Chapter Text
Eskel’s head comes up sharply at the familiar sound of a hunting wyvern’s hissing snarl mingled with a human scream of sheer terror, and he wheels Scorpion off the narrow road towards the sound, steering the stallion with only his heels as he snatches a Golden Oriole from his belt and draws his sword. He doesn’t actually expect to get there in time to save whoever screamed, but maybe he’ll be able to catch the wyvern feeding, which is a horrible thought but still better than having the wyvern fly off having learned that humans are easy to catch and tasty to eat.
To his surprise, though, when Scorpion bursts into the clearing, the wyvern is clawing at a crossbow bolt which has managed to hit it in the eye - damn good aim on the archer, or possibly the gods’ own luck, or more probably both - and the screamer, who is still screaming, turns out to be an expensively-dressed man cowering behind a much more plainly-dressed man who is hastily re-spanning his crossbow. A noble and his huntsman, Eskel guesses, from their attire and the three dead or badly wounded hounds around the thrashing wyvern. Presumably the noble’s horse dumped him and ran when the wyvern swooped down.
Eskel throws himself off of Scorpion’s back, landing in a roll as his well-trained horse wheels and trots away from the injured monster, and as the wyvern uncoils and lunges forward, meets it with a blast of Aard that knocks it back onto its tail.
The fight which follows isn’t easy - killing a wyvern without preparation is never easy - but it’s easier than it could be, due to the wyvern’s enormous blind spot thanks to that well-aimed bolt, and also the fact that the archer doesn’t run away (neither does the noble, unfortunately, and his screams are really grating on Eskel’s ears), but fires four more bolts at the wyvern, all of them exquisitely well-aimed. None of them actually hurt it, wyvern hide being what it is, but they distract it, which is almost as good. In point of fact, the distractions mean Eskel doesn’t even get hurt during the fight, not more than bruises which will heal up almost before they form.
The wyvern finally collapses, head thudding to the ground in a spray of ichor, and Eskel takes a deep breath and fishes out a scrap of cloth to wipe his sword clean before he has to deal with the - thankfully no longer screaming - noble idiot who now owes Eskel his life. Technically the crossbowman does too, but Eskel isn’t going to be pedantic about that when the crossbowman made it a hell of a lot easier to kill the damn wyvern and also probably has a lot less money than the noble does.
The crossbowman breathes out a long sigh and a soft curse, and strides across the clearing, drawing a knife, to kneel down beside the only surviving hound - badly wounded and whining in agony - and give the poor thing a mercy stroke. He strokes its ears gently before he rises, and his scowl is a truly magnificent thing. Eskel gives him a little nod and turns to the noble idiot, who draws himself up and dusts himself off as though he hasn’t spent the whole interlude cowering and screaming uselessly.
“Witcher,” he says haughtily. “I suppose you’ll want payment for that, despite not having had a contract for it.”
Eskel raises an eyebrow. “Yes, I will, given that I didn’t have a contract and still intervened to save your life.”
The noble waves a hand dismissively. “I would have been fine, I’m sure. The beast would have been sated with the hounds, or perhaps my huntsman.”
Eskel’s jaw sags in astonishment at the sheer callousness of that sentence. The huntsman in question could easily have run instead of standing his ground with a crossbow, and the noble would have been wyvern food in short order, and instead of praising the huntsman’s courage and rewarding his loyalty, this asshole counts the poor bastard’s life as worth as much as a dog’s.
“You dunghill craven,” the huntsman spits, which is really quite understandable.
“Why - how dare you!” the noble gasps. “You little -” and then he stops, and Eskel has a really terrible feeling about what’s about to come out of his mouth.
He’s right, too.
“There’s your reward, witcher,” the noble says. “You may have that mongrel’s indenture. He’s yours; do with him what you will.”
“Why you cowardly snake!” the huntsman cries, as well he might, and the noble steps forward and raises a hand to slap the huntsman - the huntsman who fucking kept him alive long enough for Eskel to arrive, who the noble has just given away to a witcher like a dog -
Eskel catches the noble’s wrist before the blow can land, and tightens his grip enough that the bones creak beneath his fingers. The noble goes white with pain and sudden fear. “How dare you -”
“If he’s mine, then you’ve no right to strike him,” Eskel rumbles, making his voice as deep and menacing as it will go. “His life for yours; the price is paid. Now go.”
He lets go, and the noble stumbles back a few steps, eyes wide, and then turns and flees. Eskel sighs, shoulders sagging. He’ll need to avoid this area for the next few decades; the noble isn’t going to forget that anytime soon. But hopefully it’ll take him a while to get home and gather his guards, and by then Eskel and his new indentured servant, what the fuck, will be long gone.
