The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  You shall be to blame for everything.

  And then fires will be lit under stakes.

  *

  The stripy old tomcat, called Ginger because of its colouring, was dying. Dying hideously. He was rolling around, writhing, scratching the ground, vomiting blood and mucus, racked by convulsions. On top of that he had bloody diarrhoea. He was meowing, although it was beneath his dignity. Meowing mournfully, softly. He was weakening fast.

  Ginger knew why he was dying. Or at least guessed what was killing him.

  Several days before, a strange freighter, an old and very dirty hulk, a neglected tub, almost a wreck, had called at the port of Cintra. ‘Catriona’ announced the barely visible letters on the hulk’s prow. Ginger – naturally – couldn’t read the letters. A rat climbed down the mooring line to alight on the quay from the strange old tub. A single rat. The rat was hairless, lousy and sluggish. And only had one ear.

  Ginger killed the rat. He was hungry, but instinct prevented him from eating the hideous creature. However, several fleas, big, shiny fleas, teeming in the rodent’s fur, managed to crawl onto Ginger and settle in his coat.

  ‘What’s up with that sodding cat?’

  ‘Someone probably poisoned it. Or put a spell on it!’

  ‘Ugh, abomination! He doesn’t half stink, the scoundrel. Get him off those steps, woman!’

  Ginger stiffened and silently opened his bloody maw. He no longer felt the kicks or pokes of the broom with which the housewife was now thanking him for eleven years of catching mice. Kicked out of the yard, he was dying in a gutter frothing with soap suds and urine. He died, wishing that those ungrateful people would also fall ill. And suffer like him.

  His wishes were about to come true. And on a great scale. A great scale indeed.

  The woman who had kicked and swept Ginger from the yard stopped, lifted her frock and scratched her calf below the knee. It was itchy.

  A flea had bitten her.

  *

  The stars over Elskerdeg twinkled intensively. They formed the backdrop against which the sparks from the campfire were dying out.

  ‘Neither can the Peace of Cintra,’ said the elf, ‘nor yet the bombastic Novigradian parade, be considered a watershed or a milestone. What kind of notions are they? Political authority cannot create history with the help of acts or decrees. Neither can political authority assess history, give grades or characterise it, although in its pride no authority would ever acknowledge that truth. One of the more extreme signs of your human arrogance is so-called historiography, the attempts to give opinions and pass sentences about what you call “ancient history”. It’s typical for you people, and results from the fact that nature gave you an ephemeral, insectile, ant-like life, and an average lifespan of less than a hundred years. You, however, try to adapt the world to that insectile existence. And meanwhile history is a process that occurs ceaselessly and never ends. It’s impossible to separate history into episodes, from here to there, from here to there, from date to date. You can’t define history, nor change it with a royal address. Even if you’ve won a war.’

  ‘I won’t enter into a philosophical dispute,’ said the pilgrim. ‘As it’s been said before, I’m a simple and not very eloquent fellow. But I dare observe two things. Firstly, a lifespan as short as insects protects us, people, from decadence, and inclines us to respect life, live intensively and creatively in order to make the most of every moment of life and enjoy it. I speak and think like a man, but after all, the long-lived elves thought likewise, going to fight and die in the Scoia’tael commando units. If I’m wrong, please correct me.’

  The pilgrim waited a suitable length of time, but no one corrected him.

  ‘Secondly,’ he continued, ‘it seems to me that political authority, although unable to change history, may by its actions produce quite a fair illusion and appearance of such an ability. Political power has methods and instruments to do so.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ replied the elf, turning his face away. ‘Here you’ve hit the nail on the head, master pilgrim. Power has methods and instruments. Which are in no way open to discussion.’

  *

  The galley’s side struck the seaweed- and shell-covered piles. Mooring ropes were thrown. Shouts, curses and commands resounded.

  Seagulls shrieked as they scavenged for the refuse floating in the port’s dirty green water. The quayside was teeming with people. Mainly uniformed.

  ‘End of the voyage, gentlemen elves,’ said the Nilfgaardian commander of the convoy. ‘We’re in Dillingen. Everybody off! You’re being waited for here.’

  It was a fact. They were being waited for.

