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laurelsofhighever · 5 months

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 11/? Rating: M Warnings: Canon-typical violence Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

Read on AO3!

Two more days of uneventful travelling brought the little group to the outskirts of civilisation, chilled and soggy under the pall of wet snow that had closed over them the night before. They had sheltered, shivering, in an abandoned barn, one of many along the old, paved road they were following, which had been in poor repair even before rumours of war had channelled carts and animals and the refugees who drove them out of the southern hinterlands. Now, it was a struggle to trudge through the lines of muddy, iced-over puddles where the flagstones left gaps, breath coming in harsh clouds of white fog and cold-numbed fingers tucked as much as possible under the folds of the oilskin cloaks Flemeth had been able to spare them.

“Lothering,” Alistair huffed when they finally paused for breath on a bluff overlooking the village. Thin banners of smoke rose from the hunched cluster of buildings in the settlement proper, and from the damp campfires dotted between the mass of grubby tents that spilled out over the southern boundary like flotsam from a shipwreck.

“Pretty as a painting.” He shot a sidelong grin to Rosslyn on his left. “I almost didn’t think we’d make it.”

“It’s a real sight, isn’t it?”

The new, reedy voice came from just off the road, from a small campsite set far enough back into the bushes that any travellers heading north would miss it on the way past. The thin, gaunt man it belonged to stepped out onto the path in front of them. Four others emerged after him, in front and behind to block their path, all in similar states of beggary with weapons drawn. Rosslyn’s own hand reached for her sword at the same moment Alistair stepped closer to guard her flank. The shiver of air along her spine told her that Morrigan, too, readied for an attack. She hoped it would not come. Though her shoulder had knitted together far faster than should be expected even with the aid of magical healing, the dull twinges that flared with every movement warned of the permanent damage that could be done if she got into a fight before the muscles fully recovered.

“Let us pass,” she commanded from beneath her hood. At her side, Cuno growled his own threat, the sound a low vibration against her leg.

“Ah, the pretty one is in charge, I see,” the stranger cried, as if delighted. He looked malnourished, his hollow cheeks exaggerated by the cracked, ill-fitting leather armour strapped about his shoulders, the sour odour of his unwashed body an offence even from ten paces’ distance. Everything from his stance to the flashy, overly stiff grip of his sword screamed his lack of skill, even without the coating of rust on his neglected blade that would have gotten any squire in Castle Cousland flogged.

One of the other bandits shifted on his feet when she didn’t respond. “Uh… these ones don’t look much like them others,” he ventured. “Maybe we should just let them pass?”

“Nonsense,” the leader snapped, and turned a greasy smile on Rosslyn. “We have rules, you know. There’s a toll. A simple ten silvers and you’re free to move on.”

“You’re not very well dressed for tollkeepers,” Alistair noted. “Better hope Bann Dunstan’s militia doesn’t catch you preying on those fleeing the darkspawn.”

The man laughed. “Bann Dunstan went north with Teyrn Loghain, and took all his soldiers with him. There’s only a few templars left at the chantry now – so we’re taking the initiative.”

“You are fools to get in our way,” Morrigan told him with a sneer.

“Loghain came through here?” Rosslyn pressed, before the bandits could test the claim.

The leader shrugged. “Day before yesterday, leading his whole army and saying the Grey Wardens betrayed the king and got him and themselves killed.”

“That’s not –”

“No other survivors?” she interrupted.

“A few,” he answered. “Band of Ash Warriors came through yesterday – stayed right out of their way, I can tell you. But you aren’t Ash Warriors.”

“No?” she asked lightly. “We came from the south, we’re armoured and armed better than you, and I can tell you exactly how far the darkspawn are behind us. Are you really going to risk yourselves on a losing battle here when you could be running?”

“Uh… you don’t seem to realise –”

She feinted forward. He flinched, and she tilted a cold smile at him.

“Alright!” he huffed, throwing up his hands. “We’re just trying to get by, before the darkspawn get us all.”

“Then go,” she suggested. “And hope they don’t catch up.”

He risked a glance sideways at the campsite, one hand rising in a hopeless gesture that faltered with the deliberate step she took towards him, his eyes glued to the inch of white steel drawn from her scabbard.

“Those things don’t belong to you,” she reminded him.

“Yes, right.” He swallowed. “Of course. Come on, gents – it’s slim pickings here anyway.”

She kept her gaze on him as he stumbled backwards, tense in case of a double-cross, though she had spent enough time among her father’s hounds to know a beaten dog when she saw one. The patter of the rain fell heavily in the mud as he retreated with the rest of his miserable band slinking at his heels, reluctant, but not one daring enough to attack alone.

They would not remain cowed for long.

As soon as the last man retreated into the cover of the trees, Rosslyn turned and leapt the ditch between the road and the bandits’ makeshift camp, hissing a curse as her boot slipped on the landing and wrenched her shoulder.

“Uh… what are you doing?” Alistair asked, coming closer.

“Outfitting,” she replied. “Before they come back.”

“If they do, I say teach them a lesson,” Morrigan scoffed. She had stayed on the road, vigilant as a wolf with the distant scent of deer on the wind.

“The best way to win a fight is to not fight in the first place.” Busy hunting through the meagre spoils the bandits had managed to scrounge together, the adage came to Rosslyn’s lips almost without thinking. It crowded with others in her head, the stories retold by the hearth on winter nights that spoke not of the glory of battle but of the hardships that went between, nights of cold and hunger where morale wavered like a candle flame by an open window. There had been days, her father said, where the Orlesians had forced them to choose between the tired army and starving civilians.

Behind her, Cuno whined. A small animal, perhaps a yearling lamb, lay poorly spitted over the fire, its flesh half-cooked and the tips of its shanks beginning to burn. Drops of fat hissed as they surrendered to the flames. In the few days of travel from Flemet’s hut, the dog’s share of their meagre rations had been smaller than she would have liked, stretched as far as possible with grains but limited by all the things he couldn’t eat.

“Such a good boy,” she crooned, leaving off her inspection of a tatty bedroll to cut away one of the haunches for him. The heat of the bone warmed her numb fingers through the thick leather of her gauntlets, gone again the instant she wiped the juices away on the inside of her cloak.

“Are we taking this stuff, then?” Alistair tried. “You know it was stolen.”

“We’re taking what we can carry, what we need,” she corrected, without looking at him. “I don’t like it either, but you heard what he said about Loghain just as well as I did – we need all the advantages we can get.”

Morrigan delicately flicked a cleaning rag away from the rim of an engraved silver bowl so she could inspect it. “If the former owners of these items were foolish enough to allow themselves to be robbed, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

“The people who passed through here were desperate,” he insisted. “They had nothing else.”

“Neither do we,” Rosslyn reminded him, and sighed. “We can pass word in the village once we get there – maybe someone will come for what’s left.”

A long moment passed as he wrestled with his conscience, as the snow thickened overhead and Cuno crunched down the bones of his impromptu meal, until necessity overcame nobility and with a snarl at nothing in particular he tramped over to the bandits’ tent to dismantle it. Even through the thick layers of armour and cloak, the tension in his shoulders screamed loud enough that Rosslyn had to grit her teeth and turn away. She swiped a bag of dried provisions and a coinpurse from the bottom of an unlocked chest, and an extra cloak and bedroll that she hoped weren’t infested with lice, before hunting around for something that might serve to wrap the rest of the meat.

Further into the trees, they found a pair of tacked-up horses tied to the branch of a bare oak. One was of much finer quality than the other, with the tall, strong-boned confirmation of a knight’s charger, but both had been neglected, left to stand with no sign of fodder in a slurry of mud up to the fetlock.

“Ah, I see we are to rescue every pathetic creature that wanders across our path,” Morrigan commented as Rosslyn ran her hands over the destrier’s legs to check for swelling.

She shot a glare over her uninjured shoulder. “Would you prefer to carry the tent?”

With their baggage now strapped to the horses, the last stretch of the journey took less than an hour. By the time they reached the outskirts of Lothering, the blizzard had eased and a glance of pale sunlight managed to slip past the bars of cloud. The squalor it illuminated rose bile in the back of Rosslyn’s throat as surely as the smell. Families huddled beneath scavenged yards of cloth trying to stay dry as the few campfires still burning billowed acrid curls of smoke, their meagre possessions kept within sight and easy reach.

“I wonder, Alistair,” Morrigan commented as they passed through the gauntlet of wan, wary stares, “why do none of them recognise you? You passed through Lothering on the journey south, did you not?”

“I was considerably better dressed then,” he pointed out, but pulled the hood of his cloak lower over his forehead nonetheless. “It’s probably for the best that we’re not recognised, if what that bandit said about Loghain is true. It does make you wonder what all these people are waiting for, though. They have to know the darkspawn aren’t that far away.”

Morrigan clicked her tongue. “‘Tis not our concern if they wish to sit like rams waiting for the wolf.”

They trudged further in silence, until the cobbles of the road once more emerged from beneath the quagmire of the squatters’ field. In the distance, the tower of the village chantry rose above the lines of shingle roofs, its pennants flashing with gold-embroidered sunbursts. If any organised retreat existed, the templars would have charge of it, though to judge from the blasphemous ravings of the merchant they passed arguing with a lay sister, their grasp on order was tenuous at best.

“Please, sers – have you seen my mother?”

Rosslyn stopped cold. A small boy, older than Oren but not by much, and with lighter hair, huddled under the eaves of an empty doorstep, clutching a scrawny, point-eared mongrel about the neck. His clothes were thin and ragged at the hems, smeared with the dirt that also smudged its way across his cheek.

“Your mother?” she repeated, fighting back the shake of double vision.

“She’s really tall, and she has red hair,” the boy said hopefully. “Some mean men with swords came and Mother told me to run to the village as fast as I could, so I did. She said she’d be right behind me, but I’ve been waiting and waiting and I can’t find her.”

“Do you know where your father is?”

The boy’s gaze turned briefly to Alistair before settling on the dirt. “He went with William to the neighbours’ yesterday, but he didn’t come back.”

“‘Tis likely your parents are dead,” Morrigan told him, without sympathy. “Waiting for them here is pointless.”

“That’s not true!” The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve. “She said she’d come.” But his lip trembled, and he drew his arms tighter around the dog.

“Here,” Rosslyn interrupted, reaching to her side before the tears could truly come. “Get yourself something to eat, then go to the chantry. It’ll likely be the first place your mother will look for you.”

With a hearty sniff, the boy peered dubiously at the offering before lighting up in glee, his worry forgotten. “A whole silver!” He made to grab for it, then remembered his manners. “Thank you – you’re a really nice lady, kind of like mother.”

“Go on,” she commanded with a rough jerk of her head, and watched him disappear through the crowd.

“Poor thing,” Alistair muttered. He rounded on Morrigan. “Did you have to do that?”

“I only spoke the truth,” she retorted.

“And what good did it do?” Rosslyn demanded.

“What good is a silver to someone who will likely soon be prey to the darkspawn?”

In terms of cold practicality, the point was well barbed; it fired clean and struck true, even if the silver for the boy’s meal had come from an already-stolen purse. Rosslyn’s hands curled into fists nonetheless, the image before her eyes smeared not with mud from the gutter, but with blood.

