title: "Silence, Water, Struggle, Hope"
chapter: 2
rating: T.
warnings: violence against women, brutality.
words: c1500
exegesis: Warden Kallian Tabris is on the road from the Circle Tower to Denerim, passing through Highever lands. Lissa Cousland survived the destruction of Castle Highever and has been leading a minor guerrilla struggle in the hills around Highever ever since.
8
Alistair
Crouched in the darkness in the lee of a broken wall, Alistair waits in silence. Rain trickles down his neck, and under his scale his gambeson is sodden heavy with damp. The night is full of the noise of water and wind in the leaves of the trees that crowd close about the North Road, despite the law that commands every lord in Ferelden to kept a bowshot's length clear on either side of the road - a law not enforced since the occupation, and be damned to the cover it gives to brigands.
Brigands, and Grey Wardens. We should be glad of it, Alistair thinks, as Wynne shifts beside him, stifling a cough in the hem of her cowl. Despite a week on the road, the mage still smells more like lyrium and dust than mud and damp, sweat and smoke and old blood, but it's hard to be glad - hard to be anything but worried - with the old woman's bony warmth pressed up against his flank, waiting for a scream from the courtyard of the burnt farmstead fifty yards away. Waiting for the sound that means everything's gone terribly wrong.
It's little too close to banditry for his liking, this business of cutting throats in the night, but when Kallian materialises out of the rain, he can't help his relief. She bumps up against him, shoulder to mailed shoulder, warm and breathing and incontrovertibly alive. The cold steel of her left bracer is a hard line against his scale as she grips his forearm. Soft, she says, "Five men down in the courtyard. Leliana and Reaver watch the door, Sten and Morrigan the rear. I need you now." A motion of her head. "Both of you. Are you ready?"
Ready to enter the door of the dilapidated barn and kill men while they sleep. He listened to his part explained in the failing light of dusk, and did not argue then. It is his task, and Wynne's, to secure the prisoner; Leliana's and Kallian's, to take one of their own, while Sten and Morrigan and the mabari watch all their backs. He will not argue now: when she says necessity, Kallian will not be swayed. "I'm ready," he says, and swallows. "Lead on, fearless leader."
Her grin is a flash of whiteness before she turns away.
They go through the barn's rotting door like the blow of a hammer, a vanguard of Wardens two abreast. Wynne's magic hums in his senses, and in the blue light of her staff they slaughter. He slaughters, and men startled from sleep die like chickens, like so many squawking fowl under a butcher's knife. Wynne is at his shieldarm, wild-eyed, grey hair on end with the static of killing spells crackling from her fingertips; Kallian and Leliana a whirlwind of murderous precision to his right, and the sound of men dying is steel and screaming and the wet noise of flesh and bone parting beneath his blade.
The prisoner is a girl, bound to a post by a rope halter around her neck. She is unconscious, bruised features pallid and slack. A tattered tunic, grimed with blood and dirt, rides up her thighs. Alistair averts his eyes and lowers his sword to the dirt as he smashes the last man aside with his shield for Wynne's lightning spell to stop his heart.
Over the sound of rasping breath and the gurgling moan of a soldier bleeding out, Kallian says, "Good work." She meets his glance across the barn, tired and full of grim irony. Her coif has fallen back to expose her pointed ears, and a smear of blood reddens her cheek in the dim blue light, but the officer is kneeling before her, her hand fisted in his hair and her sword at her throat, while Leliana loops a length of rope around his wrists and twists it tight.
"Butcher's work," Wynne says, lips pursed in disapproval, pushing past him to bend over the girl. She gives a hiss, and Alistair feels the Veil shiver as white light lances from her fingers. "Although I'm not saying they didn't deserve it. I'll need water and cloths and some of Morrigan's potions. Quickly, if you please."
"You, down." Kallian kicks the officer onto his belly with pointed emphasis and grinds a vicious heel into his ribs. Alistair makes an inarticulate noise of protest, but her black stare stills his tongue. "We'll be here a while, I take it, Wynne? Right. Leliana, I want a perimeter, whatever traps you can give me. Send in the others. Alistair, start the cleanup. Let's move, people: I want some sleep tonight."
8
8
Cousland:
Lissa wakes on warm, dry blankets. Wool scratches her bare skin, tickles her nose. It smells like armour polish, lavender, and mabari fur. That she wakes at all is a bitter disappointment. That she is not cold and damp and hurting is... unexpected.
