“Attacks started this summer,” Verschel continued, as if updating the Wardens on the year’s crop status. “Come every week now. Sometimes two or three times. Wager it will be more than that soon enough.”
The road abruptly opened into a small market square with a well at its center. They turned before reaching the large house that loomed at the end of it, its windows and doors boarded over. The track they followed was narrower and darker than the one they’d left. It stopped at a small house, gray like all the others. Verschel led them around the back and gestured vaguely to a crooked shed.
“There’s tonight’s,” he said.
The door to the shed had burst inward. Splinters littered the floor. Woodcarving tools were scattered about, knocked and kicked from the stand that had held them. A swerving trail of dark brown led away from the pool of dried blood on the dusty floor. The trail disappeared when it left the shed, washed away by the rain.
Mina watched the Wardens closely; she was shaking now, her arms wrapped around herself. The rest of the crowd hung back, trampling the remains of a garden.
Evka went to work immediately. She knelt among the wreckage, observing the blood trail closely.
“Who?” she asked simply.
“My brother,” Mina said. “Willem.” Her level tone failed to cover the crack in her voice.
“Mes condoléances,” Antoine murmured.
“Go on,” Verschel said. “You brought your help. That’s enough.” Mina didn’t move, but tears threatened the corners of her eyes. The crowd stared.
“The attacks,” Antoine said loudly, drawing attention to himself. “What brought them on?”
“It’s this damned place,” said a man with thick arms and tangled hair. “Bad luck all over.”
An elderly woman in a nightgown and overlarge boots bobbed in agreement. “Boy won’t be the last—”
“We don’t know he’s dead!” Mina cut in.
“You didn’t run for them.” The elderly woman waved vaguely at Evka. “You ran. You knew.”
Mina paced away from the crowd, her fists clenched, then turned to Antoine. Her breath was coming faster now. “There’s not always a body. Darkspawn take people, don’t they? Sometimes?”
Antoine wasn’t sure. He hadn’t died, but that was luck. They hadn’t taken him either.
“What chance does someone taken by darkspawn have?” the man said. “None.”
“If there’s a way—” Mina began.
“False hope’s no good either,” Verschel added.
Antoine could answer that.
“We don’t know it’s false yet,” he said. He glanced back at Evka. They didn’t know, did they?
Evka stood, brushing the dust from her hands. “It’s not darkspawn.”
“What?” Mina spluttered. “It has to … you can’t…”
Antoine separated himself from the crowd and came to stand next to Evka. “But we saw them earlier today,” he murmured. Ride in, save the village from darkspawn—that was the plan, wasn’t it? That’s how being a Warden worked.
“The blood’s right there. What do you sense?” Evka asked quietly, then added: “And try not to block it out this time.”
Antoine flushed. It wasn’t that he tried to block it out, he just didn’t … He pushed the complaints from his mind and tried to focus. The crowd shifted behind him, out of view but distracting.
“These people are scared.” He took a deep breath. The air was still heavy and damp. “It’s going to rain again.”
“And?” Evka prompted.
Antoine closed his eyes and listened for the sick song that pulled at the corners of his mind and gave him a headache whenever darkspawn were nearby. The song made him feel on edge. When he got too close, it was loud and it made him think of things he didn’t want to … But he felt fine. There was nothing there.
“It’s not darkspawn,” he said.
Mina’s defiance broke through the Warden-lesson. “You’re wrong.”
“Darkspawn don’t take a single person at a time. Not like this,” Evka said. “Your brother fought. There’s blood on that ax—and it’s not the right blood. It wasn’t them.”
The crowd erupted into a chorus of resignation and distrust:
“So you’ll leave?”
“The Wardens’ promise only goes for darkspawn, doesn’t it?”
“Why come here, then?”
Antoine held up his hands, hoping the crowd would quiet. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. But it was fine. The plan had shifted, but he could adjust.
“Something is after you. We know that much. We won’t leave you at its mercy.” They wouldn’t, right? He glanced back at Evka, and she gave him a slight nod. “Let us try. There’s no harm in that.”
The crowd continued to grumble, but gave up the argument and wandered home, leaving the Wardens alone with Mina. “Why does no one think we’ll help?” Antoine asked.
“Because Eichweill’s cursed,” Mina said. “That’s what people say. And we’re either too far out or too Maker-damned for folks to bother with our bad luck. Or they show up and die, too.”
“We didn’t come here to abandon you,” Antoine said. “That’s not what Wardens do.”
“Then prove it,” Mina snapped. She took a deep breath, then gave the Wardens the first and only hopeful look they’d received. “Please,” she said, then turned and went inside the house.
“That’s not what Wardens do?” Evka asked with a smirk.
“It’s not what I would do,” Antoine said. So there were no darkspawn to stop. There was still a village to save—that was something. He could work with that.
“Yeah, me neither,” Evka said.
“Any idea what did this?”
“None.”
“But we can handle it?”
Evka’s smile was dangerous. “That’s the idea.”
When they got back to the inn, Verschel had rooms ready for them. Antoine’s was comfortable, if drafty. He had the feeling everything was drafty here. When he closed his eyes, he dreamed the dream he always did. When he opened them, it was still dark. A tree branch beat arrhythmic patterns on the window and there was a strange, hollow moaning that Antoine wasn’t entirely sure was the wind.
