“Bah! He’s invulnerable!” Maric laughed, and then danced away exuberantly. He circled the fire like some kind of barbarian shaman performing a strange victory ritual, all the while laughing maniacally.
Loghain watched him, mystified, and then looked incredulously toward Rowan. “He does this often?”
“I’m thinking he may have taken a blow to the head.”
Arl Rendorn walked up then, now out of his armor and sporting thick bandages around his midsection, the cloth already darkening with bloodstains. One of his eyes was likewise bandaged, and he limped heavily. His expression was angry enough to draw notice, and when Rowan went to offer him support, he waved her off with a glower. “Apparently,” he stated with muted rage, “you have decided that my orders do not need to be followed.”
Maric detected the tension and stopped his wild careening, turning to address the Arl. “Your Grace? Is something amiss?”
“Plenty. As she well knows.”
Rowan nodded soberly, accepting the recrimination. “I know you are angry, Father—” She held up a hand to stave off any further outburst from him. “—but I did what needed to be done. Had I not routed them, at least for a time, they might have marched north once Loghain was slain.”
“She also killed one of the Orlesian commanders,” Loghain pointed out. “Quite spectacularly.”
“We might have been away by then,” the Arl snapped. Then he looked at Loghain and softened somewhat. “But . . . it is good that you live, lad. And your plan did succeed.” From Loghain, he turned toward Maric, frowning. “I would be happier, however, if our condition were not so poor. We have lost a great number of men and much equipment. Moving forward will be difficult.”
Maric walked over to Rendorn and put a comforting hand on the Arl’s shoulder, grin remaining even if his enthusiasm was diminished. “I agree, but still I think there is much to celebrate. The rebellion drew blood, and lives on.”
Arl Rendorn attempted a wan smile. “Your mother,” he began, voice thick with emotion, “would have been very proud to see you today, my boy.”
Maric was startled at both the display of emotion and the tears he fought in his own eyes as he and Arl Rendorn hugged roughly. Backs were clapped fondly, and when Maric stepped away, he could only nod awkwardly to the Arl in the silence.
Maric turned then to Loghain, who had taken a seat by the fire. He held out a hand, and Loghain slowly shook it. “Thank you for everything you did today, Loghain. I do hope you’ll consider staying with us.”
“You should have seen him up on that bluff,” Rowan said. “He was magnificent. The knights that fought with him are already talking about it.”
Loghain smiled, a bit shyly. Maric wondered if it was, in fact, the first time he had actually seen the man smile. “It was a difficult situation, and we did what we had to.” He then looked up at Maric almost apologetically, holding up what remained of the purple cloak. “I, ah, also ruined your mother’s cloak.”
Maric laughed, and Rowan joined in. “You’re being modest,” she teased.
“Indeed.” The Arl limped up to Loghain and shook his hand as well. “I misjudged you. You clearly have excellent instincts, and we could use your assistance.”
Loghain’s blue eyes shifted among the Arl and Maric and Rowan, and for a moment Maric thought he looked almost trapped. He glanced down at the fire and stared at it for a time before reluctantly nodding. “I . . . very well. I’ll stay. For now.”
Pleased, Maric turned at last to Rowan. Even bruised and battered, she looked radiant: it was just her way. She brightened as he took her hands in his. “When you hadn’t charged, I thought perhaps we’d lost you,” he said seriously. “Don’t scare me like that again.”
Her eyes teared, though she grinned and laughed. “You don’t get out of it that easily, Maric.”
“Funny,” he answered wryly.
Loghain looked up from the fire, nonplussed. “Get out of what?” he asked the Arl.
“Maric and Rowan are betrothed.” Arl Rendorn smiled. “She was promised to him when she was born.”
“Ah,” Loghain said simply, and returned his gaze to the fire.
Not much later, Maric slipped away from the fire and walked alone under the night sky. The moon shone down, and glowing moths fluttered in a great swarm nearby. It was strangely peaceful, he thought. The campfires that dotted the riverbank were far too few, and the faint groans of wounded men were the only sounds that punctuated the silence.
