Loghain and Muirnara circled each other, slowly, carefully, each with eyes not on the blade carried by the other, but on the other's eyes. The weaponsmaster at Highever had taught Muirnara that long ago. "Eyes signal intent," he had said, usually while offering her a hand to get up from the floor of the training ground where he had just dumped her, yet again. "Often the only warning you will get of what the bloody bastard intends. Don't ignore it. Use it." Her mother had complained bitterly of her bad language every time she came back from a training session. Her father had only laughed. "Pup, as long as he's teaching you the weapons skills as well as the oaths, then all's well. Just don't come out with them at one of your mother's salons again, or your mother will have my hide."

Loghain initiated the exchange of blows with a relatively slow, predictable pattern, gradually picking up the pace. Longsword crossed longsword, shield blocked, dagger parried, formalised movements in a dance taught in training yards throughout Fereldan, ground into the bone of anyone who had been in arms training. He dropped a couple of steps back as if withdrawing, Muirnara refused the feint and also backed away, the step forward would have lured her onto very uneven ground. His eyebrows lifted. "Clever. How about this?" A sudden surge forward, weight thrown behind the shield, her parry caused her to stagger an instant and then she span away with the impetus of the blow, turning the angle of the bout to back him towards the river.

"Not fast enough, Loghain, " she taunted, pressing him now, so that he gave a little ground, the wry amusement still unchanged on his face. "Sten already tired you out this morning?"

"Well, madam, some of us did sleep last night. And some of us didn't. And you must make some allowances for my aging bones." As he spoke, he abruptly picked up the pace again, blows coming fast enough now to press her strongly, and she was forced to yield a step, then another. She attempted to change the direction in which he was backing her, he immediately pressed her harder and she fell back again, realising now that she had been circled almost to the point she had originally moved him to.

"You sly bastard," she grunted. "But how about this?" A second later her dagger and sword had changed hands, and, lefthanded, she struck his sword just above the hilt with a backhand spin that Ser Gilmore had spent weeks attempting to work out a counter for when she had first developed the move. Correctly executed, that move twisted the blade in the opponents hand and frequently disarmed the unwary. Loghain however seemed to have met something similar before, he turned his wrist as she struck to absorb the spinning force, and then countered with a sharp strike towards her right hand, now only holding the flimsy wooden dagger. The force of the blow shattered the short wooden blade, she dropped the useless hilt and tossed her sword back into her right hand.

"Foolish, madam. Unless you are certain your opponent does not have the reach of you. Or is inexperienced enough not to spot the move." He had slowed a little, allowing her to recover her balance. Zevran whistled sharply from the other side of the clearing, without looking at him she threw up her left hand and the hilt of another wooden dagger smacked into her palm, a throwing move they had both practiced many times - and that had saved both of them many times in combat. That did get an approving nod from Loghain. "Excellent." He immediately stepped up the pace again, blows, parries and ripostes in a flurry that defied the eye. Then suddenly he fell back again, she pressed him, he turned slightly, threw his shield up, and then swung back hard overarm in a cross body stroke, her dagger hand was too slow to parry and the blow sent her sprawling into the dirt, gasping for breath, a long red welt over collarbone and upper arm.

"And that, madam, was the stroke that nearly killed you at the Landsmeet and for the same reason." Loghain did not even seem out of breath. "If you are determined to fight with two weapons and force your dagger to do your shield's work, then you may never, never, lower your left hand guard to improve your speed or force of thrust on a right hand attack. Never."

"All right, you've made your point." She struggled to a sitting position and prodded her collarbone gently - it seemed still to be intact. The bruise was likely to be there for a while though, unless she could convince either Wynne or Morrigan to heal it, and that wasn't likely.

Since I myself was the one who said, long ago, that we were not going to have healing for training injuries unless they were going to affect the ability to fight that day. And quoted the old line of the Highever armsmaster that the more bruises you took on the training field, the more likely you were to remember the lesson. Me and my big mouth.

He offered her a hand to pull her to her feet. "Be grateful I didn't put full strength behind the strike, since you aren't wearing a helm."

"I'm truly grateful."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Warden." He picked up her two practice blades and examined them. "Are these exact copies of your normal weapons?"

"Yes, they are." Muirnara was surreptitiously rubbing her upper arm, and trying to ignore Zevran and Oghren's smirks and mutters from the other side of the clearing. "At least the sword is. The dagger's a spare, it's the same length as the one I use but the balance is different."

