A Scholar's Travels with a Witcher

Chapter 1: Eyes of Gold and a Night of Alchemy

I know it's a cliché but the first thing that I noticed about him were his eyes.

In preparation for my mission, I had read what little formal information there was on the subject of Witchers in the University library, mostly the admittedly wonderful poetry from Professor Dandelion regarding the famed White Wolf and that blatant propaganda that makes up the infamous “Monstrum” leaflet so I was well aware of the fact that their eyes are mutated and freakish in their appearance but until I actually saw them in person I had no idea what that actually meant.

A lot of the tales describe them as Cat's eye's often yellow in the description but that is a little wide of the mark. For my estimation they are a little closer to the eyes of a Lizard than a cat, and rather than being yellow in appearance, I found them to be much closer to a deep burnished Gold.

The second thing that I noticed about him was that he looked tired. Tired, soaked to the skin and more than a little bit ill.

I had been on my journey for roughly a week, setting out from Oxenfurt to the places where I considered it much more likely that I would find my quarry and truth to tell I was surprised and more than a little taken aback that I would find a Witcher so close to home as it were. I had anticipated more time to devise speeches to persuade someone to allow me to tag along on their path but as I stood there, along with the other patrons of the inn that I was staying at that night, staring up at the rather forbidding and imposing presence of the dark-haired man on the horse, I found that I didn't know what to say.

He wasn't looking at me in any case.

“Job's done,” The Witcher grated out through clenched teeth. It was difficult to hear him over the hissing of the rain that fell all around us. He stared past me at the bulk of the innkeeper who had managed to maintain his impressive girth despite the post-wartime famine that was afflicting the area.

“You have proof?” The innkeeper pushed his way past me glaring up at the Witcher in a way that I would have found offensive.

The Witcher untied a sack that was tied to his saddle. I noticed that he was only using one hand and found his other hand pressed tightly to his side.

The sack thumped to the ground with a splash at the innkeeper's feet who bent to inspect the contents before swearing loudly about bringing this filth to his hall. I wasn't listening at this point. I was too busy studying the pale skin of the Witcher's face and the way his left arm was pressed against his side. There was a dark liquid that was mixing with the rain at the bottom of the Dark green cloak that was carefully arranged over the Witcher's body.

The man was injured.

Returning to the conversation I heard that the innkeeper was haggling over the reward, trying to claw back some money from some kind of pre-arranged price. The Witcher was having none of it and calmly and impassively rebutting every new offer with the originally agreed price. When the innkeeper eventually caved and handed up a purse of money the Witcher bent the purse to the light to inspect the contents.

“I would like a room and breakfast,” That same grating, quiet and hoarse voice.

“We're a decent people here,” responded the Innkeeper quickly without even really seeming to think about it. “We want no vagabonds or dirty mutants here. Be off with you.”

“I am willing to pay,” This time I was sure I wasn't imagining it. The Witcher had winced when he shifted his weight. I noticed the Innkeeper licking his lips at the prospect of a little more money but he shook his head.

“No thank you. Besides,” he looked around a little nervously. “We're full.”

The Witcher said nothing. Just sat on his horse looking at the innkeeper who visibly began to wilt in the Witcher's gaze.

“He can share my room,” I said without thinking. I was very conscious of the number of people edging away from me. “There's plenty of room and I could do with sharing the costs.” Someone sniggered at the declaration that there was plenty of room as the rooms were quite pokey in reality. “Also, when I was checking on my horse earlier there was plenty of room in the stables for the Gentleman's horse.” This at least was true as my quiet, ageing mare was the only tenant of the inn's hospitality.

The innkeeper threw up his hands as his greed and my arguments overcame his wobbling scruples.

“Fine, but I want the extra money upfront.”

“Then we'll need some hot water and some clean cloth sent up to my room as well.” I went on,

“Now why don't you have someone to take care of the horse? The Gentleman has clearly injured himself in the defence of the inn so surely the least you can do is care for the man's horse.”

“Defence that I paid through the nose for,” The innkeeper bustled off shouting for someone named Dick to see to the horse and to “clean that fucking mess off my porch.”

Having had their evening entertainment spoiled, the other patrons went back to their drinks. I offered my hand but the Witcher was already sliding out of the saddle and untying some saddle bags, hissing in pain as he did so.

“Let me help you,” I tried but it seemed that the man was oblivious to me, staggering a little bit under the weight of whatever was in the bags. He also untied a long sword from the saddle and strapped it over his shoulder with another grunt, carrying a last, long box under his arm. Then he seemed to acknowledge me for the first time.

“Which way?” he grated. I got the sense that he had locked his jaws against the pain.

We made it through the common room, my supporting him with his arm over my shoulder and by all of the gods he was heavy, but...

This was my first impression of what it's actually like to spend time in the company of a Witcher.

You see I'm a funny-looking man. I'm not handsome by any stretch and I'll admit to that, my teeth are slightly wonky, I have a broken nose from childhood adventures with my elder brothers and I was in the process of going prematurely bald, bearing in mind that at this point I would have, maybe been 19. I'm wiry more than well built, despite many hours of exercise and I walk with a stoop due to spending too much time hunched over desks. I also have this habit of... well... peering at people because of spending far too much time in dimly lit rooms.

I also have a surprisingly deep voice for what I look like which means that people tend to look twice at me and I've tried everything to look attractive. I've tried growing my hair (before the baldness), I've tried growing a beard which came out patchy. Once I even tried going to the village witch who chuckled a bit in what I hoped was solidarity and she gave me a potion which tasted vile, made me vomit and still didn't work.

The kindest of things to be said about my appearance was said by a girl who I was rather optimistically sent to by my father to try and woo her. I knew I had no hope of success in this particular case. I was far from the most handsome, far from the wealthiest, and far from the most titled suitor there. I spent some time with the lady in question, made her laugh and walked with her in her family's gardens a couple of times where we mostly talked about the other suitors. She told me that I was a nice person and that someday I would make some woman very happy. She told me that there wasn't any one thing about me that was unattractive, but that all together it took some getting used to. She told me that if I had been wealthier or more titled then I would have been considered. When I asked if being more handsome would have helped my case, she giggled and admitted that it wouldn't have hurt.

I resigned myself to odd drunken tumbling with other students and occasionally some coin handed out to the right people but all of these things contribute to the fact that when I enter a room, especially in the countryside full of farmers and labourers carrying my bulky bags and staff I get funny looks.

The point was that despite all of this, the looks that the Witcher got as we staggered through that room made me shiver. There was a raw hostility and active dislike of it. It wouldn't be too far for me to describe it as a naked hatred in their eyes.

It wasn't as if he looked particularly different to anyone else, at least to me he didn't. He was a little paler to be sure than the more weather-beaten men in the common room but he had been injured, was hissing in pain and losing blood so being pale was to be expected. He was wearing a leather coat under his oilskin cloak over a shirt and some leather trousers that had been strapped to his legs in a way that I had seen other swordsmen and mercenaries use to leave their movement unrestricted. His boots were large, well made and utterly filthy. I noticed that he didn't have spurs on the back of his boots.

I will grant that his eyes were startling the first time you see them but after a while, you get used to them and the only other ways that I could tell he was different was from the way he carried his sword on his back rather than at his waist, like any other mercenary, and the pendant dangling from his neck that I hadn't been able to see properly. His hair was dark and tied back in a ponytail, his nose was long and he had a jutting chin with a cleft up the middle. He was scarred but to me, that didn't strike me as unusual for a man that carried a sword. The biggest scar was horizontal across his nose, starting above his left eye until it ended on his right cheek.

So why did these people hate him so much? It was a mystery and one that I looked forward to solving in my academic future.

We made it to the stairs and I had to push him ahead of me. He slumped next to the wall when we reached the landing which gave me the opportunity to unlock my door (I had paid extra for the lockable door), get the man's belongings into my room (he protested feebly but didn't seem to have the strength to prevent me from doing what needed to be done before I came back. Levered the man to his feet and across my back.

Just because I'm wiry instead of built doesn't mean that I don't know how to pick someone up when they're not protesting. It's all a matter of leverage and the proper application of force.

I deposited him on the bed and went for my own bags to get my medical things. I had done a side course in field medicine so that I can patch up injuries. If you need surgery then I can't help you but I could probably make a good go of amputation with some help and patching up some wounds. The herbalism part of things is a little bit above my level other than “use the contents of the yellow jar in the wound before stitching it up”. I was optimistic this time as I hadn't had to use any of my precious supplies yet on the road.

I didn't have to use them then either.

The Witcher struggled into a flat position lying on his back making the frame groan in protest. He quickly took his gloves off and laid them next to him.

“Do you have gloves?” he asked me

“What?” I was rooting around in my medicine pouch finding needle, thread and bindings.

“Do you have gloves?” He raged at me the sudden bellow like a hammer, it was shocking and more than a little frightening.

“Y-yes,” I stammered, “Here with the rest of my things.” I'm no coward but his tone of voice promised murder.

“Put them on,”

“Why?”

“Put them on, God's curse you for a fool and a dead one at that. Put them on before I bleed to death.”

“Is there danger?”

“There will be if you don't put those FUCKING GLOVES ON NOW.”

I felt my brain snap then, in a way it occasionally does when my parents would scream at me when I was little, or a particularly strict professor or tutor would catch me daydreaming about girls. I just shut up, shut down and did as I was told.

“In my bags, you will find a small wooden box with wooden hinges, take it out and open it carefully,”

I did as bid and opened the thing on the floor. It was a beautiful old box, obviously much handled and treated with care. It was old, I could tell and expected some resistance in the hinges and the clasp but as it turned out the metalwork was well-oiled and the box opened beautifully. Inside, carefully clipped into specifically made alcoves for their size and shape were tiny little glass bottles. Each was individually clasped into place by metal straps that were also obviously well cared for. Inside the bottles were a variety of liquids.

“I need three bottles,” the Witcher was hyperventilating. Somewhere, the part of my brain that was

aware of such things was screaming at me that I should get some kind of professional medical expert as hyperventilation meant one of several things. I didn't know what those things were but all of them meant “get someone who knows what they're doing,

“I need the one on the top row, third from the left as you look at it. Contains a blue liquid. Then I need the one third from the right, an Amber liquid with silver sparkles. Hold it to the light to make sure you can see the sparkles.”

I did so, holding it to the candle flame to check and it did indeed contain silver sparkles. As I say I knew very little about alchemy and herbalism but fascination was beginning to overtake my fear.

“Lastly, if you take the top try by the handles and lift it out, underneath you will find another tray. Take it out gently.” The Witcher's breathing was becoming more shallow. Again my instincts were telling me that the man might die in my room but I was still too intimidated to go against his wishes.

“Underneath, I need the black bottle, before taking it out examine the bottle carefully for any leaks. If it has leaked, do not touch the liquid residue for ANY reason, even with gloves on it might kill you. Bring the three bottles over to me. Carry the third one carefully as water will form on the bottle's surface making it slippery and if you drop it, you will not survive the effects.”

I noticed that he only said that I would not survive the effects but my body was not obeying my brain at that point. I took the bottles over, taking two trips to do so. I was surprised that he did not complain about that.

“First, uncork the blue bottle and hand it over.”

I did so and he drank it down quickly with the grimace of a man doing an unpleasant job quickly.

“Then the yellow bottle.”

I uncorked and held while he lifted his jacket and shirt to display a significant claw mark along his ribs. He would scar, presuming he survived and I could also see that it wouldn't be his first scar.

He poured the contents of the yellow bottle over the injury liberally, and to my eyes carelessly.

“Put those bottles back in the same places.” He said, breathing heavily. “In the other bag, you will find several lengths of rope and a hard wooden tube with string at either end. Bring them over.”

I did so,

“Now, carefully and properly, tie me to the bed. Allow me no wiggle room and confine me as close as you can. Pay no mind to my comfort.”

Part of me came back then.

“What?” You are injured, what are you?”

“DO AS I SAY,” he roared, surging upright before collapsing back on the bed, plainly exhausted.

“I know that this may seem strange to your eyes and your instincts, but believe me when I say that this will save my life.”

I froze for a second. I would like to say that I was deliberating what he had told me. That I was making my mind up between what my (admittedly limited) professional instincts were telling me and what the Witcher wanted me to do. I was also shocked and appalled at the violence of the man. His rages were sudden, uncompromising and terrifying. That he could crush me in a confrontation was never in any doubt anyway, but now I was honestly scared and I don't mind admitting to that. I was also finding that I was regretting my earlier decisions to help the man and to pursue this line of research. I was honestly considering just dropping everything and either looking for another, more personable Witcher, or returning to Oxenfurt and my tutors to admit that I had made a terrible mistake.

“Please help me.” The Witcher moaned after a while, “Please. I cannot...”

Never let it be said that I am difficult to manipulate. A person asking for help or a pretty face are my weaknesses.

I tied the man up as requested so he was stretched out like a star. He tested his bonds.

“Good, now listen carefully as the next two hours will be the hardest. Take the black bottle and pour two drops into my open mouth. The spout is designed so that you will not find it difficult to measure out two drops so don't worry about that. Then, as quick as you can, put the wood between my mouth and tie it behind my head with the string. Again, do not concern yourself about my comfort. Within a couple of minutes, I will start howling and thrashing around. This is normal, do not concern yourself as I am told the sight is surprising and frightening. Especially to those with any kind of medical training. Do not concern yourself at...All. Do not touch me, do not untie me and do not take the gag out as my teeth may splinter. I will be delirious and I may beg you to untie me. Do not listen. Harden your heart. I swear by whatever Gods you believe in that I will be perfectly fine by morning. Do you understand?”

I nodded. “Should I bind your wound?”

“If you wish, but only after I've stopped thrashing around. That might be several hours, however.”

I nodded, and picked up the bottle, unscrewing the cap. The smell immediately filled the room and made me feel dizzy while strange lights danced in front of my eyes.

“Quickly now, before you pass out.”

I put the drops into the Witcher's mouth and re-corked the bottle, gagged him as bid and made it to the window before vomiting the night's dinner out into the night.

I turned back into the room and waited. The Witcher had closed his eyes and seemed relaxed while I started counting. I lost count at 64 heartbeats when the Witcher's back arched and his entire body went taut as a bowstring before coming crashing back down onto the mattress. He screamed then, with a sound that I would have sworn came from some kind of monster had I not been in the room next to him. Then there was silence.

The entire process lasted around two hours as best as I can judge. He screamed, moaned and howled, sometimes thrashing about, sometimes spasming in ways that would cripple ordinary folk. Sometimes his eyes would fly open with a look of absolute terror at whatever apparitions he was seeing before him and other times his eyes would snap closed as his head moved from side to side, his breathing ragged.

I had long since given up any thought that I might be able to help the man. This was well beyond my level of training. When I did eventually get back to Oxenfurt and recounted the story to my tutor, he berated me for not documenting the entire process in detail but I was far too terrified and overwhelmed by the entire process to manage something as petty and...well...ordinary as making notes. At one point there was a pounding on the door telling me to keep the noise down as I was scaring the other guests which were as ridiculous as it sounds. Especially as the Witcher chose that moment to let out one of his more violent cries chasing the innkeeper off with a half-hearted threat that we would have to pay for any furniture that we might break during our ungodly time together.

We would laugh about that much later, but at the time I was mortified and scurried off to my pack to count my funds to see if I could afford to replace a bed.

Eventually, the crying and the shaking started to die down and the Witcher seemed to sink into a sweat-soaked sleep, only occasionally moaning out something from the gag. I fetched my blanket from my pack that had been dumped in the corner and wedged myself in the corner of the room so that I could watch my patient.

I don't know when I fell asleep. All I can comment on the matter is that an uneven wooden floor can feel remarkably soft and comforting when you wake up after far too little sleep. As a result, it took far longer than I would have liked to properly wake up and remember where I was and what had happened the previous evening. I've had hangovers that were more pleasant than how I felt that morning.

Eventually, though I managed to drag myself back into the land of the living, stood, stretched, subsided, stretched again and yawned in a way that cracked my jaw.

Then I saw the empty bed, well ruffled and rather dirty.

I swore. Violently.

Stupid Gods-damned Witchers and their stupid ungrateful faces.

It took me a good couple of minutes to notice that his things were still in the corner, neatly stacked and orderly as a person might do before going in search of breakfast.

Still muttering to myself I relieved myself indiscriminately out the window, splashed some water on my face and went down to meet the world.

The Inn was much quieter in the morning, presumably, the farmers and labourers would come back in the evening for a drink or three before going home to their wives. It was the innkeeper's wife that was behind the bar that morning, cleaning cups, shouting at serving women and generally getting in the way of everyone like good innkeepers do the world over.

The Witcher called me over with a wave and a gesture if not a smile. He was sat in the corner of the common room, back to the wall with his sword propped up against the table. He looked in stupidly good health and remarkably cheerful for a man who had looked like he was in imminent danger of dying, only a matter of hours earlier.

“I didn't want to wake you,” he said between bites of sausage from the huge breakfast that he had in front of him. “So I came down earlier and kicked up a fuss until they fed me. I ordered you breakfast by the way.”

He set about the fried bacon, eggs and sausage with an energy that made me feel faintly ill. A similar plate was deposited in front of me.

“Watered wine or milk?” The serving girl asked me,

“What?” This was all happening a little too fast for comfort and I could still feel bits of my brain waking up and rebelling at how little sleep I had had the previous night. “Oh, umm, watered wine please,”

the girl disappeared.

I forced myself to eat a sausage. The best thing that could be said about it was that I had tasted worse.

“Are you going to eat that?” The Witcher snagged an extra piece of bacon from my plate. He was obviously ravenous and eating like a starving man at a feast.

I manfully ate some more and I will admit that it got better as I went on. Who would have thought that breakfast could be an acquired taste? My drink was brought as I finished and the two of us sat back in our seats and looked at each other.

Yes, trying to stare into a Witcher's eyes is unnerving. Especially as they hardly ever blink.

“So I owe you a thank you.” He said after a long while.

I didn't know how to answer that. I remind everyone that I had barely slept after what was not the most restful evening.

“You're welcome,” I managed after a while.

He nodded at that.

“It's not often that a random member of the public offers helps to a mutant.”

I didn't know how to answer that either.

“So I have to wonder,” he mused, leaning forward. “What your angle is?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you want?”

“Why do I have to want anything?”

He sighed and leant back, his gaze continued to hold mine.

“I've met many people in my time on the path.” He said after a long while. “Many, many people and I would like to think that that has given me a bit of an insight when it comes to human nature. Most prominently that people do not do something for nothing. There is always an angle, always a reason. I hunt monsters. I do it for coin. Some knightly orders have taken up my profession and they do it for fame, adulation and the promise of power and increased rank in whatever knightly order they belong to. The fact that they nearly always fuck it up is generally forgotten. I've never met anyone who does good deeds randomly. There is always an angle. Always. Even if it is just to make themselves feel better because they did something bad earlier. So what do you want?”

I will admit that I was lost for words. A somewhat rare occurrence but it seemed that my breakfast companion was running out of patience.

“Who are you?” he asked in the end.

“My name is Franklin Eriksson Von Coulthard.”

“An impressive name, Do you know what that means?”

“I do,” I answered following up with the familiar joke “But I'm not sure that my Grandfather knew it when he chose the suitably aristocratic name when he managed to buy himself a title.”

The Witcher smiled a little. Just a slight upturning of the lips but I had been watching for it. It meant that he got the joke which I had not expected.

“So, now I know your name, but who are you?”

“I don't know what you mean.

“I want to know what kind of man pulls an injured Witcher off his horse in the middle of the night. While it's raining no less and helps that Witcher across a crowded inn to a bed and then helps him to care for himself. What do you want?”

His voice had turned dangerous and I could see his hands twitching. I thought it was time to come clean.

“I'm a student at Oxenfurt.”

His eyes narrowed and I felt a chill down my spine. “Are you an alchemist?”

“No,”

“A healer then? what do they call themselves? a Doctor?”

“No,”

“Herbalist?”

“No.”

He frowned.

“Then I don't understand why you are here?”

“I want to be a professional scholar.”

For the first time, he looked a little confused.

“A what?”

“I want to be a...”

“Yes yes, I heard you the first time. I thought that being a scholar was something that you either are or are not. How does one become a professional scholar?”

“You get given tenure.”

“Ah, I see.”

He stared at me for a long moment. I felt that I had gone down in his estimation a little, as though I had been downgraded from slime to mucus.

“Why would anyone want to be a tenured scholar?”

I sighed a little. I had asked myself the same question several times over the last few months.

“There are several reasons,” I said, scratching my chin

“I have time.”

“Very well then. The first reason is that it annoys my father.”

The Witcher nodded. “From what I understand, that can occasionally be a worthwhile ambition. Why?”

“He wants me to marry and settle down. I'm not averse to the idea, providing it's a girl I like and who likes me but I wouldn't have a choice. But for the good of the family of course.”

“Of course,”

“And I find that I don't really care about the family that much. I have felt like a piece of meat being bargained over.”

“Such are the problems of being nobly born.”

It was not a new argument.

“I am aware of that,” I replied.

“Then what is the second reason?”

“I like being a student. I like attending lectures and arguing about things with other students and lecturers. I like the way I spend my days.”

“Doesn't sound like a good...”

“I also enjoy the research side of things.” I interrupted him. It was a risk to interrupt the highly trained killing machine in front of me, I was under no illusions about that but I felt that things were getting to the stage where I needed to exert myself. “I want to broaden people's understanding and knowledge. If we lose that knowledge then we step backwards rather than forwards. We need to educate ourselves and learn from the past.”

“Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”

“Precisely,”

“Who said that by the way?” The Witcher asked

“I can't remember,” I admitted. “I was always more interested in history itself rather than philosophy.”

The Witcher nodded before shrugging.

“This is all well and good but that still doesn't tell me why you helped me.”

“I would like to think...”

“Oh come on,”

“No, hang on.” I felt that courage was needed here. “I would like to think that I would have helped any injured person who was being turned away from an inn for seemingly arbitrary prejudiced reasons. I knew they had rooms available so...” I held my hands up in what I hoped was a gesture of helplessness. “If you had not been a Witcher I doubt the situation would come up. But yes I would like something from you.”

“A contract?”

“Kind of.”

“That's an odd way of putting it.”

“Not really.” I took a breath and had something to drink before starting my pitch. I had been working on it for a long while and didn't want to ruin it.

The fact that his sword was so close to hand as it were was really off-putting.

“The thing about it is this. No one knows about Witchers. Everyone knows about Witchers but no one knows about Witchers if you follow me. We all know that you turn up occasionally wearing at least one, sometimes two swords on your back and that you have strange eyes that remind people of cats,”

“Or snakes,” he put in. I couldn't read his face.

“Yes...” I tried to regain my stride. “We know that we can hire you to deal with local monster problems. We know that “Monster Problems” are defined by whatever it is that a Witcher decides they are and that the Witcher then charges a certain amount of money for their services before moving on. Often at the urging of the local populace. We also know that the number of Witchers out on the roads is dwindling.”

“How do you know that?”

I had expected the question this time.

“Because there are fewer reports of you.”

He shrugged.

“But beyond that, we know nothing.” I continued. “For instance, people call you mutants, but what does that mean to you? Why do you carry your weapons on your backs rather than at your sides as everyone else does? Is being a Witcher a calling? A job? An obligation of some sort? Why do you never hear about retired Witchers? And so on.”

He sniffed. “One of my more famous peers had the dubious fortune to befriend a world-famous poet who then chronicled his exploits.”

“Yes, I know.” I had a copy of the chronicles in my bag upstairs that I had begun rereading on my travels to prepare myself for this meeting. “I have read it several times. However, there are some problems with it from a historical standpoint.”

“Such as?”

“It is written by a world-famous poet and saga master. Therefore, in generations to come, most of the chronicle will be dismissed as being mostly fiction. That there was a Witcher with white hair who did some incredible things will not be in doubt but what the chronicles say? I'm afraid that that will mostly be dismissed.”

The Witcher nodded.

“However, my findings will be published in the Oxenfurt university Chronicle and combined into a book. This will automatically give it more weight by future historians.”

The Witcher stared into space for a long time.

“Why do you think that the “Life and Times of a Witcher” is a worthwhile thing to record?”

“Because no one else does what you do. Yes, you charge for your services, but you do provide them and those services have saved many lives. I, for one, think it would be a shame if “The Witchers” as a whole disappeared into history without a mention other than the works of a poet and an obvious piece of propaganda which is obvious now but will be taken as fact in the future unless it is contended now. That and because no one has done it before.”

“Chronicling us will not make you popular in certain circles.”

“Religious ones you mean?”

“Indeed,”

“The thought had occurred. I find that I don't really care that much.”

He smiled. He actually smiled. I nearly fell off my bench in shock.

“My work can be dangerous,” he warned.

I had him and I knew it.

“I know. I trained for some time with a fencing master and with a quarterstaff.”

“Even so, sometimes I will order you to stay behind and you will do so. Or you will die. By my hand or by the monster's hand. I cannot defend you and worry about the monster at the same time and the distraction could be deadly.”

“I understand.”

“My job often doesn't pay well and will not support both of us in provisions and the like,”

“I have an allowance that is paid to me by the university in the form of credit with most merchants and moneylenders. I can take care of myself in that regard.”

“Payment? As you say, I don't work for free and I feel that carting you around with me will not be entirely pleasurable.”

“Shall we say ten per cent of my allowance? I can also cook when we have to camp and am hardier than I look.”

The Witcher grunted.

“Will there be questions?”

“Yes, but only about method, philosophy and history. If you are uncomfortable answering then you should say so and I will leave the subject behind.”

He nodded.

“It's part of our code,” he said after a while, “that our secrets remain our secrets. Any attempt to see or divine the formulae from my potions and tools will be met with death. Any sign that you are trying to see how my mutations could be done will be met with the same.”

