‘Just a moment,’ Sheala de Tancarville interrupted. ‘One place still remains empty. Who is to be the twelfth sorceress?’
‘That is precisely the first problem the lodge will have to solve,’ Philippa said, smiling mysteriously. ‘In two weeks’ time I shall tell you who ought to take their place in the twelfth seat. And then we shall ponder over how to get that person to take it up. My choice will astonish you. Because it is not an ordinary person, most esteemed sisters. It is death or life, destruction or rebirth, chaos or order. Depending on how you look at it.’
The entire village had poured out of their houses to watch the gang pass through. Tuzik also joined them. He had work to do, but he couldn’t resist it. In recent days, people had been talking a great deal about the Rats. A rumour was even going around that they had all been caught and hanged. The rumour had been false, though, the evidence of which was ostentatiously and unhurriedly parading in front of the whole village at this very moment.
‘Impudent scoundrels,’ someone behind Tuzik whispered, and it was a whisper full of admiration. ‘Ambling down the main street . . .’
‘Decked out like wedding guests . . .’
‘And what horses! You don’t even see Nilfgaardians with horses like that!’
‘Ha, they’re nicked. Nobody’s horses are safe from them. And you can offload them everywhere nowadays. But they keep the best for ’emselves . . .’
‘That one up the front, look, that’s Giselher . . . Their leader.’
‘And next to him, on the chestnut, it’s that she-elf . . . they call her Iskra . . .’
A cur came scuttling out from behind a fence, barking furiously, scurrying around near the fore hooves of Iskra’s mare. The elf shook her luxurious mane of dark hair, turned her horse around, leant down to the ground and lashed the dog with a knout. The cur howled and spun on the spot three times, as Iskra spat on it. Tuzik muttered a curse between clenched teeth.
The people standing close by continued to whisper, discreetly pointing out the various Rats as they passed through the village. Tuzik listened, because he had to. He knew the gossip and tales as well as the others, and easily recognised the one with the long, tousled, straw-coloured hair, eating an apple, as Kayleigh, the broad-shouldered one as Asse, and the one in the embroidered sheepskin jerkin as Reef.
Two girls, riding side by side and holding hands, brought up the rear of the procession. The taller of the two, riding a bay, had her hair shorn as though recovering from the typhus, her jacket was unbuttoned, her lacy blouse gleamed white beneath it, and her necklace, bracelets and earrings flashed brightly.
‘That shaven-headed one is Mistle . . .’ someone near Tuzik said. ‘Dripping with trinkets, just like a Yule tree.’
‘They say she’s killed more people than she’s seen springs . . .’
‘And the other one? On the roan? With the sword across her back?’
‘Falka, they call her. She’s been riding with the Rats since the summer. She also s’pposed to be a nasty piece of work . . .’
That nasty piece of work, Tuzik guessed, wasn’t much older than his daughter, Milena. The flaxen hair of the young bandit tumbled from beneath her velvet beret decorated with an impudently jiggling bunch of pheasant feathers. Around her neck glowed a poppy-red silk kerchief, tied up in a fanciful bow.
A sudden commotion had broken out among the villagers who had poured out in front of their cottages. For Giselher, the one riding at the head of the gang, had reined in his horse, and with a careless gesture thrown a clinking purse at the foot of Granny Mykita, who was standing leaning on a cane.
‘May the Gods protect you, gracious youth!’ wailed Granny Mykita. ‘May you enjoy good health, O our benefactor, may you—’
A peal of laughter from Iskra drowned out the crone’s mumbling. The elf threw a jaunty leg over her pommel, reached into a pouch and vigorously scattered a handful of coins among the crowd. Reef and Asse followed her lead, a veritable silver rain showering down on the dusty road. Kayleigh, giggling, threw his apple core into the figures scrambling to gather up the money.
‘Our benefactors!’
‘Our bold young hawks!’
‘May fate be kind to you!’
Tuzik didn’t run after the others, didn’t drop to his knees to scrabble in the sand and chicken shit for coins. He stood by the fence, watching the girls pass slowly by.
The younger of the two, the one with the flaxen hair, noticed his gaze and expression. She let go of the short-haired girl’s hand, spurred her horse and rode straight for him, pressing him against the fence and almost getting her stirrup caught. Her green eyes flashed and he shuddered, seeing so much evil and cold hatred in them.
