Ruan could see a building burning on the Western horizon, where the dull grey sky had been painted blood red by the setting sun. Against it blazed a fierce point of light and a thin trail of black smoke. He didn't have long to ponder what those distant flames were consuming, however. "Hold the line!" The order came to him across a din of shouting and the clatter of blows against his shield. He braced and dug his heels into the gaps between the slick, wet cobblestones. His tall shield interlocked with those to the left and right. The shield wall flexed and held against the bodies surging onto it.

"Push!" Came another order, and they obeyed as one. Ruan leaned his weight into his shield arm and pushed off from the stones. The bodies clamouring against the shield wall were thrown back by the sudden surge. Several of the attackers tumbled over the edge of the causeway and into the cold, forbidding water. There was a howl of dismay as they staggered back, but they held their ground. In front of them a man no older than Ruan had fallen onto the slippery ground. He was writhing in pain as he clutched his head. Blood was diluting into the salt water between the cobbles where he had fallen. Suddenly something struck Ruan on the head, jolting it to the side. The ringing inside the cylindrical helm was muffled by the cloth padding. "Get your shield up, Trevelyan!" Came a shouted order. He did so, just in time to block another hurled cobblestone. "Animals!" The attackers shouted at them as they tore up loose causeway stones and threw them. "You're starving us!" Ruan kept his head down as they thumped heavily onto his shield.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Behind him the causeway stretched away into the water, like a floating road, leading to a small island. The Hermitage was little more than a steep hill that rose out of the grey sea against the grey sky. It was crowned by the tower of a large chantry, and that was surrounded with a ring of outbuildings and a wall. At one time 'The Hermitage' had been home to a true hermit, a holy woman of the Exalted Age who was famed for speaking to the eals and the gulls and healing the sick. Now, however, it was the abode of a religious community of several dozen chantry brethren. Soon enough the tide would rise to drown the causeway and make the Hermitage a true island once again. One way or another, Ruan knew, this drama would be resolved by then.

He looked over at the one who had been calling the orders. The Knight-captain, standing behind the shield wall, was marked out by the spiked peak atop her helm. She was glancing down at the rising water too. "Batons!" She called out. Ruan hesitated, but then he reached for the long wooden baton at his belt, along with the others in the shield wall. "You are ordered to disperse immediately. This is your final warning!" The knight-captain shouted above the din. A moment later she had to dodge out of the way of a stone. The crowd was not backing away, nor did their shouts and jeers lessen. "Advance!" Called the captain.

The line advanced. From inside the helm Ruan's field of vision was narrowed to a slit and the din was overlaid by the more immediate sound of his own breathing. The people in front of him wore no armour, only ragged, patched clothing. A few carried axes or other farm implements, but most were unarmed except for pieces of wood or cobblestones. They were all soaked to the bone, most of them gaunt. At first they backed away from the advancing shield wall, but then they bunched up against those pressing in from behind. A man to Ruan's left rushed the shields alone. There was a crack as a baton struck him on the head. Then the crowd rushed again.

Ruan braced as a big man lifted what looked like a broken fence post high above his head and brought it down on his shield. The big man was wild-eyed and grimacing, screaming obscenities as he lifted the fence post again. It left him wide open. It would have been easy for Ruan to swing his baton and strike a blow on the man's temple that would have dropped him straight away. Instead, Ruan ducked behind his shield and took the second impact, then he pulled the shield back and drove the end of the baton hard into the man's belly. As he doubled over Ruan stepped forward out of the line and pushed into his attacker with his shield. The big man overbalanced into the people behind him. Now the ragged crowd was huddled so close together that most of them could not raise their arms. The Templar shield wall advanced remorselessly and Ruan could hear the crack of wood against bodies. At the edge of the causeway more people toppled over into the deep water and flailed in the waves. The crowd started to retreat. Suddenly the pressure on his shield was lifted.

