The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

‘I don’t drink blood,’ Regis interrupted. ‘Haven’t for many years. I gave it up.’

  ‘What do you mean, gave it up?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘I really don’t understand . . .’

  ‘Forgive me. It’s a personal matter.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Dandelion,’ the Witcher burst out, turning around in the saddle. ‘Regis just told you to fuck off. He just said it more politely. Be so good as to shut your trap.’

  However, the seeds of anxiety and doubts that had been sown now germinated and sprouted. When they stopped for the night, the ambience was still heavy and tense, which even Milva shooting down a plump barnacle goose by the river couldn’t relieve. They covered the catch in clay, roasted and ate it, gnawing even the tiniest bones clean. They had sated their hunger, but the anxiety remained. The conversation was awkward despite Dandelion’s titanic efforts. The poet’s chatter became a monologue, so obviously apparent that even he finally noticed it and stopped talking. Only the sound of the horses crunching their hay disturbed the deathly silence around the campfire.

  In spite of the late hour no one seemed to be getting ready for bed. Milva was boiling water in a pot above the fire and straightening the crumpled fletchings of her arrows in the steam. Cahir was repairing a torn boot buckle. Geralt was whittling a piece of wood. And Regis swept his eyes over all of them in turn.

  ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I see it is inevitable. It would appear I ought to have explained a few things to you long ago . . .’

  ‘No one expects it of you,’ Geralt said. He threw the stick he had been lengthily and enthusiastically carving into the fire and looked up. ‘I don’t need explanations. I’m the old-fashioned type. When I hold my hand out to someone and accept him as a comrade, it means more to me than a contract signed in the presence of a notary.’

  ‘I’m old-fashioned too,’ Cahir said, still bent over his boot.

  ‘I don’t know any other custom,’ Milva said drily, placing another arrow in the steam rising up from the pot.

  ‘Don’t worry about Dandelion’s chatter,’ the Witcher added. ‘He can’t help it. And you don’t have to confide in us or explain anything. We haven’t confided in you either.’

  ‘I nonetheless think’ – the vampire smiled faintly – ‘that you’d like to hear what I have to say, even though no one's forcing you to. I feel the need for openness towards the individuals I extend a hand to and accept as my comrades.’

  This time no one said anything.

  ‘I ought to begin by saying,’ Regis said a moment later, ‘that all fears linked to my vampiric nature are groundless. I won’t attack anybody, nor will I creep around at night trying to sink my teeth into somebody’s neck. And this does not merely concern my comrades, to whom my relationship is no less old-fashioned than theirs is to me. I don’t touch blood. Not at all and never. I stopped drinking it when it became a problem for me. A serious problem, which I had difficulty solving.

  ‘In fact, the problem arose and acquired negative characteristics in true textbook style,’ he continued a moment later. ‘Even during my youth I enjoyed . . . er . . . the pleasures of good company, in which respect I was no different to the majority of my peers. You know what it’s like; you were young too. With humans, however, there exists a system of rules and restrictions: parental authority, guardians, superiors and elders – morals, ultimately. We have nothing like that. Youngsters have complete freedom and exploit it. They create their own patterns of behaviour. Stupid ones, you understand. It’s real youthful foolishness. “Don’t fancy a drink? And you call yourself a vampire?” “He doesn’t drink? Don’t invite him, he’ll spoil the party!” I didn’t want to spoil the party, and the thought of losing social approval terrified me. So I partied. Revelries and frolics, shindigs and booze-ups; every full moon we’d fly to a village and drink from anyone we found. The foulest, the worst class of . . . er . . . fluid. It made no difference to us whose it was, as long as there was . . . er . . . haemoglobin . . . It can’t be a party without blood, after all! And I was terribly shy with vampire girls, too, until I’d had a drop.’

  Regis fell silent, lost in thought. No one responded. Geralt felt a terrible urge to have a drink himself.

