‘Geraaaaalt! A friend of the vampiiiire’s!’
‘Oh! You ought to have said so at once!’
At a sign from the druidess, the tree creature put them on the ground. Not very gently. Milva was unconscious, with blood dripping from her nose. Geralt stood up with difficulty and kneeled before her.
The steely-haired flaminika stood beside them and gave a slight cough. Her face was very lean, even haggard, evoking unpleasant associations of a skull covered in skin. Her cornflower-blue eyes were kind and gentle.
‘I believe she has broken ribs,’ she said, looking at Milva. ‘But we shall soon remedy that. Our healers will give her help immediately. I regret what has happened. But how was I to know who you were? I didn’t invite you to Caed Myrkvid or give my permission for you to enter our sanctuary. Emiel Regis vouched for you, admittedly, but the presence of a witcher in our forest, a paid killer of living creatures…’
‘I shall get out of here without a moment’s delay, honourable flaminika,’ Geralt assured her. ‘As soon as I—’
He broke off, seeing druids with flaming torches walking up to the pyre and the effigy full of people.
‘No!’ he cried, clenching his fists. ‘Stop!’
‘That cage,’ said the flaminika, seeming not to hear him, ‘was originally meant to serve as a winter manger for starving animals, was meant to have stood in the forest, stuffed with hay. But when we seized those scoundrels, I recalled the nasty rumours and calumnies which people spread about us. Very well, I thought, you can have your Wicker Hag. You made it up as a horrific nightmare, so I shall treat you to that nightmare…’
‘Order them to stop,’ the Witcher gasped. ‘Honourable flaminika… Don’t set light to it… One of the bandits has important information for me…’
The flaminika folded her arms on her chest. Her cornflower-blue eyes were still soft and gentle.
‘Oh, no,’ she said dryly. ‘No chance. I don’t believe in the institution of turning imperial evidence. Wriggling out of a punishment is immoral.’
‘Stop!’ The Witcher yelled. ‘Don’t set fire to it! Stooo—’
The flaminika made a short gesture with her hand and Little Tree, still standing nearby, stamped down its roots and laid a bough on the Witcher’s shoulder. Geralt sat down with a thump.
‘Light it!’ the flaminika ordered. ‘I’m sorry, Witcher, but it must be thus. We druids cherish and venerate life in all its forms. But sparing the lives of criminals is sheer stupidity. Only terror deters criminals. So we shall give them an example of it. I pin great hopes on not having to repeat this example.’
The brushwood caught fire in an instant. The pyre belched smoke and flames leaped up. The yelling and screaming coming from the Wicker Hag made the Witcher’s hair stand on end. Of course, it was impossible among the cacophony–made louder by the crackle of the fire–but it seemed to Geralt that he could make out Nightingale’s desperate croaking and the high-pitched, pain-filled shrieks of the half-elf Schirrú.
The half-elf had been right, he thought. Death isn’t always the same.
And then–after a terribly long time–the pyre and the Wicker Hag mercifully exploded into an inferno of roaring fire, a fire in which nothing could survive.
‘Your medallion, Geralt,’ said Angoulême, standing beside him.
‘Eh?’ He cleared his throat, for his throat was tight. ‘What did you say?’
‘Your silver medallion with the wolf. Schirrú had it. Now you’ve lost it forever. It’ll melt in that heat.’
‘Too bad,’ he said a moment later, looking into the flaminika’s cornflower-blue eyes. ‘I’m no longer a witcher. I’ve stopped being a witcher. I’ve learned that now. On Thanedd, in the Tower of the Seagull. In Brokilon. On the bridge on the Yaruga. In the cave beneath Gorgon. And here, in Myrkvid Forest. No, I’m not a witcher now. So I’ll have to learn to manage without my medallion.’
The king loved the queen boundlessly, and she loved him with all her heart. Something so fair had to finish unhappily.
Flourens Delannoy, Fairy Tales and Stories
Delannoy, Flourens, linguist and historian b. 1432 in Vicovaro, in the years 1460–1475 secretary and librarian to the imperial court. Indefatigable scholar of legends and folktales, he wrote many treatises considered classics of ancient language and literature of the Empire’s northern regions. His most important works are: Myths and Legends of the Peoples of the North; Fairy Tales and Stories; The Surprise, or the Myth of the Elder Blood; A Saga about a Witcher, and The Witcher and the Witcher Girl, or the Endless Search. From 1476 professor at the academy in Castell Graupian, where d. 1510.