“I understand. Can I ask what they do and how it feels to have them?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Yes, but don't expect a regular answer.”

I nodded.

“Then do we have a deal?”

“We do,”

I held out my hand.

He hesitated for a brief moment before taking it.

“I don't know your name?”

“Kerrass.” He said, “Kerrass of Maecht.”

Chapter 2: Lessons, Campfire Talks, and a Witcher's Discipline

In the end we managed to get away from the village in the early part of the afternoon after much complaining and moaning on the part of my new companion.

Every time we would be ready to go he would find some new dire instruction to give me that, if not followed, would result in death for at least me and probably him during the journey. To my mind they were full of little picky things like how tight my saddle was strapped to my horse, the type of shoes that she was shod with, how long my stirrups were, how I held the reins and so on. At one point we spent a good ten minutes discussing how we were going to set up camp in the evening with everything being laid out for me so that I would know exactly how everything was supposed to be placed when we stopped for the evening if we found ourselves away from civilisation. He actually stopped down to the ground and used one of his knives to draw a diagram in the mud which included such things as how far we were to sleep from the road, where my bed roll would be situated, where his bedroll should be situated. How the horses should be tied up, where the camp fire should be dug and how and where a watchman should stand and move to ensure that we weren't being attacked during the night.

At first I asked some questions about the importance of the various instructions that he gave me, things like why I needed to have my stirrups a lot shorter than I would normally have them when I rode, only for a torrent of abuse and ridicule to come from the person that was going to be my travelling companion.

Again the thought occurred that this was possibly a lot more trouble than it was worth and that I should turn tail and head for home.

When all was said and done we left to the ironic cheers of some of the people working in the village and I couldn't help but smile to myself as the innkeepers wife had secreted a small bottle of apple brandy in the provisions that were carefully arranged in my saddle bags with an instruction not to share it with him. I had chuckled a little to myself and it was this that galvanised me to keep to the original plan.

After this, I don't think we spoke together for a week. I won't deny that it was tough going. The Witcher set a hard and fast pace which the horses complained about nearly as much as my aching muscles did. We kept to byways and game trails for the most part, avoiding the main roads with their deep ruts and potholes and therefore the gossip and traffic that goes with them. I couldn't detect any particular pattern that we were travelling by other than the fact that we were travelling vaguely eastwards.

The routine was that we would ride until early evening when I would see the Witcher take his eyes from the path ahead of us and start looking around. This was my signal that we would be making camp soon. When he had picked somewhere, often the dampest, wettest, coldest, most exposed patch of dirt and mud that he could find we would set about making camp. Well I say that we would set about the camp. In truth, I, would set about making camp while he tended to the horses and glared at the surrounding undergrowth. I would dig a small hole where I would lay the fire, occasionally sheltering the fire from the elements with a pig skin that had been purchased for that very purpose. Then if it was dry I would arrange any damp clothes that needed airing around the fire before starting to cook. Food at that point was generally a kind of barley stew with a few pieces of dried and salted meat thrown in for good measure. It was filling enough, and occasionally I was able to flavour it with some wild garlic that I found while wandering about. After the food was ready I would arrange the sleeping areas, again stretching a skin over the top, and digging a rain gulley if required before going out in search of firewood. Again the type of wood I was looking for was drilled into me by my travelling companion.

When dinner was ready I would eat, clear the pots away and curl up in my own bedroll while the Witcher kept watch over us both. I doubted that we really needed to set a watch as we were still relatively close to civilised lands at that point but I kept that opinion to myself. Anyway, better to be safe than sorry.

The Witcher would wake me up at some point in the night and it would be my duty to keep watch for the rest of the night. It wasn't easy at first but getting into the swing of things I used the time to take care of some of my own concerns. I made some notes about our early meetings as well as a lot of unimportant observations about the journey so far. I had a pretty good guess as to what was going on with my travelling companion but had decided that keeping my own council was the best thing for us both. I would collect some more firewood, do some exercises, some quarter staff drills, deal with some personal hygiene issues that would creep up every so often. It was pitch black outside the camp as the moon was waning at the time and my ears were more reliable than my eyes at keeping watch. It also meant that I could prepare the two of us a decent breakfast which I would give the Witcher when it was ready.

The only particularly relevant thing to say about him in this period is the way that he slept. Always he would sleep on his back, left leg right leg bent with his sword on his left hand side. I yearned to ask him about that but kept my silence in the meantime but every night I would watch him through my bleary state of half-sleep as he carefully arranged himself and his weapon just so until he was satisfied. When he was satisfied he fell asleep almost instantly.

He snored like a dwarf.

So fatigue turned into boredom, boredom turned into monotony, monotony turned into a strange kind of reflective thoughtlessness. It felt a lot like falling asleep only without the actual sleeping process. I dreamed up so many things, imagined conversations with my father, mother and various other family members. Remembered conversations suddenly had extra scenes that if I had said just said a slightly different thing at a slightly different time then I would have gotten away with everything. Talked that impossibly beautiful girl into bed. Finally gotten my father to up my allowance. I looked at the man who always rode in front of me and imagined the two of us travelling the lands and righting wrongs and other such romantic nonsense. I had erotic daydreams about every girl who had eventually said no and self righteous dreams where I won every argument and won every competition.

I had come through some kind of barrier into a land of kind of strange and absent enjoyment. It was fun watching the Witcher becoming more and more frustrated with me. Watching as every single time I did something without giving him the opportunity to yell at me went home into a deep part of his soul like a dagger made of glass although I carefully hid my smile for when he was asleep or when I was buried into my own blankets for the night.

In the end we had been travelling westwards for ten days give or take an hour or two when the Witcher jerked his reins and his horse turned around with a wicker of protest.

“In the name of everything, what are you still doing here?” He was absolutely furious. Not properly, about to commit murder, furious, but he was still pretty angry. The other thing was that I was roughly half asleep.

“What?” I blinked stupidly at him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and spoke again. Much quieter this time.

“Why are you still here?” he said. “This situation is intolerable.”

I stared at him for a moment as I tried to remember how to speak.

“Umm, you remember, my research project? I'm paying you to let me follow you around?”

He stared off into the distance. For a long moment.

“You really aren't going to change your mind on that are you?”

“No,” I found that I was trying not to smile again. “Do you know how hard it is to find a Witcher in this day and age?”

“I do. It's too hard. Certainly too hard for those people who actually need us.”

He stared at me again for a moment. Exasperation and frustration warring on his face, eventually giving way to wry amusement and resignation.

“Let's camp early tonight. I need to exercise, we both could do with the rest and to talk a bit more.”

He walked his horse on and we rode for maybe another hour. It was early afternoon at this point.

He eventually found us a little alcove up against an embankment that almost made the place into a cave. It was sheltered from the wind and the rain and there was plenty of room for both the horses and ourselves. I begun arranging the sleeping areas until he stopped me, directing me to put the blankets up against the embankment because they would be more comfortable.

“You know how to make tea?” he asked me.

“What?” I asked stupidly

“Tea, do you know how to make it?”

“Umm yes. The chancellor gets it in from Zerrikania and has a thing about inviting us all to help him drink it. I always thought he was showing off.”

“He was,” he said with more than a little irony, “getting it from Zerrikania at any rate. He was probably lying to you about that as well. Anyway, whatever it was it will be similar to this stuff.”

He produced a waxed paper packet from one of his bags and tossed it to me along with a jar of honey. “Make us some up along with a good sized lunch. We'll be at a village tomorrow and can get more supplies there.” He gathered up his sword and the strange, long wooden box that I had seen him with at the inn. “I like my tea hot, strong and with plenty of honey. Build us a nice big fire tonight.”

“How big?”

“Big.” He answered with a slight smile. “If you get into trouble, shout. If it gets really dangerous, scream.” He loped off at a gentle run.

I set to work building the big fire and gathering firewood, I made tea and settled in to wait.

By the time he came back several hours later I had my notebook out and was sketching.

“Those are pretty good,” he said sitting down on his own blankets making me jump.

“It's just something to pass the time.”

He nodded. The silence lengthening into awkwardness. “Do you know how to roast a rabbit?” he asked suddenly.

“I do as a matter of fact,”

“Good, because I ensnared three.”

I will not deny that my mouth started to water at the prospect. War affects things. First there was the war. Then came the disease, carried by all of those corpses. Then it was the famine due to the utter lack of people to work in the fields. Rabbit was a rarity.

“We both need to rest tonight,” he continued. “Can you clean them up and get them ready while I make sure that we can both sleep tonight?”

I nodded, took out a knife and got to work while he had taken a large ball of thread and started winding it around the trees and branches.

There was a faint jingling coming from the threads as well as little golden glints of light.

He came back with a satisfied look on his face.

“We didn't need to set watch at all did we?”

“Nope,” he grinned evilly.

“Bells on string around the camp?”

“Yes,”

I laughed at that and hurled the rabbit offal out into the woods.

“So how long have you been regretting your decision to let me tag along?” I asked as I started to thread the rabbits onto sticks over the fire.

“Roughly speaking? Since shortly after I said that you could. I don't know what possessed me, I really don't. Like most of us Witchers and mutants, I'm not used to being around people and it kind of made things difficult for me.”

“Why didn't you just tell me to leave?”

“It was a contract. I'd said yes and we'd shaken on it. Therefore a contract is a contract is a contract.” He scratched the back of his head as he poured himself some tea. “I'm under no illusions. I'm essentially a hired sword, a mercenary if you prefer and all we ever have is our word.”

“Isn't the stereotype of mercenaries that they aren't trustworthy?” I asked,

“That is indeed the stereotype, but if mercenaries start going back on their contracts, who is going to hire them next time?”

It was not an invalid point. He winced at the tea and added another spoonful of honey.

We lapsed into silence again. I was trying to contain my excitement as he was visibly relaxing in front of me.

This time he broke the silence.

“Why haven't you asked me any real questions yet?” he asked me.

“Would you have answered them until now?” I countered. “This is not the first time I've had a subject to study that involves interviews. You will answer questions when you are ready. My job is to ask the right questions at the right time.

He thought about that for a moment.

“Fair point. Do you want to ask me a question now?”

“If you don't mind?”

“A short one then.”

“Why do you carry your sword on your back and why do some Witchers that I've heard of carry both at the same time?”

“A short question I said,” His lips turned up a little in the ghost of a smile. “To be honest I don't really know. It's just that that's how I was trained to carry my swords. The plural thing of carrying both swords at once has always struck me as a bit stupid. Especially in times like this. People know Witchers carry a silver sword. People hear silver and think that that equals money. Money equals food and safety and if I were to carry it openly then it's inviting trouble.”

“Also is there any danger of drawing the wrong sword in a fight.”

“That would never happen. They weigh differently and we are trained in those movements from the moment we are brought to the school. As for carrying both, we all have different methods. Some of my fellows might argue that having both means that you are prepared for anything. This idea has merit, but personally I would argue that you should never be surprised and you should always know which sword you should be carrying. For me the only time you might need both is when you are hunting in a bandit infested area.”

“What about when travelling in an area with bandits and monsters?”

He grinned nastily. “Depending on the situation I might have to see who is faster, the monster or my horse,”

“Is it not harder to draw a sword of that length from your back rather than your side?”

“There's a trick to it. Again, if you've been trained to it then a side draw seems inefficient.”

“Can you demonstrate?”

He thought for a minute and then stood up.

“Watch carefully. Give me a cue as to when to draw as though something was jumping out at me.”

I nodded. He stood, easily and relaxed with his hands at his sides.

I shouted and his sword was in his hands before I had finished shouting.

“Did you see it?” he asked.

“No, could you do it again only slower?”

“Not really, the trick requires speed. Watch again.”

The process was repeated with my being none the wiser.

“Nope, sorry.”

His eyes twinkled. “You're watching the wrong hand. Watch what my left hand does.”

The process was again repeated.

“Can I see it again?”

He did at a final time and I smiled.

“You tug the strap,” I felt rather pleased with myself. “It makes the sword leap forwards and out.”

“Yes, you need a specific sheath for it and the blade must be shaped and oiled correctly for it to work. It also requires hours of practice.”

He subsided again and poured himself some more tea.

“As for, “why on the back.” The honest answer is that I don't know,” he scratched his armpit. “But if I had to guess, there are a couple of possible reasons.”

“Go on,” I prompted.

“Firstly, It tells everyone who I am from a distance. Yes, as I get closer you could see my eyes or my medallion when I have it out on my chest. But from a distance?”

“Stay clear of that guy,” I said putting on an artificially scared voice, “He's a Witcher coz he's got his swords on his back.”

“Exactly. Another reason is that my work takes me to some inconvenient places, up cliffs, down caves, into sewers, down wells and things. I could imagine that doing so with a sword at your waist, swing there, that sword could get in the way, or clang into something warning the monster in question that I'm coming.”

“Good reason,”

“It's also a balance thing I suppose. If you carry a sword on your hip there's a lot of extra weight there which you would naturally compensate for, both with your body and your natural movement. Eventually one side would be stronger than the other putting your body out of balance. I don't know enough about the body so I'm just guessing here, but it makes sense.”

I nodded my agreement. I'd studied anatomy at one point and it wasn't entirely incorrect.

“But my training and sword forms depend on balance and movement. If my muscles don't react exactly to my requirements then I am dead and gone, and whichever monster I'm hunting is free to kill more peasants.”

He took another drink. “Does that answer your question?”

“I think so,”

“Good,”

He finished his tea. “Right then. If you're going to watch me work, I need to be able to trust that you know what you're doing. Go and fetch your quarterstaff.”

“You ready?” he asked when I got back. He was holding a quarterstaff of his own that he had presumably earlier. His sword was propped up against a nearby tree.

I nodded.

I would like to say that I saw what happened next. I would like to say that I saw him go from a neutral standing position with the quarterstaff resting on the floor at his feet to a full staff extension with the end of the staff impacting, hard, against my forehead.

I fell, feeling more foolish than hurt.

Now there is something that, in my own defence, needs to be said again. Yes I'm a student. Yes I've spent a good portion of my life crouched over desks and musty tomes. Yes I'm gangly and not particularly well muscled. But I'm also no slouch.

If you've ever pursued any kind of athletic pastime in a group yourself you know that the range of ability is like a curve. Us scholars like to be condescending and describe it as a bell curve. The vary best athletes who are both talented and well trained are at one end and the least talented and least trained are at the other end. The vast majority of people come in a clump together in the middle. I would tend to find myself towards the front of that clump. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not a terrible waste and that I have some martial skill.

The other thing to say is this. At Oxenfurt I studied fencing as well as the quarterstaff and a little bit of wrestling. My talents were not in fencing as I tended to over-think that discipline when to be any good you need a singularity of focus that I lacked. I was OK at wrestling providing that my opponent was either my own weight or was feeling overconfident. If they were overconfident I would win a point shortly before getting pounded into the dirt.

But I liked quarterstaff fighting. I found that there was always something you could do and that there was always more than one option. A parry or a block could be turned into a strike which could then change into a jab, a strike, a sweep, a grapple or any combination of all of these things.

I also, vividly, remember the first time I fought someone I knew I couldn't beat. That I would never be able to beat. Even if I trained each and every day then I just wouldn't be able to beat this guy. I remember being terrified for just a moment. I remember thinking to myself that if this person wanted to, he could kill me, or seriously cripple me. I could be done for life. My entire existence could end here on this practice field.

I remember realising this after maybe the first exchange.

That guy was nothing compared to the Witcher.

I would actually like to have seen that fight now that I come to think about it.

But right then and there I wasn't worrying about that. I had just been walloped over the head with a heavy lump of wood and feeling very foolish.

I began to sit up and realised that I'd bitten my lip, and I spat blood.

Then I heard the sound. It was a kind of whistling sound. It's a distinctive sound that you learn quickly when you use a quarterstaff. It's the sound of the air being split apart by a quarterstaff moving far too quickly towards your head.

Now, one of the first things they tell you when you're learning to fight with either a staff or a sword is that the floor is not your friend.

I rolled.

Towards the whistling sound.

Towards the Witcher who had gripped his staff by the end with both hands and was bringing it down with immense force towards the area that I had occupied only a moment before.

He'd braced himself for the two handed swing at me and the angle of the staff meant that it mostly hit the floor while I was rolling towards his legs.

He kicked me in the ribs for my effort. He pulled back for another kick and I managed to catch the leg this time and heave upwards.

He didn't fall, instead he spun away hurling his staff away as it had broken when it hit the floor and reached his sword drawing it smoothly. He shook his hand as though loosening it from a cramp.

Fortunately I had taken the opportunity to regain my feet and settle a stance as he did so.

We faced each other then across the little clearing. A matter of seconds had passed. My sides ached, my mouth was sore and the side of my head was thumping.

I was furious.

I spat blood as a red curtain of rage filled my vision.

He attacked as I did so, but I had expected it.

I charged forwards with a shout, ducking under his stroke driving my staff into his midsection.

But he wasn't there. He had spun away, which meant that he probably had an open view at my back. I spun myself. He was right handed which meant that the strike should land here and so I put my staff there which directs his sword down like so which means that my staff is now over his sword which means that I can swing like this and he should move away to give me some room.

I had forgotten that I was screaming.

He didn't move away, instead he shoulder checked me and I fell backwards staggering. My foot landed on a stone or a stick or something damned inconvenient and I felt myself falling.

I landed hard and the breath whooshed out of me. The Witcher rose above me, his eyes blazing like the sun. His lips drawn back into a snarl. I would swear that I saw fangs in his mouth, his hair streaming about his head in a shadow and it was absolutely terrifying. He brought his sword round in a mighty strike and I did the only thing I could think of, attempt to knock the blow aside with my staff and try to roll aside.

It's hard to do that when you can't breathe.

I heard splintering wood and just for a moment I thought it was the sound of bone splintering and that I was dying.

“OK, that's enough.”

I opened my eyes, I didn't remember closing them.

The Witcher was standing over me, holding out his hand to lift me to my feet. He was smiling faintly His eyes had returned to normal, his hair was back to being tied up.

I did think about refusing the hand but on balance, I wasn't convinced that I could make it to my feet by myself.

I stood and staggered a little.

“You alright?” he asked.

“You hit me in the head.” I accused him.

“And the ribs.” he added with a slight smile. “I hope you're not sentimental about your quarterstaff as I'm afraid I broke it.”

“They're not hard to come by.” I had come fourth in one of the Oxenfurt tournaments with that staff.

“Good.” He helped me over to a tree root where he deposited me. He brought back the remains of both our staves and broke them down a little further before adding them to the firewood.

I was astonished to realise that barely a minute had passed.

I was also realising that I wasn't as badly hurt as I thought I was.

“OK,” I said after testing the cut on my lip and gently probing my head injury. I was going to have a lump there. Sure to make me more attractive to the ladies. “What was all that about? Trying to teach me some humility?”

“What did you think it was?”

“You said earlier that you wanted to test me to see if you could depend on me,”

“Correct.” He had taken out a whet stone and was inspecting his sword in the minutest detail.

“But that wasn't just that was it? Wanted to exercise some rage there?”

“Nope,”

“But you were really trying to hurt me.” I protested

“No I wasn't.”

I hissed with pain as my hand came away sticky. I held the hand up for his inspection.

“You weren't trying to hurt me?”

“Well, maybe a little,” I had begun to notice that he didn't really smile. There was occasionally a slight upturn of his lips, but I got the feeling that this was intentional. Instead there was a kind of twinkle in his eye that told me that he was enjoying himself.

“You did well,” he said. “You didn't panic and when I used the sign you didn't freeze in terror or confusion, you reacted with rage which was an interesting response. Something to think about there. Ooh, and while I think about it, I know it helps your adrenaline and things but try not to shout before a strike as it warns your opponent that a strike is coming. Instead shout as you strike”

“A Sign?” My brain wasn't quite catching up.

“ Axii to be precise. A little magic trick to confuse the minds of enemies. Did you see me make a movement with my hand? As I was drawing my sword?”

“Oh that's what it was.” I felt a little silly then.

“Don't be too hard on yourself. From my perspective you didn't freeze in terror confusion which was what I was afraid of. You didn't react blindly. You acted, with some skill I might add. Much better than I expected if I'm honest. I've seen people react much worse to that before now.”

“Was that the test?”

“Part of it. How's the rabbit doing?”

“It's fine. Besides I'm not really very hungry yet. What's the other part of the test?”

He regarded me for a long time.

“A quarterstaff is useless where we're going. Don't get me wrong, you have some skill with it but against anyone that wears anything more than chain-mail, it isn't really effective. Now yes, if we're worrying about human predators then the likelihood of them wearing full plate harness out here is rare, at most they might have a helm that they have looted from some battlefield. But Monsters are a different story. You need something with weight and an edge to cut through thick hides. Something that will put fear into your enemies. You have talent but we have a lot of work to do.”

“Are you still trying to put me off.”

“No.” he said after a moment. “No, I think that that option is no longer viable. If you want to leave then you can, anytime you like in fact. But if you're still determined to come with me then we need to make sure that you're not going to get either of us killed. Do you understand?”

“Yes,”

“I shall give you a series of exercises that you need to perform every day. Do not shirk as it will mean the difference between life and death and I will be able to tell if you don't.”

“I understand,”

“We will be approaching a town tomorrow and there will be a hunt.”

“How do you know?”

“I can see the signs. No I'm not going to tell you what they are.”

I smiled as he predicted my question.

“We'll go in and you need to stay quiet. I will tell them that you are my apprentice. They will understand being apprenticed to a trade, they won't understand you being a scholar.”

“What about my being your squire?”

He shook his head.

“That will make them think that I'm a knight. If I'm a knight then that means that I'm nobility which means that they will clam up and I need them to be comfortable enough to speak with me to do my job. Oh, and write nothing down unless we're given a private room and you're absolutely certain that no-one can see you.”

“Why?”

“Learning and intelligence frightens people. Not just peasants but nobility too. Never give away an advantage if you don't have to.”

I nodded again.

“How's your head?” he asked,

“Sore,” I answered.

He handed over a bottle.

“Peace offering?” he offered.

I took, sniffed and the smell that came out was like a knife slicing through my brain. It left a scent of apples behind. I decided that I was in it now and took a swig.

I don't know what face I pulled put the Witcher did smile then.

“Drink up, it's good for you.”

“Is this the apple brandy that the innkeeper's wife gave me? The apple brandy that was in my pack?”

The Witcher turned back to tend the fire, saying nothing.

Chapter 3: Of Cats, Villagers, and the Witcher's Smile

At first I didn't believe him when he told me that the first things that would notice us as we approached the village were the cats followed by the children. It just seemed so ridiculous to me that this would be the case. In any village there are people out working in the fields, working on the homes or on the fencing or on the roads. Hunters with bows trying to find a meal, trappers, fishermen, mill-owners, ramblers, horny couples that have escaped prying eyes for a quick tryst. But no, apparently none of that was the case. The first things that would see us coming were the cats, followed by the children.

“Why the cats?”

“Damned if I know,” he said as he was cleaning some dirt off his armour. He was fastidiously cleaning every piece of his equipment until it shone. “I once met a Sorcerer who claimed that it was because cats can see the eddies of magic. I have no idea if that's true or not but they do react oddly around monsters and they seem to hate me so...” he shrugged and got back to work.

“Why not dogs?” I asked. I had wondered if I should clean myself up as well, but he had told me not to bother, that the people in the village wouldn't be looking at me and so I was cooking breakfast.

“Dogs are just dogs. They'll react to anything if the wind is in the right direction. But cats...” he hawked and spat into a piece of leather. “My personal view is that the damn things are just so evil and monstrous that they can feel a monster slayer coming.”

“Cats aren't monsters.”

“You say that again when they've clawed your wrists apart, or when you've accidentally walked into a pair of them rutting in the street.” He spat again and scrubbed vigorously “Cats were only put on this continent to remind us all that something so small and cute can also be utterly and completely evil.”

I laughed at him. I felt we had come to a bit of an understanding. We weren't friends, at least not yet but I had high hopes for the future. We were in a strange kind of place, neither of us were entirely sure of our positions with the other or where we stood with each other so we were sort of feeling our way through the world.

There had been another load of instructions that morning about how I was to behave in the village that we were going to. Where I should stand and how I should hold my horse, how I should behave. He had warned me that I was going to be introduced as his apprentice. He would say that I was a war orphan, that I wanted to become a Witcher and that he was trying to dissuade me by showing me the horrors of what I would be going up against.

He had also asked if I could change my accent to sound less educated. Unfortunately that was beyond my rather humble acting abilities and I said so.

We arrived in the village of Treaton in roughly midmorning. Apparently this was so that the maximum possible number of people could see him coming. When he was finally satisfied that his equipment was properly arranged and prepared we rode up the track and into town. Just as we got to the first row of houses he turned his horse aside onto a small piece of grass land and just sat there. Not moving.

Now I'm not a poet. I tried it a few times in vague and vain attempts to woo a few pretty girls but I always found that my sense of humour gets in the way of such things. I have much more skill with limericks and as a result, the audience that I was intending to get to cry, end up rolling around with laughter which is not the desired effect.

But this time, the sight of the Witcher, his sword and the metal fixtures of his armour gleamining in the sunlight, sat there on his horse perfectly still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It was a peculiar feeling and I found myself wondering how many times he had done this, sitting here on the edge of a village waiting for someone to approach, wondering what the job would entail and where it might lead. Would this be the job that finally killed him? Where would he go after this, would he be injured? would he make friends? Enemies? a lover?

I thought about how many times this little ritual had been played out throughout history. A lone man with a sword on his back and bulky saddlebags comes out of the woods and along the trail, grim faced. stern looking with stark terrifying eyes that seemed to see everything despite the fact that they were just staring straight ahead.

