An Inevitable Crescendo

Fog clung to Oakhaven like old wool, heavy and damp, muffling everything but the slow creak of the inn’s sign and the oozing drip of water from the eaves. Roach’s hooves squelched in mud that smelled of wet bark and tannin. The logging village crouched between the treeline and a black river, huts braced against the slope as if waiting to slide into the water. Windows were shuttered though it wasn’t yet dark. A wooden effigy hung above the square—bird, maybe—carved and split down one side, feathers rough-hewn and rain-slick.

Geralt swung down, breath ghosting in the cold. He could feel the stare of the place, eyes behind cracks, candlelight turned low to slits. Oakhaven did not want him, but it wanted whatever hunted its edge even less.

The notice board was new timber, quick-built and already warped by the damp. The parchment on it was curling, ink bled from fog: phantom beast. Reward. Talk to Elder Holm at The Splintered Axe. The word phantom had the stink of superstition used to cover ignorance. The reward was decent; the purse at his belt was light.

The inn had a wide, low mouth and a door a shade warped by rain. He pushed in. Heat from banked coals met him, spiced with wet wool, woodsmoke, boiled cabbage. A few men hunched over mugs, voices sharp and quiet, stopping altogether when they noticed him. The barkeep—a thick-armed woman whose hair was braided back and coiled like rope—went still in the act of wiping a clay cup.

“Witcher,” she said, not welcoming, merely naming.

“Contract,” he answered, glancing at the room. “Elder Holm?”

A man in the corner looked up. Grey beard trimmed close, shoulders like a stump. His eyes were tight from sleeplessness. He didn’t stand, just lifted his mug as if to steady his hand. “You found the board. Good.”

Geralt crossed the room. A girl with a tray made herself small to avoid him, apron damp along the hem. He caught the smell riding under the room’s stale comfort—pine pitch, old blood, wet fur. And fear, always the human sweat of it.

Holm lowered his voice as Geralt sat. “We don’t want a tale. We want it dead.”

“Describe it,” Geralt said. “Tracks, sounds. Time of attacks.”

Holm’s mouth tightened. “It isn’t a beast like your usual sort. It doesn’t leave prints. Or if it does, the rain eats ‘em. Comes at night. Wail like—” he stopped, visibly resisting the urge to look at the door. “Like a woman grieving. Takes men at the edges of the woods. Loggers. Two weeks now. Three dead.”

“A wail,” Geralt said. Not a roar. He thought of the effigy in the square. “Anyone seen it?”

“Shadows, smoke, claws.” Holm grimaced. “Men see what they fear. We found Jonn’s coat raked open and hung high in a fir. No body. We don’t speak of it where children can hear.”

Geralt filed away the lack of a body. “Payment?”

Holm’s hand slid a small pouch across the table. Advance; light. “Half now, half when the thing is gone,” he said. “Room at the Axe. You’ll keep to yourself.”

Geralt weighed the pouch in his palm, then let it fall into his pocket. “I’ll need to walk the site. Speak to the families.”

“You won’t,” Holm said, voice sharpening. “You speak to me. I’ll point you where needed. The widows have enough. They don’t need a stranger pressing them.”

The barkeep’s gaze flicked between them, wary. The men at the other tables listened without looking. Geralt took a slow breath. He could force it, and all he’d get was doors closing harder.

“I’ll be careful,” he said, flat. “Room first.”

The barkeep cleared her throat. “Single room left,” she said, as if the inn could conjure more if she wanted it to. “Back stairs. Two coppers for stew, one for ale. You’ll keep your blades peacebound in the common room.”

He nodded, unbuckled his swords reluctantly and laid them on the table long enough for her to loop a length of twine around the hilts—a courtesy, not a restraint. She sniffed. “Name’s Mara.”

“Geralt.”

She grunted, then poured ale. He took a careful swallow. Thin, sour, clean. The stew arrived, plain root vegetables and a shred of meat, but warm.

“Tell me where they died,” he said to Holm between bites.

Holm traced his finger on the rough wood. “Southeast cut, by the old stump. And the stand near the river bend. Both at the edge, both on fog nights. We warned them not to go out. Men think they’re stronger than air.”