Eskel rubs his forehead and turns to the huntsman, who glowers up at him. “So,” Eskel says, not quite sure where he’s going to take this conversation. “Want to help me butcher a wyvern?” he ventures. “And then we can bury your hounds.”
The huntsman gives him an odd look, wary and confused, and jerks a nod. Eskel hands him a silver dagger - steel won’t cut wyvern hide - and leads him over to the carcass. “I want the venom glands and the wing membranes, and some of the better cuts of meat,” he explains. “If you can work on the wing membranes, I’ll get the venom glands.”
He gets another oddly wary look for that, and then the huntsman nods again. “Long strips?”
“The whole sheet between the bones, if you can get it,” Eskel says. “But long strips will work at a pinch.”
“Got it,” the huntsman says gruffly, and sets to work. Eskel watches him for a moment before turning to the wyvern’s tail and starting the painstaking task of extracting the venom glands without bursting them or stabbing himself on an envenomed spike.
By the time he’s managed it, the huntsman has quite skilfully dismantled one of the wings, spreading the membranes out on the muddy grass, and is working on the second. Eskel sets the venom glands aside and starts butchering the main body of the wyvern; the breast meat is terrible but there are some other cuts which are genuinely tasty, and it lasts quite a long time when smoked.
He finishes butchering the damn thing and sits back on his heels to find the huntsman watching him curiously, the wing membranes laid out neatly in a row beside him and the silver dagger cleaned and held easily in one hand.
Eskel nods and takes the dagger back, and whistles for Scorpion. He keeps a roll of battered leather in his pack that’s perfect for rolling up the wing membranes until he can deal with them properly - or sell them to a mage or an ambitious apothecary - and he has a empty satchel he can put the meat into, and vials for the venom glands. He packs everything away and then pulls out the little dwarf-made folding shovel he usually uses for latrine pits.
“We can leave the wyvern for scavengers,” he says quietly, “but let’s give your hounds a proper grave.”
The huntsman swallows hard. “Thank you,” he says roughly, like the words hurt his throat.
It takes a while, even with witcher strength, but Eskel digs a pit deep enough that scavengers ought not be able to unearth the poor things, and the huntsman lowers them down one by one, eyes dry and face set in stony lines, and helps Eskel fill the grave back in.
Eskel brushes his hands off and stows the shovel in his packs again when they’re done. “We should go,” he says. “I don’t trust that louse not to come back with armsmen.”
“You shouldn’t,” the huntsman snorts. “Trust him, I mean. Fucking toad. It’ll take him a while to get back - his horse ran off when the fucking dragon-thing swooped on us - but yeah, he’ll probably come back with guards.”
“Right,” Eskel says, sighing. “Come on, then.” He takes Scorpion’s reins in one hand and leads the way back towards the road, and the huntsman falls in on the stallion’s other side.
“It was a wyvern,” Eskel adds absently as they trudge through the undergrowth. “Technically they’re ornithosaurs, not draconids.”
“There’s a fucking taxonomy?” the huntsman blurts.
“Of course there is! How else would we know what works against each monster?”
“Huh.” There’s a pause, and then, “I can’t just keep thinking of you as witcher. You got a name?”
“Oh. Eskel of the Wolves. And you?”
“Lambert of no-fucking-where,” the huntsman says bitterly.
“Can I ask how you ended up indentured to that spineless ass?” Eskel asks.
“Of course you can ask, there’s nothing gagging you,” Lambert snaps, then sighs. “Fuck. I’m not fucking pissed at you.”
Which Eskel is guessing is as close to an apology as he is likely to get; fair enough. In Lambert’s boots, he’d be furious, too.
“The real fucking short version is my useless sot of a father couldn’t pay his fucking rent and offered my indenture in place of coin,” Lambert adds, voice full of derision. “I got another six years on it, assuming I don’t end up dead.”
“Ah,” Eskel says. The story isn’t too far off Eskel’s own, really, or that of many of his brothers - children given in place of coin their parents didn’t have. “Well then, we’ll try to make sure you stay alive that long.”
That gets him a disbelieving scoff, which is fair enough. “You got a use for me that isn’t bait?”
“Yes,” Eskel says mildly. “You’re obviously good with a crossbow; that will be handy. I’m guessing you can care for a horse, and I’d be astonished if you didn’t have some basic medical skills - at least enough to stitch up a hound or a human, which is mostly all I need. And if it turns out you’re decent at haggling, I may ask you to go into town for me - witchers get charged twice as much as everyone else.”
“Oh,” Lambert says, sounding very taken aback. “Squiring, basically.”
