The rattling had a soporific effect and the magician was soon asleep; Ciri, too, fell to dozing.
When she woke the sun was already high. She peered out between the barrels and packages. The wagon she was in was at the vanguard of the convoy. The one following them was being driven by a dwarf with a red kerchief tied around his neck. From conversations between the dwarves, she had gathered that his name was Paulie Dahlberg. Next to him sat his brother Regan. She also saw Wenck riding a horse, in the company of two bailiffs.
Roach, Geralt’s mare, tethered to the wagon, greeted her with a quiet neigh. She couldn’t see her chestnut anywhere or Triss’s dun. No doubt they were at the rear, with the convoy’s spare horses.
Geralt was sitting on the coachman’s box next to Yarpen. They were talking quietly, drinking beer from a barrel perched between them. Ciri pricked up her ears but soon grew bored – the discussion concerned politics and was mainly about King Henselt’s intentions and plans, and some special service or missions to do with secretly aiding his neighbour, King Demawend of Aedirn, who was being threatened by war. Geralt expressed interest about how five wagons of salted fish could help Aedirn’s defence. Yarpen, ignoring the gibe in Geralt’s voice, explained that some species of fish were so valuable that a few wagon-loads would suffice to pay an armoured company for a year, and each new armoured company was a considerable help. Geralt was surprised that the aid had to be quite so secretive, to which the dwarf replied that was why the secret was a secret.
Triss tossed in her sleep, shook the compress off and talked indistinctly to herself. She demanded that someone called Kevyn kept his hands to himself, and immediately after that declared that destiny cannot be avoided. Finally, having stated that everyone, absolutely everyone, is a mutant to a certain degree, she fell into a peaceful sleep.
Ciri also felt sleepy but was brought to her senses by Yarpen’s chuckle, as he reminded Geralt of their past adventures. This one concerned a hunt for a golden dragon who instead of allowing itself to be hunted down had counted the hunters’ bones and then eaten
a cobbler called Goatmuncher. Ciri began to listen with greater interest.
Geralt asked about what had happened to the Slashers but Yarpen didn’t know. Yarpen, in turn, was curious about a woman called Yennefer, at which Geralt grew oddly uncommunicative. The dwarf drank more beer and started to complain that Yennefer still bore him a grudge although a good few years had gone by since those days.
‘I came across her at the market in Gors Velen,’ he recounted. ‘She barely noticed me — she spat like a she-cat and insulted my deceased mother horribly. I fled for all I was worth, but she shouted after me that she’d catch up with me one day and make grass grow out of my arse.’
Ciri giggled, imagining Yarpen with the grass. Geralt grunted something about women and their impulsive natures – which the dwarf considered far too mild a description for maliciousness, obstinacy and vindictiveness. Geralt did not take up the subject and Ciri fell into dozing once more.
This time she was woken by raised voices. Yarpen’s voice to be exact — he was yelling.
‘Oh yes! So you know! That’s what I’ve decided!’
‘Quieter,’ said the witcher calmly. ‘There’s a sick woman in the wagon. Understand, I’m not criticising your decisions or your resolutions . . .’
‘No, of course not,’ the dwarf interrupted sarcastically. ‘You’re just smiling knowingly about them.’
‘Yarpen I’m warning you, as one friend to another: both sides despise those who sit on the fence, or at best they treat them with suspicion.’
‘I’m not sitting. I’m unambiguously declaring myself to be on one side.’
‘But you’ll always remain a dwarf for that side. Someone who’s different. An outsider. While for the other side . . .’
He broke off.
‘Well!’ growled Yarpen turning away. ‘Well, go on, what are you waiting for? Call me a traitor and a dog on a human leash
who for a handful of silver and a bowl of lousy food, is prepared to be set against his rebelling kinsmen who are fighting for freedom. Well, go on, spit it out. I don’t like insinuations.’
‘No, Yarpen,’ said Geralt quietly. ‘No. I’m not going to spit anything out.’
‘Ah, you’re not?’ The dwarf whipped the horses. ‘You don’t feel like it? You prefer to stare and smile? Not a word to me, eh? But you could say it to Wenck! “Please don’t count on my sword.” Oh, so haughtily, nobly and proudly said! Shove your haughtiness up a dog’s arse, and your bloody pride with it!’
‘I just wanted to be honest. I don’t want to get mixed up in this conflict. I want to remain neutral.’
‘It’s impossible!’ yelled Yarpen. ‘It’s impossible to remain neutral, don’t you understand that? No, you don’t understand anything. Oh, get off my wagon, get on your horse, and get out of my sight, with your arrogant neutrality. You get on my nerves.’