“Any signs of ritual? Totems besides the one in the square?”

Holm’s eyes flickered. “Old things in old woods. We leave offerings. Keeps the forest fed. Hasn’t done a damn bit of good lately.”

“Who made the bird?”

Holm’s jaw worked. “A carver. Used to be. Doesn’t matter.”

It mattered. Geralt finished the stew, feeling the weight of the room press close. Quiet talk resumed around him, but thin as paper. He paid for the room and took the stairs, worn soft by years of boots.

The room under the eaves was small, bed narrow, blankets scratchy and dry. A single candle waited on a crooked table. He set his pack down, unwrapped oiled cloth from his blades, checked edges until their familiarity tugged the tension out of his shoulders. He could hear the inn breathing—voices below, a door thumping, someone coughing. Outside, the fog pushed itself against the pane with soft, insistent hands.

He sat on the bed and listened for the forest past the walls. No night birds. No frogs. Just the river, a low song. He’d go at first light. He’d go now if he trusted his legs on the slick, if he wanted to risk something in that press of mist that knew every tree better than he did.

He rose and blew out the candle. In the dark, the seam of light under the door drew a thin line across old floorboards. Oakhaven held its breath. He let his eyes close and counted the beats of it, steady as a blade on a whetstone, waiting for whatever sound would come next.

Geralt didn’t sleep. The bed’s straw creaked when he shifted; the sound nagged like a pebble in a boot. He went back downstairs well before dawn, where the hearth was a red mouth in the dim. Mara muttered over a pot. The room’s quiet outside of a pair of loggers dozing facedown at a table, cheeks pressed to their crossed arms.

He took a corner seat, hood up. The ale Mara poured him was warmer than his mood. He asked soft questions when a man drifted close enough—what did you hear, how high was the coat hung, what happened to the dogs—and got tight-lipped shrugs, eyes sliding away. Fear had cemented over everything in Oakhaven. The few words he pried loose didn’t fit; a wail that tugged tears from hard men, no body, threads of fine black cloth found in pine bark. He tucked it away and sipped, counting breaths, the room’s hush a constant pressure.

The door blew in on a burst of fog. Cold rolled over the floor like a cat. A voice rode it—too loud for the hour, too bright for the inn.

“Oakhaven! What a delightfully grim little jewel!” Boot heels clicked on warped planks. “Smells like sorrow and pine tar. Exactly the sort of place where legends are born and poorly brewed ale is forced down the throats of heroes and artists alike—oh, don’t glare, I’m paying, I’m paying.”

Geralt’s fingers tightened around his cup. He didn’t turn. He didn’t have to. The tavern’s stillness buckled under sound like that. He could see the lilt of the hands in his mind, the tilt of a hat that had no business surviving weather like this.

“Good lady! Might I trouble you for something hot? Preferably liquid. And edible bread if you have it, or at least something that remembers it was once bread. Also, if a certain tall, brooding, white-haired man has passed through—purely for research purposes, mind you—I’d perhaps inquire after him and—oh.”

Footsteps halted. The room breathed in.

Geralt looked up.

Jaskier stood just inside the threshold, hat dripping, cloak spattered with mud, lute case slung at his back. His cheeks were flushed above scruff that hadn’t seen a razor in days. His blue eyes skated the room, saucy and bright, until they snagged on Geralt.

All that noise—hands, mouth, posture—fell silent in a heartbeat that stretched too long. Relief crossed Jaskier’s face so nakedly it made Geralt’s chest feel too small. Then the bard smiled, big and foolish, the kind he used to turn like a weapon.

“You look terrible,” Jaskier said, as if months hadn’t been sitting in the space between them. “Which is to say, exactly like yourself.”

Geralt lowered his hood. “Jaskier.”

The name sat heavy on his tongue. Mara’s gaze snapped between them, assessing coin and trouble. The loggers pretended they weren’t listening and failed.

Jaskier moved again, energy rushing back into him in a flood. He crossed to the table without invitation and dropped into the chair opposite like he’d been doing it yesterday, like he hadn’t left the mountain with hurt in his mouth.

