‘Get up, witch!’

Another kick, sending pain shooting right into the roots of her teeth. She saw a face bending over her. ‘Get up, I said! On your feet! Recognise me?’

She blinked. Yes, she did. It was the man she had burned, when he was fleeing from her using a teleporter. Rience.

‘We’ll square accounts,’ he promised her. ‘We’ll square accounts for everything, you slut. I’ll teach you what pain is. I’ll teach you what pain is with these fingers and these hands.’

She tensed up, clenched and spread her fingers, ready to cast a spell. And immediately curled up in a ball, choking, wheezing and trembling. Rience guffawed.

‘Nothing doing, eh?’ she heard. ‘You haven’t even got a scrap of power! You’re no match for Vilgefortz when it comes to sorcery! He’s squeezed the very last drop out of you, like whey from curds. You can’t even—’

He didn’t complete the sentence. Yennefer pulled out a dagger from a sheath fastened to her inner thigh, sprang like a cat and thrust blindly. She missed. The blade merely brushed her target, tearing his trousers. Rience leaped aside and fell over.

Immediately, a hail of blows and kicks rained down on her. She howled as a heavy boot dropped on her hand, squeezing the dagger from her crushed fist. Another boot kicked her in the belly. The sorceress curled up, rasping. She was picked up from the ground, her arms jerked behind her. She saw a fist flying towards her, the world suddenly flashed brightly, and her face exploded with pain. A wave of pain passed downwards, to her stomach and crotch, transforming her knees into a thin jelly. She drooped in the arms holding her up. Someone seized her from behind by the hair, lifting up her head. She was struck once more, in the eye socket, and again everything vanished in a blinding flash.

She didn’t faint. She could still feel. They beat her. They beat her hard, cruelly, as a man is beaten. With blows that aren’t just meant to hurt, but meant to fracture, meant to crush all energy and the will to resist from the victim. She was beaten, jerking in the steely grip of many hands.

She wanted to faint but couldn’t. She could feel it.

‘Enough,’ she suddenly heard from far away, from behind the curtain of pain. ‘Have you gone mad, Rience? Do you mean to kill her? I need her alive.’

‘I vowed to her, master,’ snarled the shadow looming in front of her, which gradually took on Rience’s form and face. ‘I promised I’d pay her back… With these hands…’

‘I care little for what you promised her. I repeat, I need her alive and capable of articulated speech.’

‘It’s not so easy,’ laughed the one holding her by the hair, ‘to knock the life out of a cat or a witch.’