Iskra, reining back her beautiful chestnut, skin still dry and raring to gallop on, rode over, pushing against Ciri’s dapple grey. The horse neighed and stepped back, tossing its head. Ciri tightened the reins, leaning back in the saddle.
‘Do you know the reason you’re still alive, you cretin?’ snarled the elf, pulling her hair away from her forehead. ‘The peasant you so mercifully spared released the trigger too soon, so he hit the horse and not you. Otherwise you’d have a quarrel sticking into your back up to its fletchings! Why do you carry that sword?’
‘Leave her alone, Iskra,’ said Mistle, stroking the sweaty neck of her mount. ‘Giselher, we have to slow down or we’ll ride the horses into the ground! I mean, no one’s chasing us right now.’
‘I want to cross the Velda as quickly as possible,’ said Giselher. ‘We’ll rest on the far bank. Kayleigh, how’s your horse?’
‘He’ll hold out. He’s no racehorse, but he’s a powerful beast.’
‘All right, let’s go.’
‘Hold on,’ said Iskra. ‘What about this chit?’
Giselher looked back, straightened his scarlet headband, and rested his gaze on Ciri. His face and its expression somewhat resembled Kayleigh’s; the same malevolent grimace, the same narrowed eyes, the thin, protruding lower jaw. He was older than the fair-haired Rat, though, and the bluish shadow on his cheeks was evidence that he was already shaving.
‘Yeah, true,’ he said brusquely. ‘What about you, wench?’
Ciri lowered her head.
‘She helped me,’ chimed in Kayleigh. ‘If it hadn’t been for her, that lousy Trapper would have nailed me to the post . . .’
‘The villagers saw her escaping with us,’ added Mistle. ‘She cut one of them down and I doubt he survived. They’re settlers from Nilfgaard. If the girl falls into their hands, they’ll club her to death. We can’t leave her.’
Iskra snorted angrily but Giselher gestured to her to be quiet.
‘She can ride with us,’ he decided, ‘as far as Velda. Then we’ll see. Ride your horse normally, maid. If you don’t manage to keep up, we won’t look back. Understood?’
Ciri nodded eagerly.
‘Talk, girl. Who are you? Where are you from? What’s your name? Why were you travelling under escort?’
Ciri lowered her head. During the ride she’d had time to try to invent a story. And she had thought up several. But the leader of the Rats didn’t look like someone who would believe any of them.
‘Right,’ pressed Giselher. ‘You’ve been riding with us for a few hours. You’re taking breaks with us, but I haven’t even heard the sound of your voice. Are you dumb?’
Fire shot upwards in flames amid a shower of sparks, flooding the ruins of the shepherd’s cottage in a wave of golden light. As if obedient to Giselher’s order, the fire lit up Ciri’s face, in order more easily to uncover the lies and insincerity in it. But I can’t tell them the truth, Ciri thought in desperation. They’re robbers. Brigands. If they find out about the Nilfgaardians, that the Trappers caught me for the bounty, they may want to claim it for themselves. And anyway, the truth is too far-fetched for them to believe.
‘We got you out of the settlement,’ continued the gang leader slowly. ‘We brought you here, to one of our hideouts. We gave you food. You’re sitting at our campfire. So tell us who you are.’
‘Leave her be,’ said Mistle suddenly. ‘When I look at you, Giselher, I see a Nissir, a Trapper or one of those Nilfgaardian sons of bitches. And I feel as if I’m being interrogated, chained to a torturer’s bench in a dungeon!’
‘Mistle’s right,’ said the fair-haired boy in the short sheepskin jacket. Ciri shuddered to hear his accent. ‘The girl clearly doesn’t want to say who she is, and it’s her right. I didn’t say much when I joined you, either. I didn’t want you to know I’d been one of those Nilfgaardian bastards—’
‘Don’t talk rubbish, Reef.’ Giselher waved a hand. ‘It was different with you. And you, Mistle, you’re wrong. It’s not an interrogation. I want her to say who she is and where she’s from. When I find out, I’ll point out the way home, and that’s all. How can I do that if I don’t know . . . ?’
‘You don’t know anything,’ said Mistle, turning to look at him. ‘Not even if she has a home. And I’m guessing she doesn’t. The Trappers picked her up on the road because she was alone. That’s typical of those cowards. If you send her on her way she won’t survive in the mountains. She’ll be torn apart by wolves or die of hunger.’
