by David Gaider
Gareth pounced quickly. “Your friend? Or your mother?”
Of course Sister Ailis had told him. Maric’s mind was suddenly awhirl, trying to remember what he had and had not said so far. The effort made the lump on the back of his head throb. “My mother is my friend,” he explained lamely.
“And why were you and your mother in the forest? You’ve no more business there than the Bann, surely.”
“We were just . . . traveling through.”
Gareth and his son exchanged a significant look that Maric couldn’t read. The elder man sighed and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Look, Hyram,” he began, his tone completely reasonable, “with our situation here . . . we have to be very careful, always. If the King has soldiers out there, we need to know why.”
Maric said nothing, and Gareth’s expression darkened with anger. He turned and gestured at the other people in the camp, some of whom had begun to gather around. “You see these people?” Gareth stated evenly. “They are my responsibility. I aim to keep them safe. If those soldiers are coming this way—”
Maric looked around nervously, increasingly aware of the growing crowd he was attracting. He swallowed hard. “I wish I knew.”
“I shouldn’t have brought him,” Loghain swore.
Gareth barely heard his son, however. Instead he stared at Maric with a mystified expression. “Why would they be after you?” His brows furrowed. “What have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“He’s lying!” Loghain seethed. He drew his belt knife and stepped forward menacingly. The crowd of onlookers murmured excitedly in response, smelling blood. “Let me kill him, Father. This is my fault. I should never have brought him here.”
Gareth’s expression was unchanged. “He’s not lying.”
“What does it matter? We need to get rid of him, so let’s do it now.” Loghain lunged forward at Maric, but Gareth interposed an arm between them. Loghain stopped short, staring at his father with surprised confusion, but Gareth was still looking intently at Maric.
Maric stepped back uncertainly, but several men with deep frowns blocked his path. “Look,” he said slowly, “I can just leave. I didn’t mean to bring any of you harm.”
“No,” Gareth stated. It was the sort of tone that left no room for argument. He glanced at Loghain. “How certain are you that you weren’t followed?”
Loghain considered the question. “We lost them halfway back. No doubt about it.” He grimaced. “That doesn’t mean they can’t find us. We’ve been here too long. How many locals know we’re out here by now?”
His father nodded, accepting the answer, and then looked back at Maric. “I’ve sent men out, and they’ll find out what’s going on soon enough. If we’re in danger, I’d appreciate knowing it now. Are we?”
Inside, Maric quailed. Bann Ceorlic and the others would surely keep looking for him, and eventually they would track him down. For a single moment, he considered telling them everything. But would they even believe him? And if they did believe him, would that be better or worse? “Yes,” he finally blurted out. “Yes, I . . . You’re in danger if you keep me here.”
Loghain snorted derisively and turned to Gareth. “Father, we’ll find out if we’re in trouble soon enough. We don’t need him here to make it worse. We should kill him to be safe.”
Several of the nearby men nodded, their eyes shining dangerously. Gareth, however, frowned at Loghain. “No. We won’t be doing that.”
“Why not?”
“I said no.” Father and son locked glares. The crowd was dead silent, not eager to get involved in what was evidently an old argument. Maric kept quiet. He wasn’t an idiot.
“Fine.” Loghain finally relented, rolling his eyes. “Then let’s pull up. Let’s not wait.”
Gareth considered it. “No.” He shook his head. “We’ll wait for the men to return. We still have time.” He then spoke to one of the burlier men standing nearby. “Yorin, take Hyram—or whatever his name is—back to the sister for now. Watch him.” The man nodded as Gareth raised his voice to address the many others who had gathered around the spectacle. “Everyone! We may need to pull up soon! I want everyone alert!” The decision had been made and they knew it. Already the crowd was dispersing, though their looks and whispers were agitated. They were frightened.
Loghain shot a dark look at Maric, who was taken by the shoulder and led away. Behind him, he heard Loghain speak to his father. “I bet I could get the truth out of him. The whole truth.”