‘Let him be, Falka,’ the other girl called, needlessly.
The green-eyed bandit settled for pushing Tuzik against the fence, and rode off after the Rats, without even looking back.
‘Our benefactors!’
‘Young hawks!’
Tuzik spat.
In the early evening, men in black uniforms arrived in the village. They were forbidding-looking horsemen from the fort near Fen Aspra. Their hooves thudded, their horses neighed and their weapons clanked. When asked, the village headman and other peasants lied through their teeth, and sent the pursuers on a false trail. No one asked Tuzik. Fortunately.
When he returned from the pasture and went into his garden, he heard voices. He recognised the twittering of Zgarba the carter’s twin girls, the cracking falsettos of his neighbour’s adolescent boys. And Milena’s voice. They’re playing, he thought. He turned the corner beyond the woodshed. And froze in his tracks.
‘Milena!’
Milena, his only surviving daughter, the apple of his eye, had hung a piece of wood across her back on a string, like a sword. She’d let her hair down, attached a cockerel’s feather to her woollen hat, and tied her mother’s kerchief around her neck. In a bizarre, fanciful bow.
Her eyes were green.
Tuzik had never beaten his daughter before, never raised his hand against her.
That was the first time.
Lightning flashed on the horizon and thunder rumbled. A gust of wind raked across the surface of the Ribbon.
There’s going to be a storm, thought Milva, and after the storm the rain will set in. The chaffinches weren’t mistaken.
She urged her horse on. She would have to hurry if she wanted to catch up with the Witcher before the storm broke.
I have met many military men in my life. I have known marshals, generals, commanders and governors, the victors of numerous campaigns and battles. I’ve listened to their stories and recollections. I’ve seen them poring over maps, drawing lines of various colours on them, making plans, thinking up strategies. In those paper wars everything worked, everything functioned, everything was clear and everything was in exemplary order. That’s how it has to be, explained the military men. The army represents discipline and order above all. The army cannot exist without discipline and order.
So it is all the stranger that real wars – and I have seen several real wars – have as much in common with discipline and order as a whorehouse with a fire raging through it.
Dandelion, Half a Century of Poetry
Chapter Two
The crystalline clear water of the Ribbon brimmed over the edge of the drop in a smooth, gentle arc, falling in a soughing and frothing cascade among boulders as black as onyx. It broke up on them and vanished in a white foam, from where it spilt into a wide pool which was so transparent that every pebble and every green strand of waterweed swaying in the current could be seen in the variegated mosaic of the riverbed.
Both banks were overgrown with carpets of knotgrass, through which dippers bustled, proudly flashing the white ruffles on their throats. Above the knotgrass, bushes shimmered green, brown and ochre against spruce trees which looked as though they had been sprinkled with silver.
‘Indeed,’ Dandelion sighed. ‘It’s beautiful here.’
A
large, dark bull trout attempted to jump the lip of the waterfall. For a moment it hung in the air, flexing its fins and flicking its tail, and then fell heavily into the seething foam.
The darkening sky to the south was split by a forked ribbon of lightning and the dull echo of distant thunder rumbled over the wall of trees. The Witcher’s bay mare danced, jerked her head and bared her teeth, trying to spit out the bit. Geralt tugged the reins hard and the mare skittered backwards, dancing hooves clattering on the stones.
‘Whoa! Whoaaa! Do you see her, Dandelion? Damned ballerina! I’m getting rid of this bloody beast the first chance I get! Strike me down, if I don’t swap her for a donkey!’
‘See that happening anytime soon?’ said the poet, scratching the itching mosquito bites on the nape of his neck. ‘This valley’s savage landscape indeed offers unparalleled aesthetic impressions, but for a change I’d be happy to gaze on a less aesthetic tavern. I’ve spent almost a week admiring nothing but romantic nature, breathtaking panoramas and distant horizons. I miss the indoors. Particularly the kind where they serve warm victuals and cold beer.’
