My thanks to all of you for reading! I very much appreciate it.
The journey to the Storm Coast went by quickly. As far as the Iron Bull was concerned, it was both too fast and not fast enough. He was still nervous about what waited for them, but he wanted to get it over with, too.
At least he had the Chargers with him. The familiarity of traveling with his own people was a relief. Especially since Ren spent most of her time riding with Dorian, whom the Iron Bull was slowly coming to trust but was still a Vint, after all; or with Blackwall, who looked at the Inquisitor with a certain unguarded wistfulness that was ... unsettling. Not that she had ever looked twice at Blackwall, at least, not that the Iron Bull knew of, and she would never take advantage of a tenderness she didn't feel in return ... but still. In the Iron Bull's mind, she belonged with him, and the reminder that all of that was only in his head—and had to stay there—was an unnecessary torment on this particular trip.
Once they'd arrived and made camp, he led them to the appointed rendezvous spot. He had been in correspondence with his handler on the road to set up the initial meet, thanks to a raven borrowed from Leliana.
The Chargers hung back as they arrived at the rendezvous, prepping their weapons and armor, except for Krem, who would be in command of the Chargers during the attack when it happened and whose opinions the Iron Bull had come to count on over the years.
Ren stood next to the Iron Bull, watching him, as they waited. He was still uncomfortable about all of this, she could tell, but there was little outward sign of it. "Is your contact somewhere around?"
"He is." Out of the underbrush came a thin, wiry elf who looked up at the Iron Bull with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Good to see you again, Hissrad."
The Iron Bull grinned at him, glad to see the familiar face. "Gatt! Last I heard you were still in Seheron."
"They finally decided I'd calmed down enough to go back out into the world."
"Boss, this is Gatt. We worked together in Seheron. Gatt, the Inquisitor."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Gatt said courteously. "Hissrad's reports say you're doing good work."
"The Iron Bull's name is Hissrad?" Ren frowned. She thought he'd said his name was just a string of numbers.
Gatt shook his head. "Under the Qun, we use titles, not names."
"My title was Hissrad because I was assigned secret work. You can translate it as 'keeper of illusions', or—"
"Liar. It means liar," Gatt broke in. There was a message in the look he gave the Iron Bull, and it brought home to Ren just how far the Iron Bull had come from his roots. Clearly the Qunari were far less given to floweriness than the Iron Bull's definitions would suggest, and Gatt was having none of the Iron Bull's self-delusions. Ren took an immediate dislike to the Qunari elf.
"Well, you don't have to say it like that," the Iron Bull snapped. He hadn't missed the message, either, and the reminder didn't sit well with him.
Ren pasted a smile on her face. "It's so nice to hear that friends say nice things about me in their secret spy reports."
"He does ... but they're not really secret, are they?" Gatt said, radiating disapproval. Ren wondered if he disapproved of her in general, of her calling the Iron Bull a friend, or of the Iron Bull's openness about his work with the Ben-Hassrath.
The Iron Bull watched the two of them, aware of the instant dislike that had sprung up between them. It wasn't really a surprise; Gatt was a true believer, one who would not approve of the Iron Bull's rather whole-hearted embrace of his role as a southern merc commander, and Ren had little patience for zealotry of any kind. It made her a good choice for Inquisitor, because it kept the Inquisition from descending into such an extreme of Andrastianism that it would turn off nonbelievers, but it didn't help in this case. Ren's flippancy wasn't about to win her any friends among the Qunari. "Look, Gatt—" he began, but the elf cut him off with an upraised hand.
"Relax. Unlike our superiors, I know how it works out here." He unbent, just a little. "We're in this together. The Tevinter Imperium is bad enough without the influence of this Venatori cult."
Both Ren and the Iron Bull tensed at that, each highly aware of Dorian standing behind them, and neither were surprised when his drawling, Imperium-accented voice cut into the conversation. "Yes, filthy, decadent brutes, the lot of them. I'm certain life would be much better for all of us under the Qun."