Effenberg and Talbot, Encyclopaedia Maxima Mundi, Volume IV
CHAPTER EIGHT
A strong wind blew in from the sea, ruffling the sails, and a drizzle like thin hail stung the voyagers’ faces painfully. The water in the Great Canal was leaden, rippled by the wind and flecked by a rash of rain.
‘Come this way, sire. The boat is waiting.’
Dijkstra sighed heavily. He was thoroughly sick of the sea voyage. He’d been delighted by those few moments on the hard and solid rock wharf, and he was pissed off at the thought of stepping onto a wobbly deck once again. But what else to do? Lan Exeter, Kovir’s winter capital, differed fundamentally from the world’s other capital cities. In the harbour of Lan Exeter, travellers arriving by sea disembarked onto the stone quay only to immediately embark onto another craft; a slender many-oared boat with a highly upturned prow and slightly lower stern. Lan Exeter was built on the water, in the wide estuary of the River Targo. The city had canals instead of streets–and all municipal transportation was by boat.
He got in, greeting the Redanian ambassador waiting for him by the gangway. The boat was pushed away from the quay, the oars struck the water evenly, the boat moved off and picked up speed. The Redanian ambassador said nothing. Ambassador, Dijkstra thought mechanically. For how many years had Redania been sending ambassadors to Kovir? A hundred and twenty, at most. For a hundred and twenty years Kovir and Poviss had been foreign to Redania. Though it hadn’t always been that way.
From time immemorial Redania had treated the countries in the North, on the Gulf of Praxeda, as part of its fiefdom. Kovir and Poviss were–it was said at the Tretogorian court–the greatest protectorates in the “Crown dominions”. Successive earls were called Troydenids, since they were descended–or so they claimed–from their common forebear, Troyden. Prince Troyden had been the natural brother of Radovid I, King of Redania, later called the Great. Even in his youth Troyden was already a lewd and extremely beastly character. People were afraid when they realised he would develop with time. King Radovid–no exception in this regard–detested his brother like the plague. He thus appointed him Earl of Kovir in order to be rid of him, to move him as far away as possible. And nowhere was further away than Kovir.
Earl Troyden was formally a liegeman of Redania, but an atypical one–he didn’t bear any feudal obligations or duties. Why, he didn’t even have to take the ceremonial feudal oath! All that was demanded of him was a pledge of ‘no interference’. Some said that Radovid simply pitied his brother, knowing that the Koviran “protectorate” couldn’t afford to pay tax or raise armies. Others, though, claimed Radovid simply wanted the earl out of his sight–the thought that his younger brother might turn up in Tretogor in person with money or military aid made him sick. No one knew what was true, but so it was, and so it remained. Many years after the death of Radovid I, the law established by the great king was still binding in Redania. Firstly, the county of Kovir was a vassal, but did not have to pay or serve. Secondly, the Koviran inheritance was in the exclusive control of the House of Troyden. Thirdly, Tretogor did not interfere in the affairs of the House of Troyden. Fourthly, members of the House of Troyden were not invited to Tretogor for ceremonies celebrating state holidays. Fifthly, nor for any other occasion.
Essentially, few knew and few were interested in what went on in the North. News about
conflicts between Kovir and smaller northern rulers reached Redania, mainly by a roundabout route through Kaedwen. About alliances and wars; with Hengfors, Malleore, Creyden, Talgar and other lands with difficult-to-remember names. Someone conquered someone else and swallowed them up, someone allied with someone else in a dynastic union, someone routed and subjugated someone else. Essentially: no one knew who, whom or why.
However, news about wars and battles lured to the North a whole myriad of brawlers, adventurers, thrill seekers and other restless spirits, looking for plunder and the chance to blow off steam. They were drawn there from all the corners of the world, even from countries as distant as Cintra and Rivia. But they were above all citizens of Redania and Kaedwen. Entire cavalry squadrons came to Kovir, in particular from Kaedwen; rumour even trumpeted that the notorious Aideen, the rebellious, illegitimate daughter of the Kaedwenian monarch, rode at the head of one of them. In Redania it was said that designs were forming at the court in Ard Carraigh for the annexation of the northern county and severing it from the Redanian crown. Some even began clamouring for armed intervention.
