The Korcari Wilds, 9:28 Dragon
The sword broke in his hand with a damp thunk. Not even a proper cracking noise. That was the third that morning, and the sixteenth in four days. Perhaps it was the retribution of the trees for his cutting away of their branches. He might have asked Morrigan if there was a charm that would make them more amenable to him, but since any hint of ignorance on his part inevitably resulted in a string of mocking remarks, he preferred not to.
The improvised training dummy was still shaking from the last blow he had landed on it. Come to that, his hand was still throbbing from the impact. Gravel and leaves stuffed into a sack put up more resistance than the sandbags favoured for the purpose in Crossroad Keep.
He gave up on the sword drill, and switched to push-ups. A challenge in full plate, but a worthwhile one. The more time he spent training in armour, the more it seemed like an extension of his skin.
As sweat ran through his hair and down his face in a salty stream, and his wet undershirt began to chafe from the friction, he allowed himself a moment to imagine a life as a temple scholar, wearing nothing heavier than a robe, breathing thick indoor air. He gasped and grinned together. No scholar he. Fifty done. Fifty more to go.
"Do you not find it tedious?" said the arch adolescent voice somewhere above him.
"No," he replied, carrying on with his next push-up. It was ill-mannered to answer in monosyllables; he forced himself to pant out a few extra details, though it slowed his movements, making each lift spasmodic rather than part of a fluid cycle. "It is peaceful. The effort creates space for new —" his lungs rebelled at the word perspectives, as well as points-of-view "— new things. I think best this way."
In the mountains he had often walked away from sparring matches, when it had been safe to train at all, and felt the map of the passes shift in his mind, revealing possibilities for new ambushes, escapes, raids that had not been there before. But, of course, he had always enjoyed exercise. Over a score of years and a world away from his fifteen-year-old self, and the sweat and strain transported him back to that time: a dutiful, unremarkable pupil in the seminary's book-bound subjects, but put a ball in his hands, or show him a running track, and he would outshine all the others.
"You smell as if a darkspawn died and rotted in your armour," said Morrigan, "after it ate ten skunks." Her bare feet appeared a yard from his head.
"I will wash it later." Sixty-five. His arm muscles felt hot, painful. "Do you require something?"
Morrigan snorted. "Only to see how your kind prepare for talking with your enemies. Does talking mean something entirely different in your land?"
He completed five more push-ups before answering. "Exercise…relaxes the muscles in the chest…and improves breath control, and strength. It is a fine preparation for talking." He was echoing his elocution master now. Gritting his teeth, he stared at the blades of grass as they lurched near and away in cycles.
"You are a very strange man. They are going to kill you — I suppose you must realise that? You disposed of those darkspawn smartly enough, but a troop of templars is not the same."
Eighty. He felt as if he were lifting the last decade of his life on his back. "I am used to facing uneven odds. I do not think my situation is as hopeless as you imagine."
The Year of Wild Magic. Crouching with six militia volunteers in a shallow cave behind a makeshift barricade, as four dozen orcs advanced up the pass. He had not died then. Katriona attacked the orcs from the flank, firing arrows and lobbing bundles of flaming pitch-steeped rags down into their midst, until they broke and fled, never realising the fearsome new enemy had just three men with her.
"My mother will not help you, so do not count on her aid. You are a game to her. A trifle she found on her path, and picked up on a whim. From time to time, she amuses herself with such toys. They never last long."
The new tone in Morrigan's voice troubled him, and would have troubled him still more if his lungs had not demanded so much of his attention. Her petulance had gone; she spoke with the detached assessment of the woman that she might one day become. He wished it were not so. No daughter should be able to speak of her mother that way. And there was bitterness there too, perhaps not unwarranted.
Ninety. If he were still in his own land, if he were still in his own world, he would have known exactly what to say to her black predictions. Tyr would guard him. The will of the Just God would guide his steps, whether to life or death. But Tyr was gone. When Casavir had fled Neverwinter for the mountains, his god had been silent, neither supporting nor opposing his decision. He had felt bereft then, wandering untethered through a cosmos without benevolence and full of questions that he was neither erudite nor arrogant enough to answer. Now that his compass was nor misplaced, but altogether lost, there was nowhere to turn for confirmation.
"I do not expect your mother's help," he said at last. Drops of sweat ran down his forehead, and hung on his chin before falling into the grass. "What will be, will be."
One hundred. He slumped to the ground. With the last of his energy, he rolled onto his back, so that the fresh moorland air could waft over his damp skin. The sunlight blazed through his eyelids. His breathing slowed. He almost felt at prayer.
Then Morrigan prodded him in the ribs with the end of a broken sword-stick. "That is the most pathetic plan I ever heard tell of. You must despise your strange winterless city since you make so little effort to return to it."
Casavir sighed. From cold maturity, the witch's daughter had retreated into toddler-like impatience. "I do not despise Neverwinter. I do not despise any city or country." Not even Luskan. He still recalled the Luskan captain who, during the war, had blocked the mouth of Glass Alley single-handed, while his soldiers retreated to the docks behind him. Good people could exist in the worst places.
"I do not despise it," Morrigan mimicked. "What an inspiring declaration that is."
Casavir smiled to himself, more amused than annoyed. "When you know a place very well, it leaves an imprint on the soul. You know its beauties and its flaws." He opened his eyes, and frowned at the sun as he articulated a thought that he had never put into words before. "It is needless to recite the praises of your home, like a bard for his liege lord, when it is part of you, and you can no more escape it than you can escape yourself."
For a few moments, he could hear nothing except wind and birdsong. He might actually have silenced Morrigan: his victories in combat would seem trivial in comparison.
But then she huffed. A pause for reflection was all he had won. That was no small thing. "What nonsense. Soon I will leave the wilds far behind me. I will travel as I think fit, to Orlais, the Free Marches, to Tevinter, and cast off Korcari like an old coat. Sentimental fools like the Dalish are bound to the past. I will be as free as a hawk." Neeshka had teased him relentlessly for his formality. He wondered what she would make of this young witch, who seemed to have learned to speak from reading books aloud, and had never had playmates her own age.
"Even hawks must roost at times," he warned her, without the least expectation of being heeded. The years had caught up with his sister and her terrifying friends and gentled them. Other more vociferous free spirits were not so fortunate. Raul the slayer of Morag was said to have withdrawn to a monastery in Dambrath; Qara was dead; Bishop had put himself beyond the reach of any help.
He closed his eyes again. He was glad to be a sentimental fool. There were many worse things to be. Gods preserve her from discovering them, if there were gods here that looked on mortals with kindness.
"Who are the Dalish?" he asked.
"Wandering tribes of elves. My mother says they are the descendants of an ancient people who ruled the world in their heyday." She sniffed disparagingly. "She knows all about the ancients, of course."
A broken column crowned with leaves both real and chiselled from stone. White tiles that had survived the crush of time to shine with stubborn brightness through the mosses of the forest floor. "Was it they who built the temple?"
"Mayhap. Their modern survivors live in tents, and worship a quaint assortment of dead gods. I cannot see the least point in it, since dead gods must perforce be of even less use than live ones. If there are such creatures as gods at all."
He remembered the shrines that ran all along the side of the Dolphin Bridge, the sailors' bridge where foreign crews and merchants came to pay their respects before travelling on. Shrines to great powers and eastern spirits, and to little local deities whom no one raised in Neverwinter had ever heard of. He had been brought up to tolerate the alien cults, but not respect them. Some of them even sacrificed chickens on their miniature altars, and that, in Ingelnicht's opinion, simply would not do.
"There are gods," he said. "In my world. Regiments of them. Some as near as a friend at dinner; others as remote as the stars." And some both at different times. So Tyr had been to him.
"How idiotic your world sounds. I dislike it more the more I hear of it. The followers of the Tevinter slave cause my mother and I enough irritation, and their mistress was not even a real goddess." She prodded him in the ribs again. "Well? Are you going to lie around all day? You need to practise how to ask the band of murderous templars to kindly refrain from killing us."
