ii.
In Death, Sacrifice
GWYN
My companions and I left the main road to clean up by the river, leaving the bodies of the bandits where they lay on the highway. Killing reasonable creatures always left a sour taste in my mouth, but they had refused to face justice with honor. Their deaths had been clean. They had only asked for mercy when it had become clear they were outmatched, and before, they had been ready to murder us for a few silvers. Better to think of the helpless refugees they had probably killed in the past, and the many that would be spared that fate in the future because we had struck them down.
We all drank our fill from the river, and refilled the water skins without speaking. Then we climbed back up the hill to the road. We crested the top of the hill and saw the village below, golden in the morning light.
"Well there it is," Alistair said. "Lothering. Pretty as a painting."
"Ah, so you have finally decided to rejoin us, have you? Falling on your blade in grief seemed like too much trouble, I take it?"
The condescension in Morrigan's tone was thicker than plate armor. I rolled my eyes. As he had antagonized the mage at Ostagar, so Alistair had antagonized the apostate at our first meeting in the Wilds. Apparently, Morrigan was the sort to hold a grudge. She had clearly decided to dislike my companion, and had already begun to needle him at every opportunity. Not that the dislike was at all one-sided. Alistair's deep suspicion of apostates was not unreasonable, but it was perhaps especially pronounced due to his upbringing in the Chantry. And trained as a Templar, he had not developed the diplomatic abilities most everyone else possessed not to share their suspicions with apostates. Instead, Alistair was trained to attack them. The Blight had forced us to work with one, but still he would not curb his tongue or check his manner, any more than Morrigan herself would.
It was already looking as though it would be a long, long road.
Alistair was trying to defend himself. "Is my being upset so hard to understand? Have you never lost someone important to you? Just what would you do if your mother died?"
Yes, because that appeal is certain to move her heart. One of the first things I had noticed about Morrigan and Flemeth was the strain between them.
Indeed, Morrigan returned coolly, "Before or after I stopped laughing?"
Although I had guessed at the sentiment, the sheer callousness of the witch's reply caught me by surprise, and I averted my eyes, disturbed. Alistair folded his arms. "Right. Very creepy. Forget I asked."
I sighed. "Alistair. You had something you wanted to discuss?"
"His navel, I suspect," Morrigan interjected. "He certainly has been contemplating it long enough." She smiled, pleased with her own wit.
Alistair was not so pleased. "Oh, I get it. This is the part where we're shocked to discover how you've never had a friend your entire life."
"I can be friendly when I desire to. Alas, desiring to be more intelligent does not make it so," Morrigan returned, the flash of her eyes and the sharpness of her retort revealing that Alistair had struck nearer the truth than she liked.
I'd had enough. "Morrigan. We have enemies enough trying to kill us without helping them along." Morrigan raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, but subsided with a frosty bow. I looked at my other companion. "Alistair? Please," I said, gesturing for him to speak his piece.
His ears were red, and he cleared his throat. "I just thought we should talk about where we intend to go from here," he said apologetically.
I looked down at the village. Refugees were camped around the outskirts, hanging laundry, trading goods, searching for friends and companions. I wondered where the tavern was. The tavern was the beating heart of any rural village. There would be news there regarding any soldiers who had escaped from Ostagar. "I need to look for Fergus," I muttered. "He wasn't in the battle. He might still be alive."
The silence lingered, until I looked back at my companions to see them staring at me with completely blank expressions. "I'm sorry," Alistair said finally. "Who is Fergus?"
He had been so much in my thoughts it surprised me, but of course they would not know. "My brother," I explained. "King Cailan said he was out scouting in the wilds before the battle."
Morrigan sniffed. "Attempting to look for him there would be foolish," she said. "He is either dead or he managed to flee to the north."
Alistair shot her a disgusted look. "Very sensitive."
Morrigan spread her hands. "I am simply saying that it is foolish to mount a rescue when you have no notion where this man is and the Wilds are overrun with darkspawn," she reasoned. "You will either find him somewhere outside the Wilds with other survivors, or not at all."
My fists clenched and unclenched as I regarded the witch. I remembered those corpses in the Wilds, in the tower, turning on spits over the darkspawns' filthy fires. Heads on pikes, contorted, blackened, and rotted beyond all recognition. Had my brother been one of them? Was he now?
