Introducing the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘Don’t move a muscle, chum,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, holding the point of his sword to the oddity’s throat. ‘Don’t budge.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ the innkeeper yelled, running over clutching a spade handle. ‘What’s this all about? Guard! Detchka, run and get the guard!’

  ‘No!’ the creature wailed, flattening itself against the floor and deforming itself even more. ‘Have mercy, nooooo!’

  ‘Don’t call them!’ the dirty halfling echoed, rushing out of the snug. ‘Grab that girl, Dandelion!’

  The troubadour caught the screaming Detchka, carefully choosing the places to seize her by. Detchka squealed and crouched on the floor by his legs.

  ‘Calm down, innkeeper,’ Dainty Biberveldt panted. ‘It’s a private matter, we won’t call out the guard. I’ll pay for any damage.’

  ‘There isn’t any damage,’ the innkeeper said level-headedly, looking around.

  ‘But there will be,’ the plump halfling said, gnashing his teeth, ‘because I’m going to thrash him. And properly. I’m going to thrash him cruelly, at length and frenziedly, and then everything here will be broken.’

  The long-limbed and spread-out caricature of Dainty Biberveldt flattened on the floor snivelled pathetically.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ the innkeeper said coldly, squinting and raising the spade handle a little. ‘Thrash it in the street or in the yard, sir, not here. And I’m calling the guard. Needs must, it is my duty. Forsooth . . . it’s some kind of monster!’

  ‘Innkeeper, sir,’ Geralt said calmly, not relieving the pressure on the freak’s neck, ‘keep your head. No one is going to destroy anything, there won’t be any damage. The situation is under control. I’m a witcher, and as you can see, I have the monster in my grasp. And because, indeed, it does look like a private matter, we’ll calmly sort it out here in the snug. Release the girl, Dandelion, and come here. I have a silver chain in my bag. Take it out and tie the arms of this gentleman securely, around the elbows behind its back. Don’t move, chum.’

  The creature whimpered softly.

  ‘Very well, Geralt,’ Dandelion said, ‘I’ve tied it up. Let’s go to the snug. And you, landlord, what are you standing there for? I ordered beer. And when I order beer, you’re to keep serving me until I shout “Water”.’

  Geralt pushed the tied-up creature towards the snug and roughly sat him down by the post. Dainty Biberveldt also sat down and looked at him in disgust.

  ‘It’s monstrous, the way it looks,’ he said. ‘Just like a pile of fermenting dough. Look at its nose, Dandelion, it’ll fall off any second, gorblimey. And its ears are like my mother-in-law’s just before her funeral. Ugh!’

  ‘Hold hard, hold hard,’ Dandelion muttered. ‘Are you Biberveldt? Yes, you are, without doubt. But whatever’s sitting by that post was you a moment ago. If I’m not mistaken. Geralt! Everybody’s watching you. You’re a witcher. What the bloody hell is going on here? What is it?’

  ‘It’s a mimic.’

  ‘You’re a mimic yourself,’ the creature said in a guttural voice, swinging its nose. ‘I am not a mimic, I’m a doppler, and my name is Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte. Penstock for short. My close friends call me Dudu.’

  ‘I’ll give you Dudu, you whoreson!’ Dainty yelled, aiming a punch at him. ‘Where are my horses? You thief!’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the innkeeper cautioned them, entering with a jug and a handful of beer mugs, ‘you promised things would be peaceful.’

  ‘Ah, beer,’ the halfling sighed. ‘Oh, but I’m damned thirsty. And hungry!’

  ‘I could do with a drink, too,’ Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte declared gurglingly. He was totally ignored.

  ‘What is it?’ the innkeeper asked, contemplating the creature, who at the sight of the beer stuck its long tongue out beyond sagging, doughy lips. ‘What is it, gentlemen?’

  ‘A mimic,’ the Witcher repeated, heedless of the faces the monster was making. ‘It actually has many names. A changeling, shapeshifter, vexling, or fetch. Or a doppler, as it called itself.’

  ‘A vexling!’ the innkeeper yelled. ‘Here, in Novigrad? In my inn? Swiftly, we must call the guard! And the priests! Or it will be on my head . . .’

