Witt came on foot across the plank bridge over the Buina River. The wind on this winter night was bitterly cold, and the village's dirt roads had long since emptied. A black cloak covered his shoulders, and two swords rode on his back. In daylight, they would have stood out glaringly, but the darkness offered him some concealment.
Witt stopped before the noticeboard outside the tavern at the village entrance. The darkness of night posed no obstacle whatsoever as he took down the only notice he was after: a contract seeking someone to kill drowners.
The contract even bore a few grease stains, looking as though someone had simply torn off a random scrap of paper to write it on.
With the contract in hand, Witt did not enter the tavern immediately. He stopped outside its door, beneath the name Wild Grape, and silently listened to the clamor within, judging that there were roughly seven or eight patrons inside.
More people meant trouble, and witchers were always on the outnumbered side.
Witt glanced at the dark houses nearby. Faint sounds that had escaped efforts to stifle them reached his ears. It seemed the owners of the other houses had no time to entertain an unexpected visitor.
With no other choice, Witt pushed the door open and entered. The tavern keeper raised his head and sized up the newcomer. Witt still wore his cloak, and the dim candlelight kept the keeper from seeing his face clearly.
"What'll you have?"
"Beer."
Witt spoke the Rivian dialect somewhat haltingly, just like Geralt.
"Pah, Rivian scum from down south." A grating insult sounded behind Witt.
Upstream along the Buina River stood a vineyard that produced the Kaedweni grapes famous throughout the Northern Kingdoms, and strangers from other lands often visited the village. The keeper therefore cared nothing whether he sold his beer to a Rivian or a Nilfgaardian from even farther south.
But most Kaedweni shared their king's view: they believed that the three southern kingdoms of Aedirn, Lyria, and Rivia had been Kaedweni territory since ancient times.
The keeper wiped his hands on his filthy apron, fetched a cracked wooden cup, and filled it with a generous serving of beer.
Standing at the counter, Witt removed his cloak, revealing silver-gray hair and a pale face that still looked somewhat youthful. He wore close-fitting dark leather armor, with straps around his arms to hold it in place.
Of course, the most conspicuous things were the swords on Witt's back. Carrying a sword was perfectly normal; nearly everyone in the North carried weapons. But no one carried a sword on their back like a bow, much less two.
Only witchers did.
"A witcher!" the keeper exclaimed upon seeing those unmistakable slit pupils.
Ignoring the keeper's fuss, Witt picked up the beer on the counter and took a sip.
The beer brewed here in Kaedwen had a strange taste, like vomit that had been chewed by a troll, with some unidentified grease floating on top.
"I'd like a room for the night."
"We haven't got any!" the keeper said hastily, his heart filled with fear. He crouched behind the counter and looked up at the travel-worn witcher.
"Try somewhere else. We haven't got a room for you," the keeper insisted. He put little stock in the boasts of those poets who went around spouting nonsense. In his eyes, even if these mutant freaks were not monsters, they certainly carried some sort of curse.
"I'm here about the contract." Witt produced the notice and tossed two ducats onto the counter.
Eskel had pressed those ducats into his hands before he left, offering advice after his strenuous efforts to dissuade Witt from taking a contract alone had failed. He had said that using the Kingdom of Kaedwen's own currency there might earn him a little more goodwill.
The tavern keeper paid no attention to the scrap of paper, snatching up the two ducats and pocketing them.
Two ducats were not much, but they would have been enough for Witt to find a kindly household on the outskirts of Ard Carraigh, Kaedwen's capital, and make do for a night.
Yet the keeper still refused to relent, instead casting a pleading look behind Witt.
Witt sighed.
In the eight years he remembered since being reborn in the world of The Witcher, Witt had often met with cold looks outside Kaer Morhen. This occasion was, of course, no exception.
The seven drunks, who had already been eyeing him menacingly, closed in around Witt. Only one person stayed where he was.
One man, reeking of alcohol and bearing an ugly scar on his left cheek, even made a point of swaggering up to Witt, his head swaying, and looking up into Witt's amber cat eyes.
Witt saw disgust in the scarred man's eyes, and fear concealed beneath it.
"There's no room for you here, and we don't need your help! Mutant freak from Rivia." The grating words squeezed out of the scarred man's mouth. He raised both hands in a shoving motion, but carefully restrained himself from touching the witcher, as though terrified of catching the curse these "monsters" carried.
"Throw him out! Buina Village doesn't welcome cold-blooded monsters! They're no different from those pointy-eared bastards in the hills!" the other drunks jeered.
Witt's pale face remained expressionless. Looking at the recently healed scar on the man's face, he ran through what he had learned at Kaer Morhen and the contents of the contract, arriving at a rough deduction.
He stared at the scarred man and said calmly, "You should be thankful the drowner that found you didn't have poisonous claws. Otherwise, you'd be lying in the river drinking horse piss by now."
"Fucking mutant scum!" The scarred man's nostrils flared and his face flushed crimson. His mouth spewed a stench of beer mixed with food.
