Geralt did not add that it was also the fault of the carters, because the joke, although well-known, did not amuse everybody.

‘Every new viceroy,’ Herbolth continued in a huff, ‘begins by removing the castellans and mayors of the old regime, in order to give his friends and relations jobs. But after what Cicada once did to the emissaries of a certain viceroy, no one tries to unseat me from my position any more and I’m the oldest mayor of the oldest regime. Which one, I can’t even remember. Well, but we’re sitting here chin-wagging, and we need to get on, as my late first wife was wont to say. Let’s get to the point. What kind of creature had infested our muck heap?’

‘A zeugl.’

‘First time I’ve ever heard of anything like that. I trust it’s dead?’

‘It is.’

‘How much will it cost the town treasury? Seventy?’

‘A hundred.’

‘Oh, really, Witcher, sir! You must have been drinking hemlock! A hundred marks for killing a lousy worm that burrowed into a pile of shit?’

‘Worm or no worm, mayor, it devoured eight people, as you said yourself.’

‘People? I like that! The brute, so I am informed, ate old Zakorek, who was famous for never being sober, one old bag from up near the castle and several children of the ferryman Sulirad, which wasn’t discovered very quickly, because Sulirad himself doesn’t know how many children he has. He produces them too quickly to count them. People, my hat! Eighty.’

‘Had I not killed the zeugl, it would soon have devoured somebody more important. The apothecary, let us say. And then where would you get your chancre ointment from? One hundred.’

‘A hundred marks is a good deal of money. I don’t know if I’d give that much for a nine-headed hydra. Eighty-five.’

‘A hundred, Mayor Herbolth. Mark that although it wasn’t a nine-headed hydra, no local man, including the celebrated Cicada, was capable of dealing with the zeugl.’

‘Because no local man is accustomed to slopping around in dung and refuse. This is my last word: ninety.’

‘A hundred.’

‘Ninety-five, by all the demons and devils!’

‘Agreed.’

‘Well, now,’ Herbolth said, smiling broadly, ‘that’s settled. Do you always bargain so famously, Witcher?’

‘No,’ Geralt did not smile. ‘Seldom, actually. But I wanted to give you the pleasure, mayor.’

‘And you did, a pox on you,’ Herbolth cackled. ‘Hey, Peregrib! Over here! Give me the ledger and a purse and count me out ninety marks at once.’

‘It was supposed to be ninety-five.’

‘What about the tax?’

The Witcher swore softly. The mayor applied his sprawling mark to the receipt and then poked around in his ear with the clean end of the quill.

‘I trust things’ll be quiet on the muck heap now? Hey, Witcher?’

‘Ought to be. There was only one zeugl. Though there is a chance it managed to reproduce. Zeugls are hermaphroditic, like snails.’

‘What poppycock is that?’ Herbolth asked, looking askance at him. ‘You need two to reproduce, I mean a male and a female. What, do those zeugls hatch like fleas or mice, from the rotten straw in a palliasse? Every dimwit knows there aren’t he-mice and she-mice, that they’re all identical and hatch out of themselves from rotten straw.’