“You don’t know that,” she growled.

“Denial will not –”

“I won’t argue this.” She drew in a steadying breath and clucked at the horses to walk on. “We should get to the chantry.”

Morrigan scowled at her. Alistair, too, held a wary edge in his posture, as if daring himself to ask whether she was alright, but she ignored them both to push on through the crowd of people milling about without much seeming purpose at all. Most wore the simply stitched clothes of farmholders, bundled up against the cold in cloaks of thick wool. A few, wealthier, had rabbit or squirrel trim about the collar, but none could be considered truly rich in their dress, and like the refugees beyond the village boundary they all kept close watch of their belongings, heads bowed like workhorses at the plough as they hurried about their business. Clearly, any with the means to leave had already made their escape.

Further on, a crowd had gathered in the lee of the chantry wall, their number shifting uneasily as a wiry man in the leather tunic and cross-tied cloak of a Chasind trader gesticulated at them from atop an overturned crate. His hair was lank and matted, his hose stained with mud to the thigh, and wild exhaustion creased the sun-darkened skin around his eyes.

“The legions of evil are on your doorstep!” he cried. “They will feast upon our hearts!”

“At last, someone who seems to understand the situation,” Morrigan noted dryly.

“There! One of their minions is already amongst us!”

Several faces turned in the direction of his point, and murmured amongst themselves as their eyes landed on Rosslyn, trying to guide her horse to the quieter side of the road. Travel-worn she might be, and scowling like a thundercloud, but a disappointing comparison to the monsters that haunted the dark edges of their bedtime stories.

“Prettiest darkspawn I ever saw,” someone laughed. “If they’re all like that, maybe I should join up.”

“This woman bears their evil stench!” the man insisted, spit flying from his lips. “Can you not see the vile blackness that fills her? The darkspawn will cover the world like a plague of locusts, and she is but the beginning! There is nowhere to run – better to slit your children’s throats now than let them suffer at darkspawn hands!”

Rosslyn stopped. Her lip twisted in a moment of indecision before she dropped the leading rein and started into the crowd with Cuno at her heels. Above, a bank of cloud shifted again and covered the sun, so that as she advanced, with onlookers scrabbling out of her way and drawn in her wake to see what would happen next, the sky darkened and the little warmth left bled from the air.

“I am not your enemy,” she declared, when she finally stood before her accuser.

“You are but the first of those who will destroy us!”

“What’s going on here?”

The Wilder shrank from the bite of the new voice, from the two soldiers in Gwaren Black fighting through the ranks of people, shoving with the hafts of their polearms when someone was too slow to move.

“You again!” spat the taller one, who had a sergeant’s band around his upper arm. “We’ve warned you. Move along, and stop causing trouble.”

“You would punish me, but not this thing of evil?” the wilder demanded. “Look on her! See the corruption thick in her veins.”

The soldiers were already looking, eyes half-lidded in affected disdain as they measured her. She stood, half a head taller than either of them, and glared coolly back.

“You’re well-armed, traveller,” the sergeant said. “Come from the south, did you?”

“Most recently,” she allowed.

The man scratched his chin. “No sigil, and no company. No mercs that I saw at Ostagar, and an honest soldier would wear a liege lord’s colours. Corrupted, you say?” he added, turning to the Wilder. “That sounds like a Grey Warden to me. I think we’ve just been blessed.”

“In what manner?” Rosslyn asked. These were not desperate farmers driven to banditry; all reports said Loghain trained his soldiers hard, ever fearful of a new invasion from Orlais, and they would not tuck their tails like scolded mongrels if she merely bared her teeth. She stood relaxed, drawn up to her full height despite the pain it brought to her shoulder.

“There’s a bounty out for traitors,” he leered.

As his hand shifted for a firmer grip on his polearm, his gaze slid to a point to Rosslyn’s left and widened in disbelief. A red-haired woman in the dawn-coloured cloth of a lay sister slipped into the open space the crowd had drawn around the confrontation, her graceful fingers splayed palm to palm in the sign of the sunburst as she placed herself gently as a feather between the soldiers and their hoped-for prize.

“Surely there is no need for trouble, gentlemen,” she said, her voice low and melodic, lilting with the precise inflections of court Orlesian. “No doubt this is but another poor soul seeking refuge.”

The sergeant gestured with his weapon. “Stay out of our way, sister, or you’ll get the same, chanter’s robes or no. The Wardens killed the king, or haven’t you heard?”

The crowd tensed. Rosslyn didn’t move. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Alistair hanging in the first line of onlookers, his stance and sword ready to aid her should any real fighting erupt, though he kept his hood low over his face, hunched to disguise his height. She could worry about his silence later, but for now she was glad neither Morrigan nor the horses were with him.

“It is no excuse for ambushing –”

“Loghain is the one who betrayed the king!” she called out over the Chantry sister’s misgivings, a clarion note on the dull air as she circled to once again stand before her opponent. “When the moment came for his support in the battle, he turned and fled, and left King Cailan and the Wardens to be overwhelmed. Their sacrifice is the only reason the darkspawn are not already swarming at your door.”

“Lies!” the sergeant spat. “This isn’t even a true Blight!”

“When the moment came,” she repeated, in a voice like winter, “he chose cowardice over loyalty.”

The insult struck. With a bellow like a bull the sergeant charged, polearm lowered to skewer her. She was ready. Whistling two quick notes, she stepped into the attack and drew her sword to parry the blow, the movement a graceful arc into his guard that slammed down into a pommel strike against his neck that sent him to the floor. His companion yelled a protest, but before he could intervene, Cuno’s massive jaws clamped around his arm. Surprise broke off into screams as he was borne to the ground and shaken like a dust rag. There was crack of bone.

“Alright!” the sergeant cried, as the crowd swayed, sickened by the sound. “Alright! You’ve won – we surrender!”

Rosslyn, her sword laid like a whisper against his neck, whistled once. In an instant her dog let go and backed off, though his thunderous growls still reverberated through the space, and left no doubt about his intentions should anyone else dare to attack his mistress. A few lost snowflakes drifted down against the stones.

“They have learned their lesson now, I think,” the Chantry sister said, calmly, as if the soldiers had lost a chess match and weren’t both lying in the dirt, the one cringing against a white steel blade and the other cradling his bloodied, broken arm. “We can all stop fighting now.”

“Can we?” Rosslyn asked of the sergeant.

Eyes wide, he nodded. “Maker bless you for your mercy, ser!”

“My mercy,” she repeated. “There’s precious little of it. I want you to be of use to me.”

“Anything – anything!”

“You’re going to take a message to Loghain,” she said.

“Uh, what –” He swallowed. “What do you want to tell him?”

She glanced up and met Alistair’s eyes, the lines of his mouth pinched in worry as he slowly shook his head to urge her to caution. For a moment, her jaw clenched around the desire to rebel, to issue a challenge like those her ancestors had laid down before their enemies, a bright, shining pennant to unfurl across a battlefield, a streak of midnight intent, but the urge bled from her as she once again felt the ugly itch of the whispers in the back of her mind. Loghain possessed an army, and in sacrificing the Wardens had excused it the obligation of stopping the Blight; for now, Alistair’s survival, and her own identity, were the only tactical advantages they had.

“Tell him there are those who know what he did,” she growled. “And that we will see justice done for it.”

She took her blade away, and kicked him for good measure as he scrambled to his feet His lackey stumbled after, cowering away as she flexed out the rush of the battle-blood that made her fingers shake. She would pay for that burst of action later. All eyes were fixed on her, or on Cuno nosing up under her hand for a scratch behind the ear. Even the Chantry sister, who seemed far less bothered by the violence than should be expected, watched with curiosity to see what would happen next.

Her father would have known what to say; he would have chided her for shrinking back from her duty.

“I am a Grey Warden,” she told the gathered crowd. “Listen to me – the darkspawn are coming. King Cailan bought you time, but it is falling away and they cannot be stopped. They do not reason. If you do not leave, you will die.”

“Coward’s talk!” someone shouted.

“We’ll show ‘em if they dare creep out of the Wilds!”

“Maybe the Wardens killed the king and you’re trying to cover it up!”

The Chantry sister raised her hands. “Good people, please –”

“If it is so safe here, then why did the bann flee north?”

The voice did not come from one of the villagers, but from Morrigan. Her disdain rang so clear that it might have been amplified by magic, and it blunted the anger of the crowd into a low, uncertain buzz that faded entirely into silence as the lay sister once more stepped forward to address them.

“Please, do not despair,” she said. “The Maker sent this Grey Warden as a warning, to help us in our hour of need.”

“Do you think we should tell her who actually sent us?” Alistair muttered in Rosslyn’s ear as he sidled up to her.

“It would be interesting to see how things could get worse,” she muttered back.

“You handled those soldiers pretty well – I’d almost forgotten how scary you were in the lists.”

Disbelieving, she glanced at him and found nothing but sincerity in his shrouded features, a soft trust that stung not least because part of her wanted to throw back his hood and show him to the people in all disregard for sense. Such a move would certainly make them listen, but if Loghain had truly put out a bounty for captured Grey Wardens, how much more would he be willing to pay for Cailan’s only heir? Perhaps, at least until they met with Arl Eamon, it would be safer to pretend he was another Grey Warden instead, to shield him with her own status as much as it was her duty as a Cousland to shield him with her body.

As she mulled this over, the crowd succumbed to the lack of fresh entertainment and let itself be chivvied back about its business, clearing the path to Morrigan and the main doors of the chantry that had been their first destination. The lay sister remained, a demure smile upon her face as she waited for them to notice her.

“Thank you for intervening, Sister,” Alistair said. “We’re glad the crowd decided to listen to you.”

“I couldn’t just sit by and not help,” came the reply. “Though from your display of skill I see my aid was not required.”

“A welcome attempt nonetheless,” Rosslyn told her.

The woman smiled and dipped into a curtsey. “Then I am glad. Perhaps, if you wish it, I can offer further assistance by escorting you to the chantry?”

#dragon age #dragon age fanfic #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair x cousland #alistair x warden #warden x alistair #cousland #warden cousland #rosslyn cousland #cousland feels #morrigan #leliana #barkspawn #lothering

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laurelsofhighever · 1 year

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“Let’s not do that again.”

Kicking off 2023 with Alistair and Rosslyn: ultimate battle couple. Who cares about armour or backgrounds

#will i make more than one art this year?#who knows #my art #rosslyn cousland #warden cousland #cousland #alistair x warden #alistair x cousland #alistair theirin #dragon age #dragon age: origins #da:o #dragon age origins #hero of ferelden

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laurelsofhighever · 9 months

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 10/? Rating: G Warnings: None Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

Read it on AO3

“I don’t see why I had to come along. Fergus is the one who’s going to be the teyrn.”

The high, plaintive voice could barely be heard over the thunder of rain on the window glass, the speaker further muffled by the thick woollen blanket that had been wrapped around her shoulders to try and chase away any chills she might catch from being caught in the unexpected downpour. Her sodden boots and outer clothes had already been removed and placed on a rack in front of the fire, and the cooking smells wafting up from the inn’s kitchen confirmed that the servants were well into the preparation of a warming evening meal.

