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Geralt has traveled with Roach as long as he can remember.
She is always just within a call’s reach. She knows how to sidestep the swipe of a Gryphon’s claws, how far to stay from the site of a Noonwraith as he fights, how to stomp her hooves into the mass of a ghoul cast aside by an Aard. Many times, as he lay pressed to the mud and bleeding, she knelt beside him, gently encouraging him to drag himself into the saddle with a nudge of her nose and a whicker. Even when facing down everything from a dozen drowners to a basilisk, she has never once faltered or come to harm.
And the thing—the thing is, Geralt cannot remember at any moment teaching her to do these things.
#
“Why,” Jaskier complains, when they next travel together, “does Roach loathe me with the ire of a thousand stinging nettles?” She has just nipped at his fingers, with which he had boldly reached out to pat her nose.
Geralt hums low and focuses his senses on listening for the drowners he knows are lurking nearby. The answer is obvious; she prefers a Witcher’s company instead. “Never had a problem with the others.”
Jaskier makes a sound behind him that sounds suspiciously like a whine. “Geralt, have you been traveling with other people who aren’t me?” He makes no attempt to hide the naked horror in his voice.
This likewise requires no answer, as it should be quite clear by now that Geralt has no need or desire for anyone else’s company. He decides to humor Jaskier, lest he compromise the contract with unnecessary distractions. “Other Witchers.”
“Oh my!” Jaskier’s voice lilts into thrilled intrigue. “Of course, I’ve always known there are other Witchers, though I have never met any myself. There have to be, else there wouldn’t be such a horrible stigma about you…” He diverges into a long-winded ramble, and Geralt declines to produce any reply in favor of focusing on the nearing drowner nest.
“Stay here,” he grunts, shoving Roach’s reins into Jaskier’s empty hands before wading further into the swamp to take care of business.
It isn’t until he’s lopping the head off the last drowner that he hears a strangled cry, and then the shrill scream of a horse—not of fear, he realizes as he swiftly backtracks, but of anger and the distinct underlying fuck you. He has heard that scream before.
He reaches Roach and Jaskier just as Roach rears up one last time, striking her hooves through a drowner’s skull, crushing it into the ground as Jaskier watches with wide eyes. “See I’m not needed here,” Geralt says drily, mostly to Roach but also for Jaskier’s sake.
She tosses her head and rubs her face up against Geralt’s side, scratching her itch with practiced ease.
“Roach!” Jaskier gapes at him.
Geralt shrugs. “You alright?”
Jaskier collects himself up, poised for an argument, and then deflates when Roach stomps a foot in warning. He eyes Roach warily and takes the long way around to Geralt. “You never told me Roach is a Witcher in disguise.”
Sometimes, Geralt wonders the same himself. After all, he cannot remember when he first picked her up—didn’t horses live to perhaps thirty years, if that? Surely he has had her longer than that—and this is not the first time she has come to her own defense.
#
It doesn’t stop afterwards.
Jaskier spends the next day’s ride between villages composing “a masterpiece to your steed, Geralt, thank you very much. Even if she doesn’t like me, she still deserves an ode to her swift action to save me!”
Said masterpiece debuts at their next tavern stop to thunderous applause.
Afterwards, when he has sung through his set of bawdy drinking songs and wistful ballads, Jaskier plunks a victory ale onto the table in front of Geralt with a flourish. “See? I told you they’d love it.” He spreads a hand with a dazzled look in his eyes. “’The Lay of the White Wolf’s Mare.’ It’s an anthem for the ages, if I do say so myself. Everyone likes a heroic steed even if she’s not a majestic stallion.”
“Never said they wouldn’t,” Geralt says mildly, dubiously swirling the ale. An ale’s an ale, but this one doesn’t seem quite up to par. He lets Jaskier’s rambling wash over him, nodding occasionally and hmming when Jaskier seems to expect a response.
“Say,” Jaskier says eventually, leaning forward in his seat, “with that impromptu rescue effort, you should switch Roach to silver shoes. I bet she could kill even more monsters that way.”
He doesn’t shoe her. It’s an added expense, and he is so rarely in paved cities that it hardly matters. Her hooves keep themselves pared down; when they do grow too long, he is able to clip them to size with the tools he keeps at the bottom of her saddlebags. “Don’t see a need. Shoeing’s expensive,” Geralt says with a shrug. “Silver’s too soft for it, too.”
