‘The matter is settled!’ he declared loudly, looking around the inn. ‘The position of commander of the troop made vacant after the heroic death of Elkana Foster, who fell on the battlefield at Mayena, is taken up by . . . What’s your name, mate? Because I’ve forgotten.’
‘Blasco Grant!’ The victor of the fist fight spat a tooth onto the floor.
‘Blasco Grant takes up the position. Are there any other contentious issues regarding promotions? There aren’t? Well and good. Innkeeper! Beer!’
‘Where were we. . . ?’
‘A just war.’ Zoltan Chivay began to count, bending his fingers back. ‘Volunteers. Deserters—’
‘Exactly,’ Dennis interrupted. ‘I knew I wanted to refer to something, and the matter concerned deserting and treacherous volunteers. Remember Vissegerd’s former Cintran corps? The whoresons, it turns out, didn’t even change their standard. I know that from the mercenaries of the Free Company, from the gang of Julia “Pretty Kitty”. Julia’s gang quarrelled with the Cintrans at Mayena. They marched in the vanguard of the Nilfgaardian troop, under the same standard with the lions—’
‘The Mother Country summoned them,’ Skaggs interjected morosely. ‘And Empress Ciri.’
‘Quiet,’ Dennis hissed.
‘That’s true,’ said a fourth dwarf, Yarpen Zigrin, who’d said nothing until then. ‘Quiet. Quieter than quietness itself. And not for fear of snoopers, but because you don’t talk about things you have no idea about.’
‘While you, Zigrin—’ Skaggs stuck out his chin ‘—do have an idea, eh?’
‘I do. And I’ll say one thing: no one, whether it’s Emhyr var Emreis or the rebellious sorcerers from Thanedd, or even the devil himself, could make that girl do anything. They couldn’t break her. I know that. Because I know her. That bloody marriage with Emhyr is a hoax. A hoax various asses have been taken in by . . . That girl, I tell you, has a different destiny. Quite a different one.’
‘You talk,’ muttered Skaggs, ‘as though you really knew her, Zigrin.’
‘Drop it,’ snapped Zoltan Chivay unexpectedly. ‘He’s right about that destiny. I believe it. I also have reason to.’
‘Eh.’ Sheldon Skaggs waved a hand. ‘Why waste breath. Cirilla, Emhyr, destiny . . . They’re distant matters. While a closer matter, gentlemen, is Menno Coehoorn and the Centre Army Group.’
‘Aye,’ sighed Zoltan Chivay. ‘Something tells me a huge battle won’t pass us by. Perhaps the biggest history has ever seen.’
‘A great deal,’ mumbled Dennis Cranmer. ‘Truly a great deal will be decided . . .’
‘And put an end to even more.’
‘Everything . . .’ Jarre belched, decorously covering his mouth with his hand. ‘Everything will end.’
The dwarves eyed him up for a moment, keeping silent.
‘I don’t quite understand you, young man,’ Zoltan Chivay finally said. ‘You wouldn’t like to explain what you have in mind, would you?’
‘In the ducal council . . .’ Jarre stammered. ‘In Ellander, I mean, it was said that victory in this great war is so important, because . . . because it’s the great war to end all wars.’
Sheldon Skaggs snorted and spat beer down his beard. Zoltan Chivay burst out laughing.
‘Don’t you believe so, gentlemen?’
Now it was Dennis Cranmer’s turn to snort. Yarpen Zigrin remained serious, looking intently and seemingly with concern at the boy.
‘Look, son,’ he said at last, very seriously. ‘Evangelina Parr is sitting at the bar. She is, one must admit, large. Why, even enormous. But in spite of her size, beyond all doubt, she isn’t a whore to end all whores.’
*
Turning into a narrow and deserted alley, Dennis Cranmer stopped.
‘I must praise you, Jarre,’ he said. ‘Do you know what for?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t pretend. You don’t have to in front of me. It’s praiseworthy that you didn’t blink when Cirilla was being talked about. It’s even more praiseworthy that you didn’t open your trap then . . . Hey, hey, don’t make faces. I knew a lot of what went on behind Nenneke’s temple walls, a lot, you can believe me. And if that’s too little for you, then know that I heard what name the merchant wrote on that medallion for you.
‘Keep it up.’ The dwarf tactfully pretended he hadn’t noticed the crimson blush that suffused the boy’s face. ‘Keep it up, Jarre. And not only in the case of Ciri . . . What are you staring at?’