“It may come to that. For now, we treat him as he appears to be: a frightened young man who needs our help.”
Gareth’s tone was final and Maric heard nothing more of the exchange—Yorin was steering Maric back toward the log hut, and he didn’t struggle. Overhead, above the tall trees, dark clouds were already obscuring the afternoon sun. It was going to rain, and hard.
“Well, who do you think he is, then?”
Loghain ignored Potter’s question as he restrung his bow. One of the small contingent of elves who traveled with the camp, Potter could be counted on to do little more than laze about and spread idle gossip, and Loghain didn’t want to contribute to the growing panic any more than he already had. It would have been far better for everyone if his father had let him force “Hyram” to spill whatever secrets he was withholding. And he was withholding something—Loghain could almost smell it. For a moment there it had seemed that Hyram was going to tell them, but then nothing. And Father had let him walk away.
“Well, come on!” Potter insisted, kneeling beside Loghain. “You must know something! You were walking with him all night, weren’t you?”
The elf was missing most of one of his long delicate ears, making his head look decidedly lopsided. He also had a nasty scar down his face, leaving one empty eye socket and a permanent sneer. That these had been “presents” from an Orlesian lord was all Potter had ever let out about it.
A slaver, Loghain guessed. In most cities, elves lived freely enough in their slums, the poorest of the poor. Their enslavement had ended long ago at the hands of the prophet Andraste, but the practice still secretly flourished in the more remote corners of the Empire. Potter had come close to speaking of his ordeal one night when they had been deep into the drink, the bitterness threatening to spill out of him like so much poison. But then he had swallowed it all down even further, flinching from company until he had successfully numbed himself into oblivion.
Everyone had their secrets. Loghain sighed and forced himself to give Hyram the same benefit of the doubt as his father had. It was not easy.
“Don’t you have work to do?” he snapped at Potter. The elf sighed and ran off. He knew better than to continue pestering Loghain, or he really would be put to work.
Still, Potter’s question was a good one. If this Hyram was a spy, then he was either a terrible one or better than any Loghain had ever heard of. Perhaps he was actually what he seemed, as his father suggested. Gareth had always allowed his compassion to rule him. Nobody was perfect. But there was surely something they were missing, some puzzle piece that Hyram wasn’t giving them, and it gnawed away at Loghain. Like most of the others in the camp, he had developed a sense over the years of when to run, and right now it was going crazy. Just looking around, he could see it in everyone’s eyes. They hurried their steps and jumped at every strange noise coming out of the forest. Some of them were already picking up their tents, packing up what little provisions they had in expectation of Father’s call to move on.
Loghain steered clear of Sister Ailis’s hut once he was finished with his bow, not wanting to tempt himself. The sister had her own way of questioning new arrivals to the camp, and he respected the fact that she was often able to elicit information when neither he nor his father could. Many saw the sister as being the camp’s leader almost as much as his father was, and certainly his father had relied on her advice for many years now. There had been a time when Loghain hoped the affection between the two of them
might grow into something more, for both their sakes. Sister Ailis, however, had her calling, and his father had never been the same since they fled the farmhold. It had taken Loghain a long time to realize it, but a part of Gareth had been broken that night. Sister Ailis knew what his father needed better than Loghain ever would, and he had to be content with that.
Padric was on watch at the edge of the camp, perched on a rock that allowed him to keep an eye on the valley below without being easily spotted himself. The lad was a couple of years younger than Loghain, but a skilled shot with a bow and could usually be counted on to show some sense. On the other hand, Dannon was standing next to Padric now, which didn’t bode well. The pair abruptly stopped whispering as he drew close.
“Any sign of the men my father sent out?” Loghain asked Padric, making no comment about what he had interrupted.
“Not yet,” Padric offered shyly. He turned and scanned the hillside below. “There’s been no sign of anything.”
“There’s some talking about leaving,” Dannon announced. He crossed his arms and glowered at Loghain. “Tonight, maybe, if nothing’s said.”
