‘Let us in on it, dwarf!’

‘When we received your letter and it was clear we’d meet in Rivia, Zoltan and I pondered over what to serve you. We racked our brains till all that racking made us want to piss, and then we went down to a little lakeside alder. We looked, and there were positively tons of snails. So we took a sack and caught a load of the dear molluscs, as many as we could stuff in it…’

‘A lot of them escaped,’ Zoltan Chivay nodded, ‘We were a tad drunk and they’re devilish fast.’

Again, both dwarves wept with laughter at another old chestnut.

‘Wirsing—’ Yarpen pointed at the innkeeper bustling around by the stove ‘—knows how to cook snails, and that, you ought to know, demands considerable arcane knowledge. He nonetheless is a born chef de cuisine. Before he became a widower he and his wife ran the roadhouse in Maribor with such a table that the king himself entertained guests there. We’ll soon be tucking in, I tell you!’

‘And before that,’ nodded Zoltan, ‘we’ll have a starter of freshly smoked whitefish caught on a gaff in the bottomless depths of this lake. And we’ll wash it down with hooch from the depths of the cellar.’

‘And the story, gentlemen,’ reminded Yarpen, pouring. ‘The story!’

The whitefish was still hot, oily and smelled of smoke from alder chips. The vodka was so cold it stung the teeth.

Dandelion spoke first; elaborately, fluently, colourfully and volubly, embellishing his tale with ornaments so beautiful and fanciful they almost obscured the fibs and confabulations.

Then the Witcher spoke. He spoke the same truth, and spoke so dryly, boringly and flatly that Dandelion couldn’t bear it and kept butting in, for which the dwarves reprimanded him.

And then the story was over and a lengthy silence fell.

‘To the archer Milva!’ Zoltan Chivay cleared his throat, saluting with his cup. ‘To the Nilfgaardian. To Regis the herbalist who entertained the travellers in his cottage with moonshine and mandrake. And to Angoulême, whom I never knew. May the earth lie lightly on them all. May they have in the beyond plenty of whatever they were short of on earth. And may their names live forever in songs and tales. Let’s drink to them.’

Wirsing, a grey-haired fellow, pale and as thin as a rake, the sheer opposite of the stereotype of an innkeeper and master of culinary secrets, brought to the table a basket of snow-white, aromatic bread, and after that a huge, wooden dish of snails on a bed of horseradish leaves, sizzling and spitting garlic butter. Dandelion, Geralt and the dwarves set about eating with a will. The meal was exquisitely tasty and at the same time extremely comical, considering the need to fiddle with bizarre tongs and little forks.