And found death.
Ciri burst into the settlement and galloped down the main street. Splashes of mud spurted from beneath the mare’s hooves.
Bonhart shoved Giselher, who was lying by the wall, with his heel. The Rats’ leader gave no sign of life. Blood had stopped gushing from his shattered skull.
Mistle, on her knees, searched for her sword, groping in the mud and dung with both hands, not seeing that she was kneeling in a quickly spreading puddle of red. Bonhart walked slowly over towards her.
‘Noooooo!’
The hunter raised his head.
Ciri leaped from her speeding horse, staggered and dropped onto one knee.
Bonhart smiled.
‘A she-rat,’ he said. ‘The seventh Rat. I’m glad you are here. I needed you to complete the set.’
Mistle had found her sword, but was unable to lift it. She wheezed and threw herself at Bonhart’s feet. Her trembling fingers dug into the legs of his boots. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead of a cry, a shining crimson stream burst forth. Bonhart kicked her hard, knocking her over in the muck. Mistle, both hands now holding her mutilated belly, managed to raise herself again.
‘Noooo!’ Ciri screamed. ‘Miiiistle!’
The bounty hunter paid no attention to her yell. He did not even turn his head. He swung his sword and struck vigorously, as though with a scythe. A powerful blow that jerked Mistle up from the ground and flung her over to the wall, as limp as a cloth doll, like a rag smeared with red.
A scream died in Ciri’s throat. Her hands trembled as she reached for her sword.
‘Murderer,’ she said, astonished at the strangeness of her voice, at the strangeness of her lips, which had suddenly become horrendously dry.
‘Murderer! Bastard!’
Bonhart observed her curiously, tilting his head slightly.
‘Are you going to die too?’ he asked.
Ciri walked towards him, skirting around him in a semi-circle. The sword in his raised and extended hands moved around, deceiving, beguiling.
The bounty hunter laughed loudly.
‘Die!’ he repeated. ‘The she-rat wants to die!’
He moved around slowly, standing on the spot, not allowing himself to be lured into the trap of the semi-circle. But it was all the same to Ciri. She was boiling over with ferocity and hatred, trembling with the lust for murder. She wanted to strike that ghastly old man, feel her blade cut into his body. She wanted to see his blood gushing from severed arteries in the final beats of his heart.
‘Well, little Rat.’ Bonhart raised his bloody sword and spat on the blade. ‘Before you die, show me what there is in you! Let the music play!’
‘Truly, no one knows how that they did not slaughter each other during the first clash,’ Nycklar, the son of the coffin maker said, six days later. ‘They wanted to slaughter each other, that was clear to see. She to murder him and he her. They flew at each other, came together for a split second and there was a mighty clash of swords. They exchanged mebbes two, mebbes three blows each. There ain’t a man what could of counted it, by sight or by hearing. So swiftly did they strike, m’lord, that not a man’s eye nor ear could have grasped it. And how they danced and leaped around each other, like two weasels!’
Stefan Skellen, called Tawny Owl, listened attentively, playing with a knout.
‘They leaped apart,’ the boy went on, ‘but neither of them was even grazed. The she-rat was as wrathful as the very Devil, and was hissing like a tomcat when someone wants to take his mouse away. But Mr Bonhart was wholly serene.’
‘Falka,’ Bonhart said, smiling and grinning like a veritable ghoul. ‘Truly can you dance and whirl a blade! You have aroused my curiosity, wench. Who are you? Tell me, before you perish.’
Ciri panted. She felt terror beginning to seize her. She understood what she was up against.
‘Tell me who you are, and I’ll spare your life.’
She gripped her hilt more tightly. She had to, had to, get through his parries, slash him, before he closed up. She could not let him deflect her blows, she could not withstand his blows with her sword, she could not risk–even once more–the pain and paralysis which pierced and spread through her elbow and forearm when she parried. She could not waste energy dodging his blows, which were missing her by barely a hair’s breadth. Get through his defence, she thought. Right now. In this clash. Or die.
‘You will die, she-rat,’ he said, moving towards her with his sword extended far out in front of him. ‘Do you not fear? That is only because you know not what death looks like.’
Kaer Morhen, she thought, as she sprang. Lambert. The comb. The somersault.
She took three steps and performed a half-pirouette, and when he attacked she ignored his feint, threw a backward somersault, dropped into a nimble crouch and lunged at him, ducking under his blade and twisting her wrist for the cut, for a fearful blow, aided by a powerful twist of her hip. Suddenly she was seized by euphoria; she would feel the blade cutting into his body.
