The Witcher and the poet were served by a cicerone in the form of the beekeeper’s relative; young, artful and arrogant, a typical specimen of an urban layabout, who’d been born in the gutter and was no stranger to bathing nor slaking his thirst there. This stripling was like a trout in a crystal-clear mountain stream in the urban hubbub, throng, grime and stench, and the chance to show someone around his repugnant town clearly delighted him. Unconcerned that nobody was asking him any questions, the guttersnipe gave enthusiastic explanations. He explained that Riedbrune was an important stage for Nilfgaardian settlers travelling northwards after the endowment pledged by the emperor: six oxgangs or roughly one hundred and twenty acres. And on top of that a ten-year tax moratorium. For Riedbrune lay at the mouth of the Dol Nevi valley which cuts through the Amell Mountains, via the Theodula pass linking the Slopes and Riverdell with Mag Turga, Geso, Metinna and Maecht; all countries for many years subordinate to the Nilfgaardian Empire. The town of Riedbrune, explained the guttersnipe, was the last place where the settlers could depend on something else and not just themselves, their womenfolk and what they had on their wagons. Which was why most of the settlers remained camped outside the town for quite some time, gathering their strength before the last push to the banks of the Yaruga and beyond. And many of them, he added, with the pride of a slum patriot, settled in the town permanently, because the town was, why, culture, not some yokelish dump stinking of dung.
In truth, the town of Riedbrune’s stench drew on many smells; dung included.
Geralt had been there, years before, but couldn’t recognise it. Too much had changed. Previously, there hadn’t been so many cavalrymen in black armour and cloaks with silver emblems on their spaulders. Previously, the Nilfgaardian tongue had not been heard on all sides. Previously, there hadn’t been a quarry outside the town, where now ragged, dirty, haggard and bloodied people split boulders into ashlars and rubble, whipped by black-uniformed overseers.
A large force of Nilfgaardian soldiers are stationed here, explained the guttersnipe, but not permanently, only during breaks in marches and searches for partisans of the Free Slopes organisation. They’ll be setting up a powerful Nilfgaardian garrison here when a great, stone stronghold is constructed on the site of the old castle. A stronghold built of stone hard-won from the quarry. The people splitting the stone are prisoners of war. From Lyria, from Aedirn, and lately from Sodden, Brugge and Angren. And Temeria. Four hundred prisoners are employed here in Riedbrune. A good five hundred work in the ore quarries, underground and open-cast mines in the vicinity of Belhaven and over a thousand are building bridges and levelling roads in the Theodula pass.
There had also been a scaffold in the town square when Geralt had visited, but a much more modest one. There hadn’t been so many devices arousing hideous associations on it, and there hadn’t been so many revolting and putrid decorations hanging from the gallows, stakes, forks and poles.
That’s thanks to Mr Fulko Artevelde, the prefect recently installed by the military authorities, explained the guttersnipe, looking at the scaffold and the fragments of human anatomy gracing it. Mr Fulko has given the hangman business again. There’s no fooling around with Mr Fulko, he added. He’s a stern master.
The diamond prospector – the guttersnipe’s mate, who they found in the tavern – didn’t make a good impression on Geralt. For he happened to be in that tremblingly pale, half-sober, half-drunk, half-real, almost nightmarish state which drinking for several nights and days without stopping puts a fellow into. The Witcher’s heart sank. It looked as though the sensational news about the druids might have originated in simple delirium tremens.
The drink-sodden prospector answered their questions astutely, however, and with good sense. He wittily retorted to Dandelion’s accusation that he didn’t look like a diamond prospector by saying that he would if he ever found a diamond. He described the dwelling place of the druids by Loch Monduirn explicitly and precisely, without exaggerated embellishment or an overinflated fantasising manner. He took the liberty of asking what his interlocutors wanted from the druids and, when treated to a contemptuous silence, warned them that entering the druidic oak groves meant certain death, since the druids were wont to grab intruders, shove them in a basket called the Wicker Woman and burn them alive to the accompaniment of prayers, chants and incantations. The groundless rumour and foolish superstition, it turned out, had dogged the druids, resolutely keeping up, never lagging more than two furlongs behind.