On the wall of a granary visible at the end of the lane was a lopsided, whitewashed slogan reading MAKE LOVE NOT WAR. Just under that somebody had scribbled in much smaller letters AND TAKE A SHIT EVERY MORNING.
‘Look somewhere else, idiot,’ Dennis Cranmer barked. ‘Just for looking at graffiti like that you can get into trouble, and if you say something at the wrong time, they’ll flog you at the post, they’ll flay the skin off your back. The judgments are swift here! Extremely swift!’
‘I saw the shoemaker in the pillory,’ muttered Jarre. ‘Reputedly for sowing defeatism.’
‘His defeatism,’ the dwarf stated seriously, pulling the boy by his sleeve, ‘probably lay in the fact that when he took his son to his troop he wept, instead of cheering patriotically. They punish differently for more serious sowing. Come, I’ll show you.’
They entered a small square. Jarre stepped back, covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve. About a dozen corpses were hanging from a large, stone gallows. Some of them – their appearance and smell betrayed it – had been hanging there a long time. ‘That one,’ pointed Dennis, simultaneously driving flies away, ‘wrote stupid graffiti on walls and fences. That one claimed that war is a matter for lords and that the Nilfgaardian drafted peasants aren’t his enemies. And that one told the following anecdote when he was drunk: “What’s a spear? It’s a nobleman’s weapon, a stick with a poor man on each end.” And there, at the end, do you see that woman? She was the madam of the military brothel on wheels, which she decorated with the words “Soldier, get your leg over today! You might not be able to tomorrow”.’
‘And just for that . . .’
‘Furthermore, one of the girls had the clap, as it turned out. Which contravenes the law concerning sabotage and the undermining of military readiness.’
‘I understand, Mr Cranmer.’ Jarre stood up straight in a position he considered soldierly.
‘But don’t worry about me. I’m no defeatist . . .’
‘You haven’t understood shit and don’t interrupt me, because I haven’t finished. That last hanged man, the one stinking to high heaven, was only guilty of reacting to the chatter of a provocateur-snooper with the shout “You were right, sir, it’s like that and not otherwise, as two plus two makes four!” Now tell me if you understand.’
‘I do.’ Jarre looked around furtively. ‘I shall be careful. But . . . Mr Cranmer . . . What’s it really like . . . ?’
The dwarf also looked around.
‘It’s like this,’ he said softly. ‘Marshal Menno Coehoorn’s Centre Army Group is marching north with a force of around a hundred thousand men. Indeed, were it not for the insurrection in Verden, they’d already be here. Indeed, it would be better if negotiations were to take place. Indeed, Temeria and Redania don’t have the forces to stop Coehoorn. Indeed, not before the strategic border of the Pontar.’
‘The River Pontar,’ whispered Jarre, ‘is north of here.’
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to say. But remember: keep your trap shut about that.’
‘I’ll beware. When I’m in my unit will I also have to? May I also encounter a snooper?’
‘In a frontline unit? Near the front? Not really. Snoopers are so ardent behind the front, because they’re afraid of ending up on it. Furthermore, if they hung every soldier what grumbles, complains and swears there’d be no one left to fight. But, like you did with the matter of Ciri, Jarre, always keep your trap shut. Mark my words, no dung fly ever flew into a trap that was shut. Now go, I’ll
take you to the committee.’
‘Will you put in a good word for me?’ Jarre looked at the dwarf hopefully. ‘Eh? Mr Cranmer?’
‘Dear me, you’re an ass, Mr Scribe. This is the army! If I put in a good word for you and tried pulling strings it would be as though I’d embroidered “lemon” on your back in gold thread! You’d have a hard time in your troop, laddie.’
‘What about if I joined . . .’ blinked Jarre, ‘your unit . . .’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Because there’s only room for dwarves in it, right?’ the boy said bitterly. ‘And not for me?’
‘Right.’
Not for you, thought Dennis Cranmer. Not for you, Jarre. Because I still have unpaid debts with Nenneke. Which is why I’d prefer you to return from the war in one piece. And the Mahakam Volunteer Regiment, consisting of dwarves, specimens of a foreign and inferior race, will always be sent to do the lousiest tasks, to the worst sectors. The ones you don’t come back from. The ones you don’t send humans to.
