Dragon's Era- No Man's Land Page 3

  Alistair made his opinion clear. "This is hopeless."

  "It's not hopeless," Astrid disagreed. "We'll have to find a way to break the stalemate." She yawned. "Tomorrow. Let's find an inn, get some sleep, and meet with those nobles tomorrow."

  They slept two to a room, except for Alistair, who made plain his distrust both of Arvid and of Zevran. Astrid swallowed her bile and put up with Wynne's insiArvidce that Rambler sleep outside the door, and then tried to ignore the older woman's insufferable words of wisdom.

  "You should learn humility, my dear. It's not for mages to put themselves forward. When Alistair gives you an order, it's for you to obey."

  "Oh, really? But he doesn't give orders! He won't even express an opinion until someone else does, and then it's only to disagree!"

  "I don't have any problem with him. He's a very sweet young man." Wynne sighed. "You just don't seem to have a gift for managing men, I'm afraid. He might need a nudge now and then, but you should leave him his pride."

  Astrid turned on her side and pretended to go to sleep. Soon after, she really did, for she was exhausted, and felt fairly safe for the first time in weeks, with a stout door and stone walls between her and the rest of the world. Tavern noise drifted in, but even dwarven singing could not wake her. Nor was there dawn to awaken her naturally. Many hours later, a pounding on her door roused her. She stumbled away from the strange stone bed, clutching at her clothing.

  "Who is it? Alistair?"

  "It is Zevran." The assassin's voice was muffled by the heavy metal door. "And Arvid. And the dog. Dress quickly. The rest are gone."

  Sure enough. Wynne was not in the room, and her little bundle of possessions was gone as well. Astrid felt frantically for her coin, but it was still securely tied around her waist.

  Grendle, Antivan, and Dog. Her remaining three allies stood before her in a bizarre, stair-step arrangement.

  "They're gone?" She stared about wildly, expecting to see red hair and black hair emerging from the room across the corridor. "Wanda and Morrigan, too?"

  "They have deserted," Arvid growled. "They have fled. It is a disgrace."

  "And, I fear," Zevran told her, "that they have left you to pay their bills."

  "Bastards!" Astrid burst out, magical flames dancing around her head like a halo. The people she hated had dared to seize the initiative, and done to her exactly what she had planned to do to them. She felt she might actually ignite from rage and frustration. "I'll skin them! Cowardly bastards!"

  The two men backed a way a little, and Zevran, assuming a conciliatory, fixed smile, suggested, "Let us search for anything left behind. It may tell us whence they have fled."

  "Bastards!" Astrid snarled, still leaking magic. "They're dead! They're nothing!"

  But she followed them, all the same, as they searched the rooms for anything left behind.

  There was not much. Having a room to himself, Alistair had packed at his leisure. And so, likewise, had Wanda and Morrigan, taking all their trumpery gew-gaws. Wynne alone had left something: a letter. Offensive and condescending as it was, Astrid gave her fellow mage credit for having the decency to explain herself. The others had simply run away.

  My dear Astrid,

  When you read this, I will be long gone. Alistair has decided to go to Jader to report to his superior officers. Morrigan, Wanda, and I think it best to accompany him. The situation in Orzammar—and, I regret to say, in Ferelden—is utterly hopeless. While that monster Loghain rules, there is no point attempting to resist the darkspawn. I hardly know which is worse.

  As your senior in the Grey Wardens, Alistair decided that he would be the best choice to report to Jader. Wanda feels she will have not the least difficulty in getting us across the border. It is really for the best, you see. A larger party would only attract unwanted attention, and I fear that Arvid and Zevran are not to be trusted.

  Alistair thinks it does not much matter what you do. You can stay in Orzammar, or go anywhere you like. Personally, I believe it is your duty to return to the Circle. After the Annulment, they will need help in rebuilding. Of course, you will do as you like, but I hope you will not be so wicked and foolish as to dream of being an apostate. It is a terribly hard life, and you would no doubt soon suffer the lawful fate of such. Do be sensible, my dear. Even the Tranquil serve a purpose. It is all part of the Maker's plan.

  Cordially,

  Wynne.

  Astrid's first impulse was to crumple the letter and set it on fire. She fought the impulse down, and smoothed out the parchment, instead letting it burn into her brain. She was keeping this. Forever. Someday, she would shove it down a blond imbecile's throat.

