Crash!
Will hooked his right boot beneath the crossbar of the oak table, kicking the timber upward into the brute’s chest, throwing two of the flanking sellswords off balance.
The remaining pair lunged with bared teeth, their steel blades converging from both flanks to box him against the bench.
Will let out a quiet scoff.
Their edge alignment was sloppy, their speed sluggish as crawling ants.
Twisting along his hips with fluid grace, he slipped inside the pincer.
His Skellige blade swept in a vicious reverse arc, driving thirty inches of cold iron clean through the red-nosed leader’s windpipe.
“Guh…!”
The mercenary clutched his neck, his eyes rolling back as he crashed onto the floorboards, the overturned trestle pinning his legs to the flags.
Will stepped forward, clamping his left hand over the man’s sword wrist.
He tightened his grip with mechanical leverage until the carpals splintered with a wet crunch.
“Aaargh!”
The strangled shriek was music to his ears.
Twisting his wrist, Will drove the Skellige steel downward, pinning the man’s sternum to the dirt.
The two surviving sellswords froze, their lips quivering in unvarnished terror.
Will gave them no time to turn.
Closing the distance in two measured paces, his edge flicked twice through the tavern air, severing both jugulars before their boots could find the door.
[Life Drain x 4, Experience +40]
[Experience: 255/400]
The oak crossbar rattled as the two outer guards shoved the street door open, drawn by the crash.
At the sight of the scarlet cloaks and the white rose brooch pinned to Salat’s chest, the municipal watchmen stiffened, their bluster melting into nervous, bowing apologies.
Will knelt among the dead, turning out pouches and pockets with practiced detachment.
Tossing aside stained garters, bone dice, and unlabelled vials of questionable oil, he counted out barely fifteen crowns from their combined purses.
“Scum of the earth, and paupers to boot,” Will muttered, tossing the empty deerskin aside with a disgusted click of his tongue.
“The watch will cart the meat to the lime pits. The timber damage is already settled with the house,” Salat said, dismissing the nervous guards with a flick of his gloved fingers before stepping over to the booth with an easy grin.
“What is the matter with these sellswords? Have they lost whatever wits they were born with?”
Salat’s mouth twisted into a cynical smirk.
“Simple greed. A chapter banner captain posted a cash bounty on rebel scouts. These dogs began snatching non-humans out of the slums and the outlying shanties, butchering them in ditches and claiming they were forest commandos. Over a hundred ‘Squirrel’ heads delivered to the counting house in seven days. Did they honestly believe Burgomaster Velerad was blind to the trick?”
Will shook his head.
“Vultures are the same in every province. If a hundred true Scoia’tael had penetrated the gates, the Trade Quarter would be in ashes by now. Men like that will slit any throat for a handful of silver.”
“Enough talk of ditch carrion,” Salat said, clapping his palms together.
“Come. There is a delivery waiting for your hand.”
“A delivery?” Will tilted his head, his curiosity piqued.
…
The Temple Quarter of Vizima, within a timber outbuilding beside the White Rose command post.
Will stared down at the open presentation case resting upon the oak table, genuine wonder breaking through his composure.
The silver sword before him was a breathtaking work of art.
From the pommel to the razor point, the blade shimmered with a pristine, snow-white gradient, the fuller etched with delicate geometric knotwork.
The crossguard sat narrow and elegant, balanced by a threaded iron counterweight pommel that could be dismantled for field maintenance.
Staring along the honed edge, the chill luminescence of the metal felt sharp enough to part skin through the air alone.
The White Widow.
The craftsmanship alone commanded two thousand crowns at any master foundry.
He knew well enough whose hand had reached across the province to place it here, but accepting such an offering was dangerous business.
Silence hung in the room until Will broke it, his voice measured and guarded.
“This is the delivery? It is far too rich, Salat. You know I cannot take this.”
“Do not refuse before you hear the tale, Will.”
Salat stepped forward, resting his palms on the table.
“Her ladyship secured this piece directly from the royal armory of Vizima. Securing the requisition took six months of private petitions and heavy bribes through my own lineage. The silver blade alone cost three thousand Novigrad crowns, a sum that buys an estate beyond the city walls.”
The knight held Will’s golden gaze.
“The Countess would be deeply grieved to hear you turned your back on her favor.”
Will’s brow furrowed.
Fine courtly phrasing did little to move him.
In his experience, the nobility never parted with a copper without calculating the return; an investment of three thousand crowns demanded interest tenfold.
He had no intention of underestimating the Countess.
Whispers around Ellander claimed that before her marriage to Count Yuri, the lord had met an untimely end on the eve of the vows, yet Lady Marie had claimed the title, the estates, and the revenues without a drop of grease sticking to her fingers.
“What does Lady Marie ask in return?”
“Not a thing.”
“Nothing at all? You swear that on your sword belt?”
Salat nodded with solemn certainty.
Even as courtly theater, three thousand crowns was an extravagant toll.
“Very well. When the snows thaw and I return to Ellander, I will pay my respects to the Countess at her parlor.”
“Splendid. Half my commission is cleared,” Salat laughed, clapping his palms and taking up his cloak.
