Summary: A sorceress contracts a witcher to capture a djinn, and everyone who has read The Last Wish collectively cringes at my lack of originality.
THE LAST WISH
VIII
Harry came tumbling out of the portal and crashed into hard ground with a mighty thud. There he laid, unmoving, breathing in and out the earthy scents of dirt and grass, of pine and conifer. He didn't need to look up to confirm that he was in the wrong place, but did so anyway, and found himself among shadows, with the still-smoking wreckage of Wezyn behind and scorched sky lingering ahead of the trees.
"Sorceress, why are we so far from—?" the witcher turned around, and the part-asked question died on his lips. Hermione was not behind him, and another look in the direction of the fires confirmed she was not ahead. Where has she gone? Harry wondered.
There were only two options as Harry saw it: they'd either run afoul of the drawbacks of rapid teleportation and had gotten separated from one another, or Hermione had not yet stepped through the portal she created moments after their close call on the promontory. A few seconds of loitering around made it quite clear to the witcher which of the two theories was correct.
When no one appeared next to him, the Bear focused on the horizon and followed red.
For a short while, he was again a child on the shores of Ard Skellig. A shaggy man with shaggy hair and a shaggy beard taught him how to sneak and stalk in the great forests Freya crafted from clay and mud, the selfsame woods that Hemdall would tear through during the time of the end, Ragh nar Roog. And the sky did look a prophecy of the Last Days, streaked with flame and shrouded in smoke as it was. He pressed on, shadowing the movements he was taught all those years ago, but the song of steel stopped the witcher short. Harry crouched low, brought a hand up to grasp his own strip of steel, and listened for the song.
It was quick, nasty, and brutal. He heard the distant elegy of a man choking on his own blood, the wheezing requiem of another with a blade through his chest, but loudest of all, he heard laboured breathing and the quick patter of bare feet toward Freya's forest, followed by heavy, thudding boots and clinking chainmail. An unarmoured man was being chased. He listened for the feet and breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the sound of rustling foliage accompanying the running man.
Harry moved to intercept the man, crossing from tree-to-tree, until he saw a dark figure grasping a gleaming longsword, catching his breath against the trunk of an old evergreen:
"Baron," he grunted, and the the dark shape jumped, pointing the sword at him. "Relax, I'm not your enemy."
Baron von Steuen stepped away from the trees, and moonlight fell through them to illuminate his face. "Aren't you?" he asked, big, curled moustache twitching with distrust.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Harry said, with genuine confusion lacing his tone. "I've been in town and on the mountain all night. What's going on?"
"What's going on? What's going on!?" the nobleman half-whispered, half-shouted. "The bloody Unicorns have lost their fucking minds is what's going on!" The sound of chainmail jingling and platemail squeaking bore down on the forest.
"Keep your voice down, they're getting closer."
"You can hardly blame me, can you?" the Baron asked, and Harry didn't answer immediately, instead motioning for the Redanian to follow him deeper into the forest:
"I don't know," said the witcher as they moved, "I don't know what's happened, and I don't yet know who to blame. So, I ask you again: what's going on?"
The Baron shook his head and frowned. "I don't know how it began, my mind's all a jumble... but we'd retired to bed, that much I know."
"And?"
"It was fine, for the first hour or two. Then the bang came, and a rage of sound that left me awake and near-deaf, Master Witcher. The men and I stumbled out of bed and out the tent, only to be left near-blind as a great white light seared my sight. Those Kaedweni whoresons pounced on us while we were vulnerable, stabbing and slashing, accusing us of terrible things. I've only escaped because my men stood in front of me, and they'll still be upon us soon."
Harry grimaced; he hadn't trusted the Kaedweni troop and the idiot sorcerer they'd brought with them, but he hadn't expected soldiers to be quite so ruthless. "Calm yourself. If they come, I'll protect you."
"Protect me?" the Baron scoffed, "these aren't nekkers or ghouls, Master Witcher, these are men, and you've precious little experience with our ilk."
"Silver or steel, a monster is a monster, Baron. Men are simply crueler than most." Harry drew the Zerrikanian sabre that had served him so faithfully for so long, and listened again.
"What is it, Master Witcher?"
"They're nearing," said Harry. "It might be best to make a stand here."
Jackbooted thugs garbed in their national yellow drew perilously close, pushing deeper and deeper into the forest. Harry readied the blade and cursed his luck: he had known there was tension between the Redanian and Kaedweni camps, but he hadn't thought it could boil over so quickly. Sirius had warned him about the perils of getting involved in political scrapes, and Harry had blundered right into a mess all because a pretty elf had asked him to. What a fool he'd been to join this expedition.
The figures stalked out from the shadows, swords a bloody contrast to the witcher's clean steel. "Witcher," one of them said with authority. "Stand aside. This man and his crew attacked us; the sorcerer will confirm it. Justice must be served."
A lie, a poor one at that; Harry did not need superhuman senses to see it. He made a show of looking at the Baron, dressed in smallclothes and a rumpled nightshirt, then at the four armoured men who surrounded them in a semicircle.
"Do you honestly think me that stupid?" he asked.
The leader of Kaedwenis blinked. "I don't follow."
"You're wearing armour."
Teeth gnashed but for a moment. "We don't have time for this. Kill them both."
His men surged forward like a great golden wave, and Harry pushed back toward the Baron. "How long has it been since you've killed a man?" he asked the Baron, as the Kaedwenis closed distance cautiously.
"Too long," replied the Redanian, with a rueful smile. "The perils of command, I'm afraid."
The Unicorns continued their slow, relentless march, coming closer, and closer, unmindful of the danger. The witcher held his blade, eyes on the Kaedwenis, ears to the forest to listen for reinforcements quick in the coming. Five feet, that was what he wanted. Five feet. And the instant booted feet crossed that invisible threshold, he pounced. His fingers crossed, the sign was made, and a great gust of wind emerged from his hand with the strength of a sigh, and hit the encroaching soldiers with the force of a battering ram.
