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Instead of focusing on the actual decision he needed to make, Eskel looked up into the deepness of the sky. He watched a silver-shining cloud drift all the way across the face of the moon and away into the star-sprinkled darkness, and considered how he'd gotten here.
The moonlight, that was part of it--which meant, his own decision to come down this slope in moonlight instead of waiting for day. It wouldn't have helped to take Cat, or to have started down the slope before the last dose of Cat he'd taken back in the caves had worn off. A witcher's vision mutations, which Cat enhanced, only helped him make the most of little light; they couldn't make color more visible. His vision would only have been starker; the hole his foot had fallen into would only have blended further into the shadow of a nearby outcropping of rock.
If the angle of the moonlight had been different, maybe. If he had taken the longer, gentler way rather than just stomping downhill on the shortest line between him and the trail where he'd left Scorpion.
But then he might as well say, if it hadn't taken him so long to deal with all those arachnomorphs; if there hadn't been so fucking many of them; if he hadn't had to take nearly every potion he had on him, and wasn't feeling weary and sick from the toxins still lingering in his blood.
If thousands or millions of years of geological processes hadn't left the rocks under that gap in the snow balanced in just that way--if his foot hadn't hit them at just the right angle and with just enough force--if a thousand things--then he would still be living the life where this hadn't happened. He would still be a witcher who didn't have to make the choice he was going to have to make very soon now.
Eskel looked down again. It was a shocking sight all over again, as it had been when the sickeningly abrupt slip-fall-crash had ended and he first saw the result.
There was his left foot, at the end of his left leg, braced against the side of the little crevice he'd fallen into. And there, his right leg, was in a more vertical position; there was his right knee, just as it should be, and then, halfway down his lower leg, there was rock.
There were two rocks, technically, which had fallen against each other when he unbalanced them by slipping on the snow and landing hard with his right foot just the wrong way. There was a bit of a gap between the massive rocks, but the gap was considerably narrower than his boot, or his ankle, or his foot.
Much narrower than they were supposed to be, anyway. Whatever there was left of those things obviously did only take up the space the rocks permitted.
There was not very much left, he didn't think. He couldn't tell how much pain he wasn't feeling because his body wasn't letting him, and how much he wasn't feeling because there wasn't anything left to feel it with. His pulse was still reasonably strong, so the immense pressure of the stone was keeping him from bleeding much. He'd made a tourniquet of his sword harness and then tried a Quen, hoping against hope that magic could pry apart the surface of a mountain face when his frantic physical strength and the leverage of his steel sword couldn't budge it.
He had seen, very clearly, that the gold glow of the Quen ended about an inch below the surface of the rocks. Even his own magic, his own sign, couldn't recognize whatever was left in that crack in the earth as a part of his body anymore.
Unfortunately, he was still physically attached to what used to be his right foot. He'd cut away his boot and trousers in the hopes that they were the problem, but they weren't. He couldn't pull or push himself free by strength alone.
It was his fibula, he figured. He'd always had strong bones, even for a witcher. The shinbone, right at the surface, that would have gotten broken, probably crushed to dust, right away. But the fibula was cushioned inside the column of muscle that made up the calf and ankle, and that was probably what had refused to break. Or, hell, maybe it was the muscle itself, too strong to wrench itself apart.
The point was, he couldn't find any way to pull himself free. If he wanted to get out of this crevice, down off this mountainside, then he was going to have to cut himself free from the broken remains of his foot and ankle and leave that piece of himself behind. There was no way around that.
There was, however, the possibility of not getting out of this crevice.
That eventuality would overtake him if he didn't choose the other and act on it pretty quickly. It was cold down here, when he was stuck holding still and surrounded by all this stone and ice and snow. He could feel weariness dragging at him more heavily every time he cast another Quen to keep warm. He wasn't bleeding quickly enough to bleed to death right away, but the injury was sapping his strength.
He'd already drunk all the water he had on him and nearly all of his potions, and when the sun rose and the air and stone began to warm, the smell of his blood would spread, attracting every hungry creature for miles around. If any arachnomorphs had escaped him, he'd find out about it then--if he was still here.
So: one way or another, he did not intend to still be sitting here to see the sun rise.
He was exhausted--from the damn arachnomorphs, from the injury, from the first frantic efforts to free himself. It would be so easy to just let this be the end. It was a witcher's death. Dying back in the cave might have been a little more dignified, but this way he'd gotten the job done first, and then found some way to get killed where no one would ever find his body.
Eskel laughed a little at that and was dimly aware that it wasn't a good sign. He looked up at the sky again, at the moon and the stars and the clouds drifting across them. This might be the last night he ever saw. Would it be such a bad thing, if it was? He had to die sometime--why not now?
Scorpion would wander off or be found eventually; Eskel had taken his bridle off, not knowing how long he might be in the caves, so the horse would be able to eat and drink without hindrance. Someone would discover the contents of Eskel's saddlebags, and that was all the inheritance he would leave behind. He would slip from the world practically unnoticed, one less witcher in a world that seemed to be getting by well enough with fewer of them every year.
He made himself look down again, made himself see what he'd have left if he cut himself free.
What good would a one-footed witcher be to anyone? When he was young some of their instructors at Kaer Morhen had been those who managed to find their way back after suffering an injury that took them off the Path. When there were youngsters to raise and train, a busy keep with a thousand jobs to do and never enough hands to do them, there had always been some use for a witcher who couldn't fight anymore. But there was nothing at Kaer Morhen now but rubble and ghosts.
