A/N:
Can my writing style fluctuate multiple times through a chapter? Yes. Goes to show that the music you write to matters!
I'm trying to get back into the swing of writing. Maybe I'll start completing a chapter once a year instead of once every five years, lmao
;
The Kendells legion was dozens of times larger than the Wardens' party comprising, so far, of two wardens half-freshly-minted, and only Carver to supervise them. The party trekked alongside Arl Urien at the head of the march, for all the horses in Ostagar had been spooked away by the battle. However, the two wardens weren't eyed kindly by their company on the road. Indeed, the Kendells legion, with their dozens, stretched out like a train of ants behind Arl Urien in the narrowing highway path, and had cloying pockets of whispers among it seemed every available ear except Alistair's and Elissa's.
The reason was obvious, illogical, yet comprehensible. While the members of Maric's Shield stationed in the Tower of Ishal must have subdued the digging darkspawn trespassers, the archdemon had still crashed into Ostagar's fortress and toppled the tower. Many good soldiers had died, including those Carver had considered the closest thing to friends. That wasn't even addressing the fact that of the MIA soldiers, Carver knew that the female ones had been taken, not killed by the darkspawn, for breeding purposes.
The only incentive for a horde to suddenly retreat from battle would be to secure stolen resources.
Carver couldn't even ascertain if the Battle of Ostagar hadn't been waged from the beginning just to take women. It was a horrifying thought to consider that the earlier darkspawn hadn't been fighting with the intent to kill. And then after fostering broodmothers and a production chain of darkspawn, how many times more powerful would the archdemon's army be, and how much more lethal without a reason to hold back?
Carver's skin hadn't stopped crawling since the likelihood had struck him.
He intellectually understood that the Battle of Ostagar had resulted in less casualties compared to a situation where Teyrn Loghain would have marched half of the king's army away, and contributed to the deaths and kidnappings of the other seventy-five-hundred soldiers left behind. Under the pressure of the king's full army, even the darkspawn whom Carver had faced had been able to reason that securing resources already in grasp was more valuable than the mere furthering of destruction. Carver just also found himself forced to emotionally reconcile with the magnitude of defeat the king's army had suffered here and now in the timeline he was living.
As for the soldiers whispering behind Carver, Arl Urien, and the wardens, the root of their dissent was found in the fact that the few wardens who had survived the Tower were also the sum total of the survivors of the fortress ruins. Naturally, this was in no small part by virtue of the wardens' skills, ability to sense darkspawn, and sheer luck.
However, the number of people who still resented the wardens' survival wasn't zero.
Whenever puffy or weary eyes would drift Arl Urien's way, burning with the desire to vent, the hair on Carver's neck would stand, and he'd peek warily over his shoulder. Fortunately, in Carver's position behind the legion commander and the two wardens, the quartermaster shuffled beside him. The quartermaster had the unenviable task within a tight deadline of acquiring horses to replace the hundreds lost, which rankled the bearded man something fierce, but Carver was nonetheless hesitantly grateful for the officer's presence. Every time Carver glanced back, the quartermaster would slip out of his field of vision, and Carver would instead see the man's expression at Carver's frown reflected on the soldiers behind them:
Mute cowering.
For the soldiers, it was out of wariness, in case the quartermaster's reactions were not unfounded, and the nameless knight marching in Arl Urien's shadow was someone of importance. Disrespect in the army was typically rewarded with physical drills meant to instil humility. For the quartermaster, however, it was from a deeper bewilderment, since the boyish Carver had not only returned from the battle where half of Maric's Shield hadn't, but had also come back merely bruised. Carver wanted to steer the bearded man correctly towards the fact that Carver had been in the backline and not in the worst of the action, but that would have meant bringing up the mages, as if the glaring legion behind Carver wasn't posing enough of a powder keg.
The march was a perfect formula for cripplingly awkward silence at the front of the line.
Arl Urien, Alistair, and Elissa were oblivious to it.
Carver didn't entertain ideas of changing the fact. He was determined to blend into the background while Alistair and Elissa fulfilled their duty, and spend the rest of his assignment overlooked. He just needed to be able to send letters and run messages of his own.
His success so far was debatable, but the Kendells soldiers behind him at least shouldn't know his name. If they were to remember him, it should merely be for what Nails had once described as Carver's reticent and mildly unapproachable nature. Once Carver was made to speak, however, he was "uptight" and "nerdy." Flattering.