It may have been a long time since he killed a man, true, but Harry suspected even the indolent and good-natured baron could press an advantage when he had one. Both witcher and baron closed the distance as their quarry stumbled back. In a whirlwind, there was a leg sliced, an arm cut, a man stabbed, and an incredible feat of accuracy aimed at soft flesh between cuirass and sallet that hacked a head clean off. Four men lay, either grievously wounded, or dead, but there was little time to rest.
"Baron," said the witcher seriously. "I hear more coming. Run. Run beyond the town toward the forest and the mountains. Call for a girl named Sylvie; she may not look it, but she's harmless. If you tell her I sent you, she'll lead you someplace safe."
The Baron looked conflicted, torn between aiding the man who had risked his life for him, and saving himself. But there was no honour in both of them dying senselessly, and there was nothing more fearsome than a witcher's scowl.
So Baron von Steuen ran. He ran as far as fleet feet could take him, and left the witcher to face down a growing mob of soldiers. He faced down there were at least seven other Kaedweni soldiers, not including Master Dorcan, who brought up the rear. Hard odds, but not impossible, due to the bomb Harry fingered underneath the leg slit of his traditional bear school kaftan. Devil's Puffball, a monstrously difficult bomb to procure reagents for, and even harder to craft, but it was a witcher's last resort. Dropping this bomb would release a cloud of poison potent enough to choke any normal man caught within it do death, but not so strong to fell a witcher before he could escape its grasp.
Dorcan stepped out from behind his men, a frown to match the witcher's own on his lips. "You've killed Kaedweni soldiers, Witcher. This is a serious crime." Harry almost laughed at that:
"This is a farce," he replied. "All the Redanians dead, the Baron in smallclothes while you lounge in your armour, and you expect me to believe they attacked you?"
"Fine, don't believe it. I didn't expect you to. But I had expected a witcher, bastion of neutrality and greed as you are, to let things take their natural course and not play the hero," Dorcan said, stepping forward. "But then again, you can't trust a witcher to act rationally. Mutants, thieves, rapists, cannibals... they say so many charming things about your lot."
"Keep still," the witcher warned. "Wouldn't want to get eaten, would you, Master Dorcan?"
"Please, you're surrounded. You'd not even come close to it."
"I'll remember that when I'm tearing the skin off your bones."
Dorcan's lips pulled back, revealing a smile as unpleasant as his demeanour. "I'll ask you only once: where is that Redanian?"
"And I'll remember you fondly when I suck the marrow from them," Harry continued, blissfully unmindful of the Kaedweni leader's question. To his credit, Dorcan did not shout, or growl, or lunge, as Harry might have expected him to. Instead he drew himself up regally, and looked to a familiar man with coals for eyes and a face streaked with the blood of innocent Redanians:
"I bore of this. We'll get it out of him, one way or another. Take him."
There was no time for the soldiers to move, only a flash, and then green, suffocating gas all around them. Harry stumbled away from the cloud that erupted around the rogue Kaedweni soldiers before it could reach him, and smiled grimly at the sound of hacking, coughing, and wheezing from within the green. Maybe he wouldn't tear the flesh off Dorcan's bones, but he would have to settle for leaving the man to choke on his own blood.
He heard the footsteps just beyond the edge of the tiny clearing where he'd butchered the Kaedwenis for their crimes, and turned. There stood Viktor, looking unharmed, Hermione, her expression unreadable as a stone statue, and Lockhart behind them, with that same dumb smile he'd seen the sorcerer wearing so many times. The three looked among each other, and Hermione nodded, striding forward to Harry, while Lockhart made his way to the cloud of dying Unicorns and blew the gas away with a wave of the hand.
Harry looked over. Some were dead. Dorcan and Harys still breathed, though they were weak and wheezy, with the pallor of men not long for the world. Others looked as though they had already passed, but the witcher's ears told him otherwise.
Whatever it was that Lockhart intended to do, Hermione stole Harry's attention from it, when she stretched out her hands and cupped his cheeks. "Harry Potter," she said. "Ever since Ilona told me who you really were, I've been thinking how you would pay for the service I rendered you all those years ago. And I've decided."
"What?" Harry asked, befuddled. Payment? Did the sorceress not scorn him for thinking she'd hold him in her debt only a night earlier? And when he last saw her, were they not on that collapsed promontory, on their way to help wounded soldiers? And now she was talking of payment?
"Payment, Witcher. It's time to pay the piper," she said cryptically.
"What are you talk—"
Any complaint was silenced as the sorceress's lips violently crashed into his own. His medallion jittered uncontrollably, pulsing and twisting around Harry's throat as if it were trying to strangle him. He tried to escape the kiss, but some supernatural force held him in her arms and a red haze descended over the tree tops.
The low rumble of thunder filled his senses, filled up his world with its rusted-iron din, and Harry belatedly realised he laid on the ground. A hand grasped his chin, and his head was turned to see Hermione smiling down at him through a ruby filter. There was fondness in her eyes that only served to make her look more devilish against the background:
"Are you well?" she asked.
He didn't remember speaking, but his voice rumbled out something coherent. As soon as he heard the words, they disappeared, and Harry let his head fell back to scorched earth with only the vague notion that he'd forgotten something important.
"You're a fool," Hermione said over his warring thoughts. "A brave, noble fool, but a fool nonetheless." Static electricity crackled through the air, a soft breeze picked up, carrying with it the scent of vanilla and parchment.
Calm. So calm.
"Come with me." His body acted independently of his sluggish mind and stood at the command. The breeze was stronger now. Vanilla intoxicated his senses. A chill went up his spine.
A storm's coming, he thought, and then the world went dark.
