Milva turned on her heel and thrashed her across the shoulders with all her might. Angoulême screamed, sat down and burst into tears.

‘I told you,’ Milva puffed, ‘not to call me that. I told you!’

‘It’s all right!’ In a somewhat shaking voice Dandelion reassured the merchants and travellers, who had run over from the neighbouring campfires. ‘Just a misunderstanding between friends. A lovers’ tiff. It’s already been patched up!’

The Witcher probed a wobbly tooth with his tongue and spat out the blood dripping from his cut lip. He felt the welts beginning to rise on his back and shoulders, and his ear–which had been lashed by the strap–seeming to swell to the dimensions of a cauliflower. Beside him, Cahir clumsily hauled himself up from the ground, holding his cheek. Broad, red marks quickly spread over his exposed forearm.

Rain smelling of sulphur–ash from the last firework–was falling on the ground.

Angoulême sobbed woefully, holding her shoulders. Milva threw aside her belt, then after a moment’s hesitation knelt, embraced and hugged her without a word.

‘I suggest,’ said the vampire frigidly, ‘that you shake hands. I suggest never, ever, revisiting this matter.’

Unexpectedly, a gale came down from the mountains in whispered gusts in which it seemed some kind of ghastly howling, crying and wailing could be heard. The clouds being blown across the sky took on fantastic shapes as the crescent moon turned as red as blood.

They were woken before dawn by a furious chorus of goatsucker nightjars and the whirring of their wings.

They set off just after the rising of the sun, which later lit up the snows on the mountain peaks with blinding flame. They had left much earlier than that, before the sun had appeared from behind the peaks. Actually, before it appeared, the sky had become overcast.

They rode amongst forests, and the road led higher and higher, which was discernible in the tree species. The oak and hornbeam finished abruptly, and they rode into a gloom of beech lined with fallen leaves, smelling of mould, cobwebs and mushrooms. The mushrooms were in abundance. The damp year end had yielded a plentiful harvest. In places, the forest floor literally vanished beneath the caps of ceps, morels and agarics.

The beechwood was quiet and looked as though most of the songbirds had flown away to their mysterious winter haven. Only crows at the edge of the undergrowth cawed, feathers dripping.

Then the beech ended and spruce replaced it. The scent of resin filled the air.

More and more often they encountered bald hillocks and stone runs, where they were caught by strong winds. The River Nevi foamed over steps and cascades. Its water–in spite of the rain–had turned crystal clear.

Gorgon loomed up on the horizon. Ever closer.