Chapter Text
Step, Livi thinks, and forces her foot to move. Step.
Step.
Step.
She’s descended into some sort of fugue-like numbness, which is good, for she’s certain that if she could feel her feet, she would not be able to move. Her riding shoes were not made for walking long distances, and she can feel every rock and twig and bump in the road, the blood from popped blisters soaking her socks, and the rigid struts of the shoes’ short heels poking dully into her own heel-bone with every lurched step forward, all padding of the thin sole having long since worn out.
Still, she judges they were indeed the better choice of footwear—her only other option had been a pair of silk slippers that would have been worn through within a mere few hours upon the packed dirt road, let alone all the scrambling into the scrubs and woodland she has done over the past three days in her attempts to avoid her pursuers. She is pretty sure she has sticks in her hair.
Step, she thinks, and it devolves into a mangled eight-count, as if she’s in some sort of deranged dancing lessons. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…
Eight times eight is sixty four. How many eights has she stepped by now? He brain dissolves into nonsense equations with made-up numbers. She might be delirious.
It will be four days straight she’s been walking, with only snatched eye-blinks of rest here and there, if she makes it to midnight.
She’s not sure if she will. Her water ran out—this morning? She thinks it was this morning, and this stretch of road doesn’t seem to be following the river, and she’s been avoiding the towns, for surely that is where her pursuers will check first, but…
She will have to find a well, she thinks.
It’s good to have some sort of goal in mind. A destination.
She doesn’t allow herself to think that she doesn’t have any real destination. That way lies despair, and madness.
She’d had one, originally, and that thought stings now. She would have gone north, to Caingorn, and begged sanctuary at a temple there.
Denesle, where her father is Viscount, is in central Redania, admittedly far from the border, but it is still only a few hundred miles from Denesle to Caingorn. Even less distance—only two hundred and twelve miles—from her father’s lands to that part of Redania so recently conquered by the White Wolf, and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of either her father or King Vizimir.
Two hundred and twelve miles, and a person on foot could make it thirty miles in a day at a push. Livi was certainly not used to walking such distances, but she was desperate. Two hundred and twelve miles. It would have taken her a week. She could have run.
But that was when she thought she would be married off to Duke Velen.
It had been a slim chance, only, that a Temple to Melitele in Caingorn would have granted her request for sanctuary, even with the goddess’s protection supposedly being open to all, but…Velen is King Vizimir’s uncle. Nowhere in Redania would have sheltered her, nor any of their allies.
But Caingorn? Caingorn now belongs to the White Wolf, that savage barbarian with his army of inhuman Witchers who has conquered most of the north, including a good two-thirds of Redania. A religious order based in Caingorn would have no reason to bow to pressure from the Redanian king, not when the two countries were practically enemies, and the White Wolf proven so definitively superior in might.
There had been a chance.
Now there was none. For not only had her father not betrothed her to Duke Velen—and to think she had once thought that that was the worst of all possible fates, to be married to a man who had killed all three of his previous wives in a manner so gruesome that no one will speak of it to her—but he had instead offered her up to be taken as tribute to the White Wolf, in hopes that she might appease his desires.
From all the rumors and pitying glances sent her way, Velen was a horrible man and would have been an even worse husband. From all those same rumors and glances, the White Wolf would be worse.
He is not human. The rumors all agree on that. The White Wolf, they say, is more—or less—than a man, somehow crossbred with the giant wolves of the mountains, ferocious and vicious and unpredictable. He has an unfathomable temper, capricious and cruel: he is apt to raze a city to the ground on the merest whim—as he did a mere few years ago to Ghelibol, upon no provocation.
The White Wolf is immortal and unkillable, still as young and hale today as he was sixteen years ago, when he suddenly appeared from nowhere, a monster at the head of an army of monsters, and started his unprovoked conquest of the north by beheading the king of Kaedwen.
The White Wolf, alone, is the match for twenty of Redania’s finest knights, or even a hundred. Strong enough to cleave a horse in twain, faster to strike than a viper, with cat-slitted gold eyes that can see into your very soul if you are unfortunate enough to catch his gaze.
Duke Velen, for all his monstrosity, is a man. An old man at that, with at least some of the frailties of age, and the possibility remained that she could have been spared by something as mundane as his natural death in the course of time. He is powerful, yes, but has no magic of his own nor any unnatural abilities. His desires are known to be horrific and sadistic, but they are known.
The White Wolf has not aged or weakened since before Livi was even born. His temper is swift and violent and completely unpredictable, his powers and desires completely unknown.
