Author's note - Many thanks to all my kind reviewers, your comments have kept me writing! I'm not promising that I can keep up this pace of a chapter every two days, but you are certainly all encouraging me to try :)
Even half awake, she was aware the light was wrong. Her tent faced east, the morning sun should be paler and brighter than this. What was crossing her closed eyes was the softer, warmer light of midmorning
Daylight. I should have been up hours ago
The thought brought her out of the sleeping furs and sitting upright, with that sense of confusion of place that always comes from sleeping in a strange bed. It took her a few seconds to realise where she was. For some reason Alistair had always come to her tent, not the other way around, not by any conscious decision, it was just the way things had been. She wondered now if it had been her attempt to force some sort of stability on her own life when everything else in the world had been so desperately unstable.
Normally in the mornings she was the first one awake, to build the new fire from last night's embers, start the breakfast kettle and bring fresh water from whatever stream they had found to camp near. So many of her nights were broken anyway, with the screams of a crazed dragon-god echoing through her dreams, that there was little incentive to try for an extra hour of sleep, better to be up and moving and to allow the daybreak chores to impose at least a veneer of normality over the top of the night terrors. But today she had slept at least two hours past the time she would generally have left her tent.
She pushed the furs away and stood up, buttoning her shirt. She could hear snatches of a conversation outside the tent without being able to make out any of the words, only the voices - Oghren, Zevran, a rumble that had to be Shale, and then, surprisingly, a bark of laughter that could only be Loghain. Oh well, she was going to have to face the comments sooner or later, about her changed appearence and a night spent in Loghain's tent. Never mind that nothing had actually happened, Oghren would be able to come up with three filthy jokes if she'd slept the night in a Chantry in front of the statue of Andraste, with the Revered Mother reading the Chant of Light over her. And Zevran would probably manage a fourth. Ducking under the half open tent flap, she pushed her way outside.
The camp was significantly more orderly than she remembered it from last night. A number of people's belongings that tended to live in semi permanent piles around the fireplace had gone. A fresh kettle of water had been put on the fire and was reaching boiling point, another one nestled in the warmth beside the firepit and held oat porridge, not yet fully cooked. She glanced over to Morrigan's hearth, some way from the rest, the Witch of the Wilds was bent over her own kettle and surprisingly seemed to be talking to Shale, with Sten listening to the pair of them. No sign of Wynne or Leliana, but Wynne had mentioned the day before that she was running short of elfroot and other materials for poultices, and Leliana generally joined Wynne on herb foraging trips, what Wynne rejected for medical supplies often ended up in the Orlesian bard's poisons. Both had known there was no plan to move the camp that day so it was not surprising they had chosen to take an early start and find as much as they could while still camped in a forested area that would yield adequate supplies. They generally returned by breakfast time so that Wynne could then spend the rest of the day making up her potions and poultices.
Wolf bounded up joyfully to present her with the muddy remains of a half chewed rabbit, stumpy tail wagging furiously. "Well, at least you didn't leave it in Morrigan's pack this time," she murmured, squatting down and scratching behind the dog's ears. "Good boy. Go finish your breakfast somewhere where it won't upset anyone?" The Mabari bounced off and she straightened up slowly. Loghain was nowhere to be seen, but Sten was now moving towards the river path and the two of them had been sparring partners in almost all the practice sessions since he had joined the party - Sten claiming that Loghain was the nearest he had had to a decent workout since he had come to Fereldan. So it was a fair bet where Loghain would currently be found.
Zevran was in the process of making tea and indicated towards her with the canister of dried leaves. "Some tea for you as well, cara mia?" His eyes took in her hair and his mouth quirked into a half smile. "Very pretty. Reminds me of this girl I knew once in Antiva, with short curls, and an innocent smile, and the best pair of-"
"Give it a rest, Zevran" She passed her mug to him after tipping out the cold remnants of her abandoned drink from the night before.
"Always so fast to think the worst of me, Warden. I was only about to comment about her beautiful eyes."
