Marian wakes the next morning in a foul mood. She'd tossed and turned most of the night, with nightmares that ranged from openly horrible to secretly oppressive, with silent, creeping horrors waiting for her around every corner. She assigns herself, Cú, and Alistair the role of forward scout, which is hardly necessary for a group consisting of battle mages and her companions, but it gets her away from the rest and that's going to have to do.
Alistair seems to sense her mood and leaves Marian to her thoughts, for which she's grateful in a distant sort of way.
They move steadily south down the ravaged remains of the Imperial Highway, following the path they'd taken to get to the Circle. Bodahn's cart cannot cross the marshland shortcut, so he leaves them then, the mages with him, and he and Irving promise to meet her in Redcliffe.
Wynne and Leliana join them and they push on, through the marshes and over the Drakon. They reach the road again soon after and their pace increases. They should make Redcliffe before nightfall, she thinks, and assuming Connor hasn't murdered Morrigan and Sten both and gone on the rampage and there isn't some other, entirely new catastrophe she needs to solve, they might sleep in real beds tonight. The mages should arrive with Bodahn in the morning and then they can finally end this blighted nightmare, once and for all.
They turn a corner in the path around some boulders and a woman in plain peasant clothes flies at them. "Oh, thank the Maker," she gasps, catching herself before she bowls Marian over. "We need help. They attacked the wagon, please help us!" she begs, beginning to back away even though they haven't answered. "Follow me!" The woman turns and runs down the road, disappearing around a bend before Marian can call her back. She glances at the others, but they're already taking out their weapons and only Alistair looks back at her and shrugs.
They follow her at a jog down the road and around the bend; Marian is running through scenarios in her mind. She only hopes it's bandits and not darkspawn, because if it is, they'll have to go back for Bodahn and the mages. They can't just leave the mages to their own defense, not against darkspawn.
When they round the bend, the woman is walking right up to a tattooed elf in leathers. Bandits, then, but... what is she doing? Marian wonders, readying her staff for a rescue.
But something is wrong.
Hadn't the woman said they? There's no one here but her and the elf. Even if he's with her, where's the things she said attacked them?
The elf nods at the woman, who stands aside, and then smiles at Marian and makes a gesture she doesn't understand. It must have been a signal, because just that quickly they're surrounded by mercenaries who'd popped out of the empty wagons, from behind trees and rocks and one or two out of the very ground itself. There are four or five archers on the berms surrounding them. This is not a good situation.
Only the creaking above her head warns her to look up. There's a huge, old, dead tree anchoring the berm that edges the road to her left, but now it's leaning over her precariously, and a mercenary behind it gives it the final push –
Alistair barrels into her from behind, knocking her forward to fall flat on her face even as the tree smashes on the ground behind her.
Ow.
Marian gets her hands under her to push herself up. She can see Alistair from here, sprawled several feet to her right, and she can hear Cú ramping up from a growl into the wet, ripping canvas of his true battle rage, but it takes a look over her shoulder to make sure that Leliana and Wynne are all right. They're cut off from Marian by the remains of the tree trunk.
She scrambles to her feet. Beside her, Alistair is doing the same. She'd dropped her staff again, and she glances at Alistair, then at the staff. He nods – at least he'd kept hold of his fucking weapons, she notes jealously – and she dives for it.
Behind her, someone yells, "The Grey Wardens die here!"
But then Marian comes up with her staff in her hands, and Leliana's arrows are singing and Wynne's magic crackles through the air like a thunderstorm, and Alistair has already cracked someone's skull with his shield, and Cú has someone's hamstring between his teeth.
Her friends really are terrifyingly competent.
It goes poorly for the mercenaries, very quickly, and eventually Alistair's got the elf down, the tip of his sword in the elf's back while Leliana picks off the last of the archers on the berm. Then there's silence.
"No one move," Leliana says, picking her way over the tree trunk and then helping Wynne to do the same. "I can see traps right ahead."
She disarms them one at a time, and then when she's done, Marian joins Alistair and Cú while Leliana and Wynne check the bodies. Wynne is proving a huge help, uncomplaining when it comes to the harsher realities of their life, and her presence frees Marian to fight as she prefers to, with fire and ice and lightning instead of supporting and healing from the rear.
"This one seemed like the leader," Alistair says to her, nodding at the elf. "Want to talk to him?"
After a moment of consideration, she nods. "I think so, yes," she says. "We should probably find out who hired him." She holds her staff in both hands and spins up her frost spell, but keeps the spell just below the surface, ready for anything.
