Geralt's Arc

Chapter 2 of 17

They rode north before dawn. The trail climbed through pine and cold mist. Rain rode behind Geralt, silent, her purple eyes fixed on his back. He felt her doubt like a blade held at his spine. She had come to stop him, not to help him. If the beast charged and she froze, they would both die. He needed her trust before they reached the runed door, or he needed to send her home. By midday they stopped at a stream. Rain knelt and pulled a cluster of small purple flowers from the bank. She turned the sprig in her fingers, careful, the way another woman might hold a coin. "You think everything with claws deserves a sword," she said. "You've never once wondered if you're wrong." "I wonder every time," Geralt said. "I just don't let it slow my hand." A cry cut the woods. High, thin, frightened. Geralt moved toward it. In a snare of twisted wire, a tiny bird beat its wings against the trap. Its feathers were gold and green, and one leg bled where the wire cut. A trapper's snare, set for game, holding the wrong thing. Rain reached for it fast. "Don't crush it," she said. "Please." Geralt knelt. The bird stabbed at his fingers. He did not pull back. He worked the wire loose, slow, one strand at a time. His hands were steady, the same hands that held the silver sword. He freed the leg without tearing it. The bird sat trembling in his palm. "Warm it," he told her. "Your hands are gentler than mine." Rain cupped the bird. She pressed the purple sprig to its beak. It drank from a bead of water on a petal. After a moment its wings settled. She opened her hands and it flew, low, then up over the pines. She watched it go, then watched Geralt. Something in her face had changed. "You could have snapped its neck," she said. "It bit you. It was in your way." "It wasn't the larger wound." He stood and wiped a thread of blood from his thumb. "The beast is. That's the only reason I hunt it." Rain was quiet a long time. Then she tucked the flowers into her belt. "The runes on that door," she said. "They aren't a ward against men. They're a cage. Someone locked the beast in long ago. I didn't tell you before." She met his eyes. "I'm telling you now. If it's chained, I'll open the way. I won't freeze." Geralt held her gaze. The doubt was gone from her spine. He could feel it. "Then we finish this together," he said. They mounted and rode on. But her words sat wrong in him. A cage, not a den. Something had trapped this beast on purpose, and had wanted it kept alive.