Gerd had gone ahead to scout and came hurrying back half an hour later. He was plainly worked up, waving his arms before he was even within speaking distance. When he finally reached them, however, he gave no report. Instead, he pinched one nostril shut and blew the other with such force that the resulting blast could have served a shepherd for a horn.

“Don’t scare off the quarry,” Geralt growled under his breath. The little girl with mouse-gray hair beside him, however, seemed rather less offended by the Bear’s manners. Geralt glanced at Gerd. “Well? What’s ahead?”

Geralt bore Gerd no grudge, nor any particular hostility. Quite the opposite. The Bear School Witcher had traveled a great distance to find him, deliver a message, and then accompany him on this journey to retrieve someone. Gerd claimed he had done it for the sake of a friend they shared, but Geralt was grateful all the same. Still, the man was nothing like the other Bear School Witcher Geralt knew. Could he truly not rein in that wild, devil-may-care manner of his, even a little? They were refugees now, for Gods’ sake.

“There’s a settlement ahead,” Gerd said, entirely unmoved by Geralt’s growl. He wiped his fingers on the long hem hanging beneath his composite armor. “In a clearing. Three timber houses, a barn, a few little huts made of mud and straw. There’s a dog running loose in the yard, and smoke coming from a chimney. Someone’s cooking. Oatmeal porridge with milk.”

“You went into the kitchen?” Dandelion burst out laughing. “Had a peek inside the pot, did you? How else would you know it was oatmeal?”

Dandelion, the renowned Bard of the North, was the sort of “renowned” who could sing from beginning to end at a king’s banquet without drawing a single complaint, then receive the king’s personal thanks afterward. A heron feather adorned his elegant, fashionable cloth cap, while an ostentatious cherry-red doublet and matching breeches completed the ensemble. Ordinarily, he would also have been drenched in perfume, with beard and sideburns groomed to perfection. Such care greatly improved his chances of ending the night in bed with a nobleman’s wife or daughter after the performance.

At present, however, even that unmistakable cherry-red attire had accumulated so much grime that its color defied description. When Gerd found Geralt, the famous Bard had already been traveling with his Witcher friend. There was nothing unusual in that. In fact, every poem Dandelion had written about Witchers had been composed during his travels with Geralt. It was one of the reasons Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, could fairly be called the best-known Witcher in the world.

Naturally, when Geralt set out to retrieve his Child of Destiny, the Bard had insisted on joining him with great enthusiasm. Before they had even crossed Cintra’s border, Dandelion had already settled on three or four possible themes for his newest poem. Unfortunately, just as he came up with a fifth, the Nilfgaardians invaded.

A journey to retrieve a child became a flight from war.

Fortunately, perhaps Fate truly did guide certain footsteps, because they had still managed to find the White Wolf’s Child of Destiny.

“Don’t underestimate me, Bard.” Gerd grinned beneath his great beard, revealing yellowed teeth as a wave of foul breath escaped. He normally shaved as soon as his whiskers grew out, but they had long since become a full beard, and under the miserable conditions of the road it had quickly matted into greasy clumps. “It’s winter, so smells don’t carry well. I won’t swear to much else, but the smell of food? That I know.”

“But,” Geralt cut in, his voice low and steady, “doesn’t that make it even stranger?”

“What’s strange about it? Oatmeal sounds good to me. I’d gladly have some. Little Ciri must miss the taste of oats and milk too, eh?” Dandelion winked at the mouse-gray-haired girl.

The girl who had once been lively and bright merely gave him a small smile. No cheeky retort followed, none of the tomboyish spark Geralt had described. Just the smile, thin and brief, before her face went still again.

Dandelion knew why. Word of the horror in Cintra had already spread, and even thinking too closely about what had happened there made something cold tighten beneath his ribs. Geralt had once called the girl “bursting with life.” After seeing all that with her own eyes, the fact that she could still summon even that faint smile said more about her mettle than any brave words could have.

“Geralt’s right, actually,” Gerd said. “And keep quiet, Dandelion. This isn’t the time for poetry. If there’s milk in the oatmeal, there must be a cow. Any farmer who saw the black smoke of war would take his cattle and run for the forest. So why haven’t these farmers fled? That’s why I didn’t do anything rash. I came back so we could discuss it.”

By “we,” Gerd clearly meant Geralt. His eyes stayed on the Wolf School Witcher, waiting for him to help make the decision. Ciri had a quick little mind, but grief still sat too close beneath her skin, and she was young besides. As for Dandelion, relying on him for sound judgment was an adventure in itself.

In the end, the scales were tipped by a long, hollow churn from Geralt’s stomach.

“We should… take a look,” Geralt said, rubbing a hand over his face. “These days, you take every chance you get to find food. Otherwise, dying would be damned stupid.”

