Andrzej Sapkowski - [Witcher 06]

by The Lady of the Lake (fan translation) (epub)

  'Alone, I imagine …'

  'That would be best,' Dijkstra smiled. 'But, if you prefer, I have no objection to more eyes watching. for example, the beautiful eyes of the ladies of Montecalvo.'

  'Lower your voice,' the sorceress mutter, without erasing the smile from her lips.'

  'When will you grant me an interview?'

  'I'll think. I'll let you know. Now leave me alone, this is a ceremony. A great feast. I'll remind you, if you hadn't noticed.'

  'A great feast?'

  'We are on the threshold of a new era, Dijkstra.'

  The spy shrugged.

  The crowd was cheering. Fireworks went off. The bells of Novigrad rang, signalling the victory and as a sign of great glory.

  But the ringing was strangely mournful.

  * * *

  ‘Hold the reins, Jarre,’ Lucienne said. ‘I’m getting something to eat. Wrap the reins around your hand. I know you only have one.’

  Jarre felt a blush of shame and humiliation on his face. He was still not used to the constant feeling that people had nothing better to do but to stare at his stump and his sleeve which was sewn shut. That the world noticed him at all hours, pitying his injury and hypocritically lamenting his fortune, while in the depth of their souls despising him as something that dared to tamper with his ugliness, the beautiful reigning order.

  Lucienne, he had no choice but to admit, was quite different, in that sense, than the rest of the people. She neither pretended not to see or fell into mannerisms that degraded or humiliated him. Jarre several times found himself thinking that this blonde girl treated him naturally and normally. But that idea constant fought back. He Refused to accept it, because he could not bring himself to behave normally or naturally.

  The wagon carrying the war amputees squeaked and rattled. After a short rainy season had come the sweltering heat. The potholes formed by the passage of continuous military convoys had dried and hardened, becoming ridges, edges and protrusions of fantastic shapes, and they rolled over these pulled by four horses. The wagon swung and swayed like a ship in a storm. The mutilated, most lame and legless soldiers cursed and swore hoarsely. Lucienne held onto Jarre, hugging him, sharing her magical warmth, his prodigious softness and exciting mix of smells – horse, leather, hay, oats and girlish sweat.

  The wagon jumped at the next pothole. Jarre pulled on the rein wrapped around his wrist. Lucienne, alternately eating bread and sausage clung to his side.

  ‘Well, well …’ she noticed his brass medallion and craftily took advantage that Jarre’s one hand was occupied with the reins. ‘What have we here? A love charm? So you were tricked as well? The guy, who invented this trinket, had to be a pretty darn good trafficker. The demand for these were great during the war, especially after too much vodka. What is the name of the girl you wear inside? Let me see …’

  ‘Lucienne,’ Jarre blushed like a tomato, ‘do not open it, please … I’m sorry, but that is my personal thing. I do not want to offend you, but …’

  The wagon jumped and Lucienne snuggled into Jarre silently.

  ‘Ci …ril …la,’ he said with effort, he did not expected a peasant girl to have far-reaching knowledge.

  ‘You will not forget about her,’ she shut the locket and let it go, then looked at the boy. ‘This Cirilla, that is. If you truly loved her. Amulets and spells are useless. If she loves you, she will be faithful and waiting.’

  ‘For this?’ Jarre raised his stump.

  The girl narrowed her eyes, blue as forget-me-nots.

  ‘If she really loves you, she’ll be waiting,’ she said firmly. ‘And nothing else matters. I know this.’

  ‘You have a lot of experience?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Lucienne blushed this time. ‘I had, what I had and with whom. But do not think I belong with those who nod their head and lie down on their back and spread their legs. But I know what I know. If a girl loves a man, so loves all of him and not little pieces. Therefore, she loves him even when a piece is missing.’

  The wagon jumped.

  ‘You are oversimplifying it,’ Jarre said through clenched teeth. ‘Oversimplifying and idealising, Lucienne. You’re forgetting the little detail, that is when a man is whole, he is supposed to be able to support his wife and family. As a cripple I cannot …’

  ‘Bah, do not cry into my apron,’ she said without a fuss. ‘The Black ones took your hand, not your head. What are you looking at? I’m from the country, but I have eyes and ears. I’m bright enough to know by the way you talk that you are a scholar. In addition …’

  She cleared her throat. Jarre also cleared his throat, and breathed her scent. The wagon jumped.

