“Clop, clop,” the sound of hooves came up from the winding, rutted road.

This place lay neither near nor far from the village, used mostly as the peasants’ fields.

Along the ridges, dogs began to bark, wary, while the cats seemed to sense something amiss; their fur bristled, then they vanished in a blink.

Such beasts had always been sensitive to magic.

From the direction of the hooves came an old horse, worth little, bearing a young man on its back.

Lannor held the reins tight, urging his mount on with careful focus.

Velen, a province under the great Northern Kingdom of Temeria, was the poorest of them all.

At first glance it looked lush, a riot of growth and color, but any decent man who stayed here two hours would learn the truth, this was a place as foul as dung.

Beneath that thick greenery lay swamps and miasma; the rich waters fed a teeming abundance of life, but offered not a shred of convenience to humankind.

Or rather, those overgrown, overbreeding “creatures” were far more dangerous to common folk than the bogs themselves.

Desolate marshes, impoverished villages, rude yokels, and monsters that seemed to spring from nowhere, that was the sum of what people thought of this place.

A farmer toiling by the ridge lifted his head. A stranger on the road was one of the few things to talk about in a life stripped bare of variety.

So he looked the traveler over, slow and careful.

The youth’s face carried a pale weariness, yet there was still some vigor in him.

His features differed from most men on the Continent, the eye sockets not deep enough, the nose not sharp enough, yet his face was clean and comely, his skin unblemished.

And yet, set against those shunned nonhuman races, elves, dwarves, gnomes, he was plainly human.

Must be from some far-off hole where even a king’s piss wouldn’t reach, the farmer thought.

…Still better than those damned nonhumans.

Leaning on his hoe, the farmer snorted twice and spat thickly onto the ground.

The youth wore cheap blue padded armor, darkened with grime, even the cotton at the waist split and spilling out. His cowhide boots had no thickened soles, cheap things, biting at the feet, but good enough to walk the earth.

He had a sword, nothing strange in Velen.

But slung across his back?

Even a farmer knew better. No one wore a sword like a bow.

How was he meant to draw it in a fight?

The farmer was just about to curl his lips into a mocking grin, he had not even a proper pair of shoes, but mockery needed no rules, when he saw the boy’s eyes as he came closer.

“Cat… cat eyes! A mutant freak!”

The mockery turned to panic. The farmer shouted as though he had seen plague given flesh, some loathsome corruption, stumbling backward again and again.

He fell on his back, limbs flailing, yet still scrabbled away in terror.

The mark of a witcher, a pair of cat eyes.

Forged by ancient human sorcerers to purge monsters, these mutated warriors, once born of a noble purpose and calling, had become, in the eyes of the present, little more than a pestilence.

Lannor let out a breath, barely there. Inwardly, he told himself, medieval fantasy was still medieval.

Ignorance bred malice.

Those amber cat eyes flicked sideways, giving the farmer on the ground a glance.

Then Lannor tightened the reins, bringing the horse under control.

The old horse was docile, and not strong. It was hungry, and he had learned to ride only a week ago.

If being thrown onto a saddle and whipped whenever he fell counted as learning.

“Hrrreee—”

The farmer’s dog, black and white, loyal to a fault.

Even as the horse’s hooves could crush it in an instant, it darted through them, rushing toward its master.

Lannor spent no small effort keeping the dog from harm.

Hungry as he was, it left him short of breath.

But when he saw the little creature bounding, unharmed, toward its master, he let out the faintest sigh of relief.

Yet just as the dog was about to leap into the farmer’s arms, a slender black shadow slipped past Lannor’s leg.

“Thwip!”

“Awoo!”

The sound of air splitting was sharp, dreadful. The lively, loyal dog burst into blood and a strangled cry mid-leap.

A bolt struck in through its lower back, punching out through its chest.

It did not reach its master. Its twitching body slammed down at the farmer’s feet.

The farmer was stunned senseless.

The faint ease on Lannor’s face vanished at once, freezing into cold, hard stillness. His body, and the old horse beneath him, both went rigid.

A large, imposing figure rode past him at an unhurried pace, mounted on a horse just as powerful.

The man’s beard and hair were thick, like a brown bear given human shape.

Yet his face held no trace of feeling, cold as carved ice.

Two swords were strapped across his back.

He wore a solid, intricate composite armor, mail, leather, iron, and padding interwoven into a coat that fell to his calves.

A pendant shaped like a roaring bear’s head swayed at his throat with each step of the horse.

And his eyes were the same as Lannor’s, amber, feline.

The man bent low in the saddle as he passed the farmer, seized the shaft of the bolt, and dragged the dog’s body up from the field.

Hard to imagine a man burdened with at least thirty kilograms of armor moving with such smooth precision.

The dog still twitched, a thin, dying whine leaking from its throat, pitiful and raw.

He did not even glance at it.

With a wet sound he pulled the bolt free, wiped it clean on the dog’s hide, and slipped it back into his pouch.

Then he tossed the carcass to Lannor.

The boy’s already shabby padding grew filthier still.

He could feel the life fading in his hands.

He still could not grow used to it… no, rather, to preserve the echo of the life he once had, he refused to dull himself to that feeling.

Yet outwardly, only a faint twitch passed through his jaw, so slight it might have been imagined.

Then his face, pale and clean, emptied, matching the man’s.

“Bordon, what do you mean to do with it?”

“That’s our meal.”

Bordon’s voice, like his face, held no inflection.

“Dog is easy to catch.”

Dogs were a species that had compromised with humans at the level of instinct. Even those who disliked them still found something in them, cute, swift, something that drew a measure of feeling.

But in Bordon’s words, it was nothing but meat.

Lannor’s ice-set face showed no reaction. He urged his horse to follow. “We should not draw more attention, Bordon. You know the situation.”

His hand trembled slightly, but it did not hinder him from hooking the dog’s body onto the saddle hook.

Such hooks were common in a butcher’s stall, meant for hanging and hauling cuts of meat.

For witchers, they were more often used to hang their loot.

Bordon seemed reminded by Lannor’s words. His emotionless cat eyes turned to the farmer, sprawled in the field.

A dark stain spread across the man’s trousers at once.

“You’re right. I am wanted, so…”

With a clatter of armor, he swung down from the saddle. He did not reach for the swords on his back, instead he drew the dagger at his chest.

He meant to kill.

Lannor understood that at once.

And he knew all too well, for a witcher stripped of feeling, with only coin and bodily needs left to him, killing a living man to cover their trail was no thing to hesitate over.

The youth’s face remained blank.

He clambered down from the old horse, awkward, and hurried toward Bordon.

The farmer, for all his terror, found a shred of nerve. He clutched his hoe tight, his expression near collapse.

He could not stand, but at least he held something that might ward a man off.

“Wait, Bordon!”

Lannor stopped him when he came within two paces of the farmer.

The boy was careful not to touch the armor. The last time he had, Bordon had snapped three branches across his back.

If it happened again, he had said plainly he would cut off one of Lannor’s hands.

To him, that suit of Bear School armor was worth far more.

“Let’s hold. We cannot just kill him. Killing leaves traces, does it not?”

Even so, Lannor stood in his way.

His expression stayed cold, as if he cared nothing for a farmer’s life, only for their course.

Bordon stood there, face like wood. After a brief thought, he sheathed the dagger.

The mutations of a witcher stripped away emotion, not thought.

Lannor turned his head slightly, letting out a breath, quiet and unseen.

After a moment’s weighing, Bordon shifted his gaze from the farmer to Lannor and spoke.

“How goes your practice with the Axii Sign?”

One of the five witcher tricks, used to cloud the mind.

Lannor’s cat eyes tightened at once, then smoothed over.

