Chapter Text
Hawke cocks his arm back and throws the blade.
Another perfect strike, the newest in a parade of twelve narrow throwing knives dividing in half the pure-white trunk of a poor innocent aspen. The last knife is buried only inches above the knee-deep snow. He wades over to collect them, having exhausted his supply.
He’s bored out of his mind.
Not much to do in Brandel’s Hollow. It’s a smaller town even than Lothering was. And he doesn’t have any friends here either. Cullen’s out. Fenris is out. The only person he does know who stuck around is—
“Aren’t you the least bit cold?”
Hawke contains a groan.
The Tevinter shuffles over, bundled in—Hawke isn’t sure how many layers. Tevinter style is…abstruse. “No,” he replies, and tugs a knife from the firm wood of the aspen.
“Fereldans,” Dorian mutters. “I’m starting to think you’re all sporting coats of fur under your clothes, just like Mabari.”
Hawke snorts at that, despite himself, as he collects his knives. The man’s not far off.
“My goodness. Did you do all that?” Dorian nods at the tree.
“No,” Hawke says airily. “A particularly well-practiced sparrow. Cullen should recruit it.” He slips the slim blades into his belt and enjoys the sensation of Dorian’s annoyed glare boring into the back of his head.
Then: “Looks like you could use a challenge, don’t you think?”
Hawke turns.
The mage is grinning under that ridiculous mustache, which is starting to gather snowflakes from the gently falling snow. Hawke thinks briefly of declining, of being the better man here. He decides against it. “Fine.” Trudges back to his spot behind the wall of the house.
“Excellent.” Dorian cracks his knuckles, a little pool of fire blooming in his hand.
Hawke plucks a knife from his belt and throws. An easy toss—one that never makes it to the tree. Instead a bolt of flame pierces the air, and the knife is knocked into the snow. All right. The mage has some basic skill. Another toss, a little faster this time, also shot down. Hawke grunts. “So I notice you didn’t go with them.”
“Of course not.” Dorian fires. A successful shot. “Why would I trek five miles through all this horrible snow just to be killed in some no doubt ghastly fashion? Blood magic is dangerous, you know.”
Hawke holds the knife in his left hand this time—his better hand. “Just the kind of inspiring courage I’d expect from a Tevinter.”
He throws. The knife spins out of the hair, snow hissing to steam where it lands. “I notice you didn’t go with them either,” Dorian retorts.
True enough. “I should have.” He readies his next volley.
“Then why didn’t you? Fereldan courage not all it’s cracked up to be?”
“Fenris wouldn’t let me,” he mutters.
Then throws two blades in quick succession. Dorian misses the first—a satisfying thunk as it sinks into the tree—but he gets the second, even as he laughs. “Truth be told, I volunteered, but Cullen made me stay here instead.”
“Hm.” Perhaps the man’s courage has been bolstered by his time outside Tevinter. “Cullen did seem…rather afraid.”
“Oh yes. Stuffed himself to the gills with lyrium. His templars, too.” Dorian swirls a little wisp of fire around his finger. “Your report was quite concerning.”
Hawke had been tracking them for days. A trail of dead templars, stretching from small settlements south of Denerim, through the flatlands. Each strike happening so fast the Inquisition, with the delay in relaying information, couldn’t keep up.
Hawke could.
Two dozen or so blood mages. Powerful enough to strike as ghosts, unseen, the alarm raised only the next day when their victims were found locked in their own rooms and exsanguinated absolutely, their blood painted on the walls in a red message. The same in every town.
YOU ARE ALL GUILTY.
Hawke could understand that, even with the Circles disbanded, a few blood mages might still seek vengeance for past wrongs. But something’s off about the whole situation. This many, all gathered together, and with this kind of strength—powerful enough to kill templars utterly unnoticed. And on top of that—who knows? That might be the limit of their ability. Or it could be just the bare surface. Hawke had a bad feeling and stayed well back while he tracked them, never once risking the proximity necessary to lay eyes on them. The figure of two dozen he estimated from disturbances in the snow.
Fenris was rather happy about the extra caution.
Hawke guessed their trajectory and sent a message to the Inquisition, so they could assemble a force to stop these mages. Just in time. Calenhad is still the largest templar training ground in Ferelden. And the blood mages will be there in two days.
Hawke throws. Two knives at once. Both shot out of the air. “I should be there,” he murmurs.
