AN: Recommended listening: Sun Will Set by Zoe Keating (watch?v=DfdPtNf7c4Y).
By the time dawn comes Kirkwall has already disappeared to the road behind her. The weather is comfortably cool in the shadows of the trees that overhang the edges of the path, though the day promises enough dry heat that Hawke plans to make as much headway as possible while she can. While she has seen no one else yet, the freshness of the wagon tracks in the earth tells her this way is well-traveled and that there will be others; whether they will be civilians or templars she cannot hope to guess.
By tenth bell the day has begun to warm, a few stragglers beginning to pass this way or the other, and Hawke has grown uncomfortably aware of her armor. Not heavy enough to hurt, thank Andraste, but it had been forged for fighting and not long travel, and the chain shirt has begun to chafe through the padded tunic beneath. By eleventh she is sweating; by noon she is in the underbrush well away from the road, stripped to the waist, her face in a Maker-given stream and her hair dripping down her neck.
When she can breathe again Hawke sits back on her heels, shoving her hair from her face, and considers her options. She will not leave the armor behind—one of the few things she'd spared no expense on, every piece of it made to her exact specifications—but neither can she continue to wear it. Not only is it hot, but no refugee fleeing the chaos of Kirkwall would easily bear gauntlets worth ten sovereigns apiece.
She pulls her undershirt and tunic back over her head once she has scrubbed most of the blood from them (Fenris's blood, a little voice reminds her), pulling her hair through the neck and tying it into place again. The chainmail she rolls tightly and straps to the underside of her pack, where a bedroll was meant to hang; the gauntlets she can barely fit inside it, jammed into a corner where they will neither pierce her apples nor crush her mother's letters. One of the apples she takes with her to clear room if nothing else; in its place she stuffs the unnecessary furred hood and then pushes to her feet, swinging the pack into place on her back.
Better. Much better, if not perfect—she still wears the boots and gorget if nothing else, but there is little to do for that but avoid questions when she can, and in short order she is on the road again, apple between her teeth, her heart lighter than it has been in months.
—
For the next four days Hawke does little but walk and sleep in short, sporadic bursts. More travelers take to the roads the farther she is between cities, but most are leaving Kirkwall rather than heading for it, and it is easy enough to lose herself between a pair of wagons or a family with a small, crying child. She risks an inn the second night for the sake of a hot meal and a bath if nothing else, but otherwise the trees serve her well enough when she cannot force herself another step forward. She is grateful she'd paid so much for the boots, now. Three days' hard travel, and not one blister to show for it.
Damn the world, but she misses Fenris. Misses her dog, too, and Merrill, and Orana, and Aveline and Sebastian and Anders—
"Shut up," she says aloud, shaking her head, and ignores the glance from the man driving the cart of hay beside her. Aveline and Donnic are needed in Kirkwall, she knows that. No hand like theirs to keep the city running, even with Meredith gone, and Merrill will see to the elves' protection as well. Orana will be safe with her, with Toby.
She cannot think of Anders without anger, without regret. Friends, she'd thought, for so many years, and still somehow she'd managed not to see the signs. Sebastian, too—she knows that sort of rage too well, knows the terrible promises it tears from souls, and if there's grief when she thinks of him too at least she knows where he is. So much harder to send letters of apology and explanation with no address to accept them. And Fenris—
Fenris will be fine. He's had worse injuries and less healing and survived them, and he would never permit the indignity of dying to a concussion. Not when she'd promised him, not when she'd let him make such a promise to her.
Promise me you won't die—
By the end of the fifth day Hawke is nearly out of supplies, and at dusk she trades a handful of silver to a traveling caravan of merchants for use of their food and their fire. They are a pleasant-enough group for how little Hawke intends to remain with them, traveling the opposite direction from her, but the news they bring is without price and she soaks up every word of Kirkwall like parched earth.
The Circle had fallen. That she'd known; she hadn't realized that Cullen had allowed it, had instated a new First Enchanter within the day even as he took Meredith's duties for himself. The city had quieted after that, no revolts or riots after that first night—Hawke is grateful for that, too—though relations still strain at every crossroads of mage and templar and guard within its walls. And then—
"Seekers?" Hawke says, startled, and the woman speaking nods.
