System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 244: The Price of Willful Blindness
Downwarren, halfway up the slope, was a trifling little village in the vast southern reaches of Velen.
That afternoon, as usual, the village elder Kayson leaned in his own doorway, basking in the lazy sunlight and looking down over the neat fields below the hill.
The hardworking folk of Downwarren moved back and forth along the ridges, swinging hoes to loosen the earth or spreading fertilizer over the crops.
The carrots, peppers, and turnips in the fields were growing splendidly, and when each dipperful of golden liquid was poured over them, they seemed to spring with even greater life.
“Another year of fine harvest. Thanks be to the Ladies for the magic acorns they granted us.”
More than half a year had passed since the night feast on Bald Mountain in spring. The villagers had long since crushed the gifted magic acorns into oil and used it to feed the earth, and from the look of things, it worked just as well as ever.
Kayson rubbed at his right ear, closed his eyes, and thought for a while. The furrows on his wrinkled brow deepened. “Time to choose the Offering for the Ladies ... What should be prepared this year? Which household should be given up?”
After a long while, the troubled Kayson drew on his pipe and blew a ring of white smoke from his nostrils into the air. But through that ring of smoke, he noticed several strange figures.
Five strangers, leading horses, were slowly entering the village.
...
“Who are you people?” Kayson stopped them at the entrance. Normally, not a single outsider would appear in Downwarren for months on end. Five arriving at once was a rare thing indeed.
Besides that, all five of the outsiders were sturdy men carrying two swords on their backs, and their eyes, eyes utterly unlike those of ordinary folk, reminded him of seasoned hunters, and of beasts such as vipers and hawks.
He frowned.
“Old father, we’re travelers from the eastern marshes...” The youngest of them showed a mild smile and glanced at the wooden sign by the village entrance. “Witchers as well, wandering where the road takes us. There’s no need for alarm. We show our strength only to monsters, never to ordinary folk.”
Kayson stepped back and cast a wary eye over the medallions at their throats. When his gaze passed over Flavius, his pupils shrank at once. “A Witcher of the Cat School? What business do you have in Downwarren?”
“We’ve passed through your lands and wanted to ask a few things ... This afternoon, did you happen to see a flock of crows flying nearby?”
“Crows? No such ill-omened creatures exist in Downwarren.” The old village elder’s voice rose. “Now I ask that you leave. Outsiders are not welcome here.”
Kayson’s raised voice stirred the dozen or so sturdy young villagers nearby, and they quickly gathered around, carrying hoes, sickles, and hayforks, their eyes full of naked threat and rejection.
To Witchers, that was strange. However much people disliked them, few would draw weapons on them to their faces, especially not against five Witchers standing together. That kind of provocation was as good as courting death.
What were the villagers relying on?
The air in the village turned taut as a drawn bowstring.
The Cat School Witcher’s hand quietly settled on the hilt at his back. His apprentice had been abducted, and no trace of him had been found since. He was near the end of his temper.
The kidnappers had lured him and his companions to Downwarren. Faced now with a cluster of peasants who did not know the height of heaven or the depth of earth, what was the meaning of it? Merely to toy with them, or to make them ... slaughter a village?
A trace of blood-dark color flashed in Flavius’s gray-green eyes. The knuckles around his sword hilt had turned white. The Kael brothers’ muscles tightened too, ready to break loose.
Roy and Letho exchanged a glance.
“Easy, Griffin.” Roy soothed his companion, then turned back to the villagers. “People of Downwarren, believe us, we mean no harm, otherwise we wouldn’t have walked in by the front road in broad daylight.”
He looked into Kayson’s eyes. “Had we meant you ill, we’d have chosen the night...” Roy said with a thin smile. “Your wives and children would have woken without husbands and fathers.”
There seemed to be a trace of magic in the Witcher’s voice. In a few short words he made the villagers afraid in spite of themselves. Yet a few of the more hot-blooded peasants were enraged by what he said.
“Kill him!”
Among them, one peasant with an astonishing growth of chest hair suddenly shouted, bulged his ox-eyes, and thrust his hayfork forward with all his strength.
And his target, the youngest Witcher, did not move at all. He merely stared back, letting the hayfork press against the Griffin breastplate over his chest.
Pop.
A yellow glow shattered. The hayfork stopped there, unable to go any farther.
The peasant who had attacked felt the strange silence around him, swallowed with difficulty, and cast a questioning glance at the others, as if to ask them,
Why aren’t you attacking with me?
“You’d best think first before striking,” Roy said. “Do you really believe the tools in your hands are sharper than the steel swords tempered by Witchers? Or that your skin is tougher than the Wyverns and Griffins Witchers have killed?”
“Would you like to test it?”
The peasants took one step back in unison, and their “weapons” lowered toward the ground.
“What do you want, Witchers?”
“An answer...” Roy took the dagger from Flavius and held it up for them to see. “Never mind if you didn’t see the crows, but you must have seen this dagger before. Calm yourselves, it is a token given to us by the three Ladies. They guided us to Downwarren, and I imagine they must have some message they wish passed on.”
...
Downwarren was not a small village. It held roughly a hundred households, and Elder Kayson’s house stood at the very center.
“Witcher, was this holy relic truly bestowed by the Ladies?” Kayson examined the dagger and quickly confirmed it was indeed the one from north of the marsh.
“You may take it that way.” Roy stood beside the window and watched the villagers passing back and forth outside. Velen was supposed to be the poorest tract in Temeria, yet the people of Downwarren looked surprisingly well. They lacked the yellowed faces and wasted bodies that marked most peasants through poor nourishment. They looked healthy enough.
“I can tell you the whole business plainly. The Ladies of the Wood used this dagger to carve bloody words across the chest of that miserable man in the marsh, guiding us here to Downwarren, though we have already laid the poor wretch to rest. So then, Kayson, as elder of Downwarren, shouldn’t you give us some hint as to how we are meant to recover the child the Ladies of the Wood took?”
“The Ladies took your child?”
“To speak more truly, they stole him. They stole an eight-year-old child, my apprentice, right from under our eyes.” Flavius roared the words in fury.
The Ladies of the Wood showed such pitiless cruelty even to the cultists under their rule. How much worse would they treat his Little Monkey?
“Silence. That is slander against the rulers of all Velen.” Kayson was first angry, then afraid. He tossed the dagger back to the Witcher. “Get out. The village cannot be dragged into ruin by a pack of proud, ignorant fools.”
“Tell us what we need, and we’ll leave soon enough...” Flavius stepped right up to old Kayson’s chest. His gray-green eyes bored into the old man’s black ones, and his voice had gone cold as steel. “Tell us where the Ladies of the Wood may be found, or what must be done to make them return the child.”
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