Or was he still alive, wandering somewhere with no idea, no inkling that our father and mother were dead, his wife and son murdered with them, and that their murderer held his teyrnir?
King Cailan Theirin had promised to bring Howe to justice.
Cailan lay dead on the field at Ostagar.
I swallowed, but could not dissolve the lump that had risen like a stone in my throat. I blinked—once, twice, thrice—trying to dispel the heat from my face, the burning tears that suddenly clouded my vision. "You don't understand," I insisted. "I have to find him."
Morrigan shook her head. "You wish to do this brother of yours a service? Avenge him. The time to look for survivors will come later."
Vengeance? She spoke of vengeance? I didn't know he was dead! Before I knew what I did, I had rounded on Morrigan with a strangled cry. My hand had flown to the hilt of my dagger, and the witch's golden eyes widened—not in fear, but in surprise. Alistair darted between us, holding up his hands, but I'd already stopped.
"Hey, hey! We have to work together here."
I'd already dropped my hand. I stared at Morrigan, then groaned, and raked my fingers through my hair. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Cavall, good dog, sensing my distress, whined and pressed his body up against my leg. I put my hand on his broad, warm head.
Everything that had happened was breaking over me again like a tidal wave. My father is dead. My mother is dead. Oriana and Oren are dead. All our knights are dead. Howe holds our lands and our people, and I cannot help them or seek justice, because the king is dead, too, and Alistair and I are the only two Grey Wardens left to stand against the Blight.
Alistair was still watching me. He was ready to intervene if it looked like I would get violent again, but he watched with more sympathy than wariness now. "You're close to your brother," he murmured.
I tried to explain. "Yes, but that's not the only—he's the only—"I couldn't. The lump in my throat had stolen my voice, and I was crying too hard to see now. I groaned again, and waved the others away, begging them to spare me my dignity.
I turned and all but ran. Just a moment, just a few moments. Then I'd go on.
I stopped walking perhaps a quarter mile past the village and sat down on the wall by the highway. For the first time since the fall of Castle Cousland, I gave in to the grief.
A fortnight. Only a fortnight since the entire world had shattered. With Duncan and the king dead, everyone who knew what Howe had done, everyone capable of giving me justice had died, too, and I was well and truly alone.
So I would not seek out Fergus. Morrigan was right, of course. I could ask in the village, but if Fergus was not here now, he was still in the wilds or he had already passed on, and we did not have the time to search for him. We had another duty—to fight the Blight. It would be comical, if it weren't so tragic and terrifying. I was a raw recruit to the Wardens, and Alistair was hardly better, with only six months more experience, and the two of us and a cold, cruel apostate mage were the only hope for Ferelden.
A cold, wet nose nudged under the curve of my arm, and my faithful hound whined again. I looked up into his big brown eyes. He had followed me out here. I stroked his short, coarse fur. "Oh, Cavall, what are we going to do?" I whispered.
He whimpered, pawing at my knee, and I threw my arms around the last friend I had left from Highever and sobbed. I sobbed until my chest ached and my face was hot, until my eyes were swollen and my throat was raw. I punched the wall beside me with futile fists until they bruised and my helpless rage had faded into quiet. Then I let Cavall lick away the tears from my fevered face, and I listened to the sound of his breathing, until I heard the fall of boots down the road.
ALISTAIR
I hadn't been certain I should really go after her, but since the alternative was staying with Morrigan, eventually I did head in the direction Gwyn had gone. She hadn't gone far past the village. She was sitting on a wall by the highway, arms around her mabari like she was about to break apart.
She'd been crying. Her nose was all red, and her eyelashes were all clumped together and wet with tears. She looked like a little girl. I really hadn't noticed before. She was always so strong and composed, so brave in the middle of the worst crises, but now I realized she didn't actually look much older than I was. Maybe twenty at the most.
She was lost in whatever sad memories she'd run out here to feel alone, stroking Cavall's coat and staring at the sky. She didn't acknowledge me for a long moment. When she did, she looked behind me for Morrigan. "Morrigan's at the gate where you left us," I told her. "At least, I think she is. Honestly, I don't care." I did, a little, but only because the sisters would have never let me hear the end of it for letting an apostate go free. Especially one as unpleasant as Morrigan. Who knew what she'd get up to on her own?
