The wagon lurched out of another pothole and Jarre took in the slack from the reins wound around his wrist. Lucienne, taking bites in turn from a hunk of bread and a sausage, cuddled up to his side.
‘Well, well.’ She noticed his brass medallion and disgracefully exploited the fact that his hand was taken up by the reins. ‘Did they take you in too? A forget-me-not amulet? Oh, whoever invented that trinket was a real trickster. There was great demand for them during the war, probably second only to vodka. And what girl’s name is inside it? Let’s take a gander—’
‘Lucienne.’ Jarre blushed like a beetroot and felt as though the blood would gush from his cheeks at any moment. ‘I must ask you . . . not to open it . . . Forgive me, but it’s personal. I don’t want to offend you, but . . .’
The wagon bounced, Lucienne cuddled up to him, and Jarre shut up.
‘Ci . . . ri . . . lla,’ the wagoner spelled it out with difficulty, but it surprised Jarre, who hadn’t suspected the peasant girl of such far-reaching talents.
‘She won’t forget you.’ She slammed the medallion shut, let go of the chain and looked at the boy. ‘That Cirilla, I mean. If she really loved you. Foolish spells and amulets. If she really loved you, she won’t forget, she’ll be faithful. She’ll wait.’
‘What for?’ Jarre lifted his stump.
The girl squinted her cornflower-blue eyes slightly.
‘If she really loved you,’ she repeated firmly, ‘she’s waiting, and the rest’s codswallop. I know it.’
‘Do you have such great experience in this regard?’
‘None of your business—’ now it was Lucienne’s turn to blush slightly ‘—what I’ve had and with whom. And don’t think I’m one of those what you only have to nod at and she’s ready to have some exspermience in the hay. But I know what I know. If you love a fellow, you love all of him and not just bits. Then it’s a hill of beans even if he’s lost one of those bits.’
The wagon jumped.
‘You’re simplifying it a bit,’ Jarre said through clenched teeth, greedily sniffing up the girl’s fragrance. ‘You’re simplifying it a lot and you’re idealising it a lot, Lucienne. You deign not to notice even a detail so slight that a man’s ability to support a wife and family depends on whether he’s in one piece. A cripple isn’t capable—’
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ she bluntly interrupted him. ‘Don’t be blubbering on me frock. The Black Cloaks didn’t tear your head off, and you’re a brainbox, you toil with your noggin. What you staring at? I’m from the country, but I have ears and eyes. Quick enough to notice a detail so slight as someone’s manner of speech, that’s truly lordly and learned. And what’s more . . .’
She bent her head and coughed. Jarre also coughed. The wagon jumped.
‘And what’s more,’ the girl finished, ‘I’ve heard what the others said. That you’re a scribe. And the priest at a temple. Then see for yourself that that hand’s . . . A trifle. And that’s that.’
The wagon hadn’t bounced for some time, but Jarre and Lucienne seemed not to notice it at all. And it didn’t bother them at all.
‘I seem to attract scholars,’ the girl said after a longer pause, ‘There was one . . . Once . . . Made advances towards me . . . He was book-learned and schooled in academies. You could tell it from his name alone.’
‘And what was it?’
‘Semester.’
‘Hey there, miss,’ Gefreiter Corncrake called from behind their backs. He was a nasty, gloomy man, wounded during the fighting for Mayena. ‘Crack the whip above the geldings’ rumps, miss, your cart’s crawling along like snot down a wall!’
‘I swear,’ added another cripple, scratching himself on a stump covered in shiny scar tissue visible under a rolled up trouser leg, ‘this wilderness is getting me down! I’m really missing a tavern, since, I tell you, I’d verily love a beer. Can’t we go any brisker?’
‘We can.’ Lucienne turned around on the box. ‘But if the shaft or a hub breaks on a clod, then for a Sunday or two you’ll not be drinking beer but rainwater or birch juice, waiting for a lift. You can’t walk, and I’m not going to take you on my back, am I?’
‘That’s a great pity,’ Corncrake grinned. ‘For I dream at night of you taking me. On your back, I mean from behind. I like it like that. And you, miss?’