The narrow path everyone was treading finally opened up. Young trees replaced grassless ravines, and the muffled rush of distant water signalled the closing proximity of a river, likely also a town.
That was when a mabari came bounding for the marching soldiers with a jovially open-mouthed smile and lolling tongue. The canine had ugly, patchy fur, a bloody maw, and at least sixty pounds of bone and muscle on it, but Elissa happily knelt in the middle of marching and opened her arms wide in invitation.
"Who's a good boy!"
"Borf!"
The mabari bowled Elissa over, before dragging a leathery tongue up the warden's face several times. Carver and Alistair unknowingly grimaced in tandem. Elissa obliviously laughed.
"You survived!" she exclaimed. "You returned!"
Alistair, who was closest to Elissa, inched away from the slobbery beast as saliva speckled his boots. "With a friend," he drawled.
Carver meanwhile didn't stare at the raven innocently perched on the mabari's back. He didn't.
The wardens and Carver moved to the side to allow the Kendells legion to march past, but not without Arl Urien glancing back at them - no, he was looking at Carver.
Loghain's messenger.
It seemed Arl Urien didn't want to stray to the wrong side of the teyrn's opinions.
Carver contained a sigh and minutely nodded, to which the arl and his soldiers immediately continued marching without a spare glance at the young knight. Not everyone noticed the exchange, and no one seemed to care. Only the quartermaster looked back at Carver twice before rows of armour swallowed him from sight. All the while, Elissa's canine companion enthusiastically demanded the wardens' attention, Carver's wordless instruction flying over Alistair and Elissa's heads.
"Come now, Alistair," Elissa was needling. "You said you've always wanted a mabari."
Alistair spluttered. "You've never heard a joke?"
"My boy will be a well-behaved companion!"
Carver stepped in after Arl Urien had turned away and proceeded marching. "Warden, please stand up. We can't afford a delay."
Alistair and Elissa looked back at him, their lighthearted atmosphere swiftly dampened by Carver's briskness. He turned away from the vanishing quartermaster and stood at rest to stare at the wardens with purpose.
"Agreed," Elissa finally decided, and picked herself up from the ground with a fond shove at her sixty-pound mabari. To her credit, her sociable attitude recovered quickly. "Dog is coming with us."
Alistair tossed a quip and tellingly put Elissa between himself and the canine.
Carver's steps faltered at first.
Dog?
Elissa had named her companion Dog?
Carver suddenly wished with unreasonable fervour that howsoever Garrett would acquire a mabari, he wouldn't name it Boy, Pet, or worse, Default. As the trees thinned out to the sight of Lothering, Carver reluctantly concluded he could only pray that Bethany would speak sense to the oldest male of the Hawke family. Perhaps they'd be lucky, and Bethany would only name the beast Big.
It had been four years since Carver had last seen his twin, but she couldn't have changed much from his memories, both old and "old." Bethany was playful but sensible, occasionally to a fault.
Elissa grabbed a passing soldier.
"Off, Warden – we soldiers are barely managing this sudden overpopulation!"
A Templar.
"I'm sorry, Warden, every Templar is currently needed."
An armoured man wolfing down food in the local tavern.
"Are you the soldier in charge here!?" Elissa demanded, exasperated.
"And eating while I can, get in line."
Relief loosened Elissa's face. "Finally. I have a mission of great importance. I seek the mage deserters."
"You and everyone else," the soldier grumbled.
Carver watched Elissa and Basket loose their tempers on each other from a corner of the packed tavern. Alistair stood behind Elissa's shoulder - who, by his matching Warden's Oath amulet, was an unknowing indicator that the two were Wardens - while Dog diligently cleaned the floor under Basket's table of food scraps. Patrons and servers had to shove past each other to navigate the tavern, and the stationary man, woman, and mabari weren't helping. It was a small mercy that a certain raven had opted to perch outside the tavern door while its usual four-legged mount was indoors. The tavern was so stuffy as to even warrant not wearing a helmet, else Carver felt he would suffocate. The bartender was fortunately harassed by five too many patrons to have the leisure of scanning the tavern's shadowed corners.
A gloved hand held Carver's elbow. "Postboy."
Carver turned, voice low but surprised. "Satin?"