They kept advancing with their batons brandished as the mob backed off. Along the way they picked up men who had been battered into senselessness and paused to fish some of the rioters out of the water. The sodden and shivering unfortunates were pushed ahead of them along the causeway or lifted onto shields to be carried by knights in the second rank. The water was lapping above their ankles as they climbed an incline in the causeway to a raised platform. It was flanked by two obelisks of granite, both carved into stylised renderings of human warriors. There the Templar shield wall halted.

Ruan pulled off his helm and watched the mob dissolve into gaggles of listless, defeated people. He looked at the wooden baton in his right hand, then at the granite warrior towering beside him. It carried a weapon and shield, too. The features of his face, carved in minimalist lines, gave him a fierce implacability. There was an outline of a sunburst on his shield, much like the one emblazoned on Ruan's. The Chantry's histories named the granite warriors as representatives of Havard, the revered bodyguard of Andraste; Havard the steadfast; Havard the Aegis; Havard the guardian of the faithful. Ruan wondered what he would have made of this scene, where the champions of the just beat the faithful away with a stick.

It had all been very different, and so much simpler, back home. There they had been calling in the faithful with bells and chants from far and wide. Ostwick's great cathedral couldn't even hold them all. Each day the procession had already been lining the square at dawn; scores upon scores of pilgrims greeting the sun with prayers as they awaited the opening of the cathedral gates. The hum of their voices could be heard even through the thick oak of those gates. Ruan had waited there every morning for a month, and each morning the pilgrims had gathered. While he waited Ruan had stood looking up at the great rose window, set high above the fires of the holy brazier at the far end of the cathedral. The sun had been rising behind that window, gradually lifting the cathedral out of darkness. When it had finally filled the window its light had streamed in through the stained glass, tinted into a rainbow of colours.

It was the signal that Ruan had been waiting for. He and three other men in the same plain robes worked as one to haul the gates open, and let the pilgrims into the light. They had come blinking upwards in reverence and awe as the chapters began their song. They spoke in hushed whispers and a kaleidoscope of tongues. There were accents of Markham and Kirkwall and Starkhaven. Dialects of Nevarra and Antiva and Rivain. Several times he had heard words he thought he recognised as Tevene. All of them wore the same small pewter badge. It was the shape of a ship with a sunburst in place of a sail. Many had carried a single gold coin and a small scroll. Some had fumbled with them nervously, some pressed the scroll or the coin to their lips as they mumbled a prayer. Even those that did not show them would have had both tucked away somewhere safe, for that was why they had come to Ostwick. Ostwick; which proclaimed itself as the place where Andraste and Maferath's hosts had first landed on their quest to bring freedom and light were once had been slavery and darkness. Ostwick; the port through which all those must pass who wished to cross the Waking Sea and follow the pilgrim's path to Andraste's birthplace. The chanters had sung the pilgrim's thoughts aloud.

"All sins are forgiven! All crimes pardoned!

Let no soul harbour guilt! Let no soul hunger for justice!

By the Maker's will I decree harmony in all things.

Let balance be restored…"

"And the world given eternal life." The procession had echoed the final line of the verse in their own harmony. There were great urns beside the holy brazier and each pilgrim had dropped a gold coin into one of them before they dropped their prayer scroll into the fire. Once they had passed the great fire most pilgrims fell into silent prayer and followed the train back down the aisle to be spilled back out into the square, a little lighter of their sins and of their gold.

Ruan had watched the scene play out often enough over the previous month, and his part in it had been done for another day, so he slipped quietly away into the cloisters to find the cell that had been his home during that time. It was a small, bare room, with a bed, a table, a stool and a statue of Andraste standing in a small alcove. Usually Ruan had been returning to the company of only a small collection of books. On that day, however, he had found a long-legged man with dark skin and a beard that had been trimmed just enough to look effortlessly elegant rather than ragged and unkempt. He had been sitting on Ruan's bed with his feet up on a chest. "Roon! There you are." Conrad Evenrig greeted him as he frowned into one of Ruan's books. "Are you having trouble sleeping? Because this thing you are reading seems like the perfect remedy."

"Not exactly." Ruan replied. He had been having trouble sleeping, but he saw no reason for Conrad to know that. "What brings you here, my Lord?"