The four set off with Gerd leading the way. When they reached the place, they found his description remarkably accurate. A patch of woodland had been felled and cleared, leaving an open space with three timber houses, a barn, and several small thatched huts clustered near the center. The farmyard was a broad morass of wet mud, slick enough to catch and reflect the moonlight.

A broken-down fence enclosed the buildings and a small patch of neglected farmland. Inside it, a filthy dog barked furiously. Smoke rose from the roof of one timber house, drifting lazily above the straw thatch.

“That smoke smells wonderful.” The Bard lifted his nose and breathed in with something approaching rapture. “Especially after my nose has grown accustomed to the stench of war… Ah. The smell of cooking fires suddenly seems almost poetic.”

In the end, they decided Gerd and Dandelion would approach and negotiate. Perhaps they could buy some food, or barter for it if coin proved unwelcome. Geralt would remain concealed behind them, watching for trouble and keeping Ciri close. In times like these, even buying a sack of oats meant being ready to draw steel a heartbeat later.

Gerd and Dandelion slipped cautiously from the bushes and headed toward the houses. They moved slowly, studying everything around them as they went. The dog caught their scent and erupted into frantic barking, racing back and forth across the yard while ignoring every soothing word and whistle the Bard offered.

The door of one hut opened.

Geralt raised the Crossbow in one smooth motion and drew the string taut, then lowered it almost at once.

A short, slender girl with a long braid burst through the doorway. She flung her arms about and shouted something. Gerd spread his hands and called back. The girl only shouted louder.

Geralt could hear her voice, but the night wind howled between them and tore the words apart before they reached him.

Gerd and Dandelion were closer. They heard her clearly.

Both men turned at once and hurried back toward the trees. Geralt raised the Crossbow again, pivoting as he searched the darkness for a target. Gerd was still moving with reasonable composure. Dandelion, on the other hand… there was no charitable way to put it. He ran panting like a dying dog.

“Smallpox!” Dandelion shouted.

“There’s been a Plague here!”

“Oh, Gods,” Geralt murmured, lowering the Crossbow.

When the two men came back, Geralt thrust out a hand, stopping them before they could get too close. At the same time, he pulled Ciri behind him and kept her well away from them.

“Did either of you touch anything in that yard? Anything at all?” Geralt asked carefully.

Witchers were largely immune to ordinary disease, but Dandelion and Ciri were ordinary humans. To them, a Plague could kill as surely as a sword.

“N-no. That dog wouldn’t let us get close…” Dandelion’s tongue seemed determined to knot itself between his teeth.

“You should thank that mongrel. Gerd doesn’t need to.” Geralt looked up at the sky. “May the Gods grant it a long life and a pile of bones higher than the Amell Range. The girl who came out of the house, did she have blisters?”

“No. She looked healthy. It’s her relatives who are infected. They’re all in another timber house. She said a lot of people have already died too. Gods… Geralt, the wind’s blowing this way!”

“Nothing to be afraid of.” Geralt waved it aside. “As long as you didn’t touch anyone with Smallpox, there’s no reason to worry… assuming there really is Smallpox. The girl might simply have been trying to frighten you off.”

“No.” Gerd was considerably calmer than the Bard. “There’s a pit behind the house. Bodies in it. The girl doesn’t have the strength to bury the dead properly, so she’s been throwing them into the pit.”

“All right.” Geralt sighed and slowly eased the tension from the Crossbow string. Thanks to an exchange of ideas with Lannor, the Wolf School now carried Crossbows as well, specifically Hand Crossbows. “The oats and milk may smell good, but we won’t be tasting them.”

“But you and Gerd could drink it,” Ciri said, tugging at Geralt’s clothes.

“Yes, we could. But then we’d have to come into contact with the sickroom and whatever’s been used inside it. No guarantee we wouldn’t carry something away on us and pass it to you or Dandelion.”

With that, the four prepared to turn back.

Then the dog in the yard began barking madly again.

“Down,” the white-haired Witcher hissed, dropping into a crouch.

A band of Riders appeared on the far side of the clearing, emerging through a gap between the trees. They whistled and shouted as they rode once around the farmstead, then spurred their horses straight into the yard. Even in the dim, wavering torchlight, the great sun-wheel emblems on their clothing were unmistakable.

“Twenty-seven,” Gerd said after a rapid count.

“Who are they?” Dandelion had flattened himself against the ground with impressive speed, one hand pinning the heron feather on his cap as he raised his head to peer ahead.

“Nilfgaardians,” Geralt judged. “Look at that gleaming black Armor. Lacquered steel.”

The Riders shouted and laughed around the yard. One struck the dog with the shaft of his spear, sending the animal fleeing with its tail tucked tight. The long-braided girl rushed from the house and began shouting again.

