They made camp hours short of Ban Glean, in a shallow dip off the road where a stand of old pines broke the wind and the ground stayed dry enough to make a camp on. The horses had been rubbed down and watered from a nearby stream, and now stood dozing under the trees with their heads down, steam coming off their backs in the cold air. The fire had been Seb's work, small, no bigger than a cooking pot, burning clean with barely any smoke.
The swords were propped against a fallen log a few feet away, silver and steel crossed where both of them could reach them in one motion.
Ciri was curled against his chest with her back to the fire, cloak pulled over both of them, head tucked under his chin. One of her hands was inside his coat, flat against his ribs not for warmth, exactly, though she'd claimed that at first. She'd been quiet for a while.
Seb had one arm around her and the other resting loose on his knee, watching the embers. The smell of pine and woodsmoke hung low and still.
"You know," Ciri said finally, "we should have done this the first time."
"Done what?"
"This. Left together, just us." She shifted, settling deeper against him. "When I left Kaer Morhen with Geralt, I was so sure it was the right thing. Go south, find answers, train, learn what I was, all of it. And it was right, I'm not saying it wasn't but it wasn't the only right thing, at least that was the plan before Avallac'h happened. You were standing there alongside Unlce Vesemir in that courtyard. And I got on the horse and I didn't look back once, because I thought looking back would mean I wasn't serious." She was quiet a second. "Leaving you behind was the mistake, I should have insisted on going with you. Not leaving the keep, leaving you."
Seb didn't answer straight away. He watched the fire, and the way the light moved on the tree trunks, and the way her breath warmed the fabric of his shirt.
"The witcher's Path is meant to be walked alone," he said eventually. "That's what Vesemir always said. That's the rule."
"I know the stupid rule." Ciri lifted her head just enough to look up at him, chin resting on his chest. "But we never followed or cared about the rules. Not once, not in the whole time we were growing up in that keep. You broke into the cellars with me when we were just fourteen. I stole Vesemir's silver sword and swung it at you because you wouldn't let me land a hit. We've spent our whole lives doing exactly what we wanted the moment nobody was watching us." A beat. "Why is this the one thing we decided to do the way we were told?"
Seb was quiet for a long time.
"Perhaps you're right," he said.
Ciri huffed a soft laugh into his chest. "That's the most you've agreed with me in years."
"Don't get used to it."
"Too late." She settled back down, tucking herself in tighter, and let out a long, slow breath that seemed to come from somewhere well below her ribs.
They stayed like that a while. The fire popped. One of the horses stamped and shifted its weight. The stars came out properly overhead, cold and sharp.
"You know what I keep noticing?" Ciri said, quieter now.
"Mm."
"I'm not waiting for anything." She said it slowly, like she was testing whether it was true as she said it. "Not for Eredin, not for the Frost, not for whatever the Lodge or Emhyr is doing. We're on the road and it's cold and there's mud in my boots and I've been on a horse for days, and I'm not waiting for anything. That's the thing I'd forgotten. I haven't felt that since I was a girl in that keep."
Seb's arm tightened around her, just slightly.
"Good, but we have an objective." he said.
"That's all you've got?"
"What else do you want me to say?"
"I don't know." She laughed, warm and low. "Something clever. You used to be worse at this. Now you're almost good at it, and it's unsettling."
"Years of practice."
"With who?"
"Brothels in Novigrad, apparently."
Ciri snorted so hard she nearly choked. "You're never going to let that go, are you."
"You asked." He smiled.
"Damn it Seb."
She swatted his arm, and he caught her hand, and for a moment neither of them said anything, and the fire burned low and steady and the pines held the wind off them, and it was, Seb thought, about the simplest evening he'd had in months, just the road, and the fire, and her.
"We should do this every night," Ciri murmured.
"We will, for a while."
"Not for a while. Every night. Even when we get where we're going. Even when this is over." She tilted her head back to look at him. "Promise me we'll keep a fire somewhere. That we'll stop doing things because we have to and start doing them because we want to."
Seb looked down at her for a moment.
"That's a harder promise than the last one," he said.
"I know." She held his gaze. "Make it anyway."
"Alright," Seb said.
And Ciri smiled, a real one the kind that didn't come out of her very often, and she put her head back down on his chest, and after a while her breathing slowed the way it did when she was truly at rest, and Seb sat up a while longer with the fire and the quiet, keeping watch over the two of them and everything they'd brought with them to this place.