"Soon," he replied. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, and removed his gauntlet so that he could brush his hair away from his forehead without pulling it out. His chin itched after several days' growth of stubble. Much more time spent foraging in the wildwoods and by the still pools of this country, and he would start to resemble Bishop. He needed a shave.
Morrigan was tapping the stick against her thigh. Her pale eyes glared at him. "I am beginning to think I have wasted too many fish on you. There is no point giving food to a dead man." She tossed her black hair. The stick fell to the ground, thoroughly disowned, and a crow flapped away from where she had been standing, a few downy feathers floating in its wake.
Casavir shook his head. These templars could hardly be fiercer than Flemeth's daughter, not even if they spat fire and acid from their mouths. He understood some of her annoyance with his slowness: he had made few formal preparations for what was to come.
Without knowing more, there was little he could achieve with battle plans. He was not supported by the web of soldiers, servants and supply chains that had been Crossroad Keep as much as the walls and towers. There was no group of uniquely talented allies, and nor a militia of dalefolk ready to prevail or fall in revenge for their lost homes. He himself was his only piece on the board, and facing all unknowns.
Morrigan might have proved a good scout. But she was a child, and one prone to dangerous overconfidence: it was not conscionable to involve her more than she already was, especially if the templars were as violent as she claimed.
About half a mile to the north of the house, he had found a snub-nosed ridge with a few boulders stranded roundabout. It had a view over a swathe of heathland, and, should there be fighting, he knew he could use the boulders to his advantage. A more favourable site for the meeting he could not imagine. Not one that was still close to the women to whom he was bound by a stranger's gratitude.
Getting to his feet, he drank a scoop of water from the pail he had brought with him, then continued his exercises: stretches, weights, and a steady jog that took him around the perimeter of Flemeth's hollow, through a stream and to the ridge then back to the start of the western uplands. That was enough.
He staggered back to the house, and stripped off his armour piece-by-piece. He scrubbed each plate and rivet till it smelled clean, and left them all to dry in the open air. Another set of clothes had been provided for him; Morrigan's dark hints that they came from murdered men should have been easy to brush aside as youthful excitability, except that her mother was the silver-haired queen of the way between worlds, and she might well have a whole army of the dead buried under her cabbage patch. He did not think so of her though. Or else, he did not want to.
The clothes were clean, and free of bloodstains. After sponging away the sweat of his exertions with moss and cold water, he pulled them on, enjoying their smoky smell, and the pleasant warmth that pressed against his skin. They had been stored in a fireside nook, and felt imbued with the memories of quiet evenings spent with friends in front of hearths, or autumn bonfires. Too few, they seemed. I wish I had passed more such evenings.
His feet took him eastwards and upwards. The encounter with the darkspawn and the little had had learned from Morrigan of the accursed race made him wary of venturing too far on his own. There was little he felt sure of: not in Neverwinter, and even less now that he was alone, and no white strength reached out to embrace him when he prayed. But he did know one thing for certain: the fate that awaited him is a darkspawn's blood corrupted his own had to be avoided at all costs.
When he arrived on the brow of the small hill, he stopped. A few wind-blown trees were his only company. Pacing the low summit, the wind making sport of his attempt to brush his hair flat, he looked out over the land in all directions. Apart from Flemeth's patchwork house, there were no signs of habitation. Morrigan had said that a people called the Chasind lived in the wilds, and that, further north, a settled kingdom with cities, roads and many little lords under a young king occupied a tamer, warmer territory.
He turned his back on the north. Morrigan had spoken only in the vaguest terms of what lay to the south, and became very sarcastic when he asked for more detail – in all probability because she knew no more herself. The Sunless Lands are there, she had said, and that was all.
If Flemeth's words proved false, and the road back was closed to him forever, then it was there that he would go, and not north to civilisation. One Neverwinter, one city wrung out between rival factions and loaded with too much history, had already been more than he could bear. Walking clear-eyed and with sure steps towards an unknown horizon was a better end for a defunct paladin than plunging into a new life all too similar to the old one.
He had helped people. He had saved lives. He knew that, yet it was always easier to remember the defeats, the failures, the compromises. The times when no real victory was possible, because an innocent was going to suffer whichever side he chose.
His legs felt heavy. The old injury throbbed in warning. He pressed his palm against it to muffle the sting, as with conscious effort he pushed the spinning thoughts and recollections away. The southern horizon was pale, wide and beautiful. All his worries could flow into that, drops of acid draining into an ocean where they would not be reckoned.
His mind easing, he walked across to the tallest of the trees, and sat cross-legged in front of it, his back to the trunk. Elanee had described the experience of reverie, how it felt to slip into that state of dimmed sensation and wandering dreams that was neither like sleep, nor meditation. More, she had said, like resting your thoughts in a glass of cool, fragrant water, before taking them back, tangles loosened, thorns softened, ready for another day.
In the privacy of his chamber, when he felt trapped between his old failings and the ones to come, the people he would fail, he had tried to fall into his own reverie. But it would not come for him, or for any human. Elves somehow were given the gift of letting go. Except occasionally in battle, or prayer, he never could.
He folded his hands in his lap, and relaxed his muscles. In the early days of Crossroad Keep's restoration, a travelling monk had been seized upon by Khelgar and pressed into giving lessons in the hall. First Neeshka had joined uninvited, then Zhjaeve, then Ivarr, then Elanee, and then he had taken a place at the back, and started listening.
His interest in the monk's teachings owed more to the presence of one person in the audience than from any wish to develop a new combat style. But he had learned to meditate. Inexpertly, and not with any likelihood of obtaining a higher spiritual state, or enhanced consciousness. Still, it occasionally provided respite when nothing else could lighten the burden.
The horizon was as beautiful as before. There was a perfect word to capture if, if only he could remember what it was. He had been taught many ways of describing mankind's relationship to the Just God, their responsibilities and obligations to each other, and even some of their joys. Yet the seminary's tutors would never have countenanced the building of a word-hoard for pleasure, or the writing of verses in praise of the world as it was. It would have carried the suspect odour of Deneirism, or worse, of Sharess.
Pearlescent. That was it. The pale shifting clouds made him think of light shining on the surface of a pearl. He let his eyes rest on their misty edges, and stopped trying to think of he would encapsulate them in a phrase, turn them from air into sound or ink on a page. They could just be. That was enough.
For a while, all was still. His soul was quiet. But nothing could give him peace for long.
"Why the mountains?" Elanee had asked. "There are people who need help all over this land."
Because he was friends with Callum. Because the kind of conflict to be had there was the simple sort that could be prosecuted with a hammer and shield. Because… "I believe they represented the possibility of something else to me. Of pureness. Of simplicity."
He had not found either there in the end. There had been good times, when he had felt he was nearing something. A few almost-perfect evenings, the militia resting around their modest campfires, in harmony with his purpose and each other. That was rare though. He had spent his days killing orcs, and too many nights mediating between one clique or another, lest his ex-farmers and shepherds decide that they would rather kill each other.
The mountains had not been a solution. The Sunless Lands were the same. They were escapes. They were, in the strangest of ways, acts of cowardice. His decision in the last moments of the battle against the King of Shadows too… In the ballads and stories he knew from childhood, to give your life in combat was the height of bravery. It was the only perfect death. But those were stories.
Lord Neverthorn was revered for being cut down on Blackbridge while leading the first charge against his enemy. If he had followed a more moderate course of action, held his troops back on the high ground, and put a trusted lieutenant in charge of the vanguard, how different might Neverwinter's history then have been? Not better, perhaps; a single king could do more damage than a chamber of rich merchant-aristocrats, were he not fit for his office. But Neverthorn's new bride might have rejoiced in her heart to see him ride back from the south-east, and his cavalry behind him.
Elanee. He had not done well by her. He had not done well at all. Abandoning his attempt at inner calm, he drew his legs up before him, and rested his chin on his knees. To tell her both yes and no at the same time had not been intended as a trap for her feelings. It was meant to spare them.
Yet, viewed differently, viewed now with the cold clarity of hindsight, he had put her in a vice, and tightened the screws. Bishop could not have been more brutal.
