‘No,’ mumbled Boreas, not knowing himself why he was doing it. ‘Not that way… That’s only a dead end. Your way is there, up that staircase… To the upper castle. If you wish to rescue the Lady of the Lake… then you must hurry.’

‘My thanks,’ said the white-haired man. ‘Thank you, stranger. Regis, did you hear? Lead on!’

A moment later only corpses remained in the courtyard. And Boreas Mun, still leaning on the pikestaff. Which he couldn’t release, because his legs were shaking so much.

The rooks circled, cawing, over Stygga Castle, covering the towers and bastions in a shroud-like cloud.

Vilgefortz listened with stoical calm and an inscrutable expression to the breathless report of the mercenary who had come running. But his restless and blinking eye betrayed him.

‘Last ditch reinforcements.’ He ground his teeth. ‘Unbelievable. Things like that don’t happen. Or they do, but only in crummy, vulgar pageants, and it comes to the same thing. Do me the pleasure, good fellow, of telling me you’ve made it all up for, shall we say, a lark.’

‘I’m not making it up!’ the hireling said in indignation. ‘I’m speaking the truth! Some horsemen have burst in… A whole hassa of them—’

‘Very well, very well,’ the sorcerer interrupted. ‘I was joking. Skellen, deal with this matter personally. It will be a chance to demonstrate how much your army, hired with my gold, is worth.’

Tawny Owl leaped up, nervously waving his arms.

‘Aren’t you treating this too lightly, Vilgefortz?’ he yelled. ‘You, it seems, don’t realise the gravity of the situation! If the castle is being attacked, it’s by Emhyr’s army! And that means—’

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ the sorcerer cut him off. ‘But I know what you have in mind. Very well, if the fact that you have me behind you will improve your morale, have it as you will. Let’s go. You too, Mr Bonhart.’

‘As far as you’re concerned—’ he fixed his terrible eye on Ciri ‘—don’t have any false hopes. I know who’s turned up here with these pathetic reinforcements worthy of a cheap farce. And I assure you, I shall turn this cheap farce into a nightmare.

‘Hey, you!’ he nodded at the servants and acolytes. ‘Shackle the girl in dimeritium, lock and bolt her in a cell, and don’t move an inch from the door. You’ll answer with your lives for her. Understood?’

‘Yes, sire.’

They rushed into the corridor, and from the corridor into a large hall full of sculptures; a veritable glyptothek. No one barred their way. They only saw a few lackeys who immediately fled on seeing them.

They ran up some stairs. Cahir kicked a door open, Angoulême rushed inside with a battle cry and with a blow of her sabre knocked off the helmet of a suit of armour she took for a guard standing by the door. She realised her mistake and roared with laughter.

‘Hee, hee, hee! Look at that…’