I found the image haunting. It had a mythic quality to it and a storied history that I found myself drawn to. I tried to think about other images that might be similar to this. I thought of a knight in full armour riding off to battle with the sun glinting off his armour and banners snapping in the wind. But despite his lack of armour, or maybe because of it. The Witcher just seemed that much more dangerous. I thought then of the churchman that my mother had once taken me to see in an effort to give me some kind of inspiration towards doing something with my life. He was obviously a few meals short of proper health, had no money to speak of, his red cassock was dirty, patched and faded and his symbol of the Eternal fire was made of wood rather than metal but his passion had inflamed the crowd and sent me home with dreams that I did not recognise.

It took me a while to find my passion and much to my mothers disappointment it hadn't been where she had wanted it to go.

But that lone priest, declaiming the righteousness of the eternal flame before the oldest oak tree in the local area had nothing on the Witcher.

There was a conviction there, a surety and a focus that I found disturbing at the same time as being reassuring.

I understood why Master Dandelion had decided to write his sagas on the subject of a Witcher then. Indeed I was surprised that no-one else had ever done it before.

I cursed my romantic soul and did my best to copy his stillness.

Now, sometime after the fact I find myself wondering what the pair of us looked like standing our horses together on that lonely mud track on the edge of a village. A significant part of me thinks that I probably looked more than a little ridiculous while my companion looked even more dangerous and heroic by association. But part of me hoped and indeed still hopes that someone in that village looked out at us and felt their hearts lift a little.

Unfortunately the effect was rather spoiled by the small child who ran at us, obviously goaded by a group of friends, and hurled a large chunk of cow shit at us, most of which landed on my companion's cloak.

Then a local cat hissed at us and spat

He sighed theatrically.

“Gerroudofit.” Someone shouted. “Go on, clear off you bunch of mongrels, go on. Or I'll have your parents tan your hides like the monsters that you are and that we all know you to be.”

An older man came out waving a large stick and made an heroic one man charge against the “miscreants” and “vandals” that had stood jeering at the pair of us. The mongrels broke before the fearsome sight and fled, laughing and hooting out into the fields.

I was watching for it so I managed to see Kerrass' mouth twitch towards a smile just briefly as the miniature battle played itself out in front of us. As a piece of theatre it lacked something but was nonetheless entertaining and spoke of much rehearsing.

The man approached, only slightly leaning on his stick which was old, gnarled and shiny as though polished with much handling.

“Greetings my Lords,” he called to us as he approached, “Greetings and welcome and Greetings again. I hope long life and health bring you to our humble little village.” There was a light in his eyes that warned me that this old man was no-one's fool. My eyes flickered from one man to the other. The Witcher had told me that a lot could be decided in the first few moments of contact between him and the “client”.

“Greetings,” The Witcher's voice had changed a little. Normally he spoke with a flat, rasping voice without accent. It was a voice that sounded as though it was bored and resented the fact that it had to leave the lips at all. Now he had an accent that I couldn't place but was familiar as though it came from just over the hill from anywhere. “I saw the sign a few days ago. Do you still have need of some specialised services?”

It was interesting that neither man spoke about a monster.

The old man scratched at his chin, obviously looking a little uncomfortable.

“The truth is master that I don't know. We have problems, same as any village and no more or less mysterious than any tale or night time circumstance that they can talk about over yonder or a little was through the forest when they bother to come a-callin'” he tugged at his beard.

“In truth I am a little concerned that you've come here for nothing.” He finished shifting his weight from one foot to another.

The Witcher nodded sagely and with sympathy. “I understand completely my friend. Tell me, do you have a blacksmith in town who can craft a blade.”

“We do master, we do at that. Any man who can swing a hammer in these parts can craft a blade after, what is it now? three wars in living memory?”

“At least,” my companion added easily dismounting.

I was astounded. His entire manner had changed, he seemed relaxed, friendly, approachable, his voice and manner was transforming before my eyes to one more suited to the village. The tall statuesque figure of just moments before had vanished.

“Well,” continued the old man. “We're lucky enough that a Dwarven refugee came through towards the end of the last war. The smith had been drafted into the army like and the although the man's daughter was doin' 'er best. The simple fact was that she just didn't 'ave the experience like.”

The Witcher motioned me to dismount and follow as he lead his horse into the village and chatted with the older man like a long lost friend.

“So now, the dwarf, the ugly little fucker, teaches Cait the Younger, what her father didn't have time to learn 'er and now we stand ready to have the best smith here abouts.”

“Superb sir, superb. In which case I have a proposition,”

“A what?”

“A proposal, a bargain if you will.”

“Alright, I'll listen.”

We came into the village as the two talked and as I wasn't really required for the discussion I took the time to have a good look around.

For a start it was busier than I had imagined. I had always imagined that, well, I hope you, dear reader forgive me this prejudice but I'm noble born and sometimes my thoughts betray me. I had always thought that peasants went out to work on the land and then came back in the evening. But here there were work yards, I could see a man working on a series of planks, sanding, shaving and topping. I saw another man hard at work on making furniture, true it was only a bench but it was still a man working at furniture. A group of women were gossiping despite the sweat that stood out on their skin as they worked at scrubbing on a set of clothes while another older woman was chasing children around, half in a game to occupy them and half in an exasperated attempt to keep them all in one place. All over this was the constant music of the hammer and saw, most often on

wood, but sometimes on metal.

There was an industry here and it left an undertone of almost frantic proportions as though they were working too hard and too quickly. It astonished me that they could keep up the pace. It was not the first time that I found myself thinking that maybe it was the city folk, the churchmen and the nobility that were the lazy people.

I was also surprised to see that we were not universally welcomed. A group of men were unloading a cart on the edge of the central village green area that made no pretence of hiding their dark looks and muttered asides.

“As I say, my apprentice here is in need of a proper weapon to suit his hands and his size.” The Witcher's comments brought me back to the conversation. “So I shall speak to the master smith about the requirements then I shall listen to your problem in return for some food and an ale and then we can decide where we go from there.”

“Yes but...”

“Rest assured my friend, if there is nothing to worry about then I shall say so and we will pay for any other food and drink while we wait for the smith's work to be done.”

I could see the conflict in the other man. He was afraid of something and I didn't really know what it was but he wanted to be persuaded.

“Well I don't want to put you out of your way.”

“My friend have you ever heard of the Witcher's code?”

The old man shook his head but I could tell that he was excited at the prospect of some kind of mysterious code.

As was I for that matter.

“We don't take money but for honest work. In this case the removal of the threat, should there be one and, depending on the circumstances, food, drink and lodging's while the work is carried out. If this is not to your satisfaction then we can be on our way leaving you and whatever it is to work out

the problem for yourselves.”

“So just a chat?”

“Yes, and I imagine a walk around and a chat to some other people and I can tell you whether or not you need to be concerned.”

The old man visibly shrank in on himself.

“Then the blacksmith is over there,” he pointed to where some steam was coming from, “and then join me in my hut which is that large one on the end.”

My companion nodded and held his hand out with an easy smile.

The old man hesitated a moment before taking it.

Have you ever had one of those times where you feel as though you've gotten lost somewhere. This is a lot harder to describe than I thought it would be but the best I can do is to say this. It's the kind of feeling where you're kind of separate from yourself as though your body went one way and your mind went another as though both parts of you made completely separate choices and then they both try to catch up with each other. It was surreal and part of this was due to the absolutely contrary nature from what I expected was going to happen versus the reality.

My gruff, taciturn companion had transformed himself into a happy, smiling, friendly, people person. He waved at the villagers, paid compliments and exchanged self-derogatory jokes with old men who were sat smoking about the problems with having an apprentice. That these jokes were aimed at me ended up going completely over my head. Several times I caught myself shaking my head in disbelief as though I was waking myself up from a not entirely unpleasant dream. I had expected a village under the cloud of fear and oppression with the Witcher arriving like a knight errant to free the people from the oppression that was all around them. Instead it seemed that the village life went on as normal and the Witcher was more one of them than I was.

The first stop was the Blacksmith's where we were met by the most stereo-typical dwarf that I've ever seen. Complete with long chain-mail, horned helmet, broad Mahakaman accent, hammer in his belt, Long beard and bushy eye-brows. The sounds of hammering came from within the forge.

“Ah a Witcher.” He said cleaning his hands on an already filthy cloth which he then used to mop his brow and the inside of his helmet before putting the cloth inside the helmet and placing the helmet back on his head.

“Indeed,” The Witcher was smiling slightly and I felt that he had gone back to the man that I knew for a little while.

“It's the sword on the back, it gives it away.”

“Then I must compliment you on your observations.”

“Thank you very much.” The helmet came off again as the dwarf scratched his head.

“As a thought,” my companion continued, “Doesn't it get a little hot in that helmet and chain-mail in the forge.”

I thought I heard a slight pause in the hammering.

“Aye, it does. A little warm I must admit but ehhh...” The dwarf looked up and down the alley quickly. “The locals expect a certain...” his hand moved in a circle as he strained for the right word.

“Quality?” The Witcher offered.

“Aye, a certain... quality from a dwarven Blacksmith.”

My companions eyes narrowed slightly.

“Well, before we start, I don't mean to sound insulting but my life depends on the answer to these questions... Do you have experience in making and maintaining weaponry?”

“After three wars any local blacksmith, including me, has been commandeered by at least two different armies to make and maintain weapons and armour for them. It's almost quicker and easier for me to make a sword than it is to make a scythe-blade nowadays.”

“Then can you work with silver and meteorite alloys?” The Witcher's eyes narrowed again.

Again the helmet came off and a more vigorous head scratching moment.

This time I knew there was definitely a pause before two rapid hammer strikes.

“Aye, I can manage that.”

“Excellent.” The Witcher smiled happily removing the sword from his back. Then I need this blade sharpening and oiling while I wait and this...” he moved towards his horse and removed the long narrow box that I had seen before in the inn where we first met. In daylight it looked old, almost black with age. Again I found myself expecting a creak from the hinges but they were obviously well oiled. The Witcher carefully produced a sword wrapped in a cloth which shone in an extraordinary way in the light of the sun. I have no idea as to the aesthetics of a sword. I've seen swords that looked beautiful before with design work, etchings and studded with jewels that swordsmen scoffed at, but I've also seen swords that have been proven to have lasted for centuries that still look dangerous but look like the most boring sword imaginable that you wouldn't look twice at if it was stuffed through the belt of a peasant bandit.

This sword was beautiful. Sharp and hard. The blade was shaped with an ever so slight leaf pattern and the hilt and cross-guard were ornamented with strange grooves that both drew the eye and repelled it.

“This needs sharpening as well. I will come for it before dark.”

“Alright, well I'll just take the Steel one into the back and...”

“Why?” my Companion asked. “The sharpening wheel is right there. I'm staying here to wait for it so why do you need to take it into the back?”

“Errr, well it's to do with... The heat, yes the heat.”

“The heat has nothing to do with it. Can you work it or not”

I noticed that the hammering stopped.

“Of course I can work it but...”

“But what?”

The dwarf sighed and looked up and down the street again before pulling a curtain around the outside of the shop.

“You'd better come out,” the Dwarf said in a much more normal voice. I would have put the accent as coming from somewhere north of Novigrad.

A giant came out of the forge, heavily muscled and short-haired enough that it was to my shame that at first I thought that the figure was a man.

“I can work it,” she said and I started with surprise. The pitch of the voice gave away her gender. She examined the plainer steel sword in the light from the forge. “This needs more than just a

wheel” she informed my companion.

“Yes,” he said, “It will.”

The girl with the frighteningly large biceps stalked back into the forge clutching the Witchers sword as though she was going to use it as a club to beat mountains to death. The two of use then turned towards the dwarf who was standing there, bright red and holding his helmet in his hands, turning it round in exactly the same way that a peasant does in those comedy plays when he's being beaten up by his betters.

In the end, the poor dwarf couldn't take it any more.

“It's like this. I'm a trader that had most of my goods commandeered in the form of taxes by the crown. That girl in there has forgotten more about metal crafting than I have ever known but the locals round here knew her from when she was little, so they just don't trust her. Then I come here on my way away from the war zone having lost everything that I own and suddenly I'm being asked to give the girl a few pointers. Leaving aside the fact that she can literally pick me up and bend me in half.”

The Witcher nodded, his eyes were glinting strangely.

“So the two of us came to the arrangement that she would do the work. I front the shop and because it's “dwarven craftsmanship” we can charge more.”

“A dangerous game.” I commented.

“A little, but have you seen the size of her?”

The Witcher's eyes glittered. “She does look as though she could flex and cracks would open in the ground.

“Precisely.” The dwarf nodded.

The curtains opened and the girl handed the sword back. I noticed that she did so so that the blade could slide straight into the scabbard and that neither the Witcher, nor herself had to touch the blade.

“Tell me miss.” The Witcher said, still smiling slightly, “Are you in the position to take orders?”

“If the money's right.” She said as she picked up a water-skin and squirted some liquid into her throat.

“I don't think money will be a problem. I need a metal pole with a short blade at the end. The blade needs to be longer than a spear head and made for slashing as well as stabbing.”

The girl nodded.

“How long does it need to be?”

“About six feet pole plus another two foot of blade. Oh and if possible I would like the entire thing to be able to be broken down into sections.”

Her eyes went vacant a moment as she sucked her teeth. By my guess she was about sixteen but she seemed far older under the soot and sweat.

“Three days, 246 crowns.” she said flatly. “It won't come cheaper than that so don't bother asking.”

“Done and done,” The Witcher said.

The girl nodded and turned back inside.

“Excuse me miss,” I blurted out without consciously deciding to.

She turned and looked at me without expression.

“Have you ever thought of marrying?” I asked. I still don't know why.

“Whatever for?” she asked looking confused.

I couldn't find an answer for that and she shrugged in a way that eloquently suggested that I was terminally stupid as she turned away.

It was only a short walk from the smithy to the head man's house.

“A spear?” I muttered,

“Not really, think of it more as a kind of pole-arm,”

“Because of course I'm more used to that.”

“You may be surprised. Anyway, we can talk more on that when she's made the thing. Now remember, hospitality is good but don't eat very much at this stage, we don't want to eat too much and make him think that feeding us is too much trouble.”

“Yes, I remember. You told me about that this morning remember?”

The Witcher made no comment about that.

“The old man came out to greet us and presented us with wooden boards that seemed to act as plates, some bread, cheese and some reasonably fresh looking butter. There was also a bowl of fat which the old man smeared onto his bread with relish but I couldn't bring myself to partake in.

There was also a jug of mead and although we both took cups of it, I noticed that Kerrass only took sips of it, barely enough to wet his lips and I followed his example.

We ate slowly, following the lead of the old man.

“So I take it that not everyone approves of your decision to consult a Witcher?” Kerrass asked.

The old man looked surprised.

“How did you know that?”

The Witcher laughed. “It's no great trick. Approval of my presence is never universal. In this case I can't help but notice that that large man with a fat nose and fatter belly keeps glaring at us. I also notice that he has a group of friends to whom he has been chatting.”

The old man groaned. “Oh, I'm going to pay for this. That's Ruthorford the Cooper. Not as much call for his trade now that the last wars have taken a lot of the workforce away meaning there's not as much food coming in for him to barrel.”

“Which of course he blames you for.”

The old man smirked “Well naturally. I'm the Alderman aren't I, head of the men's council and therefore I control the entire world and spend my days sitting outside and smoking my pipe. Never mind the fact that I'm often out in the fields helping out as much as I can these days as well as mending people's roof's. I'm the thatcher you see.”

My companion nodded sympathetically.

“He wants my job as well,” the old man continued, warming to his subject. “I would let him have it as well for all the good it would do him, just to get him to shut up but I'm awfully a-feared that he would just blame me for any problems that crop up and then blame everyone else for the rest. Not the kind of man I would trust this place with. Most folks don't listen to him, but it's always the louder ones, or the burlier ones that like to get into fights that seem to approve of what he's saying. But the women of the place support me so I mostly do OK.”

He took out a pipe and a tobacco pouch and started to fill it.

“I'm not going to hear the end of this in the next meeting.” He sat for a moment looking miserable before he remembered his manners and offered us both his tobacco pouch which we declined.

“Who's the local lord who should be paying for my services?”

“Damned if I know,” The old man lit a taper from a candle that was resting in the window. “What with three wars, Nilfgaard against the north, Aedirn against Kaedwen, Kedwaen against Redania, heh, it wouldn't surprise me if the local lord is off cowering in Nilfgaard or has fled to the distant north to get away from the Empire. Maybe both. It's been a while since we've had a tax man though, so we stockpile what we can in preparation for the day when some soldiers turn up and demand more than what we have for whatever they need it for. Not that they can take any more of our men as we don't really have any.”

“What about those troublemakers?” I asked.

“Heh, Funny you should mention that. For some reason they aren't anywhere to be found when the recruiters come through.” He took a long puff on his pipe and blew out a not unimpressive smoke ring.

“So how can I help?” The Witcher asked after carefully pouring his mead back into the jug when the old man wasn't watching.

“Well, as I say, I'm not even sure that it is a problem.”

“Is that the troublemaker asking?” Kerrass put in. “Tell me what happened. As I say, if it's nothing then I'll say that it's nothing and we'll move on, taking this fine lunch and excellent mead as our payment. I have a commission with the blacksmith but we will pay for any other food that we need. If it is something we will talk and make a deal. If we can't come to a deal then we shall walk on. So why don't you tell me what's troubling you all.”

The old man stared into his mead cup intently while working up a real cloud of smoke. I took the opportunity to pour my own mead back into the jug following Kerrass' example.

Suddenly enough to make me jump the old man moved, took a deep breath and knocked the ash out of his pipe.

“It's like this.” He said, “We lost some cattle.”

“How many?”

“Three cows.”

I nearly said something. Looking back now I am so very glad that I didn't.

“Out of how many?” Kerrass said straight faced.

“Five. We also lost two sheep and a goat.”

Kerrass was staring into space.

“What time of day was this?”

“At night.”

“At the same time or spread out?”

“Spread out over several nights.”

“Any news of bandits in the local area?”

“No sir, not that I've heard.”

“Have any remains been found?”

“No sir,”

“Was the ground examined by a tracker or a hunter afterwards?”

“No sir, we don't really have either but the ground did seem disturbed. Truth be told though, people don't like to gout out to those fields any more.”

“For good reason,” Kerrass muttered under his breath. I could see him thinking, it felt very strange to me. It was the same expression that I saw some professors get when they've been asked an uncomfortable question by a student.

His eyes snapped open.

“Is there anything else going on that's strange. Anything at all that's out of place, no matter how small or silly sounding. I promise I won't laugh. Neither will my apprentice if he knows what's good for him.”

I bit the inside of my cheeks in preparation.

“Well sir, A large number of people have been losing tools lately.”

“Nope, what else?”

“There have been noticeably fewer birds in the woods,”

“Close, interesting but not what I'm looking for. What else?”

“Well, some of the ciders soured quicker than expected.”

“What else?”

“The bee's have been swarming unusually.”

Kerrass sighed. My friend, I am trying to help you. There is something else that you think is stupid and don't want to talk to strangers about for fear that we will think you're mad. What is it?”

The Alderman finished his mead in a swallow

“Well sir it's.... Frying bacon.”

“What?”

“A few people have heard frying bacon out in the fields.”

Kerrass closed his eyes.

“Have you found anything like a hard shell? It would have been dark purple, almost black. Kind of like a large eggshell but much harder?”

“No sir,”

“How about a stretchy substance that from a distance will have looked like cloth but when you get closer, feels like a stretchy animal hide. It would stink of peat and animal droppings.”

“No sir, but as I say, since we've been losing livestock, we've moved what's left into other fields and folk don't go into those others any more so there might be things out there that we haven't found.”

Kerrass nodded and stood.

“Very well my friend. I need a guide to take me out to where the animals disappeared. In the mean time I'm going to have a walk around the village and get a sense of the place and talk to some other people to see if they can shed some more light, some detail that might have been overlooked if you don't know what you're looking for. As well as a guide I would suggest that you pass it around that if anyone should hear the sound of 'bacon frying' then they should move until they no longer hear it. Preferably to higher ground or on top of a rock. As well as that, I should be summoned immediately.”

“Is it dangerous?” The old man asked.

“Oh yes.” My companion nodded. “You have undoubtedly saved lives by summoning a Witcher and you have already served your village well. You have a burrower of some kind but we don't know what, or how many yet which would change how we go about dealing with it. With luck, we should have it all dealt with soon, probably by tomorrow night after which we can get out of your hair.”

“How much will this cost?”

“I'm afraid that depends on the thing that's burrowing. If it's one thing then I need one set of herbs and equipment, if it's the other then I need other herbs and equipment. All of which cost money.

Does that make sense?”

The old man nodded,, looking pale.

“If you could see to the guide and the frying noise and I will speak to you this evening about what I've found? We can sleep in a barn somewhere if there's no inn.”

The Alderman looked up. “No sir, you will sleep in my house. You're serving the village and I won't have it said that our hospitality is wanting.”

The Witcher laughed. “You haven't heard my apprentice snore yet. Don't worry we'll have this sorted soon.”

He turned and walked away to the next house where he knocked on the door.

Which is what we did for most of the rest of the afternoon.

Chapter 4: The Witcher’s Warning and the Weaver’s Terror

It was fascinating watching the Witcher work in this part of his profession. Even though I found it incredibly tedious and increasingly frustrating as Kerrass went around each house, talking to as many people as he could lay his hands on all the time carefully and quietly teasing information out of them. From the most senile old man to the youngest, barely able to speak, child he was the soul of patience and charm. Deftly and easily turning the topic of conversation back to where he wanted it to go, while at the same time turning down a surprisingly large number of sexual invitations.

I asked him about it later and he said that it always happens, he doesn't understand it and tends to avoid such encounters on the grounds that he never knew whose wives he was sleeping with. Then he would have to fight someone and it would all go to the cesspit from there.

But even so, given his impatience when we had first started travelling together I was surprised at just how long he could stand being invited to play with dollies and hearing the words “It used to be much better in the old days”.

I swear I'm not making that second one up either. It turns out that cliches are cliches for a reason and in my travels with the Witcher I have met an awful lot of them. Including an absent minded wizard with a pointy had and a robe, both with stars on them along with crescent moons.

We had gone round most of the village and the sun had begun to sink towards the horizon when we hit trouble. The trouble in question was the large man that my companion had noticed earlier and a group of toughs.

Rutherford the Cooper was an unpleasant man, tall and wiry of limb but he also had the enlarged nose and swelling stomach of a man who enjoys his alcohol possibly a little too much. He was clean shaven which struck me as unusual in rural parts as I hadn't seen anyone without some form of a beard. To be fair his hands were callused enough to show hard physical labour and his apron was indeed covered in wood shavings and an unpleasant looking sticky stain that I presumed was some form of glue to hold the barrels together. In the countryside things generally smell of rotting vegetation and animal dung. His smell was sharp, unpleasant and put me in mind of a chisel being driven up my nose.

His companions were thugs and hangers on. All had the similar signs of being drunkards and also all of them were armed which again made them stand out. None of the other villagers that I had seen carried anything more than eating knives although weapons were often visible, hanging on walls and propping up corners gathering rust, men very rarely carried them. I suppose on the grounds that when you're trying to persuade a field to give your children something to eat over the winter, the extra weight of a sword and armour is not really something that you want to be thinking about. But these men were armed, Clubs and axes mostly although one of the six of them had a sword.

Rutherford opened his mouth to speak but my companion was already there, pre-empting him.

“Good afternoon Mr Rutherford. I was just on my way to see you.” Kerrass extended his hand to be

shaken and smiled easily.

“That's interesting,” Rutherford folded his arms across his chest. “Because I was just coming to see you.”

Kerrass smiled slightly. “How wonderful. Perhaps you can tell me your version of events then?” He gestured to a nearby bench before sitting on it. “Shall we sit to discuss things.”

“No I don't think so. You won't be staying that long.”

“Really, why is that?” There was a treacherous note of innocent stupidity in the Witchers voice.

“Because you and your apprentice,” he sneered over the word as though it was some kind of insult to be learning a trade. “will be out of town in ten minutes.”

“Will we?” The Witcher seemed astonished at this.

“Yes you will.”

“Why is that?” I became aware that a number of people were watching and children were being ushered indoors.

“Because you're not welcome here. Filthy, mutant non-human freak spreading your disease and charlatanisms and trickery and filthy magics among decent folks. It's not natural. It's not. So I want you gone.”

“Or?” The Witcher's eyebrows rose dramatically.

“What do you mean?”

“You want us gone, or what?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“Indulge me. After all, I am a filthy, mutant, non human freak and although I am relatively clean and by definition can't carry diseases, I don't understand the actions of decent people.” He smiled nastily while I looked for a weapon. Within a couple of steps there was a hoe leaning against the wall of the house that we were standing next to. I shifted my weight, feigning boredom so that I could spring for the pole quickly.

“You will leave, or you will stay. For ever. In the ground.”

“Sorry what was that?”

“You heard me.”

“Regardless would you mind saying it a little louder for me. I get this horrible buzzing noise in my ears. A terrible affliction brought on by the presence of idiocy.”

“Leave now or else.”

“I see,” said the Witcher springing back to his feet. I saw that his left hand was on the strap across his chest and I tensed slightly. With his right hand, the Witcher reached inside his jerkin and pulled out his medallion. I had seen it before but had never had the opportunity to have a properly good look at it. It showed a stylised cat's head in the process of hissing straight ahead.. It was cold, dark metal and if I'm honest, it made me uneasy to look at it. He held it so that the sun glittered off the sharper edges

“Do you know what this means?” Kerrass asked.

I had already noticed that The Witcher used his voice like a bard might use a musical instrument. That he could make it sound friendly, amused, soft, quiet, sympathetic and many others between. This was his chilling voice. It was cold, determined and with a kind of clipping when he clearly and carefully enunciated the different syllables without dropping any of the consonants. He calls it his “don't fuck with me” voice.