And, the most damning comparison of all: she may have been able to find shelter from Duke Velen in the White Wolf’s lands. She will not find sanctuary from the White Wolf himself.
And so, she is running to nowhere, for there is nowhere to run.
No, she tells herself firmly. You are running south.
It is two thousand three hundred miles to Lyria, across the entirety of Aedirn, before she reaches somewhere not directly in the White Wolf’s control or allied to him, and even that is no guarantee of safety.
Her thighs chafe against each other with each lurching stride forward. She can taste blood in her every ragged inhale of the cold, evening air.
She keeps moving.
It grows dark.
She comes across a farmhouse. It looms, a slightly darker shadow in the shadowy night, no candles burning so late.
It has a well.
She collapses to her knees and fumbles for the rope. Her arms are shaking, and her fingers don’t seem to want to obey her orders to close, too numb from the cold.
All she can hear are her jagged gasps and her heartbeat in her ears. She forces her hands around the rope, pulls.
It takes a long time, so long, and too much effort, but slowly, slowly a bucket appears over the rim of the well. She sloshes half of it over herself in her desperation to drink, but finally, there’s water.
She gulps it down straight from the bucket, undignified and uncaring of the sight she must be, if there were anyone here to see her. And then she takes a moment to just pant and sag against the well.
She fills the bucket again, and brings it up, sipping more slowly this time. She still has a few stale pieces of bread that she’d hidden in her pockets over the weeks she’d spent in the company of the soldiers who were to “escort” her to the White Wolf. The apples, the only other food she’d managed to stash away, are long gone now.
She dips a handful of bread in the ice-cold water to soften it, then gratefully swallows the soggy mess. It is disgusting. She is so hungry that it is the best thing she has ever tasted.
She needs to re-think her plan. She has no idea how far she’s walked, but…if a traveller afoot can make thirty miles in an eight-hour day over clear and level roads, and she has certainly been going for well over eight hours each day—at least eighteen, she thinks, or more likely twenty—although she must also subtract all the time she’s spent ducking off the road to hide from any passing traveller, plus account for the fact that she is of very small stature and unused to traveling, and somewhat starving, and these roads are a bit hilly, being as they are in the foothills of the Mahakam mountains, then…she has absolutely no idea how far she has gone since she escaped her escort in the middle of the night four days ago.
At least a hundred miles, she thinks. Probably not more than two hundred.
That means there’s still well over two thousand miles left to Lyria, and she’s not even sure Lyria will be safe.
She’s not going to make it.
She needs a better plan.
Perhaps…perhaps she could disguise herself as a peasant, and find employment somehow. She has no idea how to go about doing so, but it must be better to live as a peasant than to die a horrible death at the hands of the White Wolf. She is certainly dirty and ragged enough that no one’s first thought upon seeing her would be “noble lady.” She could ask at people’s houses if they had any work that needed doing, mending or, or…washing dishes, or laundry. She has never actually washed dishes or done laundry, but she knows the theory, and scrubbing can’t be that hard. And she is actually quite skilled at mending.
The idea may be a conjured fancy borne of listening to too many ballads and plays, and she is sure the realities of it will be much harsher than her romantic imaginings, but it is the only thing she can possibly think of.
But first she needs to get farther away from where she ran from the soldiers.
Resolved, she finishes her bread and refills her stolen water-skin. It was the only thing she took from their camp—she left behind all the fine clothes and jewels, the perfumes and furs, the lovely palfrey with its beautiful riding gear, all that King Vizimir had bestowed upon her in place of a dowry. All of it not actually hers at all, but to be given in tribute to the warlord, just as she herself was.
She’s wearing the only items of clothing she has anymore that are actually hers, which is thankfully the practical, if plain, riding habit and cloak she had donned the morning her father had informed her that they would be surveying the closer lands of their estate, and had instead handed her off to the royal soldiers with an admonition to do her duty to crown, country, and family, and to please the warlord for Redania.
Her dress and underclothes, and especially her socks, are filthy, stiff, and deeply uncomfortable after almost a month of travel with no change, for of course no one had thought to pack clothes that were not also tribute, or at least to make some of the tributary clothes practical enough to hold up to long travel.
It was clear that everyone involved had simply seen her as another item to be carted off to the warlord, and had not considered that she was also a person who would have needs upon the journey. For Melitele’s sake, she’d had to beg kerchiefs from the soldiers when her monthly courses came! It had been the most mortifying experience of her life, and deeply humiliating.
The stained kerchiefs, washed as best as she could in river water, are still in her pockets. She supposes she technically stole those too, in addition to the water skin. But she doubts the soldiers will want them back, and she had left absolutely everything else behind.
