It was a good night. Despite the fact that it was marking a very specific occasion, Romulus had managed to forget most of it.
Not that everyone didn't constantly try to remind him. He was the hero, or rather one of them, and though it might’ve seemed strange to an outsider, the slave was actually a little more used to being looked up to in these settings than the Avenarius was. Nights like these were not an affair for masses of nobles, sipping wine while they plotted and schemed about what would happen tomorrow. These nights were for the common man, or elf, looking to celebrate something they’d achieved, without a single thought to what was going to happen tomorrow.
Indeed, Romulus did not want to think about tomorrow.
He accepted congratulations with silence and nods, little polite smiles without parting his lips. He shook hands firmly with soldiers, found respect in their eyes. He wasn’t known to them in the same capacity Estella was, not by a long shot. She was a mercenary, accustomed to their company, if not always their praise, and she often spent time with them. Romulus kept largely to himself, for the very reason he was not doing so tonight: he did not intend to know these people, since his time here was so short.
The mark remained on his palm. He never really expected it to leave, but was disappointed all the same when it remained. He didn’t know if other rifts still existed now that the Breach was gone. If they didn’t, then there truly was no good use for such a thing, was there? He would return to Tevinter, and Chryseis would study it, try to learn everything she could about it, and use it for her own ends. It would elevate his status, he supposed. If it didn’t kill him.
More immediately concerning was the impending death the Revered Mother Annika was about to deal him. It was their third game of Mills in a best of three, and both sides were growing thoroughly intoxicated, having agreed to take a strong drink every time one of their pieces was removed from the board. It was late at night, though how far past midnight Romulus could not say. The festivities still carried on strongly, though the more weak-willed of the masses had slipped away to sleep. Romulus was using the distraction and opportunity to drink to work up some courage. He normally became rather irritable when drinking, but this was because his mind was usually in a poor place. Tonight was blissfully different in that regard.
“Has it been as long as I think it has?” Annika prodded. “Your men are going to fall asleep, Romulus.” He studied the pieces on the grid before him, before shifting one across a gap, breaking up Annika’s three-in-a-row. A gaggle of Inquisition soldiers had them more or less surrounded in the tavern ever since they’d entered. Romulus had been convinced to start drinking more effectively once Vesryn had managed to dance with him in the throng by the bonfire for a few seconds. An embarrassing scene, to be sure.
The soldiers had wanted to play all kinds of games with him, from dice games to stabbing knives into the table between their fingers. Romulus was particularly good at that one, and left no few soldiers with new cuts and empty shot glasses. Now, those still interested watched the battle of wits between the Herald and the Revered Mother, while those less patient turned to their drinks and their conversation.
When at last the game ended, Romulus found his pieces reduced to two, and conceded defeat to the Revered Mother. He was surprised with how well she held her drink, but had to constantly remind himself that she was once a soldier, too. Still was, judging by some of the things he’d seen.
The door to the tavern swung open again, admitting a gust of chill air and a gale of laughter. Khari was still pretty steady on her feet, but not as much so as Reed, who entered with her. Apparently, he’d said something she found hilarious, or perhaps she simply found everything hilarious at the moment, it was hard to say. She smacked him in the bicep with the side of her fist, then shoved him towards the bar. “That’s a sovereign if I win—don’t forget!” She nodded with false sagacity, then turned her attention to the rest of the room, her lopsided grin growing when she spotted the game and its players.
Without much care for who was standing where, she shouldered her way through the cluster of soldiers gathered around, and they let her for the most part, a few of them steadying her when it looked like she might tip a smidge too far. “Oooh, Mills!” She was apparently familiar with the game as well, and her eyes were sharper than they ought to have been when she swept them over the board, if she was as intoxicated as she acted.
“You’ll have to play me one day, Annika.” She didn’t seem particularly inclined to play now, however. “You two gonna have a rematch?”
“No, I think she has me figured out at this point,” Romulus admitted, rising from the table. He’d actually been about to go search for Khari, but it seemed she’d found him instead. The Revered Mother offered him a smirk from the other side of the board.
“Well spotted. Finish that there, and I’ll accept your surrender.” She pointed to the last of the glass upon the table still with drink in it. Romulus snorted with a laugh, realizing that he had forgotten. He scooped up the glass and downed it, setting it roughly back down upon the table. Stopping beside Khari, he offered a squeeze of the shoulder in greeting, though they’d not been split up for all that long.
"Mind heading back outside? There’s something I want to show you.”
Khari blinked, but then shrugged. “Sure.” She looked a little curious as to what he was talking about, and for a moment, almost a bit wary, like she was expecting something she wasn’t sure she’d like. That faded quickly, though, and she made short work of her excuses to those among the larger group she knew, exiting the cluster with more ease than she’d entered it and pushing the door to the outside open with her shoulder, standing in front of it to keep it propped open until he’d exited as well.
After it had fallen shut behind them, she tilted her head to the side. “So, where’re we headed?”
"Just outside the walls,” he said, seeing no real reason to hide it. He wrapped his cloak tightly around him. It was of course quite cold, but the spot he’d found was actually quite sheltered from it, especially the damnable wind that cut so much more than the temperature itself.
The tavern behind them, they passed by the largest of the bonfires, those around it having settled down a fair amount, allowing the emanating heat from the fire to keep them warm. Many directed their eyes towards the scar across the sky above the temple, where the thin clouds still swirled around, not yet recovered. Even against the dark of the night sky it was possible to make out the sickly green color, which still hadn’t faded from the spot. He hoped it would return to normal, eventually. It was at least more peaceful than it had been.
They chanced upon the lead scout, Lia, at the main gate, which had just been left open for the time being, the two guards grudgingly performing their duty at the post, but poorly hiding the wineskins they carried. The young elf woman offered Romulus and Khari a smile and nod in greeting, before she jogged out down the road, her bow slung across her back. Another of the scouts met her outside, and the two departed together.
The spot Romulus led Khari to was situated upon a small hill, overlooking the frozen lake and the forested mountainside beyond. It wasn’t the most picturesque spot in the world, but it was outside of the walls and away from the people, and Romulus didn’t really want to do this around either, and certainly not in any of the dismal, underground hidey-holes he’d subjected himself to for the duration of his stay in Haven.
Up a short path through the snow, they could see a few trails of footprints, roughly matching the Herald’s size and shape, evidence that he’d been out this way several times throughout the day, since the occasional snowfall covered most older tracks quickly enough. Upon reaching the top, a small inlet in the rock face was revealed, not quite large enough to be considered a cave. Most importantly, it was both protected from the wind, and devoid of snow on the ground. A firepit had been meticulously pre-prepared, such that Romulus only had to stoop and briefly strike flint against steel, and soon a warm flame had sprung up, quickly heating the little space.
A substantial rug had been laid out beside it, the centerpiece atop it a large bowl, entirely covered by several warm blankets. Romulus hadn’t been uncomfortable before, but as he gestured out with his arm at what he’d assembled, he felt quite nervous, and it obviously showed, though he transformed the feeling into a sheepish grin.
"I, uh… I don’t know what I was thinking, but I thought I’d do something. A thing. For you.”
“A thing? For me? You shouldn’t have.” Khari seemed to be all easy humor, her smile firmly in place and her eyes carrying the glimmer of mirth that was often to be found there. She wasted little time situating herself on one side of the rug, lifting up the corner of the cover on the bowl with more care than she usually demonstrated with such things. When it came away to reveal an assortment of foods, she barked a laugh. “I should be alarmed by how well you know me after a few months, Rom.” The selection on offer was indeed from what he knew to be her favorites, and she popped a dried fig in her mouth with little ceremony and a short hum of satisfaction, chewing it over and patting the spot on the other side of the rug.
“C’mon then. No way I’m getting through all this by myself. But you knew that already.” She stretched her feet out towards the fire, sliding off her fine leather boots with her feet and wiggling her toes a little ways back from the flames. “And for the record, you were thinking ‘you know, that Khari is pretty great, and she really likes food. I should give her some food.’ You were completely correct, of course.” The words were playful, light, and intentionally exaggerated, from the way she said them. Somewhat more serious, however, were the next ones.
“So… thank you.”
"You’re welcome. I stole all of this, by the way,” he added, his grin not wavering as he moved to take a seat, more beside her than across from her. "While the others were all worried about the mages and the templars, and closing the Breach. Guess no one really minds when I slip away.” He hadn’t meant for the sentence to end that way, but the words were out of his mouth, and he regretted them, even if he didn’t mean anything by it, in a larger sense.