Tretogor, however, ostentatiously announced that the North didn’t interest it. As the royal jurists deemed, the principle of mutuality applied–the Koviran state had no obligations to the crown, so the crown wouldn’t come to Kovir’s aid. All the more so since Kovir had never asked for any help.
Meanwhile, Kovir and Poviss had emerged stronger and more powerful from the wars waged in the North. Few knew about that back then. A clearer signal of the North’s growing might was a more and more vigorous export market. For decades it had been said of Kovir that the land’s only wealth was sand and sea water. That joke was recalled when production from the Koviran foundries and salt works virtually monopolised the world’s glass and salt markets.
But although hundreds of people drank from glasses with the mark of the Koviran foundries and seasoned their soup with Poviss salt, in people’s awareness it was still an extremely distant, inaccessible, harsh and hostile land. And, above all, foreign.
In Redania and Kaedwen, rather than ‘go to Hell’ people said ‘get to Poviss’. If you don’t like working for me, a master would say to his unruly journeymen, ‘the path’s clear to Kovir’. ‘We won’t have Koviran order here’, shouted a schoolmaster at his disobedient and boisterous pupils. ‘Go mouth off in Poviss’, called a farmer to his son when he was critical of his forefathers’ ard and swidden agriculture.
If anyone doesn’t like the old order, ‘the road’s open to Kovir’!
The recipients of these statements slowly–very slowly–began to ponder them and soon noticed that indeed nothing, absolutely nothing, was barring their way to Kovir and Poviss. A second wave of emigration set off for the North. Just like the previous one, this one mainly consisted of discontented mavericks who were different and wanted things done differently. But this time they weren’t troublemakers and misfits at odds with life. Well, at least not all of them.
Scholars who believed in their theories, although they had been shouted down and called demented, headed North. Technicians and constructors, convinced that contrary to popular opinion it was possible to build the machines and devices invented by the scholars. Sorcerers, for whom the use of magic to erect breakwaters wasn’t a sacrilegious offence. Merchants for whom the prospect of a growth in turnover was capable of exploding the rigid, static and short-sighted limits of risk. Farmers and stock breeders, convinced that one could create fertile fields from even the worst soil, that it was always possible to breed varieties of animals in a given climate.
Miners and geologists, for whom the bleakness of Kovir’s barren mountains and rocks was an infallible signal that if there was such paucity on the surface there must be wealth beneath, also headed North. For nature loves equilibrium.
There was wealth beneath those wastes.
A quarter of a century passed–and Kovir had extracted as many minerals as Redania, Aedirn and Kaedwen taken together. Only Mahakam surpassed Kovir in the extraction and processing of iron ore, but transports full of metal serving the production of alloys went from Kovir to Mahakam. Kovir and Poviss accounted for a quarter of the world’s yield of silver, nickel, lead, tin and zinc, half of the extraction of copper ore and native copper, three quarters of the yield of manganese, chromium, titanium and tungsten ores, and the same amount of metals occurring only in their native form: platinum, ferroaurum, kryobelitium and dimeritium.
And more than eighty per cent of the world’s gold production.
Gold, with which Kovir and Poviss bought what didn’t grow or wasn’t bred in the North. And what Kovir and Poviss didn’t produce. Not because they were unable to or didn’t have the expertise, but because it didn’t pay. A craftsman from Kovir or Poviss–the son or grandson of an immigrant who went there with a bindle on his back–now earned fourfold that of his counterpart in Redania or Temeria.
Kovir traded and wanted to trade with the whole world, on a greater and greater scale. But it couldn’t.
Radovid III became king of Redania, and shared with Radovid the Great–his great-grandfather–the same name as well as the same cunning and miserliness. That king–called the Bold by fawners and hagiographers, and Rufus by everybody else–had observed what none before him had wanted to. Why didn’t Redania have a single farthing of the gigantic trade engaged in by Kovir? Why, Kovir was just a meaningless county, a fiefdom, a tiny jewel in the Redanian crown. It was time the Koviran vassal began to serve its suzerain!
A wonderful opportunity occurred to do so; Redania had a border dispute with Aedirn, as usual concerning the Pontar valley. Radovid III was determined to take up arms and began to prepare for it. He promulgated a special tax for military purposes, called the ‘Pontar tithe’. All of his subjects and vassals were to pay it. Without exception. Kovir included. Rufus rubbed his hands. Ten per cent of Kovir’s income; that was something!
