A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

by Spike368

Sent out to gather the knowledge of the real world. A young scholar from the University of Oxenfurt finds a wounded Witcher on the steps to the inn where he was staying. So he starts gathering the material for his journals. Rated T for language I will be publishing this story on Royal Road /profile/349358

183. Chapter 183

The scientific mind is a wonderful thing.

That part of your mind that spends its time analysing the experiences that it is going through, the things that are happening to the body that it inhabits and trying to figure out the world that it sees and is taking part in. One of the bigger examples of this is the way that my mind gets fascinated by things.

One of those things is the way in which my body wakes up. I am intrigued by the sensations that I experience, the order in which they come to mind and the way that they register.

For instance, in the morning that I am discussing, the first thing that occured to me was that something had woken me up but given that the thing that had woken me up was now in the past, I had no idea what it was. So the first thing that occured to me, the first thing that I felt, was the warm, comforting weight of the woman that was lying next to me and across me.

These pleasures don't happen often, especially given the woman that is my chosen sleeping partner, but when they do happen, you must enjoy them whenever they occur.

Then it occured to me that something had woken me up. This may sound backwards and I completely agree but there it is. Take it up with my early morning brain that was still struggling to free itself from the grasp of slumber.

But then the stimulus that had started me off on the path towards waking up occured again. Someone was tugging on my left arm.

My left arm because the right arm was trapped against the body of the woman and I was not particularly inclined to move it, or her.

"Lord Duke?" Someone whispered. "Lord Duke?"

Damn it.

I opened an eye to gaze into the earnest and plainly terrified face of my squire. He's a nice lad. He's been sent to me by the Knights of Saint Francesca in an effort to educate him a bit in how the world works on the outside of the realm of Toussaint. He treats me with a kind of awe which is both mortifying and gratifying in equal measure. He doesn't understand that although I am a Duke and he is a follower of a Duchess, he doesn't understand that I am not equal to the Duchess in question, due to a complicated series of legal and political treaties. He just hears "Duke" and "Duchess" and gets a bit confused.

As I say, he's a nice lad.

"Wht?" I muttered, still trying to enjoy the sensation of waking up next to a beautiful naked woman.

"Lord Duke, I know that you don't like to be disturbed until later in the day, especially when the Duchess…"

"Spit 't 'ut," I managed, not entirely awake yet.

My square, who goes by the name of Gautier paled slightly.

"Well, milord Duke… It's just that…."

I narrowed my eyes.

He closed his own eyes and just went for it.

"You asked to be woken up early."

I had indeed asked to be woken up early.

"So you come in here," I hissed, "despite the fact that my wife, the Duchess, is here, asleep and possibly in a state of undress…"

"I'm sorry Lord Duke, I'm sorry." He whimpered.

"Get out." I snarled. "And open a drape on the way out,"

The poor boy fled and had to come back to open a drape before fleeing again.

The woman next to me stirred as the early morning sunlight broke into the room and crossed her head. I have situated the bed deliberately to take advantage of the natural aid towards waking up.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Vampires are not naturally morning people. Who would have thought it?

"You are very cruel to that boy," came a voice from somewhere within the depths of the pile of pillows and tangled dark hair.

"I know," I told the mass, doing my best to crawl from beneath the covers while keeping as much of the warmth inside the blanket cocoon as I could.

"But Guillaume tells me that he has a problem with believing that anyone that is being nice to him is virtuous. So all anyone would ever have to do in order to bribe him or… you know. Would be able to…"

An arm reached out and caught me before pulling me back into bed with a strength that was impossible to ignore. I might have grown stronger in the intervening time but there is nothing that I can do when an Elder Vampire decides that she is not finished with me.

I didn't really have time to see her before she was kissing me and holding onto me firmly.

"Darling," I managed when I could get some breath back and she went in for a cuddle rather than anything further. "I don't want to be late and to miss him."

Ariadne made some noises that suggested that such matters were unimportant when she required extra kisses from her husband.

"You were the one that suggested that I need to get up early."

"I was a younger person then," she told me gravely. "I have gained time and wisdom and have decided that such things are unimportant."

"You said them last night."

"Yes," she told me seriously. "As I say, I was younger then."

I fought back, pushing her onto her back and gaining some measure of vengeance with the kissing and the cuddling. I always enjoy that because there is no way I would be able to if she didn't want me to. Then I tickled her. Which is another thing that I have learned… Along with not being a morning person, my wife is very ticklish.

"Enough," she begged, sounding a little breathless. "We need to stop or I will keep you in bed for the rest of the day."

I looked down at her with her hair all mussed up, her lips slightly parted and laughter dancing in the depths of her eyes. First I wondered how I could ever have thought of this woman as being emotionless. Then I wondered how I could have gotten so lucky to be with her.

"You assume you had much choice in the matter," she smiled.

"You know I don't like it when you read my mind,"

"Yes you do," she declared confidently. "Especially when it means that I can prolong things in matters of pleasure."

"Yes, well…"

"Fascinating, you are blushing. You were not blushing last night when you…"

I silenced her by kissing her.

"I had better go," I said after a long moment.

"Yes you had better."

I extricated myself from the now tangled sheets and blankets and for a moment I enjoyed the cooling Autumn air before pulling over my wooden legs and strapping them into place, while Ariadne rearranged the bedclothes around herself.

"Besides, I wasn't reading your mind," she told me while she beat the pillows back into an acceptable shape. "It was written all over your face."

I decided to let that one go while I was pulling some trews on.

"Are you going to stay in bed for a bit?" I wondered.

"Just for a bit," she agreed, rolling around for a bit to get the blankets good and tucked in around herself. "But they're packing up my laboratory equipment today and I need to supervise."

I picked up my shirt and pulled it over my head. "You know, you could always have two labs. One in Angral and one here."

"It's not the same Freddie," she protested and I laughed, hiding it behind the pulling on of my tunic.

My boots slipped on over my wooden feet and I tucked one of my daggers in the groove that had been carved for it on the inside of my left leg. Then I turned back to the bed to tie my belt around myself to find that Ariadne was watching me.

She still looks so beautiful to me in these moments that it takes my breath away. One of the sheets was beginning to fall off her shoulders, her hair was a mess of tangles and she was smiling gently at me.

"You do not need to be nervous," she told me gently. "It will all come right."

"I know," I told her.

"It will… It did with me."

"I know that too."

"Then go, we will see you in Angral in a couple of weeks. No more than a month Freddie."

"I know, I know, Ameiko has already threatened me with violence should I be late."

"I love you," she said softly,

She still gets nervous saying that sometimes, as though the words might terrify me and drive me away.

"I love you too," I told her. "Do you want me to shut the drapes on the way out?"

"Yes please." She told me, pulling the blankets over her head. "Daylight, phooey."

I chuckled as I tucked the belly knife into my waist and picked up my axe, slinging it over my shoulder and retying the drapes as I left.

Ameiko was waiting for me outside the room.

"Good morning Ameiko," I told her.

She responded by holding out a scroll.

"General Gaubert sent this and wants you to know that although he is pleased with the recruitment numbers that we have managed to make, there is still room for improvement."

She followed me down the corridor, for a woman roughly two thirds my height with a habit of wearing tight skirts, she can move surprisingly fast.

"Today is not a working day Ameiko, we are moving to Angral." I teased her.

"It might not be a working day for you Lord Duke, but for the rest of us, the continent does not grind to a halt."

"Fair enough,"

"Also, Intelligence suggested that you might want to read these papers on why recruitment is so far down,"

"Queen Regent resenting the handover of troops?"

"You would have to read the report to find that out Milord."

"Ameiko?"

"Intelligence was quite insistent that you read the report," she sniffed, which meant that she was done with that topic. "Also he wants to let you know that Jarl Holger Blackhand is now openly accepting advice to suggest that Coulthard shipping can be raided again,"

"Has he done it yet?"

"Not yet, but…"

"Is that also in the report?"

"There are multiple reports."

"There always are from Intelligence."

"Indeed,"

I looked at the tiny woman who walked next to me as we moved through the castle towards the hall.

"How are things going between the two of you?" I wondered.

"He is still of the opinion that I am too young for him."

"Are you not…?"

"200 years older than him? Yes. But he says it's about the appearance of the matter."

"Tell him that I said there is nothing quite like the experience of an older woman,"

"I have already tried that tactic,"

We moved down some stairs and into the entrance way.

"Then tell him that if he hasn't got his act together by the time I get back then I will sick the Duchess on him and then he can stand there and talk to her about age differences."

Ameiko made a little noise. She has a few of them now which is how she properly expresses herself. In this case this one was "I am done talking about this subject now and I would like to move on."

I grinned, I always like needling the little Yuki Onna. It reminds me of how much alike we all are.

"There is also a letter from Lady Eilhart asking whether or not you have any more thoughts on the sites for potential Witcher Schools? And a letter from Lord Voorhis briefing you on the current thinking of the Empress regarding the potential for accepting suitors."

"She still doesn't like the idea?" I guessed.

"It is not a large letter," she agreed.

I sighed and held out my hand for the small sheaf of scrolls that she gave me.

"Thank you Ameiko," I said, moving through to the dining hall.

"Thank you Lord Duke," she said before turning away.

Carys was waiting for me in ambush while I waited to get my breakfast.

"No," I told her.

"Just a couple of guards," She insisted. "Milord I must insist, a couple of guards."

"No," I said.

"Milord…"

"For a start, for you a couple of guards means a couple of dozen guards." I put the bundle of messages down on the table next to where I was going to eat and moved to the coffee pot.

