A horse's hooves are thudding on the road. Looking back, to her absolute horror, Ciri sees a huge black stallion coming after her at top speed, horse shoes sending up sparks from the cobble stones. And on the horse a knight in black armour and a helmet decorated with raptor wings. The black knight of Cintra. As he is quickly closing in on her, the wings on his helmet whooshing and the black cloak streaming behind him, she knows that this time he is real, not just a figment of her imagination like during her flight to Hirundum to find Geralt, or in her many nightmares. This time, the dark knight is truly after her and she has to run for her life.
So Ciri runs. As fast as she can. As the horse bursts through the roadside bushes, the knight shouts something, but Ciri does not understand a word for the hammering of blood in her ears. There is a high hedge and she leaps over it, her overwhelming fear giving her wings. She wants to continue her wild flight, however, to her great shock, there is nowhere to run. The small courtyard she finds herself in, a yard with a fountain in the middle, is encircled by smooth, high walls on three sides and the hedge on the fourth. Frantically, while she can hear the terrifying clip clop of the black knight's black horse coming ever closer, she looks around for an exit. But the only opening in the wall is locked by a cast iron, ornamented grille door with a heavy iron padlock. There is no way out. She is trapped like a fish in a weir, the osprey hovering in the sky above and ready to swoop. With her back to the far wall, she sees the black horse jumping the hedge, the bird of prey flapping its wings, taking flight. The stallion skids to a halt on the stone slabs and sits on its haunches. The dark knight sways in the saddle and topples over, his gleaming black armour clattering on the stones, but both rider and horse regain their footing immediately. Slowly, the knight moves toward her as she is pinned into a corner. Ciri is paralysed, not able to move, barely able to breath. He rises up like a huge, black tower, the wings on his helmet moving to and fro, whispering ominously.
"You will not escape me now, o Lion Cub of Cintra," he says in a low voice that sends chills up and down her spine. "Not this time. This time you have nowhere to run, o reckless maiden."
"You will not touch me!" she screams in utter terror. "You will never touch me again!"
"I have to. I am carrying out orders."
Suddenly, as he holds out his hand to seize the girl who is frozen with panic, there is a loud whoosh of air and the prickling electricity of magic. The black knight is slammed hard into the wall, his winged helmet falling off his head from the blast.
"You!" a shrill, but very familiar voice is shouting. "I should have known it was you all along! How could I have been so blind?"
"Y-Yennefer?" the black knight almost stutters, blinking rapidly while trying to get back on his feet.
"Don't you Yennefer me!" the black-haired sorceress screeches into his face, her arms wrapped protectively around the trembling Cirilla. "And here I thought we were friends! What an utter idiot I was! I saved your fucking life, and that's how you repay me, by stealing my daughter?"
More than surprised and both shocked and intrigued by what she is hearing, Ciri looks from the blazingly furious Yennefer to the black knight, who is still trying to get up but, dazed from the impact with the hard stone wall, has difficulty doing so. Blood is dripping from a gash in the side of his head onto his pauldron. To Ciri's surprise, he looks a lot younger than she imagined, and not at all scary anymore, but scared. Which he should be, considering how infuriated Yennefer is.
"Yennefer, you don't understand -"
"Yes, yes, the benevolent White Flame who will cleanse us all, I know all that bullshittery!" Yennefer spits, looking daggers at the knight. "But you won't take her. I won't let you, prophecy be damned!"
"Yennefer, listen to me, please, there is something you need to know, something about Princess Cirilla -"
"Then spit it out, before I curse you into tomorrow! What are you waiting for?"
"I - I can't tell. You have to take it from me, like Tissaia did. You have your magic back. Then - if I can't have her - you kill me."
"What?" Now it is Yennefer who looks more than surprised, even shocked by what the black knight is proposing, as if she cannot believe her own ears. "What are you talking about? Why can't you tell me? And why would I kill you? I didn't save your neck back then just to kill you now!"
