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It was almost laughable, how big Letho was for a viper.
They tended to be slender and discreet, yet here he was, half a mountain of a witcher, standing with his bald head to the wind, scowling as Adri joined him in the middle of a small clearing South of absolutely nowhere.
It was difficult to pass messages between witchers on the Path, but not impossible, and it had taken Adri almost a week to make the walk to the designated place, but there was nothing that would have stopped her from coming here. Letho had said that he needed her help, and so she had come to offer it.
“What is it?” she asked as she approached and his expression got more somber.
He put his weight on one leg, then the other, then uncrossed his arms, before muttering. “Not here. And took you long enough.”
Adri rolled her eyes but followed him out of the clearing, into the treeline.
She didn’t get in touch with any of her fellow vipers – it was better to be discreet, especially when she was involved – but it wasn’t the first time someone had called for her. It was the first time Letho was looking so stressed though, and that had her on high alert, ready for an attack or worse.
Ready for bad news.
Letho took them to a very small cascade that made just enough noise so they were sure that their conversation would stay between them, not that Adri feared about meeting anyone. She was pretty sure that if they walked just half an hour farther from civilization, they’d stumble upon a dragon or something.
“You know a wolf, right?”
She frowned, and mirrored Letho by crossing her arms. “I’ve met a few wolves over the years, why?”
“The one with the scar,” he pressed, sounding impatient and looking like he’d rather be pulling his teeth out than be talking about this.
“Yeah, I know that guy.” She had told Mattia about it, who had been on his way to join Warritt, but vipers loved to gossip more than they loved to assassinate, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that Letho had heard about it. What was surprising was that he would bring it up.
She didn’t say anything though, knowing that it would drive him crazy until he finally said what he had to say. She wasn’t feeling particularly patient either, but he had made her come all this way and it better not be for some bullshit reason about something that had happened a long time ago.
What was it that she had told Mattia anyway? That a few bandits had tried to attack another witcher and she had helped? She sure as fuck hadn’t gone into any detail – for a few months, she had had nightmares about his pale and inert body with half of his face cut and gushing blood at the same pace as his heartbeats. It had been horrible, to have to pull him after her, knowing that she was making some of his wounds worse, but there had been no other solution – not when they were both covered in his blood, and her hands were shaking too much to have a tight grip and he was at least a head and a half taller than her, more than twice her weight.
Gods knew she had tried everything, until she had thought that they were far enough – and then she had had to force her hands to be steady while she had gotten her sewing kit out, and had tried to do the best that she could with whatever was left of his right cheek.
She forced herself not to think about it – about him. About his pale face, his surprised laugh, his gruff voice or the way he twitched while he slept right next to her through the night – not an enemy, but far from an ally.
He couldn’t have done anything else even if he had wanted, but Adri knew that had their roles been reversed, she wouldn’t have let herself just be this vulnerable next to him. Wouldn’t have just let him take care of her for a week straight.
“Alright!” snapped Letho, abruptly bringing her back to the present moment. “You need to promise not to get mad at me Riya.”
He was potentially the last person left in this whole world to call her that, and she pursed her lips as she nodded. She liked Letho, so she’d hear him out.
“Okay, so there’s this other witcher that I know, and he’s a cat.”
Adri couldn’t help the way her eyebrow lifted, and she suddenly remembered that Letho couldn’t see the full force of her surprised look, so she reached up to grab her viper pin, and unpinned her shawl, letting the fabric fall away to reveal her face.
Letho groaned. “Don’t make this face please.”
“I can’t not get mad and keep a straight face. It’s one or the other. Now tell me about this cat.”
“Ugh, fine. So there’s this cat that I’ve known for a little while and sometimes we walk the Path together, you know, just like you did with that wolf.”
“I killed eleven guys while he was watching, that’s all I’ve ever done with him.”
I haven’t fucked him, was what she wanted to say, but watching Letho’s ears turn red would suffice for now.
“Whatever. I’ve been walking the Path for a few weeks with this cat, until a week and a half ago when we stumbled across something very horrific.” His eyes got more serious, and he shifted, turning to look at the cascade, his left profile facing her. She knew it was bad just from the line that appeared on his forehead, but nothing could have prepared her for what he said. “Those guys… they had a witcher slave.”
It was like a punch in the stomach. She lost her breath, could only stare with horror at Letho’s profile as he chewed on his lower lip.
“He couldn’t tell us all the details as some were fuzzy, but basically he was left for dead for a while before those people found him and kept him half famished for months. He...” His voice wobbled, and he cleared his throat. “Riya, the signs were all here. All the stuff you used to say about signs of torture and...”
