Heart of Ice • The Witcher

Chapter 2 • The Huntsman

   "Could you stop drinking for one moment?" Anaya said, finally expressing her annoyance at the drunken man who was already on his fifth glass of wine. Garrison reluctantly stopped pouring his next glass of wine to look over at her with a drunken look.

   "I'm only trying to warm myself," he said, reminding Anaya of just how cold the winter breeze felt against her skin. Much to her dislike, they'd set up camp outside in the woods. Although she would have preferred a proper bed in a warm tavern, she knew she had to keep moving. 

   "Could you start a fire, then?" 

   Garrison groaned and forced himself up, "As I said before, the wood's too damp to burn."

   "Just try again, please," she said. Garrison rolled his eyes and knelt down near the twigs and branches they had gathered and tried to ignite a flame. He was right, the frost had dampened the wood and ruined their chances at building a fire, but Anaya had other methods of creating a flame. 

   She waited until Garrison was hard at work when she slid her pale fingers out from under her cloak and focused as hard as she could in the direction of where she wanted the fire. She'd only attempted this once before and it had ended disastrously, almost resulting in burning a tree down. Now, as she set her mind to creating just the smallest flicker of a flame, she just hoped she didn't accidentally roast Garrison. 

   "Faea," she whispered and a small flame ignited where Garrison was working. The twigs all slowly began to burn underneath the flame she'd created.

   "Ah-ha! I knew I could do it!" Garrison said, standing up and walking back to where he'd originally been sitting. "This calls for a celebratory drink." 

   "Thank you," Anaya smiled. "Now, as I was saying, Queen Vaires-"

   "Whore," Garrison spat on the ground. 

   "She wants me dead to take my crown and rule the kingdom as her own. The only reason I escaped before she could kill me herself was because of my maid, Perilla."

   "This Perilla you speak of... Is she single?" 

   Anaya rolled her eyes, "That's not what's important. The Queen wants me dead."

   "Yeah, you've said that," Garrison said, leaning his back against a tree. 

    "Does it not phase you that your Queen is willing to kill the princess? That if she succeeds she will be sitting on the throne?"

   "I don't care."

   "How can you not care?!" Anaya said, anger bubbling up inside her. 

   "Because you don't care," Garrison said, downing a large gulp of his wine. "It's all a game to you people. You claim to care for your citizens, you claim to understand our pain and suffering from behind your castle walls that were built high enough to prevent you from being able to see. You tax us to pay for your lavish feasts while we eat rats to survive. You sleep in silk beds while your people sleep in sewers to escape the winter snow. Yet you still claim to care, so much so that to protect us you send us off to war to fight for whatever meaningless cause brings you more power. The queen kills you, she sits on the throne. You kill the Queen, you sit on the throne. In the end, it makes no difference. You're all the same, you all fuck up eventually."