Gwyn's jaw was tight. She was obviously still angry at Morrigan, too. "I didn't ask her to come with us," she said in a low voice. Then she sighed. "But I'm glad of her help, however . . . abrasive . . . she may be. It's hardly her fault, after all. I doubt she's ever had a proper conversation in her life. Can you imagine? Living alone, with just that—"she shook her head, dropping her own issues with the witch for the time being. "She tread on sensitive ground," she admitted instead. "She could hardly know it, but there it is."
I hadn't figured out yet if Gwyn was one of those who sympathized with apostates, or whether she was just pragmatic enough to leave behind her scruples so long as we needed the witch, but at any rate, it looked as if we would not be ditching Morrigan in the near future. I put aside my disappointment. We had more pressing problems.
The truth was, perhaps Morrigan had had a point back at the gate. I'd been so absorbed with my own grief, I hadn't noticed Gwyn's. Now I couldn't believe I had missed it. She'd been so understanding with me. Now it was my turn. The two of us were all we had out here, all alone against the Blight. If we weren't there for one another, our counterattack was doomed before it ever got off the ground.
I kept a wary eye on her hound as I sat down. So far, Cavall had been friendly enough to us all, but I had seen him rip out the throats of darkspawn on the road, and when we'd encountered those bandits, he'd gone straight for the men's most sensitive areas. Like he'd been trained. But he only lifted his head from his mistress's lap to whine at me and moved his hindquarters a few inches to the right, like he was giving me more room.
"Gwyn—"I hazarded at last. "Can you talk to me? This—"I gestured at her red, snotty face, the way she was hugging her dog, like he was the only thing in the world she could count on, feeling totally out of my depth. One thing I did know. "This isn't the Wardens. You didn't know them like I did. It's deeper than that. I thought something was wrong when we met. You were so . . . distant." I frowned, and on a hunch I asked, "What happened in Highever before Duncan recruited you? Some of the Wardens were . . . saved, for lack of a better word. They came to the Wardens because they had nowhere else to go. Well, you heard Daveth's story. They were going to hang him. Was it . . . was it like that for you?"
I knew by the way her face darkened and went all bleak and lonely that I was on the right track, and my heart sank, but she was quiet for so long that I was almost sure she wasn't going to tell me when she finally spoke. "My name is Gwyn," she whispered then. "Gwyn Cousland. I was the second child of Bryce Cousland and his wife Eleanor, teyrn and teyrna of Highever."
The sound of the grief in her voice was enough to send a shiver down my spine. Cousland. I knew that name. Eamon and Teagan had known the Couslands. They were the noblest family in Ferelden, with a line older than even the Theirins. Practically princes and princesses. It seemed that bad things were happening all over. "Was?" I repeated. "So you—"
Now that she'd started speaking, though, the words just came tumbling out of her, like she'd been holding them back for ages. "The king called his forces to Ostagar. Our friend, Arl Howe, was to come with his soldiers to leave with my father and our knights in the morning, while my brother went ahead with some of our other forces. My mother was going to go to visit a friend of hers, while I was to remain behind to guard our lands. It was to be the first time I was ever charged with such a responsibility. Duncan had come to test one of our knights, Ser Roland Gilmore, as a possible recruit to the Grey Wardens. When we met, he told my father I was also a good candidate, but my father refused. There weren't any others of us, just me and Fergus. He didn't want to lose all his children to the Blight. Duncan wasn't going to press the issue."
Right away I knew this was not going to be a happily-ever-after type of story. Because Gwyn had come to Ostagar, and she had been recruited. Something had changed. This was going to be one of those cheery Grey Warden fireside tales where everyone died in the end. "What happened?" I asked her. I almost didn't want to hear, but I knew if I was going to claim to be her friend, her partner in this, I had to hear it to the bitter end.
"Howe's men," Gwyn answered. "They attacked in the middle of the night. We never saw it coming. Arl Howe had always been our friend. He used the Blight, the king, as an excuse to bring his soldiers to our home . . . and then he took his chance. They'd taken the castle before we knew what had happened. They killed my brother's wife—my sister-in-law—and her son. They were unarmed, defenseless. Oren—my nephew—he wasn't even seven years old. My mother and I saw their bodies on the floor, dismembered, hacked to pieces . . ."