Alistair removes his sword from the elf's spine and nudges him with a huge, heavy boot. He groans, rolling over onto his back and wincing. "Wh..." He groans again, and Marian looks him over skeptically, but he is, in fact, bleeding from a rather serious wound in his stomach. She knows that kind of wound is almost always fatal unless a mage gets to him with a healing spell in time, and more importantly, he's probably not going to feel like moving. The elf props himself up on an elbow, prompting another moan. "What? I..." he says, finally opening his eyes. It takes him a moment to focus, his eyes first drifting over Alistair's legs and Cú before landing on Marian. She sees the instant reality rushes back in and reminds him of who she was, what he was doing here, and what happened to him. "Oh." He groans a little, like someone waking from a nap. "I rather thought I would wake up dead. Or not wake up at all, as the case may be," he says in a strong Antivan accent. Marian wonders at the likelihood of an Antivan just happening to hear of the bounty on their heads. It seems beyond the range of chance. "But I see you haven't killed me yet," he goes on, in a cheerful voice that seems utterly inappropriate to his current status in life. Does he not see Alistair's sword, or her dog's ferocious teeth?
"Is something about your situation amusing?" Marian asks coolly.
The elf laughs, and then winces, his free hand covering the wound on his stomach. "It's my way, or so I am told," he says with a smirk. It's a very convincing one, too, and Marian would be quite fooled if she couldn't see the pain tightening his eyes. It's a front. Why is he bothering with the act? "But surely that is not why you are currently sparing my life?"
"These were your men," Marian says, glancing at the dead bodies on the ground nearest her. Wynne and Leliana have finished with them and are checking the dead on the berm.
"Yes," he says, following her glance and then shrugging dismissively. It's clear that his henchmen mean nothing to him. "Hirelings, and not very skilled ones at that. I think I was shortchanged, to be quite frank with you."
"You know we're Grey Wardens," Marian says, glancing involuntarily at Alistair before she forces her eyes back to the elf at their feet. "Are you after the bounty?" she asks.
"Ah!" he exclaims, pleased. "I'm to be interrogated, then? Let me save you some time. My name is Zevran Arainai, Zev to my friends. I am a member of the Antivan Crows, brought here for the sole purpose of slaying any surviving Grey Wardens." He surveys Marian and Alistair, Cú sat between them, and laughs. "Which I have failed at, sadly."
The Crows? Marian's read about them once or twice, mostly in books from the other side of the Waking Sea. The Antivan Crows are spoken of like a public service in some places and a nuisance in others. Sometimes they're not spoken of at all, but slip through history like ghosts with sharp knives. It had been difficult to get a proper read on what they were really like.
Who would hire someone like that?
She puts the question to the elf, to Zevran, and he shrugs his shoulder a little. "A rather taciturn fellow in the capital," he says. "Loghain, I think his name was? Yes, that's it."
"Loghain?" Marian repeats, dumbstruck. She looks at Alistair again, and he's looking back, just as incredulous and confused as she is. The bounty on their heads is one thing, whatever she might think of its motivation, but hiring an assassin is something entirely different, sly and detached and something she would never, ever have expected from the Hero of River Dane.
The assassin had also said that Loghain was in Denerim, or had been when he'd hired Zevran. It lies across the entirety of Ferelden from here, and while she does feel safer with nearly the whole country between them, it also means that Loghain has all the resources of the capital and Cailan's forces at his command. They've been extremely lax about their safety, wearing their uniforms openly on the road, trusting people on not much more than their word, and they have to do better.
She'll talk to Alistair about it later.
"How did you know where to find us?" Marian asks the assassin. It's been bothering her since the trap sprung.
"You may not know it, but you're rather famous already," Zevran says, a smirk on his face. She's quickly coming to realize that he's one of those people for whom everything that comes out of their mouth is some flavor of suggestive. Maybe it's the accent? In any case, it sets her teeth on edge. "I found someone who'd seen you in Lothering and knew which way you'd gone. He managed to get out before the darkspawn came. Lucky, that man. Then it was just a matter of – "
Wait. What?
"What did you just say?" Marian demands, interrupting him, crouching so she can see his face the better. "Did you say there are darkspawn in Lothering?"
The ever-present amusement fades a little, and he looks from her to Alistair and back. "I'm not surprised you haven't heard," he says carefully, weighing something as he goes. "It happened quite recently. The darkspawn horde has overrun Lothering."