Figuratively speaking. Geralt had insisted that he'd gotten rid of all the actual ghosts, back before their battle against the Wild Hunt.
But it was no home, no refuge he could return to, not anymore. How would Eskel even keep himself fed, if he went on after this? He might extort a few extra crowns from his client if he claimed the arachnomorphs had been the ones to take his foot, might get a bed for the night and a few hot meals off their pity, but they'd want the crippled vagrant with the strange eyes and ugly scars to be moving along pretty soon, and then what? Where would he go?
Eskel let out a breath, because the answer arrived nearly before he thought of the question.
He knew exactly where he could go, where he could probably live in comfort the rest of his life. Eskel had wintered at Geralt's place in Toussaint last year, and he'd been firmly and formally assured that he was welcome back anytime. He and Lambert and Letho had all turned up within a week of each other last winter and had all been welcomed. They'd been a little crowded, but Geralt hadn't seemed to mind having all of them there. After a week he'd instead decided it was time to expand the villa to make more guest rooms than just the one immediately above his own bedroom.
Eskel, bunking in with Geralt, agreed with him. Listening to Lambert and Letho attempt to share space hadn't been exactly restful. Lambert had taken off soon after to meet up with Keira again, but Geralt had gone ahead with the construction anyway; he'd said that he was forever looking for ways to spend the money he and the vineyard earned. Eskel had still shared his bed for the rest of the winter, but, well, they'd been settled into a cozy routine by then, and in no hurry to change it.
When he went back, there would be plenty of beds other than Geralt's. One crippled witcher more or less wouldn't be any trouble. Geralt would even want him there, Eskel knew. He was always happier with people around him; when spring came he'd ridden out with Eskel, but he'd split off for a job in Nazair after they'd been on the road two days, and Eskel had kept heading north.
If Eskel never got down off this mountain, Geralt would never see him again. He would maybe watch the road next winter, waiting, wondering why Eskel didn't turn up when he'd said he would.
But Geralt would be all right, in the end. He was busy; he had a whole life in Toussaint, connections all over the Northern Realms and beyond. Ciri had sent half a dozen letters over the winter, trying to lure Geralt down to visit her in Nilfgaard. By next winter he probably would have met some sorceress or noblewoman, or knight errant, or, hell, a vampire, who would keep him busy--and cozy--for years to come.
Eskel couldn't decide to live just to keep from disappointing an old friend, not when there was no other reason for him to keep on going. It might be a comfortable life, aside from the matter of only having one foot, but what use could he be to anyone? What would he do, not even having to work to keep himself? Just sit around idle, living on Geralt's loyal generosity, gathering stares, passing the time every day just to sleep and wake and pass another? For how long?
He drifted into a half-dream of it, and saw himself in the kitchen there, getting his breakfast from Marlene. In the dream he stood on two feet, but that wasn't the important part; the important part was the story Marlene had been telling him, about how she came to Corvo Bianco.
She was nearly as old as him and Geralt; she'd been cursed, had lived for decades in her family's former home as a spotted wight, desperately trying to cure herself. She'd killed people with her efforts, and even if all she'd stolen was spoons, the staggering quantity of her theft added up to a real crime by the time Geralt caught up with her.
Everyone who'd known her as she was before the curse had taken her for dead long ago, if they weren't all dead themselves. She'd done so much harm, and not a soul would even notice if she were gone--and still Geralt had cured her instead of killing her. Set her free, and brought her back to his home when she had nowhere else to go, no idea what to do. She was an old woman, frail and defenseless, without any connections, and still she'd found work and purpose once she was given a chance.
Eskel opened his eyes and looked up at the sky again, and found himself drifting into a different dream. He stood on the snow above this little pocket in the rocks, and he looked down at the poor suffering bastard who was trapped by his crushed limb, as surely as he'd ever seen anyone trapped in a curse.
He had to decide, and soon, whether to kill that man or set him free. He'd made that choice for a lot of people over the years he'd been on the Path.
He'd never asked any of them what good they would be to anyone if he set them free. He'd never asked them whether anyone would miss them if he killed them.
He hadn't asked them anything; it wasn't up to the miserable soul trapped inside a curse to decide what should happen to them. No one in that position could make a real choice. Most of them, probably, would beg him to kill them, to end their suffering quickly. Plenty of them had done just that.
But he didn't ask them, and didn't listen to their despairing pleas. He didn't do the easiest thing, the quickest thing. Eskel saved as many as he could, and set them free to make their own decisions, when they had something other than their pain and fear to lose.
"After all," he murmured, looking down at the shivering figure with the crushed foot. "You can always kill yourself later, if you really need to. Can't decide you want to live after all once you're dead."
Eskel took a deep breath and thought through the next few steps. It was no use deciding to survive if he promptly died of blood loss or exposure anyway. He drew out the last vial of White Raffard's Decoction he'd had on him. He gathered his strength for one more burst of Igni, the potential tingling in his half-numb hands. But before he cast the sign, he whistled, and then waited, listening.
He heard familiar hoofbeats coming down the trail. Once he got as near as the track would bring him, Scorpion would be maybe ten yards away, at the bottom of this snow-covered slope. Eskel could practically roll that far, and Scorpion would stand steady as a rock for Eskel to drag himself up; he didn't need two feet to get to safety when he had Scorpion's four. He just had to get free first.
Get free--stop the bleeding--get down to the trail. That was a plan, more or less.
He drew his steel sword and carefully positioned the fingers of his other hand.