"If you're going to continue with this style, then you need a dagger that is roughly a half hand longer than this. Maybe even a hand. You are tall, but on an opponent my height the lack of reach will always tell, sooner or later. Do you have a blade in your stores that will serve, and will that affect your ability to backstab in combat?"

"Yes to the first, no to the second." She thought for a minute. "There is a silverite dagger there, that's a companion to the normal dagger I carry. Almost a shortsword. We took them out of the Deep Roads, both on the body of a Legion of the Dead dwarf we found. I offered both back to his commander, but he wouldn't take them - apparently their belief is that a weapon taken from the body of a warrior slain in combat will fight twice as hard for its new master in gratitude for being given the second chance. I've never used it though."

"Get it out, and make a good copy of it today. Then tomorrow morning we'll work through this again."

Oh wonderful. Not even one day to let the bruise heal before I get the next one

He passed her back the blades and jerked his head towards the path back to camp. "Enough for this morning. The porridge should be fit to eat by now."

As Zevran and Oghren joined them, both still smirking, she tossed Zevran his spare practice dagger back. "First smart comment from either of you, and I feed you to the darkspawn."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Warden."

She led the way back up the path. Ignoring their laughing and mutters, which hadn't stopped.

Breakfast was indeed ready when they got back to the fire, but there was still no sign of either Wynne or Leliana. They served themselves from the porridge kettle, ladling the hot oatmeal into wooden bowls. Wolf appeared beside Muirnara to whine for a share, making it clear by his whimpers and wriggling that one muddy rabbit really wasn't an adequate breakfast for a Mabari. Muirnara pushed an oatmeal bowl at him with the warning "Let it cool first." He looked at her, then at the bowl, whined again and settled down to study it, licking the rim of the bowl in a hopeful fashion.

"I wonder where our lovely mage and bard have got to this morning?" Zevran mused, spooning honey onto his porridge. "These herb gathering trips...who knows what thoughts may arise when in one another's company, with no distractions, on a pleasant autumn morning where one's pleasanter activities have little chance of interruption."

"I would consider it far more likely that they are both taking a well deserved break from your constant innuendo." Morrigan was standing on the outside of the main hearth, sorting through the sack that held her own herbalism supplies. "Muirnara, you really must stop feeding that wretched hound of your with the double baked mabari crunch as titbits - they are meant to be for healing purposes only! I thought we had at least two bags of them left, and I can only find half a bag here."

Wolf whined pathetically.

"Yes, you mangy mutt. I do mean you. It is small wonder that you are putting on weight."

Another pathetic whine.

"Eat your porridge, boy." Muirnara told him. "We will make you more biscuits, don't worry."

Morrigan threw her hands up and stalked off to her own fire. Muirnara scraped out her own bowl and put it down. "Right. Laundry this morning, and clothing repairs. Armor and weapon repairs this afternoon. Everything stowed ready to travel, in the Feddicks's wagon before supper, except for tents and bedrolls, we're making an early start tomorrow morning. If Wynne and Leliana aren't back before lunch, Shale and Wolf will go find them, but I doubt it will be necessary. Clear?"

The general grumbles seemed to be tempered with overall good humour as she went to collect her own laundry and carried it off towards the river. Having a clear bottomed river with large stones for pounding stains out of linen was a luxury they rarely had, and laundry was often the job put off as long as possible in the hopes that the next campsite would be better. Again, Alistair had always been the worst for that. She paused, then deliberately summoned the memory of a disgusted Wynne pulling one of Alistair's filthy socks out of her pack, Alistair's denial, and Wynne's exasperated response "It has your name on it!" This did not seem to hurt as much as it might have done a few days ago.

If I met him again face to face, I doubt I would manage very well. But the Landsmeet no longer seems able to poison my memories. My mother always told me that a wound never heals while you keep picking at it, that was what I was doing by trying to second guess my choices over and over again. I could get to hate Loghain if he is invariably right about things. But then I thought I hated him anyway. Now I don't know what I feel. Maybe that's for the best.

She hauled a pair of cloth breeches from her laundry sack, dunked them in the river and then started to scrub them with a rough stone and a slab of caustic soap made in their fire ashes. A little downstream she could see Sten engaged in the same task. Loghain arrived about a half hour later, dumped a sack of clothing and began sorting through it. She glanced across at him as she took several clean wet garments to spread over the bushes to dry. He seemed to have reverted to his earlier silence, working mechanically through the task with the efficiency of a soldier who has had to spend a lifetime caring for his own kit. Had he ever really thought of himself as a nobleman, with servants to take over these small jobs? Or had he always remained the independent Ferelden farmer in his mind - just with the responsibility for a farm that now spanned the entire country? She knew it wasn't something she was ever likely to ask.

