“Grain of Truth” The Witcher Short Story Released

The world of The Witcher is not one that has infiltrated American publishing despite success in Europe. Andrzej Sapkowski’s short story featuring Geralt, the main character from the game as well as the Gothic-Horror themed world he inhabits “Grain of Truth” is now available for download here at Filefront.

The story is reprinted from an earlier short story collection and does a good job of setting the scene and the world of The Witcher up for those of us who have not had the fortune to read either the translated english text from the UK or the native Polish version.

Here’s an excerpt:

Bending over, Geralt lifted the man’s right hand. As he had expected, the copper ring digging into the swollen, blue finger carried the sign of the armourers’ guild: a stylised helmet with visor, two crossed swords and the rune ‘A’ engraved beneath them.

The witcher returned to the woman’s corpse. As he was turning the body over something pricked him in the finger – a rose, pinned to the dress. The flower had withered but not lost its colour: the petals were dark blue, very dark blue. It was the first time Geralt had seen such a rose. He turned the body over completely, and winced.

On the woman’s bare and bloody neck were clear bite marks. And not those of a wolf.

The witcher carefully backed away to his horse. Without taking his eyes from the forest edge, he climbed into the saddle. He circled the glade twice and, leaning over, looked around, examining the ground closely.

‘So, Roach,’ he said quietly, ‘the case is reasonably clear. The armourer and the woman arrived on horseback from the direction of the forest. They were on their way home from Murivel, because nobody carries an uncashed credit note for long. Why they were going this way and not following the highway? I don’t know. But they were crossing the heath, side by side. And then – again, I don’t know why – they both dismounted, or fell from, their horses. The armourer died instantly. The woman ran, then fell and died, and whatever attacked her – which didn’t leave any tracks – dragged her along the ground, with her throat in its teeth. The horses ran off. This happened two or three days ago.’

The mare snorted restlessly, reacting to his tone of voice.

‘The thing which killed them,’ continued Geralt, watching the forest’s edge, ‘was neither a werewolf nor a leshy. Neither would have left so much for the scavengers. If there were swamps here I’d say it was a kikimora or a vypper . . . but there aren’t any
swamps here.’

Original text © Andrzej Sapkowski 1993, English translation © Danusia Stok 2007, first published in Great Britain in 2007 by Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group.

European readers will have the early opportunity to play The Witcher starting tomorrow while we Americans can expect the game to reach shelves the middle of next week.