Attempts to locate the fighting were thwarted. A change in the wind blew smoke across their path, confusing their sense of direction and making it difficult to breathe. They saw vague shapes that looked like groups of men running through the smoke, but Loghain avoided them for now. He needed to find the Arl—where was the main body of the rebel force? Had they holed up inside the fortress? Had they fled?
The sounds of battle and shouting became louder as they headed farther into the thick of the smoke, and it wasn’t long before they encountered a large group of chevaliers. The soldiers challenged them, and when they turned around and fled, the chevaliers gave chase.
It was a desperate, terrifying ride. Several times Loghain was afraid that Maric would slide off—it would be just like him to fall off a horse
When they finally came out of the smoke, Loghain realized they were out of the hills and heading south. Numbly, they sat there on their horses, staring at a brilliant sunset in the distance. The peace of that moment was unsettling. It seemed a crime somehow that the rest of Ferelden did not recognize what had happened. It seemed as if the earth itself should be buckling and heaving.
Loghain traded a look with Rowan, both of them covered in smoke and splattered with blood, and he knew she understood.
The rebel army had been routed. Their plan had been an utter failure.
Katriel watched with them in silence, and then quietly suggested that they should find shelter before dark. Maric would need to be properly tended to. Rowan nodded absently, and they began to ride down the rocky hillside. Loghain thought to cover their tracks—if the rebel force had been routed, it was possible that the usurper could be trying to chase the men down to finish them off. They could be coming this way.
They traveled until the sun set and the shadows arrived to swallow them up.
The dwarf eyed Rowan suspiciously from his seat on top of the wagon. His long, proud beard was full of intricate braids, and he had a rectangular tattoo just under his right eye. The tattoo meant that back in Orzammar he had been one of the casteless, the lowest of the low. Even the casteless were considered better than those dwarves who chose to come to the surface, however. Despite the vital role to dwarven society the surface dwarves had as farmers and traders, they carried a stigma with them and could never return to Orzammar again.
As Rowan understood it, some dwarves who came to the surface were political refugees, but far more were desperate criminals. Only those few born on the surface, without the tattoo, were marginally more trustworthy. Some of the formerly casteless even went to the mages to try to have their tattoos removed, or so the rumor went. The fact that this dwarf didn’t bother made her wary. He could be a smuggler. . . . In fact, his covered wagon full of goods hidden away from sight and the three human brutes lazily hanging off the sides as “guards” made that idea likely.
“How is it that a human woman like you hasn’t heard these things, already?” the dwarf asked in his deep, gravelly voice. “There been talk of nothing else. It’s difficult enough to get you cloudheads to shut up long enough to actually do business.”
“My friends and I have been traveling,” Rowan explained, pulling her shawl more tightly around her front. She didn’t like the way his beady eyes lingered on her breasts. She hated the tattered dress Loghain had bartered out of a group of traveling pilgrims a week earlier, but she had no choice but to wear it. A woman parading around the countryside in a full suit of armor was the sort of thing that drew notice. “We haven’t had a chance to stop in at any villages recently.”
“That so?” He smiled, showing teeth stained a brackish brown. “Which friends are these?”
“They are at a camp not far from here.”
“Why don’t we go and see them, then? Maybe I’ll even spare a few extra supplies if you and your friends are nice and accommodating.” His emphasis on the word and the slight darting of his tongue over his lips made it clear exactly what kind of accommodations he preferred.
She stared back at him, letting the revulsion show on her face. “I don’t think my friends are all that eager to share their fire tonight.”
“And what about you, hmm? Lots of room in the wagon.” One of the thugs hanging off the wagon perked up, apparently liking the turn the conversation was taking.
“Perhaps you missed the part where I am wearing a sword, one that I know how to use.” She placed her hand on the hilt of the blade hanging off her belt, not that the dwarf could have missed it earlier.