Geralt turned away. Ciri held her breath in anticipation. But the witcher didn’t say a word. He stood and jumped from the wagon, swiftly, softly and nimbly. Yarpen waited for him to untether his mare from the ladder, then whipped his horses once again, growling something incomprehensible, sounding terrifying under his breath.
She stood up to jump down too, and find her chestnut. The dwarf turned and measured her with a reluctant eye.
‘And you’re just a nuisance, too, little madam,’ he snorted angrily. ‘All we need are ladies and girls, damn it. I can’t even take a piss from the box – I have to stop the cart and go into the bushes!’
Ciri put her hands on her hips, shook her ashen fringe and turned up her nose.
‘Is that so?’ she shrilled, enraged. ‘Drink less beer, Zigrin, and then you won’t have to!’
‘My beer’s none of your shitin’ business, you chit!’
‘Don’t yell, Triss has just fallen asleep!’
‘It’s my wagon! I’ll yell if I want to!’
‘Stumpy!’
‘What? You impertinent brat!’
‘Stump!’
‘I’ll show you stump . . . Oh, damn it! Pprrr!’
The dwarf leaned far back, pulling at the reins at the very last moment, just as the two horses were on the point of stepping over a log blocking their way. Yarpen stood up in the box and, swearing in both human and dwarvish, whistling and roaring, brought the cart to a halt. Dwarves and humans alike, leaping from their wagons, ran up and helped lead the horses to the clear path, tugging them on by their halters and harnesses.
‘Dozing off, eh Yarpen?’ growled Paulie Dahlberg as he approached. ‘Bloody hell, if you’d ridden over that the axle would be done for, and the wheels shattered to hell. Damn it, what were you—’
‘Piss off, Paulie!’ roared Yarpen Zigrin and furiously lashed the horses’ hindquarters with the reins.
‘You were lucky,’ said Ciri, ever so sweetly, squeezing onto the box next to the dwarf. ‘As you can see, it’s better to have a witcher-girl on your wagon than to travel alone. I warned you just in time. But if you’d been in the middle of pissing from the box and ridden onto that log, well, well. It’s scary to think what might have happened—’
‘Are you going to be quiet?’
‘I’m not saying any more. Not a word.’
She lasted less than a minute.
‘Zigrin, sir?’
‘I’m not a sir.’ The dwarf nudged her with his elbow and bared his teeth. ‘I’m Yarpen. Is that clear? We’ll lead the horses together, right?’
‘Right. Can I hold the reins?’
‘If you must. Wait, not like that. Pass them over your index finger and hold them down with your thumb, like this. The same with the left. Don’t tug them, don’t pull too hard.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Right.’
‘Yarpen?’
‘Huh?’
‘What does it mean, “remain neutral”?’
‘To be indifferent,’ he muttered reluctantly. ‘Don’t let the reins hang down. Pull the left one closer to yourself!’
‘What’s indifferent? Indifferent to what?’
The dwarf leaned far out and spat under the wagon.
‘If the Scoia’tael attack us, your Geralt intends to stand by and look calmly on as they cut our throats. You’ll probably stand next to him, because it’ll be a demonstration class. Today’s subject: the witcher’s behaviour in face of conflict between intelligent races.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me in the least.’
‘Is that why you quarrelled with him and were angry? Who are these Scoia’tael anyway? These . . . Squirrels?’
‘Ciri,’ Yarpen tussled his beard violently, ‘these aren’t matters for the minds of little girls.’
‘Aha, now you’re angry at me. I’m not little at all. I heard what the soldiers in the fort said about the Squirrels. I saw … I saw two dead elves. And the knight said they also kill. And that it’s not just elves amongst them. There are dwarves too.’
‘I know,’ said Yarpen sourly.
‘And you’re a dwarf.’
‘There’s no doubt about that.’
‘So why are you afraid of the Squirrels? It seems they only fight humans.’
‘It’s not so simple as that.’ He grew solemn. ‘Unfortunately.’
Ciri stayed silent for a long time, biting her lower lip and wrinkling her nose.
‘Now I know,’ she said suddenly. ‘The Squirrels are fighting for freedom. And although you’re a dwarf, you’re King Henselt’s special secret servant on a human leash.’
Yarpen snorted, wiped his nose on his sleeve and leaned out of the box to check that Wenck had not ridden up too close. But the commissar was far away, engaged in conversation with Geralt.
