“Not in the least,” Fysh appeased him, helped by the sight of Poker stroking the shaft of a battleaxe hanging from his saddle. “I believe you, Shevlov. I know I can count on you. I mean we’re mates, aren’t we? From the good old days—”

“I’m in a hurry, Fysh. Duty calls.”

“Farewell, sergeant.”

“I wonder,” said Poker, watching them riding away. “I wonder what they want of her. That freak. You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t,” Shevlov confessed coldly. “Because you don’t ask about things like that.”

He pitied the freak a little. But he wasn’t too bothered about her fate. He guessed it would be miserable.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A signpost stood at the crossroads, a post with planks nailed to it, indicating the four points of the compass.

* * *

Dawn found him where he had landed, tossed out of the portal, on the dew-soaked grass, in a thicket beside a swamp or small lake, teeming with birds, whose gaggling and quacking roused him from his sound and exhausting sleep. He had drunk a witcher’s elixir during the night. He always made sure to keep some on him, in a silver tube in a hiding place sewn into his belt. The elixir, called Golden Oriole, was used as a panacea which was particularly effective against every kind of poisoning, infections and the action of all kinds of venoms and toxins. Golden Oriole had saved Geralt more often than he could remember, but drinking the elixir had never caused the effects it had that night. For an hour after drinking it he had fought cramps and extremely powerful vomiting reflexes, aware that he couldn’t let himself be sick. As a result, although he had won the battle, he fell wearily into a deep sleep. Which may also have been a consequence of the combination of the scorpion’s venom, the elixir and the teleportational journey.

As far as the journey was concerned, he wasn’t certain what had happened, how and why the portal opened by Degerlund had spat him out here, onto the boggy wilderness. He doubted whether the sorcerer had done that deliberately; more likely it was simply a teleportational failure, something he had been afraid of for a week. Something he had heard about many times and had witnessed several times, when a portal, instead of sending the traveller where they were meant to go, threw them out somewhere else, in a totally unexpected place.

When he came to his senses, he was holding his sword in his right hand and in his clenched left hand he had a shred of material, which he identified in the morning light as a shirt sleeve. The material was cut through cleanly as though by a knife. It didn’t bear the marks of blood, however, so the teleportal hadn’t cut off the sorcerer’s hand, but only his shirt, Geralt realised with regret.