Chapter 106: Did you love this girl? (2)

The hand holding me.... I don't know how else to say this....rippled. I sighed as she held me close. I wasn't there yet but I could feel my legs growing weak. She was so strong. Not that I was surprised but she supported my weight easily.

“But do you think you could do anything to me that I didn't want you to?”

Her hand rippled up and down my manhood again. I whimpered

“But just to assuage your concerns.” She was barely whispering. I could hear her only as a breath on my ears.

That, and her body pressed against mine was intensely erotic.

“Anything that you do....”

Her hand rippled.

“Anything that you want to do....”

Another ripple.

“Is fine by me.”

Another ripple.

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“Indeed I look forward to it.”

I was breathing quickly now. My breath coming in groans.

“You don't need to hold back.”

I gasped.

“You don't need to worry about my pleasure. Mine will come and believe me when I say that you will be ready again much sooner than you might think.”

I was trembling as she held me on the very edge of the cliff.

“You don't need to show off to me. You can let go and I will catch you. You can surrender and I will keep you safe. Then when you want to take some control you can do so with my blessing.”

I made a sound, somewhere between a whimper and a moan.

“You are a good man Lord Frederick.” She whispered. “This won't change that.”

Her hand rippled again and I whined.

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“Now let go.”

She kissed me and I did what I was told.

It took me a little while to recover but when I did she was standing in front of me with the smile of a cat that had just caught the mouse.

“A good start,” she commented with a gently mocking smile.

“A start,” I found my smile coming back. “I hope you don't mind if I ensure that you get some as well though right?”

She laughed. “You know that you don't need to show off though right?”

“No, but what if I want to?”

She was still holding onto me. I felt a rebellion start somewhere in my belly and I grabbed her back in a mirror to her own embrace, one hand on the back of her neck and the other reaching between her legs.

She let out her own gasp of delighted surprise and pleasure.

“What can I say,” as I started with one of my older tricks and then it was her turn to hold onto me. “I like doing it.”

-

The cabin was a ruin.

There hadn't been a fire set this time. I guessed that they had been pushed for time and had wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, but even then I could see that the door had been caved in with an axe and the wooden walls had been splintered with hammers and kicked in with armoured boots. Going inside I found the contents of the small....well....hut had been tossed and searched. Rotten food had been smeared up the walls, the bed had been tossed aside and splintered, the mattress had been slashed to pieces.

Men had defecated up against the walls and the walls had been daubed with graffiti. It made me sick and I didn't stay long.

I didn't want to remember this small room like this.

I left and stood in the doorway. It felt like only yesterday that I had stood here and made love to a beautiful woman and she to me before we had gone inside.

She had taught me so much in the three days that we spent together. She gave me the confidence that I had been sadly lacking. And she had loved me in her own way.

We had lain together for hours and talked. She also taught me a few more tricks that I had used later on other women, much to my amusement and their pleasure.

She had lain next to me, both of us covered in sweat and panting in happy fulfilment. She had stroked the side of my face and told me that “Some day, you are going to make some woman really happy.”

I sat down on the ground and allowed myself a few minutes in the rain to have a few quiet tears.

It felt like long time ago. Since those three days with Saffron I had been tortured, had my soul removed and tortured, gone mad, regained my sanity. Lost family members to disappearance, murder and banishment. I had learned how to properly respect women of the night as well as learning so much more about women in general. I'd been poisoned, shot, stabbed, and killed my first man.

Then I had killed several more people.

I had fallen in love twice. Once was with an ancient and unknowable being of over 900 years in age and the other with a woman in a green dress with red hair who was much better than I deserved. I had met living myths and legends. I had spoken with a dragon and talked to the ghost of a King as well as being put through approximations of the Witcher's trials.

I had learned to fight. I had learned to kill.

I had learned more about the world than I had even thought had been there to be learned. I had learned of the evils of my own prejudices and had been forced to set most of my own drama's and behaviours aside as childish things.

