“I acted alongside a priest in the case of the wolf that had, in broad daylight, killed and ripped eleven people to pieces. Magic and sword triumphed side by side. When, after a hard fight, I finally killed the wolf, the demon possessing it broke free in the form of a large glowing ball. And devastated a fair stretch of forest, scattering the trees all around. It didn’t pay any attention to me or the priest, but cleared the forest in the opposite direction. And then it disappeared, probably returning to its dimension. The priest insisted he deserved the credit, that his exorcisms had dispatched the demon to the beyond. Although I think the demon went away because he was simply bored.”

“And the other case—?”

“—was more interesting.

“I killed a possessed man,” he continued without being pressed. “And that was it. No spectacular side effects. No ball lightning, auroras, thunderbolts or whirlwinds; not even a foul smell. I’ve no idea what happened to the demon. Some priests and mages—your confraters—examined the dead man. They didn’t find or discover anything. The body was cremated, because the process of decay proceeded quite normally, and the weather was very hot—”

He broke off. The sorcerers looked at each other. Their faces were inscrutable.

“That would be, as I understand it, the only proper way of dealing with a demon,” Harlan Tzara finally said. “To kill, to destroy the energumen, meaning the possessed person. The person, I stress. They must be killed at once, without waiting or deliberating. They should be chopped up with a sword. And that’s it. Is that the witcher method? The witcher technique?”

“You’re doing poorly, Tzara. That’s not how it’s done. In order to insult someone properly, you need more than overwhelming desire, enthusiasm and fervour. You need technique.”

“Pax, pax.” Pinety headed off an argument again. “We’re simply establishing the facts. You told us that you killed a man, those were your very words. Your witcher code is meant to preclude killing people. You claim to have killed an energumen, a person who’d been possessed by a demon. After that fact, i.e. the execution of a person, ‘no spectacular effects were observed,’ to quote you again. Where, then, is your certainty that it wasn’t—”