The Sword of Destiny, Page 2

  ‘These colours are the customary categorisation, although not a precise one. Green dragons are most widespread though in fact they are rather gray, like dracolizards. To tell you the truth the reds are more red brown, the colour of brick. The large dark brown dragons are usually called black dragons. Rarest of all are the white dragons. I've never seen one. They live in the far North, apparently.’

  ‘Interesting. Do you know what other types of dragons I've heard of?’

  ‘I know,’ replied Geralt, swallowing a mouthful of beer. ‘I've also heard of them: the gold. But they don't exist.’

  ‘But how can you be sure? Just because you've never seen one? You've never seen a white one either.’

  ‘That's not the point. Across the seas, in Ofir and Zangwebar, there are white horses with black stripes. I've never seen those either, but I know that they exist. The golden dragon is a myth, a legend, like the phoenix. Phoenixes and golden dragons do not exist.’

  Vea, leaning on her elbows, looked at him curiously.

  ‘You certainly know what you're talking about - you're a witcher,’ said Borch drawing some more beer from the small keg. ‘However, I think any myth, any legend, can contain a grain of truth that sometimes can't be ignored.’

  ‘That is so,’ confirmed Geralt, ‘but that is the territory of dreams, hopes and desires: it's about the belief that there is no limit to what is possible, just because there is sometimes a wild chance that it might be true.’

  ‘Chance, exactly. It may be there once was a golden dragon; the product of a single, unique mutation.’

  ‘If that's the case, that dragon would've suffered the fate of all mutants,’ the witcher bowed his head. ‘It couldn't survive, because it's too different.’

  ‘Now you oppose natural law, Geralt. My wizard friend was in the habit of saying that each and every being can prevail in nature in one manner or another. The end of one existence always announces the beginning of another. There is no limit, at least when it comes to nature.’

  ‘Your wizard friend was a huge optimist. There is one element he didn't take into consideration; errors made by nature or those that play with it. The golden dragon and all the other mutants of its species, even if they have existed, could not survive. A natural limit inherent in them has prevented it.’

  ‘What's that?’

  ‘Mutants…’ the muscles in Geralt's jaw tensed, ‘Mutants are sterile, Borch. Only legends permit what nature condemns. Only myths can ignore the limits of what's possible.’

  Three Jackdaws remained silent. Geralt saw that the girls' faces had suddenly become serious. Vea quickly leaned towards him, embracing him with her hard, muscular arms. He felt her lips on his cheek, wet with beer.

  ‘They like you,’ said Three Jackdaws slowly, ‘The devil take it, they like you!’

  ‘What's so strange about that?’ replied the witcher, smiling sadly.

  ‘Nothing. But a toast is necessary. Landlord! Another keg!’

  ‘Not that much. A tankard at most.’

  ‘Make that two tankards!’ shouted Three Jackdaws. ‘Tea, I must leave for a moment.’

  The Zerricanian picked up her sabre from the bench as she rose before inspecting the room with a tired glance. The witcher noticed several pairs of eyes sparkle with greed at the sight of Borch's overstuffed coin-purse, but nobody dared to follow him as he staggered in the direction of the courtyard. Tea shrugged before following her employer.

  ‘What's your real name?’ asked Geralt of the girl who remained sitting at the table.

  Vea smiled revealing a line of white teeth, much of her shirt was unbuttoned as far as the last possible limit of decency allowed. Geralt did not doubt for an instant that her demeanour was designed to test the resistance of the other patrons in the room.

  ‘Alveaenerle.’

  ‘That's beautiful.’ The witcher was sure that the Zerricanian now gazed at him doe-eyed, seductively. He was not mistaken.

  ‘Vea?’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘Why do you ride with Borch? Warriors love of freedom. Can you tell me?’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘Hmm, what?’

  ‘He is…’ the Zerricanian wrinkled her brow while she tried to find the right words, ‘He is the most… the most beautiful.’

  The witcher shook his head. The criteria used by women to assess the desirability of men had always been an enigma to him.