Conrad had pulled a face, "My Lord? You've been living in a chantry for weeks, not years, Roon. They shouldn't have got to you yet. I mean, Maker's Breath, man, you're even dressed like one of them. I'm going to have to get you out of here before it's too late for you."

"I think that ship has already sailed, Conrad."

"Naysayer! You and your sister have been nagging me to put a properly respectable household together for years, and now that I am finally trying to you have both abandoned me… Come on, Roon! I need knights in my service, people that I can trust."

Ruan had raised his eyebrow at that. Tamsyn, he knew, would have done far worse, "I'm not a knight… And I am sure that there is no shortage of those who have been knighted who would be clamouring to join the household of someone as eminent as you, Bann Evenrig."

Conrad had sighed and shook his head. "I was afraid you'd say that. You Trevelyans might have the horse as your badge, but you're all pig-headed." He tapped at the boar embroidered on his sleeve, the badge of his own house, then jumped up from the bed and tapped the chest with his foot. "I brought you this. You left it in my city estate before all of the trouble and I thought you might want it before I left for Ferelden."

Ruan had recognised the chest then. He forced a smile. "Thank you, Conrad."

Conrad nodded, then shook his head one more time as he looked at Ruan. He slapped him on the shoulder as he left. Left alone, Ruan had sat on the bed and stared at the chest without opening it for several long minutes. Then he shook himself back to his feet. There were so many things to be done in those last few days before the pilgrims sailed. He picked up a long scroll from the table and went back out into the cloisters. The door to the revered mother's study was at the top of a short flight of steps, and had been open. Inside was a bright, airy room with a high, vaulted ceiling and large south-facing windows. There were two desks. At the closer of the two sat a woman who was not much older than Ruan. She wore the vestments of a chantry sister and a deep furrow in her brow. She had been resting her cheek on a bunched fist as she glared down at a jumble of papers. Her cap was sitting on top of another, higher pile of papers and her coppery hair, bundled on top of her head, was exposed.

"Room for one more?" Ruan asked her and held up his own scroll.

Sister Tamsyn Trevelyan had lifted her head and given him the same look of suspicion she used to give her little brother when he handed her things in the garden as children.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A blessed morning to you too, Sister." Ruan replied with a smile, "It's the map."

Tamsyn sighed and massaged the furrow in her brow with the ball of her thumb. It didn't get any shallower. "What map?"

"The only maps of the Ferelden Coastlands in our library were drawn back in the Blessed Age, before the Orlesian invasion." Revered Mother Thelois voice was melodious, despite the crackle of age in it, and both Trevelyans had turned when she spoke. The leader of the Chantry in Ostwick was a slight woman with an old, worn face and sharp, shrewd eyes. "I asked your brother to make sure that they are not hopelessly out of date." She stood, leaning her weight onto her stick as she held out her hand. "I shall take the map, young man. I think that our Tamsyn has her hands full." Tamsyn had handed the scroll to the Revered Mother and watched as she unrolled it on her own desk. "You've made a whole new copy." Thelois observed.

Ruan shrugged, "I had time on my hands, and there were too many changes. The Orlesians built new castles and pulled down others, and many of the landholdings have changed hands several times since the invasion. It seemed a shame to scrawl on the original."

Thelois traced the coastline with her bony finger, it had stopped as she came upon the place where Ruan had marked the Hermitage Island. "Did you make sure to check the charters." she asked.

"Yes, Your Reverence. The old charters were all renewed by King Maric when he took power. The island is forbidden to all who are not in service to the Chantry. As long as we land there no lord may make any claims."

"Good. It would be a great shame to spend all these pilgrims' alms in making a gift to some Ferelden lord." Thelois walked over to Tamsyn and patted her on the shoulder. "This is the third time that you have been through those papers, my dear. I think that you have done enough."

Tamsyn's breath hissed out through her teeth. "Your Reverence, when I am over there…"

"We shall manage." Thelois had been ready to interrupt her. "I do have some people here who can follow instructions, especially ones as thorough as those you are leaving us. The ships are already being loaded and you will depart in the morning. You should have some faith in your sisters and be preparing yourself rather than the rest of us."

