Chapter Twenty-One: La Foudre

For what was not the first time in his life and he hoped to the Maker would be far from the last –only a fool would pray he would never experience fear again; it was so commonplace an emotion that a lifetime of respite from it could only be that of death –Fergus Cousland was afraid.

Surprisingly, it had less to do with the fact that they were about to scale the Frostbacks with a dying mage in tow. Upon their return to Redcliffe, Leliana and Alistair haunted by an altercation with a strange apostate posing as the assistant of the Brother Genitivi they had sought and Fergus rattled and seething from the unforeseen confrontation with Nathaniel Howe, they were greeted by an optimistic Teagan with the news that the lyrium was successfully sustaining his brother and that Mordred had miraculously awakened in their absence.

Morrigan had been less smiling.

"Indeed, he's awake," she agreed irritably once they were free from the ears of the bann, the enchanter Cera who had remained behind to observe the arl, and Mordred himself. "Indeed, he's awake and walking and talking and complaining, as that fool Teagan will recount to anyone that will stand still enough to listen in the hopes that his brother will recover miraculously as well, it's not the same. Mordred is not the same. I doubt he ever will be."

"Will he live?" Fergus demanded, finding that he cared little else when his –when there were other people's lives hanging in the balance elsewhere, in places where he was powerless. If Mordred would live, if there would still be another Grey Warden besides Alistair in the country, a capable Grey Warden, that was good enough for him.

"Why don't you show me a man who will live forever?" Morrigan quipped back with dark humor. "But, no, our Grey Warden will not live long. And he is certainly in no condition to combat an Archdemon; that is for certain. Or any other smaller evils," she added under her breath as she looked away. "If you intend to go chasing the dusty remains of a dead woman, I suggest you hurry up and do so, although I understand not why you require the aid of this Arl Eamon when you yourself are counted amongst their treasured noble bloodlines."

"It can't look like a blood dispute," he answered grimly, looking out of the window to the lake beyond. "The destruction of Howe can't look like it's just another chapter in a bloody land squabble between the Couslands and the Howes, like I'm just taking revenge. They'll brand me as a hothead, hotspur, and that'll be that. Someone might take action against me in turn and then it's nothing but fight, fight, fight all the time while the Blight consumes us while our backs are all turned to face each other. And the same goes for the Guerrins and Loghain. It can't look as though they're simply avenging Cailan alone by deposing Loghain; it has to appear to be for the good of the country and therefore the country must back them. I suppose that I and whatever followers I can muster on account of the outrage over my parents' deaths is the first step."

"And what do you think?" asked the witch provokingly. "Must Loghain be torn down from his pedestal for 'the good of the country'?"

Fergus was quiet for a moment, considering what he truly felt and how much he felt he should give away to this mysterious third party, a witch bred in the swamps of the south, apart from the world of men, elves, and dwarves and politics. Finally, he replied, "If Loghain truly turned away from Cailan on the battlefield while there was still hope for victory or even simply to save the poor fool king, then that is indeed despicable. As for the civil war, that seems to me that that is as nearly as much the fault of the bannorn lords that have risen up as it is Loghain's. Who did they think would rule the country now that Cailan is dead? Anora alone? Her politics are not so different than her father's."

"And what do you make of his alliance with your father's killer?" Morrigan asked, still provoking. So she was perhaps not so ignorant of the politics that surrounded her new life amongst the Grey Wardens and their allies.

"He believes that my family was traitors to Ferelden," he answered slowly, trying to control his temper as he had not been able to in the Denerim brothel or the street afterward. "There's no accounting for blindness."

"Nor taste neither," Mordred quipped from the doorway. Both nobleman and witch turned at his entrance. The warden-commander, paler than ever in his grey robes, walked slowly across the room, his posture indicating a struggle not to walk like the older man the silver threads in his pitch hair suggested he had prematurely become. Fergus saw his left hand twitch once, twice, in an effort to keep from pressing against the wounds on his chest and abdomen. "From what I've heard," he continued, "Howe's hardly the popular choice for the Regency's second-in-command."

"Does that surprise you?" Fergus asked with a sharp bark of laughter. "What exactly does what he did to my parents, his best friends, say about his good character?"

Mordred shrugged. "There isn't very much that surprises me anymore," he commented with his characteristic frustrating ambiguity and left the room without saying more.

Fergus turned back to Morrigan with eyebrows raised. "I see little difference."