He awoke in chains, stripped naked, tied to a post. He was in a tent, and Dorcan was across from him, seated on a stool chair. There was blood. Lots of blood. Most of it came leaking from the witcher, but judging from the deep cuts in the his knuckles, at least some of it was Dorcan's.
"Surprised to see me?" Dorcan croaked, lower and more wheezing than his usual coarse growl, so the poison had at least done some harm to his throat.
"Not especially," Harry shrugged, testing out his voice. "the mages must have healed you."
"Aye. The elf saved my life, she did."
The elf. Amber eyes and vanilla invaded his senses, a memory strong enough to leave an impression on its own. Harry looked around, the obvious laid bare to him. The sorceress had betrayed him, leaving him in the hands of Dorcan, a man who risked international incident with every move he made. It was clear he'd been tortured, but all he felt was a deep, unfriendly cold in his bones. Perhaps he was still under the influence of the turncoat's magic.
"Don't worry," the Kaedweni said, "I've right tired myself out on you. Say what you will about witchers, but cutting you is like stabbing a brick wall and expecting it to cry out." Harry didn't care about the torture, another question burned far more fiercely inside him:
"Why?" he asked.
"Why, what?" Dorcan asked. "I've told you why, I feel like I've broken my bloody hands, and I'm in a mood for conversation."
"Not that," Harry said, and the other man perked up with curiosity. "Why kill the Redanians? What purpose does it serve other than further souring relations between your country and theirs?"
The bearded man laughed, long and loud. "You think this is about Kaedwen? I couldn't give a ploughing fuck about Kaedwen if I tried. I'm doing this for myself. Do you think me a monster for that?" Harry shook his head, remembering his disdain for his own fatherland:
"No. I can relate."
"Could you?" Master Dorcan asked thoughtfully. "I suppose you could. You are a warrior, after all. You understand," he continued, pointing at the various wounds pockmarking the witcher's already-scarred body. "You didn't hesitate to kill my men; you didn't hesitate to try and kill me."
"You weren't the first men I've killed," Harry said neutrally.
"Ah, yes, such flippancy. 'I am the big, bad mutant, and I've killed before.' Stop putting on airs, Witcher, we both know you're as saintly as Leboida behind those cat eyes, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. If you weren't, you would have had the sense to turn over the Redanian."
"I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, it's just a fact. I've killed men before. It's not so hard."
"Was it ever difficult? Was the first man you killed difficult?" Dorcan hacked out a cough, and looked amused, but there was genuine earnestness in his voice, so much that it even took the took the witcher aback. Harry stopped to think, a tougher task than one might have imagined, especially when contending with the last errant wisps of whatever spell Hermione had bound him with.
"The first man I killed was a bandit who ambushed me on the side of the road with two of his mates. They were dumb orphaned lads from a few towns over, enamoured with the idea of becoming mercenaries and wandering swordsmen. It was a lucky cut, right through the soft of the neck of one of them; the sight of his head flying through the air was enough to scare the other two back into the forest. Fighting a bandit's not so difficult in the moment."
Dorcan laughed bitterly. "Self-defence isn't hard, true... I had the dubious honour of being one of the soldiers at Hoare."
The witcher frowned, unsure if Dorcan was simply in a sharing mood, or if this was some form of morbid one-upmanship. "Hoare? I'm not familiar with the name."
"You wouldn't be. Dagread's been keen on keeping it quiet, but venture into the forests, and you'll find Scoia'tael gossiping about it, before they turn their arrows on you."
"What happened?"
"It was a culling," Dorcan said, a distant look in his eyes. "The menfolk somehow discovered the spirit of cross-species brotherhood, and began mixing among the elves. A generation in and more than three-quarters of the children in the town were half-elves like you."
"That would have been... fifteen years ago?" Harry asked, to a nod. "Dark times to be a half-elf in the North."
"Aye, and even darker times to secede from your country," said Dorcan. "Hoare got the idea that they were no longer part of Kaedwen due to the country's abusing nonhumans, never mind that they weren't within a hundred miles of any of our borders. We laughed at first, but when they assaulted tax collectors and census-takers, the army was called in. We marched on a surprisingly well-prepared village. They took out a few of us, but in the end, they were farmers pitting hoes and sickles against spears and swords." He shook his head. "Stupid. Did they really think one village could stand up against an entire kingdom?"
"You killed your first man there?"
"Aye. I was a new recruit, and cut down a boy no older than thirteen who charged at me with a smelting hammer."
"Was it a quick death?"
"No," said Dorcan. "No it wasn't. He kept beating the hammer against my shield and everyone around me was too taken up with their own aspiring revolutionaries to help. He was quick, but was tiring quickly. So I waited, and when he was winded, and raised that hammer slower than usual, I swiped my blade right across his belly and watched his guts come tumbling out," he continued, swallowing thickly. "You were lucky with your bandit; cutting a man's head off is a moment's work: over and done with quick. But when you disembowel a man, he dies slow, screaming for his mother... his innards are hot and sticky and Gods the smell—" he broke off, "—he was just a boy."
"You say all that, and yet there are—what, twelve? fifteen?—good Redanian men out there, butchered the same way?" Harry asked, unmoved by the other man's story.
"Do us both a favour and don't moralise, Witcher, you've nearly downed the same number single-handedly," Dorcan said with a cluck of his tongue. "It's all a question of price, anyway. They tell you that you'll make enough coin to feed and clothe your family, that you'll make friends, that you'll get out of your small corners and see the world... not once do they warn you of what they'll make you give."
"What they'll make you give," Harry repeated, not questioning but not entirely understanding either.
"What's family to a man who has killed children for his country? What's seeing the world to a lad who has seen friends die of everything from sword to disease to starvation? What's anything to that sort of man? What do you give to that sort of man?" He asked, though Harry suspected he wasn't supposed to answer.
"And your solution is gold?" Harry taunted anyway, though caution might have bade him to be quiet. "How ordinary."