Rutherford didn't seem to care but I did notice one of the other men going a little paler. I decided that that man was more likely to run and dismissed him from my plan of attack.

“Not only do I not know,” Rutherford tried to sound intimidating. “But I don't care. Now clear...”

“Then I shall tell you,” Kerrass interrupted. “It means that I am a Witcher of the Cat school, and an accredited guild member. That means that I live by a code.”

“I could give a fart for your...”

“That code states,” The Witchers voice was flat and grating now. Like a stone moving over gravel. “that once a contract is taken, that I must follow it through until the end of the contract.”

“Your contract is void.”

“That's lovely and everything but I don't work for you.”

“That old man is a fool and a scare monger. There is nothing wrong...”

“In which case you have nothing to worry about it. But I gave my word. If you try and stop me then I will defend myself.”

“You don't scare me with your deviant eyes and your scary voice.”

“I should.” The Witcher said but Rutherford was getting red faced and angry now.

“You don't scare me so let me make it clear. You will leave or you will be killed. If I were you I would take that path,” He pointed. “And walk out of town now. In fact, you should run.”

The Witcher's eyes narrowed, just ever so slightly. A minute movement that could have been ignored if you weren't particularly looking for it but I had learned that you needed to really pay attention to Kerrass's face to be able to tell what he was thinking, I was watching for it.

I shifted my feet even further.

“Mr Witcher, Mr Witcher.” A young voice was shouting, shattering the tension. “Mr Witcher, Mr Witcher.”

“I'm over here.”

“Mr Witcher,” The kid was filthy, wearing a short pair of overly large woollen trousers that were tied onto his waist with apiece of string. He was out of breath and his expression warred between being utterly terrified but also pumped up about the exaggerated importance of what was happening. He was also plainly scared by what he could see going on between the adults in front of him.

Say what you like but children can sense these things.

“Mr Witcher, the Alderman sent me to find you.”

Kerrass knelt down. I had noticed the trick of talking to children earlier, getting down to put himself on eye level with them and talking to them as equals

“Tell me the message, quickly,”

Rutherford backhanded the kid hard in the face and sending him sprawling.

“Get lost you little shiiii...”

He was interrupted by Kerrass launching himself up from his kneeling position and used that momentum to shove Rotherford in the abdomen. The breath exploded from the cooper as he almost flew backwards into someone's bean growing lattice causing him to collapse in a clatter of broken sticks. The other toughs stood around in confusion as they couldn't decide whether or not to help Rutherford or to attack my companion.

I helped the child to his feet and noticed the cut lip and the look of cold and injured fury that sometimes springs up in children when adults are being idiotic and unjust.

Kerrass knelt back down, ignoring the toughs but I noticed that his hand was on his sword strap again.

“Tell me,”

The kid sniffed hugely. “The Alderman tells me to tells you that Anna the Weaver has heard...”

The Witcher stiffened. The tension hadn't left his body, it had changed.

“Which one is her house. Quickly,”

He didn't grab the boy. Nor did he raise his voice or shake the boy to emphasise the importance of

the question. All things that I would have done.

“It's the one on the end sir Witcher sir. The one with the purple Fox-gloves on the front.”

“Run, from here to the smithy and bring me my silver sword. The dwarf will know which one it is. I will be at her house. Run.”

He rose and spun and had started to move, to find that Rutherford had surfaced from the mess that he had made for himself and was barring the Witcher's way.

“You assaulted me.” he sputtered in rage. “You struck me. By the power invested in me as a member of the town council...”

“Get out of my way you stupid fool.” Kerrass made to move round but was held back by one of the ruffians.

I will admit to freezing. As I said I am not a soldier and am not really used to physical confrontation outside of arranged practice areas and times. The attackers certainly weren't watching me and I could have done something I suppose but I was frozen in place.

“I need to save that woman's life you idiot.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, you will stand trial and be hung for.”

“A woman's life is in danger and all you can think about is your foolish pride.” The Witcher snarled.

All of the ruffians were watching the Witcher. My thoughts seemed to move like treacle.

“A woman's life is not in danger.” Rutherford moved towards Kerrass threateningly. “You are just trying to scam the good folk out of their hard earned money by pandering to the stories of that old fool the Alderman. Perhaps now people will finally see sense and vote him out of his position and pave the way for some real order around...”

Someone screamed.

It was a woman's voice.

The Witcher lunged for a gap between the men facing him, his sword was still in it's sheath. I saw a fist heading towards his head. Time slowed so that I could see it travelling and wondered how someone could throw a punch so slowly.

My treacherous body finally obeyed me and I moved, seizing the Hoe as I went.

In the days that followed I would often dissect what happened next in my dreams and on the back of my horse as we trundled gently down the road. To this day I don't know if I did the right thing and I suspect that I will wonder until the end of my days. I had two choices and in the split second between the scream and my seizing the hoe I weighed up the two options. On the one hand I could attack the men surrounding the Witcher and attempt to free him so that he could go and deal with things or I could run towards the scream and try to be useful there.

I tried to weigh the two options, which was more likely to save lives, where would I be most useful. It was impossible to tell but in the end I made my decision and I moved.

The ruffians were ignoring me and moving in around the Witcher so I ran towards the scream. I don't remember ever moving as fast as I did that day. I sprinted out of the little alley and along the row of huts facing the green. It wasn't hard to see where I was going as other people were standing outside their own huts, pointing and looking worried. That included the fact that the child's descriptions were accurate and to the point.

The woman screamed again, horribly.

If anything I accelerated. I could see and hear the Alderman shouting at people to go and help. He was himself making his own way towards the small cottage on the outskirts of town but his going was slow.

I sprinted towards the house. A couple of people were plucking up the courage to go in as I was arriving and I screamed at them to get out of my way. I turned my shoulder to the door as I arrived and I didn't slow down as I hit it and barrelled through into the cottage

Please believe me when I say that normally I am a fairly cultured man and that I don't normally behave like this. I have berated myself for acting the fool that day and also lauded myself for being a hero but more often than not I am left with a sense of uneasy guilt. At the time, all that I can claim was that I was so angry at Rutherford and his merry band of idiots that some spark of common sense had been ignored and destroyed. I certainly don't think I could have done the same thing in cold blood back then.

At first I didn't register what was happening. I burst through the door and my body registered the fact that the impact against my shoulder hurt. Then I saw a child which I grabbed by the pigtails without thinking and unceremoniously threw her behind me and out of the door. On some level I registered her scream of pain and anger but I was too busy surveying the scene.

The interior of the cottage was quite pretty and homely really. There was a fire pit in the middle of the room with two small beds tucked into the sides as well as two chairs and an assortment of other cooking equipment. There was also a small table with the remains of a meal on it and a spinning wheel in the corner as well as several bobbins of woollen thread.

The homely effect was spoiled by the gaping hole in the ground. The dirt floor was falling away into the hole that was increasing in size, the sounds of the dirt and stone as they fell into the hole was not unlike the frying of bacon but it was being drowned out by the roars and sounds of the creature that was climbing out of the same hole. It had grabbed hold of another child, a young boy of maybe six and was pulling the boy towards the hole and it's gaping maw. I didn't think it was much bigger than the boy itself as it came out but it was monstrously strong for it's size, roughly humanoid in shape, it had two legs, two arms although it's head seemed to grow out of it's torso rather than to have any kind of neck and it's mouth was huge and fanged. It's red gaze was fixed hungrily on the child and it's hands ended in huge claws that gashed at the boys leg as I watched blood spurting through it's fingers.

The smell was overpowering, rotting vegetable, animal manure and the raw stench of human terror all mixed into a potent cocktail that nearly stopped me in my tracks. I was already pretty shut down but I felt myself detach from my body. As I watched, another pair of clawed, webbed hands appeared in the hole and another one of those things climbed out.

There was another girl, maybe twelve years old, hiding from the monsters behind her mother's skirts who just stood and stared at the monsters, her mouth open as if she had forgotten how to scream. I grabbed for her, but she dodged around her mother to avoid me.

The first creature had a good hold of the boy now and was dragging him into the hole. The boy was screaming and shouting for his mother, spittle and snot spraying from his face as he blubbered in justifiable terror. The mother darted forwards and grabbed the boy by his reaching arms while

the second monster climbed to it's feet and started to move to the corner of the room, towards the cot that I hadn't seen before.

I screamed and charged it, hoe's blade out in front of me as I rammed it into where I thought the things neck would be. It flew off it's feet as I followed through with a push.

I dropped the hoe and scooped up the tiny human form gathered in blankets inside. The monster that I had struck tried to climb to it's feet and I stamped on it's head as hard as I could on the way past to the door.

I was still screaming and the baby added it's own cries to the general din. I handed the baby to someone and spun to go back inside.

I was still screaming and tears of what I can only assume were terror obscured my vision. The woman was being pulled towards the hole despite the girl holding onto her skirts. The boys eyes were wide with terror and pain and as I watched he screamed and choked before blood exploded from his mouth in a gout, staining his teeth and splashing against his mothers smock.

I grabbed her bodily but she was fighting me, the small fists of the girl beat me around the head and back.

“Mother,” The boy gurgled, blood and mucus clogging up his throat. He spasmed again. Tried to scream and died, right there in front of me.

The mother pulled and pulled as another gout of blood came from the child's mouth. She slipped and let go.

I kicked the little girl towards the door and picked the woman up bodily. She had started to scream again as I moved towards the door. She subsided a little when she hit her head on the door jamb in her struggles

Finally the Witcher arrived. Bursting through the door. He didn't even bother trying to rescue the boy as he chopped at the creature that I had kicked, again and again. Although the force of the blows drove the creature down to the ground He still wasn't really hurting it as it hissed and spat at him.

I carried the woman out and half threw her and half dropped her in front of the terrified villagers.

“Master Witcher, Master Witcher.” The voice came. The dwarf from the smithy with a large and heavy hammer in one hand and the silver sword in the other. I grabbed the sword and ran back into the hut.

The Witcher turned, he had one foot on the things chest now. He must have seen what I was carrying as he dropped his sword and snatched the silver one out of my hand, cutting my palm as it did so.

I still have the scar. The first of many I would gain from my travels with Kerrass.

He stabbed down once and this time there was no resistance to the blow as the sword went clear through. Another creature scrambled out of the hole to be met with a flat horizontal cut that almost cut the creature in half.

He pulled a short cylinder from his belt, twisted it and started shaking it vigorously.

“Take the steel sword and get out, get the people back.” He said, almost calmly.

It took me a second to locate the sword on the ground. I grabbed it by it's cross-guard and ran for the door, screaming for the crowd to get back.

I must have looked like a demon from hell crossed with a screaming madman. But they certainly moved back for the Witcher who emerged, dragging the body of one of the creatures, his silver sword in the sheath across his back.

There was a kind of “wumpf” noise and the roof exploded off the house.

I stood there for a moment as the straw and wooden timbers fell around me like a grotesque snowfall blinking stupidly.

The Witcher approached me, clapped me on the shoulder and carefully took the sword from my numb hands.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times trying to get my words out but eventually my legs just kind of gave way and I sat down heavily. I couldn't remember ever having been that exhausted.

The Alderman approached us. He looked old, almost ancient.

“Is it over?” he asked my companion.

“Alas no,” The Witcher said, “You have Nekkers Sir.”

The old man sighed and nodded before moving away.

The Witcher crouched next to me. He had found a flask of water from somewhere and handed it to me.

“You alright?”

I almost chuckled at that.

“I'm fine,” I forced myself to answer.

“You're bleeding.” he said carefully, the same way that you might a child. He pointed at my leg where my clothing was torn and at my hand. Blood was seeping gently from both places.

“Well will you look at that,” I said wonderingly. The pain seemed a distant thing as though it was shouting at me from a distance.

“I'll find you some mead and clean it up. Try not to move although it doesn't look serious.”

I sat back and started to really shake in the grass.

“Here drink this,” A cup was offered and I gulped down the strong and sweet mead while the Witcher cleaned up and bound my leg and hand before collapsing next to me.

“You did well. By all accounts you saved those peoples lives today.” he said clapping me on the shoulder.

“Tell them that,” I said gesturing in the direction of the family gathering round the wreck of their former home. The mother was being restrained from entering the still burning wreck of her home by her husband while she screamed in a primal, almost bestial way. The children stood nearby looking confused as other adults tried to usher them away.

The Witcher said nothing.

Chapter 5: Mob Justice and Witcher's Verdict: A Bloody Reckoning

If only that had been the end of the day.

If only.

I lay back in the grass and concentrated on getting my breath back to a semblance of normal pace and rhythm along with my heart beat. I had thought I was relatively fit and healthy. I had done all the prescribed exercises at the university and I had been on the road, with all of it's trials and tribulations for the last 6 weeks or so but I was dismayed at how utterly exhausted I was. I had also begun to shake uncontrollably. I felt detached from my body as though it was completely beyond my control and that I was just watching from an outside observers point of view. I literally remember thinking that I should try and stand up and drink something sugary which was when I remembered that the Witcher had given me a small cup of mead but it suddenly felt so far away as though that would be such a huge effort that I simply could not bring myself to perform. My arm felt like it was a tree trunk as well as being miles away from my head.

I had also forgotten that I had closed my eyes.

After forcing myself to lift the giant cloth curtains that had covered my eyes otherwise known as my eyelids, I realised that my arm wasn't as far away as I had first thought. Unfortunately the other problem was that trying to drink while lying flat on your back, although not impossible, is extremely difficult. Especially when you are shaking with shock. With great effort and no small amount of concentration I sat up and sipped at my cup of mead while I waited for the greyness at the edge of my vision to clear up. It was taking it's own sweet time to do so too.

The Witcher had vanished off somewhere doing whatever it is that Witchers do after they've killed a monster or three. I would later find out that that generally amounted to cleaning the monster blood of their weapons as it's often corrosive, harvesting alchemical bits from the corpses in question and having a look round to see if any secondary burrows had sprouted up in the absence of this singular burrow. At that point he was running around peering at the ground and occasionally freaking out the locals by bursting into their houses and throwing himself flat on the floor to listen to the floor-boards before leaping to his feet and running off. Not that there were many people to disturb as by now most of the town had gathered outside the house at the end of the row that was still smouldering.

Dimly I could hear that there was an argument taking place near the small house about whether they should let the house burn or whether they should put it out. There were arguments about it on both sides and I soon zones out of it completely thinking nothing in particular.

There was a growing buzzing in my ears anyway that sounded strangely hypnotic.

I continued to sip my mead and do my best to follow what was going on around me.

The family that up until that afternoon had lived in the hut on the edge of the road with the foxgloves in front of it were being lead away now. The woman had screamed hysterically for a while before a group of women had taken her over and to my eyes seemed to feed her something, after which she was able to be lead away. The father of the house with the foxgloves seemed to have himself well buttoned up, put a brave face on it and took his children in hand. He put me in mind of a lecture that I once attended on the still infant industry of explosives in the world.

A lot of Alfred Nabel's inventions and discoveries died with him when he blew up his own workshop to keep those secrets hidden but some things have since been rediscovered, one of the things that stuck in my mind was that explosions need to have an outlet as all that explosive force needs to go somewhere. Therefore if you want to blow up a wall you bury the explosive underneath the wall rather than placing the explosive next to it.

As I looked at the young farmer leading his somewhat smaller family away, I remembered this lecture and I remember hoping that there was someone who would keep an eye on that family in case the young man would explode randomly and at an undeserving target.

My ruminations as well as my long slow movement towards getting over my shock at recent events were shattered as a person who was by no means small grabbed me by the collar and did it's very best to haul me to my feet.

Unfortunately for him he did this incorrectly and as a result only succeeded in tearing at my clothing, much to my bemusement.

Then it turned out that he had some friends to help him who grabbed me by the arms and levered me to my feet. When they got me to my feet someone started to shout at me, in my face but then they let go of me and I was unhelpful enough to collapse back to a sitting position again. Then I started laughing.

For those of you reading who have any kind of medical history or training, yes, I was in shock and dangerously close to hysteria and no, I had no idea about that at the time. Strange how you don't think that you're in shock while you are actually in shock.

I got a kick to the face for my trouble.

I didn't stop laughing though which unfortunately made my assailant even angrier and I got another kick.

“Get up,” Someone said. I blinked at them stupidly, “GET UP,” they screamed again before having me hauled back to my feet.

I giggled again.

“Where's your friend?”

“Who?” I asked.

It was not my wisest moment.

My head snapped forward as a fist thundered into my guts and I tried to curl around the pain as though it was some kind of baby that I wanted to protect with the rest of my body. Unfortunately in letting my head go forwards I met the fist coming up in the uppercut.

It wasn't a particularly hard punch but it did make me bite the inside of my lower lip causing a small blood spray.

Once you've been beaten up though, pain takes on a kind of different meaning.

But now they had made me mad and as they did so, they pain just kind of went away.

But I needed to wait my moment.

I sagged into the men's hands.

“Where is your friend?”

“Which one,” I answered. “I have many friends.”

They gut punched me again. I found myself wondering if there was a reason that people tend to hit other people in the stomach for a reason rather than hitting them in the face.

“Get the fuck off me,”

Rutherford was struggling with someone. I couldn't tell who as the mead that I had drunk earlier was trying to come up through my nose.

“This man is harbouring a fugitive. A fugitive that assaulted me and my friends in broad day-light. I demand justice and if no-one else is prepared to provide that justice then I will find it myself.”

I was still slumped in the other men's arms. But now I got one leg under me. I felt someone grab me by the hair and tilt my face into the light.

I saw Rutherford's face. He was flushed and angry. One eye was half closed with what was going to be a truly awe-inspiring black eye and the other was wild eyed and blood shot. He also had a cut along one cheek but mostly I was looking at his nose, all big, red and with those tiny little purple veins running through them. Those little ones that you hace to be really close to a man's face to be able to see. For all the world it looked like a boil or a blister that needed to be popped.

It was a favour really. He would thank me for it later.

I had the one foot planted now and used that legs strength to launch myself up like one of those fireworks you can see around the noble quarters in Oxenfurt, driving my head as directly into his nose as I could.

The effect was rather satisfactory but by the eternal fire did it hurt.

For a moment my head swam and white light exploded behind my eyes. But on the other hand there was liquid running down my face and my enemy was reeling away from me clutching at his face.

“Bastard,” he roared. “Bastard, you've broken my nose.” He howled in pain and rage as he tried to talk through his increasingly busted up face.

He seized a bottle from a nearby villager and drank a large amount from it before whimpering in pain and hurling the bottle at the crowd as he turned his murderous face back to me.

“Bring me rope.” He ordered. “I'm gonna string you up so that your friend can see it,” he snarled at me as it began to occur to me that head-butting this vodka fuelled maniac was possibly not the wisest course of action that I had ever taken.

“WHERE'S MY FUCKING ROPE?”

Rutherford screamed at the crowd, spittle, blood and snot spraying from his lips and the ugly mushroom that had taken over his face. I felt a giggle scrabbling at the bottom of my throat. I don't know why but I managed to strangle it before it properly managed to take hold.

“Yes,” came a cold and hard voice, “Where is is his fucking rope? It will save us all time later,”

The words were spoken quietly but at the same time there was a power to them that carried them over the rest of the crowd and into everyone's ears.

If this had been a story then the crowds would have split apart providing an oh so convenient path for my rescuer to walk down. Then my rescuer would have intimidated my captors into letting me go, but this was not the case. The crowd spent a good amount of time looking around to see who had spoken.

“Show yourself you cowardly mutant freak.” Rutherford spat in his hate.

“I would,” came the Witcher's voice “but I can't seem to get through which is fortunate for us both I think.”

It wasn't an alley that formed, it was more the mob version of self preservation. People just started backing away from each other until there was a rough circle around us all as people filed into the gaps between houses, others ran into the houses themselves, calling for children to come inside lest there be trouble.

Children being children, they of course ignored this and either climbed out windows or onto roofs to see the street theatre, entertainment being rare in those parts.

As a result though I could finally see my rescuer. He had been busy it seemed as he was holding the corpse of another Nekker by the foot having dragged it towards the village. The corpse was nearly cut in half in the midriff with only a few inches worth of skin and muscle holding the two halves together with other stringy entrails spilling out behind it.

The entrails steamed in the air. A couple of people shrieked at the sight.

I kind of wanted to gasp or something but the blows to my stomach had robbed me of breath.

“Drop your swords,” Rutherford crowed in gleeful triumph at the imagined surrender of the Witcher.

“Why?” The Witcher responded sheathing what I recognised as his silver sword.

“Because you assaulted me,”

“Yes, I know why you want me to. I also know that hanging me is an overreaction according to the local law for assaulting a cretin in self-defence.”

“Drop your swords, or we'll kill your friend.”

The Witcher nodded.

“Go ahead,” He marched forwards to within about ten feet of us all. I noticed that his left hand was on his sword strap and that the steel sword was on his back. I felt a trickle of cold sweat run down the back of my neck and I shivered.

“Frederick,” The Witcher said, “I'm sorry, but you can rest assured that you will be avenged shortly.” He was talking to me but he was looking at Rutherford.

“You're insane,” Rutherford sounded like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him.

“No, I'm quite serious. If you kill him then you will have lost your shield. You will not have time to reach for a weapon yourself because by that point your head will be sailing from your shoulders in a most impressive arterial spray. Your colleagues will be too busy being shocked that they will die in relatively short order after that.”

“You're bluffing.”

For answer Kerrass grinned nastily. “Try me,”

The tableau was set. It was like a scene out of a play.

“I am a member of the village council and I am placing you under arrest.”

Rutherford drew his sword and stepped away from the other two.

“Ah, said the Witcher. I find that interesting. Release my companion first before I answer,”

“There is no answer for your actions you mutant fuck, you are guilty there are witnesses.”

“I have a defence,”

“There is no defence.”

“Yet I will make one which is the right of anyone. If you try to stop me I will assume that this town is lawless and act accordingly.”

My companion really did have an amazing talent for smiling hideously. I had heard the same about the White Wolf and wondered if it was something that they taught in Witcher school.

“Where is the Alderman?” Kerras asked. “He is the authority here that I recognise. He hired me and as such I will explain myself to him.”

“Put up your sword,” Rutherford demanded.

“I have done,” The Witcher snarled in response. “I notice that you have not.”

“I have the right,”

The Witcher managed to sneer and smile at the same time. A feat that I had previously assumed that only my father could perform.

“Where is the Alderman?”

“I am here Master Witcher. Nursing my own injury in the pursuit of Justice.” The old man was helped out of the crowd by the Dwarven smith looking as though he had aged ten years in the last two hours. I didn't blame him at all after what had happened in the cottage on the edge of the village but then I noticed the cut on the old man's brow that still looked as though it was seeping gently down his cheek.

I felt exhausted then, and more than a little sick, just wanting to find a small and dark hole to crawl away into until the world started to make sense again.

I think. I couldn't swear to it and I never asked Kerras, but I think that that was the moment where he decided what would happen next.

Kerras' lips thinned, just slightly at the sight of the Alderman staggering towards us. Even the Dwarf who had looked jovially dwarven was red with some suppressed emotion.

“Alderman,” Kerras spoke kindly but let his words project. “I would ask how the law is enforced in your village?”

“It's never really come up before,” The old man looked so sad then and I wondered if he knew, “If crime is committed a crowd of us get together and meet out punishment. More often than not it is to be cast out of the village and that is generally enough for our purposes.”

“And murder?” The Witcher asked.

“Never in my memory. It last happened in my Grandfather's time and the killer was caught and hanged.”

“I see.” The Witcher turned back to Rutherford and it seemed to me that his yellow eyes began to glow.

“Alderman, this man and his companions sought to prevent me from performing the duty for which you hired me. They threatened my companion and I with violence and death if we did not obey.”

He was speaking to the mob now. I had been to see plays, sermons and recitals and you can always tell when a performer has the audience in the palm of their hands.

“At that moment we heard a woman scream. I am a Witcher and I made to run and see how I could help as that is both my duty as a Witcher and my right as a free thinking individual. What kind of a world would we live in if we ignored the distress of another.”

It was not a question and I saw other villagers nodding.

“But this piece of shit,” Kerras snarled and again I would swear that I saw fangs. “prevented me bodily from rushing to aid the stricken. He and his companions struck out at me with clubs, swords, feet and fists.”

He paused and lowered his gaze for a moment.

“I fended them off as best as I could, and when I was free I ran to where the scream came from. I would also note, that the gentleman struck the child that brought your message to me. A message that might have prevented the tragedy that happened later. But in physically restraining me he delayed me.”

He looked back up, at me this time.

“Fortunately I was not alone and my companion was able to win free and race to assist the stricken. Where, barely trained as he is...”

I smiled at that. It seems that I can find humour in the strangest and most tragic of circumstances. My blessing and my curse.

“He managed to save, by my count, at least two children by himself as well as helping me save the mother and her daughter. That is at the very least of this man's deeds today.”

He paused before turning back to Rutherford.

“Alderman, I am told that the family lost one son today. A tragedy that no family should ever have to endure. A tragedy that is all too common in this modern era. I would ask you whether or not that son could have been saved if the message had got through as intended and if I had not been restrained so that my companion and I could do our job.”

The Alderman didn't answer.

Rutherford did though.

“This is preposterous,”

I wondered if he actually knew what that word meant. That sense of humour problem again.

The Witcher ignored him.

“In my eyes, that makes this man,” gesturing at Rutherford, “a murderer. Not only that but rather than helping with the effort to prevent more tragedy he kidnaps and assaults the true hero of these circumstances. The one person here who actually definitely saved a life today without being helped by anyone else. That includes me by the way”

“He is tainting the issue Alderman,” Rutherford splutters.

“Yes I struck him but I did so in the pursuance of saving another life.”

The alderman pushed himself away from the dwarf's support so he could stand on his own two feet.

“I agree master Witcher. You are free from blame.”

