A Winter's Night
Vesemir stands in the overgrown yard of the farmstead and turns in a circle, giving his senses free run. The mouldy scent of a neglected thatched roof is strong in his nose, next to the smell of the mice making a home in it and the ancient ashes in the hearth. There's decaying wood, beetles and their grubs rooting around in it. A few deer who have settled down under the eaves of the woods for the day, woods that have started their glacial march towards the house.
No human being is anywhere near. Vesemir is alone, except for whatever is haunting the house. The contract is vague, and the man issuing it is even vaguer. He has inherited the farm, but fled after a few days, telling Vesemir about a nightly presence, whatever that meant. Nobody Vesemir talks to knows anything about deaths that would have invited a wraith, and it clearly wasn't a corporeal monster.
He will have to spend the night and see for himself.
The kitchen garden still offers some carrots and onions, the well water is clean enough. Together with a handful of barley and some dried meat, it makes a satisfying stew. Behind the house is a small apple tree, its fruit just as small but sweet. Vesemir cooks and eats outside. He has no wish to spend more time inside the house than he needs to.
Once night falls, he steps inside. His medallion is just as quiet as it's been outside. He kneels in front of the hearth, his hands on his thighs, his breathing slowing while his mind stills.
The house creaks and settles around him. Between the trees, the moon rises and shines through the window, painting a wide silver path on the floor. In front of Vesemir, a mouse trundles along the wall, leaving tiny footprints and the wavering line of its tail behind in the dust. He’s aware of it all. His mind simply doesn’t consider any of it important enough to pay attention, floating in the depth of meditation.
He’s starting to think that nothing will happen as time passes and the moon rises higher, leaving the house in darkness again. It wouldn’t be the first time a contract turned out to be nothing but someone’s overactive imagination, or maybe the malice of their neighbours. Even with only a few summers on the Path, Vesemir has learned that lesson.
A shiver runs through Vesemir. The hairs at the back of his neck stand up. His medallion hums, rattling against the buckle of his sword belt.
He cannot move.
Vesemir is frozen in place. He can blink, and breathe, nothing more. Even swallowing is a struggle. Something is behind him. There’s no sound, or smell, not even the minute shifts of air that would tell on someone trying to sneak up on him. There is nothing, except the knowledge that he is no longer alone.
He fights to lift his hand, to curl his fingers into Yrden. They do nothing more than twitch. And he has never been able to cast a Sign without the gesture. Very few witchers can.
Something touches him. A cold draft along the back of his neck, across his cheek. Vesemir desperately wants to believe it’s just the wind sighing around the house and creeping in through the window, but he knows it’s not.
A shiver runs down his spine, and the touch follows. It moves across his skin, icy and slow. It trails along the scars a wyvern left last summer, the first Vesemir has ever killed. It slips around to his flanks, following another scar, the mark of a nekker.
It’s under his armour.
It’s under his armour.
For a merciful moment, Vesemir is sure he must have fallen asleep. That he is dreaming. Not a mistake he should have made, but so much better than the alternative.
Lips press themselves to his neck, behind his ear. The kiss burns like a mark. This is no dream.
A sultry, silky laugh creeps up on him. A man’s voice. Young. A little hoarse, like it it’s been silent for a long time. Vesemir’s own voice has fled, leaving him mute save for a low groan at the fingers slipping inside his codpiece. They cradle his cock and cup his balls.
Head bowed, Vesemir can see nothing at all except himself, and the floor he’s kneeling on. There’s not even the telltale shimmer of a wraith before it materialises.
Yet still the touches crawl across his skin, lingering on the insides of his thighs.
Two hands, long-fingered and slender. Vesemir shudders when one of them wanders up his stomach to his chest, finding his nipples already hard. The other rests between his legs, and his sac tightens from the cold. A body presses itself against his back, clammy and corpselike.