  ‘It got rowdier and rowdier,’ the vampire continued. ‘And worse and worse as time went on. Occasionally I went on such benders that I didn’t return to the crypt for three or four nights in a row. A tiny amount of fluid and I lost control, which, of course, didn’t stop me from continuing the party. My friends? Well, you know what they’re like. Some of them tried to make me see reason, so I took offence. Others were a bad influence, and dragged me out of the crypt to revels. Why, they even set me up with . . . er . . . playthings. And they enjoyed themselves at my expense.’

  Milva, still busy restoring her arrows’ flattened fletchings, murmured angrily. Cahir had finished repairing his boot and seemed to be asleep.

  ‘Later on,’ Regis continued, ‘more alarming symptoms appeared. Parties and company began to play an absolutely secondary role. I noticed I could manage without them. Blood was all I needed, was all that mattered, even when it was . . .’

  ‘Just you and your shadow?’ Dandelion interjected.

  ‘Worse than that,’ Regis answered calmly. ‘I don’t even cast one.’

  He was silent for a while.

  ‘Then I met a special vampire girl. It might have been – I think it was – serious. I settled down. But not for long. She left me. So I began to double my intake. Despair and grief, as you know, are perfect excuses. Everyone thinks they understand. Even I thought I understood. But I was merely applying theory to practice. Am I boring you? I’ll try to make it short. I finally began to do absolutely unacceptable things, the kind of things no vampire does. I flew under the influence. One night the boys sent me to the village to fetch some blood, and I missed my target: a girl who was walking to the well. I smashed straight into the well at top speed . . . The villagers almost beat me to death, but fortunately they didn’t know how to go about it . . . They punctured me with stakes, chopped my head off, poured holy water all over me and buried me. Can you imagine how I felt when I woke up?’

  ‘We can,’ Milva said, examining an arrow. Everyone looked at her strangely. The archer coughed and looked away. Regis smiled faintly.

  ‘I won’t be long now,’ he said. ‘In the grave I had plenty of time to rethink things . . .’

  ‘Plenty?’ Geralt asked. ‘How much?’

  Regis looked at him.

  ‘Professional curiosity? Around fifty years. After I’d regenerated I decided to pull myself together. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And I haven’t drunk since.’

  ‘Not at all?’ Dandelion said, and stuttered. But his curiosity got the better of him. ‘Not at all? Never? But . . . ?’

  ‘Dandelion,’ Geralt said, slightly raising his eyebrows. ‘Get a grip and think. In silence.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ the poet grunted.

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ the vampire said placatingly. ‘And, Geralt, don’t chasten him. I understand his curiosity. I – by which I mean I and my myth – personify all his human fears. One cannot expect a human to rid himself of them. Fear plays a no less important role in the human psyche than all the other emotions. A psyche without fears would be crippled.’

  ‘But,’ Dandelion said, regaining his poise, ‘you don’t frighten me. Does that make me a cripple?’

  For a moment Geralt expected Regis to show his fangs and cure Dandelion of his supposed disability, but he was wrong. The vampire wasn’t inclined towards theatrical gestures.

  ‘I was talking about fears deeply lodged in the consciousness and the subconscious,’ he explained calmly. ‘Please don’t be hurt by this metaphor, but a crow isn’t afraid of a hat and coat hung on a stick, after it has overcome that fear and alighted on them. But when the wind jerks the scarecrow, the bird flees.’

  ‘The crow’s behaviour might be seen as a struggle for
life,’ Cahir observed from the darkness.

  ‘Struggle, schmuggle.’ Milva snorted. ‘The crow isn’t afraid of the scarecrow. It’s afraid of men, because men throw stones and shoot at it.’

  ‘A struggle for life.’ Geralt nodded. ‘But in human – not corvine – terms. Thank you for the explanation, Regis, we accept it wholeheartedly. But don’t go rooting about in the depths of the human subconscious. Milva’s right. The reasons people react in panic-stricken horror at the sight of a thirsty vampire aren’t irrational, they are a result of the will to survive.’

  ‘Thus speaks an expert,’ the vampire said, bowing slightly towards him. ‘An expert whose professional pride would not allow him to take money for fighting imaginary fears. The self-respecting witcher who only hires himself out to fight real, unequivocally dangerous evil. This professional will probably want to explain why a vampire is a greater threat than a dragon or a wolf. They have fangs too, don’t forget.’