  None of the elves – and certainly not Faoiltiarna – had any faith in the assurances of fair trials or amnesties. The Scoia’tael and officers of the Vrihedd Brigade had no illusory hopes about the fate awaiting them on the far side of the Yaruga. In the majority of cases they had become accustomed to it, accepted it stoically, with resignation even. Nothing, they thought, could astonish them now.

  They were mistaken.

  They were chased from the galley, jingling and clanking their manacles, driven onto the jetty and then onto the quay, between a double line of armed mercenaries. There were also civilians there, whose sharp eyes flashed quickly, flitting from face to face, from figure to figure.

  Selectors, thought Faoiltiarna. He wasn’t mistaken.

  He couldn’t expect, naturally, his disfigured face to be overlooked. And he wasn’t.

  ‘Mr Isengrim Faoiltiarna? The Iron Wolf? What a pleasant surprise! Come this way, come this way!’

  The mercenaries dragged him out of the ranks.

  ‘Va fail!’ Coinneach Dá Reo shouted to him. He had been recognised and hauled out by other soldiers wearing gorgets with the Redanian eagle. ‘Se’ved, se caerme dea!’

  ‘You’ll be seeing each other,’ hissed the civilian who had selected Faoiltiarna, ‘but probably in hell. They’re already waiting for him in Drakenborg. Hullo, stop! Isn’t that by chance Mr Riordain? Seize him!’

  In all, they pulled out three of them. Just three. Faoiltiarna understood and suddenly – to his surprise – began to be afraid.

  ‘Va fail!’ Angus Bri Cri, shouted to his comrades as he was pulled out of the rank, manacles jingling. ‘Va fail, fraeren!’

  A mercenary shoved him roughly.

  They weren’t taken far. They only got to one of the sheds close to the harbour. Right next to the dock, over which a forest of masts swayed.

  The civilian gave a sign. Faoiltiarna was pushed against a post, under a beam over which a rope was slung. An iron hook was attached to the rope. Riordain and Angus were sat down on two stools on the dirt floor.

  ‘Mr Riordain, Mr Bri Cri,’ said the civilian coldly. ‘You have been given an amnesty. The court decided to show mercy.

  ‘But justice must be done,’ he added, not waiting for a reaction. ‘And the families of those whom you murdered have paid for it to happen, gentlemen. The verdict has been reached.’

  Riordain and Angus didn’t even manage to cry out. Nooses were thrown over their necks, they were throttled, knocked down along with the stools and dragged across the floor. As they vainly tried with their manacled hands to tear off the nooses biting into their necks, the executioners kneeled on their chests. Knives flashed and fell, blood spurted. Now even the nooses were unable to stifle their screams, their hair-raising shrieks.

  It lasted a long time. As always.

  ‘Your sentence, Mr Faoiltiarna, was equipped with an additional clause,’ said the civilian, turning his head slowly, ‘Something extra—’

  Faoiltiarna had no intention of waiting for that something extra. The manacle’s clasp, which the elf had been working on for two days and nights, now fell from his wrist as though tapped by a magic wand. With a terrible blow of the heavy chain he knocked down both mercenaries guarding him. Faoiltiarna – in full flight – kicked the next one in the face, lashed the civilian with the manacles, hurled himself straig
ht at the cobweb-covered window of the shed and flew through it taking the frame and casing with him, leaving blood and shreds of clothing on the nails. He landed on the planks of the jetty with a thud. He turned, tumbled forward, rolled over and dived into the water, between the fishing boats and launches. The heavy chain, still attached to his right wrist, was dragging him down to the bottom. Faoiltiarna fought. He fought with all his strength for his life, which not so long before he hadn’t thought he cared about.

  ‘Catch him!’ yelled the mercenaries, rushing from the shed. ‘Catch him! Kill him!’

  ‘Over there!’ yelled others, running up along the jetty. ‘There, he came up there!’

  ‘To the boats!’

  ‘Shoot!’ roared the civilian, trying with both hands to stop the blood gushing from his eye socket. ‘Kill him!’

  The strings of crossbows twanged. Seagulls flew up shrieking. The dirty green water between the launches seethed with crossbow bolts.

  *

  ‘Vivant!’ The parade stretched out and the crowd of Novigradians were now displaying signs of fatigue and hoarseness. ‘Vivant! Long live the army!’

  ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Glory to the kings! Glory!’

  Philippa Eilhart looked around to see that no one was listening, then leaned over towards Dijkstra.

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  The spy also looked around.

  ‘About the assassination of King Vizimir carried out last July.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?

  ‘The half-elf who committed that murder—’ Dijkstra lowered his voice even more ‘—was by no means a madman, Phil. And wasn’t acting alone.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Hush.’ Dijkstra smiled. ‘Hush, Phil.’

  ‘Don’t call me Phil. Do you have any proof? What kind? Where did you get it?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, Phil, if I told you where. When can I expect an audience, Honourable Lady?’

  Philippa Eilhart’s eyes were like two black, bottomless lakes.

  ‘Soon, Dijkstra.’

  The bells tolled. The crowd cheered hoarsely. The army paraded. Petals covered the Novigradian cobbles like snow.

  *

  ‘Are you still writing?’

  Ori Reuven started and made a blot. He had served Dijkstra for nineteen years but was still not accustomed to the noiseless movements of his boss, appearing from God knows where and God knows how.

  ‘Good evening, hem, hem, Your Hon—’

  ‘Men from the Shadows.’ Dijkstra read the title page of the manuscript, which he had picked up unceremoniously from the table. ‘The History of the Royal Secret Services, written by Oribasius Gianfranco Paolo Reuven, magister . . . Oh, Ori, Ori. An old fellow, and such foolishness—’

  ‘Hem, hem . . .’

  ‘I came to say goodbye, Ori.’

  Reuven looked at him in surprise.

  ‘You see, my loyal comrade,’ continued the spy, without waiting for his secretary to cough anything up, ‘I’m also old, and it turns out I’m also foolish. I said one word to one person. Just one person. And just one word. It was one word too many and one person too many. Listen carefully, Ori. Can you hear them?’

  Ori Reuven shook his head, his eyes wide open in amazement. Dijkstra said nothing for a time.

  ‘You can’t hear,’ he said after a moment. ‘But I can hear them. In all the corridors. Rats are running through the city of Tretogor. They’re coming here. They’re coming on soft little rat’s paws.’

  *

  They came out of the shadows, out of the darkness. Dressed in black, masked, as nimble as rats. The sentries and bodyguards from the antechambers dropped without moaning under the quick thrusts of daggers with narrow, angular blades. Blood flowed over the floors of Tretogor Castle, spilled over the tiles, stained the woodblocks, soaked into the Vengerbergian carpets.

  They approached along all the corridors and left corpses behind them.

  ‘He’s there,’ said one of them, pointing. The scarf shrouding his face up to his eyes muffled his voice. ‘He went in there. Through the chancery where Reuven, that coughing old coot, works.’

  ‘There’s no way out of there.’ The eyes of the other one, the commander, shone in the slits of his black, velvet mask. ‘The chamber behind the chancery is windowless. There’s no way out.’

  ‘All of the other corridors are covered. All the doors and windows. He can’t escape. He’s trapped.’

  ‘Forward!’

  The door gave away to kicks. Daggers flashed.

  ‘Death! Death to the bloody killer!’

  ‘Hem, hem?’ Ori Reuven raised his myopic, watery eyes above the papers. ‘Yes? How can I, hem, hem, help you gentlemen?’

  The murderers smashed open the door to Dijkstra’s private chambers, scurried around them like rats, searching through all the nooks and crannies. Tapestries, paintings and panels were torn from the walls, fell onto the floor. Daggers slashed curtains and upholsteries.

  ‘He’s not here!’ yelled one of them, rushing into the chancery. ‘He’s not here!’

  ‘Where is he?’ rasped the gang leader, leaning over Ori, staring at him through the slits in his black mask. ‘Where is that bloodthirsty dog?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Ori Reuven replied calmly. ‘You can see for yourself.’

  ‘Where is he? Talk! Where’s Dijkstra?’

  ‘Am I,’ coughed Ori, ‘hem, hem, my brother’s keeper?’

  ‘Die, old man!’

  ‘I’m old. Sick. And very weary. Hem, hem. I fear neither you nor your knives.’

