“His leg will have to be immobilised. Set in long splints—”

“Don’t instruct me, I said. And get you gone as well. Why are you still here? What are you waiting for? For thanks that you nobly gave up your magical witcher medicaments? For a promise that he won’t forget it till his dying day?”

“I want to ask him something.”

“Promise me, Geralt, that you’ll catch them,” said Frans Torquil, suddenly quite lucid. “That you won’t let them off—”

“I’ll give him a sleeping draught and something for the fever, because he’s raving. And you, Witcher, get out. Wait in the yard.”

He didn’t have to wait long. The old woman came out, hitched up her dress and straightened her crooked garland. She sat beside him on the step. And rubbed one foot against the other. She had extremely small feet.

“He’s sleeping,” she announced. “And will probably live, if nothing evil sets in, touch wood. The bone will knit. You saved his pin with them witcher charms. He’ll always be lame and he’ll never mount a horse again, I dare say, but two legs are better than one, hee, hee.”

She reached into her bosom, beneath her embroidered sheepskin vest, making the air smell even more strongly of herbs. She drew out a wooden casket and opened it. After a moment’s hesitation, she proffered it to Geralt.

“Want a snort?”

“No thank you. I don’t use fisstech.”

“But I…” said the herbalist, sniffing up the drug, first into one, then the other nostril. “But I do, from time to time. Sharpens up the mind like no one’s bloody business. Increases longevity. And improves the looks. Just look at me.”

He did.

“Thanking you for the witcher medicaments for Frans,” she said, wiping a watering eye and sniffing. “I won’t forget it. I know you jealously guard those decocts of yours. And you gave them to me, without a second thought. Even though you may run short when you’re next in need. Aren’t you afraid?”

“I am.”

She turned her head to show her profile. She must indeed have been a beautiful woman once, a long time ago.

“And now.” She turned to face him. “Speak. You meant to ask Frans something?”

“Never mind. He’s sleeping and it’s time I was off.”

“Speak.”

“Mount Cremora.”

“You should have said. What do you want to know about that mountain?”

* * *

The cottage stood quite far outside the village, hard by the wall of the forest which began just beyond a fence surrounding an orchard full of small trees laden with apples. The rest had all the hallmarks of a typical homestead: a barn, a shed, a hen house, several beehives, a vegetable patch and a muck heap. A thin trail of white, pleasant-smelling smoke was wafting from the chimney.