I have acquired a taste for it over the years since Ariadne introduced me to it.

"Secondly, do you mean to tell me that your husband is so terrible at his job that I would be in danger between here and where I'm going?"

"That's unfair,"

"But you expect me to get attacked?"

"I expect that if there were a hundred safe roads, and only one which led into a monster's den, you would leap into the monster's den while wondering whether or not it would be fun."

I considered this as I sat down.

"Not an unfair comment," I told her. "But I have someplace I need to be. I promise that I will take the direct route and from there, success or failure, I will head straight to Angral. And I will have my axe and be discreet with it all."

"But I could send just a couple of guards with you,"

"No,"

She sulked a bit before stalking off.

My breakfast started off then, a plate of bacon and sausage with eggs and toast appeared in front of me with a servant heading off. Only for my Castellan to sit next to me. I was at least gratified to see that he was still straightening his chain of office. Breakfast is a movable affair in a working castle, something that I am getting used to. Ariadne and I often have breakfast brought to us in the morning, as do many of the men and women that have offices to work in. The hall is reserved for those men that are coming off, or going onto, shifts or are about to depart in some way. Other than the hot drinks, there are regular pots of porridge for both the sweet and savoury tastes and the Kitchen is constantly making eggs, bacon and sausages. You can make your preferences known in advance though and the Kitchen is well aware of what I am going to want if I turn up in the main hall to eat.

"Beaten you out of bed this morning Lord Granger," I tried while I speared a sausage with my eating knife.

He ignored that. Lord Granger has an incredible ability to just ignore the things that I say so that he can get on with the important things, which is to run my castle for me whenever I have other things to do. Which is nearly always.

"General Grisholm informs me that we will need some new timber for the ammunition for the ballistae. The current timber cannot maintain the strain and simply shatters upon launch."

"Have you found another supplier?" I asked as I took a mouthful of something meaty.

"We have, but it needs to come from a further distance."

"Then get what he needs."

"Yes Lord Duke. Also there is the matter that a number of the castle staff seem to think it is appropriate to urinate from the top of the walls into the ditch surrounding the castle."

"And?"

"We have nightsoil wagons for a reason Milord, the stench can become…"

"And what would you have us do about it? People need to piss and sometimes it's tricky to get to a chamber pot."

"Even so, Dr Shani insists on the danger of disease with so many living and working in confined quarters…"

"What do you suggest?"

"A fine," he answered properly. "Any time someone is caught not using the proper methods then they are fined."

I shook my head.

"I will not encourage people to tell tales on their fellows. If we yell, people become angry. Instead, we make them laugh at their fellows."

"Very good Milord."

"Anything else? I am eager to get underway."

"Mother Iona wished to speak to you,"

"Of course she does," I took a quick gulp of coffee. "And Castellan?"

"Yes milord?" He enquired politely.

"Don't turn the place into a monastery while I'm gone. It took ages for me to be able to hear laughter in the halls when we came back last time."

"I shall endeavour to rediscover my sense of humour any day now milord. I understand that I have not looked for it in the servant's quarters."

He left.

I took the time to read one of the scrolls that Ameiko had given me while I ate. If I was not careful, my advisors and entourage would fill the day to the point that there was not enough time for me to actually go.

And yes, it would seem that the Empress was still not receptive to the idea of accepting suitors. She had a common phrase that she kept using which was "And who do you suggest I marry?" To which, Lord Voorhis, myself and several others were tired of coming up with variations of "You are the Empress of the continent, marry whoever you like."

It was not going well. Lord Voorhis had written to advise me that he was retreating from his position for now and begged me to take up the slack in the meantime.

Another letter was a report about the increased viability of the new Witcher mutations that Lady Eilhart had been working on. There is a balancing point where the mutations need to be viable, useful and not deadly to place in someone. We could have people survive the mutation but then they were not useful enough. Or they would be useful but the subject would not survive.

We had some successful tests with volunteers and condemned criminals. But those mutations tended not to be of the most useful variety.

One of the Generals on the board of advisors had suggested that we were putting all of our eggs in one basket. We were thinking in terms of one person who could do everything that a Witcher needed to do. Why not have a travelling team of people that could do the job of one Witcher. This means that training wouldn't be intensive and there would be the ability to specialise. The researcher would be better at researching while not having to worry about swordsmanship and the Alchemist could worry about potion brewing while not worrying about Magical abilities.

The idea did have some merit and I had turned the letter over to scribble some notes with a piece of charcoal while my left hand continued to shovel food in my face.

"Lord Duke," Mother Iona doesn't like to sit down when she has official business. She likes to stand in front of people with her hands clasped together in a way that she has decided means that she is being holy.

"Mother Iona," I answered while finishing my thought and my last piece of bacon.

"It is all very well this period of the year when you move from Coulthard Castle to Angral, just as it is when you move from Angral to Coulthard Castle in the spring."

"I'm sensing a 'but' coming."

"But…"

"There it is," I grinned. Mother Iona is another one that I just enjoy needling.

"But… It is also true that when the cat's away, the mice will play. Winter in Coulthard County means that there are more and more missionaries that come into the area to try and persuade the locals that their existing Yuletide celebrations are heretical and dangerous. If you were here instead then you would be able to keep an eye on such things so neither the Eternal Flame, nor the Great Sun, would be able to come and try to forcibly turn people to that worship against their will."

It was not a new argument, or a new problem.

"If I was in Coulthard Castle then those self same missionaries would be able to go into Angral to be able to try and convert them there. And that danger is more profound as those people are more isolated and have more to fear from those that would preach that Ariadne is a monster, to those that would preach that she is just a woman that is pretending on the grounds that monsters don't exist."

"Also, there is the matter of the fact that you lose months out of your calendar travelling backwards and forwards between the two places."

"You say that is a waste, but I see it as important," I told her. This too was not a new argument. "In travelling, the people of our lands see us travelling and feel more secure in that. As it is, we spend far too much time using portals to get about."

Her official veneer cracked as she smiled.

"The Witcher training in you showing through," she teased

I laughed.

"Yes and no, On the one hand I know that it's only one in a hundred portals that go wrong and leave a man a hundred miles in the air, or below ground, or cut in half or… whatever and yes, sooner or later it occurs to me that the odds are not in my favour. But the other thing is that, in travelling, we get to see what's actually out there."

"Oh yes, I am sure you see what's actually out there with your hundred guards and your servants and your confessors and…"

I laughed again.

"Which is why this time, I am going alone…"

"Hardly incognito with that dreadful axe,"

"And when we do travel as a group, I have riders and advisors out to find out what it's like out there."

"You could send riders and advisors out when you are safely in the castle as well."

"Or in Angral." I pointed out.

She sniffed at that.

"Look," I began. "I know that you are not comfortable with the move and you dislike moving to Angral…"

"It is not secure, you are too far away from the seats of power…"

"Which is why I trust you and Grantham and Danzig and the rest to deal with it."

She pursed her lips in displeasure.

"You have the power Mother Iona, use it. You are more intelligent, kinder and wiser than any of those bastards that would try and take the traditions away from our people. Use those things… You are a powerful woman now and I charge you with the protections of our people. You don't need me to do that do you?"

She stiffened.

"I thought not," I told her. "You are more than just a Priestess to Melitele. You are an advisor to the Duke and the leader of his religious council. Act like it."

"They won't listen to me,"

I made my voice hard. "Then make them listen."

She nodded unhappily.

"Safe travels Lord Duke,"

"Thank you Reverend Mother,"

I still had some work to do to build up her confidence. I have seen it in her when she stands up before angry men with fire and brimstone sermons. She fights them with kindness and empathy and it is always fun to watch as they have absolutely no idea how to combat that. It's like watching a swordsman trying to cleave water in two. But she only uses those skills and that ability when she, or others are under direct attack. She needs to be able to bring out those tools at will rather than as a reflex.

I read another letter from Madame Yennefer about some things that she wanted to add to our latest book. After Jack we had written on the Elder and the Schattenmann. We were currently working on something regarding the Rumplesteldt. Apparently Witcher Eskel had made contact with the being and was wintering in Toussaint so that he, Yennefer and I would be able to talk it all over. I am excited about this project as this will be the first that is outside of my experience.

It was a large bundle of notes though and I rolled them back up and stuffed them inside my tunic so that I could read them during the journey. A move that would doubtlessly piss the lady off herself but… I am not as afraid of her as I used to be. Still pretty afraid just… not as afraid.

I realised that I was stalling.

"GAUTHIER," I bellowed.

"Yes Lord Duke?" My Squire extricated himself from the shadows where he had been staring longingly at the coffee pot. He is too young for it as Ariadne has declared that over dependence on Coffee at so young an age can lead to addiction and a need for it later.

"What do I need Gauthier? I am nearly ready to depart."

His forehead creased in thought.

"Lord, Your bags were all packed last night and I…"

"Think bigger Gauthier. What do I need to travel?"

"Water?"

"Yes, but not what I need."

"Food, spare clothes…"

He was starting to panic. I am trying to teach him to think the next step ahead. He can follow orders well but he still only does what he's told rather than anticipating needs. Not just mine but his own as well.

But I did not have time to indulge this today.

I sighed.

"Is my horse saddled and ready Gauthier?"

A look of panic crossed his face and he fled. Nearly running into Padraig as he went out the door.

"You are being cruel to that boy," the big Skelligan told me as he came over to stand in front of me.

"I know," I admitted. "I struggle to find the balance between stern and kind."