‘You arsehole of a cripple!’ Lucienne yelled. ‘You stinking old goat! You—’
She broke off, seeing the faces of all the invalids sitting on the wagon suddenly covered in a deathlike pallor.
‘Damn,’ sobbed one of them. ‘And we were so close to home . . .’
‘We’re done for,’ said Corncrake quietly and utterly without emotion. Simply stating the fact.
And they said – the thought flashed through Jarre’s head – that there weren’t any more Squirrels. That they’d all been killed. That the elven question, as they said, had been solved.
There were six horsemen. But after a closer look it turned out there were six horses, but eight riders. Two of the steeds were carrying a pair of riders. All the horses were treading stiffly and out of rhythm, their heads drooping. They looked miserable.
Lucienne gasped loudly.
The elves came closer. They looked even worse than the horses.
Nothing remained of their pride, of their hard-earned, supercilious, charismatic otherness. Their clothing – usually even on guerrillas from the commando units smart and beautiful – was dirty, torn and stained. Their hair – their pride and joy – was dishevelled, matted with sticky filth and clotted blood. Their large eyes, usually vain and lacking in any expression, were now abysses of panic and despair.
Nothing remained of their otherness. Death, terror, hunger and homelessness had made them become ordinary. Very ordinary.
They had even stopped being frightening.
For a moment Jarre thought they would pass them, would simply cross the road and disappear into the forest on the other side, not gracing the wagon or its passengers with even a glance. That all that would remain of them would be that utterly non-elven, unpleasant, foul smell, a smell that Jarre knew only too well from the field hospitals – the smell of misery, urine, dirt and festering wounds.
They passed them without looking.
But not all of them.
An elf woman with long, dark hair caked together with congealed blood stopped her horse right beside the wagon. She sat in the saddle leaning over awkwardly, protecting an arm in a blood-soaked sling around which flies buzzed and swarmed.
‘Toruviel,’ said one of the elves, turning around. ‘En’ca digne, luned.’
Lucienne instantly realised, understood, what it was about. She understood what the elf woman was looking at. The peasant girl had been familiar from childhood with the blue-grey, swollen spectre, the apparition of famine, lurking around the corner of her cottage. So she reacted instinctively and unerringly. She held out the bread towards the elf woman.
‘En’ca digne, Toruviel,’ repeated the elf. He was the only one of the entire commando unit to have the silver lightning bolts of the Vrihedd Brigade on the torn sleeve of his dust-covered jacket.
The invalids on the wagon, until then petrified and frozen in their tracks, suddenly twitched, as though animated by a magic spell. Quarter loaves of bread, rounds of cheese, pieces of fatback and sausage appeared – as if by magic – in the hands that they held out towards the elves.
And for the first time in a thousand years elves were holding their hands out towards humans.
And Lucienne and Jarre were the first people to see elves crying. To see them choking on their sobs, not even trying to wipe away the tears flowing down their dirty faces. Giving the lie to the claim that elves supposedly had no lachrymal glands at all.
‘En’ca . . . digne,’ repeated the elf with the lightning bolts on his sleeve, in a faltering voice.
And then he held out a hand and took the bread from Corncrake.
‘Thank you,’ he said hoarsely, struggling to adapt his lip
s and tongue to the foreign language. ‘Thank you, human.’
After some time, noticing that it had all gone, Lucienne clicked her tongue at the horses and flicked the reins. The wagon creaked and rattled. No one spoke.
It was well on towards evening when the highway began to teem with armoured horsemen. They were commanded by a woman with completely white, close-cropped hair, with an evil, fierce face disfigured by scars, one of which crossed her cheek from her temple to the corner of her mouth, and another of which, describing a horseshoe, encircled her eye socket. The woman also lacked a large part of her right ear, and her left arm below the elbow ended in a leather sleeve and a brass hook to which her reins were attached.
The woman, staring malevolently at them with a glare full of vindictiveness, asked about the elves. About the Scoia’tael. About terrorists. About fugitives, survivors of a commando unit destroyed two days back.