She was crying again now, and shaking. Trembling like she couldn't stop, and the expression on her face frightened me. She was looking straight ahead, but she wasn't seeing the road and the grass and the sky. I could tell she was seeing her sister-in-law's and nephew's mutilated bodies before her. How long ago had this been? Days? Just a few weeks? And she'd been walking around all this time, keeping quiet and carrying it with her.
The reckless question I had asked her yesterday morning came back to me then, and I was so disgusted I thought I might be sick. I'd asked her if she'd ever lost someone close to her. She'd only said yes, at the time, but she'd had this. How could I have been so stupid?
She was still talking, lost in the nightmare she had witnessed. "My mother and I found weapons, a servant, a man-at-arms. We fought our way through Howe's men—this—"She drew her sword then from its place on the bottom of her double hip sheath, and held it out for me to examine. I had seen it before, in the ruins, when she fought at close quarters. It was a fine blade, centuries old, but only now did I realize it was an heirloom weapon. "This is the only thing we could save from our home," she told me. "They tore apart our chapel, killed my tutor, my mother's friend, her son and lady-in-waiting . . . Ser Gilmore held the gates with just a few knights to give my mother and me time to escape through the servant's exit in the larder. I heard . . . I heard them break through." She paused, swallowed, and sheathed her sword. "Howe's men had already found my father once when we found him. Duncan . . . Duncan helped him escape to the servant's exit. But . . . not in time. He'd been wounded. He was dying. I wanted to get him out of there. I begged Duncan to help me save him, help to get him and my mother and all of us away, but . . . it was too late. My father . . . couldn't be saved. Duncan promised my father he'd get me out. Me and my mother, but only if . . . only if . . ."
Now I saw it. "Only if your father agreed to let you join the Wardens," I finished for her, hating the conclusion I'd come to, but Gwyn's eyes flashed and her jaw tightened, and when she hastily glanced at me then dropped her eyes again, I knew I was right.
I'd known back at Flemeth's that she'd only inquired about Duncan to be kind. She hadn't known him like I had, but I realized now that to Gwyn, Duncan had probably been a very different figure. To my companion, Duncan was the man that had killed Ser Jory at her Joining. To her, he was the man that had taken her away from her dying father. Looking at her now, it wasn't hard to guess that she had probably hated him. I wondered if in her place I would feel any different. I'd always known Duncan was a man who did what he had to for the Grey Wardens. I had never felt what it was like to be on the wrong end of that. Gwyn had.
It baffled me now that she still wouldn't say it, wouldn't blame or speak ill of the man, regardless of what he had done to her. Even now, half mad with grief and loneliness, she wouldn't mention it, out of courtesy to my memories of the man. It was a level of kindness I'd never seen, directed at me. She just sat there, hugging Cavall, which I realized now might actually be the last connection she had to her old life.
"I agreed," she said, "Because my father asked me to agree, to save myself and to see justice done to Howe. But then my mother . . . she refused to leave him. She was fine!" Gwyn declared, glaring at me through her tears, daring me to defy her. "I'd kept her safe! But she said she'd slow us down, that her place was with my father, that she'd keep Howe's men from following us . . . and . . ." Gwyn stopped her tale, hissing, and with another look at me, shook her head.
She wouldn't go on, and a stone dropped into my stomach as I realized what must have happened. Duncan had dragged her away, hadn't he? He'd saved her for the Wardens, but he'd saved her against her will, and left her mother to the death she had chosen. I sighed. "I—I'm so sorry," I said. There were no words big and grand enough to make her feel better about what she had lost. "I had no idea."
She laughed once, a bitter, angry, empty bark. "Fergus is the only one left. He doesn't know. He doesn't know our parents are dead, his wife and son are dead. He doesn't know he's teyrn and we need to reclaim Highever from their murderer. And I can't go look for him to tell him." It seemed as if she'd calmed, but all at once she hit the wall beside her with her fist, hard. I looked, and saw it was already bruised. She'd been doing it already. She raised her hand to hit again, but before I knew what I was doing, I'd reached out and caught her wrist.
She whipped her head around, glaring at me so ferociously I wanted to run, but I couldn't let her hurt herself. "Look, forget what Morrigan said—"I started.
"She's right," Gwyn interrupted. "We can ask around the refugee camp, at the tavern, see if anyone's seen him, but that's all we have time for. Odds are, if he passed this way he's already gone, and if he hasn't—"she drew in a breath. "If he hasn't, he won't be coming. And it's not my concern anymore."
