The prefects offered a generous reward; and at the beginning, there were people who were tempted by Nilfgaardian gold. But at night, the informers’ cottages were set on fire, and the people escaping from the inferno died on the glittering blades of the spectral riders circling in the smoke. The Rats attacked like rats. Quietly, treacherously, cruelly. The Rats adored killing.
The prefects used methods which had been tried and tested against other gangs; several times they tried to install a traitor among the Rats. Unsuccessfully. The Rats didn’t accept anyone. The close-knit and loyal group of six created by the time of contempt didn’t want strangers. They despised them.
Until the day a pale-haired, taciturn girl, as agile as an acrobat, appeared. A girl about whom the Rats knew nothing.
Aside from the fact that she was as they had once been; like each one of them. Lonely and full of bitterness, bitterness for what the time of contempt had taken from her.
And in times of contempt anyone who is alone must perish.
Giselher, Kayleigh, Reef, Iskra, Mistle, Asse and Falka. The prefect of Amarillo was inordinately astonished when he learnt that the Rats were now operating as a gang of seven.
‘Seven?’ said the prefect of Amarillo in astonishment, looking at the soldier in disbelief. ‘There were seven of them, not six? Are you certain?’
‘May I live and breathe,’ muttered the only soldier to escape the massacre in one piece.
His wish was quite apt; his head and half of his face were swathed in dirty, bloodstained bandages. The prefect, who was no stranger to combat, knew that the sword had struck the soldier from above and from the left – with the very tip of the blade. An accurate blow, precise, demanding expertise and speed, aimed at the right ear and cheek; a place unprotected by either helmet or gorget.
‘Speak.’
‘We were marching along the bank of the Velda towards Thurn,’ the soldier began. ‘We had orders to escort one of Chamberlain Evertsen’s transports heading south. They attacked us by a ruined bridge, as we were crossing the river. One wagon got bogged down, so we unharnessed the horses from another to haul it out. The rest of the convoy went on and I stayed behind with five men and the bailiff. That’s when they jumped us. The bailiff, before they killed him, managed to shout that it was the Rats, and then they were on top of us . . . And put paid to every last man. When I saw what was happening . . .’
‘When you saw what was happening,’ scowled the prefect, ‘you spurred on your horse. But too late to save your skin.’
‘That seventh one caught up with me,’ said the soldier, lowering his head. ‘That seventh one, who I hadn’t seen at the beginning. A young girl. Not much more than a kid. I thought the Rats had left her at the back because she was young and inexperienced . . .’
The prefect’s guest slipped out of the shadow from where he had been sitting.
‘It was a girl?’ he asked. ‘What did she look like?’
‘Just like all the others. Painted and done up like a she-elf, colourful as a parrot, dressed up in baubles, in velvet and brocade, in a hat with feathers—’
‘Fair-haired?’
‘I think so, sir. When I saw her, I rode hard, thinking I’d at least bring one down to avenge my companions; that I’d repay blood with blood . . . I stole up on her from the right, to make striking easier . . . How she did it, I don’t know. But I missed her. As if I was striking an apparition or a wraith . . . I don’t know how that she-devil did it. I had my guard up but she struck through it. Right in the kisser . . . Sire, I was at Sodden, I was at Aldersberg. And now I’ve got a souvenir for the rest of my life from a tarted-up wench . . .’
‘Be thankful you’re alive,’ grunted the prefect, looking at his guest. ‘And be thankful you weren’t found carved up by the river crossing. Now you can play the hero. Had you’d legged it without putting up a fight, had you reported the loss of the cargo without that souvenir, you’d soon be hanging from a noose and clicking your heels together! Very well. Dismissed. To the field hospital.’
The soldier left. The prefect turned towards his guest.