"No," Marian breathes. Mother – Bethany – Please, no. Maker, you cannot be so cruel – not now, when I have finally found them. She'd told them and told them again that the darkspawn were at their door, and begged them to leave.
She can only hope that they did.
"Marian?"
It's Alistair, of course, and he doesn't know what's wrong with her. She can't fall apart again, not now.
She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, passes a hand over her face, imagining the emotion draining down and away as she does, and calms herself with a true effort of will. She stands. "If Lothering is overrun, the horde can spill straight out into the Bannorn," she says like that's what she's truly concerned about, glancing over at Alistair as she does.
Zevran watches her closely, carefully, with interest, and she knows that she's given away more than she wanted to. He saw her face where Alistair did not. He must know she's lying. He might think to use that somehow.
"There's nothing there but farmland and villages," Alistair says, horror-struck. "Loghain took the army with him to Denerim. They're defenseless."
Oh, Maker... She hadn't truly thought about it before when it fell out of her mouth, but now? The Bannorn is a flat bowl, the soft heart of Ferelden, where its crops are grown and its cattle graze. There's nothing to stop the darkspawn from filling it up. Then they'd have the run of the country, able to back its citizens against the Frostbacks to the west and the ocean to the east. Nowhere would be safe.
"We have to move faster," Marian says firmly, and Alistair nods, catching her mood. She turns back to the assassin, who is watching them with lively interest. She tries to remember what else she'd wanted to ask him, but the shock has interrupted her train of thought.
Well, there is one thing that comes to mind...
"Are the Crows going to send someone else, now that you have failed?"
He laughs, though the effort clearly hurts and his hand is so tight against his wound that his fingers are white. She is reluctantly impressed by the fact that he's functional. She'd be screaming by now. "Oh, yes," he says agreeably. "Not for some time, I should imagine, and they will have to find someone else to bid on the contract." He shrugs, as though the idea makes no difference to him, and she supposes it doesn't. He's tried and failed, and whatever they decide to do with him doesn't seem to weigh on his mind at all.
That thought hits her like a battering ram. Oh, Maker, what are we going to do with him? She'd rather leave him to his own devices, but that's a death sentence with a stomach wound. They can heal him and then let him go, which is just asking for him to dog them all over Thedas, or they can kill him.
She is so tired of death.
"Have I missed anything?" she asks Alistair, hoping against hope that he'll just hand her a way out of this dilemma on a silver platter. He thinks about it for a moment, to give him credit, but he shakes his head. Damn.
Zevran tilts his head. "Then unless you're quite stuck on cutting my throat or something equally gruesome, perhaps you'd care to hear a proposal?"
Leliana and Wynne now stand behind Zevran, finished with their grisly work, and Marian glances at them, makes sure that they're ready for anything before she nods at Zevran to continue.
"Well, here's the thing," he begins, unexpectedly sober. "I failed to kill you, so my life is forfeit. That's how it works. If you don't kill me, the Crows will." Leliana nods behind him, and Marian is grateful that at least one of them knows something about what he's talking about – but how does she know? a little part of her asks insistently. "Thing is, I like living. And you obviously are the sort to give the Crows pause. So let me serve you instead."
She'd expected some sort of lengthy request for his life, or possibly an offer to return to Denerim and take care of their Loghain problem for them. But this? Zevran sounds more straightforward than he has since he woke up, but he's still affecting a sort of light-heartedness she finds rather alien at the moment, and she hasn't forgotten what a good front he's capable of putting on when it suits him. Straightforward doesn't mean honest.
"Serve us in what way?" Marian asks warily. She's a fool for encouraging this.
"Why, I am skilled at many things," Zevran says, that suggestive note back in his voice. She's sure she's meant to think about how very many things he could be skilled at, and what they might be. How does this routine work for him? "From fighting to stealth, picking locks..." He trails off as she raises her eyebrow doubtfully, and then hurries back into speech, speaking quickly. "I could also warn you should the Antivan Crows attempt something more sophisticated now that my attempts have failed. I could also stand around and look pretty, if you prefer." He waggles his eyebrows at her, and only then, when he's so over-the-top as to be a caricature of a stereotype, does Marian realize he's teasing her. She rolls her eyes. "Fend off unwanted suitors? Warm your bed?" He lays the seduction on thick there, innuendo cloaked in a pretense of delicacy, and Marian raises her eyebrows at him in cool disbelief.
"No," Marian says flatly. She hears Alistair shift beside her; the sounds of his armor have become as familiar to her as her own, as breathing.
