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It happened far away from the main camp. Not that Milva would have expected anything else, what with Geralt being who he was and her being so similar. She would have chosen such a place as well, far away from prying eyes and people who would flock to his side, insist he sit and that they take a few days’ respite. Had she not been a dryad of Brokilon, she would never have found him here. But she could smell his pain from miles away, and had known from the sounds of his uneven gait as he limped off under the guise of hunting for their dinner that something was very badly wrong.
She had trailed after him, flitting from tree to tree like a sparrow. He should have heard her. Could have, had his attentions not been so focused on himself. It only caused her to worry more. Though she was not surprised when he finally went down, grunting, onto one knee. He braced himself with his crossbow, and she winced. Such a fine weapon should not have been ground into the dirt as a makeshift crutch, and she knew he never would have done it unless he had no other option to keep himself upright.
“Witcher! This is foolish,” Milva stepped out from behind the tree, and winced as Geralt started, eyes lifting slowly to meet her own, hair tumbling in front of his face from where it had escaped his headband and the unruly strip of leather that kept it gathered at the base of his neck, “Let me see to you, ease your pain at least a bit. Dandelion may be naïve, but Cahir has been far too well-trained to ignore a wounded soldier, and I suspect it won’t be long before he says as much. This is folly, to go traipsing through the wilds on still-broken bones.”
Geralt’s breath was coming in harsh rasps. His hand was fisted about the grip of his crossbow, knuckles white and sweat dripping down the pale, exposed flesh of his arm. His white shirt was darkened with sweat, Milva realized. She cursed, and went to kneel at his side.
“Dammit, Geralt. How long has it been this bad?”
“It’s not so terrible.” The effect was rather ruined by the way he gritted his teeth and winced as he said it, and Milva resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him.
“How many days?”
“Four.”
She sighed, relieved that they at least had the luxury of riding instead of trekking through the dense forest. She doubted he would have survived so long on foot. In fact, by the looks of it, he was barely pulling through as it was. She eased down onto the grass next to him, stretching her tired legs out in front of her, relieved to get some pressure off the aching balls of her feet. Geralt was not the first stubborn soldier she had seen to, and she doubted he would be the last. Milva was patient. She was willing to wait him out.
He stayed as he was, back bowed, one knee digging into the loamy earth while the other remained cocked at a ninety-degree angle. Milva leaned back on her hands. She plucked a particularly long piece of grass from the ground and began twiddling it between her teeth. She unsheathed the dagger she kept at her side and began cleaning it with a soft rag. Still, Geralt did not move. He was trembling, and she could hear the way his breaths exited his body harshly. It was only a matter of time before he sat down or fell. Sweat dripped down Milva’s back and caught at the waistband of her trousers. She cursed the witcher for being so stubborn. She wanted a bath, and a good supper, and to spread out her bedroll so she could lie on her back and stare up at the silhouettes of the trees and the blinking lights of the stars. She hadn’t asked for this bullheaded stubbornness. Part of her was nearly convinced to just leave him to it, to abandon him out here at the mercy of the elements until he came to his senses. She was a dryad, a warrior. Not the keeper of an old man who refused to see reason, even when it hit him with concussive force.
Geralt began to bow further forwards, back tensing, breath coming faster and faster. His hands were clenching and unclenching in the earth, so much so that he had dug deep furrows and uprooted the grass and several small plants. Ants scurried away from the carnage, and nightcrawlers, unearthed from their slumber, writhed in the grass. Milva looked on calmly, rather horrified, and a bit hurt for the creatures who had not asked to be so rudely removed from their homes. The snick of the whetstone on her blade filled the silence. Wind rustled in the leaves. Somewhere above them, a chickadee chirped, and remined Milva of her home. Which one, she could not say.
So enraptured was she with the sound, and so determined to ignore Geralt and his insufferable stubbornness, that she received no warning when he fell but a soft grunt and a brief tensing of every muscle in his body. Startled, she looked up, only to watch helplessly as he tumbled face-first into the earth. Oddly, his muscles never moved. They were rock-solid, taut. No reflex to put his hands in front of his face to break his fall saved him from landing with a sickening crunch in the dirt. Milva cursed.