Tamsyn opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. "Yes, Revered Mother."

The Revered Mother had turned to Ruan, "Serah Trevelyan, will you make sure that your sister goes to her room immediately without attempting to load the ships by her herself?"

"I shall do my best, Your Reverence." Ruan replied. "Do I have your permission to knock her unconscious?"

"Do what you must, Serah." Thelois commanded and turned back to her window.

Tamsyn, for her part, had glared at Ruan and snatched up her cap as she rose to her feet. "I can find my own way, Little Brother." She bowed to the Revered Mother, and swept out of the room.

In the end, the only way that Ruan had managed to get Tamsyn to her cell was by taking a detailed checklist from her and making a faithful promise to visit Ostwick's docks himself and not to return until all items were accounted for. The rest of that afternoon was spent counting barrels of grain, salted fish and meat, sacks of clothing and blankets, tents, healing herbs and herds of livestock as they were hefted into the bellies of cargo ships by an army of longshoremen. He had made sure to report to Tamsyn with the list before he finally returned to his own room.

By then the cathedral had been ringing with the cadences of the Chant as the company of pilgrims sang to ask blessed Andraste to intercede with the Maker, as only she among His children could, to beg Him to look kindly upon this enterprise of mercy. From Ruan's room it could be heard as a melodious murmur; indistinct yet familiar as a warm breeze. He was sitting quietly on his bed looking at the chest that Conrad had delivered. On the table in front of him sat the breastplate of the armour that had been inside, the etched designs of rearing stallions could be picked out clearest on the parts of the metal which he had polished, a job that was still only half finished. He wasn't sure when he had stopped polishing or how long he had been staring blankly at the burnished stallion, listening to the faraway music. He had taken a leather thong from around his neck and wrapped it around his hand. From it swung an ivory ring, its two ends carved intricately into the shape of horses' heads that matched the device on the armour.

He could remember the first time that he had seen that armour, and how proud and happy it had made him. It had arrived at his quarters in Val Royeaux with a letter from his father, carried by the armourers' apprentice. It had been the first letter he had received from his father for three years, since his decision to leave the University, refuse a life in the chantry, and enroll in the Académie des Chevaliers. "We all make our choices. Wear yours well, my son." Was all it had said. Bann Trevelyan was a taciturn man, even in his correspondence, but he said a lot with few words, and more with his actions. The gift had been extremely generous, and well timed. Ruan would have been able to wear it at his graduation as a chevalier, had he attended it. He had not. Nor had he ever worn the armour. His father had sent no more letters. Had it really been more than a year? For more than half of that time Ruan had been living on the hospitality of Conrad Evenrig, fearing the stern summons to return home. The only thing that had come from Bann Trevelyan was a deafening silence. If Ruan's father said much with few words, his silences were positively eloquent.

Another chest had been sitting under Ruan's bed for weeks. He pushed his chair back from the table and pulled it out. As he opened it a Templar helm stared back up at him, lying on a matching scarlet sash and tabard. Its T-shaped visor was blank and anonymous. The steel shone like it had never been worn. The time had finally come. The templar guards did not move to stop him when he left his cell. He was wearing only a plain white smock and sandals. The cloisters had been quiet in the moonlight as he made his way into the cavernous space of the cathedral. He had passed ranks of worshippers until he came to the small chapel sheltered in the transept. Tamsyn and one of the Mothers who served the cathedral underneath Thelois had been waiting for him at the railing that marked the boundaries of the chapel. "Are you sure about this?" Tamsyn whispered to him as she stood beside him. He just nodded in reply. What did it really mean to be sure? To be sure was a choice, and he had been running from this choice for years. It had taken until then for him to know that there was nowhere to run to but places where he would find more doubts. He paced forward into the chapel. It was decorated only with a simple marble statue of Andraste, clasping a sword in both hands, her face lifted to the heavens. He had fallen to his knees before her and bowed his head.