When he met Bordon’s gaze again, nothing showed.

“Not well. I have had little time to practice. You set the training, you know that.”

His tone was even, unremarkable.

“Mm.” Bordon scratched at his thick beard and nodded. “For now, know the Quen Sign well.”

Quen, for warding off physical harm.

The man walked past Lannor. This time, the boy did not bar his path.

From behind him, a faint glimmer of magic flickered, and the farmer’s tense face slackened into a dull stupor.

“You saw no one. Your dog ran into the woods. You did not dare follow.”

The words came from Bordon’s mouth like a set command, without pause or inflection.

Only when the farmer nodded, dazed, did he turn away without another glance, passing Lannor and moving on.

Lannor followed. His clumsy mounting cost him a few seconds.

Bordon knew well how poor the boy’s riding was, and did not look back.

But in those few seconds,

the boy’s cat eyes flicked toward the dazed farmer, while his left hand made a subtle sign.

A glimmer of magic gathered before his fingers, forming an inverted triangle.

A complete, refined Axii Sign rune.

The farmer’s clouded gaze shifted, just a little.

“Good luck, you poor bastard.”

A breath.

“No… that’s not right.”

He drew his gaze back and mounted in one smooth, silent motion, the ease of it beyond even the finest riders.

In the backlit shadow, those amber cat eyes narrowed slightly, steady, resolved, like a hunting tiger.

“Good luck to the both of us.”

The crossing of paths between Lannor and Bordon had been an accident.

Or rather, his coming to this medieval world steeped in magic had been an accident.

A university student, raised with both parents, sound in mind and body.

After passing, for no reason he could grasp, through an endless void, he arrived in a world both savage and dark. There was no sense to be made of it.

There was magic here, but it had not flourished, at least not to the point of shaping the course of society.

And so, in a backward world, human life was as cheap as grass.

In the forests of Velen, if a man dared walk a few dozen paces within, the shadow of death was already coiled around him.

Starvation, sickness, beasts or monsters, or a bite from some nameless insect that left poison in the blood, most folk of Velen had long grown numb to the deaths around them.

A modern student had only ever glimpsed such lives in a few sparse pages of history books.

He knew, setting aside magic and monsters, the lives of Velen’s people were the lives of ancient peasants.

Knowing it was one thing. Seeing that cruelty and weight, a life long removed from him, laid bare before his eyes, was another.

Death… it was too common.

And whether it was fortune or misfortune, Lannor could not become a peasant.

He had become Bordon’s Child of Surprise.

He had been made into the same kind, a witcher.

The Law of Surprise was an unwritten rule, widely acknowledged and obeyed in this world.

Its origins were as old as human history.

Its terms were simple. One who saved another might, under the Law of Surprise, demand a reward, the first thing the rescued saw upon returning home, or something the rescued did not know they possessed, often a child gained while they were away. Such a child was called a Child of Surprise.

Even in a magical medieval world, supernatural power remained scarce.

To gain the chance to wield such power, for a modern student shaken by a brutal struggle for survival, should have been a blessing.

But…

“What is our target this time?”

Lannor’s clean, Eastern-featured face scanned the surroundings as he carefully guided the old horse around a fallen trunk, riding slightly ahead and to the side of Bordon.

The hulking man, as shaggy as a brown bear, would not tolerate him straying out of sight for long.

The thick beard parted slightly, revealing Bordon’s lips.

“Perhaps two or three Foglets gathered together, or a single one grown old enough. The spread and strength of that fog falls within that range.”

“You cannot even be sure of the number? This preparation is… thin.”

Lannor’s body showed no outward shift, but the face Bordon could not see had drawn into a faint frown.

A witcher was stronger than an ordinary man, but in raw physical terms, he could scarcely match five men working in concert.

A witcher hunted monsters through skill, knowledge, and above all, experience.

Tracing a quarry from the faintest clues, identifying its kind and number, understanding its abilities and weaknesses, then engaging in a prepared, asymmetrical fight.

That was the witcher’s craft.

If Bordon’s preparations were truly at this level, he would never have lived long enough to grow that beard.

He would have died as a green boy, somewhere in the wilds.

Lannor already knew the answer.

A cold gaze crept up his spine, and with it came a voice just as cold.

“You take the lead. Use Quen well.”

Not a suggestion, an order.

Witchers of the School of the Bear were known to lose their emotions, and so even the pretense of softening such commands was gone.

Lannor nodded, calm.

…Had he not been reduced to expendable bait, meant to save on the cost of the hunt, he might have been grateful for these cat eyes.

And by the ridge they had passed earlier,

the farmer who had survived bowed low, obsequious, before four soldiers clad in Temerian issue armor, pointing at the bloodstain in his field.

It was all that remained of his loyal dog.

He prattled on. The soldiers grew impatient, one raising an iron-gauntleted hand as if to strike him across the face at any moment.

After a few sharp curses, the farmer finally pointed out a direction.

The four soldiers spat, cursed under their breath, and mounted up, riding that way.

For certain reasons, Bordon was now wanted by the lord of Velen.

But enforcement in a world akin to the Middle Ages could be guessed at. Though the witcher took care to hide his trail, he had no intention of stopping monster contracts that paid for food and coin.

And… he had no intention of paying any “cost” for the hunt.

Lannor and Bordon stood before a shallow valley formed by crossing slopes.

Within it lay a faint scatter of broken stones.

Faint, because a yellow-green fog lay over the land, abrupt and unnatural.

The wind did not stir it, nor did the damp sink.

Lannor cast a glance at the roaring bear pendant at Bordon’s throat. The finely wrought head trembled faintly.

It sensed the power in the fog.

Judging by the tremor, the power was not great.

His stomach growled with hunger, yet Lannor continued to loosen and ready his body with care.

The loyal dog had already been eaten. Bordon had left him the head.

There was little meat, but Lannor had adapted.

The man did not starve him out of cruelty. In truth, he had no capacity to draw pleasure from cruelty.

But a man without the stir of feeling could not be expected to care much for his tools.

Bordon did not wish Lannor to starve, but neither did he care whether he was full.

A witcher’s endurance ran deep, and so did his tolerance for hunger.

As he stretched, Lannor saw no sign of Bordon reaching into his potion bag for elixirs, nor did he draw the swords from his back to apply oils.

Both would markedly improve a witcher’s advantage against monsters.

Aside from cost and toxicity, they had no real drawback.

And as the main force, Bordon was plainly unwilling to spend the coin.

Which meant Lannor, as vanguard and scout, would bear the risk of that frugality.

That was how Bordon used him.

“Now. Forward.”

Having tied the horses, the bearded giant drew one of the two swords from his back with a low rasp of metal.

A bastard sword, gleaming with cold silver light.

And the way he looked at Lannor’s back matched that cold.

It was a gaze without any trace of warmth.

Before the boy lay an unknown number of Foglets.

One, or many, creatures that could conjure fog, vanish within it, and, if clever, shape it into phantoms.

Gray-skinned, gaunt, humanoid carrion-eaters, with sharp claws. Their withered arms could still take the head off a dog or sheep with a single swing. Padded armor would tear like paper before them.

An ordinary farmer, even alert, would be opened from belly to throat within five seconds, his entrails spilling onto the ground.

And such creatures excelled in ambush.

Behind the boy stood a witcher who had slain countless monsters, who could move freely in armor weighing no less than thirty kilograms, drawing the silver sword from his back.

Silver checked monsters. It was soft, but this blade was steel-cored and silvered, more than capable of cutting down a man.

Lannor showed no reaction. His clean features were still, as though all feeling had truly been stripped away.

Only his hand tightened once more at his padded armor, his gaze empty as it fixed on the void.

