When she rode to the gatehouse, there was already a crush there. An excited hubbub. They were all staring at her. The few who knew her and had seen her before, like Boreas Mun and Dacre Silifant, and the considerably more numerous of them who had only heard about her: newly recruited soldiers from Skellen, mercenaries, and ordinary marauders from Ebbing and the surroundings, who were now looking in amazement at the ashen-haired girl with the scar on her face and the sword on her back. At the splendid black mare, holding her head high, and snorting, her horseshoes ringing on the flagstones of the courtyard.

The hubbub died down. It became very quiet. The mare trotted, lifting her legs like a ballerina, her horseshoes ringing like a hammer on an anvil. This went on for a long time before her way was finally barred by crossed gisarmes and ranseurs. Someone reached out a hesitant and frightened hand towards the bridle. The mare snorted.

‘Take me to the lord of this castle,’ the girl said confidently.

Boreas Mun, not knowing himself why he was doing it, held her stirrup steady and offered his hand. Others held the stamping and snorting mare.

‘Do you recognise me, my lady?’ Boreas asked softly. ‘For we’ve already met.’

‘Where?’

‘On the ice.’

She looked him straight in the eye.

‘I didn’t look at your face then, sir,’ she said unemotionally.

‘You were the Lady of the Lake,’ he nodded seriously. ‘Why have you come here, girl? What for?’

‘For Yennefer. And to claim my destiny.’

‘Claim your death, more like,’ he whispered. ‘This is Stygga Castle. In your place I’d flee as far from here as you can.’

She looked again. And Boreas at once understood what she meant to say with that look.

Stefan Skellen appeared. He watched the girl for a long time, his arms crossed on his chest. Finally, he indicated with an energetic gesture that she was to follow him. She went without a word, escorted on all sides by armed men.

‘A strange wench,’ muttered Boreas. And shuddered.

‘Fortunately, she isn’t our concern now,’ said Dacre Silifant. ‘And I’m surprised at you for talking to her like that. It was she, the witch, who killed Vargas and Fripp, and later Ola Harsheim—’

‘Tawny Owl killed Harsheim,’ Boreas cut him off. ‘Not she. She spared our lives, there on the pack ice, though she could have slaughtered and drowned us like pups. All of us. Tawny Owl too.’

‘Very well.’ Dacre spat on the flags of the courtyard. ‘He’ll reward her for that mercy, together with the sorcerer and Bonhart. You’ll see, Mun, now they’ll gut her ceremonially. They’ll flay her in thin strips.’

‘I’m inclined to believe they’ll flay her,’ snapped Boreas. ‘Because they’re butchers. And we ain’t no better, since we serve under them.’

‘And do we have a choice? We don’t.’