Jaskier sniffs imperiously. “You could at least give it a thought. ‘In the wake of the Witcher, shod with shoes of silver…’ Perhaps with a bit of artistic license…” He taps his fingers on the table, already lost in the throes of recomposition.
Geralt downs the last of his ale and leans back in his chair, resolving to move on in the morning to find new work.
#
“I knew she’d protect me!” says the girl, her eyes shining with something like hero worship. Geralt is surprised to see Roach accept a light pat, no stomping or tail flicking. “Just like what the song says!”
Geralt heaves a great sigh. “You shouldn’t rely on animals to save you,” he says, but it’s half-hearted in light of the child’s blatant admiration for Roach. He supposes it is warranted, at least a little, as he had witnessed Roach crowd the girl away from the ghoul Geralt had briefly failed to herd away from the outskirts of the village.
The child ploughs on, “She must be your very best friend in the whole wide world. I bet she’s saved your life loads of times.”
“Wouldn’t say loads of times, but maybe she has here and there,” Geralt admits as he tethers a trophy of proof to Roach’s saddle. “She’s a good companion.”
“Wow!” The child’s eyes are bug-eyed wide as she stares at Roach in unabashed admiration. Geralt has to narrowly save her from being knocked down by Roach’s post-battle scratch down against his armor, and it’s not long after that he deposits the child into the arms of her teary mother.
“No need to thank me,” he grunts, and he goes to accept his payment from the Alderman.
How long had that bard been singing that damn song now?
#
The thing is, the song is damn catchy. Geralt hears it played in at least four separate taverns on his travels, all by bards who had to have picked it up from Jaskier somewhere along the line. He’s caught himself humming it unawares while riding along the road or putting up camp at night. It’s almost worse than that Toss A Coin nonsense, which while infuriatingly omnipresent, has in fact made a marked difference in his recent travels.
Regardless: Roach seems to like a bit of calming background noise, so he finds himself humming it a bit more, scrounging up a few apples and carrots here and there for a treat when she’s been of particular use on a hunt. And what’s more, villagers have taken to providing treats of their own, which Roach accepts from their eager hands with no signs of the testiness he has grown accustomed to.
“Are you abandoning me?” he demands of her after he slides out of a tavern to find her surrounded by a crowd of children feeding her a collection of bruised apples. In all his years of traveling, she has not proven herself open to any kind of affection from strangers. She stomps her foot at him, thumping her head against his chest as if to say, get with the times, Witcher.
#
The moment he decides to return to Kaer Morhen for the winter, Geralt makes for the northern mountains. He’s scarcely two days into the journey before he regrets his decision. He is a witcher; he can survive on the fringes of temperatures normal humans are too fragile for. But this time, the frigid claws of winter scrape at him bit by bit, and he can only imagine how Roach must feel. Solid, patient Roach, who plows obediently behind him through the building snow drifts.
“Think we can make it in the usual time,” he tells Roach, who snorts and gives a half-hearted tug on the reins. The usual time will take about four more days, perhaps five if the snow keeps up. “Path won’t be iced over yet.”
He is very, very wrong.
The path is covered in deep, crusty snow, and underneath is a layer of ice broken up by tree roots. At this point it is either slide on ice or trip on roots, and Geralt isn’t sure which he would rather do. Either way, he and Roach will end up with broken legs long before they reach the castle.
They are nearly to the castle when he nearly gives out. “Shit!” His foot slips on a patch of ice and he goes down into a snowdrift, and then tumbling down into a tree. Somehow, his hands are still wrapped around Roach’s reins; how did she get down here with him?
His eyes feel heavy—if he could only rest here for a moment, he could carry on.
But no—he cannot fall asleep here; he must keep going. To fall asleep would mean a slow slide into death, even for a witcher. “Roach,” he croaks, tugging on her reins.
Roach tosses her head up and bodily shoves him forward, pushing him up against the piling snow. When he can move no further, she plows ahead and digs out a path out to drag him through. Distantly, he thinks she should be well on her way to frostbite, like he himself probably is… nothing a little potion couldn’t fix for him, but ultimately permanent for her.
Eventually he gives up trying to leave her and climbs onto her back. He can barely hold himself up, but he tries anyway. He barely remembers getting up to the keep.
#
Later in the stables, when Geralt has slept before the fire in the main hall and recovered his wits, Vesemir looks Roach over with a critical eye. “Isn’t this the same one you brought last time?”
