Two people knelt over a corpse—that of a fifteen-year-old boy. His cause of death was no mystery, given the arrow shaft sticking from his eye-socket. It was a gruesome wound, more so given the victim’s youth, and one that drew a frown from the older of the two parties. To call him unusual would be understating it—he had white hair, not gray, though his fairly handsome face was wrinkle free, and with slitted eyes like a cat’s.

“No sense in lingering here.” He said gruffly, standing. “Just take care you stay behind me so you won’t end up like that.”

His companion, a boy in his own right and even younger than the corpse, stifled a yawn. He fell into step behind his guardian without a word.

“Hopefully we’re not too late.” Geralt muttered—the man’s name, if he could be called one. He didn’t sound too optimistic.

“I don’t get it.” The boy said, as if to himself, when they’d covered some distance. The forest was dense, and gaining ground was arduous. Every gap between the large trees was filled in by a dozen smaller ones—birches, alders, hornbeams, brambles, junipers, ferns and the like. Insects buzzed around their ears, birds flitted above their heads, beetles and spiders scuttled underfoot. “Why come test your luck, hoping you won’t get shot-to-shit in this stuffy forest? If it were me, I’d have chalked her up as a lost cause. Having a short life-expectancy is part of being a royal anyway.”

“Shut it.” Geralt said, his tone tinged with annoyance. He’d have left the little bastard behind if he could’ve helped it, but there wasn’t anyone to look after him. As much trouble as it was, he knew Alaster would get himself into ten times the trouble if left to his own devices. Still, it was unfair. He wasn’t the one who’d picked up the brat, so why was it suddenly his problem?

Unfortunately, Geralt’s wish wasn’t to be fulfilled. It wasn’t long before they came across a fresh set of corpses, almost hidden under the brush. If it weren’t for a single sword sticking upward, its scratched blade reflecting the sunlight, they might’ve walked right past them.

For better or worse, the sword belonged to a man instead of a boy this time. His simple clothing, colored a practical dun, indicated his low status. Not counting the bloodstains—courtesy of two expertly-fletched arrow shafts sticking from his chest—were clean and new. A third body was prone nearby, dressed in a leather jerkin and short, green cape. The ground around his feet was churned up, moss and pine needles furrowed down to the sand—his death hadn’t been as quick as the other two’s.

They were still gathering their wits when a low groan sounded in the little clearing. Geralt was there in an eyeblink, gripping a fourth man under the shoulder, slowly sitting him upright. His powerfully-built figure with a black, curly head of hair and beard contrasted with his deathly pallor. His deerskin kaftan was red with blood, but he was alive and conscious. “Geralt…” he groaned. “O, ye gods, I must be dreaming…”

“Frexinet!” Geralt said in astonishment. “You, here?”

“Yes, me! Ah, fuck, it hurts…”

“Don’t move.” Geralt commanded, gesturing for Alaster to stand clear. “Where were you hit? I don’t see an arrow.”

“It passed… right through.” Frexinet huffed. “I broke off the arrowhead… and pulled it out. Listen, Geralt—”

“Damn you, be quiet. You have a punctured lung, you’ll choke on your own blood if you keep yapping. What the bloody hell are you doing in dryad territory? Nobody gets out of here alive, I can’t believe you didn’t know that!”

“Later…” Frexinet groaned and spat blood. “I’ll tell you later… Now get me out. Oh, a pox on it. Have a care… Oooooow…”

 “I can’t do it,’ Geralt said, straightening up and looking around. His gaze rested on Alaster for a moment, but a ten-year-old boy wasn’t likely to be much help. “You’re too heavy.”

 “Leave me,’ the wounded man grunted. “Leave me, too bad… But save her… by the Gods, save her… The princess… Oh… Find her, Geralt.”

“Lie still, dammit! I’ll knock something up and haul you out.”

Frexinet coughed hard and spat again; a viscous, stretching thread of blood hung from his chin. The Witcher cursed, vaulted out of the hollow and looked around. He needed two young saplings. He moved quickly towards the edge of the clearing, where he had seen a clump of alders.

Something whistled before thudding into a trunk at head-height—a hawk-fletched arrow. The angle of its ashen shaft indicated where it’d been shot from; about four-dozen paces away where a fallen tree formed a hollow, its roots still sticking into the air and gripping a clump of dark dirt.