This time her warning did nothing.

The men paid no attention. One Rider urged his horse forward, seized one of the girl’s braids, and dragged her away from the doorway, hauling her through the moonlit mud. The others dismounted and joined him, dragging her across the yard. They tore away her underskirt and threw her onto a heap of rotting straw.

The girl fought with everything she had, heels digging into filth, hands clawing for purchase. Against that pack of men, it meant nothing.

Only one Soldier stayed away from the sport. He remained by the fence, guarding the tethered horses.

A long, piercing scream cut through the night, followed by a short cry of pain.

After that, the girl made no sound.

“So these are Nilfgaardian Soldiers!” The last trace of a smile vanished from Ciri’s young face. “These are the Soldiers who boast of being ‘civilized’ and ‘disciplined’!”

Geralt had expected to need a hand on Ciri’s shoulder to keep the girl, still raw from everything she had endured, from doing something reckless. Then he remembered what those horrors had already taught her. The liveliness was still there, the stubborn spark had not died, but much of her old heedless impulsiveness had been burned away.

That, apparently, was what people called growing up.

At that moment, Geralt would have preferred the Ciri who had charged headlong through Brokilon Forest without a second thought.

Dandelion shook his head, one hand still pressed over the heron feather on his cap. “They’re obviously not afraid of Smallpox. Or they think Smallpox was just an excuse the girl made up to keep them away… Melitele, twenty-seven grown men. They’ll use that girl until she’s dead!”

“They may not fear Smallpox, but they should still fear swords.”

Gerd’s voice remained calm, but there was iron beneath it now. His hand, clad in Studded Leather Gloves, reached back toward the sword Hilt over his shoulder.

“Are you mad?” Dandelion stared at the face half-hidden behind Gerd’s thick beard, horror widening his eyes. “Those are twenty-seven Nilfgaardian Soldiers! Trained men, sharp swords, gleaming Armor! Not twenty-seven thugs and rioters!”

“So?” Geralt said beside him. “You want us to stand here and watch, Dandelion?”

That frightened the renowned Bard even more. He seemed to shrink in on himself like a rabbit freshly driven from its burrow.

The white-haired Witcher retightened the leather thong binding his hair. Ciri looked up at him, her eyes bright in the darkness, and Geralt held the girl’s gaze.

“No, Dandelion… I’ve had enough of watching people behave like monsters right in front of me.”

A terrible smile opened silently amid Gerd’s beard.

“You’re mad…” Dandelion shouted. “You’re going to take on the whole lot of them? What the fuck has gotten into you? Planning to play the hero and rescue the maiden?”

“Shut up,” Geralt called without looking back.

“All right, all right!” Dandelion threw up his hands, apparently past caring. “What about me, then? I’m coming with you! Give me something to do!”

“There’s nothing you can do. Stay here with me,” Ciri said, moving beside the Bard.

Dandelion immediately put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her farther back.

“You shut up too, little girl!” The Bard was trembling, but his voice grew firmer with every word. “I’ve followed Geralt into more dangers than you could even imagine! What’s this compared to those? And now, after coming this far, you expect me to back out?”

“I’ve never trained with anything meant for hurting people, but I can damned well throw stones! I’ll stay off to the side and pelt the bastards. Even if a few of them break away and come kill me, that still means fewer of them for you to deal with!”

The Bard sounded as though he had already composed the final verse of his own heroic death. Gerd and Geralt both broke into laughter.

Dandelion scowled. “What are you laughing at? I’m serious!”

“No one thinks you aren’t, great Bard.” Gerd clapped him on the shoulder. “But things aren’t that bad. You’ll live to tell everyone about this day.”

Then, beneath the murk of the night, the two Witchers stepped out from their hiding place while a Bard emerged off to one side.

The Witchers’ right hands reached over their shoulders and drew steel swords. Their left hands raised loaded Crossbows at the same time, leveling them at the snarling, jeering shapes cavorting beneath the torchlight, those things that called themselves “men.”

The main difficulty now was making sure none of these men could call for help.

Geralt’s group had reached Cintra at the very beginning of the war and had lived through virtually the entire campaign that destroyed the kingdom. By now, they had learned something of how the Nilfgaardian army operated. These men were scouts sent ahead of the main force. Most patrols numbered fifteen and followed regular routes through sectors laid out by their command, arranged so that if anything went wrong, at least three other squads would always be close enough to answer a signal arrow.

If a signal arrow went up and Geralt’s group failed to break contact quickly, then erase the traces of their retreat, they could expect more than forty fully armed Nilfgaard Cavalry thundering after them.