‘You’ll have to carry on missing them a bit longer,’ said the Witcher, turning around in the saddle. ‘That I miss civilisation a little too may alleviate your suffering. As you know, I was stuck in Brokilon for exactly thirty-six days . . . and nights too, when romantic nature was freezing my arse, crawling across my back and sprinkling dew on my nose— Whoaaa! Pox on you! Will you stop sulking, you bloody nag?’
‘It’s the horseflies biting her. The bugs are getting vicious and bloodthirsty, because a storm’s approaching. The thunder and lightning’s getting more frequent to the south.’
‘So I see,’ the Witcher said, looking at the sky and reining in his skittish horse. ‘And the wind’s coming from a different direction, too. It smells of the sea. The weather’s changing, without a doubt. Let’s ride. Urge on that fat gelding of yours, Dandelion.’
‘My steed is called Pegasus.’
‘Of course, what else? Know what? Let’s think up a name for my elven nag. Mmm . . .’
‘Why not Roach?’ mocked the troubadour.
‘Roach,’ agreed the Witcher. ‘Nice.’
‘Geralt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever had a horse that wasn’t called Roach?’
‘No,’ answered the Witcher after a moment’s thought. ‘I haven’t. Spur on that castrated Pegasus of yours, Dandelion. We’ve a long road ahead of us.’
‘Indeed,’ grunted the poet. ‘Nilfgaard . . . How many miles away, do you reckon?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Will we make it before winter?’
‘We’ll ride to Verden first. We have to discuss . . . certain matters there.’
‘What matters? You’ll neither discourage me nor get rid of me. I’m coming along! That is my last word.’
‘We shall see. As I said, we ride to Verden.’
‘Is it far? Do you know these lands?’
‘Yes I do. We are at Ceann Treise Falls and in front of us there’s a place called Seventh Mile. Those are the Owl Hills beyond the river.’
‘And we’re heading south, downriver? The Ribbon joins the Yaruga near the stronghold at Bodrog . . .’
‘We’re heading south, but along the other bank. The Ribbon bends towards the west and we’ll go through the forest. I want to get to a place called Drieschot, or the Triangle. The borders of Verden, Brugge and Brokilon meet there.’
‘And from there?’
‘Along the Yaruga. To the mouth. And to Cintra.’
‘And then?’
‘And then we’ll see. If at all possible, force that idle Pegasus of yours to go a little quicker.’
A downpour caught them as they were crossing, right in the middle of the river. First a strong wind got up, with hurricane-force gusts blowing their hair and mantles around and lashing their faces with leaves and branches torn from the trees along the banks. They urged on their horses with shouts and kicks of their heels, stirring up the water as they headed for the bank. Then the wind suddenly dropped and they saw a grey curtain of rain gliding towards them. The surface of the Ribbon turned white and boiling, as though someone were hurling great handfuls of gravel at the river.
Having reached the bank, drenched to the skin, they hurried to hide in the forest. The branches created a dense, green roof over their heads, but it was not a roof capable of protecting them from such a downpour. The rain lashed intensely and forced down the leaves, and was soon pouring on them almost as hard as it had in the open.
They wrapped themselves up in their mantles, put up their hoods and kept moving. It became dark among the trees, the only light coming from the increasingly frequent flashes of lightning. The thunder followed, with long, deafening crashes. Roach shied, stamped her hooves and skittered around. Pegasus remained utterly calm.
‘Geralt!’ Dandelion yelled, trying to outshout a peal of thunder which was crashing through the forest like a gigantic wagon. ‘We have to stop! Let’s shelter somewhere!’
‘Where?’ he shouted back. ‘Ride on!’
And they rode on.
After some time the rain visibly eased off, the strong wind once again soughed in the branches, and the crashes of thunder stopped boring into their ears. They rode out onto a track among a dense alder grove, then into a clearing. A towering beech tree stood in the middle. Beneath its boughs, on a thick, wide carpet of brown leaves and beechnuts, stood a wagon harnessed to a pair of mules. A wagoner sat on the coachman’s seat pointing a crossbow at them. Geralt swore. His curse was drowned out by a clap of thunder.
‘Put the bow down, Kolda,’ said a short man in a straw hat, turning from the trunk of a beech tree, hopping on one leg and fastening his trousers. ‘They’re not the ones we’re waiting for. But they are customers. Don’t frighten away customers. We don’t have much time, but there’s always time to trade!’