"You wouldn't," she snapped spitefully, "but I do. He's losing control; the creature within him is insidious in nature; a changeling demon, so to speak, and one that has had years to perfect his host's nature: his habits, his words, his humors. When the host must feed off of the parasite's energy to survive, it is an exchange of power. It's a gift, but it comes with an inevitable price. The moments where our Grey Warden is himself completely are becoming fewer and fleeting when he must rely upon his guest's energy to sustain himself."

"And he explained all of this to you?" Fergus asked, somewhat skeptical, somewhat cold.

Morrigan fixed him with an icy stare, overwhelming his own chilly response with a veritable blizzard. "I am not my mother's daughter for nothing."

"No doubt," he muttered before clearing his throat and continuing. "The sooner a permanent solution is found, the better. Is he well enough to accompany us to the Frostbacks?"

"The answer to that question is irrelevant," was the curt reply. "By the time you climbed the mountains and returned, it would be too late. We go with you, regardless of whether either party likes it or not."

So after having ridden east to Denerim, the company of Grey Wardens and their allies (with varying degrees of willingness) saddled up and rode west through the first snowfall toward the Frostbacks and, as Fergus realized with a twist in his gut, Orlais: the nation with which his family had been accused of being co-conspirators.

For the first time in months, ever since the altercation with the assassins painted up as monsters, the nagging sense of his family's supposed crimes had crept up upon and surprised him. It was as though the Crows' leader's parting message had been a curse, one that had haunted him for weeks but had now finally been lifted, the words no longer echoing in the hollow cavities of his mind. With some bitter satisfaction, Fergus attributed it to the fact that he had passed the sinister sentiment on to the son of his enemy, Nathaniel Howe.

And yet he felt a twinge of guilt for having done so.

"Do you miss it?" he asked Leliana that night at camp, partly to distract himself, partly because he was genuinely curious. "Orlais. Do you miss it?"

The campfire's flickering flames backlit her copper hair, creating something like a serene halo in the frescos in a cathedral far, far away. She set her pack down near the tents Alistair had hastily erected and then disappeared into, considering the question. "Yes and no," she began and then laughed. "Isn't it always yes and no?"

"With you it would seem so," Fergus commented dryly, alluding to his hidden frustration that the onetime bard, onetime cloistered sister never seemed to give him a straight answer.

She laughed again and in such a self-knowing way that he suspected that his frustration was not as hidden as he had thought. "Do you want to know a secret?" she asked, blue eyes seemingly bright with inspiration as she sat opposite him beside the fire, their knees nearly touching and the flames close. "I'll think you fit for a riddle of its nature if you answer one of my own dying questions."

"Never stopped you before," he grumbled, "but I suppose this time it must be a bargain. Go on."

"Do you ever wonder if your parents did indeed conspire with Orlais?"

His answer was immediate in timing and harsh in tone. "Never," he said briskly, meeting her eyes with hardness in his own. "And I should think you know me well enough that you need not ask."

There was a moment when she did not look away, when he thought he might have seen resolve to challenge his own, and he wondered with fleeting briefness exactly what inspired such certainty in her expression, wondered if she, the onetime Orlesian bard, had other secrets to divulge. But the moment passed and she once again became the demure lay sister. The turning point and the sharpness of it made him think of the old wives' tales about the wandering Dalish elves and the human children they would spirit away, leaving changelings in their stead.

Almost wanting to provoke that look again, whatever it was, whatever it implied, he said sharply before she could respond, "Why?"

"It's only that you hold such suspicion for the living," she replied with strange dispassion, "and yet will not think anything ill of the dead. I know that is the saying, yes, and that they were your parents, but still…"

"You're not my confessor," he shot back, "and even if you were, I'm rather certain that nothing you can attempt will make me fit for the Maker's side. I'm already too tainted, I would think."

"I will not believe that," Leliana replied firmly. "I refuse. If an honorable man who has only acted in his own defense and that of his family is 'too tainted,' where will that leave me?"

He felt his eyebrows knot as he remembered his altercation with Nathaniel Howe, the rain, the smell of blood, the sound of his onetime hunting companion's forehead against the wooden bar. "Somewhere away from the Maker's side with me?" he supplied with dark wryness. "We're all killers, after all. We're all monsters."

"We're not darkspawn," Leliana objected, frowning.

"Small comfort," he returned. "At least my skin isn't rotten and all my teeth are still in my mouth."

Her mouth twisted but she didn't laugh. "I just wonder sometimes if people are remembering who the real monsters are," was all she said before falling silent.