“Basically,” Eskel agrees. “Though I’m no sort of knight.”
“I - huh. I can do that,” Lambert says slowly.
Eskel nods, and they walk in silence for a while.
*
To Lambert’s blank astonishment, his second experience of being sold off by a chicken-livered sot is going a lot better than his first. Oh, it helps that he’s not snotting all over himself and wailing for his mother - much less embarrassing for everyone involved - but also, well. His new master - Eskel, Eskel of the Wolves - looks fearsome, all scarred and yellow-eyed, taller than Lambert by half a head and substantially broader in the shoulders, not to mention all the rather terrifying musculature, but he hasn’t actually hit Lambert yet, either in response to Lambert’s foul-tempered disrespect or just to show who’s in charge. And he gave Lambert the proper tools to do the task he was set, and didn’t give Lambert the more dangerous task of extracting the venom glands. And -
Well. And he dug a grave for the poor damn dogs.
That’s a kindness Lambert was genuinely not expecting, and he’s still not sure how to react to it.
Everybody says witchers are heartless monsters, but a heartless monster wouldn’t have bothered to dig a grave for dogs, which means, as usual, ‘everybody’ is fucking wrong. Which Lambert probably should have guessed, given that ‘everybody’ also claimed that he’d be dead before his tenth birthday, or would never learn any useful skills and would end up just as much of a cock-eyed sponge as his worthless father.
So he’ll probably be better off tossing everything he thinks he knows about witchers out the proverbial window, and taking Eskel as he finds him.
Just now he finds him annoyingly tireless: they tromp along through the woods on the winding little path for hours, Eskel apparently content with the silence, the big stallion clopping along steadily as if this is quite normal. Lambert amuses himself by silently naming off the birds he can hear and the plants he can see along their route, and wondering what squiring for a witcher is even going to be like. It’s definitely going to involve a fair bit of butchering monster carcasses, but being a huntsman involves butchering any number of animal carcasses, so that’s not a huge change. Apparently it’s going to involve haggling - which Lambert is no more than middling at - and sewing up the witcher’s injuries; well, at the very least the witcher isn’t likely to look at Lambert with big, sad, uncomprehending eyes while he patches him up. Unlike the poor damn dogs.
Eskel finally turns off the path as the sun is starting to set; they reach a small clearing after a few minutes, and Eskel turns to Lambert. “Would you rather gather firewood or tend Scorpion?”
“Scorpion?” Lambert asks blankly. Eskel has a pet bug? Lambert didn’t even think those could survive north of Gemerra -
“My horse,” Eskel explains, a little sheepishly.
Ah. Eskel named his horse after a bug. That’s…weird, but not the weirdest name Lambert’s seen for a horse, actually. Or even the stupidest; Lambert had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing every time Lord Whatsisface brought ‘Passing Wind’ to be stabled.
“I’ll tend the horse,” Lambert says. He doesn’t have a hand axe, and it’s getting dark rapidly; he’d rather not be wandering about in the woods blind, trying to find firewood.
“Alright,” Eskel says easily. “Scorpion. Mellon.”
“What?” Lambert asks.
“Now he’ll let you touch him,” Eskel explains, shrugging and holding out the reins. “A surprising number of people think stealing a witcher’s horse is a good idea, so he’s trained to object to being handled unless I’ve given the right command.”
“Oh,” Lambert says, and takes the reins from Eskel a little hesitantly. Scorpion lowers his head to snuffle at Lambert’s hand but doesn’t object.
“Currycomb is in the left-hand saddlebag,” Eskel says, and goes striding off into the undergrowth, leaving Lambert with his horse.
If Lambert were a witcher who had to deal with people trying to steal his horse regularly, he would have different commands that meant things like ‘this person is allowed to groom and feed you’ and ‘this person is allowed to actually ride you’. And Eskel doesn’t seem like he’s a stupid man. So stealing the horse and trying to escape his new master would probably be a bad idea.
And somewhat to Lambert’s surprise, he doesn’t want to escape, at least not yet. Eskel has been strangely kind, which is a damn sight better than Lord Fuckwit ever was. He might keep being kind. Or, alternately, the best way to piss him off is probably trying to steal his horse and making Eskel hunt Lambert down instead of getting a decent night’s sleep.
Lambert shakes his head at his own maundering and starts untacking the horse, who stands patiently while Lambert gets the tack off him and then whickers happily when Lambert finds the currycomb - which is, in fact, in a little pocket sewn to the inside of the left-hand saddlebag - and starts brushing him down.