‘You see for yourself, Honourable Sir Coroner, that military service isn’t easy here. There’s no rest; our hands are full. You there, in the capital, think all we do in the province is fool around, swill beer, grope wenches and take bribes. No one thinks about sending a few more men or a few more pennies, they just send orders: give us this, do that, find that, get everyone on their feet, dash around from dawn to dusk . . . While my head’s splitting from my own troubles. Five or six gangs like the Rats operate around here. True, the Rats are the worst, but not a day goes by—’
‘Enough, enough,’ said Stefan Skellen, pursing his lips. ‘I know what your bellyaching is meant to achieve, Prefect. But you’re wasting your time. No one will release you from your orders. Don’t count on it. Rats or no Rats, gangs or no gangs, you are to continue with the search. Using all available means, until further notice. That is an imperial order.’
‘We’ve been looking for three weeks,’ the prefect said with a grimace. ‘Without really knowing who or what we’re looking for: an apparition, a ghost or a needle in a haystack. And what’s the result? Only that a few men have disappeared without trace, no doubt killed by rebels or brigands. I tell you once more, coroner, if we’ve not found your girl yet, we’ll never find her. Even if someone like her were around here, which I doubt. Unless—’
The prefect broke off and pondered, scowling at the coroner.
‘That wench . . . That seventh one riding with the Rats . . .’
Tawny Owl waved a hand dismissively, trying to make his gesture and facial expression appear convincing.
‘No, Prefect. Don’t expect easy solutions. A decked out half-elf or some other female bandit in brocade is certainly not the girl we’re looking for. It definitely isn’t her. Continue the search. That’s an order.’
The prefect became sullen and looked through the window.
‘And about that gang,’ added Stefan Skellen, the Coroner of Imperator Emhyr, sometimes known as Tawny Owl, in a seemingly indifferent voice, ‘about those Rats, or whatever they’re called . . . Take them to task, Prefect. Order must prevail in the Province. Get to work. Catch them and hang them, without ceremony or fuss. All of them.’
‘That’s easy to say,’ muttered the prefect. ‘But I shall do everything in my power to, please assure the imperator of that. I think, nonetheless, that it would be worth taking that seventh girl with the Rats alive just to be sure—’
‘No,’ interrupted Tawny Owl, making sure not to let his voice betray him. ‘Without exception, hang them all. All seven of them. We don’t want to hear any more about them. Not another word.’
Endnotes
1. The Scoia'tael – commonly known as the Squirrels – are nonhuman guerrillas. Predominantly elves, their ranks also include halflings and dwarves, and they are so named due to their habit of attaching squirrel tails to their caps or clothing. Allied with Nilfgaard, motivated by the racism of men, they fight all humans in the Northern Kingdoms.
2. The lower part of Lydia van Bredevoort’s face, as seen in society and her portraits, was actually an illusion. Experiments on a mysterious artefact had left her with burns, and throat and larynx mutations.
Baptism of Fire
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
Then the soothsayer spake thus to the witcher: ‘This counsel I shall give you: don hobnailed boots and take an iron staff. Walk in your hobnailed boots to the end of the world, tap the road in front of you with the staff, and let your tears fall. Go through fire and water, do not stop, do not look back. And when your boots are worn out, when your iron staff is worn down, when the wind and the sun have dried your eyes such that not a single tear will fall from them, then you will find what you are searching f
or, what you love, at the end of the world. Perhaps.’
And the witcher walked through fire and water, never looking back. But he took neither hobnailed boots nor a staff. He took only his witcher’s sword. He obeyed not the words of the soothsayer. And rightly so, for she was wicked.
Flourens Delannoy, Tales and Legends
Chapter One
Birds were chirping loudly in the undergrowth.
The slopes of the ravine were overgrown with a dense, tangled mass of brambles and barberry; a perfect place for nesting and feeding. Not surprisingly, it was teeming with birds. Greenfinches trilled loudly, redpolls and whitethroats twittered, and chaffinches gave out ringing ‘vink-vink’s every now and then. The chaffinch’s call signals rain, thought Milva, glancing up at the sky. There were no clouds. But chaffinches always warn of the rain. We could do with a little rain.