Across his retina, a clear, concise interface was displayed.

Name: Lannor

Race: Witcher, magically augmented human

Skills:

Ursine School Swordsmanship

Training program established

Guidance in progress, interrupted

Reason: insufficient processing power

Elixir Knowledge

Data recording in progress

Brewing guidance interrupted

Reason: insufficient processing power

Quen Sign

Beginner training program established

Guidance in progress, interrupted

Reason: insufficient processing power

Knowledge vital to a witcher’s survival was listed one by one.

Swordsmanship, elixirs, Signs.

And at the end of each entry, the same line appeared, insufficient processing power.

Above the chain of such notices, a set of arrows clearly indicated where that precious capacity had gone.

Toward a nearly completed progress bar, marked in stark red, labeled, parsing.

The gaze at his back grew colder.

Without a trace, Lannor dismissed the projection from his sight with a thought.

Time to work.

Lannor first used a wafting motion, drawing a thin thread of fog toward himself and catching its scent.

He had to be sure whether this power-laden mist carried poison or some other harm.

If the biological computation engine in his mind, the one he had picked up in that passage through the void, still had spare capacity, he could have learned everything he needed from a touch of his fingertip.

But that capacity had been diverted.

So the Intelligence Core, a relic of a higher world, was reduced to this.

A faint sting touched his nasal passages, then faded as the witcher’s body adapted.

Lannor gave a small nod. The toxicity would burn out a normal man’s lungs within five minutes.

For a witcher, it would cause discomfort, but no real harm for at least half an hour.

It would not affect the fight.

Thin cowhide boots stepped carefully into the fog.

With a soft rasp, as he felt his way forward, Lannor drew the steel sword from his back.

A wooden grip, an iron-gray crossguard and blade.

A Velen longsword, as cheap and ill-made as the province’s reputation.

It lacked the advantage of silver, but against corporeal monsters, it would never be useless.

As Lannor understood it, this contract came from an elder of a nearby village.

By his telling, this valley grew a kind of fine mushroom, found nowhere else in such abundance.

It was the village’s only commodity that could fetch a price in Gors Velen.

But a year ago, this fog had appeared, and those who went to gather the mushrooms never returned.

Now the village could not even afford a single sound iron tool.

There was no coin.

When the witcher and his apprentice arrived, the villagers pooled what little remained, fifty-three orens.

To hire these two foul, accursed mutants to clear the evil fog from the valley.

When the elder had thrown them the advance, the look in his eyes, disgust and fear, had been that of a man forced to touch lepers.

It reminded Lannor, again and again, that even if he cast off his teacher, his place in this world would be no better.

But there were priorities.

Trouble ahead could wait.

The danger before him could not.

Lannor’s amber cat eyes stung in the toxic fog.

He did not blink.

The heightened senses granted by witcher mutation stirred to life.

Enhancements wrought through disease, elixirs, and magic reshaped the human body, sharpening its perceptions.

So that a witcher might fulfill the purpose for which sorcerers had made them, to hunt monsters alone.

Thin boots brushed against weeds, raising a faint whisper.

“There is no heavy breathing here, no strong heartbeat either… too quiet.”

In Lannor’s ears, there was only his own step, and Bordon’s behind him.

And Bordon’s step and heartbeat were lighter than his own.

Hard to believe such silence belonged to a man near two meters tall, clad in heavy composite armor.

A terrifying command of body and strength.

Lannor could picture it, a man lifted one-handed by the throat, the spine crushed in the grip.

His witcher master could do it.

And as Lannor pressed forward, his sense of touch and hearing caught something wrong.

The vertical pupils of his cat eyes narrowed, focused.

“Beneath the ground… it is moving? Digging!”

Soil and stone were being disturbed. Something moved beneath the earth.

This was not a Foglet.

Without a thought, Lannor arched like a startled cat, then snapped straight, springing a full pace away.

With a burst of dirt, a clawed hand tore up from the ground.

Then the creature dragged its whole body out after it.

Humanoid, but small, about the size of a dwarf, reaching only to a man’s belly.

Gray-white skin lay bare, a blood-flecked maw splitting into a vicious grin. Layers of loose flesh piled at its neck, hiding it entirely, slick and revolting.

Lannor’s grip on the sword loosened, tightened again, testing the feel.

A Nekker. Like Foglets, carrion-eaters. Individually weaker, but different in one way.

They were wholly pack creatures.

There was a saying on the Continent, when monsters are weak, they make up for it in numbers.

“Yaaah!”

Cries rose at once from the fog.

Lannor’s heart sank. His teacher, to save effort, had not even judged the species correctly.

His narrowed gaze flicked back. In the haze, the hulking figure did not move to intervene.

Lannor understood.

Foglets and nekkers seldom shared ground, but with a tool in front, why not be sure?

Caution never went amiss.

The large figure stood, watching coldly as monster and witcher faced one another.

Fortune in misfortune, Lannor had never entrusted his life wholly to Bordon’s preparations.

“Seventeen nekkers. Only Quen and swordsmanship…”

His cat eyes swept the field as he calculated.

Quen and swordsmanship were the bulk of his training.

Seventeen nekkers, enough to wipe out a village in sparsely populated Velen.

A village here, counting the old and the women, rarely held more than twenty or thirty souls.

And facing such numbers, a boy who had undergone mutation only a month ago, who had held a sword and learned Signs for barely three weeks.

His face remained ice.

“Yes. I can hold.”

Three weeks, a well-fed man swinging an axe would need at least a week of thought and effort just to learn the proper motion.

And that would not guarantee each strike landed true.

Swordsmanship, with stance, terrain, and body in play, took a year or two to reach even a passable level.

And now, a youth with three weeks of practice judged his own limits, calm and precise.

It was not only that he could hold.

He could make it look the part.

The measure was taken. And the monsters, faced with fresh flesh, lost what little restraint they had.

No telling which moved first.

The fight began.

Four soldiers in Temerian armor drew closer to the fog-laden valley.

They spat from the saddle, laughed, cursed, traded crude jokes.

But in their eyes and faces, beneath the laughter, lay a coldness.

A soldier’s indifference to life and battle.

Among them were a crossbowman, an archer, a halberdier, and a sword-and-shield infantryman.

The infantryman was the leader of this enforcement squad.

His shield, still new, bore the silver lilies of Temeria on a blue field.

The crossbowman had just finished a joke about a prostitute and a werewolf. Their laughter took a while to die.

Then he turned to the captain.

“Captain…” He hesitated. “We will not… end up in that mutant’s hands…”

Before the captain could answer, the halberdier spat.

“What, scared? There are four of us. I say the moment that freak shows himself, your bolts and his arrows will pin him full, no need for me or the captain to lift a finger. You have a fine crossbow. Who dodges a bolt?”

He swayed lightly, at ease.

“But…” The crossbowman still wavered. “I heard… they say those freaks can use magic.”

At the word magic, the air tightened. Even the halberdier shivered.

As if something foul had brushed against him.

Then the captain spoke.

“Do not worry.” He raised a pendant.

A stone carved in the shape of a turtle.

“Lord Vserad saw to it. I carry a turtle-stone. That filthy magic will not come near us.”

The soldiers knew, and the common folk said the same, turtle-stones warded magic.

How could that be wrong?

They relaxed again. Even the crossbowman grinned.

Soon enough, they followed the forest path to the edge of the valley.

The way to fight a group alone is to turn one against many into a series of one-on-one encounters.

A nekker is not a particularly powerful monster. A farmer with a long-handled dung fork, if steady and brave, can escape with his life against a single one.

Their claws are sharp enough to dig through soil, but a dung fork holds a far greater reach.

