‘Well, shorty,’ Pike hurried him, ‘hand over the penny to the royal army, give us your vittles, give us your horses, and lead the cows from the cowshed. We aren’t going to stand here till sundown. We must get round a few more villages today.’
‘Why must we pay and hand over our food?’ Rocco Hildebrandt’s voice trembled slightly, but determination and doggedness still resounded in it. ‘You say it’s for the army, that it’s for our defence. And who, I ask, will defend us against hunger? We’ve already paid the winter levy, and the geld, and the poll tax, and the land tax, and the animal tax, and the devil only knows what else! If that wasn’t enough, four halflings from this hamlet, my son included in that number, are coach drivers in the army convoys! And no one else but my brother-in-law, Milo Vanderbeck, known as Rusty, is a field surgeon, an important personage in the army. That means we’ve paid our acreage with interest. . . For what reason are we to pay more? Wherefore and what for? And why?’
Pike gave a long look at Incarvilia Hildebrandt, née Biberveldt, the halfling’s wife. At their plump daughters, Aloë and Yasmin. At the gorgeous Impi Vanderbeck, dressed in a green frock. At Sam Hofmeier and his grandfather, old grandpa Holofernes. At Granny Petunia, doggedly picking at a flowerbed with a hoe. At the other halflings from the hamlet, mainly womenfolk and youngsters, apprehensively peeping out from their households and from behind fences.
‘You ask why?’ he hissed, leaning over in the saddle and looking into the halfling’s terrified eyes. ‘I’ll tell you why. Because you’re a mangy halfling, a foreigner, a stranger, and whoever robs you, you repulsive brute, delights the gods. Whoever vexes you, non-human, is carrying out a good and paterotic deed. And also because I feel sick with the desire to send your non-human nest up in smoke. Because I feel a yen coming on to fuck your midget women. And because we’re five burly fellows, and you’re a handful of short-arsed wretches. Now do you know why?’
‘Now I know,’ said Rocco Hildebrandt slowly. ‘Off with you, Big Folk. Begone, you good-for-nothings. We shan’t give you anything.’
Pike straightened up, and reached for the short sword hanging from his saddle.
‘Have at them!’ he yelled. ‘Kill them!’
With a movement so fast it was almost imperceptible, Rocco Hildebrandt stooped down towards his barrow, took out a crossbow concealed under a rush mat, brought it to his cheek and sent a bolt straight into Pike’s mouth, which was wide open in a yell. Incarvilia Hildebrandt, née Biberveldt, swung her arm powerfully and a sickle spun through the air, slamming into Milton’s throat. The peasant’s son puked blood and somersaulted backwards over his horse’s rump, swinging his legs comically. Ograbek, moaning, tumbled beneath the horse’s hooves, with grandpa Holofernes’ secateurs buried in his belly up to the handles’ wooden facings. The strongman Klaproth aimed a club at the old man, but flew from the saddle, squealing inhumanly, caught right in the eye with the spike of a dibber flung by Impi Vanderbeck. Okultich reined his horse around and hoped to flee, but granny Petunia sprang at him and jabbed the teeth of her rake into his thigh. Okultich cried out and fell, his foot caught in the stirrup, and the frightened horse dragged him across the sharp poles of the wattle fence. The brigand yelled and wailed as he was dragged and Granny Petunia – with her rake – and Impi – with her curved pruning knife – followed him like two she-wolves. Grandpa Holofernes blew his nose loudly.
The entire incident – from Pike’s shout to grandpa Holofernes blowing his nose – took more or less the same time it would to rapidly utter the sentence ‘Halflings are incredibly fast and can throw all sorts of missiles unerringly’.
Rocco sat down on the cottage steps. His wife, Incarvilia Hildebrandt, née Biberveldt, planted herself beside him. Their daughters, Aloë and Yasmin, went to help Sam Hofmeier finish off the wounded and strip the dead.
Impi returned in her green frock with the sleeves spattered up to the elbows with blood. Granny Petunia also returned, walking slowly, panting, grunting, leaning on her blood-spattered rake and holding her lower back. Oh, she’s getting old, our granny, thought Hildebrandt.
‘Where should we bury the brigands, Mr Rocco?’ asked Sam Hofmeier.
Rocco Hildebrandt put his arm around his wife and looked up at the sky.