He was quite hungry, and helped himself to some of the jerky, before he suddenly realized he’d forgotten the wine. Of course, his line of thinking was that both of them would’ve had enough to drink by this point in the night, and wouldn’t really want any more, but who didn’t want to drink after eating? He grimaced at himself, and then put it behind him.
"I do want you to know that you’re great, though,” he said, unable to keep himself from it any longer. She would know, surely, that he had a point to this, more than just opening up a bit and putting a stop to the moping for a night. "I don’t really want to joke about it. I don’t think I’d have made this far with this whole marked business if you hadn’t been here. I’ll probably forget a lot of the others over time, but I won’t forget you.”
Khari’s smile dimmed a little, and she swallowed, chasing down the fig with a large bite from a hunk of jerky, chewing slowly. It was an effort to give herself some time to think, and not a terribly subtle one. In the end though, she ran out of jerky before she ran out of thoughts, and so when she spoke, they were half-formed still. “You…” She grimaced. “You’d have been fine. And I’m not joking about that.” She reached up and scrubbed her hands up and down over her cheeks, sighing gustily.
“I hate endings.” She muttered the words, almost, then looked over at him and shook her head. “I’m no good at them. I only ever seem to leave when I’m angry, and when I get left, I’m…” She paused, shifting restlessly in her spot and huffing softly. It seemed that she was uncertain about something, awkward, even, which was unusual.
“I’ll miss you. And no one’s going to forget you, because I’m not going to let them.” A thin smile curled her mouth then, and she shrugged. “You were here. You were part of this. An important one—no matter what happens now, and no matter what you were before. So… if that means anything to you, there it is, I guess.”
"It does mean something to me. Maybe I didn’t want it to, when I realized this would happen, and maybe I wasn’t supposed to let it. If it didn’t mean anything to me, this would be easy. Leaving.” He made sure he had her eyes. "It’s not easy.”
He didn’t plan to say so much as a goodbye to the others. It would be simplest if he were just gone come morning, and that was how he planned it. The rest would go to sleep with their warm bellies from the drink, warm thoughts from the victory, and when they woke, they wouldn’t need him anymore. He’d played his part. It was an important one, yes, but it was over now. He’d allowed himself to think for a few moments, much earlier, that he’d been chosen by something, that Andraste was somehow wrapped up in all of this, in him, but now he recognized that as simply something that he’d wanted to believe. And like many of the things he wanted, it was best if he never got them.
"This doesn’t have to be a bad ending.” The rock wall wasn’t far behind them. He snagged a warm blanket, scooted back against the rock until his back was up against it, then draped the blanket over himself, with room to spare. He held out an arm and half the blanket, hoping Khari would scoot under it. "We can… I don’t know, tell stupid stories about the weird places we came from, and the dumb things we did. For as long as we can stay awake.”
She seemed to consider that suggestion for a moment, but then situated herself in beside him, pulling her knees up so that her feet would fall under the folds of the blanket as well. “Okay, but you’d have to have been pretty fucking dumb to come anywhere near half the stupid things I did when I was a kid.” She eased back against the stone wall behind them with an exhale, letting her muscles slacken. “My entire clan called me Da’Enfanim, which means ‘little terror,’ basically. Nicest nickname I had. Still shorter than my actual name, too.”
Romulus let out an honest laugh at that. He believed it, too, and believed it would only have encouraged her, let her know that whatever she was doing was working. He found himself relaxing, too, the alcohol in him doing enough to drown out his thoughts about the next day, the sounds of the festivities dying down in the distance…
It wasn’t enough, however, to drown out the sudden sounds of a struggle, not far from them. It took Romulus a moment to comprehend that the clash of steel and the sudden cry weren’t simply in his mind, subconsciously springing up to haunt him of his memory or warn him of his future. He turned to Khari, frowning. "You hear that?” He waited another second. A definite cry of desperate effort cut through the air.
A breath hissed out from between her teeth, and she nodded sharply. “I heard that. Let’s go.”
He shoved the blanket off of them and stalked to the edge of the little hilltop. Turning back, he grabbed the metal bowl by the bottom and tipped out the food in it. He then slid down the face of the hill, bowl in hand, towards the lake of ice, Khari, back in her shoes, right behind him. At the bottom, he heard heavy, weary footfalls trudging as quickly as possible through the snow. He looked right, and saw Lia staggering towards him, a bloody knife in one hand, the other clutching a wound in her side. The blood leaked through her fingers and down her leg.