  ‘Perhaps because the latter two use their fangs to stave off hunger or in self-defence, but never for fun or for breaking the ice or overcoming shyness towards the opposite sex.’

  ‘People know nothing about that,’ riposted Regis. ‘You have known it for some time, but the rest of our company have only just discovered the truth. The remaining majority are deeply convinced that vampires do not drink for fun but feed on blood, and nothing but blood. Needless to say, human blood. Blood is a life-giving fluid; its loss results in the weakening of the body, the seeping away of a vital force. You reason thus: a creature that spills our blood is our deadly enemy. And a creature that attacks us for our blood, because it lives on it, is doubly evil. It grows in vital force at the expense of ours. For its species to thrive, ours must fade away. Ultimately a creature like that is repellent to you humans, for although you are aware of blood’s life-giving qualities, it is disgusting to you. Would any of you drink blood? I doubt it. And there are people who grow weak or even faint at the sight of blood. In some societies women are considered unclean for a few days every month and they are isolated—’

  ‘Among savages, perhaps,’ Cahir interrupted. ‘And I think only Nordlings grow faint at the sight of blood.’

  ‘We’ve strayed,’ the Witcher said, looking up. ‘We’ve deviated from a straight path into a tangle of dubious philosophy. Do you think, Regis, that it would make a difference to humans were they to know you don’t treat them as prey, but as a watering hole? Where do you see the irrationality of fears here? Vampires drink human blood; that particular fact cannot be challenged. A human treated by a vampire as a demijohn of vodka loses his strength, that’s also clear. A totally drained human – so to speak – loses his vitality definitively. He dies. Forgive me, but the fear of death can’t be lumped together with an aversion to blood. Menstrual or otherwise.’

  ‘Your talk’s so clever it makes my head spin,’ Milva snorted. ‘And all your wisdom comes down to what’s under a woman’s skirt. Woeful philosophers.’

  ‘Let’s cast aside the symbolism of blood for a moment,’ Regis said. ‘For here the myths really do have certain grounds in facts. Let’s focus on those universally accepted myths with no grounds in fact. After all, everyone knows that if someone is bitten by a vampire and survives they must become a vampire themselves. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Dandelion said. ‘There’s even a ballad—’

  ‘Do you understand basic arithmetic?’

  ‘I’ve studied all seven liberal arts, and was awarded a degree summa cum laude.’

  ‘After the Conjunction of the Spheres there remained approximately one thousand two hundred higher vampires in your world. The number of teetotallers – because there is a considerable number of them – balances the number who drink excessively, as I did in my day. Generally, the statistically average vampire drinks during every full moon, for the full moon is a holy day for us, which we usually . . . er . . . celebrate with a drink. Applying the matter to the human calendar and assuming there are twelve full moons a year gives us the theoretical sum of fourteen thousand four hundred humans bitten annually. Since the Conjunction – once again calculating according to your reckoning – one thousand five hundred years have passed. A simple calculation will show that at the present moment, twenty-one million six hundred thousand vampires ought to exist in the world. If that figure is augmented by exponential growth . . .’

  ‘That’ll do.’ Dandelion sighed. ‘I don’t have an abacus, but I can imagine the number. Actually I can’t imagine it, and you’re saying that infection from a bite is nonsense and a fabrication.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Regis said, bowing. ‘Let’s move on to the next myth, which states that a vampire is a human being who has died – but not completely. He doesn’t rot or crumble to dust in the grave. He lies there as fresh as a daisy and ruddy-faced, ready to go forth and bite a victim. Where does that myth come from, if not from your subconscious and irrational aversion to your dearly departed? You surround the dead with veneration and memory, you dream of immortality, and in your myths and legends there’s always someone being resurrected, conquering death. But were your esteemed late great-grandfather really to suddenly rise from the grave and order a beer, panic would ensue. And it doesn’t surprise me. Organic matter, in which the vital processes have ceased, succumbs to degradation, which manifests itself very unpleasantly. The corpse stinks and dissolves into slime. The immortal soul, an indispensable element of your myths, abandons the stinking carcass in disgust and spirits away, forgive the pun. The soul is pure, and one can easily venerate it. But then you invented a revolting kind of spirit, which doesn’t soar, doesn’t abandon the cadaver, why, it doesn’t even stink. That’s repulsive and unnatural! For you, the living dead is the most revolting of revolting anomalies. Some moron even coined the term “the undead”, which you’re ever so keen to bestow on us.’