Bryce Cousland observed his daughter’s sullen lower lip with a tickle of amusement fighting through his practiced stoicism. When they had set out almost a week before, Rosslyn had been more than eager, sitting proud on the back of her pony as their entourage followed them out of the gate with pennants streaming and armour aglitter in the sunlight. He knew for a fact that she had been boasting for days to Ser Edgbert’s lad about being old enough to join the yearly progress to collect the teyrnir’s dues. It was only the change in weather, the distance of the warm castle and Nan’s baking as she shivered, that doused her excitement now.

With a sigh, he knelt and folded her hands into his so he could chafe some warmth into them. “It never hurts to have knowledge of things, Pup,” he told her gently. “Fergus will be teyrn, yes, but one day you might have your own lands to govern, and a Cousland should govern well.”

“If I do, it’ll be somewhere with less rain,” she grumbled, shrugging deeper into her blanket.

He chuckled. “I’m afraid neither tithing nor battle stop for rain.”

A long moment of silence followed as Rosslyn chewed over the old saying, her pale face scrunched in a frown. Aldous, in his dry, dour way, had taken care to teach her the basic principles of a ruler’s duty, impressed with the weight of tradition so the lesson stuck, but she was bright, and getting old enough to question the simpler truths of earlier childhood.

“The Orlesians tithed too, didn’t they?” she asked eventually, uncertain. “That’s why we fought them.”

“Yes, Pup,” he said, “and you should remember that, so that you don’t become like them.” With a creak of cold joints, he eased himself up next to her on the threadbare sofa and guided her onto his lap to better rub feeling back into her arms, using the action to craft his next words with care.

“You see, the Orlesians took too much. They did not care whether the people would have enough to keep themselves in hard times, and they did not use what they took for common good, only to fatten themselves up.”

“Like pigs!” she cried, with the vindictive relish of the young, and giggled when he poked a teasing finger into her ribs.

“Like pigs,” he agreed. “They only took and took and took, and a pig only gives back once it’s butchered. When we take, we must do so only so we can return the cost in kind.”

“But…” She frowned again. “We don’t give the coin back?”

Bryce smiled, glad for her inquisitiveness. For three days the strongcart and storage wagons had been filled with the tithes owed by Highever’s freeholders and merchants, each one marked off in the ledger he carried in his own saddlebag and which now lay over the end of the corner bed. She had watched the transactions from a vantage point secure on his knee so that she might learn the way of things, and helped her fill in the tallies when she wasn’t doodling in the margins.

“Not as such, no,” he explained, as the rain made a renewed assault upon the inn’s roof. “But we use it for things that the freeholders wouldn’t be able to get for themselves.”

“Like what?”

“Well let’s see…” He stroked his beard. “We maintain the roads, so that travellers don’t lose their cartwheels or injure their animals, we outfit the militia in case they’re needed, we manage the woods and the fields and store grain for bad years – all sorts of things.”

“But how do you know not to take too much?” she asked, after another thoughtful pause.

“Well, what have you learned since leaving the castle?” he countered.

Aldous often complained of his young charge’s flightiness, her preference for the lists over the library, but her memory was honed like a blade edge, wielded with the attention to detail required of a future swordmaster. As she recounted the story of the wolf troubling the flocks in the Culodhne Hills, and the wilt that had taken the crops near Tarleton, he caught a glimpse of what she would become, dutiful and clever, a blossom for the court that, like the blackthorn in the field, would yet hide iron strength beneath its flowing white mantle. For now, however, he caught the droop of eyelids made heavy by the storm’s chill, the way her head nodded against his arm, and chuckled to himself. The future could wait until after bedtime.

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laurelsofhighever · 3 months

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 13/? Chapter Rating: T Chapter warnings: Canon-typical racism Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

“My name is Leliana,” the chantry sister told them as she picked her way over the cobblestones. “And who you are is obvious, of course, though I am curious as to why you did not reveal yourself.” She looked to Alistair as she said this, her blue eyes sharp as cut glass as she peered sidelong under the shadowed edge of his hood.

He turned away in a pretext of searching for Morrigan. “I’m no one, really. I just have one of those faces.”

“Indeed.” She gave a contrite nod of her head. “It is easier not to have a name, sometimes, when one’s mission requires subtlety.”

“Mission?” he checked.

“You travel with this Grey Warden.”

“You’re very curious for a cloistered sister,” Rosslyn interrupted from her other side.

Leliana chuckled. “I joined the Chantry for a life of religious contemplation, but it was not always so. Many of us had more colourful lives before we joined, just as you are not simply what you appear – you carry yourself too nobly for a common soldier.”

“If that’s so, then perhaps whoever’s in charge of this place will listen to me better than these peasants when I say they should not remain here,” she grumbled. “Who is the knight-captain in Lothering?”

“Ser Bryant,” came the answer. “I will take you to him.”

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#dragon age #dragon age fanfic #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair x cousland #alistair x warden #warden x alistair #cousland #warden cousland #rosslyn cousland #leliana #morrigan dragon age #grey wardens #lothering #the reason the whole chapter isn't here is tumblr's ai shenaniganery #just fyi

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laurelsofhighever · 1 year

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 6/? Chapter Rating: M Chapter Warnings: Canon-typical violence, gore Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

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They stood by the bonfire, only the three now. The Warden ranks had long departed camp for the front lines, their faces drawn but resolute, their hands on their weapons or clasped around tokens of faith; few had passed glances to the recruits, but those that did had held pity in their eyes, and now, with the other two both dead at her feet, Rosslyn understood why.

“There is no turning back,” Duncan said to her again, solemn, proffering the silver cup to her as if the stain of Jory’s blood on his hands were merely paint. Daveth had gone first, joking about the taste of darkspawn blood before he lifted it to his lips, and then, choking, eyes rolled to whites, he had fallen in a fit and then gone still. She wondered if anyone would take the body away, or leave it crumpled like a dropped scarf, and turned away before bile could rise in her throat.

“Ser Jory was a good man,” she growled, with only the barest hint of deference to sweeten it. “You could have talked him down or let him run instead of murdering him in cold blood.”

“The Wardens make sacrifices,” Duncan replied. Rhodri stood behind him, fixed gaze to the floor, biting on his tongue. “It is the price to defend against the darkspawn.”

“It’s how you keep your secrets,” she spat. “You leveraged my father’s dying breaths to lead me to the slaughter.” She could see him behind her eyelids, the blood pooling on the floor and at the corner of his mouth. I won’t survive the standing, I think.

The warden-commander’s eyes tightened, his nostrils flared, a fractional sign of remorse and one that would have been easy to miss. “Will you drink?” he asked.

She took the cup. Revulsion coiled in her stomach like a living thing at the harsh, metal scent of the blood, made noxious by whatever potions had been added to it to turn it into an elixir as well as a poison, but her fingers tightened on the rim, quelling the urge to throw the concoction in his face. It was her mother’s spine in her, the back that had stood straight against the Orlesian Navy and sent their ships burning to the bottom of the Waking Sea.

“I know my duty,” she ground out, and her grey eyes pierced Duncan’s as she raised the cup.

“What troubles you, brother?”

Alistair looked up from the maps as the king placed a hand on his shoulder, his mouth dry. What could he say? Despite the tasks he had to oversee, the flurry of last-moment preparations in the wake of reports that the darkspawn were massing faster than anticipated, he had found excuses to linger near the gates and watch for Rosslyn’s return, and when she had finally limped in with thick winter night chasing on her heels, only the greatest self-restraint had kept him from damning propriety to go to her. Splattered with black ichor and grime, jaw tight and shoulders hunched, she had slipped away from her fellow Warden recruits towards the kennels, and he had lost sight of her. He had wanted to chase after her, to command her release from the Rite of Conscription, because what other use could he have for his title if not the rescue of a noble maiden from an unworthy end?

But it was too late. By now she would likely have already been sent to the lines down below, right on the lip of the funnel they had created in the valley floor to channel the darkspawn into a killing field. The Grey Wardens would act as the bulwark to cut off the beasts’ escape, allowing the royal forces to close in a pincer and wear them down from all sides.

A rumble of thunder punctuated his thoughts, distant but deep enough to be felt in the bones. The leather straps of his armour creaked as he straightened, the metal plate a leach for what little warmth was afforded by the braziers dotted through the hall. Winter night descended like a candle snuffer so far south, intractable and absolute even without the moons clouded by a gathering storm, perfect cover for a horde of darkspawn that shrank from the glare of the sun. Rain would slow them, but still they would come.

He cleared his throat. “My part in the plan…”

“Don’t underestimate your importance,” Cailan chuckled, misreading the source of his worry. “The Tower of Ishal has the best view over the entire valley, and I will need someone up there I can trust to know when to light the signal beacon.” The usual bright smile was clouded by a frown, the sky-blue eyes as serious as Alistair had ever seen them. “It’ll be up to you.”

He swallowed. “What do you –”

“Cailan! The field awaits.”

Loghain, unmistakeable in the clanking, outdated armour he had taken as a trophy from the Orlesian commander at River Dane, made an impressive silhouette outlined in the doorway. His elven squire scurried after him with his sword and helmet held ready, ignored as a familiar piece of furniture. The vaulted ceiling of the old Tevinter hall made his voice echo strangely, and the braziers threw deep, ageing shadows across his face. Like Cailan, he had braided his dark hair back from his temples to stop it getting in his eyes, but his dour expression held none of the younger man’s hopeful energy.

“Ho – Your Lordship!” the king called back, ignoring the lack of formality. “We’re just adding the final flourishes to the plan.”

Loghain scowled. “What flourishes? I have already outlined the attack, and the lookouts have spotted movement in the trees – there is no time to make changes that will weaken our forces’ resolve.”

“Alistair will be taking charge of the contingent in the Tower of Ishal,” Cailan said, as if Loghain had not spoken. “Along with – ah! Here comes Duncan now.”

Alistair turned in the direction his brother was pointing, his heart bucking like an unbroken colt when he spotted Rosslyn following silently in the warden-commander’s footsteps with a dog at her heels. If anything, she looked worse than when he had seen her returning from the Wilds, the clench of her jaw and the faint line between her brows telling of pain she was trying to hide.

“Your Majesty,” Duncan said, bowing low. “Your Highness, Your Lordship.”

Loghain didn’t even spare him a glance. “If Prince Alistair is going to be in the tower of Ishal, where will you be?” he demanded of the king.

“I will be leading the assault from our lines.”

“You risk too much,” he scoffed. “The darkspawn horde is too dangerous for you to play hero like you’re in a bedtime story!”

“My decision is final.” This time there was a bite to Cailan’s words. “If you think it too dangerous, perhaps we should wait for the Orlesian forces to join us after all.”

Wary of the old, familiar argument, Alistair left off trying to catch Rosslyn’s eye to glance between the pair, unsure if his intervention would be welcome. Though he disagreed with Loghain’s level of paranoia regarding the old enemy, Cailan’s blithe dismissal of everything the Orlesians had done during the Occupation of Ferelden – an age of suffering not even a generation removed from memory – rankled just as much. There was bad blood still on both sides, from old soldiers and young hotheads both, eager to reclaim a former glory.