Gatt's lip curled in disgust, and he snapped, "It was for me, after the Qunari rescued me from slavery in Tevinter. I was eight. The Qun isn't perfect, but it gave me a better life."
"One free from all that pointless free will and independent thought. Such an improvement."
The Iron Bull was frozen; he wanted Dorian to stop talking before he and Gatt came to blows, but he didn't want to talk to the mage and risk revealing to Gatt that the Vint was ... a friend? An ally? Someone he trusted at his back? Something along those lines.
Ren had no such hesitancy, however. She glared at Dorian over her shoulder, then transferred the glare to Gatt, making it clear she didn't consider him to have any authority over her. "Arguing about the war between your two nations isn't going to do anyone any good right now. Let's focus on what we're here for."
Dorian nodded, looking at least somewhat contrite, and Gatt said, "I'm not here to convert anyone. All I care about is stopping this red lyrium from reaching Minrathous."
"With this stuff, the Vints could make their slaves into an army of magical freaks," the Iron Bull agreed. He thought about the way the Templars had looked in Haven, and imagined a Vint army with the same power, terrorizing Seheron. "We could lose Seheron ... and see a giant Tevinter army come marching back down here."
"The Ben-Hassrath agree," Gatt said. "That's why we're here." He gestured toward the ocean, whose sound and smell the Iron Bull hadn't even registered yet, which was a good indicator of how off-kilter this whole mission had him. "Our dreadnought is safely out of view, and out of reach of any Venatori mages on shore," Gatt continued. "We'll need to eliminate the Venatori, and then signal the dreadnought so it can come in and take out the smuggler ship."
"Does that work for you, Bull?" Ren asked him.
The Iron Bull frowned. "Don't know. I've never liked covering a dreadnought run. Too many ways for crap to go wrong. If our scouts underestimate enemy numbers, we're dead. If we can't lock down the Venatori mages, the ship is dead. It's risky." Risky on both sides, though, the Qunari standing to lose a precious dreadnought if things went wrong, which made him feel slightly less concerned that this was some sort of trap.
"Riskier than letting red lyrium into Minrathous?" Gatt asked.
"Fine." Ren nodded sharply. "Let's get this bargain started."
"Good." Gatt unrolled a map. "My agents suggested two possible locations the Venatori may be camped to guard the shore. We'll need to split up and hit both at once."
Krem came forward, and he and the Iron Bull both studied the map. Ren stood back and let them confer, aware that they both knew the Storm Coast far better than she did. At last they looked at each other, nodding, clearly in agreement.
"I'll come with you, boss. Krem can lead the Chargers," the Iron Bull said.
She was relieved; she hadn't particularly wanted to let him out of her sight with this Qunari elf around. She trusted Gatt about as far as she could throw him.
The Iron Bull walked off with Krem, and Ren could hear him barking orders. She knew he and Krem were going over every detail of the assault to come, the Iron Bull offering advice and telling Krem how to do his job and Krem replying with a steady stream of insults, both of them pretending hard that they didn't care about one another and weren't worried that the other wouldn't make it through.
"Horns up!" the Iron Bull said, and the Chargers laughed. Their responding "Horns up!" rang across the clearing before they turned around and headed down the mountain toward the nest of Venatori that would be their part of the battle today.
As Dorian and Blackwall went on ahead, and the Iron Bull lagged a bit behind, looking over his shoulder in the direction the Chargers had gone, Ren found herself walking with Gatt up the rocky mountain path.
"So you and the Iron Bull have known each other since he fought in Seheron?" she asked.
"Yes. He was part of the group that freed me. My master had brought me along with him ... for company." Gatt's voice thickened, anger coloring it. "Hissrad and his men attacked my master's ship and set me free."
"And you decided to start following the Qun after that?"
"What do you think? I'd just seen a horned giant kill the man who had been hurting me my whole life. The Qun looked pretty good after that."
"Bull never told me that story."
