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Gerd frowned down at the broken and mangled form of the Witcher on the bed. It should have been a simple contract. Something in the woods was stealing children. Classic nekker, or griffin or even fucking warg behaviour. Most monsters that had become desperate enough to prey on humans went for the children. They were easier to carry off. It wasn’t something that ever got easier to deal with, but at least it was predictable. Rational. Instead, he’d found the mage.
Well. He’d found what was left of the mage. It wasn’t a pretty scene.
He reached down to tuck the thin blanket tighter around Kiyan’s shoulders. His poor Cat had been in no state to explain what had happened, but the children… One of the children had still been conscious enough to see Kiyan break free of his restraints when the screaming had started.
The Trials had left their scars on all of them. And now on a new generation too.
The two small figures on the second bed lay huddled together, finally sleeping too deeply for dreams to reach them.
They had been strapped to tables, all too reminiscent of the one Gerd still remembered clearly, even more than a century later.The mage must have been using portals to gather them all because there had been far more than the five reported missing in Gerd’s contract. The two sleeping nearby had been the only survivors. It had taken the better part of three days for them to stop shivering and sweating and screaming as the last of the mage’s concoctions burned through them. In the end though, they had opened amber, cat-slitted eyes and breathed. Gerd hadn’t a fucking clue what to do with them.
On the bed, Kiyan twitched and hissed. His heartbeat sped slightly until it was nearly as fast as a human at rest. Each outbreath stopped just short of being a whimper. Gerd didn’t want to think about why Kiyan refused to vocalise his pain.
Gerd was at a loss. There was little he could do to comfort Kiyan. Not while Kiyan’s body was still so broken. Every touch brought pain, and Gerd could never forgive himself for causing more of it.
‘Hush, sleep now,’ he whispered. ‘Just rest, and heal.’
Kiyan twitched again, curling toward the heat of Gerd’s body.
They’d spent many nights before tangled together on inn beds, sharing warmth and companionship. Gerd had missed it. When Kiyan had stopped finding him on the Path, had stopped falling into step beside him with an easy grin and an offer on his lips, Gerd had assumed that whatever they’d had was over. He’d thought Kiyan had grown bored, or moved on. He hadn’t thought… Well. He hadn’t suspected mages, or Trials, or newly made Witchers.
Everything in him wanted to reach out, to brush the straggly remnants of Kiyan’s hair off his forehead and smooth the pain away. But the skin on Kiyan’s face was still pink and raw and he knew the touch would only bring unnecessary hurt. He had to do something though. He’d never even bothered to look for the other Witcher. He’d just let Kiyan disappear out of his life. If he’d only looked for him, even just to demand an explanation or to say goodbye, then maybe Kiyan wouldn’t be lying in front of him in the grips of a nightmare with two newly-mutated Witchers asleep across the room. Maybe none of this would ever have happened.
He squeezed his eyes shut as Kiyan keened, a high reedy sound pushed through damaged vocal cords.
‘No,’ he moaned, ‘No good. No evil. Only pain.’
It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but it still lanced straight through Gerd. He breathed in and then out and then began to hum. He was no Oxenfurt-trained bard, but he could carry a simple tune well enough and he still remembered many of the lullabies he’d learned to soothe their youngest initiates.
He started with the Lonely Mountain song which was deep and slow and well suited to his out of practice voice. Kiyan had always had a fondness for his rumbling. Hopefully, wherever he was in his head, it would bring him comfort now.
He kept his voice low, trying not to wake the children as he began to sing quietly. It had been a while since he’d last sung to Kiyan, but it felt so familiar.
The last time had been a raucous affair. Too much White Gull after a successful hunt, and Kiyan had been falling over himself laughing at Gerd’s caterwauling attempts at serenading him. They’d ended the night sharing a bedroll, passed out in a tangled heap.
Kiyan settled a little as Gerd sang, his twitching falling still as Gerd’s voice washed over him.