“It’s stupid.” Padric kept his eyes on the valley. “Even if someone knows that blond fellow’s here, so what? They going to come all the way out here for one man?”
“I agree.” Loghain turned and stared at Dannon. “But if you want to join the cowards, Dannon, why don’t you go ahead and do that? Assuming you aren’t the only one.”
“You said yourself that boy’s dangerous.”
“I said we don’t know who he is. We will soon enough. And if my father thinks it’s worth us leaving, then he’ll say so.”
Dannon squirmed. “This was your doing,” he groused. “You’re the one that wanted to bring him, not me.” With that, he hurried off.
Padric looked relieved to see Dannon go. He smiled his thanks to Loghain and turned back to his watch duties. “He’s right, though. It’s odd.”
“What is?”
“Well—” He nodded out to the valley. “—the men who got sent out, some of them should have come back by now.”
“How overdue?”
“An hour. Maybe two. It hasn’t rained yet, so I don’t know. . . . I was thinking Henric would have come back, at least. He’s been worried about his girl, with the baby and all.”
Loghain’s stomach felt like it sank. “You let anyone know?”
“Just Gareth.”
He nodded and headed down the trail on his own. He wanted to take a look for himself, and it would do no good hanging around the camp while his father tried to keep a lid on the hysteria—justified or not. Loghain thought it was understood that the outlaws traveled together under a purely provisional basis. His father kept them organized and fed, and Sister Ailis kept them united—and it also didn’t hurt that few of them had anywhere else they could go—but they were on the run, each of them for their own particular reasons, and people that desperate didn’t hold any loyalties. His father believed differently, and maintained that it was in the worst of times that people needed to cleave together the strongest. Whenever Gareth would say that, Sister Ailis would smile at him and get all teary-eyed. For that single moment that faith of his father’s would seem like it could almost be true. But Loghain knew better. If things ever got bad enough, Dannon wouldn’t be the only rat to abandon the sinking ship.
Loghain was gone most of the afternoon, hoping to put his worst fears to rest. First he backtracked along the path the three of them had taken the previous night, confirming they indeed had not been followed. He returned to the Southron Hills and followed three of the trails he knew, hoping to run into one of the men his father had sent out, or anyone, really. But travelers this far south were few, and he saw only a flurry of horse tracks heading toward Lothering. By the time dusk fell and a storm began releasing torrents of ice-cold rain, Loghain was truly worried.
It wasn’t until he ventured down a hazardous path not far from the town that he finally spotted someone. The route was most often used by smugglers, allowing them to avoid the more patrolled roads in the north on their way toward the western mountains and the dwarves there who cared little for human laws. There were many such paths in the hinterlands, and few who used them had any legitimate reason to be there.
A lone horseman appeared, hood pulled up and his steed stepping carefully in the slippery mud. By the quality of his cloak Loghain would have guessed him a messenger for one of the city guilds, only he didn’t appear to be in any kind of hurry.
Loghain approached from well down the road, in full view. It was a friendly gesture, though the rider was wary enough to keep a hand on his sword hilt as he paused and waited. Lightning flared in the gray sky and the rain intensified, but Loghain’s leathers were already as drenched as they could possibly get. When he got within twenty feet, the rider backed his horse away and half drew his blade. The message was clear: You’ve come close enough.
“Greetings!” Loghain called out. When the rider did not respond immediately, he reached over his back and removed his bow, slowly putting it down on the ground in front of him.
This seemed to reassure the rider somewhat, though the horse whinnied nervously and pranced about on the spot. “What do you want?” he finally called back.
“I’m looking for friends!” Loghain shouted. “Men dressed like me. One of them might have come down this way, I’m hoping.”
“I haven’t seen anyone,” the rider responded. “But Lothering is filled with so many people they’re sleeping in the streets. It’s insanity. Your friends are probably there, if anywhere.”