Geralt and Gerd knew their own abilities well enough. The scum ahead had all dismounted for their “fun,” turning themselves into Heavily armored infantry. Even if the two Witchers could not kill every last one, they could still withdraw alive. But if that signal arrow went up and brought more than forty Nilfgaard Cavalry down on them…

“You still have any potion?” Geralt asked as they walked.

The light was poor, but even without taking Cat potion, a witcher could see far better at night than an ordinary man. Until they entered the Nilfgaardians’ field of vision, they could conserve their strength by walking and shorten the distance they would have to cover in the final rush.

The Bear School Witcher grinned. “Potion… hah. Used the last of it when the bad days first began. You’d have better luck expecting Dandelion to knock one of them down with a stone.”

Geralt shook his head, unsurprised. He had expected as much. His own potion had been spent at the beginning of the war as well. Back then the front had swept directly over them, and staying alive had been harder than it was now. Between them, they had swallowed every useful drug they possessed simply to survive.

The Rider guarding the horses spotted them. He immediately pulled a Spear from the Saddle and shouted. Another Nilfgaardian Soldier appeared from behind the fence, his belt hanging around his neck with a sword still attached to it. He was fumbling with the fastenings of his breeches while trying to put his leather codpiece back into place.

Geralt and Gerd were already close.

Geralt could hear the men laughing as they amused themselves with the girl on the straw. He drew several deep breaths. Each one fed the cold pressure building behind his ribs instead of smothering it. He could have forced himself calm.

He did not want to.

He wanted some “fun” of his own.

“Who goes there? Stop!” the Rider guarding the horses shouted, raising his Spear. “What are you doing here?”

Neither Witcher answered.

Two pairs of eyes gleamed faintly in the darkness, and each found a target.

Twang. Twang.

The strings of two Hand Crossbows snapped forward.

The Crossbow Bolt fired by the Bear School Witcher punched straight through the horse guard’s eye. He let out a Beast-like howl and toppled helplessly from his mount, crashing down hard enough to flatten several fence stakes beside the horse’s legs.

He really should not have removed his helmet in preparation for the entertainment to come.

The Crossbow Bolt from the Wolf School Witcher buried itself between the legs of the Nilfgaardian Soldier who had just drawn his sword.

The man still had not managed to put his codpiece back on.

After taking the Bolt there, he could not even scream. Only hoarse, choking gasps escaped him as he clutched himself and curled on the ground, eyes bulging like those of a dead fish.

Before the others could understand what had happened, much less seize their weapons, the Witchers were among them.

Gerd’s Armor was far more reliable than Geralt’s, so he took the lead while Geralt followed close behind to cover him. The Bear School steel sword swept through a perfect arc, then lashed into the surrounding Nilfgaardian Soldiers like a whip.

For an ordinary man, hacking a Longsword against plate Armor was little more than a way to stagger an opponent. Killing through it was another matter entirely. For a Bear School Witcher who had mastered the cut, however, it could be done.

Neither torso nor limb could stop the edge of the steel sword. Blood splashed across Gerd’s face, and he had no time to wipe it away. Falling bodies and spurting blood quickly taught the Nilfgaardian Soldiers exactly how different the two men in their midst were from ordinary opponents.

One Soldier still had his breeches tangled around his knees when a sword opened his carotid artery. He toppled backward, his unsatisfied cock swinging absurdly as he fell.

That one was Geralt’s work. When Gerd struck at that height, the head generally came off with it.

Another Soldier had stripped completely naked. He threw both hands over his head, only for the Bear School steel sword to sever both wrists at once. He had shed his Armor too quickly, and now, naked on a battlefield, terror had reduced him to instinct.

Somehow, he had thought flesh and wrist bones might stop steel.

Gerd and Geralt’s combined surprise attack was brutally effective. In the first clash alone, at least ten enemies went down bleeding.

But the training and discipline of the Nilfgaardian Soldiers did not allow the two Witchers to keep their advantage for long.

Clang!

A crossbow bolt came out of the darkness like a viper, streaking straight toward Gerd’s armpit.

A golden Mana Shield flared into being. The Crossbow Bolt struck it, and the shield shattered with the impact, stopping the Bolt before it could slip through the weak point in Gerd’s Armor.

Even so, sweat sprang cold across the forehead of the Bear School Witcher who had been carving through men only moments before. A crossbow bolt through the armpit, without potion at hand, was as good as a death sentence.

And the danger was not over.

“Gerd! Watch your feet!”

Geralt’s cat eyes swept over the Bolt that the Quen Sign had knocked aside. His pupils contracted sharply.

Gerd did not waste time asking why. He pivoted sideways on the toes of one foot and shifted a full step away.

An instant later, there came a violent crack.

The Crossbow Bolt exploded beside Gerd’s foot like an oversized firecracker. Metal fragments scraped across the Greave on his lower leg, throwing a shower of sparks.