She had been wrong.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to move. It was that he couldn’t.
Things were much worse than she had thought.
Geralt woke feeling disgruntled. His nostrils were clogged, and a strange, earthy smell surrounded him. He planted his hands in the earth and winced when a sharp pain lanced up his arm like a bolt released from a crossbow. It was miserable, and he sank back down carefully, sweat trickling down his forehead as he tried to keep his breathing calm. It was ridiculously hot out for the fall.
“Witcher? Are you awake?”
Geralt winced again, this time at the sound of the voice. Of course, Milva had been with him when he passed out, face first, into the dirt. She would probably tell the others. They would lose days of valuable travel time while Dandelion fussed and fretted, and Cahir brooded and Milva tried to find a way to ease his pain without the dryads’ healing waters and incantations. He ground his eyes shut, rather hoping that if he thought hard enough, the whole situation would simply vanish, and he would wake to find himself in a reality where Vilgefortz had never shattered his body at Thanedd. A kinder reality, indeed.
“Geralt. I can see you’re awake. Won’t you stop this nonsense and answer me?”
Not for the first time, Geralt was struck by Milva’s striking resemblance to both Ciri and Yennefer. She was headstrong, like every woman who had ever deigned to stay in the witcher’s life for any length of time. It seemed he attracted such personalities, whether they be in the capacity of friends, daughters, or lovers.
“I’m fine,” he grunted, pushing himself up on his elbows and ignoring the way his body twinged and protested the movement, “Help me up. The others will wonder where we’ve gone.”
“You’re going nowhere. Not in your condition, not without help, at least. And it just so happened I was coming this way in search of a hotspring. I smelled the sulphur while we were still on the road. Get up, and I’ll help you to it, and we can soak some of the pain from your body before we go back to camp.”
“Milva…” Geralt tried to lower his voice, but the dryad was not intimidated by him and never would be. She looked on placidly, and extended a muscular arm for him to take.
“I shan’t wait all day for you to make up your mind. You can come with me, or you can stay here in the dirt until Dandelion really does start to wonder where you’ve gotten to.”
Glaring, Geralt levered himself onto his knees with all the grace of a human man his age. He groaned at the pressure it placed on his unhealed bones and felt a shiver of relief rip through him when Milva took him under the armpit and hauled him upwards with an undignified grunt. He tottered there for a moment before she slipped under his arm, sighing loudly.
“You could have saved yourself so much pain if you had remained in Brokilon just a while longer. There was no need for this.”
“There was,” Geralt grunted, voice tense and thin with pain, “Ciri. She needs me. Before she’s found by someone else.”
Milva sighed and took a step forwards, shaking her head. Geralt followed, leaning on her, and limping heavily. He sniffed and picked up the sulphurous smell that she had described earlier. Bathing in a hotspring was always an assault on his senses; his hair often reeked of rotting eggs for days afterwards. But right now, with fiery pain tearing through every joint and making him feel stretched and weak, the warm water and mineral salts sounded akin to godliness. He couldn’t have cared less about how he smelled. Likely, anything would be an improvement on the current situation. He hadn’t had the resources or the energy to change his shirt for several days, and was almost loathe to undress himself now in Milva’s presence, for fear that the stench might overwhelm her. The dryad sweated, but she never smelled, not the way Dandelion and Geralt and Cahir did. Geralt was almost envious of her. His clothes would last so much longer if he wasn’t constantly scrubbing them within an inch of their lives, or simply discarding them when they became too pungent for polite company (Dandelion was usually his buffer; when the bard started complaining, Geralt knew that it was time to invest in a new shirt).
They reached a small opening in a rocky scree after about fifteen minutes of limping and curse, mostly on Geralt’s part. Milva looked hot and tired, and her face was ruddy with sweat, but she seemed more put out by Geralt’s stubbornness than the fact that she was practically carrying him. Her eyes bored holes into his own when they stopped, and it took every inch of his willpower to hold her steady, calculating gaze.