  ‘Besides,’ finished the girl, ‘I heard what you were saying to others. That your are learned. That you were a scribe in a temple. So the hand … Bah …’

  The wagon had been driving for a while without hitting any potholes, but Jarre and Lucienne seemed unaware – they remained firmly pressed together.

  ‘Well,’ she said after a long pause, ‘I’m lucky with scholars. There was one … I used to … He walked behind me … He knew a lot, and had gone through an academy. It even showed in his name.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Semester.’

  ‘Hey, girl,’ called Sergeant Derkacz from behind them, a creepy looking man who was crippled during the battle of Mayena. ‘Crack the whip over those geldings heads, this cart is crawling along like snot down a wall!’

  ‘Yeah, pick up the pace,’ added a second cripple, scratching under his pants leg at a stump covered with shiny pink skin. ‘We’ve had enough of these wastelands. I miss the taverns. You don’t know what I’d do for a beer! Can we not go faster?’

  ‘I can,’ Lucienne turned around on the wagon box. ‘But if I break a hole in the wheel or the axle, you won’t be drinking beer, only rain water. You’ll be waiting a week before we can bring any more wagons for you.’

  ‘Too bad,’ grinned Derkacz, ’because the other night I had a dream that we were married. You could carry me on your back …’

  ‘You smelly goat,’ cried Lucienne. ‘The plague take you …’

  She stopped, seeing all the faces of the disabled men travelling in the wagon suddenly turn deathly pale.

  ‘The gods!’ cried one of them. ‘And we were so close to home …’

  ‘We are lost,’ Derkacz said quietly and without any fuss. He was simply stating a fact.

  And they said, Jarre thought to himself, that there were no longer any Squirrels. That we had killed them all. That the issue with the elves had been resolved.

  There were six horses. But on closer inspection there were eight riders. Two of the mounts carried two people. All the horses had a stilted, arrhythmic gait, their heads bowed low. They looked exhausted.

  Lucienne sighed deeply.

  The elves approached. They looked even worse than their horses. Nothing remained of their pride, their disdainful superiority or charismatic differences. Their clothing, usually decorative even in the guerrilla squads, was dirty and ragged. Their hair, their pride and glory, was matted, sticky with dirt and dried blood. Their big eyes, usually devoid of any expression, were now abysses of panic and despair.

  Nothing remained of their differences. Death, fear, hunger and adversity had made them ordinary. Very ordinary.

  They did not inspire fear.

  Jarre, for a moment thought that they would linger, but they simply cross paths and disappear into the woods, without bothering to look at the wagon and its passengers. They only left behind them a smell, an unpleasant smell that Jarre remembered from the field hospitals – the smell of misery, urine, and festering wounds.

  They passed by without bothering to look at them.

  But not all.

  An elf with long dark hair, caked with dirt and dried blood, stopped her horse near the wagon. She sat in her saddle hunched over, her arm was in a bloody bandage which flies climbed on.

  ‘Toruviel,’
said one of her comrades, ‘En’ca digne, luned.’

  Lucienne quickly realised what was happening. She knew what she was seeing in the elf, having been raised in a village, she had known the livid spectre of hunger. Therefore, she reacted instinctive and unequivocal. She offered the elf some bread.

  ‘En’ca digne, Touruviel,’ repeated the elf. He was the only one of all the company wearing an emblem on his torn jacket sleeve of the silver lightning of the Vrihedd brigade.

  The cripples in the wagon had remained still, not moving a muscle until that instant, suddenly shivering as if a spell had released them. In their hands, held out to the elves, as if by magic, appeared food, bread, cheese, slices of bacon and sausages.

  And the elves, for the first time in a thousand years, spread their hands towards humans.

  Lucienne and Jarre were the first people who saw the elves cry. Great choking sobs, not even trying to wipe the tears from their dirty faces. Refuting the claims that elves did not have tear ducts.