He stopped talking, but words were useless when he turned his head to meet her gaze.
She had been a slave too, several lifetimes ago, before being sold to the Viper School. She had taught all the vipers that would listen about signs of a slave. They took human contracts, but she made it a point to have everyone be absolutely sure that whoever they were killing wasn’t just forced into doing whatever they were doing. It wouldn’t free all the slaves in the world, but if it could even save one…
“Is he a wolf?” she asked, her voice unwavering despite the knot in her throat.
Letho shook his head. “He’s a cat, like an older brother to Gaetan,” his cat, she guessed, “but he used to walk the Path with a wolf. He said they were together when he was attacked and left for dead, and wanted to know if he was still alive.”
“Did he give you a name?”
Letho shook his head, and turned back to face her.
“Will you help?”
“Doing what? I have access to the same resources as you,” she said, feeling defensive when he raised his eyebrows at her. “Don’t make this face at me. And where are those cats anyway?”
“Hiding. Aiden – that’s his name – is still too wounded to move.” He had the gall to look embarrassed for a second. “Gaetan didn’t want you to meet us at the abandoned house we use.”
Adri sighed heavily, because while she could already feel a headache arrive, she also couldn’t walk away from this, not without knowing more and at least trying to help.
“Lead the way and never let a cat say that I’m in any way dangerous in these kinds of situation.”
“No worries, I told him you were the perfect person to call.”
***
Adri had put her shawl back, so that most of her face was hidden. She didn’t need to do that, not when they didn’t meet a single soul on their way, but old habits died hard, and she felt more comfortable like that anyway.
A cat was waiting for them with suspicious eyes and crossed arms on the threshold of the tiny wood house hidden among the trees.
“That’s Gaetan,” announced Letho as Adri stopped walking, understanding the need to seize an unknown stranger when a friend was hurt.
The cat looked her up and down, still suspicious, so she took her shawl off entirely, letting it fall on her shoulders as she shook her loose curls into a more pleasing form. He nodded at this, and took a step back into the house, waiting for Letho and Adri to walk in before he closed the door.
The inside was as bare as the outside. It was only one tiny room, with a large fireplace, a square table and a pile of furs that held a too thin, too pale, too wounded witcher.
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. Letho had been right. The signs of torture were clearly visible on him, and her stomach revolted when she took a step closer to him and realized that his right eye was covered with a bloody bandage.
“I’m Adri,” she said, voice barely wobbling. “I’m a friend of Letho’s.”
The hurt cat moved, barely, to meet her eyes with his good one, and she immediately joined his side, unable to stop herself when her entire rib cage was hurting with what she could read in his eye.
“She knows what she’s doing,” murmured Letho, probably to that cat of his, but Adri wasn’t paying any attention to them.
She opened all of the pouches on her belt, taking out small vials with expertise, laying them down on the furs between her knees and the other witcher’s hip.
“I’m Aiden,” he whispered, voice weak and wreaked. “Nice meeting you.”
“Nice meeting you too,” she replied, turning around and grabbing the clean piece of cotton Letho was already holding out, knowing how she worked without her saying a single word after all those years. “I heard you’re looking for a wolf.”
He gave a sound of agreement as she broke the piece of fabric into small compresses and soaked one with the content of the first vial she had taken out and put down in front of her.
“The guys say you know one, with a huge scar.”
“Yeah,” she breathed, taking away the bandage over his eye, her heart dropping somewhere down her stomach. She had to swallow the weight lodged in her throat as Gaetan behind her made some wounded and soft noise – the kind of noise that hurt just to hear.
“Can you see out of this eye?” she asked.
“Nah,” replied Aiden, trying for an amused smirk and failing miserable. “Haven’t for a while.”
“Close both eyes,” she said, before pressing the potion soaked compress against his hurt eye, prepared for the way he hissed in pain.
“Fucking damn, that doesn’t feel good,” he groaned, voice breaking on the last syllable.
“I don’t know if I can save your eye, but it’s worth a shot to try,” she replied, leaving the compress there and grabbing another vial and another piece of fabric, eyes roaming over his body, trying to decide what to work on next.
He was in his underwear, and the damage done to his body was overwhelming.
“I’ve met him twice,” she said as she patted at the open wound on his left knee with an alcohol soaked piece of fabric. “The wolf,” she added when Aiden opened his good eye again to send her a look. She tried for a smile but it felt flat and wrong. “His name is Eskel.”
