Chapter Text
Rain poured down in thunderous rounds, shaking the canvas walls of the Temerian general’s tent. Jaskier sat, cold and miserable, in the corner, his hands bound tight by a discarded piece of rope which was causing the most unpleasant rash on his delicate wrists (one of his finest features he might add). His head lulled lazily against the tent as he muttered out a half-baked tune he had dreamt of the night before. Outside, the sloshing sound of soldier boots provided some mild distraction from the sheer boredom of being captured. It was remarkable how polite the Temerians had been, almost suspiciously cautious in how they danced around him. Even the food was clearly cooked through and remarkably edible. Perhaps the Temerians were true trendsetters in the world of human rights. Or they couldn’t risk food poisoning killing the Northern Kingdoms’ Public Enemy Number One, not before all the torture and fun was had. He smiled at the nomenclature, Public Enemy Number One. He liked that title. Perhaps it could make for a song.
Geralt would string him up himself if he knew where Jaskier was right now.
“Do you have any idea how foolish you have to be to be caught by the Temerians?” he gruffed out in his friend’s likeness, “What if Ciri had been with you? What if they torture the keep’s location out of you? Haven’t you considered the safety risks of this ‘sandpipering’?”
“Obviously Geralt,” Jaskier snarked back, “or else I wouldn’t be in this situation. I know I strike many as the type who enjoys a bit of foreplay but these ropes are far too itchy for my preference and none of the men tantalizing enough in the slightest. Obviously being a prisoner of war was not in my daily ‘to do’s’.” Jaskier let out a dramatic sigh, slumping down further against the makeshift wall, his daydream giving way to swirling contemplation on life; a pass time apparently common for a man nearing his forties. At least it was one he found himself drifting towards in moments of silence, a phenomenon he tried to drive away with as much beer and as many lovers he could scrounge up in the dank taverns that now occupied his daily schedule.
Fatherhood truly had turned his friend dull. Where was the Geralt who had charged headfirst into dragon hunts for the sake of true love? Since when did an old grouch take his friend’s name? And yes, perhaps this figmented Geralt’s concerns were well founded seeing as Jaskier was most definitely awaiting transfer to a very homely torture cell in Vizima, but think of the song cycle he could write! It was settled in Jaskier’s mind, upon his trepidation and daring escape from his present accommodations he would definitely have to get himself a bard. No, that’s silly; there was only one bard who could ever do his life story justice and it was, well, him! He was the finest bard in the Northern Kingdoms after all! Who was he meant to get? Valdo Marx (the second best in the Northern Kingdoms)? Jaskier couldn’t think of a more ridiculous notion.
An autobiographical work, that would do nicely. The Bard of Lettenhoven . No. Something grander. Herein Lies the Tale as Old as Time’s Arrow, as Witty as an Oxenfurt Banquet, as Daring and Dashing as a King’s Guard; the Story of the Fluatist of Philanderers, Piper of Premiscuates, Herald of Whores, the one and truly only, Julian Alfred Pancratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, Lover of Your Wives, Lutist of Yours Souls, and Dandelion of All Merrimen t. Yes, now that was a title fitting of his accomplishments! Jaskier bit back a grin at the idea, his mind whirling at all the lascivious stories from his temple school days he could mention, the details bubbling and crackling in his mind.
“Oi!” A sharp voice rudely interrupted, “get up, it’s time for you to piss.”
A burly man about ten years Jaskier’s senior, with thinning hair and a grotesque smile of yellowed teeth all clambering for centre spot, stood halfway through the front flap of the tent; dripping water and mud across the wooden floor. Like a poorly managed dog, Jaskier was allotted two latrine breaks a day, being carted out to the woods for his supervised dumps. He searched his mind for the desire to piss, finding the remnant need for it buried somewhere behind the exhaustion and latent anxiety he had forced away upon arrival to the camp.
“Well, aren't I a lucky girl?” Jaskier quipped as he jumped to his feet, sauntering past the guard into the heavy rain. It pelted down in gusts, thick and relentless, yanking his sopping hair over his eyes and tickling his nose. Water worked its way through every crevice of his body, suctioning his clothes to his skin as he felt the minutiae of every wrinkle finding a home under his armpits and in his asscrack, snaking down his legs filling the space between his toes and sloshing into his sock, shifting the fabric against his skin to and fro and to and fro . Irritation bubbled against the pads of his feet and fed back up through the path carved by the rain into his head where he grumbled about the future blisters he was developing.