‘What shall we do with her, then?’ asked the broad-shouldered one in an adolescent bass, jabbing a stick at the burning logs. ‘Dump her outside some village or other?’
‘Excellent idea, Asse,’ sneered Mistle. ‘Don’t you know what peasants are like? They’re short of labourers. They’ll put her to work grazing cattle, after first injuring one of her legs so she won’t be able to run away. At night, she’ll be treated as nobody’s property; in other words she’ll be anybody’s. You know how she’ll have to pay for her board and lodgings. Then in spring she’ll get childbed fever giving birth to somebody’s brat in a dirty pigsty.’
‘If we leave her a horse and a sword,’ drawled Giselher, without taking his eyes off Ciri, ‘I wouldn’t like to be the peasant who tried to injure her leg. Or tried knocking her up. Did you see the jig she danced in the inn with that Trapper, the one Mistle finished off? He was stabbing at thin air. And she was dancing like it was nothing . . . Ha, it’s true, I’m more interested in where she learnt tricks like that than in her name or family. I’d love to know—’
‘Tricks won’t save her,’ suddenly chipped in Iskra, who up until then had been busy sharpening her sword. ‘She only knows how to dance. To survive, you have to know how to kill, and she doesn’t.’
‘I think she does,’ grinned Kayleigh. ‘When she slashed that guy across the neck, the blood shot up six foot in the air . . .’
‘And she almost fainted at the sight of it,’ the elf snorted.
‘Because she’s still a child,’ interjected Mistle. ‘I think I can guess who she is and where she learnt those tricks. I’ve seen girls like her before. She’s a dancer or an acrobat from some wandering troupe.’
‘Since when have we been interested in dancers and acrobats? Dammit, it’s almost midnight and I’m getting sleepy. Enough of this idle chatter. We need a good night’s sleep, to be in New Forge by twilight. The village headman there – I don’t think you need reminding – shopped Kayleigh to the Nissirs. So the entire village ought to see the night sky glow red. And the girl? She’s got a horse, she’s got a sword. She earned both of them fairly and squarely. Let’s give her a bit of grub and a few pennies. For saving Kayleigh. And then let her go where she wants to. Let her take care of herself . . .’
‘Fine,’ said Ciri, pursing her lips and standing up. A silence fell, only interrupted by the crackling of the fire. The Rats looked at her curiously, in anticipation.
‘Fine,’ she repeated, astonished at the strange sound of her own voice. ‘I don’t need you, I didn’t ask for anything . . . And I don’t want to stay with you! I’ll leave—’
‘So you aren’t dumb,’ said Giselher sombrely. ‘Not only can you speak, you’re cocky, with it.’
‘Look at her eyes,’ snorted Iskra. ‘Look how she holds her head. She’s a raptor! A young falcon!’
‘You want to go,’ said Kayleigh. ‘Where to, if I may ask?’
‘What do you care?’ screamed Ciri, and her eyes blazed with a green light. ‘Do I ask you where you’re going? I couldn’t care less! And I don’t care about you! You’re no use to me! I can cope . . . I’ll manage! By myself!’
‘By yourself?’ repeated Mistle, smiling strangely. Ciri fell silent and lowered her head. The Rats also fell silent.
‘It’s night,’ said Giselher finally. ‘No one rides at night. And no one rides alone, girl. Anyone who’s alone is sure to die. There are blankets and furs over there, by the horses. Take what you need. Nights
in the mountains are cold. Why are you goggling your green eyes at me? Prepare yourself a bed and go to sleep. You need to rest.’
After a moment of thought, she did as he said. When she returned, carrying a blanket and a fur wrap, the Rats were no longer sitting around the campfire. They were standing in a semicircle, and the red gleam of the flames was reflected in their eyes.
‘We are the Rats of the Marches,’ said Giselher proudly. ‘We can sniff out booty a mile away. We aren’t afraid of traps. And there’s nothing we can’t bite through. We’re the Rats. Come over here, girl.’
She did as she was told.
‘You don’t have anything,’ added Giselher, handing her a belt set with silver. ‘Take this at least.’
‘You don’t have anyone or anything,’ said Mistle, smiling, throwing a green, satin tunic over her shoulders and pressing an embroidered blouse into her hands.
