Author's note:

Disclaimer: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition and all related characters and trademarks are property of EA/Bioware. Rated M for language, violence and suggestive and explicit themes.

Sorry to keep you all waiting for so very long. The words wouldn't come. I tried, but was never satisfied or outright didn't manage to put something of value down. I hope this cuts it. I'm not entirely sure myself. But I feel okay with what I've written.

Also, big battle approaching, if you read attentively. Don't even have to read between the lines, it's spelled out quite obviously. Are there some things you'd like to see? I'm open for suggetions, maybe I'll be able to fit some things in.

Enjoy.

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In An Age Full Of Heroes

Chapter XVII

The Banner Of The Dead

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They came to her tent when the sky was still dark and well before greying into day. Speaking with her fellow mercenaries, guarding the entrance, Farah'an found that the words didn't penetrated the tent, for they whispered. Probably abstaining from waking her. And what a fine job they did, she'd heard the King's Blade's messengers from dozens of paces off. They were like children running around, wearing a harness of bells, so loud clinked their chainmail. One of the guards posted outside rapped against a pole of her tent.

'Yes?'

He peered inside, allowing the flicker of torches and braziers outside to wash in, and seemed to take the fact in stride that she was already up and donning her garments.

'The King's Blade, Isala'k,' he spoke, low. 'She asks your presence.'

Farah'an arched a pierced brow. 'Asks?'

The guard merely nodded. Farah'an waved him off and finished dressing, hauling a thick fur coat over her wide shoulders.

Exiting, she once more damned this country for its biting cold, giving no regard to layers of cloth or flesh. It dug right down to the bone and settled there, content to linger until the surrounding flesh would turn blue and black. And winter hadn't even arrived, or so she'd been told.

Farah'an followed the messenger, eager to enter the shelter of another tent as quickly as possible. Inside, the King's Blade, bleary eyed and her hair tousled waited alongside Commander One-Eye. Her amusement at the moniker she'd outfitted the old fellow with shrank at the sight presented to her.

Head lowered and face hidden behind a curtain of unwashed hair, hands shackled so tight they drew blood, kneeled one of her mercenaries. His horns weren't even fully developed, a young one, then.

'What is the meaning of this?' Farah'an asked, voice louder than she intended, still rough with sleep.

The King's Blade and One-Eye jerked around, becoming aware of her presence. The King's Blade gestured tiredly at her commander.

'We've apprehended a deserter, Isala'k,' he said. 'Tried to sneak by camp during the night. One of our patrols picked him up by pure luck.'

Brows furrowed, Farah'an approached the young man, lowered herself to his level. There were no deserters among her company. 'What's your name?'

No answer came. She moved closer. He mumbled something. Farah'an grabbed his chin and made him look her in the eye. His eyes didn't focus, they stared off at something she couldn't possibly hope to see. All the while, the incoherent mumbling continued.

Firmly in her grip, Farah'an turned his head left and right, as if gauging the value of a curio on a souvenir bazaar. His skin was dry as parchment, lips cracked and broken. Farah'an leaned in closer till her ear nearly touched his mouth, still forming words. Though he'd switched into his mother tongue, Qunlat. She listened for a while, before rising again.

'This is no deserter, King's Blade,' Farah'an proclaimed. She made a helpless gesture. 'But I've about as much use for him as for a deserter.'

'Your meaning?' The woman asked.

'He's of one of the foraging troops I've had to leave behind. Probably didn't even know he walked by our camp. He's trapped in his own head.'

'Like . . . a trauma, you mean?'

'I guess that is the most appropriate word. It slipped my mind for a moment there. Your tongue is still foreign to me.'

The young qunari muttered on silently, rocking back and forth, like a baby in a cradle. Something curious awakened in Farah'an. An instinct, deeply rooted, yet foreign, in a way.

One-Eye shuffled around. 'What did he say?'

Farah'an looked back at the disquieting sight. 'Something out of the shadows. Silver under the moon. And blood.' She sighed. 'So much blood.' It made no sense to her.

'So? The ravings of a man gone mad, then. Probably saw his unit killed.'

