The courtyard of Kaer Morhen was already deep in snow when they walked out, six inches overnight, still coming down in fat, heavy flakes that turned the whole keep into something softer than it had any right to look. The walls greyed out behind the curtain of it. The battlements vanished, the world ended about thirty feet from the gates, and past that there was only white.
The horses were already saddled and waiting, breath steaming. Geralt had done them himself, Seb could tell by the way the girths were set.
Vesemir was the first one to reach them. He came down off the steps with his arms folded against the cold and stopped in front of Ciri, and for a moment he just looked at her the way he had looked at her since she was a skinny, furious child who'd been dropped into this keep and refused to cry.
"Two things," he said. "First.. if you're crossing the Pontar before the thaw, take the Kaedwen side. The Temerian fords are unreliable this time of year. Flooded half the winter, frozen the other half, and there's no telling which until you're in it."
"Kaedwen side," Ciri repeated.
"Second." He reached into his coat and pulled out a small leather pouch, pressed it into her hand. "Wyvern oil. Two vials, sealed, they hunt alot this time of year around Kaedwen, you never know what you'll run into between here and the south, and I'd rather you had it than not."
Ciri closed her hand around it and pulled him into a hug before he could pretend he hadn't done anything.
"Thank you," she said into his shoulder.
"Mm." He patted her back twice and stepped away, clearing his throat. "I know you'll probably won't use it... Just do so if you need it."
Lambert was leaning against the stable wall with his arms crossed, he pushed off the wall when Seb turned toward his horse.
"So," he said. "Off to save the world again. Or the girl. Or both. Hard to keep track now."
"Something like that."
"You going to tell me what the actual plan is, or is this another one of those 'I'll figure it out when I get there' arrangements you're so fond of? Just like you did in Novigrad."
"It's that one."
"Great." Lambert shook his head. "Fantastic. Very reassuring.." He glanced up at the sky, at the snow coming down in sheets, and then back at Seb with the corner of his mouth curling. "You know it doesn't snow like this down south, not this heavy. You'll have to cross all of this before you get anywhere near a road that isn't buried."
Seb looked up at the falling snow, then at Lambert. "I can handle snow."
"Right.." Lambert's smirk widened and then faltered, just for a second, as the thought caught up with him. "Right.. Not a problem for the fire demon." He waved a hand vaguely at all of Seb. "You'll just melt your way through it, won't you."
"You'll see in a minute."
"Gods, that's not fair." But he was grinning now, properly. "Go on then. Get out of here before I decide to come with you and regret it for the rest of my life."
He stuck out his arm, and Seb took it, forearm to forearm, the way witchers did. Lambert held it a beat longer than he needed to. Neither of them said anything about that either.
Eskel came over last of the three younger wolves, he just shook Seb's hand, then rested a hand on Ciri's shoulder for a moment, and looked between the two of them.
"Watch the mountain passes," he said. "They're worse than they look."
"That's the third time someone's told me that," Ciri said.
"It's true three times, now be careful out there." Eskel said, and stepped back.
Geralt was waiting at the gate.
He hadn't moved the entire time they'd been saying their goodbyes. He stood with one hand on the horse's bridle and the other loose at his side, watching. And when Ciri walked up to him, he let go of the horse and stood there, and for a second he looked like he didn't know what to do with his hands.
Ciri hugged him first. He folded around her without hesitation, one hand pressed flat between her shoulders, the other cupping the back of her head.
"I know you'll fix everything, so I'm not really worried, you are that stubborn afterall, but do return once this is all over, I'll head south as well after winter, we can meet in Toussaint if you guys truly head to Nilfgaard." he said.
"Of course," she said, muffled into his cloak.
He held on a moment longer than the hug needed. Then he let go, and turned to Seb.
"Protect her," he said. Same words as last night.
"I will."
"Let us know your whereabouts if you can. Doesn't have to be every village. Just occasionally. So we know you're both still breathing."
Seb glanced at Ciri, and something passed between them a short, silent agreement.
"You know that we can teleport here right?" Seb said. "Straight into the courtyard. It won't be a letter in advance."
Geralt's eyebrows went up a fraction. "You can do that now."
"We don't want the hunt to track us this soon." Seb said with a smile.
They mounted. Ciri gathered her reins, looked once at the four witchers standing together in the falling snow, and then turned her horse toward the gate.
The snow moved for them.
It started as nothing, a faint shimmer along the ground in front of the mare's hooves, the way a fire moves under a door. Then the snowfall directly overhead began to thin, flakes vanishing before they landed. The path ahead cleared itself in a straight line, ten feet wide, running from the courtyard through the gate and out onto the road beyond, it was vaporized, the ground beneath steamed briefly, then settled into clean, wet stone.