Loghain waved a dismissive hand. “Again you parrot this fool notion that we need the Orlesians to defend ourselves. Your father –”

“Is no longer king,” Cailan reminded him coldly. “Our arguments with the Orlesians are a thing of the past – and you will remember your place.”

For a moment, the cavernous hall rang with no sound but the distant hum of the gathering storm, the wind worrying the sigil banners in the camp outside. Loghain’s mouth thinned into a sullen line, his eyes shadowed by knotted brows as the censure struck true.

“So be it,” he snapped. “How fortunate King Maric did not live to see his son ready to hand Ferelden over to those who enslaved us for a century.”

“Since that’s settled, let us hope our current forces are enough.” Cailan turned, dismissing his advisor. “Duncan, are your Wardens ready?”

“They are, Your Majesty.”

“And you’ve brought Lady Cousland with you – or Warden Cousland it is now, I suppose.” Gallant as ever, he stepped forwards and caught her fingers, his gaze tinged with strange regret as he placed a courtly kiss above her knuckles. “My lady, your bravery does credit to us all.”

“I only do my duty, Your Majesty,” she murmured, demure as a court rose. “Please, tell me… did my brother return to the camp?”

Cailan offered her a sympathetic look. “I’m afraid the only Cousland we may look to now is you. And we are grateful. Every Grey Warden is needed, now more than ever.”

“If indeed this is a true Blight,” Loghain groused from the other side of the war table, as if he had not heard the exchange. “You rely on these Grey Wardens too much.”

It was Duncan who interrupted, in a voice carefully blank of emotion. “Your Lordship, this is a true Blight, barely begun. It may be that the archdemon will appear tonight.”

“I will not start this argument again,” Cailan declared, before retort could be made. “Regardless of the archdemon’s presence, we cannot let the horde spill uncontested into Fereldan lands. My lady, I asked that you be brought here for a special purpose. Your father speaks – forgive me, spoke – highly of your skills as a warrior.”

He gestured to the maps, inviting a cover for the flash of anguish in her expression.

“The beacon at the top of the Tower of Ishal will be the signal for Gwaren’s forces to attack from cover and close the trap on the darkspawn, and you and Alistair must be ready for the moment to light it. He knows the plan – I am charging you with his protection, should it be needed.”

Wide with alarm, her gaze shot to Alistair, but before he could say anything she buried the look under the noble’s mask she had been taught to wear since childhood, and turned back to the king. “If that is your command, I’ll make sure it’s done.”

Again, Loghain interrupted. “I have a cohort stationed in the tower already who can manage lighting the beacon.”

“And I’m sure another two pairs of hands will do no harm.”

The two glared at each other, like stags counting the points on each other’s crowns, but in the end Loghain was still only a teyrn, bound by oath to follow his liege lord, and he heaved a long sigh as he swiped his helmet from his squire’s fingers and jammed it onto his head.

“Very well.” He offered a curt bow. “The field awaits us, then.”

The silence left in his wake as he stalked out hung heavy with foreboding, the stones above their heads rattled by another, closer boom of thunder.

“You should get going,” Cailan said after a moment, as he donned his own helmet. “Or all the glory and accolades will be won already.”

Alistair managed to roll his eyes. “Fine, fine. But just so you know, if you ever ask me to put on a dress and dance the remigold, I’m drawing the line.” He looked to Rosslyn, but saw no reaction, none of the fond exasperation lifted in a familiar, lopsided smirk. “I’ll, uh, see you on the other side, brother.”

“Of course.” Cailan smiled, eager. “Think of it, the sons of Maric battling side by side with the Grey Wardens to stem the tide of evil. Are you ready, Duncan?”

“The Grey Wardens wait for your order, Your Majesty.”

“Then let us put an end to these darkspawn, here and now!”

The warden-commander nodded, and turned to Rosslyn. “We will talk later – there is much for you to learn. For now, remember that you are a true Grey Warden.”

“I know exactly what I am,” she replied, in the same icy tone Alistair had seen her wield earlier against Daveth, her hand curling into the dog’s ruff. Defiance lived in the line of her jaw, the draw of her brows, and after an instant of contemplation, Duncan blinked first and looked away.

“One day you will understand the necessity of what was done.” He straightened. “Make sure the beacon is lit, and may the Maker watch over you.”

He retreated after the king, and the bubble of royal guard that had fallen into step behind him, and then only Alistair and Rosslyn were left in the crumbling hall. When he stepped up to her, the layers of their armour kept him from feeling her warmth.

“What was that about?” he asked.

She did not look at him. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m –” She gasped and staggered, one hand rising to cover her mouth as if to fend off the urge to vomit. “Don’t worry about me. I can fight.”

“What have they done to you?” It was more than fear or fatigue; her arm trembled beneath his where he had lunged to stop her from falling, and now he stood close enough to catch the feverish light in her eyes. He saw horror there, too, but no trace of its source.

“The darkspawn are coming.”

A shout from the direction of the southern lookouts cut across all the questions crowding on his tongue, followed by another and then another as the alarm was passed along the lines. Horns blew. Booted footsteps clattered over stone followed by the clink of metal gears as the ballistae were drawn taut and loaded. Already they had lingered too long; the Tower of Ishal lay across the old Tevinter bridge on the other side of the valley, the beacon five floors above its entrance. There would be time later to cross the gulf that lay between him and Rosslyn and demand answers of the Wardens, or so he hoped, and in the meantime an entire army waited on him to guide them. Bryce Cousland had always insisted on duty.

He unsheathed his sword, hefted his shield on his left arm. “Let’s go.”

Without the hum of waiting soldiers, the rows of empty tents seemed to hunch in on themselves, the canvas slouched against the support poles like drunkards by an emptied cask, reflecting the clank of armour as he jogged southward towards the bridge with Rosslyn at his heels. The air above them, stinging cold, pressed down with the threat of the storm.

“The mages aren’t on the lines?” she panted, as a flare of magic shot through the darkness of the infirmary ahead of them.

“Mother Berit wouldn’t allow it,” Alistair answered. “She’s more scared of the mages than she is of the darkspawn.”

“We all may end tonight regretting that.”

When they reached the bridge, they were saluted by the commander the ballista crews, who held herself steady despite the tightness of her jaw.

“How is everything up here, captain?” Alistair asked.

“All set, Your Highness. We’ve –”

“Look – there! In the trees!”

With a worried glance the captain followed them to the parapet. The king’s army stood arrayed below, impossibly far down in the gloom, the plan of attack revealed as clearly as if the soldiers had been little wooden blocks set upon a map, with Cailan just visible on a slight rise, his golden armour sparking in the torchlight. Beyond the ranks the wide, flat bottom of the valley had been bottlenecked using constructs of sharpened logs and stakes driven into the ground, well clear of the line of trees. Fog was gathering under the eaves. As Alistair peered closer, the shadows within it moved, forming shapes like men that resolved into the first, horrific lines of the darkspawn horde that snarled and slashed at the air before them with crude but vicious-looking blades.

“Why don’t they attack?”

Alistair glanced along the line to the young soldier – still older than him, perhaps – who had broken the silence.

“They’re waiting for something,” Rosslyn murmured. The intensity of her expression betrayed more disgust than fear, her head cocked at an angle as if she were straining to hear a conversation from another room.

“Waiting for what?” the captain scoffed. “They’re beasts.”

Rosslyn turned. “There’s a second force – they’re going to cut us off.” Her head snapped back like a sleeper jolted awake, teeth bared in a snarl as the sound of shouting grew at the far end of the bridge.

“Your Highness?” The captain, a grizzled woman at least twice his age with a scar running down the left side of her face, watch him uncertainly. Waiting for orders, he realised.

“Uh…” It was one thing to move through a camp checking logistics off a list, another entirely to give unexpected orders in the heat of battle.

“You are to hold the bridge,” Rosslyn answered for him. “Focus on the range of your weapons and thin the horde for the king’s forces to cut them down. If the darkspawn break through here, channel them as best you can so they can’t use their numbers as advantage. We’ll go ahead and do what we can.”

The captain saluted again. “Aye, Warden.”

But Rosslyn was already striding away.

Scrambling to follow her, Alistair nodded to the captain and barely noticed the growing roar from the ranks of darkspawn pressing against the backs of those in front in the valley below. A barked command came from the end of the line and the archers spaced between the ballista crews reached into their quivers. The shouts ahead grew into screams.

The skirmish was almost over by the time he caught up. The soldiers who hadn’t fallen in the surprise attack had bunched together in two lines, infantry in front with archers and bolters behind picking off the last few genlocks swarming from the ruins. Rosslyn stood in the centre with her dog at her flank, her sword a flash in the darkness and her form unmatchable as she cut down every enemy that came within her reach.

One or two managed to slip past through sheer force of numbers, however, and whether it was instinct or design that drove them, they pressed hardest on the right flank until it buckled. Soldiers staggered backwards – the darkspawn howled, raised their cudgels –

Alistair moved without thinking. He slammed bodily into the closest one, taking the impact on his shield as he sent it flying backwards, then used the momentum to sweep his blade up in a biting arc that sliced through the throat of a second. Black blood spattered against his mask, but he paid it no heed. There were more of them – many more – a mass of stinking bodies that shrieked and snapped in the gap his hesitation had made in Rosslyn’s wake, and he snarled as he cut through them to get to her side, finesse dissolved into brutal economy by desperation.

At last the wave receded, leaving the soldiers at the base of the path panting as they counted up the dead. The number of darkspawn corpses greatly outnumbered the human, the last few put to a swift end by the pikes and swords of the survivors. For a moment, Alistair could only stare at his own blade, at the slick of blood from his first kills, unpleasantly giddy, before he mustered the presence of mind to wipe it away on a spare corner of cloth. When he looked up, Rosslyn, barely recognisable under the gore coating her mismatched armour, was already talking to one of the soldiers.

“The tower was overrun before we knew anything, my lady,” the greybeard groaned over a broken arm. “We were set to mind the supplies instead of being down on the field. Guess it wasn’t such a waste of steel after all. Damned ‘spawn.”

“What happened to the soldiers stationed inside the tower?” she asked.

“Couldn’t say, my lady. It’s likely they’re all dead.”

In the pause that followed, Alistair glanced to the tower, its peak dark and its weathered walls too thick for artillery to breach. The dull roar of battle joined carried from the valley below as the first flakes of snow drifted down from the sky, twisting in his gut as it grew louder.

“Take the rest of the wounded with you and fall back to the bridge,” she ordered. “You’ll be of no further use here.”

“But my lady –”

“We’ll handle the rest of the darkspawn,” Alistair interrupted, and glanced to Rosslyn. “If there are any more?”

She blanched. “Yes. There are more.”

“Then we’ll need everyone here who can still fight. And someone will have to barricade the doors behind us once we’re inside. We have to get that beacon lit.”

The soldiers close enough to hear exchanged worried looks.

“Better we get moving,” she agreed. She turned to lead the way, but hissed as her weight fell on her right leg.