Which soldier hasn't, old man? One-Eye should know better than that. But he probably never saw his entire squad killed, not with both eyes. Her accumulated respect for elderly commander sank.

Farah'an couldn't avert her gaze from the young warrior under her command and thus reached a decision, intent to follow it through, even if it pained her.

'What would you have us do with him, Isala'k?'

'Release him.'

Both humans shuffled around behind her, unsure.

'There is nothing you can do for him,' she added.

'But you can?'

'Yes. I can release him.'

They didn't understand, not until later, but freed him of his iron shackles anyway. Typical. Humans, always so ready to follow when they didn't understand, much less dare to question.

Farah'an would release him of his oath to her. Free him to return into the embrace of the Qun again. He'd done more than enough to merit this gesture.

But the disquiet rummaging in her belly didn't stop. Something was at work here, something none of them knew about, weren't even looking for.

A wild card. An unknown one, at that. She despised wild cards. And unknowns. Especially so shortly before an engagement with the enemy.

The Qun lectured her to locate and exterminate wild cards.

Better be fast, then.

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The vultures had by now settled down, taken their seats at this banquette, ready to feast on eyes and exposed organs. Some took it upon themselves to watch over the heaps of flesh from spears, swords and poles, clinging on to tattered banners flapping in the wind, stuck in the blood-soaked ground, urging their companions on with cries.

Araris kneeled among them, posture slack, hands forgotten in his lap. His garments heavy with the reek of sweat, dried blood and other fluids. His eye-lids lost more of their strength with every heartbeat, fluttering like the wings of the carnivores surrounding him.

Sparing one last glance at the shredded piece of cloth wrapped around his wrist, Araris gathered up the remains of Elya at his feet and carried her with all the care you could carry a corpse missing everything down from the midst. Entrails slipped outside with a wet noise, trailing after him like a grotesque gown.

Without focus he found his way off the battlefield and marched among the throngs of soldiers, most still busy screaming and dying.

Araris set her off at a lone tree, its branches dead and blackened by the Blight, he leaned against it and dozed off, staring into Elya's flat eyes, who returned the gesture.

He startled upright when someone nudged his foot. Araris' hand immediately went to his shoulder but found the grip of his longsword absent. A shadow blocked his view.

'Time to get up, lazy.'

Araris accepted the offered hand and was hauled to his feet with a speed that shocked his benumbed arm. The boar of a man, Gallagher Wulff, clapped him on the shoulder, setting Araris' teeth shaking.

Araris didn't feel in the mood for joking, but made an effort. 'Good to see you still have a hold of that humour of yours, old man. We'll need it.'

Arl Gallagher Wulff bellowed a laugh which put many a warrior's war cry to shame. 'Of course, laddie.' He looked at Araris, more serious. 'I didn't even know you were in Ferelden. Maker, I didn't even know if you were alive. No one did.'

'Well. I am.' Araris blinked around, nodded down. 'Where is she?'

'Some of your men took her away. All careful and venerating. Must've been quite the woman.' Gallagher Wulff looked away. 'Shame to see her go like that.'

Araris massaged his temples and rubbed his eyes, weary. 'I guess she was. And they're not my men.'

The arl chortled a laugh. 'They're now laddie, if you want or not. And mine are, as well. After that stunt you pulled. Didn't your father ever tell you heroics will get you killed.'

Araris saw the realisation speed over his face, followed by the immediate regret. 'He did. But he's dead now,' said Araris.

He held off an apology by the arl with a raised hand. But the hurt in the old man's eyes didn't diminish. 'Don't be sorry. What's done is done. No amount of words will change that. The time for words is now past. There's nothing to talk about any longer. Everyone's had enough of empty promises. Will you stand beside me in action?' Strangely, Araris felt he meant what he said. All of it.

Gallagher Wulff nodded gravely. 'I will. Just point me in a direction and teeth will fly.'

Araris layered on a faint smile. 'Good. Let the men gather everything of value and get them ready to move back to camp. The dead we leave. Once there we'll regroup, get our wounded patched up, then return to the others.'

'Yes, my lord.'

