Geralt looked keenly ahead.

‘It’s not a fair.’

‘Ah…’ she also looked, standing up in the stirrups. ‘It’s not another—’

‘Execution,’ he confirmed. ‘The most popular amusement since the war. What have we seen so far, Ciri?’

‘Desertion, treason, cowardice in the face of the enemy,’ she quickly recited. ‘And financial cases.’

‘For supplying mouldy hardtack to the army.’ The Witcher nodded. ‘The life of an enterprising merchant is tough in wartime.’

‘They aren’t going to execute a tradesman here.’ Ciri reined back Kelpie, who was already submerged in the crowd as though in a rippling field of corn. ‘Just look, the scaffold’s covered in a cloth, and the executioner has a fresh new hood on. They’ll be executing somebody important, at least a baron. So it probably is cowardice in the face of the enemy.’

‘Toussaint didn’t have an army in the face of any foe.’ Geralt shook his head, ‘No, Ciri, I think it’s economics again. They’re executing somebody for swindles in the trade of their famous wine, the basis of the economy here. Let’s ride on, Ciri. We won’t watch.’

‘Ride on? How exactly?’

Indeed, riding on was impossible. In no time at all they had become stuck in the crowd gathered in the square, and were mired in the throng. There was no chance of their getting to the other side of the square. Geralt swore foully and looked back. Unfortunately, retreat was also impossible, for the wave of people pouring into the square had totally clogged up the street behind them. For a moment the crowd carried them like a river, but the movement stopped when the common folk came up against the serried wall of halberdiers surrounding the scaffold.

‘They’re coming!’ somebody shouted, and the crowd buzzed, swayed and took up the cry. ‘They’re coming!’

The clatter of hooves and the rattle of a wagon faded and was lost amidst the throng’s beelike humming. So they were astonished when a rack wagon pulled by two horses trundled out of a side street. And on it, having difficulty keeping his balance, stood…

‘Dandelion…’ groaned Ciri.

Geralt suddenly felt bad. Very bad.

‘That’s Dandelion,’ Ciri repeated in an unfamiliar voice. ‘Yes, it’s him.’

It’s unfair, thought the Witcher. It’s one big, bloody injustice. It can’t be like this. It shouldn’t be like this. I know it was stupid and naive to think that anything ever depended on me, that I somehow influenced the fate of this world, or that this world owes me something. I know it was a naive, arrogant opinion… But I know it! There’s no need to convince me about it! It doesn’t have to be proved to me! Particularly like this…

It’s unfair!

‘It can’t be Dandelion,’ he said hollowly, looking down at Roach’s mane.

‘It is Dandelion,’ Ciri said again. ‘Geralt, we have to do something.’

‘What?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Tell me what.’