"Maybe an edge in the other direction before you leave." Padraig told me.

"Any ideas on how to do that?"

"Give him an important sounding responsibility, something to make his balls feel big."

I grunted.

"I should also warn you that Carys is very cross with you," he told me.

"I shall live with her disappointment."

"You're not the one that has to live with it," he grinned.

"You like her when she's angry," I accused.

He nodded his admittance.

"I do at that. Nothing more beautiful than an angry woman when she's angry at someone else."

We both laughed.

"Report Knight-Captain," I told him.

He drew himself up to attention.

"As you know Your Grace, your sister and her wife are coming to take up residence for a week to discuss trade with factors from Temeria and Cintra before they will follow you on to Angral. There is some consternation there and I would like permission to assign extra guards from the Coulthard garrison to supplement the Imperial ones. You Lady sister will be more comfortable that way."

I nodded, "So ordered, Liaise with Captain Boisey so that the Imperials don't think we're insulting them."

Padraig nodded. I suspect that he was already on the case there but still, it's sometimes best to make sure.

"We are still being raided from Temeria in the South. Nothing more than a few head of cattle being carried off. Not much to us but a lot to the locals."

"What do you suggest?"

"I want to do some old-fashioned bastarding to them."

He meant that he wanted to assign some of the cattle rustlers and poachers that had found their way into our own ranks to take care of the matter.

"You have men in mind?" I wondered.

He grinned in answer.

"So ordered." I told him. "Anything else?"

"Some church knights want to come East into…"

"No, Anything else?"

"Intelligence has ridden out to look at a merchant train that is coming up from the South. The merchant is not doing enough trading to be considered a real merchant but he's asking a lot of questions and taking a circuitous route. Intelligence thinks he's a spy looking for something,"

I nodded and considered for a moment.

"Check with my sister and Intelligence, but it strikes me that if he's an important merchant, he needs a proper escort to ensure his safe travels."

Padraig grinned again.

"Anything from Cidaris and Vergen?" I wondered.

"No Your Grace, The summer rains this year mean that the border is quite waterlogged. Cidaris has sent its navy to raid shipping rather than to aid another invasion effort."

"Keep an eye on it, would you," I pushed myself to my feet and wiped my mouth. "I don't want to get to Angral to have to turn around and come back."

"I will, your grace."

"Then I'm off." I told him, picking up my axe and slinging it over my shoulder.

He saluted and was already heading out of the room by the time I had had the chance to turn around. I walked out of the hall, nodding to the passing functionary as he went past me into the breakfast hall. He was yawning and I prefer to keep things informal in the morning. I crossed the entrance hall and walked down the corridor that led to my main office.

This is the part of the castle where the bureaucracy lives and where we run the Duchy of the Pontar valley out of while I am in residence. There is a smaller version in Angral and again in Vergen further to the east. Lots of offices and lots of people running around with very important slates and rolls of parchment that are the building blocks of any kind of feudal domain. I am good with names and at first, as the bureaucracy started to grow, I tried to learn everyone's names but that was soon clear to be a futile effort. Instead, a perfunctory Good Morning would do and Ameiko has a habit of introducing them by name into my office if they have something to do.

I walked past most of them, keeping my head down so as not to invite conversation. I was a man on a mission and I had somewhere to be.

My own office is past that of my council offices with a large open area in front of it's doors which contains Ameiko's desk. She was sitting there, working on some paperwork and putting some scrolls in a bag to get them ready for transport now that my court was moving over to Angral for the winter. She looked up briefly to check whether or not I needed anything before moving back to her job.

I entered my office that had a couple of servants in it, cleaning and sweeping out the hearth. A couple of them were Ameiko's deputies whose job it was to make sure none of the important paperwork would be missed or left lying around when we left.

These people, all women and hand-picked by Ameiko, I know by name. But I didn't need any of them now. Instead, I moved to the armchair that was by the hearth. I picked up the long, thin bundle that I had left there from the previous evening when I had been working on it. I still didn't know whether or not I should take it with me, but over my eggs and bacon, I had decided that it was better to have it and not need it.

I took another look around to see if I had forgotten anything before leaving.

The bundle felt ugly and heavy in my hand.

Gauthier had brought my horse up to the entrance and was waiting next to it, quivering with the excited terror of a young man expecting an inspection from a superior.

I examined the sky to find the sun shining. The flags on the keep and the walls showed me there was a little wind and no damp in the air leading me to decide that I didn't need a heavy cloak and I walked down to the horse. A quick glance told me that Gauthier and the grooms had done a good job but I made a big play of examining everything, checking stirrups and straps and things as well as having a quick glance in my saddle bags to make sure everything was the way I wanted it.

"Well done Guathier," I told the young man. "You've done a good job here."

He visibly deflated in relief and I hid a smile and a chuckle by placing my long bundle on the part of my saddle that had been modified to hold it once, a long time ago.

"Thank you Lord," he sagged a bit.

I nodded.

"Now," I began. "I will be away for a while so I charge you to see to the needs of the Duchess wherever she needs you."

He looked a little deflated. Not quite the warlike stationing that he was after, nor was it the sudden invitation to join me on the road that he had been hoping for. I wondered if his own horse was saddled and ready somewhere within ease of reach.

"Gauthier?"

"Yes Lord?"

"I assign you this post in the same way that I would assign you to a post on the battlefield."

That was suitably vague that I hoped that Gauthier would be mollified. Ariadne would know what to do with him.

"Liaise with the other guards and get them to teach you how to be a proper guard. It is time you started to learn how to keep people safe."

"Yes Lord," he puffed out his chest and again, I hid a smirk by strapping my axe into place.

"Good lad," I told him. "Now it is time for me to depart."

"Yes Lord."

I don't know what Ariadne would make of that but I kind of hoped that she would forgive me. The thought of the young squire, skilled with weapons though he might be, defending the Elder Vampire at the height of her powers was an amusing thought.

I swung into the saddle, the fact that I could do that in one smooth motion again, given my wooden legs has still not gotten old and I took a moment to enjoy my physical capabilities before I looked up at the castle.

There was a beautiful woman in a light blue dress leaning out of an upper window, her dark hair blew in the breeze. She saw me looking and blew me a kiss before waving.

I lifted my hand in greeting.

"I love you," I heard Ariadne's voice whisper in my head. "Travel safely."

"I love you too," I whispered. "I will never stop."

I thought I saw the figure nod in satisfaction before she gave me another wave and was gone from view.

I turned and rode out of the castle.

As I say, it is a busy castle now. The seat of power for a large bureaucracy and there are constantly people coming and going. But it is a military building first and when it was all being designed, there was a certain amount of insistence that the castle still follow those lines. Each building was temporary so that it could be pulled down and easily rebuilt in the events of a siege.

There was the hospital, still there for those people that are injured or sick as part of their duties to the realm. By the time of the Kalayn Rebellion it had all but emptied but now it is a thriving place again with doctors that work with them. Shani, Dean of medicine at the University, regularly sends me medical students to work at the hospital to learn about long term care for these kinds of injuries and I could see the young people walking among the wounded and sick men and women. There were often tears in that place but there was laughter too. I tried to visit it whenever I could while knowing that I still did not go enough.

The bathhouse had been moved into the keep and there was a stable in the upper courtyard now so that horses could have somewhere to be when they would be needed eminently rather than having a constant stream of people running up and down to the full stables.

There were still spare guest suites in the upper courtyard for when there were large numbers of dignitaries here and that had been the bane of the lives of my architects. As well as all of the outbuildings that I required and that they wanted to be able to defend the place, any spare space was taken up with another guest building for someone to stay in if needed.

We have been filled to capacity twice. The first time was when The Empress visited formally with the full Imperial court after the place was finished and the second time was when the Queen Regent came for a visit in an effort to remind me who is in charge.

I took a moment to giggle a bit at the memory.

My relationship with Queen Regent Adda has vastly improved in private, but in public there are still issues of people that are in her ear, preaching about how evil I am.

I rode through the outer gate and took a moment to watch the guards drilling with the Greater Imperial Garrison. Padraig and General Grissholm insisted on training the guards hard and I had deemed it good measure to not interfere. I returned some salutes and rode on.

The last courtyard still holds the main stables which I maintain in memory of Father. My feelings there have mellowed over the years and now I can admit that I missed that man dearly. I would love to show him around the place now and ask for his advice on some of the things that I was thinking.

But it was in that courtyard that I met Emma and Laurelen riding up. Their habit is to gate over a short distance from the castle and then ride up to keep an eye on things.

I dismounted and hugged the two women until Laurelen stepped back a moment.

"You look good," I told Emma.

She did too, wearing a thick dress of forest green, a thick golden torque around her neck and a golden net holding her hair back. Laurelen was dressed similarly although her dress was lighter and floatier with a floral pattern.

Emma nodded and smiled. She was breathing deeply and evenly, it was an exercise that Dr Shani had taught her for when she needed to feel calm.

"Are you here for the negotiations with…?"

Emma nodded in gratitude, safer ground for all of us.

"Yes," she said, "He wants to buy a couple of horse studs from our hunting horse stocks as well as some cattle studs."

"Will we sell?" I wondered.

"Less than he wants, and not of the kind of things that he wants and he will give us more than he intends." Emma said with relish.

I laughed at her excitement. It still makes me happy when she is so animated.

"Before I forget," I went on. "Padraig tells me that there's a merchant coming up who might be a spy. Intelligence is out to look at him but he might…"

"Who was it?" Emma wondered, instantly curious.

