Three days down the dirt trail, Will was caked in road dust from boots to collar.
He sat tall on his brown gelding, two scabbarded blades hanging at his hips: his Skellige steel on his left, and Tris’s heavy Nilfgaardian cavalry piece strapped across his saddle.
His course followed the bends of the River Ina, aiming toward the brooding silhouettes of the Sodden heights.
He gave the reed beds a wide berth.
As an old river fisherman had told him over an ale:
“Mind your mouth by the water, lad. One, you won’t spook the carp. Two, you won’t draw the drowners.”
A solitary water hag was clumsy enough on dry soil, but splash around long enough and five more would crawl from the silt before you could cock a crossbow.
Even a wandering witcher avoided getting cornered in knee-deep mud.
Reining in atop a ridge, Will looked out toward the distant footprint of Castle Armeria, seat of the realm before the war came through.
Every hamlet between here and the ramparts had been leveled to blackened timbers.
This valley had been the anvil of the first Northern War.
Nilfgaard’s legions and the Allied Kings had collided here in a storm of blood, and the kingdom of Sodden had paid the butcher’s bill.
The proud fortress was now a jagged jaw of collapsed stonework, broad breaches torn through its curtain walls.
From this height, the unburied burial pits looked like clusters of dead black beetles rotting in the sun.
When the peace terms dried on the vellum, the realm had been split along the ribbon of the Yaruga.
Cintra and Upper Sodden were stripped away, annexed directly into the empire as conquered provinces, while Lower Sodden remained under the heavy hand of Temerian bailiffs.
…
Will pulled the reins taut, bringing the gelding to an abrupt halt.
He rubbed his eyes, staring through the pines.
Thin trails of white woodsmoke drifted lazily above the canopy.
A settlement out here?
Did the Nilfgaardian vanguard miss a spot with their torches?
A glance at the rock formations explained the mystery.
The track cut into the lower skirt of the Mahakam foothills, well off the royal carriage road leading up to the castle.
Curiosity piqued, he guided his mount through the thick spruce branches until the woods opened into a secluded clearing.
A proper medieval hamlet lay tucked between the slopes: squat stone cottages and timber shanties clustered around muddy paths, moss clinging thick to ancient shingle roofs.
The craftsmanship was a strange patchwork.
The central stone buildings looked weathered by centuries, while several timber sheds had been thrown together recently with green pine, completely out of step with local masonry.
Will led his mount by the bit up to a leaning post.
The rough pine board read Calfador.
He had never heard the name mentioned in the temple archives.
The rutted lane was eerily deserted.
Through his life awareness, Will could feel the faint, nervous warmth of bodies huddled behind heavy shutters and bolted crossbars.
Every villager was tucked away out of sight.
Except one.
He followed a stronger spark of vitality toward an open yard.
To the left, rough twine was strung between two apple trees, bearing faded sheets and woolen shirts. Find the original chapter at g.com.
At the center stood a single-story cottage with a thick sod roof.
Beside it lay the smoldering skeleton of a collapsed outbuilding, its beams charred to charcoal, the stink of fresh soot hanging heavy in the cool air.
A stocky dwarf stood before the ruins, clenching a ball-peen hammer in a thick fist, staring blankly into the ashes.
“Good day. Mind telling me what happened here?”
The dwarf turned on his heels, craning his neck up with a wide, manic grin.
“Oh, marvelous day, stranger! Wonderful evening last night, you see. Felt a slight chill in the marrow, so I put a torch to my own bloody workshop to keep my toes warm! Splendid blaze. Roasted a string of blood sausages over the coals, smelled bloody fantastic!”
A stained linen kerchief was knotted across his bald scalp, with a grizzled beard tumbling past his collarbone down to his leather apron.
Before Will could get a word out, the grin peeled away into a snarl.
The dwarf’s index finger stabbed violently toward the charred beams, his voice cracking into a roar.
“Fool! Look at the heap, what else could have bloody happened?!”
“A corpse-eater came barging through my back window in the dead of night! I grabbed a tallow torch to drive the beast off, dropped it into the oil barrel, and the whole workshop went up like pitch! Twenty years of masterwork, gone in smoke!”
“Gone, the whole lot!”
Will leaned back on his heel, casually avoiding the shower of spit.
The furious old creature was oddly entertaining.