The leather-clad rogue quietly exhaled in relief. His cheekbones were skinned, and other exposed areas of his body were laced with cuts like he had rolled down a rocky hill, but he was alive. "I haven't seen one of us since the tower fell. Basket wants to defer to me, but I don't plan to stick around."
Carver frowned, processing his words. "What are you waiting for?"
"Permission, and before you get smart, I was specifically waiting for your kind." Satin smirked, but his handsome smile swiftly died. "All the Shielders with me had lost to darkspawn or…our own people…the mages, by the time we hit Lothering. I can't snatch a runner willing to return to Ostagar, and there is little point in reaching out to Denerim when Ser Rhiannon has less an idea of my next steps than I do. You're the first person of rank besides Arl Urien to step foot here, and the arl can't be speaking to the Teyrn's thoughts as well as a Shielder. Tell me where the war needs me: Jader or Ostagar?"
Carver's brows furrowed. "…Jader, not Lake Calenhad? From the local Templars' busy state, I wouldn't have guessed that the mages had fled politically far from their reach."
Satin nodded. "You would have guessed correctly, according to one of the mages still here. Senior Enchanter, by the name of Wynne. She helped us chase the deserters until Lothering, when the darkspawn on our tail switched targets to the villagers. She and a couple loyal mages are tending to the casualties here."
At Wynne's name, Carver glanced across the tavern. Satin's gaze followed.
"…You're watching the Wardens?" Satin lowered his voice further.
"I'm following them," Carver immediately corrected, but Satin chuckled.
"As you say, Postboy." He sobered, the way members of Maric's Shield did regarding missions of significance and secrecy. Carver wanted to shake whatever assumptions Satin had crafted out of his head. "Looks like you're ahead of the information – as usual. Are the mage deserters somehow a bigger problem than the chevalier legions at the border?"
The what!?
Carver pinched his nose bridge.
"That bad?" Satin quieted. "If Teyrn Loghain would want more than one of us at the Circle, I'll gladly partner with you northward."
"No," Carver quickly declined, mind racing through what he knew. "Head south and defer to Teyrn Loghain. I can't speak for where you're best served."
"And leave the chevaliers—?" Satin blinked. "Oh, I see. You got it, Postboy."
Got what, exactly?
"I'll depart immediately." Satin vanished into the crowd.
Got what? Satin!
Carver shut down his internal distress before he could crash. Jader was certainly the closest Orlesian city to a Ferelden border, but for the chevaliers to be sitting there, wouldn't that have meant some involvement of the Orlesian Grey Wardens? Even if such involvement merely extended to the chevaliers blocking the Wardens from reaching the border, then Carver's grasp of the political timeline in the west required review.
Elissa patted Carver's shoulder abruptly.
"There you are, page," Elissa declared, relieved. "The higher ranks of the king's army stationed here aren't proving themselves helpful. Fortunately, a local has offered us assistance. Where to, Sister Leliana?"
A bob of red hair perked up. "Senior Enchanter Wynne is in the Chantry," the assassin beamed sunnily. "This way!"
"Warden Elissa," Carver quickly halted the group setting to leave. Curious gazes turned back to him. "I'm…going to grab something quick, so don't wait for me." He flushed.
Oddly, Elissa and Alistair merely shared an amused look before the latter nodded to Carver. "I know how insatiable a growing boy's hunger can be. Just find us in the Chantry."
The group stepped out of the tavern before Carver could decide how red he wanted his face to be. That hadn't been one of his better cover-ups, which was enough of an embarrassment, but for the cheese-obsessed Alistair to pity him? Did Carver look younger than he truly was?
Carver shook his head. He replaced Elissa's spot at Basket's elbow and reluctantly cleared his throat.
"What now?" Basket huffed with a side glance. He stared hard at the fork in his hand before bolting up from his seat and hastily saluting. "Pardon, Ser Carver, the day has been…"
Carver cut to the chase, preferring less attention to himself anyway. "You've been busy. There's a village to the northern edge of the Brecilian Forest, a morning's ride from South Reach. With your soldiers already patrolling the West Road, it would be a small matter to utilise the village for population overflow."
"…I'll prioritise Lothering's civilians," Basket agreed as he caught up.
"If the village residents bring up the Dalish," Carver added, "acknowledge, but don't pursue. The clan that resided close by there should be long gone by now. No need to salute again," Carver hastily corrected.
Basket uncrossed his arms with a frown. "Ser?"
