A large group of onlookers had formed around the corner, outside a narrow, pink-painted cottage. A young, fair-haired woman in a nightdress was standing on a tiny balcony decorated with flowers, just beneath the steep eaves of the roof. Bending a plump, fleshy arm, visible beneath the frills of her nightdress, the woman hurled down a chipped flowerpot.

A slim man in a plum bonnet with a white feather jumped aside like a scalded cat, and the flowerpot crashed onto the ground just in front of him, shattering into pieces.

‘Please, Vespula!’ the man in the bonnet shouted, ‘Don’t lend credence to the gossip! I was faithful to you, may I perish if it is not true!’

‘You bastard! You son of the Devil! You wretch!’ the plump blonde yelled and went back into the house, no doubt in search of further missiles.

‘Hey, Dandelion,’ called the Witcher, leading his resisting and snorting mare onto the battlefield. ‘How are you? What’s going on?’

‘Nothing special,’ said the troubadour, grinning. ‘The usual. Greetings, Geralt. What are you doing here? Bloody hell, look out!’

A tin cup whistled through the air and bounced off the cobbles with a clang. Dandelion picked it up, looked at it and threw it in the gutter.

‘Take those rags,’ the blonde woman screamed, the frills on her plump breasts swaying gracefully, ‘and get out of my sight! Don’t set foot here again, you bastard!’

‘These aren’t mine,’ Dandelion said in astonishment, taking a pair of men’s trousers with odd-coloured legs from the ground. ‘I’ve never had trousers like these in my life.’

‘Get out! I don’t want to see you anymore! You… you… Do you know what you’re like in bed? Pathetic! Pathetic, do you hear! Do you hear, everybody?’

Another flowerpot whistled down, a dried stalk that had grown out of it flapping. Dandelion barely managed to dodge. Following the flowerpot, a copper cauldron of at least two and a half gallons came spinning down. The crowd of onlookers standing a safe distance away from the cannonade reeled with laughter. The more active and unprincipled jokers among them applauded and incited the blonde to further action.

‘She doesn’t have a crossbow in the house, does she?’ the Witcher asked anxiously.

‘It can’t be ruled out,’ said the poet, lifting his head up towards the balcony. ‘She has a load of junk in there. Did you see those trousers?’

‘Perhaps we ought to get out of here? You can come back when she calms down.’

‘Hell no,’ Dandelion grimaced. ‘I shall never go back to a house from which calumny and copper pots are showered on me. I consider this fickle relationship over. Let’s just wait till she throws my… Oh, mother, no! Vespula! My lute!’

He lunged forward, arms outstretched, stumbled, fell and caught the instrument at the last moment, just above the cobbles. The lute spoke plaintively and melodiously.

‘Phew,’ sighed the bard, springing up, ‘I’ve got it. It’s fine, Geralt, we can go now. Admittedly my cloak with the marten collar is still there, but too bad, let it be my grievance. Knowing her she won’t throw the cloak down.