It was an explosive Crossbow Bolt.

An Alchemical Product, and an effective one, but its cost was nothing like that of an ordinary Crossbow Bolt. In the armies of the North, no Soldier could expect such expensive equipment among his standard issue. If he wanted one, he had to pay the quartermaster out of his own pocket.

In the Nilfgaardian army, they were standard equipment.

“Crossbowman with special Bolts!”

The leg caught by the blast had gone partly numb. Gerd shouted toward Geralt at once.

“He’ll have the signal arrow too! Get over there and kill him!”

Geralt’s battlefield instincts were no duller than Gerd’s. Before the Bear School Witcher had even finished shouting, he was already surging in one direction.

Then Gerd’s eyes widened.

Geralt faced a clumsy opponent, yet instead of cutting cleanly through a weak point in the man’s Armor, his strike landed wrong.

The sound of a Blade biting into a gap in Armor was very different from the sound of the Flat of the Blade slamming against it.

Geralt’s face darkened at once.

A moment earlier, while shouting the warning to Gerd, he had hurriedly met an enemy’s sword before immediately breaking away and rushing toward the crossbowman.

Now he understood what that hasty Clash of Steel had done.

It had knocked the Hasuji of the sword in his hand out of alignment.

At that same moment, a sharp, unmistakable shriek split the night.

Geralt and Gerd stared toward the sound, brows drawn tight, as the piercing report burst overhead.

The signal arrow.

They had failed to stop it.

As a battlefield weapon, the Longsword demanded far more technique and maintenance than a Warhammer or battle axe. By the ordinary requirements of war, that made it poorly suited to serving as a Soldier’s primary weapon.

Geralt had just proved the point rather thoroughly.

In that hurried Clash of Steel with his enemy, he had failed to control the angle. The basic Wolf School steel sword in his hand had not merely taken a notch along its edge. Nearly a quarter of the Blade had been knocked out of alignment with the rest.

Taken together, the damage had thrown the Longsword’s Hasuji completely off.

Hasuji was one of the keys to whether a cutting weapon could actually kill. Put simply, it was the ability to control the angle at which the Blade entered its target. An inexperienced swordsman might swing with all his strength only to have the Flat of the Blade slap against his enemy instead of the Blade cutting into flesh.

“Damn it!”

Geralt cursed through clenched teeth. His left hand shot forward, and with a dull boom, a cold white shockwave burst from his palm, driving the enemy before him back two steps and sparing Geralt from the man’s counterattack.

There was no time to think. He threw away the ruined steel sword and drew his spare weapon from his belt.

A locally made Cintra Longsword.

Neither the craftsmanship nor the materials came close to those of a Witcher Longsword. It was village work by comparison, but at least it could still cut.

“Sorry. I botched it.”

The enemy pressure forced Geralt back beside Gerd, and the apology came reluctantly through his teeth. According to his plan, he should have cut down two enemies within two seconds and ended up a single step from the crossbowman. Then he would have aimed an Aard Sign at the man’s hands. Even if the blast failed to destroy the man’s stone crossbow, there was no chance the signal arrow would have reached the sky.

At best, the crossbowman might have managed to loose it at a bad angle, burying it in the ground without so much as a muffled fart. The earth beneath them was thick, clinging mud. Even if the man picked the signal arrow up again, clearing the muck from the channels inside its head would take time.

But a perfect plan meant nothing when the execution failed.

“Doesn’t matter. Things aren’t that bad yet. We’ve killed plenty already, and it’s not too late to break away.”

Gerd swept his sword sideways. A Nilfgaardian Soldier’s neck gave with a sound like a great bundle of celery stalks being snapped at once. The head, still wearing Nilfgaard’s distinctive winged helmet, spun into the air.

Then Gerd raised an arm across the side of his face.

Three sparks burst against it.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Three Crossbow Bolts ricocheted from the vambrace of his Superior Ursine Armor.

The crossbowman carrying the special Crossbow Bolts was no longer the only threat at range. The other ranged Soldiers in the Nilfgaardian scouting party had recovered their composure as well.

Gerd and Geralt had carved through the enemy at first because they held the advantage of surprise. Now fewer than ten Nilfgaardians remained, but those survivors had their Armor properly fitted and knew exactly how to fight. The panic of the ambush had vanished after that first bloody exchange.

Three Nilfgaardian Soldiers pulled two large Shields from the backs of their dead comrades. Geralt and Gerd had deliberately killed the shield-bearers first because they knew how troublesome those Shields would become. Once the Nilfgaardians shook off their panic, however, their training returned quickly. They recovered the equipment they needed and adjusted their tactics accordingly.

Flickering firelight gleamed across the blood-smeared great sun-wheel emblems on the Shields.

The three Soldiers carrying them stayed tucked behind the broad surfaces, without even trying to reach around and swing their swords. Their only concern was closing in on the two Witchers and steadily shrinking the space in which they could move.

It was one form of Battle Formation coordination.

Shield-bearers advanced to compress the enemy’s room to maneuver. Spearmen thrust through the gaps. Archers and crossbowmen waited behind them for an opening to shoot.

Fail to break through the Shields, and sooner or later the formation would squeeze you into a corner and punch enough holes through you to make a sieve.

Witchers, however, were not ordinary Warriors.

Even if their Longswords could not simply hack those Shields apart, they still had other tools.

“You used a Sign just now. This one’s mine. Axii.”

Gerd calmly stated the tactic. The seasoned White Wolf standing back-to-back with him understood at once and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Gerd’s left hand snapped toward an approaching shield-bearer. A wash of white Magical Aura suddenly covered the man’s eyes, and his movements faltered for an instant.

Geralt did not even turn his head.

The moment the medallion at his neck trembled in response to the Chaos magic of the Axii Sign, he lunged backward past Gerd and straight toward the man in front of the Bear School Witcher.

Shnk!

Geralt did not trust the quality of the Longsword in his hand, so he did not cut.

He thrust.

His precise swordsmanship caught the instant when the dazed enemy let his Shield sag. The Blade drove straight into the man’s mouth.

Geralt and Gerd immediately burst through the opening in the three-sided encirclement.

Geralt had barely taken two steps when an Arrow hissed past, so close that it nearly brushed the front of his arm. Cold sweat prickled across his skin.

He glanced back.

A Nilfgaardian Soldier who had just lowered his Greatbow was clutching the Armor around his upper arm, his face twisted in pain. In the mud beside his feet, a stone that had no business being there had just landed.

Dandelion.

He had actually hit someone.

More than that, the stone had knocked the Soldier’s shot off course.

The Bard had just saved Geralt’s life.

The White Wolf had no time to thank his friend. Quite the opposite.

“Run!” Geralt shouted desperately toward Dandelion. “Dandelion, run!”

These Nilfgaardian Soldiers were encased in full Plate Armor. On foot, there was no chance they could catch a Witcher. By the time they mounted their horses, Geralt and Gerd could already be across the clearing and among the trees.

Trying to hunt a Witcher on horseback in a forest was little different from trying to kill yourself.

One moment of disorientation from an Axii Sign could send a pursuer from the saddle and break his neck.

Dandelion was another matter.

He was an ordinary man. Worse, he was the sort of ordinary man whose kidneys were weak and whose constitution had never inspired confidence.

Farther away, unable to read the flow of the battle and convinced that he had finally made himself useful, the Bard crouched behind a shallow rise, muttering encouragement to himself as he prepared to throw a few more stones and help his friends.

Geralt saw the danger immediately.

The archer who had taken the stone needed only a brief glance toward the direction it had come from to pinpoint Dandelion’s position. The light was poor, but for an archer, judging direction and distance from the path of a thrown object was basic training.

The man drew a Nilfgaard Short sword from his belt and started toward Dandelion.

Against an enemy armed with nothing but stones, a Short sword was more than enough.

Geralt was still running after Gerd, but only because his legs had continued the motion without waiting for thought.

Two steps later, realization struck.

He wheeled around and sprinted toward Dandelion.

Whenever he traveled with the Bard, Geralt was forever muttering things like, “Any god will do. Just take this nuisance away.”

Now that some god seemed ready to oblige, Geralt’s body made the decision for him.

He ran for his friend.

And the bad news kept coming.

The signal arrow had gone up only moments ago, yet from the distant woods came the growing thunder of hooves, a mass of horses racing toward the clearing.

But…

Wait.

Thud. Thud. Thud!

Confusion broke across Geralt’s face, which until then had gone almost numb.

Why, amid the pounding hooves of all those horses… did it sound as though one particularly heavy buffalo was charging with them?

The Nilfgaardian Soldiers clearly assumed their reinforcements had arrived. Unlike Witchers, their hearing was not keen enough to pick out anything strange amid the approaching thunder of hooves. So even as the sound drew closer, the archer carrying the Nilfgaard Short sword continued toward Dandelion.

Soon he stood atop the low rise where the Bard had hidden himself, looking down with mockery and malice, as if eyeing an old hen destined for the cooking pot.

Dandelion happened to have just picked up another stone and was preparing to raise his head and throw it. When he looked up, he found the archer standing above him.

At that instant, the Bard, who had never possessed a shred of combat experience, discovered a remarkable presence of mind. He summoned the most genuine emotion of his life, pointed behind the archer, and stared in utter astonishment.