According to the unflappable healer-midwife who served the village, he hadn't done a bad job of his self-amputation, as such things went. The Igni-heated blade had kept the wound clean and limited what bleeding might have made it past the tourniquet, and it certainly was a nice even slice. He'd even remembered to leave enough flesh on one side to cover the face of the cut, giving her something to stitch together.
It also hurt, now that he had nothing to do but feel it, in a way Eskel honestly hadn't known a witcher could feel. The pain didn't keep him awake after he accepted the midwife's sleeping potion--he passed out for something like thirty-six hours in his client's bed--but it made it unpleasantly clear when he woke that that hadn't been a horrible dream. He'd lost a foot, and now... now he just had to keep going. Somehow.
The plan he'd made was simple enough: get to Toussaint, to Corvo Bianco, to Geralt. Heal up. Figure everything else out after that.
Like most simple things, it wasn't nearly as easy to do as it was to say.
He never quite found an opportunity to lie down and die, though. The village where he'd picked up the contract was in the Blue Mountains; by the time he woke up someone had made him a properly sized crutch and they'd worked out their plan for two boys from the village to guide him as far as the head of the Yaruga. Somebody's cousin had a riverboat there that always started late in the summer, down the long winding way to Cintra and the sea.
The story they told the cousin in question, or maybe the sheer pitifulness of Eskel's state, won him a deeply discounted fare for his passage on the riverboat. He and Scorpion both got to ride for a while. Eskel mostly slept, and cast endless repetitions of Axii to keep Scorpion standing quietly on the deck of a riverboat, and tried not to think.
He wasn't making any new decisions yet, not until he got to Toussaint. That was the plan, and deviating from the plan was how all kinds of stupid shit happened.
Just look at him, after all, deciding on the spur of the moment to take a shortcut down the mountain instead of retracing his steps.
Eskel left the riverboat where the Newt River branched off from the Yaruga, heading south. He meant to find another riverboat to take him south as far as Belhaven before he had to take to the road, but he mounted up to ride along the river looking for a boat, and discovered that he could shove his crutch neatly into the sheath for his steel sword.
He didn't need the sheath for the sword itself anymore; he had left that jammed into the narrow crack between two enormous slabs of stone, back on that mountainside.
That was the way to mark a witcher's grave, after all. Two swords, for a proper grave, but he figured one would do for the fraction of himself he'd left behind there. The silver would be enough to mark the rest of him, when the time came. He wouldn't have any other use for a silver blade.
It felt good to be riding alone with almost the right weight on his back, better than anything else had felt in weeks, and Scorpion was feeling frisky after so long cooped up. Before Eskel knew it they had left the area where the riverboats docked and were on the road south, roughly following the line of the river.
He was still headed in the right direction, anyhow. That was all that really mattered; he was sticking with the plan in its essentials.
Feeling good faded into feeling almost normal, which made it a fresh shock every time he tried to adjust his right foot in the stirrup or found his balance slightly off. He still didn't think about anything if he could help it. That blankness was disturbingly easy to come by now; at times he blinked and discovered that the scenery around him had changed entirely. He didn't know how many miles he missed in those blinks, while Scorpion trotted tirelessly along, following the road.
He wanted nothing but to sleep by the time he slid off Scorpion at a passable campsite. He put that off long enough to eat a little of his travel rations and get Scorpion out of his tack, then fell down with his bedroll haphazardly wrapped around him.
His right foot felt cold. He woke again and again through the night, trying to fix the bedroll to cover it.
The best that could be said about the remaining days on the road south was that by the end of them he'd gotten fairly adept at using his crutch, and was nearly certain that he wanted to sleep in an actual bed more than he wanted to die.
He sat back in the saddle at the sight of the first properly Toussaint-ish buildings he saw, at the northern end of the Sansretour Valley. The motion was enough to make Scorpion halt right there in the middle of the road, and for a moment Eskel couldn't think at all. He could only stare.
He was here; he was in Toussaint. He was supposed to keep going--to Corvo Bianco, to Geralt--but...
He was dimly aware of being seen. People were looking toward the man who just sat still on his horse in the middle of the dusty road, staring at the buildings. They were pointing and murmuring and summoning others. He couldn't have said how long it was before one of the people approached him; the man kept off to the side of Scorpion rather than put himself in position to be either kicked or run down.
Eskel braced himself to be shouted at, or at least told sternly to move along before he was made to.
But the man's voice was almost diffident, his hands clasped at his chest in something like supplication, when he said, "Master Witcher?"
Eskel blinked at him, wondering how the hell the man could know that, and then realized--at any distance, the end of the crutch might well look like the hilt of a sword, and there weren't so many people who wore two on their back together. And now, squinting up at him, the man was close enough to see his eyes.
Eskel nodded, belatedly, and wondered if he was supposed to speak. He couldn't remember when last he'd spoken to anyone, other than mumbles of gratitude and encouragement to Scorpion.
"Are you perhaps a friend of Sir Geralt's?"
That one was easier; Eskel nodded again.
"You seem weary," the man said, taking a few steps closer. "Please, come in, have some wine to wash the dust from your throat, water your horse and let it rest from the heat. After what Sir Geralt did for us, we are always glad to have a witcher under our roof."
Eskel blinked at him for another moment, then nodded.
"Come," the man said, stepping up close enough that he could have caught Scorpion's reins if he wanted to. "Come, you are welcome here. Please."
He started down the road toward the inn, and Scorpion followed. Eskel wasn't sure whether he'd given some signal without really deciding to, or if Scorpion was just helpfully following the road when Eskel was too absent to give him any direction. It seemed like the right idea, either way.
