Chapter 26: A Bear Among Wolves
A reminder of what he was riding away from, and what, in some distant, uncertain future, he might one day ride back to.
The memory of Elspeth’s warmth was a fleeting ghost, shredded by the harsh reality of the Korcari Wilds. Ostagar wasn’t a castle; it was a clenched fist of stone and desperation thrust into the throat of the wilderness. The air here was different. It carried the tang of stagnant water, of too many unwashed men, and beneath it all, a faint, acrid smell he couldn’t name but instinctively disliked. Like metal left in sour earth.
He guided Brute through the chaos of the outer encampment. The king’s host was a sprawling, noisy beast. Tents slumped like wounded animals. Men in Ferelden and Cailan’s own favored regalia moved with a tense, edgy energy that had nothing to do with martial discipline. It was the brittle agitation of waiting for a storm to break.
His focus was a blade, cutting through the noise. Find Duncan. Find his father. Deliver the warning. Everything else was static.
The great stone fortifications loomed ahead, a bottleneck of authority. He dismounted, his legs stiff from days in the saddle, and handed Brute’s reins to a wary-looking groom. The man’s eyes flicked over Kerr’s travel-worn but fine gear, his bearing. “Warden business?” the groom asked, his tone neutral.
“Something like that,” Kerr said, brushing past. His voice carried the unthinking command of a teyrn’s son, clearing a path without him having to ask.
Inside the main fortress yard, the press of bodies was tighter, more organized, and more anxious. He scanned the crowd for the signature grey scavenger leathers of the Wardens. He saw none. He approached a soldier bearing the royal heraldic crest. “I’m looking for the Grey Warden, Duncan.”
The soldier, a veteran with a scar bisecting his eyebrow, looked Kerr up and down. “Aren’t we all?” He spat to the side. “He’s not here. Left early this morning with a scouting party. Deep Roads, or some such Warden secrets.” He shrugged, a gesture of pure institutional indifference. “Could be back by nightfall. Could be a week.”
Frustration, cold and sharp, pricked at Kerr’s gut. A week? He didn’t have a week. Every hour was a gamble. He forced his voice to remain level. “His whereabouts? Who would know?”
“Try the other one. The junior.” The soldier jerked a thumb towards a more cluttered section of the yard near the templar quarters. “Spends a lot of time staring at the mabari, looks lost. Hard to miss.”
Kerr bit back a retort and turned away, his boots grinding on the wet stone. The urgency within him was a drumbeat. He navigated through clusters of chanting chantry sisters and groups of surly-looking mercenaries. And there, just as described, was a young man in mismatched, slightly-too-big Warden armor, crouched by a pen holding two brindle mabari hounds.
The Wardens were mythic figures, heroes of the last Blight. This one looked like he’d been handed his gear yesterday and hadn’t yet figured out which way the straps went. He was talking to the dogs in a low, earnest voice.
“...and if you just listened, you’d see the benefits of a centralized barking policy,” the young Warden was saying. One of the mabari yawned.
Kerr approached, the absurdity of the situation cutting through his anxiety. “You’re with Duncan’s lot?”
The young man sprang up, almost tripping over his own scabbard. He had an open, friendly face, currently arranged in an expression of mild panic. “Oh! Yes! I am. That is, I am a Grey Warden. Recruit. Well, full Warden now, technically, since the Joining, but it’s all still a bit… new.” He blinked. “I’m Alistair.”
“Kerr.” He offered no family name, his eyes scanning the area behind Alistair as if Duncan might materialize.
“Right. Kerr.” Alistair followed his gaze. “Looking for Duncan? He’s off doing something darkspawn-related and mysterious. Said he’d be back by evening meal, but with him it could literally mean any time between now and tomorrow’s dawn.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Once, he said ‘I’ll be back in a moment’ and was gone for three days. Came back with a sack full of deep mushrooms and a story about a talking spider. I think he was joking about the spider. Mostly think.”
A faint, unexpected smile touched Kerr’s lips. The young man’s babbling was a bizarre anchor in the rising tide of his worry. “So I wait.”
“Waiting’s the bulk of the military experience, I’ve found,” Alistair said, nodding sagely. “That and trying to find dry socks. You’re a new recruit then? Duncan’s always picking up strays.” He looked Kerr over with a critical, but not unkind, eye. “You’re a big one. Good. The darkspawn are… unsettlingly dense.”
“Not a recruit,” Kerr said, his tone final. He changed the subject. “This is the king’s full force?”
Alistair’s genial expression sobered. He glanced around, his voice dropping. “This is what’s here. Loghain’s men are still… maneuvering. It’s a whole thing. Politics.” He said the word like it was a bad smell. “You’re welcome to look around. Just avoid the templar quarters unless you enjoy being glared at. And the mage tower unless you enjoy… unexpected hair growth.”
With a non-committal grunt, Kerr moved away, leaving Alistair to his canine diplomacy. He needed to get the lay of the land, to understand the mood. He walked past drills where sergeants bellowed at sloppy formations, past healers’ tents reeking of elfroot and infection. The might of Ferelden felt thin here, stretched over a frame of ancient stone and older fear.
