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When talking to youngsters entering the service, Aplegatt usually told them that in order to make their living as mounted messengers two things would be necessary: a head of gold and an arse of iron. |  | |
| - pg. 3 Time of Contempt (U.S. edition) | |||
Aplegatt (d. 1267) was a royal messenger from Aedirn and a friend of Hansom, another messenger. He worked for King Demavend III but also received messages from other rulers to relay back to his king.[1]
Biography[]
Hagge to Maribor[]
As mages became more prominent in royal courts, Aplegatt feared his job was coming to an end as messages were now delivered between mages using their megascopes, making it far easier for monarchs to converse with one another. However, in 1267 the Northern Kingdom's rulers began to distrust their mages and began employing their royal messengers once more to keep the mages from learning of their plans. Thus, at the age of 36, after returning to Hagge from Tretogor in June, Aplegatt was tasked to deliver a message from King Demavend III to King Foltest about their plans to stage an attack on Dol Angra to make it look like the work of Nilfgaard. Foltest then sent a response back to Demavend to hold off on the campaign as the mages were going to hold a council soon on Thanedd Island.
After arriving in Vizima, he discovered that Foltest was in southern Maribor. While heading south through Ellander, he stopped at an inn to rest, and met Yennefer and Ciri as they prepared to head out the same time as him. Ciri, still half asleep, bumped into Aplegatt as she readied her horse and had one of her visions, stating Aplegatt's death would come silently with gray feathers and the sand was hot as the sun. However, when the messenger tried to ask her what she was talking about, Ciri snapped out of her trance, not remembering a thing she said. Shaking it off as just ramblings of a half asleep child, Aplegatt left to complete his journey.[1]
Temeria to Tretogor[]
After returning to Temeria, he heard news of the witcher Geralt of Rivia on a wood path near the town of Dorian, where the witcher had killed a manticore that was becoming a danger for all the wayfarers. He then met with another royal messenger, Hansom, and the two exchanged letters and the secret verbal messages for each king, with Aplegatt passing on Foltest's message for Demavend and Hansom passing on Demavend's message for King Vizimir II. With his new orders, Aplegatt than headed north to the town of Anchor. At the local inn here, he met Geralt and witnessed him slaughter the Professor, Heimo Kantor, and Little Yaxa when they came into the inn looking for Yennefer and Ciri. After this macabre performance, the messenger mounted again on his horse, ready for his 300 mile trip en route to Tretogor, the capital of Redania.
Once he arrived at the gate of the city three days later, he was kept painstakingly waiting through most of the night until Sigismund Dijkstra, the leader of the Redanian Secret Service, received his message that Demavend's troops were ready for the staged attack but Demavend wasn't going to go to the mages' council. Dijkstra then gave a new secret message for Aplegatt to deliver to Demavend, telling him not to go through with the attack as someone had betrayed them and Nilfgaard knew and was itching for an excuse to attack now. Aplegatt, extremely tired from five total days of riding without a bed, asked if he could sleep a full night, but Dijkstra refused, saying he could have a few hours to dawn to sleep, but then must be off. Before he turned in for some sleep though, he revealed to Dijkstra the events that transpired in Anchor, not knowing this provided vital information to the spy master about Ciri, Geralt, and Yennefer.[1]
Death[]
As Aplegatt once more rode off at dawn, he traveled through the woods of the Pontar Valley where a group of Scoia'tael composed of Cairbre, Toruviel, and Yaevinn were. Wanting to kill any human that strayed through the area, Yaevinn aimed for Aplegatt while Toruviel argued it wasn't worth killing a lone human. Despite this, Yaevinn, with his gray feathered arrow, still shot at the messenger, piercing him right through the back, killing him at once, causing Aplegatt's body to fall off his horse and onto the hot sand. His death meant that Demavend never received the orders to not go through with the attack on Dol Angra, paving the way for Nilfgaard to start a war with the North.
Gallery[]
