Ciri had never felt so satisfied in waking up in the morning.
For once, she isn't filled with adrenaline or nervous that The Wild Hunt could be appearing at any moment, and for once, she isn't sleeping on a hay, or bare dirt. Last night, Finn had given her his bedroll that was made in his world. It is considerably better than the usual bedroll. She felt warm, and her back doesn't feel bad because of it. Of course, she feels a little bit uncomfortable, as Finn uses the 'normal' bedroll, practically giving her the better item, still, he insists on doing so.
When the young woman opened her eyes in the morning, it was accompanied with a slight smile. He looked around the interior of the tent, where it is still empty save for the empty bedroll in the corner. It seems Finn had woken up earlier than her.
She got out of her bed roll and stretched her body, before getting out of the tent.
Outside, he could see Finn sitting near the extinguished fire as he wrote something down in a book. The pen he uses definitely looks foreign to her. Finn noticed Ciri getting out, and he nodded at her.
"Good morning." he greeted.
"Morning." She hummed, joining him. "What are you doing?"
"Writing down the route and timing of the doors." Finn answered. "Because we're practically starting from scratch, I of course have to start from a brand new part of the book as well."
"You remembered the timing and the routes?" Ciri asked. "I don't feel like I remember it."
"Well, it comes with the job." Finn simply said. He took out a pouch from his bag and gave it to Ciri. "Here, a bit of coins. Use it however you like."
Ciri raised her brow. "You're giving this so easily? It seems like a lot."
"I've spent years travelling through different worlds, Ciri, I don't feel a strong attachment towards money."
Ciri shrugged. "I suppose so…"
Ciri then saw Finn putting the book he was writing in into his bag again, before pulling another book that is more shapely, as there is an art on the hard cover of the book. Ciri could read the title of the book, titled 'The Hedge Knight'.
"What is that special bag of yours anyway? It doesn't feel like it stores that many items and yet it does."
"Well, let's just say that it is deeper than it looks," said Finn.
"What's inside of it?" Ciri asked, really curious.
"Many things." Finn said as he read the book in his hands. "Books of all kinds, tools of all kinds, supplies of all kinds, and trinkets… items that I got from my travels."
"That… seems a lot." Ciri said. "Is it not heavy?"
"Not really." Finn shrugged.
Ciri feels as though Finn is not interested in talking right now, as his eyes are fixed on his book, and all this time only she was the one asking questions.
"Err…" She thought of something as she was jiggling the coin pouch Finn just gave her. "I think I ought to find some supplies for sword care. Do you mind if I leave for a moment?"
Finn hummed, not looking up from his book. "Sure. If I'm not here when you go back, I'll probably be in the crowd watching the tourneys."
—
Ciri had little trouble finding what she needed. A small stall near the edge of the grounds sold her a vial of oil and a whetstone without much fuss, and the coin Finn gave her barely made a dent. She tucked them away and was making her way back when a loud noise caught her attention.
It wasn't just noise, really. It was the kind of collective roar that attracts even more audiences, the sound of a crowd that is wholly consumed by something happening in front of them. Ciri followed it without quite deciding to.
She weaved through the mass of bodies, ducking past shoulders and elbows until somehow, she found herself pressed against the fence at the very front. Before her stretched the tourney grounds, and in the middle of it, two knights were mid-joust.
One bore the heraldry of a rose on a green field. The other, a trout. Both of them were already well into it by the looks of the splintered wood scattered across the dirt.
They charged again. The impact was loud enough that Ciri felt it in her chest, lances exploding into fragments as the horses thundered past each other. The rose knight swayed hard in his saddle, then toppled. The crowd sucked in a breath.
"Ser Leo Tyrell is unhorsed! The lance goes to Ser Medgar Tully!"
But he was back on his horse before Ciri had time to think much of it. And what followed made her grip the fence without realising. At full gallop, the knight leaned out from his saddle and scooped his fallen shield clean off the ground. In full plate. Moving at that speed.
Ciri gawked at the maneuver.
The joust ran five lances in total. Wood splintering, horses snorting, the crowd screaming with each pass. Then on the fifth, the trout knight went down hard and didn't rise the same way. He cast his lance aside and raised his hand.
"Ser Medgar Tully demands a melee!"
The crowd roared. Swords and shields are being pulled now. The two knights moved across the grounds with an air of experience that Ciri, who had been trained by the witchers of Kaer Morhen, could nonetheless appreciate. Every exchange was smooth, calculated, with each of them reading the other and answering in kind.
Then the Tyrell knight made a different, more flashy move. He caught the trout knight mid-swing, stepped inside his guard, and drove into him with his shoulder. They went down together, but it was the Tyrell knight who came out on top, one knee on the other man's chest and a knife pressed close enough to make the point clear.
The trout knight froze in defeat.
"The victory goes to Ser Leo Tyrell of Highgarden!"
The crowd did not stay quiet after that.
Ciri exhaled, and realised she had been holding her breath for longer than she knew. Around her people were cheering and clapping and pressing forward, and she let the noise wash over her for a moment. There was something about it, the spectacle, the skill, the sheer aliveness of the crowd, that sat warmly in her chest. Something that she forgot after months of running.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a thought popped up. That she longed to do these kinds of things at least once.
—
Meanwhile, the meadow just at the edge of the tourney grounds had transformed into something altogether more informal. The joust was done for the day, but the revelry had not wound down so much as spread around, in the form of either debauched parties, or smaller games and the smell of roasting meat. A tug-of-war had drawn a sizable crowd near one of the fences, with two uneven teams already red in the face and digging their heels into the dirt. On either side of the rope, onlookers cheered and jeered in equal measure, drinks in hand.