She has some faint hope that if the guards find it too troublesome to recapture her, that, out of a desire to save their own skins, they will simply deliver all those fine and expensive goods they still have as if they were the entirety of the tribute, and the White Wolf will never know she was meant to be tribute as well. Although that would leave the question of why King Vizimir thought the White Wolf would like ladies’ dresses…
If she is truly lucky, the White Wolf will accept that tribute, and the soldiers will not tell King Vizimir that she was not delivered, afeared of his reaction to their failure to contain her.
If so, it is possible that no broader hunt will be sent after her at all. It’s not as if there is any open communication between the two kingdoms, and it’s well known at court that it has proven impossible to place spies within the White Wolf’s keep, so no one will know that she’s missing to look.
But she has no way of knowing whether that will be the case, or if the soldiers are still searching for her, or where they are searching for her, or how long and far the search will extend.
Perhaps…her head spins with all the unknown variables. She’ll figure out the details of her new plan in the morning, after she’s caught a few hours of sleep.
But not here. Here is too exposed.
So she forces herself up and keeps walking.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Livi wakes up to the wet lick of a tongue and a dog snuffling in her face.
“What…?” She winces against the brilliant coldness of the mid-morning. She’s overslept. She is outside, curled under the meager shelter of a tree. She doesn’t know where she is.
The dog barks.
Livi’s blood turns to ice.
“No,” she whispers, bolting upright. She tucks the dog’s head into her skirts, pets his head. “Shh, boy,” she says. “Shh.”
It does no good. The dog barks again, then pulls back from her and howls, and now she can hear more dogs baying in the not-so-distance.
She tries to lurch to her feet and immediately topples over with a muffled scream. Her muscles have all stiffened with sleep and are sending waves of agony through her body, but it is her feet that truly belay any effort to stand. It feels as if they have been flayed, though she knows this is not the case.
And so it is that she is on her knees, holding desperately onto the scruff of one excited hound as another one butts up besides her, when a pack of guards encircle her on horseback.
A sharp whistle from a man she does not recognize calls the dogs back to him, and she immediately misses their warmth. She is sure she makes a pitiful sight, filthy as she must be, kneeling in the dirt. The horses are so much taller than her, and the men riding them sit taller still. She eyes their hooves warily, well aware that if any one of them clops her head, she could easily die from it. Perhaps she should…
She can’t make herself move. She doesn’t actually want to die.
She looks to Captain Siert, the leader of her escort.
“Please,” she begs.
He looks uncomfortable, but not—not merciful.
None of the men surrounding her look merciful. Some look downright gleeful at having recaptured her, and some of them…she recognizes that look, from how Duke Velen used to look at her when he would ask her for a dance in the full knowledge that she could not refuse, and he would hold her hard enough to bruise and grab in all the wrong places.
“You’ll be riding pillion from now on, my lady,” says Captain Siert.
She watches in numb horror as he dismounts and pays the huntsman while another one of the guards binds her hands in silk rope. It’s tighter now than it had been before. Livi thinks she should be fighting, should be kicking and screaming and trying to run, should be crying if she can’t manage any of that—she’s already so thoroughly disgraced herself that she can hardly make it worse by throwing a fit—but…she’s so tired.
She’s so tired, and there’s no point to fighting any more, and she’s just…numb.
She doesn’t fight when she’s lifted up to be seated behind another one of the guards, and they start tracing back her steps as if they never mattered, faster on horseback than she could ever be on foot, on their way to the White Wolf once more.
She sits behind the guardsman, hands bound, and she doesn’t do anything.
Oliwia’s feet are still bleeding two weeks later when they make it to Wolvenburg and they start their grim ascent up the mountain to the fortress looming above. She is almost certain that some of the burst blisters have become infected, although there has been nothing she could do except wrap her feet in bandages and keep them as dry as she could, which, given the travel and the fact that her riding boots had been utterly ruined by her flight, was not very dry.
Not that it matters: she is tied wrist and ankle to the saddle of the dainty palfrey assigned to bear her here, and so she could not run—or, indeed, stand—even if her feet could bear the weight.
Her head is swimming and she is chills all over, and she does not know if it is terror or fever.
She supposes that if she dies of blood poisoning, she will not have to bear the warlord’s attentions long. It is perhaps something to hope for.
This is the first time since her recapture that she has been allowed to ride on her own, even if the horse is on a lead rather than risk giving her the reins.