“... so much for a pristinely kept prisoner,” he was saying as the guard pushed him further away from the camp, “at the very least you could’ve gone through the trouble of finding me a nice pair of rain boots. I mean we are in the Temerian mosslands for gods’ sake, nobody thought ‘hey maybe the vagabond we stole could use a good pair of rain equipment, seeing as we want to deliver him with as few marks as possible.’”
“Just gotta get you there alive,” the guard rumbled in a thick brogue, “never said we couldn’t rough you up first.” A strong hand clamped down on Jaskier’s shoulder and the bard swallowed as the soldier’s grip led them further into the dark night.
“Are we almost there? I’ve got to piss like a whore after an orgy,” Jaskier managed, the man’s grip feeling like a vice against his clavicle. With a shove, the soldier released Jaskier, who stumbled towards a tall, withering oak tree. Jaskier busied himself undoing his trousers as he heard the strike of a match and the thick waft of something being smoked by the soldier behind him. Jaskier’s shoulders sank as he relieved himself, eyes wandering over the details of the tree. How the bark chipped and peeled in parts, evidence of a family of weevils which had taken home in the trunk. Inside a gnarled hole Jaskeir could see the glinting eyes of a spider, its tightly curled limbs hinting at a frighteningly large body.
“How long?” Jaskier asked as he moved his stream across a thick root and onto a small beetle attempting to scamper up the tree and away from a rain puddle it had slipped into. Its legs flailed and spun as it was washed back down into the mud and sediment kicked up by the storm. The soldier gruffed.
“If I were you I wouldn’t be so excited about gettin’ where you’re headed.”
Jaskier swallowed again, his throat rough against the piddly amount of saliva he could muster. He caught a glimpse of the soldier’s outline, almost invisible in the thick night’s air. Like a man of myth and legend the soldier hulked over Jaskier, his well-kept physique seeming at odds with his evident age. Not just muscular, but built of the kind of strength only a lifetime of training could produce. It suggested the decades of swordsmanship that decorated the man’s golden years. Reflected the Temerian practice of recruiting young boys from the squalors to serve in the knight’s guard, plumping them up for slaughter with fine meats and grains and beating those who failed to keep pace.
Jaskier gazed back down at the beetle, now twitching on its backside. He knew the fates would be unkind for his cruelty towards the bug. He knew what fate awaited traitors. Slashings, burnings. Dismemberings and dissections. It was not uncommon for the courts to hire prisoners as torturers, sadists whose crimes should’ve earned themselves the rope. To drown in a puddle of piss would be an act of mercy where Jaskier was headed.
Darkness brought on by the rain shrouded the stars. A vast void stretching out beyond and beyond, encircling Jaskier in its finality. Not even up could offer out .
“Finished are ya?” Came the soldier’s voice again, gruff like Geralt’s but unkind like Jaskier’s father’s. Jaskier shook himself off before refastening his trousers, turning round to return to the lonely tent. Once more the soldier stalked behind him, Jaskier leading the way to his own chains. The camp was alight with bonfires serving host to drunken soldiers occupying their time throwing knives at trees and guzzling down overcooked turkey legs. Travel times between battles bred boredom amongst the ranks, if the men couldn’t satisfy their taste for blood soon the risk of brawls and infighting loomed ever present, surely adding thick gray hairs to the heads of the camp’s commanding officers.
When the Temerians had found Jaskier he was clawing his way out of the base of the Chotla river, waterlogged and delusional. It had been a Sandpiper job gone desperately wrong. A decently sized caravan of elves Jaskier needed to smuggle across the river towards Sodden when a mudslide took the mules and the wagon with it. They had been on the run from Temerian troops for the better part of a week, a crying elf child alerting the army to their hidden position under a tavern back in Dorian. It was by the skin of their teeth that they had made it as far as they had, and it was by Jaskier’s own rushed stupidity that the twenty-odd elves met their fate under rocks and sediment, buried beneath the unforgiving undercurrent of the river. Jaskier had run down the length of it, screaming for the lost refugees, pleading that one would return his cries. A twisted root brought up by the heavy rain season tripped him into the river, a deadhead serving as his life preserver for the journey downstream. By the time the soldier pulled him from the riverbank he was shaking, his mind fluttering on the edges of lucidity, the deadhead splintering in two from the force of the rushing water.