"I had to swear not to tell anybody."
"Of course, and being a stupid fucking knight, you cannot possibly break a vow, not if the world depended on it," Yennefer sneers.
"A blood oath." The sneer on the sorceress's face freezes, then gives way to an expression that almost looks like - concern? She lets go of Ciri.
"Shit. You will die if you break it?"
"Do you really think I would care about that?" he scoffs, finally having managed to get to his feet and leaning heavily against the wall. "He made me swear on my father's life." There is so much bitterness in his words, it makes Yennefer's skin crawl. This is not the Cahir she knows, the ardent follower of the White Flame who would let himself be tortured, even executed for the sake of his alleged saviour. Something really bad must have happened to crush that burning, blind belief."
"Damn it, Cahir. I cannot do this. I have never even tried. And, as fucking angry as I am at you, I don't think I want to hurt you. Let alone kill you."
"You have to. It's the only way," the knight by the name of Cahir urges. "I'm not going back to that dungeon."
"Are you sure?" He nods and she draws in a deep breath, her anger at him having completely, almost miraculously dissipated. "What am I to look for?" she then asks.
"The day the Emperor came to Cintra, about two years ago. Fringilla is there and we follow the Emperor into the throne room. He says something before -"
"Before what?"
"It doesn't matter. You'll see it." He swallows hard, obviously not comfortable with the thought, but intending to go through with it anyway."
"Alright then. I'll try to be quick." Yennefer walks the few paces up to the taller man, raises her arms and touches both his temples with her hands. The knight shudders, but stands still and closes his eyes. "Concentrate. Try to think of what you want to tell me. Then it will be a lot easier - I hope." The knight nods faintly. Ciri can see that his hands have started to tremble. Wide-eyed she stares at the sorceress, who is like a mother to her, and the black knight, who appears to be so very different from what she has always imagined him to be like. Who somehow, by some strange twist of fate, seems to be Yennefer's friend. Or, at least, he once was. But it is obvious that the sorceress still cares about him, in spite of her initial fury.
"Ready?" Cahir swallows and gives another faint nod. Yennefer inhales deeply once again and tightens her grip on his temples. The knight presses his eyes shut and a low moan escapes his quivering lips. Whatever the two are doing, does not seem to be very pleasant for the man, on the contrary. Not that Ciri would mind, her compassion for the black knight being very limited, more like non-existent, but the whole thing is a bit unsettling.
"Gods, Cahir, what have they done to you?" Yennefer exclaims after only a short moment, letting go of the shivering knight as an overwhelming wave of desperation and despair hits her.
"Don't - don't stop," the black knight pants. "It doesn't matter. You need to find it. Go on. Don't mind me." Biting her lip, Yennefer grabs his temples once again and concentrates on penetrating Cahir's mind to find this one memory. It would have been a lot easier had she known what the Emperor of Nilfgaard looked like, or the throne room, but she has never met the man, nor seen his picture or been inside the Cintran castle. She knows Fringilla, though, maybe she should look for images of her former classmate in Cahir's mind? She will have to dig deeper, too, ignore Cahir's groans of agony, dive beyond the fear and pain and loneliness that seem to permeate all his more recent memories. Yennefer takes another steadying breath before she goes deeper, deeper, and it works. There she is, Fringilla Vigo, with a new, intricate coiffure and in a long, silvery dress that actually suits her very well, makes her look almost regal. She is standing next to Francesca, staring at Cahir after he arrived in Cintra. Too far back in the past. She cursorily sifts through more memories, Fringilla and Francesca in a beautiful park with ponds and rose bushes, Cahir confronting Fringilla about a mission. Fringilla and Cahir watching the celebration of the birth of Francesca's baby. The sorceress and the knight looking on as an obviously high ranking officer pushes a young elven girl over the wall to her death. Fringilla entering a huge room - the throne room? - where Cahir is dining with several other officers, but why are they not moving, as if paralysed? This is interesting. Then she sees Fringilla killing one man - and woman - after the other in cold blood. Yennefer is shocked and impressed at the same time. And glad the witch did not kill Cahir. Cahir who has fallen to his knees, his head pressed painfully against the stone wall, moaning and whimpering pitifully as she rummages around in his mind. But she cannot stop now. It's what Cahir wants, and she must be very close. At the banquet Fringilla said Emhyr would arrive the next day. And there she is again, in the throne room with Cahir, telling him about Francesca and Filavandrel's desertion. She sees Cahir coming up with a sly plan to turn Fringilla's obvious failure into an advantage. Judging from the glimpses of a dimly-lit dungeon cell she has caught earlier, this plan must have totally gone awry. Although she is, naturally, curious and would like to find out more about what happened to her former comrade-on-the-run, there is no time for that. By now, Yennefer has to use all her strength to keep her hands in place on Cahir's temples, digging her fingernails into his scalp as he is shaking uncontrollably and screaming with agony. She hates what she is doing, but they are almost there, just another few seconds and she will know what Cahir has sworn not to tell. Emhyr's big and probably dirty secret.
