Sword of Destiny Read Free Page B

approaching at a walk. ‘Is there no way through?’
    ‘Got a safe-conduct?’ the nearest halberdier asked, without taking the stick he was chewing, either from hunger or to kill time, from his mouth.
    ‘Safe-conduct? What is it, the plague? Or war, perhaps? On whose orders do you obstruct the way?’
    ‘Those of King Niedamir, Lord of Caingorn,’ the guardsman replied, shifting the stick to the other side of his mouth and pointing at the banner. ‘Without a safe-conduct you can’t go up.’
    ‘Some sort of idiocy,’ Geralt said in a tired voice. ‘This isn’t Caingorn, but Barefield’s territory. Barefield, not Caingorn, levies tolls from the bridges on the Braa. What has Niedamir to do with it?’
    ‘Don’t ask me,’ the guard said, spitting out his stick. ‘Not my business. I’m here to check safe-conducts. If you want, talk to our decurion.’
    ‘And where might he be?’
    ‘He’s basking in the sun over there, behind the toll collector’s lodgings,’ the halberdier said, looking not at Geralt but at the naked thighs of the Zerrikanians, who were stretching languidly in their saddles.
    Behind the toll collector’s cottage sat a guard on a pile of dry logs, drawing a woman in the sand with the end of his halberd. It was actually a certain part of a woman, seen from an unusual perspective. Beside him, a slim man with a fanciful plum bonnet pulled down over his eyes, adorned with a silver buckle and a long, twitching heron’s feather, was reclining, gently plucking the strings of a lute.
    Geralt knew that bonnet and that feather, which were famed from the Buina to the Yaruga, known in manor houses, fortresses, inns, taverns and whorehouses. Particularly whorehouses.
    ‘Dandelion!’
    ‘Geralt the Witcher!’ A pair of cheerful cornflower-blue eyes shone from under the bonnet, now shoved back on his head. ‘Well, I never! You’re here too? You don’t have a safe-conduct by any chance?’
    ‘What’s everyone’s problem with this safe-conduct?’ The Witcher dismounted. ‘What’s happening here, Dandelion? We wanted to cross the Braa, myself and this knight, Borch Three Jackdaws, and our escort. And we cannot, it appears.’
    ‘I can’t either,’ Dandelion stood up, took off his bonnet and bowed to the Zerrikanians with exaggerated courtesy. ‘They don’t want to let me cross either. This decurion here won’t let
me
, Dandelion, the most celebrated minstrel and poet within a thousand miles, through, although he’s also an artist, as you can see.’
    ‘I won’t let anyone cross without a safe-conduct,’ the decurion said resolutely, at which he completed his drawing with a final detail, prodding the end of his halberd shaft in the sand.
    ‘No matter,’ the Witcher said. ‘We’ll ride along the left bank. The road to Hengfors is longer that way, but needs must.’
    ‘To Hengfors?’ the bard said, surprised. ‘Aren’t you following Niedamir, Geralt? And the dragon?’
    ‘What dragon?’ Three Jackdaws asked with interest.
    ‘You don’t know? You really don’t know? Oh, I shall have to tell you everything, gentlemen. I’m waiting here, in any case; perhaps someone who knows me will come with a safe-conduct and let me join them. Please be seated.’
    ‘Just a moment,’ Three Jackdaws said. ‘The sun is almost a quarter to the noontide and I have an awful thirst. We cannot talk on an empty stomach. Téa, Véa, head back to the town at a trot and buy a keg.’
    ‘I like the cut of your jib, sire…’
    ‘Borch, also known as Three Jackdaws.’
    ‘Dandelion, also known as the Unparalleled. By certain girls.’
    ‘Talk, Dandelion,’ the Witcher said impatiently. ‘We aren’t going to loiter around here till evening.’
    The bard seized the fingerboard of his lute and plucked the strings vigorously.
    ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’
    ‘Normal speech.’
    ‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble