Chapter Text
The laughter around the card table stopped when the newest stable hand entered the kitchen, pausing only long enough to shake the late spring snow from his hair like a great shaggy mabari. There was complete silence as he stomped snow and mud from his boots and removed his heavy coat to hang with the others by the door. The absence of the coat did little to take away from the sheer size of him – perhaps, Henri thought, he was more bear than mabari. Sturdy farm stock, faded red flannel stretched tight across shoulders that looked more than capable of bearing a plow harness all on their own, the fellows at the table avoided catching his eyes as he turned to warm his hands at the hearth.
Henri’s voice squeaked with an unmanful tremor when he attempted to summon it forth. He had to clear his throat twice before he could try again. “She give you any trouble today?”
It had only been a few months since the big bear of a man had come to work at the Slippery Toadstool. He was really too big and too old to be a stable boy, but the animals liked him more than the inn’s patrons. It hadn’t taken long for him to be given full responsibility of Nightmare, the owner’s ill-tempered prize racehorse. Henri had received enough bites, kicks, and various bruises from the bitch to know she was the very incarnation of evil itself.
His question hung in the air unanswered for a beat too long, chewed up and swallowed by the uneasy silence that permeated any room in which Leopold Hawke was present. There was simply something unsettling about the man, something unnatural that lurked behind that hard golden stare.
“No,” the man answered at last, and the silence, that invisible beast that prowled the room, raising the hairs on the arms of good Maker-fearing men, gobbled the single syllable up like a feastday turkey. A spark popped in the fire and several men nearly leapt from their seats. Hawke turned his big calloused hands over before the flames. “She was fine.”
Henri had to clear his throat again. “Cookie left a bowl of stew out for you,” he said, and felt a flash of alarm as those molten eyes turned on him. Maker, the man was unsettling. “P – probably cold by now. Care to, uh, you should – ah, you’ll want to warm it up. Probably. Yeah.”
“It’s fine,” he said shortly.
The silence prowled the room, traced the outlines of their souls like the cold crooked finger of death itself as he turned away, taking up his coat again, and the stew, and retreating back out into the flurry of spitting snow outside.
It seemed that they collectively released their breath. Yon, the inn’s errand boy and the youngest at the table, let loose a stressed little giggle.
“An apostate,” Jarl said, tossing down his cards and rolling his shoulders as if trying to remove a layer of filth. He was one of the Slippery Toadstool’s guards, frequently hired out to protect caravans as they passed through town, and he was easily a match in size for their resident stable boy, but after the first week he had carefully avoided making eye contact with Hawke. “I’m telling you, boys, on next month’s pay, that man’s an apostate, or I’m an Orlesian dandy.”
“You’re gonna have a tough time paying up next month’s pay when I’m about to win it from you right here,” Thom said. He worked in the stables with Hawke and Henri every day, though more and more often he seemed to find tasks to do somewhere else. He gathered up the cards and began to shuffle again.
“I’ve seen ‘em out in the yard with a mage’s staff!” Yon said.
“It’s a regular staff,” Thom almost sounded bored, yet he had been every bit as still and nervous as the rest of them, chewing on his mustaches and squirming like a well-spanked whore in Chantry service. “Farmers use them all the time to keep the wolves at bay. Your da probably owns one.”
“My da ain’t no apostate!” Yon’s face flushed red.
“No,” Thom agreed. “And neither is any man with shoulders like those.” He began to deal. Jarl took a long drink from his ration of ale.
“I knew a Templar once,” Jarl said darkly. “Taught me some things.”
“Like piss he did, Jarl,” Thom laughed. Jarl drank again.
“Mark my words, he’s an apostate,” he said. “Probably a blood mage. Consorts with demons.”
“Do you think he gets them to fuck him?” Yon asked.
“Henri wants to fuck him,” Thom chuckled.
Jarl ignored them. “I’m telling you,” he said. “He’s just waiting to feed our souls to the abyss. If we don’t act soon, he’ll take his chance and we’ll all be damned. See if we don’t.”
“I’m betting we don’t,” Thom said. He examined his cards, rearranging them. “Anyway,” he said. “Haven’t you been keeping up with what they’re saying in the streets? The king’s army is marching on darkspawn in the ruins up at Ostagar. Apostates are the least of our worries. Even the blood mage variety.”
“Henri,” Jarl leaned across the table, utterly serious. “Henri, he likes you…”
“Will you lot please stop!” Henri’s face felt like pure flame.
“If you distract him, I can run a test my Templar friend taught me.”
“There’s no such test, Jarl, he was pulling your dick on that one.”
“It won’t hurt him!” Jarl insisted.
“I said to leave me out of this madness!” Henri tried to laugh it off, but now Thom was looking at him speculatively. His heart was suddenly pounding.
“It would put the matter to rest,” Thom said, as if it were suddenly reasonable.
They managed to talk him into it with a handful of coppers and a share of their weekly ale rations. Henri told himself he would never have agreed to it if there was even a chance of Hawke being an apostate – it was a good way to ruin a man’s life, throwing around rumors like those – but he couldn’t shrug off a distinct feeling of guilt as he put on his coat and his boots and stepped out into the night.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Thom promised.
“Tell us what his dick looks like!” Yon called. His voice rang out, too loud in the cold, silent night. Henri waved him off.
A strong wind raised gooseflesh on the back of Henri’s neck, and he jumped at the sound of the inn sign clattering as it pitched back and forth so violently he could pick out the chipped green and orange paint on the wide umbrella of the mushroom on the street-facing side. The spitting snow had finally stopped, leaving portions of the yard alternatively powdered with white or brown with dead grass and stretches of mud. There was the distinct smell of something rotten on the air, and Henri had to work to keep his mind from thoughts of Blight and darkspawn. His lantern swung wildly as he hurried across the exposed expanse to the stables. He didn’t look for Jarl, who was supposed to be following, before he ducked into the stables.