Something lashed through Araris at the statement of obedience. A beast of prey snarled, content.

For now.

In the distance, the vultures saluted him with their cries.

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You could see it in their eyes, their stance. The fear etched into their demeanour. All of them were riled up about the reports arriving from the east by messenger. Reports of the approaching of the King's Blade, only a bit over a week away. The clash was unavoidable, impending and looming above them like a dark cloud. And an ending in, most likely, a decisive victory for the king-regent seemed a plausible outcome.

By now, Leonas Bryland appeared to question his decision to let some of the few remaining casks of wine remaining in the entire encampment of the rebel host be opened. Tempers already ran hot, probably just to forget about the increasingly unpleasant temperatures outside. Add wine to that, and nothing good comes of it.

The lords and ladies, noblemen and noblewomen, and other worthies who deemed themselves worthy of attending this meeting as soon as they caught a whiff of it, stood gathered around the table, leaning onto the top to achieve some kind of physical superiority over their counterpart, and simply shouted at each other. Hurling insults and accusations this way and that, some of which would make seasoned sailors blush. Maybe even the odd surface dwarf.

Most of them had no purpose being here. But their life and the life of their people was the gambling chip on the table, they couldn't stand idly by. Half of them probably didn't care about their people, only about saving their own skin, the other half hadn't even arrived with people to speak of, and much less soldiers to bolster the pitiful number of veterans among their ranks. Why Leonas hadn't kicked them out right away, Alfstanna didn't rightly understand. But refusing someone in need is hard.

They prevented real work from being done, instead they only added to the heap of it with their bickering. Generations-old grudges and grievances unsheathed like weapons, aimed at their enemies with hurtful intent.

Leonas sat through it in his chair, slumped, face cupped in one hand, eyes staring off. He didn't even react to any slurs thrown his way, didn't even blink. He looked worse by the day to Alfstanna. The gauntness to his cheeks and the smears under his eyes could already be described as sickly.

Alfstanna sighed, unable to help the poor man. Someone she called friend over the years. The burden of leadership would soon crush him, maybe already had.

Then came the inevitable, as all those worked-up men and women focused their ire and sighted a ready scapegoat, meek, the look of the defeat already about him, presented on a platter.

'It was him!'

'We should've never followed that Orlesian rat!'

'You've led us to ruin and death! You hear me, Bryland? Ruin and death!'

'Maker take you!'

Bann Loren of Lothering tried to outshout his own entourage of landowners, lords and ladies. With animated hacking and slashing gestures he sent spittle flying, but it did naught to those under his banner but entice them to shout back at him with renewed vigour. About Bryland's incompetence, about his incompetence. About everybody's incompetence but their own.

Bann Fanderel of the stronghold West Hill, the newest addition to their rebellion, managed to keep his fellow bannermen more under control, if only by a margin. A slim fellow, whip-lean, with short-cropped hair, greying at the edges, at times a look of his hard, nearly black eyes subdued those pledged to him back into obedience. But not all.

The rest of them preyed upon hapless Leonas Bryland, hurling their accusations like rotten fruit and faeces at a convicted man to be hanged shortly.

Alfstanna couldn't take it any longer, couldn't watch him sit there, doing nothing but succumb to himself and his burden and wait till the mob of nobles hauled him outside and took his head off. A twitch around the eyes here, a miniscule flinch of the shoulders there, she spotted the way each accusation cut deeper than flesh, so deep he probably believed them. He'd probably go willingly with them to the executioner's block.

Alfstanna jumped up, sending her chair clattering to the ground and grabbed as many of the wooden figurines dotting the plain wooden table. Two, as it turned out, found place in her small hands. She hurled them at the angry mob fixated on Leonas, those concentrating their efforts to a fusillade without pause.

Blood pumped and rushed to her head from all the shouting she now did herself. But her voice drowned in the erratic maelstrom of anger and blind judgement.

Until, through the chaotic noise of dozens of shouting people cut a bone-rattling roar, like that of a wild boar, perched on his hind legs to appear threatening and intimidate. And intimidate it did.