“Get undressed. Can you get yourself inside without my help?”
Geralt tested his weight. His leg was shaky, and burned whenever he stepped on it, but he refused to be helped about anymore. He nodded, rolling his shoulders, and Milva looked at him suspiciously.
“I’ll go in. Meet me when you’re ready.”
She was obviously no stranger to nudity, for which Geralt was thankful. There was nothing worse than a travel companion who didn’t understand the basic tenet that nudity was simply a part of living in the wilds. Not something to be gawked at or tittered about. One’s body was still one’s body, whether or not it had clothes on it.
Milva disappeared into the small entrance, sitting down and boosting herself inside with a hand upon the top of the opening, and Geralt was left alone. He stumbled to a nearby birch tree, wincing at every step, and braced both hands against the bark until his knuckles turned white and his nails were digging grooves into the papery surface of the tree. He took several deep breaths before sinking down to the ground and struggling out of his clothes while sitting. There was a snowflake’s chance in hell he would have been able to balance on one leg long enough to remove his trousers, and his arm was too stiff and sore to take off his shirt without undoing the enormous number of buttons that he usually avoided unfastening at all costs. It was a painful process, and Geralt was sure Milva was nearly done bathing by the time he got himself to his feet and limped forwards, sitting down on the cold rocks and slipping down inside the cave.
The dryad was waiting for him, perched atop a rock and cursing as she tried to run her fingers through the ever-lengthening locks of her hair. She looked up when he came down, seeming mildly surprised that he had made it at all. Frankly, Geralt was surprised as well. Entering the cave had been hell on his already overwrought body. He wanted to collapse here, in the warmth, and wait for his joints to knit themselves back together properly.
“You survived,” Milva observed dryly, slipping down the rock and into the pool with a resounding splash, “I thought perhaps your body would give up before you made it down here.”
Normally, Geralt would have been irritated at her sarcasm, but he knew he deserved it. She had watched him through all his limited recovery in Brokilon, and as such, was the only member of their company that fully understood the extent of his wounds. He had been told that when Triss had portalled them into the wood, he had been near death from shock and blood loss. Milva knew all of this. She knew he was in no fit state to be on the road again.
“I’m managing.” He grunted out the words, trying to take the weight off his leg. He had no idea how he would get himself into the pool. He doubted he could sit at the moment. As soon as he bent his bad knee, there was no guarantee that it would straighten again.
Milva swam over to him with clean, easy strokes, cutting through the water like a Mahakaman dagger through flesh. She pulled herself upright and offered him and arm, which he took, wobbling like an old man as they made their way to the edge.
“You may never get me out. My knee is…unpredictable.”
“You think I haven’t noticed? Damn, if you can’t make it out of here, I’ll call Cahir and have him carry you all the way back to Brokilon.”
Geralt wasn’t sure which was worse, Cahir knowing the full extent of his condition, or being forced to return to Brokilon before he had Ciri safe by his side. The forest was the place of their first meeting. Beyond his own fears for her safety, it felt wrong to return and walk on its dusky paths without his child surprise there to walk with him. He sighed and let Milva take most of his weight, palms slapping into the cold stone hard. His feet skidded across the uneven stones as he tried to regain his balance.
“Stop it. If you plan on continuing this madcap venture without needing to take several months to recover when your body finally breaks down and betrays you, you will let me help you. I’m tired of watching you wander about half dead and growling at anyone who so much glances your way. That sort of self-pitying nonsense may work on Dandelion, but it will not work on me.”
“It doesn’t.”
“What?”
“Work on Dandelion. He has an artist’s subtlety.”
Milva gave a derisive snort and Geralt was forced to let a small smile crack his stony countenance. Though, it was true. The poet had never stood for any of Geralt’s self-pitying bullshit. However, his education in philosophy made him take a muddlingly backwards approach to everything, one that often left Geralt so confused that he forgot why he had been miserable in the first place. The witcher enjoyed philosophy and the principles of psychology, but not when they were being used as a weapon against him. It left him feeling rather dazed. Though, he supposed if that was Dandelion’s goal, he achieved it nearly every time.
