KAEDWEN – Ban Gleán
Leo Bonhart sat alone in the darkest corner of the common room in a tavern that sat at the edge of Ban Gleán's southern quarter, a mug of unfinished spirits in front of him, his eyes tracking every soul who entered through the low doorway.
He had come to Ban Gleán chasing a rumor, a witcher of the Wolf School, spotted on the road north of the city some week past, moving with purpose rather than the aimless wandering most of his breed affected. Aware that Kaer Morhen is close, Bonhart had learned, over years of practicing his particular art, that witchers with purpose were witchers worth following. It was in the pursuit of that thread that he'd first noticed the other man.
He'd been sitting three tables over for the better part of an hour before Bonhart allowed himself to properly look at him a tall figure wrapped in a dark, high-collared coat despite the tavern's close, smoky heat, skin the color of old parchment, eyes a shade of red so deep they looked black until the firelight caught them just right. He drank nothing. He ate nothing. He simply sat, motionless, watching the room.
Bonhart had killed enough in his time to recognize one monster wearing a gentleman's coat.
He rose and crossed the room, settling himself uninvited into the chair across from the stranger. "You've been watching that door for the better part of an hour," Bonhart said. "Same as me. Curious, that."
The stranger's dark eyes settled on him for the first time, and something in that gaze made even Bonhart's skin prickle faintly, an old and unwelcome instinct stirring somewhere beneath his composure. "You wear your intentions rather plainly, for a man who makes his living hiding them," the man said, his voice low. "I know who you are, Leo Bonhart.. is it not? Your reputation precedes you rather considerably, even into corners such as this one."
Bonhart's mouth curved. "And you'd be?"
"A name is a small courtesy," the stranger said, inclining his head slightly, "and courtesies are worth extending, when the company proves interesting enough to warrant them. You may call me Detmold, if a name is what you require to feel properly introduced."
"Detmold." Bonhart turned the word over, tasting the lie in it and not much caring either way. "Well then, Detmold. You've been sitting here watching that door same as I have, waiting on someone in particular, unless I miss my guess."
"You do not," the stranger said. "I am waiting, as it happens, on word of a witcher. One belonging to the School of the Wolf." Something dark behind his eyes. "Their keep, I understand, is not so very far from this city. A week's ride north, perhaps two, depending on the weather in the passes."
Bonhart went very still, the careless posture dropping away from him entirely. "Now that," he said slowly, "is an interesting coincidence. Seeing as I happen to be hunting the very same breed of quarry, in the very same direction."
"Is that so." The man's mouth curved, slowly, revealing nothing so crude as fangs, merely the faint suggestion of teeth a shade too sharp to belong to any ordinary man. "Then perhaps fortune has done us both a service tonight, bringing us to the same table."
"Perhaps." Bonhart leaned back in his chair, studying the creature across from him with open, professional interest. "Though I'll admit, I've killed my share of witchers over the years... Yet I'm curious about what I can do to your kind..."
"You might have a chance killing lessers of my kind," the man said, entirely without alarm, a threat from one aging bounty hunter with a taste for trophies didn't mean anything to him. "Ekimmara. Bruxae, perhaps, if you were fortunate and they were careless. I am neither, Master Bonhart, and I suspect some part of you already senses as much, or you would not still be sitting here entertaining this conversation instead of reaching for that blade at your hip."
Bonhart didn't reach for it. He simply studied the vampire a moment longer. "A higher vampire, then."
"Just so."
"And what," Bonhart said, "would a creature such as yourself want with a Wolf School witcher, that you'd sit waiting on rumors in a tavern like this one, same as a common man might?"
Something shifted behind the vampire's composed features, the first genuine crack Bonhart had seen in him all evening, old grief, and something far more dangerous than mere sorrow. "One of that School's number killed a bruxa who was dear to me," he said, "Dearer, perhaps, than you are capable of properly understanding, given the brevity of your own kind's attachments. I have waited a long while for the opportunity to correct that particular imbalance. I intend to see it corrected properly, and soon."
Bonhart's smile widened, "Then it seems we've got more in common after all, Detmold."
"So it would seem." The vampire's eyes fixed on him, sharp and considering. "Tell me, Master Bonhart... what precisely draws a man of your particular reputation to hunt an entire School of witchers? I confess I had believed your interests ran more toward singular quarry. Trophies collected one at a time, each earned through proper, personal effort."
"They usually do," Bonhart admitted. "But this isn't about the witchers themselves, not really. Not most of them, anyway." He turned his mug slowly between his fingers, considering how much to say. "There's a girl holed up in that keep of theirs. Particular girl, a powerful one. Enough people with enough coin and enough interest in her that hunting her down properly is worth more to me than every witcher trophy I've ever taken combined."
"Ah." Something settled into the vampire's expression.
"I have little interest in the girl myself, I didn't know they take girls." the vampire said, waving one pale hand dismissively, as though brushing away a minor inconvenience. "But I am no fool, Master Bonhart, and I recognize an opportunity for mutual benefit when one presents itself so plainly." He leaned forward slightly, eyes glinting in the low firelight. "You cannot take an entire keep of trained witchers alone. Even a man of your considerable talents would find that a poor wager. I, however, am rather more than a single man's worth of trouble, when I choose to be."
Bonhart studied him a long moment, weighing it properly. "And in exchange for that help, you'd want what, free passage to whichever witcher killed your bruxa? No interference from me while you settle your grief?"
"Precisely that," the vampire said. "The girl, and whatever coin or glory chasing her might earn you, are entirely yours to claim. I want only the one who took what was mine. Once he is dealt with, properly, I have no further interest in the rest of your business there."
Bonhart considered it, turning the offer over the way he turned over every contract before committing his blade to it, weighing the odds, the cost, the likelihood of betrayal on either side. A higher vampire was no small thing to have at one's back, storybook horror stories aside; he'd heard enough true accounts over the years to know exactly what such a creature was capable of when properly motivated. And this one, it seemed, was motivated indeed.
"Well then, Detmold." He extended a scarred, weathered hand across the table, something cold and satisfied settling behind his eyes. "Seems we've got ourselves an arrangement."
The vampire regarded the offered hand a moment, before he finally reached out and closed his own pale fingers around it, his grip cool as stone, and considerably stronger than any human hand had a right to be.
"An arrangement, a strange way to name this, but so be it." he agreed.
/-\
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