Time of Contempt (7 page)

The innkeeper nodded eagerly.

‘It may turn out,’ said the white-haired man a moment later, ‘that their comrades or cronies may ask what befell these evil men. Tell them the Wolf bit them. The White Wolf. And add that they should keep glancing over their shoulders. One day they’ll look back and see the Wolf.’

When, after three days, Aplegatt reached the gates of Tretogor, it was well after midnight. He was furious because he’d wasted time at the moat and shouted himself hoarse – the guards were sleeping sinfully and had been reluctant to open the gate. He got it all off his chest and cursed them painstakingly and comprehensively back to the third generation. He then overheard with pleasure as the commander of the watch – now awake – added totally new details to the charges he had levelled against the soldiers’ mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Of course, gaining access to King Vizimir was out of the question. That actually suited him, as he was counting on sleeping until matins and the morning bell. He was wrong. Instead of being shown to his billet he was rushed to the guardhouse. Waiting for him there was not the king but the other one, immense and fat. Aplegatt knew him; it was Dijkstra, confidant of the King of Redania. Dijkstra – the messenger knew – was authorised to receive messages meant exclusively for the king’s ears. Aplegatt handed him the letters.

‘Do you have a spoken message?’

‘Yes, sire.’

‘Speak.’

‘Demavend to Vizimir,’ recited Aplegatt, closing his eyes. ‘Firstly: the disguised troops are ready for the second night after the July new moon. Take care that Foltest does not let us down. Secondly: I will not grace the conclave of the devious old windbags in Thanedd with my presence, and I advise you to do the same. Thirdly: the Lion Cub is dead.’

Dijkstra grimaced and drummed his fingers on the table.

‘Here are letters for King Demavend. And a spoken message . . . Prick up your ears and pay attention. Repeat this to your king, word for word. Only to him, to no one else. No one, do you understand?’

‘I do, sire.’

‘The message runs thus: Vizimir to Demavend. You must hold back the disguised troops. There has been a betrayal. The Flame has mustered an army in Dol Angra and is only waiting for an excuse. Now repeat.’

Aplegatt repeated it.

‘Good,’ Dijkstra nodded. ‘You will leave at sunup.’

‘I’ve been on the road for five days, Your Excellency,’ said the messenger, rubbing his rump. ‘Might I but sleep to the morning . . . Will you permit it?’

‘Does now your king, Demavend, sleep at night? Do I sleep? You deserve a punch in the face for the question alone, laddie. You will be given vittles, then stretch out a while on the hay. But you ride at dawn. I’ve ordered a pure-bred young stallion for you. It’ll bear you like the wind. And don’t make faces. Take this purse with an extra gratuity, so as not to call Vizimir a skinflint.’

‘Thank you, sire.’

‘Be careful in the forests by the Pontar. Squirrels have been seen there. But there’s no shortage of ordinary brigands in those parts anyway.’

‘Oh, I know, sire. Oh, what I did see three days past . . .’

‘What did you see?’

Aplegatt quickly reported the events in Anchor. Dijkstra listened, his powerful forearms lying crossed on his chest.

‘The Professor . . .’ he said lost in thought. ‘Heimo Kantor and Little Yaxa. Dispatched by a witcher. In Anchor, on the road to Gors Velen; in other words the road to Thanedd and Garstang . . . And the Lion Cub is dead?’

‘What’s that, sire?’

‘It’s of no concern.’ Dijkstra raised his head. ‘At least not to you. Rest. And at dawn you ride.’

Aplegatt ate what he was brought, lay for a while without sleeping a wink, and was outside the gate by daybreak. The stallion was indeed swift, but skittish. Aplegatt didn’t like horses like that.

Something itched unbearably on his back, between his left shoulder blade and his spine. A flea must have bitten him when he was resting in the stable. But there was no way to scratch it.

The stallion danced and neighed. The messenger spurred him and he galloped away. Time was short.

‘Gar’ean,’ Cairbre hissed, peering from behind a branch, from where he was observing the road. ‘En Dh’oine aen evall a strsede!’

Toruviel leapt to her feet, seizing and belting on her sword, and poked Yaevinn in the thigh with the toe of her boot. He had been dozing, leaning against the wall of a hollow, and when he sprang up he scorched his hand as he pushed off from the hot sand.

‘Que suecc’s?’

‘A rider on the road.’

