Chapter 212

Roy watched the scene before him.

His thoughts churned. A Witcher was meant to stand against monsters. Yet this time he was fighting beside vodyanoi and drowners, and against the Knights of the White Rose.

While he was still weighing that bitter turn, the battle began.

Adda’s red lips shaped obscure incantations. In one hand she held the iridescent fish scale, and with the other she cast a spray of many-colored magic over the charging vodyanoi.

At once, under the spell’s influence, the vodyanoi swelled in stature. Muscles bulged beneath their scales. Their once squat bodies grew even larger than the knights.

Whsst, whsst.

The Knights of the White Rose, locked in formation, loosed a volley at the attackers.

The bolts fell like rain.

But when the quarrels struck, at most they pierced a single layer of scales. More often they glanced off the slick hide. The barrage did nothing to halt the vodyanoi charge.

With weapons raised, they thundered forward like a dark green spear driving straight into the knights’ formation.

One giant vodyanoi drew more eyes than the rest. He stood half a head taller than Rudolf, like a gray bear risen onto two legs. Unlike the kin swarming around him, his weapon was not a fish spear or a club, but a stunted alder tree.

His thick, scale-covered arms whirled the trunk in a broad sweep. Steel swords met it with a crash. Three knights around him felt their hands split open from the shock, their weapons torn free as they were sent sprawling to the ground.

Then the vodyanoi raised the trunk in both hands and smashed it straight down.

Wind burst outward.

A Knight of the White Rose too slow to dodge took the blow head-on. In the next instant his chest caved in, and he died on the spot with blood pouring from all seven orifices.

“Ahhh!”

The gills along the vodyanoi’s cheeks flared in the air, giving voice to a hideous cackle as he swung the alder faster still.

More knights surged in like a tide, circling him, striking at his back, like a pack of cunning hyenas bringing down a lion.

In this enlarged form, the vodyanoi had gained strength and size, but lost agility. They turned slowly, and in numbers they were hopelessly outmatched. Before long the Knights of the White Rose had wrapped around them, splitting into several groups and eating them away piecemeal.

Every vodyanoi had to face two knights. They were outnumbered and untrained, their weapons wielded without discipline, openings everywhere.

Under ordinary circumstances, the Order would have butchered them quickly.

But this time the vodyanoi had come prepared. Under Adda’s blessings, several spells flowing over them in shifting colors, they no longer feared blood or pain. Shallow wounds almost closed and stanched themselves in a blink.

The White Rose knights did not possess bodies of iron and steel like the vodyanoi. Before landing they had changed into leather armor, and could not afford a style of fighting that traded wound for wound. For a while, despite the wide difference in numbers, the two sides were locked in stalemate.

Now and then bursts of fire flashed through the fight. Knights hurled bombs into the drowner pack, and explosions of acid and flame held them back.

...

For the White Rose knights, stalemate was the worst possible outcome.

It meant the monsters coming in from the lakeshore would soon encircle and tear them apart.