Chapter Text
“Here.”
“Um...what’s this?”
“A sword.”
“Yes, I know what it is but why are you handing it to me?”
“I’m going to teach you how to fight.”
Jaskier can’t quite suppress the startled laugh that bubbles out of him. He sobers a second later at the Witcher’s deadpan expression. “Oh, you’re serious.”
Geralt sighs and resists the urge to roll his eyes. “If you’re going to continue to follow me around like a lost child you should at least learn how to defend yourself. You’ve seen the people I do business with, most would rather kill me than pay me, and sometimes it comes down to your head or theirs. Being defenseless will get you killed and I can’t always be around to protect you if things go south so it’s better to know at least a few ways to keep yourself alive should it ever come to it.”
Jaskier stares at the sword blankly and makes no motion to take it. “Yes, but Geralt,” he says with a soft sigh, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “You’ve been training for battle your whole life, you probably picked up a sword before you could walk, and you know how to kill people in more ways than they know how to die.”
“Now look at me,” he says, gesturing to himself with a small sweep of his hand. “I’m not intimidating in the least nor would anyone ever assume I was. The closest thing to a sword I’ve ever handled was a letter opener when I was eleven and I was even clumsy and awkward with that. Do you really think I’m going to have any better luck with an actual sword?”
Geralt rolls his eyes again and pushes the hilt of the sword into Jaskier’s hands before he can object again. “I would rather see you die with a sword in your hand than defenseless and on your knees, praying that their blade is sharp enough to kill you in one blow.” He steps forward and claps one large hand on the bard’s bony shoulder. “Besides, you said it yourself, I’ve been training for battle my entire life so you’ll find no better teacher in all of the Continent.”
Jaskier looks like he wants to object further but reconsiders once he realizes the futility of it. Geralt has his mind made up and there’s very little on this world or the next that could sway him from it. If he was determined to teach him how to fight, then it was happening one way or another; it was better to just play along and let the lessons happen rather than try to find a way around it.
The sword is much heavier than he expects it to be and he nearly drops it when Geralt lets go. He frowns at the weight as he struggles to hold it aloft; he’s watched Geralt fight with it countless times and has always marveled at how the blade appears to become weightless when he wields it. It could have something to do with the fact that Geralt is built like a brick shithouse and treats the weapon as an extension of his own body but Jaskier becomes aware of a rather glaring issue almost immediately.
He can barely lift the sword and hold it steady, let alone wield it with any kind of grace or efficiency. The blade is wide and long and the hilt is too big for his hand; hell, it takes two hands for him to lift it at all, let alone fight with it. Geralt could teach him every move he knows and it won’t do a bit of good if he can’t even lift the damn sword.
“Uh, Geralt,” he says but the Witcher is eyeing him in a peculiar way that indicates he’s realizing the same thing. A sword is not a one-size-fits-most weapon and to use one efficiently Jaskier would need a blade more suitable to his size. Also, Jaskier is not the most graceful man Geralt has ever met and he realizes pretty quickly that handing him a very sharp, very heavy weapon will probably result in disaster by day’s end.
He frowns and looks around the clearing, eyes settling on a cluster of trees near the edge as an idea begins to form in his mind. He takes the sword back from Jaskier and walks across the clearing, slicing two long, thin branches from the nearest tree. True, it’s not exactly like the real thing but he figures they both stand less of a chance of losing a hand or getting impaled if they’re practicing with a tree branch.
He tosses one of the branches to Jaskier, frowning when the bard fumbles the catch and juggles the branch awkwardly for a few seconds before getting a decent grip. For all the skill and finesse Jaskier employs with his hands, he apparently has no idea what to do with anything that’s not a musical instrument.
“Alright, first lesson,” Geralt begins, hefting his own branch comfortably in his hand. “There are eight basic angles of attack when it comes to fighting with a sword.” He takes his branch and traces several lines in the air in front of Jaskier’s body, first an X across the middle, then one line straight down through the middle of the X followed by a single line horizontally through the middle.
“For obvious reasons most attacks will be directed in this area,” he explains, gesturing with the branch toward Jaskier’s torso. “It’s the easiest way to assure victory either through injury or death. Think of these angles as a death zone because any blow that lands in this area can and likely will result in death.”
“I’m already not enjoying this lesson,” Jaskier mumbles, his skin taking on a slightly green hue at all the conversation surrounding his likely and imminent death.
“My point,” Geralt continues, shooting him a mild glare. “Is that during a fight you want to protect this area while attempting to strike a blow in the same area of your opponent.”
He motions Jaskier forward with his branch. “Come here.”
“Are you going to hit me with that tree branch?”
“I will if you don’t come over here.”