But Lannor, after several fights in this brutal, enchanted medieval world, understood one thing well.

In a blade fight, an enemy you could dispatch with ease one-on-one becomes your executioner the moment it turns into one against two.

The truth was simple. A human body, even a witcher’s, has veins and tendons lying mere millimeters to a few centimeters beneath the skin.

To claws or steel, that thin flesh might as well not exist.

A graze is a wound, a wound hinders movement.

Then, regardless of will, the disadvantage compounds, until the throat is cut as a matter of course.

Lannor had never been in that position.

He had no intention of ever being in it.

So even though the School of the Bear’s mutagenic formulas favored endurance and strength, and its swordsmanship was built on solidity and force, he kept shifting his footing.

Seventeen nekkers surged in with shrill cries. Behind him, his mentor’s gaze was cold and still.

The young man moved laterally.

To avoid being surrounded, he had to be twice as fast as the nekkers.

For a half-starved youth, was that possible?

Not only possible. Lannor did better than that.

With a dull thud, his thin cowhide boot struck the ground in concert with muscle and bone, sending loose soil flying.

Clods of dirt burst upward, tangled with roots and weeds.

The young man, not broad of frame, now moved like a maddened bear, charging into the gap at his flank.

The carrion-eaters shrieked and wheeled to follow.

Necrophages could not match a witcher’s burst speed.

In a straight chase, they quickly fell behind.

But the tail end of the line cut across a shorter path, moving to intercept him.

Five nekkers reached his path first.

Their stinking mouths gaped, twisted teeth strung with rotting meat.

They crouched low, rubbing their claws together, waiting.

Lannor’s expression did not change.

As if he wore a knight’s heirloom armor instead of cheap padding. As if those claws, made to burrow through earth, did not exist.

He watched their jaws stretch wider as the scent of fresh flesh grew stronger, until they could no longer bear it.

They leapt, driven by instinct. Small bodies arced through the air, weight carried into downward strikes.

At that instant, Lannor’s cat eyes widened.

“Quen!”

The Sign flared, shaping a physical barrier through magic.

Ordinarily, Quen remained unseen, only manifesting at the instant of impact, deflecting a blow before shattering.

But under the teachings of the School of the Bear, it formed a visible sphere of amber light.

Nothing advanced. To true mages, the entire system of Signs was little more than cantrips.

Even a nekker’s leap would overload it. It would stop the first and break.

But Lannor, cast from an ordered age into a savage one, would use every scrap of power within reach.

A spherical barrier was common. Forming from the ground and closing above the head was common too.

But suppose, just suppose, that at the precise moment when time and space aligned, an enemy descending from above found its footing clipped by a barrier not yet fully formed.

What then?

A nekker had likely never known the sensation of missing a step on a stair.

Today, it learned.

Balance, the foundation of any fight, any discipline, could be turned in many ways in a world of magic.

Lannor’s cat eyes met the nekker’s, its own suddenly wide with panic.

Midair, three of the five lost their balance as the forming barrier caught them just so.

They flew past him, tumbling into the pack behind.

Bodies collided. Chaos followed.

With a crack, the shield shattered. Even without a direct strike, the force of impact was enough to break Quen.

Two nekkers still came, claws extended, screaming through the air.

They did not care how the others had been thrown aside. They wanted the first bite.

And Lannor, now without his shield, looked at them the same way they looked at him.

Like meat already laid on the block.

That Quen had never been for defense.

Fools.

With a sharp report, the amber shield burst outward, its fragments carrying real force.

“Wha—?”

The two nekkers in midair had no time to understand before the blast twisted their bodies off line.

Then steel flashed.

A cold sound split the air.

Lannor held the cheap Velen longsword beside his face, its tip aimed true.

He had set the blade at a strange angle.

As he lunged, it met resistance like cured leather.

With silver, it would have parted like flesh.

Even so, the nekker’s thin body could not stop the thrust, driven by momentum and weight.

The blade pierced the first through the belly, then, as if by chance, drove into the second’s jaw, through the folds of flesh, and into its brain.

It looked like the work of a panicked swordsman, luck carried on a surge of adrenaline, failing to kill the first but somehow striking down the second.

But beneath that illusion lay perfect control, of angle, force, and edge.

Only at the final instant did his grip slip, as if by accident, the web of his thumb striking the crossguard.

The thrust had been strong. The resistance greater still. With a crack, the crossguard loosened.

Under the strain, the wooden grip split.

Blood burst from his torn hand.

Worse still, a loose guard might pass against men.

Against monsters, even nekkers, it was death.

Lannor had effectively lost his only weapon.

Behind him, the remaining fifteen nekkers had regained their footing and charged.

Yet Lannor seemed finished. His arm relaxed.

He lowered the sword, skewered bodies sliding down like meat on a spit.

He did not turn.

Amid the clamor of pursuit, he heard what he had been waiting for.

A step, light as a cat’s, the mark of one who had mastered the art of killing.

In the fog behind the fifteen, a tall, broad shadow took shape in silence.

Cold and still.

For Bordon, the risk was gone. There were no foglets here.

Silver flashed.

Where Lannor’s swordplay was precise and ruthless, Bordon’s bore the mark of the School of the Bear.

Solid.

Heavy.

Decisive.

With a wet crack, blood sprayed, bone shattered.

Bordon’s silver sword, slick with foul nekker blood, carved a brutal arc.

Four nekkers, packed too close, were cleaved through the chest.

A fifth was split halfway, the blade lodged in its breastbone, the force hurling its body aside.

The tip that burst from its chest sheared away half the skull of a sixth.

Fifteen nekkers, bunched together, backs exposed.

To Bordon, they were no more than a few swings.

And this use of Lannor had paid well beyond its cost.

With a sharp crack, the cold gleam of the silver sword took the last nekker’s head.

The bearded brute wiped the blade clean with an oilcloth, slow and deliberate, then slid it back into its scabbard with a soft rasp.

The monsters that had infested this fog of power were gone.

The contract had gone just as Bordon expected, easy, efficient, and cheap.

Seventeen nekkers, faced head-on, would have forced even his School of the Bear armor to its limit once they closed in.

At best, he would have taken light wounds.

Repairs to the armor alone would cost thirty orens. Wear on the silver sword, another ten. Add elixirs and oils, and the expense would climb further.

A witcher who wanted to earn had to mind his costs.

Fortunately, his luck had held.

He tightened a loosened clasp on his armor, then lifted his steady cat eyes toward his apprentice.

The boy leaned on that ruined Velen longsword, breathing hard.

“Steady your breath,” Bordon said, his tone flat, a command.

“Our emotions are stripped by mutation. We do not fear. But the body still answers danger. Adrenaline surges, strength drains, that is normal. Control your breathing, and the body recovers faster.”

Lannor’s head was bowed. There was little sweat on him, but in the shadow beyond Bordon’s sight, a flicker of surprise crossed his face.

This was rare, instruction rooted in simple sense.

Most days, the man cared only to sharpen his apprentice as a tool, drilling him in combat and nothing else.

It seemed this time, Lannor had indeed saved him a fair sum.

He marked it in silence.

When he brushed his brow as if wiping sweat and lifted his head again, his face had gone cold once more.

Like most of the school.

“Understood.”

He answered, making his already steady breathing sound more labored.

Then he drew his hunting knife and began cutting off nekker ears, proof of the kill.

Bordon, for his part, set to work with practiced hands, stripping more valuable alchemical ingredients from the corpses.

Claws, liver, heart.

Knowledge he had never shared, and had no intention of sharing.

“This fog was not made by foglets. It has nothing to do with nekkers either. Does that mean the village contract is done?”

