I will do the best I can to keep these characters true to themselves; while I have not yet read this book series, I have played and greatly enjoyed the game based upon them.
There was no fanfare. Curled into a fetal position in the belly of a rotting cow, Siegfried found that of all things to be one of the most principal on his mind. Maggots crawled over his arms and legs, as well as across his face. Closing his eye with a wince, he shook his head back and forth as one of them crawled over his eyebrow. He gritted his teeth against the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, his greasy hair plastered to his dirty face by sweat. What little light that seeped into the rotting belly was mottled by pieces of putrid flesh and muscle, the point of the ribs slowly being revealed as the sun, heavily shaded by the thick canopy of the swamp trees, sank further and further in the sky.
He was thankful that the cow had not been with milk, and dared not think of the revolting smell such an extra load would bring in death. The few remaining intestines had been difficult to pull out in order to make enough room for himself, his gloves spattered heavily with blood, and soaked with organic matter. He had managed to wipe off a sizable amount of it on the tall grass nearby, but much of it would remain to crust over. It hadn't been enough time, though comfort was irrelevant in terms of survival. Still, Siegfried felt rather disgusted by the fact that the cow's intestine was wrapped around his calves.
Somewhere outside of his temporary shelter lay the bodies of his brothers, sodden with mud and filthy water, shields dented or broken, swords driven into Scoia'tael assailants, or lying just inches from outstretched hands. Dropped banners lay upon the ground, mud caking them to point where the original color was not discernible. Arrows were driven into the trunks of trees, and axes were stuck in the ground, or in the necks of knights. A feminine hand, bent crookedly to the side due to a snapped wrist, remained aloft in the air a small distance below him.
"Filthy, putrid, dh'oinne!" That was the very least of the insults the female elf had flung at him once she managed to rip his helmet off of his head in a mindless fury. Deprived of her quiver and bow, the location of the former of which Siegfried was not privy to, and the latter he had snapped over his knee, her fighting style had degenerated to something much more visceral. So much for the elven conceit of superiority to the lower human beings, her statuesque body striking at him with limb and nail much in the vein of a drowner, and her eyes ablaze, her face contorted into a guise oddly resembling a rabid rodent, her teeth viciously bared.
She'd fought dirty, grasping fistfuls of his blonde hair, and yanking on it. Siegfried had responded in kind by driving his knee up against her groin to shove her off of him as tufts of his own hair floated down to the ground past him, or were stuck under her fingernails along with fragments of his skin, and droplets of his blood. Scratches and gouge marks from her nails, particularly along his cheek, only added to the adrenaline and sheer rage he felt, his sword drawn. Her long black hair was wild, her headdress having been knocked to the ground in the struggle, one of its horns scraping along his jaw line. Fragments of feathers remained in his nose, stinging his tearing eyes from the irritation. His one eye was closed against the spit she had attempted to expel into it.
She ran at him manically, her hands splayed out before her. Stepping back a leg and biting the side of his lip, Siegfried propelled his sword forward. The huntress' jaw dropped, her eyes stretching wide as her hands fell to her stomach, her knees buckling. Her head hung, with one hand shooting up to her mouth to catch the blood that was beginning to fall from it in a gagging cough. Clenching his free hand in a fist, Siegfried flung it across the side of her head, snapping it to side. Her eyes rolled wild, her skin rapidly lost color, and her mouth gasped out a surprised breath.
Her head rolled of its own accord as she coughed harder, her hand gripping her neck as she choked on the blood that slipped down her trachea. Blood gurgled in her mouth as she shook violently, her hips grinding into the ground as she attempted in vain to sidle back off of the sword that impaled her. Her nose began to bleed a slow-falling stream that dribbled onto her cracked top lip. Bent and crooked to the side, she locked eyes with the knight, her chest heaving upward, and her breasts bouncing with the moment. Her thin shoulders shuddered, the hardness of the eyebrows that formed her glare slackening. Siegfried coldly returned her stare, his tight grip unwavering. Her eyelids dropped as a strangled, liquid noise forced its way out of her, and she collapsed, falling completely over the blade, Siegfried catching her contorted frame on one shoulder.
Within the belly of the cow, he clutched his blade, coated with the blood of the heifer, and as well as that of the huntress and her brethren, close. The sweat on his face and neck stung at his wounds, furthering the discomfort. Burying his cheek in the chain mail that covered his arm, Siegfried wondered as to what sorts of infection he would develop from all of this. Wounded again in the swamp, he hoped that this would not become a trend, an axe having cut shallowly into the right side of his chest, his tunic and mail torn. He'd already yanked the shaft of an arrow out from the small of his back, the embedded barb forcing him to lie on his side. The rose design on the front of his tunic was hopelessly torn from a botched stab wound.