"From Orlais, they're saying. Right hand of the Divine, beholden to none but her."
"To restore order?"
"To hunt, the way I hear it," she says, and laughs.
Hawke forces a smile, lowering her eyes to her plate. Seekers, in Kirkwall. Perhaps Sebastian will not have to search so thoroughly for her after all. But soon enough the conversation turns to other news, other rumors, and the company takes up discussion of a friend's shop in Ostwick where his lead shophand had vanished without warning.
"Is Jame going to look for her?"
"Already sent guards after her," says the caravan's leader, a short, elderly man with a thin white beard. "He says she's always been steady and hardworking for all that she complains about shem, and he'd thought to sell her part of the store when he got ready to retire. Said she had a head for business like he'd never seen."
"Mm. And she's not run off with a lover?"
"Mother says she hadn't one."
The woman shakes her head, stabbing at her pheasant with a fork. "Told you those slavers were coming south."
Oh, thinks Hawke. Don't say it, don't—this is none of your business and you've got a promise to keep—
Hawke says, "Slavers?"
A band of them, not overlarge but growing bolder, from the south of Tevinter and encroaching ever further into the Free Marches with every raid. Small towns, they tell her, with small guards and few people to raise the cry if another orphan goes missing here and there. Until this most recent raid, when the elves they'd taken had been missed and the city outraged enough to call for aid that would not come swiftly.
Markham, they tell her. Southfort, too, a small town half a day's travel east from that city, into the hills.
The elf woman's mother has gone to Ostwick for aid, they say. No one will listen, but she will not be quiet. No one will help her. No one will—
Hawke cries that night, only a little, the heel of her hand pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound, midnight breezes swaying the leaves of the over-reaching trees above her. She writes a letter to Fenris, gives it to the caravan's leader to be posted at Kirkwall when they arrive. The post will be longer, they tell her, if made from Kirkwall and not Ostwick, but Hawke knows the delivery is safer the less she is involved, and she nods and smiles and hands the letter to them all the same. Then she sleeps, her face turned toward the sea, and in the morning she rises and squares her shoulders and takes the road to Ostwick.
—
Six days after she left Fenris bleeding on a ship, Hawke finds the woman's mother in Ostwick. She is older than Hawke expects, grey-haired, a sturdier elf than Marethari but with the same distant elegance, and it is not until Hawke buys her a hot meal and gives her a name—first, unused—that she is willing to believe her offer.
There is not much to tell. Her daughter's name is Elina, and she has worked for the human merchant Jame for nearly ten years in his Markham business. She has always been respectful and dependable if occasionally short-tempered; she has never kept a lover long; she has never vanished without a word. Her brother waits in Markham for any news; her father has been dead six months. They had heard that slavers were near Southfort, but Elina had little patience for rumors; she'd tried to persuade her daughter not to walk alone without effect, and then one night like any other they had waited for her, and waited, and she had—never come.
There'd been other news after that, glimpses of a caravan with humans bearing whips at the edges of town, moving north; others vanishing along the same road at every stop. They had reinforced the guards there, but—no help came for the ones already taken, and none for elves at all, and when she had gone to the prison's warden at Southfort he had laughed in her face and sent her away.
None of your business. None of your business, you utter fool. If Fenris were here—
"I'll help you," Hawke says, and smiles.
—
She buys drinks at bars until tongues are loose. She speaks to the urchins, the street-runners without shoes and ears that hear more than they're intended; she goes to the brothel and waits until her man stumbles out into the evening, yawning, his arms stretched over his head, his guard's uniform askew across his shoulders.
She steps close, lifts a bag of silver between them, hefts its jingling weight in her palm until she has his whole attention. She says, "Tell me everything you know about Southfort's warden Grantham."
—
On the tenth night she has spent alone since Kirkwall fell, Hawke sits on an outcropped bluff high above the sea. The treeline thins maybe twenty yards from the cliff's edge, the light of her small, hearty campfire burning just within view of the road passing by beyond them. She's certain; she's checked it twice in the last hour.
