“I'm Geralt,” the witcher introduced himself after a moment's hesitation. “The one who sang is Dandelion. And this is Milva.”
“Rrr-rrwa mother!” Croaked the parrot.
“Shut yer beak!” snapped Zoltan Chivay. “Excuse me. This bird is smart, but is very rude. Ten thalers I paid for this rarity. He is called Field Marshal Duda. And this is the rest of my company. This is Munro Bruys, Yazon Varda, Caleb Stratton, Figgis Merluzzo and Percival ... Schuttenbach.”
Percival Schuttenbach was not a dwarf. From under his wet hood, instead of a tangled beard, protruded a very long and pointed nose, reliably identifying the nationality of the holder to be that of the old and noble race of gnomes.
“And the others,” Zoltan Chivay pointed to the nearby group who had caught up and stopped not far away. “Are refugees from Kernow. As you can see they are only women with their toddlers. There were more, but Nilfgaard attacked their group three days ago, and the rest were massacred. We came across them in the woods and now we travel together.”
“Yet you walk with confidence on the roads,” ventured the witcher. “Singing at the top of your voices.”
“I do not think,” the dwarf played with his beard, “that crying and walking is a better choice. From Dillingen we walked through the woods, quietly and carefully. Once the troops had passed, we went out into the road to make up time.” He paused, looking at the battlefield.
“The views,” he pointed to the corpses, “we have become accustomed to. From Dillingen, from the Yaruga, there is nothing but death on the highways ... You were part of this convoy?”
“No. The Nilfgaardians killed some merchants before we got here.”
“It was not Nilfgaardians.” The dwarf shook his head, looking at the dead bodies with a cold expression. “It was Scoia'tael. Regular soldiers do not bother to pull their arrows from the corpses. A good tip cost half a crown.”
“He knows what he's talking about,” muttered Milva.
“Where are you going?”
“South,” Geralt said immediately.
“I would not recommend it.” Zoltan Chivay shook his head again. “There is hell, fire and destruction. Dillingen is probably already taken, and the dark riders are more likely to cross the Yaruga, they will soon occupy the entire valley from the right bank. As you can see, they are already before us, and to the North, they head for Brugge. Therefore, the only reasonable direction to flee is the East.”
Milva gave a knowing look to the witcher, who refrained from commenting.
“We are just going to the East,” continued Zoltan Chivay. “The only chance is to hide behind the front, and the Temerian army will be coming from the East, from the river Ina. We will then go to the hills, along the forest paths. We will go first to Turlough, then we will continue along the Old Road up the river Chotla by Sodden, which flows into the Ina. If you want, we will walk together. That is if the slowness of our progress does not pose a problem. You, you have horses, but we, our pace is slowed by the refugees.”
“I know,” said Milva, looking keenly at him, “that a dwarf, even with luggage, can make thirty miles a day. Almost as much as a man on a horse. I know the Old Road. Without the refugees, you would be at the Chotla in three days.”
“These are women and children,” Zoltan Chivay puffed out his beard and belly. “We cannot leave them at the mercy of fate. Are you going to tell me otherwise?”
“No,” the witcher said. “We wouldn't say that.”
“I am glad to hear it. It means my first impressions were right. So then, do we walk together?”
Geralt looked at Milva. The archer nodded.
“Good.” Zoltan Chivay acknowledged the gesture. “Let's get on the road then, before a patrol surprises us. But first ... Yazon, Munro, go and search the carts. If something useful survived, load it up quickly. Figgis, see if our wheel will fit onto that small wagon, it would be perfect for us.”
“It fits!” Yelled the dwarf who dragged the wheel. “As if it were the original!”
“You see, mutton head? You were skeptical yesterday when I told you to take it! Mount it up! Help him, Caleb!”
Within an impressively short amount of time, the wagon of the late Vera Loewenhaupt, equipped with a new wheel, was stripped of tarpaulins and any unwanted items, and was pulled from the ditch onto the road. In an instant, all of the luggage was piled in. After some thought, Zoltan Chivay ordered that there be room left for the children to sit. The command was carried out with hesitation – Geralt noticed that the refugees kept their distance from the dwarves and were reluctant to give up the children.
