‘I’m leaving Brokilon again in three days,’ she said gently after a long, very long, silence. ‘The moon must wane a little and the nights become a little darker. I shall return within ten days, perhaps sooner. Shortly after Lammas, in the first days of August. Worry not. I shall move earth and water, but I shall find out everything. If anyone knows anything about that maiden, you’ll know it too.’
‘Thank you, Milva.’
‘I’ll see you in ten days . . . Gwynbleidd.’
‘Call me Geralt,’ he said, holding out a hand. She took it without a second thought. And squeezed it very hard.
‘And I’m Maria Barring.’
A nod of the head and the flicker of a smile thanked her for her sincerity. She knew he appreciated it.
‘Be careful, please. When you ask questions, be careful who you ask.’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘Your informers . . . Do you trust them?’
‘I don’t trust anyone.’
‘The Witcher is in Brokilon. Among the dryads.’
‘As I thought,’ Dijkstra said, folding his arms on his chest. ‘But I’m glad it’s been confirmed.’
He remained silent for a moment. Lennep licked his lips. And waited.
‘I’m glad it’s been confirmed,’ repeated the head of the secret service of the Kingdom of Redania, pensively, as though he were talking to himself. ‘It’s always better to be certain. If only Yennefer were with him . . . There isn’t a witch with him, is there, Lennep?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ the spy started. ‘No, Your Lordship. There isn’t. What are your orders? If you want him alive, I’ll lure him out of Brokilon. But if you’d prefer him dead . . .’
‘Lennep,’ said Dijkstra, raising his cold, pale blue eyes towards the agent. ‘Don’t be overzealous. In our trade, officiousness never pays and should always be viewed with suspicion.’
‘Sire,’ said Lennep, blanching somewhat. ‘I only—’
‘I know. You only asked about my orders. Well, here they are: leave the Witcher alone.’
‘Yes, sire. And what about Milva?’
‘Leave her alone, too. For now.’
‘Yes, sire. May I go?’
‘You may.’
The agent left, cautiously and silently closing the oak door behind him. Dijkstra remained silent for a long time, staring at the towering pile of maps, letters, denunciations, interrogation reports and death sentences in front of him.
‘Ori.’
The secretary raised his head and cleared his throat. He said nothing.
‘The Witcher is in Brokilon.’
Ori Reuven cleared his throat again, involuntarily glancing under the table, towards his boss’s leg. Dijkstra noticed the look.
‘That’s right. I won’t let him get away with that,’ he barked. ‘I couldn’t walk for two weeks because of him. I lost face with Philippa, forced to whimper like a dog and beg her for a bloody spell, otherwise I’d still be hobbling. I can’t blame anyone but myself; I underestimated him. But the worst thing is that I can’t get my own back and tan his witcher’s hide! I don’t have the time, and anyway, I can’t use my own men to settle private scores! That’s right isn’t it, Ori?’
‘Ahem . . .’
‘Don’t grunt at me. I know. But, hell, power tempts! How it beguiles, invites to be made use of! How easy it is to forget, when one has it! But if you forget once, there’s no end to it . . . Is Philippa Eilhart still in Montecalvo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take a quill and an inkwell. I’ll dictate a letter to her. I shall begin . . . Damn it, I can’t concentrate. What’s that bloody racket, Ori? What’s happening in the square?’
‘Some students are throwing stones at the Nilfgaardian envoy’s residence. We paid them to do so, hem, hem, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Oh. Very well. Close the window. And have the lads throw stones at the dwarf Giancardi’s bank, tomorrow. He refused to reveal the details of some accounts.’
‘Giancardi, hem, hem, donated a considerable sum of money to the military fund.’
‘Ha. Then have them throw stones at the banks that didn’t donate.’
‘They all did.’
‘Oh, you’re boring me, Ori. Write, I said. Darling Phil, the sun of my . . . Blast, I keep forgetting. Take a new sheet of paper. Ready?’
‘Of course, hem, hem.’
