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Vesemir of the Wolves rarely if ever came down to the little village at the foot of the Blue Mountains these days. In earlier years, still restless and unwilling to admit he’d grown too old for spending years on the Path, he’d come down more frequently, to pick up supplies and replenish the stock (and, it must be admitted, for a roll in the hay or a little good-natured gossip). But these days, he found himself unwilling to leave the keep for longer than it took to build up the south wall or tend to the horses. He hadn’t even made his usual annual trip for supplies these past two years, as tensions had been high in Kaedwen, and his pups had offered to buy the supplies themselves, since they were headed up to winter anyway. Not that they needed much. With only four Wolf witchers left, there was little that was necessary which could not be foraged or made, and it simply hadn’t been worth it.
Today, however, he was on his way down from the keep for the first time in two years, and in the summer at that. He wouldn’t normally have dropped everything for a couple of forktails, as, vicious though they were, they usually kept away from settlements except for stealing the occasional animal, but the village alderman, who was an old friend, one who had years previously saved his life, had grown so desperate that she’d employed a mage to send word, begging for help with a mated pair which had progressed from picking off stock to carrying off small children. It would likely be a hard fight, especially given his age, but he was far from feeble, and he’d been careful to bring more than twice the Swallow and Oriole he would have advised his pups to bring, as well as several of Lambert’s best Beehive shells.
He stopped first to confirm the contract, then readied himself for a hard fight, and plunged into the sparse woods.
It was not at all as bad as he’d been expecting, at least at first. The “mated pair” were actually two juveniles, which, while fierce and vicious, were rather stupid, and wholly unprepared to take on a fully grassed witcher, even an old one. He’d begun to think he wouldn’t even have needed the dose of Oriole, when all at once there was a low, horrible spitting.
A basilisk. So that was what had been picking off the villagers.
Vesemir had a moment to regret not making further inquiry into the behavior of the “forktails” before the basilisk flew at him, forcing him to duck and roll. He had no Dancing Stars and he only had two Beehive bombs left, having foolishly wasted the others taking down the forktails, and he hadn’t oiled his sword, but at least it was a smaller one. A quick aard sent the creature flying, and, as luck would have it, his last Grapeshot blew a decent-sized hole in its wing, forcing it to ground level before it could try and pummel him from above, and while it still spat milky venom, it was at least earthbound now.
Out of bombs, Vesemir at last resorted to alternated quick igni blasts with heavy slashes of his silver sword, which distracted the creature enough to where it was too busy parrying the blows with its remaining wing to try and douse him with venom.
It was still taking longer than he would have liked. He grew fatigued more easily these days, and if he hoped to win the battle, he’d better try to end it fast, or he would be overcome. One missed parry would be all it would take, and then the Wolf School would lose yet another witcher. All at once the creature stumbled over a sizable branch, and Vesemir lunged, plunging his sword up into its brain through the roof of its mouth. A flood of poisonous saliva and venom gushed over his arm, and then the creature stumbled again and fell, landing with a grim finality on the leaf mould below. Its tail thrashed in its death throws, whipping back and forth as if the creature had not yet realized its own mortality, and as Vesemir leapt out of range, the whip-thin end of it smashed into the side of his head and, as luck would have it, flinging him into the trunk of a nearby tree.
Well, that was painful.
The old witcher rose slower than he would have liked, blinking in the purple and gold tinted light. It was almost dark already, so by his estimation he must have lain there at least four hours. That said, while he was dizzy and a little weak, the nausea he felt had more to do with potion toxicity rather than venom, and judging by the position of the basilisk, and the flies it had attracted, it was quite dead.
He would live, and, more importantly, the monsters were dead.
He rose slowly, tracing his fingers along the trunk of the tree in case he might lose his balance, and staggered over to the forktail corpses, to cut off two of the feet for proof, and harvest the glands. Then he butchered the basilisk as best he could in the fading light, and cast igni on the rest, so that the reeking things might not attract scavengers.
It was completely dark by the time Vesemir finished speaking to the alderwoman and convinced the aging apothecary to buy the usable parts of the beasts, and the moon was already illuminating the rooftops with pale light when he finally made his way to the Armored Fox.
The Armored Fox was the oldest tavern in this part of Kaedwen, and was one of the few places which still held to the tenant that witchers should be respected. This close to the Wolf School, they were guaranteed protection from all manner of monsters, and the family which tended it owed their lives and livelihoods to the witchers who defended them. Vesemir had saved several generations of the family himself, in his time, and thus knew that he could expect admittance without a fuss, and a fair price for the days he would need to spend recovering from that day’s fight. At the very least, he might be able to expect ale which had not been spat in, and that in itself was very dear to a witcher.