However, she does not come that far.
All of a sudden and with a loud bang, Yennefer is thrown against Cahir and into the wall. She loses both her grip and her concentration and the memories are gone. Fuck! What the hell? She spins around as quickly as she can. Just in time for her to block the blast of fire that is shooting toward her from the hands of a mage. A mage she has met before. In Oxenfurt. And not on friendly terms, quite the contrary.
"Got you, bitch!" Rience sneers as he fires off another blast that Yennefer can just barely block. How the fuck has the bloody bastard managed to become so fucking powerful? Sold his soul to the fucking devil? If he had a fucking soul in the first place. Of course, he is out for her blood, too, after what she has done to his face.
"Thanks for keeping her here for me, Commander." The sorcerer salutes to Cahir who is struggling to his feet, disoriented, his head hurting like seven hells, and still shaking badly. "I'll take care of the beautiful Yennefer and you grab the Princess. Get a move on! We don't have all day!" With these words he conjures up a flaming lasso-like rope, catches Yennefer around the waist with it and drags her through the whirling portal that he has opened almost simultaneously. Then both mages are gone.
"Yennefer!" Ciri cries out her name, taken totally by surprise by this sudden turn of events, so sudden that she could not do a thing, did not even get the chance to unsheathe her sword. Which she, belatedly, does now. After all, she is still not alone in the courtyard with the fountain.
She watches as the man in the black armour, who was just minutes before screaming his lungs out, finally manages to stand up on slightly shaky legs. He puts his winged helmet back on his head. And, suddenly, there he is again, the hated black knight of her nightmares. The man who shot Sir Laslo through the throat, who threw her across his huge black horse to kidnapp her. Who slaughtered the refugee camp and set a murdering doppler on her. The man who is the reason for everything bad that has ever happened to her. And now, to cap it all off, he has, possibly on purpose, held up Yennefer, her mother, so the fire-fucker could get his bloody hands on her. An incredible surge of savage fury rises in Ciri's breast. She sees nothing else, just this man, the black knight of Cintra, and all she wants to do is shove her sword through his throat until his feathers are soaked in blood.
