Chapter Text
The man standing in front of Yennefer smiled confidently, his sword pointed at her from across the clearing. “The general Cahir will pay me a pretty price for your head.”
“You really think you alone are going to take me?” Yennefer smiled coldly. “I am not some helpless peasant woman for you to terrorize.”
“Maybe you used to be powerful, but word is that that showy fire magic you used to roast the Nilfgaardians drained you.” The man began to move slowly towards her. “rumor is, you’re powerless.”
It was at that point that the man made the last mistake he’d ever make, which was stepping within sword’s reach of Yennefer and pulling his arm back in order to get a good swing at her head. He’d probably assumed that she was unarmed. Maybe he had just assumed that the only weapons a mage was able to use involved magic. Possibly he had thought that a woman would not carry or know how to use a sword. Perhaps he hadn’t taken into account the fact that the long cloak she was wearing was perfect for concealing weapons, such as axes, daggers, and short, unnecessarily ornate swords. He could have let his guard down for any one of these perfectly good reasons, but unfortunately, the world would be left to conjecture, as the afore-mentioned unnecessarily ornate sword was unsheathed and neatly inserted in the man’s abdomen a few fractions of a second after he stepped within range.
The man gurgled in surprise, slowly letting his weapon fall from his hand, and putting his other hand to the sword in his stomach. Yennefer gave it a hard shove, and the man fell over, dark blood leaking from his mouth. His eyes widened in shock and he tried to gasp out a plea. She leaned down until her face was only a few inches away from his. “I am Yennefer of Vengerberg.” She whispered “And I will never be powerless.”
Yennefer pulled out her sword, then brought it down in a hard downward stroke, putting the man out of his misery. She considered the body for a second, then knelt down to search the man for anything useful. He might have been very wrong about her being powerless, but he was right about one thing. It would be a very long time until she was able to use magic to open a portal for herself. Until then, she had to try to survive and get to safety, and she had very little supplies. Hence the robbing of the dead.
Yennefer wasn’t even sure where she was, she had woken up in an unfamiliar forest she’d come to realize was behind Nilgaardian lines. Spontaneous teleportation was occasionally a side affect of unusually powerful, uncontrolled magic. More commonly the consequence was death rather than a shift of a few miles.
She walked back towards the road she’d abandoned the night before to sleep in the woods. At least she could follow that until she found civilization or someone to tell her where she was.
A few hours later a man stepped out in front of her, face hard and knife outstretched threateningly. She heard rustling that indicated that three or four others were flanking her. “Alright lady” The leader said in a business-like manner “hand over your purse and jewels and you’ll be unharmed. Otherwise…”
Ah. So this was a robbery. Yennefer smiled in a display of nervousness, her left hand slowly moving to grip the hilt of her sword. “Oh! My goodness me, sir! You must be mistaken, I’m just a poor refugee, I don’t have any jewels!”
The man’s expression didn’t change as he stepped forward. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his friends doing the same. “A refugee you may be, but poor you are not. Not with that dress. Don’t play games with me woman.”
Yennefer smiled at him. If he’d been smart, he would have seen the cold steel behind it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. “No games? Oh dear, and I was just getting into character. Ah well.”
The robber’s eyes narrowed. “what are you…”
The rest of the sentence was cut off by her sword swing. He parried it, stumbled, and fell to the ground. She leaped over his legs and turned to parry the wild swipe of one of his confederates, simultaneously stomping down hard on the crotch of the fallen leader. There was a pained “UH”. That should distract him for at least a few seconds. She jumped back out of range of the fallen man’s knife anyway.
She swung her sword down to block a blow to her abdomen, and a knife bit into her arm. Yennefer screamed in rage, swinging wildly at the man who had struck her and connecting with a dull thud. She swung her sword in vicious strokes, hacking and slashing, slowly being forced backwards. I can’t let them get behind me. I’m dead if they get behind me. God this is not how I will die.
Out of the corner of her eye she registered another person, and one of the bandits was no longer in front of her. Then none of them were and she was watching two of them flee down the road, there were two corpses at her feet, and an unfamiliar man finishing off the last bandit. He straightened up, watching the two other men out of sight, then turned to Yennefer.
She raised her sword and an eyebrow. “And you are?”
Old eyes looked at her out of a young face. “I’m the person who’s going to have to catch you when you pass out from blood loss.”