‘Dear Philippa. Mistress Triss Merigold is sure to be worried about the witcher she teleported from Thanedd to Brokilon, which she kept so secret that even I didn’t know anything. It hurt me terribly. Please reassure her: the Witcher is doing well now. He has even begun to send female emissaries from Brokilon to search for traces of Princess Cirilla, the young girl you’re so interested in. Our good friend Geralt clearly doesn’t know Cirilla is in Nilfgaard, where she’s preparing for her wedding to Imperator Emhyr. It’s important to me that the Witcher lies low in Brokilon, which is why I’ll do my best to ensure the news reaches him. Have you got that?’
‘Hem, hem . . . the news reaches him.’
‘New paragraph! It puzzles me . . . Ori, wipe the bloody quill! We’re writing to Philippa, not to the royal council. The letter must look neat! New paragraph. It puzzles me why the Witcher hasn’t tried to make contact with Yennefer. I refuse to believe that his passion, which was verging on obsession, has petered out so suddenly, irrespective of learning his darling’s political objectives. On the other hand, if Yennefer is the one who handed Cirilla over to Emhyr, and if there’s proof of it, I would gladly make sure the Witcher was furnished with it. The problem would solve itself, I’m certain, and the faithless, black-haired beauty would be on very shaky ground. The Witcher doesn’t like it when anyone touches his little girl, as Artaud Terranova discovered on Thanedd in no uncertain terms. I would like to think, Phil, that you don’t have any evidence of Yennefer’s betrayal and you don’t know where she is hiding. It would hurt me greatly to discover this is the latest secret being concealed from me. I have no secrets from you . . . What are you sniggering about, Ori?’
‘Oh, nothing, hem, hem.’
‘Write! I have no secrets from you, Phil, and I count on reciprocity. With my deepest respect, et cetera, et cetera. Give it here, I’ll sign it.’
Ori Reuven sprinkled the letter with sand. Dijkstra made himself more comfortable, interlacing his fingers over his stomach and twiddling his thumbs.
‘That Milva, the Witcher’s spy,’ he asked. ‘What can you tell me about her?’
‘She is engaged at present, hem, hem’ – his secretary coughed – ‘in escorting the remnants of Scoia’tael units defeated by the Temerian Army to Brokilon. She rescues elves from hunts and traps, enabling them to rest and regroup into combat commandos . . .’
‘Refrain from supplying me with common knowledge,’ interrupted Dijkstra. ‘I’m familiar with Milva’s activities, and will eventually make use of them. Otherwise I would have sold her out to the Temerians long since. What can you tell me about Milva herself? As a person?’
‘She comes, if I’m not mistaken, from some godforsaken village in Upper Sodden. Her true name is Maria Barring. Milva is a nickname the dryads gave her. In the Elder Speech it means—’
‘Red Kite,’ interrupted Dijkstra. ‘I know.’
‘Her family have been hunters for generations. They are forest dwellers, and feel most comfortable in the greenwood. When old Barring’s son was trampled to death by an elk, the old man taught his daughter the forest crafts. After he passed away, her mother married again. Hem, hem . . . Maria didn’t get on with her stepfather and ran away from home. She was sixteen at the time, if I’m not mistaken. She headed north, living from hunting, but the lords’ gamekeepers didn’t make her life easy, hunting and harrying her as though she were fair game. So she began to poach in Brokilon and it was there, hem, hem, that the dryads got hold of her.’
‘And instead of finishing her off, they took her in,’ Dijkstra muttered. ‘Adopted her, if you will . . . And s
he repaid their kindness. She struck a pact with the Hag of Brokilon, old silver-eyed Eithné. Maria Barring is dead; long live Milva . . . How many human expeditions had come unstuck by the time the forces in Verden and Kerack cottoned on? Three?’
‘Hem, hem . . . Four, if I’m not mistaken . . .’ Ori Reuven was always hoping he wasn’t mistaken, although in fact his memory was infallible. ‘All together, it was about five score humans, those who’d gone after dryad scalps most savagely. And it took them a long time to catch on, because Milva occasionally carried someone out of the slaughter on her own back, and whoever she’d rescued would praise her courage to the skies. It was only after the fourth time, in Verden, if I’m not mistaken, that someone caught on. “Why is it?” the shout suddenly went up, hem, hem, “that the guide who bands humans together to fight the dryads always gets out in one piece?” And the cat was out of the bag. The guide was leading them. But into a trap, right into the shooting range of the dryads waiting in ambush . . .’