With a wet slice, Lannor severed a long ear. Fetid blood splashed the ground.

The villagers had wanted their mushrooms back. But the cause of the magical fog was still unknown, let alone how to disperse it.

The monsters were gone, yet the fog itself remained poison to ordinary folk.

“Not our concern,” Bordon said.

“Monster corpses are our proof of work. There are no monsters left in this fog. We have done the job, we collect our pay. Fair dealing.”

His eyes flicked to Lannor’s sword.

“Your swordsmanship is worthless. You cannot even keep your grip. And stabbing a nekker in the belly is a farmer’s mistake. It does not stop them before they tear you apart. You were lucky. The second one threw its head onto your blade, so you only had to face one slowed by a corpse. Otherwise your hand would have been ripped off.”

“I will give you another sword. You owe me ten orens.”

Ten orens.

Half the silver plating on a School of the Bear blade could be restored for that.

What Lannor would receive was another cheap Velen longsword.

Worth perhaps two or three orens.

Yet Lannor showed no reaction. He accepted it as it was.

Counting the cost of the mutation potions, he already owed his mentor over four hundred orens.

That debt was the chain that kept him at Bordon’s side as a scout.

Whether he agreed to it meant nothing.

But Lannor knew, if he stayed, he would face not only monsters and contracts, but a debt that might follow him all his life.

Witchers lived long. Their bodies rarely failed with age.

That debt could hang over him for centuries.

No one liked owing coin.

Lannor least of all.

The wet sounds of cutting flesh and draining blood went on for some time.

The stench of monster blood spread far.

Bordon had taken all useful alchemical materials from the nekkers.

But his apprentice, strangely, had not even finished cutting the ears.

A clatter of metal rang on and on, grating against a witcher’s keen senses.

“What are you dawdling for?”

The man’s voice held no patience.

They had been in the fog for over twenty minutes. Even with a witcher’s resistance, the airways burned.

Lannor, back turned, seemed still at work.

“I am trying to fix the crossguard. In Velen, I cannot go without a weapon.”

A reasonable claim.

No one walked these lands unarmed.

But Bordon did not care for reason. His tone grew colder.

“I said I would give you one. Now move.”

The figure before him paused, then dipped his head.

From the front, it was clear. Lannor had not been fixing the crossguard at all. He had been striking it, making noise.

“Twenty-seven minutes. That is all I could buy…”

Compared to Bordon, his body was newly made. His resistance to poison was weaker. His throat, his lungs, burned as if set to flame.

Blood ran from his nose in twin red lines.

Yet his face did not waver.

Only a steady resolve.

“Enough.”

He stood, wiped the blood from beneath his nose, and faced his mentor, who loomed close over him.

“Master, we can go.”

“Your sword.” Bordon did not move. His cat eyes fixed on the boy. “Is it repaired?”

“You never taught me. My effort was wasted.”

Lannor answered plainly. He did not look away. His face was as still as Bordon’s.

The bearded man gave a noncommittal nod and turned toward the edge of the fog.

Lannor followed.

Once outside, both drew deep breaths at once.

A witcher could endure poison, but clean air was instinct.

As they walked, Lannor kept a step behind.

Watching.

The first breath of fresh air, even for the most stripped of the School of the Bear, brought a simple, instinctive ease.

The second breath.

“In… ha… hmm!?”

Something in the scent caught Bordon’s notice. His brow tightened.

Someone was nearby.

Lannor slipped back a step without a sound.

Then, a sharp hiss, twice.

Two arrows flew straight for Bordon’s face.

“Hah!”

He roared, breath bursting out, the bearded brute turning in that instant into something monstrous.

“Quen!”

Far more refined than anything his apprentice could muster with Signs.

Bordon, limited perhaps by his experience and the breadth of his thinking, could not conceive of the stranger, more unorthodox applications of Signs.

But a solid foundation yielded its own rewards, within the intended function of the craft.

An orange-yellow power shield flared into existence in the blink of an eye.

Denser than Lannor’s, built to withstand far greater physical force.

If the three nekkers from before had leapt onto this Quen barrier, they would likely have ended up as smears on a wall.

But in Bordon’s bloodshot cat eyes, two arrows, one long and one short, arrived in succession.

The longer shaft came from a longbow. It struck the shield with a sharp crack.

The orange-yellow barrier overloaded at once and burst apart.

The power of a longbow far exceeded what plays and tales would have men believe.

Even a battlefield bow built for sustained fire, not extreme draw weight, could punch through modern sheet iron within a dozen paces.

And the human body, or even that of a witcher, was helplessly frail before steel. That was an undeniable fact.

Quen, cast at full force, could block only a single arrow. Yet there was no frustration in Bordon’s gaze.

The result was reasonable, and fortunate.

The archer was skilled. The shot had been aimed straight at Bordon’s throat.

Witcher school armor did not include a gorget.

Had the arrow struck true, his end would have been no different from that of a common peasant.

The sharp head would have punched through skin, sinew, cartilage, vessels, and windpipe, then scraped bone before tearing out the other side.

A witcher’s body was tougher than a man’s, but against the gulf between steel and flesh, that advantage meant nothing.

The longbow arrow had been turned aside by Quen. It bought Bordon a precious instant.

Faced with the second projectile, faster and heavier, yet loosed a heartbeat later, the man forced his arm up.

Clang!

A ringing collision of metal.

The bolt struck Bordon’s metal vambrace and deflected away.

His thick arm shuddered.

A crossbow bolt was a weapon of war, stronger even than a bowshot, capable of punching through plate several millimeters thick.

Even with the bracer absorbing part of the force, the impact would leave a broad bruise across a witcher’s wrist.

Had his armor been any poorer, the bolt would have bitten flesh.

But pain did not hinder a witcher in battle.

The raised arm flowed into motion, reaching back.

A bright steel sword slid free with the rasp of metal.

The enhanced physique and raw strength of the School of the Bear drove the motion from draw to strike in less than half a second.

The air keened as it was split. The blade lashed straight into the brush at his flank.

Even in haste, with a bruised arm, Bordon’s swordsmanship was terrifyingly solid.

His edge alignment held steady, his direction precise, preserving the blade’s killing power to the utmost.

Against any ordinary man, that single stroke would have decided life or death.

Provided that man did not carry a shield.

A shield was the greatest safeguard in close combat.

Thud!

The treated wooden shield answered with a heavy, muffled impact.

The brush had already been pressed aside by the force of Bordon’s swing, yet leaves and branches still lay between blade and shield, chopped apart like greens on a butcher’s block, sap spraying.

The captain of the four-man enforcement squad, a seasoned Temerian sword-and-shield infantryman.

A deep gouge had been carved into the silver lilies emblazoned on his shield.

By a veteran’s habit, his stance should have been immovable.

It was the classic formation stance, weight and center of gravity driven forward into the shield.

Unless the opponent could shove his entire armored mass bodily aside, the posture could not be broken.

Yet in that hurried strike, he had been forced back.

His clouded eyes went wide, shock plain as if he had seen a wraith with his own eyes.

He had traveled far and seen much, but never a witcher, let alone crossed blades with one.

His imagination, bounded by the narrow world of a peasant age, could not accept that a humanoid creature could unleash such force.

Nor could he fathom how this mutant freak had detected him hidden in the brush.

But the fight had begun. Whether he could grasp it or not, he would see it through.

A one-handed sword, meant to pair with the shield, slid out along its rim.

Like a venomous snake.

Its target was Bordon’s blade.

The captain’s experience showed. The difference in length between his weapon and Bordon’s hand-and-a-half sword, combined with the gap in their reach, meant he could not threaten the man’s body.