‘So how can I make sure,’ Jarre continued, downcast, ‘that I’ll end up in a good troop?’
‘And which one, according to you, is so first-rate it’s worth trying to get into?’
Jarre turned around on hearing singing, swelling like a breaking wave, growing like the thunder of an approaching storm. Loud, powerful, swaggering singing, as hard as steel. He’d heard singing like that before.
The mercenary troop, formed up into threes, walked their horses along the narrow street leading from the castle. At their head, on a grey stallion, beneath a pole decorated with human skulls, rode the commander, a grey-haired man with an aquiline nose and hair plaited into a queue falling down onto his armour.
‘Adam “Adieu” Pangratt,’ mumbled Dennis Cranmer.
The singing of the mercenaries thundered, roared and rumbled. Counterpointed by the ringing of horseshoes on cobbles, it filled the narrow street way up to the tops of the houses, and into the blue sky above the town.
No lovers or wives spill tears
When the time comes to bite the blood—soaked dust
For we briskly go to war
For the ducat, as red as the sun!
‘You ask what troop . . .’ said Jarre, unable to tear his eyes from the cavalrymen. ‘Why, one like that! In one such as that I’d like to—’
‘Each has his song,’ the dwarf interrupted quietly. ‘And each bites the blood-soaked earth his own way. Just as it befalls him. And they either cry for him or not. In a war, scribbler, you only sing and march as one, you stand in the ranks as one. And later in battle everyone gets what is written for him. Whether in “Adieu” Pangratt’s Free Company, or in the infantry, or in the convoys . . . Whether in a shining suit of armour with a glorious crest, or in bast shoes and a flea-ridden sheepskin coat . . . Whether on a fleet steed, or behind a shield . . . Something different comes to each one. As it befalls him! Well, and there’s the commission, do you see the sign above the entrance? That’s your way, since you’ve thought to become a soldier. Go, Jarre. Farewell. We’ll meet again when it’s all over.’
The dwarf’s gaze followed the boy until he disappeared into the door of the tavern occupied by the recruiting commission.
‘Or we won’t meet again,’ he added softly. ‘No one knows what’s written for anybody. Or what will befall them.’
*
‘Can you ride? Can you shoot a longbow or crossbow?’
‘No, sir. But I can write and calligraph, ancient runes, too . . . I know the Elder Speech . . .’
‘Can you wield a sword? Are you trained in lanceplay?’
‘. . . I’ve read The History of Wars. The work by Marshal Pelligram . . . And Roderick de Novembre . . .’
‘Or perhaps you know how to cook?’
‘No, I don’t . . . But I reckon up well . . .’
The recruiting officer grimaced and waved a hand.
‘A well-read smart-alec! You’re not the first today. Write him out a chitty for the pee-eff-eye. You’ll be serving in the pee-eff-eye, lad. Run with this chitty to the southern end of the town, then beyond the Maribor Gate, down by the lake.’
‘But . . .’
‘You’ll find it for sure. Next!’
*
‘Hey, Jarre! Hey! Wait!’
‘Melfi?’
‘Who else?’ The cooper’s son staggered, holding on to the wall. ‘It’s me, right here, tee-hee!’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Wrong with me? He, he! Nothing! We’ve had a bit to drink! We drank to Nilfgaard’s confusion! Ugh, Jarre, I’m glad to see you, for I thought I’d lost you somewhere . . . My comrade. . .’
Jarre stepped back as though someone had hit him. For the cooper’s son’s breath didn’t only smell of second-rate beer and third-rate vodka, but also of onions, garlic and God knows what else. Very intensively.
‘And where,’ Jarre asked sneeringly, ‘is your eminent company?’
‘You asking about Pike?’ Melfi grimaced. ‘Then I’ll tell you: to hell with him! Do you know, Jarre, I think he was a bad man.’
‘Bravo. You saw through him quickly.’
‘Didn’t I just!’ Melfi strutted, not noticing the mockery. ‘He hid it, but whoever cheats me can eat the devil! I tell you I know what he was planning! What drew him here to Vizima! You probably think, Jarre, that he and his miscreants came to sign up like us? Ha, well you’re seriously mistaken! Do you know what he had planned? You wouldn’t believe it!’
‘I would.’
‘He needed horses and uniforms,’ Melfi finished triumphantly. ‘He meant to steal them from round here. For he meant to go to war in disguised as a soldier!’
