Something nudges Geralt's face.
It's warm, leathery, accompanied by a puff of hot breath, and Geralt feels panic clench his stomach as he tries to hurry his brain to wake up faster.
Monster.
He doesn't know what kind. Can't even remember what happened prior to blacking out, but he flexes his fingers and tries to reach for his sword. It's difficult. Pain blooms in the back of his head and his limbs are sluggish and unresponsive. His eyes are faster. He cracks them open, narrows his pupils to focus, and finds himself looking along a brown snout covered in short fur into black eyes.
The panic fades. "Roach?"
The mare stamps a hoof, touching her nose to his face again as if checking he's awake. If he were to allow himself the foolishness of projecting human emotions onto a horse, he's say she's concerned.
What happened?
He has just long enough to wonder before he's struck with a feeling of breathlessness, the muscles in his chest constrict, then he rolls onto his side and coughs up the contents of his lungs. Brown, cloudy water splashes onto the silt beneath him. It leaves behind its foul taste in his mouth and he retches painfully several times before collapsing down into the dirt. His chest heaves.
Roach snorts softly, not leaving his side.
After a moment, Geralt wipes the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand and reaches up. He tangles his fingers into Roach's mane as she raises her long neck and helps him stand, unsteady knees struggling against the weight of waterlogged clothes and heavy armour. His other hand goes to the back of his head, and he grimaces, fingers coming away coated in blood.
There are still sparks dancing over his vision as he looks round and tries to remember. Drowners at the ford. He'd dispatched most of them quickly, but then there'd been an instant of bad footing under the water and an attack from behind, and he'd gone down. Sharp pain had erupted in his skull as he'd hit the rocks, and then blackness.
Geralt blinks and draws a heavy breath into his aching lungs. He's still beside the river. The bodies haven't yet washed away, turning the water red where they lie in the shallows for the current to rush over and carry the blood downstream. One of the corpses still has his sword buried in it, handle and crossguard protruding above the water. It has to have been the last one.
For a moment, he frowns in confusion. Even if he'd succeeded in landing the killing blow before the rocks had snatched his consciousness away, if that's where he'd gone down, he should be dead. It's out in the middle of the ford where his face would have been well and truly covered by the water. He ought to have drowned.
Geralt glances down at his own body, sees the bite marks on the leather strap from his sword belt crossing his chest, then looks at Roach. Somehow, she must have dragged him out.
He sighs and leans his face against her mane, gently petting her while she supports his weight. "Thanks, girl," he murmurs, then finally gets up the strength to pull himself back into the saddle.
Geralt rides out into the middle of the ford where he leans down to retrieve his sword before spurring the mare on, hoping to reach the next village before nightfall. He's eager to change out of his wet clothes and Roach is going to spend the night in a warm, dry stable with soft hay and all the apples she could possibly want. She's earned it.
A/N: Thanks to kittycat-cas for prompting this, the scene of Aragorn and Brego from The Two Towers for inspiring it, and the teleporting demon horse herself for just being awesome.