"Don't sulk," Anders said, quickening his step a bit to keep up with Hawke. The road to Denerim was dusty, but in Ferelden he had learned to appreciate dust. Dust was better than mud, which was the more common alternative by far.
"I'm not sulking," Hawke lied, quickening his step as well. It had been a game he had played all morning, keeping the mage just on the verge of catching up. Anders wasn't exactly out of shape, but neither could he compete with Hawke.
"Says the man who looks like he's had nothing to eat but turnips for the last fortnight." Anders rolled his eyes and stopped to catch his breath. As predicted, Hawke stopped as well, content that the mage had conceded defeat in this ridiculous little competition of theirs. Luckily, he still had a staff to lean on.
"I happen to like turnips," Hawke said, hooking both thumbs in the straps for his pack. They were getting close to their destination, but luckily only the foolish walked out in the noonday sun. All the farmers and traders had already entered the city at daybreak, and wouldn't leave again until the late afternoon. With the recent rumors of war making the farmers skittish, not many people took the chance travelling anywhere unless absolutely necessary.
"Then you've got no excuse," Anders chided, leaning on his Tevinter staff. Covered with dust and leather straps it looked very much like an ordinary spear with a rather creative tip. "Just like you have no excuse for trying to leave me behind in the Brecilian refuge."
"I wasn't trying to leave you," Hawke said, pulling out a water skin to have a drink. "I am only making a little detour to Denerim; I would have been back and forth in no time. And you were busy." He offered the mage the water as a peace offering of sorts.
"From my experience your short trips tend to turn into disasters with alarming frequency." Anders drank deeply, splashing some water on his dusty face as well. "Like that time at the Bone Pit? Yes, 'I'm just going to check up on my investment' you said. Be back before nightfall."
"I was," Hawke said with an innocent shrug.
"Chewed up and spat out by a dragon! I thought you would die! If Aveline had not got you back as fast as she did, you would be dead. Proper dead. For real. Nothing to be done about. Even I can't work miracles." The mage spat the accusation with surprising ferocity, the fear still so very real in his memory.
"I did manage to survive just fine before you came along you know…" The rogue crossed his arms over his chest, looking just the slightest shade of guilty.
"I have no idea how. Oh, wait, I do. Bethany." The eyeroll was impossible to miss.
"So you understand why I have to go there."
"I do," Anders said with a sigh. "I'm not arguing that. I love her too. Which is why I am coming along with you."
"But you have duties back there," Hawke protested. He had hardly had time to speak with Anders this last week, and that was one of the reasons which had spurred his impromptu little trip. Just something to do while the mage was busy. At least he could use that excuse to put to rest his growing worries about his sister.
"To the blight with my duties," Anders exclaimed. "We have agreed on a general plan for what we need to do; now they just need to decide how to best go about it. It will take weeks before they have agreed on which ones that will remain in their hideout, and which ones will chance to take a more active hand.
"But what if you're recognized?" The closer they had come to the city, the more people they had met on the road. Granted, he didn't expect that Fereldan farmers would know who they were, but a city was different.
"Contrary to public opinion and my own ego, I am not really that distinctive a man." Anders sounded slightly saddened by this fact. "Two, I'm not dressed as a mage, and Maker knows people looked at my clothes more than me most of the time."
"I can understand that," Hawke drawled with a teasing smile. "I always…"
"Shush, love, don't insult the feathers. Even I have limits."
"But I had such a good joke lined up," Hawke complained.
"Fine," Anders said with a sigh. "Let's hear it. Get it out so I can smack you for it."
"I always wondered if you dressed up as a bird to attract kittens," Hawke said hopefully.
"No, no smack for you" the mage answered after a moment of thought. "That wasn't a very good joke."
"Blast it," Hawke cursed. "It was all your fault, you made me lose my moment."
"Or maybe you've lost your touch," Anders supplied helpfully, with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
"Or maybe you are trying to distract me from having you turn back," Hawke warned.