‘Let him end his days on the gallows.’
‘The quicker the better!’ The cooper’s son staggered slightly, stopped by the wall and undid his breeches. ‘I’m just sorry that Ograbek and Milton, those stupid village idiots, were taken in. They followed Pike, so they’re liable to meet the hangman too. Well, bollocks to them, effing bumpkins! And how goes it with you, Jarre?’
‘Regarding?’
‘Did the recruiting officers post you anywhere?’ Melfi sent a stream of piss down the whitewashed wall. ‘I asked because I’m already recruited. I’m to go through the Maribor Gate, to the southern end of the castle. And where do you have to go?’
‘To the south side too.’
‘Ha!’ The cooper’s son jumped up and down a few times, shook, and fastened his trousers. ‘So we’re going to fight together?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jarre looked at him condescendingly. ‘I was assigned in accordance with my qualifications. To the pee-eff-eye.’
‘Well, naturally.’ Melfi hiccupped and breathed his dreadful mixture over him. ‘You’re book-learned! They probably assign smart alecs like you to important matters, not any old ones. Well, what to do. But for now, we’ll be travelling a little longer together. For our route’s to the southern end of the castle.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Let’s go then.’
‘Let’s go.’
*
‘I don’t think it’s here,’ judged Jarre, looking at a parade square surrounded by tents, where a troop of scruffs with long sticks on their shoulders were kicking up dust. Every scruff, as the boy observed, had a bunch of hay attached to his right leg and a bunch of straw attached to his left.
‘I think we’ve come to the wrong place, Melfi.’
‘Straw! Hay!’ the roar of the lance corporal directing the scruffs could be heard from the parade square. ‘Straw! Hay! Even it up, for fuck’s sake!’
‘A standard’s fluttering over the tents,’ said Melfi. ‘See for yourself, Jarre. Those same lilies, what you were talking about on the road. Is there a standard? There is. Is there an army? There is. That means it’s here. We’ve come to the right place.’
‘You, maybe. Not me, for sure.’
‘Ah, some officer or other is standing there by the fence. L
et’s ask him.’
It moved fast after that.
‘New recruits?’ yelled the sergeant. ‘From the conscription office? Papers! Why the fuck are you standing one behind the other? March on the spot! Don’t fucking stand there! Left turn! About-turn, right-fucking-turn! Quick march! About-fucking-turn! Listen and remember. First-of-fucking-all, get to the quartermaster! Get your kit! Mail shirt, boots, pike, helmet and sword, for fuck’s sake! Then to the drill ground! Be ready for the fucking muster, at dusk! Quiiiick maaarch!’
‘Just a minute.’ Jarre looked around hesitantly. ‘Because I think I have a different posting—’
‘Whaaaaaaaat?’
‘I beg your pardon, officer, sir.’ Jarre blushed. ‘I only want to prevent a possible error . . . For the commissioner clearly . . . He distinctly spoke of a posting to the pee-eff-eye, so I—’
‘You’re at home, my lad,’ snorted the sergeant, somewhat disarmed by the ‘officer’. ‘This is your posting. Welcome to the Poor Fucking Infantry.’
*
‘And why,’ repeated Rocco Hildebrandt, ‘and for what reason, are we to pay you gentlemen tax? We’ve already paid everything we were supposed to.’
‘Blow this, look at ’im, the smart-arsed halfling.’ Pike, sprawled on the saddle of a stolen horse, grinned at his comrades. ‘He’s already paid! And he thinks that’s all. Really, ’e’s the spitting image of that turkey what were thinking about Sunday. But they chopped ’is ’ead off on Saturday!’
Okultich, Klaproth, Milton and Ograbek cackled in unison. The joke was excellent, after all. And the amusement promised to be even more excellent.
Rocco noticed the revolting, clammy gazes of the marauders, and looked back. On the threshold of his cottage stood Incarvilia Hildebrandt, his wife, and Aloë and Yasmin, his two daughters.
Pike and his company looked at the hobbit girls, smiling lecherously. Yes, assuredly, the amusement promised to be first-class.
Impatientia Vanderbeck, Hildebrandt’s niece, normally called by the pet name ‘Impi’, approached the hedge on the other side of the highway. She was a very pretty girl. The bandits’ smiles became even more lecherous and revolting.
The Saga of the Witcher Page 177