Would it have been so unthinkable to tell her – yes, I do, and yes, I would? Without conditions or doubts or distancing? Or if those words could not be said, then to have shut down their connection, and stayed away from her thereafter. Even if it left her vulnerable to Bishop, and isolated, with only one or two friends in the middle of a busy, boisterous castle preparing for war?
"Still moping?" demanded Morrigan. Casavir did not trouble himself by wondering how she had approached so silently. It was in the gift of shapeshifters to do so.
"Thinking," he replied.
"Thinking is productive and serves a purpose. What you are doing is moping."
He lowered his face to hide his smile. That was a line the girl had heard from her mother, and copied word-for-word, tone-for-tone. It made her seem younger, like a child imitating court ladies by pulling on a feathery hat and oversized gloves.
"What you are describing is planning, or calculation. Thinking must be open and free, otherwise it ignores the different forms in which truth may become manifest. It sees more roads, not fewer."
"I am sure," said Morrigan, not the least impressed, "and while you are dawdling, and puzzling over signs and directions, the world will have moved on, and left you meandering in circles." The remark stung more than any of her previous jibes since it touched on the subject of his own thoughts more than a little.
"I have met people who try to bind themselves to a single path. It rarely ends well for them, or anyone close to them." Ammon Jerro. Aribeth, perhaps. Sir Nevalle, though in another manner. Tyr protect the man when Lord Nasher eventually fell, as fall he must one day. And, of course, there was that distraught young knight fleeing to the mountains, his career, duties, status, all abandoned.
"If to end well means to end fearfully, cowering away from what life can offer, then I will take the straight road, and snap my fingers at its dangers. I am not a witch and an apostate for nothing. Korcari does not tolerate cowards for long." Morrigan's pale eyes flashed. A blush of determination and scorn rose in her cheeks.
Casavir thought they were talking at cross-purposes. He was concerned with the fates of those he had seen demolish their own foundations as they reached for something else. She still thought of life as a series of physical hazards to be dodged, of challenges to be overcome. Some carried on with that view until their death; others learned that the mind could be a more fearful place than the field of war. The knowledge would catch up with her eventually: there was too much emotion behind her brittle, bragging cleverness for her to escape forever.
He sighed. "Did you seek me here for some purpose, Morrigan?"
She sniffed, her lip curling. "Only to tell you that I have been busy while you were staring at clouds." Pausing, she folded her thin arms over her outfit of scraps. She was clearly waiting to be asked.
"And what was it that occupied your time?"
She squared her thin shoulders, and tilted her chin in pride. "I went to spy on the templars, since you could not be troubled to do it yourself."
"That was a dangerous undertaking."
"Not for me."
"They might have learned that you could shapeshift, and been watching for you."
"In that case, there would have been a trail of dead crows, wolves and bears stretching back to Lothering, and I saw nothing of the kind. And it is my mother's legend that draws them here." She scowled, unaccountably displeased that she had not yet been added to a proscription list in her own right. "Now, do you wish to learn what I saw, or not?"
The soldierly phrase 'make your report' almost slipped out, but he recognised it for what it was, and stopped himself. He was not sure how the apprentice witch would react to being addressed like a Greycloak scout. Opening his hand instead, he gestured for her to continue.
"I tracked them to the Chasind camp at Reedholm, some five leagues from here. There were seven of them: four templars, two trackers and one of their pets from the Circle." Her mouth twisted in intense disapproval.
"A mage?" he guessed.
"A gelded ram on a golden chain," said Morrigan. He thought that meant: yes, a mage. "Your are in luck. The wilds have already claimed their tithe. It was a party of fourteen that set out: beasts, hunters, darkspawn and carelessness got rid of half of them for you."
Seven. He could perhaps cope with seven, depending on their training. Then he upbraided himself: his plan was to speak to them, not defeat them in combat. If he approached their meeting tomorrow with so little optimism, so little thought of persuasion, then he had been deceiving Flemeth, Morrigan, and most of all himself as regards his intentions.
"Why do the people in the settles lands try to control mages?" He knew he needed to learn more about the customs and ideas of the templars if there could be any chance of reaching them.
Through patient questioning, he was able to create a rough picture of the situation that existed north of Morrigan's remote homeland: of all people with magical ability kept in heavily guarded fortresses for fear of what damage they might wreak on the world outside; of knights dosed with the addictive lyrium to enhance their resistance to the powers of their incarcerated charges; of children taken from their parents as soon as the first sparks of magic fizzed on their small fingers.
At first he thought of Qara and Jerro, and wondered whether customs of this world were not without merit. If the gates of the Host Tower were barred forever, and eternal fires set to burn around it, the Sword Coast would be a happier, safer place. But that was unjust to all the mages he had met who did not abuse their power, turning it instead to noble purposes. The enchanters of the Many-Starred Cloak, Aldanon the absent-minded sage, even Sand.
Nor did he believe any benefit, however significant, could justify the separation of children from their families. Thank Tyr, nothing of the sort had happened to him. Yet he had known many orphans and foundlings. Few were unscarred. Did those mages in their well-appointed jail cells still look out of the barred windows at times, and long to see a traveller with a face like their own riding towards the gates?
The remainder of the day passed quickly, spent on small chores that provided a welcome distraction from the reckoning that awaited him tomorrow. It seemed certain now that they would arrive tomorrow. Not that Flemeth had evinced any doubt.
He chopped wood, tended the fire, cleaned and polished his armour until every piece shone, and did his best to sharpen the old broadsword that Morrigan had given him before their fishing trip. During his labours, the girl herself occasionally wandered over to him, made a snippy remark, and wandered away. He hoped that she was not nursing any more ideas of scouting out the movements of the templars.
It made him uncomfortable that she had done so once already. Merely because she knew how to look after herself did not mean she should have to. She was a child still, and all too recently he had seen a child die who had underestimated the ruthlessness of adults. But of course, if he told her to leave the templars alone, she would immediately do the opposite.
As the sun set, he prepared to start dinner, thinking of fish stewed with herbs and yellow-skinned root vegetables from a box near the hearth. Before he could lift the cooking pot into place, Morrigan shooed him away and took charge of the basic kitchen.
While she chopped ingredients and dumped them in the pot, stirring them into a kind of savoury porridge, he picked up a book that had been left lying around, and flicked through the pages. They smelt of mildew and old hay. The minute script packed close together on each leaf made no sense to him; Flemeth's magic had given him the understanding of speech, but he was still illiterate.
Like a schoolboy, he focused on the plentiful illustrations in red and black ink, and tried to guess the stories behind them. A wolf crouched on the steps of a temple like the one in the Korcari forest. A pair of crows flew over a ruined city, each carrying one end of a sealed scroll. A deer lay on its side, pierced by three arrows. A woman with a dragon-like head and wings brandished a flowering branch.
Each picture had an uncanny, mesmeric quality. Though that could be the fault of his imagination; he could have happily spent hours of his early childhood before the seminary bent over a book like this, and the night afterwards dreamed of crows and white wolves.
"What are these meant to show?" he asked Morrigan before she could vanish outside with her bowl of porridge. She sauntered over and cast a bored eye over a few of the illustrations.
"Dead elvish gods," she told him. "You can fill a bowl yourself. I will not do it for you."
Pointing out that he had not requested her to would avail him nothing, he reckoned, as the door slammed behind her.
He stayed up a little longer, flicking through more of the heavy books and tomes that dotted the living area. In some he found pictures – pictures of battles, crowds, palaces, magicians, kings and queens. Yet he liked none quite as much as the ones in the first book: they had been sketched simply, but with confident lines that seemed to catch the essence of what they represented.
Flemeth did not appear. He had thought she might, since the bargain he had made with her was so close to being played out. The night grew dark, the fire burned low, and his rescuer from the Marcher's Way remained absent. There was so much he wanted to ask her. Perhaps she knew, and was avoiding him for that reason.
To stifle his questions, he had a second bowl of the porridge. Although it looked akin to the fare at Crossroad Keep, being brown-grey, lumpy, and full of bits of vegetable and meat that he did not recognise, the taste made up for it: deep, salty, warming and flavoursome at the same time. He found he only regretted his planned fish stew a little.