"Only mutants and morons scoff at normalcy. Ordinary is good: I'll stop soldiering; I'll drink and whore until the world's bubbly, and then maybe I'll die smiling."
"S'pose it's not that bad."
"Isn't it? Not a half-bad contract I was given, innit?"
Harry shook his head, confused. "What contract?"
"Don't play dumb with me now," a tinge of dignified annoyance rose at the back of his torturer's throat. "You—never mind. The sorceress will come soon and heal your wounds. And then we'll begin again at dawn. Before you die, witcher, I will know where the Redanian, and that treasure, is."
"Don't be so sure," Harry grinned bloodily. "I did make you a promise."
Dorcan made no sign of having heard the witcher's last threat as he left the tent. Left alone, with no sense of time but an immense tiredness crashing over him, Harry soon fell back into the unconscious world.
When he next awoke, Hermione stood before him, an indescribable look on her pale face. Her hands were on his body, and a warmth flowed from them into his cold wounds, sealing them.
"You are an idiot, Witcher Harry," she said simply.
"So I am," Harry replied. "But better an idiot than whatever you are, Sorceress Hermione."
"They'll try to kill you now. You should have just given up that fool Baron. Had it been the other way around, he would have done so to you," Harry flinched at the sorceress's words. The Hermione he had known was light and airy to an extent that verged on nauseating, so unlike the tales he'd heard of sorceresses, but this sneering belle conformed to every stereotype.
"Finally, your true colours show."
The elf's eyes flashed. "Shut your mouth, you bloody fool. I am trying to save your life now that you've blundered within an inch of losing it."
"Don't play dumb, you knew what would happen. Why else would I end up in alone in a forest while you made it fine to the Etolian and Lockhart?"
Hermione shrugged, uncaring. "You are not a sorcerer. I cannot always account for what happens when someone without the power travels through a portal."
"Tell me a few more sweet little lies, you've a lovely voice for it."
"You would like the truth, then? The truth is very simple. You woke up, well after Dorcan and his brutes set about maiming you. Even now you don't feel any pain. Have you wondered why?" She gazed imperiously at him. "It's the spell I put on you. You felt no pain, I am healing you, and I will try to set you free. If that's a betrayal to you then I will let you deal with the Kaedwenis alone. Because there's a bottle with untold power in it, held in the hands of a madman, and you are getting in the way of my finding it."
"A madman? You know who took the djinn?"
"I imagine, had you the time to thoroughly investigate that sorcerer's death, you would understand as well as I do, but we've neither the time nor ability to recreate it. But you shouldn't fear, I've done your sleuthing for you."
"Have you? Then who killed the thieves?"
"Easy, but long. The answer starts well back in Oxenfurt, when we found the binding rod and the lamp in that shack by the river. I went in first, to check for any magical traps awaiting us. Do you remember?"
"I remember," said Harry; he remembered the roasted pork cooking on a spit outside of the shack more clearly than the interior of it, but he did remember.
"There was hair inside, a pretty little blond lock," Hermione continued, "and hair is—"
"—A lock of hair is very valuable to a mage, I know."
Hermione nodded, beaming in a way that seemed entirely inappropriate for the situation they were in. "Absolutely. You can do a thousand things to a man if you've a lock of his hair, the most mundane of which, of course, is to identify them by brewing a potion. That being said, the process of creating said potion is a long and arduous task that I simply hadn't the time to accomplish myself."
"So?"
"I sought out the help of one with the time to make the concoction," said the elf, curling her lip as though remembering a particularly unsavoury memory. "There's a master alchemist in service of a duke who runs a town not but a few days ride from Oxenfurt. An odious man, but he's the best at what he does."
"The wyvern contract," Harry said, realisation dawning on him. Of course she had an ulterior motive in going to that town; no one would go out of their way to help a lowly witcher.
Hermione nodded. "I didn't get a chance to use it, however. You were at my back the rest of the way to Oxenfurt, and Viktor was the same to Novigrad and beyond. The only time I was able to slip away was in the small fishing town near Ghelibol."
Harry remembered Hermione's lone sojourn into the forest when he'd gone looking for Susan's colleague. At the time, he had thought the sorceress was rather lamely attempting to spy on him, but it looked as though she'd been up to much more, instead. Quickly, Harry's suspicious nature took over.
"Why hide it all? Why not just come out and tell me?"
"I had only just met you. Why would I trust you with such sensitive information?"
"Why wouldn't you? You were the one to hire me, after all."
Hermione's tongue clicked in annoyance, suggesting the witcher had her on the defensive, and that he might get something if he pressed further. That said, it was a delicate balance, and he didn't have the luxury of interrogating the sorceress, not in the state he was. One wrong word, and Harry could convince Hermione he was a threat rather than an ally. If that happened, he was as good as dead.
"So, who did you see?" the witcher relented, living to fight another day.
"Someone that I couldn't quite believe was so diabolical, at the time," the brunette murmured cryptically. "I refused to believe it, at first. But when I saw him at that keep, I started to think otherwise. So, I planted a tracking charm on him. Nearly untraceable. Even Ilona wasn't able to detect it." Hermione abruptly fell silent, and fingered the stone that lay between her collarbones, attached to a simple black choker. The stone laid there, solid and unmoving,
There was soft thought, for a moment, scattered half-scraps of evidence committed to memory now rearranging themselves in a pattern that made sense. There was but silence and thought, and then, realisation.
"I see," said Harry. "What was the point in coming back, then?"
"Come now, isn't that one obvious?"
"To reclaim the evidence and tie off loose ends."
"As it ever was," sighed the sorceress. "So far, he's done an admirable job. If all goes well, everyone but you and the Redanians go home much happier, a great deal richer, and none wiser."
"Hurray."
"Don't pout," Hermione said, crossing her arms, "we're on the same side. I don't ally with thieves and murderers if I can help it."
"Have you a plan, then? Or am I to sit here and wait until morning?"
