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It was a Fereldan autumn, grey skies against grey earth, grey clouds threatening grey rain. Mud sucked at Malcolm's boots as he walked beside the wagon, coaxing on the horses and pulling wheels out of the muck. He made a game out of it, betting with his eldest sons which wheel would get stuck next.
"Front left one," said Cormac, legs dangling from the driver's seat.
"Front right," said Artie, just to be contrary. He'd wrestled Cormac for the privilege of holding the reins today while mum stayed in the wagon with Anton and the twins. Cormac stuck out his tongue in answer.
The wagon dipped, the front left wheel squelching in the mud, and Malcolm laughed. "Cormac wins again!"
"That's not fair! It was the front left one last time, too," Artie muttered. "It's because Cormac is sitting on that side, isn't it? Told you you shouldn't have eaten all those tarts!" He nudged Cormac with his elbow.
"Hey!" Cormac nudged back.
Malcolm stretched out a hand, and Artie felt a rush of air over his skin. The wheel pulled up and out as though under its own power, bouncing the boys in their seat. Cormac whooped while Artemis clutched the reins tight.
At the next crossroads, a pair of strangers joined them on the road. Their armour was heavy and dirt-speckled, but the swords curving down their chests were clear as day. Malcolm stopped making jokes.
Mum called them monsters, the men in metal. Monsters who would take away Artie's father and big brother.
"Good morning, sers," Malcolm greeted them, his smile sunny in the grey weather. Cormac's smile was more defiant than friendly, and Artie's was hardly a smile at all.
"Morning," said one templar as he ducked his metal head. Artemis wondered what was under that helmet. The voice sounded human, even friendly, but Artie pictured a grin with blackened, razor teeth. Were the templars following them? Did they know what Cormac had done? Artie scooted closer to his brother, one hand seeking Cormac's and squeezing. His other hand was clammy on the leather reins.
"Dad?" said Artie in a small voice. Malcolm offered him a wink and kept on smiling. Artie let himself breathe. As long as Dad was smiling, nothing could be too bad.
The front left wheel got stuck again, and as Malcolm bent to pull it out by hand, the templars continued on. It was only after they'd faded from sight that Malcolm took his hand from the knife at his belt.
It was months before Artemis saw the metal men again. The Hawkes had settled in Honnleath by then, a quaint village in the arling of Redcliffe, and they'd arrived in time for Malcolm to help with the harvest. He worked now as a teacher, while Leandra stayed home with their five children.
The twins were loud, Anton was getting underfoot, and Leandra had sent Artie out to get bread so there would be one less body in their tiny home. Relieved to be away from the noise, Artie didn't head to the baker's right away but paused by his favourite spot, the garden in the middle of town, and crouched under its odd sculpture. The ground was cold and wet from the morning's rainstorm, and Artie was sure he'd end up with mud in places that his mother would scold him for, but when he closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the rough stone, it seemed to hum, buzzing softly against Artie's skin. It was like being wrapped in a blanket, the way the purring stone surrounded him.
He'd tried to explain it to Cormac once.
"It purrs," he'd said, convincing his brother to sit under the statue. "Listen."
And Cormac had sat, cross-legged and head cocked, only to look at him like he was crazy. "I don't hear anything." He'd narrowed his eyes. "Are you having me on?"
Artie had kept insisting that he just needed to listen, and Cormac had tried but still heard nothing.
Artemis wondered if the statue only purred for him. That was a nice thought, he decided. Maybe the statue just liked him better.
But then Artie opened his eyes and spotted the pair of templars, haggling over fruit and teasing the pretty vendor girl until she smiled for them. There were faces under the helmets, as it turned out -- human faces with stubbled chins and blunt, smiling teeth -- but the swords on their chests marked them for the monsters they were.
The stone stopped purring as Artie gasped. He ran back home, forgetting the bread Mum had sent him to buy, and found Cormac by the vegetable garden in back, trying to freeze the castle he’d made out of mud.
“Artie! Artie, look at this!” Cormac beamed up at his little brother as frost slipped from his fingertips, swirling around his architectural marvel. Muddy turrets froze upright, mid-topple. “I'm making the Black City!“
“Cormac, stop!” Artemis grabbed Cormac’s hand, wincing when the cold seeped into his skin instead. Cormac stopped casting. “You have to stop or the bad men will take you away!”
He remembered the way the templars had taken Laelah, the girl with the pretty golden hair who'd made the flowers grow. They’d dragged her away by that hair, and Artie had heard her screams. He didn't want to hear Cormac's.
“Artie. Artie. Hey.”
Warm healing trickled from Cormac’s hand into Artie’s, soothing his frostbitten fingers. It wasn’t cont r olled and exact like dad’s healing. It was messy, spilling out over Artemis's skin.
“Cormac, stop,” Artemis whined, but now it was Cormac grabbing his hand.
“Artie, no one’s gonna take me anywhere. I told you what happened to the last one who tried to take dad.” His grin was broad and proud and the opposite of reassuring. “I’ll squish them if they try!” He wiped the tears from Artie’s cheek with his thumb, leaving a muddy smear under each eye. He added a smear down the bridge of Artie’s nose just to complete the look, and his little brother made a face, scrunching his nose and rubbing at the dirt with the back of his hand. “Come on. Help me make mud castles!”
