The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  Tara Hildebrandt, Didi “Brewer” Hofmeier and the other carters who were gathered around him nodded. They could also hear the dull, monotonous thud of hooves coming from behind the hill and forest. They could feel the trembling of the ground.

  The roar suddenly increased, jumping a tone higher.

  ‘The archers’ first salvo.’ Andy Biberveldt was experienced, and had seen – or rather heard – many a battle. ‘There’ll be another.’

  He was right.

  ‘Now they’ll clash!’

  ‘We’d beee . . . ttter, geee . . . ttt under the carts,’ suggested William Hardbottom, known as Momotek, fidgeting anxiously. ‘I’m ttttt . . . telling you.’

  Biberveldt and the other halflings looked at him with pity. Under the carts? What for? Nearly a quarter of a mile separated them from the site of the battle. And even if a patrol turned up here, at the rear, by the convoys, would hiding under a cart save anyone?

  The roaring and rumbling increased.

  ‘Now,’ Andy Biberveldt judged. And he was right again.

  A distinct, macabre noise which made the hair on their heads stand up reached the ears of the victuallers from a distance of a quarter of a mile, from beyond the hill and the forest, through the roaring and the sudden thud of iron smashing against iron.

  Squealing. The gruesome, desperate, wild squealing and shrieking of mutilated animals.

  ‘The cavalry . . .’ Biberveldt licked his lips. ‘The cavalry have impaled themselves on the pikes . . .’

  ‘I jjjjust,’ stammered out the pale Momotek, ‘ddddon’t know . . . how the horses are to blame . . . the whoresons.’

  *

  Jarre rubbed out another sentence with a sponge. God only knew how many that made. He squinted his eyes, recalling that day. The moment the two armies clashed. When the two armies, like determined mastiffs, went for each other’s throats, clenched in a mortal grip.

  He searched for words he could use to describe it.

  In vain.

  *

  The wedge of cavalry rammed into the square. Like the thrust of a gigantic dagger, the Alba Division crushed everything that was defending access to the living body of the Temerian infantry – the pikes, javelins, halberds, spears, pavises and shields. Like a dagger, the Alba Division thrust into the living body and drew blood. Blood, in which horses now splashed and slid. But the dagger’s blade, though thrust in deep, hadn’t reached the heart or any of the vital organs. The wedge of the Alba Division, instead of smashing and dismembering the Temerian square, thrust in and became stuck. Became lodged in the elastic horde of foot soldiers, as thick as pitch.

  At first it didn’t look dangerous. The head and sides of the wedge were made up of elite heavily-armoured companies, and the landsknechts’ edges and blades rebounded from the shields and armour plate like hammers from anvils, and neither was there any way to get through the barding of the steeds. And although every now and then one of the armoured men would tumble from his horse or with his horse, the swords, battle-axes, hatchets and morning stars of the cavalrymen cut down the pressing infantrymen. Trapped in the throng, the wedge shuddered and began to drive in deeper.

  ‘Albaaa!’ Second Lieutenant Devin aep Meara heard the cry of Oberst Eggebracht soaring above the clanging, roaring, groaning and neighing. ‘Forward, Alba! Long live the Emperor!’

  They set off, hacking, clubbing and slashing. Beneath the hooves of the squealing and kicking horses was the sound of splashing, crunching, grinding and snapping.

  ‘Aaalbaaa!’

  The wedge became caught again. The landsknechts, although thinned out and bloodied, didn’t yield, but pressed forward and gripped the cavalry like pliers. Until they cracked. Under the blows of halberds, battle-axes and flails, the armoured troops of the front line caved in and broke. Jabbed by partizans and pikes, hauled from the saddle by the hooks of guisarmes and bear spears, mercilessly pounded by iron balls-and-chains and clubs, the cavalrymen of the Alba Division began to die. The wedge thrust into the square of infantry, which not long before had been menacing iron, cutting into a living body, was now like an icicle in a huge peasant fist.

  ‘Temeriaaaa! For the king, boys! Kill the Black Cloaks!’

  But neither was it coming easily to the landsknechts. Alba didn’t let itself be broken up. Swords and battle-axes rose and fell, hacked and slashed, and the infantry paid a grim price in blood for every horseman knocked from the saddle.

  Oberst Eggebracht, stabbed through a slit in his armour by a pike blade as thin as a bodkin, yelled and rocked in the saddle. Before anyone could help him, an awful blow of a flail swept him to the ground. The infantry teemed over him.

