Chapter 9.
The road cut through trees where the light thinned.
Evening had started to take hold. The sun was down behind the canopy, what remained of it broken and uneven between branches. Shadows stretched early and stayed.
Brush pressed close on both sides, roots breaking the dirt where the ground dipped. He heard them before he saw them—leather shifting, a boot scraping bark.
They stepped out where the road narrowed.
Four men. Leather patched where it had torn and been stitched again. Steel carried openly.
He swung down before the horse could shy.
"Coin and the horse," one of them said, voice carrying down the road.
Another laughed once, short. "Trying to look scary with all that iron?"
"Must be heavy," a third said, whistling low through his teeth.
The witcher didn't answer.
The light caught in his eyes for a moment.
He didn't break stride.
The first man stepped in and died where he stood, the cut heavy and final. The second got his shield up and lost his arm for it.
The third stumbled back, eyes dropping to the medallion.
"It's a witche—"
Steel took his head before the word could finish.
The last one screamed.
It didn't help him.
When it was done, the road lay quiet again. Blood soaked into dirt and brush and darkened it. He wiped the blade clean and sheathed it. No one else came.
He mounted and rode on.
—
Weeks passed on the road.
The heat stayed. Dust clung to boots and hems and never quite shook free. The land changed in small ways—fields giving way to scrub, stone breaking through soil where the ground thinned.
The work came as it always did.
Nothing that lingered.
People asked him for work.
Some burned out where they nested. Others were finished near water or along the road and left there. Coin changed hands. Words stayed short.
The blades held.
Steel cut where it was set to cut. No drift. No pull. Silver took what it was meant to take and came back clean enough with care. He wiped them down after use. Edges held.
The leather stayed where it should. Straps bit and released. Plates rode without shifting. The weight sat right.
He slept when he could. Ate what he found. Moved on.
By the time the road bent toward higher ground, the pouch at his belt was settled. Not heavy. Not light. Enough that he didn't count it twice.
—
The village showed itself under full light.
Smoke first. Then roofs, low and uneven. Fields lay close around it, broken by paths that had been worn where they were needed and nowhere else.
The road dipped as it reached the first houses, rutted and dry.
He rode through at an easy pace.
People were working. A cart stood near a shed, sacks being shifted by hand. Someone cursed when a seam split and grain spilled onto the dirt. Another bent to gather it without looking up.
A man splitting wood shifted his block with his foot and brought the axe down again. The rhythm didn't change.
A woman drew water at the well, braced against the bucket as she hauled it up hand over hand. She poured it into a waiting pail and set to drawing another without looking around.
A child ran past carrying a bundle under one arm, stumbled, caught himself, and kept going without slowing.
No one greeted him.
No one stared long.
The inn sat where the road widened, stone at the base, timber above. Its door stood open. A horse was already tied out front, head low, reins slack.
He dismounted and led his own in beside it. Tied the reins. Checked the knot once.
Inside, the room was dimmer but not quiet. Two tables were occupied. A man leaned back in his chair while another spoke, nodding once when he was done. Someone near the hearth scraped a bowl clean with a heel of bread.
The woman behind the counter wiped her hands on her apron.
"What can I get you," she said.
"Whatever's hot."
She nodded and turned back without asking more.
He took the cup she set down first and drank while he waited. When the bowl came, it was thick and plain. He carried it to the wall, set his gloves down, and sat.
He ate without hurry.
Talk moved around him without changing shape—weather holding, a fence that would need mending, a cow that hadn't taken feed that morning.
No one mentioned him.
He was halfway through when a man stopped beside the table.
Leather jacket. Mud on the cuffs. A knife worn smooth at the grip. He smelled faintly of pitch and old blood.
"You're a witcher," the man said.
The witcher looked up.
"Yes."
The man nodded once. "I hunt out past the eastern tree line."
The witcher kept eating.
"Found a wolf pack yesterday," the man went on. "Five of them. All grown. All dead."
He waited. The witcher didn't look up.
"I'll see you paid," the hunter said.
After a while, the witcher said, "Where."
The man jerked his chin toward the door. "I'll show you."
The witcher set the bowl aside, left coin on the table, and stood.
—
The trees closed in not far from the village.
The hunter led without hurry, following ground that had been walked often enough to stay open. Not a path. Just habit pressed into earth.
They left it where the brush thinned.
"Didn't tell many about this," the hunter said. "Didn't want people wandering around these parts."
He nodded ahead.
"Here."
The clearing was small. Pine needles lay thick underfoot, crushed flat in places. The ground was broken where something heavy had passed through.
The witcher crouched.
Hoof marks pressed deep into the soil, wide-set and steady.
Between them, claw marks cut in—shallower, fewer—set where the forelimbs had struck and pulled forward.
Big.
He stood and moved on.
The first wolf lay on its side, stiff, fur already dulling. The ribcage was torn open. Ribs spread wide.
Another lay farther in. Then another.
Five in total.
He moved on from the carcasses.
The clearing narrowed where the trees pressed closer. Pine needles thinned and gave way to earth torn open in long strips.
A young pine lay across the ground ahead, roots torn free on one side, soil still clinging where it had been wrenched out and dropped.
Farther on, another trunk lay tilted into the brush, branches snapped where they'd caught and dragged.
Beyond that, the ground was broken again, less clearly, the disturbance thinning as it went.
The witcher stopped at the edge of the clearing.
"Go back," he said.
The hunter turned at once.
The witcher went on.
—
The ground rose slightly as the trees thinned.
The damage narrowed until it stopped meaning anything. Torn earth gave way to packed dirt and moss worn thin where something heavy had passed more than once. Whatever it was had slowed here. Then moved with purpose.
He caught the smell before he saw anything.
Rank.
It sat low in the air, thick enough to taste. Not carried far. Held close to where it had been left.
He stopped and drew another breath through his nose.
The smell came from the trees.
One trunk stood apart, bark scraped raw along one side. Sap had bled and dried there, darkened and tacky. Coarse hair clung to the split wood, caught where something had pressed hard and shifted its weight.
He touched it once.
The smell stayed on his fingers.
He moved on.
The ground dipped beyond the trees, sloping toward stone that broke through the earth in a low rise. Brush thinned where rock pushed close to the surface. The smell grew heavier there, pooled instead of drifting.
The cave mouth opened in the stone beneath a fold of roots and moss.
Wide enough to matter.
Low enough to make him duck.
The ground before it was scuffed bare. Old tracks overlapped newer ones, pressed into dirt that never fully dried. Bones lay off to one side where they'd been shoved clear—cleaned, then forgotten.
The smell was strongest here.
He stopped short of the entrance and breathed in once more.
Chort.
He shifted his shoulders once and settled the plates. A strap was tightened, then left alone.
The silver came free.
He uncorked a vial from a leather bag at his belt and ran the oil along the blade in a thin, even coat.
Relict oil.
The vial went away. The blade stayed in hand.
He stepped into the cave.
Stone swallowed the light almost at once. The air cooled and stayed that way. He moved until the ground firmed under his boots and the wall broke the space enough to matter.
He stopped.
Waited.
The cave breathed around him, slow and heavy.
The medallion hummed.