"It hasn't worked so far," Anders said with the sweetest of smiles. "Besides, Denerim should be just over the hill according to the farmers we talked to earlier. Just give up Hawke, I'm with you for the duration. Accept that."
"I have," Hawke admitted, a resigned look on his face. "Ever since you caught up with me in the forest. This doesn't mean I'm going to stop complaining about it any time soon though."
"Should I start complaining about my armor again?" Anders said with a challenging look. "Because I have no idea how you walk around wearing these things all day, the straps chafe and the sweat, Andraste's finely polished sword, I smell like… well, like Oghren."
"It is not armor," Hawke said and patted the mage on his shoulder. "It's just leather pauldrons and a few pads and straps. You would never manage the real thing."
"Maker, I know. Just because I'm trying to look like a mercenary doesn't mean I want to give up on the option to blast some fools." Anders fingered the unfamiliar trappings with a frown.
"You look more like a farmer trying to impersonate a mercenary," Hawke said with a laugh. "But that's alright too, with those braids in your hair you look like any other dispossessed Fereldan bumpkin trying to make his way in the world."
"Do you like them?" Anders flicked one of them. They kept getting in his face, and it was all he could do not to tie everything back in his usual ponytail, but it was all in the name of disguise. And Fereldans loved their braids.
"They are growing on me," Hawke admitted with a smile. "Now let's get back on the road, I want us to be inside the walls before nightfall, and with the speed you're walking, that's going to be touch and go."
"I would walk faster if I wasn't bruised just about everywhere," the mage complained as he started off down the dusty road, this time keeping pace with the rogue. "You are really not a very good teacher you know."
"I happen to be an excellent teacher," Hawke said with mock affront. "Just blessed with a student who keeps holding his spear like a staff. This was all your idea."
"Just because I want to have the option to stab someone in the face doesn't mean that I am signing up for a bruised behind."
"You had better learn to parry faster then. You can't rely on shields when we're trying to be discreet about magic. Lucky for you I only used a stick."
"Lucky for you I didn't fry your stabby ass out of sheer principle."
"Don't sulk," Hawke said, leaning in to give the mage a one-armed hug. "You can have your revenge drowning me when you finally get around to teaching me how to swim."
"That is never going to happen, is it?" Anders sounded slightly sad at this missed opportunity for revenge.
"Not if I can help it," Hawke said with a laugh, dodging the elbow swipe aimed for his ribs.
…
They had made it inside the city wall well before nightfall; in fact the sun had quite a long way before it would drop below the horizon. As Hawke had hoped, the guards hadn't given them a more than a cursory examination and asked if they had any coin to support them while they were here. Apparently Denerim had similar problems to Kirkwall these days, people flocking there for safety and fortune, filling the once ruined city with beggars and thieves. Nobody would look twice at them, while his tattoo had been enough to distinguish him in Kirkwall, here it was as common as dogs or mud.
"Maker, they've come a long way rebuilding this town." Anders looked around the busy square with appreciation. "I hear it was almost in ruins after the blight and the battle with the Archdemon. Now it looks almost… presentable."
"This is a capital? I was expecting something a bit more… showy." Hawke had to ask, because honestly, the whole place seemed so… haphazard, a patchwork quilt of low stone and wood buildings sprawling up the side of a low mountain. It had none of the planned stony grandeur of Kirkwall, the markets were just a country bazaar compared to Llomerryn, and there was no comparison to even the tiniest city in Tevinter.
"I forgot you had never seen it," Anders said and wove deftly through the market crowd.
"Never saw much outside the Lothering countryside," Hawke admitted. "I always used to be in the face of the people in Kirkwall calling us unwashed barbarians, but… I have to admit, they might have had a point."
It felt so odd being surrounded by people that spoke in his dialect again. It should all be so familiar, but instead he just felt more out of place than he had in Llomerryn. There, everybody had been strangers in a strange land, here he was the odd one out, pretending to be as home here as everybody else. Looking the part. Sounding the part. But did he feel it? He wasn't even sure anymore. He had told Fenris once that his home was Kirkwall now, and though he hadn't been sure at the time, now it felt increasingly true. This was his homeland. His people. And yet he felt like he was visiting. Had his mother felt the same way when she had returned to Kirkwall? Maybe. Probably.
