Bear School Astartes

”It’s a pity Mother Nanik and Yennefer both refuse to let me wear a sword at my side. On that point at least they don’t argue. They both say: any fool can swing a sword, but if you really want to be formidable, you need a sharp mind...”

”Geralt, you promised me you’d come. So come.”

”— Yours, Ciri.”

”P.S.: Come. You said you could find Lann and bring him too, right? All of you come!”

”P.P.S.: Mother Nanik told me to write at the end: praise great Meritelli, may her blessing and grace be always with you.”

Unconsciously, Lann, who had originally meant to just skim through it—a letter he really could have skimmed and remembered every word—

found himself reading much more slowly.

Fingers encased in hard, menacing hand armor lifted the pages with a delicacy and gentleness as he turned to the next sheet.

The teasing, spectator’s smile at the corner of his mouth turned mild, almost tranquil.

”Careless and scatterbrained, then trying to make up for it all in one breath.”

After finishing the letter, at a pace like an ordinary man, Lann slipped the sheets back into the envelope and handed it to Geralt.

He spoke as he smiled.

”Looks like Ciri’s in very good health. Physically and mentally.”

”Of course.” Geralt tucked Ciri’s letter away, into the inner pocket at his chest. ”I’m very grateful to Nanik and Yennefer. Without their help, the few of us could never raise a girl properly.”

”Then I don’t get why you’re wearing such a long face.” Belengar scratched his chin. ”Ciri’s fine in every way.”

”But you’ve been staying with me for days now, not going out to work, hanging around like you mean to stand watch here.”

Lann was holding his cup now as well, watching Geralt, waiting for his answer.

And Geralt of Livia, a Demon Hunter made quite famous by the great poet Dandelion’s ballads, moved his lips soundlessly for a moment.

”Ciri’s doing great. She eats well, she’s growing, she’s learning new things. All of that’s good. But...”

The face that had softened, grown peaceful under the spell of Ciri’s letter hardened again as Geralt spoke.

”Someone’s digging into her.”

After Geralt’s words dropped, there was a stretch of long silence. Only the clanging from the forge outside the office door filled the background, monotonous and noisy.

”...Ah.”

Out of the silence came a murmur, like the hazy realization in a dream.

”Someone’s digging into her.”

Lann calmly repeated what had just come from Geralt’s mouth.

With one difference.

—Though unintentional, his voice carried a chill that made the temperature in the office seem to plunge.

”Who’s investigating her?”

The young Demon Hunter asked in an even tone.

”A piece of work named Reins.” Geralt took a sip from his cup and spoke softly, as if afraid to rouse some terrible thing.

”Wherever he passes, he leaves a trail of corpses. He extorts, bribes, tortures without hesitation or scruple, then silences the witnesses.”

”When I sent Ciri away from Ker Morhan to learn how to blend into society, I hid her. I tucked her away in the Meretelli Temple at Elrand, no different from a peasant girl studying at the Divine Hall.”

”Then I vanished too. For a Demon Hunter with no fixed abode, disappearing or shifting ground is easy.”

”I figure, it’s probably precisely because I hid the two of us, and hid us well, that someone decided to unleash this mad dog. To use a mad dog’s methods to find people.”

”At first I had no idea this man existed, no idea anyone was investigating us.”

Geralt lowered his eyes as he spoke.

”It was Dandelion who sent me a secret letter. He nearly got grabbed by that Reins, and we can imagine what would have followed—torture to death.”

”Luckily Yennefer had gone to him at the time and saved Dandelion.”

”Only then did I realize how far things had already gone.”

Lann’s finger slid lightly along the rim of his cup. The hand armor, forged from interlocked Evil Dragon bone, scraped over the curved glass, and the thin quiver of sound it raised sent a cold shiver through the heart.

Geralt had only recently learned that someone was digging into him and Ciri.

That was already a very fast reaction.

If not for Dandelion—

Then for a web of intelligence, or a lone investigator like Reins, tracking a person is as simple as following the traces of his life.

By the time this net, spreading along social ties and relationships, has crept inward to enclose its target, when the quarry is already as naked and exposed as if stripped of all secrets, most people feel nothing at all.

There’s no need to ever touch the target in person.

Enough clues become ”data,” and enough data is enough to piece together most of the ”truth.”

The party concerned is almost irrelevant, and will remain oblivious the whole way through.

”But you already know that bastard’s name!”

Belengar said coldly, the wine cup he’d been holding already set down on the table.

”We should just go over there and butcher him! Find the bastard, kill him, end of story!”

”Don’t lose your head, Belengar.” Before Geralt could speak, it was Lann who calmly addressed the old Demon Hunter.

”Geralt and Ciri are in hiding right now. The moment you make a move, you leave traces. The more you do, the more obvious it gets, and the more clues you leave behind.”