‘One?’ said Yaevinn, lifting his bow and quiver. ‘Cairbre? Only one?’

‘Only one. He’s getting closer.’

‘Let’s fix him then. It’ll be one less Dh’oine.’

‘Forget it,’ said Toruviel, grabbing him by the sleeve. ‘Why bother? We were supposed to carry out reconnaissance and then join the commando. Are we to murder civilians on the road? Is that what fighting for freedom is about?’

‘Precisely. Stand aside.’

‘If a body’s left on the road, every passing patrol will raise the alarm. The army will set out after us. They’ll stake out the fords, and we might have difficulty crossing the river!’

‘Few people ride along this road. We’ll be far away before anyone finds the body.’

‘That rider’s already far away,’ said Cairbre from the tree. ‘You should have shot instead of yapping. You won’t hit him now. He’s a good two hundred paces away.’

‘With my sixty-pounder?’ Yaevinn stroked his bow. ‘And a thirty-inch arrow? And anyway, that’s never two hundred paces. It’s hundred and fifty, tops. Mire, que spar aen’le.’

‘Yaevinn, forget it . . .’

‘Thaess aep, Toruviel.’

The elf turned his hat around so the squirrel’s tail pinned to it wouldn’t get in the way, quickly and powerfully drew back his bowstring, right to his ear, and then aimed carefully and shot.

Aplegatt did not hear the arrow. It was a ‘silent’ arrow, specially fledged with long, narrow grey feathers, its shaft fluted for increased stiffness and weight reduction. The three-edged, razor-sharp arrow hit the messenger in the back with great force, between his left shoulder blade and his spine. The blades were positioned at an angle – and as they entered his body, the arrow rotated and bored in like a screw, mutilating the tissue, cutting through blood vessels and shattering bone. Aplegatt lurched forward onto his horse’s neck and slid to the ground, limp as a sack of wool.

The sand on the road was hot, heated up so much by the sun that it was painful to the touch. The messenger didn’t feel it. He died at once.

CHAPTER TWO

To say I knew her would be an exaggeration. I think that, apart from the Witcher and the enchantress, no one really knew her. When I saw her for the first time she did not make a great impression on me at all, even in spite of the quite extraordinary accompanying circumstances. I have known people who said that, right away, from the very first encounter, they sensed the foretaste of death striding behind the girl. To me she seemed utterly ordinary, though I knew that ordinary she was not; for which reason I tried to discern, discover – sense – the singularity in her. But I noticed nothing and sensed nothing. Nothing that could have been a signal, a presentiment or a harbinger of those subsequent, tragic events. Events caused by her very existence. And those she caused by her actions.

Dandelion,
Half a Century of Poetry

Right by the crossroads, where the forest ended, nine posts were driven into the ground. Each was crowned by a cartwheel, mounted flat. Above the wheels teemed crows and ravens, pecking and tearing at the corpses bound to the rims and hubs. Owing to the height of the posts and the great number of birds, one could only imagine what the unidentifiable remains lying on top of the wheels might be. But they were bodies. They couldn’t have been anything else.

Ciri turned her head away and wrinkled her nose in disgust. The wind blew from the posts and the sickening stench of rotting corpses drifted above the crossroads.

‘Wonderful scenery,’ said Yennefer, leaning out of the saddle and spitting on the ground, forgetting that a short time earlier she had fiercely scolded Ciri for doing the same thing. ‘Picturesque and fragrant. But why do this here, at the edge of the wilderness? They usually set things like that up right outside the city walls. Am I right, good people?’

‘They’re Squirrels, noble lady,’ came the hurried explanation from one of the wandering traders they had caught up with at the crossroads. He was guiding the piebald horse harnessed to his fully laden cart. ‘Elves. There, on those posts. And that’s why the posts are by the forest. As a warning to other Squirrels.’

‘Does that mean,’ said the enchantress, looking at him, ‘that captured Scoia’tael are brought here alive . . . ?’

‘Elves, m’lady, seldom let themselves be taken alive,’ interrupted the trader. ‘And even if the soldiers catch one they take them to the city, because civilised non-humans dwell there. When they’ve watched Squirrels being tortured in the town square, they quickly lose interest in joining them. But if any elves are killed in combat, their bodies are taken to a crossroads and hung on posts like this. Sometimes they’re brought from far away and by the time they get here they reek—’

‘To think,’ snapped Yennefer, ‘we have been forbidden from necromantic practices out of respect for the dignity of death and mortal remains; on the grounds that they deserve reverence, peace, and a ritual and ceremonial burial . . .’

