In this way our company found itself on the road again, and the previously lengthy list of folk who did not like us grew even longer. Geralt of Rivia, an unblemished knight, had quit the ranks of the knighthood before his promotion had been confirmed by a single deed, and before the court heraldist had created a coat of arms for him. Cahir aep Ceallach had already managed to fight in and desert from both armies in the great conflict between Nilfgaard and the Nordlings, earning a sentence of death in absentia in both. The rest of us were in no better a situation. After all, a noose is a noose and the importance of why one is to hang is extremely slight; whether for discrediting knightly honour, desertion or christening an army mule ‘Draakul’.

Let it not then astonish you, reader, that we made truly titanic efforts to considerably increase the distance between us and Queen Meve’s corps. We rode south with all possible speed towards the Yaruga, intending to cross to the left bank. Not only in order to put the river between us and the queen and her partisans, but because the wildernesses of Riverdell were less dangerous than war-torn Angren; it would have been far more judicious to travel to the druids in Caed Dhu along the left and not the right bank. Paradoxically so–since the left bank of the Yaruga belonged to the hostile Nilfgaardian Empire. The father of the left-bank conception was Geralt the Witcher, who, after leaving the fraternity of swaggering knighthood, had regained the greater part of his reason, ability to think logically, and customary caution. The future was to show that the Witcher’s plan was fraught with consequences and determined the fate of the entire expedition. But more about that later.

When we reached the Yaruga there were already plenty of Nilfgaardians there who had crossed the reconstructed bridge at the Red Timber Port and were continuing the offensive against Angren; and probably further, against Temeria, Mahakam and the Devil only knows where else the Nilfgaardian general staff was planning to attack. Crossing the river right away was out of the question; we had to hide and wait for the army to move on. So for two whole days we hunkered in the riverside osiers, cultivating rheumatism and feeding the mosquitoes. To make matters worse, the weather soon declined: it drizzled, was windy as hell, and our teeth were chattering from the cold. I do not recall such a cold September among the many Septembers engraved in my memory. It was then, my dear reader, having found paper and pencil among the supplies borrowed from the Lyrian convoys, to kill time and forget about our discomforts, that I began to record and immortalise some of our adventures.