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“Jask, we are not savages. Resist the urge.”
“This turns the victim’s internal organs into a very messy goulash.”
“Oh, lovely. You were saying?”
. . . . .
He comes round with a start, his head pounding as if hit in the nogging by a horse, his every bone aching, and so thirsty, he would lick what feels like half-dried blood off his face if he could. But gagged as he is, he cannot. Cahir swallows hard around the stuffing in his mouth that almost chokes him. Where the fuck is he? Why are his hands tied up? What happened? And why the hell was a woman talking about goulash? Disoriented and confused, he takes a deep breath through his nose to clear his mind. The air is incredibly hot and stuffy, oppressive, and it smells nauseatingly of iron. Still, slowly he begins to remember. The coffin. He is lying inside a fucking coffin. The elves shoved him into it to deliver him to Emhyr as a wedding present. A bit macabre for what's supposed to be the happiest occasion in a person's life if one asked him, but the elves weren't interested in his opinion. Considering the depraved nature of this marriage, perhaps it's even fitting to start it with an execution. He had tried to fight back, but, as their prisoner, didn't have any weapons, and there were too many of them. Soon the elves had him on the ground, bruised, bleeding from several bad cuts in his face, and barely conscious. Then they gagged him and trussed him up like a pig for slaughter. There was nothing he could do. The sound of the coffin's lid closing above him was the last thing he heard before passing out. Later, when he woke up again, it was completely dark inside the casket. For hours, the wagon rumble along, every jolt from a pothole, root or stone sending waves of agony through his battered body. He must have blacked out repeatedly, and it is hard to say how much time has passed. Judging by how excruciatingly thirsty he is and how much his bladder — no, his entire abdomen — hurts from not being able to relieve himself, a day and a night at least. Eventually, the Havekars stopped the wagon. Cahir hoped at first that they would at last give him something to drink — they are to deliver him to Emhyr alive after all — but no such luck. Later, he faintly remembers the sound of agitated voices. The men's words were too muffled to understand because of the tarpaulin that the smugglers had covered their goods with to protect them from the rain and the eyes of northern soldiers, but, whoever it was, they were clearly arguing. And wasn’t there the clamour of fighting right before he passed out once again from agony and dehydration?
Cahir groans softly, a wave of nausea washing over him. If he has to throw up while gagged inside this death trap, he’ll choke on his own vomit. Not the end he has hoped for. He swallows again and tries to calm himself. Panicking will only make things worse, and they are more than bad enough already. But it's hard not to panic when you're trapped inside a suffocatingly tight box with barely enough air in it to breathe, and with the prospect of torture and a grisly public execution ahead of you. The one execution experience on Thanedd was more than horrible enough already to give him a lifetime of nightmares. Trying to concentrate despite his harrowing headache and his rising anxiety, he listens into the silence around him. But the voices are gone, and the world has fallen completely quiet again. Perhaps the voices were never there in the first place and only a figment of his imagination? What if he is slowly going crazy inside this bloody coffin? How long can a person even survive without water? He feels terribly weak already, barely able to keep his eyes open. With another soft moan, Cahir lets them fall shut. It’s pitch black inside the coffin anyway, as if he was already six feet under, buried alive and forgotten. He shudders, a chill running down his spine despite feeling far too hot, almost feverish. What if he is feverish, if he’s still with the elves, badly wounded on Thanedd, and this horror is nothing but another fever dream? But if it is, it feels sickeningly real.
Suddenly, there is a whoosh and dim light trickles in through the holes drilled into the sides of the coffin. Jolted awake, Cahir turns his aching face to the side and greedily inhales the fresh, cool air streaming in along with the light. Someone must have flung the tarpaulin to the side. But who? And why? Do they want to check if he’s still alive?
"Oh, a corpse," a male voice says from close-by. "That’s rather anticlimactic."
The voice sounds faintly familiar. It can't be one of the havekars, nor one of the Nilfgaardian soldiers they were to meet. They would know what’s inside the coffin. What if— if this man is willing to help him?
