Jarre didn’t. He wasn’t certain if he had ever seen him. As a matter of fact, Melfi was exaggerating a little in calling him a pal. He was the cooper’s son from Ellander. When the two of them used to attend the temple school, Melfi would regularly and severely beat Jarre and call him a ‘bastard-without-a-mother-or-father-begotten-in-the-nettles’. This went on for about a year, after which the cooper took his son out of school, since it had been proved that his offspring was only fit for barrels. Thus Melfi, rather than toiling to learn the arcana of reading and writing, toiled to whittle staves in his father’s workshop. And after Jarre had completed his studies and on the strength of a recommendation from the temple became an assistant scribe in the magistrates’ court, the cooper’s son–following the example of his father–bowed to him, gave him presents and declared his friendship.

‘—we’re going to Vizima,’ Melfi continued his tale. ‘To join up. All of us here, to a man, are going to join the army. These here, look, Milton and Ograbek, peasant boys, have been selected for the acreage duty, why, you know…’

‘I do.’ Jarre cast his eyes over the peasant sons, fair-haired and as alike as brothers, chewing some unrecognisable food roasted in the cinders. ‘One for each two score and ten acres. The acreage levy. And you, Melfi?’

‘With me,’ sighed the cooper’s son, ‘it’s like this, see: the first time the guilds had to supply a recruit my father got me out of trouble. But when poverty came, we had to draw lots a second time, because the town so decided… Well, you know…’

‘I do,’ nodded Jarre again. ‘An additional lottery for the levy was decreed by a resolution of Ellander town council on the day of the sixteenth of January. It was necessary owing to the Nilfgaardian threat—’

‘Just listen to ‘im talk, Pike,’ raspingly interjected the thickset and shaven-headed fellow, the one called Okultich, who had hailed him on the bridge not long before.

‘Fop! Know-it-all!’

‘Smart alec!’ drawled another huge farmhand with a dopey smile permanently plastered onto his round face. ‘Know-all!’

‘Shut it, Klaproth,’ slowly lisped the one called Pike, the oldest of the company, sturdy, with a drooping moustache and a shaved nape. ‘Since he’s a know-it-all, it’s worth listening when he talks. There may be a benefit from it. Facts. And facts never harmed anyone. Well, almost never. And almost no one.’

‘I’ll second that,’ announced Melfi. ‘He, I mean Jarre, is indeed clever, knows his letters… A scholar! I mean he works as a court scribe in Ellander, and at the Temple of Melitele the whole book collection is under his care—’

‘What then, I wonder,’ interrupted Pike, staring at Jarre through the smoke and sparks, ‘is a sodding court-temple librarian doing on the highway to Vizima?’

‘Just like you,’ said the boy, ‘I’m going to join the army.’