Chapter 136

Roy released his grip on Gwyhyr.

Beggar merely snorted, wearing the look of someone who had given up caring, like a dead pig unafraid of boiling water.

“You think if you don’t talk, I have no way to make you?”

Roy looked at Beggar. His gaze deepened, his brow knotted high, and his expression slipped into a vacant trance.

“Nivellen ... outskirts of Vizima ... bandits’ manor...”

How had he fallen this far, scraping by worse than an ordinary man.

He stepped into another Witcher’s story.

“Nivellen...”

“Witcher, you know me?”

“I don’t just know you. I also know a white-haired Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.”

At the sound of that name, Beggar, sprawled in the refuse, suddenly sat bolt upright.

“What? Take me to him, now. That white-haired bastard ruined my happy life. I’ve been hunting him for nine whole years!”

Beggar ground his teeth as he spoke, as if Geralt were his sworn mortal enemy.

“Then first you’ll tell us why you let the horses go, and where this hatred comes from. If I remember right, Geralt once helped you...”

Roy was referring to a story from many years ago, called A Grain of Truth.

“Helped?” Nivellen’s wrinkled face twisted into a bitter smile. He was clearly a man of thirty-six or thirty-seven, yet his features were weathered like those of someone in his fifties or sixties, life’s hardships having carved too many marks into him. “At first, I thought so too, until later ... As for why I let your horses go, it’s simple. I hate that white-haired man, and so I hate all Witchers!”

“I can see the confusion in your eyes. You want to dig to the bottom of it, just like that man did back then? I can satisfy your curiosity, but take me to him. Find Geralt of Rivia.”

“If you’re willing, tell your story,” Roy said. He already knew what Nivellen had been through, but Letho knew nothing.

Beggar cleared his throat and began eagerly, as if he had been waiting all along for someone to listen.

He had kept these words bottled up for a long time, but ninety-nine out of a hundred people treated them as fiction, at most listening to the opening lines.

Witchers, without question, were patient listeners.

“Do you want the short version or the long one ... Looks like you want the latter. Then I’ll start from the beginning.”

Leaning back against the heap of filth, Nivellen looked at the two Witchers, fully absorbed, and began his tale.

“Sixteen years ago, my grandfather, my father, and I lived together in a luxurious manor north of Vizima. My family never produced anyone respectable, let alone nobles. We built our fortune through robbery.”

“The elders often stopped passing merchants and stripped them clean, and sometimes led their men to nearby villages to collect protection money. Life was comfortable, and we amassed a considerable fortune.”

“But I was sickly from childhood, always coughing and sniffling. Weak, timid, I was often bullied by the servants in the manor. While my father was alive, they didn’t dare go too far. But after my father robbed a carriage and was killed by a swordsman who leapt out of it, the servants grew even more unrestrained. As for my grandfather, he’d been struck in the head by a flail when he was young, his wits never quite right, and he couldn’t protect me.”