  They had done more or less what she had planned — go to Jader —which rankled. Her intention, however, had been to get help. It was clear that these humans were simply abandoning Ferelden to its fate. She could hear Alistair's voice in her head, telling Riordan, "It's hopeless." As for Wynne's inability to distinguish between a mere pig-headed soldier like Teyrn Loghain and the darkspawn — well, that was too idiotic for words.

  She turned to her remaining companions, anger fuAstridg a new determination.

  "Come in here and shut the door. I want to read this to you. You have the right to know what's going on. Know this: whatever these scum have decided, I am going to fight on. Maker, hear me! I'm going to fight, and I'm going to put a king on the throne of Orzammar, and I'm going to defeat the Blight, and I don't need Alistair and his women to do it!"

  Chapter 2: The Stupidest Order in Canon

  "Astrid?" Alim Surana's handsome elven face turned an unattractive shade of puce. "Astrid? The First Warden's ordered you to go to Astrid?"

  "He doesn't want me meddling in politics here, he said." Loghain shrugged. He looked calm — almost cheerful. In fact, with the burden of Ferelden lifted from his shoulders, he looked years younger.

  Alim was not amused. "Pot, meet kettle! The man's practically the King of the Anderfels! Meanwhile, the arling is crawling with talking darkspawn, the fucking useless Orlesian Wardens are dead, I've a roster of only five new recruits, and the First Warden wants you to go to Astrid?"

  "I believe I said that."

  "Let me see that order."

  Trembling with rage, lightning crackling from his fingertips, Alim read the offending missive. With a huge effort, he refrained from tearing it in pieces and throwing it in the fire.

  "This is complete bullshit," he snarled.

  "The King approves of it. The order was sent to him first. At least I had a chance to make my farewells with Freya."

  Loghain and Alim met each other's eyes, understanding completely why the First Warden would play such a trick. Once again, Alim deeply regretted arranging for Alistair to rule jointly with Freya. Their friendship had not withstood Alim's recruitment of Loghain into the Wardens. On the other hand, Alim had no love for Freya, either. She had tossed her father to the wolves of the Landsmeet pretty quickly. Now it seemed like Alistair and Freya together were quite happy to do the same to Alim Surana, here in Amaranthine. It was all very well for Loghain, as her father, to forgive his daughter everything. Alim had no such ties to her, and had seen from the first that she was someone to keep an eye on, and two when he could spare them. Married to Freya, Alistair was growing more like her every day, it seemed.

  Of course, Alim acknowledged that he was a mage, an elf, and terribly inconvenient, all in all. People were uncomfortable with the whole narrative of the Blight. The songs and stories focused on King Alistair, and even more—to Alistair's rage— on Loghain Mac Tir, who had actually been present on the roof of Fort Drakon when the Archdemon was slain. Such songs and stories made little or no mention about the elf who had actually done most of the work. Most people seemed to believe that Loghain had killed the Archdemon. It made sense to them.

  The people of Amaranthine — nobles and commons both— were restive and hostile under Alim's rule. Some hated him because they were Howe loy
alists. Some hated him because he was what he was. An elf... a mage... a Grey Warden: take your pick. Having Loghain here with him — for Loghain was still very popular in Amaranthine — would be a gift of the Maker. Loghain was a far more convincing leadership figure than a slender, scholarly elf mage. It might well stop Bann Esmerelle's plotting altogether. The Grey Wardens needed a public face that the people of Amaranthine could respect... or fear, at least.

  "I'll handle Alistair," said Alim. "You're not going anywhere. The First Warden has done nothing but set me up for failure since the beginning. You're my Senior Warden, and we have darkspawn to fight."

  Loghain snorted, faintly amused. By an ironic twist of fate, his former mortal enemy was his best ally at the moment. Fighting darkspawn was infinitely better than going to Astrid. "I don't gainsay you, but you know there'll be trouble if you defy both the King and the First Warden."

  "Fuck 'em," said Alim concisely. "Stow your things in the barracks. We're going to war."

  Chapter 3: Eavesdroppers Hear No Good of Themselves

  They needed to go to Amaranthine anyway to look for the Orlesian Warden Kristoff, so Aedan agreed to let Nathaniel come along and look for his long-lost sister as well. How weird was this? A Cousland and a Howe, marching along, embarrassingly in step, searching for the girl that Aedan Cousland had nearly married.