  The standard with a black alerion bearing a gold perisonium on its chest wobbled and fell.

  The armoured soldiers, including also Second Lieutenant Devlin aep Meara, rushed over to it, hacking, hewing, trampling and yelling.

  I’d like to know, thought Devlin aep Meara, tugging his sword out of the cloven kettle hat and skull of a Temerian landsknecht. I’d like to know, he thought, deflecting with a sweeping blow the toothed blade of a gisarme which was stabbing at him.

  I’d like to know what all this is for. What’s the point of it? And who’s the cause of it?

  *

  ‘Errr . . . And then the convent of the great master sorceresses gathered . . . Our Esteemed Mothers . . . Errr . . . Whose memory will always live among us . . . For . . . Errr . . . the great master sorceresses of the First Lodge . . . decided to . . . Errr . . . Decided to . . .’

  ‘Novice Abonde. You are unprepared. Fail. Sit down.’

  ‘But I revised, really—’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Why the hell do we have to learn about this ancient history?’ muttered Abonde, sitting down. ‘Who’s bothered about it today? And what use is it?’

  ‘Silence! Novice Nimue.’

  ‘Present, mistress.’

  ‘I can see that. Do you know the answer to the question? If you don’t, sit down and don’t waste my time.’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So, the chronicles teach us that the convent of master sorceresses gathered at Bald Mountain Castle to decide on how to end the damaging war that the emperor of the South was waging with the kings of the North. Esteemed Mother Assire, the holy martyr, said that the rulers would not stop fighting until they had lost a lot of men. And Esteemed Mother Philippa, the holy martyr, answered: “Let us then give them a great and bloody, awful and cruel battle. Let us bring about such a battle. Let the emperor’s armies and the kings’ forces run in blood in that battle, and then we, the Great Lodge, shall force them to make peace”. And this is precisely what happened. The Esteemed Mothers caused the Battle of Brenna to happen. And the rulers were forced to sign the Peace of Cintra.’

  ‘Very good, novice Nimue. I’d have given you a starred A grade . . . Had it not been for that “so” at the beginning of your contribution. We don’t begin sentences with “so”. Sit down. And now, who’ll tell us about the Peace of Cintra?’

  The bell for the break rang. But the novices didn’t react with immediate uproar and the banging of desktops. They maintained a peaceful and dignified silence. They weren’t chits from the kindergarten now. They were third-formers! They were fourteen!

  And that carried certain expectations.

  *

  ‘Well, there’s not much to add here.’ Rusty assessed the condition of the first wounded man who was right then sullying the immaculate white of the table. ‘Crushed thighbone . . . The artery is intact, otherwise they would have brought us a corpse. It looks like an axe blow, and at the same time the saddle’s hard pommel acted like a woodcutter’s chopping block. Please look . . .’

  Shani and Iola bent over. Rusty rubbed his hands.

  ‘As I said, nothing to add. All we can do is take away. To work. Iola! Tourniquet, tightly. Shani, knife. Not that one. The double-bladed one. For amputations.’

  The wounded man
couldn’t tear his restless gaze from their hands, tracked their movements with the eyes of a terrified animal caught in a snare.

  ‘A little magic, Marti, if you please,’ nodded the halfling, leaning over the patient so as to fill his entire field of vision. ‘I’m going to amputate, son.’

  ‘Nooooo!’ yelled the injured man, thrashing his head around and trying hard to escape from Marti Sodergren’s hands. ‘I don’t waant tooo!’

  ‘If I don’t amputate, you die.’

  ‘I’d rather die . . .’ The wounded man was speaking slower and slower under the effect of the healer’s magic. ‘I’d rather die than be a cripple . . . Let me die . . . I beg you . . . Let me die!’

  ‘I can’t.’ Rusty raised the knife, looked at the blade, at the still shining, immaculate steel. ‘I can’t let you die. For it so happens that I’m a doctor.’

  He stuck the blade in decisively and cut deeply. The wounded man howled. For a human, inhumanly.

  *

  The messenger reined in his horse so hard that turf sprayed from its hooves. Two adjutants clutched the bridle and calmed down the foaming steed. The messenger dismounted.

  ‘From whom?’ shouted Jan Natalis. ‘From whom do you come?’

