One woman has a small child on her lap, and another is sitting on the floor. Further in, a group of adults – mostly humans or elves, but Stefan can see a dwarf woman among them – are standing around a large rock and talking animatedly in a mix of Common and what looks like Redanian sign language. A fire has been built by the entrance, and two young teenagers are playing with long sticks for swords, laughing and wrestling each other. There are a dozen people milling about the cave. Today, though, when Stefan of Kovir and his apprentice Gwenvael reach the ledge of the cave entrance, they find that someone is already there. So the Cranes have learned to dock their ship by the cliff side and reach Oxenfurt by other means. While witchers are generally tolerated in both kingdoms as long as they make themselves useful and work alone, a ship full of witchers – even if a Crane ship’s crew rarely numbers more than four – is not welcome in any of the harbours. Just a few miles from the little beach, where the river’s width dramatically narrows between Oxenfurt and the Acorn Bay, any ship wanting to sail up the Pontar or dock in any of the small harbours littering the bank finds itself boarded, and if it is by some chance not registered under the Redanian-Temerian Trade Agreement of 1246, turned around or stopped. The Crane witchers learned many decades ago that while the Free City of Novigrad hardly cared what ships docked in their harbour as long as they paid the fee, the port authorities of Oxenfurt are a different story. And more importantly, this cave is connected to dozens more, all underground, reaching as far as the old elven tunnels of Oxenfurt. High enough to be safe from the water, and yet easily reachable from the beach, it makes for a reasonably comfortable place to hide. And they have long discovered the secret of those cliffs.įor a little way up the rock face, hidden behind the few bushes that dare to grow on this inhospitable land, is a large opening into a cave. That ship is named Ar Saez, the Arrow, and its sailors are witchers of the Crane school.Ĭrane witchers are cunning navigators, and their ships are slender and light, easily moving through the jutting rocks and treacherous waters. Of course, there are those who will purposefully moor their ship as close as they can get to the cliff face, out of sight from the watch towers of Oxenfurt and the forts of Velen, and row up to the little beach in a small boat. Dangerous underwater rock formations guard it from even the most daring sailors and, if someone were to accidentally wash up on the beach, they would find nothing there and end up trapped, for the cliff is nigh unscalable. Covered in fist-sized pebbles, it is only really visible at low tide, when the river retreats along with the sea it flows into. Seagulls and petrels have made their home in the nooks and crevices of the cliff, but they are the only inhabitants of this entirely inhospitable land.Ībout three miles from the first harbour of Oxenfurt, hidden from sight by an outcrop of dark, jagged rocks, is a small beach at the foot of the cliff face. On the Redanian side, however, the cliff face is steep and dark, looming over the few boats and ships who dare to sail up the river too close to the jagged rocks. On the Velen side, the cliff has long eroded into more of a gentle slope, covered in prosperous grass and low bushes, home to many birds and small mammals. At the mouth of the Pontar, past the sprawling docks of the Free City of Novigrad, the river has dug deep gorges into the landscape, making it impossible to dock anywhere on the northern bank before reaching the sea-level port of Oxenfurt.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |