MERCURIO EN EL SUELO

They left the road that led along the Newi Valley, taking a shortcut through the mountains. They rode as fast as the path allowed. It was narrow, sinuous, and densely surrounded by fantastically shaped rocks, which were covered with different coloured mosses and lichens. They rode between vertical rock walls from which striped ribbons of cascades and waterfalls hung. They rode through canyons and ravines, and over varying small bridges spanning chasms, where white foam whirled on the ground far below.

The angular blade of Mount Gorgon seemed to tower directly above their heads, though they could not see the summit of the Devil’s Mountain – it sank into the clouds and fog that covered the sky. The weather – as it does in the mountains – changed for the worse in only a few short hours. It started to drizzle, annoyingly and obnoxiously.

When evening came, all three began to keep an impatient and nervous lookout for a shepherd's hut, a ruined sheepfold, or at least a cave. For anything that would protect them against the night sky and dripping water.

‘It seems to have stopped raining,’ said Angouleme with hope in her voice. ‘It’s only dripping through the holes in the roof of the hut now. Tomorrow, if we are lucky, we will reach Belhaven, where we can stay in a nearby shed or barn.’

‘We aren’t riding into town?’

‘Absolutely not. Strangers on horses catch the eye, and Nightingale has a lot of informers in the city.’

‘Considering that the plan is to consciously offer ourselves up as bait...’

‘No,’ she interrupted him. ‘It's a wretched plan. Together, we will arouse suspicion.

Nightingale is a cunning dog, and the news that I was captured has certainly reached him by now. And if Nightingale suspects something, then the half-elf will learn of it.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘We go around the city to the east, near the mouth of the Sansretour Valley, where there are iron mines. I have a friend in one of the mines. We will pay him a visit. Who knows, if we're lucky, perhaps this visit will be worth it?’

‘Can you speak more clearly?’

‘I will tomorrow. In the mine. I don’t want to jinx it.’

Cahir threw birch twigs into the fire. It had rained all day and any other timber would not have been able to burn. But the birch wood, although it was wet, only crackled a little before

immediately starting to burn with high blue flame.

‘Where are you from, Angouleme?’

‘From Cintra, witcher. It’s a country by the sea, at the mouth of the Yaruga.’

‘I know where Cintra is.’

‘Why are you asking if you know so much? Am I so interesting to you?’

‘Let's say a little bit.’

They were silent. The fire crackled.

‘My mother,’ Angouleme finally said, her gaze directed at the flames, ‘was a Cintrierin noble, by the right of high birth. Her House’s coat-of-arms was a Meerkat. I would show it to you – because my mother gave me a locket with this stupid cat – but I lost it playing dice...

But this shitty House shunned me, because my mother supposedly had relations with someone from the general populace, probably a stable-boy, and I supposedly am a bastard, a shame, a disgrace, and a stain on the House’s honour. So they gave me to some distantly related in-laws, who certainly had neither a cat nor a dog nor any beast on their coat-of-arms, but they were not bad to me. Sent me to school, all in all hit me only a little... Although they reminded me quite often of who I was – a bastard, begotten in the bushes. My mother visited me maybe three or four times when I was little. Then she stopped. It turns out that she didn’t give a shit about me – even though...’

‘How did you come to be among criminals?’

‘You sound like an investigating judge,’ she hissed and screwed up her face ludicrously.

‘Among the criminals, pah! Strayed from the path of virtue, bah!’

She muttered something to herself, looked in her jacket for something, and then pulled out something that was not exactly familiar to the witcher.

‘That One-Eyed Fulk,’ she said vaguely, as she eagerly rubbed a bit into her gums and inhaled some through her nose, ‘is a decent fellow after all. He took what he took, but he left me the dust. Will you take a pinch, witcher?’

‘No. I would prefer if you also would take none.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’

‘Cahir?’

‘I do not use Fisstech.’

‘It seems I am among paragons of virtue.’ She shook her head. ‘Will you preach moral certainty and lecture me that I will go blind, deaf, and hairless from the dust? That I will have

a mentally defective child?’

‘Leave off, Angouleme. And finish your story.’