Such a spot, opposite the mouth of a ravine, was a good place for a hunter, giving a decent chance of a kill – particularly here in Brokilon Forest, which was abundant with game. The dryads, who controlled extensive tracts of the forest, rarely hunted and humans dared to venture into it even less often. Here, a hunter greedy for meat or pelts became the quarry himself. The Brokilon dryads showed no mercy to intruders. Milva had once discovered that for herself.
No, Brokilon was not short of game. Nonetheless, Milva had been waiting in the undergrowth for more than two hours and nothing had crossed her line of sight. She couldn’t hunt on the move; the drought which had lasted for more than a month had lined the forest floor with dry brush and leaves, which rustled and crackled at every step. In conditions like these, only standing still and unseen would lead to success, and a prize.
An admiral butterfly alighted on the nock of her bow. Milva didn’t shoo it away, but watched it closing and opening its wings. She also looked at her bow, a recent acquisition which she still wasn’t tired of admiring. She was a born archer and loved a good weapon. And she was holding the best of the best.
Milva had owned many bows in her life. She had learned to shoot using ordinary ash and yew bows, but soon gave them up for composite reflex bows, of the type elves and dryads used. Elven bows were shorter, lighter and more manageable and, owing to the laminated composition of wood and animal sinew, much ‘quicker’ than yew bows. An arrow shot with them reached the target much more swiftly and along a flatter arc, which considerably reduced the possibility of its being blown off course. The best examples of such weapons, bent fourfold, bore the elven name of zefhar, since the bow’s shape formed that rune. Milva had used zefhars for several years and couldn’t imagine a bow capable of outclassing them.
But she had finally come across one. It was, of course, at the Seaside Bazaar in Cidaris, which was renowned for its diverse selection of strange and rare goods brought by sailors from the most distant corners of the world; from anywhere a frigate or galleon could reach. Whenever she could, Milva would visit the bazaar and look at the foreign bows. It was there she bought the bow she’d thought would serve her for many years. She had thought the zefhar from Zerrikania, reinforced with polished antelope horn, was perfect. For just a year. Twelve months later, at the same market stall, owned by the same trader, she had found another rare beauty.
The bow came from the Far North. It measured just over five feet, was made of mahogany, had a perfectly balanced riser and flat, laminated limbs, glued together from alternating layers of fine wood, boiled sinew and whalebone. It differed from the other composite bows in its construction and also in its price; which is what had initially caught Milva’s attention. When, however, she picked up the bow and flexed it, she paid the price the trader was asking without hesitation or haggling. Four hundred Novigrad crowns. Naturally, she didn’t have such a titanic sum on her; instead she had given up her Zerrikanian zefhar, a bunch of sable pelts, a small, exquisite elven-made medallion, and a coral cameo pendant on a string of river pearls.
But she didn’t regret it. Not ever. The bow was incredibly light and, quite simply, perfectly accurate. Although it wasn’t long it had an impressive kick to its laminated wood and sinew limbs. Equipped with a silk and hemp bowstring stretched between its precisely curved limbs, it generated fifty-five pounds of force from a twenty-four-inch draw. True enough, there were bows that could generate eighty, but Milva considered that excessive. An arrow shot from her whalebone fifty-fiver covered a distance of two hundred feet in two heartbeats, and at a hundred paces still had enough force to impale a stag, while it would pass right through an unarmoured human. Milva rarely hunted animals larger than red deer or heavily armoured men.
The butterfly flew away. The chaffinches continued to make a racket in the undergrowth. And still nothing crossed her line of sight. Milva leant against the trunk of a pine and began to think back. Simply to kill time.
Her first encounter with the Witcher had taken place in July, two weeks after the events on the Isle of Thanedd and the outbreak of war in Dol Angra. Milva had returned to Brokilon after a fortnight’s absence; she was leading the remains of a Scoia’tael commando defeated in Temeria during an attempt to make their way into war-torn Aedirn. The Squirrels had wanted to join the uprising incited by the elves in Dol Blathanna. They had failed, and would have perished had it not been for Milva. But they’d found her, and refuge in Brokilon.