Instead, there was the hard, moaning impact of metal on metal. And a sudden flash in her eyes, a shock and pain in her head. She felt herself falling, felt herself hitting the ground. He parried and twisted, she thought. I’m dying, she thought. Bonhart kicked her in the belly. A second kick, accurately and painfully aimed at her elbow, knocked the sword from her hand. Ciri grabbed her head and felt a dull pain, but there was neither a wound nor blood beneath her fingers. He hit me with his fist, she thought to her horror. I was just punched. Or struck with the pommel of his sword. He didn’t kill me. He thrashed me like an unruly brat.
She opened her eyes.
The hunter stood over her, terrible and gaunt as a skeleton, towering over her like a diseased, leafless tree, stinking of sweat and blood.
He seized her by the hair, lifted her violently, forced her to stand, but at once jerked her, knocking the ground from under her feet, and dragged her, wailing like the damned, towards Mistle, who was lying at the foot of the wall.
‘So you don’t fear death, do you?’ he snarled, bending her head downwards. ‘Then have a look, she-rat. That is death. That is how you die. Look, those are guts. That is blood. And that is shit. That’s what’s inside us all.’
Ciri tensed up, bent over, still gripped by his hand, and dry-retched hoarsely. Mistle was still alive, but her eyes were already misty, glazed, fishlike. Her hand, like a hawk’s talons, clenched and unclenched, clawing the mud and dung. Ciri smelled the acrid, penetrating odour of urine. Bonhart cackled.
‘That is how you’ll die, little Rat. In your own piss!’
He released her hair. Ciri collapsed onto all fours, racked by dry, choking sobs. Mistle was right beside her. Mistle’s hand, slender, delicate, soft; Mistle’s hand…
It was no longer moving.
‘He didn’t kill me. He tied my hands to the hitching post.’
Vysogota sat motionless. He had been sitting like that for a long time. He was even holding his breath. Ciri continued her tale, but her voice was becoming more and more hushed, more and more unnatural, more and more unpleasant.
‘He ordered the people who had gathered to bring him a sack of salt and a keg of vinegar. And a saw. I didn’t know… I couldn’t understand what he meant to do… I still didn’t know what he was capable of. I was tied… to the hitching post… He called some servants, ordered them to hold me by the hair… and by the eyelids. He showed them how; so I couldn’t turn my head away or close my eyes… So I had to watch what he was doing. “You have to take pains so the goods won’t go off,” he said. “So they won’t decay…”’
Ciri’s voice cracked, stuck dryly in her throat. Vysogota, suddenly realising what he was hearing, felt the saliva well up in his mouth like a flood wave.
‘He cut off their heads,’ Ciri said dully. ‘With a saw. Giselher, Kayleigh, Asse, Reef, Iskra… And Mistle. He sawed off their heads… One after the other. In front of my eyes.’
If someone were to have quietly
crept up that night to the remote cottage in the midst of the swamp with its sunken, moss-grown thatched roof, were they to have peered through the slits in the shutters, in the dimly-lit interior they would have seen a grey-bearded old man in a sheepskin coat and an ashen-haired girl with her face disfigured by a scar on her cheek. They would have seen the girl racked with sobs, choking on tears in the arms of the old man, while he tried to calm her, awkwardly and mechanically stroking and patting her trembling shoulders.
But it was not possible. No one could have seen it. The cottage was well concealed amidst the marshes. In a wilderness ever covered in mist, where no one dared to venture.
I have often been asked what made me decide to write my memoirs. Many people seemed interested in the moment my memoirs began, namely what fact, event or incident gave rise to the writing. Formerly, I gave various explanations and often lied, but now, howbeit, I pay homage to the truth. For today, now that my hair has thinned and is going white, I know the truth is a precious seed, while a lie is but contemptible chaff.
And the truth is thus: the event which gave rise to everything, to which I owe the first notes, from which my subsequent life’s work was formed, was the accidental discovery of paper and pencil among the things that my company and I stole from the Lyrian military convoys. It happened…
Dandelion, Half a Century of Poetry
CHAPTER THREE
… it happened on the fifth day after the September new moon, on the thirtieth day of our expedition, to be precise, reckoning from when we set out from Brokilon, and six days after the Battle on the Bridge.