I looked back at that....man.....that boy that had come here with Kerrass all that time ago. I thought he was incredibly naïve and I was no longer entirely certain that I even liked him that much. I had already started my journey on the way towards being the man that I was today back when I saved that baby from Nekkers all that time ago. I had taken another step that day nest to a bridge when I helped bury a troll. That had been the beginning of my journey towards being a better man.

But I had taken a significant step here. With these three creatures. These three people that the majority of society would kill or condemn them as monsters. That HAD condemned them for what they were. They had devoted their lives to the preservation of knowledge and even though I didn't entirely agree with their methods or their reasons for doing so. I had thought that an important goal.

I wept for them then because I was pretty sure Kerrass wouldn't and these people deserved tears.

That was how Ariadne found me.

She sat down next to me. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She just sat and waited for me to calm down a little.

“What happened?” She said after a while, handing me a small cloth for me to wipe my eyes.

“We don't know, for sure.” I told her, staring into space. “Could I?...”

“Could you what?”

“Could I have a hug?” I still wasn't entirely comfortable with physical intimacy between us. I needed to be warned or to ask in advance. It sounds silly when I say it like this but....

For her part, Ariadne was content to take it slowly. We were working up to things but I was still very aware that my automatic response is to reflexively flinch away from her. For her part she was still learning to interpret humanity's intimate signals so we had agreed to not be embarrassed about asking if we could, or asking if we wanted something.

Yes, this is partially fed by what I had told Saffron all that time ago.

“Of course you can.”

She shuffled closer and put her arm round me. It took me a while to collect myself.

“Ok.” I said after a while. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course I came.”

I nodded and put my own arm round her. She stiffened at first but relaxed. She smiled though so I decided that it was ok.

“What can I do to help?”

“Let me show you the library.” I told her and stood.

She was wearing what I liked to refer to as her “evil Queen” get up. It was a large, voluminous black dress that looked as though it wrapped around her, tied together at the waist by a belt. I had looked before but I could never find any corsetry, ribbing or anything. There was very little accentuation of her gender, it showed no cleavage, nor did it hug her hips or display and leg. But I won't lie. I found it incredibly sexy. She had a satchel of brown leather slung over her shoulder as well as various pouches off her belt. She also had her long golden staff with her.

I held my hand out to her. With a look of pleased surprise, she took it and we walked down the hill together as I told her about what had been here.

“I'm so sorry,” she told me when I told her about the three dead. “I'm so sorry.”

“I'm sorry too.” I told her. I don't know why. I thought that there was a bit of guilt there. I was mourning the death of a previous lover. Ariadne was getting to the point of knowing me well though.

“Don't be,” she told me. “You had no obligation to me. We hadn't even met and you would not have been able to resist a Succubus if she put her mind to having you. No man could, not even Kerrass. I'm not jealous.”

Something about her tone caught me and I looked at her sidelong as we walked down the hill.

“Well, ok. Maybe a little bit.” She smiled at me lopsidedly. “But only in so much as that you and she loved each other and that she had had you before I got the chance. Can I ask you a question?”

I nodded.

“I promise I won't get cross or upset.” She told me. “But did you love her?”

I thought about this for a minute as we walked gently and slowly down the hill. Suddenly, the rain didn't seem as important with Ariadne being around. If anything I welcomed the fresh feeling of the air. As though it was washing the world clean.

“I did.” I said after a while. “I did love her, for the three days that we had together. She wouldn't let me love her for any longer than that. We parted with that understanding and I may say that she played me like a lute. I couldn't have put up with all of the other things that would have come with loving a Succubus anyway.”

“Would you take it correctly if I told you that I'm glad.” A look of horror crossed her face. “Not that she's dead. But that she...”

“I understand Ariadne.” I smiled to let her know that I wasn't angry. “I get it. She was good to me though. Without her there would be a good chance that I wouldn't have had the nerve to talk to you the way I did all that time ago.”