Zevran laughs. "I like a woman who knows exactly what she wants. I really do," he says with a smirk. If her reactions are dissuading him, he shows no sign of it. He'd just tried to kill her! He's bleeding to death!
Men.
"And what's stopping you from finishing the job later?" Marian asks, deliberately arch, raising her eyebrows.
"Besides yourself and your very large friend over there?" Zevran asks, eyeing Alistair, who dwarfs them all. "To be completely honest, I was never given much of a choice regarding joining the Crows. They bought me on the slave market when I was a child." He shrugs, like that matters very little to him. "I think I've paid my worth back to them, plus tenfold. The only way out, however, is to sign up with someone they can't touch." He makes a soft noise, surprised, as if something's struck him that he's never thought about before. "Even if I did kill you now, they might kill me just on principle for failing the first time." Zevran shrugs, watching her closely. "Honestly, I'd rather take my chances with you."
Oh, I'll just bet you would. His sob story is – actually, she believes it, and she's not sure why. Perhaps it's the careless way he reels it off, like he doesn't give a toss about it. The whole thing is a very likely story, and that's why she distrusts it. She has gotten the impression that for Zevran Arainai, the easy answer is just that: far, far too easy.
But she'd wanted a way out of this impasse. Here's one, being handed to her on a silver platter.
She lifts her eyes to glance at Wynne, who looks back with distant sympathy, but offers no help. Leliana nods, giving Marian the tiniest of smiles, friendly and supportive – but she keeps an arrow drawn on Zevran, Marian notices. Lastly, she looks at Alistair, and finds him staring at her incredulously. "What?"
Marian checks once more to make sure that Leliana is covering Zevran and then pulls Alistair away by the elbow.
"You're not actually thinking about this, are you?" he demands as soon as they're out of earshot. "Taking the assassin with us? Does that really seem like a good idea?" He searches her face like he's desperately hoping that she'll announce that the joke's on him this time. In a way, it is – the joke's on all of them, that is, because this is going to banjax their tent allocations in camp.
"I don't want to! Do you really think I trust that lecher? Give me another option, something that means I don't have to choose to kill someone else today," Marian says helplessly.
"We'll be looking over our shoulders every minute," Alistair says roughly. He looks almost angry. She's no idea what's going on in his head. Not all of her decisions have been popular with him, but he's never gotten upset at her about anything until now. "Suppose he has magebane?" Marian shivers instinctively, and Alistair swears under his breath. "Sorry," he mutters. "But I really don't think this is a good idea."
"I know," Marian says, sighing. "I don't disagree. But Alistair..." She looks up at him, looks him full in the face, and what she'd meant to say is wiped from her mind. It's not anger, she realizes, it's concern. He's worried about her safety. She steps a little closer. He's so much taller than she that she has to tip her head back a little to look him full in the face.
Just his presence makes her feel safe.
"We'll figure something out," Marian says quietly, wishing she could take his hand or touch his face, two things that are entirely too intimate for them. Those things are reserved for lovers. She has no way to reassure him but words. Luckily, words are her favorite things.
"I don't like him," she admits. "I don't trust him, and I can't see that changing." Alistair's face lightens at her words, and she smiles wanly at him, a pale, anemic thing that he returns in kind. "But we need all the help we can get," she says, trying to remind him of the seriousness of their situation.
"Maker, you're not wrong," Alistair admits with a grimace. "We could use the help, I suppose, but..." He sighs. "Still, if there was a sign we were desperate, I think it just knocked on the door and said hello."
She's so happy to see the return of his low-key sarcasm that she doesn't reply, just smiles at him, huge and real and heart-felt. Then she turns to go back to Zevran and the others, missing the poleaxed expression on his face.
"All right," Marian says to Zevran, eyeing him coolly. "We'll give it a try." She raises her eyebrows, expectant. "I expect you to be on your best behavior."
"I can do that," Zevran says, smirking. Marian rolls her eyes, again. What has she let herself in for?
Between them, Wynne and Marian have enough healing spells and potions to repair Zevran's shredded intestines and purify his abdomen, but he'll be weak for quite a while, and he'll have a scar there for the rest of his life.
It's early in the afternoon, but Wynne expresses her reservations about Zevran moving too much in the strongest possible terms, so Marian sends Alistair and Leliana ahead to find a campsite while she and Wynne help Zevran to follow them. When Bodahn catches up with them early the next morning, they load Zevran into the back of his cart, and quickmarch the rest of the way to Redcliffe.