  The free fermion condition of the six-vertex model provides a 5 parameter
sub-manifold on which the Bethe Ansatz equations for the wavenumbers that enter
into the eigenfunctions of the transfer matrices of the model decouple, hence
allowing explicit solutions. Such conditions arose originally in early
field-theoretic S-matrix approaches. Here we provide a combinatorial
explanation for the condition in terms of a generalised Gessel-Viennot
involution. By doing so we extend the use of the Gessel-Viennot theorem,
originally devised for non-intersecting walks only, to a special weighted type
of \emph{intersecting} walk, and hence express the partition function of $N$
such walks starting and finishing at fixed endpoints in terms of the single
walk partition functions.