The archer merely sneered and began walking down the slope toward him, one step at a time. He held the Short sword low beside his waist, apparently intending to thrust upward into Dandelion’s belly.

But the hoofbeats were already very close.

Dandelion did not even get the chance to show his fear.

A violent gust suddenly tore toward him, dragged in the wake of an enormous black shadow. It howled past Dandelion and, like some nightmare out of a children’s tale, carried the grinning Nilfgaardian archer away with it.

It happened so abruptly that one moment the stink of the man’s breath was still curling beneath Dandelion’s nose.

The next, the entire man was gone.

Simply gone.

Gerd and Geralt, watching from farther away, saw what had happened clearly.

A gigantic figure had burst from the woods, moving as fast as a gust of wind. As he passed Dandelion, he seized the archer by the head as casually as a man might snatch up a candle, then charged straight toward the farmyard he had come from.

The Nilfgaardian, who with Armor and equipment must have weighed close to a hundred kilograms, swung from his hand like an empty bag.

“Lannor?” Geralt heard Gerd mutter uncertainly.

Grandmaster Ursine Armor with its bearskin collar was unmistakable. There was probably only one suit like it in the entire world. Yet the Lannor Gerd remembered had stood only a little over two meters tall. The figure before them now stood nearly 2.6 meters tall in armor.

Even Gerd hesitated to believe his eyes.

Geralt had still more reason to doubt. The last time he had seen Lannor, the young man had not even made his journey to Yharnam. That had been more than a year ago. The White Wolf simply could not reconcile the friend he remembered with this towering figure whose height and build had already passed beyond ordinary human limits.

Still, whoever the giant was, he appeared to be on their side, and he was clearly formidable.

So there was no reason to keep retreating.

“Gerd!” Geralt shouted without looking back.

The Bear School Witcher answered with characteristic enthusiasm.

“Go!”

Lannor hurled the archer’s limp body sideways.

The Nilfgaardian’s cervical vertebrae had failed under the sudden, violent wrench of Lannor’s grip. His neck had dislocated within the first second of contact.

Lannor had charged too quickly for the few remaining men in the yard to react.

The corpse left his hand as though it were nothing more than a light wooden pole, but it still weighed well over a hundred kilograms. It tumbled through four Nilfgaardian Soldiers carrying Greatbows and stone crossbows, knocking all of them sprawling into the mud.

Lannor did not stop to kill the fallen men.

He simply charged past them.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Each footfall landed with a weight that made the ground seem to answer.

A shield-bearing Soldier stared in horror as Lannor came at him like a vast black shadow.

BOOM!

The steel Pauldrons of Lannor’s Grandmaster Ursine Armor slammed directly into the great Shield without the slightest reduction in speed.

The high-quality Shield was built from joined solid planks, reinforced around the edges with iron and faced with leather. The instant Lannor struck it, splinters burst from its surface. Then the iron rim buckled, the boards cracked apart…

“Uagh!”

The Nilfgaardian Soldier’s arm, threaded through the grip behind the Shield, twisted like a wrung cloth. An instant later his organs ruptured, and mouthfuls of blood sprayed across the rear of the Shield.

Soldier and Shield alike went flying.

The fully armored man traced an arc through the air like a discarded rag doll before plunging into a pit of mud, where he lay limp and motionless.

Gerd and Geralt reached the yard almost exactly as the Shield ceased to exist as a useful piece of equipment. Both Witchers sucked air through their teeth.

“Hiss…”

They had seen Shields broken before.

They had never seen anyone break one like that.

… A Satyr?!

Before either could properly digest what they had witnessed, two Longswords came spinning toward them through the wavering firelight, their Blades gleaming like ripples across water.

Shnk. Shnk.

Both buried themselves in the earth before the Witchers.

They were magnificent swords.

Wave-like patterns of silver and black flowed along the Blades, the silver bright enough to seem luminous, the black dark as smoke.

Almost entirely on the instinct of accomplished swordsmen, both Witchers seized the sword Hilts without breaking stride and drew the weapons smoothly from the ground.

Gerd brought his new sword down with all the brutal weight of a Bear School cut. With a weapon that settled into his hands as though it belonged there, he cleaved another shield-bearer’s Shield cleanly in two.

Along with half the Soldier’s shoulder behind it.

Geralt faced an enemy bringing a halberd down at him. He turned beneath the descending weapon almost like a dancer and answered with an Upward Slash.

The sturdy haft of the halberd might as well have been dry straw before the new Longsword.

The rising diagonal Upward Slash severed the haft, took off one of the Nilfgaardian Soldier’s arms, then continued through half the scalp lying along the Blade’s path.

Gerd and Geralt proceeded, with perfect naturalness, to finish off the crossbowmen and archers who had only just begun pushing themselves up from the ground.