“Then I should thank her as well.” she smiled.

Kerrass was just filling in the last of the grave that he had dug. I saw that he had put the little straw doll that I had found in with Sally's grave and found that I was absurdly pleased.

He saw us coming, “Nearly done,” he told us. “Be with you in a minute.”

We nodded and I went off to show Ariadne where the remains of the library was. Her being her, she ignored the smoke and the flame and strode down the steps, the smoke billowing ominously as she moved.

It was a good job that I loved her otherwise I would have been even more terrified by that.

I went to stand with Kerrass who was resting on his spade.

“The cabin's a wreck.” I told him, “although to be truthful. I'm not sure that I would want to sleep in it anyway.”

He nodded at that, “Kareen will put us up tonight,”. His eyes were vacant and glassy. It was like he wasn't home. He nodded again, and I supposed he was carrying out some kind of internal monologue and nodding to something that he had heard. “I'm going for a look at the tracks,” he told me. His voice sounded odd but I couldn't have said why. “See if I can find something out.”

“Ok. Just....”

He smiled at me. “Don't worry Freddie. I'll come back. I promise.”

“Today though? Not some time next week though right?”

He nodded but then was gone into the grass.

I went and stood next to the grave for a while looking down at them.

It was a very odd experience. I had known people who had died. Of course I had. I had stood next to my Father and brother's grave. I had stood next to the grave's of people that I had killed. But somehow this was different. This had hit me harder than any of them and as I stood there, I tried to figure out why.

I still don't have an answer although I do have a number of theories.

I had spent a little over three days with these people. Not all of it had been in Saffron's bed, or in any of the other imaginative places that she decided that she wanted to take me. I ate with the family on a couple of occasions and had the privilege to observe them as they interacted. (Despite the rather personal questions that Sally had sometimes asked as well as one rather mortifying moment when Pula asked Saffron how I was performing)

There was love in that cabin. Sally loved her pseudo parents, Pula and Saffron's affection for each other was obviously very deep and they both cared about Sally a great deal. It was a warm place and I found that I..... That I missed it when it was gone. My own families interactions are much more remote with each other, much more....calling them cold is wrong. I have no doubt that my family loves each other in their own way and I also hope that they certainly know how much I love them. But there was an....

intimacy to it that I found seductive and attractive.

There was also the factor that.... I hope this doesn't sound too awful.... Tom and Annie the trolls had started me on the understanding that not all monsters are monstrous. However with Pula, Saffron and Sally, they were the first “monsters” that I had met who challenged me on an intellectual basis. They had showed me that intelligence and conscious thought wasn't just the purview of the more humanoid species. But of the others too.

There was laughter in that place. Laughter and kindness and learning and decency and.....integrity. In many ways there had been more of those things here than there had been in my own home when I had been growing up. Pula told me once after chastising Sally for not cleaning up her dishes that theirs was a house of standards.

They weren't my morals or my standards. Personally I wouldn't have held all that information back from those other places of learning. I could see his points and understand his fears but I supposed that I was a little bit more optimistic about the continent's.....capacity and treatment for knowledge.

That said something about me. I made a note of it and went back to my journeys with the objective of taking these thoughts out at a later date and going back over them.

I had never done that. What with one thing or another I had never quite gotten around to it. I could say why. Obviously I could, meeting Ariadne, losing your parents and elder brother will do that. But now it felt as though I had somehow let them down.

I hadn't even thought about all of this, the three of them, my time with Saffron, for months, years even. It felt as though I had done them a great disservice to them.

“You ok?” Ariadne was slapping soot and ash from her dress as she walked back out into the rain before swearing. “Should have done this inside,” she muttered before coming over to stand next to me and putting her arm round me.

I accepted the arm with a smile which I hoped conveyed the depth of feeling that was running through me.

“No,” I said after a while. “No, I'm not.”