The girl sneezed violently. ‘Well, as you will. Where was I... Aha. The war broke out, you know the one with Nilfgaard, and the relatives lost all their possessions and had to leave their home. They had three children of their own and I was too much to bear, so they gave me a new home. It was run by the priests of some temple. A fun place, as it turned out. A common whorehouse, a brothel, for people who liked to dine on succulent young fruits with white skins, you get it? Little girls. And little boys too. I was already too old when I went there, there were no lovers...’

Quite unexpectedly, she blushed; it could even be seen in the firelight. ‘Almost none’ she forced out.

‘How old were you then?’

‘Fifteen. I got to know a girl and five boys, my age and slightly older. And we came to a unanimous agreement. We knew the legends and the stories. Of the madman De'I, of Black Bart, of the Cassini brothers... We wanted the freedom of the road, the merry life of bandits!

Why, we said to ourselves, should we stay where we only get something to eat twice a day and had to sell our asses to repulsive creeps...’

‘Go easy on your choice of words, Angouleme. You know, too much cursing is unhealthy.’

The girl squawked and spat into the fire. ‘You really must be a paragon of virtue! Well, I’ll come to the point, because I do not feel like talking. We found knives in the kitchen of the home – they were sufficient after we grinded them well on the whetstone and belt. We turned the legs of a chair into great clubs. We just needed horses and money, so we waited until two scoundrels came, regular customers, old as the hills, ha, at least forty. They came, sat down, drank a little wine, and waited until their priests, as usual, tied their selected young thing into a specially refined piece of furniture... But that day they did not get to fuck her!’

‘Angouleme.’

‘Okay, okay. In short: We botched things up with the two old scoundrels, three priests, and a stable boy – the only one who had fought for the horses instead of fleeing. The temple guard would not give us the gate key, so we burned the gatehouse until he came out, but we spared his life, because that was a better age – we were always benevolent and good. And we went on robber’s road. That’s how it went for us, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes we dealt it, and sometimes we took it. Sometimes we were tired, sometimes hungry. Ha, hungry more often. I caught and ate more of what creeps and crawls than I ever had in my life. And of what flies – I once even ate a kid’s kite, because it was stuck together with glue made from flour.’

She paused and vigorously ran her hand through her straw-blond hair.

‘But what’s in the past is in the past. As far as I can tell you: Of those who escaped from the home with me, no one lives. The last two, Owen and Abel, were done in a few days ago by the soldiers of Lord Fulk. Abel even dropped his sword like me, but they cut him down anyway.’

‘They spared me. But don’t think it was out of loving kindness. They already had me stretched spread eagle on the ground when an officer came and forbade them the pleasure.

Well, then you came and saved me from the gallows...’

She paused for a moment.

‘Witcher?’

‘I'm listening.’

‘I know how I can prove my gratitude. If you just want to...’

‘What?’

‘I should go check on the horses,’ Cahir said quickly, standing up and wrapping his coat around him. ‘I’ll see how their feet are doing...’

The girl sneezed, sniffled, and cleared her throat.

‘Not a word of it, Angouleme,’ he warned her, feeling really bad, really ashamed, and really confused. ‘Not a word!’

She cleared her throat again. ‘You really don’t desire me? Not a bit?’

‘Milva gave you a taste of the strap, you snot nosed brat. If you don’t shut up immediately, you'll get a second helping from me.’

‘I'm not saying another word.’

‘Good girl.’

***

The slope was covered with small, twisted pines that hung crookedly, gaping pits, and holes. There were also many boards secured with rubber stamps and connected by stairs, ladders and scaffolds. Walkways protruded from the holes, supported by crossed poles. On some walkways, people were busily moving carts and wheelbarrows. The contents of the carts and wheelbarrows – at first glance muddy soil, interspersed with rocks – were dumped from the walkways into a large square trough, which then flowed into a complex of increasingly smaller and separated troughs. Water flowed continuously and noisily through the wooden troughs, which were supported on low-post cross gutters of a wooded hill. They

apparently derived somewhere down the slope.

Angouleme dismounted and signalled for Geralt and Cahir to dismount as well. They tied the horses to a fence and walked towards a building, trudging through mud next to leaky gutters and pipes.