In the night, he thought he woke up, and heard the heavy beat of vast wings passing above the house. His heart sped up. The noise faded. His breathing eased. And then the warmth and comfort of the furs sent him to sleep again, embraced in the thick, silky strands. When he opened his eyes again at first light, he dimly recalled staring at the ceiling, listening to the thing far above him, the noise receding, then vanishing. But the more he thought of it, the more it seemed like a dream. Whether it was a good or ill omen, he did not know.
The room was very cold when he woke. Thin lines of white light crept through the shutters, and marked stripes across the floor and bed, where a wolf lay deeply asleep. The fire had burned down to ash.
Opening the door as quietly as he could, he looked out over the changed landscape. Frost covered every blade of grass, sparkled on the sides of the water bucket, and merged into ice where the solid ground gave way to shallow pools. He retreated inside to boil some water to wash with. Although he had been forced to carry out his morning ablutions with the aid of freezing wintry torrents many times, this had only impressed on him how desirable it was to avoid doing so if there were any alternative.
The fire was quickly crackling again behind its grate. Grabbing one of the clean cooking pots, he ventured back out, the white grasses crunching under the bare soles of his feet. He drew up the bucket from the well faster than he ever done before, and, pot filled to the brim, returned to the house.
The room was already much warmer than it had been. The contrast made his toes and fingers prickle as the blood rushed back into them. While he was hooking the pot over the fire, a voice echoed from the corner near his bed.
"You have presents. Mother must like you. Or have plans for you."
Morrigan was standing near his careful pile of armour, which seemed to have grown larger in the course of the night. He left the water to boil, and went to investigate.
Three more objects lay beside his plate and chain hauberk. A helmet with a webbed tracery all over its…steel?...surface. A warhammer that looked like the twin of the one that had shattered against the portal, save that blue-green gems had been set at each end of the haft. And a shield. The artificer who made it had done fine work: it was round, solid, but not heavy.
When he tilted it over to inspect its back, he saw that, as in his world, most of the material was wood; metal was only present as a skin brazed onto the light frame. Less conventional was the emblem on the front: a dragon stared out at him. It had been created through some technique of turquoise enamelling. The dragon's elongated body spiralled round its head in elaborate twists. At some point in the past, the eyes might have been enamelled too, but now they were only black diamond-shaped spaces.
"More rusty old relics," said Morrigan, flicking at a speck of orange on the helmet's cheek-guard. "They look as if ten generations of owners died in them… One day, and it will be soon, I will find a town, a city, where the people own things that they did not first dig out of a grave."
He thought she was being unjust to the gifted arms: there were a few patched of mild rust, but nothing that some care and attention could not amend. The wood of the shield might lack the freshness of new-cut timber; still, it was free of rot.
"Does your mother really - acquire - grave goods?" He did not say steal. Neeshka was fond of maintaining that the removal of items of value from the mausoleums of the rich should be seen as a service to the state, since it restored wealth to the living that would otherwise moulder with the dead. It was not a view he was naturally in sympathy with; nevertheless, her argument was not completely invalid, however self-serving the motives behind it.
Morrigan shrugged. "Ask her yourself when you see her. Extracting answers from my mother is much like forcing open a mussel with a feather, if she has no wish to provide them."
He picked up the warhammer to test its weight. It felt right in his hand. There was none of that nagging sense of mismatch that he always suffered when he was adjusting to a new weapon. This one wanted him as its wielder. Not through enchantments, but through aptness.
"I will certainly ask her, should I see her before my departure." If not, and if he survived whatever was to come, he could ask her afterwards. He looked again at the weapon. It did not suggest that Flemeth placed much faith in his idea of a peaceful solution. But what else could she have given him? A speaking tube? A white flag?
"You could leave," said Morrigan, her expression for once free of mockery. With her thin face and solemn eyes, she reminded him of his eldest niece, who would be twelve that year on the Feast of the Moon. "Turn north, and keep walking. My mother has dealt with templars before. I do not know why she is sending you to perform a task that she could do easily herself."
"I cannot leave," he replied gently, and without hesitation. "I gave my word that I would do my best to – dissuade these people from their purpose. And aside from that, your mother knows how to walk between worlds. If I am ever to see my home again, I need her help."
Morrigan's displeasure flared. "I do not see why you deem your world so much superior to mine."
He tried not to smile, and failed. "You have told me yourself that your world is full of prisons for magic users, and that your greatest military order is filled entirely by men and women forced to take a substance that sends them slowly mad."
"Since your world is full of meddling gods and weak-brained fools, I would not say that it sounds so wonderful itself." She flicked the front of the shield with her index finger, making it resound with a faint metallic shiver. "Keep your word then. My mother will not care either way. I certainly will not."
He took time over his preparations. Given the distance the templars had to cover, and the terrain, it was unlikely in the extreme that they could arrive before noon. So he washed, shaved with a sharpened kitchen knife, breakfasted, then cleaned and polished the equipment left him by Flemeth. The rust crumbled away after a few scrubs. After that, it was just a matter of putting on his armour. The helmet fit, and obstructed his vision much less than many he had worn. Before setting off, he added a flask of water and a piece of flatbread to a sack.
"I will make more for your later," he told Morrigan, who was dozing again on the bed, this time as a bear. "If I can."
The bear growled, then rested its head between its paws. That might mean 'goodbye', though something less polite was more to be expected from his fractious host. On his way out, he picked up the old broadsword and slung it over his shoulder. A spare was a sensible precaution, for even the best weapons could break. He had never envied Lila Farlong her acquisition of the brilliant yet temperamental silver sword of the githyanki. A weapon that might explode at any moment was not a weapon he wanted in his hour of need.
Before he had gone two steps, he stopped. His mind fully absorbed by the confrontation to come, he had not realised he was being selfish again. She needs to know. Whatever happens, she must hear it. He unlooped the chain with the Eye of Tyr from around his neck. If he needed a lump of unresponsive metal to recall his principles, there was no help for him. But she will know it.
Within, Morrigan was human again, and sitting glowering into the fire.
"Changed your mind?" she asked without looking up.
"Not yet." He hung the chain on one of the hooks near the hearth. "I am indebted to you and your mother already for sheltering me. But I need to ask for one more kindness. If I do not survive today, I would wish this chain to be given to a friend. Elanee. Your mother might be able to arrange it. And to let Elanee know that — I did not want to leave her."
He swallowed. His chest tightened, and he breathed out slowly to force it to relax. Morrigan might not even pass the message onto Flemeth, but at least he had tried.
"You seem to have confused my mother with someone else. She is not in the habit of drifting around like a spirit of light, bestrewing sweets and granting wishes wherever she goes."
"Nevertheless."
Morrigan poked the fire savagely, moving a fresh log into the centre of the blaze. She glanced at the pendant, then at him. "I suppose I may tell her."
"Thank you."
"Do not let them slaughter you too quickly. Lest my mother think I lied about the darkspawn."
"I will try not to die too over-easily."
He closed the door, and set his face to the north. The frost was still thick on the ground as he started out for the ridge. From prior explorations, he had discovered a route that led over the backs of earthen tumuli instead of through the middle of a field of reeds and long grasses. After a few hundred yards, the tall plants declined; from then on, lush mosses and patches of ornate lichen as large as his shield covered the levels. Underneath was soft mud, only partly solidified by the cold. He avoided the worst of it.
The lot of the templars was to be pitied if they had been walking for days over such rough, uncompromising terrain. And their devotion to their task had to be respected. Only total commitment or terror of what drove them could have kept them on course through the loss of half their number as winter drew in.
He hoped it was fear: he could counteract that, find balm for it. Righteous fervour – indeed, fanaticism – could seal up the paths to the soul, block up the ears, and close the heart.
The ridge neared, a crumbling anti-climax slouching in lonely vigil amidst cast-off rubble and boulders. That mess of rock around it was a sign that once it was, perhaps, part of something greater. Now, at its peak, it might be twelve feet high. Three Khelgars, in Crossroad Keep language. Grobnar had started a trend.
He walked steadily up the southern side; the west was steep, while to the north and east there was no slope at all, only an abrupt drop.