He had been coming south along the road, and the inn was east of it--on his left side. The absence of his right foot, then, wasn't obvious to anyone until a stable boy approached, when they reached the inn yard.
The boy stopped short, eyes going wide, and he said in what seemed to be genuine shocked dismay, "Oh, Sir! What a misfortune for a witcher! Was it recent?"
The man who had first come to greet him stepped around to see what the boy had seen, and made an echoing startled noise of--sympathy?--and then shooed the stable boy back. "Give him room, Piers, he's been riding a horse all this way, he doesn't need the likes of you trying to help him dismount."
Eskel accepted the hint--though he perforce dismounted to the left, so that his remaining foot reached the ground first. Scorpion, who had become thoroughly accustomed to this process by now, stood steady while Eskel leaned against his side and extracted his crutch from the sheath on his back. When it was firmly on the ground he took a half-step back, and the stable boy came around to Scorpion's head.
"Take good care of him," Eskel said, his voice coming out even more gruff and quiet than usual. "Saved my life."
"Of course, sir," the boy said, reaching up to run a gentle hand down Scorpion's nose as he spoke, real affection in the touch of his hand, admiration shining in his eyes. "He's a witcher too, in his way, isn't he?"
More than I am, now, Eskel thought, but he just nodded and pivoted around to see how far he would have to walk on his crutch with all these people watching. The man who had approached him in the road came to his side again, and everyone else fell away, actually busy or at least pretending smoothly enough to let him believe it. The man guided Eskel into the cool dimness of the inn, through the main room and past the bar.
The room revealed by the door he opened looked too well-furnished to be actually an inn room, but Eskel didn't have the energy to argue about it and climb the stairs to an actual inn room. He hobbled over to sit on the edge of the bed.
He blinked, and the man was kneeling at his feet--his foot. "May I help?"
Eskel nodded, and the man tugged off his boot. That sensation was enough to set Eskel in motion; he unbuckled the strap that held his swords, and then shucked off his gauntlets and unfastened his armored coat and shrugged out of it.
He didn't put any of it away, but somehow nothing was in the way when he turned and collapsed onto the bed. He wasn't awake long enough to wonder where it had gone.
Eskel awoke to the sound of a familiar hiss of sympathy, the impressed acknowledgment that he and Geralt would give each other at a particularly nasty-looking wound or impressive new scar. He frowned, then opened his eyes, but he hadn't mistaken the sound, nor dreamt it. Hours had passed while he slept--the window was dark, and the room was softly lit by a single lamp.
And Geralt was perched on the edge of the bed he was lying in, giving the absence of Eskel's right foot a long, unhappy look.
He glanced up, meeting Eskel's eyes with a grimace of pained understanding. "Hope you took a bigger chunk out of whatever got you."
Eskel blinked at him for a moment--Geralt was being so normal, as though nothing had really changed, as though this were just another wound, another scar--and then said hoarsely, "No. Fucking mountain got away without a scratch."
Eskel watched Geralt's lips move around the shape of mountain, his brow wrinkling as he tried to think of a large monster Eskel would refer to that way, and then he looked down at Eskel's right leg again.
It was easier to say it to the side of Geralt's face than straight on. "Literally a mountain. Coming down a rock face and my foot landed in the wrong spot, and--" Eskel slapped his palms together sharply enough to make Geralt's shoulders jerk.
"Did it," Geralt said, but he stopped short, obviously picturing what Eskel had described, working out how it would have happened, what would have followed his foot being smashed that way. He looked down at Eskel's leg--laid a hand on what was left of it, just below his knee, and rubbed a thumb over Eskel's calf. The useless muscle there was already starting to weaken and shrink.
"You had to do it?" Geralt said, scarcely a question even if his voice tilted up at the end.
Eskel nodded, and tilted his head back a little, watching Geralt through his eyelashes. He was hard to look at directly, when Eskel knew him well enough to follow every thought going through his head.
Geralt was picturing being trapped like that himself. He was thinking about the choice Eskel had had to make, reasoning it out in almost exactly the same way. He knew how close Eskel had come to cutting his throat instead of his leg and disappearing into that mountain, never to be seen again, because he would have considered that option himself.
Geralt's grip on Eskel's leg tightened and then released all at once; Geralt twisted toward him, grabbing him by one shoulder and his side and hauling him up. He moved so fast that Eskel, still a little dazed, didn't react before he'd been yanked into a sitting position and crushed close against Geralt's chest.
Eskel huffed out a little laugh on the last of the breath Geralt left room for in his lungs, and closed his arms around Geralt in return. Geralt's fingers dug in, gripping tight, like he could reach back through the time and the distance and pull Eskel out of that hole himself.
"I can't," Geralt whispered, and then shook his head, and pressed his face into the spot where Eskel's neck met his shoulder. "I don't know if... Eskel, hell. I'm so glad."
Eskel sighed and tucked his own face in against Geralt's shoulder, knowing exactly what he meant. Not the impossibly cruel, I'm glad this happened to you, but I'm glad you chose what you did. I'm glad you're here after all.
"You came home," Geralt added, clearer now instead of halfway muffled against Eskel's shoulder. "Practically all the way. You'll let me bring you the rest, won't you? I'll get a boat, we can sail nearly all the way back to my place. We can go now, there's plenty of moonlight, and so goddamn many stars."