“Two behind me,” she managed, running past Romulus a short ways before she stopped, and fell to a knee. At the treeline, two archers in dark garb and armor appeared in pursuit, the first immediately firing an arrow that Romulus was forced to intercept with the bowl. It clattered off the metal to the ground. He scooped it up.
Though she hadn’t been anywhere near fully-armed during the party. Khari had been wearing a dagger at her hip, and she brandished that now, the blade about seven inches from the hilt. The way she held it suggested that she knew how to use it properly, and she was off across the ice, surefooted despite the slick terrain, making a beeline for the archers. Another arrow was loosed, whistling by her ear before striking the frozen surface of the lake behind her. She’d nearly reached the treeline by the time the first shooter had nocked a second, and that one struck her in the arm just as she reached him.
She shifted the knife to the other hand and jumped, tackling him to the ground in a tangle of limbs. He scrambled to get out from underneath her, throwing her off before she could stab him, but Khari worked with what she had, lashing out from where she landed and catching him in the calf. He yelled hoarsely, momentarily seized by pain, and she used the opportunity to stab him again, this time in the throat, which abruptly cut off the noise.
Romulus charged the other, and had to block a second arrow with the bowl on the way, before it could pierce his throat. By the time the archer had nocked the third, he was in range, and Romulus hurled the bowl away from him, striking his enemy in the upper body and forcing him to abandon his aim. Romulus reached him before he could draw a secondary weapon and smashed his shoulder into the man’s gut, driving him back until he struck a tree trunk. He groaned from the hit, but Romulus cut this short as well by plunging the arrowhead into his temple, and leaving it there. He sank slowly down the tree.
Immediately he turned back for Lia, checking and confirming that Khari had handled the other threat on the way. He stopped beside her to scoop up one of her arms and help her walk. Khari slung the other over her own shoulders and added a hand to the pressure on Lia's most obvious wound. "Who are they?” Romulus asked. "What happened?”
“Scouts, I think,” she mumbled, wincing with each step. “Venatori… they’re—” Her words were cut off by the sound of an ominous horn, not one Romulus had ever heard before, coming from the woods behind them. On the mountainside, firelight from torches was starting to dot the shadowy trees, moving ever closer to them. An army was on the way. Romulus swallowed, all thought of leaving before morning immediately set aside.
"We need to get back. Now.”
Not that everyone didn't constantly try to remind him. He was the hero, or rather one of them, and though it might’ve seemed strange to an outsider, the slave was actually a little more used to being looked up to in these settings than the Avenarius was. Nights like these were not an affair for masses of nobles, sipping wine while they plotted and schemed about what would happen tomorrow. These nights were for the common man, or elf, looking to celebrate something they’d achieved, without a single thought to what was going to happen tomorrow.
Indeed, Romulus did not want to think about tomorrow.
He accepted congratulations with silence and nods, little polite smiles without parting his lips. He shook hands firmly with soldiers, found respect in their eyes. He wasn’t known to them in the same capacity Estella was, not by a long shot. She was a mercenary, accustomed to their company, if not always their praise, and she often spent time with them. Romulus kept largely to himself, for the very reason he was not doing so tonight: he did not intend to know these people, since his time here was so short.
The mark remained on his palm. He never really expected it to leave, but was disappointed all the same when it remained. He didn’t know if other rifts still existed now that the Breach was gone. If they didn’t, then there truly was no good use for such a thing, was there? He would return to Tevinter, and Chryseis would study it, try to learn everything she could about it, and use it for her own ends. It would elevate his status, he supposed. If it didn’t kill him.
More immediately concerning was the impending death the Revered Mother Annika was about to deal him. It was their third game of Mills in a best of three, and both sides were growing thoroughly intoxicated, having agreed to take a strong drink every time one of their pieces was removed from the board. It was late at night, though how far past midnight Romulus could not say. The festivities still carried on strongly, though the more weak-willed of the masses had slipped away to sleep. Romulus was using the distraction and opportunity to drink to work up some courage. He normally became rather irritable when drinking, but this was because his mind was usually in a poor place. Tonight was blissfully different in that regard.
“Has it been as long as I think it has?” Annika prodded. “Your men are going to fall asleep, Romulus.” He studied the pieces on the grid before him, before shifting one across a gap, breaking up Annika’s three-in-a-row. A gaggle of Inquisition soldiers had them more or less surrounded in the tavern ever since they’d entered. Romulus had been convinced to start drinking more effectively once Vesryn had managed to dance with him in the throng by the bonfire for a few seconds. An embarrassing scene, to be sure.
