Situated in a bend in the River Nevi, Riedbrune was a small town, if one only took into consideration the densely-grouped brick and wooden buildings inside the ring of earthen embankments bristling with a palisade. But the serried buildings inside the embankments were currently merely the centre of the town, and no more than a tenth of the population could live there. Nine tenths resided in the noisy ocean of ramshackle huts, shacks, cabins, sheds, tents and wagons serving as dwellings which surrounded the embankments.

The Witcher and the poet were served by a cicerone in the form of the beekeeper’s relative; young, artful and arrogant, a typical specimen of an urban layabout, who’d been born in the gutter and was no stranger to bathing nor slaking his thirst there. This stripling was like a trout in a crystal-clear mountain stream in the urban hubbub, throng, grime and stench, and the chance to show someone around his repugnant town clearly delighted him. Unconcerned that nobody was asking him any questions, the guttersnipe gave enthusiastic explanations. He explained that Riedbrune was an important stage for Nilfgaardian settlers travelling northwards after the endowment pledged by the emperor: six oxgangs or roughly one hundred and twenty acres. And on top of that a ten-year tax moratorium. For Riedbrune lay at the mouth of the Dol Nevi valley which cuts through the Amell Mountains, via the Theodula pass linking the Slopes and Riverdell with Mag Turga, Geso, Metinna and Maecht; all countries for many years subordinate to the Nilfgaardian Empire. The town of Riedbrune, explained the guttersnipe, was the last place where the settlers could depend on something else and not just themselves, their womenfolk and what they had on their wagons. Which was why most of the settlers remained camped outside the town for quite some time, gathering their strength before the last push to the banks of the Yaruga and beyond. And many of them, he added, with the pride of a slum patriot, settled in the town permanently, because the town was, why, culture, not some yokelish dump stinking of dung.

In truth, the town of Riedbrune’s stench drew on many smells; dung included.

Geralt had been there, years before, but couldn’t recognise it. Too much had changed. Previously, there hadn’t been so many cavalrymen in black armour and cloaks with silver emblems on their spaulders. Previously, the Nilfgaardian tongue had not been heard on all sides. Previously, there hadn’t been a quarry outside the town, where now ragged, dirty, haggard and bloodied people split boulders into ashlars and rubble, whipped by black-uniformed overseers.