He walked nearer to one of those fires, wincing as he saw the huddle of bandaged and exhausted soldiers around it. Some tents had been hastily erected, but there were a great number of soldiers who were sleeping on the ground, some without even blankets. The men around the fire stared into it blankly, trying very hard not to hear the anguished cries of those who would not survive the night coming from farther upriver.
Maric watched, hovering just out of sight and yet feeling strangely drawn. He tried to tell himself they might all be dead now had he not insisted on the battle.
“Your Highness?” he heard from nearby.
Maric started and turned toward the sound. A soldier was there in the shadows, lying against a tree. As Maric approached, he noticed that the man was older, probably too old to still be fighting. Then he saw that the man’s right leg stopped at the knee, a mass of bloody bandages showing a recent amputation. The fellow was pale and shaking, drinking liberally from a wineskin.
“I’m . . . so sorry about your leg,” Maric offered, feeling inadequate.
The man grinned, glancing at his new stump and patting it almost affectionately. “It doesn’t hurt so much now,” he chuckled. “The mage even said he might come by and do what he could.”
Maric didn’t know what to say. He stood there a moment until the man offered up his wineskin as a toast. “I saw you on the field today, Your Highness. Fought not twenty feet from you at one point.”
“You did?”
“I’m going to tell my grandchildren one day: I fought beside the Prince,” he said proudly. “You were quite the sight, my lord. I watched you take down three men in a row, like it was nothing.”
“I’m sure you were distracted.” Maric grinned. “I was scared.”
“I knew we were going to win,” the soldier insisted. He looked at Maric with shining eyes. “When you came back to us this morning, we all knew it. The Maker sent you to us. To protect you.”
“Maybe He did.”
The man grinned at him and drank deeply from the wineskin. “To the Queen!” he toasted drunkenly to the moon. “You rest in peace now, Your Majesty. You did your part.”
Maric felt tears well up in his eyes but ignored them. Quietly he took the skin and drank deeply from it. “To the Queen,” he toasted to the moon.
And suddenly it all didn’t seem quite as daunting as before.
6
“To the King!”
Severan heard the toasts to the King even before he entered the throne room. The chamber would be near bursting by now, filled with nobles from throughout Ferelden who had arrived to honor the day of His Majesty’s birth.
Honor, of course, might not be quite the word for it. The native Fereldans were terrified the King would strip them of their land as he had done to so many of their fellows in punishment for some crime, real or imagined. The Orlesians, those members of the aristocracy who had chosen to seek out their fortunes away from the Empire and had been given those stripped lands, feared much the same. The King, after all, was a bored and capricious member of an ancient aristocracy, who had been sent to assume the Fereldan throne only after angering the Emperor—his first cousin and, so the scandalous rumor claimed, onetime lover—and now took out his own displeasure on subjects who had little choice but to bow to his whims.
Severan had tactfully informed the King that the rebels might have been curbed by now if he just took a lighter hand with the locals. Despite his hatred of the rebels and the embarrassment they represented, the King refused to heed the advice. He would do as he wished, and no one could tell him otherwise.
Just as he did with his court, Severan thought, recalling how the King had tried to bring the Orlesian tradition of wearing masks to the Fereldens. He had declared that all members of the nobility would be required to wear as fancy and as beautifully adorned a mask as they could acquire, and that at the end of each court, the wearer of the mask that pleased him the least would be punished. Needless to say, the frantic run on masks and the demand for those who could make them almost resulted in riots in the streets. Finally, when a would-be assassin managed to slip into the palace by wearing such a mask, the commander of the royal guard begged the King to lift the edict for the sake of security. The collective sigh of relief when the King finally did so was almost palpable.
King Meghren was a tyrant, and one did not honor tyrants; one appeased them. So the nobility put on a great show of adoration for their beloved monarch, their smiles a thin veneer covering their terror. The King, meanwhile, knew the nobles were acting. The nobility understood this, but also knew that the charade was required of them, nevertheless.
Such was the sad state of things in Orlesian-occupied Ferelden.