They sat in silence for a time, the crackling of the flames the only sound. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was beside the fireplace in the Highever main hall, but the illusion was shattered when the Antivan elf passed by and said to Leliana, "You know, it must be a sin against the Maker to keep such beauty all to one's own enjoyment. Charity is a virtue."

Fergus cracked one eye open, half-annoyed, half-amused, waiting for Leliana's reply. She looked up at Zevran and asked, "You would have me share?"

"I'm sure that the Maker smiles upon those that extend such generosity to we lesser mortals," answered Zevran smoothly. "Please, bestow your bounty."

She smiled her secret, inscrutable, sibylline smile. "Perhaps I already have," she replied, "and you just are not the lucky recipient, hmm?"

There was a moment before the former assassin laughed outright. "Clever girl," he said, approving, "well, I'll just have to wait until some fair lass sees fit to bless me with such kindness."

He swept her a deep bow and thus retreated to his own bedroll somewhere on the other side of the fire. In the distance beyond, Fergus could make out the flickers of Morrigan's own separate campsite and a shadow huddled beside the flames, alone.

Following his gaze, Leliana said, "They are arguing. She is not one to confide in anyone, but it is clear to those with eyes that look for it. Something has frightened her, whether it be within that mysterious book she carries about like a child or in his condition."

"Perhaps both," Fergus replied, shivering, his breath coming out in misty puffs. "That was a clever rejoinder there, with the elf."

"The elf has a name," she said, perhaps more sharply than intended, "but, yes; thank you. I was rather pleased with it myself. There is but one way with which to combat such a humor. One must fight good nature with good nature."

"My sister would agree," Fergus replied before he remembered and fell back into silence.

But the frustrating woman did not see fit to desist. "You're worried about her."

Her words hit right upon the heart of the worst of his fears and painfully hard at that. "Whatever gave you that impression?" he asked gruffly.

"If she's anything like you," Leliana persisted, "she's a strong girl. She's a survivor, like you are, like we all are."

"She's not in the most 'survivable' of positions currently," he cut her off curtly. "Even if Rendon Howe is treating her honorably, if that indeed is where she is, he cannot be there all of the time. I am no fool and I am no optimist; I can guess at what is like to become of a young woman, a pretty young woman, at the hands of common soldiers."

He shuddered and raged to think of what might have befallen Oriana in her last moments, so he cowardly did his best not to think of it at all. It was the past; it was a failure he could not correct. Whatever was happening to Eliante… that was in the present. That could be helped. And he still seethed to think he had sent Nathaniel Howe to do a task that was rightfully his, duty-bound to be his as a brother and the last living patriarch of the Cousland line.

"That too can be survived," said Leliana quietly. "Who would know better than I?"

The snow had ceased hours before but all winter's chill remained. It seemed that in those soft words even the comfort of the fire beside them was dispelled, leaving them to languish in the outer darkness Fergus had earlier alluded to as the new information, so freely and yet so cautiously given, dangled in the air between them but neither seemed to see fit to reach out and take hold of it.

Finally, she began to get to her feet. "I shouldn't have — It's late; I should go to—"

"Wait." His hand darted out and caught her wrist.

She turned at the sudden contact and looked down at him. "Release me," she said in that same quiet voice as before.

"No," he said, his own tone echoing her own.

"You have your own demons to contend with," she pointed out, but did not move to pull herself free from his hand's grip on her wrist.

"That may be," he allowed, "but I'm not the one that spoke up and invited someone into my demons."

There were soft footsteps to his right; Niall passed by on his way back from his turn at watch, brown eyes following the path of Leliana's slender arm to Fergus's fingers wrapped around her wrist, mutely distrustful. Leliana looked to the mage and he passed on toward his tent, still watchful. All the same, the silent admonition had been recognized and Fergus found his grip loosening and his fingers sliding down from Leliana's wrist to fold around her hand. The intimacy of the contact of palm against palm, so different from the harshness of his hand about her wrist, surprised him.

"Why did you leave Orlais?" he asked her, and her shoulders curved inward, relaxing, perhaps because he had given her a point of entry with which she could spin out her tale, her secrets, if she had found him deserving of something of its nature as she had alluded to earlier.

She sat back down and he withdrew his hand. Pulling her cloak close, swirling its deep green hue about herself, she said, "I did not tire of the Game, as I alluded to before. I did not freely walk away from it, as I might have allowed you to believe. I loved the Game, and the passionate affair I shared with it lasted until the precise moment that the world it and I inhabited tumbled down around me."