There was a slightly desperate tone in Geralt's voice, like he was trying to sell Eskel on the idea now, on Toussaint and the journey and continuing to live, like he feared Eskel was still teetering on the precipice of that choice. Like he would fall if Geralt let go.
"I can talk to some people," Geralt went on. "My armorer here might--or I can--I know a toymaker, maybe, he's clever, he'll know how to make little mechanisms, I'd just have to figure out how to get in touch, he could--maybe with a bit of enchantment--"
It took Eskel a few seconds to work out what trail Geralt had taken off down. When he realized what Geralt was saying--I will make you a new leg, I will pay and bribe and do favors for half of Toussaint to get you a new leg, I will find a way to fix this--Eskel grunted and pushed back, bringing one hand up to grip the back of Geralt's neck as he did. He dug his fingers in, the kind of grip Vesemir would have used to make sure they couldn't do anything but listen to what they were told.
"Wolf," Eskel said firmly. "Hold up. This is my monster, on my turf. You don't come running in and try to fight it for me until I post a contract, all right?"
Geralt's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and then his mouth curled into a crooked smile. "Sorry. Of course. You get first shot at it. First hundred shots, whatever you want, you decide how to handle it. But if you want backup..."
"I already came all this way for it," Eskel agreed, relaxing his grip and rubbing his thumb mostly gently up the tense muscle along Geralt's spine. "I won't forget where to find you."
"Yeah," Geralt said, sitting back and visibly pulling himself together. "Good. You wanna sleep the rest of the night here?"
Eskel mustered up a half-smile. "Oh, you're taking back the offer of a moonlit boat ride already?"
Geralt darted a quick look at him, then snorted. "Just wasn't sure whether you'd rather ride your horse all the way, maybe hop on one foot down the road."
Eskel rolled his eyes. "I have a crutch, I don't hop."
"Oh, well, if you have a crutch, why did I even bother to come and check on you?"
Eskel opened his mouth, but the teasing reply wouldn't come; Geralt's expression softened, and he squeezed Eskel's shoulder.
"Come on, get your boots--boot--on." Geralt barely winced as he corrected himself. "I'll go see about the boat. Come on out the front door when you're ready, I'll meet you in the yard."
Eskel nodded, swallowing hard, and stared down at his lap until the door closed behind Geralt.
Sitting up made him aware that he'd slept a long damn time, and hadn't paused to do any of the normal preparing-for-bed things beforehand. He glanced around to find where the pot was--a nice enameled thing with a decorative pattern, tucked under a stool in the corner of the room, because this was a classy establishment despite their good opinion of Geralt.
Someone had propped his crutch beside the bed, so he didn't even have to hop the few steps over to it. Using the pot was... well, easier than using a shallow hole in the ground, so that was something. Once he had that sorted out he crossed to the opposite corner of the room, where his gear was all hung neatly over a chair. There was no sign of his saddlebags, but he'd left them on Scorpion anyway; either they would be returned to him or they wouldn't.
He got his gear on, not letting himself think about any of it, not even the double scabbards as he slung them on his back, the silver sword in its place and the other sheath empty, since he was still using his crutch. Since it would never hold anything else ever again.
Putting it all on was the simplest way to carry all of it, and he wasn't thinking. He wasn't letting himself even think about the fact that he was getting perilously close to the time when he would have to think about things: he was in Toussaint. He was with Geralt. The rest of his life was looming up awfully close now.
But he could have the rest of this night, first. Geralt had promised him a ride in a boat under a sky full of stars--however little interest Eskel had in gazing up into a dark sky scattered with stars right now--so that was the next little stretch of choices already worked out. Eskel kept his eyes on the floor as he made his way across the inn's main room; he listened carefully to check where people were, and couldn't help hearing the little ripple of silence that accompanied him, but at least it also meant that people got out of his way.
Except the one who didn't: Geralt was standing about two steps outside the front door, feet planted firmly, hands on his hips. Eskel was tempted, for a second, to just keep his head down and keep going, crash right into him just for the sake of feeling Geralt stand firm and catch him.
But he didn't need that--didn't need to do it to know exactly what would happen, and didn't need Geralt thinking he wasn't sure, or couldn't hold himself up for the last of this journey. Eskel stopped with an inch between his one boot and Geralt's, and raised his chin to look Geralt in the eye. There was something dizzying about realizing that he was as tall as he'd ever been, and met Geralt's eyes as levelly as he had since they both finished growing.
"Come on, I got your saddlebags already," Geralt said, pivoting to make way and sweeping an arm out to show where they were going. "One of my stable guys will come get the horses in the morning--Roach deserves a night's rest after the way I rode her up here."
He said it lightly, but Eskel had a pretty good idea of how fast he had to have been riding to wear out a horse so well accustomed to the Path over a relatively short distance. He didn't know how they'd described him to Geralt, but it must have sounded dire.
Not that the reality wasn't dire, but it wasn't exactly an emergency.
Whyever he'd hurried, Geralt was here now, waiting for Eskel to get a move on. He'd already watched Eskel cross the room, so there wasn't going to be anything new in him watching Eskel make his way to--Eskel looked around, realizing for the first time that he couldn't actually see the river from where he stood.
"How much practice have you had with stairs?" Geralt asked brightly, like an asshole.
Eskel knew his part; he groaned and smacked his crutch against Geralt's shin. "Not as much as I'm about to have, I'm guessing."
"I'll lead the way so you can fall on me if you trip," Geralt said, and then turned his back, even though there was no reason for them to be walking in single file across the inn yard and over to the bridge and the stone stairs built into its side.