He’s just finishing when Eskel returns, a bundle of firewood over one shoulder; the witcher nods to Lambert and takes something out of one of the saddlebags, striding off again into the steadily dimmer woods. He comes back much more quickly the second time, with a pair of leather buckets in his hands; he puts one in front of the horse, which immediately ducks its head to drink, and the other next to the pile of firewood, four or five pieces of which he stacks neatly -
And then makes a hand gesture that makes the wood burst into flame.
“What the fuck,” Lambert spits, stumbling backwards. The horse flicks its ears but doesn’t seem to even notice the fucking magic.
Eskel looks over at him, yellow eyes gleaming like a wolf’s in the firelight, scars made terrible by the flickering flames. “It’s faster than flint and tinder,” he says mildly.
All the stories about witchers say they can do terrifying magic that steals men’s minds. Lambert was going to assume that was so much bullshit, because witchers aren’t mages, but Eskel just made fire by gesturing. Who knows what else he can do?
Eskel gets up and rummages through one of the saddlebags to produce a small sack of grain, which he pours out for Scorpion. “Can you cook?” he asks Lambert.
“No,” Lambert says, wincing, because that’s the first thing Eskel has asked of him that he has refused, which means if Eskel is the sort of person who gets angry when his subordinates disobey him, this is the moment Lambert’s going to learn what getting a beating from a fucking witcher feels like. He’s gonna guess it’ll hurt worse than Lord Fuckwit’s flimsy little riding crop.
“Alright,” Eskel says. “I can teach you.”
Lambert blinks at him. That was not the response he was expecting.
“Here,” Eskel adds, handing over the fascinating little folding shovel he used to dig the grave. “Put a latrine trench behind that bush; I’ll go hunt us some dinner.”
“Alright,” Lambert agrees, baffled by the sheer ease of that interaction.
He digs the trench - it’s not hard - and settles beside the fire, breaking some of the smaller branches Eskel collected into kindling as he contemplates his new situation in life.
There’s a soft snap of twig beneath foot, and Lambert jerks around to see glowing eyes in the woods -
Eskel steps out into the firelight, holding a brace of pheasants and a gutted rabbit in one hand. “Sorry,” he says quietly. “I forgot you can’t see in the dark as well as I can.”
Lambert takes a few heaving breaths and tries to calm his racing heart. “Yeah, no shit,” he mutters, and then claps a hand over his mouth. That’s exactly the sort of thing Lord Fuckwit would have slapped him for -
Eskel snorts softly and tosses a pheasant to land next to Lambert. “Pluck that,” he says, and settles across the fire to begin plucking the other.
Lambert jerks a nod and picks up the bird, using the familiar task to calm himself. Apparently Eskel doesn’t anger easily. That’s…very good to know.
*
Eskel finishes plucking the pheasant and turns to skinning the rabbit, watching his companion out of the corner of his eye. Lambert is a too-lean, sharp-faced young man, dark hair already beginning to recede slightly into a widow’s peak, dark eyes flicking from the pheasant to Eskel and back again. He’s probably stronger than he looks - wiry rather than bulky - and his hands are quick and clever as he plucks the bird. Eskel already knows he’s a damn good marksman and brave as a lion. Though given the disdain he’s shown for his previous master -
“Why didn’t you run?” Eskel asks.
“What?” Lambert asks, head jerking up.
“From the wyvern. Why did you stand your ground?” Lambert could probably have escaped, leaving his previous master to be eaten.
Lambert snorts. “Oh, sure, let Lord Fuckwit get his head bit off? I’d have been beaten to death as soon as they caught me. Druther die fighting than on the whipping post.”
Eskel blinks. “That’s…very fair,” he says thoughtfully. He, too, would rather die with a weapon in his hand.
Lambert is giving him an odd look. Eskel raises an eyebrow. Lambert grimaces. “I called him Lord Fuckwit,” he says roughly.
“Yes, and I expect he’s earned the epithet a few thousand times over,” Eskel agrees. “I certainly wasn’t impressed with his courage or his good sense; I imagine he was quite miserable to have as a master.”
“He’s an inbred, sapheaded shit-abed, and hasn’t realized his wife is cuckolding him with his bastard half-brother the steward,” Lambert says, grinning nastily. “And more power to her.”
Eskel chuckles. “Good for her,” he agrees. If he were married to Lord Fuckwit, whatever his real name is, he’d probably want someone else in his bed, too, and at least if it’s the half-brother, any children will look like their ostensible sire.
Judging by Lambert’s odd look, that was not the response he was expecting.
