Chapter Text
A frigid swell crashed over Casimir as yet another ice floe passed too close for comfort. He kicked out, but the broken rope remained tangled around his ankle, the other end wedged in the riverbed. He scrambled at the slick boulder, desperate to haul himself up just a little further out of the water. His numb, shaking hands were unable to find enough purchase to pull himself free. The snowmelt swollen river sucked him back down, the icy water lapping at his chest and neck.
He sucked in ragged, wet gasps, trying to catch his breath, and rested his forehead against the cold stone, his arms shaking with the effort to stay in place. He tried to shake lank, wet hair out of his face. It flopped back and stuck.
If he could untangle himself from the climbing gear, he had a chance. Yet to do that, he would have to let go of the meager safety provided by the rock and his hands were too numb to manage a knot. Even if he could, he’d barely managed the swim the first time. After hours spent watching the sun fall closer and closer to the horizon, he doubted he had the strength to do it again.
He checked that damn rope. He checked it a thousand times. When he bought it, when he packed it up, before he set out on this expedition, when he made camp, before he set the anchors, before he set it up, every step of the way.
The moment when he felt it snap the world went still. The birds and the wind fell silent. An eternity passed in a single heartbeat. Then the cliff fell away from his sudden, desperate scrambling. If he screamed, the sound was torn away as he plunged to the dark water below. Any relief that he survived vanished in the raging current and the roar of the falls.
It wasn’t fair. He was supposed to go home. It’d been such a long time since he’d seen his family. He promised to help his grandmother with the goats. Give his aunts and uncles the money to send Kasia to university. He kept meaning to make time to see Olek and his wife in Ceunnon. He'd never suffer Marek's terrible winterberry wine or banter with banter with Danka. His cousin Lidia just had a daughter; he had a niece he’d never even met.
They would never know what happened to him.
The only consolation was that Bonnie would be alright. For the first time, he was grateful he’d yet to find a knot the mare couldn’t untie.
He shook his head again. Thinking too much about the future never brought anything good.
A great shadow passed over him, too quick to be a cloud. He turned to look, but he caught sight of another ice floe. He cursed loudly and just barely had time to duck under the water before it broke on the rocks. A fragment slammed into his back, driving him into the riverbed.
The current sent him twisting and spinning until the rope went taught with a pang of dull, distant pain.
The rushing water turned next heartbeats into hours, bubbles escaping his mouth while he hung in the murky water. Then he lunged for the rope. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see what he was doing or that his hands wouldn’t cooperate. He had to do something.
Then the current caught him with enough force to tear him free.
He swam for what he hoped was the surface. He broke through, sputtering and gasping, his lungs burning. There was barely enough time to comprehend the shrinking strip of river between him and the falls before the torrent tumbled him back under.
Exhausted and disoriented, he swam for whatever he was worth. He didn’t know which way was up or down, but he was not going to die here. He was not going to…
The river swept him into thin air and raging water. His stomach dropped and he twisted, terribly weightless, flailing in the spray. The wind roared in his ears. He braced for impact, hoping that it would be fast.
Then something clamped around his wrist. For a moment, he hung midair, then it grabbed him around the waist and held tight.
He sputtered, coughing up water, and his eyes shot open. A swath of glittering red stretched into the clear spring sky.
“Easy.” His rescuer held a little tighter as he continued to spit up water. “We’ve got you.”
Still not quite believing that he’d been caught, Casimir turned to his rescuer. The man’s sharp features, framed by dark hair, should have been severe in the fading light, but his sad, kind gray eyes softened them to merely striking. His body felt too warm and solid to be a dying dream.
A cold wind picked up. Once he started shivering, he could not stop. Whether it was from cold or nerves or both he could not tell. The man took the dark red traveling cloak from his shoulders and wrapped it around Casimir’s. His shivering did not stop, but the wool was warm and dry and smelled of smoke and expensive perfumes.
He shoved his hands under his armpits, trying to warm himself, and shut his eyes. He’d never been bothered by heights before, but the sight of the ground below made him dizzy and the motion of the dragon’s flight turned his stomach.
