It had been a long night.

We were tired, physically fatigued from the battles we fought last night and mentally fatigued from last night’s revelations. We had come back to border creek in order to recuperate after the loss of Frank, but we had been forced to defend the town against a pack of werewolves instead. We were tired.

The tiredness and mental fatigue bled into our moods for the rest of our down time, and it seemed to bleed into the mood of the village too. From my brief three month stay in the village, I remembered it being a lot noisier and more active. But the fatigue seemed to have dampened the village’s vibrancy. We spent the time quietly going about our various tasks, each of us preferring to spend times inside our own heads. I spent my time helping Bess with the cooking, which she reluctantly allowed me to do, the kitchen was her domain and no men were allowed, but I managed to convince her to let me cut the vegetables and stir the potage. I also helped Mark and Luke around the farm doing the various repairs and maintenance that needed doing, like repairing the broken wheel spoke from our carriage. I debated whether I should add suspension to the carriage, adding a rudimentary leaf spring suspension would be possible. Ultimately I decided against the idea as the steel required to make the suspension would be too wasteful (it required more than 4 swords worth of steel. and it had to be steel as iron didn’t spring back, which is kind of important in a spring).

I also spent a lot of time monitoring Mathew’s condition, he seemed to be healing up ok and there didn’t seem to be any signs of an infection. I had also started to wean Mathew off the modern painkillers I had been giving him. Mathew was awake by this point and he was not happy when the pain started to increase. I explained this away by suggesting that his body was building up a tolerance to the willow bark. By this point most of the village knew about Mathew’s injury and one of them spoke up about the normal drug given to sedate someone when willow bark brought no relief. It was a concoction of hemlock and henbane.

“I was told that ‘it will cause a dreamless sleep for 3 nights’ by one of my relatives.” Mathew’s wife said to me

“After which he will never wake up!” I snapped back, I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. I reminded myself that Harriet was simply trying to help. “Look Harriet, I know you and Henrietta (Ian’s wife, and Harriet’s identical twin) are just trying to help but trust me on this, just keep giving the him willow bark to chew and make sure that he wound is kept clean, he will be fine. He is over the worst of it. As for hemlock and henbane; they are both lethal poisons that are more likely to kill him than relieve the pain.”

Hemlock and henbane were incredibly dangerous poisons and people knew this. Despite knowing this they still used it as a sedative. I don’t even know why. Probably for the same reason trepanning (drilling holes in the head) was used to relieve headaches in various different cultures to treat headaches. In some extremely rare cases a headache could be caused by an increased intracranial pressure, basically too much fluid in the brain, and the too much fluid starts to crush the brain. In those rare cases trepanning allows the excess fluids to drain out and this stops the brain from being crushed. Some old shaman/shyster probably tried it as a desperate measure and it worked, so they started using it to treat all headaches. And it probably worked, in that ‘I wouldn’t notice my original headache if someone was DRILLING into my skull’ way.

It was the fifth night of our “leave” when we finally recovered from our collective malaise and decided to sit down and have a squad meeting.

We met at the only real meeting place where this sort of discussion could take place; the pub. It was late and Ian had graciously closed the doors a little early to let us have our meeting. In exchange we would have to clean up the pub before leaving. Smelling the room, he got the better deal. We may have cost the notorious miser a couple of coppers but we saved him from having to wipe down the tables and chairs, which at this point in the night were covered in a foul mix of dried ale, mead and sweat. The tables and floor were tacky and the whole room smelt like 30 rowdy farmers had been dancing inside; because they had.

“We should clean up first.” Isiah said. His tone made it clear this was not a suggestion.

“Fine” replied mark, Josiah and I just nodded and got on with the job.

We spent the next 30 minutes cleaning the pub in silence. I fetched some water and began wiping down the tables, Mark and Isiah began sweeping the floor, and Josiah followed behind them and was mopping the floor. By the time we were done the pub was relatively clean and tidy, well at least it wasn’t sticky. I had added a little soap and lavender to the water so the smell was also mostly gone.

When we were done we sat down around a table to have our talk. Isiah pulled down some flagons and got us each some ale, except for me he just gave me an empty small cup, I noticed he got one for himself as well. I took out my waterskin full of whisky and poured some into our cups. It was the Compass Box blend’s Phenomenology, a crazy blend of dissonance that somehow managed to work together to produce something exceptional.

