Chapter Text
The wind blew icy snowflakes in his eyes, but the warlord stood unmoving. Even now that he spent most of his nights in the comfortable bed in the Keep and not on a damp bedroll under the stars it took more than the unwelcoming weather of the blue mountains to make a Witcher move.
Around him none of the other Witcher moved either, all of them trained from the first time they stepped foot into Kaer Morhen to be patient, to stay motionless, to wait for the perfect moment to strike. Geralt felt Eskel´s presence beside him, the same unconscious way he had always been able to feel his brother since the moment he had met him. The other witcher shifted his weight minutely, a movement so small it was invisible to the human eye.
The courtyard was filled with every Witcher who called the Keep their home. Likewise, almost all humans inhabiting it had found their way here, out into the icy cold. They all were waiting. Waiting for all of this to be finally over. The war had ended mere weeks ago. Now only one last act and they could finally leave this behind them and move on.
Vizimir had not been able to withstand the united might of the Witchers. And while this definitely was a surprise to the royalty living in the warm castles and manors of the south, Geralt had not for one moment doubted the capabilities of those who stood beside him and called him leader. At least there had been no doubt until the moment Vizimir has introduced a new player.
After two years of numerous fights, planning and strategizing they had been so close to victory. Until a new mage appeared at Vizimir side. The first Witcher returning home from what was supposed to be a simple spy mission reported magic as they had never seen it before. Neither Triss nor Yennefer had known what kind of spells could inflict the damage such as the one these witchers carried. It was a miracle none of them had died. The Witchers returning from battles with the mage were weak. Weaker than the wounds they had received would explain. Small cuts and minor broken bones took almost as long to heal as they would for a human. The mage had seemed to drain their power, something that even the oldest Witchers of the Keep had never seen.
Whoever this mage was and wherever Vizimir had managed to recruit them they were the new and most dangerous player in this war that none of the witchers had wanted. For the next three years the hatred the witchers felt for this mage was only surpassed by their hate for Vizimir himself.
No one had been able to clearly describe them, and no one knew their name. This mystery had only added to the creativity of the names given to the mage. Soulless shadow, cockless bastard son of a whore with sagging tits (a title Lambert had to be given credit for), and after a particular brutal fight the most widespread name. The one bathed in wolf blood. A name Vizimir himself was very fond of. The mage had not appeared every battle, but they still had done considerable damage.
The magic, so unlike anything the mages at Kaer Morhen or the royal courts of the South possessed, had slowed the fighting down, had forced the Witchers into more battles with more fighters. The only good thing to come from all of this had been that Vizimir too had to fight more battles and stretch his forces thin.
This had made it more difficult for him to follow through on his promise to kill the elves, dwarves and other non-humans living in his territory. Countless of them had managed to find their way north and had settles in the mountains surrounding the Keep. Still, the wounds the Witchers had received in the battles against Vizimir´s forces had barely started to scar and the execution of Vizimir and his loyals had not been enough to stop their thirst for revenge.
So, when the war finally ended and the Witchers returned victorious into their Keep one thing was clear to all of them. Whoever this mage was they would not live for much longer. The new ruler of Redania, a bloated man who always seemed out of breath and stank as if he was allergic even to the sight of water, but at least without connection to Vizimir or any of the other nobles the Witcher had to get rid of, had immediately agreed to send the mage up to Kaer Morhen to meet their end.
Redania´s new king had quickly understood that the Witchers wanted the mage to pay for all the crimes committed against them and since he had no interest whatsoever in starting a new war, he had seen no reason to refuse the Witcher’s claim to the mage. The peace treaty had been signed weeks ago, followed by the message that Redania´s new king had held up his end of the bargain and send a convoy with the mage up north.
Now they all stood, waiting. The carriage bringing the mage had been spotted, making its way up the steep way to the Keep and no one wanted to miss the moment the mage was killed and the war was finally over.
Aiden, perched high up on the walls of the Keep, watching the way up, signalled for the gates to be opened. The carriage, flanked by four riders slowly moved into the packed courtyard.
Geralt felt the growl vibrating through all the witchers surrounding them. Even though the sound was too low for human ears to hear it still awakened a dormant instinctual fear in them. The guards, proudly wearing Redania´s colours, shifted uncomfortably as their horses rolled their eyes and snort anxiously. Only one guard, sitting straight and proud on his gelding seemed to be oblivious to the threating air around him. With a flourished and clearly well-practiced move he dismounted, stalking towards Geralt.