  ‘From Graf de Ruyter . . .’ the messenger panted. ‘We’ve held the Black Cloaks. . . But there are severe casualties . . . Graf de Ruyter requests reinforcements . . .’

  ‘There are no reinforcements,’ the constable replied after a moment’s silence. ‘You must hold out. You must!’

  *

  ‘And here,’ Rusty indicated with the expression of a collector showing off his collection, ‘please look at the beautiful result of a cut to the belly . . . Someone has helped us somewhat by previously conducting an amateur laparotomy on the poor wretch. It’s good he was carried carefully, none of his more important organs have been lost . . . I mean, I assume they haven’t been. What’s up with him, Shani, in your opinion? Why such a face, girl? Have you only known men from the outside before today?’

  ‘The intestines are damaged, Mr Rusty . . .’

  ‘A diagnosis as accurate as it is obvious! One doesn’t even have to look, it’s enough to sniff. A cloth, Iola. Marti, there’s still too much blood, be so kind as to give us a little more of your priceless magic. Shani, clamp. Put on some arterial forceps, you can see it’s pouring, can’t you? Iola, knife.’

  ‘Who’s winning?’ suddenly asked the man being operated on, quite lucidly, although he mumbled a little, rolling his goggling eyes. ‘Tell me . . . who . . . is winning?’

  ‘Son.’ Rusty stooped over the open, bloody and throbbing abdominal cavity. ‘That really is the last thing I’d be worrying about in your shoes.’

  *

  . . . Cruel and bloody fighting then began on the left wing and the centre of the line, but here, though great was Nilfgaard’s fierceness and impetus, their charge broke on the royal army like an ocean wave breaks on a rock. For here stood the select soldiers, the valiant Mariborian, Vizimian and Tretorian armoured companies, and also the dogged landsknechts, the professional soldiers of fortune, whom cavalry could not frighten.

  And thus they fought, truly like the sea against a rocky cliff, thus continued the battle in which you could not guess who had the upper hand, for although the waves endlessly beat against the rock, not weakening, and they only fell back to strike anew, the rock stood on, as it had always stood, still visible among the turbulent waves.

  The battle unfolded in a different way on the right wing of the royal army.

  Like an old sparrowhawk that knows where to stoop and peck its prey to death, so Field Marshal Menno Coehoorn knew where to aim his blows. Clenching in his iron fist his select divisions, the Deithwen lancers and the armoured Ard Feainn, he struck at the junction of the line above Golden Pond, where the companies from Brugge stood. Although the Bruggeans resisted heroically, they turned out to be more weakly accoutred, both in armour and in spirit, than their foes. They did not weather the Nilfgaardian advance. Two companies of the Free Company under the old condottiero Adam Pangratt went to their aid and held back Nilfgaard, paying a severe price in blood. But the awful threat of being surrounded stared the dwarves of the Volunteer Regiment standing on the right flank in the face, and the severing of the array imperilled the whole royal army.

  Jarre dipped his quill pen in the inkwell. His grandchildren further away in the orchard were shouting, their laughter ringing like little glass bells.

  Jan Natalis, nonetheless, attentive as a crane, had noticed the menacing danger, and understood in an instant which way the wind was blowing. And without delay sent a messenger to the dwarves with an order for Colonel Els . . .

  *

  In all his seventeen-year-old naivety, Cornet Aubry believed that to reach the right wing, deliver the order and return to the hill would take him ten minutes at most. Absolutely no more! Not on Chiquita, a mare as nimble and fleet as a hind.

  Even before he had arrived at Golden Pond, the cornet had become aware of two things: there was no telling when he’d reach the right wing, and there was no way of telling when he’d manage to return. And that Chiquita’s fleetness would come in very handy.

  Fighting was raging on the battlefield to the east of Golden Pond. The Black Cloaks and the Bruggean horse protecting the infantry array were smiting each other. In front of the cornet’s eyes figures in green, yellow and red cloaks suddenly shot out like sparks, like the glass of a stained-glass window, from the whirl of the battle, chaotically bolting towards the River Chotla. Nilfgaardians flooded like a black river behind them.

  Aubry pulled his mare back hard, jerked the reins, ready to turn tail and flee, get out of the way of the fugitives and the pursuers. A sense of duty took the upper hand. The cornet pressed himself to his horse’s neck and galloped at breakneck speed.

