Thank you YenniferOfVengerberg for help with editing :)


When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat;

The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;

But now I am a great king, the people hound my track

With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.

Under the caverned pyramids great Set coils asleep;

Among the shadows of the tombs his dusky people creep.

I speak the Word from the hidden gulfs that never knew the sun—

Send me a servant for my hate, oh scaled and shining One.

When the world was young and men were weak, and the fiends of the night walked free,

I strove with Set by fire and steel and the juice of the upas-tree;

Now that I sleep in the mount's black heart, and the ages take their toll,

Forget ye him who fought with the Snake to save the human soul?

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?

I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.

The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;

Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

by Robert E. Howard


Gentle lute music strummed in time to the undulations of the barely clad dancers and the bodrhain kept time to an ancient, carnal rhythm. The smell of sweet spices and sex filled the interior of the brothel, washing over the man who stood before the madam arguing the price for his services. He was huge, over six feet tall, and broad, and he was covered in intriguing, numerous, horrible scars. She knew noblewomen who would pay fortunes to bed him for one night, if he was contracted to her house. He kept his head shaved, however, and that was a turn off as most of her female clientele found running their fingers through their lovers hair to be a wonderfully effective aphrodisiac. His limbs, well made and powerful, they boasted hard edged, lean muscles. One of his biceps was bigger than both of Madam Triska's stringy thighs put together. Eyeing him over appreciatively, she grieved she was too old to be on active duty any longer. She had always like her men raw and brawny and he almost sparked a little heat in her dried up loins.

"Nightwraiths," he purred in his deep, rumbling drawl that placed him from Vicovaro, far to the east, "are three hundred dakari marks apiece. No less. And you have three of them. To my reckoning, that's nine hundred marks, plus expenses. I will take care of your wraiths for fifteen hundred marks total. Take it or leave it."

"Ahh witcher, you wound me deeply! We are but gentle flowers in this establishment and the wraiths have scared away my customers so I have no money. One of the washer girls was even slain last week. How am I to afford your price! Have a little pity on an old woman and her fragile children."

Letho of Gulet snorted disdainfully and stared down at the dusky skinned procuress in a way that dried up the spark that was trying valiantly to stir up her already arid loins. His eyes were slit pupiled, like all witchers, and they reminded her of a snake. If the large man had known her thoughts he might have laughed. Until a scant year ago, he was a witcher of the viper school and a king killer. Now, he was was the last of the vipers, to his knowledge, and using an old Griffon school medallion he had found at a market stall in Caingorn. He had left the north far behind him in the early spring, after the snows left the passes around Kaer Morhen, and headed east, toward Haakland. Now he found himself stuck in the sleazy metropolis of Banzarnavar, a sprawling city on the Hyborian plains that made Novigrad look like a reedy, backwater shithole. He was sick of this city, sick of this brothel and sick of this contract before he had even taken it.

"My price is fifteen hundred dakari marks." He turned away from her, his two swords, slung over his right shoulder, shifting on his back. "Maybe you'll find someone to do it for you in exchange for a week in the hay with one of your girls, Triska."

"What about the law of surprise?" Whined the madam, trying to cajole the witcher into capitulation, "I could give you that which I don't know I have yet."

"Not like any of your girls are going to have babies, you ensure they take their tea every morning, Madam, and I have no need for a newborn pig or dog, either" He raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger taking a huge gust of air into his lungs, ignoring the scent of woe and abuse that hung about the place. At least brothels west of the Blue Mountains were filled with women, and even some men, who joined the oldest profession willingly. These girls and boys had little choice. Slavery was rampant here in the hinterlands between Zerrikania to the south and the northern border kingdoms. It wasn't as if he could afford to walk away from the contract. His gold had run low with the cost of replacing his horse's tack and saddle.

"Tell ya what, Triska. Nine hundred marks and you will grant me whatever unexpected thing you have that you don't currently know that you have. It will be mine and I will ride away from here. If it's a child, I will return for it. Is that understood?" Letho's head was starting to hurt. Right behind his left eyeball. Damn. Geralt of Rivia's notorious chivalry had rubbed off him after the fight with the Wild Hunt and it was giving him a migraine.

The madam hemmed and hawed, but eventually capitulated and was set to scurry off to see if her pigs were ready to give birth yet, or if someone had brought her a goat to pay for a wench, of which she was currently unaware. Letho stopped her with a huge hand on her shoulder.

"Here's my instructions. Fail to follow them and I'm not responsible for damages or deaths to your patrons or prostitutes, got it?"

She nodded, gulping convulsively. That spark in her loins had definitely turned into a dull, lead ball that bore no moisture to the deserted wasteland south of her dangling paps.

"You will clear the entire house out. You will tell your customers to come back no sooner than three days from now. You and your prostitutes will leave the house and not come back. Three days for you too. Is that understood?"

"But where am I to take my doves and daughters, Master Witcher?"

"I really don't care. But none of you can stay here." He looked out the dingy window that struggled to let air and light into the room. It was now four hours after noon and another three hours before it got well and truly dark. "Do it now."

"What? What? Now? I've had no time to prepare!" she squealed.

"You want the wraiths gone or do you want to use them to entertain customers?" he ground out. The sharp throbbing above his left eye was causing the eyelid to twitch spasmodically, which added to the witcher's terrible countenance and prooved to be the final death stroke of Triska's doubtful passion.

The madam started screeching orders then, which did his throbbing head no good. Letho grabbed a bottle of honey mead off an abandoned table and sat down to drink it while watching the exodus, savoring the mead. The big witcher timed the completion of the bottle with the evacuation of the last of the whores. then reveled in the silence for a span of heartbeats before rising to find his horse and bring in his saddlebags.

Brewing potions was much easier to do over a brazier than an open campfire, which is what the Viper usually did when on a contract, so he enjoyed the experience while he could. He mixed up some specter oil to apply to his blade along with katakan and full moon potions to increase his resistance to damage. The witcher spent an hour sharpening and then oiling his silver blade, testing it's weight in his hands as he twirled it in deadly arcs. He ensured he had a couple of Moon Dust bombs tucked in his bandolier then he knelt on the floor, slowed his breathing and closed his eyes.

His hands lay slack on his thighs and his muscles were relaxed as he danced with each of the three wraiths in his head, visualizing each move, right down to where he would lay down his yrden trap. Each spin, each moulinette, each pirouette was considered; every weakness of the spirits was reviewed. He brought to mind everything his old masters at the Viper school had taught him about these beings that spawned out of the strong emotions that could accompany a person's death. He breathed in and out in slow, measured time, slowing his heart rate to an incredible thirty beats per minute.

The creatures were the negative energy wraiths of three sisters who had died the year before in the brothel. They had been murdered by a particularly brutal customer, one after another, and their spirits were unsettled. He wasn't sure yet why they had taken a whole year to make their appearance or if he would have to fight them for three consecutive nights or not. There had been stories of just such happenings amongst his Viper bretheren, and some said you had to battle each night for each spirit in the group because of the complex way they were bound to this plane of existence.

Ten minutes before he estimated the wraiths would make their nightly showing, he roused himself from his trance, quaffed his potions, and braced himself for their impact on his circulatory system. He often thought it was like being kicked in the balls by a rabid mule that wanted him dead. His veins stood out, a stark bluish black against his pale skin, tracing his brutal visage like evil spiderwebs. He then rose up, hefted his silver sword, checked his bombs one more time and headed up the stairs to the third floor, to the dance floor, the ballroom where he would dance with the ladies.