The Time of Contempt (The Witcher #2)

by Andrzej Sapkowski

“You will not touch me!” she screamed, drawing her sword. “You will never touch me again!” The knight moved slowly towards her, rising up like a huge, black tower. The wings on his helmet moved to and fro and whispered. “You will not escape me now, O Lion Cub of Cintra,” he said, and his cruel eyes burned in the slit of his helmet. “Not this time. This time you have nowhere to run, O reckless maiden.” “You will not touch me,” she repeated in a voice of stifled horror, her back pressed against the stone wall. “I have to. I am carrying out orders.” As he held out his hand to seize her, Ciri’s fear subsided, to be replaced by savage fury. Her tense muscles, previously frozen in terror, began to work like springs. All the moves she had learned in Kaer Morhen performed themselves, smoothly and fluidly. Ciri jumped; the knight lunged towards her but was unprepared for the pirouette which spun her effortlessly out of reach of his hands. Her sword whined and stung, striking unerringly between the plates of his armour. The knight staggered and dropped to one knee as a stream of scarlet blood spurted from beneath his spaulder. Screaming fiercely, Ciri whirled around him with another pirouette and struck the knight again, this time directly on the bell of his helmet, knocking him down onto his other knee. Fury and madness had utterly blinded her, and she saw nothing except the loathsome wings. The black feathers were strewn in all directions. One wing fell off, and the other was rest...