After a couple of minutes, he arrived at the ridge's unimpressive summit. It had the advantage of being dry, which set it apart from the bog it sprouted from. Short springy turf clung to its back. In summer, it would be a pleasant spot to laze in with a basket of food and cordial, and friendly company. He and his fellow officer cadets picked from the seminary had spent a few afternoons like that beside the Never during training. Yustas, Cubby, Ethel, Cothi and Piers. Two were dead, two had moved into temple service, and one was still with the Greycloaks. And of the living, there was only one he would see again gladly.
Those summers in his early manhood now seemed to be washed in gold and framed in ivory, like all false dreams. Here the winter was in the grass, and threading through the soil. He unslung the broadsword, drew it, and jammed it into the shallow turf. The blade vibrated as its top struck the bedrock. It stood upright, quivering yet holding. That seemed right, somehow.
He looked in all directions. Nothing was approaching. To the north all was still, save for a scattering of birds swooping, diving, rushing into the open to forage, or back into shelter to spare themselves the attentions of their larger kindred. In birds, he did not think such a manner of existence empty. At least the rooks never tried to sell the sparrow's chicks to the shrikes, and claim a knighthood afterwards for their services.
His side ached again, suddenly, painfully. Whenever he thought it completely healed, the wound struck again. Perhaps the ice in the air had disturbed the tender skin and freshly-knitted flesh. No matter. His intention was to talk, not fight. Though now he had many miles ahead of him in which to consider how he might be forced to give battle anyway. Still, the imbalance in their forces would give him a chance at the start: the group would look at one solitary man with borrowed arms, and not see him as a threat. As lunatic, maybe. Did they have holy fools in Ferelden? As long as they did not take on look at him and think Katalmach, berserker, it would be well.
He waited, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting. As the morning drew on, the sun grew in strength, until by noon the grass on the ridge was green, and his cuirass was baking him slowly as if he were a trout in an iron pan. He had expected Morrigan to appear and insult him some more, or Flemeth to come and assess him, and drop dark hints as she watched him through those dangerous yellow eyes. But neither joined him. He felt more than a little bereft. They were his only anchors in this world on the far side of the Marcher's Way.
He ate the bread and drank the water. Only as the sun was dropping in the sky, and the renewed chill in the wind was cooling his armour, did he sight specks on the northern horizon. They came steadily nearer. Six human-shaped figures, and a pack animal.
Casavir descended from the ridge to take up position on the flat in front of a boulder as high as the crown of his head. He took his helmet with him, but did not put it on. These visitors would need to see his face. The broadsword he left on the ridge. With his shield on his arm, and warhammer on his belt, he could not avoid creating a somewhat imposing impression. The king of the stone giants, said Katriona. Traded in brains for brawn, you did, said Callum. My soldiers all opted for brains. That's why they keep running away.
He smiled and winced at the memories. Defending himself to his friends, and persuading himself of his choice, and reasoned: in these wilds though – surely it would be stranger to go about without defences. There are darkspawn, wild beasts. Only a truly dangerous man would walk here unarmed.
A woman with a hunting bow slung over her shoulder strode ahead of the group while towing a pony on a halter. Her dun-coloured clothes and lack of heavy armour at once made him think: ranger. But no – tracker, that was Morrigan's word.
The four monoliths lumbering behind her made it seem as if she was being pursued by a string of ungainly moving chimneystacks. They must be the templars. All four were in plate, and all but one had their helmet on. The pauldrons on their shoulders were wider than those he was used to, and the cuirasses more angular. Beneath the waist, each wore a kind of split red skirt that protected their legs.
The last member of the group was a grasshopper in comparison. Casavir caught glimpses of him only at intervals when he popped up briefly between his vast associates, before disappearing again into their shadows. It left him with an impression of white-blond hair, and a ragged blue surcoat. The mage, surely.
Morrigan had said there was another, a second tracker, but no seventh member of the party was anywhere to be seen. The unfortunate fellow must have been lost on the way; a general could lose armies in five leagues of hostile ground. One scout could all too easily come to grief.
The lead tracker was busy watching the terrain. The three templars in eye-slit helms would have a reduced field of vision. It was the fourth templar, helmetless, with dark skin and long black hair, who shouted and pointed when the group was just a furlong away. All six came to a juddering halt, except the pony, which seemed determined to carry on at exactly the speed and cadence that had seen it safe across Korcari. The tracker wrenched it back by its bridle with an unkind jerk. Casavir frowned. Nevertheless, he immediately raised his hand in what he hoped was a familiar gesture of greeting, and not a deadly insult.
The party, recovering from their surprise, altered their direction by a few degrees, so that they were advancing towards him. He checked that his stance was relaxed and open. Have faith in them. Look for what is best, and not what is corrupt. A lesson he had always tried to follow wherever he went: the city, the mountains, the castle. In the main, it had not been difficult, until he met Bishop.
The tracker fell back, as the four massive templars took the lead, forming a defensive line behind which the others were sheltered. The oversized hilt of a double-handed sword protruded over the shoulder of each warrior. They were a formidable sight, despite the mud that was spattered on them up to their shoulders, and the many rips in their crimson kirtles.
"Well met, travellers." He let his voice ring out clearly and confidently. Since he had agreed to do this, he would not sabotage his own efforts through timidity.
The leftmost of the templars pulled off his helmet. It could have been a conciliatory gesture, except that the scrutinising look that followed made him suspect that the templar wanted to examine him unobstructed. The person revealed was human: a man about Casavir's age or a little younger with fuzzy brown hair crowning a large, oval face that was pink and shiny from its long confinement.
"And who by every demon in the Fade are you?" he demanded in a carrying baritone.
"My name is Casavir. I am a knight of the city of Neverwinter." He inclined his shoulders in a bow.
"Never heard of it. Never heard of you." The templars had stopped some ten feet away. That was too distant to see the man's expression in detail, or to check the eyes for incipient madness.
"I am a stranger here, sir. May I ask your name?"
The templar straightened. Even without the gold-edged cuirass and prominent shoulder guards, he was a big man, tall and heavy-set. "You are speaking to Knight Commander Fillan Landless, sir." He gave the title particular emphasis that could not be attributed to an effort to be particularly polite. "And furthermore, sir, I can tell you that you are lurking round in a perilous area. An infamous maleficar and apostate is known to live nearby, so I strongly advise you to account for your business here. Sir."
For the present, Casavir decided to side-step the question, lest by answering he bring matters to a head over-early. "As I said, Knight Commander, I am a stranger here. May I ask what the term you used means — maleficar?"
Fillan stared at him. Two of his fellow templars shifted on their feet, and the great helmets slowly turned in tandem as the people stuck within tried to get a better view of Casavir, like blind moles nosing the afternoon air from the mouth of a tunnel.
"You're a cursed fool to play the jester in this wretched place," said Fillan at last.
"I do not jest, sir. Nor do I tell lies. To do so would be against my vows."
Fillan's lips clamped together. He seemed unsure as to whether he should answer Casavir or swear at him. But uncertainty was good in this situation. Casavir could work with it.
"A maleficar," said the dark-skinned templar, "is what we call a mage who uses forbidden methods to practise their art. Blood magic."
"Thank you, Sir Bryant," Fillan said without warmth. "We can always count on you to be a wondrous font of knowledge." Bryant stiffened. He was as old as his commanding officer, or older. His forehead looked weathered; there were lines at the corners of his serious mouth. It must be unpleasant for him to be so condescended to by a man who was likely his peer in experience, if not rank.
"Is blood magic then an evil thing? In my homeland alchemists often use blood in their potions." He paused. What was Sand always ordering, and arguing about with Seneschal Kana because of the expense? "Wyvern blood, frequently."
Fillan's eyes narrowed. "You don't look Tevinter."
Tevinter…that was a nation somewhere beyond Ferelden, though he did not understand why Fillan had connected it to him. Perhaps wyverns were common there, as they were in the Cloak Wood near Baldur's Gate.
"I have no knowledge of Tevinter. Until recently, I had barely travelled a score of miles from the borders of my native land." He suddenly wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of his predicament. Here he was, in an entirely different world, attempting to convince these grim, weary men that he was not a threat, yet at the same time to retain some gravitas: sufficient to let them believe his words could be worth their attention.