She is, ridiculously, grateful for the privilege of a saddle of her own. None of the guards’ saddles were configured for riding aside, nor even had proper pillions, and so her legs are aching and bruised and blistered as a result of sitting upon their saddles in a way they were never designed to be sat upon. Each step of the palfrey, no matter how smooth her ambling gait, sends waves of agony up through her battered thighs and rear, but it is mildly better now that she has a proper seat. Not to mention that the guards are no longer so violatingly close, squeezing her body tightly against their own rigid armor.
It was never technically improper, but she could feel their enjoyment in forcing her closer than such men would ever normally be allowed.
At least now she is riding, blissfully alone in the saddle. And it’s a proper side-saddle, so she can hook her leading leg around the horn and actually balance properly, and not feel as if she is going to fall off any minute if she doesn’t submit to their unwanted holds.
She is decked out in all the finery of Redania’s tribute: a silken gown more adult than anything she has ever worn before, both in its cut and in the expense of its detailed embroidery, dyed in a rich blue hue; sapphires in her ears and on her fingers; diamond-and-sapphire pins in her hair; lapis-and-gold paneled bracelets on her wrists, and a necklace at her throat to match; amber and myrrh as perfume, the bottles in her saddlebags along with the rest of the tribute; and, thankfully, a thick, fur-lined cloak which provides her only defense from the mountainous chill that whips at her exposed skin and burrows down into the metal of all the jewelry she is encased in. It is a far richer ensemble than she could have otherwise ever hoped to wear, even as a viscount’s daughter who had unfortunately caught the eye of the king’s uncle.
It is beautiful.
She hates it.
She hates it, but she had donned it without protest, and done her own hair, for she has no lady’s maid here in the wilderness, even as escort, which by all rights she should.
It must be that no one had seen the use of a chaperone, when they all knew she was being sent to the warlord to be despoiled, not even married, and she couldn’t—she had thought of it, in the measly five minutes it had taken her father to inform her of her fate and remand her into the custody of these royal soldiers, but she couldn’t make herself ask for some woman to accompany her, not when that woman would by all likelihoods share her same fate, without even whatever dubious shields of Livi’s station remain. If such shields even exist, when her father and her king and her country have made it clear they do not care what dishonor befalls her as long as it appease the White Wolf and his savage horde of warriors.
And that is a thought that has kept her up many a night, for although Duke Velen would have been horrible, he was but one man, and without even the paper fiction of a marriage, the warlord will have no reason to limit—to limit his men, who are said not to even be entirely men at all, but part-monster, with all the desires and…anatomy to match their beastly halves.
And Livi is terrified.
But she had donned the gifted finery, and done her hair as fine and gleaming as she could make it with minimal tools, and rouged her cheeks and lips—because of course whoever had packed had remembered that—all in the hopes that, that if she could make herself particularly pleasing to the warlord, that he would not want to—to share.
She is…she knows she is pretty. Beautiful, bird-like, delicate. Still ripe with the flush of youth, not quite full-grown, and naturally both small and slim. Those were, after all, the qualities which had most attracted Duke Velen to her. And she is exotic, too, with all her grandmother’s rich, dark skin; the high curve of her cheekbones; and the thick mane of her sleek, black hair. Not to mention the startling hue of her bright green eyes, framed as they are by thick, dark lashes. Perhaps she will be even more exotic in the warlord’s keep; she does not know if there are any Zerrikanian Witchers, or those of any of the other darker-skinned peoples.
So yes, Oliwia is beautiful. Tempting, hopefully, even if she does not feel it. Even if it makes her feel sick to think of the warlord—to think of any man—desiring her in that way.
But her desirability is the only thing she has left to trade on, and so trade on it she will.
She knows there is a high chance her pitiful plan will backfire, and instead entice his men, which is the last thing she wants, but…there is no hope for escape anymore. Not from that oh-so-imposing keep, injured as she is, all the way down this perilous mountain trail. She does not have the skills for it. And so she must throw herself onto the mercy of the one man left who has the power to protect her, and who might be persuaded to see the value in doing so.
If there is one thing she knows about powerful men, it is that they are possessive of that which they see as theirs.
It is a truth of the world she has had to invoke since her recapture, most especially during one horrid incident where—well. Her nightmares of being…passed around the warlord’s army, and her fear of their more monstrous natures and physical attributes, had both sprung entirely from that incident, for before then she had had no idea that such things were even options to fear.
She has learned many things about the lusts of both Witchers and men in the fortnight since her recapture.
Before her flight, she could have at least expected some moderate measure of privacy when using the latrine, or sleeping—it is how she escaped, undoing her bound hands with her teeth while she was supposed to be asleep, and crawling out from under the back of her tent in the dark of the night.