That evening, Leandra smacked Cormac upside the head for coming into the house covered in mud and smacked Artemis twice for forgetting the bread. He promised to get it tomorrow.
Honnleath was a small town, small enough that Artie could walk from one end to the other in a matter of minutes, and small enough that rumour travelled faster than footsteps.
The templars had taken someone. A child, the baker said. No, a man, his wife argued.
"When?" asked Artie, not quite managing to hide the fear in his eyes.
"Early this morning, as dawn was breaking."
Artie nodded, thinking of his father, remembering how calm he had looked that day on the road. His father, who he hadn't seen that morning. But then he hadn't seen his older brother either. Artie had trouble counting out the coins, hands shaking as he accepted the loaf of bread.
He ran home for the second day in a row, but this time there were templars behind the house, joking and laughing as their boots flattened the mud where Cormac had been making castles the day before.
A child.
No, a man.
"Dad!" Artemis called, running into the house and searching the rooms. "Cormac!"
Leandra shushed him harshly and clutched the sleeping bundle closer to her chest. "You'll wake the twins!"
Artie barely heard her over the sound of his pulse in his ears. Dread cramped in his stomach, but he didn't see them. He tried to tell her something was wrong, that Cormac and Dad were missing and there were templars outside, but his voice simply stopped working, as though the shouting had used it up. He choked out a few distressed sounds and fled back into the main room.
They had taken them. They had taken them, and now they were here to arrest the rest of the family, weren't they?
The doorknob turned, and Artemis pictured a metal hand on the other side. The door opened --
" No !"
--and slammed shut, hard enough to make the house shake, and chairs and table followed, wood snapping against the wall. Artie threw his arms over his head as dishes crashed and shattered and books flew. He shook, and the whole house seemed to shake with him.
The door opened again, more cautiously, but the face that peered around it wasn't hidden by a helmet. Blue eyes were wide in a dark face, his father's face.
Malcolm looked around. “Oh, Artie, no,” he breathed.
Artie’s face was a mess of snot and tears, eyes big and blue and frightened. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he hiccupped, hugging himself. “I’m sorry. I saw the templars, and I didn't see you. I didn’t know what to do, and…”
Chair and table legs scraped the floor again, clattering against the wall. This time Malcolm felt it, the rush of magic over his skin, and if not for his own magic, he would have been knocked back too. He turned to whisper something to someone outside and then shut and locked the door behind him. He hushed Artie gently and bent to cup his damp cheeks. Malcolm smiled like he always did, but this time Artie read the panic in his eyes. “All right, Artie. It’s all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or your brother, do you understand me?"
Artie nodded, his lip trembling. "And mum and Anton and the twins?"
The panic in Malcolm's eyes hardened to determination. "I won't let anything happen to them either. But I need your help, Artie. We need to clean this place up and act like this didn’t happen, all right?”
Artie nodded again.
“But first I need you to stop rattling the dishes. Can you do that, Artie?"
"Where's Cormac?"
"He's outside with Anton. I told him to keep watch."
"There are templars outside!"
"I saw them. They're a little ways down the road now." Still much, much too close. Close enough to have heard the slamming. "Now, Artie, please. Breathe. I need you to stop moving things around."
Artie hiccupped some more, fat tears sliding down his cheeks. Malcolm's voice was soothing, but his grip was tight on Artie's arms.
Leandra stood in the doorway, a hand over her mouth and fear in her eyes. In the next room, the twins were bawling, loud ear-splitting cries. “Malcolm,” she said in a wrecked voice. “Two of them? We can’t…”
“I know, Leandra.” Malcolm let go of Artie to climb to his feet, taking her hands in his. “And we can. We’ll manage, I promise. Tend to the twins. I'll take care of this.”
Leandra nodded and disappeared. Artemis heard her hushing the babies, heard the lullaby she started to sing, and as he listened, what was left of the dishes stopped rattling. The knot in Artie's stomach started to loosen.
"That's good, Artie," said Malcolm. "That's good." He divided his attention between his son and the window. "Now help me clean up this mess. Be careful with those broken dishes."
Malcolm righted the bookshelf, the table and chairs. A leg had snapped off the table, which he propped up with a stack of books. Two of the chairs would be better off as firewood, and he tossed the pieces into the fireplace. He moved quickly and pushed Artie to do the same. When Artie peeked out the window, he saw what his dad was looking at: Cormac and Anton just outside the house, talking to the templars.
They left Honnleath that night, packed up their things into the wagon and bid goodbye to another life.
Artie sat up front with Malcolm, huddled under the blanket the two of them shared. It wasn't until they were miles away that Malcolm broke the silence. "Do you know what magic that was, Artie?"
Artie said, "No," in a small voice.
"That was force magic. Looks like you're a force mage, like your dad."
Artie said nothing.
"I'll teach you how to use it. Maybe you can help me try to keep Cormac out of trouble."
Artie's lips twitched.
"Ah, there's a smile." Malcolm tapped a finger under Artie's chin, and Artie looked up. "It's not so bad. We'll get through this, I promise."
And Malcolm smiled. He smiled like he always did, like he had the last time they'd been on the road, but this time Artie didn't find it comforting.