The fire had burned down to a low, steady bed of embers when they heard the footsteps, soft and coming up the road from the east. Seb's hand had drifted toward the log before he'd even consciously registered the sound, but he stopped himself. One set of feet. Heavy, tired gait. No horses. Nothing about the rhythm suggested a threat.
Ciri had heard it too. She didn't move, but her breathing changed, and Seb felt her hand slide off his chest to rest near her knee, where her dagger sat within reach.
A figure emerged from the dark at the edge of the firelight, an old man, bent and wrapped in a patched cloak that had been good wool two decades ago, carrying a pack on his shoulders that looked heavier than he was. He stopped at the edge of the pines and raised one hand, palm out, in the universal sign for I mean no trouble.
"Evening," he called, careful and polite. "Didn't mean to intrude.. Saw the fire from up the road and figured I'd ask rather than just walk past." He hesitated, glancing between them. "This winter's colder than the last one. Would you mind if I sat a while? I'll be gone by first light, I won't trouble you."
Seb glanced at Ciri. She gave a small shrug, your call.
"Come in," Seb said. "Fire's not much, but it'll hold."
The old man nodded his thanks and trudged in, dropping his pack by the log with an audible sigh of relief. He sat carefully on the far side of the fire, well out of arm's reach of both of them, which was either good manners or good instincts. He rubbed his hands together over the flames for a moment before speaking again.
"Travelers, are you?" he said. "Rare sight this time of year. Most folk are holed up somewhere, waiting for the thaw."
"Something like that," Seb said.
"Bound where?"
"Ban Glean."
"Ah. Same as me, then." The old man shifted, settling in. "Peddler by trade. Cloth and buttons, mostly. Not much business in winter, but I've got a sister in Ban Glean and I'd rather spend the cold months with her than alone in my own house." He squinted across the fire at them, taking them in properly for the first time and then his gaze caught on Seb's face, on his eyes, and his whole body went still.
The fire cracked.
"You're a witcher..." the old man said. His voice had gone up half a note. He was already halfway to standing, pack forgotten, one hand braced against the log. "You're... I didn't... I'll just move on, no offense meant, I'll..."
"Don't," Seb said, and raised one hand, palm open, the same gesture the old man had used coming in. "We're not going to eat you. Sit back down."
The old man stared at him.
"Sit," Ciri said, not unkindly. "He's serious. He doesn't eat people, I've known him for years and I've never once seen it."
Seb shot her a look. She gave him a small, entirely unrepentant smile.
The old man sat, slowly, watching Seb like a man watching a dog he'd been told was friendly but hadn't personally tested. When nothing happened, when Seb went back to tending the fire as if nothing had occurred he let out a long breath and settled properly.
"Sorry," he said. "I know it's foolish. Just.. the stories, you know."
"I know the stories," Seb said.
"Heard all the same ones," Ciri said.
The old man's eyes flicked to her. Then to the sword propped against the log on her side, and then back to her face, and something puzzled crossed his expression.
"The lass is a witcher too?" he said. "I didn't know they took lasses. I thought.. well. I thought it was all men."
Ciri tilted her head, the firelight catching the green in her eyes. "They don't take lasses. They made an exception for me though."
"An exception."
"A considerable one," Seb said. "She wouldn't leave them alone until they agreed."
"That's not true."
"It's close enough."
The old man laughed, a short, surprised bark, and the last of the nervousness finally left him. He unwrapped a bit of dried bread from his pack, he shared some with them and he chewed on it quietly for a while, listening to the fire, looking at the trees, looking at the road.
"You two heading into Ban Glean for work, then?" he said eventually.
"Possibly," Seb said. "Depends what's there."
"Something's been off in Ban Glean the last month or so. I heard it from my sister's letters." The old man scratched his chin. "Guards've been out in the woods on the eastern side, more than usual. And there's a boy gone missing, a woodcutter's son, fourteen or so. Nobody knows where he went. They dragged the river, walked the whole wood twice, nothing."
Ciri leaned forward slightly. "Missing, or taken?"
"I don't know." The old man shrugged. "If you're going there anyway, ask the guards at the gate. They know more than they tell the likes of me."
Seb nodded slowly. "We will."
/-\
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