The bard sighs and trudges forward with his own branch dragging along the ground behind him. When he gets close enough Geralt reaches out and grabs his hand, repositioning his wrist and tucking his thumb under the branch so it’s mostly hidden by the wood.
“Someone who fights dirty will go for the hands first,” he says by way of explanation, correcting a few more aspects of Jaskier’s grip. “They’ll try to take off your thumb or a couple fingers to prevent you from holding the sword properly. They might even try to lop off your hand, possibly even your arm to get the advantage.”
“Lop off my-?!” Jaskier balks, his face draining entirely of color. “No, no, no, Geralt I’m a bard. A bard! My hands are my livelihood and last I checked it’s pretty difficult to play a lute with no fingers. What the hell am I going to do if some villager with a grudge decides to cut off my hand because we failed to rid the town of the banshee or goblin or whatever they can’t deal with themselves?”
“Find a new instrument.”
“Oh, haha,” Jaskier snips back, fixing the Witcher with a glare of his own. “It’s easy for you to say, I’m pretty sure you could still mangle someone with no hands, just those massive thighs of yours.”
Geralt rolls his eyes. “Focus.”
“Hard to when you keep talking about me getting maimed and/or killed.”
“That’s what I’m trying to prevent,” the Witcher insists, his patience already beginning to wear thin. “I’m trying to teach you how to defend yourself so that doesn’t happen.”
“Well you could be a little less graphic,” Jaskier mutters with a pout.
“Noted, now lift your sword...er, branch.”
Jaskier mumbles something under his breath but obeys, lifting his branch while attempting to maintain the proper grip.
“You want to treat your weapon like an extension of yourself,” Geralt explains, lifting his own branch as well. “Which means you also want to be aware of the mechanics of your movement. Pretend you’re going to attack me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very.”
Jaskier rolls his eyes but again obeys, lunging forward while hefting his branch overhead like a club. Geralt counters it easily and jabs his own branch in the bard’s bony ribs, ignoring the nasty name Jaskier calls him in response. “An overhead attack leaves your chest and torso exposed and you’ll end up with a blade between your ribs before you even realize it’s happened.”
He takes a step back and nods to Jaskier. “Try again.”
To his credit, Jaskier takes a moment to consider his next attack before engaging. He takes a step forward and swings his branch horizontally, aiming for Geralt’s torso. Again, the Witcher easily avoids the slow, clumsy attack and sweeps the branch away from him with his own, landing the blunt end of the branch against Jaskier’s ribs again. It’s not a heavy blow but it’s enough to make the bard wince when the branch bounces off his chest.
“You’re still leaving yourself exposed,” Geralt explains, dropping his branch and taking a step toward Jaskier. He positions him carefully, correcting his posture and stance so that he’s facing more to the side rather than standing straight in front of him. “The best way to protect yourself during a sword fight is to make your stance as narrow as possible, you have less angles exposed like this which means there’s less of a chance of getting hit somewhere vital.”
He steps back again and nods for the fight to continue. Jaskier eyes him critically for a few seconds as if trying to determine the best point of attack that won’t get him jabbed in the ribs again. When he lunges forward this time, he swings low toward the knee.
Again, Geralt blocks it easily but this time he nods in approval. “Good,” he says, offering one of his very rare, blink-and-it’s-gone smiles.
“Wait, really?”
The Witcher nods again and straightens. “Defensive action often requires offensive consideration. For instance, you’re short-”
“Thank you.”
“Which means you should use that to your advantage. Rather than focusing an attack on the upper body, focus instead on the legs.” He draws an imaginary line across his abdomen with one hand. “Think in terms of opposites: if your opponent is taller than you, aim for the lower body; it’s more difficult to deflect a low attack than it is to block one from above. If they’re shorter than you-”
“Upper body,” Jaskier fills in with a small nod.
“Good. Your goal should be to disable your opponent and prevent them from coming after you while giving yourself a chance to escape.”
Jaskier frowns and allows his branch to droop slightly. “Wouldn’t that be seen as cowardly? Running away from a fight?”
“Pride has killed more men than a sword ever will.”
“Fair point. But what if I can’t get away? What if I’m forced to...you know…” he fades off, making a small stabbing gesture with his branch.
“Well then I’d say you already have some experience with that.”
Geralt realizes pretty quickly that that was the incorrect thing to say because Jaskier begins to take on that pale, greenish color again. Several months back, Jaskier had been forced to kill two men in self defense and although he’s usually pretty good at adopting a casual, carefree demeanor, it’s clear the action still haunts him even now. It had been an accident mostly, a few uncoordinated yet lucky strikes on his part, but it still ended with two men dead and him holding the blade. It had taken weeks before he’d even look at the dagger Geralt had given him, let alone touch it again. No matter how many times Geralt reminded him that he shouldn’t bear any guilt or remorse for the killings, he was just defending himself after all, it didn’t change the fact that Jaskier still walked around with the weight of metaphorical blood on his hands.