They landed in a riverbank clearing with a soft jolt.
“Are you going to be alright if we get down?” he asked.
He nodded and was swept up into strong arm and the dragon lowered them to the ground. The man set him against the dragon’s warm side. He muttered something under his breath -was it his imagination or did he feel drier? - then he took a blanket from a saddle bag and draped it over his shoulders.
Then something brushed against his mind and he startled. If his reflexes hadn’t been so damned slow, he would have scrambled away.
“Careful.” It took him a moment to understand that the gentle reprimand wasn’t directed at him. “He says he’s sorry, he didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“s’fine. Never happened before,” he lied through chattering teeth.
“I’m Murtagh,” he said, then gestured to the dragon. “This is Thorn.”
“Casimir.” He tried to make his voice steady, but he was still shaking and numb. “Cas’f we’re friends.”
He felt another gentle nudge and tried to relax. After so many years, it still felt strange and uncomfortable to hear someone speak in his mind, but Thorn seemed kind.
“Friends already?” he said.
He still flinched.
“After that?” He tried to force a laugh, but it just sounded choked. “Better be.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“South’f the Spine,” he said. “’bout two weeks ride from Leona Lake.”
Murtagh reached to pull the cloak’s hood over his head. Out of well-worn instinct, he shied away, grateful that his shaggy hair had come untied in his ordeal. The other man backed away.
“Can you tell me what season it is?” he asked, kneeling in front of him.
“Sure can.” After a few moments of silence, the other man’s brow furrowed in concern.
Thorn made an amused sounding huff. “I like this one.”
Murtagh shot the dragon a decidedly unamused look. “Good. You’re feeling well enough to be sarcastic. I still need to know that you know when it is.”
“Spring. Been out long enough, couldn’tell you more’n that.” His lips and tongue felt so numb and foreign that even a crude slur was an effort.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Fuckin’ rope broke,” he spat through chattering teeth. He wanted to smoke very badly to steady his nerves. Or even just to feel a little warmer. “Must’ve checked a hundred…I’m not dumb or reckless or…”
“It’s not your fault,” Murtagh said. “Look at me.” He held up a finger. “Follow without moving your head.”
Casimir followed his directions and tried to wrap the cloak tighter around himself. His still frozen hands weren’t quite up to the task. After a moment, Murtagh nodded in approval.
“How are you doing?” Thorn asked.
“Above ground aren’t I?” He tried to force a laugh through chattering teeth. It came out as a choked cough.
“I’d like to check your pulse. Can I touch you?” Murtagh asked.
“Go ahead.”
“I need to see one of your hands.” Casimir somewhat reluctantly extricated his left hand from the warmth of the cloak and blanket. Murtagh’s face fell with a quiet, “Oh.”
A chill crept up his spine when he saw his mangled hand. He’d been too cold and panicked to notice his shredded, bloody fingers, mottled purple and stark white and still swollen from the cold water. A steady trickle of blood rolled down his wrist, staining his ragged, torn shirt cuffs. His ring finger flopped at an unnatural angle across his middle finger. In his desperate scrambling on the cliff and in the river, he’d torn two nails nearly clean off.
Everything grew distant, the sounds of the forest muffled, and he felt himself unmoored, like he was watching from outside his body as he turned his suddenly quaking hand over. A drop of blood fell for an eternity to his lap. A strip of ragged skin hung across the meat of his palm, exposing pale tendons.
Even if he hadn’t lost his tools in the fall, he could never use them right again. He’d have to learn to hold charcoal all over just to take a clumsy rubbing, let alone write or draw fine details. He couldn’t trust himself not to damage artifacts with a chisel or trowel. He’d never climb again.
Maybe he could find a wealthy eccentric who wanted an in-house historian or antiquities dealer, but he wouldn’t have the freedom to see his family when he wanted. He couldn’t even keep that job for too long or people would start asking uncomfortable questions.