Geralt recognised him. He had been one of Vizimir´s soldiers, not particularly high ranking but still vicious enough to make himself noticeable in a fight. One of the Bears had cut his eye out in that final fight, but the man didn´t seem to hold a grudge. Since all his action in the war had been that of a soldier following orders, he had not been executed. Clearly Redania´s new king had given him a promotion, one that he was quite proud of, judging by the way he pushed his chest out to show his new sign of rank as he came to a halt a few feet in front of Geralt.
“Warlord.” A short nod, just deep enough as to not cause offence. To his left, Yennefer snorted quietly. The soldier didn´t notice. Geralt inclined his head but stayed silent. The man took it as an invitation to continue.
“I know you said you were going to kill him but if you have changed your mind in the meantime, I can give you some helpful tips on how to handle him and the brat. I´ve been his guard since Vizimir found him and I know a lot about him how to handle him.”
The man waited for a sign of Geralt´s interest in the knowledge he was clearly proud of, but when it did not come, he spoke again regardless.
“You actually only need to know three things to keep him in check. First, since the treaty is signed and he is now yours, he can´t really refuse anything you order him to. I mean, he still tries from time to time, y´know.” He showed his yellow teeth, snorting an ugly laugh. “But the mages have done good work on those cuffs of his an´ you´re his master now, so they´ll make him do what you want him too. Or at least he´ll be in a lot of pain if he doesn’t, you understand. So, don´t take the cuffs off, alright? Think of them as a leash. It was one hell of a fight getting them on to him the first time, but they have done good work.”
The other guards shifted uncertain, uncomfortable by the casual way their leader spoke to Geralt. But the man didn´t seem to feel even the slightest bit unsure.
“Second. If he really doesn’t want to do what you tell him to do, just threaten the brat. He really cares for the bastard child. Bloody elf.” He spat on the ground and missed the way Geralt frowned at those words. Eskel to his right snarled, a sound echoed by several others.
Oblivious, the man carried on. “So, just, y´know, smack it a bit. Or take their food. Makes him real compliant. I wasn´t so sure about the brat at first, but Vizimir really did have some clever ideas.”
“And lastly, and this is just a thing I learned in my years being his keeper. Keep their hair short. You have to shave it every few weeks or I swear they never stop having flees and all kinds of other nasty shit. Filthy bastards.”
The man inspected Geralt before looking around. For the first time he seemed to notice the tense atmosphere and swallowed audibly. Then he made his first wise choice since arriving in Kear Morhen: he shut up and turned back to the carriage his men had started to open. The carriage had only one door at the back, which was locked with a heavy chain.
Geralt turned his head to Eskel, a silent question in his eyes. The other Witcher shook his head. He also had no idea what the man had been talking about. But it sure as hell hadn´t been good. Geralt felt Vesemir move forward as all off them waited for the guards to open the carriage. United they stood, waiting for the men to hand over the mage.
The first thing Geralt noticed about the man that the guards pulled out roughly from the opened door, was that he was thin. His head, shaved unevenly and marked with several long cuts that had just started to heal, hung slow, as the men holding him dragged him towards Geralt.
He was dressed in thin clothes, too thin to withstand the icy wind of the mountains, and he was already shivering as the redanian soldiers unceremoniously dropped him to Geralt´s feet. His hands, bound behind his back by a heavy chain connecting metal cuffs circling his wrists, were useless and he was not able to stop himself from hitting the unforgiving stones head-on.
Geralt stood frozen, starring at the man laying at his feed. Disbelief filled his head. This was the mage? This thin, pitiful creature, to weak to even walk? Still, just standing close to man, Geralt could feel the power radiating from him. It felt wild, barely contained. Nothing like the power Yen, Triss or any of the other mages in Kaer Morhen emitted. The feeling reminded Geralt of running through an icy forest, twisting to fit between the trees, the feeling of the branches on his skin, the wind in his hair, the trill of jumping and trying to find balance in frozen ground.
The man´s power seemed to flow through him uninhibited, into the stones beneath his body, into the cold air around him, seemed to move like it was connected to the world, to the life that arose from the earth, and then flowed back into the body it came from.
The man struggled to get up. He dragged his head across the uneven stones and slowly managed to lift up his chest until he was kneeling in front of Geralt. His eyes were still fixed on the ground in front of Geralt´s boot and he took a deep breath, seemed to stead himself and finally looked up to meet Geralt´s eyes.
Blood from a wound cutting through his brow was the only thing that disrupted the intensity of his ice-blue stare. The red flowed down his face, some of it leaking into the man´s eye, but he did not seem to feel it as he looked up at Geralt unwaveringly. His lip was split open, the wound barely healed. A bruise high on his cheek bone, so dark it almost seemed black, only help to exaggerate the sharp cut of his bones.