  ‘Easy does it,’ Dainty Biberveldt rasped, hurriedly finishing off Dandelion’s soup from a bowl which by some miracle had not been spilled. ‘There’ll be time to call anyone we need. But later. This scoundrel robbed me and I have no intention of handing it over to the local law before recovering my property. I know you Novigradians – and your judges. I might get a tenth, nothing more.’

  ‘Have mercy,’ the doppler whimpered plaintively. ‘Don’t hand me over to humans! Do you know what they do to the likes of me?’

  ‘Naturally we do,’ the innkeeper nodded. ‘The priests perform exorcisms on any vexling they catch. Then they tie it up with a stick between its knees and cover it thickly with clay mixed with iron filings, roll it into a ball, and bake it in a fire until the clay hardens into brick. At least that’s what used to be done years ago, when these monsters occurred more often.’

  ‘A barbaric custom. Human indeed,’ Dainty, said, grimacing and pushing the now empty bowl away, ‘but perhaps it is a just penalty for banditry and thievery. Well, talk, you good-for-nothing, where are my horses? Quickly, before I stretch that nose of yours between your legs and shove it up your backside! Where are my horses, I said.’

  ‘I’ve . . . I’ve sold them,’ Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte stammered, and his sagging ears suddenly curled up into balls resembling tiny cauliflowers.

  ‘Sold them! Did you hear that?’ the halfling cried, frothing at the mouth. ‘It sold my horses!’

  ‘Of course,’ Dandelion said. ‘It had time to. It’s been here for three days. For the last three days you’ve . . . I mean, it’s . . . Dammit, Dainty, does that mean—’

  ‘Of course that’s what it means!’ the merchant yelled, stamping his hairy feet. ‘It robbed me on the road, a day’s ride from the city! It came here as me, get it? And sold my horses! I’ll kill it! I’ll strangle it with my bare hands!’

  ‘Tell us how it happened, Mr Biberveldt.’

  ‘Geralt of Rivia, if I’m not mistaken? The Witcher?’

  Geralt nodded in reply.

  ‘That’s a stroke of luck,’ the halfling said. ‘I’m Dainty Biberveldt of Knotgrass Meadow. Farmer, stock breeder and merchant. Call me Dainty, Geralt.’

  ‘Say on, Dainty.’

  ‘Very well, it was like this. Me and my ostlers were driving my horses to be sold at the market in Devil’s Ford. We had our last stop a day’s ride from the city. We overnighted, having first dealt with a small cask of burnt caramel vodka. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like my bladder was about to burst, got off the wagon, and I thought to myself I’ll take a look at what the nags are doing in the meadow. I walk out, fog thick as buggery, I look and suddenly someone’s coming. Who goes there? I ask. He says nothing. I walk up closer and see . . . myself. Like in a looking glass. I think I oughtn’t to have drunk that bloody moonshine, accursed spirit. And this one here – for that’s what it was – ups and conks me on the noggin! I saw stars and went arse over tit. The next day I woke up in a bloody thicket, with a lump like a cucumber on my head, and not a soul in sight, not a sign of our camp, either. I wandered the whole day before I finally found the trail. Two days I trudged, eating roots and raw mushrooms. And in the meantime that . . . that lousy Dudulico, or whatever it was, has ridden to Novigrad as me and flogged my horses! I’ll get the bloody . . . And I’ll thrash my ostlers! I’ll give each one a hundred lashes on his bare arse, the cretins! Not to recognise their own guvnor, to let themselves be outwitted like that! Numbskulls, imbeciles, sots . . .’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on them, Dainty,’ Geralt said. ‘They didn’t have a chance. A mimic copies so exactly there’s no way of distinguishing it from the original – I mean, from its chosen victim. Have you never heard of mimics?’

  ‘Some. But I tho
ught it was all fiction.’

  ‘Well it isn’t. All a doppler has to do is observe its victim closely in order to quickly and unerringly adapt to the necessary material structure. I would point out that it’s not an illusion, but a complete, precise transformation. To the minutest detail. How a mimic does it, no one knows. Sorcerers suspect the same component of the blood is at work here as with lycanthropy, but I think it’s either something totally different or a thousandfold more powerful. After all, a werewolf has only two – at most three – different forms, while a doppler can transform into anything it wants to, as long as the body mass more or less tallies.’

  ‘Body mass?’