Mark looked at the two of us accusatorily; Isiah hastily got up and got two more cups. I poured a couple of fingers worth in the cups and handed them to Mark and Josiah. Mark looked at the small amount (relative to the flagons of ale) and decided to sniff the cup; Josiah on the other hand took a look at the cup and decided to swallow the whole thing in one gulp. He then proceeded to cough and splutter it all out again. Then he spent the next minute gasping. Finally he recovered, grabbed the cup and with a massive grin on his face he said “more please!”

“Pffft” we all burst out laughing. The silent and sombre mood that had hung around the room seemed to disappear.

“What is this?” Mark asked suspiciously.

“It tastes like fire!” Josiah replied cheerfully his hand still outstretched demanding more.

I deftly switched the waterskin full of the really nice Phenomenology of which I only had one case, with a waterskin full of Tennessee Jack and poured another double into Josiah’s cup. “Sip it slowly” I said to him as he brought the cup to his face.

“This is what happens when you try to turn ale into a tincture. Alexander of Aphrodisias came up with the process of purifying water by distilling it. I applied the same process to ale and it resulted in an undrinkable horrifying thing. It looked clearer than the cleanest spring water but it burned in the throat, so I called the thing firewater. I stored it in a barrel and forgot about it for years. Then one day I returned back to the thing hoping to mix it with herbs to make something to treat a cough. It had turned back into the colour of ale. Out of curiosity I tasted some and I liked the taste. It didn’t help with the cough though.” I invented this story taking credit for inventing whisky a thousand years before its invention; although this is probably close to how it was discovered… or the perfume industry.

Mark took a tentative sip at the same time as Josiah took his second sip. They went through the time honoured face making that happens when everyone sips their first hard alcohol: oh-that’s-a-new-flavour; oh-that’s-bitter; oh-that-burns; oh-that-was-horrible-and-I-am-never-doing-that-again; oh-it-feels-warm-in-my-stomach; oh-that-feels-nice. Let’s do it again!

Isiah got us back on track by clearing his throat “we need to clear the air between us”

“You all have been hiding things from me and planning things behind my back” Mark said

I tried to look a little bit apologetic; Josiah just rubbed his head innocently, this was all still too new for him. Isiah took a different approach.

“Yes.” He said with more than a hint of defiance in his voice. “We had to hide our secrets. Our mere existence is a crime; by law you should be trying to kill us. By the letter of the law we are unnatural monsters that should be hunted down and killed. The king has outlawed the existence of magic and all magical beings. So we hid the part of ourselves that would get us killed.”

Mark looked a little mollified at that. “I understand that part, but planning things behind my back is not ok. We are part of a military squad and the squad can only function if we are all working together as a whole.” He explained

Both Isiah and I nodded at this statement.

“We will endeavour to do better moving forwards.” Isiah said in a very formal manner, implicitly acknowledging Mark’s last statement as a military order.

I released a huge sigh of relief and said “Moving on, we need to discuss what happened the night of the ambush and how these wolves knew where we were.”

“They have a spy.” Isiah spat out in disgust. No-one likes a spy, especially if he is working against you.

“But the question is who?” I asked.

“It has to be someone with intimate knowledge of our mission.”

“It must be someone who was in at the base camp when we were there, how else would they have known that we were coming back to border creek.” Isiah said

“They also knew about us defeating the blood wolves…” the list of who it could possibly be seemed to be getting very small.

“It has to be either Merlin or the Quartermaster. They are the only ones who knew we were coming back to border creek” Isiah said cracking his knuckles, plotting his revenge; his eyes were glowing an unnatural yellow, so the cat wasn’t happy either.

“It can’t be Merlin. He has been with us most of the time; he didn’t have time to send messages. And he was with us when we were attacked by the blood wolves.” Josiah said defending our squad mate

“It can’t be the quartermaster. He has been a soldier all his life, he is a survivor of the Great War. He has seen first-hand the devastation caused by the real forces of magic; he wouldn’t betray the King for a measly witch.” Mark said, Mark had been with the army for five years and naturally knew the quartermaster better than us.

Something in Mark’s words set off some alarm bells in my head. It was like we had all been ignoring something right in front of us and suddenly I could see the moon-walking bear.

