdan loves you and you could easily have chosen to stay with him and the other survivors of the Wave-Serpent to help Helfdan build the Clan of the Black Boar, you would have been welcomed.

“You could have stayed in Toussaint, lecturing the Knights of Saint Francesca about monster slaying.

“And those are just the factors from our journey’s together.

“You are a skilled fighter. You might not make a good soldier as you are too independently minded, but you would make a good bodyguard or a good caravan guard. Some form of mercenary work. And before you tell me that that’s what you do already I would say that there is a big difference between being paid to fight other men and to fight monsters.

“I imagine the pay would be better too.

“You are amongst the best herbalists in the world. Open a shop, or if you don’t want to risk that, you could make a good living from supplying a shop with the stuff that no-one else knows how to find. Team up with someone, they do front of house, you do the crafting work.

“Be a teacher or a lecturer. I know for a fact that Oxenfurt would love to have you on staff and you are a good teacher. You teach without being condescending and there is always applicability and reasons behind everything that you teach. Do you know how rare that is? You could teach alchemy, anthropology… probably some others.

“You could turn your hand to many other trades and yes, it is true that non-human business men are treated with disgust and fear, that is changing and as I say, have someone more acceptable being the front of the business.

“Fuck, even last night, you told me that you could have stayed in Kovir with friends and even lovers but you chose to move on.”

I considered that.

“Possibly not the best example but there you go…”

“Freddie, I have tried to leave the path before, it never works out.”

“Bollocks,” I told him with a smile. “It might not have worked out then, but things never work out perfectly, you rebuild, you adjust. I grant you that the time they burnt your inn down and killed your wife, that was a good reason to move on. But the others? In which case, why does the path always call you back? One of the definitions of being a farmer is someone that has the courage to replant after the lord has come and commandeered all of your grain for the good of the army, or the rains have come and washed all your crops away. Or a disease wipes out all of your cattle.

“But you didn’t do any of those things, you returned to the path. Even when, arguably, you would be a better killer or guard than you would be a Witcher. More peaceful life too.

“And failing all else, build a cabin in the woods somewhere and live off the land. Don’t tell me that you can’t do that. You can hunt and grow enough vegetables to feed yourself and no-one would ever need to know you are there.”

Kerrass was staring at me, the thoughts were bouncing across his face.

“And it’s not just you either,” I told him.

“Geralt, the quintessential Witcher, by far the most famous Witcher on the continent, is the lord of a manor. He has an all-but wife that he plainly adores and who adores him, for all that they occasionally take far too much delight in clawing each other’s eyes out for my taste. But he is rich. If he sold his more famous mementos of his journey then he would be even more rich. And that’s not including his wine and olive oil crops which are only having their prices elevated because of who he is.

“But every so often, he will travel around and walk the path. A smaller path than others to be sure, but he pulls contracts down from the gate-posts and the notice boards and goes off to risk his life. If he wanted it, he could be the Court Witcher to the court of Toussaint, but he is not.

“Eskel is the closest to a Witcher of old. And I understand he doesn’t like people too much. As I say, I don’t know him well, but he is still famous. He could be living a quiet life somewhere with a nice herb woman or huntress to keep each other warm at night and make a quiet living. I understand he prefers small groups of friends to large scale parties but he could still have that.

“Lambert is the lover of one of the richest Sorceresses on the continent. Since she all but cured the plague she can travel around, living in the best inns and palaces, eating the best food and drinking the best wine and as far as anyone can tell, he and Lady Metz are devoted to each other in a way that is, frankly, baffling to everyone that knows them. But he still keeps himself in trim fighting shape and will still go off to take a contract and earn a bit of money by himself.

“Why? He doesn’t need to and apparently, Lady Metz finds it frustrating but quote “he occasionally… just needs to do these things” end quote.

“All Letho would need to do to become obscure is to grow some hair or buy a really good wig. That and stop looking like a Witcher you know?”

The conversation paused for a moment as Kerrass was staring into space with an expression of horror.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking himself. “I was stuck on the idea of imagining Letho with a head of hair.”