"I'm working on it; I don't know where he's hidden it."
"What's there to work on? Most of the Kaedwenis are poisoned and half-dead. If you break me out now and give me my swords, I'll bleed it out of him, sorcerer or no."
"Contrary to how it looks, I don't condone torture, and I certainly don't condone murder. It's not my place to judge, nor do I wish it to be. That's a job for Dumbledore and the Brotherhood of Sorcerers to do, not you or myself."
"How very witcherly of you."
Hermione ignored his quip. "I'll find out where he's hidden the damned thing. Gently. And then I'll come find you."
"And what am I to do during the long meanwhile?"
"Escape, obviously. You're a clever boy, I've no doubt you've already thought of six different ways to spirit yourself away, and I could use the distraction of you escaping to aid my own search."
"Two," said Harry.
"Two?" Hermione repeated.
"Two. I see two ways out of here, not six."
"Well," said the elf with a light smirk and an appreciative glance up-and-down his now-uninjured body, "perhaps I underestimated you after all, Master Witcher." In a swirl of fine silk robes, she turned her back on the mutant, and disappeared through the front flap of the tent. Harry looked to his right arm, tied uselessly against a wooden beam, and dislocated his shoulder. A minute later, and a hand was free. Another moment passed, as bone was reset to socket and Harry applied some of the finer uses of the igni sign on his other bindings, the ropes fell away easily. The witcher stumbled over to a table of bloodied tools, and grasped a stained, curved knife.
Darkness had fallen long ago, and Harry suspected that the hour was fast approaching midnight. Normal men wouldn't be able to see very well, and Harry had all he needed to make a convenient escape. Dorcan would be awfully disappointed come morning.
The witcher, all wounds and scrapes healed by the woman who had caused those wounds and scrapes to begin with, crouched low and stalked to the back. He stabbed the canvas with the torturer's blade, and cut down, down, until he had created a flap to match the one at the front of the tent. Instantly, the smell of wet earth and the spatter of rain kicked the flap aside.
"A storm?" Harry murmured to himself. Turning back, he looked out the front entrance once more, where the night seemed as calm as could be. "Strange." Strange indeed it was, but if it was raining outside, Harry could use the reduced visibility to his advantage. Perhaps he could even thin the ranks of any remaining Kaedwenis before completing his disappearing act.
He stepped into the rain, still aware that his armour and blades were gone, hidden away somewhere in this small complex of tents. But it was too dangerous to go in that direction now, so he'd have to improvise. There were clothes and weapons among the jewels and gold hidden away in the treasure cave, finery, but anything was better than being barefoot and naked in a thunderstorm.
So, he would start with gathering his bearings and learning exactly where they'd gone during his leave of sanity, before making his way back to the cave. Then he'd go looking for the baron, with hope the man hadn't gotten himself killed.
It wasn't particularly difficult to determine where they had taken him: the various red tents among the gold ones, and the steep drop of a mountain path into a valley, suggested that this was the original campsite the two factions had used while he, Hermione, and Viktor had been out hunting nightwraiths. Good, he thought, need to go north, back toward Wezyn.
And he did exactly that, keeping toward the trees and away from the light of the camp. The rain had kept all the Unicorns in their barracks, huddled away from the rain, unwilling to venture out and even patrol the area. Harry counted his blessings and disappeared into the green There, he avoided the soft earth and stepped on hard, rocky tree roots and risked cutting his feet to minimise the chance of his tracks being discovered. Fortunately, with the rain coming down as it was, any tracks left behind were likely to be washed away come morning, so Harry didn't worry himself too much over the prints he left behind.
The forest undulated and steepened the further he went into it, and Harry felt a strange mixture of elation and disappointment: elation that he had gotten away from the Kaedwenis, and disappointment that it had been so easy to escape.
Eventually, the earth straightened out, and Harry passed by the burned-out hovels of what used to be a sleepy mountain village, now silent as the grave its once-inhabitants were unceremoniously buried in. Soon, the witcher came upon the graves and stopped a moment to smile grimly at the continued quiet, and then moved on.
By the time he reached the cave, he was soaked, tired, and a nearly impaled by a glittering spear.
"Witcher?" a familiar voice said in the darkness. It was the Baron, dressed in traditional Redanian finery. "Why are you naked?"
"It's a boring story," Harry replied tersely. "Have you seen armour or weapons here?"
"There are plenty of swords and axes to be found. Armour, however? Nothing particularly useful among the whole lot. It's all gilded, ceremonial shite that'll crush inward at first blow from a mace. There a some clothes like mine over by that gaudy throne, a pair of boots by the chest of pearls, and I'd not doubt there are some trousers stitched from mermaid hair or some such. None that are really battle-worthy, however."
Harry was off immediately, venturing into the antechamber, and finding all the Baron had indicated (though the trousers had been made of sturdy leather, rather than mermaid hair), he slipped them all on. And, among the piles of gold, he found a particularly well-made sword in the Ofieri style, which was none too different from the Zerrikanean one he'd left behind.
The Baron, patriotic as ever, was all smiles when he saw the witcher emerge in the garb of his people. "Ah," he mused while making a show of inspecting Harry, "it's quite a good look on you, Master Witcher. Shave the sides of your head, and cut that mop down, and I'd make a Redanian out of you yet." The witcher smiled back, tightening the sash around his waist. For once, regal dress didn't require a doublet that choked him, nor trousers that were impossible to move in. Perhaps the Redanians had it right.
But this wasn't a time for levity, no matter how dearly they wished it to be. "How did you find your way here?" Harry asked.
"Why," said the nobleman, "your friend here showed me the way."
As if on cue, a great ball of black smoke drifted into the room, and phased into the form of a giggling young girl. She laughed and waved fondly at Harry, who returned the gesture genially:
"Hey Sylvie," he greeted, "thanks for taking care of him; I'll take it from here."