  ‘Humans,’ Geralt said, smiling slightly, ‘are a primitive and superstitious race. They find it difficult to fully understand and appropriately name a creature that resurrects, even though it’s had stakes pushed through it, had its head removed and been buried in the ground for fifty years.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the vampire, impervious to the derision. ‘Your mutated race is capable of regenerating its fingernails, toenails, hair and epidermis, but is unable to accept the fact that other races are more advanced in that respect. That inability is not the result of your primitiveness. Quite the opposite: it’s a result of egotism and a conviction in your own perfection. Anything that is more perfect than you must be a repulsive aberration. And repulsive aberrations are consigned to myths, for sociological reasons.’

  ‘I don’t understand fuck all,’ Milva announced calmly, brushing the hair from her forehead with an arrow tip. ‘I hear you’re talking about fairy-tales, and even I know fairy-tales, though I’m a foolish wench from the forest. So it astonishes me that you aren’t afraid of the sun, Regis. In fairy-tales sunlight burns a vampire to ash. Should I lump it together with the other fairy-tales?’

  ‘Of course you should,’ Regis confirmed. ‘You believe a vampire is only dangerous at night, that the first rays of the sun turn him into ash. At the root of this myth, invented around primeval campfires, lies your heliophilia, by which I mean love of warmth; the circadian rhythm, which relies upon diurnal activity. For you the night is cold, dark, sinister, menacing, and full of danger. The sunrise, however, represents another victory in the fight for life, a new day, the continuation of existence. Sunlight carries with it light and the sun; and the sun’s rays, which are invigorating for you, bring with them the destruction of hostile monsters. A vampire turns to ash, a troll succumbs to petrifaction, a werewolf turns back into a human, and a goblin flees, covering his eyes. Nocturnal predators return to their lairs and cease to be a threat. The world belongs to you until sunset. I repeat and stress: this myth arose around ancient campfires. Today it is only a myth, for now you light and heat your dwelling places. Even though you are still governed by the solar rhythm, you have ma
naged to appropriate the night. We, higher vampires, have also moved some way from our primeval crypts. We have appropriated the day. The analogy is complete. Does this explanation satisfy you, my dear Milva?’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ the archer replied, throwing the arrow away. ‘But I think I’ve got it. I’m learning. I’ll be learned one day. Sociolation, petrificology, werewolfation, crap-ology. In schools they lecture and birch you. It’s more pleasant learning with you lot. My head hurts a bit, but my arse is still in one piece.’

  ‘One thing is beyond question and is easy to observe,’ Dandelion said. ‘The sun’s rays don’t turn you into ash, Regis. The sun’s warmth has as much effect on you as that red-hot horseshoe you so nimbly removed from the fire with your bare hands. Returning, however, to your analogies, for us humans the day will always remain the natural time for activity, and the night the natural time for rest. That is our physical structure. During the day, for example, we see better than at night. Except Geralt, who sees just as well at all times, but he’s a mutant. Was it also a question of mutation among vampires?’

  ‘One could call it that,’ Regis agreed. ‘Although I would argue that when mutation is spread over a sufficiently long period it ceases to be mutation and becomes evolution. But what you said about physical structure is apt. Adapting to sunlight was an unpleasant necessity for us. In order to survive, we had to become like humans in that respect. Mimicry, I’d call it. Which had its consequences. To use a metaphor: we lay down in the sick man’s bed.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘There are reasons to believe that sunlight is lethal in the long run. There’s a theory that in about five thousand years, at a conservative estimate, this world will only be inhabited by lunar creatures, which are active at night.’

  ‘I’m glad I won’t be around that long.’ Cahir sighed, then yawned widely. ‘I don’t know about you, but the intensive diurnal activity is reminding me of the need for nocturnal sleep.’