Immediately on her arrival, she had been informed that Aglaïs needed her urgently in Col Serrai. Milva had been a little taken aback. Aglaïs was the leader of the Brokilon healers, and the deep valley of Col Serrai, with its hot springs and caves, was where healings usually took place.
She responded to the call, convinced it concerned some elf who had been healed and needed her help to re-establish contact with his commando. But when she saw the wounded witcher and learned what it was about, she was absolutely furious. She ran from the cave with her hair streaming behind her and offloaded all her anger on Aglaïs.
‘He saw me! He saw my face! Do you understand what danger that puts me in?’
‘No, no I don’t understand,’ replied the healer coldly. ‘That is Gwynbleidd, the Witcher, a friend of Brokilon. He has been here for a fortnight, since the new moon. And more time will pass before he will be able to get up and walk normally. He craves tidings from the world; news about those close to him. Only you can supply him with that.’
‘Tidings from the world? Have you lost your mind, dryad? Do you know what is happening in the world now, beyond the borders of your tranquil forest? A war is raging in Aedirn! Brugge, Temeria and Redania are reduced to havoc, hell, and much slaughter! Those who instigated the rebellion on Thanedd are being hunted high and low! There are spies and an’givare – informers – everywhere; it’s sometimes sufficient to let slip a single word, make a face at the wrong moment, and you’ll meet the hangman’s red-hot iron in the dungeon! And you want me to creep around spying, asking questions, gathering information? Risking my neck? And for whom? For some half-dead witcher? And who is he to me? My own flesh and blood? You’ve truly taken leave of your senses, Aglaïs.’
‘If you’re going to shout,’ interrupted the dryad calmly, ‘let’s go deeper into the forest. He needs peace and quiet.’
Despite herself, Milva looked over at the cave where she had seen the wounded witcher a moment earlier. A strapping lad, she had thought, thin, yet sinewy . . . His hair’s white, but his belly’s as flat as a young man’s; hard times have been his companion, not lard and beer . . .
‘He was on Thanedd,’ she stated; she didn’t ask. ‘He’s a rebel.’
‘I know not,’ said Aglaïs, shrugging. ‘He’s wounded. He needs help. I’m not interested in the rest.’
Milva was annoyed. The healer was known for her taciturnity. But Milva had already heard excited accounts from dryads in the eastern marches of Brokilon; she already knew the details of the events that had occurred a fortnight earlier. About the chestnut-haired sorceress who had appeared in Brokilon in a burst of magic; about the cripple with a broken arm and leg she had been dragging wi
th her. A cripple who had turned out to be the Witcher, known to the dryads as Gwynbleidd: the White Wolf.
At first, according to the dryads, no one had known what steps to take. The mutilated witcher screamed and fainted by turns, Aglaïs had applied makeshift dressings, the sorceress cursed and wept. Milva did not believe that at all: who has ever seen a sorceress weep? And later the order came from Duén Canell, from the silver-eyed Eithné, the Lady of Brokilon. Send the sorceress away, said the ruler of the Forest of the Dryads. And tend to the Witcher.
And so they did. Milva had seen as much. He was lying in a cave, in a hollow full of water from the magical Brokilon springs. His limbs, which had been held in place using splints and put in traction, were swathed in a thick layer of the healing climbing plant – conynhaela – and turfs of knitbone. His hair was as white as milk. Unusually, he was conscious: anyone being treated with conynhaela normally lay lifeless and raving as the magic spoke through them . . .
‘Well?’ the healer’s emotionless voice tore her from her reverie. ‘What is it going to be? What am I to tell him?’
‘To go to hell,’ snapped Milva, lifting her belt, from which hung a heavy purse and a hunting knife. ‘And you can go to hell, too, Aglaïs.’
‘As you wish. I shall not compel you.’
‘You are right. You will not.’
She went into the forest, among the sparse pines, and didn’t look back. She was angry.
The Saga of the Witcher Page 69