Geralt has not wintered at Kaer Morhen in perhaps four years, but Roach certainly still knew how to pick her way up the hidden paths. “Guess so.” He leaves out the dramatic snow-filled rescue of this winter’s journey to the keep.
“How the fuck did you manage that?” Lambert demands from three stalls over, where he is struggling to unbridle a feisty gelding Geralt has never seen before. “I’ve never had a mount last more than four or five seasons, and they’re a bitch to replace.”
“Hmm,” is all Geralt says, and Vesemir gives him an odd look.
“Perhaps,” Vesemir says to Lambert, with a touch of reproach, “if you were less rough on your mounts, you might find they last longer than a year.”
Lambert subsides with a grumble, and Geralt and Vesemir leave him to make their way back to the keep.
“Geralt,” Vesemir begins, and there is a heavy pause; Geralt is not the only one who likes to weigh his silence. “How long have you had that horse anyway?”
Ah, this again. “Truth be told, I don’t know,” Geralt admits. He shrugs one shoulder. “She’s just been around. Good horse, knows what she’s doing.” He can slap her haunch to get her away from a fight, and just as quickly afterwards she comes back to his whistle. Surely most horses could follow at least basic training principles?
“Unlike Lambert’s,” Vesemir sighs. “When that boy will learn, I’ll never know.” A small smile curls at the corner of his mouth, and he leans in. “You haven’t shod her in silver, have you?”
Geralt shrinks in despair. “Take it you’ve heard the latest propaganda,” he mutters.
Vesemir smirks at him. “Is there any truth to your bard’s tales, or is it all elaborate embellishment?”
“She did save the bard once, but it was only a drowner, not that bullshit about protecting him from all the dangers of a hunt while I was off slaying dragons,” Geralt mumbles. Then, reluctantly, he mentions the child in the village, the sudden hero worship for Roach, and with a great sigh, he delves into the snowy rescue on the way to Kaer Morhen.
“Hmm,” is all Vesemir has to say about that.
But the next morning, Vesemir drops a dusty pile of books beside Geralt’s breakfast plate with a thump. “I think you’ll find these… enlightening,” he says with a curl of his lips.
Geralt stares at him. He had nothing against reading, but he did not have in mind to spend the day nose-deep in tomes that had little to do with Witchering and, by the looks of it, everything to do with irrelevant magic.
Down the table, Eskel gives a short bark of laughter. “Already hitting the books, Geralt? Don’t you think it’s a little early?” Then, as if remembering something, he abruptly slaps a palm on the table. “Wait—you’re supposed to help with the southern wall before the blizzards set in.”
Lambert grins with a manic gleam in his eyes and pushes his bench back. “Looks like it’s just you and me today, bitch.”
In lieu of climbing up on a snowy wall to patch up holes with bricks and stone, Geralt finds that a day spent in the library might not be so bad after all. “Good luck,” he says, straight-faced, and flees with the books before anyone can rope him back into helping.
Vesemir’s book choices do prove to be… interesting. The first is all about witches’ familiars, how some creatures lend themselves to time around magic than others. Cats and birds seem to be common choices—Geralt idly wonders if Yennefer ever had a cat. There is no mention whatsoever of horses.
The second book details how some familiars find their partners on their own. Some immortal creatures, apparently, attach themselves to magic users. Not all are… sentient, per say, but there is some degree of intelligence in familiars that cannot be found in other animals. And some live for a very, very long time.
“Some familiars are immortal?” he says out loud in disbelief. He has to flip the tome closed to make sure it’s not a strange joke Vesemir is playing on him. Is this meant to imply that Roach is… immortal?
Well, he thinks, it would certainly explain her fearless enthusiasm in throwing herself at every monster he fights.
#
He goes out to the stables, to the warm quiet in the lull of the storm, and seats himself on an overturned bucket before Roach’s stall. She pays him no heed, just munches away at her hay net.
“So,” he says into the silence. “Heard you might be magic.”
She raises her head and regards him with a judgmental eye.
He tries again. “That mean you can talk?”
Apparently not, because she returns to ignoring him in favor of nibbling her hay again.
He wonders if she can even understand him, if that’s within her abilities, or if she’s only... slightly magical in nature without the sentience that would enable her to speak to him. She’s the only thing that’s stuck by him all these years—he’s shared so many secrets with her that it’s only fair he finds out some of hers.