Stephen Hulin

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  I'm Nimue verch Wledyr aep Gwyn.

  I go to Gors Velen. To Aretuza, the sorceresses school on the Isle of Thanedd.

  We could do many things once. We could create illusions of magical isles, show to thousands of people dragons dancing in the sky. We could bring forth illusions of numerous armies approaching town walls, and every citizen saw that army in the same way to the very minor details of equipment, and the signs on the banners. But only those incomparable ancient vixens who paid for their magical powers with their lives could do this. Since those times abilities of our kind severely degraded - most likely as a result of living among humans.

  Victor Pelevin, The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Good work, Boxcray! Lovely bloody mess you’ve sailed us into!’ Javil Fysh shouted angrily. ‘The Pontar’s bogs! The devil’s own cesspool! Oh the foul things I’ve heard! Men and ships perish here! Where’s the fucking river? Where’s the fairway? Why...’

  ‘Shut your damned gob!’ the captain shouted. ‘Where’s the fairway, where’s the fairway! Up your thrice-plowed arse, that's where! Think yourself wise, that it? Go on then, here’s your chance! Another fork! Which way, oh wise one? Left, followin’ the current? Or will ye have me turn right?’

  Fysh snorted and turned his back to the captain. Boxcray took the helm and directed the sloop into the left branch.

  The deck hand with the plummet shouted. After a while, much louder, shouted Kevenard van Vliet.

  ‘Riverward, Boxcray!’ bellowed Peter Cobbin. ‘Hard astarboard. Away from the bank! Away from the bank!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Snakes! Don't you see? Vipers! Bank’s infested with ‘em!’

  Addario Bach cursed.

  The left bank was full of snakes. Reptiles were wriggling among the reeds and algae, crawled over half submerged boles, hanged, hissing from branches above the water. Geralt recognized moccasins, rattlesnakes, jararacas, boomslangs, chain vipers, leaf vipers, puff adders, black mambas and some that he did not know.

  The whole crew of the "Prophet" ran in panic from the port board. Kevenard van Vliet came running to the aft and crouched, shivering behind the witcher's back. Boxcray spun the wheel, and the sloop began to change course. Geralt put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘No.’ he said. ‘Stay the course. No closer to the other bank.’

  ‘But the snakes...’ Boxcray indicated a branch that they were going near to, fully loaded with hissing reptiles. ‘They’ll drop aboard...’

  ‘There aren’t nearly that many! Keep her steady. Far off the other bank.’

  Shrouds of the main mast caught on the overhanging branch, a few snakes twisted around the ropes, a few of them, including two mambas fell on board. They lifted and hissed attacking the crowd at the starboard. Fysh and Cobbin run to the bow, the deck hands shouted and run to the aft. One of them jumped into the water, vanished in it, before he could shout. On the surface blood frothed.

  ‘Ilyocoris!’ The Witcher pointed at the wave and the vanishing dark shape. ‘And unlike the snakes it's real.’

  ‘I hate reptiles,’ Kevenard van Vliet cried shivering behind the witcher. ‘I hate snakes...’

  ‘There’s just a handful. Never were any more. But they were enough to build the illusion.’

  The deck hands were shouting, rubbing their eyes. The snakes vanished. Both the ones on deck, and the ones on the river bank. There was no trace of them.

  ‘What was,’ moaned Peter Cobbin. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Illusion,’ repeated Geralt. ‘The vulpess got us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The vulpess. She’s creating illusions trying to disorient us. Wonder when she started. The storm seemed real. But there were two branches, the captain saw. The vulpess hid one of the branches and falsified the compass indications. She also created the illusion of snakes.’

  ‘Witcher's tales!’ snorted Fysh. ‘Elven superstitions! Old wives’ tales! So what? Every fox can do such things? Hides branches, cheat compasses? Show snakes where there are not any? Nonsense! I say that this is from those waters. We were poisoned by vapours, venomous swamp gases and miasmas. This is what caused those phantoms.’

  ‘Those are illusions created by the vulpess.’

  ‘You take us for fools?’ Shouted Cobbin. ‘Illusions? What illusions? Those were the most real vipers. You have all seen them, haven't you? You heard their hiss? I even smelled their stench.’

  ‘That was an illusion. The snakes were not real.’

  "Prophet" once again caught an overhanging branch.

  ‘This is an illusion, right?’ said one of the deck hands extending his arm. ‘A hallucination? This snake is not real?’