Dijkstra slid an interrogation report to the edge of his desk, because the parchment still seemed to reek of the torture chamber.
‘And then,’ he concluded, ‘Milva vanished into Brokilon like the morning mist. And it’s still difficult to find volunteers for expeditions against the dryads in Verden. Old Eithné and young Red Kite were carrying out pretty effective purges. And they dare say that we, humans, invented all the dirty tricks. On the other hand . . .’
‘Hem, hem?’ coughed Ori Reuven, surprised by his boss’s sudden – and then continuing – silence.
‘On the other hand, they may have finally begun to learn from us,’ said the spy coldly, looking down at the denunciations, interrogation reports and death sentences.
Milva grew anxious when she couldn’t see blood anywhere near where the buck had disappeared. She suddenly recalled that he had jumped just as she had fired her arrow. Had jumped or was about to; it amounted to the same thing. He had moved and the arrow might have hit him in the belly. Milva cursed. A shot to the belly was a disgrace for any hunter! Urgh, the very thought of it!
She quickly ran over to the slope of the ravine, looking carefully among the brambles, moss and ferns. She was hunting for her arrow. It was equipped with four blades so sharp they could shave the hairs on your forearm. Fired from a distance of fifty paces the arrow must have passed right through the animal.
She searched, she found it and sighed in relief, then spat three times, happy with her luck. She needn’t have worried; it was better than she had imagined. The arrow was not covered in sticky, foul-smelling stomach contents. Neither did it bear traces of bright, pink, frothy blood from the lungs. What covered the shaft was dark red and viscous. The arrow had gone through the heart. Milva didn’t have to creep or stalk; she had been spared a long walk following the deer’s tracks. The buck had to be lying in the undergrowth, no more than a hundred paces from the clearing, in a spot that would be surely indicated by the blood. And after being shot through the heart, he would have started bleeding after a few paces, so she knew she would easily find the trail.
She picked it up after ten paces and followed it, once again losing herself in her reverie.
She kept the promise she had given the Witcher. She returned to Brokilon five days after the Harvest Festival – five days after the new moon – which marked the beginning of the month of August for people, and for elves, Lammas, the seventh and penultimate savaed of the year.
She crossed the Ribbon at daybreak with five elves. The commando she was leading had initially numbered nine riders, but the soldiers from Brugge were following them the whole time. Three furlongs before the river they were hot on their trail, pressing hard, and only abandoned their efforts when they reached the Ribbon, with Brokilon looming up in the dawn mists on the far bank. The soldiers were afraid of Brokilon and that alone saved the commando. They made it across. Exhausted and wounded. But not all of them.
She had news for the Witcher, but thought that Gwynbleidd was still in Col Serrai. She had intended to see him around noon, after a good long sleep so she was astonished when he suddenly emerged from the fog like a ghost. He sat down beside her without a word, watching as she made herself a makeshift bed by spreading a blanket over a heap of branches.
‘You’re in a hurry, Witcher,’ she scoffed. ‘I’m ready to drop. I’ve been in the saddle all day and all night, my backside’s numb, and my trousers are soaked up to my belt, for we crept our way through the wetlands at dawn like a pack of wolves . . .’
‘Please. Did you learn anything?’
‘Yes I did,’ she snorted, unlacing and pulling off her drenched, clinging boots. ‘Without much difficulty, because everybody’s talking about it. You never told me your young girl was such a personage! I’d thought she was your stepdaughter, some sort of waif and stray, a star-crossed orphan. And who does she turn out to be? A Cintran princess! Well! And perhaps you’re a prince in disguise?’
‘Tell me, please.’
‘The kings won’t get their hands on her now, for your Cirilla, it turns out, fled straight from Thanedd to Nilfgaard; probably with those treacherous mages. And Imperator Emhyr received her there with all ceremony. And do you know what? He’s said to be thinking of marrying her. Now let me rest. We can talk after I’ve slept, if you want.’
The Witcher said nothing. Milva hung her wet footwraps on a forked branch, positioned so that the rising sun’s rays would fall on them, and tugged at her belt buckle.