The soldiers had wanted to play all kinds of games with him, from dice games to stabbing knives into the table between their fingers. Romulus was particularly good at that one, and left no few soldiers with new cuts and empty shot glasses. Now, those still interested watched the battle of wits between the Herald and the Revered Mother, while those less patient turned to their drinks and their conversation.
When at last the game ended, Romulus found his pieces reduced to two, and conceded defeat to the Revered Mother. He was surprised with how well she held her drink, but had to constantly remind himself that she was once a soldier, too. Still was, judging by some of the things he’d seen.
The door to the tavern swung open again, admitting a gust of chill air and a gale of laughter. Khari was still pretty steady on her feet, but not as much so as Reed, who entered with her. Apparently, he’d said something she found hilarious, or perhaps she simply found everything hilarious at the moment, it was hard to say. She smacked him in the bicep with the side of her fist, then shoved him towards the bar. “That’s a sovereign if I win—don’t forget!” She nodded with false sagacity, then turned her attention to the rest of the room, her lopsided grin growing when she spotted the game and its players.
Without much care for who was standing where, she shouldered her way through the cluster of soldiers gathered around, and they let her for the most part, a few of them steadying her when it looked like she might tip a smidge too far. “Oooh, Mills!” She was apparently familiar with the game as well, and her eyes were sharper than they ought to have been when she swept them over the board, if she was as intoxicated as she acted.
“You’ll have to play me one day, Annika.” She didn’t seem particularly inclined to play now, however. “You two gonna have a rematch?”
“No, I think she has me figured out at this point,” Romulus admitted, rising from the table. He’d actually been about to go search for Khari, but it seemed she’d found him instead. The Revered Mother offered him a smirk from the other side of the board.
“Well spotted. Finish that there, and I’ll accept your surrender.” She pointed to the last of the glass upon the table still with drink in it. Romulus snorted with a laugh, realizing that he had forgotten. He scooped up the glass and downed it, setting it roughly back down upon the table. Stopping beside Khari, he offered a squeeze of the shoulder in greeting, though they’d not been split up for all that long.
"Mind heading back outside? There’s something I want to show you.”
Khari blinked, but then shrugged. “Sure.” She looked a little curious as to what he was talking about, and for a moment, almost a bit wary, like she was expecting something she wasn’t sure she’d like. That faded quickly, though, and she made short work of her excuses to those among the larger group she knew, exiting the cluster with more ease than she’d entered it and pushing the door to the outside open with her shoulder, standing in front of it to keep it propped open until he’d exited as well.
After it had fallen shut behind them, she tilted her head to the side. “So, where’re we headed?”
"Just outside the walls,” he said, seeing no real reason to hide it. He wrapped his cloak tightly around him. It was of course quite cold, but the spot he’d found was actually quite sheltered from it, especially the damnable wind that cut so much more than the temperature itself.
The tavern behind them, they passed by the largest of the bonfires, those around it having settled down a fair amount, allowing the emanating heat from the fire to keep them warm. Many directed their eyes towards the scar across the sky above the temple, where the thin clouds still swirled around, not yet recovered. Even against the dark of the night sky it was possible to make out the sickly green color, which still hadn’t faded from the spot. He hoped it would return to normal, eventually. It was at least more peaceful than it had been.
They chanced upon the lead scout, Lia, at the main gate, which had just been left open for the time being, the two guards grudgingly performing their duty at the post, but poorly hiding the wineskins they carried. The young elf woman offered Romulus and Khari a smile and nod in greeting, before she jogged out down the road, her bow slung across her back. Another of the scouts met her outside, and the two departed together.
The spot Romulus led Khari to was situated upon a small hill, overlooking the frozen lake and the forested mountainside beyond. It wasn’t the most picturesque spot in the world, but it was outside of the walls and away from the people, and Romulus didn’t really want to do this around either, and certainly not in any of the dismal, underground hidey-holes he’d subjected himself to for the duration of his stay in Haven.
Up a short path through the snow, they could see a few trails of footprints, roughly matching the Herald’s size and shape, evidence that he’d been out this way several times throughout the day, since the occasional snowfall covered most older tracks quickly enough. Upon reaching the top, a small inlet in the rock face was revealed, not quite large enough to be considered a cave. Most importantly, it was both protected from the wind, and devoid of snow on the ground. A firepit had been meticulously pre-prepared, such that Romulus only had to stoop and briefly strike flint against steel, and soon a warm flame had sprung up, quickly heating the little space.