Her flight had put end to even those privileges, and with their loss came looks, and the too-tight grips pressing her into their bodies, and—
And.
That first night after her recapture, she had awoken to the completely foreign feeling of a hand snaking around her waist in the dark, and hot, moist breath and the scratch of stubble tickling at the nape of her neck, and she had screamed, and, and he, he—
He had laughed.
He had laughed, low and mocking. And his arm had squeezed around her tighter. “Aw, don’t be like that, my lady,” he had said, and it was clear that her title meant nothing to him—and why should it, when all the powers backing it up had made it clear that it meant nothing to them?
“You owe us a few nights of comfort after giving us the runaround so long,” he had said. “Made us ride through the nights, you did, without sleep or succor, and it were our own pay we had to use to hire the dogs, and maybe your noble ladyship don’t care about such common things as money, but your little runabout was damn expensive. But that’s alright, there’s other things you can do to make it up—”
“Grol. What’s going on here?” That was Captain Siert with a lantern, and Livi near fainted from relief. The other guards stumbled in after him, four more looming shadows crowded in the small tent, no doubt summoned by her scream.
She’d had to listen to Grol’s whole deranged rant over again, and his arm was still viselike around her, the both of them lying on the ground, and she didn’t dare speak for fear of making it worse.
Captain Siert's face might as well have been a mystery, illuminated only by the barest flickers of lantern light from below. Livi could much better make out through the murkiness that his hand not holding the lantern gripped tight the hilt of his sword. “You honorless piece of shit,” he spat, and Livi distantly noted her own absurd shock that such vulgarity was spoken in her presence. “You would dare—”
“And why not?" challenged one of the men, and Livi’s stomach swooped in dread.
It wasn’t Grol who spoke. She thought it might be Klemens, who was second-in-command. She couldn’t see any of their faces. “It’s not like anyone will notice in a few days once she’s been loosened up on a few Witcher’s cocks.” She could hear the smirk in the man’s voice even if it was too dark to see it, and two of the other guards standing over her chuckled.
Livi was fairly certain she understood what he was implying, even if she had never heard such—such crude terms for it, and her stomach dropped out from under her at the realization that of course, of course, she had been sent to slake the desires of not just the warlord but also his army of Witchers, oh gods above, how would that even work, oh gods, oh gods, oh gods—
Captain Siert didn’t say anything, and Livi didn’t understand why until suddenly she did: two of the other guards had chuckled. So that was at least four on Grol and Klemens’ side, and only two—if that—on Captain Siert’s. On hers.
“It’s a dangerous journey, Cap’n.” probably-Klemens ambled over to Siert and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “And it’s been a stressful few days. It could’ve been all of us swinging from the rope for what that little bint’s put us through.”
There were rumbles of agreement from all around. Livi couldn’t tear her eyes away from Captain Siert’s shadowy face. His grip on his sword was white-knuckled, but he’d made no move to draw it. He may as well have been carved of stone.
She could feel her heartbeat in her stomach, where Grol’s arm was still wrapped around her like an immovable iron band.
“We’d be doing her a favor, even,” said Grol. His moist breath and spittle flicked against the back of her neck with each horrible, lecherous word. “A girl’s first time should be with a human, not one of those monstrous beasts.”
“Heard them wolf Witchers got knots like actual wolves, and the cat ones got barbed spines all down their shafts.” That remark came from another of the guards behind her, and Livi didn’t even know what that meant, but it sounded horrible, and it also sounded like he was agreeing with Grol.
And she definitely didn’t want—whatever horrible monster things the Witchers were, but that would be a problem for future Livi, and this was a problem for now, and Captain Siert still hadn’t moved, and she had no chaperone, and—her father would never find out about this, if they were to force her, because who would tell him? The guards themselves? The Witchers? She could hardly expect to be able to write home about her despoilment, and even if she could, what would it do? King Vizimir and her father had both made it very clear in sending her to the wolves that her virtue was not a priority—that, in fact, the ruination of her virtue was both the expected and optimal outcome. And besides, any such letter would not reach back to Redania until well after she had already been taken and, and…taken by the White Wolf, and his men, and most likely also killed, and would anyways do her absolutely no good right now.
And so Livi had appealed to the only possible power these men might respect, or at least fear, for certainly she had no power of her own, nor any other to call on.
“I will tell the White Wolf,” she said. Her voice shook, and was barely above a whisper. Tears blurred her vision. She couldn’t tell if anyone had heard her.
