She stopped the horse. She was at a crossroads, the road forked into two, with both forks looking identical.
Why had Fabio not said anything about the crossroads? Ah, who cares if I don’t know the way, I always know where to go…
So why now do I not know which fork to take?
A huge shape noiselessly moved over her head. Ciri’s heart felt like it leaped into her throat. The horse whinnied, kicked and galloped off in a rush, choosing the right fork. She stopped it after a while.
‘It’s just a ordinary owl.’ she whispered, trying to calm herself and the horse. ‘An ordinary bird… There is no reason to be afraid…’
The wind intensified, dark clouds covered the moon completely. But before her, in view of the road on the path that twisted through the forest, there was a clearing. She rode faster, the dirt sprayed out from under the hooves of the horse.
Soon she had to stop. Before her was a cliff and the sea from which arose the familiar black cone of the island. From here she could not see the lights of Garstang, Loxia or Arethusa. She only had eyes for the slender, solitary and ornate tower of Thanedd.
Tor Lara.
It thundered and a moment later a blinding flash of lightning ribboned across the cloudy sky and joined with the top of the tower. Tor Lara windows flashed like red eyes, it seemed as if the inside of the tower had been on fire for a second.
Tor Lara… The Tower of Seagulls… Why does this name awaken in me such terror?
The wind shook the trees, the branches rustled, Ciri squinted her eyes, dust and leaves hit her on the cheeks. The horse snorted and twisted below her. Ciri managed to recover control. Thanedd Island was to the north, she had to head in westward direction. The sandy road lying in the darkness was as a clear as a white line. She moved the horse into a gallop.
The thunder boomed again. Suddenly, in a flash of lightning, Ciri saw riders. Dark, fuzzy, silhouettes moving on both sides of the road. She heard a scream.
‘Gar’ean!’
Without thinking Ciri spurred the horse, pulled the reins, turned and went into a gallop. Behind her there was shouting, whistling, neighing and the clatter of hooves.
‘Gar’ean! Dh’oine!’
Galloping hooves, the rush of wind. A darkness in which shone the white trunks of the birch trees along the road. Thunder. In the flash of lightning, Ciri could see two horses were trying to cut off the road. One man stretched out his hand, trying to seize the reins. In his hat was pinned the tail of a squirrel. Ciri dug her heels into her horse, and laid low across its neck, her momentum throwing the hand aside. Behind her, screams, whistles, a roar of thunder. A flash of lightning.
‘Sparle, Yaevinn!’
Galloping, galloping! Faster, horse! Thunder. Lightning. Fork in the road. To the left! I’m never mistaken. Another fork. To the right! Gallop horse! Hurry, hurry!
The road started to lead up, but the sand under the horse’s hooves, although being spurred on, started to slow it down…
At the top of the rise Ciri looked around. Another flash of lightning illuminated the road. Completely empty. She listened but could hear nothing but the leaves rustling in the wind. The thunder rumbled.
There was no one there. The Squirrels… Were just a recollection of Kaedwen. The Rose of Shaerrawedd… I found it. The is not a soul here, not one follows me…
The wind hit her. The wind is blowing from inland she thought, and I feel it on my right cheek… I was lost.
Lightning flashed again, its light reflecting off the shining surface of the sea, on its background the black cone of Thanedd Island. And Tor Lara. The Tower of Seagulls. The tower which pulls me like a magnet… But I do not want to go to that tower, I am going to Hirundum. Because I have to see Geralt.
The lightning flashed again.
Between her and the cliff stood a black horse. And on it sat a knight wearing a helmet decorated with wings from a bird of prey. Suddenly the wings fluttered, and the bird took flight…
Cintra!
A paralysing fear griped her. Her hands clenched painfully around the reins. Lightning flashed. The Black Knight reared up on his horse. Instead of a face he wore a monstrous mask. The wings fluttered…
Her horse without any urging went into a gallop. Darkness, punctuated by lightning.