The Mother began to sing from the chant, and Ruan murmured the words along with her. They were words he had known how to recite by heart since childhood. Yet he had concentrated on every one of them now. He had to feel them. He had to believe them. He had to stop the chattering thoughts that threatened to rise to a roar and carry him away. It should have been enough. He remembered a time when those words burned like fire, when they could bring tears to his eyes and make his whole body and mind sing as one. Yet try as he might, his body felt heavy as lead, and his mind would not hold the words. They formed on his tongue and were gone just as quickly.

When it was done the Mother bid him rise to his feet. She said "Go in peace, Brother." and was an affirmed lay-brother of the chantry. He remembered being surprised that it was over, and he felt no different. He had walked alone back to his cell where two chantry brothers were waiting for him. Knowing what would come next he had knelt on the stone floor and bowed his head. One of the brothers stepped closer and laid a hand on his head. There was a gentle tug on his hair and the snick of shears and Ruan had watched the copper locks fall like autumn leaves around his knees. He closed his eyes and placed his hand on his breast. The ivory ring was still there, hanging from his neck on the leather thong. Had he forgotten to remove it or deliberately left it there? All at once he had found the words to hold onto. "We all make our choices. Wear yours well, my son."

When it was done he was left alone. At least he thought he was alone, until he stood and found Tamsyn watching him quietly from the door. "It is usual for the Affirmed to wait a year before taking their full vows." She had said, matter-of-factly. Ruan nodded in reply and sat down on the bed, numb. Tamsyn walked over to the table where the half-polished armour still lay and ran her fingers over the rearing stallion etching into the breastplate. "I have found that here you can be part of something. There is a lot that you can do, and you have options. The Revered Mother has spoken to the knight-commander and the templars will accept you. Though… she has been impressed with your work. She has suggested that you could be very useful serving as a cleric in the chapter house here."

Ruan just stared at the locks of his hair scattered on the flagstones and ran his hand over his stubbled head. "I can't stay here while you all go." he said.

"Life as a templar involves a lot of hard choices, Ruan. It can be… harsh. Thelois is offering you her patronage. You could rise far with her help."

"I have made my choice, Tamsyn." he had cut her off with more of a snap in his voice than he intended and the part of him that still had room for such feeling had been sorry for that. She left without saying anything else, and for that he had been grateful. Some time after she was gone had risen and swept away his fallen hair along with all the broken pieces of the past. The next day was to bring a new beginning, and the start of their great mission to Ferelden.

So why did he keep reliving that night, over and over, even weeks later as sat beneath the rough granite face of Havard?

"Maes, take Cooper and Trevelyan, I want that wagon brought up here as a barricade. See to it." Knight-captain Roslinn's voice cut through his reverie with the same snap and brought him back to the present. She had pulled off her helm and hood and her chestnut hair was trying to curl into waves on her head, even though it was short-cropped and plastered with sweat. She was standing beside the other statue that marked the end of the causeway and was gesturing with her long baton. Ruan followed where it pointed at a wagon on the edge of the dunes. He marched behind two templars up the sandy slope. The wagon was standing where the tough, wiry grass started to claim the sand as its own at the crest of the dune. Tents and makeshift shelters spread out amongst the dunes and the fields beyond. They huddled and pooled in the hollows between the dunes and spread out onto the fields beyond. A group of a eight people huddled around a small fire beside the wagon, at least four of them were children under ten. A hollow-eyed man stood up as he saw them approach. "We weren't making any trouble. We want nothing to do with those fools. We were just here minding our own business, I swear it."

"We're just here for the wagons." said the templar beside Ruan.

The man looked stricken. "My wagon? Why? It's all I've got left."

"Requisition. It's needed." Ser Maes replied tersely

"We can return it when this is over." Ruan added, hastily. It was hard to look at the man.

They dragged the wagon down to the threshold of the causeway. Ruan stepped back and watched the templars as they heaved it over onto its side. He winced at the sound of splintering and cracking wood as it crashed down. A second wagon had been fetched and that too was overturned to form a wooden wall between the two Havards. As the tide went out it would uncover the land between the coast and the Hermitage, but they all knew that they had no need to defend the wide sand flats. A number of people had already gone missing attempting to cross them, and Ruan himself had helped to fish a man out of the quicksands close to the causeway.

