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Eskel cups Lambert’s face in his hands. “Listen to me,” he says softly. Lambert meets his gaze, face grim as granite and fury dancing in his eyes. “No matter what happens out there, my Lam, you have one job. Survive.”
Lambert raises an eyebrow. “Not gonna tell me to fight with honor? Or for ‘the glory of the Empire’?”
“Fuck honor,” Eskel rasps. “Fuck glory. Fuck everything. Just survive. Live to come back to me.”
Lambert jerks a nod and then lunges forward, hooking a hand behind Eskel’s neck and dragging him down into a vicious, biting kiss. “Nothing’s managed to kill me yet,” he snarls as they part. “This sure as hell ain’t gonna be what does it. I’m dying in my bed, gods damn it, when I’m old and grey, and you’re gonna be even greyer right beside me.”
Eskel nods. Lambert’s teeth split his lip slightly, and he savors the sting of it and the metallic taste of his own blood as Lambert steps away.
“Come on, then, witcher,” one of the guards calls, banging his spear against the bars. Lambert spits a curse but goes - they’ve learned the hard way that the guards can activate the spells on their collars, and even for a witcher that pain is not something to be endured lightly. The guards herd him down the corridor and out of sight.
Eskel sinks to his knees and rests his hands on his thighs and closes his eyes. He should meditate - he knows he should - but he cannot. Instead, he focuses intently on the noises from the arena above him.
The crowd roars excitement, then screams in terror. Something screeches. A draconid, probably; a nasty fight even with potions available, and of course they haven’t been given any. But Lambert is fast and skilled and vicious.
The crowd noise ebbs and peaks; the draconid screeches. Eskel breathes, slow and even, and does not think about anything but the next breath.
The crowd roars again, louder this time, the sound rising and rising until it shakes the walls. And then - silence.
Eskel breathes.
And then there is the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, and Lambert’s unmistakable voice muttering curses in four languages, and Eskel surges to his feet as the cell door opens and catches Lambert as he stumbles.
“I lived,” Lambert rasps. He’s bleeding and bruised and clearly exhausted but he’s here in Eskel’s arms, and that is all that matters.
Eskel holds him close, and vows again that somehow, someway, they will both survive.
*
Two weeks later, they are both called out of their cell. Lambert grips Eskel’s arm, hard, just for a moment; Eskel meets Lambert’s eyes and nods, once, sharply. Whatever this is, they’ll face it together, and if the bastards have decided that it will be amusing to see two witchers fight each other, well, they won’t be getting quite the show they expect.
There’s armor waiting near the entrance to the arena. Eskel picks the spikiest gambeson, just because he can, and Lambert mutters insults about the quality of the leatherwork as he makes his choices. And then the guards are handing them swords, silver and steel both, and ushering them out onto the sand.
“Well fuck, His Imperial Fucking Majesty is here,” Lambert murmurs, glancing up at the imperial box, where a lean figured in black with a golden chain is reclining elegantly.
Eskel bites back the urge to send an Aard straight at the bastard. There’s shielding between the stands and the arena, more’s the pity.
They pace slowly out into the center, wary as longtailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs, and as they reach the middle the far door opens and a fucking shaelmaar comes trundling out, prodded along by blunted spears.
Eskel hisses between his teeth. Shaelmaars aren’t easy fights, but it’s daylight, which will make it clumsier, and there are two of them. They’ll have to run it into the walls of the arena, baiting it into charging.
Lambert flicks a hand. “Got a plan. Follow my lead.”
“Aye,” Eskel agrees, and they spread out as the shaelmaar approaches. Lambert waves his silver sword.
“Hey, big and ugly! Come and get it!” he cries, and adds a slew of multilingual insults. The shaelmaar doesn’t care what he’s saying, of course, but it doesn’t like the movement or the sound, and after a long moment of angry huffing and pawing, it gathers itself to charge. Eskel edges sideways, heart in his throat; Lambert knows what he’s doing, but bad luck can ruin even the best witcher’s day.
Lambert dodges out of the way with a gorgeous diving roll at the very last moment, and the shaelmaar thunders past him to strike the base of the imperial box with a boneshaking thud. And Eskel sees the wards flare, bright even in the sunlight. Flare, and weaken. Even very good wards aren’t meant to be hit with shaelmaars.
Oh. Oho. His clever, clever Lambert.
Eskel leaps forward, hewing at the shaelmaar and carefully hitting mostly its carapace, and then hastens backwards again as it shakes its brief daze off and turns to pursue him. He tempts it back and back, curving to follow the line of the arena’s wall, and then as they reach the opposite side of the arena from the imperial box he stops teasing and sends an Igni flicking straight at its face. Shaelmaar aren’t terribly weak to fire but they sure don’t like it; the monster bellows and paws at the ground in preparation for a charge. Eskel backs up hastily, eyes on the shaelmaar, gauging his moment.
His leap out of the way isn’t nearly as graceful as Lambert’s was, but it does the job, and the shaelmaar hits the wards again like the sea crashing against a pier. As Lambert comes howling in to hack at it - never quite hitting its vulnerable under-plating - Eskel eyes the ward flare. It was definitely weaker this time.
Lambert takes another turn as bait, leading the shaelmaar on a zig-zagging path through the arena that just happens to end opposite the imperial box; Eskel grits his teeth as Lambert cuts his dodge so close the wind of the shaelmaar’s passing sends him tumbling, but Lambert rolls to his feet without any sign of injury, and when the shaelmaar hits the wall, the ward flare is barely visible at all.
One more, Eskel thinks, and whacks the shaelmaar a good one right where it’ll sting. Its bellow rings from the arena’s walls. He makes a damn good show of it, if he says so himself, dodging just out of the way of its paw-swipes as he leads it back out into the middle of the arena. Lambert joins him, shoulder to shoulder, and the shaelmaar howls its fury at both of its tormentors. Eskel must admit to some fellow-feeling.
“You’ll get your vengeance,” he murmurs to the monster. “And we’ll have ours.” He brushes his gloved hand against Lambert’s and counts down mentally. Three, two, one -
They dart away from each other, sand shifting beneath their feet, and the shaelmaar thuds home against the imperial box’s base. The wards flare one more time and shatter, and the wall itself, no match for the immense fury of a shaelmaar’s full-force charge, caves in around the monster’s head.
The Emperor in his fancy box startles to his feet, his guards shouting in alarm, and they have just enough time to realize what is about to happen before the whole damn silk-draped monstrosity comes tumbling down in an avalanche of broken stone.
The crowd in the arena screams in horror, and people start scrambling for the exits; Eskel expects there will be casualties from the mob, but given that they were here to watch him and Lambert die horribly, he doesn’t much care. He looks across the rubble at Lambert and offers his hand, and Lambert scrambles over to him, hauls him close and kisses him, and then leads the way up and over tumbled stone and thrashing shaelmaar, stopping very briefly to cut off the Emperor’s head just to make very sure, and down into the catacombs that lead out of the arena.
They’re still collared. There are still guards. But they’ve got swords in their hands and armor on their backs and the Emperor is dead.
Two witchers against a headless Empire? Eskel grins, baring all of his teeth, and sees the glint of Lambert’s matching grin in the dimness of the tunnel.
“We got this,” Lambert snarls.
“Damn straight,” Eskel replies, and takes Lambert’s offered hand as they run.
They’ve got this. They’re going to survive and fucking thrive.