Further conversation was interrupted by nine soldiers in black uniforms with the sign of the sun on their spaulders, armed with guisarmes.
‘Would you be,’ asked the sergeant commanding the soldiers, tapping his calf with an oaken truncheon, ‘the witcher Geralt?’
‘Yes,’ Geralt answered after a moment’s reflection. ‘I would.’
‘You’ll be coming along with me, then.’
‘How can you be sure I will? Am I under arrest?’
The soldier looked at him in a seemingly endless silence, but somehow strangely without respect. No doubt his eight-man escort gave him the nerve to look in that manner.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘You aren’t under arrest. I received no order to arrest you. If I’d received an order my question would have been different, sir. Very different.’
Geralt adjusted his sword belt rather ostentatiously.
‘And my answer,’ he said icily, ‘would have been different, too.’
‘Now, now, gentlemen,’ Dandelion decided to step in, putting on an expression, which, in his opinion, was the smile of a seasoned diplomat. ‘Why that tone? We’re honest men, we needn’t fear the powers that be, why, we’re willing to help them. Whenever the opportunity arises. But by virtue of that we deserve something from authority, don’t we, officer? If only something as tiny as an explanation of why our civic freedoms are being curtailed.’
‘There’s a war on, sir,’ the soldier replied, not in the least bit disconcerted by the torrent of words. ‘Freedom, as the name suggests, is a matter for peacetime. Any reasons will be elucidated by His Lordship the Prefect. I carry out orders, so don’t get into discussions with me.’
‘Fair enough,’ the Witcher conceded and gave the troubadour a slight wink. ‘Then lead us to the prefecture, good soldier. Dandelion, go back to the others and tell them what’s happened. Do the necessary. Regis will know what to do.’
*
‘What’s a witcher doing in the Slopes? What do you seek?’
The person asking the questions was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man with a face rutted with scars and a leather patch over his left eye. In a dark alleyway, the sight of that cyclopean face was capable of wresting a moan of terror from many a breast. But how unjust, when it was the face of Mr Fulko Artevelde, Prefect of Riedbrune, the highest ranking custodian of law and order in the entire region.
‘What does a witcher seek in the Slopes?’ repeated the highest ranking custodian of law and order in the entire region.
Geralt sighed and shrugged, feigning indifference.
‘You know, of course, the answer to your question, prefect. You could only have gleaned the fact that I’m a witcher from the Riverdell forest beekeepers who hired me to protect them on their march. And being a witcher, in the Slopes, or anywhere else, I’m generally in search of the chance to work. So I’m journeying in the direction suggested by the patrons who hired me.’
‘Logical,’ Fulko Artevelde nodded. ‘On the face of it at least. You parted company with the beekeepers two days ago. But you intend to continue your travels southwards, in somewhat peculiar company. With what aim?’
Geralt didn’t lower his eyes, but steadily returned the burning gaze of the prefect’s only eye.
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘No. Not for the time being.’
‘Then the purpose and direction of my travel is my private business.’
‘I suggest frankness and openness, nonetheless. If only in order to prove you don’t f
eel in any way guilty and don’t fear either the law, or any authority guarding it. I’ll repeat the question: what is behind your expedition, witcher?’
Geralt pondered this briefly.
‘I’m trying to reach the druids who were abiding in Angren, but have probably moved into these parts. It would have been easy to learn that from the beekeepers I was escorting.’
‘Who hired you to deal with the druids? The guardians of nature haven’t burned one too many people in the Wicker Woman, have they?’
‘Fairy tales, rumours, superstitions. Strange for an enlightened person like yourself. I want information from the druids, not their blood. But really, prefect, it seems to me I’ve been too frank, in order to prove I don’t feel guilty.’
‘It’s not about your guilt. At least not just about it. I’d like, nevertheless, a tone of mutual congeniality to prevail in our talk. For in spite of appearances, the aim of this talk is, among others, to save you and your companions’ lives.’
‘You have provoked my sincere curiosity, m’lord prefect,’ answered Geralt after some time, ‘Among other things. I shall hear out your explanations with truly rapt attention.’