‘In the birch copse,’ he said. ‘Next to the other ones.’
The sensational adventure of Mr Malcolm Guthrie of Braemore took the pages of many newspapers by storm. Even The Daily Mail of London devoted several lines to it in its column ‘Bizarre’. However, because very few of our readers read the press south of the Tweed, and if they do, then only newspapers more serious than The Daily Mail, let us remind you what happened. On the day of the 10th March last year Mr Malcolm Guthrie went fishing to Loch Glascarnoch. While there Mr Guthrie happened upon a young woman with an ugly scar on her face (sic!), riding a black mare (sic) in the company of a white unicorn (sic), who were emerging from the fog and darknes (sic). The girl spoke to the dumbstruck Mr Guthrie in a language which Mr Guthrie was so kind as to describe as, we quote: ‘probably French, or some other dialect from the continent’. Because Mr Guthrie does not speak French or any other dialect from the continent, a conversation was not possible. The girl and the accompanying menagerie vanished, to quote Mr Guthrie again: ‘like a golden dream’.
Our comment: Mr Guthrie’s dream was undoubtedly as golden as the colour of the single malt whisky Mr Guthrie customarily drinks, as we learned, drinking often and in such quantities that would explain the seeing of white unicorns, white mice and monsters from lochs. And the question we would like to pose runs thusly: What did Mr Guthrie think he was doing with a fishing rod by Loch Glascarnoch four days before the [angling] season began?
The Inverness Weekly, 18 March 1906 [edition]
CHAPTER SEVEN
Along with the intensifying wind the sky darkened from the west, and the clouds, approaching in waves, extinguished the constellations one after the other. The Dragon went out, the Winter Maiden went out and the Seven Goats went out. The Eye, which shines brightest and longest, went out.
The edge of the horizon lit up with a short-lived flashes of lightning. Thunder rolled with a dull rumble. The wind abruptly intensified, blowing dust and dry leaves into their eyes.
The unicorn neighed and sent a mental signal. Ciri understood immediately what he wanted to say.
There’s no time to lose. Our only hope is in a quick escape. To the right place, and the right time. We must hurry, Star—Eye.
I am the Master of Worlds, she recalled. I am of the Elder Blood, I have power over time and place.
I am of Lara Dorren’s blood.
Ihuarraquax neighed, urged them on. Kelpie echoed him with a long-drawn-out snort. Ciri put on her gloves.
‘I’m ready,’ she said.
A buzzing in her ears. A flash and brightness. And then darkness.
*
The water in the lake and the early-evening silence bore the curses of the Fisher King, who sat on his boat jerking and tugging the line, trying to free a lure caught on the lake bottom. A dropped oar thudded.
Nimue cleared her throat impatiently. Condwiramurs turned away from the window, and then bent over the etchings. One of the boards in particular caught her eye. A girl with windswept hair, riding a black mare rearing up. Beside her a white unicorn, also rampant, its mane blown around like the girl’s.
‘I think that’s the only fragment of the legend that historians have never quibbled about,’ commented the novice, ‘unanimously regarding it as a fabrication and a fairy-tale embellishment, or a delirious metaphor. And painters and illustrators, spiting the scholars, took a liking to the episode. Look, prithee: each picture is Ciri and the unicorn. What do we have here? Ciri and the unicorn on a cliff above a sea beach. And here, if you please: Ciri and the unicorn in a landscape like something from a drug-induced trance, at night, beneath two moons.’
Nimue said nothing.
‘In a word—’ Condwiramurs tossed the boards onto
the table ‘—everywhere it’s Ciri and the unicorn. Ciri and the unicorn in the labyrinth of the worlds, Ciri and the unicorn in the abyss of times—’
‘Ciri and the unicorn,’ interrupted Nimue, looking at the window, at the lake, at the boat and the Fisher King thrashing around in it. ‘Ciri and the unicorn emerge from nothingness like apparitions, suspended over some lake or other . . . And perhaps it’s constantly the same lake, one that spans times and places like a bridge, at once different, but nonetheless the same?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Apparitions.’ Nimue wasn’t looking at her. ‘Visitors from other dimensions, other planes, other places, other times. Apparitions that change someone’s life. That also change their own life, their own fate . . . Unbeknownst to them. For them it’s simply . . . another place. Not that place, not that time . . . Once again, one more time in a row, not that time—’
‘Nimue,’ Condwiramurs interrupted with a forced smile. ‘It’s me who’s the dream—reader, let me remind you. I’m the expert on dream visions and oneiroscopy. And all of a sudden you begin to prophesy. As though you saw what you’re talking about . . . in a dream.’
