Dragon's Era- No Man's Land

by Jacon Winfree

  Leonas Bryland still would not speak to him directly. None of Howe's evidence against the Couslands made the least impression on his former friend.

  "Even if Bryce was the deepest-dyed of traitors," Bryland had said, addressing Loghain, his voice pitched to carry to the man on the teyrn's other side, "there is no excuse for murdering him, much less my cousin Eleanor, her daughter Elissa, her grandson Oren, and her daughter-in-law Oriana. None. Rendon Howe can shove his forgeries up his pimply arse."

  Howe scowled. Eleanor was not supposed to die. She would have had immense value as a hostage, while having no blood right to the teyrnir of Highever at all. It was her own stubbornness that had killed her. For that matter, Howe had ordered his men to take young Elissa alive—and unspoiled, too. She could have been forcibly married to Thomas—or better yet, to himself—and he could have ruled Highever in her name. He was surrounded by idiots. They had lost their heads when the women succeeded in killing a few of them, and had tried to avenge their shame in blood. Howe had them executed afterwards. He had no use for those who could not follow simple orders.

  And his evidence was not forged. It infuriated him that no one seemed willing to look at it objectively. Bryce had been angling for the throne. Knowing what an idiot Cailan was, Bryce had thought an early death in battle entirely possible, and was positioning himself as the logical replacement. That was not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but Bryce had colluded with the Orlesians this time, promising them trade concessions and advantageous marriages with his daughter and grandson. Had Fergus survived Ostagar, they would likely be looking at a civil war at the moment—or worse. Loghain should bloody well thank him!

  On the other hand, he could see why Loghain was displeased about his failure to serve at Ostagar. No help for it, since he had had to settle the Highever affair, but there it was. A chance at favor remained, could he but hold the right of Loghain's defensive line. Luckily Leonas would be on the left, far away at his Southron Hills fortress.

  Something had happened at Castle Redcliffe: something bad. Loghain needed a man there who knew what fighting meant: not a cowardly sot like Vaughan Kendalls, the new Arl of Denerim, who was charged with keeping the capital quiet. If that fool managed not to spark yet another elven riot, it would be a major miracle.

  The trouble in Redcliffe was not the work of assassins, apparently, but of some sort of ghastly magical accident. Loghain had confided to the Council that Eamon Guerrin's son and heir was a secret mage. It was very likely that the boy had become an Abomination and massacred the entire village. The initial reports from Loghain's scouts did not look good.

  But Howe was not afraid of magic. He had his own mages among his troops, sworn to serve him, and well rewarded for their efforts. Some were assignments from the Circle of Magi, and some were apostates he had found by chance. Bryce might have toed the Chantry line, but Howe knew better than that. Howe gave coin and lip service to the prestigious foundation of Our Lady Redeemer in Amaranthine, but allow a member of the Chantry into his secret councils? Never. The Chantry was completely an Orlesian institution, and any priest or Templar was potentially an Orlesian agent. Howe had very much enjoyed questioning the Couslands' priest. She had had quite a bit to share.

  And one good thing out of Ostagar was that the power of the Grey Wardens was broken. Only two had survived, according to Loghain: a pair of decent Fereldan boys forced into the order and too young to have been fully indoctrinated. They had control of Grey Warden treaties that could be used to benefit Ferelden. Loghain had provided them with an escort that was not only effective, but likely to keep them loyal. Howe could not help chuckling as Loghain explained his choices and his reasoning behind them. Who said the man was incapable of subtlety? Even Bryland had to laugh, though he still refused to look at Howe.

  One of the young Wardens was, amusingly enough, the son of the famed Amell misalliance. Howe had met the heroine of that absurd romance at the Palace just before their departure: still quite attractive twenty years after the scandal that had completed the fall of her family. Her daughter was with her: extremely pretty and well-bred, but completely without a dowry. Too bad, that. Loghain said she was far more genteel than her brothers, who clearly did not give a fig for their noble lineage. Howe thought the girl would be an acceptable companion for Delilah, once Loghain decided that he no longer needed her as a hostage for her brothers' good behavior... and after his own sons were safely married to respectable heiresses.