Geralt’s wandering mind distracted him long enough that Milva was able to help him slip into the hotspring without being rendered insensible from the pain. She guided him onto a small ledge, and he let his legs be buoyed up slightly, enjoying the warmth and the way it seemed to seep directly through his skin and onto his aching muscles.
“Better?”
“Much.”
Grinning, Milva swam off and resumed her position on the rock, going back to working through her tresses. Geralt had never seen her with her hair down before, and now that it was wet, he saw it was quite curly. He amused himself for a while by watching her try to untangle it with only her fingers, storing away several curses in what he thought was Skelligan. He wondered if she had lived on the Isles at some point, before giving herself over to the forest. Skelligan was a difficult language to master; usually only native islanders had such control and fluidity in their accents. However, he did not deign to ask. Milva had been purposely closed-off about her past, though whether it was because she did not was to discuss it or could not remember after drinking the waters of Brokilon, he couldn’t say. However, it felt like too great a breach to invade her privacy in such a way, especially when he so jealously guarded his own.
Eventually, she slipped back into the water. Geralt was dozing by that point, head slumped against his chest. He hadn’t slept properly in days; the pain had kept him awake most nights, shaking and tense in his bedroll and hoping none of his companions would take notice. In the absence of it, it had taken less than ten minutes for him to drift off. He awoke with a sort of grunting snore when the gentle splash of Milva’s re-entry echoed off the cave walls, gentle as a wooden chime but still sharp and painful on Geralt’s sleep-heightened senses. She cursed.
“Go back to sleep, witcher. I can see you needed it.”
Geralt was awake now, though, and he was beginning to ache again. He let his lips twist into a grimace, and, feeling salty sweat break from its crust on his face, dunked his whole head beneath the surface of the water. When he emerged, Milva had swum closer, a concerned look on her face.
“Dammit, you look terrible.”
“Thanks,” Geralt chuckled weakly, “And here I was concerned I wouldn’t be presentable.”
“Not that. You’re pale and sweaty.”
“It’s hot in here.”
“Not that hot. Come here. Whatever’s the matter with you?”
She smacked a wet palm to his forehead and pulled away abruptly, cursing more viciously.
“You might have said something when you began to feel ill.”
Geralt didn’t feel ill. He ran a quick internal triage to make sure. But there was nothing amiss. Besides the baseline agony that he had been subjected to since Thanedd, he felt fine. No illness. Besides, witchers were immune to most human ailments. It took a highly mutated virus, or an extremely rare one, to lay him low.
“I feel fine, Milva. My body is just reacting to the strain it’s been under.”
“Some comfort, indeed.”
He shot her a glare and scrubbed over his joints, taking special care on the injured ones. Though they looked hale and healthy, his limbs still felt as raw and bruised as they had the day he had awoken in the healing waters. Every time he looked down, Geralt expected them to be purple and green with bruising, and he was always shocked and disappointed to see just how healthy he appeared outwardly. It made him feel as though he had no right to be as miserable as he was. As though the pain were all conjured by his mind, since there were no physical marks to prove its existence.
“I’m not so idiotic as to hide an illness from the members of my company. Not when it could be transferred to any one of them. It’s nothing more than the heat of the springs. I’m sure that if you checked your own forehead, you’d find a similar reaction.”
“Not so idiotic as to hide an illness. Just idiotic enough to walk on broken limbs for weeks on end.”
“A decision which affects me and me alone.”
Milva spun in the water, a vicious expression on her face, which was quickly growing red from heat and rage. She slapped a palm onto the flat surface of the pool, and the resulting noise rebounded around the chamber and made Geralt want to cover his ears. He growled at her, but she paid him no mind.