* * *
“What happened there?” Evka asked as the Wardens followed Verschel and Mina through the village the next day. If Eichweill was colorless at night, daylight did it few favors. If anything, the streets and buildings were somehow grayer.
Verschel barely gave the burned-out building a glance. “Rogue mages—apostates—five years back now? Made some stand against those chasing ’em. Raised a bunch of demons. Or became ’em. Not sure which.”
“What about that house?” Antoine asked when they reached the market square, suppressing a yawn and gesturing toward the boarded-up building they’d passed the night before.
“Renke’s place,” Mina said.
“Belonged to a couple nobles down on funds,” Verschel explained. “Old ones were fine. But the son—he thought he was owed something. Poisoned our only Chantry brother when the man caught him thieving. We ran him out last winter.”
“So when you said your village was cursed…” Evka said. In addition to the apostates and murderous nobles’ son, they’d learned about the blacksmith’s possessed donkey, seen the site of a freak lightning strike, and heard about the bandit gang that attempted to hold Eichweill hostage—until they realized no one cared.
“If you’re looking for reason in the attacks, there’s no sense in it,” Verschel said. “It’s always one thing or another. Just the way it is.”
“Right,” Evka said.
Mina had offered to show the Wardens the other attack sites, prompting Verschel to follow since no one else got the order right. There were dark circles under Mina’s eyes, and she hadn’t said much, but she watched the Wardens closely, waiting for them to find answers at every stop. It wasn’t going to happen. Each site revealed signs of a powerful something entering Eichw
eill, but little else. The other villagers answered questions, but otherwise took no interest, accepting the Wardens’ failure as inevitable.
“There’s no point in you two dying here,” said a cherry-faced woman, barely sparing them a glance from the candles she was making. “You do that and who’s left with the mess when your next of kin come looking, huh?”
“Wardens don’t have next of kin,” Evka said. “At least none that come looking.”
“There’s still a mess,” huffed the candlemaker and waited for the Wardens to leave.
“There’s still the woods,” Antoine said after they’d examined a goat shed with indistinct scratch marks on the walls.
Evka stared out at the thick ring of trees that encircled the village. “That’s a lot of ground and no place to start.”
“We lost a hunter in there a month back,” Mina offered. “We don’t know where exactly, but the trail should’ve taken him past the split rock.”
“Then we track the creature where it lives and stop it before it returns!” Antoine said, as if that ending were inevitable, enthusiasm making his mouth run faster than his brain.
“You do that,” Verschel said.
Not long after, Evka and Antoine were far enough into the trees that gray Eichweill was hidden from view. A crow screamed from the rattling branches of a nearby tree.
“That’s cheerful,” Evka said, watching the crow take off into the overcast sky.
“What’s a cursed village without atmosphere?” Antoine teased. He was enjoying himself, but then, he enjoyed everything. Despite leaving Eichweill almost immediately, he’d managed to buy a half-dozen sweet rolls, which he didn’t seem interested in eating, and a series of silver cylinders that were supposed to give off sparks when properly lit. The latter had reportedly come from a Qunari trader. Evka suspected he’d been swindled. At least he shared the rolls.
“There it is!” Antoine said as they broke through a stand of trees. Up ahead a large, split boulder sat in a small clearing. “Where do we start?”
“By looking,” Evka said.
“For what?”
“Anything.”
“We know it’s not darkspawn,” he said, starting to explore the clearing.
“There’s that,” Evka said. The ground was still wet from the previous night’s rain; damp leaves clung to each other in giant clumps.
“You’re disappointed?”
“Darkspawn, we could sense—whether you want to or not,” she added, catching the look on Antoine’s face. She continued her search. Darkspawn would be easy. Darkspawn she could handle. She could even keep Antoine alive while doing so. Probably.
“The rain’s washed everything away,” Antoine called.
“Not everything,” Evka said.
A graying, waterlogged arm lay in the leaves, its fingers curved and contorted upward like a dead spider. Punctures and tears in the flesh implied the work of teeth—and large ones. There was no sign of the rest of the body. Antoine drew a quick breath as he came up beside her.
Whatever had attacked Eichweill was no less daunting than a darkspawn. Not knowing what it was made it worse.
Evka signaled Antoine to ready his bow, then led them away from the arm, down a nearby animal track. Evka was a skilled tracker underground and her aboveground skills weren’t bad. Enough to give her something to go on. Moving half on actual clues, half on hunch, she led them farther into the trees. The forest was as silent as they were. No more crows, no periodic rustle of small rodents.
Then there was the buzz of flies.
The Wardens exchanged a look and kept moving.
And the buzzing grew louder.
A dark mound rose on the path up ahead. The last of the autumn insects flew drunkenly over it, swarming over the raw flesh.
“Just a ram,” Evka breathed, relieved but not enough to speak at full volume. The relief faded with a glance at Antoine. “What is it?”
Antoine’s eyes were darting around the scene, the way they did when he was thinking a lot of things at once. He moved carefully toward the dead ram, his hand tracing the path of twisting entrails in the air.