"Which raises the question – again – of what you're doing out of it now. A long way out of it, by the sound of you." He felt as if Fillan's gaze were trying to pin him against the boulder. There could be no delicate evasion this time.
"I became separated from my friends and lost after fighting a dark spirit under the earth. A woman called Flemeth found me and took me to her home to recover. While there, she told me that a number of templars were travelling south with the intention of killing her and capturing her daughter." His short summary failed to mention certain things — for example, that Flemeth had first asked him to kill them in return for his passage home. If his omission prevented bloodshed, then he would not regret it.
But as soon as he said the name Flemeth, the templars, all four of them, drew their swords. The scout notched an arrow to the string, and drew it tight. They did not seem as interested in peaceful solutions as he was. Not remotely.
Casavir raised his right hand, palm forwards, to remind them that he was not here to fight. "Is that true?" he asked. "Are you here as killers?"
Fillan scowled. "The woman that you call Flemeth has been living in shameless opposition to the Chantry for decades. Longer, if the Chasind legends have any substance." The big templar wrinkled his nose. He was evidently not a believer in the stories passed down within tribes. Replace Chasind with Uthgardt, and many Neverwinter officers would agree with him. "It was cunning of her to stir you up against us. Matty, test him."
The mage stepped forward from behind the templars' wall of steel. It was the first chance Casavir had to look at him properly. He was an elf; there was no doubt about that. An elf a little taller than Sand with prominent, pointed ears. Under a cloud of blond hair, the mage, Matty, had a long wary face, and large blue eyes that flickered from side to side between glances at Casavir. A staff was strapped to his back. He stretched out an arm, and golden light flashed from his hand.
The light exploded as it reached Casavir, frothing and glittering and making him blink with its intensity. It tickled his nostrils; he pinched the bridge of his nose as a precaution.
"No effect," said Fillan grimly. The spell was not intended to induce a sneezing fit, then. "Doesn't mean there isn't one in him playing dead. Mael was walking round for months like a damned baa-lamb before we found out."
"Hollis," said the templar next to Fillan. It was a woman's voice, softer and more mellow than anything that might have been expected to issue from the metal carapace. The words did not match the tone. "It was Hollis that seemed alright for so long. Until we found him eating Mael's intestines in the stables."
Fillan's manner had never been friendly, but now a chill settled on it, the next night's frost arriving early. "Yes. I remember. Hollis. The thing inside him fooled all of us." His glower could have frozen molten rock.
"What was that spell?" Casavir asked. At least the urge to sneeze had subsided. Fillan would have taken sneezing as another kind of mockery.
"It's supposed to draw out demons into the open." Fillan twisted his great-sword between his gauntleted hands. "Of course, since you're standing there with a monster on your shield admitting straight-out you were sent by Flemeth, mayhap that's as open as a demon can be, spell or no spell."
"I have not been possessed by a demon." No demon that Casavir could imagine would even try to possess a paladin. Such an attempt would be agonising for it, and dismissed with ease by the intended victim.
"And yet — there you stand," said Fillan.
"I gave my word I would, and so I must." Had he explicitly given his word? Perhaps not, but he had given an undertaking, expressed a willingness. It was not an oath like the ones laid down before the sanctum of Tyr, when the priest would bind a woollen band around the arm of the promise-maker, and recite the solemn, ritual prayers. It was still an obligation he had to keep for the sake of his own integrity.
"We have the superiority in numbers and arms," Fillan said flatly. The scout raised her bow, and the templars their swords, though not, Casavir noted, Bryant. The dark-skinned man was looked down the line at his commander with a furrowed brow. On the left, the mage stood, flexing his fingers, not as a threat, but more as a nervous reflex. His staff was still on his back.
"Now," Fillan continued, "there are two ways this could go, and that I'm offering you two ways at all is a blessing of Andraste, and not owing to my own inclinations. Either we kill you here, out in the wilds far from anyone that might throw incense on your pyre, or you surrender.
"If you surrender, we'll take that hammer and shield off you, and then you'll tell us everything you know about Flemeth and her daughter, since it seems the rumours about that were right." To his regret, Casavir realised that he must have inadvertently confirmed Morrigan's existence. The names she would call him if she learned about that… "And if you say enough that we can use, we'll tie you up here and collect you on our homeward road. There's not a chance I'm leaving you to run around free causing trouble at our backs. Once we reach civilisation, the housecats at Kinloch Hold can decide your fate."
If Fillan had expected Casavir to be intimidated by his unattractive offer, he would be disappointed. Yet, in one respect, it did cause him grief, for he could see clearly, though without the powers of perception Tyr granted him, that the Knight Commander really did think he was being merciful in allowing him a choice between certain death and uncertain, unlimited captivity. Was that what mercy looked like in Ferelden?
"In that case, I must needs consider both sides of your offer." Casavir suspected that his considerations were already tending strongly in one direction.
"He's delaying," snapped the scout. She was a thin woman, with long ashy hair pulled back in two braids, and a narrow, angry mouth. "Holding us up to give the apostates time to get away."
Fillan did not look at her. His gaze was still fixed on Casavir. "Consider quickly."
"Then let me see if I understand you. If you captured Flemeth's daughter, you would take her away to be put in a jail for mages, whether she will or no?"
Fillan scoffed. "The Circle Tower is hardly a jail. They've got more silk and lace on the curtains up there than on all the dresses in Orlais put together. Tell him, Matty."
The mage glanced at Fillan, then Casavir. His lips turned up in an odd half-smile, while the rest of his face stayed blank. "Indeed. The Circle Tower has many luxurious amenities. Piped hot water, a vast and deservedly famous library, and ample quantities of food and wine for the refreshment of the residents." His darting eyes focused fully on him, demanding his full attention. "Everything is very well arranged. The Tranquil take on the menial chores, leaving the other mages at leisure to pursue their studies."
"Yes," said Fillan, frowning at the mage. When he spoke, some of the clip and cut had left his voice. "So you see this daughter would be much better cared for in the Circle. Much safer there than here. How old is the girl?"
"About sixteen."
Fillan let out a doubtful breath between his teeth. "Old. But not too old to settle. Perhaps." The mage was still staring intently at Casavir.
"Who are the Tranquil?" Fillan's frown deepened; the mage nodded very slightly, approving the question.
"When mages fail to settle, they are made Tranquil," Bryant explained. "Their connection to the Fade is severed. Their connection to their emotions vanishes at the same time, and they become…thinking beings rather than feeling ones."
Casavir wished he could see the reactions of the other two templars. Were they feeling shame, anger, indifference…? The scout was unmoved. Her only response was to draw her bow-string tighter.
"In my land, we would class such an act as dark magic of the foulest sort." Morrigan had not told him of this practice. The gall rose in his throat as he imagined young humans and elves, adolescents, having the full apprehension of life stripped away from them, and being turned into tools for another, like the servants of the King of Shadows.
If Fillan was discomforted by Bryant's detached sketch of their order's sin, he did not let it show on his face. Instead, he drew himself up. "Fortunately, this is not your land, or we would be overrun by hordes of demons. We control the mages because we have to. We devote our lives to curbing their excesses so that everyone, even the mages themselves, has the chance to sleep soundly in their beds without dreading what poison could be creeping through the hearts of their neighbours. Through their friends. Their children. Is it nice work? No. Is it kind? No. Is it necessary? As breathing. More so. Because the more we succeed, the more souls will stay pure and unsullied, fit to rest beside the Maker when he calls them to Him."
Fillan spoke fluently and with such rhetorical precision that he must have made similar speeches before. That was strangely heartening. If Fillan was used to arguing his cause, that meant there were people, perhaps many people, who opposed it. Not everyone in Ferelden accepted as obvious the need to mutilate the souls of disobedient mages.
"And Flemeth?"
"What of her?"
"Will she have a trial? A chance to plead her case?" Fillan gave him another of his incredulous looks.