“Easy.” The other man’s steady voice snapped him back to his body. His breath came in horrible, sharp wheezes and his too fast heartbeat rang in his ears. “Don’t look; just breathe with me. In, one, two…”
His eyes snapped up, meeting Murtagh’s concerned gaze. He found something darkly funny in how Murtagh used the same tone one would use to calm a spooked horse. He tried to match his breathing, but couldn’t quite maintain the steady rhythm. Even so, it helped a bit.
“Do you need space?” Casimir shook his head. “May I touch you?”
He nodded, swallowing a wave of nausea. He half expected Murtagh to take a salve or bandages from one of the dragon’s saddle bags. Instead, he carefully took his shaking hand in both of his and started to murmur something under his breath. He only caught a few words and understood even fewer, but he had a pleasant, soothing voice.
He watched in awe as his bleeding fingertips stitched themselves back together and the color returned to his skin. It stung at first as feeling returned, but the magic left a warmth like summer sun in its wake. By the time his finger snapped back into place, he couldn’t help but notice how strong and gentle the other man’s calloused hands were.
“Better?” Murtagh asked, gently massaging the last of the chill from his hand. Casimir was so caught up in the soft, focused look on his face in the fading sunlight that he nearly missed it. “Are you alri…”
“Yeah,” he said, still a touch distracted, but his voice felt steadier. “I’m fine. Just a little…this was…”
Murtagh nodded in sympathy and laid two fingers just inside his wrist. When he finished checking his pulse, he let go. Casimir flexed and curled his fingers, trying to determine what mobility he still had. The new scar across his palm didn’t restrict his movement and he could rebuild the callouses. It was more than he could have hoped for even a few minutes ago.
“I need to see your other hand to fix it. Look to your left and tell me what you can see.” Grateful for the distraction, he did so.
“Pine trees.” He felt Murtagh take his other hand. As careful as he was, Casimir hissed as his fingertips brushed raw knuckles. “There’s still snow under them further in… A rock covered in lichen; deer tracks leading down to the riverbank… Thorn’s scales...”
One of his fingers straightened. He craned his head to look when Thorn caught his attention.
“Don’t turn around. Tell me what you hear?” He closed his eyes and tried to focus on that instead of the strange, half numb sensation of his hand stitching itself back together.
“The river. There’s some birds, I don’t know what kind. Wind in the trees…That spell. I don’t know the words, but it sounds nice.”
He’d nearly forgotten the language, knew he couldn’t speak it now if his life depended on it, but he missed it nonetheless.
Thorn kept him distracted from the uncanny feeling with questions until Murtagh finished his spell. After making sure his right hand was usable, Murtagh wiped away the remaining blood with a fine kerchief and warm water, then he handed him the waterskin. Casimir forced himself to take a few slow sips while Murtagh finished checking him over.
As Murtagh fixed his scrapes and bruises, Casimir was increasingly aware of the fact that Murtagh was rather handsome. And he felt, and likely looked, like a drowned rat. The last few weeks on the road hadn’t done him any favors. He hadn’t so much as thought of shaving since he last passed through a village.
It would be just his luck to be plucked from certain death by a kind and dashing dragon rider while looking scruffy and pathetic.
At least his unexpected swim meant he was clean.
But it was only a fleeting thought. As the thrill of immediate danger passed, exhaustion took its place. And he was still so damn cold.
He wanted to be back at his camp, with a warm meal and a smoke, then wrapped in his blanket to sleep for days. Yet the last thing he wanted to do was cook. He didn’t have it in him to hunt or forage, so if he really wanted something hot, he’d have to steal some oats from Bonnie. And to even get that far, he’d have to trek miles through the mountains on a wrenched ankle in the dark.
He always left little margin for error with respect to supplies to keep costs low. It just hadn’t bitten him in the ass too hard until now. Although he didn’t regret his decision to send nearly his whole advance to his family, right now, he wished he kept a little more for himself to pay for better food.
