Season of Storms

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  “It’ll break the rudder!” Pudlorak bellowed, trying to stab the monster with a boathook. “It’ll break the rudder! Grab the halyards and raise it! Drive the bastard away from the rudder!”

  The vodyanoy chewed and jerked the rudder, oblivious to the cries and jabs of the boathooks. The blade gave way and a chunk of wood was left in the creature’s teeth. It had either decided that was enough or the she-fox’s spell had lost its force; suffice it to say that it dived and disappeared.

  They heard the aguara barking from the bank.

  “What next?” yelled Pudlorak, waving his arms. “What will she do next? Master Witcher!”

  “By the Gods …” sobbed Kevenard van Vliet. “Forgive us for not believing … Forgive us for killing the little girl! Ye Gods, save us!”

  They suddenly felt a breeze on their faces. The pennant on the Prophet—previously hanging pitifully—fluttered and the boom creaked.

  “It’s opening out!” Fysh shouted from the bow. “Over there, over there! A broad water, there’s no doubt it’s the river! Sail over there, skipper! Over there!”

  The river channel was indeed beginning to widen and something looking like broad water stretched beyond the green wall of reeds.

  “We did it!” called Cobbin. “Ha! We’ve won! We’ve escaped from the swamp!”

  “By the mark one,” yelled the leadsman. “By the mark o-o-one.”

  “Haul her over!” roared Pudlorak, shoving the helmsman away and carrying out his own order. “Shallooows!”

  The Prophet Lebioda’s prow turned towards the offshoot bristling with pneumatophores.

  “Where are you going?” Fysh bellowed. “What are you doing? Sail for the broad water. Over there! Over there!”

  “We can’t. There’s a shallow there. We’ll get stuck! We’ll sail to the broad water along an offshoot, it’s deeper here.”

  They heard the aguara bark again. But didn’t see her.

  Addario Bach tugged Geralt’s sleeve.

  Petru Cobbin emerged from the companionway of the afterpeak, dragging Parlaghy—who could barely stay on his feet—by the collar. A sailor followed him carrying the girl, wrapped in a cloak. The other four deckhands stood steadfastly beside them, facing the Witcher. They were holding battleaxes, tridents and iron hooks.

  “You can’t stop us, good sir,” rasped the tallest of them. “We want to live. The time has come to act.”

  “Leave the child,” drawled Geralt. “Let the merchant go, Cobbin.”

  “No, sir.” The sailor shook his head. “We’ll toss the body and the merchant overboard; that’ll stop the beast. Then we’ll get away.”

  “And don’t you lot interfere,” wheezed another. “We’ve nothing against you, but don’t stand in our way. Because you’ll get hurt.”

  Kevenard van Vliet curled up by the side and sobbed, turning his head away. Pudlorak also looked away resignedly and pursed his lips. He clearly wouldn’t react to his own crew’s mutiny.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Petru Cobbin, shoving Parlaghy. “Toss the merchant and the dead vixen overboard, that’s our only chance of escape. Out of the way, Witcher! Go on, boys! Into the boat with them!”

  “What boat?” asked Addario Bach calmly. “Do you mean that one, perhaps?”

  Javil Fysh, hunched over the oars of a boat, was rowing, heading for the broad water, already quite far from the Prophet. He was rowing hard; the oar blades were splashing water and strewing water weed around.

  “Fysh!” yelled Cobbin. “You bastard! You fucking whoreson!”

  Fysh turned around and raised his middle finger at them. Then took up the oars again.

  But he didn’t get far.

  In full view of the Prophet’s crew the boat suddenly shot up in a jet of water and they saw the toothy jaws of a gigantic crocodile, its tail thrashing. Fysh flew overboard and began to swim—screaming all the while—towards the bank, where cypress roots bristled in the shallows. The crocodile set off in pursuit, but the palisade of pneumatophores impeded its progress. Fysh swam to the bank and flopped down chest-first on a boulder lying there. But it wasn’t a boulder.

  An enormous lizard-like turtle opened its jaws and seized Fysh by his upper arm. He howled, struggled, kicked, flinging mud around. The crocodile broke the surface and caught him by the leg. Fysh screamed.