Fergus was quiet, watching her, and allowing the tale to unfold at its own pace, keeping his own reactions and emotions withdrawn and subsequently hidden. Leliana continued. "Lady Cecilie adored her tarot cards, a fascination I carried forward long after her death. I'm sure you've heard of them, yes? Little painted cards that answer questions regarding the past, present, and future in the simplest and yet the most complex of terms. Well, at least you are not laughing at me.

"What any of this has to do with the reason I left Orlais, you might ask. Well, like the cards I speak of, the answer is at once simple and complex. There was a card I pulled, some months before the events that led me here transpired: La Foudre. If you have ever seen it in Ferelden, you might know it as the Lightning-Struck Tower. It is an omen of catastrophe, of a house built up by ego being struck with the lightning of reality. Confronted with this omen, I laughed it off and ignored it and dealt with the silly cards no longer.

"At this point in my life, I was in the employ of a woman named Marjolaine, who was perceived as a simple rich widow by many. She was not. She was, and she was not. She was many things, and she was not. But what she was for certain was my bardmaster and I… cared for her deeply."

Still, he did not speak and yet she did not seem to notice. "We had an… assignment that dealt with some sealed documents. I knew not what they were, only of their importance. But I looked. I thought it would be simple; I had undone and resealed dozens, hundreds, of such documents in my career. But none whose contents contained such implications.

"You see, most bards confine their doings to the borders of Orlais, some even to the boundaries of Val Royeaux itself. At this point in my career, I was such. But some do not allow borders to confine their grand games and it was at this moment that I recognized Marjolaine to be such. I… tried to stop her, to reason with her, to convince her to take the papers back. She said she would… but when next I saw them, they were waved before my eyes in a cell and it was my own name staring back at me."

She laughed softly. "The lightning had struck the tower and I hadn't been watching, even as the building was burning all around me. I didn't realize it until it was much too late, and I found myself at the mercy of… the Orlesian guards that had come after me. They did terrible things to me," she murmured, blue eyes downcast toward her hands, which were folded in her lap with a deceptive serenity.

"But you got away," Fergus pointed out, finally finding his voice, and her eyes darted back up to him once more.

"I did," she agreed. "The tricks Marjolaine taught me were not good for nothing, I found. And then I came here, to Ferelden, and to the Maker."

Laughing softly once more, she leaned forward, bracing an elbow against each knee and planting her chin against her hands. "In some decks, alternate ones, they call La Fouldre, the Lightning-Struck Tower, La Maison Dieu, the House of God. I know not why, but it is something of a comfort to me, this unanticipated duality, that even in great calamity, salvation can be found."

She reached out and covered his hand with her own. "I survived. So will she survive, if that is indeed what she is up against."

"Will she?" he asked without looking up at her. "Are you so certain? Did you really survive? You're not the same person now that you were before, it sounds like."

"No," she agreed. "I'm not. But that is perhaps for the better, no? It could have been for the worse, but it is not."

"But you see," Fergus replied grimly, "with my sister and her disposition, I fear that the worse is the more likely outcome in this situation."

Up the mountain they continued, leaving the horses behind at an amicable inn, as both snow and night fell around them. Fergus and Leliana, for once, had parted on amicable terms the evening before and spoke no more of their conversation. Whatever communication they imparted to one another the following day was mute in nature: a gesture of direction, a hand extended in assistance up a slope, a shared half-smile at Zevran's pursuit of Morrigan when Mordred's ears were distracted.

But there were other, more sinister silences. Chief among those was Sten's muteness; Niall could regularly be caught casting a furtive glance backward at the reserved qunari soldier and he was not the only one to be witnessed doing so. Sten, dwarfing even the tallest of his human companions, put Fergus ill at ease and seemed to outright terrify Alistair. The only one seemingly completely unperturbed by the mysterious qunari –even Morrigan disguised her disquiet with quips directed at the silent soldier that were answered with noncommittal grunts –was Mordred.

Yet this fearlessness seemed borne out of the fact that the warden-commander simply seemed to ignore the qunari that followed him across Ferelden –not the wisest strategy, Fergus thought. Yet it was effective for the most part. Mordred never appeared to question himself, so Sten never questioned him. Or so it appeared on the surface.

This soon proved to be a less than accurate appraisal of the situation at hand.

As they approached the tree line and the presumed boundaries of the hamlet of Haven, as marked upon the map Leliana and Alistair had procured from Brother Genitivi's Denerim residence, the ground leveled out into a less-steep plane and Fergus felt plate-mail scrape against his own armored shoulder. Blinking in surprise at the contact, he watched as Sten pushed his way past the other companions –nearly shoving Niall down the slippery slope to their right –in his approach to Mordred.