They risked the dangerous sands in desperation to reach the supply of food from Ostwick that landed every other week on the island. When the so called 'pilgrimage of mercy' had first landed there had been no-one on this lonely stretch of coast except the sisters and the seals. Ruan had spent the first week riding out to nearby chantries, escorting wagon loads of food. Within a fortnight, however, the first refugees had started to arrive. A whole caravan of people had come bearing news of villages destroyed by the darkspawn in the South. The pilgrimage had been true to its name. It had fed and clothed them. They had offered to escort the frightened, hungry people to Highever. Then they were told that, in fact, these people had come from Highever and found the city gates closed against them. So they had given the refugees tents and told them that they could take shelter on the island after a period of time. They had to be certain that none of them carried the blight. Before that time had passed, however, another caravan had arrived, then another. Soon enough the trickle of people had become a flood. Many of them were fleeing civil war between men rather than the darkspawn.

By the end of the second month the camp had swelled to the size of a small town and there was no way they could be accommodated on the tiny island. Cartloads of food wheeled across the causeway from the Hermitage were picked clean and still left people hungry. The stores on the island were emptied faster than the Ostwick ships could fill them. The first reduction in the rations created grumbling. The second had halved the ration still further, and that was when trouble began. The handful of sisters and templars handing out the meagre rations had been mobbed and forced to retreat across the causeway. The mob had followed them and it had taken the whole of the templar contingent to force them back. Now they were all stranded on the mainland with the tide still rising, and barely a third part of the day's ration had been distributed.

They laid out the unconscious rioters in the sand in front of the barricade and then hunkered down behind it. Ser Roslinn inspected their makeshift wall with a deep frown. "Tomorrow we must find enough timber to build a stockade here, otherwise they may be tempted to try again, especially when the ships return from Ostwick." She muttered.

"It's been two weeks already. Perhaps they're not coming back." Ser Maes was grey haired and scarred. He wore an expression of determined resignation.

"They'll be back." Ruan said with confidence.

"It'll be a drop in the ocean anyway. There's no way that we can keep feeding this lot. If you ask me it's time that they pulled us out. We've done our bit."

"Then what happens to these people?" Ruan replied.

Maes shrugged. "It's not our country, Trevelyan. Let the Fereldens feed them."

"With what? Half of Ferelden's harvest must have been lost." Ruan also thought about the stories of the darkspawn creeping Northwards, with nobody seeming prepared to fight them.

"Maes might be right," Ser Roslinn said quietly as she looked across the barricade at the camp, "We can't keep this up for much longer, and we aren't helping these people by keeping them here with promises we can't deliver on. We've already done more than we set out to do."

"We can't just sail away and leave them." Ruan replied

"You can follow the orders you are given, Brother." Roslinn cut back, turning to fix him with a stare. "Like in the shieldwall. You were ordered to keep your shield high and overlapped and use your baton."

"I used my baton, and the shieldwall held."

"You broke the line and risked us all because you lacked the stomach to strike when and where it was needed. If you can't do that you will not make a templar, and you will address me as Knight-captain when you speak to me, Brother."

Ruan's face burned, but he bowed his head. "Yes, Knight-captain."

"The first watch is yours, Brother Trevelyan." she jumped down from the barricade.

"Yes, Knight-captain." Ruan climbed up onto the underside of the capsized wagon and found a perch from where he could watch the camp. As the others began to light a fire he suddenly remembered the smoke he had seen on the horizon. He turned to the West and looked for it, but whatever it was had been burned away and there was no light to be seen. He wondered what had been lost to the flames.

It had been embroidered flames blazing on their sails when they had left Ostwick harbour on the morning after his vows. The tall ships had been magnificent with the sunburst of the Chantry above them and the cheers of the people of Ostwick behind them. All of them, Ruan included, had felt like heroes. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He pulled on the leather thong around his neck to pull the ivory horsehead ring from inside his breastplate. "I have made my choice." he said to himself as he pressed it to his lips. He had to believe it. "I will wear it well."