Patience, however, has never been her virtue, and when the rolling black sea at her back throws up another spray of ice across her unprotected neck, she hisses under her breath and feeds flame into her circle of logs until they are burning brighter than ever. If she hadn't left her pack with Fenris's book and that thrice-blessed hood hidden in the trees—
A rustle in the night-dark woods. A branch breaking—and then a man's voice, cheerful and friendly. "Hallo!"
Hawke yanks her fingers from the fire just in time for a trader to emerge from the shadows of the treeline, one hand lifted in greeting. Square shoulders, average height, a dark, full beard; Hawke smiles, straightening, and inclines her head. "Evening."
"Sure is," he says, coming slowly into the light of her fire. He carries a pack of his own; at her gesture he drops it gratefully to the earth on the other side of her little clearing and sinks to his knees, both hands outstretched towards the fire and her squirrel slung carefully above it. "Mind if I rest with you here a few minutes? My feet have been aching for a furlough."
"Not at all. Have you traveled far today?"
"Some good miles. Hoped to make it a bit closer to Kirkwall before nightfall, though."
"Ah. It seems we're going opposite ways."
"Shame, that," he says with a warm smile. "A pretty thing like you shouldn't have to go any road alone."
Hawke titters. "That's too kind. I'm just trying to meet some friends of mine east from here."
"Oh? You've really come all this way by yourself?"
"It isn't so bad." She shrugs, fiddles daintily with a loop of hair falling over her shoulder. "I was just trying to get out of the mess in Kirkwall, and with no family there to look after me…"
"Poor girl." He reaches behind him and pulls a pair of hare from his belt. "Here. I'll sweeten the meal for you."
"How kind!" And she does want them, actually, considering how long it's been since she's had a proper dinner, but despite their fragrant aroma and the mouthwatering sound of sizzling meat, she keeps herself to her fish and the last slices of roasted apple. "Tell me, have you any family?"
"Cousin in Southfort," he says carelessly, picking a bit of hare from between his teeth, and Hawke checks her staff laid flat behind her.
"I hear Southfort is lovely this time of year."
"Ha! He runs the prison, so I'd reckon his view's the same year-round."
She makes a noise of agreement, smiles again at his grin. Something moves in the trees, a glimmer of animal eyes; Hawke forces her eyes to her empty plate until her heart calms, then leans back on her hands to listen. The trader talks a while longer, taking her silence as invitation, telling her of his journey south and the conditions of the roads, of the rainstorm he'd been caught in two days back, of the pleasantness of her own charming company. She laughs again, gaze flicking to the underbrush, and he leans forward into the full light of the campfire, smiling again.
"So," the trader says, his voice low, "I never caught your name."
Her lips part—
—and the first mabari tears out of the trees towards them.
"No!" the trader shouts, leaping to his feet, but Hawke already has staff in hand. Galling, that battle and death should come as relief—but as the lead mabari leaps towards her through the sparking campfire, snarling, spittle flying from its teeth, she has no time and no mind to spare.
Its teeth lock to her staff and the weight nearly throws her to the ground. She doesn't dare fire, not with the trader leaping for his short knife, not with who knows how many still lurking in the woods. The dog snaps again, teeth gouging white scars into the polished darkwood; Hawke puts a hand to her forehead and shoves and the dog goes flying backwards with a yelp, long enough for her to stagger to her feet. Barks ring out across the clearing, echoing weirdly back from the sea; she rakes her hair from her eyes and snatches a breath, looking for shadows, for green eyes—
Three more. Three more, maybe four—the trader has one circling the fire, obviously drawn here by the smell of spitted hare. The dogs are lean and rangy, hungry but not starved, though there is more than one scar around their muzzles to tell her they are not untouched by human hands. The first one she struck has not moved again.
The dog leaps. The trader's knife flashes in the firelight—and it falls, dead, pierced to the hilt in the heart. A curse blisters the air as the trader tries to pull it free again, but before he can loose it another mabari is on him, sprawling him to his back beside the campfire, the knife skittering away from his hand.
