The Child
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Outside a small village in the Blue Mountains, twenty-two-year-old Hilde crouched in her herb garden, pulling weeds while her six-year-old son played nearby. Every few minutes, she paused to watch him chase toads through the damp grass.
“Look, Mama!” the boy shouted, proudly holding up a fat, squirming critter. “This one’s huge!”
“I see,” Hilde said, her smile warm and bright.
“Oh! Ew! It peed on me!” The little boy burst out laughing.
Hilde sat back on her heels and giggled. “You’d better scrub those hands real good before supper. You don’t want your fried chicken tasting like toad pee, do you?”
“No way,” he grinned, wiping his hand on his pants. “That’d be nasty.”
Hilde dusted the dirt from her apron and called him inside to wash up. “We can sing some songs after we eat,” she promised. “I’ll play the lute.”
“The hen song, too?”
“Yep. The hen song, too.”
Just as they reached the front door of the woodland cabin, the thud of heavy hooves echoed from the trail. Hilde’s husband rode up on his old plow horse.
Jonas Bobak was a stern, unyielding man. He was Hilde’s second husband and stepfather to her son, having married her when the boy was two. Now, she was carrying Jonas’s child. Her first husband, Jozue, had been killed defending their village from outlaws before the boy was even born.
Jonas dismounted without a word, following them inside. He ignored Hilde entirely, his cold eyes landing instead on the child.
“You’re coming with me,” Jonas said.
“Where?” the boy asked, curious.
“Back outside,” Jonas replied, his voice flat. “There’s someone coming for you.”
“What?” Hilde gasped.
“I ran into trouble in the high field,” Jonas said, turning to her. “Nekkers. Twern’t there yesterday, but today there was a mess of ’em.”
The blood drained from Hilde’s face. She knew the ancient laws of the realm. She knew where this was going. “Oh gods… no, no, no!”
“A witcher happened to be nearby and saved my hide,” Jonas continued relentlessly. “For payment, he asked for the Law of Surprise. The first thing I saw when I got home.”
He looked down at the boy, who had gone entirely still and wide-eyed.
Instinct took over. Hilde snatched her son up, swinging him onto her hip and clutching him tightly to her chest just as a tall, battle-scarred silhouette stepped into the doorway.
“You can’t have my child!” Hilde screamed at the witcher.
Without a word, the witcher turned and walked back outside, mounting his horse and riding down the dirt track. But as he reached the crossroad, the sound of galloping hooves closed in behind him.
“Take him and go!” Jonas called out, pulling his horse alongside the witcher’s. He held the tearful child out in front of him. “I owe a debt, and the boy is the price.”
The witcher half-turned in his saddle, his catlike eyes narrowing. “What of your wife?”
“She’s a reasonable woman. She’ll manage,” Jonas spat. “It’s just the shock of it. Here.” Jonas thrust a slip of paper into the witcher’s gloved hand. “His full name and birthdate. Anything else you need?”
“No,” the witcher said slowly.
Though a thread of suspicion nagged at him, the witcher set the child securely in front of him in the saddle, dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and rode off. Jonas sat atop his old plow horse, watching until the dusty trail swallowed them whole.
When Jonas returned to the cabin a few minutes later, Hilde was staggering to her feet, clutching her bruised jaw. A thin trickle of crimson dripped from the corner of her mouth where he had struck her down.
“Where’s my baby?” she gasped, her vision swimming as she tried to regain her balance.
“Gone,” Jonas answered curtly. “Don’t you ever defy me like that again. I owed a debt. I always pay my debts.”
Grief tore through Hilde so violently she couldn’t catch her breath. “Esau!” she shrieked, throwing herself at Jonas and pounding her fists against his chest.
Jonas seized her wrists and shoved her hard onto the bench. “Stop it!” he barked. “I’ve raised another man’s bastard for four years. Now we have a child of our own coming. I intend to focus on my own blood.”
Hilde looked up at him with a gaze cold enough to kill.
“You’ve sentenced my child… Jozue’s child… to death,” she whispered, her voice trembling with raw venom. She knew the brutal, agonizing reality of the witchers’ trials; few children ever survived them.
“Jozue Kaminski is dead,” Jonas sneered, spitting on the floor at the name.
“Jozue died a hero,” Hilde said, her voice dropping into a deadly, quiet rage. “You will die a coward.”
Jonas merely smirked and strode off to the bedroom.
Hours later, after his heavy snoring filled the cabin, Hilde slipped into the dark. She took nothing with her except three things: a small portrait of Esau she had painted weeks ago, a silver locket containing a lock of his brown hair, and her lute.
She fled a half-mile through the woods to a neighbor’s home. Through choked sobs, she told them everything. They sheltered her for the night, and at dawn, took her six hours away to her parents’ home in the neighboring valley.
A week later, word reached Jonas through a traveling trader. Hilde’s body, overwhelmed by the intense grief of her loss, had miscarried three days after leaving. True to his bitter nature, Jonas blamed Hilde for the death of his heir.
Meanwhile, high in the snowy peaks at the fortress of Kaer Morhen, the witcher Vesemir rode into the outer courtyard. He carefully lowered the small, frightened boy to the ground before dismounting.
Another young boy—already living at the keep—rushed forward with a wide, welcoming grin.
“Geralt,” Vesemir said, clapping a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder. “This is Esau. Why don’t you take him inside and show him around?”
“Okay!” young Geralt said enthusiastically, grabbing Esau by the hand. “Come on! We’re gonna be best friends!”
The two boys scampered off toward the Great Hall, their footsteps echoing against the old stone. Vesemir watched them go, his hand resting against his saddle. His mind drifted back to the road outside the village, and the callous ease with which a father had handed over a child.
Something wasn’t right about that man, Vesemir thought. Not right at all.
Shaking his head, he pushed the uneasy thought to the back of his mind, unsaddled his horse, and headed up the steps into the shadow of the castle.
NOTES: We know Geralt's story and even Lamberts, but Eskel doesn't have a backstory. All that is known about him before he arrived as a child at Kaer Morhen is his sole memory of his mother is an old hill-folk song she used to sing to him (De Ole Hen). This, of course leads to the theory, or likelihood, that he is originally from the Blue Mountains. He's the same age as Geralt, so born in 1211 and his full name is Esau Kelly Kaminski. It's all we know canon-wise. I wanted to give this wonderful character a history, even if he can't remember it.