‘The iron ore is washed here,’ said Angouleme while pointing. ‘Over there it is brought out in the tunnels of the mine. They feed material there, pouring it into the troughs where it is washed with water from the stream. The ore is deposited in sieves, where it is separated out.

There are many such mines and filtration camps around Belhaven. But the ore is then moved into the forested valleys, like the Mag Turga, because wood is needed for the furnaces and smelters...’

‘Thanks for the lecture,’ Geralt interrupted her with sour expression. ‘I've already seen several mines in my life and I know what it takes to smelt. When will you finally reveal to us our purpose for riding here?’

‘To chat with one of my acquaintances. He’s a pit foreman here. Come with me. Ha, I see him already! There, in the carpentry building. Come on.’

‘That dwarf there?’

‘Yes. His name is Golan Drosdeck. He is, as I said, a...’

‘Pit foreman. You said. But you have not said why you want to chat with him.’

‘Take a look at your boots.’

Geralt and Cahir obediently looked at their shoes, which were covered in a strange, reddish coloured mud. ‘The half-elf you seek,’ Angouleme answered the question before they could ask it, ‘was at the meeting with Nightingale with the very same reddish dirt on his shoes. Get it now?’

‘Now, yes. And the dwarf?’

‘You shouldn't respond all the time. For variety, you should try keeping quiet every once in a while – it makes for a grim countenance.’

They had no trouble making their way through the mining camp. Some of the miners looked at them and then quickly looked away; others remained frozen with their mouths open. Anyone that was in their way quickly moved aside. Geralt could imagine why. His face still shone and Cahir’s was still covered in stains, bruises, scratches and scrapes – the scenic remnants of the fight and the beating Milva had given them. So they looked like individuals who enjoyed cutting each other in the face, and who would also not take long to polish the face of a third person.

The dwarf, Angouleme’s friend, stood beside a carpentry building, painting an inscription on something like a blackboard, which was cobbled together from two planed boards. He

noticed the three and put away his brush, set his paint bucket aside, and looked at them from under lowered brows. His physiognomy, ornamented by a speckled beard, was suddenly painted in utter amazement. ‘Angouleme?’

‘Hello, Drosdeck.’

‘Is that you?’ The dwarf opened his bearded mouth. ‘Is that really you?’

‘No. It’s not me. It’s the newly resurrected prophet Marjoram. Don’t ask silly questions, Golan. For a change, you could act a little wiser.’

‘Don’t joke, Bright. I never expected to see you again. Mauleslin was here five days ago and he told me that they caught you and put you to the stake in Riedbrune. He swore it was the truth!’

‘Well, that’s a good thing.’ The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘Now, if Mauleslin ever wants to borrow money from you and swears that he will give it back, then you’ll know what his oath is worth.’

‘I already knew that,’ the dwarf replied, then blinked rapidly and twitched his nose just like a rabbit. ‘I wouldn’t lend him a penny if they were falling from the sky. But the fact that you're alive and safe makes me happy, ha, that makes me glad! Maybe you will even pay your debt to me?’

‘Perhaps. Who knows?’

‘And who do you have here with you, Bright?’

‘Good friends.’

‘Well you look good, but…where are the gods leading you?’

‘As usual, I’m going astray.’ Ignoring the threatening eyes of the witcher, she drew a pinch of Fisstech, sniffed it through her nose, and rubbed the rest into her gums. ‘You sniff, Golan?’

‘Well.’ The dwarf held out his hand and pulled a pinch of the narcotic into his nose.

‘In truth,’ the girl continued, ‘I'll probably go into Belhaven. Do you know where Nightingale and the Hanse are?’

Golan Drosdeck cocked his head. ‘You, Bright, should stay out of Nightingale’s way.

They say he’s as mad at you as a wolverine when woken in the winter.’

‘Whoa! Even after he heard that two horses pulled me onto a sharpened stake? Didn’t he feel sorry? Hasn't he shed any tears?’

‘Absolutely not. He supposedly said: Now Angouleme got what we knew all along she must – a pole in the ass.’

‘Well, what a boor. A vulgar bastard. The governor Fulk would say ‘dregs of society’. But I say, ‘dregs of the cloaca’!’