Loghain sheltered his eyes from the rain with a hand, trying to make out the rider’s face under the hood. He couldn’t. “Lothering is filled with people?”
“You haven’t heard?” The rider seemed genuinely surprised. “With all the soldiers passing through, I would have thought half the Kingdom had heard already.”
“No, nothing.”
“The Rebel Queen is dead.” The rider sighed sadly, adjusting his hood as the rain splattered down. “Bastards finally caught her in the forest last night, they say. I tried to see the body before I left, but there were too many mourners.” The rider shrugged. “They say the young Prince might be dead, too. If you’ll pardon my saying so, let’s hope that isn’t true.”
Loghain’s blood went cold. “The Prince,” he repeated numbly.
“With any luck, he’s still out there somewhere. Considering all the soldiers I saw, he’d better be running for his life.” As the rain continued to pour, the rider nodded politely and gave Loghain a wide berth as he passed by.
Loghain remained where he was, his mind racing. Lightning flashed high overhead.
Maric picked listlessly at the soup they’d brought him, idly curious about the exact kind of animal that had provided the gamey meat swimming in the broth. Finally, Sister Ailis took the bowl away from him and returned to her sewing. She spent her time patching blankets and clothing, humming softly to herself all the while. He caught pieces of the Chant of Light, if he wasn’t mistaken, though the exact verses eluded him. Truthfully, he had other things on his mind.
Such as getting out of the hut. He could hear activity going on outside, like they were packing the entire camp up. The sister denied it. Maric had asked three times if the men Gareth was waiting for had returned before the burly guard outside the door promised he would tell the sister immediately should the situation change, and it had not. Maric sat on the bed, fidgeting. He toyed again with the idea of confessing everything, but where would that get him? What would Gareth do, suddenly saddled with a fugitive who was far more dangerous than he had imagined? Better to get out, get away from these poor people, and find his own way back to the rebel army. Yet the closed door and a single guard proved to be an incredibly effective deterrent to this plan.
An excellent start to your reign, King Maric, he chided himself. This is the kind of first-class problem-solving that will serve you well when you take charge of
the rebellion.
“You’re very hard on yourself,” Sister Ailis commented, glancing up from her sewing. She was wearing a set of delicate dwarven spectacles that reminded Maric of his grandfather King Brandel . . . “Brandel the Defeated,” as everyone else remembered him. Maric himself remembered the man as being both very sad and very proud. His grandfather possessed a pair of golden spectacles that he would immediately hide whenever he was caught wearing them, lest someone think him going blind. As a child, Maric used to think it was a fun game to steal them and then race around the castle halls wearing them. At least it was fun until he was finally caught, usually by his mother. Mind you, even she had to stifle her giggles at the sight of Maric in those things, and reprimanded him mostly for his grandfather’s benefit. Afterwards in private she would laugh and kiss his nose, pleading with him halfheartedly not to do it again. Pleas he ignored, of course.
It was odd to remember that now. He hadn’t thought of his grandfather in many years. He looked away from the sister and then remembered she was waiting for a response. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I said you’re very hard on yourself. You’re frightened, anyone can see that.” Her smile was knowing. “Have you considered that perhaps the reason you’re here, young man, is because the Maker led you here?”
Maric wanted it to be true. He stared at the floor until the sister returned to her sewing and left him be. Maric didn’t want these people to be hurt on his account, and more and more it looked like his best option was simply to dash out the door the next time it opened. If they killed him before he got out of the camp, then so be it. At least he would no longer be putting them in danger.
He kept his stare on the floor for some time, listening to the beat of the rain against the hut and the frenetic activity of the people outside. Men were yelling, things were being covered, children were giggling and being hustled into tents. The smell of fresh rain filled the hut, a scent that Maric had reveled in when he was young because it meant Mother might be forced indoors. But now it only made him anxious. He felt like he was waiting, waiting for Loghain to finally come and kill him, Gareth to command his release, another round of questions, waiting for something to happen. In time he slept, though only restlessly and without dreams.