Redanian emissaries made for Pont Vanis, imagined as a small town with a wooden palisade. They communicated astonishing news to Rufus on their return.
Pont Vanis wasn’t a small town. It was a great city, the summer capital of Kovir, whose ruler, King Gedovius, sent King Radovid the following answer:
The Kingdom of Kovir is no one’s vassal. Redania’s petitions and claims are groundless and based on the dead letter of a law which never had any force. The kings of Redania have never been the overlords of Kovir, for the rulers of Kovir–as can easily be checked in the annals–have never paid Redania tribute, have never carried out military servitude and, most importantly, have never been invited to celebrations of state holidays. Or any others.
Therefore, the King of Kovir informed the emissaries–with regret–that he could not recognise King Radovid as his seigneur or suzerain, much less pay him a tithe. Nor could any of the Koviran vassals or arriere vassals–which were subject exclusively to the Koviran suzerainty.
In short: let Redania mind its own business and not stick its nose into the affairs of Kovir, a sovereign kingdom.
Cold fury welled up in Rufus. A sovereign kingdom? A foreign land? Very well. We shall deal with Kovir as we would any foreign province.
Redania, along with Kaedwen and Temeria–incited by Rufus–applied against Kovir a retaliatory tax and ruthless right of storage. A merchant from Kovir, heading southward, had to, whether he liked it or not, put all his goods on sale in one of Redania’s cities and sell it or return home. That same constraint faced a merchant from the distant South, when making for Kovir.
Redania demanded heavy duty on goods which Kovir shipped by sea, even if they were not calling at Redanian or Temerian ports. Koviran ships, naturally, didn’t want to pay–and only those who didn’t manage to escape paid. The game of cat and mouse begun on the sea quickly led to an incident. A Redanian patrol craft tried to arrest a Koviran merchant, two Koviran frigates appeared, the patrol craft went up in flames. There were casualties.
The line had been overstepped. Radovid decided to discipline his d
isobedient vassal. A four-thousand strong Redanian army crossed the River Braa, and an expeditionary force from Kaedwen invaded Caingorn.
After a week, the two thousand surviving Redanians crossed the Braa the other way, and the poorly-equipped survivors of the Kaedwenian corps trudged home across the passes of the Kestrel Mountains. This had revealed a further purpose which the northern gold served. Kovir’s permanent army consisted of twenty-five thousand professionals seasoned by combat–and banditry–as well as mercenaries drafted from the far corners of the world, unreservedly loyal to the Koviran crown for their exceptionally generous pay and a pension guaranteed by contract. Prepared for any risk for the exceptionally generous bonuses paid out after every victorious battle. Further, these wealthy soldiers were led in battle by experienced, able–and now extremely wealthy–commanders whom Rufus and King Benda of Kaedwen knew very well; they were the same ones who not long before had served in their armies, but had unexpectedly retired and gone abroad.
Rufus was no fool and could learn from his mistakes. He quelled his swaggering remaining generals, who were demanding a crusade, ignored the merchants calling for a starvation blockade, and mollified Benda of Kaedwen, who was greedy for blood and revenge for the extermination of his elite unit. Rufus initiated negotiations unrestrained by the prospect of humiliation, by the bitter pill he had to swallow; Kovir agreed to talks, but on their territory, in Lan Exeter. He had to eat humble pie.
They sailed to Lan Exeter like petitioners, thought Dijkstra, wrapping himself in his cloak. Like humble supplicants. Quite like me today.
The Redanian squadron sailed into the Gulf of Praxeda and headed towards the Koviran coast. From the deck of the flagship Alata, Radovid, Benda of Kaedwen–and the hierarch of Novigrad accompanying them in the role of mediator–observed in astonishment the breakwaters extending into the sea, above which rose the walls and sturdy bastions of the fortress guarding access to the city of Pont Vanis. And sailing north from Pont Vanis, towards the mouth of the River Targo, the kings saw port alongside port, shipyard beside shipyard, harbour by harbour. They saw a forest of masts and the blinding white of sails. Kovir, it turned out, was prepared for blockades, embargos and duty wars. Kovir was clearly ready to dominate the seas.
The Tower of Swallows Page 29
