Three sharp knocks sound as the maid raps her knuckles on the guest room door. "Housekeeping!"
There's a pause in which she tilts her head closer to listen, though with noon already past, she isn't expecting a response. One, two, three, she counts in her head, giving ample time for a reply, then after five seconds of silence, she pulls back and gets to work. She gathers the broom from where she's left it propped against the wall, hefts the laundry basket on her hip, and lets herself in with the master key.
The room is dark on the other side. It's not entirely a surprise, when plenty of the guests leave the shutters closed to keep in the heat, but her job isn't one she much cares to do by candlelight. Sighing, she sets down the laundry basket to prop the door open - which insists on swinging closed no matter how far she pushes it - then leaves the broom against the wall again as she makes her way towards the windows.
Not much light gets in from the hallway. The maid squints, trying to assess the state of the room through the dimness as she watches her step on the uneven floorboards. Thankfully, it doesn't appear to be a wreck. The floor's mostly clear and the bed's unmade with a pile of blankets bundled up on the far side, but that's perfectly manageable. There's a strange smell lingering in the air, but it's neither alcohol, piss nor vomit, so she's more than content to deal with that. A considerate enough guest, she concludes, stepping round to the far side of the bed and sliding down the latch on the shutters to push them open.
Light spills into the room. The girl blinks twice, letting her eyes adjust, then turns back to face the bed. Suddenly, she starts. An involuntarily yelp leaves her throat as her eyes come to rest on what she thought had been a pile of blankets bundled on the mattress. Someone's still here.
On the left side of the bed, closest to the window, a man is lying on his side. One arm is trapped under him while the other dangles down over the edge of the mattress, fingertips stopping just inches from where a small, empty glass bottle is lying atop the floorboards. Her eyes wander, widening as they take in the assorted items lying beside it: more of the glass vials, empty, with a faint smell unlike anything she recognises; bloodstained bandages, soaked through, discarded. His clothes are in a heap near to the foot of the bed, metal glinting where she recognises armour, while by his head, within arm's reach, is a sword.
A second one. She can already see the hilt of another poking out from underneath his gambeson.
Fear begins to rise in her chest as her eyes dart for the door. She stutters, tongue fumbling for words of apology until she realises he's still sound asleep. The shaft of light falling across his face doesn't appear to have disturbed him any more than her clunking footsteps. For a moment, the maid hesitates. She could still leave, close the shutters again and come back later, or not at all. But he's unconscious, and she's curious, and the bandages strewn on the floor have sparked a different kind of anxiety. She takes a nervous step closer.
The man still doesn't move. Her eyes roam across the skin exposed above the blankets, gasping softly as she takes in the wicked scars marring almost every inch of it. Fair hair - more than fair, white - splays across the pillow, tendrils having escaped the band holding it back from his face.
There's a dark stain on the sheets where they rest covering his hip and along his outer thigh, the reddish brown of dried blood. The maid swallows. From his stillness, the paleness of his skin, it's hard to keep from wondering if he's dead.
"Sir?" she murmurs, only half hoping he'll respond as she leans in closer. Her gaze pans down to his chest, partly obscured by the arm crossed over it, and tries to look for movement. It's impossible to tell if he's breathing or not.
"Sir, are you alright?" Her voice is barely more than a whisper while she's simultaneously trying to elicit a response. The contradiction hasn't escaped her. It takes a few seconds for the girl to steel herself before she dares reach out a hand to hold in front of his face, unnervingly close, and feels for breath. One, two, three, again she counts, and isn't sure if she can feel anything or not.
Stomach doing backflips, her eyes pan down the rest of his body. Apart from the blood clinging to his leg - and there doesn't seem to be too much of it - she can't see any obvious signs of injury. Not that she thinks she'd even dare look closer.
The bloody bandages on the floor, though, do seem to be drenched. Biting her lip, the girl moves her fingers a few inches lower under his jaw to touch the side of his throat. She's tentative, lacking the nerve to press harder, until she tells herself that if a pulse is there, she'll never feel it holding back like this. She takes a breath and digs her fingers in against the artery.
The next part happens in an instant. A tight grip closes around her wrist before she even realises what's happening, prompting a sharp intake of breath as her eyes fly to his face. His eyes are open, irises an eerie yellow, glinting and fierce as they fix on her. His gaze roots her to the spot as much as the hand painfully grasping her arm. She trembles, breathing turning ragged as she meets his accusatory glare.