With no eyes on him, Eskel followed, automatically matching tracks so no tracker could tell that two of them had come this way. His left boot fit neatly into Geralt's left footprints, and he could land the end of his crutch in the impression of Geralt's heel, if he swung it inward slightly farther than was natural.
There was no reason to do it, but he kept it up all the way down the stone stairs and onto the little jetty, where Geralt waved him toward the prow end of one of those ubiquitous little sailboats. Strange not to be taking the tiller, to be sharing with someone else, but Eskel focused on the process of getting himself into the boat without tipping it over or dumping himself or his crutch into the Sansretour.
He'd barely gotten into the boat--down in the bottom with his saddlebags and some other bundles, not bothering to perch on the bench seat--when Geralt cast off, guiding the little boat out into the current. He was half-hidden from Eskel by the sail, but it was easy enough to see when Geralt stuck one foot out and pushed a big box--basket?--toward him.
"Marlene packed some stuff for you," Geralt said. "She was worried you wouldn't have been eating properly."
Eskel's stomach answered for him while he was still trying to remember when and what he'd last eaten. It growled loud enough for even an ordinary human to have heard over the river, and as Eskel leaned forward to grab the basket he saw the curl of Geralt's smile. Eskel shifted closer to the mast and leaned lightly against it as he opened the basket. First he drew out a flask that proved to contain watered wine--more like water with a little wine for flavor, but welcome all the same.
Then there were all the little carefully wrapped packages and cushioned crocks, and he thought of Geralt racing here from Corvo Bianco, carrying a goddamn picnic basket, and he started to laugh.
"Hey," Geralt said, "if you don't like it--"
Eskel plucked a brined olive from the towel-padded jar and tossed it at Geralt, and Geralt caught it in his mouth and grinned with all his teeth. He didn't finish the sentence, at least, and Eskel dug in without further commentary.
There was an incredible variety of food, though Eskel remembered enough from the winter to know that Marlene had probably thrown it together in ten minutes while apologizing to Geralt that she didn't have time to pack him a three-course dinner.
There were two kinds of rolls and four kinds of cheese and fresh grapes somehow spared from being made into wine, and the little meat pies he'd eaten so many of over the winter, and fruit tarts and nut tarts and more wrapped packages beyond that which Eskel didn't even bother opening. He ate and ate as if he could make up for weeks of limited rations in a night, tossing morsels to Geralt whenever Geralt nudged him with a toe or made a particularly mournful noise at the sight of what Eskel was wolfing down.
Eventually his stomach began to ache and his thoughts went stupid-slow as his digestion overtook his brain. He closed the basket in pretty good order and curled down into the bottom of the boat, cushioning his head on his pack against the side. He'd just close his eyes for a minute.
He didn't think he slept, but when he opened his eyes the boat was barely moving, drifting to one side of the river's main channel, nearly out of the current entirely. The moon had sunk lower in the sky, so Geralt's face was in shadow, tipped down as it was with both hands plastered over his mouth to keep him silent.
It didn't stop Eskel from understanding the shuddery motion of his shoulders, or seeing the glint of tears where they ran down over his knuckles.
Eskel lay still and watched. His body was so drowsy and heavy that he could almost believe that he was still asleep, and this was only a dream. His thoughts moved even more slowly.
Geralt was crying. Geralt was trying not to wake him. He didn't want Eskel to know.
Geralt was crying for him. Mourning him--the him he used to be and the piece of him that was gone forever now.
He wasn't even wrong to; Eskel couldn't sit up and say, Here I am, I'm right here with you, because he wasn't, not in the way he should have been. Something was lost. Geralt wasn't wrong to grieve for it.
It occurred to Eskel, lying there watching the visible shuddering of Geralt's carefully silenced sobs, that he hadn't done this himself. He hadn't cried. He hadn't even wanted to, he didn't think. He'd wanted to sleep, or to not exist at all, or to empty his mind until he was only an animal reacting to his environment, but he hadn't mourned.
That was Geralt, always attending to some part of the job that Eskel hadn't even thought of. Eskel could leave this to him, then, at least for a little longer. He let his eyes close again, and only faintly registered the sensation of the boat starting to move again, when it finally came.
"Rise and shine, princess!"
Eskel opened his eyes to the low slanting light of dawn and Geralt crouching above him in a way that Eskel couldn't make sense of at all, until he realized that he was in the bottom of the sailboat and Geralt was perched on the dock the boat had been tied up to. Eskel groaned and reached a hand up and it wasn't like he forgot, he couldn't possibly forget--but there was still a second when he tried to put his right foot down to stand on, and it wasn't steady under him and he had to look down to see why not.
He kept his head down as he planted his left foot and Geralt heaved him up, getting his shoulder under Eskel's arm to bring him from the boat up onto the dock. Getting out of the boat was a lot more work than getting into it, but Geralt managed it almost smoothly, and Eskel was standing on the dock before he could think anything of it.
Geralt handed him his crutch and scooped up Eskel's saddlebags, leading him to where a pair of saddled horses stood waiting. One was the usual brown of Geralt's horses, the other a pale gray. "Building up your stables, Wolf?"
"Oh, you know how it is," Geralt said vaguely. "Build a big stable, horses show up."
Eskel was pretty sure that wasn't how that worked at all, but he'd never owned a stable, nor built one, so who was he to say? He paused in front of the gray to let it catch his scent, giving it a look over. It stood quietly, showing no sign of being unnerved by his unnatural gait or the presence of a stick in his hand, just blinking calmly at him and whuffling warmly in his face. They'd get along just fine, Eskel figured, at least for the couple of miles back to Geralt's place from here.