Rutherford spluttered a bit but The Witcher wasn't done.

“Good,” The Witcher said, “And the other matter?”

The old man tried to speak again but couldn't get the words out. The air was thick with a tension that I had only just noticed. The old man nodded and kind of shrunk in on himself.

“Excellent,” said the Witcher drawing his sword almost leisurely. “In that case, as that rope hasn't turned up.”

He took two quick steps,

“Now just a minute...” It seems that Rutherford couldn't resist a cliché,

I heard the blow rather than seeing it as I had closed my eyes. It was like... No, I was going to say that it sounded like a cleaver cutting meat, or a pair of scissors cutting silk. But it didn't. It sounded like someone having their head cut off.

Many people screamed.

At least two people vomited.

The Witcher hadn't joked about the spray either.

“Let him go,” he said quietly to the two men holding me. I rather think that they were still holding me in shock rather than with any intention of harming me. They certainly dropped me as though I had suddenly become as hot as a newly forged sword.

Kerras crouched next to me,

“You Ok? Can you stand?”

I nodded.

“Good, I need your help if you can give it. I could probably manage but I would rather trust you than some of these people.”

I levered myself to my feet. It took much longer than it should have.

“Now,” said the Witcher, addressing the crowd again. “This village has Nekkers. I don't know how many but Nekker swarms tend to be between six to as many as fifteen. I have killed two. It is vital, absolutely vital that tonight, you lock and bar your doors and shutter your windows as it's getting late now. In the morning I need every person able to swing a pick or a shovel. Bring food and water for yourselves as we must work hard and quickly if we are to make your village safe again. In the mean time, if you hear a sound like stones on a hillside or, strange as it may sound, like bacon frying in fat. Then run. Get everyone out of the area and find me, my companion or the Blacksmith and say what has happened. Don't grab anything, take no belongings, and above all don't go back until I, and I alone tell you that it is safe. Your lives depend on it. If you do this then you will all be safe. I promise.”

Strange as it may sound. For a man who had just butchered another in full view off everyone, we all believed him.

Chapter 6: Dawn of the Nekker Hunt: Preparing for the Battle Underground

I sat carefully and tried to relax. Back to the tree with my legs stretched out in front of me I wriggled a little in an attempt to be comfortable. It was not easy, twigs, dry leaves and the soft squishing that I was trying not to think of as the mud grinding itself into my trousers. Leaning my head back onto the trunk of the tree I did the little tricks that the Witcher had taught me to keep myself calm.

Deep breath, in through the nose. Now hold it,

One second,

Two seconds,

Three Seconds.

Then blow it out through my mouth nice and hard.

Just focus on the breathing now.

But it was no good. The sky on the Eastern horizon was noticeably lighter than it had been a moment a go.

It was nearly time.

Twisting around on the floor I could just about peer round the bulk of the tree to see the white flag hanging off the pole, limp and quiet in the still air of the morning. I could see the flag and if I squinted hard I could just about see the mound of earth just beyond it.

I took another breath.

I had lived around people all my life. Whether it was at my birth place in my fathers manor house or later in the castle that he had bought, there was always some kind of noise. When I had left to go to Oxenfurt I had lived amongst the other students and in the crashing, bells and calls of the city. Even in those times on the road. I had stayed in inns with other guests, the sounds of drinkers in the common room, other sleepers and occasionally the sound of lovers in the rooms next door. When I slept outside, there had been the Witcher's snoring or the snorting and restless shifting of the horses.

But this was a silence so utterly pervasive that it was like a blanket settling over me and far from being soporific it seemed to accentuate every little noise making every twig movement, or leaf rustling into a sound that made the world seem like it was exploding.

Not that that happened often.

As I had learned, at this time in the morning, the majority of noises were caused by birds in the trees, or small animals in the undergrowth. But there was none of that now. I had been warned about this of course. It was apparently a common thing in the presence of a monsters next or burrow. Those things that could run away had and those that couldn't would already have been eaten.

Take another breath.

Two cylinders, one for my hands and another for my belt. I had had hours of practice. They were actually rather easy to use. Grasp it with both hands, twist and shake before throwing hard enough for the glass to break. The danger was that the glass was remarkably thin and could break easily and so had to be carried gently. I had first wanted to hold it in my other hand until it had become obvious that I would need both hands free to activate one of these grenades.

Grenades. Such a strange word. I didn't know much about alchemy but it seemed to be almost magical to me that the right combination of things could produce such an alarming effect. The twist mixed the two substances, the shaking would aid the mixing, when the glass broke then the mixture would be exposed to the dirt and the air, which would cause it to explode. I had laughed at that and asked the Witcher why people didn't just use this instead of hiring mages, and sorcerers to do whatever they did and the Witcher looked me straight in the eye and said.

“You are not the first person to ask that question.” before walking off.

I resisted the urge to get up and stretch my legs. Too much noise. For all I knew one of the nekkers was just behind that mound and listening for just the slightest piece of noise to go charging off after.

I took another deep breath and looked up to check the Eastern horizon. It was definitely a lighter shade of blue.

I started counting in my head.

Slowly, keeping my eyes open, ears tilted for any sound. Anything to let me know what was going

on.

Absolutely nothing.

After Rutherford had been killed, an action that I was still not entirely impressed with, The Witcher had started chasing the people indoors and I did my best to help him. The villagers were reluctant at first, many wanted to help, many more felt guilty at the events of the afternoon and wanted to let everyone know, in exquisite detail how much they had wanted to help, but were just kept away from doing so by children, spouses, events, work, things in the way and so on.

It had not occurred to me before how little there was to do in a village of an evening. In Oxenfurt I might go to a tavern, or to see a play or sit somewhere and read a book. Dance in the square or argue loudly with someone.

Here it would seem that the main evening pass time was to gossip with their neighbours. The doings of folk being their entertainment, the state of the cows and their regular bowel movements. Their romance novels were replaced with matchmaking of the younger members of the village. Their adventure books taken up with how they would conspire against each other, how factions and cliques would build up and interact with each other, feuding over tiny little facts and issues.

But now they had something really meaty to talk about.

Dreadfully classist of me again, but it astonished me that the absence of a simple cooper could lead to such a power vacuum within a village. My trained aristocratic brain wanted to scream at these people that it was just a Cooper that was missing, and not a very nice one at that. But this was a major crises for them. An empty seat on the village council. People were already arguing over the different candidates and who could be put forward and who would do a good job and who would be terrible for the role and say what you like about that Rutherford man but he did have a point that the Alderman was getting on a bit nowadays too.

It seemed to me that despite the visible evidence of both a monster corpse and the death of a local boy, no-one wanted to believe that there were monsters in the village. The news had been taken in to the collective consciousness and then had sloughed off them in much the same way that water never sticks to the back of a duck.

At one point my scholarly brain rebelled and I grabbed a middle aged woman who was refusing to move until she had finished discussing things with her next door neighbour. I confronted her with the slowly setting sun and the very real presence of monsters in the village and she looked at me as though I had crawled out from under a rock.

“Yes well,” she said, “They're only nekkers aren't they.” She actually chuckled.

“But they killed that boy,” I protested incredulously.

“Well,” she droned in the tones of a woman imparting wisdom to the painfully stupid, “You know what they say?”

“Errr, no. No I don't”

“Well,” said the neighbour, her arms folded, “Monsters are attracted to that sort aren't they. They only punish people for a reason and that family were always a little....”

“Strange,” said the first woman.

“Aye, that's what I meant. I mean who builds a house that far away on the edge of town.”

I stared at them incredulously for what felt like several minutes. The house had simply been the one on the edge of the row. Not outside of the town limits at all.

“Monsters don't bother decent folks after all.” she continued, blithely ignoring my astonishment.

“Yes they do,” I heard myself screech. “They really do. How many people are going to go hungry over the winter because those Nekkers have eaten some of your livestock.”

“'ark at 'im getting all high and mighty,”

“Yes, but he follows a Witcher around doesn't he. Got to be a little cracked in the head to want to do that doesn't he.”

“GET INSIDE NOW.” I roared. “AND DON'T COME OUT UNTIL MORNING.”

“Alright, alright you don't need to tell me twice.”

The women retreated with bad grace.

I couldn't believe it. I was still feeling tremors in my arms from the exertions of earlier that day, the visible and physical marks that proved with absolute certainty that things were happening and these women wanted to ignore that.

I was furious.

But what was I going to do?

Eventually the Witcher, the Alderman, the dwarf and I got everyone inside. Salt was placed outside every entrance to every building. The dwarf waved us farewell and the Witcher locked the Alderman and I inside the Alderman's house after taking some crushed leaves out of one of the packets in his bags and adding it to his water bottle.

I managed to eat a little and collapsed into an exhausted sleep where I remember dreaming rather vividly, but for the life of me I couldn't have told you what it was I dreamt.

The following day started early. Very early. Too early for my blood.

I was woken by the Witcher, looking alarmingly awake and refreshed for someone who had clearly and obviously had no sleep judging by the growing pile of Nekker corpse bits that were piling up out of sight behind the Alderman's cottage.

He had the disgracefully bad manners to smile at my rather drawn face as I was suffering what can only be described as a hangover, which I thought was massively unfair given that I hadn't really drunk anything other than a couple of cups of mead and although that mead might have been a bit stronger than I was used to I had eaten properly and drunk no more.

As a result though it took me a lot longer to wake up than I normally would. The last parts of the sleepiness was driven away by my head being plunged into a bucket of water that had been drawn from the town well, by the Witcher, for that purpose.

Breakfast of some bread and a nutty kind of goats cheese seemed to mostly complete the cure as the village gathered in the green.

I found myself wondering if the Witcher was aware of the placing of himself as he stood with his back to the house with the foxgloves. So that every person there would see, not only him, but also the ruin of a families life.

It was a stark, unpleasant image that stands clearly in my mind to this day.

“I will not lie to you,” he started out calmly. He sounded like a surgeon informing a person that they were about to lose both legs. “I will not lie to you but the problem is rather serious. Last night I found four Nekkers wandering the nearby area above ground. Normally they are relatively timid creatures for whom strength in numbers is the greatest part of their courage and conventional wisdom, according that great scholar John of Brugge, is that when you find a number of Nekkers above ground then then you can expect at least three times that number below ground. That means that with the four already killed there could be anything between twelve to fifteen more still burrowing underground looking for prey.”

“So when are you going down into their tunnels then?” someone shouted, a male voice that I couldn't see the owner of.

The Witcher shook his head. “I'm afraid that that's simply impossible. If I found a burrow and tried to go down there, not only would I not fit, but I would easily get lost, or the entire thing could collapse on top of me, I wouldn't be able to breathe and so on.”

He scanned the crowd.

“We need to drive them into the open where I can slay them.”

“What's this 'we' stuff?” yelled the woman next to me giving me more than a little of a glare. “We hired you didn't we? Why do you need 'our' help?”

The crowd murmured it's approval of this.

“I don't.” said the Witcher. There was just the slightest hint of a smile about him. I couldn't see his features move but I could tell that that was what he was thinking. “I don't need your help. It could all be done by me, let alone by me and my apprentice.”

People started muttering to themselves.

“However,” he held his hands out in a placating gesture.

“However, as the Alderman will tell you, I am not cheap and I charge by the day. Doing it all by myself, even with the help of my apprentice will take several days if we want to make sure that all of the Nekkers are actually dead and I assume you want them all dead so that there aren't any of them left to reproduce?”

I smiled to myself. He'd handled that well.

“I thought that you would all be a lot happier if you put this all behind you as fast as possible.” The Witcher continued, “I'm just trying to give you the best possible value for money.”

The villagers were nodding and I could hear a couple of them talking about conscientiousness and honesty and 'good craft practice that'.

For myself I was struggling not to laugh. I had seen salesmen at their work before and it came to me in a flash that the Witcher could sell wine to a noble from Toussaint.

“What I need is for all of you to stay in the village today. Preferably towards the North East side of the village to make it easier for me to spot signs of the Nekker's presence. I also need about six volunteers, they need to be strong people and able to wield a shovel with speed and to be able to keep up with me as I will be moving damn fast. There is no risk to these people, that you can be assured of, no matter what. The faster the job's done then the safer it is. Any questions?”

“What do you need the fucking shovellers for?” shouted an older woman.

The Witcher grinned nastily. “To dig some big fucking holes.”

As it turned out, he wasn't joking.

Have you ever seen a water diviner work. Those people that take a branch of wood, hold it a weird way and walk around slowly humming until they twist the branch round in their hands and declare with absolute surety that this is where the person should dig their well. Then, to everyone's astonishment it would turn out that they were right.

Neither have I, but that's what it reminded me of. The Witcher took out his medallion and held it tightly in his hand walking around the relatively small wooded area with his eyes closed. He would walk slowly, the hand holding the medallion close to his throat with his other hand held out in front of him. Then he would stop, cock his head like a dog listening to the wind at the same time as sniffing before his eyes would snap open and he would sprint off to another patch of woodland where he would throw himself horizontal onto the ground with his ear to the ground for a moment before getting up and closing his eyes again.

This would go on for a while before he would stop and point at a very particular patch of earth

and tell the diggers to dig on that particular spot, no not there, maybe a foot to the left, no not quite... Yes that's it. Then the men would dig, the dwarf who had deputised himself to lead the group would supervise and the Witcher would sit nearby, on a stump or a mound in the ground, obviously poised to leap to his feet a moments notice, his eyes hooded and barely moving.

I soon realised that not having done much manual labour in the past I was more of a hindrance to the digging work than an aid, I moved and sat next to the Witcher.

“I have to ask you a question,” he said suddenly,

“What?” The suddenness of the question had startled me.

“I have to ask you a question and it is not an easy one to answer and I want you to think about it.”

“Right? Do I need to be concerned?”

“A little,” he admitted “I want to know if you're alright to help me tonight?”

I started to speak but he held his hand up to forestall me. “No don't answer too quickly. I need you to think about it. You worked hard yesterday and went through a couple of nasty things. That's not a compliment but a truth. I've seen men put through things like that and the strongest man can be shaking and sweating for several days after that. I need to know if I can depend on you with my life, and the lives of those villagers.”

I thought about it for a while.

“I won't pretend that I'm happy with everything and I am looking forward to some spectacular nightmares in the near future. But keeping busy is good. What is it you'll need me to do?”

“Run, really fast. Really really fast, stay calm and be able to operate a small device without dropping it?”

“I think I might need a little more than that.” I smiled.

The Witcher did not.

“We need to drive the Nekkers to the surface. They are uncomfortably close to the village so they need to be exterminated rather than driven away which is normally the best solution to a Nekker problem. They came from that direction,” he waved in the direction of the West. “So we need to close off the escape routes and then drive them to a last burrow which will lead to the open and then....”

“Make with the chopping,” I said, “and the stabbing, also the slicing.”

“I see you get the idea. I need you to run from burrow to burrow, dropping bombs down the holes. You will do the Two burrows to the North, I will do the two to the south and then we will meet at the burrow closest to the village where, theoretically, the Nekkers will come to the surface and then we fulfil your chopping side of the plan. I've spoken with the smith and your spear will be ready by then. Can you do that?”

“I think so yes. I'll need to practice.”

“Good, I'll give you an empty bomb so you can practice with it. You should also get some rest as this is all going to happen in the early hours of the morning when the Nekkers are at their most tired.”

I had nodded. Of course I had nodded, what else was I supposed to do in that situation.

Of course I was bitterly regretting that now.

Sleep had been something that had happened to other people during the evening. I had been so tempted to get myself some kind of artificial sleeping aid such as alcohol but somehow that seemed like a terrible idea. The Witcher had me practice the quarter staff with him for a while, only with one end of the staff painted black, directing me to only hit him with that end of the staff which is harder than it sounds. I had run the track over and over again. Theoretically it wasn't very far. I had torn up a blanket, the whitest blanket I could find and tied the scraps to trees along the route that I had chosen to run down. Earlier today they had been so bright that I had ridiculed the need for any kind of further practice. But now, in the blue-gray light of early morning My imagination threw nightmare scenarios at me. What if one of the two remaining village pigs had found it's way back into the woods in the middle of the night? What if the Nekkers had decided to come out for a wander and I ran across them?

What if...

Intellectually I was well aware that the “What if?” game that I was playing with myself was a useless and wasted exercise but I couldn't help it.

I checked my supply of explosives again. One still on the belt, one in my hand. For some reason I felt the need to make sure that the one in my hand was indeed still there despite the fact that it had never actually left my hand at any point.

The holes that had been dug had gone down maybe three feet. They were narrow as well, no more than half a foot wide and the earth from the hole was piled at the side. I was to throw the cylindrical device into the hole, kick the earth over the top and then run on.

“Speed,” The Witcher had said to me as he had left me for his own waiting place. “Speed is key. In the hole is fine. A little dirt over the top is perfectly OK. Speed, not finesse.

He had gripped me by the shoulder as he had gazed at me for a long time with those strange eyes. It was easy to forget those eyes in the light of the day but in the half light of the very early dawn , the yellow Irises had almost shone, reflecting what little light there was and the pupils themselves were huge holes, giving the uncomfortable feeling of looking back at the eyes of a corpse.

He had loped off. It could only have been a few minutes earlier but he was gone. As was his sword. The spear was still too unfamiliar to me and I had elected to leave it at the site of the eventual battle as it was still heavy and ungainly in my hands but now I felt it's lack clearly and distinctly. My hands ached for the weight of it and the cold of the metal to cool my sweating palms.

Surely it must be time, surely now.

The mound was still there, bathed in the light of dawn. The sky was alive with colour now. A painter might have been able to capture it in all it's glory but for me, a little scholar out there in the woods near a village that I couldn't even remember the name of, I felt very small and frightened. I thought of my family, my friends back at the university and the too few women that I had known. I made myself promises that if I survived this then I would tell various people how I really felt, I would reconcile with my father and apologise to my mother.

I would probably have gone on longer, driving myself into a pit of depression and self recrimination. I have done several of these late night or early morning watches now, waiting for action or death and the self recrimination hole is a deep one that can suck you down, further than you ever thought possible but I didn't have chance this time.

I heard it.

At first I didn't know what I had heard. It was like....Try and imagine the sound that a metal hammer makes when it strikes a plank of wood and shatters it. But then there is another element to the noise which is like hearing something when you are underwater.

I heard it.

At first I second guessed myself. Had I really heard anything? Was that really the sound I had been waiting for? Had I imagined it? What was going on?

But then came the disbelief.

It was too early, the Witcher had made a mistake. It was too early, surely there would be a few minutes yet? Please let me live for just a few more minutes.

All of this happened in an instant and it shames me to admit, here and now that I found myself honestly considering dropping the explosives and running off into the night. I wanted to, I could feel my legs gathering themselves towards movement in that direction. I sorely wanted to. I even tried to make the decision.

But I didn't.

I don't remember the point where I decided to move. All I know is that suddenly my feet were under me and I was running. I reached the hole and froze for a moment as I tried to remember what I was supposed to do. I nearly dropped the grenade but instead I found the bit I needed, gripped and twisted.

It didn't move.

Then I remembered.

I twisted it the other way.

Threw it in the hole, probably a little harder than I needed to and kicked as much of the dirt over it as I could before sprinting off in what I hoped was the right direction to be rewarded by a much louder bang behind me.

I stumbled, before re-finding my feet and ran on.

I saw the first piece of the blanket flapping from a nearby branch, then I saw the second. I was absolutely terrified but that fear gave me speed. My imagination had vanished and my entire world was the next piece of blanket.

At some point I heard another, muffled bang in the distance. My ears were still ringing from my own explosion but I was coming up on my second mound.

This time I was more co-ordinated. The grenade came off my belt. The removal of imagined monsters lurking in the dark made my hands sure.

I gripped,

twisted,

threw,

kicked,

then I was off again.

The bang behind me gave me a kick and I sprinted on.

Piece of blanket, piece of blanket,

Where was the piece of....

There it was.

And on and on, branches whipped at me, bushes and brambles tugged at me, small stones and uneven floor threatened to trip me up.

But I ran on and slowly I could see more and more as the sun climbed up the sky.

There was the clearing.

The Witcher was already there, because of course he was already there. The bastard wasn't even breathing hard. Near him I could see his Steel sword driven into the ground point first, rather deep. From the pommel I could see his Witcher medallion dangling and he was rubbing his other sword with a cloth.

He nodded at me as I arrived. There was no comment, nothing was said.

He threw the cloth at me.

“Rub that over the blade.”

I caught up my spear that was resting against a nearby tree. It seemed lighter than I remembered somehow.

The Witcher had placed the silver sword in his back scabbard and knelt next to the sword in the ground.

As I watched, rubbing the new steel with what looked like a red-jelly like substance, he took three bottles out of a pouch at his side.

He took a small swig from the first before placing it back in the pouch, then couple of gulps from the second before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He waited a moment before taking the third bottle. He grimaced slightly before quickly draining the contents.

I stood mesmerised, remembering the inn and what had happened when he had used these things before.

He knelt next to the sword and carefully, slowly he reached out and took the hilt in both hands and leant forwards until his head rested against the pommel.

It seemed like a religious thing, as though he was praying.

Then he screamed.

It was not a human sound that scream. It was the sound of the thing that comes for you in the night. It was the sound of a tortured and wounded animal determined to sell itself dearly.

No human throat could have made that noise.

He knelt there for a while. His entire body trembling. I was frozen in shock. I wanted to go and help him, reassure him, offer some kind of comfort but I couldn't

His breathing became harsh and ragged, he groaned then as if in some kind of pain but still he didn't move.

Then it was silent.

I realised that I had stopped oiling my blade and rubbed at it furiously.

Slowly, very slowly. The Witcher unfolded and turned to me.

I nearly ran from him then.

I certainly swore and blasphemed.

He grinned at my reaction and somehow it was not reassuring.

He was white now. The colour of death, his skin seemed to have shrunken on his bones, his skull clearly visible, his teeth bared in a corpse like grimace of what looked like hate. His eyes glittered and black veins visibly throbbed just below the surface of the paper like skin.

“Stand, well back from me,” he gestured.

His words seemed slow and elongated to me, each syllable drawn out and clearly pronounced in the way of a drunk man taking care to make sure that he is clearly understood. His gesture was slow, languid and dreamy like. He moved differently, all loose as though his head was being held by an invisible hand and that everything else was being dragged along with the head.

I fell back where I was ordered and turned to watch.

Slowly the Witcher drew his sword and stood before the burrow.

There was a sound on the edge of my hearing and it was a moment before I recognised it for what it was.

It was the sound of frying bacon.

I have spent a lot of time since that early morning thinking about what happened next. I have compared it to fights that I have been involved in, fights that I have seen and fights that I have heard about.

I have also thought long and hard about those fights that are described in ballads where the fight ranges widely around the location, swinging off chandeliers and fighting along balconies where one opponent gets the upper hand, small injuries are traded back and to until the good guy is held over some kind of precipice until some over confidence inspired mistake sends the villain over the edge and into the gulf.

I once spoke to a fencing instructor about this and he explained that the differences between an actual fight and a show fight and a demonstration fight. In a show fight as you might see on stage often involves taking the time to strike the other persons weapon nice and hard so it makes a suitably impressive sound and flashes nicely in the sunlight or in the local stage lighting.

A demonstration fight involves a lot of the spins and twirling effects that are designed to look impressive and show off a fighters skills, agility and physical form.

Whereas an actual fight is often over very quickly. The difference being that an actual fight is all about killing the other person. No flashy moves, no demonstrations, just short, sharp and brutal murder. More often than not the most skilled fighter will be the one that wins. But there is also a mental part of a fight which is the gap between a man that can fight for real, or the man that confines his fighting to the first blood circles. The real winner of a fight is the person who is willing to go further than the other guy. In a fist fight, the person who will win is the person who is willing to put their thumbs through the eye-sockets of his opponent and jab them in the throat until they choke to death. Yes, there are occasions where terrain, physical conditioning and other circumstances can make a difference. No-one fights well when drunk for example, but essentially that's what it boils down to.

Apparently the same thing is true in a sword fight. The idea is to kill the other person with absolute minimum effort.

I knew none of these things at the time. But looking back at that time, the first real time I had seen the Witcher fight rather than just killing someone, that was what he was doing.

In fact, calling it a fight is an overstatement. It wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter.

His movements, although blindingly fast, seemed unhurried and leisurely. He expended no amount of effort than the minimum required, for instance at one point he was moving and it looked to me that he missed the Nekker in question, but there was in fact a gout of black blood and the thing died. He must have done it with the very tip of his sword but at the same time, the effect was the same as if he had cut the things head off.

He hardly moved. That was the other thing I noticed. We later figured out that there was a total of sixteen Nekkers that were killed that morning which, apparently, is an unusually large number but it seemed strange to me that I never saw him dodge something, he never ducked, or sidestepped or moved out of the way. Every stroke was a killing stroke, no move happened without one or two Nkkeres staggering away either dying or injured. It wasn't until much later as my own combat skills had improved under the Witchers tutelage that I realised that he was dodging, all the time. It was just that every attack was also a dodge, in dodging one Nekkers strike he was killing another.

It was hypnotic.

It was terrifying.

It was beautiful, horrible and terrible all at the same time.

I almost didn't notice the Neker that had made it past him and was coming for me.

I do not know what happened. The Nekkers had come out of the ground where we had dug that last hole, almost exactly as The Witcher had predicted. They came out first in ones and twos and later as a group. To my eyes nothing had made it past the Witcher in the growing light of the morning and the Witcher was stood almost directly in front of the hole so it would have been hard, if not impossible for him to have missed one. But miss one he did and I owe my life to the fact that Nekkers are relatively stupid animals and this one screamed as it jumped to attack me.

