“Easy now, sorceress. If I were you, I would keep my hands where the light hits them.”
The scarred leader gestured with his chin toward the brush, where four mounted men leveled cocked crossbows, their iron sights locked onto Yennefer from different angles.
Neither Yennefer nor Ciri possessed the iron endurance of a mutant.
A heavy bolt through the belly or the throat was a messy, fatal affair, and the mercenary knew well enough that an arrow flew faster than incantations.
These men were no common hedge brigands.
Their coursers were disciplined, military-bred stock, four loaded crossbows stood ready, and the wire wraps on their longsword grips showed the honest polish of long service.
An uneasy standoff hung over the road, each side waiting for the other to flinch.
Will turned the possibilities over in his mind.
These men were either seasoned field scouts from Nilfgaard’s Department of Military Intelligence, or a deserter squad fleeing north to wash the imperial stink off their coats, hunting for quick coin to buy land under fresh names.
Geralt, Will, buy me a dozen breaths.
Yennefer’s voice brushed directly against the back of Will’s mind, clear and sharp.
Will’s eyes sparked.
He sheathed his blade with a soft click, holding up two empty palms, his posture shedding every trace of hostility.
“Gentlemen, there is no need to spoil an honest morning with drawn steel.”
He took half a step forward, his smile smooth and reassuring.
“Allow me to present myself. I am the younger brother of Lady Marie, Countess of Ellander’s southern estates. These folk were hired from the capital garrison to see me safely home.”
The scarred rider let out an ugly snort.
“Is that so? And where is your carriage, little lordling? Travelling the ditches like a common peddler?”
“A minor mishap along the road, sir,” Will answered smoothly, tilting his chin to catch the sunlight.
“Take a look at the skin on my throat, or the set of my ears. You won’t find dirt like this on a field laborer. Furthermore, I am more than happy to offer a modest token of goodwill to seal our meeting.”
He tapped the leather pouch hanging heavy from his hip.
The leader’s eyes sharpened, his knuckles tightening around his hilt.
“Slow hands, boy. Don’t go tossing it. Upend the purse right where you stand. If a single witcher bomb rolls onto the grass, I swear on my mother’s grave that every one of you takes an iron bolt through the teeth.”
“Naturally. Whatever eases your mind.”
Moving with deliberate slowness, Will loosened the drawstring, held the velvet mouth downward, and gave it a gentle shake.
Over eighty Novigrad crowns tumbled onto the damp turf, chiming cleanly against the stones.
“You see, gentlemen? I already handed five hundred crowns to the town guard as an advance. If we can reach an accommodation…”
Before the sentence finished, the earth beneath the horses’ hooves erupted.
Thick, thorny briars surged from the clay like striking serpents, coiling around the stirrups and dragging at the mounts’ legs.
The horses shrieked, rearing in blind panic as their riders pitched sideways in the saddles.
Geralt moved like lightning.
The witcher closed the gap in two strides, his Skellige steel humming through the chaos.
His blade took the nearest rider through the waist before the man could recover his balance, dark blood spraying across Geralt’s impassive features.
A fraction of a second behind him, Will whipped his spare blade from his scabbard and hurled it end over end.
The heavy pommel took an archer square between the eyes; the man’s neck snapped back with a dull crack, his lifeless body sliding into the ferns.
The scarred leader bit his lip until blood ran, throwing his weight against the thorny vines until the fibers tore.
Baring his yellowed teeth, he charged straight at Will, several bleeding gashes opening across his thighs as he ripped free.
Will watched the man barrel forward and let out a short laugh.
He drew Tris’s heavy Nilfgaardian cavalry sword from his belt; cutting down imperial dogs with imperial steel had a lovely irony to it.
He made no effort to parry. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
He wanted this one breathing.
Thunk.
The mercenary’s longsword punched straight through Will’s ribs, the point bursting out through the back of his doublet.
The man’s manic grin froze on his lips.
Instead of collapsing into the mud, the youth stood tall, his gaze cold and steady.
Slowly, the triumph in the soldier’s eyes peeled away into unvarnished terror.
For a moment, Will found himself missing the arrogant swagger the scarred rogue had worn five minutes earlier.
“By the gods… what kind of abomination are you?”
Will offered no reply.
He flared the Fountain of Life, locking his chest muscles tight around the lodged steel to pin the blade in place.
With a smooth half-circle sweep of his own sword, he sheared the mercenary’s right wrist clean off.
A high, strangled shriek tore from the man’s throat as he stumbled back, clutching the spurting stump while dark crimson rained over the weeds.
Will reached down, gripped the blade stuck through his ribs, and hauled it free with a wet scrape.
Using the bloody length like a javelin, he hurled it across the road, pinning an archer’s shoulder to a birch trunk before turning his attention toward Ciri.