Gerd had a limited repertoire of songs, but an unlimited well of patience for his love. He sang through all the songs he knew, then, when he was done, he started again at the beginning. He sang through the night and through the sunrise. He sang as he used a wet rag to drip water between Kiyan’s lips, encouraging him to drink as much as he could. He sang as he prepared a light meal for himself and their two newest Witchers. Even when they woke and joined him, he kept singing, because Kiyan had yet to start whimpering again, but he had also yet to wake.
The children were still wary of him, but his gentleness with Kiyan in those first days seemed to have won them over at least a little, and they no longer shrank away from him every time he moved. They’d apparently become protective of their strange protector.
‘Why’re you singin’?’ the smaller child asked. A girl, so far as Gerd was aware, though he’d known some before who weren’t what they looked like.
‘Helps him sleep,’ Gerd rasped, his voice strained after singing for so long. ‘He needs the rest. ‘S been a while, though, so I’m a little out of practice.’
Both children narrowed their eyes at him, as though they didn’t believe him. It was… distressingly adorable, really. Gerd had never spent much time with the initiates, after he’d passed his Trials, so all of this was very new to him.
‘What’re your names?’ he asked, figuring it was as good a place to start as any.
Neither of them looked like they planned to answer before the sun went down again. Gerd sighed.
‘I’m Gerd,’ he offered, ‘Of the School of the Bear.’
Still, neither of them spoke.
‘That’s Kiyan,’ he added, nodding toward the still sleeping figure on the bed. ‘He’s from the School of the Cat. We’ve known each other for a while.’
‘What’s that mean?’ the bigger of the children asked, head tilted to the side a little. ‘The schools?’
Gerd shrugged. ‘Each Witcher is trained by a School,’ he explained. ‘We’re brought up with a cohort of others around our age in different Schools. The Bears, my School, train in the mountains. So do the Wolves, though they’re way up North. Cats have a caravan; move around a lot.’
‘Is that it then?’ the littler one asked. ‘Bears, Wolves and Cats?’
‘There’s also the Vipers, the Griffins and the Manticores. They all have their own areas of the Continent.’
‘Why? Wouldn’t it make more sense to all stay together?’
Gerd managed to keep his wince internal. ‘We all focus on different skills,’ he explained. ‘The Bears tend to be hardy and focus on powerful, head-on attacking. Cats tend to be slimmer and more agile so they focus on flexibility and dodging. The other schools all have their own specialities as well.’ He didn’t think this was exactly the time to get into the politics of the schism and the school’s differing ideologies.
The bigger child’s chin jutted out pugnaciously. ‘And is it true that you steal children?’
On second thoughts, inter-school politics might have been preferable.
‘No, we don’t steal children,’ he said, trying not to snap. He hated that rumour. ‘We’re not monsters, no matter what some people might think. People would leave children with us; orphans, or unwanted kids they couldn’t afford to feed. Sometimes we’d ask for the Law of Surprise, and end up with a kid. But we didn’t steal kids. No more Witcher kids now anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.’
‘Except us,’ the bigger one said, frowning.
Gerd winced. ‘Except you,’ he agreed. ‘But since it was some crazy mage who did that, I think you’d agree it still doesn’t really matter.’
‘We’re still Witchers now though,’ the little one said, mulish.
‘You are. And I’ll look after you, I promise. You and Kiyan.’ Gerd vowed.
‘I’m Maja,’ the smaller child said, hopping off the stool and sticking a hand out.
Gerd took the hand and shook it gently in his big paw.
‘Andris,’ the other child added, waving.
‘Good to meet you,’ Gerd said, smiling.
Kiyan finally stirred on the bed, uncurling from the tight ball he’d been sleeping in. He blinked slowly at Gerd, then at the children. Gerd noted that his skin still looked sensitive; pink and half-healed.
‘There’s food,’ Gerd said gently, gesturing to what he’d set aside for Kiyan.
‘Someone was singing,’ he whispered, voice broken and raspy but alight with something that sounded awfully like hope.