And Rise: Chapter 7
By the time they arrived, the gaping entrance to the catacombs was filled and Cauthrien's men were long gone.
Cauthrien forced her heel against one of the larger stones, rubble no doubt left over from the darkspawn several months before. It did not so much as shift or groan, and she frowned.
"Job done, then?" she asked, glancing back to him.
"No." Nathaniel was staring towards his father's estate, as he had been ever since they had left the barracks, and she sighed, stepping away from the fill and moving to stand beside him. Whatever anger she had felt in that alley had faded with his story and with the necessity of moving, and she looked at him now with only a small amount of frustration and little desire to walk away.
"Well, we can't unearth that entrance," she said, and looked for his reaction.
"Then we go in through the other door." He jerked his chin towards the keep, then flowed into motion. "You can tell your guards to look aside for a moment, I take it? Getting out a window was easy enough, it's getting in that is more of a problem. Hence the catacombs earlier this evening. If I hadn't managed that jump when everything began to collapse-"
"I will do what I can." She fell into a jog behind him, trying not to recreate the sudden roar and crash of below the earth, his hands on her, the overwhelming darkness. She wasn't so quiet as him with his soundless long strides, but they made good time through the thoroughfares and side streets, passing shuttered windows. The third bell rang from the chantry, distant across the city. "Three and a half hours," she murmured, and he held up a hand in acknowledgment.
Three and a half hours until he had to be Maker knew where to avoid the sun. The catacombs, she supposed, but he could be blocked in there without a chance of escape. A root cellar, but none existed within the city walls. A storage closet, but the thought of sleeping in one-
"Hold," Nathaniel breathed, and she came to a stop at his side. The last several feet of the alley stretched before them, before it opened out onto the main road leading to the estate. The main road that should have had at least five guardsmen patrolling it.
The main road that was empty.
"Shit," Cauthrien hissed, and crept forward, leaning around the corner to look to the gates. Nothing. The road was deserted. No guards patrolled the walls, and the gate was up.
Nathaniel joined her, close behind with his hands on his bow, an arrow nocked and ready. "Well," he said, "at least you won't need to pull rank?"
She snorted, hand at her sword. "Right. So, the other door?"
"The dungeons. How else do you think I stumbled over my father's ring?" His voice was tighter than before, and she glanced back to see his jaw tense, the muscles of his throat standing out. He stared straight ahead again. "Be ready. Without the catacombs exit, the beasts may be in the house itself."
She nodded, and murmured back only, "Follow me," then ducked out onto the street and advanced with quick, careful strides. There were gouges in the dirt, scuff-marks. And there were dark drips of blood, lines of it in the mortar of the walls. She bowed her head and pressed forward, until they were beyond the gate and in the surrounding yard.
The last time she had been there with a sword at the ready, prepared to kill if need be, the Warden had met her beyond the door. She had nearly lost her life in that battle. The thought steeled her shoulders and banished whatever tendrils of exhaustion were beginning to catch up to her after nearly a day on her feet. She crossed the yard with quick glances to either side, then tried the door.
The latch opened, and she pressed inside.
The first three ghouls fell upon them as they passed the chapel.
It was Nathaniel who saw them first, loosing an arrow with a shout that sent Cauthrien into a crouch. The first fell before it ever reached them, the arrow finding its mark in the center of its throat. The second dropped as she slashed its knees, then screeched as she drove the blade into its belly. The third forced her to the ground, but a kick sent it rolling off, and Nathaniel ended its unlife with an arrow between the eyes.
The rest were not so easily put down.
Two more lurked in the library, and just as the first wave fell, they charged screeching from the doorway. Cauthrien and Nathaniel fought them retreating, trying to make time down the hall to the far end. But the room at the end of the hall held still more enemies, lurking behind the doors. By the time they stumbled free, Cauthrien with blood in her hair and her eyes, Nathaniel nursing a fast-healing wound to his leg, she was gasping for breath and leaning hard against the wall.
"How much further?" Nathaniel growled as he looked for any sign of approaching ghoul, arrow trained for a moment on each of the closed doors. "I went out the first window I found. I can't get my bearings."
"Not far. End of this hall, left." She braced her hands on her knees a moment, then shoved herself upright. "Let's go. We can lock the door to his quarters behind us - there's a bar there. It will hold."
He nodded, expression turning shuttered and grim before he began to move again, padding fast down the hall. She followed, backing after him to keep her eye on the other entrance. The latch to Howe's quarters caught, but a kick just beside it from Nathaniel popped the wood open and they stumbled in.
Nathaniel quickly barred the door behind them, and made for the nearby table, finding flint and tinder to light one of the torches fallen from their holds dangling from the ceiling. She didn't know how he found his way in the dark, with the lack of windows, but soon light filled the room enough that she could see. Cauthrien trailed after him, checking her armor and trying to wipe the blood from her face. The rooms were in disarray, never cleaned after the Warden's rampage, wooden carvings fallen from the walls, chess set overturned. The old hearth was filled with nothing but cold, forgotten ash, and books lay scattered on the ground.
He bent to pick one up, dusting off the cover and setting it aside.
"And to think that I once believed I knew him," he murmured.
"Now is not the time." She brushed by him, catching his elbow in a brief touch to pull him along. The door down to the dungeons was just ahead, hanging open to the dark below. She glanced away for any other torch within reach, then hesitated.
Nathaniel Howe's portrait stared down from the wall near opposite the bed.
"Look," she murmured, and he did- then shook his head and strode past, taking the steps down to the dungeon two at the time.
"Another time, perhaps," he said, voice heavy with uncertainty and pain. She followed after, stepping quick to take her place at the lead.
