who for a handful of silver and a bowl of lousy food, is prepared to be set against his rebelling kinsmen who are fighting for freedom. Well, go on, spit it out. I don't like insinuations.'
'No, Yarpen,' said Geralt quietly. 'No. I'm not going to spit anything out.'
'Ah, you're not?' The dwarf whipped the horses. 'You don't feel like it? You prefer to stare and smile? Not a word to me, eh? But you could say it to Wenck! 'Please don't count on my sword.' Oh, so haughtily, nobly and proudly said! Shove your haughtiness up a dog's arse, and your bloody pride with it!'
'I just wanted to be honest. I don't want to get mixed up in this conflict. I want to remain neutral.'
'It's impossible!' yelled Yarpen. 'It's impossible to remain neutral, don't you understand that? No, you don't understand anything. Oh, get off my wagon, get on your horse, and get out of my sight, with your arrogant neutrality. You get on my nerves.'
Geralt turned away. Ciri held her breath in anticipation. But the witcher didn't say a word. He stood and jumped from the wagon, swiftly, softly and nimbly. Yarpen waited for him to untether his mare from the ladder, then whipped his horses once again, growling something incomprehensible, sounding terrifying under his breath.
She stood up to jump down too, and find her chestnut. The dwarf turned and measured her with a reluctant eye.
'And you're just a nuisance, too, little madam,' he snorted angrily. 'All we need are ladies and girls, damn it. I can't even take a piss from the box – I have to stop the cart and go into the bushes!'
Ciri put her hands on her hips, shook her ashen fringe and turned up her nose.
'Is that so?' she shrilled, enraged. 'Drink less beer, Zigrin, and then you won't have to!'
'My beer's none of your shitin' business, you chit!'
'Don't yell, Triss has just fallen asleep!'
'It's my wagon! I'll yell if I want to!'
'Stumpy!'
'What? You impertinent brat!'
'Stump!'
'I'll show you stump… Oh, damn it! Pprrr!'
The dwarf leaned far back, pulling at the reins at the very last moment, just as the two horses were on the point of stepping over a log blocking their way. Yarpen stood up in the box and, swearing in both human and dwarvish, whistling and roaring, brought the cart to a halt. Dwarves and humans alike, leaping from their wagons, ran up and helped lead the horses to the clear path, tugging them on by their halters and harnesses.
'Dozing off, eh Yarpen?' growled Paulie Dahlberg as he approached. 'Bloody hell, if you'd ridden over that the axle would be done for, and the wheels shattered to hell. Damn it, what were you-'
'Piss off, Paulie!' roared Yarpen Zigrin and furiously lashed the horses' hindquarters with the reins.
'You were lucky,' said Ciri, ever so sweetly, squeezing onto the box next to the dwarf. 'As you can see, it's better to have a witcher-girl on your wagon than to travel alone. I warned you just in time. But if you'd been in the middle of pissing from the box and ridden onto that log, well, well. It's scary to think what might have happened-'
'Are you going to be quiet?'
'I'm not saying any more. Not a word.'
She lasted less than a minute.
'Zigrin, sir?'
'I'm not a sir.' The dwarf nudged her with his elbow and bared his teeth. 'I'm Yarpen. Is that clear? We'll lead the horses together, right?'
'Right. Can I hold the reins?'
'If you must. Wait, not like that. Pass them over your index finger and hold them down with your thumb, like this. The same with the left. Don't tug them, don't pull too hard.'
'Is that right?'
'Right.'
'Yarpen?'
'Huh?'
'What does it mean, 'remain neutral'?'
'To be indifferent,' he muttered reluctantly. 'Don't let the reins hang down. Pull the left one closer to yourself!'
'What's indifferent? Indifferent to what?'
The dwarf leaned far out and spat under the wagon.
'If the Scoia'tael attack us, your Geralt intends to stand by and look calmly on as they cut our throats. You'll probably stand next to him, because it'll be a demonstration class. Today's subject: the witcher's behaviour in face of conflict between intelligent races.'
'I don't understand.'
'That doesn't surprise me in the least.'
'Is that why you quarrelled with him and were angry? Who are these Scoia'tael anyway? These… Squirrels?'
'Ciri,' Yarpen tussled his beard violently, 'these aren't matters for the minds of little girls.'
'Aha, now you're angry at me. I'm not little at all. I heard what the soldiers in the fort said about the Squirrels. I saw… I saw two dead elves. And the knight said they also kill. And that it's not just elves amongst them. There are dwarves too.'
'I know,' said Yarpen sourly.
'And you're a dwarf.'
'There's no doubt about that.'
'So why are you afraid of the Squirrels? It seems they only fight humans.'
'It's not so simple as that.' He grew solemn. 'Unfortunately.'
Ciri stayed silent for a long time, biting her lower lip and wrinkling her nose.
'Now I know,' she said suddenly. 'The Squirrels are fighting for freedom. And although you're a dwarf, you're King Henselt's special secret servant on a human leash.'
Yarpen snorted, wiped his nose on his sleeve and leaned out of the box to check that Wenck had not ridden up too close. But the commissar was far away, engaged in conversation with Geralt.
'You've got pretty good hearing, girl, like a marmot.' He grinned broadly. 'You're also a bit too bright for someone destined to give birth, cook and spin. You think you know everything, don't you?
That's because you're a brat. Don't pull silly faces. Faces like that don't make you look any older, just uglier than usual. You've grasped the nature of the Scoia'taels quickly, you like the slogans. You know why you understand them so well? Because the Scoia'taels are brats too. They're little snotheads who don't understand that they're being egged on, that someone's taking advantage of their childish stupidity by feeding them slogans about freedom.'
'But they really are fighting for freedom.' Ciri raised her head and gazed at the dwarf with wide-open green eyes. 'Like the dryads in the Brokilon woods. They kill people because people… some people are harming them. Because this used to be your country, the dwarves' and the elves' and those… halflings', gnomes' and other… And now there are people here so the elves-'
'Elves!' snorted Yarpen. 'They – to be accurate – happen to be strangers just as much as you humans, although they arrived in their white ships a good thousand years before you. Now they're competing with each other to offer us friendship, suddenly we're all brothers, now they're grinning and saying: 'we, kinsmen', 'we, the Elder Races'. But before, shi- Hm, hm… Before, their arrows used to whistle past our ears when we-'
'So the first on earth were dwarves?'
'Gnomes, to be honest. As far as this part of the world is concerned – because the world is unimaginably huge, Ciri.'
'I know. I saw a map-'
'You couldn't have. No one's drawn a map like that, and I doubt they will in the near future. No one knows what exists beyond the Mountains of Fire and the Great Sea. Even elves, although they claim they know everything. They know shit all, I tell you.'