Geralt sighs quietly and lowers his own branch. “Listen, I can’t guarantee you’ll never find yourself in a situation like that again; sometimes the only resolution in a fight is to kill your opponent,” he says, stepping forward to correct Jaskier’s posture once more. “But not every fight will end that way. Sometimes winning a fight is as simple as surviving to see another day.”
Jaskier tips his head in a nod and says nothing.
Satisfied with his corrected posture and stance, Geralt steps back again. “I’m not teaching you to kill anyone Jaskier, I’m teaching you to defend yourself and stay alive. With any luck you’ll never need to use this but you should know it in case you ever need to.”
“Now,” he says, stepping back and motioning with his branch. “Try again.”
They spend the rest of the afternoon working through various fighting techniques, both defensive and offensive. Geralt teaches him basic blocking techniques, deflection, and feinting, breaking each lesson down to its barest foundation. He briefly considers trying to condense several decades worth of knowledge into a single afternoon but quickly realizes that would be impossible. These are things he’s known since he was a child but teaching them to someone who has never even picked up a sword, let alone used one in any kind of training, is more difficult than he imagined.
One lesson typically spirals into several sub lessons as he remembers, corrects, and adds in additional information to each element. He continuously corrects Jaskier’s posture, helps him widen his stances, alters his grip and tries to make each lesson as straightforward as possible (which usually just ends with a confused expression on the bard’s face).
Jaskier, for his part, absorbs the knowledge with several questions but little protest. He’s still clumsy and awkward with his movements but he’s a fast learner and it usually only takes a few tries for him to get the hang of a new technique. Granted, he hasn’t mastered any of them and still gets confused when Geralt recalls something from an earlier lesson but he’s learning and that’s all that matters for the moment.
The sun is a low, fiery glow along the horizon when Geralt finally puts an end to their lessons for the day. It’s becoming too dark to see and frankly he’s tired of talking; he thinks he’s spoken more in this one afternoon than he has all month. He’s not used to being the vocal member of their party and welcomes the blissful silence when it occurs.
Jaskier appears equally relieved when the lessons finally come to an end for the day; while they may not be using actual swords, he did not manage to escape the day unscathed. He has long, branch-width bruises all over his body and while none of the blows actually broke the skin, he’s already beginning to feel stiff and sore from the intensity of the training. He knows there’s more to come, there’s no way Geralt is going to drop the lessons after just one day, but he’s a little surprised when the Witcher stops him from tossing his branch at the end of the day.
“Keep it,” he tells him as he adjusts Roach’s reins. “Consider it your practice sword until further notice.”
“Shouldn’t I start practicing with a real blade?”
“Not until I’m convinced you won’t accidentally impale yourself or me with one, no.”
Jaskier examines the branch silently for a second. “It’s not very intimidating, you know? The worst I could do with this is give someone a rather devastating splinter.”
“You could always try singing at them, that would scare anyone away.”
“Arse.”
“Hm.”
OOOOO
“You know,” Jaskier grumbles as he’s tossed into the dirt for the third time that hour. “I’m starting to think you’re enjoying this.”
“Whatever would give you that idea?” Geralt asks, straightening carefully and extending his hand down toward Jaskier.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jaskier snips, accepting the Witcher’s hand and allowing him to drag him up off the ground. “Maybe the fact that each lesson in hand-to-hand combat somehow ends up with me in the dirt and you standing in triumph. Call it a hunch.”
Geralt offers the barest hint of a smirk and rolls his eyes. “You will fall one hundred times before you learn to walk.”
“I have fallen two hundred times and I’m not even crawling yet.”
“All the more reason to keep practicing.”
“Oh come on,” Jaskier mutters, dusting yet another layer of dirt off his already filthy pants. It’s a pointless endeavor really, he’s just going to end up back on the ground in a few minutes anyway. “There’s a small, evil part of you that secretly enjoys flipping me into the dirt. Admit it.”
“I will admit no such thing,” Geralt tells him although the smirk is still there, hovering just below the surface. It’s like a mirage on a hot day, an indistinguishable shape the flickers and fades by the second. “Falling is part of the learning process. Even when it happens a lot.”
Jaskier just shakes his head and steps back a few feet, dropping down into the defensive crouch Geralt had taught him a few weeks before. “Well, if you’re going to keep throwing me into the dirt then the least you can do is pay for the wash house in the next town we come across. My clothes are filthy and I can’t perform looking like this.”
“What a shame.”