  For a moment, it wasn’t clear which of the two reptiles would catch Fysh—the turtle or the crocodile. But finally, both of them got something. An arm with a white, club-shaped bone sticking out of bloody pulp was left in the turtle’s jaws. The crocodile took the rest of Fysh’s body. A large red patch floated on the surface of the murky water.

  Geralt took advantage of the crew’s stupefaction. He snatched the dead girl from the deckhand and retreated towards the bow. Addario Bach stood beside him, armed with a boathook.

  Neither Cobbin nor any of the sailors tried to oppose him. On the contrary, they all ran hastily to the stern. Hastily. Not to say in a panic. Their faces suddenly took on a deathly pallor. Kevenard van Vliet, huddled by the side, hid his head between his knees and covered it with his arms.

  Geralt turned around.

  Whether Pudlorak hadn’t been paying attention or the rudder—damaged by the vodyanoy—wasn’t working, suffice it to say that the cutter had sailed right under some hanging boughs and was caught among fallen tree trunks. The aguara took advantage of it. She leaped down onto the prow, nimbly, lightly and noiselessly. In her vulpine form. Previously he’d seen her against the sky, when she had seemed black, pitch-black. She wasn’t. Her fur was dark and her brush ended in a snow-white blotch, but grey prevailed in her colouring, particularly on her head, which was more typical of a corsac fox than a silver one.

  She metamorphosed, growing larger and transforming into a tall woman. With a fox’s head. Pointed ears and an elongated muzzle. Rows of fangs flashed when she opened her jaws.

  Geralt knelt down, placed the little girl’s body gently on the deck and retreated. The aguara howled piercingly, snapped her toothy jaws and stepped towards him. Parlaghy screamed, waving his arms in panic, tore himself away from Cobbin’s grasp and jumped overboard. He sank at once.

  Van Vliet was weeping. Cobbin and the deckhands, still pale, gathered around Pudlorak. Pudlorak removed his cap.

  The medallion around the Witcher’s neck twitched powerfully, vibrated and made its presence felt. The aguara kneeled over the girl, making strange noises, neither growling nor hissing. She suddenly raised her head and bared her fangs. She snarled softly and a fire flared up in her eyes. Geralt didn’t move.

  “We are to blame,” he said. “Something truly ill has happened. But may no worse things occur. I cannot allow you to harm these men. I shall not allow it.”

  The vixen stood up, lifting the little girl. She swept her gaze over them all. And finally looked at Geralt.

  “You stood in my way,” she barked, clearly, slowly enunciating each word. “In their defence.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I am taking my daughter,” she finished. “That is more important than your lives. But it was you who stood in their defence, O White-Haired One. Thus, I shall come looking for you. One day. When you have forgotten. And will be least expecting it.”

  She hopped nimbly onto the bulwark and then onto a fallen trunk. And disappeared into the undergrowth.

  In the silence that fell only van Vliet’s sobbing could be heard.

  The wind dropped and it became muggy. The Prophet Lebioda, pushed by the current, freed itself from the boughs and drifted down the middle of the offshoot. Pudlorak wiped his eyes and forehead with his cap.

  The leadsman cried. Cobbin cried. And then the others added their voices.

  The thatched roofs of cottages could suddenly be seen beyond the thicket of reeds and wild rice. They saw nets drying on poles. A yellow strip of sandy beach. A jetty. And further away, beyond the trees on the headland, the wide river beneath a blue sky.

  “The river! The river! At la
st!”

  They all shouted. The deckhands, Petru Cobbin and van Vliet. Only Geralt and Addario Bach didn’t join in the yelling.

  Pudlorak, pushing on the wheel, also said nothing.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Cobbin. “Where are you going? Head for the river! Over there! For the river!”

  “Not a chance,” said the captain, and there was despair and resignation in his voice. “We’re becalmed, the ship barely responds to the wheel and the current grows stronger. We’re drifting, it’s pushing us, carrying us into the offshoot again. Back into the swamp.”

  “No!” Cobbin swore. And leaped overboard. And swam towards the beach.

  All the sailors followed his example. Geralt was unable to stop any of them. Addario Bach roughly shoved down van Vliet, who was preparing to jump.

  “Blue sky,” he said. “A golden, sandy beach. The river. It’s too beautiful to be true. Meaning it isn’t.”