Dandelion watched with evident disgust as two dwarves tried on clothes pulled from the corpses. The others prowled among the carts, but found nothing they considered worthy of taking. Zoltan Chivay whistled on his fingers, signaling it was time to end the salvaging, then he cast a professional eye over Roach, Pegasus, and Milva's black bay.
“Your horses,” he said, wrinkling his nose with an air of disapproval. “They are useless. Figgis, Caleb, to the drawbar. We will take it in turns. Forwaaarrd!”
Geralt was sure that the dwarves would have to abandon the cart when it became stuck in the muddy trails, but he was wrong. The dwarves were as strong as bulls, and the roads leading to the forests were not too grassy or muddy. The rain continued to fall incessantly. Milva was sullen and moody and when she spoke, it was merely to grumble that the horses hooves might crack at any time. Zoltan Chivay licked his lips in response, and told her he was a master at preparing horsemeat, which infuriated Milva even more.
They had maintained a regular formation, and at the centre they pulled the cart. Zoltan marched in front of the cart, Dandelion rode next to him on Pegasus and quarreled with the parrot. Geralt and Milva followed, and behind them dragged the six women from Kernow.
The guide was Percival Schuttenbach, the long-nosed gnome. Although his size and stature was smaller than that of the dwarves, he had equal the amount of strength and his agility far surpassed theirs. During the march he ran around tirelessly, rummaging in the bushes, darting forward and disappearing, then suddenly emerging nervously, making monkey gestures from a distance giving a sign that everything was okay, they could go on.
Sometimes he would come back quickly and give a report of obstacles on the trail. Whenever he returned, he gave the four children sitting on the cart a handful of blackberries, nuts or some kind of weird, but clearly tasty tuber.
Moving at a terribly sluggish pace, they marched for three days. They did not stumble upon the army, and saw no smoke or fire. However, they were not alone. Scout Percival reported to them several times about groups of refugees hiding in the forest. They passed several such groups, and quickly at that, because the peasants, armed with pitchforks and stakes did not encourage them to make contact. It was suggested, however, to try to negotiate with them and leave the group of women from Kernow, but Zoltan was opposed to it and Milva supported him. The women also did not seem very keen to leave the company. This made it all the more strange that they behaved towards the dwarves with reserve and a certain dislike, mingled with fear, they hardly spoke at rest stops and stood on the sidelines. Geralt attributed the behavior of the women to the tragedy they had recently survived, but he suspected that the reason for their reserve could be the fairly liberal manners of the dwarves. Zoltan and his company swore obscenely and often and the parrot, Field Marshal Duda, had an even richer repertoire. They sang bawdy songs, valiantly supported by Dandelion. They spat, blew their noses in their fingers and farted loudly, which was usually followed by laughter, jokes and competitions. They only took the trouble to go deep into the bushes for larger commissions, and for lighter ones, they did not bother to go that far. The latter finally unnerved Milva, who strongly admonished Zoltan one morning when he took a piss on the ashes, still warm from the fire, without any concern for the audience around him. Zoltan was taken aback at this reprimand, and said that people who hide shamefully in the bushes are informers and plotters, it
makes them easily recognizable as untrustworthy and deceitful. This eloquent justification however, had no affect on the archer. She bombarded the dwarves with a rich medley of insults and a few specific threats for good measure. It seemed to be highly effective, as everyone obediently and meekly started going to the toilet in the bushes. In order to not be seen as treacherous conspirators, however, they went in groups.
The new company had completely changed Dandelion meanwhile. The poet fit in with the dwarves like a brother, especially when it appeared that some of them had heard of him before and knew a few verses of his ballads. Dandelion never left Zoltan's company. He wore a quilted jacket he had acquired from the dwarves, and he had replaced his tattered feathered hat for a sable cap that made him look like a scoundrel. In his wide copper lined belt, he had planted a knife he'd been given as a gift, giving him the look of a true rogue. The knife had a bad habit of pricking him in the groin every time he bent forward. Fortunately, he soon lost the assassin's dagger and didn't have another to replace it with.