So he chose instead to strike the blade, to disrupt the enemy’s rhythm. With luck, he might even throw off his balance.

It was the plan of a seasoned soldier.

But witchers hunted monsters for a reason, they could cast Signs.

One hand held the sword, but the bearded brute’s other hand had already formed a strange gesture.

His lips moved beneath the thick beard. “Aard!”

Boom!

A translucent shockwave slammed into the shield.

Already marred by a sword cut, the wood split along the crack with a sharp snap, breaking clean in two.

The Aard Sign was a psychic shockwave.

The captain staggered, off balance, his wrist wavering wildly in the air.

A small stone carved into the shape of a turtle slipped from his sleeve.

“Turtle stone, foolish.”

Bordon’s face was glacial.

Magic was a scarce resource, a service reserved for nobles and the truly wealthy.

Yet in this world, every dirt-scraping farmer, every milker and shepherd, swore with utter conviction that their misfortune and wretched lives were the work of magic.

Poor soil, sick cows, lost sheep, all blamed on magic.

Fear and slander born of ignorance.

Thus rumors of “breaking magic” and “banishing power” spread everywhere.

From the crow of a rooster to a rabbit’s foot, anything would do. Demand created its own market.

And the most famous of such charms was the turtle stone.

Even many nobles and politicians, who rarely dealt with magic, believed in it.

Let alone a handful of common soldiers.

But the truth was simple, only dimeritium could counter magic.

In the infantryman’s eyes flickered disbelief and fear, tangled together.

He had lost his balance. At Bordon’s level of swordsmanship, ending him required no more than a light touch of the tip across the throat.

Flesh would part, vessels severed cleanly.

With the reflexive contraction of muscle, the vessels would retract into the chest.

Hemorrhage.

The kind no sorcerer present could save.

Yet just as the blade was about to draw that line, the steady, grounded swordsmanship halted.

Then the hulking man, like an upright brown bear, moved with startling lightness and sprang away from his position.

The next instant, two arrows hissed through the space he had occupied.

The sword-and-shield infantryman seized the moment to recover his footing, half a shield raised before him.

Aside from the reduced coverage and the tremor in his nerves, he was much as he had been at the start.

Such was the dilemma of facing many.

Each of the four-man enforcement squad would not last a single exchange against Bordon alone.

Yet now, killing even one of them, or dealing meaningful damage, had become difficult.

The heavy man moved with light steps, his heightened hearing flaring.

Behind him, someone was rushing through the brush.

The scrape of foliage spoke of a long weapon.

A long weapon meant trouble.

Even for Bordon, a grim sense of danger pressed in.

He made his decision at once and called for his apprentice.

“Lannor, kill the two shooters. Ahead, behind the rock on the rise, past the brush.”

Lannor was his Child of Surprise. In old tales, such a child shared a deep bond of fate with the one who claimed him.

Their destinies intertwined, shaping one another in unseen ways.

After the mutations, he too had become like a proper witcher of the School of the Bear, stripped of most emotional fluctuation.

They were the same kind.

Bound by fate.

At this moment, Bordon trusted his apprentice without hesitation.

His sword was broken. It would not serve against monsters or witchers, but against men, it was enough.

And now Lannor stood before the halberdier.

The man, once brimming with confidence in his turtle stone, now faced the youth’s cat eyes with fear, forcing himself to stand his ground.

Sweat slicked his grip on the halberd.

Because the young man before him bore the same expressionless face as the upright bear not far away.

Lannor did not turn his head as he answered his master.

“Understood, master.”

Bordon received the reply and had already begun to gather his strength, preparing to seize the moment and kill the infantryman before him.

The young man drew the battered Velen longsword from his back.

The halberdier swallowed, trying to steady his nerves.

“I’ll… help you.”

The first words were cold as ice.

But in the last, something broke through, lava beneath the glacier.

His waist twisted, his arm snapped forward.

Muscles and sinew, strengthened by elixirs, surged in unison.

The Velen longsword, its guard already loose and rattling, tore through the air with a howl more terrifying than any bow or crossbow.

It drove straight for Bordon’s back.

Bordon’s trust in Lannor came from how thoroughly the boy embodied the School of the Bear.

Cold as a glacier, stripped of mercy. That was the impression Lannor had given his master the moment his witcher mutations were complete.

Most witchers of the School of the Bear were emotionally blunted. Because of that, they could draw steel and kill without hesitation, without the slightest burden on their conscience.

But for the same reason, even hatred came faintly to them.

They cared only for coin, and for the needs of their bodies.

Taken together, it meant they cared only for the maintenance of their own survival.

Bordon ensured Lannor’s safety and fed him. He was also teaching him the skills of a witcher.

The process was unpleasant, even cruel, but it was fact.

In Bordon’s view, Lannor’s thinking should not differ much from his own. There was no reason for the boy to hate him.

But there was one question Bordon had never considered.

What if Lannor had retained his emotions from the very beginning?

What if his witcher mutation had been… perfect?

The cheap blade screamed through the air.

Bordon’s pupils shrank, and every hair on his body stood on end.

No matter how crude or worthless a Velen longsword might be, a sharpened strip of iron could still kill.

Lannor had chosen his moment well. So well that Bordon almost took it for coincidence.

By everything he knew of his apprentice, the young man should not have had the combat experience to seize such an instant.

Every muscle in Bordon’s body had already been set for a forward charge.

A preparation made a heartbeat ago, meant to kill the sword-and-shield infantryman outright.

Now those taut, rigid muscles had lost their ability to adapt.

The shift between tension and release took less than half a second, but in a sword fight, half a second was enough to decide life and death.

He had to surge forward. His muscles had already committed to it. Unless he wished to fall flat, he could not change course.

Emotionless thought served him well in that moment.

The hulking man, like a charging bear, slammed toward the infantryman.

Yet in that motion, Bordon rolled his shoulder with a strange, almost dance-like shift.

The scabbard fixed to his back swayed with it.

Crack.

Under the razor edge of his heightened senses, the Velen longsword struck square against the scabbard of the silver sword meant for monsters.

It was knocked aside.

Had it struck empty space, it would likely have punched straight through.

Lannor moved the instant he released the throw, driving forward toward Bordon. Seeing the result, his brow tightened slightly.

A witcher who had lived who knew how long, who had slain countless monsters. Even after estimating Bordon’s strength as high as he could before acting, Lannor still had to admit his master was formidable.

But that would not change the outcome.

The resolve in the young man’s eyes was like stone.

“He’s the only one wanted. There’s no quarrel between us.”

With a single line, Lannor snapped the halberdier out of his stunned daze.

Seeing the turn in the battle and the strength of the burly witcher, the soldier had no choice.

He leveled his halberd and followed behind Lannor.

A strong enemy made for a solid alliance.

Lannor’s throw could not be underestimated. Even now he was weakened by hunger, even after circling and exhausting seventeen nekkers.

But it had still been a witcher’s throw.

Bordon’s bear-like charge faltered, his body knocked off balance.

Yet the seasoned witcher’s experience and adaptability were frightening.

He did not fall from the sudden shift in weight. Instead, he gripped his sword in both hands and raised his arms high.

He abandoned defense of his torso entirely, lifting the finely crafted School of the Bear steel sword over his head.

With his weight pitched forward, strength and mass drove into the blade.

A furious downward strike.

“Hah!”

The sword-and-shield infantryman before him was nearly paralyzed with fear.

Bordon’s massive frame cast a heavy shadow across his face.

He dropped his one-handed sword and braced both hands behind the broken half of his shield, teeth clenched as he pushed upward against the descending blade.

He truly was a seasoned infantryman. Even faced with a strike most soldiers would never see in a lifetime, he chose the most reasonable response.

