The crimes of which the sorcerers suspected the energumen, the person possessed by a demon, were carried out in the vicinity of Rissberg, in an uninhabited area called the Tukaj Hills, a chain of upland covered in ancient woodland, separating Temeria from Brugge. The hills owed their name—some people insisted—to a legendary hero called Tukaj, or to something completely different, as others claimed. Since there weren’t any other hills in the region it became common to simply say “the Hills,” and that shortened name also appeared on many maps.

The Hills stretched in a wide belt about a hundred miles long and twenty to thirty miles wide. The western part, in particular, was worked intensively by foresters. Large-scale felling had been carried out and industries and crafts linked to felling and forestry had developed. Large, medium, small and quite tiny, permanent and makeshift, tolerably and poorly built settlements, colonies, homesteads and camps of the people earning their living by forest crafts had been established in the wilderness. The sorcerers estimated that around four dozen such settlements existed throughout the Hills.

Massacres—from which no one escaped with their life—had occurred in three of them.

* * *

Dry Rocks, a complex of low limestone hills surrounded by dense forests, formed the westernmost edge of the Hills, the western border of the patrol region. Geralt had been there before; he knew the area. A lime kiln—used for burning limestone—had been built in a clearing at the edge of the forest. The end product of this burning was quicklime. Pinety, when they were there together, explained what the lime was for, but Geralt had listened inattentively and forgot it. Lime—of any kind—lay quite far beyond his sphere of interests. But a colony of people had sprung up by the kiln who made a living from said lime. He had been entrusted with their protection. And only that mattered.

The lime burners recognised him, one of them waved his hat at him. Geralt returned the greeting. I’m doing my job, he thought. I’m doing my duty. Doing what they pay me for.

He guided Roach towards the forest. He had about a half-hour ride along a forest track ahead of him. Nearly a mile separated him from the next settlement. It was called Pointer’s Clearing.

* * *