“This is… a remarkable sword.” Geralt stared at the Longsword in his hand with open fascination.

As for his good friend the Bard?

Well… now that Dandelion was no longer about to die, he ceased to be a good friend and returned to being an “annoying nuisance” who followed Geralt around looking for material.

How could that possibly be more important than a fine sword?

“And the way it handles… I don’t even need time to adjust. It fits perfectly.”

“If you stopped staring at the Blade, you might notice the Pommel is shaped like a Wolf’s head, Geralt.”

Lannor emerged from the shadows some distance away. His enormous frame brought with it a vast shadow and a physical pressure difficult to ignore.

“It was made after a Wolf School steel sword. If it feels natural enough that you don’t need to adjust, that only means you’ve trained well.”

“It really is you!” Geralt exclaimed. “Wow… did you swallow some experimental potion from the Sorcerers? This is…”

Strength, speed, sheer size. Every part of Lannor now strained Geralt’s understanding of what a human, even a Witcher, was supposed to be capable of.

“Good to see you made it through, White Wolf.”

“You too, Lannor.”

Lannor and Geralt clasped each other by the forearm, pulled close, and embraced.

The sword was excellent, but Geralt was not the sort of man who took a friend’s belongings and suddenly forgot they ought to be returned. A trace of reluctance crossed his weathered but still handsome face, yet he reversed the Longsword without hesitation and offered the sword Hilt back to Lannor.

“No. Keep it.”

Lannor shook his head. Instead, he produced the Longsword’s matching Scabbard, along with another silver sword, and handed both to him.

“They’re gifts from Fabri, the Archimagister of your Wolf School. If you’re trapped in a war zone, you can’t afford to go around without decent weapons.”

“Master Berengar?” Gerd asked as he finished cutting the throat of the last Nilfgaardian Soldier and came over.

Geralt looked at him.

Funny. Why did it seem as though a Bear School Witcher knew the Archimagister of his school better than he did?

Given their present circumstances, however, Geralt decided this was hardly the time to pursue the matter. He accepted both Longswords and strapped them across his back.

“Yes, Berengar. He prepared a set for you too.”

Lannor handed Gerd the Bear School pair of swords, then embraced his friend as well. This one was somewhat more comfortable than embracing Geralt. At least Lannor did not have to bend down quite so far.

“Thank you, my friend. You carried out what I asked of you faithfully, even when it meant putting yourself in danger.” Lannor clapped Gerd on the back, his voice carrying more feeling than usual.

“Hah! None of that polite nonsense between us.”

At some point, the Bard who had been lying flat in a ditch with one hand pressed over the heron feather on his cap had quietly made his way over to the three men. He poked Geralt in the side, then jerked his chin toward Lannor, who stood conspicuously taller and broader than everyone else.

Geralt slapped his hand away with mild disgust before giving him a nod. Yes, Lannor was a friend.

Only then did Dandelion breathe easier. When Lannor had thundered past him earlier, the Bard had thought for a moment that a mountainside was collapsing.

Geralt deciding to fight more than twenty Nilfgaardian Soldiers was something Dandelion could still summon the courage to help with. Fighting someone like Lannor, however…

He could promise not to abandon Geralt and run. If necessary, they could die together.

Actually attacking Lannor was another matter entirely.

Now that his nerves had settled, the Bard noticed the distinctly unusual Longsword in Geralt’s hands and let out a low gasp.

“Valyrian Steel! You’re holding a Valyrian Steel sword!”

“What?”

Dandelion stared at Geralt’s corpse-like expression. He had long since grown accustomed to his friend’s manner, but there was still something deeply frustrating about pouring out genuine excitement and receiving absolutely nothing in return.

For a Bard, few things were worse.

“Valyrian Steel! The hottest new material on the market! Even the Dwarves are buying it in bulk! When have you ever seen those short bastards buying steel instead of selling it?”

Then the Bard slipped into something resembling a recitation.

“‘Like rippling water, like curling smoke! Forged in Dragonfire, unyielding before common iron!’ A friend of mine wrote that description for the hero’s weapon in one of his poems. I think it’s dreadful, personally, but at least the characteristics are accurate.”

“I’ve heard every finished weapon made from the stuff comes from the hands of some famous master craftsman. Even the cheapest one starts at this much!”

Dandelion held up six fingers.

Geralt gave a silent little “wow.”

“No wonder I’ve never heard of it. I rarely pay attention to things I can’t afford.”

In the distance, Ciri came stumbling toward them from the low rise where they had originally hidden.

“Are you all right?”

She had hurried over only after seeing that the fighting was finished.

Geralt raised a hand and waved her back before she could come too close. Smallpox was still here, after all.

Beside the little thatched hut, the long-braided girl pushed