Chapter 4: THE TRAVELING BARD
The Academy gates looked smaller from the outside.
I adjusted the strap of my new travel pack—purchased with the last of my performance earnings—and took one final look at the spires of Oxenfurt. Eight months ago, I'd woken up in that building with someone else's memories and a power I didn't understand. Now I was walking away from the only stability I'd known in this world.
Professor Willemer had called me a fool. "You have talent, Julian. Real talent. Why throw it away wandering roads like a common minstrel?"
I hadn't been able to explain. Couldn't tell him that the Academy's dusty lectures on poetic meter and musical theory felt like learning to swim in a bathtub. I needed the ocean.
The merchant caravan was loading the last of its cargo when I arrived at the crossroads. Twelve wagons, maybe forty people, all heading southeast toward Vizima. The caravan master—a broad-shouldered man named Borek—looked me up and down.
"Bard, eh?" He spat to the side. "You any good?"
"Good enough that you won't regret bringing me along."
He grunted. "Don't slow us down. Don't steal. Don't cause trouble with the wives." He jerked his thumb toward the last wagon. "You can ride with the cloth merchants. They're boring enough that your songs might actually improve the journey."
The cloth merchants turned out to be a pair of brothers named Pavel and Marek who spoke primarily in trade figures and textile quality. By the second hour, I understood why Borek had placed me with them.
But the road—the road was everything I'd hoped.
Green hills rolled to the horizon. The sky stretched wide and blue above us, unmarked by buildings or Academy spires. Birds I couldn't name sang in copses of oak and ash. The air smelled of grass and horse and possibility.
I played as we traveled. Nothing supernatural, just music to pass the miles. The caravan workers drifted closer when I played, their conversations growing lighter. Even Pavel stopped mid-sentence about thread counts to listen to a particularly lively jig.
This is what I needed. The world, not books about the world.
We made camp that first night at a waystation—a cleared area with a well and fire pits, used by travelers for generations. I helped gather firewood because standing around felt wrong, and because the physical work helped me think.
That's when I met the Kowalczyks.
They weren't part of the caravan. A family of five huddled near the edge of camp—mother, father, three children ranging from maybe four to twelve years old. Their clothes were travel-stained and patched. Their eyes had the hollow look of people who'd seen too much.
The father, Tomek, flinched when I approached.
"Just a bard," I said, holding up empty hands. "I noticed your fire was struggling. I have some dry kindling if you need it."
He stared at me for a long moment. Then his shoulders dropped and he nodded.
I helped rebuild their fire. The mother—Marta, like the tavern keeper back in Oxenfurt, which felt like some kind of sign—heated a thin soup over the flames. The children watched me with the wary curiosity of young things who'd learned not to trust easily.
"Where are you heading?" I asked.
"North." Tomek's voice was rough, unused. "Away from the south. Away from—" He stopped. His jaw worked silently.
"There's been trouble in the south?"
"Trouble." He laughed, and there was no humor in it. "Soldiers came. Black and gold, with suns on their banners. They said we had to swear to a new emperor. Some people refused. The soldiers..." He shook his head. "We didn't wait to refuse. We just ran."
Nilfgaard.
I kept my face neutral, but my pulse quickened. The empire's expansion was beginning—years earlier than I'd expected, or maybe just further along than the show had depicted. The timeline I thought I knew might not be as reliable as I'd assumed.
"I'm sorry," I said. "For what happened to your home."
"Home." Tomek stared into the fire. "There is no home anymore. There's just running."
The youngest child—a girl with tangled brown hair—tugged at my sleeve. "Are you really a bard? Do you know magic?"
"I know songs," I said. "Some people think that's magic enough."
"Can you sing about Papa's village? So people remember it?"
Tomek looked up sharply. Pain flashed across his face, followed by something else. Hope, maybe. Or its ghost.
"Would you want that?" I asked him. "If I wrote a song about what happened—about your home and the people who lived there—would you want strangers to hear it?"
He was quiet for a long time. The fire crackled. One of his sons threw a stick into the flames and watched it catch.
"Yes," Tomek finally said. "Someone should remember. Someone should know what they destroyed."
That night, by the light of dying embers, I listened. Tomek told me about his village—a place called Brzeg, on the banks of a river whose name I'd never heard in any show or book. He told me about the baker who gave free bread to widows, the blacksmith who sang while he worked, the children who played in the mill pond during summer.
He told me about the fire. The screaming. The way the soldiers had laughed.
I wrote nothing down. I just listened, letting the truth of it sink into my bones.
The next evening, at another waystation, Borek announced there would be entertainment. "Our bard's been freeloading for two days. Time to earn his keep."
I took my place near the central fire. Forty faces watched me—caravan workers, a few other travelers, and the Kowalczyk family huddled at the edge.
I played a few warm-up songs. Nothing special. Getting the feel of the crowd, letting them relax.
Then I shifted into the melody I'd been composing in my head all day.
"Listen well to the tale I tell, of Brzeg that burned by the river..."
I let myself sink into the music. And I pushed.
Not hard. Not the desperate reaching that had broken me with Tomasz's lie. This was a gentle expansion, carrying the emotion of the song outward on waves of sound.
The truth of Brzeg flowed through my fingers. The baker's kindness. The blacksmith's songs. The children's laughter. And then the fire, the soldiers, the destruction of everything simple and good.
I sang it all, and I meant every word.
Around the fire, faces changed. A merchant who'd been smiling grew solemn. A wagon driver wiped his eyes with a dirty hand. A woman clutched her husband's arm, her expression stricken.
Marta Kowalczyk was crying silently. Her husband sat rigid, fists clenched, tears streaming into his beard.
When I finished, the silence lasted a long time.
Then someone started clapping. Others joined. But it wasn't the cheerful applause of entertainment—it was something heavier, more deliberate. Acknowledgment.
A merchant pressed coins into my hand. "For them," he said, nodding toward the refugees. "Make sure they eat."
Others followed. By the time the crowd dispersed, I had enough coin to keep the Kowalczyks fed for weeks.
I gave it all to Tomek. He stared at the money like he couldn't understand what it was.
"Your story did this," I said. "Not mine. I just sang it."
Three days later, at a tavern near the Vizima crossroads, I heard a trader humming a familiar melody.
"What's that song?" I asked, trying to keep my voice casual.
"Something new. Heard it from a merchant caravan." He scratched his beard. "Sad thing, about a village that burned. Stuck in my head for days."
It's spreading.
I shared my dinner that night with the Kowalczyk children—bread and cheese and dried fruit I'd bought at the last village. The youngest, Ania, asked again if I was a wizard.
"No," I said. "Just a bard."
The lie tasted strange on my tongue. But what else could I tell her?
At the crossroads the next morning, I said goodbye to the caravan. Tomek clasped my hand.
"Thank you. For remembering Brzeg."
"Thank you for trusting me with it."
I watched them continue north—toward safety, I hoped—and then turned my face toward Vizima.
The caravan had been good. Educational. But I needed my own stories now. My own dangers. My own truths to sing.
The road to Vizima stretched empty ahead of me. I shifted my lute case on my shoulder and started walking.
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