He was young, younger than Geralt had imagined for a mage so powerful, and his youth was not the magically frozen kind that was manufactured in Aretuza or Ben Ard. No, this was a young man, so young that his face should still have clung to the fat that rounded a child´s face until adulthood finally managed to shake the last of it off. His face however had evidently been robbed of this, starvation and hunger greedily eating away the last remaining innocence of a childhood ending.
Transfixed by the man Geralt only noticed the child when it was tossed in front of him in the same uncaring the manner the guards had handled the mage. The child´s head was shaven as well, seemingly with an equal indifferent hand holding the blade, as it´s head to was marked with long, shallow cuts.
The short stubble was not nearly enough to hide the ears, elongated into points. An elven child. Dressed in rags just as filthy and thin as the ones the mage was wearing and still of an age in which the face showed no sign of developing into a boy or a girl, the child only barely glanced at Geralt before crawling towards the man, gripping his arm and burying the little face into his side.
“There you have ´em. If you do decide to keep them alive, remember my words! Trust me, they can be a lot of trouble but with a firm hand you will be reaping the benefits soon enough. If you do decide to kill them tough, be sure to salt the earth where you burned them. Can´t have the little mage crawling back from hell to haunt us now, can we?”
The guard has already climbed into his saddle, offered one last sneering smile before spurring his horse into action and leading his men out of the Keep´s gates. Geralt watched motionless until the carriage could not be seen anymore. Only then he turned back to his two prisoners, crouching at his feet.
This was not at all what he expected. In all the weeks of negotiating, he and the other witchers had imagined this moment. The moment the mage, the one person that brought so much blood and pain to them, was handed over. And then the moment, that was supposed to follow immediately after, the staining of the cobble stone of the courtyard, the head rolling towards the pigsty, when justice was finally served.
It should not have surprised Geralt so much that this is not what was happening. The fact that it did only show that he had still not learned that life was rarely as simple at it seemed and never kind to anyone.
The man turned his head, pressed kisses on the child´s scalp, whispered hushed words Geralt couldn´t understand. Only then he lifted his head again, fixed his uncanny eyes on the warlord once again and spoke.
“I do not expect your mercy, nor do I deserve it. I know what I have done, and I welcome my just punishment by your hand.” He swallowed, his eyes flitting down to Geralt´s hand gripping the handle of the sliver sword, strapped to his side. The mage visible gathered himself again and looked back up, continuing.
“All I am asking for, it that my daughter is spared. She is still a child; she has nothing to do with this.” His voice, so composed when he accepted his own death began to shake. “Please, I know that I have no right to ask anything of you, not after what I have done. But. She is innocent, I swear it. There is no magic in here. She could stay here, work as a goose girl or in the kitchen, she will be no trouble at all! She can follow orders and work hard, and she is clever. Please, I beg you. Do not punish my daughter for my wrong-doings!”
Wide, brown eyes found his golden ones, as the child lifted her head from her father and stared up at Geralt. She was small, still small enough to probably need the comfort of a soft toy to be able to fall asleep at night, though Geralt had his doubts that life has been kind enough to gift her this small luxury. If she were being considered for the training the witchers went through, Geralt would have sent her away, for she was still at least two summers to young to start. Yet her eyes seemed ancient, looking up at the man into whose hands her life had been thrust so carelessly.
She had a typical elven face, high cheekbones, barely hidden by what little fat had been able to cling to her thin body. Almond shaped eyes, full lips, cracked from the cold, a long, thin nose. She bore no similarity to the man calling her his daughter. Still his pleas, desperate and fearful, where those only made by parents begging for their child´s life.
Geralt did the only thing he could think off, the only action that was logical through the chaos that had taken hold of his head. He nodded. “No harm will come to her here; you have my word.”
The man collapsed into himself, his shoulders sagging down as if a weight had been relieved from them. A weight that he seemed to have carried with him for a long time, judging by the relived sign and the tears he unsuccessfully tried to hide by pressing his face against the child´s head again. For a few seconds he stayed there, taking purposeful breath as if trying to find his composition again. The child stared up at Geralt unmovingly, a frown disrupting her tiny forehead and fine brown brows.
Then the man lifted his head once more. His lip quivered as he forced himself to speak again. “I am ready. Please, just don´t let my daughter watch. It will be much easier for her to feel at home here, if she doesn´t have to witness my -.” He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw. “It will be better. She will forget me soon enough.” The last words were spoken more to himself than to anyone else, but it were the first words that finally managed to shake Geralt from his confusion.
