‘A soldier doesn’t question his orders,’ said Cahir, feeling the dressing on his head. ‘Doesn’t analyse them, doesn’t ponder over them, doesn’t wait for them to be explained to him. That’s the first thing they teach a soldier where I come from. So you can understand that not for a second did I ever question an order which was issued to me. The thought of why I had to capture a Cintran princess didn’t even cross my mind. An order’s an order. I was cross, naturally, because I wanted to taste fame, fighting against the knighthood, against the regular army… But working for the intelligence service is also treated as an honour where I come from. If it had only concerned a more taxing task, a more important prisoner… But a girl?’

Geralt threw a trout’s spine onto the fire. Before nightfall they had caught enough fish in a stream flowing into the Sansretour to eat their fill. The trout were spawning and easy to catch.

He listened to Cahir’s account, and the curiosity in him struggled with a feeling of profound hurt.

‘It was essentially chance,’ Cahir went on, gazing into the flames. ‘Pure chance. There was–as I found out later–a spy at the Cintran court, a valet. When we’d captured the city and were preparing to encircle the castle the spy stole out and gave a sign that he would try to get the princess out of the city. Several squads like mine were formed. By accident, it was my group the men spiriting Ciri away ran into.

‘A chase through the streets began, in quarter that was already on fire. It was sheer hell. Nothing but the roar of flames, walls of fire. The horses didn’t want to go there, and the men, what can I say, were in no hurry to urge them. My subordinates–there were four of them–began to claim I’d gone mad, that I was leading them to their doom… I barely managed to wrest back control…

‘We pursued them through that fiery bedlam and caught up with them. We suddenly had them before us: five mounted Cintrans. And a bloody fight began, before I could tell them to watch out for the girl. Who ended up on the ground at once anyway, as the man who was carrying her perished first. One of my men lifted her up and onto his horse, but he didn’t get far, for one of the Cintrans stabbed him through the back. I saw the blade pass an inch from Ciri’s head and she fell in the mud again. She was dazed with fear; I saw her cuddling up to the dead man, saw her trying to crawl under him… Like a kitten by its dead mother…’

He fell silent and swallowed audibly.

‘She didn’t even know she was cuddling up to the enemy. To a hated Nilfgaardian.’