  Thomas—with Varel's help—was holding things together in the North. Loghain had demanded that Howe write to Nathaniel and command him to return home and serve in the war against the darkspawn. Fair enough. Nathaniel's airs and graces had annoyed Howe to the point of sending his son abroad, but some of the nonsense had been knocked out of him during his service to Lord Harimann, if his letters were any criterion. He was a good-looking young man, and might do well on the Fereldan marriage market.

  As to Delilah...

  Howe stole a glance at Loghain out of the corner of his eye. With Cailan gone, and the Couslands out of the picture, the crown of Ferelden was anyone's who could take it and keep it. Howe had no illusions about his own prospects: he had never been popular. If he could keep his acquisition of Highever, that was the most he could realistically hope for, given the current situation.

  There was no doubt that Ferelden's danger was real. The darkspawn had emerged from the earth in overwhelming numbers and had carried the day at Ostagar, after Cailan's ridiculous charge. The Orlesians would likely take advantage of Ferelden's plight. Loghain was unquestionably the leader they needed: the only one who had a chance of winning against these odds. In Howe's opinion, they should just get on with it and declare Loghain king. Fereldan needed a strong hand at the helm: a man's hand. Freya was Queen Dowager, and her father's current heir, but Howe did not much like her, and no one could regard her as a war-time leader. As for the Theirins, they had had a good run, but their day was done. For that matter, Loghain had been the only thing propping them up for the past thirty years.

  If things fell out as Howe hoped, and Loghain was crowned King... Well... a King needed a Queen. He could already see that Bryland had come to the same conclusions and was tarting up his daughter Habren in hopes of attracting the Regent's notice. Luckily, Habren was hardly the kind of girl to catch Loghain's fancy. Unfortunately, Delilah was really not Loghain's cup of tea, either. But she was not nearly as annoying as Habren. She would do as she as told, and she knew how to hold her tongue. With any luck, she would produce heirs.

  First things first. He had to deal with the crisis in Redcliffe and hold back the darkspawn in the west of Ferelden. If he could attain those two objectives—and Howe was sure he could—then many good things would be sure to follow.

  * * *

  Hawke, Cauthrien, and their party reached the gates of Orzammar, and they found the dwarven kingdom in chaos. They met with the rival pretenders to the throne, and Cauthrien was nearly incandescent with rage by the time the conversations were over.

  "For two coppers," she snarled, stalking aback and forth in the Commons, "I'd turn my back on these crazy dwarves and let the darkspawn have them! They can send us an ambassador when they're ready to talk seriously!"

  "I don't think we should do that," Hawke said, hoping to sooth her temper. "It's really important to gain this alliance."

  "How can we do that, when the dwarves are using a trick to weasel their way out of it? 'The treaty is with the King of Orzammar," she quoted, biting out each word.

  "Then we need to force them to choose a king," Hawke said, his heart quailing at the magnitude of the task. Very cautiously, he reached out to lay a hand on Cauthrien's broad shoulder. She did not shake him off, which was good for all sorts of reasons. "We can't trust them to settle this is any reasonable amount of time. In fact," he added, in a low voice, thinking it through. "it's really to their advantage for the Blight to last as long as possible."

  Cauthrien paused in
her pacing. In a moment, she saw his point. Yes. The longer the darkspawn left the Deep Roads and ravaged the surface, the longer the breathing space for the dwarves. They had no real incentive to hurry. Hawke removed his hand, but smiled. First contact had been made.

  "You're a persuasive man, Liam Hawke. All right, we won't leave—not yet. However, there are things I will not do," Cauthrien said slowly, her attractive face hard with anger. "I will not appear in their ridiculous Provings, even though splitting a few dwarven heads like melons has a certain appeal at the moment. I will not deliver forged papers for that slimy little shit Bhelen."

  "But we could take care of the Carta problem," said Hawke. "If they don't object to an armed band of humans rampaging through their city, then we could do that. Both the claimants asked for that. And then there's the Paragon..."

  "That's madness," Cauthrien snapped. "Absolute madness. If they don't have the stones to search the Deep Roads for her, why should we?"