Carver could appreciate Basket's professionalism, but while Carver's helmet wasn't on, and while they stood in the town's tavern…. Hm. "Basket, how many villagers were lost to the darkspawn attack?"
"Three dozen," Basket reported. "Mercifully, ten miners, half of the artisans, and a farmer's family had moved out prior to the attack, per my insistence. Most of the remaining civilians, however, were lost."
"The farmer's family…" Carver's pulse quickened, "the Hawkes?"
Basket tilted his head. "Yes, I believe so. Ser?"
"Nothing. You've done well with what you had. Carry on."
"Speaking of, isn't your family name––"
"Not an uncommon name," Carver dismissed. "I'm leaving Lothering shortly; reach out to Ser Nigel for any instruction Ser Rhiannon can't provide." He pivoted away with his head bowed before Basket could pursue the query.
When Elissa and her group found Carver, he was standing by the bridge on the tavern's side of the river, gazing at the farmhouses that dotted Lothering's once-fertile land now poisoned by darkspawn blood. His helmet was securely on.
Carver turned at Elissa's voice to see her retinue had grown to include a rectangular, towering woman who wore her wrinkles with dignity and her grey hair in a principal's bun. Dried blood splotched her Circle mage robes a dark brown.
Senior Enchanter Wynne.
"Carver, I thought I said we'd be at the Chantry!" Elissa remarked.
Carver shallowly bowed his head.
"You should have remembered," Alistair gently admonished, "but at least you waited in a public spot. If not, Dog would have had to sniff you out. I think you would have smelled him before he could smell you, though— Yeeouch! Don't hit me, I'm delicate!"
Elissa elbowed him once more for good measure, her lips tellingly quirked.
Aside, Leliana produced a key. "We have one more teammate to greet before setting off," she informed on Elissa's behalf.
The party released Sten from his cage and, with his reluctant acceptance of freedom, departed for Kinloch Hold. When the scenery began to fade from rolling yellow fields to deciduous woods, they came upon darkspawn from underground madly pursuing a rickety horse-drawn wagon. Dog perked up at the distant clamour before bounding ahead for the closest darkspawn. Leliana loosed an arrow into a helmet's eye socket just as Dog sacked a hurlock, exposing the party's location. Both groups rushed towards each other - and in a blink, the rush was over.
Carver shook his head like a canine, briefly pressing a gauntlet to his helmet. His present awareness still rang with Sten's roar, Dog's growl, the flash of Wynne's magic, and the clash of Alistair and Elissa's shields. Carver hadn't swung his sword once in the brief fight. The hand that was wrapped around his sword hilt trembled with memories of the last time it had drawn a weapon.
"Are you harmed?" Elissa's voice cut through the forest.
A wooden wagon slowed to a halt for the party, a stout figure turning in the wagon's box to greet the party with relief. "Save for a good fright, my son and I are fortunately well! Aren't we, my boy?"
"Enchantment!"
Carver distractedly gestured forward with his free hand. "...Ask them about Sten's sword."
He was faintly aware of Sten shooting him a look as Alistair passed on the message, and Elissa projected it ahead. The party was greeted with a negative as they neared the wagon, but Bodahn quickly followed with an invitation to discounted wares in thanks and incentive for travelling together moving forward.
Bodahn was a font of rumour and fact as they traced the southern roads.
The rush of migration from Ferelden's south saw to the epidemic fear of the blight, which was expanding into a pandemic as merchants carried the news across the Waking Sea and through the Frostbacks. Foreign merchants were already reclaiming their families that were settled in Ferelden to move in with relatives back home.
Hillfolk were also apparently spreading complaints of a Dalish clan in the Southron Hills who were refusing both human and elven refugees due to an ostensible affliction within the clan. With the clan's refusal to name the illness, it was the common refugee's struggle to believe that the Dalish weren't merely building a wall on shallow excuses.
With Gwaren's natural defences in plutons and the Brecilian Forest, Ferelden's largest port had fallen silent, either beset by darkspawn or by the sudden evaporation of land and sea trade.
All of these troubles meant that Ferelden's strongest trade partner was now Orzammar. The Ferelden coin was shifting to reflect the value of Orzammar in the world economy, and dwarven crafts were starting to flood the Ferelden market. Bodahn's trail of contacts authenticated the reality that Orzammar's barter system was transforming into one with the Ferelden sovereign as the common currency. This had evidently provoked Orlais, which had placed temporary revisions on import taxes to encourage trade with merchants that the blight had driven out of Ferelden. Popular opinion blamed the presence of chevaliers in Jader on this economic bate.
