Chapter 51: A Wolf At The Banquet

Translated passage:

The three rotten soldiers gave the young witcher a clearer look at the face of this world.

Until now, the soldiers he had met had been different sorts of men. Lawmen, elite troops sent in pursuit. Phillip’s mounted squad, the baron’s castle guard and direct arm. They might be coarse, savage, and steeped in stupid prejudice, but there was no denying they had skill. They were above the common folk and common soldiers of their age.

They knew how to kill, how to track, how to handle horses and military gear. Those skills gave them status, and status gave them rules. A baron’s guard had neither the time nor room to swagger through villages as he pleased. An elite soldier had neither the leisure nor the chance to moonlight as a roadside brigand.

For ordinary soldiers, though, the three men Lannor had just beaten to death with his fists were perhaps the truer face of the age. Slack, undisciplined, convinced that a sword in hand meant mastery of force in some remote corner of the land. They robbed, bullied, killed when they liked, and only did a little honest work once a year, when they followed the tax collector around.

To most folk, they were bandits wearing a state badge.

Lannor felt no guilt over the violence his rage had brought out. He had meant to leave the corpses where they lay and go on with his real business. But during the fight, an overturned storage chest beneath the tarp caught his eye.

He crouched beside it and picked up a black, hard strip of cured meat. His cat eyes shifted. There was still half a chest of the stuff. By Velen’s standards, that was no small store.

From the traces, the sack of meat had been placed there less than two days ago. The witcher rubbed his gloved fingers over its surface, and soon the tips of the leather shone with grease.