Silence began to overtake the camp as Jaskier laid down in his tent, the General off in a local whorehouse for the night, leaving Jaskier a respite from his snoring and a promise of a quiet sleep. He didn’t have much of that these days. Visions of Rience still danced in his head, cackling and crackling until ash poured over it all and buried Jaskier in it. Tonight it was mud that overtook him, an unrelenting crying child serving as the accompaniment of his own failings.
He awoke with a start, the sound of the child still ringing in his ears. Slowly, he noticed commotion coming from outside his tent. Yelling cut through his sleep-induced fog and shot ice down his spine as he saw flickers of orange light through the thin tent walls. He startled back as a figure burst into the room, a torch held high in the air and a dagger drawn. From behind the flame emerged a young soldier, no older than Ciri, with tipped ears and long, curling hair stuffed under a cap adorned with a squirrel’s tail.
“Sandpiper,” he hissed, sheathing his dagger and holding out his hand, “we must go. Now!” Jaskier wobbled to his feet, gripping the elf’s elbow with his bound hands like it was a rope out of quicksand and followed him into the darkness.
Out on the mud soaked grass soldiers fell like boulders, crashing in singing cacophonies, inciting the roar of a rockslide on a barron cliff. Jaskier tightened his grip on the elf, a tether bounding him to the present, to the gravity of the battle now commencing. Blood slashed through the air, ripping through raindrops and sweat before coloring the trampled ground in crimson and black. Limbs tore from bodies in hollow cracks, screams drowned out by the torrential rain and silenced by an enemy’s blade. The elf savior pressed on, guiding Jaskier across a carpet of fallen men towards a clearing in the neighboring woods.
“The captain will want to speak with you sir,” the elf was screaming as Jaksier stumbled to keep pace, “we just have to get you through these woods, he’s waiting o-”
Thunk.
The elf collapsed, an arrow dug into his skull. Jaskier felt the familiar cool of blood splashing on his face. He shook, staring at the elf. At once he fell, clinging to the boy’s body. He gathered the material of his shirt in his hands, pushing against the corpse, fulfilling a foolish fantasy that, with enough pleas, he could rise again. Jaskier’s hands fell tenderly around the boy’s cheeks, his thumbs rubbing circles around his empty eyes, stuck open and frightened.
“You’re alright,” Jaskier whispered, “you’re alright.”
“Sandpiper!” A voice cut through the haze, a hand yanking Jaskeir off the ground and back into the throws of the battle. An older elf stood in front of him now, words pouring out of his mouth faster than Jaskier could hear. “- get to the woods! You have to run!” He shoved him hard, causing Jaskier’s footing to falter as he took off, through the thick pile of bodies where the two armies first clashed; over the discarded quivers that held trampled arrows, past the screaming hordes of men, beyond the push of death; over mud and blood and brains and grass and stones and limbs and twigs and men. His body slammed to the ground as he caught on a helmet - he refused to remember whether it was still attached to a body. He scrambled; bodies flailing and falling about him, swords cutting through diaphragms like practice dummies. He collapsed again, filth coating his face. An ax lifted above him, mighty like a condemnation from the gods. This is how he ends. With cries and blood. On his back. Bound and helpless. Pleading like a child.
Then it all froze. Like a dream, the soldier’s weapon drifted at Jaskier’s touch as if caught in a stream. It was difficult to parse his memories, the world covered in a haze. A woman, of a beauty no mortal could hold. A terror to her. The kind that cuts deep under the flesh and nestles into the bones. The terror that fills nightmares and fairytales, foreboding ominous stories to keep children out of the woods. He remembered her mirthless laugh. The bizarre world she brought him to. The lute which buzzed under his fingers and the story that burned itself into his brain. A tear slipped from his cheek as he felt the magic encase him. He closed his eyes. In the end he had hoped there would be music, and in the end the gods had gifted him it.