Time of Contempt(72)

Geralt stood up, wiped his mouth, and punched him in the jaw with all his strength. The spy staggered but didn’t go down. The nearest Redanian leapt forward, intending to seize the Witcher, but grabbed thin air, and immediately sat down, spitting blood and one of his teeth. Then all the others jumped him. There was a chaotic confusion and crush, which was exactly what the Witcher had been hoping for.

One of the Redanians slammed head first into the gargoyle, and the water trickling from its jaws turned red. Another caught the heel of the Witcher’s fist in the windpipe and doubled up as though his genitals had been ripped out. A third, smacked in the eye, fell back with a groan. Dijkstra seized the Witcher in a bearlike grip, and Geralt kicked him hard in the ankle with his heel. The spy howled and cavorted hilariously on one leg.

Another heavy tried to strike the Witcher with his short sword but slashed only the air. Geralt caught hold of his elbow in one hand and his wrist in the other. He spun him around, knocking over two others who were trying to get up. The thug he was holding was strong and had no intention of releasing his sword. So Geralt tightened his grip and the man’s arm broke with a crack.

Dijkstra, still hopping on one leg, seized a partisan from the ground, hoping to pin the Witcher to the wall with its three-pronged blade. Geralt dodged, seized the shaft in both hands and used the principle – well known to scholars – of the lever. The spy, seeing the bricks and mortar of the wall looming, dropped the partisan but was too late to prevent his crotch slamming into the chimera’s head.

Geralt used the partisan to knock another thug off his feet and then held the shaft against the ground and broke it with a kick, shortening it to the length of a sword. He tried out the makeshift club, first by hitting Dijkstra – who was sitting astride the chimera – and then by quietening the moans of the bruiser with the broken arm. The seams of his doublet had burst under both arms some time before, and the Witcher was feeling considerably better.

The last brute on his feet also attacked with a partisan, expecting its length to offer him an advantage. Geralt hit him between the eyebrows, and the bruiser sat down hard on the pot holding the agave. Another of the Redanians – who was unusually stubborn – clung to the Witcher’s thigh and bit him painfully. This angered the Witcher, who deprived the rodent of his ability to bite with a powerful kick.

Dandelion arrived on the steps out of breath, saw what was happening and went as white as a ghost.

‘Geralt!’ he yelled a moment later. ‘Ciri’s disappeared! She isn’t here!’

‘I expected as much,’ answered the Witcher, bashing the next Redanian, who was refusing to lie down quietly, with his club. ‘But you really make a body wait, Dandelion. I told you yesterday that you were to leg it to Aretuza if anything happened! Have you brought my sword?’

‘Both of them!’

‘The other one is Ciri’s, you idiot.’ Geralt whacked the heavy trying to get up from the agave pot.

‘I don’t know much about swords,’ panted the poet. ‘Stop hitting them, by the gods! Can’t you see the Redanian eagle? They’re King Vizimir’s men! This is treachery and rebellion. You could end up in a dungeon for that . . .’

‘On the scaffold,’ mumbled Dijkstra, drawing a dagger and staggering closer. ‘You’ll both be for the scaffold . . .’

He wasn’t able to say anything else because he collapsed on all fours, struck on the side of the head with the stump of the partisan’s shaft.

‘Broken on the wheel,’ pictured Dandelion gloomily. ‘After being rent with red-hot pincers . . .’

The Witcher kicked the spy in the ribs. Dijkstra flopped over on one side like a felled elk.

‘. . . then our bodies quartered,’ continued the poet.

‘Stop that, Dandelion. Give me both swords and get away from here as quickly as possible. Flee from the island. As far away as you can!’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m going back up. I have to save Ciri . . . And Yennefer. Dijkstra, lie there nicely and get your hands off that dagger!’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ panted the spy. ‘I’ll send my men after you . . . I’ll get you . . .’

‘No you won’t.’

‘Oh, I will. I’ve got fifty men on The Spada . . .’

‘And is there a barber surgeon among them?’

‘Eh?’

Geralt came up behind the spy, bent down, seized him by the foot and jerked it, twisting the foot quickly and very powerfully. There was a cracking sound. Dijkstra howled and fainted. Dandelion screamed as if it had been his own ankle.