“You’re injured,” Alistair realised.

“It’s nothing.”

He waved her dismissal away. “You there – get a bandage! I thought it was all darkspawn blood.”

“Most of it is,” she insisted, but winced again as she tried to dodge around him. “We don’t have time for this – and you’re not carting me back behind the lines.”

He remembered the lift of her chin from the very first time he met her, the defiance in calling Isolde only an arlessa, and gulped back the truth that he wanted so desperately to send her away.

“If there are darkspawn in there, I need a Grey Warden, and you’re the only one I’ve got,” he said instead. “Which means I need to know you’re not going to bleed out in the middle of a fight.”

Her acceptance came in a huff of fogged breath and a muttered curse as she turned aside to take the bandage from the soldier who had been lurking out of the way with an injury kit. Protocol could not let him tend to the wound himself, but he held the torch and steadied her at the elbow while she loosened her cuiss plates and roughly wrapped the linen around her thigh.

“Someone can take a proper look at it in the morning,” she grumbled, low enough for only him to hear. “If any of us are still alive by then.”

The tower, when the company finally made it inside, rang heavy with silence after the rage of the storm and the battle outside, the cautious tramp of their boots muted under the vaulted stone ceiling. Boxes and racks of weapons lay in haphazard piles that hid the statues of the long-dead magisters standing on marble plinths along the walls, the scent of oiled metal thick in the darkness but overlaid with the rank, rotted-fur odour of the horde.

“Where are all the bodies?” Alistair asked in a whisper. “Loghain said he had people stationed in the tower.”

“My da used to tell stories about how darkspawn took people down into the dark,” someone murmured. “Never to be seen again.”

Rosslyn glanced over her shoulder. “Steady. The garrison may be –”

She stopped dead, cut off by a guttural, bubbling snarl from the next room. It was answered by a hiss, and then the clatter of something metal falling to the floor, and then more harsh cries joining a squabble like an unexpected bone tossed to a pack of street dogs. Their company drew back, weapons raised, passing fearful glances to their neighbours. The dog whined. Towards the rear, the three Circle mages who had been assigned as healers to the company drew closer together, hiding behind their staves.

“We can’t let them bottleneck the door,” she hissed after a moment.

He glanced around the edge of the arched doorway and blanched. “I think that’s an ogre in there. Maker’s breath, what are they doing ahead of the horde? There wasn’t supposed to be any resistance here.”

With a heaved breath, she adjusted her grip on her sword and raised her shield into a guard. “If you like, we could tell them they’re in the wrong place,” she said.

“Right, because clearly this is all a misunderstanding.” He couldn’t help a grin. “We’ll laugh about this later.”

Behind them the soldiers waited, counting on them to lead.

“We’re going to rush them,” Rosslyn instructed. “Archers will hang back against the wall and pick off outliers, infantry will form a shield wall and advance. On my mark – the king is relying on us.” She turned, nodded once to Alistair, rocked onto the balls of her feet.

“For Ferelden!”

The wall of noise as she charged in startled the darkspawn from their spoils. Some went down before they could even reach for their weapons, taken in the eye or throat by Fereldan arrows, but the rest leapt forward with enraged shrieks that battered the disciplined line of soldiers. The shield wall held under the first assault, but above the noise of hurlocks and genlocks the bellow of the ogre reverberated like a war drum. It moved like a landslide, slate grey in the gloom, limbs thick as pillars wrapped in spiked cuffs, its round head a gape of dagger teeth crowned with black horns. Eyes like obsidian glittered as it lowered its head.

“Mages! Bring it down!”

It charged. Alistair only just managed to dive out of the way. Fireballs lit the air overhead. He came up hacking at the limbs of the darkspawn that swarmed into the gap the beast had broken in the line, heard the roar of the ogre as it batted at the flames igniting across its shoulders, the screams of the soldiers left trampled in its wake. He tried to get to it – sliced open the throat of one looming hurlock and bashed another with the boss of his shield – but before he could take more than five steps another howl of pain shook the chamber and it fell to one knee. A giant hand swept out. Two men hit the wall and slumped unmoving, a third cried out as the brawny first closed around his torso and squeezed.

And then Rosslyn was there. Her sword arced through the monster’s wrist, severing tendons, and before it could react she dodged under its reach and came up, feet planted, and with a shout drove her sword to the hilt beneath its ribs.

He lowered his sword as it fell, his boots slipping a little in the blood starting to pool beneath the fallen. Outside, the night had been too dark to see her expression as she fought, but the mages’ fires had ignited the darkspawn’s spoil, and in its flickering light he caught the feral gleam in her eyes, clear even behind her face-guard, a manic energy eager for the next strike of her blade.

But most of the smaller darkspawn were dead already, and those that remained gibbered as they were cut down, out of her reach. The Fereldans left standing picked through the bodies, retrieved arrows and checked for survivors, shouting for one of the mages at every groan or twitch of a limb. With nothing else to do, she turned and despite the pain of her wound crouched beside the soldier the ogre had grabbed, but did no more. As Alistair crossed to join her, the man’s gaze pinned him in glassy, silent rebuke.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, placing a hand on her shoulder. “But we should get moving.”

“They know we’re here.”

He frowned. “The darkspawn?”

When she nodded, distant, the cold dread that had settled in his stomach turned over again, but he forced aside his concern. A sergeant broke away from the knot of survivors on the other side of the room and came to a salute, the action brittle beneath the spatters of gore.

“Orders, Your Highness?” she asked.

“We need to secure the tower,” he answered. “Pyres for the dead will have to wait.”

“Aye, ser.”

Necessity hurried their steps as they passed from the entrance chamber. One of the mages volunteered to stay behind with the injured, which left their company barely more than ten in number. It was enough in the narrow corridors to dispatch the small band of darkspawn lurking by the tunnel blasted into a corner of the outer wall, though the hole, littered about with cart-sized blocks of masonry, held the promise of more horrors to come. A damp, putrid odour, like meat left to rot in stale water, welled from the orifice, and it was easy to imagine movement from within the creeping darkness. And still there were no bodies, no signs of violence save the ones they themselves had caused.

“Right.” Alistair hefted his shield and tried to ignore the itch of so many faces looking in his direction. “How long would it take to collapse this tunnel?”

The senior of the two mages leaned on his staff, his eyes fixed on his feet. “It is not a question of time but of making sure the whole tower doesn’t collapse with it,” he warned. “Unless we went into it say… two hundred paces, and used an Earthquake.”

“We don’t know what we’ll find at two hundred paces,” the sergeant pointed out next to him.

“If there are darkspawn in the tunnel they’re not going to stay there,” Rosslyn snapped. “We can’t afford to let them through. Your Highness, I can clear the rest of the tower – it’ll be easier if I’m not having to watch behind me as well as in front.”

An involuntary breath sucked in through his teeth at the determination in her voice, the grim practicality with which she volunteered herself for danger. With the sergeant’s gaze keen on his expression, he lowered his voice, hand tight on the hilt of his sword to keep from reaching for what he could not have.

“You’re not going alone.”

“I’ll take the enchanter,” she answered with a shrug. “And maybe an archer. Cuno will be with me, too.”

At this, the dog whined and butted his head into her palm, a wide, lolling smile showing strong, white teeth.

“And me,” Alistair said.

“Your Highness –”

“The king charged me with ensuring the beacon is lit,” he interrupted. “Without it, the whole battle could be lost.”

For a hard moment she searched his face, as if daring herself to call out the flimsiness of his excuse, to pick an argument in lieu of any more darkspawn to throw herself at. In the end, however, the noble sense of propriety drilled into her over hours of childhood lessons with Aldous won out, and she turned to the sergeant instead.

“Collapse the tunnel, and then hold the line here. Nothing goes up.”

The sergeant passed one last nervous glance towards Alistair before saluting and turning on her heel to relay the order to the rest of the soldiers. After a moment, a bolter broke away from the huddle; he tried not to let the relief run too deep when the man came to attention in front of Rosslyn instead of him.

“His Highness and I will scout ahead,” she instructed. “You are to stay back to be effective at range.”

“Yes, Warden.”

No more words were spoken as they climbed through the tower. Above the grandeur of the main floor, the pillars lost their delicate scrollwork and the ceilings lowered into barrack rooms and storehouses, and yet other chambers that seemed to have no original purpose at all. The vacant gazes of statues watched them pass from beneath an ages-thick layer of dust, indifferent, and after a while the eerie silence lost its teeth, shrinking to the perfectly ordinary sound of four sets of footsteps.

“You should have stayed with the others.” Rosslyn’s gaze stayed focussed on the shadows ahead, her voice pitched too low for the rest of their party but still full of reproach.

“I didn’t want you to go alone,” he admitted, just as quietly, wishing they were anywhere else.

“After two years you can’t think I need you to coddle me,” she scoffed. “Even if…”

“What?”

The glance she shot him skittered away in an instant. “It doesn’t matter.”

Shortly after silence fell again, they came across a chamber full of corpses. Not only darkspawn, but war dogs and men in thick woollen smocks to keep out the cold, and in the very centre of the room another ogre keeled over on its back with a ballista bolt through the chest.

“Check for survivors,” Rosslyn barked. She moved to toe the bulk of the dead ogre’s arm, disgust plain on her face.

“These aren’t Loghain’s men, they’re not wearing the Drake,” the bolter said. “They’re just the handlers. Not trained to fight.”

“They must have heard them coming and retreated here, where they could make a stand.” Rosslyn paused. “I don’t think any ‘spawn got through.”

Alistair turned away from the dog at his feet, one of the injured the kennelmaster had asked to be moved to avoid stress to the others. “We need to keep moving.”

There were too many stairs left to climb, too many grains of sand slipping through the hourglass, every passing moment maybe one too late for Cailan and the Wardens, one more for the darkspawn to throw their overwhelming numbers at the Fereldan lines and crumple it like paper, and even if they were driven back, what then? A true Blight would mean an archdemon, an endless pouring of tainted creatures from the Deep Roads until it was slain, and perhaps another hundred years of disaster that would make the Orlesian Occupation seem trivial by comparison. Perhaps self-interest would inspire those same Orlesians to ally with their former, contested province, but mistrust whispered like a demon on both sides of the border.

The wind howling at the top of the corridor sped Alistair’s footsteps. The tower’s peak stood open to the elements, he knew, an unadorned platform encircled by high arches. When they had first arrived at Ostagar, Cailan had told him eagerly of the enchantments the ancient Tevinter magisters had laid into the stonework to protect it from the elements, how the signal fire that had burned in times of strife had been magical instead of mundane, fuelled by lyrium rather than pitch and timber. Even now, the worst of the storm seemed to part around the walls, the wind barely cooling the sweat from his forehead as he charged up into the chamber proper. Someone had stacked the signal fire ready for lighting, with thick ash trunks at the base to ensure the flames would last, and barrels of oil to make them burn hot.

“Douse it,” he ordered. “Then wait for my signal.”

Below, the battlefield lay obscured under a cloud of smoke, the flying snow catching like sparks in the pinprick lights of the fires Cailan had ordered lit to mark his battle lines. Within the haze, masses clumped and strove against each other, human on darkspawn, but any semblance of order had long since been scattered by the horde’s chaotic onslaught. Alistair heard grunts and curses behind him as he scanned for Cailan’s banner, but did not turn to help. The rise where the king had planned to wait with the Grey Wardens was swamped with orange light. Loghain’s forces, the black banners of Gwaren, were nowhere to be seen.

“Light it – light it now!”

A pause, and then a burst of scorching air as the kindling ignited, and then Rosslyn’s footsteps as she came to join him by the ledge.

“Can you see them?” he asked, desperate. “Loghain should be –”

“There!” She pointed. A faint glimmer of rushlights within the trees.

“What is he doing? Surely he can see the beacon?”

The lights were moving in the wrong direction. As the battle waged on, the screams of the dying faint on the wind, they bobbed northwards in silence like the drift of leaves carried by a current. He stared, disbelief and desperation trying to rationalise the sight into some sort of illusion. Loghain was a master tactician – Cailan’s oldest advisor – whatever his plan, it must –

“We are betrayed.”

There was a dead quality to Rosslyn’s voice that snapped him from his reverie. When he looked up, she was slumped against the pillar next to her as if wounded, with the visor of her helmet lifted to allow her to breathe, the shadows thrown deep across her face twisting into such lines of pain he knew it was the truth. For a moment he could only gaze at the downturn of her mouth, the wisps of dark hair that had escaped and caught on her lips. His breath rasped in his throat.

“There was never a garrison in the tower,” he realised, still transfixed. “What do we do?”

She seemed to have forgotten his presence. Startled, she turned grey eyes on him, trying to form words that refused to come, until a wash of white dread sent her features slack.

The bolt struck her before she could cry out. Alistair lunged, grabbed her arm before she could tumble out onto empty air. He heard the impacts of more crossbows, and the screams of the others fell silent behind him. Darkspawn poured like beetles from the stairwell.

And then the world exploded.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age: origins #da:o #dragon age fanfiction #alistair theirin #alistair x warden #warden x alistair #alistair x cousland #cousland #rosslyn cousland #ostagar

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laurelsofhighever · 11 months

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 7/? Rating: G Warnings: None Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

read it on AO3

August, 9:24 Dragon

A hush echoed through the castle, fearful and portentous, a held breath that penetrated even to the sanctuary of the library, where the sun glared its wrath hot across Rosslyn’s shoulders as she sat still in her riding clothes, and staring at her hands, and listening to the quiet, distant sobs of the Antivan girl Fergus had been trying to impress. Despite the sweat trickling down her spine and the headache starting behind her eyes, she made no effort to move, waiting like everyone else for what the mages would have to say. The servants hadn’t even come with a midday meal, even though the morning was long since past.

Her body might be trapped, tense and numb and waiting for word, but her mind wandered. Her vision played the accident over and over until she forgot the pattern in the carpet and saw instead the flash of harness bells as her brother’s horse, young and flighty and not used to its rider, spooked at a pheasant in the grass. She remembered a shout. An eternity had passed as he hung weightless in the air, and then the arc of is fall had curved, accelerated, stopped short with a thud that left him in the dirt unmoving.

Everyone had panicked, except for her father. As the fastest rider, she had been sent for a cart to bring Fergus home, for a messenger to go down into the city to get the mage healers serving in the chantry hospital. Guilt dogged her for how she had pushed her mount, how its sweat-darkened flanks had heaved as she leapt from the saddle and left its reins trailing to fly up the steps, but worse was the yawning void that grew with every moment that crept past without the joyous cry that Fergus had awoken.

And worst of all, the shame that asked whether it was her own selfishness that wanted her brother to live.

A floorboard creaked by the door.

“Rosslyn?”

Alistair stood anxious with one hand still on the knob as the other ruffled backwards through his hair. The movement exaggerated the bare inch of skin at his wrist where a recent growth spurt had outmatched the fit of his sleeves, and had finally made him taller than her. He didn’t look like he wanted to tease her about it today. Instead, he crossed the floor and took her hand as he sat next to her, holding it firm in both of his as if she might slip loose and vanish without it.

“He’s going to be alright,” he murmured into the silence.

“What if he’s not? What if he –” She licked her lips. “They can’t make me the heir. They can’t.”

“You don’t need to worry.”

He squeezed her fingers, and after a moment she let herself fall against his shoulder. A bird sang outside the window.

“I envy you sometimes,” she admitted after a while.

“That’s not surprising. Being able to fit seven dumplings in your mouth at the same time is quite an achievement.”

Sighing, she allowed him the jest. “I know we’re not supposed to talk about it – about who your father is –”

“Your father is the closest thing I’ve ever had to one,” he said, curt.

“I know.” The knowledge hung between them, as it had since she’d found out he was the son of the king. “But you’re free. No one has any expectations for you – when you grow up you’ll be able to do what you want, without anyone trying to turn you into something you’re not. You’re not the spare.”

“You’re not just a spare either.” His voice had softened, but not enough to completely dull the edge brought out by mention of the king.

“Sometimes it feels that way.”

Ever since her first lessons, rebuke and gossip and repetition had been hammer and anvil to her place in the world, forging it with such skill that it had taken her years to realise its shape. Her mother had had a ship and the open horizon, not the gilded bars of protocol.

“You won’t have to do this alone,” Alistair ventured. “If – if it comes to that. If I really can go and do anything I want, then I want to stay here with you. If only to remind you not to blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault,” he added, with a grin she didn’t see.

She had been trying to forget. “I’m the one who told him to take Sunbird.”

“You were joking,” he told her. “And he wasn’t paying attention. You probably saved his life getting back as quick as you did.”

“He was being such a prat.”

A deep breath hissed in through his teeth. “I… I think it’s because he’s in love with her. Oriana.”

“Then that makes him even more of a prat.”

Instead of replying, he merely sighed. The summer sun crept across the room, marking the hours until it retreated into a purple twilight and the servants could be heard on their rounds to light the lamps. None came to bother them where they waited, and hoped, and tried not to imagine what would happen next if hope wasn’t enough.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age: origins #da:o #alistair x cousland #alistair x warden #warden x alistair #alistair theirin #cousland #rosslyn cousland #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age fic

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laurelsofhighever · 10 months

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 8/? Rating: T Warnings: None Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

read it on AO3!

Lightning crackled, and between its wicked, lashing tongues something stalked her. Whispers in her mind. An old woman with dirty hair and golden eyes leaned over her. Was this waking? No. A dragon – the woman was the dragon. Things clawed in the dark at her feet, the roots of vining laurels that twined around her body, cut into her skin. She snarled as she ripped at them with calloused hands but the growth was rotten, disintegrating in her fingers. One drove into her shoulder like a needle into cloth and still the rest grew, choking, twisting, closing over her mouth –

Rosslyn woke with a gasp of air. The jolt sent a blinding stab of pain through her shoulder that receded into a duller agony, and she fell back to the pallet with gritted teeth, eyes scrunched shut to bear it. After a moment, a cold, wet point shoved against her arm, a snuffling weight whining at her to move.

“Good dog…” she croaked, searching for Cuno’s bulk with her uninjured arm.

This time when she tried to move, a pair of thin hands pressed against her bare skin to guide her back down. They felt like her mother’s. For a moment of vertigo, she tried to work out why that thought clenched like fist around her heart, until the memory of flames and blood reared in her mind’s eye, with her mother’s shadow framed against the kitchen door as Duncan dragged her towards safety.

Grief did her no good. Her eyes opened on the wattle-and-daub walls of a small room, not a traditional Ferelden roundhouse but a square design that might have been Chasind, unadorned and thick with the scents of dung, smoke, and the bittersweet tang of the herbs hanging from the rafters. She had been stripped to bindings and breeches, but the surge of panic quieted at the sight of her armour piled neatly against the chimney breast on the opposite wall, with the Cousland sword propped over it as if standing to attention. The fire in the hearth sulked in its embers and licked its heat against her face.

“Where am I?”

“Safe, child,” answered a gravelly voice. “Or, safer than you were.”

Amusement rang in the sound of it. Following the gentle urging of the stranger’s touch, Rosslyn turned her head to find the old woman from her dream, gaunt and hollow-boned, with a thin slash of a mouth and eyes yellow and sharp as crab apples. The sight somehow bolstered her, and with feeling creeping back into her limbs memory came too, the grey dark of the tower and the smoke-obscured battlefield below, the gabble of the darkspawn, a flash of agony and then bronze, bronze eyes pleading with her not to go into the dark.

“Alistair –” She brought her hand to cover her brow. “What happened? Where is he?”

“Taking out his fretting on the woodpile, the last I saw,” the old woman replied with a huff.

He’s alive. She tried to sit up again, but the movement pulled at her shoulder.

“Do not be so eager to undo my good work, girl,” her attendant warned. “You are in the Wilds, and will not suffer for another moment of lying still.”

“The Wilds?” It would make sense if this was indeed a Chasind hut, but the vast territory couched at Ferelden’s feet was nigh-on unmapped.

“I plucked you and your companion from the tower.”

“It was swarming with darkspawn.”

The old woman waved an indifferent hand. “Unimportant.”

For a moment, Rosslyn considered. Loghain’s desertion, the king and the Grey Wardens, the awful feeling of the horde itching at the inside of her skull, all of it like a dream. The voices had receded now, silent like an emptied hall, but the revulsion still crawled in her stomach. And the dragon…

She glanced sideways to her rescuer as she stroked Cuno’s ears. The woman’s age fit her like a mask; there was no frailty in her movements, and a faint aura of power hung over her, like the vastness of the sky on a clear night. When she was little, her father had told her stories of witches who lived in the Wilds, had even said once that Maric had met one briefly after Queen Moira’s death, and it was written in the earliest pages of the Cousland Book that it had been Flemeth herself who had torn down the walls of Bann Connobar’s fortress and left Sarim Cousland standing in the ashes to prosper.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Names are pretty, but useless,” came the reply. “Besides, one of your blood should know me well enough.”

“You are Flemeth, then.” For a third time Rosslyn rose, curling up to save the strain of torn muscles, and this time she made it to sitting, though she had to hunch over and cradle her injured arm with a dizziness that left her short of breath. After a moment she managed to flex her fingers, but the movement felt weak – too weak to heft a shield. Still concerned, Cuno whined and dropped his head to her knee.

“The army lost the battle, didn’t it?”

Flemeth nodded, her voice heavy. “The darkspawn were too many, and the reinforcements did not come. Those that remain are scattered and retreating as best they can.”

The rage awakened by the news did not burn as she thought it would. Instead, it sank to the pit of her stomach like a glob of molten iron dropped into a pool, quenched into a hard ball by the cold.

“The king?”

“He died in the rearguard.”

She closed her eyes, her sigh deep and marrow-weary. Everything was wrong. She had to find Alistair, to talk to him. Now that the business of sitting up had been done away with, her ears caught the regular, dull thud-and-clatter of metal cleaving wood. Another wave of nausea threatened as she pushed to her feet, spots dancing before her eyes, but Cuno brought his broad head under her hand to steady her, and she managed not to fall. Flemeth pursed her lips but did not intervene.