‘I want to get undressed,’ she growled. ‘Why are you still hanging about? You can’t have expected happier news, can you? You’re in no danger; no one’s asking after you, the spies have stopped being interested in you. And your wench has escaped from the clutches of the kings and will be declared Imperatoress . . .’
‘Is that information reliable?’
‘Nothing is certain these days,’ she yawned, sitting down on her bed, ‘apart from the fact that the sun journeys across the heavens from the east to the west. But what people are saying about the Nilfgaardian Imperator and the Princess of Cintra seems to be true. It’s all anyone’s talking about.’
‘Why this sudden interest?’
‘You really don’t know? She’s said to be bringing Emhyr a goodly acreage of land in her dowry! And not just Cintra, but land on this side of the Yaruga too! Ha, and she’ll be my Lady as well, for I’m from Upper Sodden, and the whole of Sodden, it turns out, is her fiefdom! So if I bring down a buck in her forests and they lay hands on me, I can be hung on her orders . . . Oh, what a rotten world! And a pox on it, I can’t keep my eyes open . . .’
‘Just one more question. Did they capture any sorceresses— I mean did they capture anyone from that pack of treacherous sorcerers?’
‘No. But one enchantress, they say, took her own life. Soon after Vengerberg fell and the Kaedwen Army entered Aedirn. No doubt out of distress, or fear of torture—’
‘There were riderless horses in the commando you brought here. Would the elves give me one?’
‘Oh, in a hurry, I see,’ she muttered, wrapping herself in the blanket. ‘I think I know where you’re planning to . . .’
She fell silent, astonished by the expression on his face before she realised that the news she had brought was not at all happy. She saw that she understood nothing, nothing at all. Suddenly, unexpectedly, unawares, she felt the urge to sit down by his side, bombard him with questions, listen to him, learn more, perhaps offer counsel . . . She urgently ground her knuckles into the corners of her eyes. I’m exhausted, she thought, death was breathing down my neck all night. I have to rest. And anyway, why should I be bothered by his sorrows and cares? What does he matter to me? And that wench? To hell with him and with her! A pox on it, all this has driven the sleep from me . . .
The Witcher stood up.
‘Will the elves give me a horse?’ he repeated.
‘Take whichever you please,’ she said a moment later. ‘But don’t let them see you. They gave us a good hiding by the ford, blood wa
s spilt . . . And don’t touch the black; he’s mine . . . What are you waiting for?’
‘Thank you for your help. For everything.’
She didn’t answer.
‘I’m indebted to you. How shall I pay you back?’
‘How? By getting out of my sight!’ she cried, raising herself on an elbow and tugging sharply at the blanket. ‘I . . . I have to sleep! Take a horse . . . and go . . . To Nilfgaard, to hell, to all the devils. Makes no difference to me! Go away and leave me in peace!’
‘I’ll pay back what I owe,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t forget. It may happen that one day you’ll be in need of help. Or support. A shoulder to lean on. Then call out, call out in the night. And I’ll come.’
The buck lay on the edge of the slope, which was spongy from gushing springs and densely overgrown with ferns, his neck contorted, with a glassy eye staring up at the sky. Milva saw several large ticks bored into his light brown belly.
‘You’ll have to find yourselves some other blood, vermin,’ she muttered, rolling up her sleeves and drawing a knife. ‘Because this is going cold.’
With a swift and practised movement, she slit the skin from sternum to anus, adroitly running the blade around the genitalia. She cautiously separated the layer of fat, up to her elbows in blood. She severed the gullet and pulled the entrails out. She cut open the stomach and gall bladder, hunting for bezoars. She didn’t believe in their magical qualities, but there was no shortage of fools who did and would pay well for them.
She lifted the buck and laid him on a nearby log, his slit belly pointing downwards, letting the blood drain out. She wiped her hands on a bunch of ferns.
She sat down by her quarry.
‘Possessed, insane Witcher,’ she said softly, staring at the crowns of the Brokilon pines looming a hundred feet above her. ‘You’re heading for Nilfgaard to get your wench. You’re heading to the end of the world, which is all in flames, and you haven’t even thought about supplying yourself with victuals. I know you have someone to live for. But do you have anything to live on?’
The Saga of the Witcher Page 71
