1 - 20 of 60 Bookmarks
Navigation
List of Bookmarks
-
A litany for hope by Chrissy22
Fandoms: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
11 Dec 2023
Tags
Summary
Lambert and Aiden meet in the years following the Tournament and leading up to the pogroms. There is a lot of bad blood between the Wolves and the Cats, but as tensions rise and the humans start to turn on witchers, Lambert and Aiden strike up an unlikely friendship to stay safe.
A story about finding hope and love in dark times.
Series
- Part 1 of Ars Nova
-
Bookmark Collections:
-
Bookmark Collections:
-
Bookmark Notes:
<333
-
Bookmark Tags:
Bookmark Notes:
In the spring they returned to the Path, and the strange fog of hopelessness still clung to Lambert. It was unfamiliar - while suspicion had always come easily to him, so had the stubborn refusal to roll over and die, which was its own sort of hope, Lambert had come to realize. He kept going because he trusted that Aiden was right, maybe, and one day he too would see it. It was only blind faith that carried him forward these days.
They were somewhere in Aedirn, stopping to get the horse reshoed. There was no work in town and they'd spent the last of their coin on the horse. Lambert was bristling under the stares and whispers of suspicious villagers.
He was standing outside the farrier’s building with his arms crossed, letting Aiden take care of negotiating the price without him. He glared at anyone that looked his way, daring someone to try something today.
“Master Witcher,” came a soft, hesitant voice.
Lambert looked over at the young woman, barely more than a girl, who was standing a ways away, a baby perched on her hip. She smelled like nerves as she approached, but she was straight-backed and met his gaze evenly.
“I’ve come to ask for help. There’s something in the woods, sir, something killing off the people on the outskirts of the village. The lord doesn’t care, he won’t post a contract for it. My husband, he…he disappeared a few weeks ago. He went hunting and didn’t come back. The lord said he’d probably run off on me, abandoned us but - but I swear, he hasn’t, he wouldn’t,” she said, angry tears filling her eyes. “There’s something in the woods - it took Piotr’s son too, and Hansel’s sister. We can hear it at night sometimes, something moving through the forest…I don’t have a lot of coin, but you can take what little I have. And I have a ring, too - it’s real gold.” She pulled what was clearly a wedding ring off her finger, holding it out to Lambert with shaking hands.
Lambert wasn’t Geralt - he didn’t work for free. But he was also not the type of asshole who'd take a widow’s wedding ring.
There was a part of Lambert, where a nasty festering hurt remained, that wanted to take it from her anyways. He wanted, in fact, to turn her down. If humans wanted a world without witchers, fine. They could live without witchers’ labor too, keeping them safe in their homes. How dare they try to wipe them out and then come crawling back asking for help afterwards?
He wanted to yell, to tell her to fuck off, he wanted to scare her…
But he was not that kind of man. He could be, but he wasn’t.
“Uh - okay, look,” said Lambert, wishing Aiden would hurry up and come out. “Do you have a barn or a stable or something?”
She looked confused. “Y-yes?”
“Great. Let me and my friend sleep there tonight, and I don’t know, how much coin do you have? Not in total, how much can you actually spare to pay us?” Lambert asked.
“Eighteen crowns,” she said. She didn’t look away, though he could see she was embarrassed.
“Eighteen crowns and a place to stay, and we’ll take care of whatever the hell’s lurking in the woods,” said Lambert.
She nodded and then, inexplicably, she stuck her hand out. It took Lambert a second to realize she wanted to shake his hand. She didn’t flinch from his touch.