‘What the bloody hell?’ muttered Dandelion behind Geralt’s back.
‘Over here, Master Elves!’ the man in the hat called over. ‘Don’t you worry, no harm will come your way. N’ess a tearth! Va, Seidhe. Ceadmil! We’re mates, right? Want to trade? Come on, over here, under this tree, out of the rain!’
Geralt wasn’t surprised by the wagoner’s mistake. Both he and Dandelion were wrapped in grey elven mantels. He was also wearing a jerkin decorated with the kind of leafy pattern elves favoured, given to him by the dryads, was riding a horse with typical elven trappings and a decorated bridle. His face was partially hidden by his hood. As far as the foppish Dandelion was concerned, he was regularly mistaken for an elf or half-elf, particularly since he had begun wearing his hair shoulder-length and taken up the habit of occasionally curling it with tongs.
‘Careful,’ Geralt muttered, dismounting. ‘You’re an elf. So don’t open your trap if you don’t have to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re hawkers.’
Dandelion hissed softly. He knew what that meant.
Money made the world go round, and supply was driven by demand. The Scoia’tael roaming the forests gathered saleable booty that was useless to them, while suffering from a shortage of equipment and weapons themselves. That was how forest trading began. And how a class of humans who earned their living from this kind of trade sprang up. The wagons of profiteers who traded with the Squirrels began appearing clandestinely on forest tracks, paths, glades and clearings. The elves called them hav’caaren, an untranslatable word, but one which was associated with rapacious greed. Among humans the term ‘hawker’ became widespread, and the connotations were even more hideous than usual, because the traders themselves were so awful. Cruel and ruthless, they stopped at nothing, not even killing. A hawker caught by the army could not count on mercy. Hence he was not in the habit of showing it himself. If they came across anyone who might turn them in, hawkers would reach for a crossbow or a knife without a second thought.
So they were out of luck. It was fort
unate the hawkers had taken them for elves. Geralt pulled his hood down over his eyes and began to wonder what would happen if the hav’caaren saw through the masquerade.
‘What foul weather,’ said the trader, rubbing his hands. ‘It’s pouring like the sky was leaking! Awful tedd, ell’ea? But what to do, there’s no bad weather for doing business. There’s only bad goods and bad money, innit! You know what I’m saying?’
Geralt nodded. Dandelion grunted something from under his hood. Luckily for them, the elves’ contemptuous dislike of conversing with humans was generally known and came as no surprise. The wagoner did not put the crossbow down, however, which was not a good sign.
‘Who are you with? Whose commando?’ the hawker asked, unconcerned, as any serious trader would be, by the reticence of his customers. ‘Coinneach Dá Reo’s? Or Angus Bri-Cri’s? Or maybe Riordain’s? I heard Riordain put some royal bailiffs to the sword. They were travelling home after they’d done their duty, collecting a levy. And they had it in coinage, not grain. I don’t take wood tar nor grain in payment, nor blood-stained clothing, and if we’re talking furs, only mink, sable or ermine. But what I like most is common coinage, precious stones and trinkets! If you have them we can trade! I only have first-class goods! Evelienn; vara en ard scedde, ell’ea, you know what I mean? I’ve got everything. Take a look.’
The trader went over to the wagon and pulled back the edge of the wet tarpaulin. They saw swords, bows, bunches of arrows and saddles. The hawker rooted around among them and took out an arrow. The arrowhead was serrated and sawn through.
‘You won’t find any other traders selling this,’ he said boastfully. ‘They’d shit themselves if they were to touch ’em. You’d be torn apart by horses if you were caught with arrows like that. But I know what you Squirrels like. Customer comes first, and you’ve got to take a risk when you barter, as long as there’s a profit from it! I’ve got barbed arrowheads at . . . nine orens a dozen. Naev’de aen tvedeane, ell’ea, got it, Seidhe? I swear I’m not fleecing you, I don’t make much myself, I swear on my little children’s heads. And if you take three dozen straight away, I’ll knock a bit off the price. It’s a bargain, I swear, a sheer bargain— Hey, Seidhe, hands off my wagon!’
The Saga of the Witcher Page 74