"I...I'm sorry… I didn't mean..." She fumbles to get the words out.
There's confusion on his face as those strange eyes - unearthly, cat-like - dart to his surroundings, then the tension seeps from his brow as he remembers where he is. His grip goes slack, abruptly letting her go. "What do you want?"
His voice is hoarse. Raspy. His head sinks back into the pillow, hostility mostly gone, though she feels another rush of nerves as she thinks he still seems irritated. "I'm just the maid," she stammers, unconsciously clutching her freed arm to her chest. "I'm here to clean the room."
"You usually disturb the guests for that?"
"No, I...didn't realise you were here at first. Then when I saw the bandages on the floor, I got worried."
He blinks, then his gaze wanders towards the bandages in question, as if only just remembering how they got there. His expression softens. "Didn't mean to scare you."
Her heart rate is only just beginning to slow. "My fault. Shouldn't have startled you." The trembling in her limbs is slowly coming back under her control, though she's sure she still seems terrified. Even without the full intensity of his glare, those eyes are frightening.
He keeps his gaze fixed on her another few seconds, then heaves a sigh and shifts himself to sit up straighter in the bed. "Forget about maid service, I don't need…" he starts to say, then it gets cut off in a hiss of pain as a grimace contorts his face.
Her blue eyes widen. "You're hurt," she says, her gaze flitting down towards his leg. A fresh bloodstain is just beginning to creep through the blankets.
"Not badly." It takes him just a heartbeat too long to reply, the look on his face sheepish. His words don't convince either of them.
There's a beat in which the girl glances from the blood to his face, then she takes a breath. She's decided to be bold. "My Ma used to be a nurse for the soldiers, when the war came through here. I was her helper. I could take a look at it for you?"
That gets a surprised blink and, to her annoyance, a dismissive look. "Your mother around?"
"No. She passed last summer."
For a moment, he looks apologetic, then he grits his teeth and gives a pained huff. She can tell he isn't taking her seriously.
"I know I'm not as good as a proper medic, but I can help."
That draws another dubious glance. "How old are you?"
"Eleven."
His silence in the wake of that says it all. "Your father still alive?" he asks after a beat.
"Yeah."
"What would he say if he knew you were here?"
"He owns the inn. He'd want me to help the guests."
The scowl she gets in response tells her that wasn't the reply he'd wanted. "I'm sure you have other guests to be helping."
"Yes, but if my Ma were here, she'd say you need it most."
He just stares at her. She wonders if he's really annoyed with her, or just in pain.
With him sitting up, it's easier to get a good look at him. Even more scars criss-cross the skin of his torso, looking to her like what could be claw marks, or burns, or stab wounds, or anything, really. There's enough variety that she thinks he might have suffered every injury her imagination cares to conjure up, and that shocks her even more than the evident size of the weeping wound in his leg.
Yet another scar cuts vertically across his left eye and curves down across his cheek. It's not quite enough to detract from an otherwise handsome face, but it lends his expression an even more dark, menacing air than it already has. Around his neck is a silver chain, on it a medallion in the shape of a wolf's head resting atop his breast.
She's still captivated by his eyes, unsettling though they are with their yellow intensity turned towards her. She recalls the swords, the potion bottles on the floor, the plethora of scars carved into his skin, and all the pieces start to fall into place.
"You're a witcher, aren't you?" she says.
The reply is an irritable, monosyllabic grunt. "Yes."
"What's your name?"
He shoots her a scowl. "What's yours?"
"Annette."
The willingness with which she answers seems to take him by surprise. A beat passes, his eyes still narrowed, then he relents. "Geralt of Rivia."
Geralt. She thinks she knows the name from somewhere.
The witcher's own eyes flit towards the bloodstain seeping through the sheets. She can tell he wants to inspect the damage, but there's a reluctance with her here.
Annette steps back, crosses round to the other side of the bed, then just as he seems to think she's heading for the door, she turns and climbs up onto the mattress beside him.
His eyes widen in surprise. A defensive hand curls into the sheets, expression darkening to a scowl as he instinctively recoils. "Don't you have other rooms to clean?"