“Fascinating that our paths cross here of all places,” he said, shaking rain from his sleeves. “I was tracking a rare story—well, rare enough for me, which you know is quite a feat—and every tavern for fifty miles has been humming with whispers about a phantom haunting the logging roads, grief in its wake, men vanishing like coins in a whorehouse mattress. Naturally I thought, who would be glaring at fog and cursing under his breath within a day of such a rumor? Geralt of Rivia. And here you are. Imagine my shock.”

His voice was brittle around the edges, even as the words stubbed at Mara’s temper and made the loggers exchange glances. Geralt watched his mouth move. Watched the way Jaskier’s fingers trembled just once when he reached for the cup Mara placed in front of him, then curled quick around it to hide the slip.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Geralt said, low.

“Mm. I could say the same to you and a hundred other places besides.” Jaskier took a gulp that made him wince, then chased it with a grin. “I have missed this swill. Mara, darling, it’s only slightly better than horse piss. Which is to say, thank you.”

Mara lifted a brow. “If you have coin for insults, you have coin for breakfast.”

Jaskier slapped a couple of coppers onto the table with theatrical flourish, then dropped his eyes back to Geralt’s face, the theatrics peeling back enough to show something smaller and naked. “I heard about the… song in the woods,” he said, quieter. “The wail. It sounded like the beginning of a very sad ballad. I thought I should be here to… capture it.”

Capture it. Geralt held his gaze. Jaskier didn’t look away. That unguarded relief flickered again, softer now, matched with uncertainty.

“Elder Holm won’t like you stirring the villagers,” Geralt said, because the practical was a safer road than anything else they might speak. “They want it killed. Quickly.”

Jaskier shrugged, appetite coming back under his skin. “Elder Holm can dislike lots of things. He’s welcome to add my charming personality to the list.” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “You’ll need someone to ask the questions you won’t. You glower; they lock up. I smile; they give me their firstborn and directions to their embarrassing secrets. We’ve done this dance.”

“We’re not dancing,” Geralt said. The line came out harsher than he meant. It landed between them with a dull thud.

Jaskier’s mouth twitched, hurt flickering so fast most wouldn’t have seen it. He covered it with a long look at Geralt’s shoulder, his hands, the notch on his jaw. “No,” he said, bright again by force. “Not yet.”

Mara thumped down a bowl for Jaskier. Steam rose in curls. He broke bread, ate as if he’d forgotten the taste of hot food, talking in shorter bursts as he chewed. Snippets of roads, of songs traded for beds, of a stableboy who’d sworn he’d seen a white silhouette weeping at tree-line and a dog who howled along. Each detail was either useless or interesting; Geralt sorted them without effort, the muscle memory of their old rhythm clicking into place despite everything.

Silence settled for a few seconds. Jaskier wiped his mouth with his thumb, then traced the edge of the bowl. When he spoke again, he looked at the grain of the table instead of Geralt.

“I didn’t come for the story,” he said softly, just for the space between them. “Not really.”

Fog pressed against the windows. Someone coughed and spat into the hearth. Geralt’s heartbeat was steady and heavy in his ears.

He grunted. “Figured.”

Jaskier huffed a breath that could have been a laugh if it didn’t catch. “Right. Well. I suppose you’ll tell me to leave. For my own good. And I’ll pretend to consider it.” He lifted his lashes, met Geralt’s eyes. “I’m tired of pretending.”

Geralt looked at the scar on Jaskier’s lip where a drunk had once split it in half for a rhyme too clever by half. Looked at the smear of mud on his cheekbone, the stubborn tilt to his chin. He felt the familiar urge to push, to keep the world’s teeth off him by keeping his own hands up.

Mara slapped a fresh log on the fire. Sparks spit up the chimney.

“Finish your breakfast,” Geralt said. “Then we’ll talk to Holm.”

Jaskier’s smile came back slower. “We?”

“For now.”

Relief washed over Jaskier again, less sharp this time, sinking deep. He nodded, bent to his stew, and ate like a man who’d been starving on more than one front. Geralt sat still and drank the rest of his ale, counting breaths until the room’s pressure shifted around the two of them, making space where there hadn’t been any. Outside, the fog pressed on the glass and held. Inside, a voice that had once filled amphitheaters dropped to a murmur meant only for his ears. And Oakhaven—braced and afraid—listened to the beginning of something it didn’t have a name for yet.