"Don't get in the way of my drink. I paid for it."
"Drink my ass!" The scarred man punched the beer out of Witt's hand and reached for the collar of his padded armor with the other.
Two of the others stretched out their hands to seize Witt's arms, trying to leave him no room to dodge.
But Witt simply twisted aside, avoiding the scarred man's hand, then reached out with his right hand and yanked hard. The scarred man lost his balance and crashed into the drunk trying to grab Witt's right arm. Caught off guard, the man on the right took the full impact, and the two tumbled together toward the wall.
Dealing with the man on his left proved even easier. Taking advantage of his height, Witt drove his left elbow back into the man's jaw, knocking him unconscious and sending him crumpling to the floor.
Steel rang clear as his sword left its sheath.
The blade reflected the candlelight onto the faces of the four men still standing, revealing indescribable terror.
Their opponent had put three of them out of action almost instantly, and now he held a weapon. What could they do besides tremble?
The tavern keeper hurriedly threw back the two ducats Witt had given him, as though they were tickets on a boat to hell. He no longer concealed his fear of the witcher and did not dare so much as glance at Witt again.
Steel sword in hand, Witt approached the scarred man.
By now, the scarred man had vomited up everything he had consumed that evening after being flung aside, and had sobered up considerably.
He looked in terror at Witt standing before him. Those amber cat eyes seemed to shine brighter than the candles in the room.
The scarred man could not utter a word. He felt only the icy cold of his hands and feet, as though his blood had left his body ahead of him. Yet what he had left on the tavern floor was the yellowish puddle from wetting himself.
Witt rested his sword point against the scarred man's unmarked right cheek, pricking his skin just enough to send blood sliding down like raindrops.
"Need me to give you another scar and come up with a story to go with it? Say, a heroic tale of begging a witcher for mercy, then killing him when his guard was down. I imagine that would sound braver than fighting a drowner with a pitchfork."
"Enough, witcher. They've learned their lesson. I posted the contract. I'm Jeff, the one hiring you."
Witt had noticed Jeff, who had remained seated at the table, long before. He looked like the village headman.
"If you hadn't sat there doing nothing all this time, they wouldn't have received a lesson like this." Witt naturally knew the man had been testing him. After all, for a Kaedweni to swallow his distaste and ask someone for help, he always needed some reason to convince himself.
Witt sheathed his sword. He had never intended to risk being wanted by Henselt, that magic-hating "swine" of a king, just to kill a few drunks who had nothing to do with him.
Still, to keep them from causing trouble while he carried out the contract, Witt considered this sort of threat quite necessary.
"Master witcher, please forgive their rudeness. Several villagers have been killed recently by those pointy-eared curs in the wooded hills, and now drowners have appeared nearby too. That's why they..." Headman Jeff offered a few words of explanation for the drunks.
Witt knew that these elves ambushing humans in the hills were actually the forerunners of the Scoia'tael from the games. But it was only 1261, and they had not yet drawn the attention of the Northern Kingdoms. They operated only around Kaedwen, where hatred of nonhumans was most severe, attacking human merchants passing through.
Witt's silence made Jeff increasingly uneasy. Thinking the witcher before him was still unwilling to let the matter rest, he said in an unfriendly tone, "You came for the contract, didn't you? I'm willing to add another ten ducats to the original reward as compensation for their disrespect."
Witt had not expected his wandering thoughts to bring such a favorable result. The reward for this contract was only fifty ducats to begin with; it had just increased by a fifth.
Fifty ducats might sound like a lot, but exchanged entirely for crowns-the currency issued by the Free City of Novigrad, which held its value best in the Northern Kingdoms-they would fetch only ten, enough to cover just half the price of a night at Novigrad's cheapest brothel.
Witt had not intended to haggle with these people, but the unexpected increase in his reward reminded him of Lambert, who had encouraged him to come take the contract alone.
This formerly youngest witcher of the School of the Wolf believed in one maxim when dealing with clients: "If your client can offer ten crowns as a reward, he can offer a hundred. Don't be like Geralt and say nothing."
And whenever Lambert imparted his "words of wisdom" to Witt, he would receive a heavy blow from their shared mentor and father figure, Vesemir.
Then Vesemir would say sternly, "Don't teach your brothers those sneaky tricks you learned at the gambling table."
Thinking of Vesemir, that kindly yet stern, rigid yet tolerant old man, brought to Witt's mind the lonely castle deep in the Blue Mountains-his home in this world, Kaer Morhen.
Seeing Witt still say nothing, the headman grew unnerved beneath the stare of those cat eyes, wondering whether his tone a moment earlier had offended the mutant freak before him.
More anxious than ever, Jeff feigned composure and ventured, "Then how about increasing it to seventy ducats?"
"Mm," Witt replied expressionlessly.
After this incident, Witt decided he ought to follow Geralt's example after all. Silence was golden.
Only then did Headman Jeff let out a long breath and ask with relief, "May I have your name?"
"Ger... of Rivia." Witt froze for an instant, then smoothly supplied his answer. "Witt of Lyria."