Gloria, the bosomy proprietor, actually smiled at him upon his entrance, even with his bloodied clothes and his eyes still darkened by the last traces of potion. “Master Vesemir. I hope you’ve been well these past years?”
“Yes,” he replied, little interested in small talk. “A room and a bath please.”
She slid a key across to him. “Here you are. I’ll have my girls send up a bath in a minute.”
“Thank you,” he responded gruffly, and hurried up the stairs.
A long soak made a great deal of difference in his mood.
He was sitting quietly, simply watching and eating, when all at once there was a commotion by the front door. He turned his head. There was a group of tittering young women, working class by their roughened hands and sunned faces, and in their midst was a brightly-attired younger man, clearly trying to disengage himself from clutching hands and bosoms thrust in his face, gathering what looked to be a lute closer to himself so it could not be touched.
“Sorry, my darlings—this has been lovely, but I do have to sing now. I did promise.”
A bard. Vesemir frowned faintly. It had been a long time since there had been any traveling minstrels in Hertch, and the cut of his doublet made it quite clear that he was not of the region. Who would come to this out-of-the-way place of his own volition, when there was no lure but a single modest inn and a small population of working people? Had he not heard the stories that had warned so many others away—careful, you are near the home of monster-men?
The owner and one of his boys then began to move back the tables, calling the bard forward, and Vesemir, not yet finished with his meal, slitted his eyes against the warm glow of the tavern lights and simply hoped that the songster was halfway competent.
Then he stepped forward, and swung his lute up in a quick, practiced motion, bounced a little on the balls of his feet, and then began to sing.
To his pure surprise, the bard was quite good. He’d obviously been trained, but more than that, he had spirit, and at least half of the songs seemed like they were original compositions, given the authority with which he sang. Vesemir, who normally had to plug his ears at the screechy off-key songs he’d heard those rare times he’d been allowed to stay at a tavern or inn long enough to hear a bard, found himself actually quite enjoying it, such that he forgot to finish his stew and set the gravy-covered spoon on the table instead of the bowl without thinking of it.
He was pleasantly surprised, in fact, when he became aware that the world outside the windows was quite dark, and the bard at last paused, took up a mug of ale for a brief drink, and declared “I am going to have to cut it short to go on my break, I’m afraid. Any requests for a last song?”
“Play your new hit!”
Vesemir blinked. New hit? How popular was this bard, that news of him would have reached already to this Melitelle-forsaken corner of Kaedwen?
There was a sudden wave of emotion so strong that Vesemir could almost taste it, a mingled miasma of guilt and grief and anger that smoldered like a furnace, startling him out of his thoughts with a fervor. He blinked, then realized that it was the bard himself, the emotion mirrored in his eyes and the quick grimace on his face.
“Ah, that isn’t my best work, I’m afraid. Are you sure you don’t want any of my other hits? Fishmonger’s Daughter? Elaine Elattrial? Her Sweet Kiss?”
The scent only intensified at the chorus of drink-slurred voices shouting back at him “We need to get a beat going here!” “Enough sad songs!” “Nothing about elven beasts!” “Come on, let it burn!”
At that, the bard flinched back. “Very well,” he said. Then, swiftly, mercurially, and with no change in natural scent, his entire demeanor suddenly seemed to change. He leaned back against the wall, let a sneer cover his face, strummed a few opening chords. And then he began singing, voice low, angry, disaffected. “I hear you’re alive. How disappointing. I’m also alive, no thanks to you…”
Vesemir stared. All of his earlier work had been bawdy tavern songs, or sweet love ballads. This, this felt like nothing so much as a declaration of war. The bard struck a chord change and continued singing, and Vesemir couldn’t help feeling that there was something familiar about the bard, something lingering in his scent. But he couldn’t quite catch it.
And then the bard straightened up “all those lonely miles that you ride…now you’ll walk with no one at your side…” and the rush of grief in his scent lent a different tone to the words he was trying to say, a tone that spoke of heartbreak and betrayal. The bard broke his song to walk over to the bar, motioning for a drink, and then resumed, voice reaching almost a snarl. “What for d’you yearn, it’s the point of no return, after all the things we did, we saw, you turned your back on me…what for do you yearn—watch that Butcher burn!”
