CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Just in time,” said Frans Torquil morosely. “You made it on time, Witcher, right on time. The spectacle’s about to begin.”

He lay on his back on a bed, as pale as a whitewashed wall, his hair wet with sweat and plastered to his forehead. He was wearing nothing but a coarse linen shirt that at once reminded Geralt of a winding sheet. His left thigh was swathed down to the knee in a blood-soaked bandage.

A table had been put in the centre of the room and covered in a sheet. A squat individual in a black jerkin was setting out tools on the table, one after the other, in turn. Knives. Forceps. Chisels. Saws.

“I regret but one thing,” said Torquil, grinding his teeth. “That I didn’t catch the whoresons. It was the gods’ will, it wasn’t written for me… And now it won’t come to pass.”

“What happened?”

“The sodding same as in Yew Trees, Rogovizna and Pinetops. Except it wasn’t like the others, but at the very edge of the forest. And not in a clearing, but on the highway. They’d surprised some travellers. They killed three and abducted two bairns. As luck would have it, I was nearby with my men. We gave chase at once, soon had them in sight. Two great bruisers as big as oxen and one misshapen hunchback. And that hunchback shot me with a crossbow.”

The constable gritted his teeth and waved a hand at his bandaged thigh.

“I ordered my men to leave me and follow them. They disobeyed, the curs. And as a result, they made off. And me? So what if they saved me? When they’re cutting my leg off now? I’d rather have fucking pegged it there, but seen them ’uns kicking their legs on the scaffold before my eyes clouded over. The wretches didn’t obey my orders. Now they’re sitting there, hangdog.”

To a man, the constable’s subordinates were indeed sitting shamefacedly on a bench by the wall. They were accompanied by a wrinkled old woman with a garland on her head that didn’t match her grey hair at all, who looked completely out of place.

“We can begin,” said the man in the black jerkin. “Put the patient on the table and strap him down tightly. All outsiders to leave the chamber.”

“They can stay,” growled Torquil. “I want to know they’re watching. I’ll be too ashamed to scream.”

“One moment,” Geralt said, straightening up. “Who decided that amputation is inevitable?”