And then I got the image too and shuddered.

“The horror,” I commented.

“I think it’s pride there,” Kerrass agreed. “Pride that keeps him from dressing ordinarily, carrying his swords in his hands or on his hips. And wearing a wig.” He shuddered again. “I think it’s one of his mutations that means that he doesn’t have any hair. Not even eyelashes. Don’t quote me on that though.”

“Ok so pride. But he could go South, or across the mountains North into the tundra, or East into the desert. I know that the Skelligans don’t give a crap about what happened to Foltest and in certain elements of the Empire, he’s a hero. But he stays where he is a wanted man.

“Letho has every reason to stay up in Kaer Morhen and live the life of a hermit or whatever. But every so often, and I know this to be true, he will strap his swords to his back and walk the path somewhere in the Northern, and more remote parts of the Empire where no-one knows, or cares, about who he is.”

Kerrass shifted his weight. I think he was getting curious about the answer himself now.

“I can keep going,” I said. “Gaetan still travels the path and was actually deeply insulted when I got a message to him to say that I was prepared to offer him a job of consulting on the new Witcher schools so he didn’t have to speak with the various people that might upset or aggravate him.

“Uhtred, the last known surviving bear is still out there somewhere although I only seem to hear word of him after he has already gone,

“So why do you do it? When you have every reason to stop, every opportunity to stop… you don’t need to do it for a living any more. So why do it? Why be a Witcher?”

I dipped my pen into the ink and sat there for a while with my pen poised.

Kerrass sat there for a while, staring off somewhere at something that I could not see. I had no idea what was going on there. But I could easily read him. Not just because he was my friend and I had spent so much time working with him and talking with him. But because this was not really my first interview.

At first he had been inclined to brush me off with a handwave and a dismissive answer. But having talked around the point with him for a while, he had started to see my point. He agreed with me and I had driven him into the consideration part of the conversation.

Not a small victory sometimes, depending on the person that you’re dealing with, so now he was thinking about what to say.

“I want…” he said before shaking himself and sitting up to pour himself some more of the watered wine that had been served with breakfast. “I want to dismiss the question,” he admitted. “I want to tell you something like ‘It’s just what I’ve always done’.”

“Is it though?” I wondered. “Don’t get me wrong Kerrass, it might be but if that was true for you, I am not convinced that it would be the same for everyone else involved.

Kerrass nodded and his face sunk into a strange confusion and I decided that he needed a bit of prompting.

“One of my thoughts is that it is a kind of calling. Being a Witcher is a calling?”

Kerrass chuckled. “What, like a priest kind of thing?”

“Why not?”

“No, it’s not that. We were all made into Witchers. Although I do need to tell you that there are Witchers that have permanently escaped the path. Not many, I will admit, but there’s a merchant in Novigrad… Or he used to be a merchant in Novigrad. I have no idea how things stand with him given all of the recent excitement. But there was a merchant in Novigrad who hides his eyes behind some coloured glass. Married a woman and adopted her children and he tells me that people look at him, see the eyes and then dismiss it as being impossible. 'No Witcher would ever stop being a Witcher,’ they tell themselves and then they move on.

“I used to spend the Winter with him sometimes,” He said that with a distant look on his face before shaking himself.

“I can’t speak for everyone,” he warned me with a sidelong glance. “And at first, it is worth saying that the thing that caught me was that it felt… cleaner to do the things that I was otherwise called to do. As I’ve told you, my first departure from the path was to be a vengeful assassin on behalf of a Princess that almost certainly did not approve of the choices that I made on her behalf. So returning to the path at that point was… it was a feeling of returning home to what I knew best.

“There is certainty in the life of being a Witcher and that is also a part of it. There is the monster, slay the monster, lift the curse, get paid, move on. There is a rhythm to that life that is attractive. There is a purity to that life as well which is just as attractive. A freedom of not being beholden to anyone.”

“But that freedom is an illusion,” I argued. “You are only free so long as you get paid. You still have to go to all of the places where you are going to get paid. You still have to go into towns and cities and it is still true, although the Empress has taken steps in an effort to try and protect you, it is still true that a lord who is having issues can command you to do something.