"Yours is a fascinating strategy, warden," he growled when Mordred's back did not immediately turn to face his arrival. "Tell me: do you intend to travel north until it becomes south and assault the Archdemon from behind?"

"Why," said Alistair, who had been walking beside his fellow Warden, "that isn't a bad idea at all. Not the traveling north until it turns into the south bit, no, but we could lie in wait for the Archdemon, wait until the bulk of the horde passes over, and then spring out to flank them. Given our numbers, it's not a bad idea at all."

Fergus rubbed his forehead with his palm. Morrigan cast Alistair a typical scathing look, but the former Templar was so used to those that it hardly fazed him. The truth was that it wasn't such an awful idea, but instead that Alistair had, as per usual, missed the real issue at hand. It made Fergus wonder how Teagan could be so blind as to the damage that had been inflicted upon a boy who could have been Ferelden's savior in the era of a murdered king and a Blight, had he a little more self-direction and common sense.

However, the implications of Sten's comment and the manner in which it had been raised –so abruptly and with confrontation ringing in each syllable –had not been lost on Fergus. Nor on Mordred, whose shoulders tightened with the insinuation of a threat.

But Alistair had drawn Sten's attention away, at least for the moment, and soon both ex-Templar and qunari soldier were drawn into an argument of sorts that Leliana and Fergus only shook their heads at and continued on up the mountain as Alistair whined and bickered. Not a moment after, Mordred and Morrigan followed suit and the instant of tension seemed to have dissolved into a seemingly more benign squabble between Alistair and Sten.

In the distance, Fergus could make out the outline of a building perched upon the side of a cliff. He heaved a quiet sigh of relief at the revelation that they were not far from safe lodgings, but that was quickly replaced with irritation as Alistair's bickering drifted to his ears:

"You are a Grey Warden," Sten was saying. "How are you going to face an Archdemon, even from the flank, if you cannot face me?"

"It is a mystery, I'll admit," Alistair muttered.

"If it will make you feel better, I will turn around and pretend I cannot hear you approaching. But I will not allow your weakness to damn us all. Draw your sword; I'll try not to injure you permanently."

"Weakness?" Alistair sputtered. "I — I do not have anything to prove to you! Forget it."

"So you do have a spine," said Sten with a snort of contempt. "It's a pity you don't see fit to use it."

Fergus's shoulders relaxed again, thinking that that would be the end of that. It was not.

"And what of you," Sten demanded, rounding on Mordred once more, "you, who call yourself 'commander'? What sort of commander are you exactly, to command your force to scale a mountain in search of a dead woman's dust and therefore travel in the precise opposite direction of your enemy?"

"Do the qunari make a habit of questioning the leadership of those they have pledged to serve?" Morrigan murmured snidely and Sten heard.

"Do not think I have forgotten you, woman," he said and her eyebrow rose at his attention, "I know a viper when I see one. Do you believe you can control him in that respect should your magic fail you?"

"I am controlled by no one," said Mordred sharply, but Fergus had to bite back a snort of disbelief, knowing what he did. But knowing what he did of the qunari and their opinions regarding mages and abominations, he knew not to raise any issue with Mordred's statement. "Least of all you," the mage continued, "and isn't that exactly what you're attempting to do now?"

"I attempt nothing," replied Sten. "I either succeed or I do not. And it would appear that you are not, in fact, succeeding. In response to your question, witch, I have pledged my service to no man in Ferelden. I have pledged myself to the defense of this country from the Blight, a purpose that it would seem this Grey Warden no longer pursues. So, yes, I question."

"And what would you have of me?" Mordred snapped, turning in the snow to face the soldier. "I need Arl Eamon's men and I need his support. Loghain will not trust any Grey Wardens; that has been made quite clear."

"Has it?" Sten inquired. "Have you asked him recently?"

Zevran smothered a chuckle. Mordred glared at him, and then at Sten, and something darkened in the warden-commander's gaze, became crystalline and otherworldly. For the first time, Fergus recognized what Morrigan had meant when she spoke of loss of control, of the demon's changeling talents. The change was subtle, but it was there for those who looked. And it seemed that Fergus was learning how to look, if nothing else.

"As for what I would have of you," continued Sten, "the answer is simple and should be obvious, even to you. I would have you stop running in the opposite direction. I would have you turn around and fight."

