“That’s your receipt,” she snorted.

“A witcher! A hired monster killer! And he gave up his swords! At once! Meek as a schoolboy!”

“Bet he’d turn his cock over as well, if we ordered him to.”

“Let’s do it then! Eh, girls? Have him whip it out!”

“We’ll see what witchers’ cocks are like!”

“Here we go,” snapped the commandant. “They’re off now, the sluts. Gonschorek, get here! Gonschorek!”

A balding, elderly gentleman in a dun mantle and woollen beret emerged from the next room. Immediately he entered he had a coughing fit, took off his beret and began to fan himself with it. He took the swords wrapped in their belts and gestured for Geralt to follow him. The Witcher didn’t linger. Intestinal gases had definitely begun to predominate in the noxious mixture of the guardhouse.

The room they entered was split down the middle by a sturdy iron grating. The large key the elderly gentleman opened it with grated in the lock. He hung the swords on a hook beside other sabres, claymores, broadswords and cutlasses. He opened a scruffy register, scrawled slowly and lengthily in it, coughing incessantly and struggling to catch his breath. He finally handed Geralt the completed receipt.

“Am I to understand that my swords are safe here? Locked away and under guard?”

The dun-clad elderly gentleman, puffing and panting heavily, locked the grating and showed him the key. It didn’t convince Geralt. Any grating could be forced, and the noisy flatulence of the “ladies” from the guardhouse was capable of drowning out any attempts at burglary. But there was no choice. He had to accomplish in Kerack what he had come to do. And leave the city as soon as he could.

* * *

The tavern—or, as the sign declared, the Natura Rerum osteria—was a small but tasteful building of cedar wood, with a steep roof and a chimney sticking up high out of it. The building’s façade was decorated by a porch with steps leading to it, surrounded by spreading aloe plants in wooden tubs. The smell of cooking—mainly meat roasting on a gridiron—drifted from the tavern. The scents were so enticing that right away it seemed to the Witcher that Natura Rerum was an Eden, a garden of delights, an island of happiness, a retreat for the blessed flowing with milk and honey.

It soon turned out that this Eden—like every Eden—was guarded. It had its own Cerberus, a guard with a flaming sword. Geralt had the chance to see him in action. Before his very eyes, the guard, a short but powerfully built fellow, was driving a skinny young man from the garden of delights. The young man was protesting—shouting and gesticulating—which clearly annoyed the guard.

“You’re barred, Muus. As well you know. So be off. I won’t say it again.”