‘I don’t doubt it. We’ll get to those explanations, but gradually. In stages. Have you ever heard, master witcher, of the tradition of turning imperial evidence? Do you know what that is?’
‘I do. Weaselling out of one’s responsibilities by fingering one’s comrades.’
‘A gross simplification,’ Fulko Artevelde said without smiling, ‘typical, actually, for a Nordling. You often disguise gaps in your education with sarcastic or exaggerated simplifications which you consider witty. Imperial law operates here in the Slopes, master witcher. More precisely, imperial law is going to operate here when rank lawlessness has been utterly extirpated. The best way to fight lawlessness and criminality is the scaffold, which you surely saw in the town square. But occasionally the offer to turn imperial evidence also works.’
He made a dramatic pause. Geralt didn’t interrupt.
‘Quite recently,’ the prefect continued, ‘we managed to lure a gang of juvenile criminals into an ambush. The brigands offered resistance and were killed . . . ’
‘But not all of them, right?’ Geralt conjectured, bluntly, becoming a little bored by all this oratory. ‘One was taken alive. They were promised a reprieve if they turned imperial evidence. I mean if they started grassing. And they grassed me up.’
‘Why such a deduction? Have you had any contact with the local criminal underworld? Now or in the past?’
‘No. I haven’t. Not now, or in the past. So forgive me, lord prefect, but the whole matter is either a complete misunderstanding or humbug. Or a trap directed against me. In the latter case I would suggest we don’t waste any more time and proceed to the nub of the matter.’
‘It appears that the thought of a trap troubles you,’ the prefect observed, furrowing his scarred brow. ‘Could you, perhaps, in spite of your assurances, have some reason to fear the law?’
‘No. I’m beginning, though, to fear that the fight against crime is being conducted hurriedly, wholesale and not meticulously enough, without painstaking inquiries to determine guilt or innocence. But well, perhaps that’s just an exaggerated simplification, typical of a dull Nordling. And this Nordling continues not to understand in what way the Prefect of Riedbrune is saving his life.’
Fulko Artevelde observed him in silence for a moment, then clapped his hands.
‘Bring her in,’ he ordered the soldiers who’d appeared at his signal.
Geralt calmed himself with several breaths, for suddenly a certain thought made his heart race and his adrenaline flow. A moment later he had to take several more breaths, and even – astonishingly – had to make a Sign with his hand out of sight beneath the table. And the effect – astonishingly – was none. He felt hot. And cold.
For the guards had shoved Ciri into the room.
‘Well I never,’ said Ciri, right after she’d been sat down in a chair and had her hands handcuffed behind the backrest. ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in!’
Artevelde made a brief gesture. One of the guards, a huge fellow with the face of a slow-witted child, drew his arm back in an unhurried swing and struck Ciri in the face so hard it made the chair rock.
‘Forgive her, Your Lordship,’ said the guard apologetically and astonishingly mildly. ‘She’s young and foolish. Skittish.’
‘Angoulême,’ Artevelde said slowly and emphatically. ‘I promised you I’d hear you out. But I meant I’d listen to your answers to my questions. Not to your badinage. You will be rebuked for your lack of respect. Understand?’
‘Sure, nuncle.’
The gesture. The slap. The chair rocked.
‘Young,’ mumbled the guard, rubbing his hand on his hip. ‘Skittish . . . ’
From the young woman’s snub nose – Geralt could see now that it wasn’t Ciri and was astonished at his mistake – trickled a thin stream of blood. The young woman sniffed hard and smiled predatorily.
‘Angoulême,’ the prefect repeated. ‘Do you understand me?’
‘Yes sir, Mr Fulko.’
‘Who’s this, Angoulême?’
The girl sniffed again, inclined her head and fixed Geralt with her huge eyes. Hazel, not green. Then she shook her untidy mane of flaxen hair, causing it to fall onto her forehead in unruly locks.
‘Never seen him before.’ She licked the blood which dripped onto her lip. ‘But I know who he is. Anyway, I already told you that, Mr Fulko; now you know I wasn’t lying. His name’s Geralt. He’s a witcher. He crossed the Yaruga about ten days ago and he’s heading for Toussaint. Right, my white-haired nuncle?’