She tensed her arm to bring me closer. It was an invitation for a closer embrace and I found that I wanted it. We moved closer and I put my arm round her as we stood there for a moment looking down at the graves. It wasn't a false statement that I had made before. Without these people, would I have had the guts to talk to this woman in the way that I had. I somehow found that I doubted it.

Kerrass came out of the undergrowth. Ariadne pulled away from me and offered him a hug. “I'm so sorry,” she told him.

He briefly accepted the hug before pulling away.

“What did you find?” I asked him.

“Knights, or heavy cavalry. Shod horses. At least twelve but no more than 20. Three groups from all directions. They knew exactly where the cabin was and knew exactly what they were dealing with. I found silver arrowheads in the remains of the fire. Sally was killed first as she went out to greet them presuming that they would be friendly. Then they captured Saffron and Pula, Saffron struggled free and killed at least two that I could tell with her fire magic and before they could restrain her. Then they nailed Pula to a tree, and pulled Saffron apart in front of him.”

“Bastards” I muttered.

“Why would they do that?” Ariadne asked after another moments silence.

“Flaming swords,” I commented. “The villagers told us that they had flaming swords on their armour and heraldry. I don't recognise them but that doesn't mean very much. Mark was telling me in Toussaint that there have been a lot of new “Holy” orders of knights been founded after the loss of, and the later disgrace of the remnants of the flaming rose over in Temeria and Redania.”

I shrugged.

“Lots of younger sons and disgruntled knights that need employment that don't want to go back to work after the end of the war. Same thing that meant that Lord Fuck-face's rebellion managed to get so many recruits back in Angraal.”

“So you think it's a religious thing?” Ariadne asked. Kerrass had walked off a little way to stare out over the, now, rain-swept valley and was no longer listening.

“I don't know.” I said. “Is it odd that I kind of hope that it isn't. I think it's much more likely that the religious thing is an excuse. Some kind of....explanation that gives people the excuse to do the horrible things that they want to do.”

Ariadne shuddered and, not for the first time, I felt the guilt of being a worshipper of the holy flame. The guilt of association to all the fanatics and torturers that the sect seemed to attract. Not for the first time I considered renouncing my religion for this reason and not for the first time I realised that it wasn't the religion's fault. That people will always find an excuse to do despicable things.

Ariadne was looking at me. I cleared my throat on the second attempt.

“How's the.....” maybe it was the third attempt. “How's the library?”

“I won't lie Freddie,” She brushed some more soot from her dress now that she had been reminded of it. “It's in a bad way. I'm going to need to bring some people in. Not least because there's so much of it.”

“Who did you have in mind? Pula, the Doppler, once told me that there was some dangerous information in there that he didn't want to fall into the wrong hands.”

“I was thinking of Margarita.”

“Laux-Antille?”

“Yes. She's still, mostly putting together a new magical school after Aretuza was sacked. I like her, she doesn't seem to care about the politics of the world. She's one of those rare minds that only cares about teaching so I think this might be well suited to her. She might even make it a school thing and get the students to work on it. She would also respect the fact that there are such things as dangerous knowledge without the knowledge itself being evil.”

I nodded.

“Sounds good.”

We stood there for a bit longer. I guessed that neither of us really knew what to say. I was happy to see her, excited by the fact that I was seeing her but also... I didn't want to be excited or happy. I wanted to be sombre. I stared over at Kerrass. He hadn't moved for a while.

“Freddie,” Ariadne said quietly. “The two of you are going to do something drastic aren't you?”

“Yeah.” I said looking at the curve of Kerrass' back and the almost quivering tension in his body. I could also feel the rage in my belly. It was a small thing really and I hadn't noticed it until I had looked for it but it was there. I also thought that it might be the thing that had kept me from grieving too hard. “Yes I think we are.”

I sighed and looked back at her.

“To everyone else, these are three dead monsters and to far too many people in authority, the only good monster is a dead one.”