The forest came to an end and under the horses hooves there was a splash, and the sounds of a swamp. The sound followed her from the wings of a bird of prey. Closer… Closer…
A furious gallop, her eyes wept for more speed. The lightning raced across the sky. In its light Ciri could see alders and willows lining both sides of the road. But they were not trees. They were the servants of the King of Alders. Servants of the Black Knight, who galloped behind her, and the wings of the bird of prey rustling on his helmet. Grotesque monsters on both sides of the road stretch out their hands towards her shoulders, laughing wildly, opening the black maws of their mouths. Ciri was thrown forward onto the horse’s neck. Branches whistle, whip, and hooked on her clothing. Deformed trunks creaked, the holes opened and closed, and then become covered in a mocking smile…
Young lion of Cintra! Child of the Elder Blood!
The Black Knight was right behind her, Ciri could feel his hands trying to grab her hair. The horse fuelled by her screaming, jumped forward, and beyond an invisible barrier, breaking branches with a crack…
Ciri pulled the reins and leaned into the saddle, she turned the panting horse about. Shouting wildly, furiously. She drew her sword from it sheath and swung it over her head.
This is not Cintra! I’m not a little girl! I’m not unarmed! I will not let you…
‘I will not let you! You will not touch me anymore! You will not touch me ever again!’
Her horse with a splash and a squelch landed in water, which reached up to its belly. Ciri leaned forward and screamed, then struck the stallion with her heels and turned it back towards the bank. A pond, she thought. Fabio said something about fishponds. This is Hirundum. I was right. I’m never wrong…
Lightning. Behind her was a dike, and beyond that the black wall of the forest, penetrating into the sky like a saw. And nobody else. Only the howling of the wind cut through the silence. Somewhere in the swamp a duck quacked in fright. No one. There is nobody on the dike. No one was following me. It was a phantom, a nightmare. Memories of Cintra. I only imagined it.
Off in the distance was a light. A streetlight. Or a fire. It’s a farmhouse. Hirundum. It is close. Only a little further…
Lightning flashed. One, two, three. With no thunder. The wind died suddenly. The horse neighed, then tossed it head and reared.
In the black sky appeared a milky film, which cleared quickly, twisting like a snake. The wind blew again, and from the dike arose a dust storm of dead leaves and grasses.
In the distance , the light faded away. It sank and melted into a flood of a million little fires which suddenly glow blue and cover the entire swamp.
The horse snorted, neighed, the dike raged. Ciri with difficulty remained in the saddle.
Nightmarish riders appeared like a ribbon that crossed the sky. As they moved closer Ciri was able to get a better look at them. Their helmets were bristling with buffalo horns and their plumes were frayed. Under the helmets were the white masks of the dead. The riders rode on skeletal horses covered with ragged blankets. The wind howled with anger among the alder trees, a sword of lightning split the black sky relentlessly. The wind howled even louder. No, she thought, not the wind. It’s a ghostly song.
The nightmarish parade turned directly towards her. The hooves of their horses pass through the ghostly lights hanging over the swamp. At the head of the host rode the King of the Wild Hunt. A rusty helm sat upon his cadaverous face, his eye sockets gaping holes where a livid fire burned. Frayed robes fluttered around his body. He wore a breastplate covered in rust, upon which rattled a necklace, empty like a pod of beans. Once it contained precious stones. But these had fallen out during the wild chase across the sky. And
they become the stars…
This is not real! This is not! It is a nightmare, a hallucination, a delusion! It only seems like it to me!
The King of the Wild Hunt spurred his skeletal steed and broke into a wild and hideous laughter.
‘Child of the Elder Blood! You belong to us! You are ours! Join the procession, join our Hunt! Let us run, run to the end of eternity, until the limit of existence! You are ours, daughter of Chaos! Join us and know the joy of the Hunt! You are ours, you’re one of us! Your place is among us!’
‘No!’, she cried ‘Be gone! You’re dead!’
The King of the Wild Hunt laughed, his rotten teeth tapped on his rusted armour. His burning eye sockets peered from his skull mask.
‘Yes, we are dead. But you are death.’
Ciri clutched her horses’ neck and dug her heels into its side. The horse ran along the dike at a dizzying gallop. Behind her she could feel the spectral pursuers.
* * *
Bernie Hofmeier, a Halfling and a farmer from Hirundum, raised his curly head, listening to the sound of distant thunder.
