There was a blinding flash and the horses began to neigh, kick and thrash the air with their forehooves. Several horsemen fell and screamed as they were trampled. Fryga’s grey mare also bolted before the Witcher could bring her under control. Fryga leaped up, jumped and seized the bridle and reins. Geralt drove her away with a punch and spurred the mare into a gallop.

Pressed to the steed’s neck, he didn’t see Degerlund frightening the horses and blinding their riders with magical lightning bolts. Or see Bue and Bang falling on the horsemen, roaring, one with a battleaxe, the other with a broad scimitar. He didn’t see the splashes of blood, didn’t hear the screams of the slaughtered.

He didn’t see Escayrac die, and immediately after him Sperry, filleted like a fish by Bang. He didn’t see Bue fell Floquet and his steed, and then drag him out from under the horse. But Floquet’s stifled cry, the sound of a rooster being butchered, lingered long.

Until he turned from the highway and dashed into the forest.

Mahakam potato soup is prepared thus: gather chanterelles in the summer and men-on-horseback in the autumn. If it is the winter or early spring, take a sizeable handful of dried mushrooms. Put them in a pan and cover them with water, soak them overnight, salt them in the morning, toss in half an onion and boil. Drain them, but do not discard the broth; instead be vigilant in removing the sand that has surely settled at the bottom of the pan. Boil the potatoes and dice them. Take some fatty bacon, chop and fry it. Cut the onion into half slices and fry them in the bacon fat until they almost stick. Take a great cauldron, toss everything into it, not forgetting the chopped mushrooms. Pour on the mushroom broth, add water as needs be, pour on sour rye starter to taste. (How to execute the starter may be found elsewhere in another receipt.) Boil and season with salt, pepper and marjoram according to taste and liking. Add melted fatback. Stirring in cream is a matter of taste, but heed: it is against our dwarven tradition, for it is a human fashion to add cream to potato soup.

Eleonora Rhundurin-Pigott, Perfect Mahakam Cuisine, the Precise Science of Cooking and Making Dishes from Meats, Fishes and Vegetables, also Seasoning Diverse Sauces, Baking Cakes, Making Jam, Preparing Cooked Meats, Preserves, Wines, Spirits, and Various Useful Cooking and Preserving Secrets, Essential for Every Good and Thrifty Housewife

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Like almost all post stations, this one was located at a junction where two roads intersected. It was a building with a shingle roof and a columned arcade with an adjoining stable and woodshed, set among white-barked birches. It was empty. There seemed to be no guests, nor travellers.