They found six more of the ravenous beasts in the winding, twisting stone halls of the dungeons. The barred doors all hung open and the ghouls feasted on long-dry bones. They fought amidst the rattle of chains and the screech of bars against stone, forcing their way down and onward until Nathaniel whispered her name and led her into a side room. Her shoulders sagged with fatigue and she wiped again, futilely, at the blood once more streaking her lips. It was hopeless and only made the aches in her arms louder.
He closed the door tight behind them, leaving them in near dark; the torch had almost gone out twice in the chaos of the fighting, and she clutched it now, taking it to a sconce and setting it there.
"The passage opens here," he said, indicating a stone slab recently shifted. He moved to it and crouched to slide it into place, a respite for the moment. Their safe haven - down the hall from where his father died, from where he had tortured so many. It was a small room, barely anything, but the weight of the crimes and perversions enacted here made her anxious. She glanced to the door.
"It will hold," he assured her as he straightened again and took his bow in hand once more, loosing the string.
She nodded, trusting him because she had to and because she had no will left to be more nervous, more alert than she already was. For a long while she was silent, enjoying the break for what it was. She didn't speak again until her breathing had evened and her hands no longer trembled when she unclenched her fingers.
"Have you seen these things before?" she asked.
"I have," he said as he worked at retying the bowstring shorter. He glanced up to her, fingers pausing for just a moment. "They are walking corpses, animated by demons. Hunger demons, I believe." His gaze drifted back to the slab, to the catacombs, and she followed it.
"Are they really so fast?"
"Sometimes." He caught his bow against his foot and his opposite knee, bending it to string it anew. "If they have been possessed for many years. The body decays, and the demon inside rebuilds it, each time forgetting a little more what the original looked like. They become more Fade than human. As the limits of the body begin to break down and the demon strengthens in its time in this world, it can do more - be more. They are most dangerous when they have aged."
Slipping the top loop into its notch, he eased the pressure on the wood and then hefted it in his hands, testing the draw. "But they die," he murmured, "like any other walking corpse. Sometimes they take a little reminding of what its like, but pierce its heart or gut, take its head off, break its spine - it works. They will not rise again. Burning the bodies is even better."
"I'll have a team called in once we're done here," she assured, then rolled her right shoulder with a grimace, sagging against the wall behind her. Long hours awake and holding a blade had made the old injury flare up, the muscles tight and cramped and the joint aching. Just a little longer and she could rest, and-
Nathaniel set his bow down with a faint clatter, crossing the space between them. She looked up to him, quirking a brow in silent question.
"You must be tired," he said. His own expression spoke of echoing exhaustion, but he found the faintest of smiles for her, smoothing over the jagged edges she had seen in him ever since she had told him of his father. He moved closer still, too close, and she tensed. He shook his head and canted it in question. "How long have you been awake?"
"Since dawn," she said, exhaling shakily. She shrugged, shoulder twinging and tightening the lines of her mouth. "I will manage."
"Your shoulder pains you?" There was concern in his voice, patience and attention, and his hands flexed at his side as if he would touch her. She felt her cheeks bloom with heat. For all their verbal sparring, for all her distrust, she wanted that support. And the memory of his lips on her skin-
No.
"Howe-" He flinched, and she took a deep breath. No - she could not hurt him to push him away. "Nathaniel. Don't concern yourself. I can fight."
"I can fix those things for you, for a little while, if you'll let me." He met her gaze, and didn't look away as he reached up to rest a palm over her shoulder, against her pauldron.
"Does your monstrosity give you the power to heal, then?" she asked, the way he pressed against her making her words hitch. The small chamber felt too close and too warm suddenly, even though he moved no closer, and only shook his head.
"No. I'm afraid not. But…" He glanced away, down to his hand. Lifting it to his lips, he caught the fingertip of his glove in his teeth and tugged the leather free. Her breath caught and she leaned her head back against the stone behind her. Stone, she reminded herself, that had heard the screams of innocents. Stone no doubt that had been slicked with their blood as well. But that all faded as he tossed the leather aside.
"But," he repeated, "just as your blood kept me from dying, a drop of mine can ease your pains for a little while."
"Blood magic," she whispered, tensing not only from the idea of it but from how close he seemed, how lidded his eyes had become - how her breath quickened in turn while her stomach twisted. She remembered too clearly what it had felt like for him to drink from her, what besides panic the sensation of his breath on her throat had created in her.
She settled her hand against his chest, but did not push him away.
"Not blood magic," he said, voice low and thick, his eyes focused now on her mouth.
"Then what's the trick to it?"
"Too much and you will want more of it. But too much is a cup full, a night's drink full. A nicked finger," he said as he brought his hand to his mouth, "would not risk so much." He paused there, lips parted enough that she could see the sharp tip of one elongated canine, then let his hand drop. "I will give it only if you ask it of me."
Only if, she thought and couldn't stop the weak laugh from rising in her throat. Only if, as if his closeness was not making her head spin, her heart beat double-time, her fingers twitch and curl with the urge to take hold of him. She reached out, settling her other hand on his hip.
His lips quirked into a smile - easy, amused, surprised, not the least bit predatory - and he leaned in until they were nose to nose. "But ask it of me," he murmured, the sound rumbling through her chest and down her spine, "and I'll gladly give it."
Even if exhaustion hadn't weighed her down, even if her shoulder hadn't twinged and ached beneath his hand, she didn't think she would have turned away. Blood was hardly in her thoughts. It was the temptation of tasting him, of feeling him even with a barrier of steel between. The threat of attack momentarily forgotten, she leaned forward and breathed against his lips,
"Please."