THE WITCHER'S CHOICE

Part 8: TOO MUCH SMOKE

PART 8

Geralt woke up at dawn. Everybody else was still asleep around the dying fire of the camp. No, not everybody, Elyn and Brum were nowhere to be seen. Geralt got up, brushing dry leaves from his clothes and went to the stream, to drink some water and refresh himself. His witcher's enhanced hearing caught an indistinct whispered conversation above. He looked up the ravine but couldn't see anyone. He decided to climb up. When he reached the top, he found Elyn and Brum looking intently at the forest with worried faces.

"What's up?" asked the witcher.

"Geralt!" turned Brum in surprise. "You are up early."

"So are you."

"True, yes," smiled the knight. "We are studying the terrain."

"Something wrong?"

"You see that smoke over there?" indicated Elyn with her arm.

"Yes," answered Geralt.

"There is a village there, isolated, hidden," she explained. "In the past, they've been kind to us, sheltered us. They have no love for the king of Kovir. We have helped them to scare away tax collectors."

"That smoke is too much for a chimney, or even a group of chimneys," said Geralt.

"Exactly," said Brum.

"You think they've been attacked?"

"Yes," answered Elyn.

"That would explain the ghouls," said Geralt.

"Those hideous creatures we found?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"They feed on fresh corpses," explained the witcher.

Elyn blanched.

"I'll go," she decided.

"No, Elyn, it's too dangerous," shook his head Brum.

"If there are survivors... I have to help them. I'll go alone, I won't risk any of you," she said.

"I'll go with you," decided the witcher.

"Why would you do that?"

"It is my job to protect people from monsters," explained the witcher.

"I have no money to pay for your services, witcher."

"You saved my life, Elyn, I owe you," he said.

"Very well," she accepted.

"Elyn, a word?" grabbed her arm Brum.

They moved away from the witcher and talked for some time in what appeared to be a heated argument. After a while, Elyn returned to the witcher's side whilst Brum sighed, shaking his head with resignation.

"Let's go," said Elyn to Geralt.

"What was that about?" he asked, indicating the frustrated Brum with his head.

"Never mind that. We need to move quickly, we have to go now," she prompted him.

"Ok," he nodded. "I'll get Roach ready."

They departed immediately, while the others still slept. Elyn's company had no horses, so both of them mounted Roach, going deep into the forest.

"This morning, Brum remembered where he had heard your name before," said Elyn, "Blaviken."

"I see," said the witcher, guessing that her argument with Brum had been about that.

"They call you the Butcher of Blaviken," she continued. "They say you murdered a bunch of people in the market, in cold blood."

Geralt remained silent.

"Care to tell me your side of the story?" she asked.

"Why? Would you feel inclined to believe me instead of a whole town?" he answered, unable to avoid sarcasm.

"That is for me to decide," she said gravely, "and I always decide after I've heard both sides."

"You shouldn't pick sides. That's what I did in Blaviken and it didn't end well."

"You chose the wrong side?"

"Honestly? I don't know. I will never know. Both sides were bad."

"You had to choose the lesser evil," she understood.

"Evil is evil, lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. I didn't want to choose but I was forced to. The people I killed were thugs, threatening the villagers, looking for revenge. My reward for trying to protect Blaviken was a stoning and my universal fame as a butcher. I should have stuck to my code, to my job: killing monsters," explained Geralt, deliberately leaving out part of the story.

"Except you couldn't, you are sensitive, you care," she said.

"I shouldn't. I've learnt my lesson," he assured her.

"I don't think so," she contradicted him.

"Why do you say that?" he frowned.

"Because you are riding with me."

"It's just in case the ghouls attack again," he shrugged.

"You know very well it's not," she smiled, "and I'm glad. I was not mistaken about you."

"Mhm," sighed Geralt. "I bet the others don't agree, I bet even Brum has changed his mind about me."

"That's because they weren't there when the ghouls attacked. They didn't see what I saw."

"What did you see?"

"That your first concern above all else was to know if I had been bitten. Nothing else mattered to you, except that I was all right. That is because you are not the heartless witcher people want to believe you are. You are decent and you care. If the people of Blaviken can't understand that, it's their loss to have cast you out instead of securing you as their protector."

"I'm not as decent as you think," he commented.

"That's because people don't often give you the chance to be," she smiled.