"I told you, I want to help." She stares at him earnestly. "Please. Let me take a look."
He returns the gaze, deliberating, then decides he doesn't want to expend the energy of arguing. "Alright," he relents. "You can look. Just don't do anything." His fingers clutch at the sheets, then, carefully, begin to peel it back from the wound, triggering a fresh surge of bleeding as half-formed scabs break off.
He arranges the sheets modestly, sliding the fabric between his legs, and it suddenly dawns on her he's naked beneath the covers. A blush begins to creep across her cheeks, but the embarrassment is quickly replaced by nausea as she takes in the sight of the wound.
Half of the skin covering his hip and upper thigh is missing. It's been savagely torn away, leaving the tender flesh beneath exposed in a deep, ragged line along his outer leg, at his hip gouged down almost to the bone. The blood at the outermost layer appears to have formed a fragile clot, but it's been all too easily disturbed and ripped open again. Yellowish plasma seeps from the wound, mingling with the dark red ooze of blood. It smells foul.
Just the sight of it fills her with nausea. He doesn't miss her reaction, the way she holds her breath to keep from gagging. He glances over, raises an eyebrow. "You gonna leave now?"
The thought crosses her mind. But, stubborn as ever, she shakes her head. "No." She gulps, takes a calming breath as she forces herself to look. "What did that?"
Geralt grimaces, gives the answer as a pained grunt. "Griffin."
"It looks bad. I really think you need a doctor."
"Could be worse. Could have broken the bone, too." For her sake, he tries to play it off as not as bad as it seems, but he really doesn't make the case sound convincing.
"How do you know it's not broken?"
"If it was broken, I'd still be lying out there in the meadow bleeding to death."
"So you're just gonna bleed to death in my Pa's inn instead?"
That gets another grimace, this time seeming fueled more by anxiety than pain. "I'm a witcher. Already took a few healing potions. I've recovered from worse."
She eyeballs the wound again, getting used to the sight of it. Green pus is starting to seep from beneath the blood crusting below his hip. "It's infected," she remarks.
The look on his face tells her he already knows.
Annette swallows. "There's garlic in the kitchens. I could make a salve…"
Geralt shakes his head, and she can see the tendons in his neck stand out as he clenches his jaw in pain. "Wouldn't hurt, but I need tincture of calendula."
"Calendula?"
"Marigold. It's antiseptic, promotes healing."
She purses her lips. "Doesn't grow round here. There's a herbalist the other side of the village. I could go see if she has anything to help you?"
"And how much would that cost me?"
Annette shrugs. "Part of the service."
It takes him a little by surprise. Geralt studies her face, all wide-eyed innocence and an earnest desire to help. He doesn't want to take advantage, but he also really, really doesn't want to lose his leg. "Alright," he agrees. "Check down there by my things. There should be a coin purse. Take thirty crowns and see if the herbalist will make a calendula tincture. Failing that, burdock should help with the infection, at least. If there's any change, it's yours."
There's a clinking as Annette counts out the coin, then she frowns down at the pile of his bloodstained clothes. "I could take these to the laundry for you, too. They're filthy."
It's touching, really, how much she's willing to help. But also getting a little annoying. "Leave them," he says gruffly. "I have spares."
"What if I said it was on the house too?"
"Would your father approve of you offering all this for free?"
"No," she replies, and her smirk is that of a child caught up in the thrill of doing something forbidden. "So don't tell him."
Geralt won't say a word.
She hefts up the pile of clothes and dumps them in her laundry hamper, then looks more closely at the ragged, bloodsoaked trousers. The hole ripped down the right leg is huge. "I could see about getting these repaired for you too?"
He gives her a dry look. "I think they're a lost cause."
As much as she wants to impress him with her helpfulness, she knows he's right. Shrugging, Annette dumps the trousers back into the hamper, thinking maybe they'll at least have some use as rags, then shuffles towards the door.
"I'll go to the herbalist when I can get away," she says, propping it open with her foot. "Might not be till late, but in the meantime I can try and find some fresh bandages, and I'll bring you water."
"I'd prefer wine."
"Wine, you have to pay for."
He blinks, and she chuckles at the look on his face. "Can't have everything for free, witcher."
Geralt just mumbles indistinctly, then lets his head sink back into the pillow.