Finn had claimed a seat at the edge of it all, near a stall that offered salted nuts. He was just here to watch. That was, in truth, the whole point of it for him. World travel had a quality to it that was difficult to explain to people who hadn't done it, it's like sightseeing stretched to some impractical extreme, where the sights themselves were entire cultures and the small, living moments within it. A tug-of-war on a meadow in Westeros was, objectively, not so different from a tug-of-war anywhere else. And yet it was entirely its own thing, and Finn found a quiet pleasure in simply being present for it.
He was mid-sip when someone pointed at him.
"You! You there, with the strange clothing!"
Finn lowered his cup.
The man doing the pointing was broad, loud, and wearing the sigil of the stag on his chest. Lyonel Baratheon, there was no doubt about it. He was grinning in the way of men who were already several drinks into the afternoon and had decided that the world existed to amuse them.
"I've never seen clothing like that on anyone in these lands," Lyonel continued, gesturing broadly at Finn as though presenting him to the crowd. "Where in the seven hells did you get it? Come, get in my team. I want to see it dirty with mud!"
Finn glanced down at himself. The clothing was medieval in cut, broadly speaking, but it wasn't Westerosi, the stitching, the dye, the particular drape of the collar were all wrong for it. He had bought it off a tailor in Faerun, a couple of worlds ago now, and had kept wearing it because it was comfortable for a medieval attire. Apparently it was conspicuous enough to get him conscripted.
"I don't think that's—"
"You can't refuse me while you're standing on my grounds." Lyonel's grin widened. "Come on! Or I swear I'll fecking geld you."
Finn looked at the man for a moment. He looked at the rope. He looked at the crowd, several of whom were now watching him with interest.
He set down his cup, put on a smile that was only partly manufactured, and stood up.
"Right," he said. "Why not."
—
It was well into the evening by the time Finn made his way back to the tent. The fire was already going, and Ciri was sitting before it with her sword across her knees, working the whetstone along the blade in slow, even strokes. The oiled cloth sat folded beside her. She looked up when she heard him approach, and her expression shifted into amusement.
"You look like you had fun," she smirked.
Finn looked down at himself. The mud had dried into patches across his sleeves and the knees of his trousers, and there was something he suspected was grass stain along one shoulder.
"A few games with the crowd," he said, settling down beside her near the fire. He glanced at the sword in her lap. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?" Ciri said, without looking up. She drew the whetstone along the edge again. "Vesemir used to say 'a witcher may forget to eat, or to sleep, but a witcher may never forget to care for his sword.'"
Finn was quiet for a moment. "Wise man, Vesemir."
Ciri glanced at him. "I almost forgot that you know him."
"I know of him," Finn said. "I don't know him." He paused. "Have you eaten?"
"Just some bread." She nodded toward the small bundle near her pack.
For a moment the only sound was the fire and the soft rhythm of the whetstone. Then Ciri tilted her head slightly, not stopping her work.
"You watched the tourneys today, didn't you?"
"All of it," Finn said. "Something you want to ask?"
"I was wondering if we could enter." She looked up then, and there was a grin on her face that she wasn't trying particularly hard to conceal. "The jousts, specifically."
Finn looked at her. "You want to enter."
"If I could. It seems like fun." She shrugged one shoulder. "I saw similar things back in Cintra. Never really had the chance to appreciate them properly."
Finn sighed. "Right."
"So… Can we?"
He turned it over for a moment before answering. "Theoretically." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Look, Ciri. I understand that you've been running for months, and that this is the first time you've had room to breathe. I understand that. But this tourney matters, some things are about to happen that will change the course of history here. If we involve ourselves carelessly, we risk shifting something we can't shift back. So if we do this, you have to be careful."
Ciri considered that. "I don't even know what's supposed to happen," she said. "I wouldn't know what to avoid."
"Someone will die here. Someone very important." Finn said. "And it will happen in a very specific way. Now I don't know if you joining in the jousts would change anything, but I'm just afraid that it will."
She was quiet for a beat. Then: "Fine. I'll be careful. So how do we enter?"
"You enter," Finn corrected. "I don't want to." He saw her look and added, "I'm capable with a sword. Jousting is another matter entirely. I've barely ever ridden a horse." He paused. "Okay… there's something called the mystery knight."
Ciri set the whetstone down and turned to face him properly. "Go on."
"You arrive in armour that covers you from head to toe. Face hidden, obviously. The master of games can't see who you are, thus can't verify anything. Normally, you'd need to be a knight to enter the lists, but this mystery knight tradition creates a loophole, if you declare yourself one, they are obligated by custom to let you in. All you need is armour that leaves nothing exposed, a moniker, and a sigil."
Ciri stared at him. "That's it?"
"That's it." He held up a finger. "But you need to not get caught. You are not a knight. You are also, by the customs of this particular world, not supposed to be in those lists at all let alone participate in anything."
"Because I'm a woman."
"Because you're a woman," he confirmed. "So, armour, first. I have a set, but it won't come close to fitting you. We'll need to find a smith on the grounds, something pre-made that's close enough to your size. There's no time for a custom commission."
Ciri reached down and sheathed her sword. She was already rising. A grin on her face, clearly excited.
"Then let's go."
Finn made a sound that was almost a laugh. He reached over and gave her shoulder a pat as he passed her on his way to the tent.
"I need to change first," he said.