It was the bodies that determined the Witchers path. He'd encountered the first drowned in a village pond two days ago but took it for no more than the common occurrence of a younger noble son learning the hard way about the proper attire for a hard nights hard drinking.
The next before nightfall as short and sudden lightning led to a distant hilltop where a grim statue of a man stood where he fell, struck thrice, his own mundane spears clutched futilely in one hand.
Then yesterday, by a dark lake under a ruined tower another, this time flesh - but only flesh - burnt to a crisp, his obviously cared for gear spotless. He'd expected the fourth an hour earlier than the actual find, and the uncooperative forest wouldn't let him close to the scene, this time a victim of what appeared to be... greenery, the body impaled with the bole of a maturing willow, rising up from below through his own trunk where it branched out mercilessly, the violence of the event evidenced by the young trees weeping gore, flesh rubbed all over.
It was the bodies that had determined the Witchers path, as always, although if anyone asked he was following the code, and to be precise he was aware it wasn't every body that would turn his course but the escalation to multiple corpses motivated him more often than not, even if they are knights. So one drunken young noble vainly flaunting his full plate on a bender ending his night hooded in a pond hadn't been enough to get his attention, not his problem, but a second fully armoured battler bronzed on a hillside, then a third baked and a fourth raked, suggests something more than ergot in the local ale.
It was a cold watchful camp nearby that left this morning none the wiser as to what had befallen the knights, and Knights Errant he judged them now indeed, for the Witcher was well aware his path had been drawing towards Toussaint, with Cervantes Pass now ahead, and whatever the gruesome signposts on the journey portend for the future, the Suns rays, fine wine and pungent cheese in this oddball land is a certainty. His mind relaxed in anticipation, his concerns diffused like the Bees around his head, as he set off at no great pace into the mornings cleansing mist.
It was the bodies that determined the Witchers path, so he told himself, so he thought, so he wanted, he was the Master of his own destiny, but he knew this time for sure, it wasn't true.