‘A dangerous thing,’ he said ‘this storm without rain. Lightning strike in the wrong place and there’ll be fires…’
‘A little rain would not hurt,’ sighed Dandelion, who was tightening the strings of his lute. ‘because the air is that thick it can be cut with a knife… My shirt is glued to my back, the mosquitoes surround us… But I think it going to remain in the clouds. The storm will circle us and will fall somewhere else in the north. Perhaps the sea.’
‘It’s falling in Thanedd,’ confirmed the Halfling. ‘It is the highest point in the surrounding area. That tower on the island, Tor Lara, draws fucking lightning. During a storm, it looks like it is wreathed in flame. It is surprising that it doesn’t fall apart…’
‘It’s magic,’ The troubadour said with conviction. ‘Everything about Thanedd is magical, to the rocks. And the wizards are not afraid of the lightning. But what am I saying? Did you know, Bernie, That they can catch lightning?’
‘Don’t fuck with me! You’re lying, Dandelion.’
‘May the Gods strike…’ the Poet paused, glanced anxiously at the sky. ‘May a duck bite me if I’m lying. I’m telling you Hofmeier, wizards capture lightning. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Old Gorazd, the one who was slain on Sodden Hill, once captured lightning right before my very eyes. He took a long length of wire, one end fasten to the top of his tower, while the second…’
‘The other end of the wire is put into a bottle,’ suddenly spoke the shrill voice of Hofmeier’s son sitting on the porch, he was a small Halfling with a thick head of curly hair like a sheep’s fleece. ‘In a glass demijohn, like the one that my dad uses stores his wine.’
‘Home, Franklin!’ Shouted the farmer. ‘To bed, to sleep! It’s almost midnight and we have work to do tomorrow! And there will be no fooling with bottles and wire during a storm, or you’ll get the strap. You’ll not be sitting on your ass for two weeks! Petunia, take the boy from here. And bring us more beer!’
‘You’ve had enough,’ Petunia Hofmeier said angrily as she carried the child inside. ’You’ve put enough already in your gullet.’
‘Do not growl. Soon the Witcher will return. It is proper to treat a guest.’
‘When the Witcher comes back, you can go get it for him.’
‘Oh stingy woman’ Hofmeier growled, but so that his wife could not hear. ‘All of her family, the Biberveldts of Knotweed, are to a man, misers… The Witcher has been gone a long time. He went over to the ponds and disappeared. A strange man he is. Did you see the way he was looking at the girls Cinni and Tanderinki this evening when they were playing in the yard? Strange look in his eye. And now… I get the impression he went to be alone. And that he took lodging in my house because it is on the outskirts, away from the others. You know him better Dandelion, tell me… ‘
‘Know him?’ The Poet killed a mosquito on his neck and strummed his lute as he watched the black silhouette of alder trees by the pond. ‘No, Bernie. I don’t know him. I don’t think anyone knows him. But something happened to him, I can see it. Why did he come here, to Hirundum? To be closer to Thanedd island? And when I proposed yesterday riding together to Gors Velen, from where you can view Thanedd Island, he refused without hesitation. What keeps him here? Did you offer him a lucrative job?’
‘Well there,’ muttered the Halfling ‘If I’m being honest, I did not believe that there really is a monster. The child that drowned in the pond may have had a cramp. But the point is everyone started shouting that it was a Vodyanoi or a Kikimora and that we must call a Witcher… And they offered him a soldier’s fortune. And what did he do? He spends three nights by the dikes, then sleeps during the day or sits without saying a word, watching the children like a mother… Strange. I would say even, peculiar.’
‘Well one might say.’
Lightning flashed, illuminating the farm and buildings. For a moment shone the ruins of an Elven palace across the dike. For an instant the orchards rattled with the sound of thunder. Violent winds sprang up, trees and reeds rustled over the pond and marred the mirrored surface of the water crumpling and tarnishing the tips of the floating water lilies.
‘The storm is headed this way.’ Said the farmer glancing at the sky. ‘Maybe it’s the island magicians with their spells? Thanedd must house over two hundred of them… What do you think, Dandelion, what are they going to discuss at this convention of theirs? And will it do any good for us?’