"I don't know, Padraig and Intelligence are coordinating on the matter and I told Padraig to talk to you on the matter."

"Interesting, what kind of questions are they asking?"

"Again…" I laughed. "Speak to Intelligence."

She got a hungry look in her eyes.

"Oh I will," she chuckled with relish. "Coming onto my lands and spying to find out things about us."

I laughed with the two of them and Lauralen winked at me.

"Well I'd best be off." I told them. "Mustn't be late."

"You've got plenty of time," Laurelen told me as Emma paled and shut down.

"In my experience," I told her, "saying things like that is how people run out of time so quickly."

"That's fair," Laurelen agreed.

I waved to my sister and turned my horse to ride away.

"Freddie?" A small voice came. I did my best to hide the elation that voice caused me to feel.

"Yes?" I wondered of Emma as I turned back.

She took a couple of deep breaths and lifted her eyes to meet mine.

"Tell him to come home," she told me. "Tell him that we miss him."

I was unable to avoid looking past Emma at Laurelen's face which was radiating triumph as she cheered silently with joy. It is still a big thing whenever Emma can talk about something that isn't trade. But as agreed, I kept my face blank. Past experience has taught us that Emma doesn't react well to congratulations when she takes these steps back into the world.

"I will tell him," I told her. "Good luck with the trade deals."

She nodded and I turned away, riding out of the castle and took to the road, following it East and West until I met the river road and followed it along.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

Very early on in my stewardship of the lands that I hold control over, I was told that, if I ever looked out over the fields of my domain and didn't see something that I could improve in some way, then it was time to move on and retire. Hand over the control over my lands to someone else and just let them get on with it.

There was still a long way to go, there was no way to deny that, but I love my corner of the continent. I don't get over to the Pontar Valley between Aedirn and Kaedwen as much as I would like and that is nearly always travelled to by way of a transport gate, but the problems of that area are not something that requires speedy decisions. They need time for the land to recover from the wars and the armies that have moved over it. It needs safety and security so that villagers and farmers are encouraged to resettle there. So that the dwarves don't fear that whatever it is they mine is going to be stolen away from them by the state. The place needs security and I work hard to give it precisely that. But mostly, that involves patrols and the ruthless extermination of banditry and raids from jealous lords.

Ariadne is my ambassador to the Elves. I have still to meet Queen Francesca and according to Ariadne, that is unlikely to ever happen. Ariadne tells me that the Elves are pleased with my policies and the way that I treat the everyday people on my lands but there was still a long way to go before I could be trusted.

When I asked how long that would be Ariadne told me that it would involve several generations. Longer than I would live, even with her extending my lifespan.

I rode alongside the river for most of the morning. Stopping to buy some smoked fish from a small cottage along the way that I ate from the saddle. I found the road that I was looking for, properly marked according to some of my patrols and I turned further inland. The lands are doing well. Out in the fields I could see men working at the crops and I was pleased to see that the harvest looked as though it was going to be good this year. I had hoped that there would be no need for rationing over the winter and that maybe we would have some surplus in order to trade. But that was Emma's department and I wouldn't interfere with that. All these years later and she still terrifies me.

I stepped aside to let a shepherd herd a flock of sheep from one field to the other, tying my horse to a fence post and perching there as I watched. The shepherd tipped his hat to me in gratitude and I nodded back. Just one of those small interactions on the road.

He was not the only road user and that was something else I was pleased to see. Try as I might I am unable to keep the missionaries from coming into the lands. This man looked relatively harmless. He was smelly, his teeth were rotting and his cassock seemed to be made out of rotting sack cloth. He was followed by half a dozen women and a couple of sullen eyed men. They were singing hymns in a kind of call and response way and although he did so with a lot of gravity, my feeling was that he was largely making them up as he went.

I made a note of their position and rode on, cutting pieces off an apple and eating them.

I helped a peddler get his wagon out of a ditch. He told me that his horses had been struck by a priest who had hit the horse with their stick and had startled it into running off the road. I asked about the description and the peddler and his daughter looked a bit bemused when I said that I would take care of it.

I passed a couple of local wagons moving hay and various other things that just needed moving from place to place in a farmland community until I came upon what I wanted. A small patrol of riders wearing the black and Red of the first Northern Army of Nilfgaard. The Knight in charge recognised me and saluted crisply. I told him about the missionary and his little train of people and they rode off at speed.

I sniggered a little in imagining what was going to happen.

I made camp in a small copse of trees a good distance from the road. I could probably have found an inn or at worst, paid for a night on the floor of one of the farmer's places if I could keep my identity from them long enough so that they wouldn't sleep on the floor themselves.

The cares of the world seemed to fall from my shoulders as I set out my bed roll, dug a fire pit, groomed my horse and set food to cook. I did some training with the axe and the knife as well as some general exercises before settling down with a mug of tea to watch the sunset while my food cooked.

I felt good.

The stew was good and hearty, the bread was fresh from the castle ovens and I was sitting in the darkness, watching the fire burn, too tired to do anything else but not tired enough to fall asleep when I realised what I was missing.

Moving to my saddle bags I found what I was looking for, a sheaf of papers, something to write on, a couple of quills and an ink pot.

I always carry them with me. Just one of those habits that I just can't set aside. Even on those excursions when I knew I was not going to get anything written, somehow, the shape of my bags seemed wrong in some way if I didn't have the materials to write something in them. I would be left feeling uncomfortable.

I mean… I haven't written anything outside either my studies or my duties for some time, but it made me laugh that Gauthier had packed them anyway. I really did need to be a bit easier on that boy.

I sharpened the quill, dipped it in the ink and started to scratch away. I'm sure that by now, you have guessed what I started to write. It came to me almost without thinking about it.

'The scientific mind is a wonderful thing'.

So if all of this seems a bit confusing, out of order or otherwise existing without context, then that is why. I am several years out of practice when it comes to properly recording my thoughts and working through these matters with ink, quill and parchment.

I also know that it is well over two years now since there was last a missive in a paper under the title "A scholar's travels with a Witcher" but here it is. Did you miss me?

I missed you. I don't know if that is any recompense for the delay but it remains true nonetheless. I have missed you and I hope that you do not hate me too badly for the shape of the feelings that I left you. Please be reassured that things are much better now than they were when I last left you. But I am getting the story out of order again so now I will return to the narrative. Just…

If this all seems a bit… lacking in some of the qualities that you came to expect from previous situations, then I do apologise. Please bear with me… This article might even contain something of academic note. Or it might be a pair of articles. If there is one writing habit that I have been unable to get rid of, it is that I still like to waffle on about fuck all.

I made a whole bunch of notes, enjoying the feeling of scribbling something on paper that was resting on something. I remember it distinctly. I was leaning back against a tree with my legs stretched out in front of me. I was warm, cosy and a sense of rightness was in the air.

Then I stopped, listened for a moment and could not keep myself from smiling a little.

I worked for… maybe another hour before I put a whole bunch more wood on the fire to keep it going overnight and I lay down to sleep.

"Good night," I whispered to Ariadne through our long renewed link. Even when we are apart physically, we make the effort. "I love you." I told her.

As it used to, I got something of a sense of where she was and what she was doing. She was wearing a comfortable smock and was carefully wrapping glass-wear in thick, padded cloth. A woman happy at her work.

"I love you too," she told me. "Sleep well."

I did.

I was stiff in the morning. Not surprising really as I am always stiff the first time I wake up on the ground after a period of sleeping in beds. I set the fire going again to warm up some soldier's tea and to heat some porridge before I did some stretches. Then I ran around the copse of trees with my axe on my back and dagger in my belt before doing some other weight training with the axe as the weight. Not ideal, but you take what you can get when you are away from proper training equipment. And even doing a little is better than doing none at all.

And proper training has saved my life, more times than I can count.

I ate, packed up my stuff and moved to rejoin the road.

It seemed to be busier that morning and I continued my habit of standing aside when I needed to stand aside for those travellers and users of my roads when they needed the extra space. It has no impact on my self esteem to let these people get on with what they needed to get on with.

I stopped for something to eat at a tavern that served me half a chicken, some cheese, apples, biscuits and a half a loaf with a small pot of butter. I paid the tavern keeper who looked at me suspiciously. I have seen this look several times now since taking over the Dukedom. He looked at me, looked at the ever present axe that was in its harness on my back with its unusual shape before looking back at me and my hard wearing clothes.

Then he looked at the axe again, then my face. Sometimes they figure out who I am but often they don't. To them, a Duke travels with soldiers in rich clothes with beautiful women on his arm. He certainly doesn't stop in villages for a mug of ale and a roast chicken.

He shook his head dismissively and I went to sit outside. Mostly to keep an eye on my horse and make sure that nothing was stolen but also so that I could watch the world go by.

The food had that quality of home cooking that is sometimes missing when you eat out of a castle kitchen and I can't say that I didn't enjoy it.

I departed with as little fuss as I could, buying a thick steak for my dinner in the evening and nodding to a group of women that were examining me and gossiping about me behind raised hands. The mischief in me made me bow to a pretty woman that was walking down the road and winked at the child that had made the connection between my axe and who that meant I was.

I rode easily. I had plenty of time, my haste at the castle notwithstanding. But in my experience, time is saved by rising early and travelling until late. It is not saved by rushing around and bellowing for farmers and travellers to "make way".

I helped a wagoneer reattach a wheel. I scooped a stray sheep back into a nearby field that held a flock with similar markings. I dismounted and glared at a group of young men who were bullying a girl and making her feel uncomfortable.

