‘Everybody would.’ Hotspurn leaned over in the saddle and looked her in the eye. ‘Because that’s the truth. You are an innocent victim, Falka. You aren’t even sixteen, so according to the empire’s law you’re a minor. You ended up in the Rats’ gang by accident. It’s not your fault that one of the bandits, Mistle, whose unnatural tastes are no secret, took a fancy to you. You were dominated by Mistle, sexually abused and forced to—’

‘Now it’s all clear,’ Ciri interrupted, amazed by her own calm. ‘It’s finally clear what this is all about, Hotspurn. I’ve seen men like you before.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Just like every cockerel,’ she said, still composed, ‘your comb bristles at the thought of me and Mistle. Like every stupid tomcat it dawns in your stupid noggin to try to cure me of this sickness which is contrary to nature, to turn the deviant back onto the road of truth. But do you know what is truly disgusting and contrary to nature in all that? Your thoughts!’

Hotspurn observed her in silence, with a somewhat mysterious smirk on his thin lips.

‘My thoughts, dear Falka,’ he said a moment later, ‘may not be decent, may not be nice, and they are obviously not innocent… But, by the Gods, they are in keeping with nature. With my nature. You do me a disservice, thinking that my attraction to you has its basis in some… perverted curiosity. Ha, you also do yourself a disservice, by not being aware–or not wanting to realise–that your captivating appeal and uncommon beauty are capable of bringing any man to his knees. That the charm of your glance—’

‘Listen, Hotspurn,’ she interrupted. ‘Do you want to bed me?’

‘What intelligence,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘I’m simply lost for words.’

‘Then I’ll help you.’ She spurred her horse a little, in order to look at him over her shoulder. ‘Because I have plenty of words. I feel honoured. In other circumstances, who knows… If you were someone else, ha! But you, Hotspurn, do not attract me at all. Nothing, simply nothing, about you attracts me. And actually, I’d say, it’s the reverse: everything about you puts me off. You can see for yourself that in such circumstances the sexual act would be contrary to nature.’

Hotspurn laughed, also spurring on his horse. The black mare danced on the track, gracefully lifting her shapely head. Ciri fidgeted in the saddle, fighting with a strange feeling which had suddenly woken in her, somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, but which quickly and doggedly struggled outside, onto her skin, quivering from the touch of her clothing. I’ve told him the truth, she thought. I don’t like him, by the devil, it’s his horse I like, that black mare. Not him, but his horse… What damned foolishness! No, no, no! Even if I wasn’t thinking of Mistle, it would be ridiculous and stupid to yield to him just because the sight of that black mare dancing on the track excites me.