Geralt swung up on the brown, so Eskel made his way around to the gray's side and mounted as well. He'd barely gotten his crutch slung on his back before Geralt said, "Race you!"
He was reining around as he said it, and Eskel moved automatically to follow, tightening his thighs and hoping the unfamiliar horse was decently trained. She wheeled quickly enough, at least, and lunged into a gallop after Geralt's mount; they drew even out on the road, and it was instinct to guide her leftward, so that they could cut Geralt's angle as they turned off the packed trail and across the field up to Corvo Bianco.
He barely won the angle even so; Geralt's knee brushed along his, he had his horse so close alongside, and the gray's mane whipped over to brush the brown's neck. Eskel jabbed an elbow out and leaned lower over his horse's neck, letting the reins out, urging her to a greater turn of speed without knowing whether she had it. Geralt let out a bark of laughter and did likewise in his peripheral vision. They feinted back and forth at each other, but they'd both been taught to value their horses too well to actually try to crash them into each other and risk them tangling their legs--not for this kind of friendly competition, anyway.
They traded the lead back and forth a couple of times as little dips and bumps in the terrain gave one horse or the other a half-stride of advantage, but Eskel couldn't have said which one of them was leading when they clattered into the courtyard that led to the stable and drew up before they could run anyone over.
"Draw?" Eskel offered.
Geralt huffed as he swung down. "Thought for sure you'd have an advantage, with yours carrying less weight."
Eskel's mind went to his missing steel sword before he looked down and was jolted all over again by the absence of his right foot. He growled at Geralt and dismounted, drawing his crutch as he did; Geralt came over to him, big dumb bastard grin on his face, just like always. He let Eskel knock into him like it was a shove and not his one working leg wobbling under him.
Eskel shoved him for real, just to keep the game going a little longer, and in the process got himself aimed toward the front door. Barnabas-Basil was waiting for them there, hands clasped behind his back, expression neutrally attentive as always.
"Welcome, sir, and welcome back, Master Eskel. Everything is readied as you requested, sir. Will you require anything else immediately?"
"Just my bed," Geralt said. "Thanks, B-B. C'mon, Eskel."
Geralt herded Eskel inside, making straight for his own bedroom. It was nearest the door, easiest to reach, but there were half a dozen other bedrooms in the villa now, and Geralt had said he wanted to sleep, so--
Geralt's hand was still on Eskel's arm as he shut the door behind them. Eskel's raking glance over the room had only time to notice a few changes--extra furniture, empty hooks and shelves on the walls--before Geralt's grip tightened to something painful, hauling Eskel back to him. Caught off-guard, Eskel stumbled against him and they both staggered, hitting the door hard.
"What--"
Eskel got no further before Geralt's mouth was on his, rough and hungry and almost frantic. His grip on Eskel didn't slacken; he got one arm around him and the other hand in Eskel's hair, keeping him pressed tight against Geralt, who had his back to the door.
It was instinctive, automatic, to respond in kind; he'd never stopped to think twice about any tussle he got into with Geralt, fight or fuck or both. He kissed back, pressing into Geralt with all his weight. He tossed his crutch away to get a better grip on Geralt. Eskel pressed his right knee to the door between Geralt's thighs and was rewarded with the roll of Geralt's hips against his thigh, half hard already. He was grinding against Geralt's hip, stiffening fast himself, and then Geralt pushed off the door and Eskel went to put his right foot down for a backward step and his right foot wasn't there.
Geralt was still holding on to him. Between them they stopped the lurch and rebalanced, but it gave Eskel's mind time to catch up. "What the hell, Wolf?"
"You heard me out there," Geralt said, getting into motion again, pushing until Eskel had to hop backward. It was only a couple of steps before Geralt was shoving him down to the bed, coming right down with him. "All I want's my bed. And you."
That wasn't what Geralt had said--except that he hadn't let Eskel out of his sight anytime in the last several hours, and barely since he'd found him, and he hadn't taken his hand off Eskel since they got here. It was possible Geralt had expected him to know what he meant by that, but--
"We're not--I'm not--you--"
"Nope, talking about it is not on the list of things I want," Geralt insisted, grinding down against him pointedly enough to make Eskel's breath catch. "Tell me no or shut up."
And, well. Eskel never was any good at telling Geralt no, even when he probably should have. He certainly wasn't about to start now. He rolled his eyes and pushed up into the weight of Geralt's body, writhing under him to get friction where he wanted it, and Geralt rewarded him with another authoritative kiss. His hands went to Eskel's clothes--he was still wearing his sword for fuck's sake--and started unbuckling and unbuttoning, moving fast, like there was a wound he had to find.
Still frantic. Still trying to catch Eskel and pull him back to safety, now that they were truly in a safe place. It clicked, then, like the reverse of the moment when he'd watched Geralt reconstruct everything that had gone through Eskel's head back on the mountain. He knew exactly what Geralt was trying to do--not only to save Eskel once, but to keep him here. You came home, Geralt had said, and now he was determined to make Eskel believe this really was his home, to tie him to Geralt and this life for good. To save him and keep him safe.
It wasn't even a ploy. It was real and honest, and Eskel knew that, bone deep, as much as he knew how to respond to Geralt's kiss or touch or a glance exchanged from a hundred yards away. He would do the same for Geralt and Geralt--Geralt would do this for him all the way, would bring Eskel into his bed and his home and his life without reservation. Geralt always wanted someone at his side, someone he could keep, and Eskel wasn't going to leave him for the Path anymore, so of course Geralt would want to keep him every bit as much as Eskel wanted to stay. He felt a flash of guilt for imagining that Geralt would have done any less, and let him be some idle, lonely dependent rather than...