I found a similar camp-site off the road in a ruined house. The place was well known to me and I knew I would not be disturbed by any spirits or anything else that I needed to be worried about. I lit a fire, knowing it would be hidden from the road and took my time making camp and doing my exercises. When I was good and sure everything was as set up as I could want it. I went out into the darkness a short way and waited until my night vision had adapted.

"YOU CAN COME OUT," I called. "I heard you last night, I saw the lookout on the road this morning and the crops were moving against the wind yesterday."

I didn't have to wait long before Carys emerged from the long grass. She was furious. Not with me, thank the flame. A dozen other men came out, dressed in leathers with bows, swords and quivers of arrows. All of them were Elves and camouflaged for moving through farm land.

She looked at me for a long time. I sighed and nodded before turning back to my fire to cook the steak that I had been looking forward to since I bought it. My evening's entertainment was listening as she ripped metaphorical shreds off those Elves that had been seen "by a fucking d'hoine of all people" and then she stationed a few of them as look outs.

Then she came to sit nearby.

"You're not angry?" she asked, her tone of voice as a challenge.

"No," I told her. "I enjoyed the solitude though and I don't get enough of it."

"I will teach them to be more discreet although I sent one back to the castle in disgrace. He is not suitable for this work, I don't care who his mother's fucking."

I nodded, swallowing my curiosity as I knew from past experience that she wouldn't answer. She occasionally likes to leave little hints of gossip in my ear so that she can enjoy telling me that she doesn't want to tell me. But now was not the time for our game, this was too important.

"You're in charge of my security. I will leave it in your hands." She nodded in satisfaction and added her own steak to the pan when I took mine off.

I made some notes on my thoughts for the day and went to sleep. That night, Ariadne and I spoke a bit about a book that she was reading. It was a daft romance novel that she was reading for inspiration. She wanted to write a book about the human concept of love, romance and sex and according to her, the matter required a lot of research. I teased her by wondering how much of a test subject I was and why the subject needed quite so much trashy, badly written research material.

She told me that the trashier it was, the better.

We told each other that we loved each other and I slept.

The next day went much the same as the first two had. I travelled a little harder that day that left my poor escort in a bit of a bind, but they didn't have my moral objections to crossing fields with cattle in them. Nor did they have to limit themselves to routes that my horse could take. They made good time and although I was riding a little faster, I was not galloping so they could take their time.

I also stopped often, using Father's old trick of stopping and talking to the farmers. People recognised me more often as the further I got away from Castle Coulthard, the less people were used to seeing me in all my finery and armour, riding amongst the guards and followed by palanquins and carriages. They could see the axe, see the symbols and just put the required facts together in order to get the required solution. One farmer told me that I needed to invest in proper irrigation and I told them that I was working on it. Followed by an explanation as to why we hadn't got to his farm yet. He was both displeased at the delay but also astonished that I took the time to talk to him.

Another man told me that he was a little fed up with all the patrols around the place and still another told me that the state of the roads needed some repair.

I mean they did, but I had to bite off a glib response when pointing out that it was still much better than the mud tracks that they had been before I started my road building efforts.

A woman wanted to know when there was going to be a school built locally so that she could see to it that her darling little boy, who was hiding behind her skirts picking his nose, could get the education that his obvious intelligence deserved. Privately I thought that the child could do with some more time playing with his friends but I couldn't really just tell her that.

Conversely, just a little bit further down the road, I was fair accosted by an older man who had seen my interaction with the woman and told me that I could keep my "damn learning" out of the minds of the local youngsters so that men like him could properly teach them what they needed to know.

"In this neck o' the continen', we don' need le'ers to be able to plough a furrow," he told me. And he might be right, but I countered by explaining that although that is true, learning letters would help the child to know that he is not being swindled by the merchant that comes to buy the grain, or the Imperial tax collector when they come to take the taxes.

He did point out that I was the one that came to take the grain… I mean, I'm not, I have people that do that kind of thing for me but I took his point. I told him that corruption happens to plenty of people and although I am doing my best, I couldn't speak for all the people that work for me. I also told him that if he knew of any corruption or cruelty being committed in my name then he should come and see me.

He then asked how he would know that corruption was happening. To be honest, I don't think he knew what the word meant. So I told him that he would know that if he learnt his letters and his sums. The locals who were nearby laughed at the joke and to be fair to the old man, he cracked a smile and admitted that I had got him there.

It was a good couple of days and as the miles rolled away underneath my horses feet and as the simple food settled into the pit of my belly, the cares of the world continued to melt away. Not for the first time, I resolved to do this kind of thing more often and also not for the first time, I wondered when I would find the time. Or if I would let myself do something like this if there wasn't some kind of objective for me to travel towards.

I eventually came to the place of my objective late on the sixth day. It was one of those areas of the continent where the border between places is movable and the locals are not entirely certain as to who their lords are and so long as life is relatively quiet, they tend not to care as much either.

It was a nice little village. As I have written before, it is the kind of place that is not quite large enough to be noted down on any maps other than the detailed ones that are drawn up by locals and merchant caravans. It certainly wouldn't be shown on any kind of military tactical map. It was a cluster of buildings at the bottom of a slope where a group of small paths and roads met. Whether the village was there before the roads or the roads migrated there because of the village I don't know. What I do know was that it was a village that serviced many of the local farms and had a bit of a logging and tanning industry on the side.

The smells of such places need to be experienced to be believed. But as I rode in I could look up the slope that had been cleared and there were now people going through and pulling out the stumps of the previous felled trees with ropes and oxen in harness. There was a large inn with a tavern attached, a smithy, a cooper, a wheelwright and a saw mill. There was also a small chapel that I intended to go and pay my respects to later while I was there. The place was relatively quiet, or as quiet as such a place ever is.

It is worth remembering that a village like this one never really sleeps. Even though this was not a farming town and the men were probably out somewhere keeping up with the harvest, there was still plenty of work that needed doing. Roofs were being repaired and re-thatched. Furniture was being made and women gossiped while they continued the never-ending task of making sure there was enough wool to clothe them all over the winter. So the music of the saw and the hammer, with the odd discordant note of a hammer striking metal according to a rhythm of its own. As agreed, Carys and one of the other guards came into town with me while the rest of the escort went and camped in some woodland within the sound of a horn blast, but not so close or obviously that they would be seen from the village.

And they were forbidden from going anywhere near the Northern slopes on the road.

The innkeeper was expecting me and although he tried to let me have the rooms without charging me, I didn't have to do much persuading to let me pay for the place to stay. I paid for three rooms, up front and with dinner, bed and breakfast for a week. I had no idea how long we were going to be here but I had allowed plenty of time.

After that chore was done, I met the man that had been assigned to watch the place by Intelligence who told me that what I was here for had not come to pass. Reports said that I could expect things to come to a head in the next couple of days. I nodded, gave the man a couple of crowns and told him to be about his regular duties. He promptly spent the coins on a full meal, a couple of ales and a night with one of the locals that was amenable to such things before riding off the following morning.

For me, I ordered a bath. Being back on the road felt good, but at the same time, it felt good to get that grime off me. I spent the evening sitting in the corner of the inn, playing cards with Carys and talking about the business of our lands while we ate, drank and watched the locals about their business.

It was a nice inn all things considered. Not the kind place that had much going for it, but what it did have, I liked. It puts its money into important things. The beds were of good quality, the food was simple but well cooked and the place was clean. The innkeeper had more sons than daughters and was apparently a widower. He was the cook of the place while his sons worked the bar and the stables. A couple of the local women helped out with the rooms and were occasionally happy to negotiate for their affections although such things never took place under the roof of the inn.

The innkeeper insisted on that.

There was a bar, several tables and an open area with a raised stage that was clearly meant for dancing although there was no music that night. I would like to write, for the sake of symmetry, that it reminded me of the village with the unicorn, but that would be unfair. There are hundreds of small villages like this in Coulthard lands alone. As representatives of that kind of village go, this one was as good as any other.

The following day, Carys and I got up to some hard training with the other guard that came with her. And when I say hard training, I mean it. The riding had kept me up with some other things but a horrible lethargy had sunk into my upper body and I was driven to dismiss it. So we worked in one of the side, fenced off areas. Well away from the Northern slopes and went through a number of the drills that we had all come up with during training. The three of us fought one on one, two on one and then all three of us against each other. The other elf didn't like it as Carys made him fight without moving his legs. She told him that, like most elves, they have a tendency to depend on mobility and freedom of movement. But you can't do that in a swamp, or when you're enclosed with other soldiers, or when you are protecting someone…

Like a certain inept lord who was running through some of his own exercises nearby and was pretending not to listen. There were also sprints around the village, much to the bemusement of the locals and there were some local trees that could be used to do the more basic upper body exercises.

After that, I luxuriated in being a rich man in a place where money goes further by ordering another bath and paying the locals to do some laundry for me with far more money than they asked for before I explored for a bit. I chatted to the smith, the wheel-wright and the cooper although the fletcher and the thatcher were at their work and their workshops stood empty. I also went to pay my respects at the chapel. It was only a small place. I would imagine the village could get in there if they all just squeezed in and remained standing. There were some pews and I knelt before the fire and offered up my prayers there.

I was about half way through when one of the locals told me that the priest was shared between three villages and that he was not due to be in this village again for another three days. I asked some more questions of her and of some of the other locals that night, about whether or not they all felt as though this was a problem and they admitted that sometimes they feel left out. And that the priest is not around when they need him. When a man dies in an accident he needs to lay to rest sooner rather than later, or when the old Mother Gemple finally died, the priest was not at her bedside because he was dealing with something else, two villages over.

