Andrzej Sapkowski
Born in Lodz in 1948, the most popular Polish author of fantasy tales and novels. Educated as an economist and merchant. Andrzej Sapkowski has repeatedly been awarded all the major Polish prizes for the writing of fantasy tales, and his books have been bestsellers. In 1997, he won the "Polityka Passport" award, by which that leading Polish weekly designates Polish artists with prospects for success abroad.
Sapkowski earned his popularity with a cycle of stories and novels about the warlock Geralt. Geralt is a mutant, a hired assassin trained from childhood to fight against monsters. Yet this training has not deprived the warlock of an internal code of ethics. At once cynical and noble, Geralt has been compared to Chandlers' Philip Marlowe. The world in which the warlock's adventures take place owes much to Tolkien, but also contains references to Slavic mythology.
Sapkowski is the only Polish writer of fantasy who has succeeded in crossing beyond the boundaries of popular literature to become an object of interest not only to newspaper reviewers, but also to serious critics.
Sapkowski has a phenomenal gift for narrative, for inventing sensational events, creating a suggestive mood, and building up the suspense. Along with a dazzling, slightly cynical sense of humor... (Jacek Sieradzki, "Polityka")
A completely naive reader will absorb the tales about the warlock as regular fables filled with peripetia; a less-naive reader will discern the wit that lightens the serious tone; an even-less-naive reader will revel in the meta-textual jokes that the author uses to undercut the credibility of his own narration. (Malgorzata Szpakowska, "Tworczosc")
Excerpt
God’s Warriors
Andrzej Sapkowski
About the book
Even from a distance he could see that there was something wrong at the monastery. . Usually the gate was closed up, but now it was gaping wide open. . Outside, in the courtyard, silhouettes of people and horses flickered by. . Reynevan hunched down in his saddle and urged his mount into a still more frantic gallop.
And then they caught up with him.
•
First came the spell, the curse cast, the powerful lighting strike that put the horse in a panic and knocked Reynevan from his saddle. . Before he could get up again, a dozen or more people came out of the ditches and from behind the trees and fell on him. . He managed to get his knife out of his boot, hitting two of them with wide strokes, putting a stop to a third with a quick stab in the face. . But the others got him. . They stunned him with heavy blows, and knocked him to the ground. . Kicked him. . Smothered him. . Overpowered him. Twisted his arms behind his back.
“Tighter,” he heard a familiar voice. “Pull the ropes tighter, don’t hold back! Not much of a loss if you hurt him. Let him get a little taste of what he’s in for.”
They pulled him upright. He opened his eyes. And started shaking.
Before him stood Pomurnik. Birkart Grellenort.
His eyes were shining from the blows to his face, his cheek and eye burned as if they had been seared with an iron. Pomurnik swung back and struck him once more, this time from the left with the back of his gloved hand. Reynevan tasted blood on his lips.
“That,” explained Pomurnik quietly, “was just to get your attention. To make you concentrate. Are you concentrating?”
Reynevan didn’t answer. Turning his head, he tried to see what was going on behind the monastery gate and work out who the men riding on horseback and the foot soldiers running around were. One thing was sure—they were not the Black Riders of Rota. The ones holding him looked like ordinary hired thugs. Near the thugs stood a man with a round face and attire that betrayed him as a Walloon, and eyes that betrayed him as a sorcerer. It was that Walloon, guessed Reynevan, who had knocked him out of his saddle with that spell.
“You thought,” murmured Pomurnik, “that I would forget about you? Or that I wouldn’t find you? I warned you that I have eyes and ears everywhere. He swung back and struck Reynevan again, right in his now swelling cheek. His eye, sore from the last time he’d been hit, began to water. Tears welled up in his other eye as well, and his nose started to run. Pomurnik leaned toward him. Very close.
“I felt,” he hissed, “that you still weren’t giving me your full attention. And I require your full attention. Exert some mental effort. Hear out my proposition. You got caught. You won’t escape with your life. But I can get you out of this. I can save your skin. As soon as you agree to take me to… You know who. That astrologer who masquerades as a big idiot. I’ll spare your life if you take me to him…”
“Ho! The Great Grellenort!”
From the height of his saddle a knight in full plated armour looked down at them. His horse was covered in sky-blue and silver restrictive armour. Reynevan recognised him. He remembered.
“The prince demands that he be delivered to him. Immediately.”