He found Hawke in Nightmare’s stall, his big rough hands cupped, so uncharacteristically gentle as the mare nuzzled his palms. He was talking to her, quietly, hard voice pitched low – a picture of a completely different man than what Henri had come to expect.
She was nearly calm before she caught Henri’s scent, and, nostrils flaring suddenly, eyes rolling, she backed up a step. Hawke heeded her silent warning and dropped his hands. He backed from the stall and got the doors closed before she started kicking.
“Sorry!” Henri whispered quickly as he rounded on him, all towering, bearded mass, golden eyes and bulging muscles. He took an involuntary step back, and felt a moment as absolute horror as his boot landed in the bowl of mostly untouched stew on the floor. He overcompensated, stumbled, and fell. He cheeks burned in mortification.
“Henri,” Hawke said, and it wasn’t the gentle voice he had used on the horse, but something flatter, less patient, with a thin edge of danger, like ice rimming a frost bitten lake, and damn if it didn’t send pleasant little shivers up Henri’s spine. “Why are you here?”
Henri felt like blubbering. He hadn’t for a moment even considered Jarl’s wild ideas about an apostate blood mage mucking out the stables, but now, for the first time, the thought of what if permeated his senses. The playful thought of seducing this man suddenly seemed nothing less than suicidal and yet he was still somehow curious. His heart hammered in his chest, so hard and so high he thought he choke on it.
Hawke sighed and shook his head, reaching with one of those large hands to haul Henri to his feet.
“Calm down,” Hawke said, and Henri broke out into a cold sweat. He jumped guiltily as Nightmare kicked her stall again.
“This – this was a mistake!” Henri said. Maker, those hands. Was the rest of him big too? “I’m sorry!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawke said.
“I – !” a clatter of hoof beats in the yard halted Henri’s pitiful attempts at confession. He thought, for a moment, he spotted Jarl watching at the window. Hawke looked past him, then strode out into the yard, straight backed and full of purpose, as men begin to call loudly for the inkeep and lights flared within the Toadstool’s windows. Henri followed, pausing by the open stable doors.
“-en route to Denerim,” one of the men, a templar, was saying as Hawke, with his head bowed, quietly took his horse’s lead. The beast was lathered with exertion, flank heaving, and seemed ready to drop on the spot. The Templar hardly seemed to take note, addressing Josua, the inkeep, as soon as he appeared in the yard. “We require rooms for what’s left of the night, and don’t overcharge me.”
“At this hour, messere, what - ?”
“Ostagar has fallen, and the king is dead,” the Templar said. ”We’ve come from Lothering – it’s only a matter of days before they’re overrun, maybe a few weeks before they reach you here, if you’re lucky. If you have a shred of intelligence, you’ll start packing now.”
“You abandoned Lothering?” Hawke demanded suddenly, laying a hand on the templar’s shoulder.
The templar looked ready to scold the impertinent stable boy for his tone, but when he turned his head he met the broad expanse of the other man’s chest and shoulders and he quickly rethought his position.
“Little point in throwing our lives away defending something that’s already lost,” he said, uncomfortably shaking off the offending hand. He turned back to Josua, who was gaping and wringing his hands, and he seemed to miss the moment when Hawke dropped his horse’s lead and turned to stalk back to the stables.
Henri scrambled to get out of his way, staring as he began to take down Nightmare’s tack.
“What are you doing?” Henri asked. But he didn’t need to. He recalled the man’s cold fury, weeks ago, on receiving word of a brother signing up for the king’s army, leaving their mother and sister in Lothering. Henri could read well enough, as long as the words weren’t too big, and he had caught a peek at the letter while Hawke was out on an errand. You think you’re the only one who gets to leave, to have a life? he remembered reading. I’ll make my name at Ostagar. Enjoy your horse shit.
Henri scrambled quickly up the ladder to the loft Hawke called home. It didn’t take long to gather the man’s belongings – shaving kit, handful of flannel shirts, stack of correspondence, a purse heavy with every copper he’d saved since coming to work at the Toadstool. Henri only hesitated over the staff, wondered again about Jarl’s wild theories.
It felt like cold, normal wood gripped in his palm.
Hawke was quiet for a long moment when Henri brought him his things, and he stared with an unreadable expression that made Henri itch until Hawke at last accepted the bundle and lashed his staff to the back of his horse.
Hawke only hesitated a moment before he said, “Here,” and tossed Henri the purse with very little sign of regret. There was even a trace of humor to his lips. “Give it to Josua for the horse,” he explained. “And if there’s any left, use it to get out of town. Don’t wait too long, understand?”
“But what about you?” Henri asked.
Hawke grunted as he pulled himself up into Nightmare’s gleaming saddle. “What about me?”
“You’re going to Lothering?”
“I wouldn’t recommend that.”
Henri nearly tripped over his own feet, getting out of his way, and clutched the purse to his chest as he watched him ride through the yard, scattering templars like flies brushed from a bull’s backside. In the chaos he created, Hawke was gone in moments.
Henri nearly screamed when Jarl’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. Yon and Thom were there, too, bundled for the cold and each carrying satchels full to bursting with pilfered loot from the kitchens.
“He paid for Nightmare,” Henri said, slightly stunned, even as Jarl lifted the purse from his arms and peeked inside. He showed the contents to Thom.
“I think we can find a better use for the funds, my boy,” Thom said. “I hear Antiva is lovely this time of year.”