"You have to come with me, Princess. It's too dangerous here for you," the man with the raptor wings says hoarsely while approaching her. He reaches out with his gauntlet-clad hand. However, Ciri has her sword at the ready. Her muscles, previously frozen in terror, begin to work like springs. All the moves she has learned in Kaer Morhen perform themselves, smoothly and fluidly. Ciri jumps as the black knight is about to grab her arm. Totally unprepared for the pirouette which spins her effortlessly out of reach of his hand, he grabs at nothing but thin air. And provides her with the perfect opportunity to attack. Perhaps he would have had a chance to defend himself if he had drawn his long Nilfgaardian sword before coming closer, but, not counting on much of a resistance, maybe even hoping she would willingly follow him, he has not. A stupid mistake he will pay for with his life. Ciri's sword whines and stings, striking unerringly between the plates of the knight's black armour. The knight staggers and drops to one knee as a stream of scarlet blood spurts from beneath his spaulder. Screaming fiercely, Ciri whirls around him with another pirouette and strikes the knight again, this time directly on the bell of his helmet, knocking him down onto his other knee. Fury and madness utterly blinding her, she sees nothing except the loathsome wings, hears nothing but the clang of her sword against his helmet, the rush of blood in her ears and her own savage screams. Doesn't hear him pleading with her to let him take her to safety. In a murderous frenzy, she hacks at the wings until the black feathers are strewn in all directions. One wing has fallen off entirely and the other is resting on the knight's bloodied spaulder. The knight, still vainly trying to get up from his knees, tries to seize her sword in his armoured glove and grunts painfully as the unexpectedly sharp witcher blade slashes as easily through the chainmail sleeve into his hand as a knife through butter. The next blow knocks off his helmet, and Ciri jumps back to gather momentum for the last, mortal blow. Now he would pay for all he has done to her, for everything she has forever lost because of him, the black knight of Cintra.
However, she does not strike.
When she looks at him, there is no black knight of Cintra, no black helmet, no raptor's wings, whose whistling tormented her in her nightmares. In his stead there is a not so very old, unarmed, profusely bleeding man with light brown, curly hair, his face deadly pale, his blue eyes wide with shock and pain. Kneeling in a pool of blood before her.
"Do it. Kill me, Princess," he grinds out through gritted teeth when he sees her hesitate. He tilts his head back so she would easily be able to cut his throat. End him once and for all. Isn't it what she has always dreamed of doing? Why she wanted to learn how to fight like a witcher in the first place? To kill the hated black knight?
But the black knight of Cintra has fallen beneath the blows of her sword, has ceased to exist. Only hacked-up feathers remain of the forbidding wings. This man, who is almost begging her on his knees to kill him, is nothing to her, means nothing to her. She does not know him. She isn't afraid of him, nor does she hate him. And neither does she want to kill him.
She sheathes her blood-covered sword and turns around, hearing the cries of the Scoia'tail approaching fast from Garstang. She knows that in a moment they will trap her in the courtyard. She knows they will catch up with her on the road. She has to be quicker than them. She runs over to the black horse, which is, nervous from the fighting and tinge of fresh blood in the air, champing at the bit and clattering its horseshoes on the paved ground. With a clap on its behind and a loud cry, she urges it into a gallop, leaping into the saddle in full flight. Cahir sees her jumping the hedge, then she is gone. Only the hoofbeat on the cobblestones resounds in his aching head for some moments before the painful thudding vanishes, too. For a split second, everything is eerily quiet. Before his commando of Scoia'tail arrives.
Cahir tries to get up from the stone floor, however it is too slippery with blood. His blood. Or he is too shaky and weak from blood loss, or both. Two elves are trying to lift him up by his good hand, but he pushes them away.
"Leave me..." he groans. "I'm fine. It's just a scratch." However, he knows it isn't. There is far too much blood and he starts to feel light-headed and dizzy. The elves seem to be unsure what to do next, seem to wait for his command to follow the fleeing Princess, but even if there was still a chance to catch her and even though it is his mission which he has to fulfil, Cahir is not at all sure that that is what he wants. Perhaps it is for the best that Cirilla is gone and he in no shape to follow her, even if he had a horse. Perhaps he has been wrong all along and it is not her destiny at all to end up with her father in Nilfgaard. Perhaps Yennefer has been right the whole time about the prophecy being nothing but bullshit. Suddenly Cahir feels overwhelmed by weariness and the desire to just lie down on the cold, sticky stones, close his eyes and never wake up again. With him killed on his mission, his family will be safe. Maybe Cirilla will be, too, somewhere far away. With Yennefer. He hopes she will. So he does not give the command. And the White Flame and the prophecy can go fuck themselves.