“You might have the freedom to choose whichever road you want, but you are still forced to choose the roads that will lead you towards paying work and a place to be able to spend that money.”

“That is true, and it is also true that I can’t always be choosy about what kind of job I take. I do still need to eat after all and that has got me into trouble in the past.”

He thought for a little longer.

“Another answer that doesn’t feel entirely true, is that it is what I have always done. You say that what we learn to do first is what we do in a crisis and I think that might be part of it. When we need to get back into what we are doing, we return to the path. That task that we are good at, that task that we know what we are doing and know how we need to proceed.

“I think….” He grinned suddenly. “It’s an interesting question and I think there is a temptation to make this all more complicated for ourselves than it actually is.”

He paused for a moment.

“I think… And let me explain this answer before you start jumping down my throat and trying to tell me that it has to be more complicated than that. I think… I think that we do it because we can.”

I wrote the words down carefully, keeping my eyes fixed on the Witcher opposite me.

“The man that is a merchant… well… He could no longer do it anymore, he needed to stop but there is always the thought that he could go back to it and if he is still alive I would suggest that he might return to the path after his wife and children pass on. Or in the same way that your sister’s rivals start to rebel, his rivals might rebel when they realise that he has been old enough to have traded with their grandparents. There will be rumblings of making him step aside to… I am getting off topic.

“I think we do it because we can. We do it for as long as we can stand it and then we take a break to do something else, something less stressful or less deadly. Something that doesn’t affect our souls as much as they used to. But I think that we return to the path because we can.”

He leaned forwards against the table. He had all the hallmarks of a man that had found his subject.

“Monster slaying, being a Witcher or whatever you want to call it, is a nasty job. An unpleasant job. A risky job. No-one wants to do it. After all, the mages that created us literally did so so that they didn’t have to do that job.

“But it is a job that needs doing. There are always going to be monsters. We had nearly wiped them out or driven them out of humanity’s path but then the wars happened and as the people retreated, the monsters expanded and mutated to come to grips with the modern world. They are far more adaptable than people are. And we also now know that the Conjunction of spheres was not an isolated phenomenon.

“There are already more monsters out there. You might not have noticed, or have records of it because you live in one of the cradles of civilization on the continent. But out there, especially amongst the mountainous regions, there are a growing number of trolls, worms and ice drakes. Those monsters that are uniquely suited to the presence of the cold that came through when the Empress stopped the frost at the end of the third continental war.

“There are always going to be monsters out there and even if I, and the people like me, work until we drop and finally exterminate everything that is a monster or that people think of as monsters, then there would still be more monsters to come in the future. We know that now.

“So killing monsters, being a Witcher, there is always going to be a need for it. There are always going to be children that need rescuing, beasts to drive off so that cattle and village food supplies can be preserved, there is always going to be a need for this kind of work.

“Those of us that survive and are the first generation of Witchers, the forerunners of what you and the others are going to create. We are uniquely suited to doing this job. There is going to be no-one better. Don’t get me wrong, you will do your best, but in watering down the methods and the mutations to make the process more survivable and less cruel, you will make lesser Witchers. It cannot be helped and you should not feel bad for doing that. I simply state facts.

“So we do it because we can. Because there is no-one better suited to it than us. Any idiot can wield a silver sword, but not anyone can take that sword into the depths of a cave where no sunlight reaches to fight the thing that sleeps there. Any mage can throw a sign, but if that magic doesn’t kill their quarry, they cannot wield the sword that will keep them safe, or move fast enough to avoid the Griffin’s claws, or be immune to the Kikkimore’s venom.

“We do it because we can, because it is what we are suited for, because we have always done it.

“But most of all, I think we do it, because if we don’t do it. Then someone else will have to do it instead. And those people are far more likely to fuck it up and get themselves eaten, or some other poor sap that was just passing at the time.”

“Pride then,” I nodded.