While he could go back down the mountain for supplies, a small village’s market couldn’t replace his delicate tools. Even if it could, he didn’t have the money. Even if he had the money, their value was as much sentimental, and they’d been bent and worn just the way he liked them.
If he had a chance to try again. If he didn’t have to, somehow, scrape together the funds to pay back his advance. By the time he’d be ready, his patron would have found another treasure hunter or graverobber.
“All things considered, you’re doing remarkably well,” Murtagh said. He reached to clean blood from his face, then stopped, remembering his earlier reaction and handed him the kerchief.
“Wasn’t in the water long,” he said, taking the offered cloth and cleaning the healed scrapes. A lifetime of experience told him that it was far better for people to think him extraordinarily lucky than extraordinarily durable.
“Would you like help getting back to the village?” Thorn asked.
“My camp’s upriver,” he said, shaking his head. As much as he didn’t want to ask much more of them, he didn’t want to spend a night on the mountain without shelter.
“You’re a hunter?” Murtagh offered a hand to help him up.
“Historian.” He clasped his hand and Thorn shifted to help him to his feet.
The dragon’s strength sent him crashing into Murtagh’s chest. He was grateful for the man’s broad shoulders and grabbably narrow waist as he caught himself. Murtagh shot the dragon a sour look over his shoulder. His ankle twinged as he stepped back.
“Sorry,” Thorn said. “Are you alright?”
“A little sore,” he said. They’d already done enough for him and so long as he was careful, his ankle would sort itself out with some rest. “Just need to walk it off.”
Murtagh gave him a skeptical scowl, but after enough silence, accepted that that was the answer he was getting.
The dragon lifted them to his back. After showing him how to strap himself in, Murtagh settled behind him. Then the dragon took a few great, leaping strides along the riverbank and unfurled his wings.
At any other time, he would have been ecstatic to fly on an actual dragon. Now, even though Thorn kept low, he could barely stop himself from snapping his eyes shut and waiting for it to be over. But he knew where they were going, so he forced himself to look. He’d never stopped shivering, but the faint rush of wind chilled him anew.
They landed a little down river from his campsite. He said he could manage from there, but Thorn would not hear of it, insisting on seeing him back safely.
“Wait,” he said. “My horse. I know you’re a friend, but she…”
“Murtagh can calm her,” Thorn said.
“If it helps, her name is Bonnie.” He vaguely remembered something about magic using names.
“It should,” Murtagh replied.
Progress was slow and he had to be careful of uneven footing, but he and Thorn kept up a decent conversation about hunting in the area. Murtagh stuck close to the dragon’s side, comfortably quiet.
Casimir didn’t know much about dragons or dragon riders and most of it came from a crass drinking song. Yet they’d never interfered in any of his business, so he didn’t mind theirs.
During the war, he heard too many conflicting rumors to put much stock in any. First the Varden had a dragon. It was blue, no purple, no gold. Years later, deep in their cups, his cousins told him of a horrifying brute that was as much a danger to the king’s own soldiers as it was to the Varden. All the while, he tried to keep his head down as the most unremarkable historian imaginable and tried not to think too hard about what might happen if things became any worse.
And after? The stories were, well, they were the ones you heard in a tavern. Exaggerated to get someone to buy you a drink and often downright bizarre. At some point, he heard something about a fish and put about as much stock in it as one would any fish story.
But if the rest of the riders were even half as decent as Murtagh and Thorn, he found he had a much better opinion of them
By the time they reached his campsite, it was already dark. He wasn’t sure if they were planning on flying on or if they needed a place to stay for the evening. If they did, there was plenty of space in the clearing for everybody. After everything the pair had done for him, the least he could do was offer to share.
“Thank you for everything,” Casimir said, stopping himself just before he could tuck a strand of still damp hair behind his ear. “If you need a place to stay for the evening…”
“He would like to stay for…”
“Thorn!” A series of exasperated expressions flicked over his features and Casimir was suddenly very aware of a private conversation. The dragon made an amused huff and Murtagh continued, “Pay no attention to anything he says. He’s incorrigible. But yes, we would appreciate company.”