‘Something you should rather say behind his back, Bright. And do not loiter in the area of Belhaven, make a detour around the city. And if you must to go into town, go in disguise...’

‘Don’t teach a grandfather to cough, Golan.’

‘I wouldn’t dare.’

‘Look, dwarf.’ Angouleme braced her boot against one of the steps to carpentry. ‘I’m going to ask you a question. Do not hurry to respond – think twice before you answer.’

‘Ask.’

‘Have you, by chance, recently come across a certain half-elf? A stranger, not from here?’

Golan Drosdeck inhaled air, sneezed vigorously, and wiped his nose on his wrist. ‘A half-elf, you say? What a half-elf?’

‘Don't be stupid, Drosdeck. The one Nightingale hired for the special job. To get rid of someone. A certain witcher...’

‘A witcher?’ Golan Drosdeck smiled and lifted his board up off the floor. ‘Imagine that!

Fact is, we are looking for a witcher – that's why we've been painting these signs and hanging them in the area. Look, here: Looking for Witcher, good pay, plus room and board, Inquire for details with the management of the mine ‘LITTLE BABETTE'. How do you spell

‘Details’? With an ‘ai’ or ‘ei’?’

‘Write: ‘Particulars’. And why do you need a witcher in the mine?’

‘What a question. What else, if not for monsters?’

‘Like what?’

‘Knockers and Barbegazi. They are all over the place on the lower levels of the mine.’

Angouleme threw a glance at Geralt, who confirmed with a nod that he knew what they were. Then he gave her a meaningful cough, letting her know that he wanted to get back to business.

‘So, back to business.’ The girl had understood instantly. ‘What do you know of that half-elf?’

‘I do not know of any half-elf.’

‘I told you to think twice.’

‘I've done just that.’ Golan Drosdeck gave her a sly look. ‘And I think that it is not worth it for me to know something on this matter.’

‘What does...?’

‘It means that it is restless. The terrain is restless and the days are restless. Gangs, Nilfgaardians, the freedom fighters of the ‘Free North Case’... and various foreign elements, half-elves. Each one is eager to cause trouble...’

‘What does...?’ Angouleme wrinkled her nose.

‘It means that you owe me money, Bright. Instead of returning it, you want to add new debt. Significant debt – because what you ask can get a person a blow to the head, and not with bare fists, but with a pickaxe. What do I get? Does it pay for me to know something about this half-elf, eh? Do I get anything for it? It seems there are only risks and no reward...’

Geralt had heard enough. The conversation bored him and neither the jargon nor manner appealed to him. With a swift movement he seized the dwarf's beard, pulled it towards him, and then shoved him back. Golan Drosdeck tripped over the bucket of paint and fell. The witcher leaped on him, put a knee to his chest, and shoved a knife in front of his sparkling eyes. ‘Your reward,’ he growled, ‘will be that you'll get away from here with your life. Start talking.’

Golan's eyes darted all around, from the caves to the walkways.

‘Talk,’ repeated Geralt. ‘Tell me what you know. Otherwise I'll cut your throat so that you’ll drown before you bleed to death...’

‘RIALTO’...’ groaned the dwarf. ‘In the mine named ‘RIALTO’...’

***

Only minor details distinguished the mine ‘RIALTO’ from ‘LITTLE BABETTE’, as well as the other mines and surface-mines that Angouleme, Geralt, and Cahir passed by – ‘THE SPRING MANIFESTO’, ‘ALTERZ’, ‘NEUERZ’, ‘APRIL FOOLS’, ‘DULCINELLA’,

‘COMMON CAUSE’ and ‘HAPPY HOLE’. Work was in full swing in all of them – muddy earth was brought out of tunnels or shafts, poured into troughs, and washed in sieves. All of them had plenty of the characteristic red mud.

‘RIALTO’ was a large ore mine near the summit of the hill. The summit was cut off and formed an open pit. The filtration camp was actually on a terrace cut into the mountainside.

‘RIALTO’ was a large ore mine near the summit of the hill. The summit was cut off and formed an open pit. The filtration camp was actually on a terrace cut into the mountainside.