System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 50
Spansol squatted at the foot of Mahakam. Two hundred households give or take. Most of the able-bodied did not farm. They worked the dwarf-run mines up in the hills. That custom had lasted generations, fifty years and more.
The village buildings were not the usual timber-and-wattle of other hamlets. They were hewn and stacked from the mountain’s stone and ore, solid and neat where a peasant house elsewhere would have been rickety and crude.
Roy sat on the village elder’s carpet and drank a thin stew of boiled greens. He rubbed his smooth chin and let the place sink in.
“Witcher work must be good,” he said. “We left Aldersberg not long ago and already folk are hunting us down.”
“Casili, you claim four murders in three months in this village?” Letho asked.
The ruddy-nosed man who had escorted them nodded, his smile gone serious. “Three lads not yet wed have been dead for some time. The most recent, Brady, was found a few days back. He left two children and a widow. They’ll have to rely on the village now.”
He shook his head. “There hasn’t been an atrocity like this since Spansol was founded. People are frightened. They blame mountain ghosts, witches and things of that sort. They live in terror. Will you two find the killer? We’ll discuss reward later.”
Letho waved a hand. “Payment can wait. First I need facts. Why are the fields full of women and children at this hour? Where have the men gone?”
Casili pointed out the window toward the sun. “They are in the mines. Four or five hours left on the shift.”
“The village has been butchered and they still go to work? They do not watch their families?”
The elder rubbed his wide nose and forced a bitter smile. “The bosses in the mountains agreed to shorten the men’s shifts. Everyone can be home before dark. They promised to catch the culprit. But they are not professionals. Three months passed with no progress. It seems when monsters vex the mountains, only Witchers can sort them out.”
He looked at Letho with a mixture of hope and deference.
“Bosses in the mountain?” Roy chewed the phrase over. He knew in the wider world dwarves and elves were weaker before men; here in Mahakam it felt inverted. Men worked in Dwarf mines and called the Dwarves their masters. The word came from a strange, almost worshipful place in Casili’s voice.
“Is Brovar Hogg, the High Elder of Mahakam, a tyrant or something?” Roy asked half to himself.
Letho cut to the chase, blunt as ever. “Tell us about these four deaths. The causes, the scenes, what was found.”
Casili’s face darkened with grief and anger. “I went to each scene as soon as I heard. The sight will never leave me. The devilry was brutal.” He spoke with the bluntness of a man who had stared at disaster.
He laid out what he had seen. Letho and Roy listened, thoughtful.
“Found in the woods, bellies ripped open, bodies propped face-down on high branches, scavenged by birds, chewed by beasts.”
Letho flicked a look at his partner. Roy read the glance and guessed what the Witcher suspected. He said it out loud.
“By that description they are not the work of some wandering forest fiend.”
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