  He still felt that Alistair had been wrong to cede Amaranthine to the Wardens. Yes, the arling was vacant—though for that matter, so were Denerim and Gwaren— but the port of Amaranthine was an important Fereldan city. What if the First Warden appointed an Orlesian or some other foreigner as Commander? Aedan would have been perfectly happy to remain in Denerim and rebuild the old compound. Perhaps, though, Arl Eamon did not want Aedan interfering in Eamon's role as chancellor and chief adviser to the king. Of course, if Eamon was set on exiling him from the capital, there was Soldier's Peak, ready to be renovated.

  On the other hand, Amaranthine was a chaotic mess. Aedan suspected that Arl Eamon had advised Alistair to give the Wardens Amaranthine both to get Aedan out of Denerim and to dump the responsibility of putting it in order on the Hero of Ferelden. Alistair had always excelled at dumping responsibility on him. Aedan had hoped those days were over, but apparently they were not.

  And now, here he was, hobnobbing with Howes again. Aedan had thought those days were over, too. Then Nathaniel showed up at Vigil's Keep, proud, penniless, and utterly bereft. He was a Howe, but he was also completely innocent of the murders his father had committed. Aedan's heart had sickened at the thought of hanging a boyhood companion, whose only crime lay in not choosing his father more carefully. Still, there had been resentment there, and it had made him impulsively choose to make Nathaniel Join him in the order that Aedan both upheld and hated.

  Nathaniel still looked at him oddly, now and then. Not surprisingly, since Nate was trying to reconcile what he felt about his father with what everyone else in Ferelden was telling him about the man's deeds. He had thought his entire family was dead, and then the old groundskeeper had recognized him and revealed that his sister, Delilah, was still alive: living in the city of Amaranthine, and married to a shopkeeper.

  It was a horrible comedown for Lady Delilah Howe. Aedan, however much he still hated his family's murderer, found the idea of a young noblewoman being forced to survive by selling herself in marriage to one beneath her both distressing and outrageous. Did Freya, did Alistair know that Rendon had left an heir? Did Eamon? It was a nasty piece of spite. If Aedan did not feel animus against the daughter of the man who had killed his parents, then no one else should meddle in the affair. It would have been proper to summon Delilah to the Landsmeet and give her a proper hearing. Instead, she was thrown away like so much rubbish.

  He did not think Fergus knew. Fergus had arrived late to the Landsmeet, only recently recovered from his near-mortal wounds at Ostagar and his year among the Chasind Wilders. Their relationship, however, had not quite recovered yet. Aedan had lived, while Father and Mother, while Oriana and little Oren all lay dead and rotting in a filthy midden. Fergus had since written that he had caused a burial mound to be raised over the dead. It was difficult to identify anyone, since the scores of corpses been stripped ruthlessly, greedily, of all clothing and jewelry. There was more than one child among them. Aedan's survival lay between the brothers, an open wound. Fergus and he were still family, but Aedan had not saved Fergus' wife and son. Fergus did not know about Nathaniel yet. What would he say, when he found out that a Howe was Aedan's brother Warden?

  That last night at Highever, Rendon Howe had told Aedan that Delilah had asked after him. Aedan had thought Delilah quite attractive, and had accepted that ultimately the two of them would marry. Father would give him some bannorn or other, and Delilah would have a dowry, and between them, he had thought they would do very well. It had not been a very romantic situation, but Aedan had enjoyed paying court to his prospective bride now and then. He liked her, and she seemed to like him well enough. He would play his part with good grace and treat his lady wife as a gentleman should.

  He had been a fool. Rendon had apparently no intention of giving his gentle and charming daughter to a mere second son. His real plans had been thwarted when Fergus had brought home an Antivan wife. Perhaps that was when he had begun compassing their deaths. Perhaps if Fergus had married Delilah, Rendon would have been satisfied with knowing that his grandson would someday be Teyrn of Highever.

  These were heavy thoughts. Aedan let Anders and Oghren chatter idly as they approached the South Gate of Amaranthine. Nathaniel sullenly muttered his relief that his father's head was not on display there. Aedan ground his teeth and did not take it up. Rendon Howe had been decently burned, which was a great deal more than he had vouchsafed the Couslands.

