‘On a black horse?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Yennefer,’ Dorregaray said, glumly. Unnoticed by anybody, the Witcher twitched.

A silence fell, broken only by the belching of the future centurion.

‘Nobody… without a safe-conduct…’

‘Will two hundred lintars suffice?’ Geralt calmly took from his pocket the purse received from the fat Alderman.

‘Ah, Geralt,’ Three Jackdaws smiled mysteriously, ‘so you—’

‘My apologies, Borch. I’m sorry, but I won’t ride with you to Hengfors. Another time perhaps. Perhaps we’ll meet again.’

‘I have no interest in going to Hengfors,’ Three Jackdaws said slowly. ‘Not at all, Geralt.’

‘Put away that purse, sire,’ the future centurion said menacingly, ‘that’s sheer bribery. I won’t even let you through for three hundred.’

‘And for five hundred?’ Borch took out his pouch. ‘Put away that purse, Geralt. I’ll pay the toll. This has begun to amuse me. Five hundred, soldier, sir. One hundred a piece, counting my girls as one gorgeous item. What?’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ the future centurion said, distressed, stowing Borch’s pouch away under his jacket. ‘What will I tell the king?’

‘Tell him,’ Dorregaray said, straightening up and removing an ornate ivory wand from his belt, ‘that you were overcome by fear when you saw it.’

‘Saw what, sire?’

The sorcerer flourished his wand and shouted an incantation. A pine tree on the riverbank burst into flames. In one moment the entire tree was engulfed from top to bottom in a blaze of fire.

‘To horse!’ cried Dandelion, springing up and slinging his lute across his back. ‘To horse, gentlemen! And ladies!’

‘Raise the barrier!’ the rich decurion with a good chance of becoming a centurion shouted to the halberdiers.

On the bridge, beyond the barrier, Véa reined in her horse. It skittered, hooves thudding on the planking. The woman, tossing her plaits, screamed piercingly.

‘That’s right, Véa!’ Three Jackdaws shouted back. ‘Onwards, my lords. To horse! We’ll ride in the Zerrikanian fashion, with a thundering and a yelling!’

IV

‘Well, just look,’ said the oldest of the Reavers, Boholt, massive and burly, like the trunk of an old oak tree. ‘So Niedamir didn’t chase you away, my good sirs, though I was certain he would. But it’s not for us paupers to question royal commands. Join us by the campfire. Make yourselves a pallet, boys. And between you and me, Witcher, what did you talk to the king about?’

‘About nothing,’ Geralt said, making himself comfortable by leaning back against his saddle, which he had dragged over beside the fire. ‘He didn’t even come out of his tent to talk to us. He just sent that flunky of his, what’s his name…’

‘Gyllenstiern,’ said Yarpen Zigrin, a stocky, bearded dwarf, who was rolling a huge resinous tree stump he had dragged from the undergrowth into the fire. ‘Pompous upstart. Fat hog. When we joined the hunt he came over, nose stuck up towards the heavens, pooh-pooh, “remember, you dwarves”, he says, “who’s in command, who you have to obey, King Niedamir gives the orders here and his word is law” and so on. I stood and listened and I thought to myself, I’ll have my lads knock him to the ground and I’ll piss all over his cape. But I dropped the idea, you know, because word would get around again that dwarves are nasty, that they’re aggressive, that they’re whoresons and it’s impossible to live with them in… what the hell was it?… harmonium, or whatever it is. And right away there’d be another pogrom somewhere, in some little town or other. So I just listened politely and nodded.’