Chapter 315: Nilfgaard?
Gerd asked, "Did you get anything out of him?"
"Nothing. The bastard refused to cooperate. He just wanted us to kill him and get it over with."
Lynn answered Gerd, then turned to face Charimier. "You want to die? I'll make sure you don't. You think you can take all the answers in your head to the grave? Laughable."
"Looks like the people of the Arcane Coast haven't seen much of the world. Otherwise, why would they be so ignorant of magic?"
At the insult to his homeland, Charimier instinctively scowled, only to be met with the witcher's Axii Sign. Charimier felt an invisible bat slam into the back of his head. His mind went blank, and the rage in his eyes faded into a vacant stare.
A few seconds later, Lynn asked, "Who are you?"
Charimier answered woodenly, like a puppet on a string. "Charimier of Caron. The town of Caron is my fiefdom."
Caron? Lynn hadn't heard the name. But it didn't matter. The North was vast, filled with countless obscure towns. He didn't dwell on it.
"What are you and your men doing in the Skellige Isles?"
"By the command of the Duchess of the Arcane Coast, Helena Lange-Haar, we are to apprehend the witcher Gerd and bring him back to the Duchy to stand trial. If the witcher resists, we are to execute him on the spot."
"Is your unit the only one carrying out this order? Are there others?"
"There are no other Duchy forces nearby, but there is a Nilfgaardian sub-fleet. If our mission is unsuccessful, we can seek their assistance."
Lynn had only asked the question offhand. He never really thought the Duchess would send two fully-armed forces to capture a single witcher. But he hadn't expected to uncover a secret.
"Wait, where did this Nilfgaardian fleet come from? And why are you conspiring with Nilfgaardians?"
"The Duchess's victory in the civil war was due to Nilfgaard's secret support in both coin and manpower. Therefore, when the Nilfgaardians had a need, the Duchess dispatched us to assist them in completing their mission."
Lynn frowned. It was only the year 1252. The main Nilfgaardian invasion of the North was still eleven years away. The Nilfgaardian army shouldn't be in the North at this time, let alone on a secret mission.
"What mission?"
After more questioning, Lynn uncovered a shocking secret: several months ago, Princess Pavetta of Cintra and her husband were sailing from the Skellige Isles when their ship was caught in a storm. No one survived.
This accident instantly soured the relationship between the Isles and Cintra. To ease tensions and to wipe away the shame, the King of the Isles led the fleets and main forces of the major clans south to invade the Nilfgaardian Empire, raiding coastal villages and towns along the way. They believed that the storm that had killed Princess Pavetta and her husband, Duny, was unnatural. They suspected Nilfgaardian mages were responsible.
However, the usurper emperor of Nilfgaard had never given an order to assassinate a member of Cintra's royal family. To be wrongly blamed for such a thing would make anyone furious, let alone an emperor. The rage of a common man might spill blood a few feet away, but the rage of an emperor would cause bloodshed for miles.
But the Empire was strong in its economy and army, not its navy. In a direct confrontation, they were no match for the Skellige fleet. The Skellige longships were also more agile and nimble than the Empire's ships. If the Imperial fleet was small, it would be surrounded. If it was large, the enemy would simply retreat.
So, the admiralty made a bold decision: they would raid the islands themselves. Based on eyewitness accounts from coastal survivors and an analysis of the Isles' economy and military, the admiralty believed the main forces of all the major clans had sailed south, leaving the home islands with few soldiers to defend them. Therefore, they decided to send a sub-fleet on a long-range raid of the Skellige Isles to give the islanders a taste of their own medicine.
But an entire sub-fleet would easily attract attention, so they had to break into smaller groups to make their way to the northern waters. Along the way, they would intentionally hoist Skellige flags and attack the merchant ships of the Northern kingdoms, harming the relationship between the Isles and the North. In truth, Imperial ships and Skellige longships were so different in design that anyone with a keen eye could tell the difference. But when faced with life and death, most people couldn't stay calm, and after being provoked or attacked, they were in no position to argue the point. This was why Lynn had seen captains in the Novigrad Portside district unwilling to sail to the Skellige Isles.
Currently, the Nilfgaardian sub-fleet was docked in a port in the Duchy of the Arcane Coast. Their mission was to assist in taking down the witcher Gerd, then scout the weakest of the Skellige clans to help the Nilfgaardians complete their raid. Charimier and his men had been sent to the Skellige Isles in two groups: one to find Gerd's tracks, and the other to secretly gather intelligence on the different clans' military strength.
Based on the intelligence they had gathered, Charimier concluded that the most suitable target was the ancestral home of Count Torgier on Spikeroog. The reason was that Count Torgier and King Bran Tuirseach, the current ruler of the Isles, were from the same clan. If they could capture the Tuirseach clan's home—even the branch family's—it would severely damage the morale of the Skellige fleet and force them to end their raids and return home.
However, Charimier hadn't had a chance to report this to the Nilfgaardians. He wanted to settle his personal score first.
After hearing everything Charimier had to say, both Lynn and Gerd's faces became grim. Neither had expected to get caught up in a conflict between the Skellige Isles and Nilfgaard. If they had just killed Charimier and left, they could have avoided the whirlpool. But neither Lynn nor Gerd had any intention of doing so. If they did, they would be safe, but Count Torgier and the people in his castle would likely be doomed.
In his past life and his current one, Lynn had never considered himself an impartial observer. Objectivity was important, but when the interests of his country were at stake, objectivity could be set aside. In this world, the Skellige Isles weren't his home, but as a Northerner, he naturally sided with the North.
Besides, he knew Nilfgaard's true nature all too well from the source material. They claimed to be civilized and advanced, yet they did the most inhumane things. Honestly, unless you were from the Golden Tower City under the Sun, he couldn't see any benefit to siding with Nilfgaard.
As for remaining neutral, that was even more impossible. In the great cataclysm that would one day sweep across the North, there would only be two choices: fight or die. There would be no surrender and no neutrality.
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