‘You’ve got pretty good hearing, girl, like a marmot.’ He grinned broadly. ‘You’re also a bit too bright for someone destined to give birth, cook and spin. You think you know everything, don’t you?
That’s because you’re a brat. Don’t pull silly faces. Faces like that don’t make you look any older, just uglier than usual. You’ve grasped the nature of the Scoia’taels quickly, you like the slogans. You know why you understand them so well? Because the Scoia’taels are brats too. They’re little snotheads who don’t understand that they’re being egged on, that someone’s taking advantage of their childish stupidity by feeding them slogans about freedom.’
‘But they really are fighting for freedom.’ Ciri raised her head and gazed at the dwarf with wide-open green eyes. ‘Like the dryads in the Brokilon woods. They kill people because people . . . some people are harming them. Because this used to be your country, the dwarves’ and the elves’ and those . . . halflings’, gnomes’ and other . . . And now there are people here so the elves—’
‘Elves!’ snorted Yarpen. ‘They – to be accurate – happen to be strangers just as much as you humans, although they arrived in their white ships a good thousand years before you. Now they’re competing with each other to offer us friendship, suddenly we’re all brothers, now they’re grinning and saying: “we, kinsmen”, “we, the Elder Races”. But before, shi— Hm, hm . . . Before, their arrows used to whistle past our ears when we—’
‘So the first on earth were dwarves?’
‘Gnomes, to be honest. As far as this part of the world is concerned – because the world is unimaginably huge, Ciri.’
‘I know. I saw a map—’
‘You couldn’t have. No one’s drawn a map like that, and I doubt they will in the near future. No one knows what exists beyond the Mountains of Fire and the Great Sea. Even elves, although they claim they know everything. They know shit all, I tell you.’
‘Hmm . . . But now . . . There are far more people than . . . Than there are you.’
‘Because you multiply like rabbits.’ The dwarf ground his teeth. ‘You’d do nothing but screw day in day out, without discrimination, with just anyone and anywhere. And it’s enough for your women to just sit on a man’s trousers and it makes their bellies swell . . . Why have you gone so red, crimson as a poppy? You wanted to know, didn’t you? So you’ve got the honest truth and faithful
history of a world where he who shatters the skulls of others most efficiently and swells women’s bellies fastest, reigns. And it’s just as hard to compete with you people in murdering as it is in screwing—’
‘Yarpen,’ said Geralt coldly, riding up on Roach. ‘Restrain yourself a little, if you please, with your choice of words. And Ciri, stop playing at being a coachwoman and have a care for Triss, check if she’s awake and needs anything.’
‘I’ve been awake for a long time,’ the magician said weakly from the depths of the wagon. ‘But I didn’t want to . . . interrupt this interesting conversation. Don’t disturb them, Geralt. I’d like . . . to learn more about the role of screwing in the evolution of society.’
‘Can I heat some water? Triss wants to wash.’
‘Go ahead,’ agreed Yarpen Zigrin. ‘Xavier, take the spit off the fire, our hare’s had enough. Hand me the cauldron, Ciri. Oh, look at you, it’s full to the brim! Did you lug this great weight from the stream by yourself?’
‘I’m strong.’
The elder of the Dahlberg brothers burst out laughing.
‘Don’t judge her by appearances, Paulie,’ said Yarpen seriously as he skilfully divided the roasted grey hare into portions. ‘There’s nothing to laugh at here. She’s skinny but I can see she’s a robust and resilient lass. She’s like a leather belt: thin, but it can’t be torn apart in your hands. And if you were to hang yourself on it, it would bear your weight, too.’
No one laughed. Ciri squatted next to the dwarves sprawled around the fire. This time Yarpen Zigrin and his four ‘boys’ had lit their own fire at the camp because they did not intend to share the hare which Xavier Moran had shot. For them alone there was just enough for one, at most two, mouthfuls each.
Add some wood to the fire,’ said Yarpen, licking his fingers. ‘The water will heat quicker.’
‘That water’s a stupid idea,’ stated Regan Dahlberg, spitting out a bone. ‘Washing can only harm you when you’re sick. When
you’re healthy, too, come to that. You remember old Schrader? His wife once told him to wash, and Schrader went and died soon afterwards.’
‘Because a rabid dog bit him.’
‘If he hadn’t washed, the dog wouldn’t have bitten him.’
‘I think,’ said Ciri, checking the temperature of the water in the cauldron with her finger, ‘it’s excessive to wash every day too. But Triss asked for it – she even started crying once … So Geralt and I—’