‘What are you saying, m’lady?’

‘Nothing. We’re leaving, Ciri, let’s get away from this place. Ugh, I feel as though the stench were sticking to me.’

‘Yuck. Me too,’ said Ciri, trotting around the trader’s cart. ‘Let’s gallop, yes?’

‘Very well . . . Ciri! Gallop, but don’t break your neck!’

They soon saw the city; surrounded by walls, bristling with towers with glistening, pointed roofs. And beyond the city was the sea; greygreen, sparkling in the morning sun, flecked here and there with the white dots of sails. Ciri reined in her horse at the edge of a sandy drop, stood up in her stirrups and greedily breathed in the wind and the scent.

‘Gors Velen,’ said Yennefer, riding up and stopping at her side. ‘We finally made it. Let’s get back on the road.’

They rode off down the road at a canter, leaving several ox carts and people walking, laden down with faggots, behind them.

Once they had overtaken them all and were alone, though, the enchantress slowed and gestured for Ciri to stop.

‘Come closer,’ she said. ‘Closer still. Take the reins and lead my horse. I need both hands.’

‘What for?’

‘I said take the reins, Ciri.’

Yennefer took a small, silver looking glass from her saddlebags, wiped it and then whispered a spell. The looking glass floated out of her hand, rose up and remained suspended above her horse’s neck, right before the enchantress’s face.

Ciri let out a sigh of awe and licked her lips.

The enchantress removed a comb from her saddlebags, took off her beret and combed her hair vigorously for the next few minutes. Ciri remained silent. She knew she was forbidden to disturb or distract Yennefer while she combed her hair. The arresting and apparently careless disarray of her wavy, luxuriant locks was the result of long, hard work and demanded no little effort.

The enchantress reached into her saddlebags once more. She attached some diamond earrings to her ears and fastened bracelets on both wrists. She took off her shawl and undid a few buttons on her blouse, revealing her neck and a black velvet ribbon decorated with an obsidian star.

‘Ha!’ said Ciri at last, unable to hold back. ‘I know why you’re doing that! You want to look nice because we’re going to the city! Am I right?’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘What about me?’

‘What
about
you?’

‘I want to look nice, too! I’ll do my hair—’

‘Put your beret on,’ said Yennefer sharply, eyes still fixed on the looking glass floating above the horse’s ears, ‘right where it was before. And tuck your hair underneath it.’

Ciri snorted angrily but obeyed at once. She had long ago learned to distinguish the timbre and shades of the enchantress’s voice. She had learned when she could get into a discussion and when it was wiser not to.

Yennefer, having at last arranged the locks over her forehead, took a small, green, glass jar out of her saddlebags.

‘Ciri,’ she said more gently. ‘We’re travelling in secret. And the journey’s not over yet. Which is why you have to hide your hair under your beret. There are people at every gate who are paid for their accurate and reliable observation of travellers. Do you understand?’

‘No!’ retorted Ciri impudently, reining back the enchantress’s black stallion. ‘You’ve made yourself beautiful to make those gate watchmen’s eyes pop out! Very secretive, I must say!’

‘The city to whose gates we are heading,’ smiled Yennefer, ‘is Gors Velen. I don’t have to disguise myself in Gors Velen; quite the contrary, I’d say. With you it’s different. You ought not to be remembered by anyone.’

‘The people who’ll be staring at you will see me too!’

The enchantress uncorked the jar, which gave off the scent of lilac and gooseberries. She stuck her index finger in and rubbed a little of it under her eyes.

‘I doubt,’ she said, still smiling mysteriously, ‘whether anyone will notice you.’

A long column of riders and wagons stood before the bridge, and travellers crowded around the gatehouse, waiting for their turn to be searched. Ciri fumed and growled, angry at the prospect of a long wait. Yennefer, however, sat up straight in the saddle and rode at a trot, looking high over the heads of the travellers – they parted swiftly for her and made room, bowing in respect. The guards in hauberks also noticed the enchantress at once and gave her free passage, liberally handing out blows with their spear shafts to the stubborn or the overly slow.

‘This way, this way, noble lady,’ called one of the guards, staring at Yennefer and flushing. ‘Come through here, I entreat you. Make way, make way, you churls!’