The shadowy form nodded, and then wagged its finger in mock disapproval. Harry wondered why the child would do such a thing, and then it hit him. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten my promise. Once this is done, we'll play."
Seemingly satisfied, Sylvie returned to her natural form and drifted out from the antechamber.
"Delightful child," said the Baron. "Are most spirits like her?"
"Sadly, no."
"Huh. A shame," the other man said, and then promptly changed subject: "But, what do we do now?"
"We must wait. The thief I met on the mountain had been murdered, with the djinn stolen by the time we finished cleansing Wezyn of the angry spirits, and the sorceress reckons she knows who took it."
"She does? Who was it?"
"The second thief, of course: Gilderoy Lockhart."
"The dowdy sorcerer that came with us?"
"The very same."
"You're having me on, aren't you?" the Baron exclaimed with a disbelieving laugh. "The man's a moron."
"A man need not be intelligent to be a ruthless murderer."
"True enough, I suppose. The magical types are always more conniving than they let on," said the nobleman, to no disagreement from the witcher. "Well, then... what are we to do?"
"Hermione seems adamant the man's gotten hold of the flask which contains our wish-granter, but that he's gone and hidden it somewhere. She says she'll try to find wherever that hiding place is, and come to us once she's found the bloody thing. I imagine we'll sneak right out from under their noses once that's done."
"That easy, is it? Lady Hermione is still alive and in the company of those murderers for a reason; can you really trust her?"
"Probably not. I don't trust her any more than I do Lockhart. It's an alliance of convenience, or desperation, mores like. A portal is, ironically, our safest way out from here, since they're guarding a bottleneck area of the pass. So we'll have to hope the sorceress comes through."
Both men laughed.
"Putting our faith in a sorceress?" the Baron said mirthfully. "We really are at our rope's end, aren't we?"
Hermione did not come in the night. Nor did she come at a dawn obscured by clouds and downpour. By midmorning, Harry worried for her safety. The Baron was no better: "We ought to go back; that lass is our only way out of here, and if she's dead, we're dead."
Soon enough, Harry agreed. So Harry found himself traversing the valley once more, this time with with clothes to protect him from the rain and a companion to watch his back as they made their latest trek back through the forest.
They heard the clash only as the oaks and sycamores thinned.
The witcher stopped first, and Baron von Steuen followed suit nearly immediately. They listened, and the song of steel came whispering, carried on the wind and through the leaves:
"A skirmish?" asked The Baron, his words punctuated by distant shouts from the belligerents.
"Possibly," replied the witcher, "the yellow-bellies are after the gold in the cave. Cutthroats are like to turn on each other for that sort of treasure."
"Good," growled the nobleman with venom. "Those scoundrels butchered good men for that treasure, good Redanian men. May they choke on their steel."
When they reached the edge of the wood, the two interlopers did not quite stumble onto the civil war they'd been expecting. There was a skirmish, to be sure, but Dorcan's men did not cannibalise each other, as Baron von Steuen might have hoped. Instead, they ganged up on a solitary figure wreathed in black fur, and nursing an abdominal wound.
It was Viktor. He fought back nobly, viciously, but Harry smelled the truth of the matter, as he always did. He had the scent of a mortally wounded wolf, growling and snapping in vain hope that their fierce struggle might postpone their death throes a moment longer.
"We should help," said The Baron, though Harry suspected he cared far more about avenging his fallen comrades than rescuing the Etolian.
"We should," agreed Harry, as three of the Kaedwenis, Dorcan standing just behind, advanced on Viktor, "but it would have to be quick. Another cut like that, and the sorceress's man is as good as dead."
"Feel free to attack, then; I'll follow your lead," replied the Baron quickly.
Harry wasted no time, darting out from the treeline back toward the tents, with the Redanian following close behind. No words needed to be said; the plan was simple: they'd circle around and attack the Kaedweni soldiers from behind, and Harry had the perfect entry point in mind.
He bid the Baron wait in the secluded area behind the makeshift barracks, and pulled back the slit canvas of the tent he'd escaped from the night before, and peeked inside. A small grin played unbidden at his lips, for a man sat on a rickety three-legged stool inside, back facing the witcher, too enthralled with the clash outside to turn around. It was Harys, the seedy-looking, capable scout from when the established crew made their first sojourn into this accursed valley.
As he gripped the knife stolen from that very marquee, the faintest sense of pity washed over the witcher over killing someone as skilled as this man in such a cowardly manner. But then he heard the man chuckle lowly at the mayhem as though at a mumming, and Harry's traitorous sense of mercy fled over hill and dale, leaving him only with grim resolve.
It was easy to sneak up on the man; for all his skill as a tracker, no man of natural means could hear a witcher step up to them, and no man of natural means could easily match a witcher's strength when the mutant wrapped strong arms round his neck and pulled him out from the stool he was sitting on. Harys didn't have but a moment to struggle before the blade in the witcher's free hand jabbed through the soft flesh of his throat and pulled sideways. A gout of blood sprayed forward, and the scout gurgled something, maybe a warning to his comrades, but it was never loud enough for them to hear.
The witcher dropped the body, poked his head out from the back-end of the tent and recalled the Baron. The elder man spat on the still body, and then grimaced at all the tools laid out on the table:
"Murderers, robbers, treasonous scum, and now torturers, too," he said, "their existence is an affront to the gods."
Harry said nothing; they stepped in Harys' draining lifeblood as they made their way toward the other exit.
Outside the torture tent, the whirlwind of steel continued. Viktor had permanently downed two men and relieved another of his arm, who lay on the ground in shock, but the Etolian was still outnumbered two-to-one, and Dorcan still skulked behind them, waiting to finish the job in case his last men did not:
"Just give up," he said, as Harry and the Baron peeked out from the front exit of the marquee. "Lockhart already knows what your whore is planning; she's as good as dead, and you're injured. If you give up, and help us find that fucking witcher and the Redanian, we'll give you cut of the treasure and you'll live the rest of your life like a king."