"She is an apostate. And one that should have been brought to heel a long time ago. Once we get hold of her, I'm not going to waste time listening to the history of her life. We will put her down, quick and clean."
Casavir felt certain that if the templars did somehow succeed in cornering Flemeth, what happened afterwards would not be the swift execution…murder…that Fillan imagined.
The eyes of the whole party were on him. He could still walk away. Perhaps they would pursue him, and try to cut him down, or perhaps they would think of the losses they had suffered on their long journey, and choose discretion. But the moment had come to make his decision.
They hunted people and killed them in their homes. They kept others imprisoned, and punished the rebellious through an assault on their core nature. They might believe they were doing good; their grisly methods argued against it. He would not turn back. He would hold this ground until they yielded it, or until they laid him low.
"Well?" said Fillan.
Casavir pulled on his helmet.
A second later, the tracker's arrow bounced off his left pauldron. Either the force behind it had been wanting, or the charms worked into his armour were still alive. He crushed the arrow haft under his heel, and unhooked his warhammer. Its first service in his hands would be a brutal one.
"You are free to surrender at any time," he told the line of templars that was advancing towards him. Fillan had replaced his own helmet. Bryant had not, and seemed in no hurry to draw nearer to his three comrades. "I do not harm people who have put down their arms."
His promise of fair treatment was meant with total sincerity; he did not know if the battle would run in his favour or not, but it was important that, if Tyr — no, if chance, providence, any kind-hearted deity — were on his side and let him prevail, his opponents would understand that they need not fight to the death.
"I can't say the same," Fillan growled, the helm rendering his voice lower and deeper. In their jagged armour, ridged helmets and red kirtles, they looked like his boyhood image of the blood knights that slew Neverwinter's last king.
Casavir dodged behind the boulder. With his back to the ridge, moraine on the left, and the boulder ahead of him, he was in as defensible position as could be achieved. The templars could still approach from his right, but one at a time, and with the advantage of reach that the two-handers should have given them undermined by lack of room to swing.
The first templar stepped around the boulder. Not Fillan. This one was too short. Stay calm. Keep a clear head. It was too early to let the battle spirit out to the slaughter. He would be warred down before he could rebalance the numbers.
The templar made a malformed swing at his head. He could the blow easily on the top of his shield, which absorbed the force without a groan or a creak of protesting wood. Good. It would have to stay intact through many more attacks.
A blur shot past. Another arrow, loosed from behind him. The tracker must be on the moraine.
The templar yelled in protest. A female voice. Though not hit by the arrow, it must have passed too close for her to be easy about it. He let her land two more blows on his shield. No blood had been spilt yet. No irreparable harm had been done. If only that could remain so.
A change in the atmosphere warned him what was coming a heartbeat before it happened. His breath caught in the suddenly warm, damp air. A prickling, like the bites of a thousand ants, rushing up his arms and down his spine.
The lightning struck. It exploded into the cliff a yard above his head. The impact sent pebbles and larger rocks tumbling down, a few colliding with his right arm and helmet before they thudded into the ground. He staggered from the wave of energy that rushed outwards from the blackened stone, and made his ears ring.
"Knife-eared bitch!" the templar exclaimed, the ferocity of the insult clashing with the soft low voice. "Aim straight, blast you!" She had been caught in the blast almost as much as he.
Casavir did not wait for her curses to subside. He brought his warhammer around in a smooth curve, and smashed it against her knee. The crimson skirt concealed the damage; the crack and the templar's scream assured him that it was devastating.
She intuited his next attack. Bent over in pain, she raised her sword diagonally over her head to deflect him. He felt pity. Awful pity. Then he kicked her on her shattered knee, and, as she fell sideways, he struck again. The back of her helmet crumpled as if it were made of nothing more solid than cotton. She lay on the floor. He did not think she would rise again.
One down.
The templar's body was obstructing attacks. He adjusted his position, stood with his back square to the ridge so that he could watch both the archer on the heap of moraine, and his exposed right flank. The most recent of the tracker's arrows was still lodged in a rivet of his cuirass. It did not feel as if it had pieced the skin. By this point, Bishop would have thrown himself into the fray, his sword and knife moving in a lethal dance. The tracker did not seem inclined to imitate him. Not an experienced hand-to-hand fighter then.
Fillan and the other helmed templar dragged away their comrade's body. Golden tracery covered Fillan's breastplate, while a thicker line of gold ran around the circumference of his shoulder guards. Alongside his height, it marked him out.
Casavir wanted to pursue him, end him as quickly as possible in the hope that the fight would collapse, and the survivors would break and flee. But he had been a warrior and an officer too long to fall into that temptation. To allow himself to be lured into the open now would merely be an indirect form of suicide. And, Tyr forgive him, he wanted to win this battle.
Another lightning bolt flashed in front of his eyes, only to expire again in the stony side of the ridge. More rocks rained down. He was starting to suspect that the mage's misses were, in reality, hits. They were landing exactly where the elf intended them to.
"You'll pay for her, coward. Crawl out of your den and fight!" Fillan yelled across the boulder. But it was the third templar, not Fillan, who appeared next, holding his sword before him like a lance.
Casavir pressed his back against the ridge. The point of the sword, intended to skewer him, instead skewered the air a few inches in front of his chest. Dodging the templar was no so simple. Through momentum more than design, the – man? – collided with him. Wrapping an arm around Casavir's neck, he bore them both to the floor.
They grappled. The templar was on top. He was excellently placed to break Casavir's neck — the weight on his chest held him pinned. His warhammer had slipped from his grip as he fell. He needed a weapon.
His feet scrabbled for purchase. They got some hold on the rough ground, but his attempts to throw the templar off all failed. With his right hand, he kept pulling at the templar's wrist, dragging it away from his neck. With his left leg, he began kicking his enemy's knee and calf, hoping to distract him from what else he was doing.
He pulled his arm free of the shield straps. Feeling round blindly, his hand lighted on a rock of the right size and heft. The mage's lightning could be to thank for that one.
Immediately, he struck it against the templar's helmet, putting all the strength he had into each blow. A stream of oaths and curses issued from the region of the mouth. The grip slackened.
Casavir rolled free. Dropped the stone and grabbed his hammer. More arrows bounced uselessly off his breastplate. He wanted to shout "surrender!" but sensed movement behind him, so he finished that templar in just the same way he had the first, a blow to the back of the helmet, without ever seeing the face underneath.
He was still almost too late. As he was turning, the cut landed on his right shoulder. The guard deflected it. A second earlier, and the sword would have struck his neck, where the plate was weaker, the flesh more vulnerable.
He snatched up his shield, and used it to block the next swing. This close, Fillan's scale became more apparent. He was huge: almost a second Lorne Starling. But flexible. After the next failed swing, Fillan switched the great-sword to his off-hand, and began wielding it as if it were a longsword, or even a dirk. He jabbed at Casavir's right side.
Casavir caught the thrust on the rim of his shield. Barely. More blows followed, and more parries. But Casavir was on the defensive. He could not see an opening that promised success more than it did death. If this carries on, he will win. My muscles will tire, my spirit will tire. He had to change the footing of the confrontation while he still could.
"Do something, Matty!" Fillan yelled between assays. "And you! Stop wasting arrows!" He sounded more panicked than Casavir had expected. Fillan did not feel his advantage. That is something.
"What do you want me to do?" the tracker demanded.
"Maker's Blood—"
Casavir took his chance. He jumped back to the edge of the moraine, and hurled his warhammer. It struck Fillan on the hip. Metal cracked, and perhaps more. He did not stop and look. Turning, he hauled himself up the loose shelf of grit, pebbles and rocks. It was only five feet high. The ascent was over almost before it had begun; then he was standing on the shelf right next to the tracker.
Finally, she had decided to draw her knife.
"Surrender," he told her. She lunged at him. He let the knife bounce off his cuirass. Then he took her by the throat, and slammed her headfirst into the ridge. Her eyes stilled. She slumped, her body drooping at the end of his outstretched arm. She was not dead. He hoped she was not dead.
Casavir caught his breath. Sweat was running down his face within his helmet, but his vision was still clear.