A substantial rug had been laid out beside it, the centerpiece atop it a large bowl, entirely covered by several warm blankets. Romulus hadn’t been uncomfortable before, but as he gestured out with his arm at what he’d assembled, he felt quite nervous, and it obviously showed, though he transformed the feeling into a sheepish grin.
"I, uh… I don’t know what I was thinking, but I thought I’d do something. A thing. For you.”
“A thing? For me? You shouldn’t have.” Khari seemed to be all easy humor, her smile firmly in place and her eyes carrying the glimmer of mirth that was often to be found there. She wasted little time situating herself on one side of the rug, lifting up the corner of the cover on the bowl with more care than she usually demonstrated with such things. When it came away to reveal an assortment of foods, she barked a laugh. “I should be alarmed by how well you know me after a few months, Rom.” The selection on offer was indeed from what he knew to be her favorites, and she popped a dried fig in her mouth with little ceremony and a short hum of satisfaction, chewing it over and patting the spot on the other side of the rug.
“C’mon then. No way I’m getting through all this by myself. But you knew that already.” She stretched her feet out towards the fire, sliding off her fine leather boots with her feet and wiggling her toes a little ways back from the flames. “And for the record, you were thinking ‘you know, that Khari is pretty great, and she really likes food. I should give her some food.’ You were completely correct, of course.” The words were playful, light, and intentionally exaggerated, from the way she said them. Somewhat more serious, however, were the next ones.
“So… thank you.”
"You’re welcome. I stole all of this, by the way,” he added, his grin not wavering as he moved to take a seat, more beside her than across from her. "While the others were all worried about the mages and the templars, and closing the Breach. Guess no one really minds when I slip away.” He hadn’t meant for the sentence to end that way, but the words were out of his mouth, and he regretted them, even if he didn’t mean anything by it, in a larger sense.
He was quite hungry, and helped himself to some of the jerky, before he suddenly realized he’d forgotten the wine. Of course, his line of thinking was that both of them would’ve had enough to drink by this point in the night, and wouldn’t really want any more, but who didn’t want to drink after eating? He grimaced at himself, and then put it behind him.
"I do want you to know that you’re great, though,” he said, unable to keep himself from it any longer. She would know, surely, that he had a point to this, more than just opening up a bit and putting a stop to the moping for a night. "I don’t really want to joke about it. I don’t think I’d have made this far with this whole marked business if you hadn’t been here. I’ll probably forget a lot of the others over time, but I won’t forget you.”
Khari’s smile dimmed a little, and she swallowed, chasing down the fig with a large bite from a hunk of jerky, chewing slowly. It was an effort to give herself some time to think, and not a terribly subtle one. In the end though, she ran out of jerky before she ran out of thoughts, and so when she spoke, they were half-formed still. “You…” She grimaced. “You’d have been fine. And I’m not joking about that.” She reached up and scrubbed her hands up and down over her cheeks, sighing gustily.
“I hate endings.” She muttered the words, almost, then looked over at him and shook her head. “I’m no good at them. I only ever seem to leave when I’m angry, and when I get left, I’m…” She paused, shifting restlessly in her spot and huffing softly. It seemed that she was uncertain about something, awkward, even, which was unusual.
“I’ll miss you. And no one’s going to forget you, because I’m not going to let them.” A thin smile curled her mouth then, and she shrugged. “You were here. You were part of this. An important one—no matter what happens now, and no matter what you were before. So… if that means anything to you, there it is, I guess.”
"It does mean something to me. Maybe I didn’t want it to, when I realized this would happen, and maybe I wasn’t supposed to let it. If it didn’t mean anything to me, this would be easy. Leaving.” He made sure he had her eyes. "It’s not easy.”
He didn’t plan to say so much as a goodbye to the others. It would be simplest if he were just gone come morning, and that was how he planned it. The rest would go to sleep with their warm bellies from the drink, warm thoughts from the victory, and when they woke, they wouldn’t need him anymore. He’d played his part. It was an important one, yes, but it was over now. He’d allowed himself to think for a few moments, much earlier, that he’d been chosen by something, that Andraste was somehow wrapped up in all of this, in him, but now he recognized that as simply something that he’d wanted to believe. And like many of the things he wanted, it was best if he never got them.