I spun to face it but it was already inside the reach of the bladed end of my spear and all I could do was to get the shaft of the spear between myself and the creature as I pushed and heaved at the thing. I hadn't realised how big it was though and again, if it had been thinking about more clearly it would have used that weight to throw me around a bit, but all it could do, all it could think of doing in it's savage and uncompromising fury was to get it's teeth and claws at my face and neck.

It's teeth snapped at me, trying to get round the spear, it's claws raked at my clothes and I retched and vomited at the stench of it's breath.

In the end I simply toppled over, the weight and the stench and the pain was just too much and my legs just buckled under me. As I fell I felt a strange kind of disconnect, I don't know where it came from but it felt as though I was watching the action from a distance like a spectator at some kind of sporting event, and like any sporting event, this part of me started shouting advice.

Unlike every sporting event I have ever been to though, the participant could actually hear the advice and I took it, twisting as I fell. I didn't quite manage to land on top of it but I certainly managed to prevent it from landing on top of me.

I rolled then, pinning it to the ground. I had a sudden and overwhelming feeling that if another Nekker got past then I was done for but still I pushed the haft of the spear into it's throat and leant on it with all my strength and weight.

If it was a human, It would have had the good grace to stay throttled.

But it wasn't human. It didn't work like a human, it didn't think like a human and as a result, because I was thinking like I would if fighting another human I was unprepared for it to use it's legs as a spring to lever me off and away from itself.

There was just enough time for me to realise that I was in fact flying through the air before I came crashing down. Just that moment of realisation followed by another thought that came almost as quickly. The realisation that this was going to really hurt.

I was not disappointed.

It was more by luck than by design that I managed to tuck my head and roll onto my back, as otherwise I would have been sent spinning over the top of the monsters to land plumb on my head. As it was my neck was stiff and sore for a good couple of weeks afterwards to go along with all the other injuries that I had sustained.

I crashed down onto my back and for a moment the world span around. I was aware of the pain in a distant kind of way, again as the lucid part of me realised that there were several stoned that had been placed onto the ground in rather unfortunate ways that I would have to deal with later.

Much to my astonishment though I still had my spear in hand. I rolled to my left which the Witcher told me later, saved my life and looked for my opponent who had vanished.

Again, that monstrous, animal instinct of theirs to bellow just as it was coming towards me, hands uplifted to rake across me, mouth open to bite, feet raised to kick out. All I had to do was to lift my spear, brace it as best as I could and the Nekker simply ran onto it.

It didn't go easily though.

It fought every step of the way, at first it tried to pull itself off the weapon. But then I remembered a small part of the many lessons that the Witcher had tried to impart and I twisted the spear in the things guts.

It screamed again before it actually started to pull itself along the spear towards me. Terror clawed at my throat, choking me. I would have paid real money right then to be able to drop the spear and run for it but the terror was a blockage in my throat that I couldn't clear. The thing scrabbled towards me, teeth gnashing, claws reaching and getting closer with every movement. The oil that I had coated the spear with hissed against the things skin, black goo escaped from it's gaping maw and I froze.

I sobbed in the cold morning air but somehow this was not enough for me. A mere sob at this time, the ultimate time of my life up until that point could not be marked by a sob. So I screamed back at the thing, screamed my fear out through lungs and a throat that burned with the effort of both that scream and the effort of the run through the woods earlier. All the waiting and the pain and the fear came out of me, channelled into that scream.

I took a firm hold of the shaft of the spear and pushed.

Hard.

The Nekker over balanced and I could add my weight to the spear itself pushing down, and down and down. The magic bound into the things blood and skin and flesh fought against the steel spear but the oil that the Witcher had given me was my ally and I pinned the cursed thing to the floor like I would hammer in a nail.

I started at the silence. I was still alive and suddenly the air smelled all the sweeter for it. I could smell the dung of the far off cattle, my own unwashed body, not to mention the horrific stench emanating from the monster I had just killed.

I wanted to laugh, I wanted to puke my guts up, I wanted to cry and jump and shout until the world ended in the prophesied eternal snow.

What I did was lean forwards and concentrate on breathing in and out as I suddenly felt dizzy.

After a long moment I realised that the sounds of fighting had stopped and as I looked up I realised that the Witcher was staring at me and probably had been for some time. Colour was returning to his cheeks and although he looked a little wild eyed and I thought I could see a slight tremor in his hands, he looked considerably more human.

He was cleaning his sword with water from a skin that he had brought with us.

“You did well,” he said in much the same way as my lecturers had done after I had made a point in a Lecture. He had that glint in his eye that I was beginning to associate with amusement. “So how does it feel to be a monster slayer?”

I answered by staggering away and vomiting violently against a nearby tree.

Not my most poetic moment I will admit.

“I will ask you again later,” he said with a smile.

We borrowed a wheelbarrow from the nearest house and spent, roughly the next hour carting the corpses to a nearby clearing where we piled them up together in a heap and burned them, spending enough watching to make sure that they had properly started burning before turning away.

I don't know what I was expecting from the villagers but I know it wasn't this.

They essentially ignored us.

As we walked through the village towards the Alderman's hut people moved out of our way but beyond that nothing happened, no-one enquired after our success, no-one commented or made a fuss. They were just going on about their lives.

At first I thought that they might have forgotten what was due to happen that night but there had been four explosions that had not been small as well as various screams and shouts, not to mention the plume of black and oily smoke snaking up to the heavens from just outside the village.

I gathered our things in silence as the Witcher dickered with the Alderman. It seemed that the Alderman was trying to back out of the deal that he had made and the Witcher was being firm. I retreated then into myself and carried our things into the sunny morning before I said something that I would regret.

There was a funeral procession going by a little way off. At first I thought it was the little boys funeral before I realised that the body was too big, meaning that it must be Rutherford the Coopers funeral. I saw the weeping women and the dark faced men and I looked away, unable to put a name to the deep feeling that was in my heart at that moment.

The Alderman came to the door and shouted for a boy who was told to fetch the Dwarven smith who, dutifully summoned got into a screaming row with the Alderman. As I later found out, the Alderman had negotiated in bad faith with the Witcher, promising more than he could easily afford relying on some kind of pity response from the Witcher to make up the difference. The Witcher had asked, would a craftsman demand less money for what had been done. In the end, the Witcher demanded what money there was and required that the Alderman and the village foot the bill for my spear. The Dwarf had been furious at this, not at all convinced that the money would be forthcoming as the Alderman had already broken one deal, why should the dwarf believe that he would cover the other deal.

For some reason the Witcher was blamed for this as well.

In the end we left the little village at maybe an hour before noon and headed roughly north. I wasn't really paying attention by this point. I was furious and saddened beyond words as well as suffering the effects of exhaustion and loss of adrenaline.

We rode at an unexpectedly hard pace for several hours taking a strangely circuitous route, moving off the road and following various rabbit trails before coming back tot he road again and head along at a good trotting pace for several hours. I would put it at mid afternoon when the Witcher stopped, looked carefully up and down the road before leading us off the trail for about an hour of hard stumbling through woods and meadow lands before directing me to set up camp against an embankment. I did so woodenly and without thought while he vanished into the undergrowth. He came back, a couple of hours later, just as the shadows began to lengthen carrying a couple of large meat steaks, a loaf of bread, some cheese, a few apples and a bottle of rye in a sack which he dumped next to the fire.

He looked at me for a moment before taking his swords off and carefully laying them next to the bedroll.

“Here,” he said offering the bottle, “You look like you could use a drink.”

I took the bottle and drained off considerably more than I had initially intended to.

The Witcher raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“So,” he said taking the bottle back and having a much smaller swallow from it. “How does it feel to be a monster slayer?”

I laughed at him. I had no words and it was either laugh or burst into tears.

After I calmed down I looked up.

“I think I can guess anyway,” I said reaching for the bottle, “But why are we so far off the road.”

The Witcher took the bottle back. “If you know already, then why are you asking?”

“Because I want to hear it out loud. Because I want to hear that humanity is not as bad as I think it is. Because if you say it I can disbelieve it and claim that you are a monster for thinking it.”

The Witcher sighed and leant back on his saddle.

“We're so far off the road because the villagers know which way we went. They know which way we went and there's going to be some kind of hunter or woodsman amongst them and they know that we are carrying a, for them, not small amount of money. They also know that your spear and my swords could be sold for even more money. That Alderman, although a good man amongst his kind, has a village to think of. When he hired us, he was thinking of the good of his village. Now, he's thinking that he's just given up his cache of back taxes to two cut-throat conmen vagabonds and that if something were to happen to those vagabonds then that money could be recovered. Hell, there's even the possibility that Rutherford had some friends that might want vengeance.”

He shrugged and passed me the bottle.

“Times are hard,” he went on. “They breed hard and unpleasant people. I wish it wasn't so but there it is. Even if the Alderman isn't planning our demise then that's a village full of people with any number of motives to come after us, greed not least.”

“I know,” I said, “I know but, I just. I thought there would be something different.”

I sounded like a grumpy child and I knew it.

“Did you expect a parade?” he asked. “Cheering women to throw themselves at you in their thanks, a feast to proclaim our excellence.” he grinned mockingly at the thought.

“No,” I agreed, “No I didn't expect that. That was too much. I was, I don't know but I wasn't expecting this sense of anticlimax,” I threw a branch into the fire, “I suppose I was just looking for some kind of gratitude. To not have had people attempt to swindle us as we left would have been nice.”

The Witcher sighed.

“Such is the nature of the job. Sometimes there is gratitude. I have been feasted before when the job is for a noble of some kind. I have had women throw themselves at me in gratitude which is a dangerous offer to accept as a rule,” he sniffed at that thought, “I've also been run out of towns with lynch mobs chasing me for days. I've been imprisoned for made up crimes and then offered release if I perform this one simple service, only to be flogged on my return. But the vast majority of people will try to cheat you, and then pay up in one form of another. That's just the way of things.”

“It just feels as though nothing has been achieved.” I wailed “Why do it at all if all you're going to be met with is ingratitude and blame. What's it all for?” I asked. I could feel angry tears collecting in the corner of my eyes.

The Witcher smiled a little sadly. Looking back over all the sneers, and laughs and smiles and faces that he had presented me and the other villagers over the last few days. This felt like the first genuine expression that I had seen.

“What is it all for?” he said, “You saved that little baby's life. That's one little boy who will have a chance at life because of you. I saw that as I ran up. You made a difference there. It might only have been a small one, the child might die next winter but that child is sucking down more air because you were in that place at that time. You saved that life which is more than just about all of the people on this continent can say. You saved a life. More than that, you saved an innocent life and gave him a future.”

I nodded, grateful to him. “What about you?”

“For me,” he settled back. “I'm about to have a huge fat steak, which I would like cooking rare please, half a bottle of some fine rye vodka and enough money in my pouch so that when we get to a proper place with a tavern then the pair of us can get properly drunk and sleep in a proper beds. Separately. On me this time.”

He grinned in satisfaction.

“If you want a wench though you're going to have to pay for it yourself. I'm not paying for that.”

I laughed at him and felt the tension leave me.

“Fair enough.”

Chapter 7: The Mutant's Burden: Cruelty, Regret, and the Witcher's World

“So,” I began as we rode down into the valley.

“Oh hell,” The Witcher responded, smiling crookedly. “All of your best questions start with that look and that word.”

“I don't know what you mean,” I protested, hoping that I was simply radiating innocence,

“You know exactly what I mean you lying dog. First you ride along in silence for a good long time staring at a point around two inches above your horses head with this kind of frown on your face.”

The Witcher demonstrated in an exaggeratedly comical way which I expected was a lot closer to the truth than I was strictly comfortable with, “Then,” he continued, “You look up at me and open your mouth as though you're about to speak before you think better of it. Then you strangely tilt your head backwards and forwards, from side to side while you consider various different ways to start a conversation before you eventually give up and just decide to come out with it and ask the question.”

“I do not,” I protested even though I was lying through my teeth and we both knew it.

“I will bet you the price of tonight's dinner that you were about to ask me a question and that you were uncomfortable asking it.”

I said nothing.

“Hmmm?” He prompted arching his eyebrows at me.

“No bet,” I muttered.

“Ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

We had been travelling together for some time by this point and although I would hesitate to refer to the two of us as friends we had come to an understanding. I would suspect that the correct word for it was companionship. We tolerated each other while at the same time having enough empathy for each other to know when to stay out of each others way, when to crack a joke and what was likely to make the other person smile or bring them out of whatever dark mood that they had fallen into. I had discovered that the Witcher was a lot more genial than our initial weeks together would suggest, but at the same time and by his own admission he had a tendency to sink into black moods for days at a time where he couldn't really be talked to at all for any reason. When these moods would overtake him, the best that I could hope for was that we would find a job for him or by him a large bottle of whatever apple fermented spirit could be found in the local area. The stronger the better is how he liked it. Oddly though, in these black moods he became a better teacher.

We would train every morning and every evening, Strength and stamina exercises in the morning as well as balance and footwork and in the evening there would be some work on the spear.

Occasionally he would declare that he needed me to do some drills for him so he could work on his own sword work. He would direct me to perform a series of jabs with the spear at various heights followed by two massive sweeps. He would then parry and leap about, avoiding the spear and would claim that it was some kind of monster drill. I can't speak for that but I do know that my quarterstaff and spear work improved in those first weeks on the road than they ever did under professional tutelage at Oxenfurt.

We had taken part in three hunts since the first one involving Nekkers. The first had been a Shepherd who had a problem with a griffin sneaking off with some of his sheep. The Witcher had told me that this would be too dangerous for me and ordered me to stay in the shepherds hut for two days and that if he didn't return then I was to go home. Needless to say he did.

The second was for a noble who had a problem with a ghost in one of the outbuildings of his grange. While not being particularly dangerous as I was standing in a circle of salt and Iron shavings, the first time I saw that that thing it must have taken years off my life. Nothing like the sight of a woman with no head feeding a baby at her breast that was slowly eating her to give you nightmares.

We also had a run in with a suspected werewolf who turned out to be a badly treated dog, trained by it's owner to attack anything in front of it. There was a land dispute and a local legend of a demon dog and the dogs owner thought that he would get away with murder by hiding it with the local legend. We figured it all out, killed the dog, restrained the owner and delivered him to the town council. They were still debating what to do as we rode away, money in hand.

To my surprise the Witcher had turned down two contracts, one involving a Golden dragon, because apparently there's no such thing as Golden Dragons and he also turned down a contract that was about bringing another nobleman a Succubus, because the Succubus had betrayed him. The Witcher had tried to explain to the lecherous old dog that such things were in the nature of Succubi and that as the thing hadn't killed anyone and wasn't particularly dangerous, the Witcher wouldn't hunt it. After some complaints the Witcher made some kind of comment along the lines of the fact that the old fart should consider himself grateful that the Succubus had taken any notice of him at all and we had left with the threat of hounds being set on us. I had noticed that the Witcher stopped to talk to a local herdsman though when we were heading away from that area.

I found that I was enjoying myself although I was beginning to be concerned that I wasn't going to be writing one book, that I was in fact going to be writing several and that it would take more than one outing with Kerrass to get all of the material that I wanted. From our first hunt with the Nekkers alone I could think of several essay titles to warm the cockles of my Lecturers hearts and the material was just stacking up.

But there was one subject that I needed to broach. A subject that wouldn't be easy to discuss, but it needed to be discussed.

There was no doubt about the matter. My companion was a mutant and we needed to talk about that.

“So,” I began again.

“So,” he said, mockingly.

“So you're a mutant.” I decided to just come out and say it.

“Yes?” he prompted. When I struggled for words he carried on “Have you only just noticed that? I thought it was fairly common knowledge that Witchers are mutants,”

“What's it like?” I blurted, berating myself for being extremely lacking in scientific method and lack of preparation with my questions.

“I don't know, what's it like being human?” he answered promptly. I got the feeling that he got asked this question a lot and that this was a rehearsed answer.

“You know what I mean. You were human originally.”

“Yes, but only mostly,”

“What does that mean?” I asked. I sensed a defensive wall going up between us and I needed to get past it before the wall was finished.

He sighed and gave me a good hard glare for a moment. “I'm from the Cat school of Witchers.”

“So?”

“What do you mean so?”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” I asked

“Doesn't it?” he accused

“Lets say it does. Lets say I know everything there is to know about the Cat school of Witchers. This due to the famously public nature of that school where they took regular tours of their keep and invited many scholars to inspect their cellars and their techniques, inviting...”

“Yeah alright alright, fair point,” The Witcher held up his hand in the agreed sign to say that I had scored a point during training. He was smiling I was glad to see

“Even if I knew all of those things, I would still like to hear it from you.”

The Witcher thought about this for a moment taking a drink from the wineskin that hung at his pommel.

“I was always taught that the Cat school was different from the other schools for two reasons.” He began, “The first was the fact that it was founded by Elves, or so our history told us. For some reason this means that we can only recruit those with elven blood. Not that that's some kind of snobbery, it's just that the formulae and herb combinations that we use, only seem to work on those with Elven blood to some degree. It doesn't seem to matter, to what degree but this would prove that somewhere in my ancestry an Elf got curious.”

“What happens to those children who don't have elven blood?” I asked.

“They die, screaming in agony,”

“Oh,” I said feeling a small wave of nausea rise in the pit of my stomach. “In other questions that I may not want to know the answer to... What's the other thing that makes the Cat school different?”

The Witcher looked at me for a moment. “There seems to be a flaw in our mutations that means that although we may survive the mutations perfectly well, there is a significant chance that we may become psychotic.”

“Good to know,” I said faintly.

“Still want to travel with me?”

I shrugged. “You haven't killed me in my sleep yet.”

“That's because I'm waiting for the doors in my soul to open and for the little demons that live on the other side of those doors to tell me to.”

I tried to nod as though this made perfect sense, while internally I was just hoping that he was teasing me.

“So you have some Elven blood in you somewhere?” I prompted.

“Yeah, so I'm not sure I'm that different from what I was. I was still separate although I don't remember knowing that. I went to the Witcher school when I was eight as my family could no longer afford to feed me. They tested me to see if I had Elven blood in me, I did and I was subjected to trials.”

“Yes, but you are a mutant. Doesn't that feel different”

“Contrary to popular belief it doesn't make that much difference other than the fact that I can see much easier in the dark than I remember being able to do when I was younger. The main changes are invisible, to you and to me.”

“Sterility, Strength....”

“Immunity to disease and so on. The ability to take what is essentially poison and become faster and stronger, Yes.”

“How does it effect you socially?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you aren't human, but nor are you an elf or a dwarf. I've seen you in towns, people don't trust you,” I shrugged an apology at this truth, “But they don't hate you nearly as much as they hate outright non-humans.”

The Witcher scratched his chin while he thought.

“Truth to tell, I've never really thought about it. I suppose.... I suppose it gives me a certain amount of perspective. I am separate from society. I'm part of it, but at the same time I am separate from it. It gives me a different point of view that makes it easier to look at the big picture rather than just whatever the locals seem to think.”

I thought about this as we continued to ride.

“Yes I can see how that could be useful in your line of work.”

“You're thinking about the thing with the Hound.”

“I am.”

At first we had travelled East when we had met, but gradually we had shifted southwards and as we did so, the rains of spring started to turn into the bright and warm of Early summer. The villagers were still busy and there was a tension in them now as they watched their new crops growing. Would this crop succeed? would it fail? With all of the people that have died, will this be enough for the village to survive? Would all the mouths be fed? They were almost watching the crops grow, their mouths hanging open and their stomachs audibly growling in some spaces.

The signs of the recent wars were obvious in the number of deserted villages that we were passing. To be clear, calling some of those places villages was probably even a little bit ambitious. They might only have been a few houses gathered together to mind the meeting place where the farm traffic was driven through. We would knock, and call out to see if we could buy a fresh loaf of bread or something as any change from trail food is always welcome but we were always met with silence. We would shrug and move on.

There were also bandits in the area. Not many but they were definitely there. We rode through and the Witcher would point out the signs of them. A flock of birds swooping in to land on a particular set of trees before veering away at the last minute. Deer standing out in the open where it shouldn't be. After a bit of this I spent a bit more time with my hand resting on my spear and spent some time training that little bit harder, much to Kerrass' amusement.

“If they're out here.” He would say, “If they're out here then they've been chased off from the jucier pickings on the main roads. They're probably sick, starving, wounded or a combination of the three. Slowly they'll either drift home, integrate into the local areas, starve or head back to the busier highways where they're more likely to find a juicy merchant. We are both armed and any decent bandit will be wondering whether or not it's worth his while.”

I was not reassured however so I trained and worked harder.

The Witcher continued to be amused but took advantage of my zeal by training me and working me harder.

That day the sun was up, the birds were singing and there was a town visible below us with a small keep up on the hillside that looked in fairly good repair. Most of the houses were thatched with straw, but one or two had tiled roofs and the place looked in good repair. We were still some distance away though and we were looking forward to a properly cooked meal where neither of us had to do the work, a soft bed in safety and Kerrass was hopeful of a wench. The following day we would call at the castle to see if there was any work for a Witcher in the area and if not we would re-provision and continue to head south.

For myself it had been too long and although the town was small, after the thatched and muddy villages that we had been spending too much of our time in recently, the picturesque town with the river running through it and a water mill gently splashing looked like heaven. I heartily hoped that Kerrass would find some work and that we could spend a couple of days here. I wanted to write my mother and my tutor to let them know how we were getting on, maybe tidy up the notes I'd been keeping and put some thoughts down on paper before I forgot some of the observations that had run through my head since the Witcher and I had started travelling together.

Needless to say that it didn't go according to our plan.

Not that you'll be surprised by that dear reader but I think it's important to know the mindset that we were both in as we got to that point in the journey.

We rode down the side of the valley, the road snaking backwards and forwards so that nearby farms could still take their goods to market on the back of a wagon. We were chatting and mocking each other and laughing and doing those things that people do when they've been travelling together for a while, telling each other about how much they snore and how much their body odour was beginning to take on a chisel like quality.

Eventually we came to a bridge. It was an old stone bridge, probably dwarven in manufacture as they tend to be the kind of folks who build that particular kind of lasting feature on the landscape. It was almost certainly the reason that the town had been built up there. It was also, unfortunately, obviously in some state of being halfway through some repairs. We travelled across the bridge, taking our time and riding our horses carefully to ensure that they didn't lose their footing.

I will forever regret the words that came out of my mouth when I reached the other end of the bridge. I still, to this day, shiver in regret as I remember that bright, sunny morning with the gentle breeze carrying the scent of fresh bread and cooking meat came from the town houses. I shudder and squeeze my eyes shut in an effort to keep the image from crossing my vision.

“Well, it looks like somebody's already done your job for you.”

There are explanations as to why I said those words. There are reasons but, here I sit, at my desk in the warmth of Oxenfurt university and I know, with absolutely no sense of self delusion that those same reasons do not excuse me. I was using humour as a reflexive defence against the horror that was there. That I hadn't expected such a horrible sight to greet me on so lovely a morning. Yes, I was, and I suppose that I still am, racially inclined to be prejudiced in certain areas. This is a problem in myself and I need to work on that problem but at the same time... Those words were said, they were in the air and my ears were registering it even as I said them.

The Witcher looked at me with a look of utter disgust and disdain.

There are moments, if you're lucky you get the chance to see when they happen and to know the mistake you made but there are moments when you drop several rungs in someone's estimation and you can see it happening before your eyes.

“So it would seem,” he said coldly, “but there is never any reason for this kind of cruelty.”

He dismounted and threw his reins to me negligently.

Bile rose in my throat. He was right of course. Absolutely right.

Tears welled in my eyes.

Dammit.

I dismounted myself, and staked out the horses as the Witcher would need my help and I deserved the penance.

There was a tree at the end of the bridge where the path to the right led towards the town and the path to the left led up towards some light hills sparsely covered with some trees. The tree was huge, obviously used as a kind of meeting spot for various reasons and for some stalls to be placed on market days. Pedallers would come here and hand out odd sorts but there were no pedlars today.

Instead there was the corpse of a troll. Still relatively fresh enough that some of the fluids glistened slightly and it was attracting flies in reasonably large sized numbers. It had also been mutilated.

Horribly.

It had been nailed to the tree by the wrists and the ankles as the head, hands and feet had been removed and placed, mockingly at the foot of the corpse. The head was particularly grotesque, it's eyes had been put out, the sockets burned and you could see that the tongue and ears had been cut off. It's teeth shattered. And it's genitals rested on the top of it's head. There were tracks of moisture running from the eye sockets that were not blood.

It had been crying.

It was a pitiable sight that brought tears to my eyes.

But this was not the worst thing.

The stomach was opened by a huge hole from which it's entrails had spilled but there were lots of small cuts and discolourations which I assumed were bruises.

“A troll could have survived that,” The Witcer said, pointing at the hole in it's stomach. His voice was soft, “They nailed it to the tree so that it couldn't protect it's soft stomach and chest with it's harder carapace on it's back.”

He took a breath and looked at me.

“Then they tortured it to death. For fun.” he said coldly.

I sobbed then. “I'm sorry,” I managed to squeek out.

He nodded and looked away from me.

“Look,” he said, pointing at a blackened patch of grass, “They set a fire to help them and to cook some food.” He used a boot to kick out a chicken bone before sighing and covering his eyes. “It probably took him all night to die.”

“Who did this?” I asked.

“Probably a knight of some kind. That's a lance hole in his stomach.” He was moving round the ground, peering at it closely. “Or a group of them. This was their idea of sport.”

He spun and moved to me quickly, grabbing me by the lapels. “You came out here wanting to know about Witchers and the way we live?” He yelled in my face, spittle flying.

I gulped, unable to answer.

He dropped me, the rage leaving him just as suddenly as it had overtaken him.

“We do a job. It's a nasty job and it's not too much to say that we are professional murderers and killers. But there is no joy in it unless we save someone directly or occasionally when we avenge children or a pretty girl. But we never torture the monster. Our job is to kill it. It is their nature to be monsters. It is their nature to kill people and to hunt the byways and lanes, sewers and alleys for their quarry. It is our nature to protect ourselves from such things and that's what people like me do, by hunting them down. But I never take joy in killing a unique, if different creature.”