“Have you made up your mind?” Pomurnik hissed. “Will you take me?”
“No.”
“You’ll regret it.”
The courtyard of the monastery was seething with men on horseback, swirling with men on foot. In contrast to Pomurnik’s thugs, in multihued, even shabby clothing, the marksmen and the foot soldiers in the courtyard were attired respectably and identically, in black and green. The men on horseback were mostly armored, armigers as well as heraldic soldiers.
“Give him here! Give me the Hussite!”
Reynevan recognized that voice. He recognised that stature, that charismatic masculine face, the nape of the neck shaved according to the fashion then among the knights. He recognised the black and red eagle. The men in the monastery courtyard were led by Jan, Prince of Ziębice. The Prince himself was in a coat stitched in stoat over Milanese armour.
“Bring him here, closer,” he nodded authoritatively. “Marshal Borschnitz! Grellenort! Bring him here! And get that Walloon out of my sight! I can’t bear these magicians!” Reynevan was brought closer. The prince looked down at him from his saddle. He had bright, blue-grey eyes. Reynevan realised who he reminded him of, with his eyes and the shape of his abbess’ face.
“God is slow but just,” announced Jan of Ziębice, ceremoniously, through his nose. “Slow, but just, yes, yes. You have denied religion and the cross, Bielau, you Judas. You have persevered in the dark arts. You have plotted to assassinate me. You will pay for your crimes, Bielau, you will pay for your crimes.”
By the time he finished the sentence he wasn’t looking at Reynevan anymore, but rather at the courtyard. There were four nuns standing there. The abbess was with them.
“Hussites were concealed,” Jan announced loudly, standing in his stirrups, “in this monastery! Spies and traitors were given asylum here! Someone must pay for this! Do you hear me, woman?”
“You won’t punish me,” said the abbess, in a charming, undaunted voice. “Not you! You’re breaking the law, Prince Jan! You’re breaking the law! You have no right to enter the grounds of the monastery!”
“It’s my land, and I have full authority over it. It’s thanks to my ancestors that this monastery is even here!”
“It’s thanks to God it’s here! And it is not subject to either your authority or your jurisdiction! You have no right to enter here, nor to stay here, neither you, nor your army! Nor that scoundrel, nor his thugs!”
“And he,” said Jan of Ziębice, standing in his stirrups, indicating Reynevan, “had the right to be here? All summer? Are you allowed to hide heretics, Sister? Like the one lying there?”
Reynevan looked in the direction in which the prince was pointing. In the place where the wall surrounding the courtyard met the infirmary wall, covered in dried clusters of ivy, lay Bisclavret. Reynevan recognised him by the made-to-order calfskin jacket the Frenchman had recently commissioned, expecting everyone to admire it. It was only because of the jacket that it was possible to recognise him. The corpses had been hideously massacred. The fair-haired miles gallicus, once Ecorcheur, Obłupiacz must have put up a serious fight when they surrounded him. And he must have refused to be taken alive.
Translated by Jennifer Croft
Bibliography:
Collections of stories about the Warlock:
Wiedzmin (The Warlock). Warsaw: Reporter, 1990.
Miecz przeznaczenia (Sword of Destiny). Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 1992.
Ostatnie zyczenie (Last Wish). 1993.
Cycle of novels about the Warlock:
Krew Elfow (Blood of the Elves). Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 1994
Czas Pogardy (Season of Contempt). Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 1995.
Chrzest ognia (Baptism by Fire). Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 1996.
Wieza jaskolki (The Swallow's Tower). Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 1997.
Pani jeziora (Mistress of the Lake).Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 1999.
Manuscript Discovered in a Dragon's Cave. Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 2001.
Boży bojownicy (God's Warriors), Warsaw: SuperNOWA, 2004
Translations:
Czech:
Zaklinac. Prague: Winston Smith, 1992.
Krev elfu. Ostrava: LEONARDO, 1995.
Cas opovzeni. Ostrava: LEONARDO, 1996.
Kres ohem. Ostrava: LEONARDO, 1997.
Russian:
Wied'mak . Moscow: AST, 1996.
Krov elfov. Moscow: AST, 1996.
Chas priezrieniya. Moscow: AST, 1997.
Krieshcheniye agniom. Moscow: AST, 1997.
Lithuanian:
Likimo kalavijas. Kaunas: DAGONAS, 1997.
German:
Das Schwert der Vorsehung. München: Heyne, 1998.