‘They leaped apart,’ the boy went on, ‘but neither of them was even grazed. The she-rat was as wrathful as the very Devil, and was hissing like a tomcat when someone wants to take his mouse away. But Mr Bonhart was wholly serene.’

‘Falka,’ Bonhart said, smiling and grinning like a veritable ghoul. ‘Truly can you dance and whirl a blade! You have aroused my curiosity, wench. Who are you? Tell me, before you perish.’

Ciri panted. She felt terror beginning to seize her. She understood what she was up against.

‘Tell me who you are, and I’ll spare your life.’

She gripped her hilt more tightly. She had to, had to, get through his parries, slash him, before he closed up. She could not let him deflect her blows, she could not withstand his blows with her sword, she could not risk–even once more–the pain and paralysis which pierced and spread through her elbow and forearm when she parried. She could not waste energy dodging his blows, which were missing her by barely a hair’s breadth. Get through his defence, she thought. Right now. In this clash. Or die.

‘You will die, she-rat,’ he said, moving towards her with his sword extended far out in front of him. ‘Do you not fear? That is only because you know not what death looks like.’

Kaer Morhen, she thought, as she sprang. Lambert. The comb. The somersault.

She took three steps and performed a half-pirouette, and when he attacked she ignored his feint, threw a backward somersault, dropped into a nimble crouch and lunged at him, ducking under his blade and twisting her wrist for the cut, for a fearful blow, aided by a powerful twist of her hip. Suddenly she was seized by euphoria; she would feel the blade cutting into his body.

Instead, there was the hard, moaning impact of metal on metal. And a sudden flash in her eyes, a shock and pain in her head. She felt herself falling, felt herself hitting the ground. He parried and twisted, she thought. I’m dying, she thought. Bonhart kicked her in the belly. A second kick, accurately and painfully aimed at her elbow, knocked the sword from her hand. Ciri grabbed her head and felt a dull pain, but there was neither a wound nor blood beneath her fingers. He hit me with his fist, she thought to her horror. I was just punched. Or struck with the pommel of his sword. He didn’t kill me. He thrashed me like an unruly brat.

She opened her eyes.

The hunter stood over her, terrible and gaunt as a skeleton, towering over her like a diseased, leafless tree, stinking of sweat and blood.

He seized her by the hair, lifted her violently, forced her to stand, but at once jerked her, knocking the ground from under her feet, and dragged her, wailing like the damned, towards Mistle, who was lying at the foot of the wall.