  ‘No! Stop!’

  A huge arieta, hanging from a branch hissed bloodcurdlingly and struck in a flash, once and then once again.

  The deck hand shouted excruciatingly, stumbled, fell down, trembled in fits, rhythmically hitting deck with the back of his head. Froth came from his mouth, blood started dripping from his eyes. He was dead before they managed to run to him. The witcher covered the body with a cloth.

  ‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘Be careful! Not everything’s unreal!’

  ‘Look out!’ shouted a sailor from the bow. ‘Look out! Maelstrom in front of us! Maelstrom!’

  The oxbow once again split into branches. The left fork, the one on which they were being carried seethed with a terrible whirlpool. The rotating ring of foam rose and fell like boiling soup. In the whirlpool appearing and disappearing where logs, branches and even a whole tree with a forked crown. Sailors ran about making noise, others cried out. Boxcray sttod quietly. Turning the wheel, he sent the sloop to the right, into the quiet channel.

  ‘Uh,’ he wiped his forehead. ‘We’re clear. And nary a moment too soon! Would have been in dire straits if that maelstrom’d caught us. Oh, t’would’ve tossed us…’

  ‘Maelstroms! Ilyocoris! Vipers! Her illusions! They’ve worked! They’ve brought us to this foul place that’s swallowed countless men and ships before us!’

  ‘Others’ve perished here,’ Addario Bach said, pointing to the side. ‘True. There’s one of the dead.’

  Rotten and destroyed, it’s sides overgrown with algae, entwined with vines and moss stuck on the right side which was sunk in the swamp sat a shipwreck. They watched it as the weak current carried “The Prophet” by it.

  Boxcray nudged Geralt with his elbow.

  ‘Master Witcher,’ he said quietly, ‘the compass is acting barmy. The needle shows that we have shifted course again - east to south. If this ain’t the she-fox’s trickery, then this is foul news indeed. The swamp’s uncharted, but not a salt don’t know that it stretches far to the south the fairway. Means the river’s carrying us into the very depth of the swamps.’

  ‘We are drifting,’ said Addario Bach. ‘There is no wind. The current is flowing away from the river.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Geralt shook his head. ‘I’ve heard about these oxbows. They change the direction of the waters flow. Depending on high tide or low tide. And don’t forget about the vulpess. It may also be an illusion.’

  The banks were still covered with a dense ticket of swamp cypress, and there were also large truck, overgrown swamp plants. There were a lot of dead trees. From their lifeless trunks and branches hung thick garlands of Tillandsia, shining silver in the sun. From one of the branches was appeared a heron, swimming by studying the “Prophet” with fixed eyes.

  The lookout shouted.

  This time she was seen by all. Again she was standing on a branch hanging over the water, straight and motionless. Boxcray, without coercing, turned the wheel, sending the sloop to the left bank. The fox barked suddenly, loud and shrill. She barked again as “The Prophet” sailed past.

  As they sailed past the branch, in a flash she disappeared into the depth as a huge fox.

  ***

  ‘It’s a warning,
’ said the witcher when the hubbub on board had died down. ‘Prevention and a challenge. But also, a requirement.’

  ‘That we release the girl,’ Addario Bach stated. ‘Of course. But we can no let her go, because she’s dead.’

  Kevenard van Vliet moaned, clutching a bottle of whiskey. Wet, dirty and frightened, he no longer looked like a merchant who could afford his own ship. He looked like a petty thief caught stealing plums.

  ‘What do we do?’ He moaned. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘I know,’ Javil Fysh suddenly announced. ‘Tie the dead girl to a barrel and throw it over board. The vixen will tear her hair out mourning her cub. We’ll gain time.’

  ‘Shame on you, Master Fysh,’ the tanner’s voice suddenly becoming rigid. ‘A terrible thing to do with her remains. It’s not human.’

  ‘And was she a human? She was an elf, and half animal besides. I’m telling you, the barrel – it’s a good idea…’

  ‘An idea,’ Addario Bach drawled, ‘worthy of a madman or a complete idiot. Thinkin’ ye might be the latter. We show the fox wench we’ve killed the lass, we flaunt it, we’re done for.’

  ‘We didn’t kill that cub,’ Peter Cobbin intervened before Fysh crimson with anger could react. ‘Parlaghy did. He’s guilty. We’re clean.’