“Mind your mouth, old man. Did your mother never teach you manners, or do you just rinse your gums with tavern swill every dawn?”
He glanced at the ruined joists.
“Besides, ghouls don’t go wandering into village yards for casual visits, you half-blind mule.”
The dwarf let out a ragged breath, spreading two calloused hands in defeat.
“Aye, you have me there. Anger got the better of my tongue. Felt like dropping two hundred crowns on a high-born maiden in Wyzima only to find her tangled up with the stable boy…”
“Enough, enough. Spare me your tavern tales,” Will interrupted, lifting an eyebrow.
“What about the rest of the folk? Why is the lane dead?”
The dwarf spat into the ash.
“Hiding under their straw beds, the lot of them. Strange folk, these humans. Genuinely believe that sliding a three-inch bolt keeps a monster from tearing their rafters down. Might as well lay out wine and cakes and invite the ghouls in for a harvest dance!”
Will put the pieces together quickly enough: desperate panic and sheer helplessness.
He glanced down at the tarnished silver brooch pinned to the apron.
“Master Bowen, is it? I can track down whatever brought that carrion down on your roof. But steel doesn’t leave the sheath for free.”
Will rolled a silver crown over the knuckles of his left hand.
Bowen’s eyes flicked to the twin hanks of steel at the boy’s belt, then locked onto the pale gold gleam in his irises.
“You’re no witcher. Where are your cat eyes? By the Great Mother, can’t a healthy lad do an honest turn for an old artisan without gouging him for coin?”
“Keep grumbling, then.”
Will offered a thin smirk, turned on his heel, and walked toward his horse without a backward glance.
Three…
two…
One.
“Hold your stride, lad!”
A quiet chuckle rose in Will’s throat.
“Fine,” Bowen grumbled, kicking a charred splinter.
“Find whatever crawled out of the earth to ruin me, and I’ll scrape together whatever coin is left in my strongbox. Won’t be much, mind you.”
“Fair enough. Tell me exactly what broke through your door.”
“I was sorting chisels by the bench when two ghouls burst through the timber partition. Slavering jaws, gray hides, claws like sickle blades. You know the rest.”
“That all? You sure you haven’t crossed anyone in this valley lately?”
“Not a soul! Lived among these clodhoppers for twenty winters. Never shorted an iron shoe, never cheated a weight, kept my repair rates lower than dirt. I came down from the peaks looking for a quiet spot to nurse my gout, that’s all.”
Will gave a curt nod and paced into the perimeter.
The contract fell right into his path; he had come south hunting necrophages anyway, and picking up some pocket money along the way was a welcome bonus.
From the temple scrolls, he knew the anatomy well enough: bipedal scavengers with elongated digits, sickle claws, bent backs, and an unmistakable reek of putrefying meat.
Stepping along the boundary, he checked the timber fence.
The cedar palisade stood unbroken, not a single stake splintered.
Interesting.
The scavengers were brazen enough to walk right through the front gap.
Will knelt by the mud near the lane, finding deep, gouged claw prints pressing south.
He tracked the trail toward the perimeter of the hamlet, where the sickening stink of rancid fat grew thick beneath a stand of weeping birches.
The signs were undeniable.
A ghoul left its foul musk wherever it dragged its belly.
The nest had to be an old barrow or a collapsed root cellar nearby.
Necrophages shunned open daylight and fire, hunting when the sun dipped beneath the hills.
Plain steel would carve through their hide well enough if swung with conviction.
The muddy impressions petered out in a patch of coarse shale a few hundred paces beyond the village fence.
Will shut his eyes, pulsing his life awareness outward.
Beneath the turf, four distinct, throbbing green lights flared into his senses.
He grinned.
No matter how deep a beast burrowed into the dark, life could not hide from the life that watched it.
He kicked through the carpet of rotting leaves and damp topsoil until the toe of his boot struck seasoned timber.
Clearing away the loam revealed a square wooden hatch, fitted with iron hinges and sunken flush with the shale.
Found you.
Then he frowned, examining the narrow frame.
The opening was barely three feet across, far too small for a man’s shoulders, yet framed with squared, dovetailed cedar joints.
Realization clicked into place.
Ghouls didn’t square timber frames, and they certainly didn’t hang iron-forged hinges.
A dwarf built this hole.
Now he wanted to see which local clansman wanted Bowen turned into ash.