“I’ve been wondering about this since the David incident” I said, referring back to my killing of David and then finding out that he was a spy. “She is a witch. By and large witches are harmless. And the ones that aren’t, don’t live very long.”

Mark and Josiah both looked at me confused; Isiah was frowning as if he had also just figured out that something wasn’t right.

“Witch craft isn’t natural…” I started, trying to explain something whilst also trying to figure out the problem out loud.

“Magic isn’t natural” Mark said back, interrupting my train of thought

“No, magic is a natural part of this world.” I said to him patiently trying not to take offence. “It is just a part of the world that can’t be seen by most humans. It is a part of a greater world, we just call it supernatural. Weres have existed since antiquity, so have mages, elementals and various other creatures of magic.

Witches are different. Witches are humans… I mean normal humans like you.” I said when I saw Mark about to interrupt again

“They are humans who are somehow trying to manipulate the nature of this world. They are trying to imitate mages; they try to channel energy through them to affect nature. Magic or spirit energy exists all around us in the natural world. Mages are born with the natural ability to channel this spirit energy inside them, refine the energy and use the magic energy to for their own purposes. A mage is naturally limited by how much energy they can channel and their own elemental affinity; that is the type of energy they can channel. Humans shouldn’t be able to channel these energies. Witches are humans who forcibly channel these energies which are unnatural to them. This how ever comes at a grave cost… life force. They use their own life force as a source of energy to power their spells. They sacrifice their looks, which is why they all look like hags, and their lives to power their magicks.

It does however have its own advantages, life force has no elemental affinity so they are able to manipulate all of the elements, and they are able to do things like minor alchemy, the ability to brew potions, minor physical enhancements, they are slightly stronger and faster than normal… minor everything basically.

They use life force in exchange for the powers they get but it is not an equivalent exchange. Life force is an extremely powerful source of energy; only ever to be used as a last resort. When a magical being burns their life force it allows them to temporarily access powers far beyond their limits: a water mage capable of only freezing a barrel’s worth of water may be able to freeze an entire lake, which could be useful if they were being attacked from something in the lake.

The results aren’t the same for witch craft. Witchcraft goes against nature, like trying to swim up a waterfall, so the amount of power required is greatly amplified. It is the equivalent of having to burning a forest to boil a pot of water. The stronger the spell the more life force is required, which is why they used to work together in circles; distributing the life force required over multiple people. Instead of one witch sacrificing a year’s worth of time, twelve witches could sacrifice a month’s worth of time… of course there aren’t many witches left and no witches circles anymore, which is why I said they are supposed to be harmless. A witch causing this much mayhem should have run out of life force a long time ago.”

“So you think the witch is somehow using magic to spy on us from a distance?” Isiah asked me, ending my monologue (which was actually quite helpful, I was starting to confuse myself).

“It’s possible, I guess to use something like numeromancy or oculomancy or some other divinatory magicks to scry our futures.” I said shrugging. “But again this requires a lot of power, how is she fuelling this much power without killing herself.”

“Human sacrifice… Killing living beings to fuel spells. Kora told me about them; it is part of the night tiger tribe’s history. There are beings called the Rakshasa, who consumed the blood and flesh of humans to temporarily gain abilities to power their magicks. It can also be done by consuming the life forces of animals but it is said to be less effective.”

I was distracted for a second, suddenly remembering my Great-uncle Vik. He used to sit me at his side and tell me stories about the Rakshasas eating naughty children to scare me. So apparently my childhood nightmares could have really happened…

“We have to stop her!” Mark exclaimed, smashing his hand down on to the table.

“We can’t even tell what we know to the army; even knowing about this stuff could get us summarily executed.” I said to Mark “Your King’s ban on all magical knowledge... it’s not really helpful when fighting against people who already have magical knowledge.”

“In any case, we should go back to base as soon as we can. The longer we stay here the more danger we bring to our families.” Isiah said bring an end to our conversation.

We went back to our houses in silence, we had more questions now than when we started and things didn’t seem to be going in our favour. We still didn’t know if we had a spy in our midst or if the witch was divining things with magic. We didn’t know if the latter was better or worse, because it almost certainly involved human sacrifice. We didn’t know how to pass on our conjecture to the army without getting killed. And we didn’t know what we were going to do next.