Oddly, Orlais's actions hadn't frosted Fereldens' opinions of the egocentric empire. Passive disdain for Orlais was already the status quo at this point; recent events were merely another mark on their record.
Regarding the mages, Wynne revealed that Uldred had led the mages out of Ostagar to flee what he had thought was a lost battle, reasoning that the Templars had already proven themselves ready to blame mages for the disaster. The Templar whom Carver had witnessed smite a mage had apparently not been the only example of blind distrust. A number of the army's dead had been mages who had perished under a human blade.
Uldred's retreat could thus be credited for how the king's army had been forced to fight darkspawn without healing or long-rage support. Survivors of the battle afterwards also hadn't been able to receive healing outside of the efforts of a single Chantry brother and a couple of herbs. Bodahn revealed that Uldred's declarations had unfortunately been the common public's first accounts of the Battle of Ostagar, painting the southern situation in demoralising colours.
Elissa also contributed to Bodahn's chatter. Carver recalled that a certain noble dwarf route had featured three wardens travelling with Duncan in the Deep Roads, scouting for the archdemon, before stumbling across a certain noble dwarf. According to Elissa's story, those three had been travelling with Duncan through the Coastlands on their way to Orzammar. The three had perished with Ser Roderick in defence of Castle Cousland, while Duncan and the nobles in Castle Cousland had met up with Teyrn Bryce in the castle pantry.
Duncan had apparently given Teyrn Bryce his word he would see the group out of the castle safely even at the cost of his life. However, the nobles around Duncan had been a just sort who honoured debts. The Couslands couldn't have Bann Loren's family pay their debt when the guests had been endangered in the Couslands' own castle, and Duncan had still needed to scout the Deep Roads for the archdemon. Thus Elissa Cousland had stepped forward and offered to be conscripted, assured that her older brother Fergus was still alive far from the sacking. Duncan, Elissa, and the group had managed to flee the castle while Teyrn Bryce and Teyrna Eleanor had bought them time at the cost of their lives.
From there, Duncan had brought Elissa with him to the Circle where they had recruited Solona, then to Orzammar where they had picked up Faren. It was still a mystery what had become of Daveth and Ser Jory.
Eventually, Bodahn and Sandal split off for a merchant's route tracing River Dane, where the Bannorn and their people could frequently be encountered. The party trekked the rest of their way to Kinloch Hold, guided by the grassy corridors of dried-up ravines from a time when Lake Calenhad had spilled over to River Dane. Now they found their steps softened by soil made rich by a fossilised past.
Carver noted the irony when a distressed traveller lured Elissa and the group into an ambush, punctuated with a felled tree. Along with a ring of highwaymen and the ravine's difficult terrain, the party was now caught in a noose.
An elf among the thieves drew two shortswords, intending to make worm food out of the party.
"The Warden dies here!"
;
A/N:
A few reasons for my Battle of Ostagar theory you've known by the end of this chapter:
When your Warden first meets Cailan, he expresses doubt that Ferelden is facing a blight, because the king's army is easily defeating the darkspawn who then merely return in bigger numbers. Almost like calculated losing, or recon. But this can't be, because "darkspawn are not clever."
Then the archdemon hits.
When the Warden wakes up after the battle and asks Morrigan what Ostagar now looks like, Morrigan says there are only dead bodies, and darkspawn cleaning the ruins of survivors that they bring back with them underground.
The doomsayer In Lothering says his wife was "screaming as they dragged her away," not as she was being killed.
In conclusion, Carver's internal shuddering is justified in this and the last chapter.
As for my readers: I too am looking forward so, so much to a reasonably seasoned Carver reuniting with DA2!Garrett in the thick of things! I actually didn't want Carver to meet Garrett in Lothering in Chapter 4 just to build up the anticipation, but I also needed misunderstandings to arise between Garret and Carver before Garrett left for Kirkwall. Stir in the formation of separate friend groups, let assumptions simmer, and violá! Delicious drama. But since I'm glacial at updating, you guys are going to have to be patient with me. *sweats*
Thank you as always for your reviews! Your thoughts mean so much to me!