Viktor blocked a blow, side-stepped another, and strafed out of the way from a second barrage. The Kaedweni men stopped attacking for just a moment, so as to give the Etolian time to think:
"I heff killed two of your men. Maimed one more. Vy should I believe you vill show me mercy?" he asked, gripping his own wound.
Dorcan stroked his bearded chin and his lips curled into a vulpine grin. "They're dead. And the other one is close. If he survives, then he gets a cut. But I have little doubt that you'll injure or kill what's left of my people before I have to put you down. I'd like to avoid further bloodshed."
Harry crept out from the tent, and caught Viktor's eye as he moved toward Dorcan, kilij drawn and ready to cut the moment he got in arm's reach.
"And you are asking me to betray the woman I svore myself to for this?" Viktor's eyes moved away from Harry's form quickly, so as not to alert the bearded cutthroat that death encroached on him.
"It's not betrayal if she's already dead," said the Kaedweni. "Lockhart took her up the mountain pass," he continued with a finger pointed in the direction of another one of the many peaks that ringed the valley. "He knows she conspired in the witcher's escape. He knows she wants whatever's in that bottle for herself, and used that to lure her up all alone. In all likelihood, he's shot that elven bitch in the back with some explosion hex the moment they were out of earshot."
Harry came closer, closer, but as he got within seven feet, he heard hysterical huffing nearby.
"Kronay," Dorcan identified the noise, which came from an armless man on the ground. "What is it?"
His bloodied stump pulled up, and pointed behind the Kaedweni leader, right at the witcher. Harry grimaced, and drove his sword straight for Dorcan's back, but he felt steel clanging against his own, and Dorcan dove away. The unicorn crashed into the ground and quickly scrambled up to his knees, with a familiar curved blade held defensively in front of him.
"That's my sword," said the witcher.
Dorcan looked up and laughed, before waving the blade shortly. "It's quite a good blade, but you seem to have found adequate armaments."
"It's alright," replied the witcher, "but I'll be sure to take mine back once I separate you from your head."
"Still trying to kill me, eh, witcher? Have you nothing better to do?"
"I made you a promise," Harry replied just as the Baron came up to stand side-by-side with the witcher.
"And you, Etolian, are you with them or us?"
Viktor snorted. "Them. Did you think I vould betray my employer like that? I am not an honourless dog like yo-"
Dorcan spat in annoyance. "Oh, fuck you and get on with it. I have no patience for pompous lectures." He stood, and the two men who had been clashing with Viktor, drew back-to-back with their commander in a triangular, three pronged phalanx.
"I vould be glad to," said Viktor. "But, first, Witcher."
Harry said nothing, but glanced up at the fur-wrapped Etolian to indicate he was listening.
"Go find Lady Hermione, if vat this kusse says is true, she needs your help more than ve do."
"You'll be outnumbered and injured."
The Baron interrupted, this time. "Two on three? Hardly outnumbered."
"I heff already defeated three of them with this vound. Three more is nothing. Go."
Harry sighed, but Viktor was right. No matter how badly he wanted to be the one to finish Dorcan off, Hermione, if still alive, was locked in a much more dangerous struggle than a few men with swords could ever be. With a grimace, he shuffled backward, away from the fracas. Just as he was about to turn his back on them, Dorcan's voice cut through the bitter chill of the rain:
"Running away, are you? I thought you were a warrior!" The soldier laughed loudly, throwing his arms up in a mocking gesture. The witcher's dispassionate gaze fell upon the Kaedweni, and he curled his fingers into a complicated twist. Nothing could be seen, but they felt a dark power skirt by them, like an arrow that had just missed target.
Something heavy and metal clattered against the few stone pebbles under a deluge of muddy water, and that took everyone's eyes off the witcher. Next to Dorcan, one of his soldiers had dropped his sword, and stood, limp-shouldered.
"Regan?" The other infantryman asked his suddenly-unresponsive friend. "Pick up yer sword, yeh blithering idiot!"
But Regan didn't pick up his sword. He merely looked up at his comrade and to his commander with a dopey smile and a far-away stare in his tarry eyes; then his arms stiffened and lowered to the belt he kept his weapons on. They watched as a hand, garbed in a lobstered gauntlet, grasped a bone-handled knife notched on the belt just adjacent to his sword's scabbard, and drew it with a flourish.
Dorcan looked back to the witcher, whose unnatural gold stare bore into his own, and they both knew what was to come:
"Infantryman!" Dorcan shouted wildly, "Drop the knife and pick up your sword! We've Redanians to kill!"
Again, his man did not listen, but stared at his own reflection in the polished mirror sheen of the dagger he held. Dorcan made to lunge at Regan, but stopped short, and was forced to parry a lethal strike from Viktor. The other infantryman tried the same, and faced the same resistance from Baron von Steuen. And in that time, Regan stopped admiring the blade, and positioned it for a killing blow. With necrophage speed, the bewitched man drove the blade into his own flesh, where the jaw and throat met. Though he gurgled, and blood quickly poured from his mouth, the faraway look never left his eyes, and he never once appeared to be in pain, from the time he stabbed himself, to the moment he collapsed to the ground, unmoving.
When Dorcan and the witcher next met eyes, there was wild terror in the bearded man's eyes, and a newfound understanding of what kind of monster he had been tempting with his taunts and torture. In truth, Harry's actions disgusted himself as much as it did his enemies, but he would gain no advantage from humanising himself only moments after doing something so inhuman.
"As I said, Master Dorcan," said the witcher, feigning disinterest as he turned away, "killing a man's not so hard."
"Witcher!" shouted the commander, but Harry ignored him:
"It's two-on-two now, Viktor. I like those odds."
And like that, the air filled with the sudden metallic screech of battle, and the iron grunting of men an inch from death. But the cacophony faded as Harry retreated up the pass, and turned down a side path, where a great mountain loomed in the distance.