“Affects only you, you say? Ha. If only it were that simple. If only it were that easy, that decisions you make could affect you and no one else. Do you not see the way Dandelion frets for you? The way Cahir avoids your wounded side when you train together? Even the way I followed you here tonight, after a day of watching you pale as a sheet and shaking with agony? You’re not so cunning, witcher, to deceive people who see you. Who know you. And if you think this Ciri of yours, if we ever do find her, won’t notice and worry and be ridden with guilt, you’re more of a fool than I thought. Dammit to hell, you selfish, stubborn bastard. A pox on you and your thick head.”
She swam to the side with a great deal of splashing, and heaved herself from the water, which cascaded over her naked form and onto the stone floor in a great rush. Geralt sat, a rushing sound in his ears. He thought that he looked quite stupid, staring into the middle distance with all the wisdom of an illiterate beggar in a library. He closed his mouth before Milva could turn, trying to compose himself a bit. He wouldn’t be spoken to that way, he thought. Not when Ciri’s life was on the line. Her life, which was more important than any guilt she might feel at his coming to her rescue.
“Dammit, Milva,” he rasped, voice hoarse from the steam rising off the pool, “Damn you and your pretty words. Trying to get me to slow down under the guise that my doing so will help Ciri more than my absence will hurt her. You know nothing of what it was like to wake after Thanedd, not knowing if she was living or dead. Of what it was like to float in that damned pool, burning and aching and not for a moment knowing if she lived. I am not used to being useless, dryad. And I have no intention of being useless to Ciri now.”
Milva sniffed. Geralt kept himself staring straight ahead, into the deep recesses of the cave where stalactites towered, sentinels to the vulnerabilities of this gash in the earth. He set his jaw, determined not to look at her. She wrung out her hair, and flung on her clothes in a great rush, scarcely bothering to dry herself before she rose.
“You’re a fool, Geralt of Rivia. And if you’re not careful, you’ll be alone in the world by the time you find your Ciri. Alone and broken, unable to walk, let alone fight the demons that she will face. You’ll be of no use to her like that, will you? And you’ll have no one left, no one to turn to when you’re too weak to care for her yourself, out of nothing more than your own folly.”
Without so much as bothering to put on her boots, the dryad gathered up her longbow and her things, and clambered out of the cavern, leaving Geralt very much alone, and very much unable to leave.
It was hours later when the sound of footsteps woke the witcher from his fretful sleep. He had managed to get himself out of the cave and back into his clothes, but the effort had sapped him of what little strength he retained after a day of riding. He had passed out next to the tree where he had left his things, watching the world spin and tilt lazily above him until eventually it had faded to black.
He sat and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, stifling a yawn and keeping a weather eye out for whoever might be making the noise. Based on the sound of a quick heartbeat and the gentle humming he heard, Geralt knew who had come, and why. However, one could never be too cautious. It had been foolish of him to let himself fall asleep here, alone and vulnerable. Though, a devilish voice inside his head cackled, he had been given little say in the matter.
“Geralt,” an affronted voice gasped, “Great Goddess, you look terrible!”
“Dandelion.”
Geralt leaned back wearily on his good hand as the bard came into view, stepping out from behind a birch tree a few paces away. He looked sweaty and concerned, his normally well-coiffed hair in ragged disarray about his head, and his ever-present lute nowhere to be seen.
“Milva said she’d left you out here. She came back in a right state, muttering and banging things about. Poor Cahir almost got himself shot when he asked if she’d had a chance to hunt us down some dinner. It took us nigh on an hour to get her calm enough to tell us where you were.”
“Could’ve made my own way back.”
“Ah. So that’s why you were taking a convenient nap. Just gathering your strength, I suppose? It seems to be in short supply for you these days. I can see you growing tired Geralt, and I can see how much pain you’re in. It doesn’t take having a degree in the liberal arts to guess what you and Milva fought about.”
Geralt scowled. He was exhausted, and wished that his companions would leave him to his misery. Talking about his pain wouldn’t magically eke it out of his limbs. And short of a magical intervention, the witcher knew that there was very little that could be done for him now.
“Doesn’t it?”