  ‘Well, he won’t turn into a mastodon. Or a mouse.’

  ‘I understand. And the chain you’ve bound him up in, what’s that about?’

  ‘It’s silver. It’s lethal to a lycanthrope, but as you see, for a mimic it merely stops the transmutations. That’s why it’s sitting here in its own form.’

  The doppler pursed its glutinous lips and glowered at the Witcher with an evil expression in its dull eyes, which had already lost the hazel colour of the halfling’s irises and were now yellow.

  ‘I’m glad it’s sitting, cheeky bastard,’ Dainty snarled. ‘Just to think it even stopped here, at the Blade, where I customarily lodge! It already thinks it’s me!’

  Dandelion nodded.

  ‘Dainty,’ he said, ‘It was you. I’ve been meeting it here for three days now. It looked like you and spoke like you. And when it came to standing a round, it was as tight as you. Possibly even tighter.’

  ‘That last point doesn’t worry me,’ the halfling said, ‘because perhaps I’ll recover some of my money. It disgusts me to touch it. Take the purse off it, Dandelion, and check what’s inside. There ought to be plenty, if that horse thief really did sell my nags.’

  ‘How many horses did you have, Dainty?’

  ‘A dozen.’

  ‘Calculating according to world prices,’ the troubadour said, looking into the purse, ‘what’s here would just about buy a single horse, if you chanced upon an old, foundered one. Calculating according to Novigradian prices, there’s enough for two goats, three at most.’

  The merchant said nothing, but looked as though he were about to cry. Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte hung his nose down low, and his lower lip even lower, after which he began to softly gurgle.

  ‘In a word,’ the halfling finally sighed, ‘I’ve been robbed and ruined by a creature whose existence I previously didn’t believe in. That’s what you call bad luck.’

  ‘That about sums it up,’ the Witcher said, casting a glance at the doppler huddled on the stool. ‘I was also convinced that mimics had been wiped out long ago. In the past, so I’ve heard, plenty of them used to live in the nearby forests and on the plateau. But their ability to mimic seriously worried the first settlers and they began to hunt them. Quite effectively. Almost all of them were quickly exterminated.’

  ‘And lucky for us,’ the innkeeper said, spitting onto the floor. ‘I swear on the Eternal Fire, I prefer a dragon or a demon, which is always a dragon or a demon. You know where you are with them. But werewolfery, all those transmutations and metamorphoses, that hideous, demonic practice, trickery and the treacherous deceit conjured up by those hideous creatures, will be the detriment and undoing of people! I tell you, let’s call the guard and into the fire with this repugnance!’

  ‘Geralt?’ Dandelion asked curiously. ‘I’d be glad to hear an expert’s opinion. Are these mimics really so dangerous and aggressive?’

  ‘Their ability to mimic,’ the Witcher said, ‘is an attribute which serves as defence rather than aggression. I haven’t heard of—’

  ‘A pox on it,’ Dainty interrupted angrily, slamming his fist down on the table. ‘If thumping a fellow in the head and plundering him isn’t aggression, I don’t know what it is. Stop being clever. The matter is simple; I was waylaid and robbed, not just of my hard-earned property, but also of my own form. I demand compensation, and I shall not rest—’

  ‘The guard, we must call the guard,’ the innkeeper said. ‘And we should summon the priests! And burn that monster, that non-human!’

  ‘Give over, landlord,’ the halfling said, raising his head. ‘You’re becoming a bore with that guard of yours. I would like to point out that that non-human hasn’t harmed anybody else, only me. And incidentally, I’m also a non-human.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mr Biberveldt,’ the innkeeper laughed nervously. ‘What are you and what is that? You’re not far off being a man, and that’s a monster. It astonishes me that you’re sitting there so calmly, Witcher, sir. What’s your trade, if you’ll pardon me? It’s your job to kill monsters, isn’t it?’

  ‘Monsters,’ Geralt said coldly, ‘but not the members of intelligent races.’

  ‘Come, come, sir,’ the innkeeper said. ‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Dandelion cut in, ‘you’ve overstepped the mark, Geralt, with that “intelligent race”. Just take a look at it.’

  Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte, indeed, did not resemble a member of an intelligent race at that moment. He resembled a puppet made of mud and flour, looking at the Witcher with a beseeching look in its dull, yellow eyes. Neither were the snuffling sounds being emitted from its nose – which now reached the table – consistent with a member of an intelligent race.