What happened?
She lies still and takes stock. Somewhere nearby a mabari is barking, a woman's voice - kindly but unamused, reminding her painfully of Nan - berating a boy for leaving socks in her bedroll. Closer - so close she could reach out and touch it - soft breathing and the slow rasp of a whetstone on steel. She aches, but it is the ache of wounds near-healed, not jaggedly immediate. Her head is clear. No fever. Cautiously, she flexes hands and feet: no bonds, either. Her skin is itchy with dried sweat and dirt, her mouth is dry as a desert, and she's naked and weak with the lassitude of fatigue, but otherwise? Healthier than she's been for weeks.
She opens her eyes.
An elf sits cross-legged a yard from her blankets, the sleeves of a too-large brown shirt rolled halfway up hard-muscled forearms. Young, and female, sharp-cheeked, dark-haired and hollow-eyed. Sunlight through the broken slats of the wood wall - the faint scent of hay and old manure makes Lissa think barn - lights patterns from the steel of the dagger the elf's sharpening, the blade resting on a stained rag on her knee. Someone's rigged a canvas partition around their corner, and the ragged end wavers with the movement of the air.
The whetstone ceases. Without looking up, the elf says, "If you're awake, I expect you'd like some water."
Lissa's lips are cracked, tongue swollen. She manages a nod in place of speech. The elf slides the dagger into a sheath in her boot and uncaps a leather canteen. She flinches despite herself when the elf reaches for her shoulder to help her sit.
"I'm not your enemy, kid." The words are neutral, but the elf squats back on her heels with the quirk of an eyebrow, and waits until Lissa's propped herself up on one elbow, holding the blanket across her breasts, to offer the canteen again.
The water tastes like old leather, but it's wet, and to her parched throat better than fine Antivan wine. She makes herself hand it back with some left in the bottom, and meets the elf's dark eyes. "You're not Howe's?"
Please. Dear Andraste, please let this not be some kind of trick.
"Howe?" The elf's features tighten. "Spit on the shem bastard. Don't worry, kid. You're safe with us."
"'Us?'" They must have a mage with them: her wounds were much worse than mere herbalism could have dealt with easily. Have I fallen in with apostates, then?
"Our merry band of doomed fools." The flicker of a smile. "You'll meet 'em in a bit. I thought you might need a little time to wake up and wash up before introducing you to too many people." The smile vanished, replace with dark, bitter understanding. "When we found you, it was obvious you hadn't been... treated kindly. You can wash" - a shrug indicated a bucket by the hung canvas - "There's water, and it's warm. And we've managed to scrounge a shirt and trews that look to fit you. But first, I need to know. What did Howe's men want with you?"
"Besides the obvious?" Shame and humiliation scalds Lissa. Bad enough that it happened, that she can remember the captain's sour breath in her face and his hands on her breasts, but that this elf should throw it in her face -
"Besides that," the elf agrees mildly. A calloused hand closes around Lissa's wrist, a light grip - but with all the give of wrought iron. "Kid, you're far from the first girl to be beaten within an inch of her life and fucked against her will. There's no shame in it. The shame's on them, for what they did when you had no choice. You understand me?"
"For an elf," Lissa snaps, brittle, "you're not very respectful."
"Aye, well." The elf's chuckle all irony and cracked, bitter shards of amusement "My so-called betters did try to beat it into me, but it didn't really take." Softly, gently: "Like any other wound, kid, it gets easier with time."
Lissa looks aside, picks at the blanket. The elf's eyes know too much. "I said I'd kill Rendon Howe," she says, after a long, stiff moment. It's the truth, if not all of it. If they don't already know who she is, there's a chance they'll turn her in for the bounty on her head if she gives her name. And I cannot bear that. "I said I would, and I will."
"Aye, I hear he's a man needs killing." The elf shifts, stands. Briskly: "I'll leave you wash in peace. Clothes and a towel beside the bucket. Take all the time you need."
All the time you need. The canvas ripples in the wake of the elf's passing. Lissa stares after her, still hot with humiliation, and wonders what sort of company she's fallen in with now.
8
A/N: Yes, Lissa's being a little paranoid. Who saves someone just to turn them back in? But in her defence, she's not really thinking straight right now.
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