A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

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.”