Maric couldn’t tell him that. He let him go and stepped back.
“But—” Duncan looked around, his confusion only mounting as he saw both Kell and Utha accepting Nicolas’s words just as Maric did. “You can’t be serious! You have to come back. This is suicide!”
“I can think of worse ways to die.”
“No! It’s wrong.” He ran up to Nicolas, making as if to push him back against the hearth. The warrior warily caught at the lad’s leathers and held him with a strong hand, though Duncan didn’t struggle much. He seemed more astonished than outraged. “How can you let the demon defeat you like this?”
Nicolas nodded slowly, closing his eyes as if the idea pained him. “Julien saved you,” he sighed. “He did the right thing, I know that. I wish I’d died with him.” Then he paused, opening his eyes and looking directly at Duncan. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I did die with him. This has nothing to do with the demon.”
“But—”
“Let me have my dream,” he pleaded, his voice heavy. It was as much to Maric and the others as to Duncan. “Please, just let me have this one last thing.”
Duncan looked like he was about to continue arguing, but seeing the expression on Nicolas’s face, he visibly deflated. Finally he nodded. He didn’t agree, even Maric could see that, but he couldn’t argue in the face of that pain. He gave Maric a troubled glance and then turned and stormed out the door without another word.
Kell walked up to Nicolas, extending his hand. “You served well,” he said. “You did your duty. Let it end here.” Nicolas shook his hand heartily, the tears coming more quickly. He fought to control a sob.
Utha went to the warrior, looking up at him with compassionate tears of her own. She made no gestures, but simply took both his hands in hers.
“Thank you,” he croaked, his voice near breaking.
Maric nodded at the man. Part of him felt disquiet at the idea of leaving Nicolas behind, a warrior who could still be of great help to them. But would it be better to demand that he follow them, fighting until he died some grueling death alone in the Deep Roads? Or worse, survived and carried on alone? It didn’t seem as if Grey Wardens met happy ends even at the best of times. Perhaps it was better to choose your own.
The idea settled over Maric like a dark cloud as they left Nicolas behind in the cabin. Outside, Duncan waited with his arms crossed. The lad looked distressed rather than belligerent. It must be difficult to understand when death seemed like a thing very far away. Perhaps it was better that he didn’t.
Julien solemnly watched them leave, and then returned inside the cabin to his love. This dream wouldn’t end, and somehow that brought Maric a small amount of comfort.
“We need to find Genevieve,” Duncan avowed.
Maric agreed, and together the group swiftly walked down the hill and out of the wilderness in search of the Grey Warden’s commander.
Time was running short.
13
The guard studied the group with a wary eye as he peeked through the massive gate’s shuttered window. The livery of a horned stag on a black background hung from the battlements. Duncan didn’t recognize it, but he assumed it was Orlesian. The guard’s accent seemed to confirm that. “M’lord doesn’t take in travelers,” he sneered.
Maric glanced back at the rest of them, clearly asking for ideas. They had spent the better part of the afternoon traveling through the marshes before they’d seen the remote outpost. It had appeared out of the mist, ivy creeping up its cracked stone walls and greyish moss hanging down. It was as if the marsh was busily trying to reclaim the place, and yet it endured nobly.
There was a single keep within the walls and a small courtyard, room for no more than perhaps a hundred men, according to Kell’s estimation. The sort of outpost the Empire built on the fringes of its borders, watching for incursions even if none had materialized for centuries beyond counting. They were convenient places for out-of-favor aristocrats to be exiled, though Duncan knew that some noblemen took these frontier assignments seriously and tried to make an honest go of it. They brought law to the local villages and attempted to clear the wilds of outlaws and pagan worship. This place, however, looked as if it was barely holding its own against the murky marsh around it, and if there was any local population to speak of, they hadn’t seen evidence of it. This was a cold and wet wilderness, full of snakes, and certainly an inhospitable place to build anything.
Duncan shrugged, and neither Kell nor Utha appeared to offer anything better. Maric sighed and turned back to the waiting guard at the window. “We’re looking for someone. A friend.”
The guard squinted at Maric. “We don’t have no Fereldans here.”
“She’s not Fereldan. She’s Orlesian, perhaps the captain of the guard? Her name is Genevieve.”
“What’s that? I don’t know anybody by that name! She certainly isn’t the captain, ’less he up and turned himself into a woman when I wasn’t looking! Begone, all of you!” The guard made to close the shutter, but paused as someone behind him mumbled something indistinct. Duncan strained to hear but couldn’t make it out. The guard merely grunted and looked back at Maric. “My friend here says the new seneschal’s wife goes by that name. That her?”
“Most like, yes.”
“What’s your business, then? We’ve had our fill of travelers in these parts. We don’t open up the gates for no one without His Lordship’s say. So if you got some message to pass on, I’ll take it and you lot can be on your way.”
Maric paused, and Duncan could see his mind working rapidly—and coming up with nothing. The King of Ferelden was not much of a bluffer, it seemed. Duncan was hardly surprised. “Tell her that her brother is here to see her,” he spoke up.
The guard pressed his face against the trap window, rolling his eyes around so he could clearly see who spoke. “That you?”
Duncan was tempted to say it was Maric, but the panicked look in the man’s eyes said that wasn’t likely to be a good idea. Too bad, as the only other person who could pass believably as Genevieve’s brother would be Kell, and he was an even worse liar than the King. “Half brother.” He nodded. “My name is Bregan.”
The guard chewed his lip thoughtfully, eyeing Duncan’s swarthy skin. Finally he grunted. “We’ll see what she has to say about it, then. Wait here, you lot.” The window slammed shut with a loud clack.
Maric frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea?” he whispered.
“You got a better one?”
Utha made a complex gesture to Kell, and the hunter shrugged in response. “I don’t know who this seneschal might be,” he said to her. “I know very little about our Commander beyond her life with the order.”
The dwarf nodded as if to say that she was no better off.
They waited in the mist for quite some time, listening to some unknown bird cawing off in the distant marshes. When the shutters clacked open again, it startled them all. “You there,” the guard growled, looking at Duncan. “She said she’ll see her brother. The rest of you can wait outside.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Maric asked. “We only—”
“It’s the seneschal’s orders.” The guard slammed the window shut again and a moment later the gate doors creaked open. The courtyard beyond was mostly mud, with only one gnarled tree covered in hanging moss growing next to a smithy and a dilapidated stable. The stable appeared to contain few actual horses, and most of the foot traffic seemed to be between the keep and the larger tower next to the gate. There were a handful of soldiers in sight, all men wearing ill-fitting chain hauberks and the same stag-on-black livery as above the gate.