Suddenly, one of the elves screams and blood spurts into Cahir's face. Another Scoia'tael reels and falls to his knees, his fingers clutching his mutilated belly. The remaining elves leap back and scatter all around the courtyard, swords flashing.
They have been attacked by a white-haired fiend, who has fallen on them from a wall, from a height that would have broken a normal man's legs. It ought to have been impossible to land gently, whirl in an impossibly fast pirouette, and a split second later begin the slaughter. But the white-haired fiend has done it. And the killing has begun.
The Scoia'tael fight fiercely. They have the advantage in numbers, but they have no chance. A massacre is playing out before Cahir's eyes. The ashen-haired Princess, who has wounded him a moment earlier, was fast, was unbelievably lithe, was like a mother cat defending her kittens. But the white-haired fiend who has fallen amongst the Scoia'tail is like a Zerrikan tiger. The fair-haired maid of Cintra, who for some unknown reason did not kill him, seemed insane. The white-haired fiend is not insane. He is calm and cold. And kills calmly and coldly. Cahir knows who he is, what he is. Yennefer has told him about the man when they were on the run from the Brotherhood. That night in the cave here on Thanedd. It feels like a whole lifetime ago, but not even three years have passed since that night when, to while away the time, he entertained Yennefer with fairytales and she told him stories about the white-haired witcher Geralt of Rivia, the Butcher of Blaviken, the White Wolf.
The Scoia'tail have no chance. Their corpses pile up on the slabs of the courtyard. But they do not yield. Even when only two of them remain, they do not run away, but attack the white-haired fiend once more. The fiend hacks off the arm of one of them above the elbow as Cahir watches. He hits the other elf with an apparently light, casual blow, which nontheless throws him backwards, tipping him over the lip of the fountain and hurling him into the water. The water brimms over the edge of the basin in ripples of crimson.
The elf with the severed arm kneels by the fountain, staring vacantly at the blood gushing from the stump. The white-haired fiend seizes him by the hair and cuts his throat with a rapid slash of his sword. Cahir closes his eyes, feeling sick to his stomach. He has seen plenty of violence and bloodshed in his life, spilled plenty of blood himself, but watching this incredible human - no, mutant - killing machine is something entirely different, something almost otherworldly, something nightmarish beyond imagination.
When Cahir opens his eyes and looks up, the White Wolf is standing directly over him, cold hatred burning in his yellow mutant eyes.
"I know who you are, Nilfgaardian," says the white-haired witcher, deadly venom in his voice, while kicking the helmet with the hacked-up wings. "You have been pursuing her doggedly and long. You have grown into nightmarish dimensions in her dreams. But now you will harm her no more."
"It was never my intention to harm her," Cahir whispers, giving up his efforts to rise from the ground, now slippery not only with his blood but the blood of the elves, too. His hand, slashed by the fair-haired princess, has gone numb. "And I am sorry. For everything. Truly."
"An apology? From you? Is that how you intend to stay my hand from slaughtering you?" spits the witcher, raising his sword that is dripping with the blood of the massacred elves.
"No." The knight raises his head and looks the witcher in the eye. "Do what you must. Quickly or slowly, makes no difference in the end. Just get on with it. You'll do me a favour."
"Damn you!" growls the white-haired mutant shifting his sword arm to the side so he can, with one fluid movement, chop off the kneeling black knight's head. But he hesitates.
"What are you waiting for? Do it. Kill me," the black knight urges. He cranes his neck so the witcher can take aim more easily and closes his eyes, waiting for the final blow. But it never comes.
When, after some long minutes, he opens his eyes, the fiend is no longer there. Cahir is alone in the courtyard with the bodies of the elves. The water in the fountain soughs, spilling over the edge of the basin, washing away the blood on the ground.
Cahir shivers. He feels cold and empty and sick. His vision goes blurry at the edges and everything around him starts to spin.
Then he faints.
