Yurga squinted.

‘Protecting people, saving their lives, how do you judge that; bad or good? Those fourteen on the hill? You on that there bridge? What were you doing? Good or bad?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Geralt with effort. ‘I don’t know, Yurga. Sometimes it seems to me that I know. And sometimes I have doubts. Would you like your son to have doubts like that?’

‘Why not?’ the merchant said gravely. ‘He might as well. For it’s a human and a good thing.’

‘What?’

‘Doubts. Only evil, sir, never has any. But no one can escape his destiny.’

The Witcher did not answer.

The highway curved beneath a high bluff, under some crooked birch trees, which by some miracle were hanging onto the vertical hillside. The birches had yellow leaves. Autumn, Geralt thought, it’s autumn again. A river sparkled down below, the freshly-cut palisade of a watchtower shone white, the roofs of cottages, hewn stakes of the jetty. A windlass creaked. A ferry was reaching the bank, pushing a wave in front of it, shoving the water with its blunt prow, parting the sluggish straw and leaves in the dirty layer of dust floating on the surface. The ropes creaked as the ferrymen hauled them. The people thronged on the bank were clamouring. There was everything in the din: women screaming, men cursing, children crying, cattle lowing, horses neighing and sheep bleating. The monotonous, bass music of fear.

‘Get away! Get away, get back, dammit!’ yelled a horseman, head bandaged with a bloody rag. His horse, submerged up to its belly, thrashed around, lifting its fore hooves high and splashing water. Yelling and cries from the jetty–the shield bearers were brutally jostling the crowd, hitting out in all directions with the shafts of their spears.

‘Get away from the ferry!’ the horseman yelled, swinging his sword around. ‘Soldiers only! Get away, afore I start cracking some skulls!’

Geralt pulled on his reins, holding back his mare, who was dancing near the edge of the ravine.

Heavily armoured men, weapons and armour clanging, galloped along the ravine, stirring up clouds of dust which obscured the shield bearers running in their wake.

‘Geraaaalt!’

He looked down. A slim man in a cherry jerkin and a bonnet with an egret’s feather was jumping up and down and waving his arms on an abandoned cart loaded with cages which had been shoved off the highway. Chickens and geese fluttered and squawked in the cages.

‘Geraaalt! It’s me!’

‘Dandelion! Come here!’

‘Get away, get away from the ferry!’ roared the horseman with the bandaged head on the jetty. ‘The ferry’s for the army only! If you want to get to the far bank, scum, seize your axes and get into the forest, cobble together some rafts! The ferry’s just for the army!’

‘By the Gods, Geralt,’ the poet panted, scrambling up the side of the ravine. His cherry jerkin was dotted, as though by snow, with birds’ feathers. ‘Do you see what’s happening? The Sodden forces have surely lost the battle, and the retreat has begun. What am I saying? What retreat? It’s a flight, simply a panicked flight! And we have to scarper, too, Geralt. To the Yaruga’s far bank…’