The mage had popped up again. A silver light shone from the end of his staff, which was pressed against Fillan's hip. Is that what healing magic looks like here? His own spells from Tyr were tinged with gold; the white and pink of Elanee's healing always put him in mind of the climbing roses that grew round the porch of his family's house, and flowered without fail on the first day of Kythorn every year. Roses…gods… He looked at the senseless body at his feet, and felt sick.
But this was not over yet. Not nearly. Fillan was straightening. The mage reached out to him again, and even from his position on the shelf, Casavir felt the thrum of power that moved from the elf to the warrior.
They seemed to be at an impasse. Casavir had only his hands and the tracker's knife for a weapon. Fillan was armed, healed and perhaps made stronger through the mage's enchantment. Yet he would not make the mistake of climbing the moraine while Casavir waited at the top.
Fillan pointed. The mage said something in quiet protest, his blond hair fluffing out as he shook his head emphatically.
"You will do it, or you can walk back to Lothering with no ears. I don't care if you're tired. Tired is one up from dead."
The mage nodded, head bent, but Casavir could still see that his blue eyes were flashing. Angry? Humiliated? Or was it just his power? Familiar humid warmth and energy washed over him. He needed to move.
He hurled himself off the shelf just in time. Lightning struck the place where he had been standing. If the tracker had not been dead before, she was now. Maker, or Andraste, or whatever gods are looking, the dead gods of the elves even, spare her soul.
Luckily for him, the southern end was much nearer the ground than the north. His ankles protested. One might be twisted. Since it could still bear his weight, it did not matter overmuch. He did not intend to win this fight by sprinting.
Bryant was still helmetless, still not racing forward to support his commander. Fillan rounded the corner of the boulder. He had noticed his subordinate's unhelpful restraint as well.
"Stop lounging round like a drunk lizard and help us!"
Not eagerly, but not ignoring the direct order, Bryant held his sword ready, and started to advance on Casavir at a slow, steady pace. His face was expressionless. His eyes black and thick with regret. Two templars, and one mage. And I have a shield and a knife. With the ridge to my back…I would still be attacked at the flank as well as the front. He needed another, better plan, and quickly.
Then the mage upended the board. There was no warning of his decision. He simply pointed his staff at Bryant, and spoke three harsh syllables. The templar froze. His limbs became as stiff as laundry bats. Though he stayed upright, he clearly could not even twitch the end of his little finger. Despite his paralysis, there was a shift in his expression. Some of the grief had lifted from his dark eyes.
"Traitor!" Fillan lunged towards the mage with a speed and fluidity that had to be a result of the blonde elf's own magic. Whatever was driving Matty, and Casavir already had several possibilities in mind, it had made him an ally, and one he was bound to protect.
Casavir thrust the tracker's knife at the small of Fillan's back. It fractured into useless fragments. At least its total destruction attracted the huge templar's attention.
Fillan turned. The helmet tilted. The eyeslits glared down at Casavir, black as pitch. "You. Apostate slave." He was holding his sword in his right hand, and Casavir's warhammer in his left.
Casavir brought up his shield. The edge of the sword skittered over it harmlessly; the hammer struck the surface with a much more solid crunch. The timbers shook. They held together, but he did not want to see how many more blows it could withstand.
He retreated, his eyes on Fillan. By padding slowly backwards, then trotting, or weaving to the left when the templar swung, he was able to reach the southern edge of the ridge with the shield intact.
His helmet had a wider field of view than most —still, he was sorry for those missing snippets at the edges of his vision that would have let him know how close he was to the edges. The cliff on his right was not high, but he could still break his limbs falling off it.
Sweat was running into his eyes. His breathing was hard.
The mage was hovering far too close to Fillon. Nor did he seem to be shielded. The templar could dispatch him with one swipe, then turn again on Casavir. Sand would have been a furlong away and counting. Elanee would have used stoneskin. Even Ammon Jerro would have kept a cautious distance.
"Stay back," Casavir shouted to the mage. The words came out half-garbled —sta' ba' – all his energy was focused elsewhere. So is this how the knights of Neverwinter speak peace? A voice in his head laughed, and it was not Flemeth's, nor Morrigan's, rather a mixture of the two.
Fillan was giving him no more opportunities to dodge. He pressed forward in an uphill charge, raining heavy blows on Casavir's shield until, under the assault of the warhammer, it cracked in two.
Fillan shouted in triumph. But Casavir was ready. He flung himself down, seizing the man's legs, and let his weight and the slope knock the templar first off-balance, then down to the ground. He let go and staggered away before Fillan could counter-attack. It hurt to breath. Plate armour was not intended for anything more athletic than walking…
The old broadsword was still at the ridge's low summit. He pulled it loose from its shallow mooring, and span it, testing it, reminding himself of its feel.
Fillan was on his knees, just levering himself upright with the help of his own two-hander. Casavir strode down to him. First he kicked the sword away, and avoided the gauntlet that snapped out seeking to trap his ankle in a vice. The huge templar slipped forward again, left hand out to save himself from sprawling.
Casavir put his boot on the warhammer. Then he jammed his fingers under the man's helmet and pulled it away.
Fillan blinked in the onrush of extra light. His hair was plastered to his scalp, his face sweat-stained. Casavir's instincts said: ask him to surrender. His experience said: no. This was not an irreversible defeat. Fillan's expression, as savage as a snarling mastiff, did not say I know that I have lost.
Without his helmet, the top of his neck was exposed. Casavir could see the soft cloth padding the top of the metal collar. Fillan was tensing, ready to spring, but it was too late for him. Casavir drove his borrowed sword down through the man's neck and deep, deep into his torso.
He let go of the hilt, and stepped away. Did not want to see the man's death agonies. He could pull the sword free, and try to end things with a single clean swing, but he was shivering inside his armour. His strength had left him. Physical strength, and the simple battle knowledge that let him hurt another person intent on doing the same to him. He pulled off his helmet, and dropped it on the ground next to the warhammer and the broken shield.
"Knight Commander! By all that's—" Bryant called as he jogged up the slope, released from paralysis. He knelt beside Fillan, who had slumped sideways, blood leaking from his mouth onto the springing shallow turf that Casavir had approved of that morning. Throwing away his gauntlets, he rested his bare hands gently on the dying man's forehead and shoulder.
The choked, liquid whisper had nothing in common with the earlier sonorous baritone. "Pick up your sword…and fight…curse you…"
Bryant pressed his lips together. The lines on his forehead deepened. He did not respond at first. Only continued to rest his hands on Fillan. When he did speak, it was quietly, decorously, as if reading aloud from a beloved old book.
"I have faced armies with you as my shield, and though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing can break me except your absence. When I have lose all else, when my eyes fail me, and the taste of blood fills my mouth, then in the pounding of my heart, I hear the glory of creation…"
It had to be a religious text. The cadence was as familiar as a prayer to Tyr, though the words were strange. Sometimes it seemed as if Fillan was trying to join in. At least, his mouth moved.
Bryant kept up his recitation for a little longer, until a gruesome coughing fit rocked Fillan's body. Then the big templar lay still. Casavir felt a surge of grim hope.
"He is dead," sighed Bryant. He dragged his hands over his face, though they were covered in blood. The last of the templars did not appear to care. "Ach, Fillan."
Half-turning, he met Casavir's gaze. His eyes were wet. He looked like a man deeply grieved, but far from bent on revenge. "I never thought—" he began. Then the dark eyes widened. They were concentrated on something behind Casavir.
Removing his helmet had been a mistake. Casavir span around. Felt his end rushing towards him on the point of a hunting knife. Saw a glimpse of stubble, a sharp face, and square auburn brows. Bishop. He braced himself. The blade would go through his cheek.
Then there was blood, and grey fur, and a deep snarl that was wilder than mountains. A wolf with bloody jaws looked up at him from the corpse of its victim. A human in leathers with a long knife. A ranger – no, a tracker. Not Bishop. Not even like him in truth. Still less so with the throat torn out.
A pale girl with black hair rose out of the wolf. Scarlet flecks covered her face and arms.
"I told you," said Morrigan, her much practised impatience not able to conceal the trembling in her shoulders, "there were seven."