“The templars are practically drowning in lyrium. Fenris can walk through most any normal spell with only the smallest of ill effects. Blood magic is likely harder to shrug off, but the principle remains,” Dorian says. “You and I, sadly, are built of more mundane stuff. No shame in avoiding near-certain death.”
Hawke issues his final salvo. Two at the same time, and the last straight after. Dorian misses the third and sighs. “Well, ten out of twelve isn’t bad.”
“No,” Hawke concedes. “It’s not.” Damn it all. The man’s likability is starting to wear him down.
Shouting from behind them.
Hawke turns and strides back toward the main square. The templars must be back. He follows the paths stomped out in the knee-deep snow, slipping between the little houses with their chimneys puffing out woodsmoke. The faint smell of cedar settles over the town, and the scent jogs a memory of—Lothering in the winter, his mother stoking the fire as Hawke at fourteen runs out the front door to see Bethany landing a well-aimed snowball in Carver’s face—
He shakes it free. Not now. Now there are blood mages to be dealt with. He enters the square.
This is not a triumphant return.
Templars being pulled off horses, dragged into the town hall, screams and moans gouging the air, not damped an ounce by the steady fall of snow—Hawke makes a quick count. A quarter gone, at least. Cullen’s horse is pacing through the square, and he shouts orders, the bright winter sun gleaming bronze off his helm. Hawke runs up to him, ducking past townspeople hauling injured templars to shelter. “Commander!” he calls. “What happened?!”
Cullen tugs the reins, and his horse draws to a stop, dancing in the snow. “They were—strong. So strong. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much power concentrated in so few mages.” He shakes his head. “We left our mark, but…we lost too many. I don’t think we have the numbers for a second strike.”
“Will Calenhad hold?”
“I don’t know. The bulk of the templars there are trainees. I think we bought them some time to prepare, at least. The blood mages won’t be moving right away, not after a battle like that.”
A poor comfort. His bad feeling was right after all. But something is missing. “Where’s Fenris?”
Cullen’s jaw tightens.
No.
“When I called the retreat…he stayed behind to cover our escape.”
Hawke feels his veins turn to ice, crack into pieces. He shivers, hugging himself.
“I’m sorry. I wish I had better news. We’ll speak later.” Then Cullen’s trotting off, shouting orders again.
Hawke stands there for a moment, then spins, heading down the road toward the forest. Something catches his arm, and he halts, controlling himself. “You’ll want to let go of me.”
“Going after him won’t help.” Dorian’s hand twitches but remains on Hawke’s elbow. “He can walk through bloody walls, if he’s still alive he’ll escape on his own. Meanwhile, the second you try and walk into that camp you’re dead for certain.”
The Tevinter is right. Hawke hates it, but the Tevinter is right. Hawke has fought blood mages before, and the cost has always been high. And now that they’re on their guard—
Dorian releases him, perhaps sensing that the frenzy of tension has drained away, for now, at least. “You’ll just have to trust him. And, forgive me if this sounds forward, but I doubt he’d want you throwing your life away for the sliver of a chance at success.”
Of course not. Of course he’d want Hawke to be all right. Of course he stands a not insignificant chance of escaping on his own. The lyrium struggles against blood magic, but their time on the run has nurtured Fenris’s patience, his shrewdness. And Hawke’s passed on a few tips of his own on how to be sneaky.
Or Fenris could be dead.
The possibility skates across Hawke’s mind, and he dismisses it out of hand. It can’t be. Not after everything they’ve been through.
“All right,” he mutters. “I’ll wait. But if he’s not back by tomorrow, I’m—I have to at least get close. See if he’s still there.”
Dorian hesitates, opens his mouth as if to speak. He turns away before he says anything.
Hawke knows what he was going to say. It won’t help.
He stalks off toward the town hall to see if there’s any way to lend his aid.
——
The snow’s still falling well after nightfall.
Hawke hasn’t even tried to sleep. He knows he couldn’t. For a while he was in the town hall laying stitches, setting bones, cauterizing wounds. The templars were practically glowing with lyrium than they left. The magic was supposed to break right over them. But it broke them instead. Too much power. Why are the mages so powerful?