I told them that I would see about addressing the matter and made a note of it. I absolutely intend to do so as well. The comfort of having a local priest is not something that can easily be understood by those people that live closer to the civic centres where churches and priests are more numerous. A local priest can really help out a community. Even if he is not that active in the community. Just the spiritual security is enough to make it worthwhile.

I spent the evening writing a letter to the Arch-Bishop to explain this and to explain where the problem was taking place. It never does to offer problems without offering a solution to fix the problem so I wondered if there was some way of having a kind of… "under-priest" that could take care of the day to day business of a town and then having the actual priest reserved for weddings and funerals and things of that nature. I also wondered if it might be a good idea for some of the lay brothers, the men in monasteries, as to whether it might be a good idea to get them some experience working "in the field" as it were. The equivalent of an apprenticeship by any other name. I had no idea if that would get us anywhere but still

I rose a bit later the following morning.

If everything went according to plan, then I should expect something that day.

I have not improved at the skill of waiting. I still hate it and I still struggle to get by when it comes to that kind of thing. Intrusive images of waiting in woodlands for this or that disaster to take place, waiting for a signal or waiting for a word, a shout, or a horn call. It was, it is always, hard and I am not getting better at it at all, no matter how much I might try and pretend so.

What I am better at though, is filling the time so that I don't have to think about it. I trained hard for a good few hours in the morning. Long after I probably should have stopped. Actually stopping only when my limbs were rubbery and there was grey at the edge of my vision. I took my horse out for a small trot around an empty paddock and gave her a thorough grooming. Reading or studying at such a time is all but impossible so I didn't even try that. Fortunately though, my patience was rewarded.

Carys came to find me and stood in my eyeline and nodded before I examined the sky. It was mid afternoon by this point.

"It will not be today," I told her. "It will be in the morning. Early enough to be dramatic, but not so early that no-one will see what is happening."

She nodded.

"I will withdraw the scouts then,"

"Carys?" She turned back. "I do not enjoy being a wrathful lord, but if someone is seen or drives him off, then someone will answer for it."

She took a moment to weigh the words before squaring herself up to me.

"Yes My Lord," she said. She is better at recognising an order when I give it now. Far better than she used to be. But then again, I am far better at giving orders than I used to be.

I knew what would happen anyway. If someone did give the game away then I would not hear about who it was. Carys would turn up and take all the blame for it upon herself. I would yell, she would be contrite and promise to do better. The piece of theatre would happen in front of the other guards so that they could all see me being angry and could also all see her taking the blame for their ineptitude. Then quietly, those guards would police themselves. The following day, one guard would have left to join an old unit or find another way to be useful while another person would have taken their place. That is the way the world works.

I also knew that if Carys deliberately drove the matter home on her own behalf, then the piece of theatre would happen behind closed doors. The thought had occured before now, but I didn't think that this would be the case this time.

I squashed the desire to go out there and find the camp that I knew, even now, was being erected. I could probably even picture the group of trees that would be used to hide the camp.

I finished doing what I was doing. I think, by that point, I was on to cleaning my travelling armour. A chore that I do not leave to squires. At one point, I wanted to clean my own battlefield armour but the process was so long and involved that Padraig came and forcibly took it off me, telling me that I was neglecting other duties. And that this, after all, was what squires were invented for.

But the battlefield armour was probably in a wagon somewhere, possibly already on the roads to Angral.

But I was done now. I went back to the inn and feeling that weight off my shoulders, I pulled out a book and a scrap of parchment and made some notes on what I was reading. I ate dinner, made some of my own notes, the basis of which would become what you now hold in your hands and had an early night.

Ariadne was a calming presence that night. She did not come through a teleport gate but she talked about the business of the day and about how she had dined with Emma and Laurelen. There was a conversation about Emma showing some signs of improvement again and that her meetings had gone well. Tomorrow was the bulk of the loading of Ariadne's lab and equipment and although there was nothing that she could do to make it more secure, she has found that if she stays to watch the loading of it all, she tends to fret. So she was going to Aretuza to visit with Margarita and deliver a few lectures of the history of magic from before the landing.

She lulled me into sleep so that in the morning I could feel refreshed.

And I did.

I have developed the soldier's practice of sleep. It sometimes takes me some time to get there but once I'm asleep, I'm asleep. Ariadne claims that I sleep lighter than she would like but she will take what she can get. I rose early, did some morning exercises, only light ones this time though as my muscles were punishing me for the abuse that I had put them through the previous day. I ate a large breakfast with Carys where we made some small conversation about some changes that she wanted to make to the security of the Angral residence when I heard a cat hiss.

It was always the cats that noticed him first. I remember he made the joke that monsters recognise monsters when it first happened and followed that up with the joke that, despite cats not liking him, he quite liked cats. He said that it was an important moral lesson to learn that something so small, cute and furry can also be evil incarnated on our mortal plane.

Carys reacted first and looked over my shoulder to the Northern slope. The slope where even now, workmen were heading out with heavy oxen and even heavier ropes and hooks to pull the stubborn stumps from the ground. My eyes followed the Northern road up the slope where it wound round some of the older stumps until I found him.

"Holy Flame," I breathed, almost like a prayer, "I had forgotten."

He was standing there, just off the path, on the back of his horse. His long coat over his shoulders so that it hung down the back of his horse. His sword harness and the buckles that came with it seemed to glitter in the early morning sunlight. The morning mist drifted around the horse's hooves and with the two swords over his shoulder and the strong, steady and calm way that he seemed to stare down at the village. It seemed to me that he was the figure of legend.

I have seen that sight more times than I can count. I have stood next to him when he has been waiting on the edge of a village to see if this time someone has a job for him or if children are going to be encouraged to throw handfuls of dung to frighten him off. I have watched his return when he has manipulated events so that he can seem even more magnificent than he actually is. I have seen the long hours of preparation that it takes to make him into this, the Witcher from the legends and the story books.

And no matter how often I have seen it, it still sends a shiver down my spine. I have written before that I sometimes regret that my talents do not go towards the medium of paints and oils. I can sketch small things. Flowers and small animals. But I cannot capture the majesty of certain situations and it must also be admitted that if there is a skill of mine that I have neglected, then it is that one.

I have wanted to capture so many images over the course of my journeys. There are other ones as well, images that have occured in the time since I stopped travelling and writing. But this one was the first one and it is possibly the most important one. It is a sight that is becoming rarer by the day and if our plans regarding the future of the Witcher schools would come to pass, it is also true that eventually, this image will disappear from living memory.

The Witcher on the edge of the village.

"Right then," I whispered. "Here we go."

I rose from my seat and pulled my own armoured coat on. Only now did I see that I had mirrored my coat to that of a Witcher's coat. Some men have called me the Witcher Duke and I have never liked that name, but only now did I admit that there might be more truth to the nickname than I would like to admit.

I slung my axe over my shoulder as a force of habit and then took out the long thin leather package. From it I took the two old parts of my old spear. I had cleaned, sharpened and oiled it before setting out and it slid out freely. For a moment, my heart soared as I held onto the familiar metal with my right hand. But again, for the first time in a long time, my left hand felt clumsy and ugly. I had to concentrate to fit the two pieces together in a movement that I have practised and practised and used to be able to do in my sleep. But now…

I got the two attached and walked out from the village. My axe feels comfortable slung on my back now and I no longer need to hold it in place. It is the spear that feels wrong and much though I am used to this feeling. I am, once again, left saddened by this loss of so faithful a friend.

I moved just past the last house. More people had seen him now, standing his horse and more than one child was scolded in getting back to work. The lumberjacks were studiously ignoring him.

I found a good solid place to stand and slowly raised the spear above my head, holding it horizontally so that the Witcher could see it.

We stood like that for a minute or two, long enough for my arms to start to ache and for me to be glad for all the work I have done in building up my arm strength.

I watched as the Witcher turned his head away and down. I recognised that stance, he was thinking. Time seemed to stretch before he flicked his reins and the horse started to move down towards the village.

He took his sweet ass time to get down the slope too. I gave up and tried to lean on the spear as I used to before I remembered that it would feel wrong and instead took it apart and put it back in its sheath which I slung on my other shoulder from where my axe harness lives.

He was watching me as he came and I stood, as relaxed as I could manage. I had an overwhelming confusion as to what I should do with my hands. Tuck them in my belt? Hold onto a strap? I felt uncomfortable.

He threw the reins of the horse over a stump and came to stand in front of me.

"Freddie," he said, neutrally.

"Kerrass," I said, as neutrally as I could manage.

There was a pause as the two of us examined each other.

He looked different. There were a few less strain lines in his face which looked a little fuller than I seemed to remember him being. He had also cut his hair at some point although there were signs that he was trying to grow it back. It was long and tufty on the top while the back and sides were cut short. He had made some efforts to tie the top-hair into a knot in a style that I understand is called "Elven style" but it was not quite long enough. This meant that he was also wearing a leather band around his head to keep the hair out of his eyes.

There was some other new equipment but the swords remained the same. I saw the silver symbol of the wave-serpent on the hilt of his silver sword and suppressed a smile.

He took a couple of deep breaths.

"I take it that this means there's no monster contract for me here?" His tone was dry. I judged it to be a little bit bemused, or annoyed. I was out of practice at reading his emotions.

"There is actually," I answered, scratching my chin. "There's a ghoul nest just over the hill." I turned and gestured. "I have someone keeping an eye on it. Three or four above ground and a couple of emergence sites."