Sending Alaster a death-glare, the type that promised, well, death if the kid so much as breathed wrong, he slowly stuck his hands into the air. “Ceádmil! Vá an Eithné meáth e Duén Canell! Esseá Gwynbleidd!” He shouted, enunciating each word slowly.

This time, they heard the bowstring’s twang before they saw the arrow, because it was shot for them to hear. It soared upwards, reached its apex and fell in a curve. The arrow plunged into the moss exactly two paces from where Geralt stood. Immediately, a second joined it, near close enough to skewer his foot.

“Meáth Eithné!” he called again, before the next arrow found purchase in his skull. “Esseá Gwynbleidd!”

“Gláeddyv vort!” Came a voice like a breath of wind.

Geralt breathed like someone pardoned. He wasted no time undoing his sword-buckle, drawing the sheathed blade away from himself and casting it away. He motioned for Alastar to do the same.

The boy did as he was told, though not without a grimace of displeasure. His own sword was almost as big as he was, though it wasn’t even a longsword proper.

A second dryad emerged noiselessly from behind a fir trunk wrapped around with juniper bushes, no more than ten paces from them. Although she was small and very slim, the trunk seemed thinner. Her outfit was a patchwork which accentuated her shapely form, sewn weirdly from scraps of fabric in numerous shades of green and brown, strewn with leaves and pieces of bark. Her hair, tied with a black scarf around her forehead, was olive green and her face was criss-crossed with stripes painted using walnut-shell dye. Naturally, her bowstring was taut and she was aiming an arrow at them.

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“Eithné—” Geralt began, but a commanding ‘Tháess aep!’ made him fall silent, standing motionless, holding his arms away from his trunk.

The dryad did not lower her bow. “Dunca!” she cried. “Braenn! Caemm vort!”

The one who had shot the arrows earlier darted out from the blackthorn and slipped over the upturned trunk, nimbly clearing the depression. Although there was a pile of dry branches in it there was no sound of it snapping beneath her feet. The three males heard a faint murmur close behind, something like the rustling of leaves in the wind. There was a third. It was that one, dashing out from the woods, who picked up their swords. Her hair was the colour of honey and was tied up with a band of bulrush fibres. A quiver full of arrows swung on her back.

The furthest one approached the tree throw swiftly. Her outfit was identical to that of her companions. She wore a garland woven from clover and heather on her dull, brick-red hair. She was holding a bow, not bent, but with an arrow nocked. “T’en thesse in meáth aep Eithné llev?” she asked, coming over. Her voice was extremely melodious and her eyes huge and black. “Ess’ Gwynbleidd?”

“Aé… aesseá…” Geralt began, but the words in the Brokilon dialect, which sounded like singing in the dryad’s mouth, stuck in his throat and made his lips itchy. “Do none of you know the Common Speech? I don’t speak your—"

“An’ váill. Vort llinge,” she cut him off.

“I am Gwynbleidd. White Wolf. Lady Eithné knows me. I am travelling to her as an envoy. I have been in Brokilon before. In Duén Canell.”

 “Gwynbleidd.” The redhead narrowed her eyes. “Vatt’ghern?”

 “Yes,” he confirmed. “I’m a witcher.”

The olive-haired one snorted angrily, but lowered her bow. The red-haired one looked at him with eyes wide open, but her face—smeared with green stripes—was quite motionless, expressionless, like that of a statue. The immobility meant her face could not be categorised as pretty or ugly. Instead of such classification, it was more apt to describe her as indifferent and heartless, not to say cruel, but there was not much sense in trying to humanize older dryads. He knew she was old—despite appearances, she was much, much older than him.

They stood in indecisive silence. Geralt heard Frexinet moaning, groaning and coughing. The red-haired one must also have heard, but her face did not even twitch. The Witcher rested his hands on his hips. “There’s a wounded man over there in the tree hole,” he said calmly. “He will die if he doesn’t receive aid.”

“Tháess aep!” the olive-haired one snapped, bending her bow and aiming the arrowhead straight at his face.

“Will you let him die like a dog?” he said, not raising his voice. “Will you leave him to drown slowly in his own blood? In that case better to put him out of his misery.”

“Be silent!” the dryad barked, switching to the Common Speech. But she lowered her bow and released the tension on the bowstring. She looked at the other questioningly. The red-haired one nodded, indicating the tree hollow. The olive-haired one ran over, quickly and silently.