They wandered among the dense forests, which covered the slopes of Turlough. The forests seemed dead, there were no animals. They had probably been scared by the army and fled. There was nothing to hunt, but so far they were not threatened by hunger. The dwarves had brought a lot of supplies. However, there were a lot of mouths to feed, and it didn't take too long for the supplies to run out. Munro Bruys and Yazon Varda disappeared once it was barely dark, taking with them an empty sack. When they returned in the morning, they had two sacks, both full. One was filled with horse feed, the second was filled with groats, flour, dried beef, a wheel of cheese that had barely been touched, and even a huge Kindziuk, a delicacy consisting of a casing stuffed with beef offal, pressed between two tablets in the shape of bellows to stoke the fire.
Geralt could guess where the bounty had come from. He did not comment immediately, but waited for a suitable moment. Once he was alone with Zoltan, he asked him politely if he did not see anything wrong with robbing other refugees, no less hungry than them, and fighting for survival. The dwarf replied seriously, that yes, he was very much ashamed, but he felt it was part of nature.
“My great vice,” he explained, “Is my irrepressible goodness. I just got to do good. However, I'm a rational dwarf, and I know that I can't spread my kindness to all. If I tried to be good for everyone, for the whole world and all the beings inhabiting it, it would be like a drop of drinking water in the salty sea. In other words, a wasted effort. I decided therefore to take solid action, so it does not go in vain. I'm good for myself and my immediate entourage.”
Geralt did not ask any more questions.
During one of their stops, Geralt and Milva chatted longer with Zoltan Chivay, the incorrigible and compulsive altruist. The dwarf was well informed about the course of the war or at least he gave that impression.
“The attack,” he replied, trying again and again to silence Field Marshal Duda, who was now swearing loudly, “Came from Drieschot. It began at dawn on the seventh day after Lammas. The Verdanian army marched with Nilfgaard because Verden, as you know, is now an Imperial protectorate. They moved at a rapid pace, leaving all the villages in ashes from Drieschot to Brugge and abolishing the army stationed there. The Nilfgaardian Black Infantry managed to sneak across the Yaruga when they were least expected and took the fortress at Dillingen. They built a bridge of boats in half a day, can you believe it?”
“We believe anything now.” Milva muttered. “You were in Dillingen, when it began?”
“We were in the area,” said the dwarf evasively. “When the news reached us of an invasion, we were already on our way to Brugge. The roads were a terrible mess, they were full of fugitives and refugees, some leaving the South to go North, others vice versa. They clogged the road, and we were stuck. We got confirmation too, that Nilfgaard was both behind us and in front of us. The ones who'd left from Drieschot had split up. I somehow felt that a large incursion had went to the Northeast, toward the city of Brugge.”
“And the blacks are already now North of Turlough. We're in the middle, on neutral ground.”
“In the middle,” admitted the dwarf. “But not on neutral ground. Imperial squads are flanked by Squirrels, Verden volunteers and various other isolated groups, and they are even worse than Nilfgaardians. They are the ones who burned Kernow, but failed to catch us, and we just about managed to escape to the forest. We had therefore better not stick the tips of our noses out of this forest. We should be careful. We will reach the Old Road, then go along the river Chotla to the Ina and there we will find the Temerian army. King Foltest's troops have probably already recovered from the surprise and will show the Nilfgaardians some resistance.”
“I hope so.” Milva said, looking at the witcher. “The problem is, we have urgent matters in the South. We had thought of going South from Turlough, towards the Yaruga.”
“I do not know what the matters are that push you to go in that direction,” Zoltan's eyes flashed at them suspiciously. “They must be bloody important for you to risk your necks like that for them.”
He paused, waited a little, but no one hastened to explain. The dwarf scratched his behind, coughed and spat.
“I would not be surprised,” he said finally, “to learn Nilfgaard already holds both sides of the Yaruga and the Ina estuary in its claws. Where exactly do you need to be on the Yaruga?”