  And suddenly the image shimmered. Suddenly, where a moment earlier there had been fishing cottages, a golden beach and the river beyond the headland, the Witcher for a brief moment saw a spider’s web of tillandsia trailing right down to the water from the boughs of decaying trees. Swampy banks, cypresses bristling with pneumatophores. Bubbles rising up from the murky depths. A sea of water plants. An endless labyrinth of branches.

  For a second, he saw what the aguara’s final illusion had been hiding.

  The men in the water began to suddenly scream and thrash around. And disappear below the surface, one by one.

  Petru Cobbin came up for air, choking and screaming, covered entirely in writhing, striped leeches, as fat as eels. Then he sank below the water and didn’t come up again.

  “Geralt!”

  Addario Bach used the boathook to pull the small boat, which had survived the encounter with the crocodile and had now drifted to the side of the ship. The dwarf jumped in and Geralt passed him the still stupefied van Vliet.

  “Captain.”

  Pudlorak waved his cap at them.

  “No, Master Witcher! I shall not abandon my ship. I’ll guide her into port, whatever happens! And if not, I’ll go down to the bottom with her! Farewell!”

  The Prophet Lebioda drifted calmly and majestically, gliding into an offshoot and vanishing from sight.

  Addario Bach spat on his hands, hunched forward and pulled on the oars. The boat sped over the water.

  “Where to?”

  “To the broad water, beyond the shallows. The river’s there. I’m certain. We’ll join the shipping channel and come across a ship. And if not, we’ll row this boat all the way to Novigrad.”

  “Pudlorak …?”

  “He’ll cope. If it’s his destiny.”

  Kevenard van Vliet wept. Addario rowed.

  The sky had grown dark. They heard the distant rumble of thunder.

  “A storm’s coming,” said the dwarf. “We’ll get bloody soaked.”

  Geralt snorted. And then began to laugh. Heartily and sincerely. And infectiously. Because a moment later they were both laughing.

  Addario rowed with powerful, even strokes. The boat skipped over the water like an arrow.

  “You row as though you’ve been doing it all your life,” said Geralt, wiping his eyes, wet with tears. “I thought dwarves didn’t know how to sail or swim …”

  “You’re succumbing to stereotypes.”

  INTERLUDE

  Four days later

  The auction house of the brothers Borsody was located in a small square off the Main Street, which was indeed Novigrad’s main road, and connected the town square with the temple of Eternal Fire. At the beginning of the brothers’ career, when they traded horses and sheep, they had only been able to afford a shack beyond the town walls. Forty-two years after founding their auction house they now occupied an impressive, three-storey building in the most elegant quarter of the city. It had remained in the family’s possession, but the objects at auction were now exclusively precious stones, chiefly diamonds, and works of art, antiques and collectors’ items. The auctions took place once a quarter, always on a Friday.

  That day the auction room was full to bursting. There are a good hundred people, thought Antea Derris.

  The buzz and murmur quietened down. The auctioneer, Abner de Navarette, took his place behind the podium.

  As usual, de Navarette looked splendid in a black velvet jerkin and waistcoat with golden brocade. Princes could have envied him his noble looks and physiognomy, and aristocrats his bearing and manners. It was an open secret that Abner de Navarette really was an aristocrat, banished from his family and disinherited for drunkenness, profligacy and debauchery. Had it not been for the Borsody family, Abner de Navarette would have lived by begging. But the Borsodys needed an auctioneer with aristocratic looks. And none of the other candidates could equal Abner de Navarette in that regard.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a voice as velvety as his jacket. “Welcome to the Borsodys’ Auction House for the quarterly auction of art treasures and antiques. The collection under the hammer today, which you became acquainted with in our gallery, is unique and comes entirely from private owners.

  “The vast majority of you, I note, are regular guests and clients, familiar with the rules of our House and the regulations that apply during auctions. Everybody here was given on entry a brochure containing the regulations. I thus presume that you are all informed regarding the rules and aware of the consequences of breaking them. Let us then begin without delay.

  “Lot number one: a nephrite group figure, depicting a nymph … hmm … with three fauns … It was made, according to our experts, by gnomes, dated as being a hundred years old. Starting price: two hundred crowns. I see two hundred and fifty. Going once. Going twice. Going three times. Sold to the gentleman with number thirty-six.”