They found Holm first, because leaving it would only make Jaskier talk more. The elder was a stiff man with thin lips and a voice that seemed to splinter every sentence into orders. He looked at Jaskier like a tool he hadn’t asked for and said the inn had one room left. He looked at Geralt like a blade to be sheathed quickly and pressed a rough token of advance payment into his palm.

“Finish it,” he said, eyes flicking to the bard’s colors. “And keep him quiet.”

Jaskier smiled too brightly. “I never make promises I can’t keep.”

They walked back to The Splintered Axe with the fog clinging to their boots. Jaskier kept up a running commentary designed to stitch over the torn places.

“Charming man, that Holm. The sort who believes wives are for fetching wood and shutting up. You know the type; we’ve drunk with eight of him. Did you notice his ring? Ebony. Not common for these parts. I’d wager he—”

“Jaskier.”

“—either inherited it or stole it, and neither speaks well of—yes?”

Geralt didn’t look at him. “You’re babbling.”

“I am. It’s either that or burst into flames. Babble seems kinder to the varnish.”

They reached the counter. Mara didn’t bother hiding her curiosity as she slid a key across. “Room’s small,” she said. “Two men, you’ll step on each other’s toes if you aren’t careful.”

Jaskier’s mouth curved. “We’ve done that before.”

Geralt took the key. The stairs groaned under his weight; Jaskier followed close enough that his breath warmed the back of Geralt’s neck at each landing. The hall upstairs smelled like soap and damp wool. He unlocked the last door and pushed it in.

Small was generous. A single bed, barely wide enough for a man with shoulders like his. A table with one wobbly leg, a washbasin, a hook with a cracked mirror above it. The window was a square of gray pressed against the glass. The bed’s quilts looked clean. They looked insufficient.

Jaskier stopped behind him, hand lifting as if to touch Geralt’s shoulder, then falling to his side again. “Cozy,” he said lightly. “I’ve composed in pantries larger than this. But the acoustics will be divine.”

Geralt set his bag by the table and tested the chair; it protested. He glanced at the bed and then at Jaskier.

“There’s only one.”

“Yes.” Jaskier moved to the window and wiped a clear patch with his palm, peering out at the fog. “I can sleep on the floor.”

“You won’t.” It came out too quick, too blunt. He corrected himself. “You don’t have to.”

Jaskier looked over his shoulder. “You snore.”

“You kick.”

“I do not kick. I flail with grace.”

Their eyes held. The humor thinned to something rawer. Jaskier turned away first, setting his lute case on the bed and folding back the quilt to check the sheets as if that inspection could occupy the whole of his attention. His hands were careful, too careful; he smoothed wrinkles that didn’t exist.

Geralt unbuckled his armor in practiced motions. The silence between them was thicker than the fog outside. Leather straps squeaked. Jaskier’s breath hitched at the sound, subtle and unintentional. He busied himself tugging off wet boots, making a performance of it. “I chased a rumor to an apple orchard last month. Turned out to be a goat with indigestion. The farmer paid me in cider anyway. I wrote him a song about perseverance.” He paused, boot heel thumping the floor. “I’ve been writing about you. A little.”

Geralt’s hands stilled on a pauldron. “Don’t.”

“It’s not unkind.” Jaskier’s laugh was thin. “Mostly I make myself the fool. It scans better.”

Geralt hung his armor on the bedpost, the weight of it making the frame creak. He could feel Jaskier’s gaze skim over scars he’d acquired since that mountain, counting them the way he used to. The old ache of the parting sat between his ribs, stubborn and heavy. He reached for his sword and laid it on the table, the silver catching what weak light there was. “We’ll need to be out again before dusk.” The practical, always.

“Of course.” Jaskier set his boots neatly under the window and flexed his socked toes, wiggling warmth back. “I’ll keep behind you. For once.” He looked at the bed again, then at the floorboards. “We can… arrange ourselves. Head to foot. Or—” He stopped, throat working. “I won’t make things difficult.”