A new, female voice, rich and sardonic, interrupted the rhythmic chopping of wood as Rosslyn hobbled closer. Alistair muttered something indistinguishable in response that made the woman laugh.

“And tell me,” she mocked airily, “when you are finished turning all our store into splinters, will you take the axe to the rest of the Wilds and give them the same treatment?”

“Am I supposed to just sit on my hands and wait?” he demanded. “I can’t just do nothing, not when…”

“You might prepare for your departure, or perhaps a bath? ’Tis my understanding that kings are supposed to take care with their personal hygiene.”

A pause. “I’m not the king. I wasn’t meant for the crown – I don’t want it.”

“The people of Ferelden will doubtless be grateful,” the woman replied as the sound of chopping resumed. “’Twould seem they already have enough to worry them.”

“Listen, you have no – Rosslyn!”

The axe slipped from his hands as she flinched into the brittle winter sunlight, the metal head a dull thump against the ground. With barely an instant to brace herself against the cold that raked against her feverish skin, she was swallowed up in his arms, the whisper of her name by her ear as he pressed his cheek against her hair, every muscle tensed as if he suffered a mortal wound. Somehow, he had managed to miss her injuries; his strength took the weight off her shivering limbs, so she did not pull away. Despite the icy air he had stripped down to a simple linen shirt that had soaked through with sweat, and the scent of smoke and iron clung to him, rank but real; the fabric twisted under her fingers as she buried deep into the crook of his shoulder.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he breathed.

Something fluttered behind her ribs, but she dismissed it. Blood loss. The concern of one as good as a brother. Behind him, the dark-haired woman who had been talking with him narrowed yellow eyes, her tanned arms crossed over a scrawny frame barely disguised by her layers of hide and crimson-dyed wool.

“I’m sorry about Cailan,” Rosslyn murmured, closing her eyes against the scrutiny.

A shudder ran through him, and he shook his head in lieu of anything he could voice. “It doesn’t seem real. We ought to be dead on top of that tower.”

“Do not wish for such things so easily, boy,” Flemeth scolded from the doorway.

“I didn’t mean…”

As Alistair pulled back to argue, he glanced down, his eyes widening in realisation at Rosslyn’s state of undress. His hands leapt from her bare skin as if shocked, colour climbing hot into his face. Flemeth had brought out a blanket, which he snatched with an apologetic grimace to drape around Rosslyn’s shoulders. More tired than amused, she wrapped it closer with her good arm.

“I told you not to worry so much, did I not?”

“I’m grateful, of course,” he stammered. “Very grateful. But why us? If Cailan had been saved – or the Warden-Commander – then –”

The witch cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I am sorry for your grief, but it must come later, in the dark shadows before you take vengeance, as my mother once said. You still have your duty, and it must come first.”

To Rosslyn, the subtle emphasis on the word felt pointed. A Cousland was bound by duty, she had always been taught so, but in making her a grey Warden Duncan had stripped her of her name – and in so doing, forced her into another sort of compact entirely. Alistair twitched at her side as if wanting to reach for her, but the action halted before it began, and instead he clenched the fist, steeled himself, and straightened. It hurt, but in the way of an old injury troubled by cold weather.

She forced a breath. “What happens now?”

“The battle at Ostagar has bought you time,” the witch replied. “But the full might of the horde has not been defeated. It has always been the duty of the Grey Wardens to unite the lands against the blights.” She arched a brow. “Or did that change when I wasn’t looking?”

“I am only one grey Warden,” she retorted. “Barely. We would need an army to defeat the horde.”

Flemeth levelled a steady look at her, as if she could see the kernel of defiance, the shadow clinging to the memory of her father on the pantry floor and her mother poised with arrow nocked in the doorway, which snaked into her ear like a breath of cold wind. The Wardens were dead; no one remained to keep her in the Grey, no one who could execute her for desertion. The weight of the Warden’s Oath hung around her neck, untouched. Rhodri had explained the custom of sealing the blood of the fallen into a locket, to carry the sacrifice of those unlucky enough to not survive the Joining, and when he had handed her the dainty silverite pendant it had taken almost more strength than she possessed not to fling the barbarous trinket into the fire.

Daveth would have tutted to see her thoughts now; it rankled that a common thief might think her dishonourable. But then the last sight of Ser Jory’s face swam into her vision, the way the light left his eyes as his wife’s name gasped through bloodied lips, and her mouth curled. The Grey Wardens had no honour in the first place.

“Arl Eamon won’t stand for it,” Alistair said. The conversation had gone on without her. “He wasn’t at Ostagar – he still has all his men. And he’s Cailan’s uncle, a respected voice in the Landsmeet.” Something desperate wriggled in his voice. “We should go to him, let him know what Loghain has done.”

“What creeps upon Ferelden now is a threat greater than any one man can pose,” Flemeth warned. “Your priority must be the darkspawn.”

“But how do we fight them? Redcliffe won’t be enough on its own, and Highever –” He swallowed, glanced sideways at Rosslyn.

“The treaties,” she realised, and turned to both of them. “The Warden who took me into the Wilds said that they once had treaties that can demand aid from the other races during a Blight, but we couldn’t find them.” A darker thought took root. “And who’s to say if Orzammar or the Dalish would even honour such oaths anyway.”

Flemeth snorted. “They will honour the treaties because they must, and because I will give you what you were searching for.”

“You took the treaties?”

“The seal wore off long ago, I protected what was contained within,” she replied, offended.

“Then we’ll take them,” Alistair declared. “And we’ll get our army.”

“Someone will need to lead it,” Rosslyn pointed out. Her voice was quiet, but he flinched from it nonetheless and shoved a hand through his sweat-darkened hair.

“If we get that far,” he said.

Rosslyn hunched further into the blanket but let the blot of cowardice go. Perhaps, once, it would have been her concern, but he had been lost to her the moment she drank from the cup, and though the knowledge left a bitter taste in her mouth, like medicine it offered strength as well.

“So you are set then?” Flemeth asked. “Ready to move against the Blight?”

Rosslyn glanced up to the sun, low on the northern horizon and not yet at midday. “What choice do we have?”

“There are always choices,” came the mocking reply.

Across the small yard, the young woman who had been talking with Alistair let out a scoff. “Only for some of us.”

“Do not complain, girl,” the old woman snapped. “You have been itching to get out of the Wilds for years, here is your chance.” She turned to Rosslyn and Alistair, dropping the edge of biting humour that had clung to her manner thus far. “It has already been decided. Consider it repayment for your lives – I’m giving you Morrigan, my daughter, that which I value above all in this world.” Another scoff from Morrigan went ignored. “Without her, you will surely fail, and you must succeed.”

“Then we should start as soon as we can.”

“Are you fit to travel yet?” Alistair asked. His hand flexed towards her elbow, but the gesture cut short before he could touch her.

“As long as weight is kept off the injury, yes,” Flemeth answered for her. “Morrigan knows spells to speed the healing.”

“She’s a mage too?” He frowned. “Outside of the Wilds that will make her an apostate – it could be a problem.”

The witch canted her head to the side. “If you did not want the aid of us illegal mages, perhaps I should have left you on top of that tower.”

“… Point taken.”

“You need not fear for my safety,” Morrigan interrupted. Unlike her mother’s dry mockery, hers rang with glee, a songbird instead of a crow. “I am more than capable of outwitting those brutes the Chantry keeps leashed to its service.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “that attitude isn’t going to draw any attention at all.”

Her lips thinned. “I suggest a village north of the Wilds as our first destination,” she said to Rosslyn. “’Tis not far and you will find much you need there. Or if you prefer,” she added, with a pointed look at Alistair, “I will simply be your silent guide.”

Years of lessons in court etiquette schooled Rosslyn’s expression into one of indifference, shrugging off the bite in her temper caused by the now-pulsing ache in her shoulder.

“A silent guide is no good to me,” she replied levelly. “And you’re right that we’ll need supplies.”

“Then I shall gather my things,” Morrigan replied with a condescending nod.

She slunk away behind the hovel and in watching her go Rosslyn failed to notice Flemeth’s exit as well, silent as mist. Alistair watched her.

“We need all the allies we can get,” she told him, before he could complain.

“No, it’s not… Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’m difficult to kill.” The wry edge in her voice held too much bitterness to pass as a joke, but one corner of his mouth tilted up all the same. He inhaled, then let go the breath. A wren called from the thicket beyond the clearing, a sharp chit-chit like a pair of marbles clacking together.

“Eamon will know what to do,” he said. “He’s one of Cailan’s oldest advisors.”

“Not his anymore,” she replied, as gently as she could.

He flinched. “Don’t do that. When we were in the tower…” He shook his head. “It wasn’t me they were following. None of this is supposed to be happening.”

She thought of the whisper that had snaked deep through her flesh as the darkspawn blood burned down her throat, her vision doubled on an image of blackened, crooked scales and a maw of sword-sharp teeth dripping poison. The weak sun faltered behind a creeping bank of cloud and even wrapped in the thick wool of Flemeth’s blanket a shiver grasped at her bones. Her injury throbbed. She held her tongue.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #dragon age fanfiction #alistair theirin #alistair x warden #warden x alistair #alistair x cousland #cousland x alistair #rosslyn cousland #cousland #morrigan #flemeth

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laurelsofhighever · 1 year

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Characters/pairings: Alistair x Cousland Chapter: 1/? Rating: G Warnings: None Fic Summary: The story of the Fifth Blight, in a world where Alistair was raised to royalty instead of joining the Grey Wardens.

Read it on AO3

The boy narrowed his eyes at the line of weeds and decapitated them with an angry swing of the willow switch. As the flowers dropped to the ground, the stalks waved a little in the violence of his strike, but it didn’t make him feel better. With strands of hay caught in his tawny hair and his simple, oversized tunic splashed with mud, he was hardly a sight fit to be seen at the arlessa’s party, or by any of the noble guests who had come to pay court to her in her condition. He told himself he preferred the stableyard anyway. He preferred to stay out of the way.

But it was starting to rain. Fat, heavy clouds had been looming closer since the morning, swallowing up the sun to the north even as they drove the hot, cloying summer wind before them like an omen, and now the first drops, scouts for the impending deluge, smashed into flagstones, into the weeds he had yet to cut down, and onto the tip of his nose. The temperature dropped. He shivered as the scent of slaked dust rose around him, half tempted to stay out in the downpour to spite the efforts of the cook to keep him presentable, but he was old enough to know the punishment he would receive wouldn’t be mitigated by sympathy if he caught a cold.

He huffed and skulked towards the stables as a second drop landed square on the top of his head – the midden-side entrance, opposite to the tack room where all the visiting drivers and retainers would be gathered at drinking and cards while Their Graces rubbed elbows upstairs. Some treated him kindly enough, but more than once he had seen a gleam of cruelty in the eyes of those who would have found a scrawny kitchen orphan good sport, and so he preferred to slip quietly past, into the gentle company of the horses. They didn’t care what he was, or who his father was, and as long as he showed them due respect, he could curl up in a corner of the loft and wait out the weather. Somewhere that smelled nicer than the kennels.