“No place in particular,” Geralt decided to respond. “Just simply at the river. I want to find a boat to sail to the mouth.”
Zoltan looked at him and laughed, but stopped immediately when he realized it was no joke.
“I must admit,” he said after a moment, “you are dreaming if you think you will get there. You should give it up. All of Southern Brugge is on fire, before you get to the Yaruga you will be impaled or sent to Nilfgaard. Even if by some miracle you manage to get to the river, you have no chance of sailing to the mouth. I told you about the pontoon, slung from Cintra to the shore of Brugge. This bridge is diligently guarded day and night, and nothing crosses the river that way, except maybe the salmon. Your important and urgent matters will have to lose their importance and urgency. You cannot piss any higher, that's my advice.”
Milva's facial expression revealed that she agreed with the dwarf. Geralt had nothing to say. He felt very bad. He felt a dull ache like invisible blunt teeth biting into the bones of his left forearm and right knee, the pain made worse by his fatigue and the constant humidity. He also had a piercing, depressing, and extremely unpleasant feeling. A strange feeling, which he had never before experienced, and one that he could not cope with.
All he felt was helplessness and resignation.
After two days the rain stopped, and the sun shone on his face. Freed from the fog which had dissipated quickly, the forest breathed again and the birds went on singing, forgetting their silence during the bad weather. Zoltan cheered and ordered a long stop, after which he promised the walk would be easier and that they would reach the Old Road in a day at most. The women from Kernow dried their black and gray clothes on the surrounding branches, shamefully hiding in the bushes in their underwear, scoffing their meals. The scruffy children ran about having fun, disturbing the dignified calm of the steaming forest. Dandelion slept off his fatigue. Milva had disappeared.
The dwarves rested, but remained active. Figgis Merluzzo and Munro Bruys went in search of mushrooms. Zoltan, Yazon Varda, Caleb Stratton and Percival Schuttenbach sprawled not far from the cart and played 'Screwed', their favorite card game, to which they devoted every free moment, even on wet evenings. The witcher sometimes sat and played with them and encouraged them, as he did now. He still could not understand the complicated rules of the game, but he was fascinated by the cards themselves, which were beautifully and meticulously painted. Compared to human playing cards, these were true masterpieces of printing. Geralt once again argued that the techniques the dwarves used were strongly advanced and weren't just exclusive to mining, steel and metallurgy. If
dwarves, despite their abilities, did not hold the monopoly of the games market it was because people much preferred to play dice, also gamblers paid little interest to aesthetics. Human gamblers, and the witcher had taken the opportunity to observe more than one, always played in crumpled boxes so dirty that before laying them on the table they had to be laboriously detached from their fingers. The figures were painted so sloppily that it was only possible to distinguish the Lady from the Jack because the Jack sat on a horse, although the horse looked more like a lame weasel.
The images on the dwarven boxes excluded such mistakes. The king wearing a crown was truly royal, the Lady was beautiful and seductive, and the Jack, armed with a halberd, was rakishly mustached. In the dwarven tongue, these figures were called Hraval, Vaina and Ballet, but when Zoltan and his company played, they used the names common to humans.
The sun shone, the moisture evaporated from the forest, Geralt encouraged the players.
The basic principle of Screwed was something resembling a horse auction at market, such was the intensity and tension in the voice of the player. The pair presenting the highest "price" tried to get as many folds as possible, while the second pair tried to prevent it in every way. The game ran loudly and violently, and each player sat with a big club next to him. They rarely used the clubs, but they were often waved about.
“How can you play this game, with that empty head? Are you deaf? You bid clubs, instead of hearts? What do I bid hearts and sing an operetta too? Oh, I should take my stick and whack you over your stupid noggin!”
“I had four clubs and a jack, I thought I had the best bid!”
“Four clubs! Unless you counted your little pecker when holding the cards in your lap. Think a little, Stratton, it's not university, it's just a card game! Even a pig could rob a mayor if he had good cards. Deal, Varda.”
“Double hearts.”
“You little shit!”
“He already played his king, and crapped his pants. Doubleton of clubs!”