"Fight what?" Mordred laughed with harshness in his voice that Fergus had not heard before. "The Archdemon? Will you be so kind as to provide me with directions to where exactly it lurks? Have you some superior insight into its abode? Or," he paused, unsettling eyes fixed upon the objector, "would you have me fight you? If so, let's get on with it."

Morrigan drew her breath inward with a sharp hiss, golden eyes furious, and Fergus could deduce the cause of her stifled outrage. It would take a blind man to see that the warden-commander was far from in fighting condition, even weeks after the incident at the Circle Tower. A charitable man would recognize this, step down, delay the duel until his opponent was in a better state.

Sten, taught from birth that one must be in fighting condition constantly, whatever injuries or deficits plagued him, did not have patience or sight for such charity. "If my pledge to defend this land from the darkspawn requires such that I must usurp you as you have proven ineffectual," replied the qunari soldier, withdrawing the greatsword from its sheath upon his back, "I will not hesitate to do so."

"No," said Fergus quickly, stepping between them. Looking to Mordred, he muttered, "Don't be an idiot, whatever you are." To Sten, he said, "I'll fight you on his behalf. My country isn't in the habit of allowing mages to fight honorable duels."

Whether that was true or not, he had not the faintest idea. But Sten seemed to accept the excuse and, almost as importantly, Mordred stepped back, eyes narrowed but consenting to the proxy. And Fergus turned to face his opponent and, eyes measuring the qunari's build, strength, and the length and heft of his weapon, wondered if he hadn't made the last poor decision of his life.

Sten met Fergus's eyes, and the two men exchanged a nod. With grim determination, Fergus pulled the shield and longsword from his back and cast aside the extra burden of the pack he carried. Niall and Leliana both retreated backward to make room as the two warriors slowly circled each other, wary and watchful.

The tension broke and Sten charged forward, sweeping his greatsword in a wide and dangerous arc. Knowing full well that he did not have the strength to block the momentum of such a swing, Fergus dropped close to the icy earth as the blade whistled above his head before scrambling back to his feet and thrusting his own weapon forward in a low blow.

With a one-handed grip, Sten used the length of his sword hilt to parry Fergus's attack before driving the hilt down and forward to crash against the nobleman's shield, the metal defense having been thrown up at the last moment possible.

Scattered, Fergus stumbled backward, the force of the clash still reverberating through his armor and the bones beneath. Zevran and Alistair moved quickly to make way as Fergus retreated further, close to the cliff's edge, dangerously close. Looking back at his opponent, a future flashed across his thoughts: Sten charged forward, reckless, with another deadly swing, Fergus ducked once more, rolled forward, and the momentum of the qunari soldier's attack with no contact made upon its target would throw Sten off-balance and most likely hurtling off the edge.

Armed with this foresight, Fergus waited and, sure enough, Sten charged. Slowly, and yet so quickly, Fergus ducked the swing of the greatsword and sidestepped around the edge of the cliff. But when the momentum was about to carry the blow to its inevitable conclusion and Sten would topple from the heights, Fergus reached out and grabbed the qunari soldier by the waist and only the greatsword spun away out of control, shearing through the air and snow to an unseen depth.

Both human and qunari hit the icy earth hard and, seeing what had transpired, Leliana and Alistair moved forward to hoist both fighters to their feet as they coughed and sputtered, the wind thoroughly knocked from their lungs.

Sword and shield strewn across the snow at his feet, Fergus braced his palms against his knees, breathing heavily, Leliana's hand upon his shoulder. When he finally looked up, Sten was regarding him with something unreadable in his violet eyes.

"I was not wrong," said the qunari soldier, "but you are strong enough. I will follow your lead."

Fergus grinned in sheer relief and looked down at his feet again, still recovering his breath as Sten turned away to gather his own belongings he had dropped upon commencement of the duel. Leliana squeezed his shoulder and then slipped away to join Alistair and Zevran in discussing the buildings in the distance. When Fergus finally straightened back up, he found Mordred looking at him still. The look in the mage's was not unreadable; no, it was not unreadable at all.

It was dangerous.

After all, it was not Mordred's lead Sten had said he would follow as they climbed further up the mountain to the domain of the mysterious village of Haven.

Leliana is deliberately omitting the specific details of her disgrace and betrayal here as I believe she does in DA:O proper, since her account there and the story of Leliana's Song do not match up. It will be interesting to write Fergus's reaction when/if he finds out of her deception.

As always, reviews are truly appreciated.