  The murderers ran from the chamber. They vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

  They didn’t kill Ori Reuven. They were paid killers. And there hadn’t been the slightest mention of Ori Reuven in their orders.

  Oribasius Gianfranco Paolo Reuven, master at law, spent six years in various prisons, constantly interrogated by various investigators, asked about all sorts of apparently senseless things and matters.

  He was released after six years. He was very ill by then. Scurvy had taken away all his teeth, anaemia his hair, glaucoma his eyesight, and asthma his breath. The fingers of both hands had been broken during the interrogations.

  He lived for less than a year after being freed. He died in a temple poorhouse. In misery. Forgotten.

  The manuscript of the book Men from the Shadows, the History of the Royal Secret Services vanished without trace.

  *

  The sky in the east brightened. A pale glow appeared above the hills, the harbinger of the dawn.

  Silence had reigned by the campfire for a long time. The pilgrim, the elf and the tracker looked into the dying fire in silence.

  Silence reigned in Elskerdeg. The howling phantom had gone away, bored by its vain howling. The phantom must have finally understood that the three men sitting by the campfire had seen too many atrocities lately to worry about any old spectre.

  ‘If we are to travel together we must abandon mistrust,’ Boreas Mun said suddenly, looking into the campfire’s ruby glow. ‘Let’s leave behind us what was. The world has changed. There’s a new life in front of us. Something has ended, something is beginning. Ahead of us—’

  He broke off and coughed. He was not accustomed to speeches like that, was afraid of looking ridiculous. But his accidental companions weren’t laughing. Why, Boreas positively sensed friendliness emanating from them.

  ‘The pass of Elskerdeg is ahead of us,’ he ended in a more confident voice, ‘and beyond the pass Zerrikania and Hakland. There’s a long and dangerous road ahead of us. If we are to travel together . . . Let’s abandon mistrust. I am Boreas Mun.’

  The pilgrim in the wide-brimmed hat stood up, straightening his great frame, and shook the hand being held out towards him. The elf also stood up. His horrifyingly disfigured face contorted strangely.

  After shaking the tracker’s hand the pilgrim and the elf held out their right hands towards each other.<
br />
  ‘The world has changed,’ said the pilgrim. ‘Something has ended. I am . . . Sigi Reuven.’

  ‘Something is beginning.’ The elf twisted his ravaged face into something that according to all evidence was a smile. ‘I am . . . Wolf Isengrim.’

  They shook hands, quickly, firmly, downright violently. For a moment it looked more like the preliminaries to a fight than a gesture of reconciliation. But only for a moment.

  The log in the campfire shot out sparks, celebrating the event with a joyful firework.

  ‘God strike me down—’ Boreas Mun smiled broadly ‘—if this isn’t the start of a beautiful friendship.’

  . . . along with the other Martyr Sisters, St Philipa was also calumniated for betraying the kingdom, for fomenting tumults and sedition, for inciting the people and plotting an insurrection. Wilmerius, a heretic and cultist, and self—appointed high priest, ordered the Saint to be seized, thrown into a dark and foul prison beset with cold and stench, calling on her to confess her sins and declare those that she had committed. And Wilmerius showed St Philipa divers instruments of torture and menaced her greatly, but the Saint merely spat in his countenance and accused him of sodomy.

  The heretic ordered her stripped of her raiment and thrashed mercilessly with leather straps and for splinters to be driven under her fingernails. And then he asked and called on her to disavow her faith and the Goddess. But the Saint merely laughed and advised him to distance himself.

  Then he ordered her dragged to the torture chamber and her whole body to be harrowed with iron gaffs and hooks and her sides scorched with candles. And although thus tormented, the Saint in her mortal corps showed immortal forbearance. Until the torturers were enfeebled and withdrew in great horror, but Wilmerius fiercely admonished them and ordered them further to torture her and soundly belabour her. They then began to scorch St Philipa with red hot irons, dislocate her members from the joints and rend the woman’s breast with pincers. And in this suffering she, having confessed nothing, expired.

  And the godless, shameless Wilmerius, about whom you may read in the works of the Holy Fathers, met such a punishment that lice and wyrms spread over him and overcame him until he was decayed all over and expired. And he reeked like a cur such that he needs must be cast into a river without burial.