  ‘Enough of this empty bullshit!’ Dainty Biberveldt suddenly roared. ‘There’s nothing to argue about! The only thing that counts is my horses and my loss! Do you hear, you bloody slippery jack, you? Who did you sell my nags to? What did you do with the money? Tell me now, before I kick you black and blue and flay you alive!’

  Detchka, opening the door slightly, stuck her flaxen-haired head into the chamber.

  ‘We have visitors, father,’ she whispered. ‘Journeymen masons from the scaffolding and others. I’m serving them, but don’t shout so loudly in here, because they’re beginning to look funny at the snug.’

  ‘By the Eternal Fire!’ the innkeeper said in horror, looking at the molten doppler. ‘If someone looks in and sees it . . . Oh, it’ll look bad. If we aren’t to call the guard, then . . . Witcher, sir! If it really is a vexling, tell it to change into something decent, as a disguise, like. Just for now.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Dainty said. ‘Have him change into something, Geralt.’

  ‘Into whom?’ the doppler suddenly gurgled. ‘I can only take on a form I’ve had a good look at. Which of you shall I turn into?’

  ‘Not me,’ the innkeeper said hurriedly.

  ‘Nor me,’ Dandelion snorted. ‘Anyway, it wouldn’t be any disguise. Everybody knows me, so the sight of two Dandelions at one table would cause a bigger sensation than the one here in person.’

  ‘It would be the same with me,’ Geralt smiled. ‘That leaves you, Dainty. And it’s turned out well. Don’t be offended, but you know yourself that people have difficulty distinguishing one halfling from another.’

  The merchant did not ponder this for long.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let it be. Take the chain off him, Witcher. Right then, turn yourself into me, O intelligent race.’

  After the chain had been removed the doppler rubbed its doughy hands together, felt its nose and stared goggle-eyed at the halfling. The sagging skin on its face tightened up and acquired colour. Its nose shrank and drew in with a dull, squelching sound, and curly hair sprouted on its bald pate. Now it was Dainty’s turn to goggle, the innkeeper opened his mouth in mute astonishment and Dandelion heaved a sigh and groaned.

  The last thing to change was the colour of its eyes.

  The second Dainty Biberveldt cleared its throat, reached across the table, seized the first Dainty Biberveldt’s beer mug and greedily pressed its mouth to it.

  ‘It can’t be, it can’t be,’ Dandelion said softly. ‘Just look, he’s been copied exactly. They’re indistinguishable. Down to the last detail. This time even the mosquito bites an
d stains on its britches . . . Yes, on its britches! Geralt, not even sorcerers can manage that! Feel it, it’s real wool, that’s no illusion! Extraordinary! How does it do it?’

  ‘No one knows,’ the Witcher muttered. ‘It doesn’t, either. I said it has the complete ability for the free transformation of material structure, but it is an organic, instinctive ability . . .’

  ‘But the britches . . . What has it made the britches out of? And the waistcoat?’

  ‘That’s its own adapted skin. I don’t think it’d be happy to give up those trousers. Anyway, they’d immediately lose the properties of wool—’

  ‘Pity,’ Dainty said, showing cunning, ‘because I was just wondering whether to make it change a bucket of matter into a bucket of gold.’

  The doppler, now a faithful copy of the halfling, lounged comfortably and grinned broadly, clearly glad to be the centre of interest. It was sitting in an identical pose to Dainty, swinging its hairy feet the same way.

  ‘You know plenty about dopplers, Geralt,’ it said, then took a swig from the mug, smacked its lips and belched. ‘Plenty, indeed.’

  ‘Ye Gods, its voice and mannerisms are also Biberveldt’s,’ Dandelion said. ‘Haven’t any of you got a bit of red silk thread? We ought to mark it, dammit, because there might be trouble.’

  ‘Come on, Dandelion,’ the first Dainty Biberveldt said indignantly. ‘Surely you won’t mistake it for me? The differences are clear at . . .’

  ‘. . . first glance,’ the second Dainty Biberveldt completed the sentence and belched again gracefully. ‘Indeed, in order to be mistaken you’d have to be more stupid than a mare’s arse.’