Kerrass nodded in thought.

"So… nine or ten?"

"That's what I thought."

He nodded.

I don't know who started to laugh first, or who moved first but suddenly we were both laughing and both of us moved forwards into a hug.

He pulled back first to properly examine me now that he was up close and personal.

"You look good," he decided after a moment.

"So do you," I told him and I meant it. He looked… more relaxed, more comfortable. He was openly grinning too which was new, his laughter seemed that bit freer than I had ever heard it before, as though it was easier to be spontaneous and more able to relax. He looked… almost happy.

He pulled me in for another hard hug.

"Look at you," he said, "two hands again and some actual muscle mass now. You will have to tell me how you managed that and who trained it into you. Because try as I might, I never…"

He stopped and shook his head, still grinning at me.

"That's a lot," I told him, unable to keep from answering his grin. I was surprised at just how good it was to see him. "Beer?"

"Goddess yes, and a lot of it."

"I've booked you a room," I told him as we turned towards the inn.

"And a bath?" He asked hopefully.

"There's a bathouse out back." I laughed.

"Thank the Goddess for that. I smell like feet."

We both laughed at that and I saw him examining the axe on my back.

"Freddie, I have so much to say and so much to ask, but how did you find me?"

I laughed at him, properly at him this time and I saw that fact register in his face.

"Ah Kerrass, this is one of those things that we both have to get used to now. In the North of the Continent, Imperial Intelligence works for me. I knew where you were two days after you left us."

He stared at me in horror about that for a moment before amusement returned.

"And you didn't come after me?"

"No, I did consider it, sending people after you. At first I didn't because I was angry. Later I didn't because I was sad and later still I didn't because Lord Geralt advised me not to."

He nodded.

"That makes a lot of sense. And was that Carys that I saw going back inside the inn?"

"It was,"

"Does she still hate me?"

"Hate is a strong word," I told him. "There are many complicated thoughts and feelings about you around the place and she is one of those…"

He put his hand on my arm to stop me and I turned to look at him.

He looked me in the eyes for a long moment.

"She was right to be angry," he told me. "I have had a lot of time to think over the last couple of years and a lot has happened, to both of us it seems, and I am desperate to catch up and find out why you have the axe of Gardan on your back rather than your spear. And I can only guess at how desperate you are to ask me questions and things. But I want to say this first and I want it to be here, before we start drinking so that you will know that I mean it."

"Alright?"

I kind of squared myself up to him.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I did you wrong Freddie, you and yours and the people around you. I should have been there to support you, to grieve with you and to get you drunk when you needed to get drunk and I wasn't. I would like to renew our friendship and I know that as part of that, I owe many people apologies for what I did and didn't do. Your sister, Ariadne, Padraig and yes, Carys is one of them…"

"Kerrass it's alright… But for all the affection that I hold for you, and I hope that you know that I still love you like a brother, but exactly like a brother, I kind of want to kick your ass."

A flash of the old Kerrass was in his eyes for a moment but I was not the weaker, cowed scholar that had a habit of obedience with this man any more.

"You have apologised to me before," I told him. "You have had your little self-pitying periods before and you have apologised and told me, and others that it would never happen again. Well it happened again Kerrass. And again. And at a moment when I needed you the most, it happened again."

I took a deep breath, there was the ghost of old anger in my voice and I could hear it. But it was old anger too and I knew that as well.

"I suppose what I'm saying Kerrass is… Don't make promises that you can't keep."

It was Kerrass' turn to take some deep breaths.

"I deserved that," he began. "I deserved every word that you just said. I know that I have made you promises before. I know that I have apologised for my crappy behaviour before and sooner or later, I have always gone back on what I have said and what I have promised. And although I can tolerate the blank looks and distrusting eyes from others, I will apologise and prostrate myself before them and say whatever it is that they need to hear, and mean those words too. But to you, I will not apologise."

I looked in his eyes and tried to see what he was thinking, trying to guess where he was going with this. I didn't know whether to be angry, sad or to tell him to fuck off. I decided that I didn't have enough information.

"Where are you going with this Kerrass?"

He took a deep breath before continuing.

"Over the last couple of years, I have realised that words are empty and verbal promises are too easily given and too easily broken. We… meaning I, give apologies and just assume that a simple apology is enough and that we can go back to normal."

He grinned again.

"Believe me, I have a whole philosophical discourse of examples where we offer people empty words to make ourselves feel better more than the people that we are trying to help. Empty words like 'I'm sorry for your loss,' or 'Let us know if there is anything we can do,' or one that I am confident you will share… 'I know how you feel'."

I chuckled.

"You are right, I hate that one."

He joined me in a short laugh.

"But you, I will not make empty apologies and fill your ears with empty words. I will, instead, show you how important you are to me and show you how sorry I am."

I nodded.

The words hung in the air for a moment.

"You've been practising that speech haven't you?"

"A little bit, speaking into camp fires since I came down from the North."

I took a moment to think about what he said. I had come here absolutely intending to forgive Kerrass for everything unconditionally. But now that I am here, I realise that things are not that simple.

"I cannot…" I took a moment to clear my throat. "I cannot just forgive everything Kerrass. I can't forgive everything and just go back to the way we were. I came here to see you and to talk to you and I hoped… But I just can't go back to what was."

"I don't expect you to,"

I waved him off.

"Apart from anything else, I am not the man I was. It has been a hell of a two and a half years."

"So I've heard. Battles and things where you single handedly took on a company of Cidaris soldiers,"

I sighed.

"It was four men. FOUR MEN. How many times do I have to…"

"And the Wyvern?"

"A knight with a Wyvern on his shield, but Kerrass…"

I forced the tone back towards serious.

"I am not as angry as I was," I told him. "Nor as hurt, but I would be lying to you if I said that anger and hurt was gone. I told you that I love you like a brother Kerrass and I meant it, but you remember what a couple of my brothers were like?"

"I remember," he said softly.

"I still love you like a brother, even after everything you said and did, but I cannot go back to the way that we were. What I can do is offer the hand of friendship and a new beginning? It's what I came here to do. And we will see how life takes us from there."

"I would like that Freddie, I really would."

He offered me his hand and I took it and pulled him into a fierce hug.

"I've missed you Kerrass."

"I've missed you too… Brother."

We pulled apart and I needed to turn away for a moment and I heard Kerrass clear his throat a couple of times.

"So," he began before clearing his throat again. "You mentioned something about beer? Now that part is over, I have the sudden urge to start drinking heavily."

We both laughed in relief and went into the inn.

We found a table and a set of chairs towards the back. One of the Innkeeper's sons brought over a large jug and a couple of mugs. I told Kerrass to pour one for both of us and I went to get my things which I put on the chair beside me.

"Good beer this," Kerrass decided, pouring himself a second mug and having a look around. "Seems like a fairly good place,"

He looked at me suspiciously.

"Is this the place where we met, I would have thought I would have recognised it."

"It is not,"

"It's just, I thought… you being you, you might like that for the whole symmetry of the matter. Lure me into the area by means of a monster contract and then spring it on me as some kind of surprise."

"That idea is much better than mine," I told him. "I knew that you were coming south again and what route you were taking. I put some notices around and I knew that you would follow them as the monster population is pretty low around here nowadays."

"I understand that the land is being looked after by someone that knows what they're doing,"

"Thank you," I answered.

He toasted me with his mug.

"But no," I went on. "That particular inn was torn down and the site for it is a little way further East of here. It was a victim of Emma's mercantile efficiency which meant that they just weren't as busy as they wanted to be, or needed to be. One of the problems was a new inn that was erected less than a mile away and the landlord's regular clientele would make the trek there for the better beer and the better atmosphere."

"Ha," Kerrass replied. "He really did hate me that one,"

"Must have been because you slept with his wife," I replied.

"And his daughter," Kerrass agreed. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "Have you kept up with any of the other places we visited?"

"Not as many as I would like. The town with Tom the troll is doing well now that the spoiled daughter is out of the way. They're not saving for a dowry any more and it would seem that my work has caused a bit of a tourist trade. Tom has a grave now and according to what I've been told, Greta the troll is up in the hills again with her little one. She's not as trusting of humans any more but a few of them help her out."

"Good," Kerrass agreed.

"Amber's Crossing doesn't exist anymore," I told him. "I went back once when part of a delegation heading south. It was much smaller than I remember. I remember the trees having this kind of sinister feel about the place and a weight to the air. Now there's just a few abandoned old buildings and I could have ridden around the woodland in a little over a day."

"Such is the way with such places. The presence of the thing, whether it be a forest spirit or something else… The absence of power kind of deflates the place. What happened?"

"Not much, the people suddenly revelled in their freedom and fucked off. There is still a timber site in the woods but that's run out of a camp closer to the other towns."

Kerrass nodded.

"I don't have much to do with Lyria and Rivia so I can't tell you what's going on around the site of the Flaming swords. I do know that the old library of Pula, Saffron and Sally is now as recovered as it can be. They have it up at Aretuza now and they still work on getting as much out of it as they can. Apparently, just when they think they have it all out, some student figures out a new way to read… whatever off the burn ashes."

A shadow crossed Kerrass' face.

"Good, I am… pleased."

I nodded in acceptance of that.