“They already are.” It wasn’t meant as a knife. It still cut.

Jaskier’s smile faltered. He accepted it like a penance, then nodded. “Right. Well. I inflict my difficulties on fewer people these days.”

Geralt scrubbed a hand over his face. The mirror on the wall reflected a tired man with white hair dragging damp across his temples. He could hear Jaskier’s soft fidgeting; the way he tuned the lute strings with deft, restless fingers, the notes barely sounded, like he was afraid to take up space. The memory of cold stone and words that had fallen from his own mouth like blows pressed at his lungs.

“You can have the bed,” he said abruptly. “I’ll take the chair.”

“And then you’ll be a knot from neck to thigh and useless when a creature tries to bite my head off.” Jaskier shook his head. “No. We’ll share. I can keep to my side. I am very good at staying on my side.” He swallowed, and his voice went smaller. “I learned.”

Geralt met his eyes in the mirror. Something in him flinched. “We’ll manage,” he said finally.

Jaskier’s shoulders eased a fraction. “We always do.”

They worked around each other in narrow arcs, bodies aware of limited space, old muscle memory clumsy with new edges. When Jaskier brushed past to reach the washbasin, his sleeve grazed Geralt’s bare forearm. The contact was brief, electric. Both of them went still, as if the room had shifted.

“Sorry,” Jaskier murmured, eyes on the cracked porcelain. He dipped his hands into the water and hissed at the cold. “Do you ever think,” he said softly, not looking up, “about the mountain?”

Geralt could have lied. He could have grunted and moved the conversation along a safer path. The truth leaned against his teeth like a weight. “Yes.”

Jaskier nodded, shoulders curling in protectively. A droplet slid from his jaw to his throat. He dried his hands and straightened, arranging a mask of brightness with visible effort. “Good. Then we don’t need to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“We’re not pretending.” It sounded like a promise and a warning at once.

Jaskier sat on the edge of the bed, spine straight, hands braced on either side of his thighs. He looked like a man about to stand and run or stay and be brave. The quilt wrinkled under his grip. “Fine,” he said, acceptance layered over fear. “We’ll start with not kicking.”

Geralt blew out a breath and crossed the space to the chair. He lowered himself into it, testing angles he already knew would be unforgiving. He reached for the whetstone out of habit, then set it down again, fingers restless. Jaskier lifted the lute into his lap and plucked a string so gently it barely carried.

The room held them both like a closed palm, tight but warm, the air complicated with the smell of damp wool and oil and something that had always meant Jaskier. Outside, the fog thickened across the glass. Inside, their breathing found a rhythm that wasn’t peace yet but might be the road to it. The bed waited between them, narrow, unavoidable, and theirs to navigate when the lamps went out.

Geralt lit the stub of a candle and set it on the table. The little pool of light made the silver look colder. He sat, took the whetstone in his palm, and drew it along the blade in slow, even strokes that hummed like a soft saw through bone. He didn’t need to sharpen it tonight. He did it anyway, because the scrape and pull were simple and clean and never asked for words.

On the bed, Jaskier had positioned himself cross-legged atop the folded quilt. He pulled the lute into his lap and twisted a peg, listening. The first notes were tentative, a breath pushed into wood and string. He plucked again, adjusted, and found the line between too tight and too slack with the care he used to pour into smoothing arguments and placating drunken strangers. The sound warmed the corners the candle couldn’t reach.

Steel kissed stone. String answered.

Geralt set the rhythm with his hands—pull, lift, pull. He could feel Jaskier picking his way around it, not to drown it out but to live beside it. He glanced up once, through the hair that had fallen across his brow, and caught Jaskier’s eyes already on him. They didn’t look away. Something eased in his chest in the steadiness of it.

“New song?” he asked, voice low enough to set the flame shivering.

Jaskier gave a small shrug. “New enough. It keeps changing its mind when I try to make it behave.” He touched a chord so quiet it could have been a thought. “I’m letting it sulk until it tells me what it wants.”

“Like a cat.”

“I’ve always preferred dogs.” He flicked a glance at Geralt’s hands and smiled a little. “Though I admit some cats are worth the scratches.”