  They passed into the street of the merchants. In the distance, Nathaniel recognized a woman. She was poorly clothed, and her back was to them, but Aedan thought he knew the set of those slender shoulders. They walked toward her. Aedan hung back, respectful— and a little envious— of the family reunion.

  "Delilah? Is that really you?"

  "Nathaniel! I had feared the worst..."

  Aedan's heart clenched at their loving embrace. He bit his lip and his eyes burned. He remembered searching Howe's dungeons in Denerim... the dungeons at Vigil's Keep... hoping against hope that Mother might have been spared. It was a vain hope, of course. Howe had not the least incentive to keep her alive. Now Nathaniel had family again. Aedan looked past Nathaniel's shoulder at Delilah's tearful, joyful, tender face.

  She had aged a bit. There were worry lines at her brow. She was thin, too; no longer the curvaceous young lady of times past. Either she had not been eating regularly, or the victuals a common shopkeeper could put on the table were insufficient to keep up her lovely figure. The clothes looked second-hand: threadbare and faded, like Delilah herself.

  Nathaniel obviously felt the same, for his next words were urgent, his voice rough with emotion.

  "Times must have been hard, Delilah, but you can do better than this. Come back to the estate until we can find somewhere else."

  "What?" Delilah laughed. It made her look briefly young again. "Oh, Nathaniel, I didn't marry Albert out of desperation. I adore him. He's so much better than that stuck-up Cousland boy Father kept trying to set me up with!"

  Anders snickered. Oghren snorted a rumbling laugh. Nathaniel glanced at Aedan, rather alarmed. Aedan, stricken, felt himself turning red with shock and embarrassment. It seemed he must say something.

  "Er..." he managed, at the moment very, very sorry he had not ordered Nathaniel hanged. "I'm standing right here. Remember me? Aedan?"

  "Oh. That was you, wasn't it? Awkward... I'm sorry. What my Father did to your family was... terrible.. Thank the Maker I'm finally away from his evil."

  Nathaniel protested. "Father's 'evil?' Isn't that overstating things a little? He got caught up in politics."

  Brother and sister were eng
rossed in their own concerns again, ignoring Aedan, who stood there, unimportant, a minor bystander in their family drama. A handful of words for the slaughter of his parents, of his nephew and his brother's wife, of his good friends and loyal servants; and then a lot more yammering about bloody Rendon Howe than the bastard deserved.

  "You weren't here, Nathaniel," said Delilah. "You didn't see what he did. Of course you always worshiped Father from the time you were a little boy. If you want the culprit who destroyed our family, it was Father, without question." She took him by the hand.

  "Come brother. Let us sit and catch up."

  They disappeared into a hovel behind the market stalls. Aedan gaped after them, biting back bitter resentment; shamefully, meanly glad to see that Delilah Howe was living in squalor. Anders looked about to make a smart remark, and then wisely refrained, seeing Aedan's dark, furious face. He hissed in sympathy.

  "Let's... go over... there," he suggested to Oghren. "While the Warden-Commander works on commanding himself."

  It wasn't easy. Aedan liked to think himself a clever man. He had persuaded elves, dwarves, and mages to fight for him. He had resolved knotty problems with smooth words. He had won over the Landsmeet. He had talked a diffident young man into becoming King, and then into marrying the daughter of a man he hated above all others. He had made a friend and comrade of a bitter enemy. The King of Orzammar himself had spoken of Aedan's "legendary charm."

  His charm, apparently, had no effect whatever on women. With women, Aedan was forced to recognize that he was a fool and dupe. He had imagined Delilah charmed by him! Why should she be? Why should she be any more charmed than Morrigan, whom he had imagined to be his soulmate, his best beloved? "Legendary charm?" What a joke. He had not charmed any female who traveled with him during the Blight.

  Wanda, whom he had believed to be a close friend, had taken herself off to Astrid as soon as the dust of the Archdemon settled. Now Aedan wondered if the sweet, rather loony demeanor had been a bard's sham to gain inside information. Based on seeing her in deep conversation with some Chantry officials, it now seemed very likely. She could tell the Chantry and the Orlesian Empress everything they could possibly want to know about the new king of Ferelden and those close to him.