"Nobody ever sat down and decided to build this city," Anders said, gesturing to the labyrinthine quality of the dirty streets. "It just used to be a Tevinter outpost back here in the day, that's the looming tower in the distance. People just kept building around it, knocking things down when they could afford something bigger and better. The palace district is… well, slightly more impressive."
"And we have to figure out a way to get inside there." Hawke pulled out a few coppers, buying them both some meat on a stick. He'd missed that in Kirkwall, there was just nothing better than slowly roasted nug. What the Kirkwallers had against the squealing little nuisances he had no idea. They were delicious.
"I assumed you had a plan for it beyond going up and knocking on the gates," Anders said, questioning eyebrow shooting up.
"I had. Just sneak inside, find the king, have a chat." Hawke shrugged as if that would have been the simplest ask in the world. "And then you came along."
"Are you calling me clumsy?" The mage poked him with his empty meat-skewer.
"Ow," Hawke complained. "I call them as I see them. You're not exactly the most subtle man I know. Or the most agile."
"And here I thought I'd get a respite from this kind of badgering when Fenris decided to stay with Isabela."
"I don't know about badgering," Hawke retorted. "You two looked pretty friendly last time I saw you."
"That would be an exaggeration." Anders brushed back the annoying braid, looking thoughtful. "We just… got a few things straightened out between us. Both of us. It's not like we're going to take up playing Diamondback or something."
"He might miss someone to play with now that Donnic is gone." For some reason Hawke found it hard to mock the fact that Fenris and Anders now were on what at least appeared to be speaking terms.
"There's always Isabela," Anders suggested.
"I think he likes winning a bit too much for that."
"Are you implying I'm a bad gambler as well?"
"My, my, someone is prickly today, maybe we should find a room and see if I can't unruffled some of your feathers," Hawke suggested with a smirk.
"Not the worst idea," Anders started, then caught sight of something over Hawke's shoulder, eyebrows pulling together in a worried frown.
"What?" Hawke asked, turning around to see what was happening.
The crowds in the market square were parting to allow a squadron of soldiers marching through, led by a very familiar redhead on a horse. Aveline looked her usual commanding self, the armor was a different style than the one she had worn as guard captain, but it was no less imposing. She wore the colors of the crown, and by the way people bowed their heads and shouted greetings, she had already made an impression of herself.
"Andraste's ashes, here comes trouble," Anders said, the frown deepening.
"Or opportunity." Hawke moved to the side with the rest of the crowd, but made sure to be in the first row of onlookers.
"I don't think this is wise," Anders whispered, tugging at the rogue's arm.
"We need a way in," Hawke whispered back. He would have liked to add that Aveline still owed him, but he thought all scores had been wiped clean in the battle for the Gallows. But hopefully friendship would still count for something.
As the horse tottered past, Hawke took half a step forward and made a small wave, nearly indistinguishable amongst the rest of the onlookers. He counted on Aveline not having lost her touch.
She had not. Unfortunately.
"Halt," she commanded, raising her hand and her men obediently came to a halt behind her. "Arrest those men," she continued with a gesture at Hawke and Anders, who suddenly found themselves quite alone as the rest of the crowd backed away.
"Yes Captain," came the snappy replies and Hawke and Anders suddenly found themselves surrounded by armored men with drawn weapons.
"I told you," Anders muttered quietly to himself, hiding his face in his hand.
"What?" Hawke managed to spit out, but something in Aveline's gaze stopped him from going for his daggers. She looked ready to ride him down if she had to. "What have we done now?"
"They are deserters," Aveline explained quite loudly for the sake of the soldiers and the crowd. "Take them in, throw them in the dungeon and make sure they stay there under guard until I have time to question them. If they resist…" she paused for a moment, giving Hawke a warning glance. "Cut them down."
She meant that, Hawke realized with a sinking feeling. She meant every single word.
Maker's breath what had he stumbled into now?