‘For us? I doubt it.’ The troubadour strummed his fingers along the strings of the lute. ‘These meetings are usually a fashion show, gossiping, backbiting and the opportunity for internal wrangling. Quarrels about whether to generalize magic or make it more elitist. Fights between those who are kings, and those who prefer to exert pressure on kings from a distance… ‘
‘Ha!’ Bernie Hofmeier said. ‘Then I see that this meeting on Thanedd will be no worse that thunder in a storm.’
‘Maybe, But what do we care?’
‘You do.’ said the Halfling grimly ‘Because you strum the lute and sing. You look at the world around and see only rhymes and music. But no more than twice in the past week did the army trample our cabbages and turnips beneath the hooves of their horses. The army chases the Squirrels, the Squirrels run and disappear and the path of both passes over our cabbages…’
‘No time to mourn the cabbages when the forest burns.’ recited the Poet.
‘You, Dandelion,’ Bernie Hofmeier looked at him askance ‘when you say something I do not know whether to laugh, cry or kick you in the ass. I’m serious! And I say that terrible times have come. With posts on the highways, gallows, the dead in the fields and the roads, this country is starting to feel like the times of Falka. And how can we live like this? By day people come with threats from the king that we will be put in the stocks for helping the Scoia'tael. And at night the elves show up and you try to refuse them help! Thus, very poetic, see how the night takes on a reddish appearance. It is so poetic it makes me want to vomit. And so we are caught in the crossfire…’
‘You’re counting on the Congress of Sorcerers to make a difference?’
‘Count on it. You said yourself that there are two factions among the Sorcerers. There were already times when Sorcerers mitigated kings, put end to wars and rebellions. After all it was the Sorcerers who made peace with Nilfgaard three years ago. They can now…’
Bernie Hofmeier paused and pricked up his ears. Dandelion’s hand muted the string of the lute.
From the darkness emerged the Witcher from the direction of the dike. He walked slowly towards the house. Again the lightning flashed. When the thunder struck, the Witcher was already with them, on the porch.
‘What happened, Geralt?’ Dandelion asked to break the awkward silence. ‘Did you get the monster?’
‘No. This is not a night to track. It’s a restless night. Restless… I’m tired, Dandelion.’
‘Then sit down and re
st.’
‘You misunderstand me.’
‘Indeed,’ muttered the Halfling, looking at the sky and listening. ‘A restless night, something evil is brewing… The animals are crowded in the barn… and screams can be heard in the wind…’
‘The Wild Hunt ‘ the Witcher said quietly. ‘We’ll close the shutters, Mr Hofmeier.’
‘The Wild Hunt?’ Bernie was terrified ‘Ghosts?’
‘Do not fear. It flies high. In the summer it always flies high. But it may wake the children. The Hunt brings nightmares. Better close the shutters.’
‘The Wild Hunt’ Dandelion said, glancing nervously up. ‘heralds war.’
‘Nonsense. Superstition.’
‘But shortly before the attack on Cintra by Nilfgaard…’
‘Quiet!’ The Witcher interrupted with a gesture, straightening up suddenly, staring into the darkness.
‘What is…’
‘Horses.’
‘Damn it’ Hofmeier hissed, springing up from the bench. ‘at night it can only be Scoia’tael…’
‘One horse’ the Witcher interrupted, taking up his sword which he had placed on the bench. ‘One real horse, the rest are the ghost of the Hunt… Damn, it is not possible… In the Summer?’
Dandelion also rose, but he was ashamed to flee, as neither, Geralt or Bernie had made a move to escape. The Witcher drew his sword from it sheath and ran towards the dike, the Halfling without hesitation rushed after him, arming himself with a pitchfork along the way. Lightning flashed again, illuminating on the dike a galloping horse. And behind the horse came something vague, something that was irregular, woven with darkness with glowing flashes, a whirlpool, mirage. Something that gave rise to panic, disgusting, visceral horror that twisted the entrails.
The Witcher cried, raising his sword. The rider saw him and hasted their gallop, steering the mount towards him. The Witcher cried again. Thunder boomed overhead.
There was a flash again, this time it was not lightning. Dandelion crouched next to the bench and would have crawled under it, but it proved to be too low. Bernie dropped his pitchfork. Petunia Hofmeier ran from the house screaming.
Andrzej Sapkowski - [Witcher 03] Page 10