  ‘Indeed,’ confirmed Fysh, addressing not van Vliet or the witcher, but to Boxcray and the sailors. ‘Parlaghy’s the guilty one! Let the fox elfess have her vengeance on him. We’ll put him in the dinghy with the corpse, set them adrift. It’ll give us time to…’

  ‘Not on my watch.’

  ‘Nor on my ship!’ Kevenard van Vliet turned pale. ‘Master Parlaghy might indeed bear the guilt, but to throw him overboard, sentence him to death? No, not that.’

  ‘It’s his death, or ours!’ Fysh squealed. ‘What would you have us do? Witcher! Can we count on you should the vulpess come aboard?’

  ‘Yes, Fysh. I’ll defend even you.’

  There was silence.

  “The Prophet Lebioda” drifted among the fetid water, dragging algae behind them. From the branches watched pelicans and herons.

  ***

  The lookout gave a warning cry. A moment later everyone was shouting. Looking at the rotten shipwreck, overgrown with vines and mud. The one that they had seen an hour ago.

  ‘We’re sailin’ in circles.’ Confirmed the dwarf. ‘River must wind round on itself. Vulpess has got us caught in her trap.’

  ‘Only one way out,’ Geralt indicated the left branch with the maelstrom and it’s boiling water. ‘Sail through that.’

  ‘Through that geyser?’ Fysh roared. ‘Have you gone completely mad? It’ll smash us to splinters!’

  ‘Aye,’ confirmed Boxcray. ‘It will. Or turn us keel upwards and bury us in the bog. We’ll finish like that wreck. Look at the tree limbs whirl in that cataract. Can’t you see it’s might? It’d be our doom.’

  ‘An illusion, most likely. Another of the vulpess’s tricks.’

  ‘Likely? You think? A witcher, and you can’t tell?’

  ‘I’d recognise a weaker mirage. These are exceptionally powerful. Seems to me…’

  ‘It seems? And if you’re wrong?’

  ‘We have no choice,’ barked Boxcray.’ Either through the whirlpool, or around in circles till…’

  ‘Till we die,’ added Addario Bach. ‘Till we all fuckin’ die.’

  ***

  Whirling among the maelstrom was a tree that popped in and out of the water, it’s branches stretching like the splayed hands of a drowning man. The funnel was boiling seething, the foam swelled and frothed. “The Prophet” shook and jerked, the whirlpool sucked a it. The tree carried by the water smashed into the boards, spraying foam. The sloop began to sway and rotate faster and faster.

  Everyone about shouted.

  Suddenly all was quiet. The water calmed and became smooth like glass. “The Prophet Lebioda” gradually drifted among the overgrown marshy shore.

  ‘Spot on Geralt,’ Addario Bach cleared his throat. ‘T’was an illusion.’

  Boxcray stared at the witcher. He was silent. Finally, he took his cap off. His skull, it turned out, was as bald as an egg.

  ‘I’ve spent me whole life sailin’ rivers…’ he croaked finally. ‘Me wife begged it of me. On the river, she said, you’ll be safer. Safer than at sea. “I won’t worry meself sick each time ye set off on a voyage”’

  He placed his cap back on, shook his head, and tightened the grip in the wheel.

  ‘Is it over?’ Kevenard van Vliet asked. ‘Are we safe now?’

  No one answered his question.

  ***

  The water was thick with duckweed and algae. Among the shore grew cypresses, sticking out of the shallow were their pneumatophores, breathing roots, some of which stood seven feet in height. On a grassy island basked turtles, while frogs croaked.

  This time they heard her before they saw her. A loud, sharp bark, like a yelled threat or warning. She appeared on the shore in the guise of a fox on the trunk of a fallen tree. She barked, raising her head high. Geralt caught strange notes in her voice, he realised that in addition to the threat there was still an order. But she was not ordering them.

  The water under the trees suddenly started bubbling and from it emerged a monster, huge, all covered with a green and brown pattern on its scales. The monster, following the commands of the fox, swam through the water, right towards “The Prophet”.

  ‘Is it too…’ Addario Bach swallowed. ‘Is it an illusion?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Geralt. ‘Vodyanoi!’ he shouted at Boxcray and the sailors. ‘She has caught vodyanoi in her spell. Boat hooks! Grab the boat hooks!’

  The vodyanoi emerged next to the ship, they saw a flat, head overgrown with seaweed, bulging fish eyes and conical teeth in a large mouth. The monster violently hit the side of the boat, once, twice. The whole of “The Prophet” trembled.