Geralt snorted, a ghost of it. The edge of the sword felt right against his thumb. He wiped the blade with a rag and checked the fuller for any burrs. The room breathed with them—fire tick, breath in, breath out, the damp outside pressing but not entering.

“Do you remember Novigrad,” Jaskier said, lighter, “the inn with the crooked stage and the innkeeper with the mole the size of a plum?”

“Who wouldn’t.”

“You sharpened a dagger through my entire first set. I thought the audience would riot. They thought it was part of the act.” Jaskier’s lips curved. “I suppose it was. You were the knife man and I the fool who sang while his throat was in danger.”

“They only tried to fight you after the third ale,” Geralt said.

“They tried to kiss me after the fourth.”

Geralt let the corner of his mouth go. “And you let them?”

“I chose my kisses. I always did.” Jaskier’s fingers went softer, drawing out a line that lifted and fell like a sigh. “Sometimes I chose poorly.”

The rhythm of the whetstone faltered and returned. “Sometimes we both did,” Geralt said, and it wasn’t a confession so much as a balance offered.

The music changed. Jaskier slid into a minor turn, not sad so much as honest, the sort of melody that sat close and didn’t try to impress. It suited the small room. It suited the bed too narrow for anything careless. He leaned over the instrument, hair falling against his cheek, his mouth parted just enough to show concentration. He wasn’t performing for a crowd. He was making something for this table, this sword, this man.

Geralt set the weapon down. He took a cloth, ran it along the blade, and laid it aside with care. The blade’s cold had seeped into his hands; he flexed his fingers, listening as if he could listen his pulse into climbing down from the warbeat it took on around Jaskier. The lute’s line threaded into it, steadied it.

“Play that again,” he said, nodding at the last turn.

Jaskier did. He added a quiet harmony under it, a second voice that barely brushed the first and made it fuller. He looked up like a child showing a stolen sweet and waiting for scolding that wouldn’t come.

“Good,” Geralt said simply. It was not a word he used for songs often. Jaskier’s throat worked. He nodded, eyes gone shiny, then blinked it away and kept playing.

They stayed like that for a long time. Sometimes Geralt’s hands found the whetstone again, a few absent strokes to keep his muscles from stiffening, then nothing but the clean sound of tuned strings and the occasional soft click of a peg settling. The fog made the window a mirror, a blur that held two men in a room where they dared share air without cutting each other on it.

Jaskier shifted, the bed creaking. He stretched his legs out and his foot brushed the chair leg. Geralt didn’t move it away. The contact was light and constant and said nothing and everything they could manage. Jaskier leaned his shoulder into the wall and let a hum glide under his fingers.

“I missed this,” he said, so low the words barely made it beyond the lute’s body.

Geralt could have asked, what, specifically. The chair. The candle. The sounds. The safety. He understood there was no single answer. He reached, without thinking too hard, and adjusted the candle to throw more light onto the strings. Jaskier’s smile at the small consideration was quick and grateful, not a performance, a gift accepted.

“Tomorrow we’ll talk to more than Holm,” Geralt said, because plans were a language they’d always shared when honesty felt too sharp. “Someone knows something. They’re afraid.”

“They usually are,” Jaskier murmured. “You’re terrifying.”

“You’re loud,” Geralt said. “It evens out.”

Jaskier chuckled, and the sound sat easy in the room. He played the refrain once more, quieter, letting it fade until there was only the small grind of metal and the candle’s soft complaint. He set the lute down with reverence and stroked his palm over the curve of it, then over his own knee, smoothing nothing. “All right,” he said, more to himself than to Geralt. “We can sleep.”

Geralt nodded. He blew out the candle and the dark folded around them, not heavy, not hostile. The bed shifted as Jaskier slid under the quilt, careful as promised. Geralt stood, joints protesting, and crossed to the mattress that had made space for both of them. He lay down on his back, felt the warmth of another body inches away, and stared up at the black line where ceiling met wall.

Their breaths found each other again. Somewhere beyond the fog, a night bird called, thin and distant. In the small room, a quiet peace settled, fragile as blown glass and just as precious. It was not forgiveness. Not yet. But it was a place to begin.