  Three Jackdaws burst into the alcove re-buttoning his trousers and gave a loud command to the landlord. Tea, two steps behind him, feigned boredom as she looked around the tavern, the merchants and the mariners present avoiding her eyes. Vea sucked at a crayfish while casting the witcher knowing glances.

  ‘I'll have another order of eel for everyone, braised this time,’ Three Jackdaws sat down heavily, his still open belt jangled. ‘I'm tired of crayfish and I'm still hungry. I have reserved you a room, Geralt. You have no reason to be wandering this night. Let's have some more fun. To your health, girls!’

  ‘Vessekheal,’ Vea replied, holding up her glass. Tea blinked and stretched. Her lovely breasts, contrary to Geralt's expectations, did not burst out of her shirt.

  ‘Let's have some fun!’ Three Jackdaws leaned across the table, and slapped Tea on the behind, ‘Let's party, witcher, Hey! Landlord! Over here!’ The landlord quickly approached them, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘Do you have a large tub? Like one for washing linen in: solid and roomy.’

  ‘How big, sir?’

  ‘For four people.’

  ‘For… four,’ repeated the landlord smiling widely.

  ‘Four,’ confirmed Three Jackdaws, pulling his full coin-purse out of his pocket.

  ‘We'll find one for you,’ promised the landlord as he moistened his lips.

  ‘Perfect,’ replied Borch, all smiles. ‘Order one and bring it up into my room and see that it's filled with hot water. Get to it, my dear chap, and don't forget beer and at least three tankards.’ The Zerricanians laughed and winked at the witcher.

  ‘Which do you prefer?’ asked Three Jackdaws. ‘Huh, Geralt?’

  The witcher scratched his head.

  ‘I know it's a difficult choice,’ continued Three Jackdaws with a knowing air. ‘I also have trouble sometimes. Well, we will decide when we're in the tub. Hey, girls! Help me up the stairs.’

  III

  There was a barricade on the bridge. A long and solid beam positioned on trestles barred access to the other bank of the river. Halberdiers in buttoned leather jackets and mail were gathered there, standing guard on both sides. Aloft, a crimson pennant bearing a silver griffin flapped in the wind.

  ‘What the devil?’ exclaimed Three Jackdaws as they approached the barricade. ‘We can't pass?’

  ‘Do you have a pass?’ asked the nearest halberdier, without removing from his mouth the straw he was chewing to stave off hunger or quite simply to kill time.

  ‘What pass? What's going on? An epidemic of cattle plague? War? In whose name do you block the road?’

  ‘On the order of King Niedamir, Lord of Caingorn.’ the guard moved the straw to the other corner of his mouth and indicated to the pennant. ‘Without safe conduct, you cannot pass.’

  ‘How stupid,’ interrupted Geralt in a tired voice. ‘We are not, however, in Caingorn but in the county of Holopole. It's just as well that Holopole and not Caingorn collects the toll on the bridges of the Braa. What's it got to do with Niedamir?’

  ‘Don't ask me,’ replied the guard, spitting out his straw. ‘I'm only here to check the passes, if you want, you can ask our commanding officer.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Over there, making the most of the sun behind the toll collector's booth,’ replied the guard, looking not at Geralt but at the naked thighs of the Zerricanians which lay nonchalantly across their saddles.

  A guard was sitting on a pile of dry straw behind the hut of the toll collector. He was drawing in the sand, with the end of his halberd, a picture of a woman; a rather detail
ed view from an unusual perspective. Next to him there was a thin man, half dozing, delicately strumming chords on a lute. An eccentric plum coloured hat decorated with a silver buckle and a long egret feather drooped over his eyes. Geralt recognized the hat and the feather so famous in Buina and Iaruga and known in all the manors, castles, guesthouses, inns and brothels. Especially in the brothels.

  ‘Dandelion!’

  ‘Witcher Geralt!’ merry blue eyes appeared from under the hat. ‘What a surprise! Is it really you? You wouldn't happen to have a pass, by chance?

  ‘What's all this business about passes? What's going on here, Dandelion? I'm travelling with the knight Borch of the Three Jackdaws and his escort and we want to cross the river.’