Vesemir’s mug crashed from his fingers, fortunately only a half-inch to the table. That was what he had been trying to recall. The hint of chamomile and expensive orange oil that had lingered on his pup’s clothes and gear for a few weeks after he’d come in from the path. The clash of contradicting color he’d seen in a shirt Geralt had guiltily taken up to wash, a shirt which would have ripped apart if Geralt had tried to wear it. He recalled one night in late November when Geralt had had a few too many mugs of White Gull, and had gone on a drunken rant about the little bird who’d followed him around one summer. He also recalled the winter that Geralt had returned morose and bitter, spitting at shadows, and had never mentioned the bard again. Now, that scent, and a few bits of the song “swords and stupid hair” suggested the epithet of butcher meant more than just an insult. Geralt had, after all, gained the infamous name of The Butcher of Blaviken long ago. His pup had almost killed himself that summer, reeling from the undue hatred. To think that this little two-penny songster was using a name that had so hurt his pup—for what, to capitalize on? sent such a rush of blinding rage through Vesemir’s veins that it took all the self-control he’d beaten into his pups not to scruff the boy and drag him from the makeshift stage to demand answers. Instead, he swallowed his ale and vowed not to make a scene—there would be plenty of time to catch the bard later, more privately. Even the notoriously tolerant Armored Fox wouldn’t want their hired bard to be dragged out in the middle of the performance.
The bard finished the last chorus with something approximately like a growl, and promptly waved off the cheering admirers with a “I’m sorry, dears, but I think that will be the last song for the night. Can’t go hurting my voice singing too long, can I? I promise I will be in town tomorrow as well if there is anything else you’d like to request.”
Most of the workers and farmhands crowding the bar started protesting, asking for “Just one more song,” but the bard took a seat by the bar, carefully laid down his lute, and asked for “Whatever you’ve got that’s strong.”
Vesemir decided that now would probably be the best time to talk to him, and got up to walk over. The bard, staring unseeing at a mug of moonshine, looked up at his approach.
“What can I do for you, my dear…witcher.” A pause, as blue eyes caught slitted yellow. The bard’s eyes darted to Vesemir’s swords, then to his medallion, and then back up to his face. “Fuck.”
Vesemir fumed even more as he realized that if the bard’s scent was that angry and afraid, there was really no other way the ‘butcher’ song could be taken. He was probably yet another Oxfort raised idiot who netted his gold making witchers out to be monsters.
“I think you know,” he said mildly, trying to control his temper until he could be certain there was no misunderstanding. “That last song of yours was quite interesting, wasn’t it.”
Rage scent, like peppers and the smoke that billowed from refuse piles. “Yes, I suppose it was. I guess it’s too much to hope for that you’re not a Wolf?”
So not only did he know about witchers, he knew about the witcher Schools? This smacked of being purposefully, calculatingly malicious, rather than just an attempt to make a few extra coins by songs in poor taste.
“…That would be correct. My name is Vesemir, and I am”
“Grandmaster to the Wolf School. Right, I’ve heard.” The bard gulped his moonshine. “Fate is fucking laughing at me right now, I just know it.’
Gloria, who had been edging ever closer, wiping the bar absentmindedly with an already-dirty cloth, shot the bard a nasty look. “Master Vesemir has been a cornerstone of Herch for generations. If you’re coming here to slander him, you’d best leave my establishment.” Vesemir had only a moment to feel warmed at her unconditional support when the bard snorted.
“I have no quarrel with him, no. Witchers in general are quite delightful people. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about his pups, so if any of them have come back from the path already I may as well leave while I’m ahead.”
That…that was unexpected. “Which pups are you referring to, bard?”
“Geralt and Lambert, mostly. Eskel was quite a delight when I met him, at least the first time.”
“And what have Geralt and Lambert done to you, bard?”
“Well, Lambert is a smoldering pisspot of a man with the foulest temper I’ve ever come across, and frankly I’ve had it with how he’s treating his lover. And Geralt…” the bard’s voice faded. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Only to sing slander about him?”
The bard puffed up like a small bird in a snowstorm. “I gave him forty years of my life! I followed him, I sang for him, I tended his wounds, I re-wrote his reputation, I made his name golden on the Continent. And then he threw everything I’d ever done for me in my face and abandoned me on the top of a fucking mountain in Caingorn, swarming with nekkers and other nasty beasties. If a sorceress hadn’t owed me, I wouldn’t have made it down alive. Then, of course, I went back to Oxenfort to mind my own business and got captured and tortured for information about his whereabouts and...other things. Which, to clarify, I didn’t give. But the fact remains that Geralt and I aren’t on speaking terms.”
Vesemir took a deep breath. “Perhaps we should continue this conversation upstairs,” he said, looking at the barmaids, who were trying to pretend (poorly) that they weren’t eavesdropping. The bard hesitated, then gave a gust of a sigh. “Sure. Nothing left to lose, I guess. If you’re going to kill me, Axii me first,” he said, and set down his mug to get up.
Vesemir couldn't help feeling that this conversation would be quite interesting.