Eskel’s not sure what Lambert is expecting, but it’s doubtless terrible. Eskel knows the rumors about witchers as well as anyone. Still, Lambert hasn’t run screaming yet, so Eskel is counting this whole afternoon as a victory. And if Lambert chooses to make his escape once they’re in more settled lands, then…well, Eskel wishes him luck. He’s certainly not going to hunt the man down and demand his service. And Lambert is a trained huntsman; he can probably find work easily enough. If he does choose to run, he has as good a chance as anyone to land on his feet.
“Grab the salt out of the left-hand saddlebag, please,” he says, once the pheasants and rabbit are ready to cook. “And then come watch me prepare these; I’m just roasting them, but there’s an art to it.”
Lambert does as he’s told, bringing the salt over and hunkering down next to Eskel as he works, watching intently. “How do you know how much?” he asks after a minute.
“It’s…enough?” Eskel says. He’s never thought about it much.
“That’s why I can’t fucking cook,” Lambert grouses. “‘Enough’ isn’t a measurement! How do I know what’s ‘enough’ anyway?”
Eskel chuckles. “I don’t know; it just looks right. But apparently I should be teaching you alchemy, not cooking.”
There’s a pause, and then Lambert whispers, “No shit?”
Eskel looks over to see Lambert’s eyes are wide as saucers, his mouth hanging slightly open. “You’d teach me that?” he breathes.
“Yes, if you’ve the aptitude,” Eskel says. The basic balms and salves he uses are pretty much human-safe; it’s just the potions that use ingredients humans really shouldn’t be handling, and have recipes no one but a witcher ought to know. And the more of the simple stuff Lambert can take on, the more time Eskel will have for the things that really require a witcher’s knowledge and resistance to being poisoned.
Lambert looks poleaxed.
Eskel turns his attention back to the food; humans, he knows, need their meat cooked through, instead of half-raw the way witchers can eat it when they must, and he doesn’t wish to make his companion ill on the first night. Or at all, really, but the first night seems inauspicious.
Lambert seems baffled to be offered an entire pheasant and a leg of the rabbit for his own, and startles badly when Eskel starts eating the bones of his share, but he eats hungrily enough, sucking the bones clean and after a moment’s dubious thought tossing them gently to Eskel as he finishes with them; Eskel catches them and gnaws them to pieces small enough to swallow without ruining his throat.
“Is it like birds?” Lambert asks. “Do you have rocks in your craw?”
Eskel snorts. “No. I just break bones fairly often, so I need the stuff to heal them. Risks of the job. It doesn’t work for humans,” he adds after a moment. “Eating bones, I mean. It’s one of our mutations.”
“Huh. Handy, I guess, if you’re going to be breaking them all the time,” Lambert says thoughtfully.
Eskel nods and finishes off the last few bites of the rabbit, then leans back with a sigh. Lambert is licking his fingers clean; he looks…faintly exhausted, actually. Well, it’s been a rather energetic day for him, between the wyvern fight and then walking all afternoon.
Eskel waves a hand at the heap of packs and tack. “Go ahead and get the bedroll out,” he says lazily. He’s going to be meditating tonight - he doesn’t sleep well next to strangers; no witcher does, as far as he knows - but there’s no reason for Lambert to sleep cold.
For some reason, Lambert goes tense for a moment, but then he nods jerkily and gets up. Eskel sits there watching the fire, tracing out possible routes in his head: obviously he doesn’t want to spend much time near Lord Fuckwit’s holdings, but would it be faster to go north or east first?
He’s not paying much attention to the rustle of fabric behind him until Lambert says, sounding oddly nervous, “Do you have oil?”
“What?” Eskel says, slewing around. Lambert is standing next to the bedroll, shoulders tense as a strung crossbow, fingers knotted in the hem of his tunic.
“I’m not gonna fight you,” Lambert says roughly. “That’d be fucking stupid. But - it’d be - I’d appreciate oil.”
Eskel blinks at him for a long, long moment before he realizes what Lambert is expecting, and then he puts a hand over his eyes and sighs from the bottom of his soul. Gods, sometimes he really does hate the rumors about witchers and their appetites. “That is not a duty I expect from you,” he says, as firmly as he can. “Just - go to sleep. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.”
There’s a pause, and then Lambert says faintly, “Oh,” and there’s a rustle and a thump as he sits down. “Um,” he adds, after another long silence. “Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight,” Eskel says, and turns back to the fire, composing himself for meditation. Behind him, he hears Lambert wrestle his boots off and lie down. Scorpion has already flopped down beneath a tree, utterly undignified.
Eskel closes his eyes and sends up a wish with the dancing sparks - not really a prayer, because no god heeds witchers, but a wish - that this isn’t all going to turn out to be a spectacular catastrophe.
He’s fairly sure his wish is about as potent as the sparks it’s keeping company with, but hey, even a spark can start a forest fire, right?