His armour sits heavy and sturdy on his body, yet it does nothing to protect him. He might as well be naked. Icy air ghosts across his skin, accompanied by another quiet laugh. Lips press themselves to the back of his neck, a freezing brand that sinks deep into his flesh.
Vesemir chokes on his breath when something hard slips between his legs from behind. It’s painfully cold, so cold that he almost expects it to stick to his skin. The fingers teasing at his nipples give them a last pinch, leaving them sensitive, rubbing against the coarse fabric of his tunic with every inhale. And then the fingers spread him open, pulling his ass cheeks apart as much as they will inside his leathers.
The hard thing follows. There’s no more denying that Vesemir knows exactly what it is and what will happen. He wants to scream when the head of the frigid cock touches his rim but he can only keen, the sound of a trapped animal.
The cock shoves itself inside, glacially slow. It tears at Vesemir’s insides, but his flesh has grown so numb from the cold that there’s no pain. Palms brush across his stomach, one arm curling itself around his chest and one hand returning to teasing at his cock. He’s soft, the cold and the revulsion see to that. But the hand still strokes him, fingertips taking hold of his foreskin to shift it up and down in the same excruciatingly slow rhythm as the cock in his ass.
Vesemir blinks, and a tear rolls down his face. He wants to grit his teeth, swallow down the saline taste at the back of his mouth, but he can’t. More tears follow. The pressure across his chest is gone, and a finger touches his face. It catches one of the tears. With a hushed crackle at the cusp of even Vesemir’s hearing, it freezes.
The tear sits in the air, shining like a diamond in the gloom of the hut. When it falls, it shatters on the floor between Vesemir’s thighs.
A susurration fills the room, whispers too low to catch any of the words. The tone is one of surprise, and then there's that laughter again. It worms its way into Vesemir's ears, seductive and mesmerising. Spreading like poison, it fills his thoughts.
His cock grows firm under the slow strokes. His body answers to the fingers caressing him like a lover would. All Vesemir can do is endure both the pleasure and the pain.
The thrusts into him shake him, and the cold shakes him even harder. He cannot say how long it lasts, until finally, the cock buries itself all the way , filling him with freezing spurts of liquid. It numbs his insides, and Vesemir is glad of that. When the cock withdraws, it leaks out of him. He can see it, a pearl white puddle between his legs. It smells of snow falling on a winter morning.
Arms wrap around him, and icy lips touch his neck in a tender, lingering kiss. A palm rests on his belly, the rings of his chainmail growing painfully cold with it, and a finger traces circles around his nipples until they rub hard against the hardened leather of his armour. Vesemir keens and gasps, shivering uncontrollably, his cock trapped hard and aching in his codpiece. He tries to ignore it, wishing it soft, wishing this all a dream.
His fingers are a pale blue that frightens him more than anything else. He's seen that colour, on men and witchers, and even on witchers it's not a good sign. But try as he might, a twitch with one finger is all he can manage.
The hands wander all over his body, touching him as if his armour wasn't there, following scars and tracing muscles. When one of them cups his cock, Vesemir shouts in agony at the shock of cold and then again at the pleasure as the hand strokes him while fingers push into him once more. The voice whispers to him, a winter wind caressing his face.
Between his legs, the puddle of spent glitters like frost, crystals catching and reflecting the moonlight. Vesemir stares at it while the fingers tease him into a release he doesn't want, his own seed excruciatingly hot as it runs down his shaft. He stares at it while the fingers in his ass are replaced with a cock once more, a bolt of freezing pain thrusting into him over and over.
He stares at it until it glitters red in the light of dawn.
At first he thinks it's blood, his insides torn and rent and raw so much he's bleeding. And then it melts away into nothing, fleeing the sun. The whispers stop, the hands are gone. Vesemir tries to move and finds that he can, even though it's only to fall on his hands and knees. He screams when the blood returns to his limbs in a blinding wave of agony.
Scrambling to his feet, Vesemir flees the house. The scent of frost and snow follows him until it's chased away by the smell of summer outside.