“Now let us see to the pests choking the foundations of the old court.”
Will strapped the silver scabbard to his baldric, its weight sitting remarkably light against his hip, and followed the knight into the adjoining yard.
At Salat’s whistle, the two sentries from the tavern joined their ranks, along with two fresh swordsmen.
Studying their profiles as they traded nods, Will caught the shared slant of their cheekbones and the curve of their noses.
Brothers or cousins, bound by blood.
Lady Marie had cast her net deep into the chapter.
Salat was far more than an ordinary banner officer; given how comfortably he moved through the city wards, he had been running clandestine errands in the capital for years.
Taking actual command of the Order of the White Rose remained unlikely, however; at least two or three high-born marshals were waiting like vultures for Grand Master Walras to draw his last breath.
The company of six turned down the alleys toward the ruins of Old Vizima.
The degradation of the district made Will’s jaw tighten.
Even the rough hands out at Mel Farm kept their stables in better order than this open sewer.
A foul, black slime coated the cobblestones from wall to wall.
Through his heightened senses, Will could pick out the sour stench of stagnant privy waste, rotting offal, and unwashed blood.
Idle sellswords lounging against the timber shanties glared at passersby with predatory hunger, stepping back into the shadows only when the red mantles of the White Rose cleared the corner.
Every few paces, a sickening draft of swamp gas drifted up from the stone grates.
According to Salat, Vizima rested directly upon the drowned foundations of an ancient elven metropolis; the masonry below remained remarkably intact, though the air in the dark was worse than the surface streets.
Non-humans and the destitute huddled in the damp alleys simply because royal decrees barred them from the upper wards; their only other choice was the lawless brush outside the palisade, where monsters roamed unchecked.
“Salat, you are certain the northern sluice is clear of drowners?”
“Routine work. The Order updates the clearing tallies every sunrise; whatever crawls into the stone pipes is culled before noon.”
Will and the five knights wrapped thick layers of greased linen across their noses and mouths. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
The sulfur stench of rotting eggs grew suffocating near the iron grates; methane gas was pooling in the shafts, rendering tallow torches too dangerous to light.
The old drainage canals offered multiple entry shafts, and their squad held the western sluice gate.
Will watched in quiet appreciation as the knights formed a shield wall across the flagstones, using polearms and heavy broadswords to butcher the scavengers as they dragged themselves up the steps.
It was disciplined, heavy labor.
The mail coats kept them safe from rogue scratches, even if their movements were deliberate and slow.
Will’s task was field dressing the cuts, stepping in with Life Drain whenever a beast faltered on the flags.
[Life Drain x 6, Experience +90]
[Experience: 345/400]
The drowners were a sickly, mottled cyan, looking like bloated drowned corpses dragged from a stagnant pond, slick with algae and reeking of sulfur rot.
Their frames were parody sketches of men, complete with translucent scales, neck gills, spined ridges running down their vertebrae, and broad, webbed digits that made them lethal in the shallows.
Their lunging gait was comically awkward, hopping forward in low, spring-loaded bounds like wet toads.
Yet their claws were blunt; their true danger lay in dragging prey beneath the surface to crush the throat with their needle teeth.
“Will! Lend a hand on the left flank, more are crawling through the conduit!”
Four more cyan shapes scrambled over the sluice rim, hissing through their gills as they charged the gap.
Will drew the White Widow with a crisp rasp of silvered steel.
The balance was intoxicating.
The lead necrophage bounded forward, its head a grotesque cluster of swollen fish skin and milky, lidless eyes.
Will stepped into the stride, bringing the silver edge across in a level, horizontal plane.
Shk.
The blade passed through scales, sinew, and cervical vertebrae like a hot wire through butter.
The gurgling hiss cut off in mid-breath.
Will stood frozen for half a beat, staring at the clean cross-section of the neck.
He had put his full weight behind the strike, but the sheer lethality of the refined silver was terrifying.
He kicked the headless carcass down the wet stone and turned the blade into a whirlwind.
Silver flashed through the gloom.
Every swing sheared webbed arms from sockets, parted rib cages, and severed spines with clean, effortless precision.
He finally understood why Geralt’s skirmishes always left such gruesome carnage in the dirt; when monstrous muscle met a razor edge of pure silver, anatomy simply ceased to resist.
It took immense stamina, but the release was unmatched.
Salat and his four kinsmen watched in frozen shock.
Beside their grinding, conservative wall, the youth had dismantled four necrophages in thirty seconds flat, moving with terrifying economy.
[Life Drain x 4, Experience +60]
[You have reached Level 5. Free Attribute Points +1]
[Experience: 5/500]
The chime brought no satisfaction.
A sudden, violent tremor rippled through Will’s awareness.
His golden eyes snapped toward the black pipe mouths feeding the cistern.
Dozens of vibrant, pulsing emerald points were erupting across the subterranean map, multiplying by the second, pouring through the flooded galleries from every direction.
“Salat! Drop the gear and pull the men back!” Will bellowed, panic cracking his voice.
“Out of the shaft, now!”
“What is it?!”
“Move!” Will roared, dragging the nearest knight toward the ladder.
“The whole nest is flooding the pipes!”