Up above barbed cliffs and treacherous, crumbling paths, Harry found Hermione alive, well, and in conversation with Lockhart near the peak of the mountain. They stood in what appeared to be a circular patch of mostly level ground, surrounded by a half-circle of rows and rows of stone seats cut into the side of the mountain. Harry stopped and flattened himself against a high wall before they saw him. He had come with every intention of helping Hermione defeat a murderous sorcerer, but now seeing them speak candidly, those old doubts arose and he found himself eavesdropping rather than interfering.
"What a shame," the golden-haired man clucked his tongue in mock disappointment. "Isn't that a great shame, Lady Hermione? Surely you didn't think I'd simply leave you alone with the witcher without some way of knowing what you were discussing."
The woman in question sneered at Lockhart. "Indeed," she said insincerely.
"That's your problem, Hermione, you think smarter than everyone else around you," he said, his mocking edge replaced with rising anger. "But maybe you're right; I fell into your trap: I've killed friends, soldiers, and much more for your vanity, haven't I?"
Hermione's expression went dead. "Don't go convincing yourself you're the hero in all this."
Harry squinted in confusion. He felt like like there was something he was missing or had just missed, as though he'd walked into a tavern looking for a drink and a conversation about politics, but instead stumbled on two scholars debating the merits of participatory economics.
"What, and you are? Don't make me laugh," Lockhart's voice had lost all of its typical jaunty humour now.
"Near as I can tell, I've not murdered anyone. You, on the other hand... murder, torture, theft. You're quite the monster, Gilderoy."
There was silence: an uncomfortable, long silence while Lockhart stood alone with his thoughts. Hermione gave him the space to do so. "Don't play games," he said, after a time. "I may be a monster, but you're a wolf like the rest of us."
Harry cursed under his breath. All he could understand were half-utterances and phrases that had secret, double meanings to them. They were speaking in riddles, and he was woefully unequipped to make sense of them. So, he stepped out from behind the wall, and made his way toward the two figures. As he approached, sword drawn, Lockhart turned on him with a beaming white smile:
"Ah, Witcher, how good of you to join us!" he greeted jovially, gesturing from himself, to Hermione, to Harry. "Am I to assume that this means my entourage are... no longer of this world?"
"As good as." Harry shrugged, as he left the jagged path and joined the two on level ground.
"You were supposed to let me deal with this," Hermione said, her tone curiously accusing for someone who was supposed to be in danger. "This would have ended without bloodshed."
"You took too long. And you should be thankful, had the Baron and I not come when we did, Viktor would have been killed facing six men alone." Hermione fell quiet at the witcher's rebuke, fiddling with the hem of her jacket instead, and Lockhart took advantage of the silence:
"Witcher," he addressed Harry again. "Do you know where we stand right now?"
"No, and I don't care."
"I know you witchers take delight in your boorishness and martial skill alone, but do humour me for a moment," sniped the sorcerer, clearly irked. "Will you do that for me?"
Harry bowed, so as to indicate Lockhart could go on, but he kept his sword in hand as an unspoken warning.
"One-thousand years ago, these mountains were covered with elven towns and cities, all centres of learning and the arts for everyone to partake in. Noble, isn't it?" he said, with the false air of someone who had great affection for the arts. Perhaps this was why Hermione snorted in amusement, and drew a baleful glare from her magical compatriot. "This particular place, was a theatre." he finished, pointing at the carved stone steps elevated above them.
"Fascinating," drawled Harry.
"It's especially appropriate that this story ends here, considering what a mummer's farce it's been."
"How do you figure?"
"Why, ask your darling sorceress!"
And so, Harry did exactly that. "What on earth is he talking about?"
"Go on, Lady Hermione."
"I'm not sure what he's talking about, Master Witcher," replied Hermione. There was defiance in her eyes.
An ugly smile overtook Lockhart's handsome face; in that moment, he and Lucius Malfoy appeared as brothers. A hand reached into his robes, and pulled out a bottle with a bright, silvery substance swirling inside it. Hermione's eyes widened:
"How?" she murmured, half in awe, and half in terror.
"As I said, darling Hermione," he spat her name with disgust. "You're not as smart as you think you are. It only took a few spells to fool the great Hermione Granger, perhaps I really could outwit Dumbledore himself!"
"So that's it, is it?" Harry asked. "You had the djinn on you the whole time?"
"I did, actually. But we're straying. Hermione knows exactly what I'm talking about. And she's best tell you; if I don't hear the right answer, then I uncork this bottle, and we three take a wild ride at the spirit's mercy. Do you understand?" He didn't wait for Hermione to nod or shake her head. "Now, tell it true, who stole the spirit inside this bottle from Ban Ard?"
"You, of course."
"And who convinced me to steal it?" his grin widened, and his teeth managed to glint even in the rain.
Hermione closed her eyes, and breathed out, before answering, "I did."
Time seemed to slow. Harry turned to Hermione, an unasked question on his lips and a genuine look of sorrow etched into her countenance. And Gilderoy Lockhart laughed long and loud into the storm.
A/N: Hey there, been a while! Once again, the chapter length got away from me. There's only about 4-5000 words left in this arc, but I didn't want to release another mammoth 15,000 word chapter, purely because I feel it's a chore to read something that long on one page. There has been some restructuring to the plot in the time I've been away, so there's likely going to be another arc in Novigrad (that will bring the HP trio altogether for the first time) slotted in before "Aen Saevherne", which was supposed to be the arc after TLW.
Chapter Notes:
The Spell: Some book-readers might recognise Hermione's 'kiss' spell that she uses on Harry. This is almost the exact same spell Yen uses on Geralt in the canon "The Last Wish", except Yen used her power over Geralt to embarrass him and the people who mistreated her in Rinde, while Hermione essentially uses it to roofie Harry into submission.
Thanks for reading,
Geist.