Let the child watch – what exactly? The man´s execution? But even though Geralt felt like he was standing on unsteady ground, one thing was clear in his head. The man, bearing the signs of abuse and cruelty so clearly, was not the enemy they had thought him to be. Something was not the way Geralt and the other Witcher has expected it to be. And Geralt would make no rash decision based on poor information. The man was not dying here today. But when Geralt opened his mouth, wanting to explain all this to his prisoner, he could just find one word.
“No.”
Devastation was not strong enough a word to describe the look on the man´s face. It tore into Geralt´s heart. The heart he kept so carefully hidden, yet the pain that spoke from the man´s eyes managed to find its way into it, like an arrow shot with a steady hand.
“I understand.” Then, quieter. “I understand.” He turned back to the girl, pressing kisses into her temple. “Remember what we talked about? How perhaps you will have to see something that scares you and I can´t be with you then? Remember that we said it´s a good thing? Right? Do you still remember why it´s a good thing, even though it will scare you?”
The child did not turn her gaze away from Geralt, but she still answered her father. “It is a good thing, because it means that I am still alive.” A rehearsed answer, each word spoken carefully, clearly something the man had often repeated to her. But then her voice became quieter, unsure. “But… I don’t want to be without you, Papa.”
Even though the men shut his eyes he could not stop the tears from escaping. “You will be fine. You will be, I promise. You will live a better life that I could ever give you and you will forget me soon enough, alright? You can start over, and you have to use your chance, right?”
But the child shook her head, both hands grabbing her father´s tunic as she started to sob. “I don’t want to forget you, Papa. Please! Don’t leave me, Papa!”
Panicked the man glanced up towards Geralt. “Anouk, let go off me now. Remember? We talked about this!” As the child still held onto him, her tiny hands white-knuckled, he spoke to Geralt again. “She normally listens well, I swear. This is just hard for her! She never had anyone else. But I swear on all the gods, she will not bring you trouble. She can obey. Please, I beg you. Don´t punish her for this! She is still a little child, but she will learn!”
Frantically he started whispering to the child. “Anouk! Please let go of me! Please, we have talked about this. Come on, it will be alright. Just let go of me now, okay? You need to let go of me!” The child only clung to his side harder, sobbing so hard she was gasping for air.
“Stop.” Geralt´s voice sounded strange to his ears, as if someone else was speaking. It was fitting, considering his body felt as if being thrown into icy water, unable to move, frozen in time, sinking to the bottom. But he could not listen to the man beg for even one second longer. Not when he was begging for his child to let go off him, so that Geralt could lift up his sword and… No. This was not what he had expected, and he needed to adapt, even though it felt as if the ground had given out from under him as the enemy he has envisioned and the triumph he had looked forward to disappeared into thin air, as if they never existed in the first place.
Because they hadn´t. The man, the shivering, bruised, frightened man kneeling in front of him, begging not for his life, but only for the life of his daughter, who evidently had lived a life just as hard as his, was not the enemy Geralt had thought he was. He didn´t know what was happening, what had gone wrong for him to be in this situation, but he heard Vesemir´s voice in his head, heard what the sword master had said whenever Geralt had stumbled, had fallen during the training. Adapt. Re-assess. Think.
The man had opened his mouth again, ready to plea again for Geralt to spare his daughter. But Geralt could not bear to hear it again. “I will not harm her. And I will not harm you.”
The man froze. The confusion was plain on his face. Then he seemed to come to a conclusion. “You want me to work for you. Of course. Can´t throw away a gold nugget when it´s tossed to your feet.” He chuckled, but the sound was hollow and ugly. “I understand. I do. And I will do as you order me to. You don´t need my daughter to make me obedient. She could still live her life as a normal child here, yes? I will do whatever you say but my daughter… she deserves a life. You don´t need her for your revenge.”
Geralt shook his head and finally found the words he so desperately had been looking for. “You misunderstand me. I will not hurt you daughter, nor will I harm you. I don´t intend to use your magic. I only want to understand. I think there is a lot that we don´t know. About you. About all of this. But. I do not think you are the enemy we thought you to be.”
The mage frowned, clearly not following. But Geralt´s words had spurred the other around him into motion. “To the council room, I reckon.”, grumbled Vesemir and Eskel stepped forward, slowly, careful not to intimidate the man more than necessary and gently pulled him up by his arm. The child rose as well, moving her hands to now grip the man´s lose pants. The mage let himself be pulled along, and together they moved towards the doors leading to the great hall.