‘She’s young . . . Skittish . . .’ said the guard quickly, looking somewhat anxiously at the prefect. But Fulko Artevelde just grimaced and shook his head.
‘You’ll still be fooling about on the scaffold, Angoulême. Very well, let’s go on. With whom, according to you, was Geralt the Witcher travelling?’
‘I’ve already told you that too! With a comely fellow called Dandelion, who’s a troubadour and carries a lute. And a young woman, who has dark blonde, chin-length hair. I don’t know her name. And another man, without a description, his name wasn’t mentioned either. Four of them in all.’
Geralt rested his chin on his knuckles, observing the girl with interest. Angoulême didn’t lower her gaze.
‘What eyes you have,’ she said. ‘Creepy peepers!’
‘Continue, Angoulême, continue,’ Mr Fulko urged, scowling. ‘Who else belonged to this witcher’s cohort?’
‘No one. I said there were four of them. Not been listening, nuncle?’
The gesture, the slap, the trickle. The guard kneaded his hip, but refrained from any more comments about the skittishness of youth.
‘You lie, Angoulême,’ said the prefect. ‘How many of them are there, I ask for the second time?’
‘Whatever you say, Mr Fulko. Whatever you say. As you wish. There’s two hundred of ’em. Three hundred! Six hundred!’
‘Lord prefect.’ Geralt forestalled the order to strike. ‘Let’s leave it, if we may. What she said is precise enough to show she’s not lying; at most lacking in information. But where did she get her facts? She declared she’s never seen me before. It’s the first time I’ve seen her too. I give my word.’
‘Thank you,’ Artevelde frowned at him, ‘for your help with the investigation. How valuable. When I start interrogating you I count on your being equally eloquent. Angoulême, did you hear what the gentleman said? Speak. And don’t make me encourage you.’
‘It was said,’ replied the girl as she licked the blood dripping from her nose, ‘that if the authorities were informed about a planned crime, if it was revealed who was planning villainy, there’d be clemency. So I’m telling you, ain’t I? I know about a crime being prepared and I want to forestall the evil deed. Listen to what I say: Nightingale and his hanza are waiting in Belhaven for this here witcher and are
planning to club him to death there. A half-elf gave them the contract. A stranger, no one knows where the hell he’s from, no one knows him. The half-elf said it all: who he is, what he looks like, where he’s from, when he’ll arrive, in what company. He warned that the Witcher’s no mug but an old hand, so not to play the hero, but stab him in the back, down him with a crossbow or better yet poison him, if he eats or drinks somewhere in Belhaven. The half-elf gave Nightingale some money. A lot of money. And promised there’d be more after the job’s done.’
‘After it’s done,’ Fulko Artevelde remarked. ‘So the half-elf is still in Belhaven? With Nightingale’s gang?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. It’s over a fortnight since I escaped from Nightingale’s hanza.’
‘So would that be the reason you’re grassing them up?’ the Witcher smiled. ‘Settling scores?’
The young woman’s eyes narrowed and her swollen mouth twisted. ‘Leave my sodding scores out of this, nuncle! And me grassing is saving your life, right? Some thanks would be in order!’
‘Thank you.’ Geralt again prevented the beating. ‘I only meant to remark that if you’re settling scores, it diminishes your credibility to turn imperial evidence. People grass to save their skin and their life, but they lie when they want revenge.’
‘Our Angoulême has no chance of saving her life,’ Fulko Artevelde interjected. ‘But she wants, naturally, to save her skin. To me that’s an absolutely credible motive. Well, Angoulême? You do want to save your skin, don’t you?’
The girl pursed her lips and visibly blanched.
‘The boldness of a criminal,’ said the prefect contemptuously, ‘and of a snot-nosed kid at the same time. Swoop down in numbers, rob the weak, kill the defenceless, oh, yes. Look death in the eye, not so easy. That’s beyond you.’
‘We shall see,’ she snarled.
‘We shall,’ nodded Fulko gravely. ‘And we shall hear. You’ll bellow your lungs out on the scaffold, Angoulême.’
‘You promised me clemency.’
The Saga of the Witcher Page 124