"So why did you spar this morning without a helmet, Warden?" Loghain did not look up at her, but her hand again drifted to her shoulder, where the purpling of the new bruise was clearly visible at the neckline of her shirt.

She draped the last of her shirts over a blackthorn bush and sat down on a flat stone beside them. "I should have anticipated the problem. Without the hair twisted up at the back of my neck, the helmet I was using no longer fits me. I couldn't find anything to pad it comfortably. I had one other helm in our stores which almost fits, but..." She paused. "Well, I can show you." She lifted the helm from the bottom of her laundry sack and passed it to him. "We found this in the village where Shale came from. It didn't fit any of us, but Wynne said the enchantments on it are excellent, and Bodahn Feddick warned us that he couldn't possibly give us anything like what it would be worth to a good armorsmith in Denerim, so I was holding on to it, planning to take it to Master Wade before the Landsmeet. And then," she shrugged, "a lot of things happened while we were in Denerim, and it got overlooked."

He took the helmet from her hands and inspected it. It was grey iron, and of a pattern that had not been used much in Ferelden since many years before the occupation, open faced with only a nose guard, a pair of wings of beaten metal either side of the face.

"I remember these helmets. They went out of fashion because unlike the Templar bucket helms they were made to the measure of one person and shaped to their head. So as you have found, they are hard to pass on when no longer needed. But you say it almost fits you? From the size of the helm it was made for a woman - or possibly for an elven man."

"The fit is excellent, except at the back of the neck. When my hair was long, I couldn't even get it on. Now, I can, but there is pressure here." She drew a finger down her nape.

"Well, when these were still worn, Warden, the 'helm cut' you see in old paintings was common." He laughed at her grimace. "Hair cut in a bowl around the ears to pad the top of the helm, then shaved to the skin from below the ears to improve the fit at the back of the head. I take it that solution does not appeal to you"

She winced. "Leave me the last few shreds of my vanity please."

He looked over the helm again, then held it up and studied the line of Muirnara's head. "If the pressure is really only at the nape of your neck, then if you could bring yourself to crop that last inch of hair close, it would probably fit without...more extreme measures. You would not really look any different to how you do now, unless someone was staring at the nape of your neck, and how many people are likely to do that?"

"Zevran"

He gave an unexpected laugh at that. "And do you plan to arrange the rest of your life solely based on what that lecherous elf may be thinking or doing?"

"Damn you, Loghain Mac Tir. How can I ever get a decent argument if you keep talking sense?"

"Madam, if a quarter of what the Chantry teaches us is correct, then I am thoroughly damned already by my own actions, you need not wish any more damnation on me."

Muirnara sighed, and drew the silverite dagger from her wrist sheath. "Just as well this still has the edge on it from last night. Since I am not going to save the perfect edge for a darkspawn throat, if I have to use its sister blade instead from now on, you might as well do this now." A grimace that became a more genuine smile. "And no, I am not taking the shirt off. I'm going to wash it anyway as soon as one of my other shirts is dry."

He accepted the dagger, tested the edge, and then motioned her to sit on a nearby broken branch. "This will only take a minute, it really is just that last inch, no more."

She felt the dagger pass over her neck with a whisper as the hair was stripped away, and then suddenly she froze, her head up. The thunderstorm smell of magic was suddenly all around, and that unmistakeable sound of an arrow being nocked into the string of a longbow.

"Loghain Mac Tir!" The voice was that of Wynne, full of anger and a little fear. She was standing on the far side of the clearing, a twisting ball of ice in the palm of each hand. And beside her, Leliana stood, her bowstring drawn back to her cheek, and the black feathered arrow trained unerringly on Loghain's throat.

Authors note - The helm that Muirnara and Loghain are discussing is the Helm of Honnleath, that you can acquire during The Stone Prisoner DLC. For those unfamiliar with the term 'helm cut' go and look at paintings of King Henry V of England - hair was cut that way for precisely the reason that Loghain states, immensely practical and impossibly unflattering.

Many thanks to all those of you who are reading, favouriting, and especially those who are reviewing, it is very much appreciated. Particular thanks to Gene Dark who commented that a mother-hen Wynne barging in on Loghain with a dagger at Muirnara's neck was a real missed opportunity in the first chapter. On reflection I entirely agreed. I do listen to suggestions. :)