Over the next few days, the caravan traveled steadily along the ancient road through the Northern Kingdoms. Thin frost still covered the ground when they set out each morning, the midday sun melted the snow, and by evening it froze again beneath the wheels. This recurring rhythm gradually eased Yavi's taut nerves.
Mel came over carrying two cups of hot tea. "Looks like you finally don't have to keep watch all night?"
"These people are more reliable than I expected." Yavi accepted the hot tea she offered, its rising steam blurring his sharp features. "At least they can handle ordinary wild beasts."
Mel cradled her cup, her gaze following Hawk as he directed the unloading. The burly man was shouting orders, telling the guards to stack the goods neatly.
"I've been traveling to and from the academy with Hawk's caravan for three years now," she said softly, a faint, reassured smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. "We've run into bandits a few times, and once a pack of winter wolves attacked... but Hawk always manages to get us out of danger."
"The old guy certainly knows a thing or two. Looks like he served in the army when he was young." Yavi nodded in acknowledgment. "He's fairly dependable, but I still trust myself more."
The caravan continued peacefully like this for several days. Just as they were about to enter Redania, Yavi, who had been sitting in the carriage with his eyes closed, resting and meditating, suddenly opened his eyes. His Witcher Senses had caught something unusual-at least several dozen uneven breaths in the pine woods on either side of the road, along with the faint clink of metal.
"There's an ambush."
Before Mel and Claire could react, Yavi had already shot out of the carriage like an arrow from a bow. In a few leaps, he reached Hawk's side and seized the caravan leader's reins.
"There's an ambush ahead, at least forty men." Yavi lowered his voice and pointed toward the woods on either side. "Ten on the left have bows. There are heavy weapons on the right."
Hawk's thick eyebrows knitted together as he surveyed the quiet woods suspiciously. "Boy, my scouts just checked this stretch of road..."
Just then, a jay suddenly burst from the bushes in alarm. Yavi's ears caught a muffled curse-one of the ambushers had accidentally given away his position.
Hawk's gaze immediately sharpened. He raised his right hand and made a signal understood only within the caravan. "Everyone, on guard! Defensive formation!"
Almost at the same moment, the bandits, realizing their ambush had been exposed, sounded a harsh horn. Dozens of ragged bandits armed with iron weapons swarmed out from both sides. The burly man leading them brandished a bloodstained double-bladed axe. "Boys! We're after the goods and the women! Kill everyone else!"
The caravan guards quickly organized defenses on both sides, but the caravan was too long for them to cover the carriages at the rear. The guards shouted for those behind to hurry to the front.
The rear of the caravan instantly descended into chaos. Terrified students shoved one another as they fled forward, their leather boots making a jumble of dull thuds against the muddy ground. Holding Mel's wrist with his left hand and shielding Claire with his right arm, Yavi cut a path through the chaotic crowd.
Suddenly, a piercing cry broke through the uproar. A vicious-looking bandit had grabbed the wrist of a female student who had fallen to the very back of the group, and her thick padded school uniform made a ripping sound as he tugged at it. The girl's face turned pale with fear. The bandit's large, iron-vise hand gouged several bloody marks into her slender wrist, and her efforts to break free were as futile as a dragonfly trying to shake a pillar.
"Don't be scared, little beauty..." A savage grin filled the bandit's face, just as his right hand reached toward the girl's chest.
A crescent of silver flashed past. Spurting blood traced a lurid arc in the sunlight, and the head, still wearing its savage grin, spun three and a half times through the air before landing in the mud with a thud.
As the warm shower of blood splashed over the student's deathly pale face, her vacant eyes still reflected the headless corpse slowly sinking to its knees. Only when Yavi shoved her toward safety did she stumble toward the crowd as though waking from a dream.
"Go! Don't look back!" Yavi's low shout was swallowed by the screams around him.
"Yavi! Behind you!" Mel's scream came from a distance.
Without looking back, Yavi dodged sideways, then slashed upward with a backhand stroke. The blade passed through flesh as easily as slicing soft tofu-the bandit's sword arm was severed cleanly at the elbow. The muscle fibers were clearly visible on the cut surface, and even the stark white splintered bone gleamed coldly in the sunlight.
Before the severed arm hit the ground, Yavi turned his wrist, his silver sword tracing a perfect semicircle. A second head flew into the air, terror forever frozen on its coarse face.
Yavi had barely drawn his silver sword back when four more bandits lunged at him from different directions. They had clearly learned their lesson and kept a cautious distance, their crude iron spears glinting coldly in the sunlight.
The bandit on the left attacked first, thrusting his spear straight beneath Yavi's ribs. The witcher nimbly sidestepped, sliding his blade down the spear shaft and shearing off three of the man's fingers. Amid the screams, Yavi followed through with a spinning kick, sending the second bandit crashing into the third, and the two tumbled into a heap.
The fourth bandit's axe was already cleaving down before his eyes. Yavi swung his sword directly to meet it, a pale blue current of air surging over the sharp silver blade. Before the blade even made contact, the sword qi had split the iron axe in two. The bandit stared at his ruined weapon, somewhat dumbfounded.
But Yavi gave him no chance to think. He drove his left foot hard into the man's knee, throwing him off balance and forcing him down onto one knee. Before that newly bent leg had steadied, Yavi's silver sword had already become a streak of cold light and plunged straight in. Its tip pierced precisely into his mouth, the sharp blade penetrating his soft palate and emerging three inches below the occipital bone at the back of his head. Yavi violently twisted his wrist, rotating the blade half a turn inside the skull, then wrenched it outward. With a teeth-grating crunch of shattering bone, half the bandit's head peeled open like a split pumpkin. Gray-white brain tissue mixed with blood splattered onto the mud, and the one relatively intact eye still held incredulous terror.
The remaining three bandits froze in place, their weapons trembling slightly in their hands. They watched half their companion's head slide to the ground, gray-white brains mingling with blood and slowly spreading through the mud. A thick, nauseating stench of blood filled the air.
Though their legs shook uncontrollably with fear, the vicious gleam peculiar to desperate outlaws soon returned to the three bandits' eyes. They exchanged glances, then suddenly attacked together-one charged head-on, swinging a rust-covered machete, while the other two flanked him from the left and right, their three weapons cutting off every angle of escape.
Just as a blade was about to touch Yavi's clothes, a strange red-and-green glow suddenly rose around the witcher. The next second, three silver flashes appeared in different places almost simultaneously.
The first bandit's machete suddenly left his grasp. He stared blankly at his right hand, severed cleanly at the wrist, and before the pain could reach him, a line of blood had already opened across his throat; the bandit on the left ran two more steps in his charging posture, only for his upper body to slide off at an angle; the one on the far right suffered the worst, his entire body precisely bisected from between his eyebrows to his crotch, the two halves falling to either side as his entrails spilled all over the ground.
Yavi's figure solidified again behind the three men, not so much as a drop of blood clinging to his silver sword. He slowly sheathed it as the dull thuds of three bodies hitting the ground sounded one after another behind him.