  ‘I'm also stuck here.’ Dandelion rose and lifted his hat before bowing to the Zerricanians with a courtly flourish. ‘They won't let me pass either, me, Dandelion, the most celebrated of minstrels and poets for a thousand miles around. It was the lieutenant who refused; and he's also an artist, as you can see.’

  ‘I can't let anyone cross without a pass,’ stated the lieutenant with a disconsolate air before adding the finishing touches to his sand picture with the tip of his weapon.

  ‘We'll take a detour along the bank. It will take longer to get to Hengfors, but we don't have much choice,’ said the witcher.

  ‘To Hengfors?’ the bard looked surprised, ‘You mean you're not here to see Niedamir? You're not hunting the dragon?’

  ‘What dragon?’ asked Three Jackdaws, looking intrigued.

  ‘You don't know? You really don't know? In that case, I shall tell you all about it, my lords. As I am obliged to wait here in the hope that somebody with a pass accepts my company, we have lots of time. Sit down.’

  ‘Wait,’ interrupted Three Jackdaws, ‘It's nearly midday and I'm thirsty, plague on it! We can't discuss such matters with dry throats. Tea and Vea, hurry back to town and buy a keg.’

  ‘I like the way you think, lord…’

  ‘Borch, also called Three Jackdaws.’

  ‘Dandelion, nicknamed The Unrivalled… by certain young ladies.’

  ‘Get on with it, Dandelion,’ interrupted the witcher, impatient. ‘We haven't got all day.’

  The bard seized the neck of his lute and violently strummed some chords.

  ‘What would you prefer? In verse or in prose?’

  ‘Normally.’

  ‘As you like.’ Dandelion did not lay down his lute. ‘Listen well, noble sirs, the events took place one week ago, not far from a free city named Holopole. Ah yes, in the small hours of the morning, dawn tinting red the veil of mist in the meadows…’

  ‘It was supposed to be normally,’ the witcher pointed out.

  ‘That is normally, isn't it? Okay, okay, I understand. Briefly, without metaphors. Near the town of Holopole, a dragon alit.’

  ‘Oh really?’ exclaimed the witcher, ‘That seems incredible - nobody has seen a dragon in these parts for years. Isn't it just a dracolizard? Some of them can be quite big…’

  ‘Don't insult me, witcher, I know what it is. I've seen it. By chance I just came to Holopole for the market and I saw it with my own eyes. My ballad was already prepared, but you didn't want…’

  ‘Carry on. Is it big?’

  ‘It's as long as three horses, to the withers no bigger than a horse, but much fatter. Gray as sand.’

  ‘Green, then.’

  ‘Yes. It swooped down without warning on a herd of sheep. The shepherds ran away and it killed a dozen animals and ate four of them before taking flight.’

  ‘It flew away…’ Geralt nodded his head. ‘That's it?’

  ‘No, it returned the next morning, nearer to the city this time. It dived down onto a group of women who were washing their linen at the edge of the Braa. And did they run, my friend! I have never laughed so much in my life. Then the dragon executed two turns above Holopole before attacking some ewes in a nearby pasture. What a lot of panic and confusion it started! The day before, well, nobody had believed the shepherds… the burgrave then started to mobilise a militia and the guilds, but before he had time to organize them, the people had taken matters into their own hands and sorted it out themselves.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With a very popular method. The master shoe-maker, a certain Kozojed, conceived of a means to finish off the reptile. They killed a sheep then stuffed it full of hellebore, belladonna, hemlock, sulphur and shoemaker's pitch. To be on the safe side, the local pharmacist added two quarts of boil remedy and had the priest of the Temple of Kreve bless the offering. Then they staked the stuffed sheep in the middle of the herd. To tell you the truth, nobody believed that the dragon would be attracted by one stinking piece of shit surrounded by a thousand others. But reality exceeded our expectations. Forsaking the sheep that were alive and bleating, the reptile swallowed the bait along with the stake.’

  ‘What then? Tell me more, Dandelion.’