  "Because she can settle this," he pointed out. "If we can at least have a message from her to the Assembly, whatever she says goes. The Shaper of Memories said that a Paragon's vote would count for more than the whole Assembly put together. We can at least try to find out something. I'm not convinced that anyone has made an effort. Maybe the Assembly doesn't want to be outvoted."

  He was getting quite good at making Cauthrien see things his way. Either she trusted him more, or he was actually making sense. Both would be nice. Hawke had liked Cauthrien from the first.

  "All right," she agreed, taking a deep calming breath. "First, the Carta."

  * * *

  Unsurprisingly, the Carta was settled with ferocious speed. The Wardens' band burst into Dust Town like a storm, and when they were done, the Carta had ceased to be.

  As he finished off another thug, Hawke reflected that the dwarven leadership could have done this themselves, had they wanted to. Perhaps they preferred that the casteless have this outlet—up until the time that the casteless actually gained a bit of power. Then it was time to crush them, and letting humans do it meant that the deshyrs didn't even have to dirty their hands. Hawke wondered if he was a class traitor. He certainly had more in common with these poor wretches than with the filthy rich bastards who were destroying their city with their power games.

  Scum always seems to rise to the top.

  A meaty thud, and the Carta leader's head rolled away. Cauthrien hadn't even broken a sweat fighting Jarvia. The two simply were not in the same class. Caste. Whatever.

  Then there was serious looting done. Everyone was in high spirits. The Carta's hideout was a maze of treasure rooms and warehouses. Cauthrien insisted that the shares be fair, which meant that Hawke and Alistair could earn a bit of coin for themselves. Cauthrien took a share herself. Hawke found a seat on one of the stone chairs and carefully assessed his plunder.

  "This is nice," he said, handing Cauthrien a heavy jeweled amulet. Nevarran, from the look of it.

  "I like it," she agreed. "You mean, this is for me?"

  "You took down Jarvia."

  Hawke gave her his best smile. She actually smiled back, and accepted the gift, before she moved on to mediate some disputes among her soldiers. Yes, it was definitely a smile, and it warmed Hawke through and through. Cauthrien was no inbred noble lady, but sprung from the soil of Ferelden and promoted entirely on merit, which, in Hawke's opinion, was as it should be.

  Morrigan pretended to scorn loot, but that was all an act. She collected jewelry like a crow collecting shiny bits for its nest. Hawke refrained from asking her what she would do with it, back in her hut in the Wilds. Then he thought about it a little more. It was entirely possible that this was an essential part of an elaborate escape plan: both from Flemeth and the Wardens. Jewelry was portable, concentrated coin. Hawke could hardly blame her.

  Anders and Alyson were quite excited to have coin of their own. Alyson had no experience of coin herself, since she had been sent to the Circle when quite young. Anders had been incarcerated as a fifteen-year-old boy, and had enjoyed his brief periods of freedom during his escapes, but his funds had always been precarious.

  Just like ours, thought Hawke. The life of a tenant farmer was a hard one.

  Hawke's secret dream involved earning enough to buy their little place in Lothering outright, and setting himself up as a freeholder. It had seemed hopeless before now. Since Father's death, he had had four mouths to feed, little capital to improve their land, and years of uncooperative weather and indifferent crops. Father and Mother had always been perfectly happy paying rent to Bann Ceorlic's steward from their little, ever-dwindling nest egg; and they had no greater ambitions than to simply be left alone to live their storied romance. Father did not understand farming, and Mother had always regarded it as beneath her notice, other than to grow flowers for a cutting garden. Sympathetic neighbors had taught Hawke and Carver how to plow and sow, how to harrow and reap.

  Now, with this kind of coin...

  If the farm survived the Blight—

  If he was allowed to go home once it was over—

  If he could hang on to what he earned—

  Well... he could thump a coin purse with the price in full right under Ceorlic's bony nose. Once he had his charter, he could plant an orchard in the north quarter, and even buy the river pasture from Barlin. With that gained, he could diversify into dairy cattle, and hire a good cheesemaker. In three or four years, the farm would pay for itself, and he could build an addition onto the house... Maybe someday he could find a strong, capable woman to share it with. His eyes slid involuntarily to Cauthrien...

