And Rise: Chapter 2
She woke up on her back, halfway down the staircase, her head throbbing and her throat raw. She stared up into the dark.
Death, she thought. Is this death?
She remembered little of what had come before. Hands on her, arms around her, the hiss of breath by her ear. She had fought - yes. That she could remember, and the bruises on her shoulders, on her knuckles, made it more real. She grasped at threads. Darkness, choking on the earth in the air, and then a hand over her mouth-
There was a flicker of light, a cough, and she turned her head. Down on the ground below, Alan held aloft his torch and looked around. The others had also been knocked down by the crash of earth, and began to pull themselves up as she watched. Carefully, she rolled onto her side, then her front, pushing herself up to her knees.
No, not dead.
But what had happened?
Most of the light had gone out, and the glow of the torch that still burned down below didn't quite reach the top of the stairs, but she could see a ragged shadow. There was a gap there, an emptiness. The stairs were gone. Whatever was up there, she couldn't reach it now.
And below, dirt and rubble blocked off the path they had would have taken further into the hall. There were other exits, small and narrow, but they likely led only to more grave chambers. She coughed, standing and beginning to pick her way down to the floor.
There would be no more exploration that night.
"Alan?" she called, searching for him in the rubble. The light came from his torch, and he raised his other hand to her. She let out a breath. "What happened?"
"I'm not sure, Ser!" He was doing his best to sound confident and unshaken, but she could make out the tremor there. "The stairs just began to collapse - are you alright?"
"I'm fine." She coughed again, pulling dust and dirt from her lungs. "Is anybody hurt?"
He moved to the person nearest him, and she paused to count heads. Everybody was there and some degree of upright, and she let out a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed was to have killed one of her own because of an ill-placed step.
"Everybody's fine," Alan called up, as other torches flared back to life. She could see now that he was favoring his sword arm, but she could also make out the shape of a shrug.
"Just spooked, Ser," another added, and she chuckled. It was awkward and relieved and rasped in her throat, but it was a reminder that she was alive. That they were all alive, even down in the dark.
"Understandable. Let's get everybody up and out," she said, resuming her descent. A glance back behind her showed how large the break in the stairs was - at least thirty feet of empty air. There was nothing to be done for it, and the pile of rubble from the crash went well above the ceiling of the hall that had led to the rest of the catacombs.
She looked back down as Alan asked, "Ser?"
"There's nowhere left for us to search," she said as her booted foot touched the ground at last. She quickly put distance between herself and the stairs, going instead to help Dairene to her feet. Left unsaid was, and none of us are in a mind to do it. No need to test pride aloud when everybody already knew it.
It would, she thought as they began moving, be a faster trip out then it had been in. At the very least, she no longer felt eyes on the back of her neck, and the light of torches filled the hall and banished most of the shadows.
It was only as they reached the entrance that she realized that her sword was gone.
She had never been so grateful to see the jagged spike of Dragon's Peak blocking out half the full moon as she was that evening. Its shadow cut across her barracks room as she shed her armor, and crossed her path as she made her way to a small tavern a fifteen minute walk from the palace. Those swaths of shadow were nothing compared to the enclosing dark beneath the city, and she took solace and strength every time she emerged from it.
There were bruises across her body from hitting the ground or being struck by debris. There was a tattoo pattern of fingers on her throat, too, but she tried to ignore it; whoever had grabbed her had disappeared, and she preferred to think it a figment. The bruises could have had other explanations. Had she clawed at her throat for breath?
Yes, that seemed more likely than a shadowy assailant who pulled her out of harms way and left without a single trace, nothing taken but a sword of little value.
She ordered whiskey at the bar, then sank with her cup in her usual seat, a small table in the far corner where she could watch. This was one of the few taverns in Denerim that she could afford and that didn't care if she was guard captain of Denerim, that didn't care that she had once led Loghain Mac Tir's armies. It was a place she could forget herself for just a little while, and she took advantage of it for all it was worth, knocking back half her cup in just a few swallows and letting the burn of it work the last of the earth's cold from her limbs.
There were smudges of dirt on her knuckles and under her nails, and she picked them off while she scanned the room. It was busier than normal, perhaps because of the chill in the air or because of the otherwise fair weather. It was not so wet as it usually was in late Harvestmere, and the streets too had seemed livelier. It had been a reassurance and a blessing. No matter what happened below the streets, life continued.
She took another swallow, then started at the looming of a shadow in the corner of her vision. She hadn't heard an approach, and she turned, frowning.
"I don't want company," she said.
The man standing near her was cloaked from head to toe, but she could make out a smile on his lips, a patch of beard beneath his mouth. There was a curl, too, of dark hair, a tendril snaking from inside the folds of fabric shadowing the rest of his face.
"I have a question, if I may," he said, and his words were tinged with a faint accent. Marcher, she thought. "Ser Cauthrien, yes?"
Cauthrien stiffened, then sat back, arms crossed over her chest. "Yes. Your question is asked."
He chuckled. "No, forgive me. I have a question for Ser Cauthrien. For you. Do you mind?" He gestured to a chair, and she had half a thought to say that yes, she minded.
Instead, she said only, "I would know who I'm speaking with."
The man moved to sit, his back to the rest of the room. She noted the creak of leather and the faint scent of salt and wood, the specific musk ofship that was so rare in Ferelden. She watched too as he reached up and pushed his hood back, revealing pale skin, pale eyes, and dark hair braided at his temples and pulled back.
It also revealed a hooked nose she couldn't not recognize, and she inhaled sharply.
"Ah, yes, I thought you'd recognize me. Or my lineage, as it were. I am Nathaniel." He didn't hold out a hand, or smile, or do anything but lean his elbows against the table, hands propped below his chin. "We met a long time ago."
She swallowed. She knew that name, knew that nose, but it made no sense. She remembered a young man - a boy - but she hadn't even been knighted yet and had seen him only in passing. He had been at Rendon's heels, and had watched Loghain with wide eyes, the sort that had said let me be you. He'd been like so many other children brought to the Landsmeet by their parents. No, she remembered him.
But it didn't make sense.
Cauthrien shook her head slowly, not looking away from him. "Nathaniel H-"
His reaction was instant, a tightening of his hands into fists, a scowl, nearly a snarl, twisting his lips and brow. "Don't say that name." His expression tightened, hardened- and then he shook his head. His voice softened. "That's why I'm here."
"You died eight years ago."
She remembered the news, that Rendon Howe's son had been taken by the same sea that would later take King Maric. She could even remembere the funeral, if she thought hard enough. She had stood guard at it, alongside templars and beginning to wilt from the heat of the pyre as it burned a child's clothing, his toys, the bits and pieces of a life lost.
And yet he sat across from her, full grown and focused wholly on her, and the smell of the sea was not of its murky, roiling depths but of the world of men on its surface.
Nathaniel Howe leaned forward.
"My father told people as much," he said. "Lost to the waves. But the ship made it to the Free Marches." He smiled, a grim thing, thin and tight, and finally sat back, carding a gloved hand through his hair. "I have… been in there ever since. I tried to return when word of the Blight reached Ostwick, but there were few ships willing to come near. I arrived just today, before dawn."
Cauthrien said nothing at first, brow furrowed until her head began to ache. She took another swallow of whiskey in an attempt to dull it. Nathaniel Howe had died eight years earlier. Rendon had never spoken of him in her presence, and the world had moved on. But here he was, unmistakable and alive. Pale and drawn, perhaps, but alive.
"And what do you want of me?" she finally asked, looking from her cup to him.
"I want you to tell me what happened to my father."