”How did he know he was being investigated? Who told him? Along which line did the information travel? Through whose couriers?”

Lann looked at Belengar.

”Just Geralt’s reaction of wanting to ’investigate back’ is already enough to leak a hell of a lot, isn’t it?”

”And besides...”

Speaking, Lann sank into deep thought.

His fingertip lightly tapped the wine cup in his hand; the Hand Armor of [Smaug], the bone at the tip of his finger was basically a claw.

The sharp fingertip knocked against glass with a clear, crisp sound.

Lann’s mind, which had relaxed after returning to the Magical Middle Ages, returning to Airetusa, tightened again at the news Geralt had just brought.

And began to race.

”Heh, not just one bunch of people.”

The young Demon Hunter who’d just been brooding suddenly let out a cold little laugh, and dropped a line out of nowhere that made both Geralt and Belengar freeze.

”You just said, along the route you and Ciri took after leaving Ker Morhan, that mad dog Reins tracked down a whole lot of people. Right, White Wolf?”

Lann rubbed his chin, asking without turning his head.

Geralt nodded heavily. ”He’s a goddamn rabid dog. Even the toll collector at a ferry crossing, he has to torture and silence.”

”From Codwin’s northeast corner where Ker Morhan sits, all the way to Elrand in Temeria. You had to go through at least Codwin, Redania or Yaden, and finally reach Temeria. Which route did you take?”

”We passed through Redania.”

With a sharp ”clack,” Lann set his cup down on Belengar’s table. ”Then that already involves the borderlines of three Kingdoms.”

”One vicious, unscrupulous, completely reckless killer, who doesn’t even bother to clean up the corpses he’s tortured, just openly chases traces along the borders of three Northern Kingdoms?”

”He even kills ferry toll collectors. You think the Royal government there doesn’t know?”

”Wait! You mean...” Insight flickered in Geralt’s eyes first, but then they grew darker, colder, his voice dropping as he didn’t finish the sentence.

”Redania’s intelligence service has a long history, and quite the glorious record.” Lann spoke with a half smile. ”Temeria’s spymaster is called Taler. I know him too, he’s no useless idiot.”

”And yet none of them supposedly knows there’s a rabid dog rampaging across their turf, biting everyone he sees?”

The young Demon Hunter smiled and clapped his hands. ”How delightfully fresh.”

After the clap, the half-smile on Lann’s face smoothed out completely.

”Who could honestly not know? They’re all waiting for that mad dog to really bite you out into the open before they make their move.”

”Or think deeper. Back when we smuggled Ciri out of Sintra, no one said she was the Princess of Sintra. She was just some filthy street brat. Everyone in the markets believed the Sintra Royal Family had been wiped out in the slaughter and chaos.”

”Of course, with you and Ciri, the Child of Destiny, tied together, Dandelion’s already turned that into ballads. You walking around with a little gray-haired girl—anyone with eyes can more or less guess who she is.”

”But the problem is... whose dog is Reins? He’s a nobody, suddenly jumps out of nowhere—on what basis does he count as ’someone with eyes’? On what basis can he be so sure the kid you’re carrying is Ciri?”

Lann’s keen mind was like a scalpel dissecting the problem, cutting this tangled chaos into clear strands, one by one.

And he laid it all out for Geralt and Belengar to see.

”Those spymasters are definitely curious as hell about this too. They’re letting Reins crash around like a madman because they’re most likely planning to dig out whoever’s behind him in one go at the end.”

Belengar’s brows knit tight.

Unlike Lann, his thinking wasn’t that agile, he hadn’t undergone systematic study and training, and he didn’t have that many cases and insights dissected in history books.

He wasn’t even like Geralt.

As a famous Demon Hunter, Geralt’s tangled with more than a few palace messes. Plenty of palace schemers dream of having a sharp ’sword’ they can wield when convenient.

And Geralt is constantly mistaken for someone who can serve that role.

Belengar has rich experience in the world of Blacksmiths and common folk, but he’s hardly ever brushed up against this kind of thing.

Experience isn’t something you get just by living long; you need events or education to accumulate it.

So his reaction was very simple: ”That Reins uses Magic—doesn’t that mean ordinary people can’t stop him?”

Lann sighed helplessly, looking at the old Demon Hunter with the kind of gaze you’d give an innocent little donkey.

”My teacher, a Demon Hunter Master of the Bear School.”

Lann tapped his own chest as he spoke.

”Back then he got chased stupid by a four-man military law enforcement squad, and with my help, he ended up dying outright.”

”And he was a Bear School Demon Hunter Master who could wear heavy armor at all times.”

”Reins—does he have the ability to wear chain armor twenty-four hours a day?”

”A few men with crossbows lying in ambush by the roadside can kill a Great Mage who’s caught off guard! His damn Magic’s worth shit!”