  ‘What else can I do? I'm not going to stop now. Listen to the rest: barely enough time had passed for a skilful man to untie the corset of a lady when the dragon started roaring and emitting smoke from both front and behind. Next it did a somersault, tried to fly away and then fell down motionless. Two volunteers approached it to check if it still breathed. They were the local grave-digger and the village idiot, conceived by the lumberjack's daughter, a deranged girl who had been knocked up by a company of pikemen passing through Holopole during the rebellion of the Voivod Tracasse.’

  ‘What lies you speak, Dandelion.’

  ‘I do not lie; I do nothing but colour gray reality. There's a difference.’

  ‘Not really. Carry on, we're wasting time.’

  ‘As I was saying, a grave-digger and a courageous simpleton went as scouts. We then raised for them a nice burial mound, small but pleasing to the eye.’

  ‘Ah, good,’ said Borch. ‘That means that the dragon still lived.’

  ‘And how,’ replied Dandelion merrily. ‘It lived, but it was too weak to eat the gravedigger and the idiot; it only sucked their blood. It then flew off… to the great anxiety of all, even though it found it difficult to take off. The dragon crashed with a roar every cubit and a half then took off again. Sometimes it crawled, dragging its hind legs behind it. The more courageous followed it at a distance without losing sight of it. And you know what?’

  ‘Speak, Dandelion.’

  ‘The dragon plunged into a ravine up in Big Kestrel Mountain, not far from the source of the Braa. It remains hidden in the caves.’

  ‘Now it all becomes clear,’ announced Geralt. ‘The dragon lived in these caves in state of lethargy for centuries; I've heard of similar cases. Its treasure must also be there. I know now why soldiers are blocking the bridge. Somebody wants to lay their hands on the treasure and that somebody is called Niedamir of Caingorn.’

  ‘Exactly,’ confirmed the troubadour. ‘The whole city of Holopole boils for this reason, because the people consider that the dragon's treasure belongs to them. But they fear to oppose to Niedamir. The king is a young featherbrain who has not yet started to shave, but he knew how to show that it was dangerous to take him on. Niedamir wants this dragon more than anything. That's why his reaction was so prompt.’

  ‘He wants the treasure, you mean.’

  ‘I'm convinced that the dragon interests him more than the treasure. Because, you see, the principality of Malleore has aroused the appetite of Niedamir for a long time. After the strange death of the prince, there remained a princess of marriageable age. The powers of Malleore did not see Niedamir and the other suitors in a good light because they knew that any new power would want to keep a tight rein on them; a situation that a gullible, young princess would not know how to deal with. They therefore dug out a dusty old prophecy that assured that the crown and the hand of the girl would belong to the one who conquers a dragon. They believed that this would keep the peace, knowing that no one had seen dragons in the region in such a long time. Niedamir didn't care about the legen
d. He tried every possible means to take Malleore by force but when the news of the appearance of the dragon of Holopole reached his ears, he understood that he could consequently conquer the noblemen of Malleore with their own weapon. If he returns to Malleore triumphantly brandishing the head of the dragon, they will welcome him as a monarch sent by the Gods, and the powers that be will not dare say a word. Don't be surprised that he seeks this dragon like a cat stalks a mouse. All the more so as this dragon crawls along with difficulty. For Niedamir it's a pure godsend, a smile of destiny, damn it.’

  ‘And it cuts out the competition.’

  ‘Well, I guess so. It also cools the ardour of the inhabitants of Holopole. He must have given a pass to all of the horsemen in the vicinity who might be able to strike down the dragon, because Niedamir is not keen to enter the caves himself, sword in hand, to fight the dragon. In a flash he had the most celebrated dragon slayers gathered around him. You probably know most of them, Geralt.’

  ‘It's possible. Who? ‘

  ‘Eyck of Denesle, for starters.’

  ‘Son of a…’ The witcher whistled softly, ‘The god-fearing and virtuous Eyck: the dauntless knight, beyond reproach, himself.’

  ‘You know him then, Geralt?’ Borch asked. ‘Is he really such a specialist in dragons?’

  ‘Not just dragons; Eyck knows how to deal with all monsters. He's even struck down manticores and griffins. He's also defeated a few dragons, or so I've heard. He's good, but the lunatic ruins business by refusing to take payment. Who else, Dandelion?’