Chapter 4

The way to fight a group alone is to turn one against many into a series of one-on-one encounters.

A nekker is not a particularly powerful monster. A farmer with a long-handled dung fork, if steady and brave, can escape with his life against a single one.

Their claws are sharp enough to dig through soil, but a dung fork holds a far greater reach.

But Lannor, after several fights in this brutal, enchanted medieval world, understood one thing well.

In a blade fight, an enemy you could dispatch with ease one-on-one becomes your executioner the moment it turns into one against two.

The truth was simple. A human body, even a witcher’s, has veins and tendons lying mere millimeters to a few centimeters beneath the skin.

To claws or steel, that thin flesh might as well not exist.

A graze is a wound, a wound hinders movement.

Then, regardless of will, the disadvantage compounds, until the throat is cut as a matter of course.

Lannor had never been in that position.

He had no intention of ever being in it.

So even though the School of the Bear’s mutagenic formulas favored endurance and strength, and its swordsmanship was built on solidity and force, he kept shifting his footing.

Seventeen nekkers surged in with shrill cries. Behind him, his mentor’s gaze was cold and still.

The young man moved laterally.

To avoid being surrounded, he had to be twice as fast as the nekkers.

For a half-starved youth, was that possible?

Not only possible. Lannor did better than that.

With a dull thud, his thin cowhide boot struck the ground in concert with muscle and bone, sending loose soil flying.

Clods of dirt burst upward, tangled with roots and weeds.

The young man, not broad of frame, now moved like a maddened bear, charging into the gap at his flank.

The carrion-eaters shrieked and wheeled to follow.