"That's not true," I said at once—more, I think, because I couldn't bear to hear her despair than because I believed it. She was already shaking her head. She knew she was right. I knew she was right.
"'In death, sacrifice,'" Gwyn recited. I'd always known the Warden's motto was grim, but the way she said it, the words were as cold as carved stone on an epitaph. "We start dying the minute the chalice touches our lips, don't we?" She looked at me, searching for confirmation, I guess. I'd been a Warden longer than she. "We kill everything we were before, everything we'd ever hoped to be or do in the future, and we spend the rest of our days dying, sacrificing our lives for a victory we never live to enjoy. And this time, who's to say we're dying for a victory at all, Alistair? If it's all for nothing, if we can't stop the Blight—"
It was too horrible to contemplate. For a time, at least, I had gained more than I lost, joining the Wardens. Only now did I realize how great the sacrifice could be. For the first time, I felt the taint working in me, a slow-acting poison, and I saw the shadow of it in her. It couldn't all be for nothing. I wouldn't allow it.
I hadn't realized I still had her hand before I'd brought it to me, right over my heart. I froze for a split second, and so did she. I'd surprised both of us with the gesture. "We will," I promised her. "We will defeat the Blight, Gwyn. You and me. For Duncan. For all of them. For your family, we will stop the Blight. Then we'll find your brother, and we'll see this Howe pay for what he's done. I swear it."
Her eyes softened, and she murmured, "So did the king. And yet?" She moved her other arm, drawing a circle that encompassed the two of us, the road, and everything that had happened at Ostagar. Then, gently, she extricated her hand from mine. "You're very sweet," she told me. "But let's not make promises we can't keep. We don't know what's going to happen. There aren't any guarantees. Fergus might already be dead, and if that's the case, so are the Couslands. I'm a Warden now, whether I like it or not. I have a duty. Even if it kills me. 'In death, sacrifice.'" She closed her eyes, shuddered once. She scratched Cavall's ears, and her hound turned his head to lick her fingers.
By the Maker, it hurt, to see her so beautiful, and so sad, to be so utterly helpless to comfort her. The sun filtered through the clouds and shone on her dark brown hair. It lit it all up with red and gold, but for all that, it was cold, and Gwyn shivered again.
I wished I had a cloak or a jacket or something. Her battle leathers had probably been warm enough up north this time of year, but this far south, they didn't offer much in the way of protection from the cold. I hesitated. Very uncertain it was the right thing to do, I put my arm around her shoulders to keep her warm. "At least we're in this together, right?" She looked up at me, searching my face. "Please let me help," I begged her quietly.
She held my gaze for a long time. Her lips started to turn up, like she was going to smile, but then it all went horribly wrong, because she started crying again instead. "Maker help us, Alistair," she said, half-laughing, half-sobbing.
I just knew I'd bungled it, but then she just collapsed on me all of a sudden. I gasped in surprise and pulled her closer, more so she wouldn't fall off the wall than anything else, and she grabbed a fistful of my mail and buried her face in my shoulder, just sobbing all over me.
I wanted to run, but I knew that was wrong. It seemed the only thing I could do was bring up my other arm and hug her, except that felt wrong, too, because I knew I shouldn't be thinking about how well she fit in my arms, like she belonged there, when she was crying her eyes out. Maker, it felt like I might spontaneously burst into flames at any moment. Or like the Maker might start hurling lightning at me—and be right, too.
Most of all, I just wished she'd stop the crying, because this time, I felt like it was somehow my fault. But she was clutching at me like she was frightened I'd disappear, so I had to have done something right, right?
Maker help us, indeed!
In the end, it was all I could do to hold her, and rub her back like a moron, and wait for it to be over. I think it only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed like forever before she finally let go, stood, and scrubbed her cheeks with her hands.
I stood, too. "Are you ready to go on?" I murmured.
"No," she answered, "But we've got to, anyway."
That about summed it up, didn't it? Whether or not we were ready, we didn't have a choice. Ferelden was counting on us. It was probably about time we went back to find Morrigan and found out what they knew down in the town.
As if she'd read my mind, Gwyn said, "We should go find Morrigan. See what the news is in the town." She snapped her fingers at Cavall, and he fell in step at her heel, and we headed back down the road.