"That's one of the few things he hasn't told you, I gather," Gatt said, and she could see in his face that he thought there was more to the relationship between herself and the Iron Bull than there was. Not for the first time, she wondered if getting close to her in a more physical sense, to truly worm his way into her trust, had been one of the Iron Bull's orders. If it had been, he hadn't done a particularly good job of it, she thought with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. Or were they worried that an intimacy had sprung up against orders, she wondered with a sudden sharp concern. Was that what this proposed alliance was about, keeping closer tabs on the Iron Bull? Was all this some kind of set-up? She could have kicked herself for not thinking of that before they got here. If she had, she could have come up with some type of counter-measure, just in case.
"Is he in trouble over passing on those reports?" she asked, not that she expected Gatt to tell her the truth either way.
Gatt shrugged. "The Ben-Hassrath aren't pleased with how forthcoming he's been ... but he's one of their best agents. He kept the streets clean in Seheron longer than anyone before him—or since. He fought until it nearly killed him." He glanced back over his shoulder at the Iron Bull. "Besides, the Qunari like to preserve any resource that has some value left in it. That's why I still have a job."
"Following the Qun hasn't always been easy for you?"
"I had a temper. Have a temper," Gatt corrected himself. "Hissrad's nickname for me, Gatt, comes from gaatlok, the explosive powder in Qunari cannons. It took me a long time to accept the Qun; to get past justice to purpose. Some days are still difficult."
Ren looked him over. She still didn't like him, but in the calm that had come over him while he talked she thought she could glimpse what made the Qun attractive to some types. There was an assurance in Gatt that he knew what his role was; not unlike the way she had felt when she had been made Inquisitor officially, she supposed, although she had been and still was scared to death of the role at the same time.
Gatt slowed to let the Iron Bull catch up to them. "You gave your men the easier job."
"You think?"
"Lower and farther from the smugglers' ship? It's much less likely to be heavily defended."
"I suppose we'll do the heavy lifting, then." The Iron Bull smiled grimly. "It'll be just like old times." He looked over his shoulder anxiously, though, belying his confident words.
Gatt laughed. "You worry too much."
The Iron Bull glanced back over his shoulder again. "They're my men," he said simply. "Some of them have been with me for years."
Ren wondered exactly how old he was. If he'd spent years as a mercenary, and years in Seheron before that ... forty, maybe? Mid-thirties? Did Qunari live longer than other races, or the same length of time? She was 25, and that felt young, especially on nights when Cullen and Leliana started reminiscing about the Blight. Sometimes she wondered why they all let someone of her youth and inexperience run the Inquisition ... but they did, and most days their confidence in her gave her strength when she wanted to run and hide from the weight of what she had to accomplish.
There was an advance of Venatori in front of them, and Ren took advantage of being in the back of the pack to get low and move stealthily through the thick grass, coming out of it behind one of the Venatori and slitting his throat. The others were all engaged in the battle by that point, and there was a loud, bloody few minutes before the last Venatori fell.
The Iron Bull slapped a bandage on a cut on his upper arm, and Dorian healed a wounded shoulder.
Gatt watched Dorian with undisguised hostility. "You must wish you were back in Tevinter, mage. No soldiers to guard you here, no slaves to wait on you."
Dorian raised an eyebrow. "So true. But it's the lack of fashion that really strikes fear into my heart," he said with an exaggerated sigh.
"You know nothing of fear," Gatt said in a low voice like a blade's edge.
In a similarly sharp and deadly tone, one she rarely heard from him, Dorian said, "And you intend to teach me?"
Gatt pulled back from the potential conflict. "No. You serve the Inquisition, and the Ben-Hassrath wish an alliance. It's enough, for now."
"For now, eh?" Dorian said under his breath to Ren. "I'd watch that one if I were you."
"I am. Bull may trust him, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can."
"My sentiments exactly."
The Iron Bull glanced at them. He didn't need to hear their words to know what they were saying; neither did Gatt, who was watching Ren and the mage closely. Not that anyone expected them to trust Gatt, but it wasn't good to be too open about it.
"Come on," the Iron Bull said loudly. "Let's go find the rest of these Vints and take 'em out. I want to see that dreadnought in action."
Gatt gave him a grim smile. "Just like old times."