Emotionally and physically drained from the bloodbath of the day, he entertained the notion of the earth swallowing him to reunite him with his fallen brothers. Was this what his father felt when he lost to the manticore, broken, tired, and at long last, ready to bid death welcome? Poring over the short-handed archive of his sire, Siegfried had selfishly wondered on occasion whether his father had thought about him or his mother in his time of dying, when the monster's eyes had glared back into his.
Now he found his answer, and he was utterly disappointed. Modeling himself in the guise of the pious Eyck of Denesle, he had adjusted his temperament so, despite his mother's words to the contrary. "You are your father's son, Siegfried, but you must remember that you will not be him." At least, that was the gist of the conversation that his memory could recall. He doubted little that his mother had been more eloquent with her point than how he had given her credit, but at the time, he was more focused upon masking his disappointment by busying himself with the task of adjusting his sword at his belt.
Whatever the case, he felt the instinct of battle. Staring into the eyes of the huntress, his emotion toward his men had ceased existence, the forefront of his thoughts occupied with the goal of survival. The very real fear of her gouging out his eyes with her fingernails had taken all precedence over the possibility of being able to bury all of these lost knights, and giving them the proper last rites. But now, the guilt of it came crashing back. If, and that was a small chance to begin with, he was found, he would have to the bear the weight of his shame on his back.
Siegfried turned his head further away from the dying light of the day. Not even suited to be his father's son, he had hid in this carcass to preserve his own life. Perhaps the maggots and he found a kinship in it. But there had been no choice, rationality trumpeted. His men had either lain dead upon the ground, or very extremely close to death due to their wounds, the rapidly rising water levels, the vicious local fauna, or a combination of the three. He'd managed to force a drowner off of the still-living knight it had been feasting upon, the latter squealing and flailing his arms about as the fiend tore off his facial flesh. The sight of the hanging skin, its blood and juices dripping, suspended in the teeth of the bug-eyed, sickly blue-scaled, abdominally bloated abomination set him off immediately. His sword lopped the head clean off to roll upon the ground. Seizing his prize, Siegfried yanked the stolen face from between the creature's jaws, albeit not without tearing off part of the left eye socket, and dashed over to his comrade. Collapsing to his knees with a gasp of air, he promptly dropped the face in despair upon seeing the knight, his skinned face staring back at him with green eyes wide open.
His lack of medical expertise effectively tied his hands. After the bout with the echniops, he had applied himself to the medical books, but not to the extent this warranted. True, he could bandage a wound, and even set a broken limb, but facial reconstruction was far beyond his capability. Grasping the knight's hand between his, Siegfried found it hard to hold back childish tears of frustration as the dying man whispered, his eyes imploringly rolling toward him, "Help me…"
Any man of any station could become a knight, and so the threads of began to unravel in Siegfried's mind as he bent his stiff right leg, the intestine squishing around it. Doric, formerly a peasant farmer, had been mourning the death of his sister, a milkmaid whose child had survived the birthing. He had fallen from the arrow of an elf before ever seeing his newborn nephew. The skinned man, Calhoun, had led a storied existence in his life. Kidnapped as a youth and sold into slavery, he had escaped to keep a nomadic lifestyle for five years before joining the Order. Owain, once a coddled noble, had grown up with a romanticized image of knighthood, much like Siegfried. Needless to say, it had crashed down upon his head when an axe had amputated both of his legs, and a boot had stomped down hard upon his skull.
He didn't the pity the dead in the slightest. But the idea of carrying their lives with him burdened Siegfried heavily. He tried not to think of it, but he also did not long for the warmer and cleaner lodgings of his post. No, he could not let his mind drift away, for despite his desire to be swept into oblivion by the swamp water, he still clung bitterly to life. And so it made the sensation of the moist, putrid air, and the squishy, squirming surface that much more of a glory.
He envied Geralt. A witcher's life was a lonely one, but that released the burden. No, that wasn't correct; Geralt had friends, as demonstrated by the party to which he had been so graciously invited. There was the bard, Dandelion, a mentioned dwarf, Zoltan, and the medic, Shani. Siegfried vaguely remembered her excitement at seeing him again, and although that did give him a slight smile, he found it did not hold the previous warmth it once had when he had returned to his bunk that night. Hands clasped upon the pillow behind his head, he had entertained the notion of singing more songs to the gentle lady, and see her smile again. She rightfully deserved another smile, the weariness of her occupation at St. Lebioda's clearly showing upon her face at the party in the guise of dark circles under her eyes.