Behind them, the snow kept falling.
Lambert let out a low whistle. "Show-off."
Eskel just watched, arms crossed with a smile on his face.
Vesemir's expression didn't change, but he shook his head slowly.
Geralt stood at the gate and said nothing at all. He watched them ride through Ciri turning in the saddle once for a last look, Seb keeping his eyes forward and watched the clean road stretch out ahead of them and close up behind them the moment they passed, snow filling in over the wet stone as if they'd never been there.
They disappeared into the white long before the gate.
For a while the four witchers stood in the courtyard with the snow falling on them, saying nothing.
Then Lambert broke the silence, because of course he did. "So," he said. "I give it two weeks before one of us has to go drag them back."
"They won't need dragging," Eskel said.
"I know." Lambert stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at the gate. "I'm just saying things because I'm gonna miss them."
"what's that?" Eskel asked with a smile.
"Nothing." Lambert said.
Vesemir turned and headed back toward the keep, boots crunching in the snow. "Get inside. It's cold, and there's still supper to make."
Geralt stayed at the gate a moment longer than the others, looking out at the road that wasn't there anymore.
Then he followed them in.
.
.
.
.
They'd been riding for a few hours by then, and the snow had thinned to a fine, sparse drift that barely reached the ground. The road under them had gone from white to grey slush on the eastern side, packed ice in the wheel ruts where wagons had come through before the last freeze.
The Blue Mountains were behind them and dropping fast. Ahead, the land opened out into the wide, ugly sprawl of Kaedweni flatland, patchworked with half-frozen fields and strips of blackened woodland that hadn't been cut for timber. Some of it had been burned. Ciri noticed.
Ciri gathered her reins, nudged the mare up until she was even with Seb's horse, and looked sideways at him.
"Vizima, then?"
"Vizima." Seb adjusted his hood against the wind. "I have to try to find Dandelion and Zoltan if I can. I left them in Rivia after everything went sideways they were out in the city when the portals opened, and I haven't had a single word since. I owe them better than that."
"You owe them better than dragging them into it in the first place."
"I know." He said it flatly, without self-pity. "But they came with me anyway. So now I go find them, they are probably worried about me."
Ciri nodded, watching the road. A minute passed.
"Should we take a contract on the way?" she said.
Seb glanced at her.
"One or two," she went on, entirely too casual. "A proper job. Something with claws, something that needs killing. It'd be good practice, and it would keep coin in the purse, and..." she paused, deciding whether to bother dressing it up, and decided not to, "..it'll be fun."
Seb let out a slow breath through his nose. "You really do want distractions."
"I really do." She met his eyes, honest about it. "It'll keep me sane. Sitting still drives me half-mad, and riding from one town to another with nothing to do but think about Eredin and the White Frost and what Nilfgaard might be planning is worse." She looked forward again. "Besides. I'm glad I'm doing this with you. I want to actually do something on the road, not just travel it."
Seb was quiet for a beat longer than she expected. Then he said, "Fine. One or two. Not more than that, we've got somewhere to be."
"One or two," she agreed, and there was a lightness in her voice that hadn't been there twenty minutes ago.
They rode on. The road forked ahead, and the signpost at the fork had been struck through with something heavy and bent sideways, so the letters were unreadable. Seb steered them left anyway, toward the smoother-looking track.
"Temeria's a fucked-up place regardless," he said. "And we're heading straight into the worst of it. Have you ever been to Velen?"
Ciri's brow furrowed. "I've heard of it."
Seb laughed.
"I don't recommend it," he said. "At all. It's a swamp with ambitions. The roads are mud, the villages are half-empty, and half the folk there would sell you to a passing bandit for a loaf of bread. I spent a week there on the Path and I've never been happier to see the Pontar in my life."
"That bad?"
"Worse." He adjusted his grip on the reins. "The only good thing I found in Velen was a woman's ghost who needed putting to rest, and even she was miserable company for the first ten minutes."
Ciri snorted. "You do know how to sell a place."
"I'm not selling it. I'm warning you."
"Noted." She glanced over. "So we're going around Velen, then."
"We're going through it," Seb said. "It's the shortest route from here to Vizima, and the alternative is two extra weeks of Kaedweni forest in the middle of winter. But we're not stopping for anything that doesn't need killing, and we're not drinking the water."
"You just said it was the worst place you've ever been."
"I did."
"And we're going through it anyway."
"That's the Path," Seb said. "You go through the worst of it to get to the better part."
/-\
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