“We want to see Lady Eithné,” Geralt repeated. “I’m on a diplomatic mission—”

“She,” the red-haired one pointed to the honey-haired one, “will lead you to Duén Canell. Go.” She sent a glance toward Alaster, not denying him entry.

“Frex— And the wounded man?” Geralt asked.

The dryad looked at him, squinting. She was still fiddling with the nocked arrow. “Do not worry,” she said. “Go. She will lead you there.”

‘But—"

“Va’en vort!” She cut him off, her lips tightening.

Given no other option, he turned towards the one with the hair the colour of honey. She seemed the youngest of the three, but he might have been mistaken. He noticed she had blue eyes. “Then let us go.”

“Yes,” the honey-coloured haired one said softly. After a short moment of hesitation she handed him his sword, and Alaster’s as well. “Let us go.”

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Be silent.” Was her response. She moved very swiftly through the dense forest, not looking back.

Geralt had to exert himself to keep up with her. He knew the dryad was doing it deliberately, knew that she wanted the men following her to get stuck, groaning, in the undergrowth, or to fall to the ground exhausted, incapable of going on. She did not know, of course, that she was dealing with a witcher, not a man. And Alaster, well, he was no witcher, but the boy’s stamina was abnormal.

The young woman–Geralt now knew she was not a pure-blood dryad–suddenly stopped and turned around. He saw her chest heaving powerfully beneath her short, dappled jacket, saw that she was having difficulty stopping herself from breathing through her mouth. “Shall we slow down?” he suggested with a smile.

“Yeá.” She looked at him with hostility. “Aeén esseáth Sidh?”

“No, we’re not elves. What is your name?”

“Braenn,” she answered, marching on, but now at a slower pace, not trying to outdistance them. They walked alongside each other, close. He smelled the scent of her sweat, the ordinary sweat of a young woman. The sweat of dryads carried the scent of delicate willow leaves crushed in the hands.

“And what were you called before?”

She glanced at him and suddenly grimaced; he thought she would become annoyed or order him to be silent. She did not. “I don’t remember,” she said reluctantly.

He did not think it was true. She did not look older than sixteen and she could not have been in Brokilon for more than six or seven years. Had she come earlier, as a very young child or simply a baby, he would not now be able to see the human in her. Blue eyes and naturally fair hair did occur among dryads. Dryad children, conceived in ritual mating with elves or humans, inherited organic traits exclusively from their mothers, and were always girls. Extremely infrequently, as a rule, in a subsequent generation a child would nonetheless occasionally be born with the eyes or hair of its anonymous male progenitor. But Geralt was certain that Braenn did not have a single drop of dryad blood. And anyway, it was not especially important. Blood or not, she was now a dryad.

“And what,” she looked askance at him, ignoring Alaster trudging behind. “do they call you?”

“Gwynbleidd.”

She nodded. “Then we shall go… Gwynbleidd.”

They walked more slowly than before, but still briskly. Braenn, of course, knew Brokilon; had they been alone, Geralt and his ward would have been unable to maintain the pace or the right direction. Braenn stole through the barricade of dense forest using winding, concealed paths, clearing gorges, running nimbly across fallen trees as though they were bridges, confidently splashing through glistening stretches of swamp, green from duckweed, which the Witcher would not have dared to tread on. He would have lost hours, if not days, skirting around.

Braenn’s presence did not only protect them from the savagery of the forest; there were places where the dryad slowed down, walking extremely cautiously, feeling the path with her foot and holding them by the hands. He knew the reason. Brokilon’s traps were legendary; people talked about pits full of sharpened stakes, about booby-trapped bows, about falling trees, about the terrible urchin—a spiked ball on a rope, which, falling suddenly, swept the path clear. There were also places where Braenn would stop and whistle melodiously, and answering whistles would come from the undergrowth. There were other places where she would stop with her hand on the arrows in her quiver, signalling for him to be silent, and wait, tense, until whatever was rustling in the thicket moved away.

In spite of their fast pace, they had to stop for the night. Braenn chose an excellent spot; a hill onto which thermal updrafts carried gusts of warm air. They slept on dried bracken, very close to one another, in dryad custom. In the middle of the night Braenn hugged him close. And nothing more. He hugged her back. And nothing more. She was a dryad. The point was to keep warm. Though, that didn’t stop Alaster, who kept to himself, shivering against a tree-trunk, from giving him a displeased look the whole night through.