“Geralt. Don’t be difficult. We want to help you, and we can’t do that if you keep sequestering yourself away like this. You might have gotten a reaction out of Milva, but you shan’t get one out of me. We’re going back to camp, where you’ll talk and apologize, and then we’ll hear no more about it. And you’ll ask. Ask if you need a break, if you need to stop for water or to walk until there’s no more stiffness in your limbs. No more of this ridiculous hiding your pain. You can’t get to Ciri on stubbornness alone. Not if your limbs are barely hanging onto your body.”
Wincing at the image, Geralt took Dandelion’s proffered hand and used it to heave himself upright with a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a moan. The bard shouldered his weight with more difficulty than Milva had, but he still managed with no complaint. Geralt blinked away the stars that were bursting before his eyes. He felt terribly dizzy, and knew that if Dandelion hadn’t been there, he would have found himself back on the grass moments after getting to his feet. He trembled and clung to the silky doublet that suddenly found its way into his hands. The forest was spinning sickeningly about him, and his knee was burning and throbbing in time with a pulse that was far too fast. It was all he could do to stumble along at the poet’s side as they traversed what must have been a fairly short distance back to wherever the others had set up camp. To Geralt, though, it felt like a lifetime of agonizing, stunted steps on a useless limb.
“Welcome back.” The voice was cold and Geralt looked up to see Cahir sitting, whittling something with the stiletto he kept in his boot. There was a drawn look to him, and when Geralt mustered the energy to look around, Milva was nowhere to be found. He could smell her, though, so she must have heard them returning and left.
Grunting in reply, Geralt let Dandelion lean him back against a log close to the fire, groaning as he stretched out his knee in front of himself and kneaded it as hard as he could. He hoped that Cahir and Dandelion wouldn’t notice how badly his hand was shaking as he did it.
They sat in silence for a while as Milva’s scent dissipated. Wherever she had gone, it was far from here, and Geralt doubted they would see her again that night. He accepted a bowl of boiled oats that Dandelion offered up, sprinkled with a bit of anise and cinnamon from the bard’s own pack. Nodding his thanks, he leaned back, not hungry but unwilling to waste the food or spurn Dandelion’s good intentions. He had already alienated his company enough today, though he did not feel that he was entirely to blame. He reserved the right to make his own choices about his body, he thought dispassionately. They would save themselves a world of wasted pain if they would simply stop with their misplaced concern and anger.
After managing a few spoonfuls, Geralt set aside the bowl before it made him sick. His stomach was churning, and his leg ached so badly he half expected to see flames pouring from the joint. He was too hot, but the heat from the fire soothed the pain that ripped through him.
Dandelion came and collected the bowl, placing a hand on the witcher’s shoulder as he did so. His face was not kind or gentle, nor was it angry. It was just neutral, and the simple lack of emotion disconcerted Geralt a great deal. The poet was always easy to read; his face a direct passageway to his heart. Geralt had never seen him so closed off.
“You look tired,” he said, simple and straightforward, none of the usual ornamentation crowding into his speech, “But we need to talk before we retire. Geralt, we’re meant to be a company. A company that supports one another, and we can’t do that if you refuse to tell us when you need respite or when your injuries are paining you. It was ill-advised for you to leave Brokilon when you did, everyone told you that. But you made the decision to go all the same, for Ciri, and in your position I would have done the same.
“However, that decision is no excuse to completely neglect yourself. Milva is right. You can’t protect Ciri if you’ve nothing left of yourself to protect her with. And short of that, it’s damned selfish. We’ve killed for you and that girl, and happily. But you can’t repay us like this and expect us to go on at your side.”
Geralt folded his arms over his chest as well as he could. Dandelion was right. He was exhausted and sore and terribly cross, and wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep, real sleep, not the fitful rests punctuated by hours of wakefulness he’d been experiencing since leaving Brokilon. He scowled, staring into the depths of the fire.
“Then don’t.”
Dandelion made a noise that was somewhere between an enraged splutter and a growl. Cahir simply looked on, but the intensity of his gaze belied his own feelings.