The storm broke just as he stepped over the threshold. A couple of the horses stamped and whickered nervously at the sudden staccato noise against the wooden tiles of the roof, but the straw of their bedding was thick, and cosy, and their haynets full of the sweetest meadow grass Arl Eamon’s fortune could provide, and when nothing emerged to threaten their comfort, even those more skittish mounts settled down to munching again. But something was still off. The boy cocked his head at the odd, stilted sniffle that reached him from the dark corner at the far end of the building. The door in the wall there led to the main keep, and that meant it was usually given a wide berth by the arl’s servants. It was unlatched.

He caught a flash of movement in amongst the straw as he sneaked closer, the switch still in his hand held out to the side like a sword, ready for quick action. Definitely – there was definitely someone there. The drumming rain on the roof echoed the rise of his heartbeat. He breathed deep, in through his nose, imagined a thief or an assassin. Imagined the look of pride and gratitude on Arl Eamon’s face when he found out just who had stopped this interloper singled-handed. He readjusted his grip on the switch, and with a battle cry leapt around the corner.

He found a girl.

The first thing he noticed was blue. A silk dress with vining leaves embroidered in green and gold around the hem, with just the tips of pale satin shoes poking out from underneath where she had tucked up her legs against her chest. In age, she looked a little younger than him, though brighter and better fed. He lowered the switch as his gaze moved on to the sight of blotchy, tear-stained cheeks and the tumble of black hair down her back, a frown knitting over his brows in confusion and not a little annoyance that she wasn’t an invading qunari twice his size. For a moment, the shock of being discovered made her stare blankly at him, but then her eyes, stormy with crying, flicked down to his hand and back to his face.

“Your grip is all wrong on that, you know,” she said.

He pouted, glancing down before he remembered you should never take your eyes off your opponent. “Who are you?” This was his hiding place, not hers, even if she was a noble.

She sniffed, indignant. “I’m Rosslyn.”

“Why are you crying?” The name didn’t mean anything to him, though it rankled that she clearly thought it should.

At the question, Rosslyn looked away and drew her arms around her knees. “Mother got angry because Arlessa Isolde thought I called her a walrus.”

His mouth fell open. “Did you?”

“No! I said she wasn’t as big as a walrus. And I don’t know why everyone even cares so much,” she added, dashing a new tear away from the side of her face. “She’s only an arlessa.”

Feeling a new glow of sympathy warming for this unexpected stranger despite the oddity of her last remark, the boy smiled and crossed the space to sit next to her on the bale, careful to leave a gap between them so his dirty tunic wouldn’t rub off on her dress. That she didn’t object he took as a positive sign, but he found he couldn’t quite look at her close to, and had to drop his gaze to his boots instead, kicking the heels against their shared seat.

“I can’t believe you did that,” he told her. “I would never have been so brave.”

Rosslyn bobbed her head at the compliment, and he caught a smile out of the corner of his eye.

“But she does look a little bit like a walrus, doesn’t she?”

She giggled. “And she behaves like one. Nobody likes her. Mother said we had to come today to show respect to Arl Eamon, but I heard her and Lady Landra talking in the hall before we left.”

“Arl Eamon likes her,” he said, still looking at his boots. “He likes her a lot.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “I suppose someone has to.”

The boy kept his thoughts to himself. The arlessa had only been part of Arl Eamon’s household for a few months, since Harvestmere, but even that short time had been enough to rob him of all illusions. In the lead-up to the wedding, the servants had fluttered and fawned over the idea of the arl finally having a wife; yes, she was Orlesian, but those below stairs had heard great reports from the arl’s valet about the lady’s beauty and how thoroughly she had won his heart. She had brought her own elven maid, and her own money, and if there were worries about Orlesian pretension, they were soothed by the hope of Orlesian glamour. The problem was that nobody had told the new arlessa about the young bastard living under her husband’s protection in the castle kitchen.

He shook away the dark thoughts and cleared his throat. “Why did you come down here? People must be looking for you.”

“At first, I didn’t know where I was going, but…” She smoothed her palms over her knees. “I like horses, and it’s not like I really wanted to run away properly.”

“Sometimes I want to run away,” the boy offered, unsure of what else to say.

“Yeah?”

“I’d become a dragon hunter, or a Grey Warden, maybe.”

“Not holding a sword like that,” she replied. “Here.”

Before he understood what she meant to do, she had leaned across him and plucked his left arm from his side so she could rearrange his hand around the end of the switch, guiding each digit into a lighter hold and moving his thumb so it no longer pressed over the backs of his fingers.

“That way your wrist is more mobile, and you can meet strikes at more angles,” she explained, turning to smile at him with big, grey eyes. “If you were in the army they’d make you fight with your right hand to be part of the shield wall, but if you’re going to be a hero, left-handed should be alright.”

“Uh…” His face heated; she sat close enough for him to smell whatever noble perfume had been brushed into her hair, but she didn’t seem to mind the contrast with the odour of dogs and manure that clung to his own clothes. “Thanks.”

She sat back. “Is it… alright if I stay here for a little while? I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Of course you can stay.” He smiled at her. “I know where there are some kittens – do you want to see them?”

He had discovered the alley cat and her litter some weeks before, and had since spent his free time carefully coaxing the whole family to trust him by bringing scraps he could slip from the kitchen in the moments when the cook was distracted. Carefully, because the cook had no fondness for cats, and a plentiful supply of sacks, and only a short walk to the nearest stream. Now, however, as he led Rosslyn up the ladder into the hay loft, then higher still into the rafters by the tack room chimney, his stomach lurched with excitement at being able share the secret with someone who might appreciate it. She followed him gamely, not tripping even once despite her flimsy shoes and long skirts, and when she spied the three kittens gambolling about beneath the small window at the far end of the eaves, she gasped.

“They’re so small!” she whispered.

“They were smaller,” he whispered back.

The kittens, all tabbies, noticed them and left off their pouncing game to back up against the far wall of their den with pointed, fluffed-up tails and uncertain hisses, but only until they recognised their visitor and heard him trill a greeting like the one he heard their mother use. He uncoiled a piece of cord from the pocket of his breeches and tossed it towards them like an angler before trailing it slowly back along the floor. The kittens watched. After several repetitions, the bravest sank into a wobbly crouch, crept forward, and pounced on the end of the string.

After a little while, in which Rosslyn joined in with the silver ribbon that had tied her hair back from her face, the mother cat returned through a hole left by a broken shingle, calling to her litter with a low, rolling inquiry that brought them tottering to her side. She washed their faces as they mewled and pawed at her legs, then with a brief tail-flick at the two interlopers flopped down as if exhausted. The boy flicked the end of the cord for her as the kittens suckled, and she followed the movement with slitted, barely-gold eyes.

“Do they have names?” Rosslyn asked, after a moment of rapt silence.

“You’re not supposed to name cats, my mother said,” he replied, dangling the cord a little higher, “because then they couldn’t come and go as they please.”

“I’ve never heard that. Nan says –”

“Rosslyn!”

The voice echoed from below, rich and worried, startling the cat with a low growl that bristled her fur and sent her slinking away, driving her kittens before her like a gooseherd until they disappeared from sight. Left alone, the two children exchanged nervous glances.

“Rosslyn! Pup, are you here?”

“It’s Father,” Rosslyn breathed, eyes wide.

They heard the heavy tread of boots on the loft ladder. The boy reached for her arm, an unfamiliar panic clawing in his throat at the thought that she would leave, and take her brave disdain for the arlessa with her. But the words jumbled on his tongue, kept from spilling by another fear, that they would both be punished for being found together in such a place away from the people who obviously cared about her wellbeing, and that whatever her noble father said, it would be enough for Arl Eamon’s thunderous gaze to descend upon him and finally cast him out like all the gossipmongers in the kitchens muttered when they thought he couldn’t hear.

A head appeared at the top of the ladder. In the low light it was difficult to see any strong resemblance between the lord and his daughter – hair sandy brown instead of black, shoulders broad, jaw square behind a trimmed beard – but when his eyes pierced the gloom and caught sight of the two children huddled like mice under a pantry crock he let loose a sound somewhere between a gasp and a shout and leapt the last rungs into the room, arms already held out to gather her into an embrace. Rosslyn’s arm slipped free, and with that tether gone the boy shrank back against the wall.

“Oh, my darling girl,” the lord sighed, dwarfing his daughter as he knelt to hug her. “We’ve all been worried – Mariwen feared you’d run into the city.”

“‘m sorry, Father,” Rosslyn mumbled in return. “Is Mother really mad?”

“No, Pup. And she’ll be glad to see you safe.” He pulled back to brush his large hands over her hair as if to reassure himself of the fact. “But who is your friend here?”

Rosslyn turned then, smiling, but it faltered as colour flushed her cheeks. “This is…”

The boy dropped his gaze to his shoes. Hot shame tightened along his spine, stinging at the back of his throat. Of course he wasn’t important enough to warrant a name.

“He’s my friend.” She stepped closer into a formal bow with her hands crossed over her chest and his head snapped up. “Forgive me, ser, for not asking who you are. What should I call you?”

“Oh.” Nobody had ever bowed to him before. He felt his mouth drop open without any words yet scrambled to fill the space. “I – it’s alright. My name’s Alistair. My lady.” To follow up, because it felt proper, he tried to return her gesture, though far more clumsily and probably to far less effect in his rough-spun, dirt-spattered tunic. But she smiled at him again, and it straightened his shoulders.

They nearly crumbled again when he caught the lord’s gaze over his daughter’s shoulder. The look in the eyes was gentle but guarded, and clever, like he could see everything. He was taller than Arl Eamon, a little younger in the lines of his face, and his open fondness for Rosslyn awoke a wriggle of envy in Alistair’s belly that felt a lot like when the cook decided he’d been bad and locked him outside the keep at dinnertime.

“Thank you for keeping my daughter safe, Alistair,” the lord said, with a nod of his own. “I hope she hasn’t been too much of a menace.”

“We’ve been playing with kittens,” she told him. “But they went to hide because you spooked them.”

“Did I? Well, I’m sorry for that – I’ll be quieter next time.”

“Do I have to go now?” she asked.

He smiled at her and nodded, holding out his hand. “I’m afraid so.”

“Do I have to apologise to Arlessa Isolde? I never even said she looked like a walrus, even though she does a little bit.”

“I didn’t know you’ve seen a walrus,” her father replied mildly. “But come, and on the way back I can teach you an extra lesson about diplomacy.”

Rosslyn groaned, but nevertheless placed her hand obediently in her father’s larger one. “It was good to meet you,” she said to Alistair. “Thank you for showing me the kittens.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled, even though she was already turning away. When she looked back over her shoulder, a faint hope surged that she might break free of the lord’s grip and run back to him – maybe insist he come with her – but instead she watched her father go down the ladder and then turned to follow him. There was a brief pause, one last look, and then Alistair was alone. With a shuddered sigh, he slid his back down the wall and sat, drawing his wiry arms around his knees.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair theirin #warden x alistair #alistair x warden #alistair x cousland #cousland #warden cousland #grey warden #rosslyn cousland #as the world falls down #my writing #ferelden

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