‘You don’t have anything,’ said Kayleigh, and the gift from him was a small stiletto in a sheath sparkling with precious stones. ‘You are all alone.’
‘You don’t have anyone,’ Asse repeated after him. Ciri was given an ornamental pendant.
‘You don’t have any family,’ said Reef in his Nilfgaardian accent, handing her a pair of soft, leather gloves. ‘You don’t have any family or . . .’
‘You will always be a stranger,’ completed Iskra seemingly carelessly, placing a beret with pheasant’s feathers on Ciri’s head with a swift and unceremonious movement. ‘Always a stranger and always different. What shall we call you, young falcon?’
Ciri looked her in the eyes.
‘Gvalch’ca.’
The elf laughed.
‘When you finally start speaking, you speak in many languages, Young Falcon! Let it be then. You shall bear a name of the Elder Folk, a name you have chosen for yourself. You will be Falka.’
Falka.
She couldn’t sleep. The horses stamped and snorted in the darkness, and the wind soughed in the crowns of the fir trees. The sky sparkled with stars. The Eye, for so many days her faithful guide in the rocky desert, shone brightly. The Eye pointed west, but Ciri was no longer certain if that was the right way. She wasn’t certain of anything any longer.
She couldn’t fall asleep, although for the first time in many days she felt safe. She was no longer alone. She had made a makeshift bed of branches out of the way, some distance from the Rats, who were sleeping on the fire-warmed clay floor of the ruined shepherd’s hut. She was far from them, but felt their closeness and presence. She was not alone.
She heard some quiet steps.
‘Don’t be afraid.’
It was Kayleigh.
‘I won’t tell them Nilfgaard’s looking for you,’ whispered the fair-haired Rat, kneeling down and leaning over her. ‘I won’t tell them about the bounty the prefect of Amarillo has promised for you. You saved my life in the inn. I’ll repay you for it. With something nice. Right now.’
He lay down beside her, slowly and cautiously. Ciri tried to get up, but Kayleigh pressed her down onto her bed with a strong and firm, though not rough, movement. He placed his fingers gently on her mouth. Although he needn’t have. Ciri was paralysed with fear, and she couldn’t have uttered a cry from her tight, painfully dry throat even if she had wanted to. But she didn’t want to. The silence and darkness were better. Safer. More familiar. She was covered in terror and shame. She groaned.
‘Be quite, little one,’ whispered Kayleigh, slowly unlacing her shirt. Slowly, with gentle movements, he slid the material from her shoulders, and pulled the edge of the shirt above her hips. ‘And don’t be afraid. You’ll see how nice it is.’
Ciri shuddered beneath the touch of the dry, hard, rough hand. She lay motionless, stiff and tense, full of an overpowering fear which took her will away, and an overwhelming sense of revulsion, which assailed her temples and cheeks with waves of heat. Kayleigh slipped his left arm beneath her head, pulled her closer to him, trying to dislodge the hand which was tightly gripping the lap of her shirt and vainly trying to pull it downwards. Ciri began to shake.
She sensed a sudden commotion in the surrounding darkness, felt a shaking, and heard the sound of a kick.
‘Mistle, are you insane?’ snarled Kayleigh, lifting himself up a little.
‘Leave her alone, you swine.’
‘Get lost. Go to bed.’
‘Leave her alone, I said.’
‘Am I bothering her, or something? Is she screaming or struggling? I just want to cuddle her to sleep. Don’t interfere.’
‘Get out of here or I’ll cut you.’
Ciri heard the grinding of a knife in a metal sheath.
‘I’m serious,’ repeated Mistle, looming indistinctly in the dark above them. ‘Get lost and join the boys. Right now.’
Kayleigh sat up and swore under his breath. He stood up without a word and walked quickly away.
Ciri felt the tears running down her cheeks, quickly, quicker and quicker, creeping like wriggling worms among the hair by her ears. Mistle lay down beside her, and covered her tenderly with the fur. But she didn’t pull the dishevelled shirt down. She left it as it had been. Ciri began to shake again.
‘Be still, Falka. It’s all right now.’