“What?”
“Don’t. If my choices place a burden on you that’s too great for you to bear, no one is compelling you to stay. I’m sure you’d be happier in Oxenfurt, teaching and reclining in furs by the fireside. And you, Nilfgaardian who is not from Nilfgaard, I trust you’d like to make a home for yourself out of something other than bloodshed? Start a family, work the fields? I don’t compel you to stay here. Go on, be on your way. I’ll move faster without you.”
There was a heavy, fetid silence. Dandelion’s face was reddened with anger, but he did not go to his pack, nor did he release Pegasus from her picket and begin tacking her up. Geralt wished he would. Wished Cahir would take his own accursed nag and leave him and Roach in peace. Milva, it seemed, had already taken her que and returned to Brokilon. The sulphurous afternotes of her scent had completely disappeared from the camp, and her pack was nowhere to be seen, though Geralt had been in too much pain before now to make much of its absence.
Eventually, Dandelion began drumming his fingers against a log. Cahir went back to his whittling. It was as though Geralt had said nothing, as though he didn’t even exist. Something close to rage bubbled at the back of his throat.
“Dammit, you can leave! Gods above, take your accursed complaints with you.”
Neither did a thing. They didn’t even look up. Geralt was about to speak again when a dark voice piped up behind him, nearly making him jump. His senses were truly dulled, to have not noticed the person’s approach.
“They won’t.”
He twisted as far as he was able, and squinted in the crepuscular afterglow of the sunset. There stood Milva, her red hair dried and plaited, packs and a brace of squirrels neatly slung over one shoulder. Her face was empty as well, and she stared straight ahead, not at Geralt, though it was clear she was speaking to him. He found it absolutely infuriating, but said nothing. The cant of her shoulders belied a great slough of emotions roiling beneath her calm exterior.
“They won’t, because we are a company. Whether or not you like it, or even want it. So shut your damned foolish mouth and go to sleep, before Cahir knocks you senseless. He’s wanted to for days now. Dandelion’s been the only thing standing between you and his fist and a good night’s sleep.”
Geralt, despite how hot and flustered and angry he felt, had to snort a bit at that. Half of him thought he wouldn’t even mind if Cahir relieved him of his senses for a bit. Anything to escape this damned pain and how frightful it made him. He clenched his fists and took Milva’s extended hand. She helped him to his bedroll, and handed him a small packet of herbs while he unlaced his boots.
“Yarrow root and birchbark, to relieve a bit of the pain you’re in, and valerian and hops to help you sleep through the night. Tomorrow, when you’ve slept and your pain has abated, we’ll talk. Not tonight.”
Geralt took them without complaint, nearly knocked off his feet by the strength of the sleeping herbs alone. Dizzy and aching, he massaged his knee a bit, rolling up a cloak to keep it propped up while he rested. The rest of his company congregated around the fire, talking quietly amongst themselves about menial things, telling jokes and stories to pass the time. He sighed, a shaky thing, tremulous with pain, and cursed the day he had chosen to accompany Yennefer to Thanedd. A damned unlucky day that it had been, to leave him thus, shaking and exhausted and unable to treat anyone with the courtesy he knew they were accorded. Vesemir would box his ears for behaving in such a way, Geralt knew. He frowned, staring up at the stars and the trees, which seemed to be lazily spinning above him. It was all a bit nauseating; Milva must have found a particularly strong batch of valerian to leave him in such a state. Weakly, he hoped the others would let him sleep tomorrow. Perhaps Dandelion would rub his leg, if all was forgiven. The bard had clever hands, soft but strong when they were needed, and devilishly capable at rubbing out knots. In better days, Geralt had once joked that it was the only reason he had allowed the other man to keep travelling with him. What he wouldn’t do to return to that time now.
Lulled by the mindless chatter of his companions and the blessed respite from his pain, Geralt drifted in and out of consciousness for a bit before falling asleep.
He dreamt of a swallow. Zirael, she was called, and as she overtook the white frost she was lost to him forever.