  ‘En’ca … Digne,’ repeated the elf with the lightning bolt on his sleeve. He then reached out and took the bread from Derkacz.

  ‘Thank you,’ he croaked, finding it difficult to adjust his lips to the strange language. ‘Thank you, man.’

  After a while, seeing that everyone was finished, Lucienne clicked at the horses and jerked the reins. The wagon began to creak and rattle. They were silent.

  It was approaching evening when they met armed horsemen. They were led by a woman with white, short-cropped hair, her face disfigured by scars. One bisected her face from the corner of her mouth in an arc to her eye. The woman was missing half of her right ear and her left arm below the elbow ended in a leather cuff with a brass hook, which the reins were wrapped around.

  The woman, with a hostile look that betrayed her fierce desire for revenge, asked about the elves. About the Scoia’tael. The terrorists. The fugitives, survivors from a commando unit destroyed two days ago.

  Jarre, Lucienne and the cripples in the wagon avoided eye contact with the white-haired, one-handed rider and indistinctly mumbled that they had not seen any elves or met anybody on the road.

  You lie, thought the woman who was once Black Rayla. I know you are lying. You lie out of pity. But even so that will not help them, because I, White Rayla, do not know pity.

  * * *

  ‘Hooray, dwarves! Long live Els Barclay!’

  In Novigrad the pavement rumbled beneath the shod boots of the veterans of the Volunteer Army. The dwarves marched in a formation of five, waving their flags which depicted crossed hammers.

  ‘Long live Mahakam! Long live the dwarves!’

  ‘Glory and honour to them!’

  Suddenly, someone in the crowd laughed. And soon everybody was laughing.

  ‘This is a scandal …’ gasped Hemmelfart. ‘An affront … It is unforgivable …’

  ‘Vile people,’ hissed the priest Willemer.

  ‘Pretend you do not see them,’ Foltest told them calmly.

  ‘We should not have skimped when dividing the spoils,’ said Meve sourly. ‘And refused to supplement the rations.’

  The dwarven officers retained their seriousness and form, and stood before the grandstand and saluted. The non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Volunteer Army, however, expressed their discontent against the austerity measures imposed by the kings and hierarch. Some of them, once past the grandstand, showed the kings a bent elbow, other made one of their favourite gestures – a clenched fist with an upright middle finger. Scholars describe the gesture as digitus infamis. Common people called it something worse.

  The blush on the faces of the kings and the hierarch showed that they were familiar with both names.

  ‘We should not have insulted their greed,’ Meve insisted. ‘There people are very fastidious.’

  * * *

  The howling around Elskerdeg became a gruesome chant. None of the men sitting by the fire paid any attention.

  The first to speak after the long silence was Boreas Mun.

  ‘The world has changed. Justice has been done.’

  ‘You overdid it a bit with the justice, my friend,’ the pilgrim smiled. ‘However, I agree that the world has changed. Adjusting to the fundamental laws of physics.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said the elf, ‘if we are thinking of the same laws.’

  ‘Every action,’ said the pilgrim, ‘has a reaction.’

  The elf chuckled, but it sounded friendly.

  ‘A point to you, human.’

  * * *

  ‘Stefan Skellen, son of Bertram Skellen, former Imperial Coroner, stand up. The Supreme Court of the eternal Empire by the grace of the Great Sun finds you guilty of crimes and abuse, of which you were charged. For the treason and active participation in a conspiracy against the Empire as well as the person of the Imperial Majesty. Your guilt has been ratified and proven and the Tribunal has found without any extenuation circumstances. Also His Imperial Majesty has exercised his right not to grant a pardon. Stefan Skellen, son of Bertram Skellen, you will be transported from this courtroom to the Citadel, where you will be held until the proper time comes. As a traitor to your homeland of Nilfgaard, you are unworthy to tread upon its ground; you will be laid on a wooden skid and dragged by horses to Millennium Square. As a traitor to his homeland of Nilfgaard, you are unworthy to breathe the air; you will be hanged by the neck on the gallows between heaven and earth. So you will stay there until you die. Then your body will be cremated and the ashes scattered to the winds on the four sides of the world. Stefan Skellen, son of Bertram Skellen, traitor. I the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Empire, sentence you and this is the last time I will speak your name. From now on, let it be forgotten.’