She shouldn’t have remembered his name, she knew. He wasn’t the first witcher she met on the Path – there was this Epic Summer of Manticors, as she liked to call it, and she had never bothered with their names, but for some reason she had remembered his.
“I’ve heard of him,” rasped Aiden as she moved on to other wounds, trying to prevent infection.
He should have been burning up, but his skin was clammy and slightly cold and that worried her more than anything else.
“I’m looking for his brother.”
That made her blink, but her hands kept working over his legs. She moved so she could reach his ankles – both had been broken at some point, she could just tell. The schools of witchers weren’t in contact with each other but rumors ran wild, and she had heard stuff about the wolfs being weird and sentimental, but she hadn’t thought that there was a lot of truth to that. She felt loyalty to her own school too, after all they were all made of the same thing, but to think of them as her siblings… that took it maybe a little too far.
But then again, apparently Gaetan and Aiden were thinking the same of each other, so maybe the vipers were the strange ones.
“What’s his name?” she asked as he very softly moaned in pain when she got to work on the soles of his feet.
He had probably ran barefoot in the forest and through some glass, but someone had thankfully taken care of the shards.
“His name’s Lambert. We’ve known each other for about three decades now.”
“Tell me about him,” she said as she switched to his other foot.
He started talking, affection loud in his voice, as she worked as best as she could.
***
Aiden was asleep after a brutal session of rebreaking and resetting a few bones followed by some potions and forcing bread and some cheese down his throat. Gaetan was looking pale, and even Letho was shook as the three of them sat close to the fire and ate a little bit too.
“So,” whispered Gaetan, sitting close enough to Letho that he was practically in his lap, not that the viper seemed to mind, quite the contrary, “will you help him?”
“Haven’t I been doing that?” she replied, raising an eyebrow.
“I mean finding his Lambert. Letho said you have your ways.”
Adri had to send the other viper a death glare at that.
“Letho has no idea what the hell he’s talking about,” she hissed between her teeth as the viper’s ears turned red but he still met her eyes.
“Cut it out Riya,” he said, and she didn’t miss the way Gaetan put his hand on Letho’s knee at that. “We both know if there’s someone capable of finding him, it’s you. You have your thing.”
“My thing isn’t that easy and it’s not to be used lightly.”
“But you have it!”
“I need way more than just a name and a profession anyway.”
“Aiden says the guy is always at some keep in the Blue Mountains during winter.”
“Ah, so you want me to go to their Keep! That sounds like a great plan.” She rolled her eyes, just to make sure they understood that it was sarcasm, in case her tone wasn’t enough. “Why don’t the two of you go, huh?”
“I need to make sure he survives this,” scowled Gaetan.
“And let me guess, you need to stay here with him,” she told Letho, gesturing at the cat still patting his knee and sitting against his side.
Letho frowned but didn’t say anything.
“Must I remind you that the wolves, just like the vipers, never really released the exact location of their home? For good and valid reasons.”
“We’ve all heard rumors about it being attacked by a few peasants, it can’t be that hard to reach!” protested Gaetan, leaning in her direction, Letho’s arm immediately going around his waist.
She wondered if it was to hold him back or to be able to push him away and behind him if they started fighting.
“You’ve ever fought another witcher?” she asked him instead of commenting on what she was seeing.
Clearly, Letho was in over his head with this cat.
Gaetan seemed taken aback by her question, but took a brief moment to think about it.
“Never a real fight.”
“I have, and it’s not pretty,” she replied, before biting into her piece of bread.
She was highly doubtful about cats and wolves being friendly enough to accept a viper of all schools coming all the way to their home to deliver a summon to the other side of the continent.
Aiden moved in his sleep, the blanket wrapped around him sliding off his shoulder, and in an instant Gaetan was by his side, tucking it back around him tightly, before gently running his fingers through his long black hair, an absolutely haunted look crossing his face, and Adri, not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, told herself that her sentimentality was going to be the death of her.
“Even if I do find this keep, there’s no guarantee that Lambert guy will be there.”
Gaetan’s eyes jumped to her, full of hope.
“Really?” he breathed.
“Yeah really, I’m a softy and that’s why Letho made me come all the way here,” she replied dryly. “So, no guarantee.”
“Aiden said that he goes absolutely every single winter.”
She sighed heavily, “at least that gives me a few month,” before Gaetan was tackling her to the ground in a hug that, frankly, hurt her ribs a little.
Letho jumped to his feet, obviously not knowing what to do and how she would react to the attack, but she simply patted his cat on the head while looking at him and mouthing “you owe me”.
“Thank you,” he mouthed back, smiling as his cat told him to join the hug.