  Carver came over, carrying a heavy, jingling sack. He grinned at his brother, and squatted down, poking at Hawke's impressive pile of loot.

  "This is the life, isn't it? What are you going to do with yours?"

  "I was thinking about buying the farm, and maybe adding a bit to it," Hawke confessed.

  Carver made a face. "Little dreams for little people! If I ever plow a furrow again, it'll be too soon."

  "You can't be a soldier forever, Carver."

  "Teyrn Loghain seems to be making a career of it. Not that I'm holding out for a noble title. A knighthood is all I ask. 'Ser Carver Hawke' sounds good. And a manor to go with it, where my servants will do the work."

  "Good luck with that," Hawke shrugged.

  "Besides," Carver considered, "don't you have to be a Warden for the rest of your life? No farm for you, I reckon. Isn't that true, Alistair?" Carver called over to Hawke's fellow Warden. "Don't you have to be a Warden until the day you die?"

  "Spot on," Alistair agreed. "Once a Warden, always a Warden."

  "So you see," Carver said with a smirk, "You're stuck being a Warden. No little farm for you. I can't imagine why you'd want it. You've got it made with your fancy Warden Compound...free room and board... servants... status. Mother and Bethany are being taken care of by the Crown, so all our coin is our own, really. The Queen might make Mother one of her ladies-in-waiting."

  "I'm going to set aside some presents for them, all the same," Hawke said coldly, at the moment intensely disliking both his brother and Alistair, who thought being a Warden was just the best thing ever invented. Furthermore, 'lady-in-waiting' sounded to him like a fancy name for 'servant.' They had been poor in Lothering, but they had been nobody's servants there.

  Carver tried to palm a gold pendant from his brother's pile, and Hawke slapped his hand away. His younger brother was not in the least embarrassed.

  "That's a good idea about presents. Mother and Bethany will be dripping with jewels once we get back!"

  Hawke answered with a noncommittal grunt, still fuming, his cherished dream soaked with the cold water thrown on it.

  After a return to the Orzammar Commons for some trading and some resupplying, the party got a good night's rest, and then talked their way past the guards at the huge barrier doors to the Deep Roads. They were accosted by a red haired dwarf who claimed to be
the Paragon Branka's husband.

  "Oghren Kondrat's the name. Don't suppose you have a map of Ortan Thaig?" He smirked. "I do. Last known place Branka visited, and the ancestral home of Paragon Caridin, who I happen to know she was interested in. Take me along, and I'll share."

  Cauthrien was unimpressed: she knew a drunk when she saw one. Still... maps were maps. She glanced over at Hawke. He shrugged.

  "All right," she said, "Let's go."

  Oghren grinned fiercely. "Been waiting to hear those words for two years."

  The barrier doors opened, breathing out an unspeakable miasma of ancient death and decay. The party groaned and coughed, while Oghren cackled in glee.

  "Yep! That's the Deep Roads! Ah, the smell of it! Get used to it, cloudheads!"

  Cauthrien winced, fighting off a wave of nausea. "I've never smelled anything like that...except..."

  "Yes," Hawke agreed, grim with the prospect before them. "We smelled it at Ostagar. That's Taint. Only here it's everywhere, and it's permeated...everything."

  They exchanged another quick look, and then marched forward, through the doors. Their people—some more reluctantly than others—followed them, as they plunged into the darkness of the Deep Roads.

  Chapter 31: Hawkes Over Ferelden, Part 3

  Aside from their casualties, Cauthrien viewed their journey to Orzammar as a brilliant success. The dwarves had a king. King Bhelen was already giving orders to send an army to Ferelden's aid. The Legion of the Dead, impressed by Hawke and Cauthrien, themselves would be coming to the surface to fight. And Paragon Branka, in undisputed possession of the Anvil of the Void, had promised them a hundred newly-smithed golems for their very own.

  That, of course, was Cauthrien's point of view. In his current state of dull anguish, Hawke could hardly see things the same way.