Was this how one of the dead felt, once he or she was placed in the burial pit outside of that hospital? Certainly, Siegfried knew the dead could not feel, not anymore, but here he lay, squashed within a mangled corpse on deeply disturbed earth. Did Shani accompany the bodies as they were taken away? No, probably not, as there were far too many sick. He wondered if she felt any sadness upon making the proclamation of a death, or if the demands of her line of work, and a history of already having served on the battlefield of Brenna, desensitized her from such. He had once wondered if he could hear tales of the battle from her, but decided to let the bad memories lie.
He remembered that pulsing adrenaline when he had fought the cockatrice alongside Geralt, the worry for his comrade's life and the pride in avenging his father driving the high of it even further. But by contrast, the battle with the huntress had been one of sheer pain, the adrenaline yanking out a primal beast from him, one that still made his fingers shake with the sheer thought of an image of himself, teeth gritted and hair flying wild, stabbing his assailant with a primal lack of control.
He had sung of hope to Shani, Geralt, and Dandelion, but felt it slipping between his fingers now. Perhaps it had been wrong to launch into a political debate over the position of the Order, but the drinking of wine and the merriment of music had soothed all opinions present. He doubted little Geralt's judgment in making friends, and perhaps if he met Zoltan himself, he too would be fond of the dwarf, but for now, Siegfried found that difficult to reconcile after the meat grinder he had been forced through. He had seen the monster in the non-human today, although it was not the only one. The human monster that dwelled within spooked him tremendously, shaking him to the core.
Holding up a hand, he swatted away a maggot that was attempting to feast upon the gash in his breast. Yet, despite this hideous revelation, his body functioned normally. He still breathed, and he still warded off unwanted intrusions and hitchhikers. He knew would have to exit the corpse eventually, the water from his canteen depleted, and rapidly collecting in his bladder. A bird unknown to him called out as the shadows grew ever longer.
He remembered "forging" a toy sword out of a piece of wood as a child, and poking it in the direction of a little white rat that the old smoky gray kitchen cat had been too lazy to capture in her paws. In a flurry of skirts, the maid had borne him off, fretting and exclaiming about him catching a disease from the ball of fur. Retrospectively, he felt a hand grasp his insides at how much of a near miss it had been, what with this plague's marriage to the vermin. Vizima's growing population of exterminators stalked the gutters and pantries much in the vein of how he had ardently patrolled the sewers. Whole wheels of cheese and loaves of bread with tell-tale bite marks had been thrown to the streets for the beggars to grasp and feast upon. He gave his kindness whenever he could, despite the fact that it was sorrowfully meager for such a massive problem.
The hacking old woman he had offered a red apple to had swatted it out of his hand to bounce and skid down the road. Careening into the alley, it had smashed into a pile of refuse. Spitting at his boots, she snapped, "I don't need yer damn charity!" Glancing over her shoulder as she shuffled away, Siegfried spied a little dirty girl, her faded pink dress torn and her feet bloodied from a lack of shoes, fall to her knees to grab it. She promptly jammed it halfway into her mouth for a large bite, her matted brown hair bouncing. Siegfried started toward her, his hand outstretched, but she jerked at the sound of his clanking armor, and darted further into the alley.
But this beast within remained, and it haunted him, as he could find the idea difficult to fathom. Within the virtuous light lay a sleeping devil even he could not defeat, for as to its bane, he was clueless. He chided himself against the ghastly thought in order to give himself a sense of normalcy. The non-humans had their own beast within, the huntress was evident of that. He could at least defend humankind from it.
Sleep was hard to come by, be it from continuously having to fend off the maggots, or from the fear of drowning, or being discovered. He couldn't remember the occasions when he had dozed off, but he knew for certain he must have, given the rising of the sun without the first graying of the dawn. He ultimately decided to burst forth from his cocoon upon the graying of the second dawn. His shelter was worn down to the bone, and the discomfort was too difficult to bear for another day. The ascent was slow, the disentangling of his legs arduous. Propping himself upon his elbows, Siegfried a spat a maggot from his lips. He limbered his legs, stretching each one slightly from having been so long without much movement. Wincing at the tingling sensation, he stood carefully, his back brushing against the cleft of the rib cage.
Staggering slightly on his feet, he attempted to take a breath of fresh air, but immediately closed his mouth in disgust. Death and decay still hung heavily. He couldn't help but imagine how badly he would smell once he returned to civilization, caked in blood and mud and smelling slightly of piss and metal. Following the hand of the dead huntress, he came to stand above her body, crooking his head slightly to see that the right side of her face, upended to him in profile, had been stripped down to what little muscle remained over her bone. Where her wild eye had once stared at him, a gaping black hole remained. Siegfried backed away from the hole to stumble off, leaving the empty eye socket behind.