  Two clerks perched at neighbouring desks diligently wrote down the results of the sales.

  “Lot number two: Aen N’og Mab Taedh’morc, a collection of elven tales and poems. Richly illustrated. Mint condition. Starting price: five hundred crowns. Five hundred and fifty, to Merchant Hofmeier. Councillor Drofuss, six hundred. Mr. Hofmeier, six hundred and fifty. No more bids? Sold for six hundred and fifty crowns to Mr. Hofmeier of Hirundum.

  “Lot number three: an ivory device, of a … hmm … curved and elongated shape … hmm … probably used for massage. Foreign provenance, age unknown. Starting price: a hundred crowns. To my left, a hundred and fifty. Two hundred, the lady in the mask with number forty-three. Two hundred and fifty, the lady in the veil with number eight. Do I hear three hundred? Three hundred, to the wife of apothecary Vorsterkranz. Three hundred and fifty! Going for the last time. Sold for three hundred and fifty crowns to the lady with number forty-three.

  “Lot number four: Antidotarius magnus, a unique medical treatise, published by Castell Graupian University at the beginning of the academy’s existence. Starting price: eight hundred crowns. I see eight hundred and fifty. Doctor Ohnesorg, Nine hundred. One thousand, the Honourable Marti Sodergren. Any more bids? Sold for one thousand crowns to the Honourable Sodergren.

  “Lot number five: Liber de naturis bestiarum, a rare edition, bound in beechwood boards, ornately illustrated …

  “Lot number six: Girl with a Kitten, portrait en trois quarts, oil on canvas, the Cintran school. Starting price …

  “Lot number seven: a bell with a handle, brass, dwarven work, the age of the item is difficult to ascertain, but it is without doubt antique. There is an engraving on the rim in dwarven runes, reading: ‘Why are you ringing it, you twat?’ Starting price …

  “Lot number eight: oils and tempera on canvas, artist unknown. A masterpiece. Please observe the rare use of colour, the play of pigments and the dynamics of the light. The semi-dark mood and the splendid colours of a majestically rendered sylvan landscape. And please note the main figure in the work’s central position: a stag in its rutting ground, in atmospheric chiaroscuro. Starting price …


  “Lot number nine: Ymago mundi, also known as Mundus novus. An extremely rare book, only one copy in the possession of the University of Oxenfurt and a few in private hands. Bound in cordovan. Excellent condition. Starting price: one thousand five hundred crowns. One thousand six hundred, the Honourable Vimme Vivaldi. One thousand six hundred and fifty, the Reverend Prochaska. One thousand seven hundred, the lady at the back of the room. One thousand eight hundred, Master Vivaldi. One thousand eight hundred and fifty, the Reverend Prochaska. One thousand nine hundred, Mr. Vivaldi. Bravo, Reverend Prochaska, two thousand crowns. Two thousand one hundred, Mr. Vivaldi. Do I hear two thousand two hundred?”

  “That book is godless, it contains a heretical message! It ought to be burned! I want to buy it to burn it! Two thousand two hundred crowns!”

  “Two thousand five hundred!” snorted Vimme Vivaldi, stroking a well-groomed white beard. “Can you top that, you devout arsonist?”

  “It’s a scandal! Mammon is triumphing over probity! Pagan dwarves are treated better than people! I shall complain to the authorities!”

  “Sold for two thousand five hundred crowns to Mr. Vivaldi,” Abner de Navarette announced calmly. “However, I remind the Reverend Prochaska about the rules and regulations of the Borsody Auction House.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Farewell. Please forgive the disturbance. It can happen that the uniqueness and wealth of the Borsody Auction House’s portfolio calls forth strong emotions. Let us continue. Lot number ten: an absolute curio, an exceptional find, two witcher swords. The House has decided not to offer them separately, but as a set, in honour of the witcher whom they served years ago. The first sword, made of steel from a meteorite. The blade was forged and sharpened in Mahakam, there are authentic dwarven punched patterns confirmed by our experts.

  “The other sword is silver. There are runic signs and glyphs, confirming its originality, on the cross guard and along the entire length of the blade. Starting price: one thousand crowns for the set. The gentleman with number seventeen, one thousand and fifty. Any more bids? Do I hear one thousand one hundred? For such rare items?”