The Fisher King, judging by the sudden intensity of his voice and his cursing, had failed to unhitch the lure and the line had snapped. Nimue said nothing, and looked at the engravings. At Ciri and the unicorn.
‘I really have seen in a dream what I’ve been talking about,’ she finally said, very calmly. ‘I saw it many times in my dreams. And once while awake.’
*
As it is known, the journey from Człuchów to Malbork may in certain conditions take even five days. And since the letters from the Człuchów Commander to Winrych von Kniprode, Grand Master of the Order, had without fail to reach the addressee no later than on the day of Pentecost, the knight Heinrich von Schwelborn didn’t delay and set off the day after Sunday Exaudi Domine, in order to travel peacefully and with no risk of being late. Langsam, abersicher. The knight’s attitude greatly pleased his escort, which consisted of six mounted crossbowmen, commanded by Hasso Planck, a baker’s son from Cologne. The crossbowmen and Planck were more accustomed to noble gentlemen who swore, yelled, urged and ordered them to gallop at breakneck speed, and afterwards, when they didn’t make it in time anyway, put all the blame on the poor infantry, by lying in a way unbefitting a knight, not to mention one from a religious military order.
It was warm, though overcast. It drizzled from time to time, and the ravines were enveloped in fog. The hills, overgrown by lush greenery, reminded Sir Heinrich of his native Thuringia, his mother, and the fact that he hadn’t had a woman for over a month. The crossbowmen riding at the rear were languidly singing a ballad by Walther von der Vogelweide. Hasso Planck was dozing in the saddle.
Wer guter Fraue Liebe hat
Der schämt sich aller Missetat . . .
The journey was proceeding peacefully and who knows, perhaps it would have been peaceful all the way, had Sir Heinrich not noticed the glistening surface of a lake down below around noon. And because the following day was Friday and it behove them to get in holy-day food in advance, the knight ordered his men to ride down to the water and look around for a fisherman’s homestead.
The lake was large, and there was even an island on it. No one knew its name, but it was probably called Holy Lake. In this pagan land – as if in mockery – every second lake was called ‘holy’.
Their horseshoes crunched on the shells lying on the shore. Fog hung over the lake, but it was obvious it was uninhabited. There was no sign of a boat, nor a net, nor any living soul. We’ll have to search elsewhere, thought Heinrich von Schwelborn. And if not, too bad. We’ll eat what we have in our saddlebags, even if that means smoked bacon, and in Malbork we’ll make our confession, the chaplain will demand a penance and the sin will be absolved.
He was about to issue an order when something buzzed in his head under his helmet, and Hasso Planck yelled horrifyingly. Von Schwelborn looked and was struck dumb. And crossed himself.
He saw two horses: one white and the other black. A moment later, though, he noticed in horror that the white horse had a spirally twisted horn on its domed forehead. He also saw that a girl was sitting on the black, her ashen hair combed so as to obscure her cheek. The group apparition seemed not to be touching either the ground or the water – it looked as though it were suspended above the fog trailing over the surface of the lake.
The black horse neighed.
‘Whoops . . .’ said the girl with the grey hair quite distinctly, ‘Ire lokke, ire tedd! Squaess’me.’
‘Saint Ursula, O my patron . . .’ mumbled Hasso, white as a sheet. The crossbowmen froze open-mouthed, and made the sign of the cross.
Von Schwelborn also crossed himself, after which with a trembling hand he drew a sword from a scabbard strapped under his saddle flap.
‘Heilige Maria, Mutter Gottes!’ he roared. ‘Steh mir bei!’
That day Sir Heinrich didn’t shame his valiant ancestors, the von Schwelborns, including Dietrich von Schwelborn, who had fought bravely at Damietta and was one of the few not to run away when the Saracens conjured up and set a demon on the crusaders. After spurring his horse and having recalled his fearless forebear, Heinrich von Schwelborn charged the apparition among the freshwater mussels splashing up from under his horse’s hooves.
‘For the Order and Saint George!’