To intercept the blade before it reached the point of maximum force.

But a mutant enhanced by magic far exceeded the expectations of an ordinary veteran.

Boom!

“Urgh!”

The muffled cry tore from him as his eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.

The broken shield had lost its structural symmetry. Even with both hands, it twisted under the immense force.

The School of the Bear steel sword slid along the tilt, shaving off splinters of wood and the silver lilies of Temeria.

Then it bit into the mail at his shoulder.

The infantryman’s face contorted.

The small iron rings of the mail warped and shattered, driven into flesh and bone.

Through the vibration of bone itself, he could hear the steel blade grinding against the jagged edges within.

Blood streamed down the sword and armor.

His shoulder was half severed. Only torn flesh beneath the arm still held limb to body.

He was finished.

Bordon’s expression did not change.

Amid the man’s scream, he forced the blade downward, then drew it out.

This was not a simple withdrawal. It was a drag cut.

With the screech of metal on metal, the infantryman’s shoulder was torn free entirely.

The blood that had already been pouring now sprayed.

Bordon did not only seek to eliminate a threat. He meant to break the will of the others.

It worked.

The next two arrows came immediately after he severed the captain’s shoulder. The longbow shot was weak, easily deflected by the vambrace on his left arm.

The bolt still carried force, but its aim was gone. It left only a pale scratch across his armor.

Such intimidation struck only for an instant. Its effect would last no more than this volley.

After that, trained soldiers would steady themselves.

But that moment was all Bordon needed.

Because now, he would face his student.

He turned sharply. Cold met resolve.

Both understood, the other meant to kill.

Lannor came first, armed with nothing but a hunting knife, meeting his master’s killing intent head-on.

The killing aura of a man who had hunted countless monsters pressed down, suffocating. Fresh human blood still clung to Bordon’s beard.

As he stood, he would not have been out of place painted in a church as an enemy of the divine.

Yet Lannor’s steps did not falter.

The School of the Bear steel sword trembled faintly before the swing.

Lannor held the hunting knife before his chest, a meaningless guard.

In strength, reach, blade length, and quality, he had no chance against Bordon.

He had no chance of surviving even a single strike.

His swordsmanship, compared to Bordon’s, was crude, little better than a juggler’s trick.

At any moment, that poor cotton armor might be split along with his body.

But…

“I don’t have to match you in swordsmanship.”

For the first time, Lannor smiled before Bordon.

The burly man’s cat eyes narrowed.

In the next instant, Lannor twisted mid-run and dragged something from behind him, the blade of a halberd.

The halberd was still in the soldier’s hands. He was charging as well, following Lannor.

Now its thrust had been redirected.

The broad blade drove straight toward Bordon’s torso.

And Lannor, lowering his body with practiced agility, reached toward his master’s waist with knife and hand.

That was where Bordon kept his alchemy sack.

“Choose, master.”

A halberd’s charge and thrust cannot be weathered by armor, not even the finest witcher school gear.

You cannot even brush the blade aside with a vambrace to deflect its path.

It is already too close.

A thrust aimed at the torso, even if it glances off, what difference does it make?

The halberd’s blade is broad and keen. If it opens flesh across the trunk, it will cut through at least two organs.

Heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, none will remain untouched.

You must stop the thrust with your sword.

But if you do, the Alchemy Sack is lost.

The elixirs and bombs within are your only hope of surviving what comes next.

Two archers, one troublesome soldier with a polearm, and one of your students, a witcher.

Short of crushing them with the overwhelming physique granted by elixirs, or spending costly bombs, there is no chance.

Lannor left a trail along the way that the Enforcement Squad could follow, and drew them in.

Three volleys had already been loosed since the fighting began, no more than twenty seconds in all.

Yet Lannor had already sealed Bordon’s fate, adjusting to every shift in the field.

Look closely. In those young cat eyes, calculations and branching possibilities flicker, cascading like a waterfall through his pupils.

Lannor halts the computation midstream, redirecting the full capacity of his mind to the present moment.

And his Biological Intelligence Core has fulfilled its purpose.

No matter the choice, Bordon has no path left.

He will die here today.

Bordon sees it at once.

That towering frame of his stiffens.

Most witchers of the School of the Bear lose the capacity for emotion after mutation. They spend the rest of their days merely sustaining life.

In past contracts, Bordon has faced death more than once.

Each time, he found a way to live with a clear head, then dragged a monster’s severed head to claim his pay.

But in this snare woven from human cunning and killing intent, with death waiting on either side, that same cold temperament leaves him lost.

Worse still, light flares in Lannor’s hand, magic.

Axii Sign.

A technique Bordon used only before Lannor, never properly taught.

He never imagined the boy had reached the point of using it in real combat.

The strong witcher’s mind lurches into a sudden fog, and worse, his confusion deepens.

Faced with the certainty of death, even the urge to drag an enemy down with him fades.

He cannot summon hatred.

Even the instinct to survive is suppressed for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat—

“Thk.”

The halberd, its path subtly altered by Lannor, drives into Bordon’s abdomen.

Scarlet bursts outward.

Lannor slips beneath the steel sword of the School of the Bear, darts to his mentor’s side, and with a flash of his dagger severs the strap of the Alchemy Sack.

He snatches it into his grasp.

Bordon’s last chance to turn the tide is gone.

The instant the blade enters his body, even a witcher’s physique cannot stave it off. Weakness floods Bordon in a single surge.

The halberdier drives him back several steps until he strikes a tree. His legs give, and he slumps to the ground.

The halberdier, nerves still taut, does not realize it is over, still grinding his teeth as he pushes the shaft forward.

Only when Lannor steps up beside him, hand pressing down on the man’s grip, does he stop.

“Easy, friend. It’s done.”

The soldier jolts as if waking from a dream, then shouts, gulping air.

That moment feels longer than the whole battle.

The two archers descend from the high ground. The crossbowman keeps his string drawn, bolt leveled at Lannor.

The longbowman runs to the fallen sword-and-shield infantryman, now silent even in his agony.

Under the questioning looks of the halberdier and crossbowman, he checks the man’s eyes and pulse, then shakes his head.

Lannor is not surprised. With that much blood lost, even a sorcerer would struggle to pull him back.

“Filthy mutant freak.”

The halberdier spits and mutters.

Men of Velen are no strangers to death. Professional soldiers even less so. Beyond venting their fear of magic and mutants, there is little to say.

The halberdier steps forward, boots grinding, reaching to wrench the weapon from Bordon’s belly.

The bear of a man is not yet dead, though. Witcher vitality clings stubbornly. He sits there, silent.

A pair of cat eyes fixed on his student.

But once the halberd is pulled free, the bleeding will end him within a minute.

Lannor meets that gaze without flinching, raising a hand to stop the soldier.

The three remaining men stiffen at once, like bristling hounds.

The crossbowman levels his bolt. The longbowman draws and aims at Lannor.

They have just witnessed a witcher’s strength, and true magic, paid in blood.

And Lannor has cat eyes as well.

Tension is inevitable.

Their alliance was sudden to begin with.

“What are you playing at, freak? Looking to die?”

The crossbowman snarls. Lannor sees the tremor in the finger on the trigger.

The others are the same, anger in their faces, swallowing hard.

Lannor turns slightly, watching them in silence until their breathing steadies.

After a long pause, he speaks.

“I hold only a knife, gentlemen. You have two arrows on the string.”

Their nerves ease, a fraction.

Perhaps not from his words, but from the weight of their advantage.

Then Lannor tilts his head.

“But will two arrows be enough?”

“Try it, freak! Move, let me see you try!”

Spittle flies from the crossbowman’s lips.