Hopeful all of a sudden, Cahir grunts as loudly as he can with the gag still in place and bumps his shoulder into the wooden box with force. It hurts, but produces a loud thud. The coffin shakes, and he keeps grunting and rocking the box although the movement makes him nauseous again, as if he were on a ship in a storm. It must be obvious now to whoever the man is that there is an alive person inside the coffin, not a corpse, right?
"Ooh! Ghost corpse? Is that a thing?" the voice says, and suddenly, Cahir knows who it is. The Sandpiper! But is it possible? What are the odds that the Sandpiper, Yennefer's friend from Oxenfurt, the one who risked his life to save the elves, and them, is here in this remote forest at exactly the right time to find him? Perhaps it's just a delusion? He's had hallucinations before, of Princess Cirilla. Or is it destiny? Cahir grunts once more and bangs his shoulder against the hard wood of the casket.
"I… I don’t…"
The wagon shifts as if someone heavy had climbed onto it and there is the faint sound of rope being cut. Cahir keeps grunting. The lid is lifted and thrown to the side. But instead of the friendly, sympathetic face of the Sandpiper, Cahir stares up into the face of a man he has last seen on Thanedd. He freezes with sudden dread. The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia. Fuck.
"You!" the white-haired mutant barks, utmost loathing dripping from his voice.
"It’s him." Sandpiper sounds baffled. How the man has recognised him without the long hair and shaggy beard is a mystery to Cahir, he must look very different from when they met back in Oxenfurt, but there is no time to wonder about it.
"Fucking Nilfgaardian!" Geralt growls. He grabs the front of Cahir's shirt, lifts him, then slams his fist into the bound and gagged man's face. Hard.
"Geralt!"
Cahir moans, bright stars exploding in front of his retina from the vicious impact, and for a moment, everything goes blurry and dark. Then he feels the cold steel of a knife pressed against his throat.
"I’ll kill you," the Witcher hisses, murder in his amber eyes. "All night, Ciri woke up screaming in terror because of you."
Cahir makes a strangled noise, gagging and choking in his enemy's vice-like grip.
"You hunted her for Emhyr, didn’t you?" Geralt snarls, pressing the blade even closer against Cahir's Adams apple, so close, he barely dares to breathe.
Shit. This is the end, he knows it is. Cahir breaks into a cold sweat, feeling faint, his heart pounding like mad. Maybe it's better like this, tough. A quick, clean cut and it will be over in a heartbeat. Much better than what awaits him in Nilfgaard. But he doesn't want to die, and he still needs to tell the Witcher the secret that Emhyr is Ciri's father. Only, with the gag, he can't. If only he could make the Witcher listen somehow, show him that he is not the enemy. Yet, no matter how hard he tries, all Cahir manages to produce are half-strangled, inarticulate grunts, which the Witcher ignores.
In the distance, the faint shouting of men can be heard.
"Soldiers are coming. We need to get back to the path," the 'goulash' woman, who must be standing at the head end of the coffin, urges.
"I will kill anyone who gets in my way until I get to your fucking emperor and kill him too," the Witcher snarls, bringing the knife into position for the final, deadly cut.
His heart missing a beat or two, it takes all Cahir’s strength of will to not wet himself.
"Geralt. Geralt, please," the Sandpiper chips in. Cahir gasps and whimpers with terror. "He’s just a prisoner. Perhaps this is an opportunity for… less savagery."
Horses whinny in the distance, and the shouting grows louder. Military commands. Cahir can even hear them above the loud beating of his heart.
The Witcher hesitates for an instant, pondering the bard's words.
"Ciri spared your life on the island," he then grunts through gritted teeth, as if it physically pained him to restrain himself, "so I will too. This time."
"Mmhmm," Cahir moans and, hope suddenly rekindled, cautiously nods his head, barely believing his luck. Perhaps he will survive this encounter after all?
"But if I see your face again,” the Witcher continues, "I will split you open and watch you bleed." Then he slams Cahir’s head hard against the bottom of the coffin and lets go of his shirt. Cahir yelps with pain. Only a second later, the Witcher thrusts the knife at him, its tip inserting itself in the boards not far from Cahir’s ear.