"This doesn’t have to be a bad ending.” The rock wall wasn’t far behind them. He snagged a warm blanket, scooted back against the rock until his back was up against it, then draped the blanket over himself, with room to spare. He held out an arm and half the blanket, hoping Khari would scoot under it. "We can… I don’t know, tell stupid stories about the weird places we came from, and the dumb things we did. For as long as we can stay awake.”
She seemed to consider that suggestion for a moment, but then situated herself in beside him, pulling her knees up so that her feet would fall under the folds of the blanket as well. “Okay, but you’d have to have been pretty fucking dumb to come anywhere near half the stupid things I did when I was a kid.” She eased back against the stone wall behind them with an exhale, letting her muscles slacken. “My entire clan called me Da’Enfanim, which means ‘little terror,’ basically. Nicest nickname I had. Still shorter than my actual name, too.”
Romulus let out an honest laugh at that. He believed it, too, and believed it would only have encouraged her, let her know that whatever she was doing was working. He found himself relaxing, too, the alcohol in him doing enough to drown out his thoughts about the next day, the sounds of the festivities dying down in the distance…
It wasn’t enough, however, to drown out the sudden sounds of a struggle, not far from them. It took Romulus a moment to comprehend that the clash of steel and the sudden cry weren’t simply in his mind, subconsciously springing up to haunt him of his memory or warn him of his future. He turned to Khari, frowning. "You hear that?” He waited another second. A definite cry of desperate effort cut through the air.
A breath hissed out from between her teeth, and she nodded sharply. “I heard that. Let’s go.”
He shoved the blanket off of them and stalked to the edge of the little hilltop. Turning back, he grabbed the metal bowl by the bottom and tipped out the food in it. He then slid down the face of the hill, bowl in hand, towards the lake of ice, Khari, back in her shoes, right behind him. At the bottom, he heard heavy, weary footfalls trudging as quickly as possible through the snow. He looked right, and saw Lia staggering towards him, a bloody knife in one hand, the other clutching a wound in her side. The blood leaked through her fingers and down her leg.
“Two behind me,” she managed, running past Romulus a short ways before she stopped, and fell to a knee. At the treeline, two archers in dark garb and armor appeared in pursuit, the first immediately firing an arrow that Romulus was forced to intercept with the bowl. It clattered off the metal to the ground. He scooped it up.
Though she hadn’t been anywhere near fully-armed during the party. Khari had been wearing a dagger at her hip, and she brandished that now, the blade about seven inches from the hilt. The way she held it suggested that she knew how to use it properly, and she was off across the ice, surefooted despite the slick terrain, making a beeline for the archers. Another arrow was loosed, whistling by her ear before striking the frozen surface of the lake behind her. She’d nearly reached the treeline by the time the first shooter had nocked a second, and that one struck her in the arm just as she reached him.
She shifted the knife to the other hand and jumped, tackling him to the ground in a tangle of limbs. He scrambled to get out from underneath her, throwing her off before she could stab him, but Khari worked with what she had, lashing out from where she landed and catching him in the calf. He yelled hoarsely, momentarily seized by pain, and she used the opportunity to stab him again, this time in the throat, which abruptly cut off the noise.
Romulus charged the other, and had to block a second arrow with the bowl on the way, before it could pierce his throat. By the time the archer had nocked the third, he was in range, and Romulus hurled the bowl away from him, striking his enemy in the upper body and forcing him to abandon his aim. Romulus reached him before he could draw a secondary weapon and smashed his shoulder into the man’s gut, driving him back until he struck a tree trunk. He groaned from the hit, but Romulus cut this short as well by plunging the arrowhead into his temple, and leaving it there. He sank slowly down the tree.
Immediately he turned back for Lia, checking and confirming that Khari had handled the other threat on the way. He stopped beside her to scoop up one of her arms and help her walk. Khari slung the other over her own shoulders and added a hand to the pressure on Lia's most obvious wound. "Who are they?” Romulus asked. "What happened?”
“Scouts, I think,” she mumbled, wincing with each step. “Venatori… they’re—” Her words were cut off by the sound of an ominous horn, not one Romulus had ever heard before, coming from the woods behind them. On the mountainside, firelight from torches was starting to dot the shadowy trees, moving ever closer to them. An army was on the way. Romulus swallowed, all thought of leaving before morning immediately set aside.
"We need to get back. Now.”