She forced herself to swallow, and spoke again, summoning every ounce of noble deportment and elocution she could muster from the ground. “If you force me, I will tell the White Wolf. I am tribute to him. How do you think he will react if he finds out you have stolen my—f-first time from him? Do you think he will show you mercy?”
Silence met her question.
“I’m not—I’m not risking the White Wolf coming after me, nor his Witchers.” That was Peet, the youngest of her guards. He was a quiet boy about Livi’s own age, she thought, fifteen or sixteen. It was the first time she’d heard him make any noise tonight. “An’ if you lot do anything to make him come after us…”
“Lad’s got a good point,” said Captain Siert. Livi felt oddly betrayed that he’d given credit to Peet for her idea. Even if that should be negligible on her list of concerns right now.
“Everyone back to bed,” Siert ordered. “There will be no impropriety. Janek, you’re on watch. Everyone else, sleep. I’ll watch the lady.”
And miraculously, they obeyed. They grumbled, but they obeyed.
Grol’s hand snaked out from under her waist, and soon everyone had left the tent except her and the captain.
Slowly, Livi pushed herself up to sitting. She hadn’t dared—that entire time, she’d been lying on the ground, with a man—a vile, disgusting, evil man at that—pressed up against her, so horribly vulnerable and intimate, while five more men loomed over her, and even if his hand had not strayed from her waist, even if everyone remained fully clothed, even if nothing had actually happened, she was still shaking.
Now Captain Siert crouched down as she sat up, the two of them about as far apart as it was possible to be in the small tent.
Livi tugged the bedroll and blanket up to cover as much of herself as she could, and hugged her knees to her chest. “Thank you, Captain,” she said, although she had no idea what she was actually thanking him for. He hadn’t—he hadn’t done anything. Her voice was hoarse.
The captain didn’t respond at first. Then, finally, “I apologize, my lady, for the inexcusable behavior of my men.”
Livi nodded, once, but didn’t say anything.
She curled into herself, and swallowed her tears, and watched the lantern burn itself out into nothing.
In the morning, the captain pulled her, wrists still bound, into his own saddle, and they all continued on as if nothing had happened.
After a few hours, they cycled which guard she rode double with so as not to tire the horses. And so she rode double with Klemens, who had so casually said “why not?” to the idea of all these men raping her; and she rode with whichever of the men had made those horrible crude comments about, about Witcher anatomy—and she still wasn’t sure which one that had even been, which was somehow even worse than knowing; and the one who laughed and hadn’t said anything; and, of course, Grol, who was by far the worst of them all—if only for the way the feel of his moist, putrid breath on her neck brought her right back to lying on the dank ground, in the darkness, alone and surrounded and afraid.
And no one said anything about what had happened.
She would almost believe that it hadn’t happened—that it had all been just a terrible nightmare, brought on by her fears of what was to come—except that the captain only let himself or Peet guard her during the night for the rest of the journey.
And Peet. Peet had, during one of her newly-humiliating and fear-inducing breaks to relieve herself in the woods, turned his back—the only of her guards to still do so—and said, almost too quiet to hear, “‘M sorry, m’lady.”
“Pardon?” she’d asked.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said again. “About last night. I should’ve—I didn’t say anything, and I should’ve, earlier. ’S not right, what all them were saying, what they were threatening to do, and I knew it, and I should’ve done something, I just—I froze, an’ I couldn’t—I didn’t…I mean, I’m sorry, that’s all. Me ma raised me better’n that.”
Oliwią took a breath, rising from her crouch. “You were the only one who said anything, Peet. I thank you for that.”
He flushed and winced. “’S not enough, though. If they—if they try again, I’ll—I’ll try…” He trailed off. They both knew that there wasn’t much he could do, younger and scrawnier and much less experienced than all the other men that made up her escort, one against many.
“Thank you,” she said, with a sad, scared smile for the only modicum of kindness that had been offered her in many weeks, knowing that she could not rely upon it.
“Sorry,” he said again, and that was the last it was spoken of.
By some miracle, or perhaps by Captain Siert’s tired and watchful eye, or—most likely—by the omnipresent threat of the White Wolf, no one had tried anything nearly so overt in the time since.
And now they have finally reached the keep of the White Wolf. Kaer Morhen.
It is…well, it’s exactly the image that Livi’s nightmares have conjured, dark and imposing and utterly inescapable. The keep is carved into the mountain itself, stark and unadorned; the walls are hewn from rough stone, dotted across with arrow-slits and iron-barred windows much too small for even a cat to slip through. Jagged merlons and jutting turrets cut up from the curtain wall to loom over the landscape.