  It swam from the hooks, swam, then dived for an instant with a splash and emerged at the stern, near the rudder. It grabbed the rudder and pulled hearing a crack.

  ‘Turn the wheel!’ Boxcray yelled, trying to hook the creature. ‘Turn the wheel! Pull the ropes! Drive away this bastard!’

  The vodyanoi gnawed and tore at the rudder, ignoring the shouts and blows from the hooks. The rudder cracked, and in the teeth of the creature was a piece of board. Whether it decided that this was enough or the spell of the fox lost its strength, it dived and disappeared.

  From the shore came the bark or the vulpess.

  ‘That her bark?’ Boxcray shouted, waving his arms. ‘Again? What’s next? What more can she do to us? Witcher!’

  ‘Gods…’ sobbed Kevenard van Vliet. ‘Forgive me for losing faith! Forgive us for killing the maiden! Gods, save us!’

  Suddenly they felt on their faces a sharp gust of wind. The gaff sadly hanging before “The Prophet” cracked and the boom creaked.

  ‘Clear sky up ahead,’ shouted Fysh from the bow. ‘There! Wide flat water! The river, for certain! Steer her there, Captain! There!’

  The channel began to expand, a green wall of reeds loomed off to the side.

  ‘Success!’ exclaimed Cobbin. ‘Ha! We won! We are out of the bogs!’

  ‘Mark one!’ shouted a sailor. ‘Mark one!’

  ‘Raise the rudder!’ Boxcray growled. ‘Shallows!’

  “The Prophet Lebioda” turned her nose towards the reeds.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Yelled Fysh. ‘Make for the river! There! There!’

  ‘Can’t! Too shallow! She’ll run aground. Gotta sail this branch till it joins the river. We’ve depth in this channel.’

  They again heard the vulpess barking. But could not see her.

  Addario Bach pulled Geralt’s sleeve.

  From the ladder leading from the hold, appeared Peter Cobbin, dragging Parlaghy by the collar, who could hardly stand. Walking behind them came a sailor, with the girl wrapped in a cloak. The re
maining four sailors faced the witcher. They held axes, spears and iron hooks.

  ‘Now here’s how it’s gonna be, damn it.’ Cobbin croaked. ‘We wanna live. Its high time we did something to that end.’

  ‘Put the child down,’ Geralt hissed. ‘And hands off the merchant, Cobbin.’

  ‘Nay, Master Witcher.’ The seaman shook his head. ‘The stiff and the peddler are going overboard. That’ll stop the she-beast! That’ll be our chance to flee.’

  ‘Best stay out of this. Witcher,’ rasped a second sailor. ‘We’ve naught against you, but get in our way and we’ll have to hurt you.’

  Kevenard van Vliet crouched at the side, cried and turned away. Boxcray also dutifully averted his eyes, his lips, it was clear did not support the rebellion of his crew.

  ‘This is how it is,’ Peter Cobbin pushed Parlaghy. ‘The merchant and the dead fox go overboard. It’s our only chance at salvation. Now step aside, witcher! C’mon lads, toss them in the dinghy!’

  ‘What dinghy?’ Addario Bach asked quietly. ‘Ye mean that one?’

  A long way from “The Prophet”, bent on the bench of the dinghy, rowed Javil Fysh, heading towards the reeds. The oars tore at the seaweed, spraying water.

  ‘Fysh!’ Yelled Cobbin. ‘You rotten bastard! You plowin’ whoreson!’

  Fysh turned, bent his elbow and showed them his dick, then again took up the oars. But did not row away.

  In front of the eyes of the crew of “The Prophet”, the boat suddenly jumped in the water, all saw a tail thrash the water and from the water the teeth and jaws of a huge crocodile. Fysh flew overboard, swam, screaming towards the shore, to the green crowns of the cypress in the shallows. The crocodile pursued him, but it was a slow pursuit. Fysh swam to shore, collapsed on a boulder and lay there. But it was not a boulder. A giant snapping turtle opened its mouth and grabbed Fysh’s arm above the elbow. Fysh howled, darted, twitched and slashed in the mud. The crocodile popped up and grabbed him by the leg. Fysh roared.

  For a moment it was not clear which of the reptiles possessed Fysh – the turtle or the crocodile. But, in the end, both left with something. The jaws of the turtle, with the left arm sticking out of it, a bloody mess with white bone. The rest of Fysh was taken by the crocodile. A large red stain was left on the surface of the water.