“At least partially, but also compassion and duty. We do it because that was what we were made for, what we were born for and trained to do. We do it to keep your children safe and if we charge money, we only do so because we need to eat and there are tools that are vital to the job that need to be paid for. And also so that people don’t under appreciate the risks that are involved. If we charged nothing then people would think it was easy and then anyone can do it. Or we would always be pulled this way and…”

He threw his hands in the air.

“But that’s why we do it.”

He laughed.

“Or at least, that’s what I think anyway. I imagine that other people have different answers.”

“Such as?” I wondered.

“I dunno, you’d have to ask them.

We both laughed and he watched as I made some more notes before packing my papers away carefully.

“So,” he began carefully, echoing his question from the night before. “What happens now?”

Just as carefully as he had been, I didn’t look at him. There had been some genuine fear in his voice.

“I dunno Kerrass,” I began, deliberately echoing his tone of voice from earlier. “What do you want to do?”

I risked a look at him then, my question had caught him off guard.

I strapped my bag up, checked that everything was secure and sat back down, watching Kerrass think.

I decided to throw him a lifeline.

“When was the last time that someone asked you that, Kerrass? What do you want to do?”

He seemed startled by the question.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

He was lying. He knew what he wanted to do but he didn’t know how to ask for it.

I grinned internally. It is always an odd moment when the person that used to lead you around, that you used to ask for help and know everything that is needed to know, is now the person that needs leading around and is asking you for help.

“Shall I tell you what I’m going to do?” I wondered aloud.

He looked up at me with curiosity.

“If you don’t want to look at that ghoul nest, a couple of hills over, I kind of have a responsibility to at least have a look at it and come up with a plan as to how to deal with it. I would rather hire a professional for the job but if the professional is unwilling or unable then fair enough.”

Kerrass nodded, his eyes glittering.

“Of course, I would pay a fair price if you wanted and it is always a privilege to watch a professional at work. From there I was going to travel overland towards Angral where I shall spend the next couple of months seeing to the business of the Eastern parts of my realm. I would imagine that I will have to travel to the Pontar border between Aedirn and Kaedwen and look at some stuff, yell at some people and things. But my headquarters will be in Angral for a few months. It is there that I intend to celebrate Yule.”

Kerrass’ smile was growing.

“From there,” I continued. “There is another Winter tournament in Toussaint that I have promised to attend, the Queen of Dorn is going to be there and there are several other friends that I am looking forward to seeing. Guillaume wants the position of “Champion of the Saint” back after Gregoire beat him for it two years ago and now that Guillaume has twins, he is determined to make Toussaint as safe as it can be. And the addition of Sleeping Beauty herself being in the crowd means that there will be a good turnout.

“After that, in the early spring there is going to be a festival of the Skeleton Ship. I have a standing invite and as I didn’t go to the last one for various reasons, I kind of have to go to this one. Apart from anything else, I want to watch The Empress batter some sense into Helfdan and the Queen.”

Kerrass laughed at that.

“After that?... I don’t know. Play it by ear I suppose. I need to be back in the West by the Spring Euinox so… I suppose that’s what I’m going to do.”

Kerrass nodded and his expression turned pensive again.

He was still afraid.

“Do you wanna come?” I asked, trying to keep the tone light.

He took a deep breath and I was astonished to hear his breath shudder.

“Would I be welcome?” He asked, not looking at me.

“Don’t be daft Kerrass,” I told him with just a touch of frustration in my voice. “Emma will be actively upset if you don’t come and more than just her would love to see you, even if it’s only briefly.”

My tone wasn’t getting through to him though.

I sighed.

“Of course you would be welcome Kerrass. Of course you would. I miss you. I’ve missed you since the moment you left. Every day that has passed… Every day Kerrass. Every day that I have known where you are I have had to force myself not to ride out to meet you. To yell at you, to hug you, to knock the fuck out of you.”

Kerrass raised an eyebrow at that.

“I would win Kerrass because you would look at me with pity and I would fight dirty.”

The eyebrow lowered.

“I miss you Kerrass.” I told him. “I long to wander the continent again, even when I can’t and duty prevents me. But even that brief journey and the places that I would go.”