The nobles and worthies shrank and jumped away from the sound as if burned by the acoustics. They cowered and stared, wide-eyed, gaping like fish. Lips up and down. Up and down.

For there stood a boar indeed, filling out the entrance of the tent alone with sheer mass. A man of a boar. Arl Gallagher Wulff of West Hills in all his gruff majesty. Chainmail and boiled leather still dirtied and bloodied, his bald pate raked with scratches and cuts, and his beard a greasy mess. To Alfstanna he was a sight for sore eyes and she couldn't help the smile taunting her face.

Only now did she register the young messenger standing behind him, uncertain. He'd probably tried to announce the arl, but, well. No chance for that with this lousy lot.

Gallagher Wulff looked around, his intense stare gauging the entire tent. When he caught Alfstanna's eye, the corners of his broad mouth twitched.

'There will be silence, you mongrels! What is it you're trying to accomplish here? Shout so loud, the King's Blade can find you blindfolded?' He gazed from side to side, a maniacal expression layered on. Alfstanna would laugh, but then, that would hardly be appropriate.

Sure to have captured everyone's attention, he said, 'And I expect you to bow.'

Alfstanna frowned and one of the lesser nobles, a minor landowner and his wife under Bann Loren, Alfstanna believed to remember, voiced her confusion out lout with faked heat in his speech, 'Bow. Whom to? You?'

A laugh bubbled out of Gallagher Wulff's broad mouth, stopped just as abruptly. Deadpan, he said, 'No. To the man who's banner you fly, you cretin.'

And with the figure who entered next, about as tall as Wulff himself, but far more fine-boned and slimmer, the shocked silence after the arl's appearance turned into something else entirely. It took a few heartbeats for most. But then they recognised him, a ghost, a spectre of the past. Even Alfstanna had trouble to believe her eyes. Beside her Leonas rose, simply concentrating on breathing. A pallor to his skin, like most of the people filling the tent into a cramped, heated place.

For those who'd never met the man or didn't outright recognise him due to his peculiar appearance, a ripple went out, whispered and hushed in fear or awe, probably both in equal measures: Cousland.

A name thought dead, extinct, risen again. Alfstanna had never seen a group of people this disquieted.

His voice was a metallic rasp, it drove a flinch through the assembled crowd. 'Leonas. Alfstanna.' He nodded at them. 'A word, if you please.'

Heads turned this way and that. Muttering and mumbling started to rise up like a lapping wave, crawling up to the shore.

'You heard him!' boomed Gallagher Wulff. 'Off you go!'

They filed out with haste, nearly trampling over each other in their sudden eagerness to leave the tent. Once they were amongst their foursome and in relieving silence, Arl Gallagher Wulff stomped to the back of tent and poured himself some red wine from a clay pitcher. Downed it in one big gulp and poured anew.

Araris settled down in a chair next to Leonas. He hadn't lost any of his fluid efficacy of movement which Alfstanna remembered so fondly.

'It is good to see you both well,' he spoke.

Leonas scratched his brow. 'I fear I've brought no honour to your name with my actions.' He hesitated at the end, unsure how to address the man sitting beside him.

Araris reached for the goblet offered by Gallagher Wulff with a thankful gesture. 'Fuck honour, Leonas. Keep it for the fairy tales and the romantics. What do they know of the world?'

'Nevertheless-'

Araris cut him off. 'No. You've done far better than anyone else would have in your stead. It's war. Bad things happen. And once you start a war you cannot control it.'

A hotness lingered under Alfstanna's breasts, seeing as how Leonas Bryland didn't seem to agree with Araris, struggled against his reassurances. It didn't matter if they were hollow or truthful, Leonas needed to hear them, really hear them. And if Araris Cousland could ever be called good at something, then guarding his inner mind was surely among those qualities. Even more so now, it seemed.

'Don't listen to the filth coming out their mouths. Let them bicker.' Araris took a sip, all the while eying the arl of South Reach. 'Better in here than they sow discontent out there.'

Leonas shook his head. 'I'm not made for this.'

Araris nodded gently, placed a hand upon Leonas' shoulder and waited till the man met his gaze. 'Some men are. Some men aren't.' The Cousland scion shrugged. 'It's the way of the world. But for someone who isn't made for this, you bloodied them pretty good.'

