New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
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Several months earlier.
Winter.
The courtyard of Kaer Morhen.
Eskel’s sword turned in clean, effortless arcs.
Three windmill dummies hammered at him in rotation, yet he moved through their strikes with room enough to speak.
“We learn swordsmanship so that even when one man faces three, he can still find a way to turn the fight and kill his opponents.”
Wide-eyed, Marek asked the next question.
“What about one against five, and they have crossbows?”
“Then you learn how to stay alive and look for a way out.”
“What about one against ten?”
“Then you’re finished.
Die politely.”
The witcher slipped between the three spinning windmills, removed the cloth covering his eyes, and looked at Marek.
His scarred face was calm, almost gentle.
“Remember this.
Witchers aren’t knights.
Fighting many at once is impressive, but given the choice, I prefer many of us against one of them.
“Fully armed, with bombs and Signs, a witcher can do astonishing damage.
So what?
That breaks our rules, and more importantly, no one pays us for it.
“In certain terrain, under certain conditions, we might fight ten men or even twenty.
But instead of discussing how to survive that, think about how not to end up there.
Especially against regular troops in formation.
When you see soldiers lined up properly, the reasonable voice in your head should be telling you to run as far as possible.
“Swordsmanship matters.
Choosing the right opponent is what lets you live long enough to use it.”
When Eskel said those words, the scars across his face twisted in ugly lines.
Remembering them now, Marek found them strangely warm.
***
Angoulême stood facing a female elf.
From behind, Marek could not see the elf’s face, but her lean figure and twin one-handed swords said enough.
If she could hold Angoulême at bay, even briefly, she was not much weaker.
Thanks to Eskel’s lessons, Marek knew what the simplest move was.
He drew his steel sword with a sharp hiss, deliberately dragging the blade along the inside of the scabbard to make the sound carry.
The elf’s attention flicked toward him.
Angoulême seized that instant.
She rushed in like a hunting cat, both hands on her sword.
Her first blow knocked the elf’s left-hand blade aside.
Her left fist smashed into the elf’s sword arm, blocking the recovery, and the pommel in her right hand came down without mercy against the side of the elf’s head.
The blow made a dull, anvil-heavy crack.
The elf spun once and crashed to the ground, then lay still.
Marek quickly raised a hand to stop Angoulême from stabbing down to finish her.
He first kicked both fallen swords far away, then took out a little powder and sprinkled it over the bare back of the elf’s hand.
After a short wait, confirming there was no reaction, he crouched and turned her over.
The elf had hair as black as charcoal, loose and thick around her shoulders.
Thin braids framed both temples.
Her lips were narrow, her brows patterned with delicate tattooing, her forehead high.
A swelling blood-dark bruise had already risen where the pommel had struck her skull.
She wore a dark green tunic beneath simple handmade leather armor.
Tight sheepskin breeches covered her legs, and riding boots her feet.
She carried two ornaments.
One was a necklace made of thin leather cords wrapped several times around her throat, strung with carved golden wooden beads.
The other made Marek frown: a squirrel tail tied at her belt.
She was Scoia’tael.
The Scoia’tael had begun as nonhuman resistance born from human oppression and discrimination.
After bloody crackdowns, protest had turned into armed revolt, and armed revolt into guerrilla war in the deep woods.
From half-drunken tavern talk in Vergen, Marek vaguely remembered the name of the Scoia’tael commander around Flotsam.
Iorveth.
Damn it.
The name and the stories attached to it made him want to turn and run.
But there was one thing he still had to test.
He drew his steel sword and lightly set the edge near the elf’s throat.
The voices came again.
“Kill her.”
“Do it.
She’s Scoia’tael.
Her hands must be bloody.
Killing her saves lives.”
“Kill her.
Open her throat.”
“Just push.
She won’t even feel pain.”
The familiar pattern returned, layered whispers overlapping one another.
This time, though, the volume was weak, almost a murmur.
Nothing like the roaring pressure he had heard before.
When he drew the sword back, the voices stopped at once.
Marek considered the difference between the two incidents and sank into thought.
Angoulême, standing guard nearby, noticed him testing the blade and sheathing it again.
After a moment, she stepped forward quietly.
She patted his shoulder, her voice unexpectedly gentle.
Don’t force yourself.
If you can’t do it, I’ll do it.”
Marek shook his head, pulled her wrist aside before she could thrust, and motioned for her to sheathe her sword.
Angoulême kept trying.
“There’s no shame in it.
If you can’t kill, it’s because the captain’s too kind.
That’s fine.
I’m willing to kill for you.”
Marek pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Forget Lambert’s nonsense.
I’m not having a problem, and I can do it.
I just need to understand a few things first.”
For reasons he could not fully explain, he had never mentioned the killing voices to Lambert.
Not on the first day he tried to act like a hero, not after waking from illness, though he had had countless chances.
Instinct told him this was a secret he should not share.
Angoulême still looked ready to argue, but one sharp look from her captain made her fall silent.
Marek took two potions from the Bottomless Herb Satchel, lifted the elf’s head, and poured them down in order.
Then he tore half the sash from her waist, considered for a moment, dipped it in blood, and wrote a message in broad, sweeping letters Angoulême could not understand.
After that, he hid both elf and message in the brush.
“Move,” Marek said, unusually grim.
“We’re going to Flotsam.
Fast.”
Angoulême fell in beside him.
“She’s Scoia’tael.
Won’t she tell her friends when she wakes?”
“That’s why she drank two potions.” Marek kept a brisk, steady pace.
“And that’s why we need to put as much distance between us as we can.”
“You sound nervous.
Is it that bad?”
“If you listened when people talked in taverns instead of grinning into your ale, you’d know the Scoia’tael leader in this region is Iorveth, the son of a bitch.”
Angoulême shut her mouth and lengthened her stride.
Even someone as reckless as her knew Iorveth’s name.
He was Aen Seidhe, a former Vrihedd officer and now one of the North’s most feared Scoia’tael commanders, famous above all for his hatred of humans.
After becoming one of the Scoia’tael commandos, he had continued to bear direct responsibility for raids, burnings, and slaughter in human villages.
The Scoia’tael collected everything they could.
Including human heads.
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Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.