Jarre, Lucienne and the invalids, avoiding the gaze of the white-haired, one-armed woman, spoke, mumbling indistinctly that no, they hadn’t encountered anyone or seen anyone.
You’re lying, thought White Rayla, once Black Rayla. You’re lying, I know you are. You’re lying out of pity.
But it doesn’t matter anyway.
For I, White Rayla, have no pity.
*
‘Hurraaaah, up with the dwarves! Long live Barclay Els!’
‘Long liiiive the dwaaarves!’
The Novigrad streets thudded beneath the heavy, iron-shod boots of the old campaigners of the Volunteer Regiment. The dwarves marched in a formation typical for them, in fives, and the hammers on their standard fluttered over the column.
‘Long live Mahakam! Vivant the dwarves!’
‘Glory to them! And fame!’
Suddenly someone in the crowd laughed. Several others joined in. And a moment later everybody was roaring with laughter.
‘It’s an insult . . .’ Hierarch Hemmelfart gasped for air. ‘It’s a scandal . . . It’s unpardonable . . .’
‘Vile people,’ hissed priest Willemer.
‘Pretend you can’t see it,’ Foltest advised calmly.
‘We shouldn’t have economised on their pay,’ Meve said sourly. ‘Or refused them rations.’
The dwarven officers kept their countenance and form, standing erect and saluting in front of the review stand. Whereas the non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Volunteer Regiment expressed their disapproval of the budget cuts applied by the kings and the hierarch. Some crooked their elbows as they passed the stand, while others demonstrated their other favourite gesture: a fist with the middle finger stuck stiffly upwards. In academic circles that gesture bore the name digitus infamis. The plebs had a cruder name for it.
The blushes on the faces of the kings and the hierarch demonstrated that they knew both names.
‘We ought not to have insulted them by our miserliness,’ Meve repeated. ‘They’re an ambitious nation.’
*
The howler in Elskerdeg howled; the howling turned into a horrifying wailing call. None of the men sitting by the campfire turned his head around.
Boreas Mun was the first to speak after a long silence.
‘The world has changed. Justice has been done.’
‘Well, you might be exaggerating with that justice.’ The pilgrim smiled slightly. ‘I would agree, though, that the world has in some way adapted itself to the basic law of physics.’
‘I wonder if we have the same law in mind,’ the elf said in a slow, drawling voice.
‘Every action causes a reaction,’ said the pilgrim.
The elf snorted, but it was quite a friendly snort.
‘That’s a point for you, human.’
*
‘Stefan Skellen, son of Bertram Skellen, you, who were Imperial Coroner, be upstanding. The High Tribunal of the Eternal Empire by grace of the Great Sun has found you guilty of the crimes and illegitimate acts of which you have been charged, namely: treason and participation in a conspiracy intended to bring about a murderous assault on the statutory order of the Empire, and also on the person of the Imperial Majesty. Your guilt, Stefan Skellen, has been confirmed and proven, and the Tribunal has not found extenuating circumstances. His Royal Imperial Majesty has thus not granted you an imperial pardon.
‘Stefan Skellen, son of Bertram Skellen. You will be taken from the courtroom to the Citadel, from where, when the apposite time comes, you will be led out. As a traitor, unworthy of treading the soil of the Empire, you will be placed on a wooden cart and horses will pull you to Millennium Square on that cart. As a traitor, unworthy of breathing the air of the Empire, you will be hanged by the neck on a gallows by the hand of an executioner, between heaven and earth. And you will hang until you are dead. Your corse will be cremated and the ashes tossed to the four winds.
‘O Stefan Skellen, son of Bertram, traitor. I, the head of the Highest Tribunal of the Empire, sentencing you, utter your name for the last time. May it henceforth be forgotten.’
*
‘It works! It works!’ shouted Professor Oppenhauser, rushing into the dean’s office. ‘It works, gentlemen! Finally! Finally! It functions. It rotates. It works! It works!’