I took a moment to get my breath back. As it turned out, I was just as upset as Kerrass had been.

“I meant what I said Kerrass,” I told him, trying to return to a sense of being calm. “In that small clearing when we were going to find Ariadne. You will always have a place at my hearth. Even if I am not there and if you need help, no matter where I am, just leave a message at any Imperial post in the North and they know to feed you, heal you and speed you to my side.”

I sighed again.

“I love you Kerrass. A better brother than some of the brothers that I’ve had. And Mark was more Father than Father was. Not really a brother but a parent, just as Emma was. Flame but I miss him, and her really.”

I turned away then for a moment before taking a breath and turning back.

“Of course you’re welcome Kerrass. I would be upset with you if you didn’t come. Even as I would strive for understanding.”

Kerrass nodded and took a breath.

“Then I shall go and pack my things,” he said before leaving.

He managed to control himself enough that he didn’t run up the stairs.

I took a moment to steady myself and have something to drink before I followed more slowly. The depth of my own emotion had taken me by surprise and had frightened me a little. In the moment, I had realised just how frightened I might have been that Kerrass might have turned me away. The relief that he would be travelling with me left me feeling dizzy.

So I finished the cup of watered wine on the table and followed Kerrass up the stairs. My belongings were mostly already packed but I sat on my bed for a moment while I collected myself. I told Ariadne that my mission was successful and that we would be departing shortly.

“Is everything alright?” she asked.

I took a moment to consider. Ariadne gets cross with me if I am just glib about such questions and answers.

“I think so,” I told her. “I had not realised how scared I was though.”

She thought about this for a while.

“Then I shall see you both when you get here,” she said before, in a smaller, quieter but firmer tone of voice. “Proud of you, my love.”

And she was gone.

“I love you too,” I said to the empty air.

I secured my weapons around myself and pulled my saddlebags over my shoulders in the way that Kerrass had once taught me before I went downstairs to find Kerrass already saddling his horse.

I took my time, still not entirely trusting myself to speak. Carys was perched on a fencepost just outside the inn watching the pair of us. The rest of the escort would be around somewhere, probably scouting out the nearby countryside I would expect, or watching the ghoul nest while they decided if the Duke of the Pontar would be allowed to go and deal with the matter.

I no longer get to make all of these decisions regarding my own safety.

Kerrass led his horse out into the yard and stood waiting for me while I finished up strapping the saddle into place and making sure the entire tack was in the position that I wanted it to be. He did not speak as he watched, he was wearing his Witcher’s mask and the swords were on his back. Can’t be anything but the Witcher in public after all.

I finally decided that I was as prepared as I could be and led my horse into the late morning sunlight. There were clouds in the sky and although the sunlight was warm, I rather thought it would rain later.

“So,” I said to Kerrass, moving towards him. “Ghoul nest?”

I turned towards the exit of the inn yard and I felt his hand close around my arm. I turned again to look at him, coming to a halt.

It was not quite a perfect Witcher’s face. There was a look of indecision in his eyes and he was searching my face for something, some sign or thought that I could not guess.

Whatever it was, he found it and nodded. The indecision vanished.

“I have something for you,” he said, wrapping the horse’s reins around his fist before he went to his bags and bundles and rooted around in the depths of it, placing unneeded items on his horse’s saddle while he looked for the thing he wanted.

“Originally,” he went on. “I was going to give this to you on your wedding night.” He was speaking quietly and I had to move close to him to hear.

“The plan was that I was going to take you aside at one point in a lull. I was going to pull you aside to a quiet area. I had arranged the matter with Ariadne and Emma that I wanted to share a quiet moment with you and a bottle of apple brandy. They didn’t know much else about what was going to happen though.”

He found what he was looking for which seemed to fit inside his hand while he repacked his other goods.