Captain Siert, reluctance tight in every line of his body, goes to knock upon the huge iron gates.
Oliwią draws herself up to sit as elegantly as she can upon her beautiful mare while they wait for the answer, bound as she still is and her entire bottom half pulsing in agony.
She hopes desperately that she is not bleeding enough to stain the gown or her slippers through her layers of undergarments. Such would not make a good impression on the warlord at all, though she knows better than to think it could be possible that she’s not bleeding at all. At least it is cold enough, even in the summer, to numb her slightly.
She pushes the pain off her face with practiced effort, and does her best to look placid. Pliant. Alluring.
She doesn’t know how to look alluring. Docile and obedient will have to do. Graceful. Dutiful. Willing.
She wills herself into being all those things, tucks her terror and her pain tight away into the recesses of her mind. She shrugs her cloak open, wiggling a bit to do it without the use of her hands, even if it exposes her to the cruel, whipping wind, in order to best show off the finery of the tribute, and of—of herself. She imagines the cold seeping its numbness into her bones, dulling the fear. Maybe it even works.
Her heart is still beating loudly in her throat, blood rushing in her ears. She forces her breaths to be even and slow, her seat loose and relaxed in the saddle, despite the agony jolting up her legs and into her very core. The last thing she needs is to spook her own horse.
The wait is interminable.
Finally, a small door built into the larger gate creaks open, and a single man steps through.
No, not a man—a Witcher. Oliwia can’t see anything from this distance that would mark him as not human, but the twin swords strapped to his back and silver medallion hung round his neck mark his status clearly.
He is huge. Tall, broad, and heavily-muscled. His studded leather armor is well-worn, and the swords and knives strapped all about his body have clearly seen much use. His boots make no sound upon the stone as he slowly stalks up to their party with all the grace of a predator.
As he draws nearer, Livi can make out his features in more detail. His broad, flat face is weathered and might as well have been hewn from the same stone as the mountain keep for all the mercy or emotion it shows. A deep, jagged scar made of many clawed lines runs down the entire right side of his face, from his temple, across his eye, and all the way down to his lightly stubbled jaw, twisting his lips into a permanent grimace. His eyes are shadowed beneath heavy brows, but they almost glow, like amber lanterns in the cold mountain air. True to the stories, his pupils are slitted like a cat’s.
Captain Siert hastily backs away as the Witcher steps forward, and bows awkwardly. “Sir,” he says, and the address is careful. Livi knows—because she had asked, before her flight—that none of her guards know the proper form of address for a Witcher, nor what signs mark rank amongst their people. This man could be a simple gate guard, or he could be a high general in their army. He is, at the very least, thankfully not the warlord himself, for the White Wolf is said to have long hair as white as the mountain snow, and this man’s hair is a perfectly mundane dark brown cut short enough to just curl around his grizzled jaw.
If she had to, Livi would guess the man is closer to ‘gate guard’ than ‘general,’ based upon the plainness and wear of his armor and weapons, but she is glad that she is not the first to attempt an address.
“We have brought,” begins the captain, then has to swallow and try again. “We have brought a gift, from the lords of Redania, with their compliments to the White Wolf.”
The Witcher eyes Siert head to toe in a slow, assessing glance. Livi has no clue what he might be looking for, and his scarred face gives nothing away.
Then he turns that same glance to Livi.
Calm, she tells herself. Gracious. Desirable.
She sees his eyes snag on the horse’s ornate gold-embossed bridle, on the ropes at her wrists and ankles, on the jewels, and on—on the low neckline of her bodice and the smooth expanse of skin above it.
Calm, gracious, desirable.
It is, strangely enough, on her face that the Witcher’s gaze lingers longest.
She manages to meet his unnatural eyes. Her heart is thudding wildly. She counts the seconds to force her breath into even and slow measures.
The man’s nose flares ever so slightly—in what, Livi doesn’t know. Anger? Disgust? Lust? His jaw twitches.
After a moment, he breaks her gaze to circle slowly around the horse. The guards all stand very, very still, and Livi can hear them breathing hard. She doesn’t dare turn to follow the Witcher’s assessment, and instead focuses on keeping her head high as he looks his fill.
The horse shifts her weight and whickers softly. Livi attempts to relax her tensed muscles, and pats the mare as gently and unobtrusively as she can with her bound hands. In the day’s only mercy, the cold and the constant rush of fear have practically numbed her to the agonies of her injuries that have haunted her these past many days, and it is easy enough to swallow the sounds of her discomfort.