Cahir gasps and groans.
“Let’s go.” The Witcher jumps off the wagon, out of the prisoner's field of vision.
“Good, then. Moving on,” the woman says.
A horse whinnies very close by.
Panting, Cahir turns his aching head toward the bloody knife, then, with a grunt, he struggles into a half sitting position. The Witcher, the woman, who looks a lot like a Scoia’tael, and the bard gallop up a slope and vanish into the forest.
Cahir lets himself sink back, turns toward the knife, grips it with both his bound hands, and, with a loud grunt, he pulls it from the coffin, the blade cutting painfully into the palm of his left hand. Luckily, it isn’t Mahakam steel and not very sharp, otherwise he could have seriously injured himself. He sits up once more, half leaning against the side of the coffin to steady himself against another dizzy spell. He must have sustained a bad concussion from the beating the elves gave him, and the Witcher punching him in the face has not helped with the nausea and splitting headache, the contrary. When the world has mostly stopped spinning, Cahir bends forward and reaches for the restraints around his feet. Frantically, he moves the blade of the Witcher's knife up and down to slice through the thick rope, now silently cursing it for being so blunt. He has to get out of here, and quickly so, before the Nilfgaardians find him and drag him to the City of Golden Towers to be tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered, his mutilated remains, like it is the custom with traitors, to be fed to the pigs in the market square. When, finally, his legs are free, he places the knife in his bootleg. No matter how much he hates it, this has taken far too long, and there is no time to cut through the gag and the ropes around his wrists with this low-quality blade. Very close by, Cahir can already hear the Nilfgaardian officer shout orders to his men. It is only a matter of minutes until they are here, and he still needs to get himself a horse.
His legs having gone dead from being trussed up and crammed into the coffin like a pickled herring for so long, Cahir more falls than climbs off the wagon. Moaning softly, he struggles into a standing position and holds onto the wagon for support, closing his eyes for a moment against the sudden feeling of vertigo. Then, still holding onto the wagon, he moves forward, the pins and needles in both his feet making him suck in his breath with every tentative step. He must be a pitiful sight, messed up, bloody, and staggering like the village boozer after a night of heavy drinking. But nobody sees him anyway, and it better stays this way.
Among the weapons the Havekars were transporting for their illegal trade, Cahir spots a familiar, tear-shaped sword pommel and black scabbard. What a stroke of luck! He grabs it together with the leather belt that has been wrapped around it. Using his legs to hold the scabbard in place, he draws the blade out a few inches, then cautiously moves the rope tying his wrists across the sharp steel. It takes less than a minute and both his hands are free. With a dagger that he also finds among the weapons and which is much sharper than the Witcher's knife, it is now almost easy to cut the gag too. To not slice open his cheek with the double-edged blade, Cahir slides it up the back of his neck. Tilting his head back slightly creates just enough slack to slip the tip of the blade under the tightly tied cloth. Using his other hand to pull the cloth outward away from his hair, he widens the gap, carefully turns the blade a little and pulls it backward. The dagger cuts through the taut fabric like a knife through butter. He has to repeat the procedure twice, but then the strip of fabric falls to the ground. Coughing violently, Cahir spits out the soggy cloth the elves had stuffed into his mouth, finally able to move his jaw and swallow properly again. Then he uses his sword to cut one of the horses loose from the wagon. The mare has no saddle and stirrups, and with his battered body still far from as cooperative as he would wish, it takes ridiculously long for Cahir to mount it, but the animal is good-natured and stands still until he finally manages. He clucks his tongue, leans forward a little and uses the pressure of his legs to make the horse go faster, up the slope after the Witcher and his friends.
Soon, the voices of the Nilfgaardian soldiers grow faint and fainter.
Fuck, against all odds, he has made it out alive and mostly in one piece. Now he only needs to stay out of the Witcher’s sight while trailing him until he can somehow convince him to listen. It won’t be easy, but it might work — if destiny so wants.