He was talking to the ground now, almost speaking to himself.

“Trolls especially. Unless they're rabid, which by the way is a disease that effects humans as well as trolls, they can be reasoned with, take an active part in society...”

He stopped himself mid rant.

“They may have needed to kill him.”

He looked back at me. I was stunned by how cold and emotionless his face was. How still it was.

“But they didn't need to torture him to death.” he said flatly.

“I know,” It seemed so little to say. So little and so pointless. “I'm sorry. I spoke in ignorance.”

He waved me off. “You're forgiven. I'm just angry and you're a nearby target.”

He sighed again.

“Come and help me bury him off the road so that when he rots he doesn't poison the river.”

It took us a few hours to do the work. We didn't have the tools to bury him properly but there were enough loose stones that we could erect a decent sized cairn over the body before we rode into town at a point where it must have been early afternoon.

We smelt, we were covered in gore, I was shaking like a leaf with emotion. We were a grim sight. More than ever I wanted a bath to scrape the world off my skin and an urgent need to drink myself into unconsciousness.

We were not in a good state.

But even allowing for that I was not prepared to be spat at by a man doing some maintenance on the town gate.

His eyes followed us as we rode up, beady, glittering eyes from underneath a thunderous brow until we rode past which was when he hawked and spat.

I was still feeling a bit shaken and I didn't react other than to know that it had happened. To all intents and purposes, the Witcher ignored him.

We continued to ride in, nice and slowly.

More and more people came out to see us. Glaring with sullen eyes. I had seen this before from the absolutely poor and starving villagers who saw our clothes and goods, they had regarded us with hungry eyes and hated us because we had things that they did not. But these people. There was only hate there. Hate and anger.

“We don't need your kind here,” Somebody yelled from the safe anonymity of the crowd. A few other people murmured their agreement.

The Witcher continued to ignore them, lost in whatever chain of thought that had caught him up.

We came to an inn, a large building with a courtyard and we dismounted to walk the horses through the gate. The groom stopped shovelling the muck out of the stables and watched us with sullen eyes.

Our reception inside was no better.

“We're full.” The innkeeper told us.”

The Witcher sighed loudly and placed some money on the table which the innkeeper glanced at briefly before looking back up into the eyes of my companion. An impressive feat that most people couldn't manage for any kind of real length of time.

He slowly shook his head. Slow and firm.

“We're full.” he said again flatly.

I had been training with the Witcher for a bit now and I noticed that the Innkeepers right hand was under the table. I also noticed that the bar wench had left through a back door, probably to get some help.

“Really?” said the Witcher, looking around the all but empty common room. “There were no horses in the stable that I could see.”

“Let me be clear.” The innkeeper said. The man was clearly apprehensive but something glittered in his eyes that told me that he had no intention of backing down. “If we were completely empty, if we were starving and my children were shedding tears of pain at the hunger pangs that kept them awake at night. Even if my inn was basically a barn with rats piss to drink and dung to eat. Even if all of these things were true. There would be no room for the likes of you.”

I expected an explosion, I expected extreme violence or a display of temper from the Witcher but nothing happened. I saw him consider things. I saw him check the windows, the doors and the other people in the room. But in the end he nodded, shrugged and took his money back.

Outside, the afternoon sunlight was reflected from the armour of the dozen or so guards that were waiting for us. I couldn't help but notice that the armour was particularly shiny, as were the crossbow bolts that were pointing at the pair of us.

“Now this, Private Clayton, is what we call “pre-emp-tive Law-keeping.” A man in slightly more ornate armour stood forwards from the group, his chest-plate in the stylised heavily muscled form. It was burnished to a bright sheen which spoke of many hours with scouring sand and armour polish. It also had several scratches and scars that glittered across the surface. He took his helmet off as he spoke and allowed his long, braided dark hair to fall down his back. He spoke with the same accent as the innkeeper but his angular, almost feminine facial structure as well as the sharp points on his ears spoke to his mixed blood.

“Hello my friends,” he called to us. “Are you here for the troll hunt?”

His face and voice were friendly, but he stood in amongst his men that still bristled with armaments. They looked a little more competent than I would normally expect from town guardsmen and handled their weapons as though they knew how to use them.

Kerrass stared at this man for a moment, again looking at the entrance to the courtyard. I saw his gaze flicker towards the stables, the post where our horses were tied and a stack of boxes that were next to a low wall.

“Who asks the question?”

“Sarge,” said a younger voice, “Why don't we just arrest them Sarge?”

The elf-blood smiled before addressing one of his men.

“Because he's a Witcher, Clayton. Good as I am, I doubt I could match him one for one. Hence the crossbows,”

“But why Sarge?”

“Now that's an interesting question Private Clayton. The man is aware that he is a Witcher and he knows that I know that he is a Witcher. I know this, how Private Clayton?”

“Sarge?” Came a young voice from one of the armoured faces. The boys helmet was open and the face wore a scraggly and uneven beard.

“Think about it Clayton,” he turned back to us, “Apologies for this but I need to bring the new lad up to speed.”

“Oh no, please go ahead,” The Witcher intoned, crossing his arms. A gesture that hid the fact that his left hand had was holding his sword strap. For some reason I was fairly confident that the gesture was not lost on the half blood.

“Come on Clayton?”

“Sarge, the sword on his back Sarge.”

“And?” The Sergeant prompted, not taking his eyes off my companion.

“Err, his eyes Sarge.”

“Good lad. Now don't take your eyes off him. Later I'm going to question you on his appearance and what he's doing. Now, Mr Witcher. My name is Sergeant Gult of the town and castle guard. Charged with defence and law-keeping of the local area.”

“Unusual to see a mixed blood in such a position.” I couldn't tell without seeing The Witcher's eyes as to whether or not he was amused.

“Call it an hereditary position if you like. My father accidentally knocked up an elf woman when one of those commando units came through here 30 odd years ago.”

“I don't understand,” The Witcher commented, “Did he trip over something?”

I felt myself shift. He was trying to diffuse the situation with humour. I noticed that the other guards posture didn't shift though. Neither did my Companions.

“I like you Witcher.” said the Sergeant. “He told me that to avoid banditry by the commando he was assigned as a guide, to take them through the area, missing the military patrols and avoiding the richer areas. There seemed to be this ritual amongst them and one night he offered to partake.” The Sergeants armour rattled as he shrugged. “Nine months later, the woman arrived at the castle gates with me in a basket. Father insisted that he would have married her and that he even offered to, but she spat at him, hissed like a cat and vanished into the trees and he did his best to look after me. Taught me everything I know. However, I will freely admit that this was only his side of the story. So, now you know my story. What's yours. Are you hear for the Troll hunt? I warn you not to lie to me.”

“Sarge,”

“Shut it Clayton,” The Seargeant said without rancor.

“No,” said my Companion. “I was coming here looking for work, certainly. But it seems to me that the work has already been done. Your doing perhaps?”

“No,” A shadow flickered across the Seargeants face. “No not mine, nor ours either.”

“Good,” The Witcher nodded, “What was done to that troll was despicable.”

The other guards shifted a little.

“Did you take him down?” The Sergeant asked quieter, and somehow sadly.

“and buried him. As much as we could anyway.”

The Sergeant nodded.

“Down weapons lads.”

“But Sarge,”

“Shut it Clayton.”

“Sarge, Sir William said...”

“I don't care what Sir William said. What you should care about son is the fact that I'm here and he aint. Which means what, Private Clayton?”

“Dunno Sarge.”

“Proud of you son.”

The half-elf turned back to us ignoring the smirking faces of the rest of his men.

“I take it that the decision to slay the troll was not particularly popular Sargeant.”

“Not really no,” The Sergeant hawked and spat in a manner that spoke of long practice. “Old Tom was a decent feller as trolls go. Not that I've known many trolls mark you. Thing was, he used to be a bit of brigand round here but you could normally plead off by giving him something to eat or a bottle of booze. And he would take any kind of hooch going as well, down in one. But gradually he seemed to get bored of that until me old dad had this idea. He went to the lord of the castle and said

“Why don't we pay 'im to look after the bridge. Trolls like bridges and all. The Lord agreed and the deal was struck. Much to the annoyance of some of the locals.”

He paused for a moment, “Thirsty work this, Corporal Jenkins?”

“Sah,” shouted a pikeman,

“Take Jones and Matthews inside and get a round for everyone, including the Witcher and his companion but NOT for Private Clayton who is too stupid to be allowed to drink just yet. Also, be so good as to tell the innkeeper that these two gents are OK in my eyes.”

“Sah,” shouted the pikeman, drowning out Private Claytons protests.

The beer was produced and was of surprisingly good quality.

“That's better,” said the elf smacking his lips around the rim of the tankard. “Now where was I?”

“Paying the troll,” supplied the Witcher, hiding a faint smile behind his own mug.

“Ah yes, so the troll took his pay, day in and day out for years. The local kids, including me by the way, used to ride on his shoulders during the fair while he demanded his tolls from travellers. In turn he would hand most of the money over to the city treasury and in return we would pay him in food, booze and equipment for him to repair the bridge. Not a bad job he made of it too to be honest and we were always fairly certain that any cheating he did was purely by accident.”

The elf sniffed hugely and stared at the bottom of his mug somewhat forlornly.

“Why don't I pay for the next round?” The Witcher offered, handing a few coins over to Corporal Jenkins.

“Decent of you, my friend, decent of you.” The Sergeant was checking the sun every so often.

“So what happened?” The Witcher prompted gently, surprising gently I remembered thinking.

The Sergeant sighed and seemed suddenly younger, and considerably older as the mask of jovial guard Sergeant fell away.

“The local lord has a daughter. Lady Josefina she's called and by all the Gods above and below you will never see a more beautiful creature in all your life. Gorgeous she is with hair the colour of sunlight, pale blue eyes that can make a man weep if she looks at him from underneath her long lashes.”

The half-elf shook himself.

“Suffice it to say my friend that were I a better poet then I could talk about her virtues for a long time but I would also hide the very real fact of how utterly loathsome she is.”

“Really,”

“Really. I know that my elven blood means that I served the current lords father when he was a lad and the Lord isn't a young man as it is. I've been a guardsman for most of that time and served in all three wars in one capacity or another. I've seen good men do bad things and bad men do good things and every spectrum of things in the middle. Primarily I believe that what a person becomes is as a result of their surroundings but that girl was just born wicked. She's the sort that holds planes of glass, to focus the sun on an ant-hill and pulls legs off spiders.”

I shuddered.

“Yeah see, your friend knows what I'm talking about.” The Sergeant continued taking another long drink. “Anyway, her father, who is quite aware of the problem, decides that as she's just turned sixteen she needs to be married. Not the worst idea he's had but that means that we've attracted every Shit-dick in the surrounding region to court the poisonous little wench.”

“Sarge, I don't think you should be....”

“Clayton, one more word out of your pox filled mouth and I'll have the baby fat flayed from your back.” The Half-elf put some venom in his voice this time.

“He's a good lad really,” he muttered in aside to the two of us, “Just a little young and too ready to believe that beauty equals goodness.”

“I know the type,” The Witcher commented. I thought he did very well not to look at me as he said it.

“Anyway, the lady gathers suitors around her like flies on shit. She's under pressure to choose one but she's having far too much fun terrorising people and setting them all against each other. So far their have been, to my knowledge, four death duels that I've had to break up and eight to the first blood, some of which nearly became death duels. There have been nine fights, a still growing number of “accidents” and one poor kid, too young for the arena, tried to hang himself after she lead the others in a campaign of cruelty against him. In short, beautiful though she is, it would have been better for everyone if she had simply been drowned at birth.”

The Witcher took a sip from the beer. I noticed that he wasn't really drinking. A sign that he was getting ready for a fight. I took his lead and offered my beer to the Sergeant who took it gratefully.

“Anyway, it looks like she's found a favourite by the name of Sir William the Ram.”

“I've never heard of him,” The Witcher turned to me and raised his eyebrows. I shook my head to say the name meant nothing to me either.

“I'm not surprised. Arrogant little puke rides around saying that he wishes another war could start so that he could “see some action” as it were. Unfortunately he's good enough that he would probably become famous and poets would sing songs about him. Tall he is, and a wall of muscle. Handsome to go with it as well. I would have thought he'd been coddled but as it turns out, he really is as good as he thinks he is. Fought in a bunch of tourneys down in Toussaint where they go for that kind of thing and got his nickname. They say he's slow to start but once he gets going then there's no stopping him. Seeing him train I can believe it as well. Once claimed that he could knock down a castle gate with his lance and his charger. Can believe it too with the amount of armour he wears. Tried to lift the chestplate once and I could barely stand. And I'm no sluggard.”

The Witcher nodded, having handed his own beer off to Corporal Jenkins.

“Anyway,” The Sergeant continued. “The entire crowd came down a couple of days ago, looking for some sport.” He spat again, his voice had suddenly gone thick. “They came down for some sport and Old Tom, poor Tom. He demanded that they pay the toll didn't he. Poor bastard never stood a

chance. With her shrilly cheering him on, Sir William the Pox-ridden son of a bitch, levelled his lance and ran the poor old bastard down. The entire party then spent what must have been an enjoyable few hours torturing the troll to death until he succumbed to his injuries. In other words, he bled out while being poisoned by his own guts. Poor sod.”

The half elf spat again. I felt sick.

“So then we all get ordered to leave the body where it was left as a warning to other monsters and brigands that the law was governed properly here and that anyone who takes it down should be arrested.”

The Witcher nodded.

“Are you going to arrest us Sergeant?”

“Good heavens no. What for?”

“For taking the body down.”

“I didn't see you,” the Half-elfs eyes were gleaming oddly. “And I would bet you a not inconsiderable amount of money that no-one else saw you either.

“I see,” said the Witcher.

“Sergeant,” I jumped in. “may I ask a question?”

“Certainly squire,”

“If the troll was already dead. Then why did you think we were here for the troll hunt?”

The Sergeants eyes gleamed again.

“There's another troll isn't there.” The Witcher said.

“Saying nothing sir,”

“But Sarge, Sir William said...” Private Claytons voice was cut off by Corporal Jenkins bringing his gauntleted fist down smartly on top of the Privates helmet which made a noise, not unlike the ringing of a bell.

“I know of no other troll Mr Witcher sir,” The Sergeant hadn't reacted to Private Clayton's 'accident' “Nor do I know that if you travel back out of town the way you came but continue on this side of the river that you may come across the hunting party, or at least where the other troll...” He leant forwards with the air of a conspiritor “Or should I say troll's'” He exaggerated the S to almost comic effect. “used to make their lair. Nor will I mention how grateful the local towns folk would be if you could... potentially....”

“I see,” said Keras. “I thank you for the beer and I will think on what you said. I am inclined to pursue the matter anyway, but how grateful would you say the locals wouldn't be?”

“I believe that the going rate for a monster of that side would be a few hundered florins while the Lord is away.”

The Witcher nodded, looked at me with a raised eyebrow and we went to fetch our horses.

Chapter 8: Negotiating with Knights and Taming Trolls

As it turned out, it didn't take us that long to find what we were looking for.

The sound of a Troll roaring is a very particular sound, kind of cross between an avalanche and the roar of a....

Ok, this one is tough so I'm going to have to ask you to just go with me on this one.

Picture the scene. You've just been out drinking. As you get up to leave the place someone starts picking a fight with the local gentle giant. Every local pub or inn has one of these. He's a guy, known for being heavily muscled. Often tall as well, does a lot of work involving heavy lifting. Blacksmiths often get this kind of size. They often come across as deceptively stupid although anyone who makes that assumption of someone who knows the intricacies of smelting and forging is massively mistaken. They're often remarkably gentle and courteous, this from a childhood and young adult life of having to be extra careful with the other kids their age for fear of spontaneously and accidentally breaking said peers.

As a result these men tend to develop a kind and gentle disposition which means that it is extremely hard to make them angry.

Now, as I said. Picture the scene. You're out drinking. One of these gentle giants is talking to a pretty girl. They might be in any stage of the courtship process from the teasing to the days before marriage part. But there this person is talking to the girl. The girl is being reasonably amenable to the attention from the giant, after all he is heavily muscled and I'm told that a certain type of girl can really go for that kind of thing and then comes in a third player and his group of friends.

This third player, and you'll know this person as well. This third player is an angry drunk. Can be the nicest person in day to day life but when he's had a tankard or two, he can get downright nasty. For whatever reason, he hasn't figured this out yet, and nor has he figured out that it is a bit of a sport amongst his friends to egg him on. Said third party decides that he wants to prove how tough he is by picking a fight with our Gentle Giant.

So he goes up to the Giant and starts hurling insults at him trying to provoke him. The Giant ignores him, apologises for any real or imagined insults and generally does his best to avoid any kind of confrontation. Giant and girl go to another part of the bar. But Angry man isn't done with them yet so he follows, trying physical attacks now, pushes, crueller jibes and things. Angry's friends start realising that things are going a little too far and start to pull him back but he's properly angry now and ignores them, throwing off restraining arms. By now the locals are expecting a fight and are moving out of the way. Gentle is still trying to avoid it though but realises that Girl might get hurt so puts her behind him and turns to face the threat.

Angry is waving his arms now, pushing the giant who is basically trying to tell Angry to Fuck off, calmly and persistently in the same tone of voice that you might use to get rid of someone trying to sell you something useless. He's beginning to get frustrated though and the barman steps in trying to calm things down while shooing one of the maids out the back to fetch whatever guard or watch person that might be available. The girl might tug on the giants arm trying to remove them both from the situation. Giant is happy with this solution and turns to go.

Events from here differ slightly. The girl might have enjoyed the attention and the drama but whatever they have now realised that things are getting out of hand, it's just the girl, the giant and Angry in a circle. The giant turns and Angry man hits him. With a chair, a tankard, a bottle, a club or whatever.

Giant is now irate and turns to face the threat automatically. Girl tries to pull him away, coming round him to try and divert the giants attention by getting him to look at her instead of Angry. Giant looks down.

But Angry swings again. Maybe at Giant, maybe at the girl, but whatever he was aiming for he hits the girl and the girl goes down.

There is blood.

Giant bellows in rage.

That sound. That sound that he makes is the sound that I'm thinking of. A primal sound of fury that comes from before we had learned about things like civilisation and living together in peace.

That sound and we heard it about an hours ride out from the town. We had been travelling at a steady trot during that time but with a quick glance at each other, our already tired mounts were kicked into a gallop, we left the track and started moving up through the gentle but rocky hills occasionally having to duck out of the way of low hanging tree branches. When I was first trained how to ride, they warn against riding like this for fear of loose stones and rabbit warrens breaking horses legs. In truth it was a miracle that nothing happened to either steeds as we galloped along.

The sounds had gotten worse. Along with the roaring we could hear a regular kind of crashing noise like a huge bundle of sticks being thrown into the ground over and over again. There were human voices as well and horses screaming in distress.

We rode into a small valley formed by a few hills, their crowns covered in loose rocks which had clearly been quarried and turned into stone for the towns houses, as well as several trees. It was sheltered there and would have been rather pleasant during calmer times.

We came round a bend in the valley and came across the sight.

It was a little dell. You entered it from only the direction that we had used and the hills came round into a circle facing us reaching a taller peak directly in front of us. There was some evidence that someone had used fallen trees and loose rocks to build up the crest of those hills to provide more shelter. I remember that there was a large burnt patch in the centre of the ground as well. At the time, a small pavilion had been erected near to where we stood our horses with a blue and white standard nearby that we had seen emblazoned in the town. The ground sloped up to the hills in front of us getting steeper and steeper until it reached what looked like the small opening of a cave although it didn't look as though it went very far back at all.

Standing in the mouth of the cave was another troll. I wouldn't have known she was a she for the looking as it seemed that troll genders look very similar to each other but I'm describing her as “she” as I now can't think of her as anything else given the following events. She was standing guard over that cave entrance like she was a warrior of old defending the breach in a castle using, and I swear that this is true, an uprooted tree as a club.

Her foes, eight full armoured knights who were trying to approach on foot with spears, swords shields. One man was trying with a crossbow but couldn't seem to get a clear shot while there was also a pair of injured men lying, battered and bruised next to the pavilion being tended to by a couple of squires.

It was an almost comical sight. It was plain, even to me, that the knights couldn't use their horses to approach due to the slope and the troll's choice of weapon was fearsome enough that the crossbowman was unable to get a clear shot. They were clearly trying to draw her onto the flat ground so they could get round her or mount some kind of cavalry attack but the poor besieged troll was clearly having none of it, sticking to her post like the most dutiful soldier that you've ever seen and as a result she had the high ground. But that was her problem as well. Eventually she would tire and then it would all be over. No sooner had the amusement hit me than the remorse followed up. I looked away, not wanting to watch anymore.

My companion had similar ideas.

“Whatever happens,” he whispered fiercely over the din. “Back my play and say nothing,” before riding towards the pavilion at a gentle pace as though he didn't have a care in the world.

It is in these moments that the decisions are made which shape our lives. I had been told to trust this man. He hadn't set a foot wrong so far. Hadn't, as far as I knew placed me in any danger that I wasn't aware of before hand but at the same time, his carelessness towards everything in that particular moment struck me as being off. The situation was obviously dire or otherwise we wouldn't be here, indeed we wouldn't have found the place at all. But he was just walking up to the pavilion as though there was nothing going wrong at all, that nothing was out of place and that everything was absolutely fine.

It obviously wasn't.

But the decision was clearly already made for me.

I dismounted, took our horses and lead them both towards the the picket line where all the other horses had been tied.

Having done that I followed Kerrass into the Pavilion, there was an effort by two, faintly disgusted looking guards to prevent my entry but some whispered conversation from within followed with a high and feminine giggle chased out a “Oh do let him in,” and suddenly the way was clear for me.

I entered and in the way that the Witcher had taught me I scanned the room quickly.

For room it was, there was a partitioned off area behind which I guessed was a bed and a place for feminine hygiene. There were several large chests and the place was so filled with blankets and tapestries that I was left wondering where the cart was that had brought all this stuff out here in the first place. Eventually though it evidenced itself to be part of the structure, onto which was placed some food and drink.

There was also a table, sat in front of the table, the chair twisted so that the occupant could see the entirety of the room, sat the Witcher in the most relaxed posture that I had ever seen him in. Leant back, legs outstretched and gesticulating broadly with his sword propeed against the arm of the chair negligently. I briefly thought to myself that if I had placed my weapons as carelessly as that then he would have kicked my ass up and down the pavilion.

Sat on the other side of the table was the largest man I had ever seen. He was also, quite possibly the most beautiful man that I had ever seen. Long blonde hair that fell away from his temples in waves, cut, just short enough so that it would easily fit under a helmet of some kind. Piercing blue eyes glittering from under the longest eyelashes that I had ever seen on a man. Strong and chiseled cheeks and a chin that stuck out with a cleft down the middle. He looked like the hero of a balladeers tales. The kind of man that slays dragons and rescues princesses from towers. He also had this way about him, a slight upturn of the mouth that was always on the edge of turning into an outright sneer but not enough for you to call him on it. I felt that he was judging everyone in the room, including me, and that he was finding us all wanting. Other than the female that was also present of course. Someone he looked possessively over which was when I realised that he wasn't looking down on us, he was checking us to see if he was a threat to his dominance over this woman.

He was also dressed in Full Plate armour. The same kind of armour that only the truly rich can afford. And it shone.

As for the girl...

How do you describe the most beautiful girl you've ever seen?

Even though I find that my personal tastes tend to run towards the more brunette end of the scale, this girl was.... Hard to describe.

She was blonde, not the burnished blonde of the knight but the light, almost white, blonde of sunshine. She was pale with a perfectly clear complexion, defined face and a long neck graced with a golden choker style necklace. She also had blue eyes, which were much more startling than the knights given her pale skin and light colouring and where as his glittered, hers shone, large and white with obvious delight at the world and everything that she saw. She wore simple sapphire earrings and a golden circlet to keep the thick, and admirably luxurient hair back from her face.

She was the kind of girl where her beauty hits you like a hammer to the face when you see her for the first time. The kind of beauty where you find yourself thinking “Have I stared at her too long? Am I staring now? How long was it since I last looked at her? and can I get away with looking at her again now? Oh holy fire is she smiling at me?”

As I entered she was laughing at something that the Witcher had said. The laughter was like rain in a desert and even worse, I could tell as the three of them were looking at me, the jest was at my expense.

I felt myself redden as I bowed and moved to stand at the back of the pavilion to stand with the other servants of which there were three. Two maidservants and a man whose slightly richer clothing suggested that he was some kind of seneschal or chancellor.

But in truth I wasn't really looking at them. My eyes were too full of the glory of the woman sat, enthroned at the other end of the room next to the table.

“I'm so sorry Master Witcher,” she said, her voice warm and soft. “But what was it you said your name was? Your jest has just driven it from my mind,” she giggled again.

That giggle. It was like a peek behind the curtain at the theatre. A glimpse beneath the mask. I suddenly remembered the tear tracks on old Tom's face.

“It is purely my mistake Milady. I may even have forgotten to mention it, as captivated as I was by your beauty.” The Witcher's voice was astonishing in it's change. I had heard him change his accent before to be able to talk to villagers and feel like “one of them”. He sounded cultured, educated and refined. I'm a noble and I don't talk like that. It was like how people would like to think their Kings and Queens talk.

“My name is Kerrass of Maecht. Master Witcher, at your service.” He quickly got up and sketched a bow with a smile. I saw the smile hit home with the girl, but more so with the knight who scowled, sensing competition maybe?

“Oh how wonderful. I've never met a Witcher before. What's it like?”