  All around was yelling and hoof beats, a kaleidoscopic twinkling of figures, the flashes of swords, clanging and thudding. Some of the Bruggeans who were pressed against the fishpond were putting up desperate resistance, herding together around a standard bearing an anchored cross. The Black Cloaks were slaughtering the scattered and exposed infantry.

  The view was obscured by a black cloak with the symbol of a silver sun.

  ‘Evgyr, Nordling!’

  Aubry yelled, and Chiquita, excited by the cry, give a truly deer-like bound, saving Aubry’s life by carrying him out of range of the Nilfgaardian sword. Arrows and bolts suddenly howled over his head, figures flickered before his eyes again.

  Where am I? Where are my comrades? Where is the enemy?

  ‘Evgyr morv, Nordling!’

  Thudding, clanking, neighing of horses, shouts.

  ‘Stand, you little shit! Not that way!’

  A woman’s voice. A woman on a black stallion, in armour, with hair blown around, her face covered in spots of blood. Beside her armoured horsemen.

  ‘Who are you?’ The woman smeared the blood on her sword with a fist.

  ‘Cornet Aubry . . . Constable Natalis’ Flügel-Adjutant . . . With orders for Colonels Pangratt and Els—’

  ‘You have no chance of getting to where Adieu is fighting. We’ll ride to the dwarves. I’m Julia Abatemarco . . . To horse, dammit! They’re surrounding us! At the gallop!’

  He didn’t have time to protest. There was no point anyway.

  After some furious galloping, a mass of infantry emerged from the dust, a square, encased like a tortoise in a wall of pavises, like a pincushion bristling with spear blades. A great gold standard with crossed hammers fluttered over the square and beside it rose up a pole with horsetails and human skulls.

  The square was being attacked by Nilfgaardians, who were darting forwards and jumping back like dogs worrying a beggar swinging a cane. The Ard Feainn Division, owing to the great suns on their cloaks, could not be mistaken for any other.

  ‘Fight, Free Company!’ yelled the woman, whirling her sword around in a moulinet. ‘Let’s earn our pay!’

  The horse
men – and with them Cornet Aubry – charged the Nilfgaardians.

  The clash only lasted a few moments. But it was terrible. Then the wall of pavises opened before them. They found themselves inside the square, in a crush, amongst dwarves in mail shirts, basinets and pointed chichak helmets, amongst the Redanian infantry, light Bruggean horse and armoured condottieri.

  Julia Abatemarco – Pretty Kitty, condottiero, Aubry only now recognised her – dragged him in front of a pot-bellied dwarf in a chichak helmet decorated with a splendid plume, sitting awkwardly on an armoured Nilfgaardian horse, in a lancer’s saddle with large pommels, which he had clambered into to be able to see over the heads of the infantrymen.

  ‘Colonel Barclay Els?’

  The dwarf nodded his plume-helmeted head, noticing with evident appreciation the blood with which the cornet and his mare were sprayed. Aubry blushed involuntarily. It was the blood of the Nilfgaardians whom the condottieri had hacked down just beside him. He himself hadn’t even managed to draw his sword.

  ‘Cornet Aubry . . .’

  ‘The son of Anzelm Aubry?’

  ‘His youngest.’

  ‘Ha! I know your father! What have you brought me from Natalis and Foltest, Cornet, my boy?’

  ‘You are threatened by a breach in the centre of the line . . . The constable orders the Volunteer Regiment to pull back the wing as soon as possible, and retreat to Golden Pond and the River Chotla . . . In order to reinforce—’

  His words were drowned out by roaring, clanging and the squealing of horses. Aubry suddenly realised how absurd the orders he had brought were. What little significance those orders had for Barclay Els, for Julia Abatemarco, for that dwarven square under a gold standard with hammers fluttering over the surrounding black sea of Nilfgaard, attacking them from all sides.

  ‘I’m late . . .’ he whimpered. ‘I arrived too late . . .’

  Pretty Kitty snorted. Barclay Els grinned.

  ‘No, little cornet, son,’ he said. ‘It was Nilfgaard that came too soon.’

  *

  ‘Congratulations to you, ladies, and to me, on a successful segmentectomy of the small and large bowel, splenectomy, and a liver suture. I draw your attention to the time it took to remove the consequences of what was done to our patient in a split second during the battle. I recommend that as material for philosophical reflections. Miss Shani will sew up the patient.’