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Eskel lies back on the blood-matted grass and gazes up at the sky, breathing slow and deep as the Swallow knits the gash in his side back together.
It’s a beautiful evening. The moon is full, glowing gently behind a thin layer of high haze, and the sunset has turned everything lavender and gilded the undersides of the clouds. A small flock of birds crosses above him, heading south.
South for the winter, south for warmer climes. Which means that it is time for Eskel to head north.
North, to Kaer Morhen’s familiar stone walls, to the chill in the air and the humid warmth of the hot springs. North, to his brothers. North, to the lads who have become younger brothers to him, bright-eyed Voltehre and sharp-tongued Lambert. North, to Geralt and Gweld, so much dearer than brothers, the missing pieces of Eskel’s own soul.
Gods willing, they will make it home this year.
Today’s minor debacle notwithstanding, Eskel hasn’t had a bad year, really. The contracts have been frequent enough without being too frequent, the aldermen have mostly paid up with a minimum of complaining, and the weather has been nice enough to let Eskel camp rather than paying for an inn’s thin pallet more days than not. He’s saved up almost enough money for another horse, or maybe a really good mule. He’s even been able to acquire a few trinkets here and there: a tiny carved stone horse for Geralt, a jar of rich cobalt-blue pigment for Gweld.
His side feels slightly less like it’s been shredded; Eskel sits up slowly and warily, glancing down at it, and nods to himself. An hour or so of focused meditation, and he’ll be able to get up and take his trophies from the pair of mated griffins which the alderman swore up and down was supposed to be only one griffin, and a scrawny one at that.
Maybe he’ll take a few feathers for the lads.
*
The moon is full again, glowing in the early evening sky as Eskel trudges up the last few hundred paces to the great iron-bound gates of Kaer Morhen. They’re closed, of course, but before Eskel can whistle to let the gatewatcher know to let him in, the little door set into the right-hand gate creaks open, and two figures come hurrying out towards him. Not Geralt and Gweld - neither has red hair, nor moonlight pale - but Eskel recognizes them all the same.
“You’ve grown,” he says dryly, as Lambert and Voltehre stumble to a slightly awkward halt in front of him, looking torn between dignity and flinging themselves eagerly at him. Voltehre is almost as tall as Eskel is, now, all knees and elbows and gangly lack of grace; Lambert hasn’t hit his true growth spurt yet, but Eskel suspects he will soon. They’re only a year or two out from their Medallion Trial, if Eskel has been counting the seasons correctly.
“Great lanky scarecrow, he is,” Lambert mutters, elbowing Voltehre in the side. Voltehre laughs and rests his arm on Lambert’s shoulder, leaning on him with a smirk.
“Oh, come here,” Eskel says, opening his arms, and they both scramble forward, crashing against him and clinging. Eskel chuckles; his armor can’t be terribly comfortable to be pressed up against, but neither boy seems to mind.
“Am I the first back, then?” he asks quietly.
“Not the first of everyone,” Voltehre says, muffled against Eskel’s shoulder. “Just of the three of you.”
Eskel doesn’t say anything comforting, because they all know it’s bad luck to assume a brother will make it home. He just squeezes the lads a little tighter. “Well, let me in the gate, then,” he murmurs. “I need a bath.”
Lambert clings to him for another long moment before letting go and stepping back. “Well, I wasn’t gonna say anything,” he snarks weakly. Voltehre snickers as he also lets go and takes one of Eskel’s packs; Lambert takes the other, leaving Eskel with just his swords to carry. He lost his horse last autumn, to a swamp and a kikimora swarm, and hasn’t saved up enough for another yet.
“How was the Path?” Voltehre asks as he holds the door open for Eskel and Lambert.
“Can’t have been as bad as Frank’s was,” Lambert adds. “He looked like twelve kinds of shit when he came dragging in last week. Lost his fuckin’ silver sword, even.”