The white unicorn reared up like a heraldic emblem, the black mare danced, and the girl was alarmed, it was clear at first glance. Heinrich von Schwelborn rode on. Who knows how it all would have ended if the fog hadn’t suddenly been blown towards him and the image of the strange group dissolved, disintegrating into a myriad of colours like a stained-glass window smashed by a stone. And everything vanished. Everything. The unicorn, the black horse and the strange girl . . .
Heinrich von Schwelborn’s steed rode into the lake with a splash, stopped, tossed its head, neighed, and ground its teeth on the bit.
Hasso Planck, struggling to control his unruly horse, rode over to the knight. Von Schwelborn was huffing and puffing, almost wheezing, goggled-eyed like a fast-day fish.
‘On the bones of Saint Ursula, Saint Cordula and all the eleven thousand virgin martyrs of Cologne . . .’ Hasso Planck stammered out. ‘What was it, noble Herr Ritter? A miracle? A revelation?’
‘Teufelswerk!’ von Schwelborn grunted, only now blanching horrifyingly and chattering his teeth. ‘Schwarze Magie! Zauberey! A damned, pagan, devilish matter . . .’
‘We ought to get out of here, sire. As quickly as possible . . . It’s not far from Pelplin, anything to get within the sound of church bells . . .’
Sir Heinrich looked back for the last time on a rise just outside the forest. The wind had blown away the fog and the shining surface of the lake had grown dull and rippled in the places not obscured by the wall of trees.
A great osprey circled above the water.
‘Godless, pagan land,’ muttered Heinrich von Schwelborn. ‘Much, much work, much hardship and labour await us before the Order of the Teutonic Knights will finally drive the Devil from this nest of Slavs.’
*
‘Little Horse,’ said Ciri, reproachfully and sneeringly at once. ‘I don’t want to be intrusive, but I’m in a bit of a hurry to get back to my world. My friends and family need me, you know that, don’t you? And first we end up by some lake with a ridiculous boor in chequered clothes, then run into a pack of filthy, yelling shaggy heads with clubs, and finally on a madman with a black cross on his cloak. They’re the wrong times, the wrong places! Please, do try a bit harder. I beg you.’
Ihuarraquax neighed, nodded his horned head and communicated something to her, a clever thought. Ciri didn’t quite understand. She didn’t have time to ponder, since the inside of her skull was filled with cool brightness, her ears buzzed and her nape tingled.
And black and very soft nothingness engulfed her again.
*
Nimue, laughing joyous
ly, dragged the man by the hand. The two of them ran down to the lake, winding their way among the young birches and alders, among stumps and blown down trees. After running onto the sandy beach, Nimue threw off her sandals, lifted up her dress and splashed around in bare feet in the water by the shore. The man also took off his boots, but was in no hurry to enter the water. He removed his cloak and spread it out on the sand.
Nimue ran over, threw her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoes to kiss it. The man had to lean over a long way in any case. Not without reason was Nimue called Squirt – but now that she was eighteen and was a novice of the magical arts, the privilege of using that epithet was exclusively reserved for her closest friends. And some men.
The man, his mouth clamped on Nimue’s, put his hand down the front of her dress.
It moved fast after that. The two of them ended up on the cloak spread out on the sand, Nimue’s dress up above her waist, her thighs powerfully gripping the man’s hips, and her hands digging into his back. When he took her – too impatiently as usual – she clenched her teeth, but quickly caught up with him in excitement, drew level, and kept up with him. She was skilled.
The man was uttering amusing sounds. Nimue observed fantastic shapes of the cumuli slowly gliding across the sky over his shoulder.
Something rang, as a bell submerged at the bottom of the ocean rings. There was a sudden buzzing in Nimue’s ears. Magic, she thought, turning her head, freeing herself from under the cheek and shoulder of the man lying on her.
A white unicorn stood by the lake shore – literally suspended above the surface. Beside it was a black horse. And in the saddle of the black horse was sitting . . .
But I know that legend, the thought flashed through Nimue’s head. I know that fairy tale! I was a child, a little child, when I heard that tale. The wandering storyteller, the beggar Pogwizd, had told it to her. The witcher Ciri . . . with a scar on her cheek . . . The black mare Kelpie . . . Unicorns . . .The land of the elves . . .
The Saga of the Witcher Page 178