Oliwią does not know the reason for this prolonged assessment, but she gets the definite sense that the Witcher is displeased with her. Of all her myriad fears, she had not thought to add a fear of the Witchers entirely rejecting her as tribute.
If she is refused…If she is refused, what will happen? She can hardly go home. And the soldiers will take her back down the mountain, and then…she does not think that Captain Siert’s sense of honor or Peet’s fear-ridden sympathy will be enough to save her a second time.
If she is refused—If she is refused, she will beg the Witcher to at least take the horse as consolation.
And as soon as she is no longer tied to the saddle, she will throw herself off the cliff a few bare yards to her right and hope she dies quickly.
She notes that the Witcher gives each of the soldiers the same intense study he gave to her and the horse. Captain Siert is standing rigid as a board. Peet is shaking in terror. Klemens is white, and Grol looks like he might wet himself in fear. She hopes, vindictively, that he does.
The Witcher completes his circuit, and is standing before their group once more.
“I see,” says the Witcher, finally. His voice is gravelly, and hard. Definitely displeased.
Livi swallows, and gathers her resolve. Her eyes dart the distance between herself and the cliff’s edge.
“And who’re you, then, lass?” His voice still rumbles, but is much softer in tone.
Livi blinks. She’s never been called ‘lass’ in her life, but there is no doubt he’s addressing her.
She draws in a shaky breath. “I am Oliwia Cecylia Bartol, Baroness of Denesle.” She ought to say something about how she hopes to be pleasing to the warlord, but she can’t force the words through her lips. “Might I have the honor of your name as well, my lord Witcher?”
He huffs, his lips quirking up in the barest hint of a smile, and his cat-slitted eyes crinkle in amusement as he meets her gaze once again. “I am called Eskel, Oliwia Cecylia Bartol, Baroness of Denesle.”
Eskel. Livi knows that the warlord’s second-in-command, his most trusted general, shares that same name, but surely such a powerful man would not be on mere gate greeting duty? The Witcher gave no title nor even a family name, which would imply that he doesn’t have one, and his accent is quite common, but the casual familiarity of his address, when her own noble rank is so evident by both her introduction and her finery, points to him being of higher status.
Despite his fearsome appearance and the mocking edge to his introduction, she does not think he is mocking her, precisely, nor that he intends his words to be cruel. It feels more as if he’s inviting her in on a joke, even if she’s not entirely sure of the punchline. And if she can get this Witcher to be friendly towards her, even if he isn’t that Eskel…
“It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Lord Eskel.” She figures it is better to flatter by assuming a higher rank than he actually holds rather than insult him by assuming a lower. And…she takes a risk, hoping to all the gods that she has read him right. “I will admit that your name trips off the tongue much more easily than mine. Please, if we are to be using bare names,”—and the impropriety of that terrifies her, almost seeming like she is issuing an invitation to unwanted overfamiliarity, but surely it is best to model her own manners after his?—“call me Oliwia, or Livi.” She smiles, hoping it comes across as a friendly and conspiratorial expression rather than one which is queasy with terror.
Probably-Lord Eskel’s eyes spark, and he seems almost…impressed? “Livi, then,” he declares, and he takes her horse’s reins from Klemens. He starts leading her towards the gate, and whistles up a complicated little tune—a signal, most likely, for the gate creaks open to allow them entry.
The guards start to back away, and Lord Eskel stills. All friendliness drops from his countenance, and his voice goes as cold as ice. “Did I say you could leave?” he hisses.
The guards freeze. One of them whimpers. The palfrey prances in place beneath her.
“Do—does the White Wolf not accept the tribute?” Captain Siert quails beneath Lord Eskel’s inhuman gaze.
“I don’t know,” says the Witcher. There’s a slow and deliberate threat in his carefully even words. “I’m not the White Wolf. So while he’s deciding, you all stay here.”
Grol squeaks in terror at that pronouncement. Livi wants to feel some satisfaction in his fear, but her own swiftly mounting dread drains her of the ability to do so.
No one—no one—has seen the inside of the Wolf’s stronghold since he became warlord. By all reports, tribute is dropped before the gates and those who bore it there must then quickly depart, lest they invoke the Witchers’ ire by staying on their doorstep for longer than necessary.
Kaer Morhen is well-known to be impenetrable. To be invited into the keep, when no spy or assassin or even messenger has ever made it inside—or, if they had, had certainly not made it back out again—points to something being deeply wrong.
But none of them are so stupid as to disobey a Witcher, so they all follow Lord Eskel into the White Wolf’s den.
The door shuts behind them with a gentle thump, and so they are well and truly trapped when Lord Eskel turns back to face them and draws a knife.