"According to Samantha, the unicorn village is still there, just a few houses are occupied now and other villages have raided it for salvage. There's a farming village a day north that keeps going south and steals timber. Other than that… Skellige and Toussaint remain Skellige and Toussaint…" I chuckled as a thought occured to me. "Try as I might, I can't find the place where we fought the Nekkers. It's not on any map and I've had people trying to find that blacksmith girl so that I can give her a better job. People regularly ask to examine the spear that she made for me and are impressed with her work but damned if I can find the place."

Kerrass laughed. "Nor could I, such is the way with such villages," he told me. "But that leads me onto…"

"The change to the axe?"

Kerrass nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He laughed.

"So why did you change from the spear?"

I sighed unhappily.

"It's frustrating really, and a little bit heartbreaking. It's not about the axe, or the spear, not really. It's about the hand."

I waved my left hand for emphasis.

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

"Yes and no, it's not wood. It's metal."

"It looks like a man's hand."

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

"I'm guessing that when you punch something with your left hand, it tends to remain punched."

I laughed.

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

"Ouch,"

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

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

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

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

Kerrass nodded.

"Why does that…?"

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

"Jerking off?"

"Kerrass… I'm a married man now."

"So you were jerking off."

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

I leered at him, trying to embarrass him.

I was disappointed.

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

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

"The weight of the metal?"

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

"Interesting,"

"You're getting as bad with that as Ariadne is with 'fascinating'."

Kerrass grinned.

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

Kerrass nodded, he didn't look surprised.

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

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

"The blade sang?"

"It really did."

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

I sighed.

"You're not going to let me forget about that, are you."

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

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

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

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

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

I shook my head.

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

Kerrass gazed at my expression.

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

I sighed.

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

Kerrass nodded to show that he understood.

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

Kerrass chuckled.

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

I shrugged.

"Whatever else can be said of it, Gardan's axe is quite recognisable."

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

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

I shrugged.

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

"There are," Kerrass affirmed.

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

"Nor should you be. So you slew a Wyvern?"

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

"Young and convinced of his own immortality?"

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

Kerrass nodded.

"That's how things go."

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

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

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

I shrugged.

"How's the war going?" Kerrass asked.

I sighed unhappily.

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

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

"They are not wrong."

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

"Or try to marry her?"

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

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

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

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

I laughed at the memory.

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

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

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

"Not really."

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

"Because you have been investing in roads."

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

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

"So the meeting," Kerrass prompted.

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

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

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

Kerrass winced in appreciation.

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

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

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

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

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

"I know the very head tilt," Kerrass agreed.

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

Kerrass laughed.

"What happened to the noble?"

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

Kerrass nodded.

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

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

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

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

"Well what?"

"When did the two of you start shagging?"

"Kerrass I don't think…"

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

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

"It was at Helfdan's wedding to Cerys," I told him.

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

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

"Both… The wedding first though I think."

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

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

Kerrass laughed.

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

"How's he doing that?"

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

Kerrass' expression changed from trepidation to horror.

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

Kerrass laughed before a look of melancholy crossed his face.

"I'm sorry I missed that," He sighed

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

Kerrass nodded and I watched him carefully.

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

He took a juddering breath in.

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

"What was it you said about empty promises?"

Luckily, he caught the humour in my voice.

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

I winced.

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

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

I sighed.

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

"What?"

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

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

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

"I might. I want to, certainly but…"

"You would be welcome, Kerrass."

For some reason, he seemed relieved.

"Then I will come."

I nodded.

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

Kerrass nodded.

"Well on that matter, I would love to help."

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

"Can they do that?"

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

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

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

I laughed.

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

"I am looking forward to it,"

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

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

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

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

I shook my head at the memory.

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

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

I finished my point and the silence between us lengthened.

"WELL?" Kerrass demanded, loud enough to turn other people's heads towards us. "HOW WAS IT?"

"A gentleman never tells."

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

He looked so indignant that I laughed at him.

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

He nodded, a little disappointed.

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

He smiled.

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

Kerrass chuckled.

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

Kerrass outright laughed.

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

"It's… uh…"

"Come on Freddie, be honest."

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

"Such as?"

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

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

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

Kerrass was laughing,

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

"The bitch," Kerrass mocked.

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

"So how does that work with you?"

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

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

Kerrass had not stopped laughing.

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

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

I waited until he was done before continuing.

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

"Are you sure she's not teasing you with all of that?"

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

I stilled my face for a moment.

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

Kerrass stared at me.

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

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

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

Kerrass started to recoil.

"And she has charts, Kerrass. There are graphs."

"I didn't need to know that Freddie."

"Hey, you asked."

"I'm pretty sure I didn't."

I let the laughter subside.

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

I shook my head.

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

"Doesn't sound too bad."

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

I shook my head before laughing at a memory.

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

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

"It doesn't sound so bad," he said.

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

Kerrass nodded, now seeing the serious side.

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

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

Kerrass nodded.

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

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

I took a deep breath.

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

"Monster fetish,"

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

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

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

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

"I remember it well," Kerrass whispered.

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

"I remember,"

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

"I do, Freddie. I know."

I took a juddering breath.

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

Kerrass just nodded.

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

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

I surprised him by grinning at him.

"Don't worry, you can make the next one,"

"What do you mean?"

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

I stared at him for a while.

"We sent messages Kerrass, you would have been welcome."

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

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

"Not unfair. But go on."

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

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

Kerrass laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kerrass nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And how is Emma?"

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

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

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

I shook my head.

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

I shook my head again, staring off into space.

"I sense a 'but' coming." Kerrass told me.

I smirked at the inevitability of it.

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

Kerrass nodded with a sympathetic look on his face.

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

"Does she… Do you know what's wrong with her? Why is she struggling so much?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Poor Emma," he said.

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

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

"You mentioned that Chireadean came back?"

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

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

"I don't have an obsession with slim women. I like all women…" I protested.

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

"You didn't know me back in my student days."

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

"Didn't he once have a crush on Yennefer?"

"Or so the bard claims," Kerrass agreed.

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

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

I laughed.

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

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

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

"Nothing in common?" Kerrass commented.

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

Kerrass nodded, slicing himself an apple.

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

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

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

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

Kerrass groaned in dawning horror.

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

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

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

"It's not…"

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

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

Kerrass groaned.

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

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

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

"I feel much the same,"

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

I laughed.

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

"Have you drunk it yet?"

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

"How was it?"

I laughed.

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

Kerrass nodded and smiled at the thought.

"Are the Knights of Francesca working?" He asked.

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

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

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

It was a valid point.

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

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

"Both,"

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

"So you're an advisor to the Empress now,"

"Oh no. I have a new title. 'Special' advisor to the Empress."

"Oooohhh. Well la-de-da."

"I know, isn't it fucking awful?" I put my head in my hands.

"Run Freddie. Just run."

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

"Yeah…" Kerrass chuckled. "Are they?"

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

Kerrass nodded.

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

"Oh?"

"And she hates Redania."

"Why…"

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

Kerrass nodded, keeping up with the story.

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

"Are you in danger?"

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

I shook my head.

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

"Someone from their chosen faction no doubt."

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

"Anais will be relegated to the role of baby maker."

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

"Or have Lord Roche's sense of paranoia,"

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

"What about the other side of the Pontar?"

"Redania?"

Kerrass nodded.

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

"I had heard that rumour. I dismissed it as ludicrous."

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

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

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

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

"Not following Kerrass?"

"Politics was always your arena, Freddie."

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

"She will hate both of those things."

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

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

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

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

"Then why don't you?"

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

Kerrass laughed.

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

"It sounds like you pity her."

I thought about that.

"I do," I decided. "I really do."

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

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

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

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

"And how do you propose…"

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

"It's the Summer, too much disease and bad smells from all the courtiers in the summer."

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

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

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

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

"Alright Kerrass, that's enough. People are looking…"

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

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

Kerrass grinned.

"It would work though, wouldn't it."

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

I laughed at the image.

"Imagine her with someone like Gregoire standing behind her."

"There are only so many people like Gregoire."

"True."

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

"Yeah, named after his father."

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

I put my drink down carefully.

"It will never happen," I told him.

"Why not? That would mean…"

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

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

"I don't understand."

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

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

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

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

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

Kerrass was nodding along.

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

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

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

We drank in silence for a bit.

"So how are you doing Freddie?" He asked.

We both laughed.

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

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

Fortunately, it was not a new question for me.

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

I laughed.

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

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

Kerrass nodded along.

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

I considered things, looking for an example.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I shook my head at the memory.

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

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

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

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

In this case, I poured myself another drink.

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

"What do you think about Sam now?" He asked.

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

Kerrass nodded and stared into space for a moment.

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

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

Kerrass accepted that with a nod before he frowned.

"What happened with the man being flogged?"

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

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

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

"He gets it." Kerrass agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded and rubbed his forehead.

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

"Pretty much, yeah."

He stared into space for a long moment.

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

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

"Poor Rickard…

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remained silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I slept. I tried not to but I slept."

He sighed and finished his drink.

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

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

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

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

Kerrass smirked at that.

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

Kerrass nodded his acceptance of that.

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

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

Kerrass smiled as he nodded.

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

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

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

"You might be surprised. Anyway, finish your story."

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

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

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

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

"Then came the decision to move."

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

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

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

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

"More time to work it," I told him.

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

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

"Strength training will help with that."

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

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

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

"The raised spikes from the blade?"

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

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

"I've missed you Freddie," he told me. "I've missed this. I was a fool and I'm so, so sorry."

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

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

I nodded.

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

"Something with apples in it?" I wondered.

Kerrass laughed.

"I see you remembered."

"How could I forget."

He clapped me on the shoulder and we moved inside.

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