‘Really?’ Jean La Voisier, Professor of Chemistry, called Rotten Eggs by his students, asked bluntly and quite sceptically. ‘It can’t be! And what, out of interest, works?’
‘My perpetual motion machine!’
‘A perpetum mobile?’ Edmund Bumbler, venerable Zoology lecturer, asked curiously. ‘Indeed? You aren’t exaggerating, my dear colleague?’
‘Not in the slightest!’ yelled Oppenhauser, and leaped like a goat. ‘Not a bit! It works! The machine works. I set it in motion and it works. It runs continuously. Without stopping. Permanently. Forever and ever. It can’t be described, colleagues, you must see it! Come to my lab, quickly!’
‘I’m having my breakfast,’ protested Rotten Eggs, but his protest was lost in the hubbub and general excited commotion. Professors, magisters and bachelors threw coats and fur coats over their gowns and ran for the exit, led by Oppenhauser, still shouting and gesticulating. Rotten Eggs pointed his digitus infamis at them and returned to his roll and forcemeat.
The small group of scholars, constantly being joined by more scholars greedy to see the fruits of Oppenhauser’s thirty years of labours, briskly covered the distance separating them from the laboratory of the famous physicist. They were just about to open the door when the ground suddenly shook. Perceptibly. Powerfully, actually. Very powerfully, actually.
It was a seismic wave, one of the series of earthquakes caused by the destruction of Stygga Castle, Vilgefortz’s hide-out, by the sorceresses. The seismic wave had come all the way to Oxenfurt from distant Ebbing.
Dozens of pieces of glass exploded with a crash from the stained-glass window on the frontage of the Department of Fine Arts. The bust of Nicodemus de Boot, the academy’s first rector, scrawled over with rude words, fell from its plinth. The cup of herb tea with which Rotten Eggs was washing down his roll and forcemeat fell from the table. A first-year physics student, Albert Solpietra, fell from a plantain tree in the academy grounds that he had climbed to impress some female medical students.
And Professor Oppenhauser’s perpetum mobile, his legendary perpetual motion engine, turned over once more and stopped. Forever.
And it was never possible to start it again.
*
‘Long live the dwarves! Long live Mahakam!’
What kind of mixed bunch is this, what gang of ruffians? thought Hierarch Hemmelfart, blessing the parade with a trembling hand. Who’s being cheered here? Venal condottieri, obscene dwarves; what a bizarre bunch! Who won this war, after all, them or us? By the Gods, I must draw the kings’ attention to this. When historians and writers get down to their work, their scribblings ought to be censored. Mercenaries, witchers, hired brigands, non—humans and all other suspicious elements are to vanish from the chronicles of humanity. Are to be deleted, expunged. Not a word ab
out them. Not a word.
And not a word about him either, he thought, pursing his lips and looking at Dijkstra, who was observing the parade with a distinctly bored expression.
It will be necessary, thought the hierarch, to issue the kings with instructions regarding Dijkstra. His presence is an insult to decent people.
He’s a heathen and a scoundrel. May he disappear without trace. And may he be forgotten.
*
Over my dead body, you sanctimonious purple hog, thought Philippa Eilhart, effortlessly reading the hierarch’s feverish thoughts. You’d like to rule, you’d like to dictate and influence? You’d like to decide things? Over my dead body.
All you can make judgements about are your piles, which don’t count for much beyond your own arse.
And Dijkstra will remain. As long as I need him.
*
You’ll make a mistake one day, thought priest Willemer, looking at Philippa’s shining, crimson lips. One day, one of you will make a mistake. Your vainglory, arrogance and hubris will be your undoing. And your scheming. Your immorality. The baseness and perversion you give yourselves unto, in which you live. It will come to light. The stench of your sins will spread when you make a mistake. Such a moment has to come.
And even if you don’t make a mistake, an opportunity will arise to blame you for something. Some misfortune, some disaster, some pestilence, perhaps a plague or an epidemic, will fall on humanity . . . Then your guilt will descend on you. You will not be blamed for having been unable to prevent the plague, but for being unable to remove its effects.
The Saga of the Witcher Page 199