Lannor remains expressionless, which only lays bare the man’s fear.

“You have just seen what a witcher can endure and how he kills. You, one halberdier without a weapon, and two archers with short blades, all within five paces of me. If I move, you will not last ten seconds.”

In truth, they might last a minute. Lannor falls short of his teacher in strength, gear, and swordsmanship.

But Bordon’s presence still looms large in their minds, enough to muddle them.

“We… we still have two arrows!”

“Yes. Two arrows.” Lannor nods, still half-turned.

“But to kill me within ten seconds, you must strike my heart, or my head.”

As he speaks, their eyes drift to those points.

Then the archers’ faces darken.

They are veterans. They understand.

“Yes, gentlemen. I stand side-on. To hit the heart, your arrow must pass through my arm, three layers of padded armor, skin, ribs, a pair of lungs. It will not reach. That leaves me time to kill you after I am struck. So you must aim for the head.”

“And if you limit yourselves to so small a target, even with a knife, I am confident I can turn aside two arrows.”

The young man raises his hunting knife beside his cheek.

The meaning is plain.

The heart is open to you. Whether you loose is your choice. What follows, I have already made clear.

Silence falls.

Across from him, the three Temerian soldiers clench their jaws.

The young man’s face remains calm, as though the talk of his own death never touched him.

Then he smiles, faintly.

“There is no need to take it that far, is there? I only wish to speak with my kind. He cannot be saved, that much is clear. Even a priestess of Melitele could not mend this, could she? Take this time to tend to your fallen comrade. By the time you are done, he will be gone as well. Carry their bodies to your lord’s castle and claim your bounty. We have seen enough blood today.”

The stances do not change, but the air loosens.

Perhaps it is the smile. Perhaps it is the mention of coin.

The longbowman wets his lips, hesitant.

“You… you will not come with us? The lord has offered three hundred and sixty orens for that murderer, that is…”

“That is a great sum.” Lannor cuts in, nodding.

“But hear me. I owe you. Your whole squad.”

“We stand with blades drawn now, but the truth is you freed me from my master, and lost a good soldier doing it.”

“We all saw how strong he is. Alone, I would never have escaped.”

“You are the lord’s enforcement squad. Taking him was your duty. That much is right. But a life is a life. Duty or not, I owe you for saving mine, and I will repay it. You lost a man. I will not take a single oren of that bounty.”

The sincerity eases them further. The archers lower their weapons a little. In turn, Lannor turns to face them fully.

“They say snake-eyed witchers feel nothing. Seems that is a lie.”

The longbowman lowers his bow and nods.

The crossbowman releases the tension on his string.

“We appreciate your honesty. But Captain Baron was a widower. The coin you refuse will not reach any kin of his… you should think again.”

“Let it be.” Lannor smiles, sheathing his dagger.

“It is a debt. If he has no family, then see him given a proper burial with that money. I judge my life to be worth more than three hundred orens.”

A life-debt left unpaid would sour him against himself.

The three exchange glances, then nod, stepping back and leaving space for the two witchers.

By now, pink froth gathers in Bordon’s beard, blood from the lungs.

He still watches his student.

Lannor looks down at him, then slowly crouches.

“At last, we can speak properly… master.”

There is no need to hide now. No need to play the glacier.

Lannor smiles, relief plain in it.

A witcher’s body is shaped by magic. Their lifespan far exceeds that of ordinary men, and even their heartbeat runs far slower.

Bordon’s bleeding is slower as well.

Even so, with a halberd driven into his abdomen, a witcher’s blood still spreads beneath him into a widening red pool.

Lannor and Bordon both know his time is short.

The stench gathers, monster blood caught in the seams of armor, human blood, the damp loam of trampled grass, all mixing into something foul.

Not long ago, Lannor would have retched bile within three breaths of such a smell.

Now his boots stand in the pool, stirring its copper stink into ripples, and he feels nothing.

There is no denying it, this world has changed him.

“You, from the very start, you endured the mutation whole.”

Bordon speaks with effort.

“You still have your emotions.”

Halting words, but startling enough that the halberdier nearby, who is gathering their captain’s body, stares in disbelief and pulls his companion farther away.

A normal man would already be at death’s door by now. Witchers truly are mutants.

Lannor does not mind the filth. He drops down and sits across from Bordon on the mud soaked through with blood.

It is the most at ease he has felt in a month.

He smiles, loose, unguarded. “Yes. That is right.”

As he speaks, he taps his temple with a finger.

“I was fortunate. The mutation did not take anything from me.”

Bordon’s thick-haired head nods stiffly, but the disbelief churning inside him is his alone.

Turning a common man into a witcher is agony beyond human endurance.

Most witchers grow strange in temperament. That comes not only from physiological change, but from minds warped by excess pain.

And yet, that young man, after seven days of mutation, had immediately formed a plan and buried his emotions.

What kind of jest is that?

Numb with shock, Bordon recalls the first time he met Lannor.

That youth with skin so fine it would stir envy in noble ladies. That youth who went weak at the sight of a severed head.

That was not a man who had known hardship. That was not even one who had seen the world’s cruelty.

Bordon had long believed Lannor to be some distant noble’s kin, cast here by accident through a misfired portal.

But a man who has known no hardship does not possess such will, such thought.

Bordon himself endured mutation. In his memory, even the fiercest and proudest warrior’s sons were reduced to formless wrecks under it.

But Lannor…

“You are not the son of some distant noble house, are you?”

Blood still trickles from Bordon’s lips, yet he stares hard at his student, speaking each word with care.

“Even if you were the whelp of Foltest, I would not believe he could produce someone like you… like this…”

Foltest, king of Temeria.

A man of immense power, able to grant his heir the finest education in the world. Even so, Bordon cannot believe such breeding could yield what stands before him.

Not even close.

Mind, patience, resolve, there is a gulf there, something ancient, something that reeks of blood.

From the very beginning, he understood his position, and in the same instant, found a way through it.

No king could teach that through experience alone.

Lannor gathers the Alchemy Sack in his hands and shrugs.

“A bit of experience, a bit of knowledge, and the constant sense that I might die under your training at any moment… given the education I received, this was not especially difficult. And I never claimed to be of noble blood.”

“Heh. True. All of that was my own guesswork. You never said a word.”

Bordon lets out a cold laugh.

Lannor suddenly looks up, eyes widening. “You laughed?”

The great man, growing weaker by the breath, seems surprised himself. He nods. “Laughed? Perhaps. Perhaps the blood loss has taken whatever in me dulled emotion. I find I hate you a little now. Too late for that, is it not?”

Bordon’s bearded face twists into a grim smile. A leather-gloved hand rests on his belly, where blood has pooled thick within the seams of his armor.

The slightest movement threatens to spill more.

Yes, at this point, the bleeding has rendered everything moot.

“It seems you have regained some feeling at the end. Then perhaps you would care to talk?”

“Talk?” Bordon’s face holds an unfamiliar smile. With the last of his strength, he shifts slightly, seeking some scrap of comfort.

It only draws more blood.

“Talk about what?”

“About why you ‘took’ me. I do not believe you would save a penniless farmer.”

Lannor folds his hands, watching his teacher with quiet interest.

He had been handed over to Bordon by the Law of Surprise, by fate itself, taken from a farmer’s hands.

The hellish mutation, the apprentice life steeped in the constant threat of death, all of it began with that single exchange.

Lannor smiles now, but that does not mean he has forgotten.

On the contrary, he remembers that day clearly, being traded like chattel.

Bordon speaks freely now. There is nothing left for him to hold back.

“Ah. The Law of Surprise. A fine accident, that.”

The bearded man chuckles weakly, then recounts the bargain.