Eskel winces. “Shit.” Losing a sword is always bad; losing a silver sword is usually a death sentence. Most of the things witchers hunt can’t be killed without one, and they aren’t cheap to replace. They have to be enchanted, either by a witcher trained as a blacksmith or by a mage, so the silver won’t be too soft to actually use. If a Wolf can survive long enough to get back to Kaer Morhen, he can get a new one, but otherwise…
Well, some witchers never leave the Path, and the School recites their names at midwinter, and if they’re very lucky their medallions come back to be hung from the rafters in the great hall.
But not Frank’s, this year, which is something.
“I had a decent year,” Eskel admits. “One nasty contract right near the end - I didn’t scout enough, and it was two griffins instead of one - but that was the worst of it.” Lambert hauls open the door to the big room Eskel and Geralt and Gweld share, and he and Voltehre pile Eskel’s packs beside the cold hearth. Lambert scowls at the logs stacked ready to be lit, and gestures Igni with adorably intense concentration. The logs blaze up at once.
“Nicely done,” Eskel says approvingly, and sets his swords on the rack, then rummages into the outside pocket of one of his packs and pulls out a little cloth packet. “Here - I brought these for you.”
“Presents?” Voltehre asks, as startled as if Eskel and Geralt and Gweld haven’t been bringing back presents for the lads for more than half a decade now.
Eskel grins and unrolls the packet to reveal two perfect griffin primary feathers, gleaming golden in the firelight. “Here. Trim the ends for quills; they don’t break easily, and they write better than goose-quills do.”
“Oh wow,” Voltehre breathes, taking one gently. Lambert picks up the other, running a finger over the barbs wonderingly.
“These’re from those griffins?” he asks.
“Yes, one from each. And yes, before you ask, I got all the useful potions ingredients too, and I’ll bring those down to the labs tomorrow. But these are for you.”
Lambert looks endearingly young and awed as he stares down at the feather in his hands. Voltehre sidles up next to his friend, fitting against Lambert’s side easily even with their new height difference, and holds his feather up beside Lambert’s; they’re nearly identical in height and width, though Lambert’s has a thinner black bar at its tip.
“Must’ve been pretty big fuckers,” Lambert murmurs after a long moment.
“I think they may have had some archgriffin ancestry,” Eskel says ruefully as he starts to unstrap his armor. “Which I will need to mention to Rennes, because if those are starting to crossbreed it’s going to be really unpleasant for us. I didn’t think they were crossfertile, but -” he shrugs. “Maybe they were just flukes. Nice feathers, regardless.”
“Thank you,” Voltehre says. “These are beautiful.”
“Glad you like ‘em,” Eskel says, hanging his armor up on its stand. It’ll need repairs, of course, and a good solid cleaning, but that can be a chore for later this week.
Lambert tucks the feather carefully into the breast of his tunic. “Gimme the alchemy stuff, I’ll run it down to the labs,” he says.
“And I’ll take your dirty things to the laundry,” Voltehre adds, putting his feather away just as gently.
“Thank you, lads,” Eskel says. “I am going to go soak for an hour or two. You can sit with me at dinner, if you like, and I’ll tell you how the Path went.”
“Ooh!” Voltehre says eagerly, and the two of them quickly ransack Eskel’s packs and go trotting off with their burdens. Eskel stretches and sniffs himself and grimaces. Yep, a bath is definitely called for.
*
It’s another month on, and the full moon hangs low over the mountains and turns the leafless trees to stark black shadows against the drifts and hummocks of the first true snowfall, when a low whistle from outside the gates brings Eskel to his feet from where he’s been mending a tunic in the guardhouse up on the ramparts, Lambert and Voltehre startling upright out of their doze beside him.
Two familiar figures are leading their horses their way up the trail, one with hair as red as fire, one as pale as the ankle-deep snow they’re all slogging through.
Eskel beats Voltehre and Lambert to the gate by quite a good distance, even though he was furthest from the door, and there beneath the barbican he greets his lovers with open arms, clasping them tightly despite the cold buckles and stiff leather of their armor -
Gweld and Geralt, come home safe at last.