He sighed, yawned, hawked, spat, wrapped himself in his cloak and spurred on his horse. Owing to those few moments of reflection he fell behind. Geralt was barely visible in the fog.

The Witcher rode hard. And didn’t look back.

* * *

“Here’s the wine,” said the innkeeper, putting an earthenware jug on the table. “Apple wine from Rivia, as requested. My wife asked me to ask you how you’re finding the pork.”

“We’re finding it among the kasha,” replied Dandelion. “From time to time. Not as often as we’d like to.”

The tavern they had reached at the end of the day was, as the colourful sign announced, The Wild Boar and Stag. But the sign was the only game offered by the establishment; you wouldn’t find it on the menu. The local speciality was kasha with pieces of fatty pork in thick onion sauce. Largely on principle, Dandelion turned his nose up a little at the—in his opinion—excessively plebeian vittals. Geralt didn’t complain. You couldn’t find much fault with the pork, the sauce was tolerable and the kasha al dente—in few roadside inns did the cooks prepare the latter well. They might have done worse, particularly since the choice was limited. Geralt insisted that during the day they cover the greatest distance possible and he hadn’t wanted to stop in the inns they had previously passed.

Not only for them, it turned out, did The Wild Boar and Stag turn out to be the end of the last stage of the daily trek. One of the benches against the wall was occupied by travelling merchants. Modern-thinking merchants, who—unlike traditional ones—didn’t disdain their servants and didn’t consider it dishonourable to sit down to meals with them. The modern thinking and tolerance had their limits, naturally; the merchants occupied one end of the table and the servants the other, so the demarcation line was easy to observe. As it was among the dishes. The servants were eating pork and kasha—the speciality of the local cuisine—and were drinking watery ale. The gentlemen merchants had each received a roast chicken and several flagons of wine.

At the opposite table, beneath a stuffed wild boar’s head, dined a couple: a fair-haired girl and an older man. The girl was dressed richly, very solemnly, not like a girl at all. The man looked like a clerk and by no means a high-ranking one. The couple were dining together, having quite an animated conversation, but it was a recent and fairly accidental acquaintance, which could be concluded unequivocally from the behaviour of the official, who was importunately dancing attendance on the girl in the clear hope of something more, which the girl received with courteous, although clearly ironic reserve.