Alfstanna smiled at Gallagher Wulff, who also handed her a much needed goblet to flush down all that unpleasantness stuck in her throat. 'He's right, you know,' she said to Leonas. 'You're too hard on yourself. Always have been.'

Leonas tried for a grateful expression, nearly accomplished it. 'Yet, pretty good doesn't cut it during warfare.'

'No,' said Araris, flatly. 'But it's a start.'

'I'm assuming you'll take over this sorry bunch?' Still not able to speak his name or add a title, he swallowed audibly. Araris chose to overlook it or simply didn't have the energy to care.

'And whip them into shape, correct. That doesn't mean you're off the hook, Leonas. I need you.' He looked around, a cold fire dancing in his bright eyes. 'All of you.'

Alfstanna nodded once. Then again, more sure of herself.

'Well, laddie,' Gallagher Wulff grated out, in between stuffing grapes and pieces of bread into his mouth. 'I already told you. I'll send teeth flying for you.' He dipped his head to the entrance. 'Let me start with this lot. Beat some sense into them.'

'No need. When they need beating, I'll do it myself,' Araris said.

Leonas sighed, life returning to him now that he could let go. Of some things, at the very least. 'I'm with you as well, Araris. For the Laurel. And for Ferelden.'

They echoed his words. 'For the Laurel. For Ferelden.'

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Anethayín was a bit out of breath from the hike. Thankfully, her stamina could only improve the longer she marched with what she found out they called the rebel host. Granted, she might be a far-travelled minstrel, but she'd never witnessed a host. Yet, Anethayín was pretty sure, this didn't qualify as such. Probably good for morale, though.

Exhaling, she straightened out her jacket and trousers, not paying any heed to the two, grim-face guards wearing blackened chain beneath grey leathers, a silver brooch holding their cloaks together at the neck.

She'd never met a real lord. Only pretend-lords and ladies who tried to lure her for her voice. And sometimes for her flesh. Driving away the stray thoughts, Anethayín entered.

'Oh,' she said, a bit disappointed. 'It's you.' She shook her head. 'Of course, it's you.'

From the back of the octagonal tent, Araris glanced at her, amusement lighting up his features, whilst he filled two goblets with red wine. 'Who did you expect?'

'Well. I didn't know. First I thought, what would a lord – any lord – want with me? A few ideas came and went. Had to see for myself, but then I thought. Wait. Cousland. How's that possible. Took your advice, heard around a bit and looky there the camp's on fire with rumours. I guess I must've been so excited I forgot to take all I know of you into account. But that's fine as well, I get to meet a real nobleman, no matter what.' She shot a smirk his way.

'So, that's what took you so long. All that self-exploration, running around in camp and chasing after hearsay. You know, most nobles out there would've taken your tardiness as an insult, Anethayín. The noose would probably be prepared already.'

Anethayín took hold of the goblet he offered her, sipped a bit at the vintage, savouring its taste. 'Nah. Somebody has to keep you grounded, you know. Not have every wish of yours fulfilled. And stop with the gloominess. It's cliché.'

Araris eased into a chair, sighing, doing nothing but staring into his goblet. Anethayín blinked, something twitched in her gut, settled there like the bruise of a punch. Maybe the cliché wasn't so cliché after all.

'So. You're, uh, tent's nice. Better than our recent accommodations.'

Araris chuckled at her blatant change of topic. He peered around. 'It is. Isn't it. Planning on staying?'

'Me? Oh, no.' Her time to let a laugh escape. 'I belong among the common flock. Playing my lute and spreading cheer and happiness. Of course, I'll be spying for you and report anything out of the ordinary immediately, your Gloriously Shining Radiance, etcetera, etcetera.'

'Very good. Off with you, then, Mistress Spymaster.'

'I shall speed to your will.'

Yet, she stayed for quite some time before making good on her promise.

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So, when is Araris faking and when is he being sincere? Who knows . . .

Thank you all for reading and keeping up with me and my sporadic updates.

Love you all,

fjun