Then things settled out a bit, and he had no more tasks to distract him, no more split flesh to slip over his fingers, blood to drip down to his wrists. He stood by the door and surveyed the groaning casualties, unmoved by their suffering. Because he wasn’t aware of it anymore. Instead Fenris’s absence swelled inside him, seeping into every hidden corner, hollowing him until he was afraid the void would expand beyond the diaphanous surface of his soft, weak skin, would crush him gently in its absolute refusal to be contained.
So he went outside, where snow fell infinite from the abyssal sky, and his own emptiness because a small thing in the quiet of the winter night.
Too late to go now. The dark hides him but he still can’t see in it. A disadvantage that might prove fatal. Instead he must stay here. Why did he agree earlier to wait? What did that damned Tevinter say to make him condemn his partner to captivity by those cursed blood mages?
Can’t go find Fenris. Can’t sleep. Can’t help anymore. Nothing to do but bloody pace, block out imaginings of Fenris’s suffering, wring his hands until his skin is rubbed raw. Useless.
He breathes in deeply and lets it out. His breath forms a great cloud that twists and dies in the cold air. The sight reassures him, for some reason, and he does it again, and again. As if he needs proof that he’s still here. Still alive.
“There’s a light!”
A shout, dampened the by snowfall.
Hawke starts running. The soldier is coming the other way, towards the center of town. She gestures behind her, frantic. “There’s a light! Not fire, it’s magic!”
“How many? And what color?” Hawke demands.
She stops for a second, her boots sliding a little. “Just the one. And, er—white, mostly. Maybe a little blue?”
Hawke is running again.
Most of the horses are penned outside of town, but the stable has a few, and Hawke appropriates one—the biggest one, in case it needs to carry two. In his haste to mount he nearly slips off the other side, but he gets himself steady and digs his heels in. The horse snorts and barrels forward.
It could be a trap, Hawke reflects, as he gallops down the road, snow spraying up beneath his horse’s hooves. They could be using a ruse to draw out the Champion of Kirkwall, take care of him ahead of their attack on Brandel’s Hollow. He decides it’s not likely, although the thought makes him circumspect, and he slows the horse to a canter, squinting ahead. The half-moon reflects off the broad plain of snow, lending some illumination, and he sees a lone figure—the rest could be invisible—struggling forward, with the glint of moonlight off his silver hair—
“Fenris!” Hawke shouts.
The figure stops and looks up.
Hawke turns his horse, and it plunges through the virgin snow. There’s a long, shallow dip just ahead, and Hawke realizes Fenris must have found the river and followed it. A circuitous route, but it brought him back. As Hawke draws closer, he sees that Fenris isn’t wearing his cloak, his coat, or even his armor, just a shirt and trousers that are soaked to the thigh with melted snow. The lyrium glows through them, vivid white-blue. Damn it all. How did he make it this far? It’s five miles as the crow flies, and following the river—seven, at least—
Hawke dismounts, wraps Fenris in both arms. “Maker, oh, Maker’s blood, I was afraid you were dead—“
“I am not.” Fenris shivers against Hawke’s chest. “Simply cold. We need to talk. I have some important information.”
“Andraste’s ass, Fenris, you escape from a den of blood mages, walk through the snow back to—listen, let’s just get you inside and sit you in front of a fire, all right?”
“That…does sound appealing,” he mumbles.
Once released from Hawke’s arms, he goes to the horse and slips his foot into the stirrup—which is when Hawke discovers his feet are bare. He never particularly liked wearing boots, but he did it without complaint when the weather turned— “Shit,” Hawke mutters. As soon as Fenris is settled Hawke grabs one of his feet and raises it to the moonlight, praying he doesn’t see the red blisters, or worse, the creeping black of the worst kind of frostbite, where the flesh becomes dead, unsalvageable—
White and waxy, but no more.
“I’ve told you the markings burn my skin,” Fenris remarks. “That was, to some degree, literal. In this case, a boon.”
That’s why the lyrium’s glowing so bright. It’s protecting him. Considering how he shivered earlier, that likely wasn’t enough to stave off the cold completely, but it did keep him from losing his toes.
Hawke grins. The relief is a pair of warm hands that have shaped him again, taken him from the void and made him anew. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
“As am I. Now let us return. I have some things to tell you, but…they may not be easy to hear.”
Hawke isn’t sure he likes the sound of that, but with Fenris alive and with him once more, he doesn’t much care at the moment. He mounts the horse, wrapping his arms around Fenris’s waist as they start at a steady walk back to town.