“I wanted a quiet moment,” he said. “A quiet moment for the two of us, you and I, to take it all in. All the journeys and the monsters. All the laughter and the upset. All the fighting and the small moments of friendship that I value more than I can say. I just wanted there to be a moment to reflect on the boy that you were and the man that you had become. And the Witcher that you had found and the Witcher that you had made me into. I wanted to reflect on that and everything that we had done for each other and tell you just how much you mean to me.”

He finished and came to stand in front of me. He was looking at my chest I think, lost in thought and he just stood there for a moment before he smiled suddenly and looked up into my eyes.

“Obviously that didn’t happen,” he said with a grin and we both laughed.

“I hope you know how much you mean to me too, Kerrass,” I began, feeling a little moved by his speech and I felt as though I wanted to say something but he waved me off.

“I once gave your Mother a pendant,” he said, taking my right arm and pushing a small woollen pouch into my hand. There was something hard, heavy but also a looser component in the bag.

A sickening, horrified feeling crept into my gut.

“I told her that, in the moment of slaying your older brother, she was a Witcher and that she deserved her own pendant. I talked about how we collect the pendants of fallen Witchers and leave them in those places that are sacred to us. I think I gave her a gryphon pendant and I was moved when I heard that she was buried with that same pendant.”

He took his hands away, leaving me looking at the pouch in my hand.

“You are more of a Witcher than some Witchers I have known,” Kerrass told me. I might have been imagining things but his voice sounded heavy and thick. “And there is no-one else I would rather call brother.”

I looked up at him and his face swam before my eyes.

“Kerrass I…”

There were no words.

I knew what it was, even before I tipped it out into my hands.

A small nub of metal landed in my palm, chased by a length of chain. I shook it until I could see the face of a snarling cat that was hissing at me.

“I don’t think he likes me,” I tried for a joke.

“He doesn’t,” Kerrass agreed. “They never do. But he will take care of you if you learn to trust him.”

I held the cat so that it glittered in the sunlight. I looked back at Kerrass who gestured for me to put it on.

It felt heavy around my neck and the metal was cold against my chest.

“I am honoured, Kerrass.” I heard my voice shake. “Honoured… Truly… I… I don’t know what to say.”

I held my hand out.

Kerrass looked at it for a moment before taking it and using it to pull me into a hug.

“Love you Brother,” he whispered in my ear forcefully.

“Love you too.” I told him.

We pulled apart and seemingly by mutual agreement, we busied ourselves with our horses for a moment with our horses before climbing into the saddle. I saw Carys nod and jog off towards the path.

“So…” I began. “Ghoul nest?”

“Let’s go and have a look at them at least, Brother” Kerrass agreed. “I need to have a look before I can figure out how much to charge you.”

I laughed and I pointed in the direction that I knew we had to go.

It felt oddly like coming home.

The sun was shining, the road was firm beneath my horse’s hooves, I had a weapon at my side and a blade across my belly. And I was travelling with a Witcher to hunt some monsters.

Yes, it felt like coming home.

(A/N: This is it. This is the end. If this was a book… A very long book or series of books that the critics would call meandering and bloated, then this would be the last page and the final full stop. And if you want to stop here then fair enough. It’s as good a place as any.

But I am not quite done with these characters yet. I have been writing about Kerrass and Freddie, even when Freddie was occasionally called Francis and Franklin, since 2016 and I have the urge to finish things.

It always frustrated me at the end of books when the authors would just leave the characters there and I would never learn what would come afterwards. What would those characters do? How long would they live? What happened after these events?

That, and I need to say my own farewell to them. So this is the end of the story. For the next “chapter” I intend to write a series of little vignettes about what happens to each of the characters in my version of the Witcher world. I will make no pretense about it… I have no shame in admitting that I am a hopelessly optimistic romantic and that might give you some idea of what to expect over the days, weeks, months and years and even centuries that some of these characters live on for after these events.

But if you prefer to imagine that Freddie and Kerrass went on from here to have many adventures and live on in the continent, imagining what they do and constructing your own headcannon for what they do and what happens, then you go for it.

So if you want to stop here, then thank you for reading.

If not, then I shall see you next time which will also, hopefully, include some news about what I intend to do next.

Thanks for Reading.)