Well, rather than rapidly getting naked in Geralt's bed, for a start. It had only been a few seconds that he lay frozen while that realization rushed through him, but Geralt had already gotten well ahead in getting him naked. Eskel surged up, flipping Geralt half over as he attacked buckles and buttons, and Geralt was startled into a short laugh but kept his hands moving.
Eskel clamped his knees to Geralt's hips, so that Geralt couldn't get Eskel's pants down past his thighs, giving himself a little time to catch up, but he barely had Geralt stripped to the waist before Geralt changed tactics, pressing close to nuzzle at the side of Eskel's throat. Eskel groaned but kept his own hands moving, refusing to give in to the shiver rising up his spine until he got Geralt's pants open. Then he let it move through him, writhing so that his cock pressed against Geralt's at the same time he was getting both of their pants down.
Geralt helped with both parts of that plan at once, kicking in concert with Eskel to get rid of his pants, and getting a firm grip on Eskel's ass to pull him in tight. Eskel got his own hold on Geralt, and they were grinding against each other and exchanging kisses that dissolved into biting or laughter or both, as they both struggled for a pointless upper hand.
The pleasure of it felt like water when he hadn't realized how thirsty he was--he couldn't think of the last time anything had felt so good, so right, so entirely as if his body was doing exactly what it should. He squirmed away a little or shifted his rhythm every time he felt himself getting close, determined to draw it out, to keep feeling this as long as he could. To stay.
He didn't know how long he managed to get away with that, but eventually Geralt responded to him shying away by growling and making a decisive downward move, pinning Eskel's legs with his body, hands gripping tight on Eskel's hips.
Eskel let out a breathless laugh, startled, even as Geralt's mouth closed on his cock. The laugh trailed off into a moan and then a gasp for breath, because the pleasure of playful frotting was nothing compared to the focused heat of Geralt's mouth.
Geralt was relentless, bringing him to the brink without letting him catch his breath. Eskel couldn't think, couldn't do anything but feel, arching up against Geralt's weight and hold with absolutely no effect. The sensation built to a dizzy height soon enough, making his toes curl and crackling like lightning down his spine until he came in a stunning rush.
He lay blinking at the ceiling, mind gone perfectly blank, until Geralt moved up over him, smirking down at him with pointedly closed lips.
Eskel huffed and moved without a thought, hooking a leg around him and flipping them, pressing a kiss before Geralt could, and licking his own come off Geralt's tongue. Geralt wriggled under him, a full-body laugh or an attempt to get some friction or both at once, and Eskel gave him a firm bite on the lower lip and then pressed him down into the bed. "My turn, Wolf. Behave."
Geralt just snorted at that, and Eskel didn't bother responding except to move down Geralt's body to get his mouth on Geralt's cock. That was almost more familiar and home-like than anything yet, as his awareness narrowed down to the body of the person he knew the best in the world. He knew the weight of Geralt's cock on his tongue, the taste and smell of him, and the way he tugged on Eskel's hair like an asshole until Eskel got a hand between Geralt's legs, cupping his balls and stroking one finger farther back.
That made the muscles of Geralt's thighs go slack, and Eskel let himself catch half a breath on a laugh before he went back down, using his mouth and hands to drive Geralt straight to the edge and over it without messing around any more than Geralt had. In gratifyingly little time Geralt was cursing and growling and gasping and coming in Eskel's mouth, one more familiar taste and feeling to crown it all.
Eskel swallowed most of it, but then crawled up over Geralt's limp body to return the favor of a messy, sharp-tasting kiss. Geralt made a grumbling sound into his mouth but didn't break the kiss until they both tasted more of spit than anything else. They were barely kissing by then anyway, the post-orgasm and post-everything drowsiness catching up with them both. Eskel thought about moving off of Geralt before he fell asleep, and closed his eyes for just a second to gather himself before he did it.
Eskel woke up slowly, the way he only did when he knew exactly where he was and how many walls stood between him and anything that might want to kill him. By the time he could wonder where he was, he knew without a doubt that he was at Corvo Bianco, naked in Geralt's bed with Geralt lying beside him breathing slow and easy, and that it was about midafternoon judging by the sounds filtering in from the rest of the villa.
He stretched a little, flexing toes and fingers, and--ah. Yes. He opened his eyes and looked down at himself. They hadn't pulled up any covers, and the bit of bandage he'd been keeping wrapped around the stump-end of his leg had come off unnoticed with his pants or at some point while they slept. Nothing shielded the blunt fact of his leg ending where it did now, the fresh red scar where flesh had been patched back together making a redundantly obvious borderline.
He glanced over to where Geralt was lying, and saw Geralt's gaze flick up from his leg to meet his eyes, then back down, then up again to stay. Geralt tilted his head against the pillow and said, "Okay?"
Eskel looked down, trying not to think too hard about the question as he let his eyes adjust to the sight, like staring into a bright light. He was okay right now, even with his attention on that absence.
One more scar, that's all. What's one more? He knew it wasn't going to be that simple for long, but here in bed, at home with Geralt beside him, he could almost believe it.
"Okay," Eskel allowed, and then, "where the hell did my crutch land?"
Geralt snorted and got up to look for it, and Eskel followed him, finding his balance as well as he could in the meantime.