Geralt arrived at Kaer Morhen with winter in his hair and the scent of foreign wine in the saddle packs. The journey from Vengerberg had been uneventful by witcher standards—only one night spent in the lee of a crumbling abbey, only two bandits too hungry to flee, and a procession of merchant wagons resigned to losing tarpaulins to mountain winds. His horse picked its way past the battered milestone and along the last stretch of icy track, where cart wheels had lashed mud into ruts the size of coffins.
The dwarves had already staked their claim on the keep: two dozen Ironbraid masons, their beards tucked into work-shirts, cursing at the ancient mortar with the venom of men who took shoddy stone as a personal affront. The yard thundered with the ring of hammers, the high ping of chisels biting granite, curses in three languages and one or two that might have been invented for the day's special irritations. Scaffolds bloomed on the walls like frost, planks splayed out to catch rogue slates, and a portable forge huffed black smoke beneath the gatehouse where the brave or foolish hammered new iron into brackets and brackets into legacy.
He was met at the gate by Vesemir, whose greeting was a grunt and an arch of the eyebrow that meant more than a round of toasts in a landlord's hall.
"You've brought an army," Vesemir grumbled, eyeing the string of drovers behind Geralt. Goats—dozens, perhaps a hundred—clattered up the road, their yellow eyes rolling at the dwarves' hammering. The cows trudged in with the long-suffering patience of animals who have survived frost and wolves only to be promised more of both. The pigs, bless their stubborn hearts, rooted in last year's straw before the procession was even inside the gate. They were followed by two wagons of provisions—barrels sloshing with red wine from Aedirn, sacks of bulgur and rye, crates of dried apples and salt pork, six wheels of cheese in wax, and enough onions to perfume the keep through spring.
"We'll need more hands," Geralt said, his voice pitched for Vesemir's ears alone. "The south tower walls are worse than I thought. The Ironbraid say they can finish the west curtain before the snows deepen, but if we want the roof mended by thaw, we'll need at least another dozen stoneworkers. Thirty to break and haul stone for them. Maybe more."
"You'll have them," said Vesemir, nodding with that peculiar fatalism all schoolmasters develop—if there are too many mouths, well, the world will test which ones can chew.
Inside, the company gathered by the dinner table, scarred as ever but dressed in fresh linens—someone, perhaps Rina, had run their hands with vinegar and stronger stuff over every plank. Geralt took his seat beside Visenna, who wore her years as lightly as a borrowed shawl, and Berengar, whose broad laughter shook the wine in its mug.
He removed his gauntlets, flexed fingers stung raw from the alpine wind, and watched the plates fill: broth thick with barley and garlic, shreds of pork floating on oily waves, bread torn straight from the oven and steaming as if it wished to return to the fire.
They made a show of beginning the meal before talk—Vesemir's rule, a stubborn echo of times when fathers believed quiet teeth kept the cold at bay. But before the bowls were cleared and the last heel of buttered bread were sopped up, conversation unfurled.
Geralt, as usual, was the first pressed to speak. "Your face is a letter, witcher," Rina teased, setting a wedge of cheese before him. "Read it aloud for us. Where did the wind take you this time?"
He spoke in brief, careful sentences—never quite boasting, but never cloaking the sharpness of his luck. "Vengerberg was… right for a season. The wine was passable, and I met a woman with a sharp mind and sharper tongue. The dwarves there send their regards—though they were glad to find real walls here, not lordlings' follies." He described the hiring, the bargain struck by Yennefer, the surprising civility of city property agents, and the feeling of spending real coin for once, not a payment dripped in blood. He left out more than he said; Vesemir noticed, and said nothing.
"And how was the city?" asked Mira, youngest by only a month, but oldest in the ways of reading faces for the truth between sigh and smile.
"Restless," he said, "and growing hungrier for answers than for bread. The kind of hunger that gets people burned before they're ready. But it isn't our harvest to reap—not yet."
The others contributed their turns, stories surfacing around the table the way old stones do in thaw. Berengar had laid a new floor in the west barracks, cursing at splintered oak and rusty nails and the luck of carpenters who charge by the hour. Lembert bested all comers at riddles for three weeks running, his prize a wooden sword he now refused to surrender even at table. Rina planted leeks and found, by luck, a plot of mint the size of a blanket—she made tea of it and still had enough to scent the blankets.
Visenna recited the ailments and remedies of yet another year, the swelling and the coughings, the daily miracles wrought with honey, willow bark, and the patience of a saint who'd lost her calendar. She nodded at the children, seated at a smaller table, and recounted how Tomik learned to read by reciting monsters' names off Geralt's bestiary, and how Nessa, hard as boiled leather, could now catch chickens faster than any dog.
And as the meal waned, and plates were cleared and wine renewed, Vesemir looked down the board, studied the beams overhead, and grunted the old inquiry, "So. Who's left to tell a tale?"
Silence, save for the spitting of logs. Snow drifted on the ledge outside. The keep, battered by war, now filled with people and purpose, held itself together by laughter, luck, and the memory of hands that would never fill these bowls again. For winter in Kaer Morhen, that was—as always—enough.