  * * *

  ‘We did it, we made it!’ Professor Oppenhauser shouted as he burst into the dean’s office. ‘We did it, gentlemen! Finally! Finally! It works! It moves! It works!’

  ‘Really?’ Jean La Voisier, professor of chemistry, called Carbonstinker by his students, asked sceptically. ‘Is it really possible? And how, out of curiosity, does it work?’

  ‘Perpetual motion!’

  ‘Perpetuum mobile?’ exclaimed Edmund Bumbler, the elderly zoology lecturer. ‘You’re not exaggerating, my dear colleague?’

  ‘Not at all!’ Oppenhauser exclaimed, jumping like a goat. ‘Not at all! It works! I’ve launched a functional mobile and it works! Without stopping! Perpetually! For ever and ever! There are no words to describe it, colleagues, you have to see it! Come with me, hurry!’

  ‘I’m eating breakfast,’ Carbonstinker protested, but his protest was lost in the commotion, excitement and widespread bustle.

  The teachers, graduates and students stood up to collect their togas, capes and gowns and ran to the door, led by the shouting and gesticulation Oppenhauser. Carbonstinker dismissed them with a digitus infamis and returned to the roll on his plate.

  The group of scholars were on the march ready to see the fruit of Oppenhauser’s thirty years of efforts, they ran quickly towards the office and were about to open the door when suddenly the ground trembled. Noticeably. And strongly. Very strongly.

  It was a seismic shock, one of a series of shocks caused by the destruction of the castle Stygga the hiding place of the sorcerer, Vilgefortz. The seismic wave from far off Ebbing had reached here to Oxenfurt.

  With a clatter, several panes of stained glass fell from the front of the Department of Fine Arts. The dusty bust of Nicodemus de Boot, the first rector of the academic institution, fell from its pedestal. Carbonstinker’s cup of tea fell from the table where he was eating his roll. From a banana tree a freshmen from the physics department, Albert Solpietra, fell while trying to impress the female medical students.

  The perpetual motion machine of Professor Oppenhauser, the legendary inventor, moved for the last time, before standing still. Forever. And it was never possible to restart it.

  * * *

  ‘Long live the dwarves! Long live Mahakam!’ />
  What a band, what soldiers, thought the hierarch Hemmelfart, as he bless the parade with his trembling hands. Who are they cheering here? The venal condottieri, the obscene dwarves, what kind of madness is this? In the end, who won this war, them or us? By the gods, I have to warn the monarchs. When historians and scribes are put to work, we must subject their works through censorship. Mercenaries, witchers, murderers for hire, non-humans and all kinds of suspicious items should disappear from the annals of mankind. We have to erase them. Not a word about them. Not a word.

  And not a word about him too, he thought, clenching his lips and looking at Dijkstra, watching the parade with a clearly bored expression.

  It will be necessary, thought the hierarch, to issue a command to the kings about Dijkstra. His presence is an insult to decent people. This atheist and villain. Let him disappear without a trace. And let him be forgotten.

  * * *

  This is what you think, you sanctimonious purple pig, thougth Philippa Eilhart, effortlessly reading the hierarch’s mind. Do you want to rule, do you want to dictate and influence? Would you like to decide? Never! The only thing you can decide about is your haemorrhoids and even that is on your own ass, and you decisions there will not be relevant either.

  And Dijkstra remains. As long as I need him.

  * * *

  Once you make a mistake, thought the priest Willemer, fixing his eyes on the shiny red lips of Philippa Eilhart. Or any of you make a mistake. And you’ll lose your conceit, arrogance and pride. The plots that you weave. Your immorality. Your atrocity and perversions to which you surrender, in which you live. All light will eventually leave, and the pestilence of your sins will spread when you make a mistake. The moment will come.

  Because even if you do not make a mistake, I will find a way to defame you. Some misfortune will befall mankind – a curse, a plague, a pestilence of perhaps an epidemic … Then all the blame will be on you. You will be punished for not having been able to prevent the plague, by not knowing how to avoid its consequences. You will carry with you all the blame.