‘The Zerrikanians!’ the Witcher shouted, helplessly tugging at the ropes.

‘Oh, shit!’ Dandelion chimed in. ‘Geralt! Do you understand?’

The Zerrikanians rode through the throng like hot knives through a barrel of butter, scattering their path with massacred corpses, and then leaped from their horses in full flight, to stand beside the dragon struggling in the net. The first of the onrushing constables immediately lost his head. The second aimed a blow with his pitchfork at Véa, but the Zerrikanian, holding her sabre in both hands, upside down, with the tip pointing towards the ground, slashed him open from crotch to sternum. The others beat a hurried retreat.

‘To the wagons!’ Sheepbagger yelled. ‘To the wagons, kinsmen! We’ll crush them under the wagons!’

‘Geralt!’ Yennefer suddenly shouted, pulling up her bound legs and pushing them with a sudden thrust under the wagon, beneath the arms of the Witcher, which were bound and twisted behind him. ‘The Igni Sign! Make it! Can you feel the rope? Cast the bloody thing!’

‘Without looking?’ Geralt groaned. ‘I’ll burn you, Yen!’

‘Make the Sign! I can take it!’

He obeyed, and felt a tingling in his fingers, which were forming the Igni Sign just above the sorceress’s bound ankles. Yennefer turned her head away, biting down on her coat collar and stifling a moan. The dragonling, squealing, beat its wings beside her.

‘Yen!’

‘Make it!’ she bellowed.

Her bonds gave way in an instant, as the disgusting, nauseating odour of charred skin became unbearable. Dorregaray uttered a strange noise and fainted, suspended by his fetters from the wagon wheel.

The sorceress, wincing with the pain, straightened up, lifting her now free leg. She screamed in a furious voice, full of pain and rage. The medallion on Geralt’s neck jerked as though it were alive. Yennefer straightened her thigh, waved her foot towards the charging wagons of the Barefield constabulary, and shouted out a spell. The air crackled and gave off the smell of ozone.

‘O, ye Gods,’ Dandelion wailed in admiration. ‘What a ballad this will be, Yennefer!’

The spell, cast by her shapely little foot, was not totally effective. The first wagon–and everything on it–took on the yellow colour of a kingcup, which the Barefield soldiers in the frenzy of battle did not even notice. It did better with the second wagon, whose entire crew were transformed into huge, rough-skinned frogs, which hopped around in all directions, croaking comically. The wagon, now bereft of a driver, tipped over and fell apart. The horses, neighing hysterically, fled into the distance, dragging the broken shaft behind them.

Yennefer bit her lip and waved her leg in the air again. The kingcup-yellow wagon suddenly dissolved into kingcup-yellow smoke to the sound of lively musical tones drifting down from above, and its entire crew flopped onto the grass, stupefied, forming a picturesque heap. The wheels of the third wagon went from round to square and the result was instant. The horses reared up, the wagon crashed over, and the Barefield constabulary were tipped out and thrown onto the ground. Yennefer, now driven by pure vindictiveness, flourished a leg ferociously and yelled out a spell, transforming the Barefielders randomly into turtles, geese, woodlice, flamingos and stripy piglets. The Zerrikanians expertly and methodically finished off the rest.