Mid-stride, he reached out with Life Drain, only to confirm his suspicion: targets felled outright by Geralt and Yennefer offered no experience motes to his pool.
To harvest the vital essence, he had to apply the killing stroke himself.
Geralt had already taken three heads, his steel carving through leather and bone without an ounce of wasted motion.
Further down the path, Ciri leaned heavily against her short blade, drawing ragged breaths beside the body of a rider she had managed to gut.
Her limbs trembled with reaction.
Yennefer stood several paces back, her cheeks flushed pale from the drain, holding two struggling riders in mid-air with constricting roots until their windpipes crushed flat.
A sharp click cut through the rush of wind.
Geralt’s ears twitched, catching the distinct snap of a crossbow release nut, his golden eyes widening in panic as his head whipped toward Ciri.
“Ciri! Drop!”
A dying mercenary sprawled in the ferns had managed to cock a stirrup crossbow with his failing boots, aiming the square iron tip directly at the girl’s breastbone.
Will caught the movement a beat earlier.
Driven by instinct, he lunged across the grass with terrifying speed, throwing his shoulder across Ciri’s chest.
Thwack!
The iron quarrel punched clean through the meat of his left shoulder, the kinetic shock hurling him backward into Ciri’s arms.
The girl caught him by the ribs, tumbling with him onto the damp leaves.
Will started to draw breath, but a sudden, icy numbness spread outward from the wound, freezing the nerves across his collarbone.
His expression hardened.
He gripped the iron shaft, ripped the barbed bolt out through his back, and hurled it into the mud.
“Keep the scarred bastard alive,” he rasped through locked teeth.
“We need his tongue.”
Without waiting for an answer, he drew his dagger, sliced the blackened, poisoned flesh away from the puncture, and dropped cross-legged into the dirt.
The quarrel had been dipped in a concentrated neurotoxin.
A blinding, searing ache tore through his lung tissue, his heart hammering like a trapped bird as cold sweat washed over his forehead.
His senses shut down one by one.
The coppery reek of the clearing faded, and Ciri’s frantic shouts grew muffled, as if filtered through deep water.
Beneath the agony, his thoughts stayed flat.
The Fountain of Life surged through his core, pumping thick waves of restorative warmth through every ruptured vein to battle the venom.
All he had to do was hold the gate.
Ten minutes dragged past before Will doubled over, vomiting thick clots of black, congealed bile onto the moss.
The foreign poison was too virulent to break down through normal metabolism; his surging vitality had forced the toxin straight out through his stomach lining.
Air rushed back into his chest.
Color returned to his vision, and when he opened his eyes, three sets of eyes were staring down at him in silent shock.
Will wiped his mouth on his sleeve and offered a tired grin.
“I take payments in all denominations: Novigrad crowns, a warm meal, or an honest hug.”
The tension broke.
Ciri dropped to her knees, throwing her arms around his neck, her forehead pressed against his uninjured collarbone.
“Geralt said the bolt carried an alchemical neurotoxin,” she whispered, her voice shaking with shame.
“I froze. I couldn’t move. Thank you, Will.”
Geralt stepped up, resting a heavy, gloved hand on the youth’s shoulder.
Between witchers, words were surplus to requirements.
Seeing Yennefer prepare to offer a rare compliment, Will waved his hand toward the unconscious leader lying in the ditch.
“That venom wasn’t boiled in a forest pot. Let us see who provided the recipe.”
The scarred man lay motionless, though Geralt had already bound a strip of linen around the severed wrist to keep him from bleeding out before the questioning.
That wouldn’t do.
Will knelt, pressing a thin trickle of restorative vitality into the stump.
The unnatural, agonizing itch of rapidly knitting nerve endings and closing bone was guaranteed to shock the most stubborn soldier awake.
Within ninety seconds, an ear-splitting scream tore through the canopy.
Slap!
Geralt’s backhand caught the man across the cheek, cutting the shriek short with a spray of bloody spit and broken teeth.
“Keep your voice down and answer straight,” Geralt rumbled, kneeling over the mercenary’s chest.
“Answer true, and you might walk away from this ditch. Name?”
“K… Kolos,” the man wheezed, trembling violently.
What followed was a masterclass in field interrogation.
With Will’s healing keeping the subject conscious, Geralt cracked small metacarpal bones whenever the soldier hesitated, his execution precise and methodical.
The story came out in ragged gasps.
The squad had been regulars in a Nilfgaardian line division.
Sick of the meat grinder at Sodden, they had staged their own deaths during the retreat, leaving their sergeant to collect the burial stipends while they slipped north across the Yaruga to buy homesteads in Temeria.
Along the post road, however, a wealthy traveler had crossed their path, offering bags of gold for a specific task: hunting down an ashen-haired Cintran girl named Cirilla.
The handler’s name was Rience.