“You’re awfully dismissive for someone who is enjoying the fruits of my labor. May I remind you that I’ve been the one to keep coins in our pockets between your monster hunting jobs?”
“And what a kind benefactor you’ve been.”
“Thank you,” Jaskier replies before lunging toward him again. He has every intention of catching Geralt around the waist and using his full body weight to drag him to the ground but best laid plans rarely ever work out in one’s favor when their opponent has a foot and a half and at least one hundred pounds of pure muscle to their advantage. As such there’s a quick movement, too quick to follow really, and suddenly Jaskier is on his back again, breathless and dirty and staring straight up at the afternoon sky.
“I really hate you sometimes.”
“Hm,” Geralt replies, offering him his hand once again and tugging him back up off the ground. In spite of Jaskier’s numerous complaints, he’s actually doing quite well with the hand-to-hand combat training. True, he still ends up in the dirt more often than not (which is a powermove on Geralt’s part only about 50% of the time) but he’s getting better day by day.
While he's continued teaching Jaskier basic sword fighting techniques, he’s also started incorporating elements of hand-to-hand fighting in their lessons as well. He knows all too well that not every fight involves a weapon and the ones that don’t tend to be much dirtier and more violent than those that do. A shocking level of brutality comes in trying to disable or kill your opponent when you’re doing it with your bare hands and that’s the mindset he tries to instill in Jaskier during their hand-to hand training. All the sword training on the Continent would do him no good if someone tackled him into the dirt and gouged out his eyes with their thumbs.
He maintains the same fighting tactics as the sword training, focusing on defensive maneuvers and teaching Jaskier how to stay low and use his size and speed to his advantage. What he lacks in physical strength the bard makes up for in agility; he’s remarkably limber and has excelled in dodging and deflection.
He’s also light and buoyant on his feet which makes teaching footwork much easier. It didn’t take long for Jaskier to realize that a moving target was much more difficult to deal with and he quickly began to develop his own style of fighting during their sparring sessions. It focused heavily on evasion, quick footwork and even quicker attacks followed by rapid retreat. He may not be able to take Geralt down physically (it has all the effect of a hummingbird trying to move a boulder) but he’s gotten a few lucky strikes in during their sword fighting lessons.
The constant training has also succeeded in toughening a few of the bard’s softer edges. He’s always been on the smaller side, a slight build with long, lanky limbs, but the near daily sparring sessions have started to sculpt and outline the underlying muscle tissue, his arms and shoulders becoming more defined with each passing week. He’s getting stronger and faster, if only marginally, but it’s a change he doesn’t complain about.
A warm breeze rustles through the trees around them, bringing with it the smell of sweetgrass and flowers and the gentle reminder that spring was right around the corner. Which was just as well in Jaskier’s book because he always found it easier to get inspiration and compose new songs in the spring than he did in the cold, grey, winter months. He’d been working on one for a few weeks now and hoped to test it out at the next decent sized tavern they stumbled across. Whether the audience loved it or hated it didn’t really matter; they still ended up with a handful of coins by the end of the night which was usually more than enough to get them from one town to the next.
He dusts his pants off again, silently noting how pointless the action is, and stares off at the curve of the horizon. “You know, there should be a town a couple miles northeast of here. Care to pass through?”
Geralt considers the request for a moment before shrugging one shoulder loosely. “Might as well, we’re low on supplies as it is.”
Jaskier suppresses a smile, silently pleased with himself for how well the distraction worked out. Supplies aside, they’ve spent the last several nights sleeping on the cold, unforgiving ground and while Geralt might be fine with using a rock for a pillow, Jaskier was ready to sleep in an actual bed for a change.
Also, with any luck they’ll be able to find someone with a monster problem that needs tending to and Geralt will have an excuse to kill something. He tends to get more churlish than usual when he goes for too long without a job and he’s starting to develop that prickly, irritable demeanor that Jaskier is all too used to navigating around. A good monster hunt will tide him over for a few weeks at least and blunt the sharper edges of his personality. It’s a win for both of them honestly.
“I’m serious about the wash house,” Jaskier reminds him as they make their way back to the main road. “Consider it compensation for ruining my clothes.”
“A bit of dirt hardly counts as ruining your clothes.”
“Says the man who is usually covered in a combination of mud, blood, and everything in between.”
“Exactly, your clothes aren’t ruined until you can’t tell what color they were originally.”
“Now I see why all the ladies flock to you; who could possibly resist such charms?”
“We’ll travel faster if you stop talking.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
“Well then let’s test that theory. Starting now.”
Jaskier tries to come up with a witty retort but nothing comes to mind so instead he just grumbles to himself and keeps walking.
“See, we’re moving faster already,” Geralt tells him, smirking at the rude gesture Jaskier makes at his back.