"Of course you were, Zevran." She glanced at the dwarf who was also watching her. "Oh, get on and say it, Oghren. You're going to anyway."
"Wasn't about to say a word, Warden. That long streak of stone dust you dragged in after the Landsmeet already warned us both. Said that if either of us came out with something rude about the hair when you came out this morning, then he'd see that my beard and the elf's balls were the next casualties. When someone tells me that and has a sodding great sword pointing at me, I tend to take the threat seriously." Oghren was managing a close to deadpan expression, but Zevran was chuckling openly.
"He said what?" She took her tea mug with a word of thanks and stirred the porridge kettle.
"I think he was probably joking, bellissima. But how one would tell when the line is delivered by someone with a face like that, is a little beyond me. And like our noble dwarf here, I prefer not to test the theory. He also made it clear that you had done nothing in his tent but sleep, and that teasing along those lines would incur a similar penalty. I told him that we were all well aware of that since the noise that used to come from your tent in the small hours of the morning regularly roused the whole camp from slumber and that clearly you were not the kind of woman who lies back in stoical silence - ouch!" The rest of the sentence was cut off as one of Muirnara's leather gauntlets which had been drying beside the fire after oiling the night before collided with Zevran's cheek. He threw a hand up to deflect the second gauntlet that followed it, still laughing. "Peace, peace, cara mia. No, I didn't say that."
"He didn't say that, Warden, but Shale did." Oghren was also laughing. "Said that you used to be noisier in the tent than a flock of pigeons on a morning when the grain got put out. Wouldn't bother throwing anything at that golem though, Warden, it'd just bounce."
Muirnara sat down by the fireplace, and buried her head in her hands. "It's a conspiracy. And you're all in on it. Does that mean I can consider putting either of you on night duty with him and not wonder if you're going to sink a knife in his ribs?"
"Wouldn't have done it anyway, Warden. Way to blunt a good knife."
"Our good dwarf has a point. Anyway, the man is a former employer, and despite all the stories you may have heard, we of the Crows do not generally assassinate our former employers. Not without either considerable provocation, or a substantial fee, neither of which appear to be forthcoming at present. And since the person who would most like to buy such a contract is currently to be married to the target's daughter, the likelihood of a fee being negotiated from that quarter is small in the extreme. Also, since I failed in the contract which he bought, assassinating him after that would seem like adding insult to injury. He has accepted my apologies for my professional failure, and my inability to return his money, so the matter rests there as far as I am concerned."
"I just do not believe I heard you say that." Muirnara drank her mug of tea in a series of scalding gulps. The oblique reference to Alistair had also hurt less than she had expected, like prodding a wound and finding a dull ache rather than the sharp stab of open flesh. Damn you, Loghain. You were right that I was tormenting myself. Doesn't mean I entirely know how to stop yet.
She looked at the sleeve of her shirt. No good mending that before sparring, in all probability she'd only rip it again. "Right then, people, down by the river in five minutes. Zev, you're with me. Oghren, you'll go a round with Sten when he finishes with Loghain, since Leliana isn't here . Last one there has to scour the breakfast pots later."
"I still say this whole system is sodding unfair, Warden. Means the mages never get to do any washing up in the mornings." Oghren's grumbles were a common part of their morning ritual but he was already reaching for the heavy wooden practice blade he sparred with.
"Well," Muirnara pointed out. "Leliana gets out of it this morning too since she isn't here. Morrigan cooks her own food so she can't exactly be asked to add cleaning the main pots to her camp chores. And if I remember rightly, Wynne had to clean the pot after the evening when you made that stew you said was an old Orzammar recipe..."
Zevran was collecting the wooden practice daggers and short blades. He smirked at Oghren. "Ah, but Warden, he never said what it was a recipe for. Now if that was a recipe for what they use to mend stonemasonry, a lot of things about it suddenly make sense. Both about the colour and the texture. And the adhesive properties."
"You topsiders just don't appreciate decent food. Though it probaby would have been better with less lichen. And having to use rabbit in it instead of nug...my old mother would have wept."