There is no time—only white teeth slavering for the trader's throat, his arms useless and bleeding—
Hawke slams the tip of her staff into the ground. Force ripples outward, a sheer wall of pressure as inexorable as a rushing tide. The campfire sputters out before it to throw the world into darkness—the dog lets out a startled cry of sudden pain as it falls away and she winces—but it's the trader's eyes that lock her in place in the abrupt night, accusation and realization and sudden fear all mingled to tell her she has risked too much. Careful, here. Oh, damn it, be careful!
His stare drops to the ground behind her. A low rumbling growl, the knotted tensing of muscle—the last dog. The last—
Hawke closes her eyes. Her staff falls to the grass with a quiet thump.
Her last thought, before it springs, is that she hopes they fight it off her quickly.
—
By the time the ringing in her ears has dulled enough for her to form coherent thought, she is already in the covered wagon hidden just off the road. She shakes her head roughly, dislodging hay from her hair, but does not try to rise; voices come from just outside, the trader's and another she does not yet know, a high, nervous tenor with a faint lisp.
"I'm telling you, she's no ordinary apostate! Who d'you know who runs around with a staff like this, who don't flinch when mad dogs are running at her?"
"I don't know, ser, I just—"
"And those were good dogs, you ruddy idiot. What were you thinking bringing them up so close?"
"You said to bring the men, ser, and they were tied to the wagon when we came."
A slap. "Well, they didn't stay there, did they?"
"No! No, ser. I'm sorry, ser."
A pause, then, full of disdain: "You'll be paying for their replacements the moment we get back to Southfort. This never happens again, Walter, hear me?"
Walter's voice is muffled, as if through his own hand. "I hear you, ser."
Hawke rolls to her back, gingerly testing her muscles and scrapes. Not bad, considering: a few scratches and gouges on the back of her neck, a pulled muscle in her back, the leather of her belt nicked but still functional. There, Fenris. I'm gagged and tied wrist to ankle in the back of a slaver's wagon, but for once, everything's under control. She heals the muscle out of habit, though leaves the scabbing marks on her neck for evidence, and settles again. An owl calls in the distance, hunting for prey.
"Just get her out of here. Get her to Grantham and tell him I'm staying the course to Kirkwall. With the mess there nobody'll notice a few more gone missing."
"But you said she's a mage, ser!"
"And I've got this." There's a knock of knuckle on wood and Hawke clenches her eyes closed—her father's staff. Her father's—but she'd known the moment she set the plan she wouldn't keep it, had depended on that for the sake of the girl she means to rescue. Let it go. Let it go. "You saw how she went down the moment she dropped it. Mages aren't worth salt without a staff."
"What if she's got spells, ser? Or—or runes? Or poultices?"
There's another smack, and then the trader's voice drops dangerously low. "She was carrying a little bag of coin and a waterskin, Walter, and not a shred of anything else. I'm taking this staff to Kirkwall and I'm going to look until I find out exactly who she is and how much she's worth, and I don't want to hear another word out of you unless it's 'yes, ser.' You understand me?"
A heavy swallow. "Yes, ser."
"Good. Now get your arse on that wagon and get her the Void out of here."
"Ser," Walter says again, cowed, and the wagon rocks with his weight as he swings aboard. A brief blaze of torchlight as the trader lifts the cloth-cover at her feet to glance in at her; she musters herself enough for a fiery glare—sans fire, regrettably—and spits something uncomplimentary through the gag.
"Sorry, dearie," he says, shaking his head. "Can't be helped."
Hawke sneers again, disgusted, and he lets the flap fall between them without looking at her again. Low orders to a pair of thick shadows beside the wagon—the hired muscle, she supposes, since Walter can apparently barely command himself—and then the wagon shifts again as they climb on, one to the wide board at Hawke's feet, one to the seat beside Walter. A click of the tongue and a snap of reins and they are moving—and a moment later, the soft pale glow of the trader's lantern winks out into darkness.
A long silence, then Walter, just loud enough to hear over the creak of harness and wagon: "I hope we know what we're doing."
Hawke grimaces through the gag. So does she.