Her face was unreadable.

“The other thing is... that if these men were knights then there's almost certainly nobleman's sons in amongst them. If we took this to the authorities then the killer's families will apply political pressure meaning that nothing will get done. Then there's the religious aspect. If they are church knights. Regardless of how legitimate or illegitimate they might be. They would claim that there was provocation and the courts would, almost automatically, side with them for fear of bringing down the entire weight of the greater church down on them.”

“So what then?”

“As you say.” I told her. “We'll do something drastic.”

She nodded. Her face was the familiar mask that I could recognise from all that time ago.

“I'm so sorry, my love.” I told her.

The first time that I had called her that as well. Not the way I wanted that to happen but at the same time, I felt as though I had to say it. I needed to say it. After all, it was true.

“It's alright.” She said. “It's not you, the Empress or the Duke of Angraal. Just some jumped up bastards who don't know that they're evil.”

“It's not alright.” I told her. “It's not alright.” It felt as though it bared repeating.

“Then we will make it alright.” She said with a tired smile. After a moment that smile turned vicious and I abruptly found her more attractive. “Can I help?” She asked me with a certain amount of relish.

I grinned savagely to answer her but, fortunately for everyone, my brain caught up a little.

“No,” I said. “I mean I want you to. Nothing would make me happier than to take these bastards on with you beside us but....”

I sighed.

“I'm protected by my rank, status and my fame,”

“and your notoriety.” She was smiling, she saw my point.

“Kerrass isn't important enough and I can, and will, kick up enough of a stink until he's ok. But if you do this or are involved then you're just another dangerous monster and you prove them right.”

She was nodding.

“You're right.” She said. “I don't like it but you're right.”

I nodded. “Wait a while, I still need to talk to Kerrass.”

“I'll be back in the cabin.”

Kerrass didn't react as I approached so I stood and waited for him.

It was a long time before he spoke.

“I'm sorry Freddie.” He said. His voice sounded creaky and dusty. “I know I promised you that we would hunt for your sister. I am aware of the hypocrisy in this and the selfishness of this.”

He looked at his shoes.

“I'm so sorry that I have to let you down.” He told me “But.... I need to do something about this.”

“I know Kerrass.” I told him.

“I'm going to kill those men.” He told me. “I'm going to fucking murder them for what they did here. These people were my family. They weren't Witchers but they were my family.”

He turned to face me then. His face was awful. “They healed me when I was hurt. They cared for me in my anguish and they gave me love and affection when I needed it most. I told you that I've been married twice? When both wives died, I came here. I didn't go back to the keep, I came here.”

“I know Kerrass.”

“After I had avenged Princess Dorn, I came here. When my brothers died. I came here and without these people, I would have died a thousand times over. I cannot let this slide.”

I know Kerrass.”

“I just can't do it Freddie. I can't.”

I know Kerrass. It's alright.”

“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry but I need to kill these bastards. I've been wandering around all day trying to think of how I can tell you that I need to leave you for a while so that I can go off and do this, especially after I gave you so much grief for your selfishness a few weeks ago, but....”

“It's alright Kerrass.” I had managed to get a bit closer and put my hand on his shoulder. “I get it. I understand.”

For a moment, a flash of rage crossed his face.

“They were your family.” I told him. “I get it. Of all people, I get it.”

His face softened. I stepped a bit closer and put my arms round him.

“So lets go get the bastards.” I told him. “Let's go get them.”

Kerrass sobbed and began to shake. I recognised the same symptoms from the time with the Grave hags and held onto him until his fit began to subside and he pulled away.

“Let's go get the bastards.” I told him again.

“Sorry,” he said again wiping his eyes.

“What for?”

“For....all of this.” He gestured. “For another delay.”

“My bastards will wait.” I told him. “Your bastards might still get away.”

He nodded again.

“Thank you Freddie.” He said. “I'll get the horses together,” He moved off.

Another memory.