Muirnara laughed softly as she rummaged in her tent for her own wooden practice blades, tried on two helmets with a frown, and then, discarding both, jogged down towards the river, the gentle bickering of the other two still in her ears. There had always been laughter in this camp before the Landsmeet, sometimes black humour - in fact, more often than not black humour - but laughter none the less. After the Landsmeet there had been none - her companions stepping cautiously around her open grief, and even more cautiously around the silent figure who had pitched his tent and then obeyed her orders with no more than a terse nod. Not that she had ever given him many orders - as far as she remembered, her sole instructions to him had been given to him the night he arrived and had been "Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, do your share of the chores, kill any Darkspawn we come across and for the sake of Andraste do not do or say anything to one of the others that causes them to try to take your life, it's cost me enough to save your life already." Then she had stormed away, dry eyed and white faced to her own tent and her own guilt.
As she came out of the trees to the flattened bare area of ground by the river bank that they had designated as a sparring area she paused, watching the two combatants already at their bout. Loghain was a tall man, but anyone would be dwarfed by the seven foot Sten. Alistair had been Sten's sparring partner before the Landsmeet and had looked even smaller. Like Loghain, Alistair had wielded longsword and shield which always appeared flimsy in comparison to the huge two handed blade the Qunari used. Loghain had on the first day carefully made his own wooden practice blade as an exact copy of the longsword she had assigned him from her stores. He had also been the one who had suggested that the practice blades needed to be kept oiled heavily to increase their weight to something approaching metal. It would never have occurred to her to do that, Highever had always used blunted metal swords for training anyway, but since Ostagar their group resources had always been so slender that spare weapons taken from darkspawn and bandits were sold at the first opportunity.
She crouched down and massaged her calf muscles, then ran through a series of stretches, still watching the other pair, analysing their differences in style. Sten was the larger, and stronger, and considerably younger than Loghain - at least she assumed he was. She had never actually asked Sten his age. And he probably wouldn't have told me even if I had asked, her mind added to that. Loghain always stripped to the waist for practice, commenting he saw no good reason to mend his shirts any more often than he had to. He was lean, almost gaunt to her eyes, muscles corded with long training, scars of various kinds crossing one another, every shade from the angry red of a slash received only two days before, which had only been grudgingly healed by Wynne after Muirnara had spoken sternly to her, to the faded white lines of battle wounds received before she was born. Sten when fighting moved with all the deliberation of an immovable force of nature, every step appearing to root him again to the rock below his feet, the impression he gave was that no attack could possibly unbalance him. Loghain, however moved with the grace of a dancer, light on his feet, the way he wielded the practice blade made it seem weightless though she knew exactly how heavy it actually was. And she knew from the Landsmeet how lethally fast the man was in battle, even in full armour.
Neither of them had yet made a touch on the other, they broke off after a battery of heavy swings, circled and then closed in on each other again. Loghain ducked under a round swing from Sten's blade that looked like it would have fractured his skull had it connected (some of the early practice injuries incurred by Alistair had resulted in Muirnara imposing a rule that helms were always to be worn for sparring, even if one of their mages was present), then he leapt forward and struck down with a force that the Qunari barely parried. They remained with the blades forced down and locked for a minute then parted and nodded to each other. Sten called something that Loghain seemed to nod agreement with, then Sten turned to the river bank and scooped up some cold water to wash his face with and Loghain strode over to where she was waiting, just as Oghren and Zevran came out of the trees.
"Were you planning to spar with Zevran again, Warden?"
"I had planned to."
"Not this morning. Let Zevran and Oghren pair each other this time. You are with me. Where is your helmet?"
"I'll explain afterwards"
"Oh, this should be good," Zevran quipped, but he and Oghren backed off to the far side of the clearing, starting their own warmup exercises. Loghain pointed to the spot where he and Sten had been, and with a dry mouth she took up her practice blades and moved to the indicated position.
I haven't faced him with a blade in my hand since the Landsmeet. And then he had no idea how I fought, or what my weaknesses are. Unfortunately now, I think he has a very clear idea of both.