He turned a corner near a quieter section of the battlements, where the noise of the camp faded into the whisper of the wilds beyond the wall. And he saw her.
She was older, her hair a stunning sweep of silver-white, but she stood with a poised, effortless strength that belied the years implied by its color. Her robes were simple, practical linen and wool, but they clung to a figure that was full and unmistakably, vibrantly female. She was examining the mortar between the great stones, her hand resting on the wall, her profile clean and thoughtful. A senior enchanter, by the stave strapped to her back.
As if sensing his gaze, she turned. Her eyes were a clear, penetrating blue. They took him in, not with the dismissive glance of a busy appointee, but with a calm, comprehensive assessment that felt both intellectual and strangely physical. It swept from his travel-dusted boots, up his long legs, over the breadth of his chest under his leathers, and finally to his face.
Kerr felt a familiar, visceral kick low in his belly. It was an instinctive, raw response, divorced from all thought of politics or Blight. It was the same part of him that had appreciated Elspeth’s sturdy, knowing warmth. This was different—a sharp, electric recognition of a potent, mature beauty. His loins stirred, a heat spreading through him that had nothing to do with the damp chill of Ostagar.
Wynne’s eyes held his for a moment longer than necessary. A faint, almost imperceptible flush colored her cheeks. The serene composure of her expression didn’t waver, but deep within the calm pools of her eyes, a spark of something ignited. A memory of heat, long banked but never extinguished, stirred in answer to the blatant, unchecked masculinity standing before her. A subtle, unwelcome, and entirely undeniable warmth unfurled low in her own belly, a forgotten echo between her legs. She offered a polite, neutral nod, the perfect picture of a senior enchanter acknowledging a soldier.
Then she turned back to the wall, her focus apparently restored. But her hand, resting on the sun-warmed stone, pressed a little more firmly against it.
A reminder of what he was riding away from, and what, in some distant, uncertain future, he might one day ride back to.
A black blur materialized from the treeline ahead, resolving into a mounted figure riding with an easy, relaxed posture that still ate up the ground. The man wore dark leathers and a familiar, weathered grey coat. Duncan.
Kerr reined Brute in, the sudden halt sending a cloud of breath into the air between them. The Grey Warden’s scarred face showed no surprise, only a calm, assessing gaze that swept over Kerr from boot to brow.
“Warden-Commander,” Kerr called out, forcing a casual nod. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat beneath the cool facade. “A word? In private?”
Duncan’s eyes held his for a second too long. “Kerr Cousland.” He didn’t smile. He gestured with a slight tilt of his head toward a copse of bare oaks off the road. “This way.”
They dismounted in the skeletal shade. The silence was broken only by the creak of leather and the soft chuff of the horses. Duncan leaned against a pale trunk, his expression neutral. “Your brother and father speak of you often. The charming spare. I didn’t expect to find you on the road alone.”
“Plans change,” Kerr said, the words tasting like iron. He dispensed with any further preamble. The urgency was a live wire in his veins. “I bear news. Dark news. Arl Howe turned traitor.”
Duncan went very still. Not shocked.Alert. Like a hound catching a scent. “Go on.”
“He tried to sack Highever. Last night. His men were inside our walls.” Kerr’s voice dropped, low and hard. “He’s dead. I killed him in the lower hall. We slaughtered his men. The castle is secure.”
The Warden absorbed this, his gaze turning inward. He gave a slow, grim nod. “We intercepted a cipher. A fragment. It suggested Howe was moving to overthrow the Teyrnir. We’ve been waiting for his forces to show themselves at Ostagar.” His eyes sharpened, pinning Kerr. “You understand the implication. His soldiers marching south under royal banners would have been a dagger pointed at the king’s back from within his own camp.”
The confirmation, cold and official, landed in Kerr’s gut. He’d known. Hearing it was different. “It wasn’t just Howe’s ambition,” Kerr said, the theory he and his mother had crafted now given voice to the one man who might believe it. “He couldn’t have moved so boldly, so stupidly, without a larger guarantee. I think he had permission. From Loghain.”
Duncan’s eyebrow twitched upward. A flicker of something dangerous in his eyes. “That is a severe accusation.”
“Is it?” Kerr took a step closer, his height imposing, his frustration bleeding through. “Think about it. The main army is at Ostagar. The king’s most powerful loyalist is the Teyrn of Highever. Remove us, and who holds the north? Who gains the king’s trust by default? Loghain hates Orlesians. He’d see an alliance with them as poison. He might see removing a house he thinks is too sympathetic as a necessary evil to ‘save’ Ferelden.”
The wind rustled the dead leaves above them. Duncan stared into the middle distance, his mind visibly working through the logistical nightmare. “If that is true,” he said finally, his voice a gravelly murmur, “then Ostagar is not just a battlefield against darkspawn. It is a trap within a trap.” He looked back at Kerr, a new, unsettling respect in his gaze. “You ride to warn your father.”
“I ride to stop a massacre.”
Duncan pushed off the tree. “Then we ride together. Now. Every hour we waste is an hour Loghain has to adjust his plans.” He moved toward his horse with a fluid, purposeful grace. “You’ve just changed the entire geometry of this war, Cousland. Try to keep up.”