Now, my dear future reader, I shall go back in time somewhat and describe the events which took place directly following the glorious Battle on the Bridge, which was so fraught with consequences. First though, I shall enlighten the considerable number of readers who know nothing about the Battle on the Bridge, either owing to their having other interests or as a result of their general ignorance. Let me clarify: that battle was waged on the last day of the month of August in the Year of the Great War in Angren, on the bridge connecting the two banks of the River Yaruga in the vicinity of a border post called the Red Timber Port. The sides of this armed conflict were: the Nilfgaardian Army; a corps from Lyria commanded by Queen Meve; and our glorious company. Which consisted of myself, i.e. the undersigned; and also the Witcher, Geralt; the vampire, Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy; the archer, Maria Barring, known as Milva; and Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach, a Nilfgaardian, who liked stubbornly to maintain that he was not such.
It may also be unclear to you, dear reader, why Queen Meve was in Angren, when it was believed she had perished during the Nilfgaardian incursion into Lyria, Rivia and Aedirn in July, which ended in the total conquest of those lands and their occupation by the imperial army. However, Meve had not perished in battle, as was thought, nor was she captured by Nilfgaard. Banding together a loyal mobile force from the surviving Lyrian Army under her colours and enlisting anyone she could, including mercenaries and common felons, the valiant Meve took up a partisan war against Nilfgaard. And the wildness of Angren suited guerrilla warfare perfectly; now striking from an ambuscade, now lurking in some undergrowth–for there was undergrowth in abundance in Angren. If truth be told, there is nothing worth mentioning in that land aside from undergrowth.
The regiment of Meve–now called the White Queen by her army–swiftly grew in might and acquired such daring that it was able to cross to the Yaruga’s left bank, in order, to prowl freely and foment unrest far in the enemy’s rear.
Now let us return to our sheep; that is, the Battle on the Bridge. The tactical situation was as follows. Queen Meve’s partisans, having rampaged on the Yaruga’s left bank, wanted to flee to the Yaruga’s right bank, but happened upon the Nilfgaardians, who were rampaging along the Yaruga’s right bank and wanted to flee to the Yaruga’s left bank. We, from a central position, i.e. the very middle of the River Yaruga, happened upon the above and were surrounded on both sides, from the left and right, by armed men. Having nowhere to flee, we became heroes and covered ourselves in undying glory. The battle, incidentally, was won by the Lyrians, since they achieved what they had intended: i.e. a flight to the right bank. The Nilfgaardians bolted in an unknown direction and in so doing lost the battle. I realise that this all sounds passing confusing and I shall not omit to consult with some military theoretician on the text before publication. For the moment, I am relying on the authority of Cahir aep Ceallach, the only soldier in our company–and Cahir confirmed that winning battles by means of a rapid escape from the battlefield is permissible from the point of view of most military doctrines.
The contribution of our company to the battle was indisputably meritorious, but also had negative consequences. Milva, who was with child, met with a tragic misadventure. The rest of us were fortunate enough not to suffer any serious injuries. But neither did anyone profit, nor even receive any thanks. The exception being Geralt the Witcher. For Geralt the Witcher, in spite of his repeated, but clearly duplicitously professed, indifference and his frequently declared neutrality, displayed in the battle a fervour as great as it was exaggeratedly spectacular. In other words, he fought in a truly effective way, if not to say: for effect. He was noticed, and Meve, the Queen of Lyria, knighted him with her own hand. It quickly turned out that there was more unpleasantness than benefit from that accolade.
For I must tell you, gentle reader, that Geralt the Witcher was always a modest, prudent and composed man, with a soul as simple and uncomplicated as the shaft of a halberd. The unexpected promotion and apparent generosity of Queen Meve changed him, however, and had I not known him better, I would have said that it made him conceited. Instead of vanishing from the scene as quickly and anonymously as possible, Geralt became mixed up in the royal retinue, enjoyed his honour, took delight in the grace and favour, and relished his fame.
But fame and renown were the last things we needed. I shall remind those that do not remember that the very same Geralt the Witcher–now dubbed a knight–was being sought by the intelligence services of all the Four Kingdoms in connection with the matter of the sorcerers’ rebellion on the Isle of Thanedd. Attempts were made to charge me–an innocent person, as honest as the day is long–with the crime of espionage. To that one ought to add Milva, who had collaborated with dryads and Scoia’tael, and who was embroiled–as it transpired–in the infamous massacre on the borders of Brokilon Forest. To that one ought to add Cahir aep Ceallach, a Nilfgaardian, a citizen of an enemy nation, whose presence on the wrong side of the battle would have been arduous to explain or justify. It so happened that the only member of our company whose curriculum vitae was not besmirched by political or criminal issues was the vampire. The exposure or identification of any one of us threatened us all with impalement on sharpened aspen stakes. Each day spent–initially, indeed, pleasantly, safely and with full bellies–in the shade of the Lyrian standards aggrandised that risk.