“Being a Witcher? We are the line that stands between the darkness and the Light madam. When you hear the animal noises in the depths of the night. When you hear the howls of the damned or the calls of creatures in pain, there I must tread. In haunted caves, crumbling ruins and remote mountain tops. There I wander, hunting out evil so that good people like yourself can sleep in peace.”

“I like that, 'In haunted caves and crumbling ruins. I shall have to commission a poem about it.”

“You do me too much honour Milady. In truth it is a task, a necessary thing that must be done by someone. If not Witchers then who else? A woefully unqualified soldier or guard who leaves behind a wife and child?”

“A trained knight is more than capable of seeing off any monster.” Commented the knight. He was trying to get back into the conversation somehow. Obviously unhappy with the direction things had gone.

“Like the trained knights outside, failing to kill a lone troll?” The Witcher's voice positively dripped with scorn. “The simple truth is, that to kill a monster, you need a professional. How many of those men have silver weapons?”

He was met with silence.

“Hmmm, I thought as much.”

“Is that why you carry two swords?” The girl asked curiously. “Silver for monsters and steel for men?”

“Hmmph. Just a common killer.” Said the knight.

The girl fluttered her hand. I will admit that she did so prettily.

“You'll have to forgive Sir William. He recently killed another troll you see and is struggling to see why you would be needed.”

She was setting the two men against each other. There was little doubt in my mind as to which she preferred but it was also quite clear that she wanted to keep him on his toes.

The Witcher sneered a little.

“It's quite easy to kill a troll when you have flat terrain and a good run up with a lance that keeps you quite out of reach of the trolls swings. It takes a lot more courage to step in range of those arms, with or without armour. I notice that Sir William is in here while others attempt to bring the beast down.”

The knight reddened in anger. He was also not looking as handsome as he had a moment before.

“Yes well. He sees the problem and is thinking of the solution rather than wasting his time and effort.” The girl defended the knight, re-exerting ownership and bringing him to heel with one sentence.

“The, truth of the matter madam is that both swords are for monsters.” The Witcher continued. There are beasts in the wider world who are naturally occurring and others who are magically occurring. The silver sword is for magical creatures and the steel is for more natural occurrences. But both types of sword are for monsters. I will admit to needing the steel sword for the occasional act of self-defence as sometimes my travels take me into.... less civilised areas.”

The girl nodded her sympathy.

“Anyway my lady. You obviously have a troll problem. I am a Witcher and therefore I am your solution. Allow me to get rid of the problem for you.”

“But my knights?”

“Oh I've no doubt your knights will bring down the beast eventually.” He waved his hand negligently, “But at what cost? Mens lives. Men who have connections that might prove problematic should they be injured, or even killed?”

I was reminded again that the Witcher would have made an excellent sales man.

One of the servants. The more richly dressed servant stood forward and cleared his throat.

“That is a valid concern Milady. Your father would...”

“Oh poo my Father.” Venom dripped from her words.

“If I may milady.” said the Witcher. “It may even be more fiscally responsible in the long run as well,”

The girl subsided and started thinking.

My father had done a certain amount to see to the education of his children. One of the things we were all taught was to keep our thoughts hidden from others in case an opponent could read our intentions. I was taught the same by the Witcher and my Fencing masters about facing a man in a fight.

It was clear that the girl had not received this advice and you could see the war of ideas wrinking her pretty brow.

“Very well Mr Witcher. How much would you charge to remove this troll from my fathers lands.”

“200 hundred crowns Milady,” The Witcher answered promptly.

Sir William scoffed. “200 crowns. For what? An hours work.”

“For doing something you and your fellows can't seem to do,” The Witcher declared. More scorn. He was making the knight angry for some reason that I couldn't see.

I saw the girl look at the Chancellor again, who nodded.

“Very Well Master Witcher, 200 crowns for the removal of the troll.”

The Witcher nodded and rose to his feet.

“A quick word with my man and I will set about it.”

He beckoned me out of the tent and leant in. “Have your spear ready and beware treachery, especially from the crossbowman.” he whispered quietly.

I nodded as we walked towards the horses.

I unstrapped my spear and took the cover from the blade while the Witcher took his silver sword from the box and I helped him strap it along side his steel one.

“Steel one coming off?” I asked, but he shook his head. Eyes glittering strangely.

He took a small flask from the small black box and oiled his silver blade appropriately as we moved back to join the Lady and her knight who had come out of the Pavilion.

The Witcher laughed at something, silver sword hanging easily in his hand.

“Oh My lady.” He said chuckling. I was startled. Although I had heard him offer wry chuckles before now, this was the first time that I remembered him actually guffawing out loud as well as grinning from ear to ear in a way that suggested amusement rather than imminent murder. It was strange and looked uncomfortable on his face. Like a shirt that is only just a little bit too small for the person wearing it.

“Oh My Lady,” He said laughing. “Call those fools back before they hurt themselves.” He laughed again before raising his voice.

“Call it off lads, call it off. Come and take your rest.” He waved his sword in the air as he did so.

I'm sure he was completely ignorant of how that made it glitter in the sunlight.

Someone sounded a horn call and the knights, still failing to attack the troll on the hillside started to stumble back towards us.

“Right lads gather round,” The Witcher crouched in the middle of them and I shivered. There was a fey feeling in the air. Something was happening that I did not understand.

“Now then boys. I'm a Witcher, notice the two swords and the strange eyes. I'm a professional and I'm here to give you all a lesson on how things are done alright?”

One of the knights spat in disgust.

“What's your name?” He asked the knight.

“Sir Phillipe of Cruss.” said the man. I thought the accent was from Toussaint originally but I couldn't be certain.

The Witcher's eyes narrowed a little.

“I will remember. Now first of all. Do any of you have a silver sword? Do you Sir Phillipe?”

The knights armour clattered as he shook his head.

“I thought not. If you are going to slay monsters then you need silver weapons, or for the monster to stand still long enough for you to batter it to death. Now do any of you know about the behaviour of Stone Trolls. Sir Phillipe?”

The clatter came again.

“How about trolls in general? Phillipe? No? Well let me tell you. Just because they sound stupid and don't have as much of a working knowledge of what 'we' call the common tongue doesn't mean they actually are stupid. You try speaking without any lips.”

“Trolls, intelligent? You degenerates are all alike.” Sir Phillipe, who was clearly not as clever as he wanted to believe spoke with a voice that made me think of fingernails on blackboards. I did notice however that Sir William was getting redder and redder standing next to the Lady Josefina possessively.

“What I was going to say before a certain ill-mannered lout decided to interrupt was that trolls are cleverer than you think they are. Remember that cave trolls are often sought after for masonry work as they have a basic and innate instinct as to how stone fits together to a level that even Dwarves don't understand. Also notice at how she...”

“She?” Sir Phillipe again.

“Yes, 'she' you ignorant fool. You would know this had you studied anything to do with the subject. She, which should tell you something else about her behaviour. Also, if you interrupt me again, I'm gonna knock you on your arse you incompetent fool. Now,”

Somehow he managed to exclude Phillipe who was spluttering.

“Can anyone tell me what family of monsters Trolls belong to?”

“Err ogroids.” Came a timid voice. The smallest of the knights who was looking a little pale.

“Well done,” said the Witcher, “What's your name?”

“Sir Thomas of Anelren sir.”

The Witcher nodded.

“I will remember it. What are Ogroids allergic to Sir Thomas?”

“I don't know sir,”

A couple of the other knights tittered.

“Quiet,” Thundered the Witcher. “Lack of knowledge is not a fault. Failure to follow up on that lack, is.” I struggled to keep my face straight as I wondered how many other roles the Witcher could take up. I had seen killer, mercenary, instructor, courtier and now I was seeing Class Professor.

“Ogroids are allergic to a particular mix of herbs that can poison them. It can make even the slightest wound become serious, even fatal to a troll.”

“Are you going to tell us the formulae Sir Witcher.”

The Witcher grinned at Thomas.

“Of course not Tom. Trade Secret.”

“See, just a tradesman after all.” blurted Phillipe angrily.

The Witcher, who still held the sword in his hand, simply flicked his wrist. It was lightening fast and Phillipe fell backwards on the grass.

“You cut me,”

“Yes,” said the Witcher standing and moving forwards.

“With that poison on the blade too. You've poisoned me you honour-less fuck.”

“Language in front of the lady,” admonished the Witcher.

“I don't care about that, you've poisoned me.”

“Are you a troll?”

Phillipe floundered, his hand on his face where a small cut on the cheek was welling a slight amount of blood. The kind of scratch you might get from being slapped in the face by a branch.

“No, of course not you simple....”

“Them I shouldn't think you have much to worry about then,” said the Witcher moving forwards again. “Also...” He hauled off and booted the fallen knight in the face.

The other knights sniggered but I was watching Sir William and his lady. She had enjoyed the display but Sir William was now watching the Witcher with a kind of hunger. I hadn't seen that kind of hunger before that day but I have seen it since. It is the face of a warrior wanting to test himself against another. It is the face of someone getting ready for a fight.

“Watch carefully boys.” The Witcher said to the other knights. “You might learn something.”

Another one of those iconic moments happened then. The Witcher walking towards the troll, sword out and held away from his body at his side. The others stood with me were not unaware of this. There was a connective feeling of held breath as the Witcher came to a halt, well outside the range of the hill.

The troll, who had very sensibly used the opportunity to sit down and have a rest, heaved herself up to her feet using the tree as leverage and swung her arms around a little. For all the world she looked like an athlete doing some warm-up exercises.

“Hello up there,” The Witcher called.

The Troll looked at him and growled.

“Now there's no need for that,” The Witcher continued. “I just want to talk.”

The Troll roared. Hearing it in the distance was nothing compared to the real thing, up close and personal. It wasn't really a noise that you heard, it was more something that you felt in your gut and in your chest.

“Also,” The Witcher went on conversationally. “I'm not in the least bit intimidated by loud noises.”

The Troll stopped and leant forward to peer at my companion. Then she lumbered forwards a few steps holding her tree in the same way as a washerwoman holds a frying pan when she suspects the presence of a mouse.

“You, two swords need?” Her voice was so deep that it was hard to think of her as feminine.

“Sometimes.”

She scuttled backwards a few steps with remarkable agility for something her size.

“You Wisher man,” She yelled and brandished her club at him.

The Witcher didn't move. “I am, yes.”

“You here Kill Kill? Truth Tell.” She demanded.

The Witcher slowly and calmly sheathed his sword on his back. The other knights around me started whispering to each other about strategy, tactics and psychology.

“If I have to kill kill. I will.” The Witcher was speaking clearly. Making sure he was saying each word distinctly. The troll raised her club...

“But I hope I won't have to,”

The club was lowered again. She looked at him with an exaggerated look of suspicion. She sniffed him.

“You smell truth.”

She shook her head and bellowed.

“But Wisher men Kill Troll, Kill.”

“Sometimes Troll kill men kill.” The Witcher said reasonably. “Men can't kill Troll. Call Witcher. Help.”

“You Help?”

“When I can.”

The Troll considered this. I was fascinated. As far as I know there are relatively few examples of scholarly discourse with Trolls. People have obviously spoken with them many times but no scholar had ever really made a study of them. It was amazing and I found myself being drawn into it. The troll obviously had a problem speaking common. It would be wrong to call it a speech impediment because she wasn't human and her teeth were on the outside of her mouth, taking the place of lips. She sounded stupid because her language was stunted and that made sense. It wasn't her first language so of course she came across as slow, or easily confused. She was having to convert the Witchers words into her own language, reason them out, come up with a response and then translate that response into common.

Like everyone I had heard of Rabid trolls. But then again I have heard about rabid and crazy humans as well. I felt a perception twist and shatter inside me. The trolls were intelligent and reasoning creatures. Maybe they weren't as clever as we are, maybe they don't 'work' in the same way that we do but I found myself wondering at all the reported troll attacks. How many of them were down to one side or the other not talking and not 'thinking'.

The troll was pacing, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her emotions were easy to read, her huge face contorted into remarkably similar expressions to human faces. I wanted to spend a week talking to her and making notes.

Someone's armour clattered as they shifted their weight and I was brought back to the very real threat of imminent violence.

“You help?” The troll asked again.

The Witcher nodded. “Yes. I help. If I can.”

I wondered if the troll noticed his emphasis on the word 'If'.

She sniffed hugely and turned away from the Witcher for a moment, rubbing her face with the back of one stony wrist.

“They Killed my man,” she wailed suddenly dropping her club and covering her face with her hands as she sobbed openly and with more raw honesty than many humans would. “He worked for them for years and they killed him.”

My heart wrenched and I felt close to tears as I felt the trolls anguish like a punch to the gut. Nor was I the only one as I heard Sir Thomas sob and one of the maidservants had to turn away.

“He bridge fixed. He Money collect. He angry not get, when at him they laugh.” She was sobbing and sniffing between words. It was horrible. She looked like a toddler who had had a favourite toy stolen, or a faithful dog who was wondering why it had been kicked by a beloved master.

“He Good Troll. He hurt no-one.” She was getting angry again now and I found I didn't blame her.

“I know it. I know they did.” The Witcher said. “I'm so sorry.”

The troll peered at him suspiciously, her distress momentarily forgotten.

“What you sorry for? You there not.”

“No. I suppose I'm sorry on behalf of my race.” Said the Witcher.

“Tanks. Sorry bring not him back though.”

“I know it.”

The troll abruptly sat down and just wept. There's no other words for it. The Witcher cautiously approached and gently place a hand on her shoulder.

I am not ashamed to say that I felt tears on my face at that image. I thought it was beautiful and impossibly sad. I am no poet to immortalise something in words that can bring tears from listeners, nor am I an artist who can render a moment, frozen in time. I have always been at peace with this lack in myself.

But every so often... Every so often I feel it's lack.

Time stood still as we all watched a Witcher console a grieving woman. At that point it didn't matter what race they both were, but one of us, at least had not forgotten what we were all doing there that day.

“They here kill me?”

I also noticed, in the scholarly part of my brain that I found myself hating at that point, that her common was getting better the more she used it.

The Witcher just nodded.

“I fight.” The Troll told him.

“I know that too. Why you not run?” I also noticed that the Witcher's common had got worse.

The Troll shrugged as she looked at him. Huge amber eyes staring into the cats eyes of the Witcher.

“Baby sick,” she said simply.

“Oh fuck off,” I heard myself whisper in despair.

“I'm not staying here any more,” one of the knights who we hadn't met yet said to his friends. “I no longer want a part of this. Come on.”

Two of the knights left the group and rode away.

Sir William said nothing, frowning in concentration.

“Witcher,” screamed the girl. “I demand you perform your duty.”

The Witcher took a few steps away from the troll.

“Be silent woman.” He snarled.

“But....”

I saw the Witchers hand twitch.

“I said be silent.” He thundered. “I am working here. Interfere again and I wash my hands of this affair and will act according to my conscience”

He turned back and spoke to the troll before turning back and he looked at me.

“Franklin,” he waved me up.

I ran over, the Witcher watched the remaining knights who were getting less and less comfortable with every passing second.

“There's a baby,” he said without looking at me. He looked like a man dangling over a cliff by one hand and could feel that hand getting slippery. “You know medicine?”

“A little, mostly wounds and stuff. Not sure I know much about Troll babies though.”

The Witcher pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well she won't move until the baby's better. Can't say I blame her, but that's the obstacle. Can you have a look for me?”

It was a surreal experience. I had used my training on injured men before and cleaned up the odd busted child who had hurt themselves kicking a ball. The difference this time was that the “baby” was the size of a fully grown dwarf and the anxious parent was, well, a Troll whose spade sized hands made a noise that was quite literally stones scraping over each other.

“Well,” I said emerging from the small cave that was surprisingly neat if foul smelling and filthy. I didn't want to presume though, for all I knew that was a Troll's version of spick and span.

“Well. He?” the mother nodded.

“He's hot to the touch and doesn't like the light. Do you mind if I touch your forehead madam?” I

asked

“Wha'?” she looked bewildered.

“Him face touch?” The Witcher put in. “Simple words, normal tone and pace,” he said to me.

“Oh,” she bent down and I could feel her forehead which was unsurprisingly cool.

“Well,” I suddenly felt very tired. “This is a bit out of my league but if he was human I would say to wrap him up warm and get some water into him.”

I saw the Trolls bewildered face.

“Him, water drink?” I tried.

She shook her head. “Him mouth close,” The troll responded.

“Little water. Drip drip.” I said. “Him bad meat eaten?” A thought had occurred to me.

“Meat old.” she nodded.

I nodded as well and went to the Witcher who was watching the knights. His hand was on his sword strap.

“The baby needs wrapping up warm, blankets or skins. Then drip feed him as much water as you can get into him.”

“What's wrong with him?”

I shook my head. “I don't know,” I almost sighed the words. “Maybe he's eaten something bad given the family disruption or it might just be Troll snuffles. She said old meat. This is above my head.”

The Witcher nodded a little crestfallen.

“I'm heading back to town.” I said.

The Witcher looked up, confused and I saw that I wasn't the only one feeling the strain.

“There's bound to be an old woman, or healer of some kind who has forgotten more herb and local lore than you or I ever knew.”

I felt so much better when the Witcher nodded, relief at a plan being formed written large on his face.

“Ride fast Franklin. Otherwise I might have to kill a knight or two and I don't fancy I could take them all.”

I nodded and clapped him on the shoulder before catching up my spear and running to my horse.

Stereotypes are interesting things. Everyone, including me has an image of the local village herbalist, or Witch. Think about that image now for a moment. Firstly They tend to be either ancient or young, never middle aged. They're either a crone or a promiscuous lady of the night type wearing either too revealing clothes or covering themselves from top to bottom. They always live alone and without company.

This was the image of what I was looking for and I couldn't have been more wrong.

I eventually found Mother Raeburn working on the small patch of ground next to her house. She was weeding her plants, all grim determination and scowl of concentration with a clay pipe clamped firmly between her teeth which generated enough smoke to make the insides of my lungs itch. She was, maybe mid to late forties. No spring chicken to be sure and older than many of the old women in those areas that had been ravaged by the more recent war but she was still a lot younger looking than I was expecting.

She was tall, grey haired that was pulled back into a pony tail and other than that she looked like any woman who was beginning to feel as though she “wasn't really that old was she?” I will admit that she was attractive in an earthy kind of way. She clearly worked herself hard and spent most of her time outdoors and things. She had the bloom of health about her, unsurprising given her profession and when I explained the problem she drove her trowel deep into the earth and started bellowing instructions at the numerous children who were hanging round the house. All along the lines of, “Make sure this is done, hang these, brush those, wash the other things. Not too much smoke or it all goes to pot” and so on.

As it turns out she had married relatively young and had seen no reason why she couldn't be the local herb-woman as well as enjoying life at whatever damn pace she liked. By her own admission she drank, she tried various herbs of mind altering capabilities and still enjoyed the odd roll in the grass, hay or bed whenever she could convince her husband of the need and spent the rest of her days running him, the children and the grand-children ragged.

All this I learned while frantically trying to suggest that time was precious.

She collected several bunches of things and a couple of bottles of strange coloured liquids. One of which contained a small lump which I was sure was a wasp. Apparently it added to the texture.

We also made a stop at the local butcher who was in the process of slaughtering and butchering a couple of sheep where she spent some time arguing with the man about something that I couldn't quite catch and he ended up handing her a large wineskin of something. I was still on the horse as she handed it up to me.

“Hold this,” she instructed in the tones of someone who is used to being obeyed.

“What is it?” I asked all innocent.

“Pigs blood.” She was rooting through her satchel for something.

“What?” I recoiled.

“Would you rather I use your blood. Pass it over.” She poured the contents of a small paper packet into the mouth of the skin and gave it a shake. “That'll have to do.”

“Pigs blood,”

“Yeah,” she said climbing up behind me, ignoring the offered hand. “Makes it easier for the troll to swallow. Fresh pigs blood is like Mothers milk to 'em. Off we go.”

On the ride back I learned more about her history and the history of every family in the local area.

“Are you a Witch?” I asked at one point.

“Are you a Witch hunter? Come to take me off to a pyre?”

“No ma'am, just a curious and exhausted scholar.”

“In that case. I would say I know a thing or two that they didn't teach those youngsters up in Aretuza or wherever it is they teach young magic people nowadays. But I wouldn't say I'm a Witch or Wizard or Sorceress or anything. Just an increasingly old woman who knows a thing or two. Also, don't call me Ma'am. Makes me feel old. Greta is fine.”

I also heard the full history of the “thing with Tom,” filled with many stories of Tom's quiet mischief and the towns equally quiet affection for the troll who had worked with the townsfolk to make their lives a bit better. She told me that, “he was a good man that, despite being a troll. He gave the impression that there was more going on behind those eyes than most would give credit for.”

There were all these little stories about that time that Tom had gone out to find a lost sheep, or had walked a little girl home, or played a prank on an uptight merchant.

If I hadn't before, I was becoming increasingly certain that I would have liked Old Tom.

It was just beginning to get dark as we got back to that little clearing. It was that stage of things where the light was just beginning to turn red. I didn't bother with niceties and just rode up to the foot of the hills and helped the lady down who ran towards her patient. The Witcher was still stood in the same spot. To all intents and purposes he hadn't moved.

As I went to stand with him I could look around the place. Sir William hadn't moved either and he and the Witcher were staring at each other, something building between them. The girl could be heard yelling at someone, presumably taking out some frustration on some poor maidservant.

Another couple of knights had made a retreat as well.

“You were quick,” said the Witcher quietly.

“Quick?” I answered. I was breathing hard and my poor horse was shaking. “She was fussing over every detail and it took me ages to find her. I wanted to apologise for being late.”

The Witcher sniffed. “Such women want to exert control on the grounds that they need everyone to listen to them and do what they're told. They need the obedience of everyone from the highest King to the lowest peasant. It's a knack that they seem to teach each other in an ancient and sacred code. To be honest I'm surprised she didn't make you wait till morning.”

“I think she was fond of the Troll.”

The Witcher nodded. “Well, lets see how it's going.”

Prominently and obviously he turned his back on Sir William the Ram and moved over to where the Herb-woman was making cooing noises over the infant troll while the mother troll looked on, hands

wringing nervously.

“How's the patient?” the Witcher asked.

“He'll be fine.” said the Herb-woman. The infant troll was now in his mothers arms drinking greedily from the wineskin we had picked up earlier. The Troll was visibly shaking with relief.

“He essentially got the Troll equivalent of the snuffles but with the added stress, poor food and his mother not being able to nurse him properly for obvious reasons.” She glared down the valley to where the pavilion stood and Sir William was practising his death stare on us.

“Can the child be moved?” The Witcher asked.

The woman sighed and rubbed her eyes, looking much older than I judged her years. “Yeah, so long as he keeps guzzling that stuff down, which he will, and then drinks the water and eats and nurses properly then he'll be fine.”

“What wisher man say?” The troll could move surprisingly quietly for someone of her bulk.

“You need to leave,” My companion told her brutally. “Wrap up your child and head that way,” he waved over the lip of the crest, away from the pavilion and the entrance to the little vale. “Stick to the high places where the horses can't reach you and you should be fine. I will deal with these fine folks and any other pursuit will already be too far behind you.”

“Us not go. Home this.” She stamped her foot and there was a sullen rage in the trolls voice that I found I couldn't blame her for.

My companion got help from a surprising source though.

“He's right Annie,” said the Herb-woman.

“Who's Annie?” I asked.

“Annie I.” The troll said stamping her foot. A trolls stamp can make the earth shake.

“Don't mind him.” said the Herb-woman. “But the Witcher is right. You have to go or those men will come back for you. Give it a year and the Lord will come back and sort this all out and things will have calmed down again. You'll see.”

The troll stared at the infant unhappily.

“Dis our home,” she said again.

“I'm sorry Annie,” said Greta. I was surprised at the emotion in the old woman's voice, but then I suppose I shouldn't have been as there was a lump in my own throat.

The troll wiped her eyes.

“No you fault.” She said. She stomped over to the cave and pulled out a large animal skin that she quickly fashioned into a crude sling and put the infant inside who was still guzzling from the wine skin.

“Tank Greta,” she said,

“I'll see you soon Annie,” said the older woman.

“Tank Wisher man friend.”

I stood dumbfounded.

“That's you,” Kerrasss said to me. He was smiling sadly.

“Oh,” I said, jumping a little. “You are quite welcome Annie. Thank you.”

The trolls face creased in confusion. “For what?”

“never mind.” I whispered.

The troll nodded.

“Tank Wisher man.” The Troll paused “You not Wisher man.” she decided after a while.

“I'm not?”

I nearly crowed with delight at the Witchers face as his mouth hung open in astonishment.

“No, You kind,”

Without further preamble she glared at the Pavilion and very deliberately picked up her club and swung it over her shoulder before climbing up and over the lip of the dell with surprising agility.

The Witcher stared at his feet for a moment before he looked back up at the place where the troll had disappeared.

“No Annie.” he muttered. “You're wrong. I'm not kind at all.”

He turned and looked at me. “Silver off,” he said. There was a fire in his eyes as he said it.

“Thank you for the help Greta,” he carried on as I quickly unstrapped the more ornate of the two swords. “But there is about to be some violence here and you may not wish to see, or there may be repercussions.”

“I can stomach justice when I see it Witcher and my status offers me protection aplenty. I supply her father's ointment for his knees.” she cackled evilly, “Also there are bits of this countryside that even that Sergeant has forgotten about.”

The Witcher nodded, rolled his shoulders and looked back at me. “Stay out of it. Protect yourself and Greta here if it should come to that.”

I nodded. I was disappointed but there was still enough of my brain that was cool enough that I could understand that he needed space to work.

The Witcher took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was absolutely no trace of emotion there. Not thought or feeling. Again, it felt as though I was looking at a mask rather than looking at a human being, even a mutant. He turned and walked down the hill towards the Pavilion.