Mistle was warm, and smelled of resin and smoke. Her hand was smaller than Kayleigh’s; more delicate, softer. More pleasant. But its touch stiffened Ciri once more, once more gripped her entire body with fear and revulsion, clenched her jaw and constricted her throat. Mistle lay close to her, cradling her protectively and whispering soothingly, but at the same time, her small hand relentlessly crept like a warm, little snail, calmly, confidently, decisively. Certain of its way and its destination. Ciri felt the iron pincers of revulsion and fear relaxing, releasing their hold; she felt herself slipping from their grip and sinking downwards, downwards, deep, deeper and deeper, into a warm and wet well of resignation and helpless submissiveness. A disgusting and humiliatingly pleasant submissiveness.
She moaned softly, desperately. Mistle’s breath scorched her neck. Her moist, velvet lips tickled her shoulder, her collarbone, very slowly sliding lower. Ciri moaned again.
‘Quiet, Falcon,’ whispered Mistle, gently sliding her arm under her head. ‘You won’t be alone now. Not any more.’
The next morning, Ciri arose with the dawn. She carefully slipped out from under the fur, without waking Mistle, who was sleeping with parted lips and her forearm covering her eyes. She had goose flesh on her arm. Ciri tenderly covered the girl. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaned over and kissed Mistle gently on her close-cropped hair, which stuck up like a brush. She murmured in her sleep. Ciri wiped a tear from her cheek.
She was no longer alone.
The rest of the Rats were also asleep; one of them was snoring, another farted just as loudly. Iskra lay with her arm across Giselher’s chest, her luxuriant hair in disarray. The horses snorted and stamped, and a woodpecker drummed the trunk of a pine with a short series of blows.
Ciri ran down to a stream. She spent a long time washing, trembling from the cold. She washed with violent movements of her shaking hands, trying to wash off what was no longer possible to wash off. Tears ran down her cheeks.
Falka.
The water foamed and soughed on the rocks, and flowed away into the distance; into the fog.
Everything was flowing away into the distance. Into the fog.
Everything.
They were outcasts. They were a strange, mixed bag created by war, misfortune and contempt. War, misfortune and contempt had brought them together and thrown them onto the bank, the way a river in flood throws and deposits drifting, black pieces of wood smoothed by stones onto its banks.
Kayleigh had woken up in smoke, fire and blood, in a plundered stronghold, lying among the corpses of his adoptive parents and siblings. Dragging himself across the corpse-strewn courtyard, he came across Reef. Reef was a soldier from a punitive expedition, which Emperor Emhyr var Emreis had sent to crush the rebellion in
Ebbing. He was one of the soldiers who had captured and plundered the stronghold after a two-day siege. Having captured it, Reef’s comrades abandoned him, although Reef was still alive. Caring for the wounded was not a custom among the killers of the Nilfgaardian special squads.
At first, Kayleigh planned to finish Reef off. But Kayleigh didn’t want to be alone. And Reef, like Kayleigh, was only sixteen years old.
They licked their wounds together. Together they killed and robbed a tax collector, together they gorged themselves on beer in a tavern, and later, as they rode through the village on stolen horses, they scattered the rest of the stolen money all around them, laughing their heads off.
Together, they ran from the Nissirs and Nilfgaardian patrols.
Giselher had deserted from the army. It was probably the army of the lord of Gheso who had allied himself with the insurgents from Ebbing. Probably. Giselher didn’t actually know where the press gang had dragged him to. He had been dead drunk at the time. When he sobered up and received his first thrashing from the drill sergeant, he ran away. At first, he wandered around by himself, but after the Nilfgaardians crushed the insurrectionary confederation the forests were awash with other deserters and fugitives. The fugitives quickly formed up into gangs. Giselher joined one of them.
The gang ransacked and burnt down villages, attacking convoys and transports, and then dwindled away in desperate escapes from the Nilfgaardian cavalry troops. During one of those flights, the gang happened upon some forest elves in a dense forest and met with destruction; met with invisible death, hissing down on them in the form of grey arrows flying from all sides. One of the arrows penetrated Giselher’s shoulder and pinned him to a tree. The next morning, the one who pulled the arrow and dressed his wound was Aenyeweddien.
Giselher never found out why the elves had condemned Aenyeweddien to banishment, for what misdeed they had condemned her to death; since it was a death sentence for a free elf to be alone in the narrow strip of no-man’s-land dividing the free Elder Folk from the humans. The solitary elf was sure to perish should she fail to find a companion.
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