Geralt, when I emphatically reminded him of that, became somewhat dispirited, but put forward his arguments, of which he had two. Firstly, following her disagreeable accident, Milva still required care and attention, and there were barber-surgeons in the army. Secondly, Queen Meve’s army was marching east, towards Caed Dhu. And our company, before it changed direction and became embroiled in the battle described above, had also been heading to Caed Dhu, for we hoped to obtain some information from the druids dwelling there to aid our search for Ciri. Patrols and lawless gangs prowling in Angren had driven us from our straight road to the aforementioned druids. Now, under the protection of the friendly Lyrian Army, in the grace and favour of Queen Meve, the way to Caed Dhu was wide open; why, it seemed straightforward and safe. I warned the Witcher that it only appeared so, that it was but a semblance and that royal favours are deceptive and inconstant. The Witcher did not want to listen. But it was soon proved who was right. When news got out that a Nilfgaardian punitive expedition was marching towards Angren in great force from the Klamat
Pass in the East, the Lyrian Army wasted no time in turning back towards the Mahakam Mountains in the North. As may easily be imagined, that change of direction did not suit Geralt in the slightest; he was hurrying to the druids, not to Mahakam! As naïve as a child, he ran to Queen Meve to obtain an exemption from the army and a royal blessing for his private business. And in that moment queenly love and favour ended, and admiration for the hero of the Battle for the Bridge vanished like so much smoke. The knight, Sir Geralt of Rivia, was reminded in a cool, though resolute, tone of his knightly duties towards the crown. The still ailing Milva, the vampire Regis and the undersigned were instructed to join the column of fugitives and civilians moving behind the convoy. Cahir aep Ceallach, a sturdy youth who in no way resembled a civilian, was given a white and blue sash and conscripted into a so-called free company, which meant a cavalry unit drawn from various bits of rabble picked up by the Lyrian corps on the road. In this way our company was sundered and everything suggested that our expedition was definitively and resoundingly over.
As you might imagine, dear reader, it was not the end at all, nay, ‘twas not even the beginning! Milva, once she had learned of this development, immediately declared herself fit and well. She was first to give the order to withdraw. Cahir flung his royal livery into the bushes and bolted from the free company, and Geralt fled the opulent tents of the select knighthood.
I shall not go on at length about the details, and modesty does not permit me the excessive display of my own–not insignificant–contribution to the undertaking. I merely state the fact: on the night of the fifth of September our entire company clandestinely took leave of Queen Meve’s corps. Before parting from the Lyrian Army we stocked up liberally, without asking the quartermaster’s permission for so doing. I consider the word ‘theft’–as used by Milva–to be too blunt. For we deserved some sort of payment for our involvement in the memorable Battle of the Bridge. And if not a payment, then at least compensation and reparations for the losses we incurred! Passing over Milva’s tragic accident, not counting Geralt and Cahir’s cuts and bruises, all our horses were killed or crippled, apart from my faithful Pegasus and the skittish Roach, the Witcher’s mare. Thus, in lieu of compensation, we took three full-blooded cavalry steeds and one colt. We also took various bits of tackle, whatever fell into our hands; for the sake of fairness I shall add that we subsequently had to throw half of it away. As Milva said, that can happen when you steal in the dark. The most useful things were taken from the army stores by the vampire Regis, who can see better in the dark than by day. Regis additionally diminished the defensive capabilities of the Lyrian Army by one fat, mousy-grey mule, which he led from the pen so expertly that not a single beast snorted or stamped a hoof. Stories about animals smelling vampires and reacting to their smell in panicked fear cannot thus be believed; unless it refers to certain animals and certain vampires. I shall add that we kept said mousy-grey mule for some time. Following the loss of the colt, which later bolted in the forests of Riverdell, alarmed by wolves, the mule carried what was left of our belongings. The mule was called Draakul. It was so named by Regis immediately after being stolen and so it remained. Regis was clearly entertained by the name, which no doubt had some amusing significance in the culture and speech of vampires, but which he did not wish to explain to us, claiming it was an untranslatable pun.
The Tower of Swallows Page 8