“It’s not been eaten,” he said.
He was right. Evka felt a chill despite herself. “An animal would have eaten this.”
“A lure?” Antoine asked.
“A call.” The voice came from the trees, cold and scraping like an ax over stone. Evka had her own ax ready before it could finish the words. Antoine whipped his bow in the direction of the sound.
“Then we’re called,” Evka said, keeping her voice cold. If it wanted to scare them, she wouldn’t give it that edge.
“Not for you. Not yet. For my own.” The voice was behind them now. Antoine spun around. Evka moved to stand with her back to his.
But nothing emerged from the woods around them. The wind began to pick up and with it a strange hollow moaning. She felt Antoine take a step away from her. He looked pale and his face held a look of troubled concentration. The way it did when he was trying to shut out darkspawn, but that’s not what this was. Still, he kept his bow on the trees. Then the moaning stopped.
“It’s gone,” Antoine said, unusually subdued.
“Antoine?”
A slow roll of thunder sounded overhead. The crow from before—or perhaps a different one—let out a scream. Antoine looked at Evka and smiled brightly, as if nothing had happened. “Shall we beat the rain to Verschel’s?”
“Sure,” she said. She watched the elf carefully on the way back, but he seemed fine.
* * *
In Antoine’s dream he was dying. Darkspawn had attacked and their blood was poisoning him. It burned and he couldn’t think straight. Sometimes it felt like nothing and that was just as bad. The plan was to lie there. The backup plan was to die. Then a dwarf was asking him a question …
Antoine woke with a start.
There was a dwarf watching him with an amused expression on her face. “Ready?”
He’d fallen asleep sitting up in the inn’s small dining room. His untouched supper sat cold in front of him. He ran a hand over his face to wake himself up and grinned at Evka. “On y va!”
The butchered ram and strange voice in the woods were enough of a bad sign that they’d decided to patrol the village that night. They didn’t know what they were patrolling for, but it felt suitably heroic. It was closer to how Antoine imagined Warden life than anything else that had happened. They’d managed to convince Verschel and a few others to help. The agreements were grudging, but since two Wardens couldn’t cover the entire village by themselves, it was better than nothing.
“Do we know anything?” Antoine asked as they went to check the path to Mina’s house for the third time.
“Only that trouble that talks back is the worst kind.” Evka shrugged, then gave him a probing look that made his chest tighten. There’d been something strange about the voice in the woods, but he couldn’t explain it. He’d just tried to block it out.
“Should we—” Antoine froze.
That sound was on the wind again. The same one he’d heard on the road where they’d met Mina, in the inn last night, and in the woods that afternoon. The sound the villagers must have been hearing for weeks. Reedy, hollow moaning. It made him feel sick and defiant. He wanted it to go away. Then a new sound joined the first. High-pitched, terrified—and human. The sound jarred Antoine back to his senses. He took off for the market square with Evka at his heels.
Despite their fear, a ring of villagers surrounded the well that stood in front of the boarded-up Renke house. As Antoine squeezed through the crowd, he caught sight of the blacksmith’s thick arms and tangled hair—of his blank eyes and the thread of intestines looping away from his torn middle. The man had been one of their volunteers.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
“You!” spat a voice from the crowd. “What good are you?”
“I don’t—” Antoine couldn’t see who’d spoken, and then it was everyone.
/>
“They can’t stop this.”
“It’s always the same.”
“They let him die.”
“What difference does it make?”
“We didn’t—” Antoine tried.
“Is it still here?” someone asked.
The hollow moaning that swelled from all around gave them an answer. The crowd started to panic. Antoine was finding it hard to focus. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
“Everyone, you need to—” Evka began.
A throat-wrenching scream cut the words short as a man was dragged down from the edge of the square. In seconds, he was yanked from the lantern lights of the other villagers and into the darkness.
Then the screaming stopped.
The crowd erupted into screams of their own.
“Antoine—there!” Through the press of people running, he saw Evka moving toward the shadow that had started this. Antoine swallowed and ran after her. No matter what the strange voice was, or the hollow moaning, Wardens didn’t run away. If he did, these people, Evka …
Antoine ran faster.
The shadow—the creature—barreled away from the square and the shouting villagers. Whatever this thing was, it was fast. And big. Very big. It ran on all fours, its gait overly stretched, uncanny but efficient. They couldn’t let it get away.
But it was getting away.
The creature veered down the uneven path that led to the now-ownerless smithy. Antoine realized Evka was no longer with him, but he couldn’t stop now. If the beast cleared the smithy it would be in the trees. It would escape.
He wasn’t going to catch it in a straight chase. He needed a plan …
His only hope was to make it around the smithy first. He darted from the path, cutting what he hoped was a faster trail and praying the beast wouldn’t change course. He made it in time, but barely. The beast charged in from the left.
And then again from the right with Evka chasing after it.
A call. But not for them … for my own …
There was more than one.
Antoine released an arrow, but he was too slow. The beasts veered off and bolted for the woods. The Wardens raced after them.
Antoine reached the treeline first. It was still, silent. Where had they gone? He needed a plan, any plan …
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 18
