“There comes a time,” Kithshok said as he tossed a tiny pebble into the pond to watch the ripples spread, “when every man and woman of the Qun must accept that we are each of us experiments in perfection. Our very births and every moment after are preconceived, contrived contributions to a grand design. Each life has a purpose. Each purpose serves a function. And accepting that purpose, taking on that role to perform that function, is what makes a Qunari who he or she is.”
His silver-violet eyes narrowed just a little, watching the entire pond be consumed in tiny waves that warped the reflected sunlight. One pebble had done all that, had disturbed an entire body simply by following the will of another. It had been cast forth, fallen, and the water had reacted as a whole.
“I understand you, Marian Hawke,” he went on, looking over to the woman beside him. She wore the armor of a Ben-Hassrath, a wise decision for being in the wilds of the Brecilian Forest, but Kithshok remembered vividly when she had been something else--when he had been something else. Both of them had been cast to the wind and waves of chaos with the world not seeming to realize how their actions, separate yet inexorably linked, would affect entire nations. She looked back at him with vibrant green eyes that had learned to see into the very core of his being, and her hand reached out, slight and pale, and linked fingers with his own.
Marian smiled, her eyes dropping to their joined hands. A silence fell between them. It was familiar, comfortable, invaded only by the wind moving through the leaves overhead and the songbirds of early spring trilling out their songs to inform others that they had claimed their territories.
“To abandon your purpose is to deny who you are,” she breathed, her voice barely loud enough to travel the close space between them. “I have heard the men talk. To them, you are still Arishok, will always be Arishok. You have returned to them something important that was long lost, and I don’t speak of ancient words penned by a well-meaning philosopher. You have returned to them an empire of the mind as equally important as the lands they could one day regain. The Qunari are wiser for it. Ferelden has already witnessed it. The men believe that you have brought us here to build a Qunandar of the south.”
He nodded a single time. “That is what I told the Council. But I brought with me the nameless and discontent, the saarebas and their unwilling handlers. I chose the ones suspected of questioning their own beliefs because I had nothing but questions. As Qunoran, I was granted the ability to know all about myself, which I intended to share with you.”
“I remember.”
“Neither of us saw the need.” He squeezed her hand. “But before we took ship for the south, the Ariqun saw fit to tell me all I had chosen not to know. I killed a brother in defense of the Qun--in defense of all our people--for the needless deaths he had caused. The Ariqun’s first transgression had been years ago when she was still only Tamassran. The one I killed was more than my brother in the Qun. He was my brother by the blood in our veins...and we had both been intended for greatness. Asari knows the story. And she has told it to our son.”
Kithshok’s head dropped back against the tree, his horns connecting with the solid bark. The pond had long since fallen calm again. The ripples were no longer visible. The surface of the water was as smooth and clear as glass. So it was with all things. Every disturbance had its time, each wave its roiling journey into shore, but the body of the sea remained ever changeless.
“My brother’s error was not the corruption I should have feared. The Ariqun was guilty of one far greater along with all those who held the office before her. We are each of us an experiment in perfection, but we should still have the freedom to choose. That I was born to be Karasten, I cannot deny. That I climbed the ranks because I knew that to be my purpose was inevitable. But that I was so destined to be Arishok because my father was Arishok, and he before him and he before him...that was in defiance of the laws set down by Koslun. Accomplishment is in ability, not in the blood.”
Marian gave him a strange look. She turned just a little to be able to face him more fully. “I seem to remember,” she said, a curious tone in her voice, “that ability is in the blood.”
“Carried by it, yes. Dictated by it...no. I am no Tamassran, but I know this to be absolute truth. My brother shared the same blood as I, yet his was not an ability that would make a strong Arishok. There was never that guarantee despite generations of careful selection.”
“You have that ability.”
“Do I?” His words had a hard edge that he didn’t intend, but Marian’s was not a will easily swayed or intimidated. “When your father is an Arishok and your mother an Ariqun, the ability the blood carries has as much direction as a leaf tossed about by a summer tempest. To have wisdom, even as a soldier, is paramount. But I can no longer blindly follow orders--not after what I have learned. The Qunari way is to let ability decide who ascends and who does not. The point I am trying to make, kadan, is that my ascension was decided long before I was born. The Triumvirate had decided after our defeat at the hands of your Chantry that we would never suffer such a loss again. Qunari were not simply bred to be soldiers or scholars or physicians or craftsmen. Some of us were bred to be Arishok, Arigena, and Ariqun. We had built a dynasty where one was never to exist.”
He pulled on her hand to draw her closer, wrapping an arm about her leather-clad shoulders and pressing his brow to the lightly scented locks of her ginger hair. She smelled of cinnamon and clove, of the forest breeze and the earth they sat upon. Her own arms slid about his waist as she came to rest in the hollow of his shoulder.
“I have brought us once more into exile,” Kithshok whispered into ears well capable of understanding, “only that our people might one day remember what they are meant to be. I will fulfill the role that fate has decided, and there are none who came with me that would have it be otherwise.”
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Antaam Industries faced certain dissolution amidst the economic
downturn of war. With a cease-fire in place, the General hopes to rebuild a
crumbling corporate empire from the ashes of the past, pulling in an unlikely
ally from across enemy lines. But Imperium Innovations has not taken its
sights off its own inevitable expansion, and old grudges run deep.
For days, they had held the crossroads at the mountain pass, Fog Warriors pelting them with arrows from the north, what passed for Tevene warriors from the south and west. Whoever won and held this village, nameless and primitive despite its tactical significance, gained control of the entire eastern half of Seheron. They were already predominantly Qunlands. This victory would simply seal it.
But it would be hard won.
A victory all the sweeter, the Arishok thought to himself as he carved is way through the fray. Sataareth in hand, he rallied what soldiers he could to him. He would not suffer the enemy any longer than need be. A shield wall was formed, and they shoved their way deeper behind enemy lines. He felt the sticky warmth of blood across his face as basra fell to his axe. Broad, white teeth gleamed in the fire of the setting sun. Explosions of gaatlok sprayed clods of earth and gore into the air ahead of him. Only here in war was destruction such a pleasing force to behold.
He was born for this.
The forces should have pulled back at dusk. It was unwise to fight when you were as likely to hit ally as enemy, but fires both magical and mundane lit the field with the rage of a thousand suns. Sweat cut paths through the blood on his skin. Muscles burned from the continued effort, his body giving in to weariness even as his mind would not. He was Qunari. There was no room for weakness.
His back pressed up against that of another. Kithshok, his right hand. The younger kossith used both sword and shield as weapons, bludgeoning a foe to one side while removing the arm of another. In a fluid motion, that shield came up to block burning arrows from the Fog Warriors before arcing out to have one of its four corners bite into the pallid flesh of a Nevarran mercenary. The Arishok smiled grimly as he lashed out at his own opponents. Sword and axe swung in tandem to clear the rest of the area. It afforded them a space to breathe.
“Vashkata has the Fog Warriors pinned,” Kithshok panted, his sharp eyes darting about even as he addressed his commander. It was a fool who let himself be caught unawares. “What they fling at us is little more than a dying breath. Tevinter is pulling back into the forest barrier. They have not sounded retreat.”
The Arishok nodded. “Then they hope to catch us in a ruse. Have our men fall back to the village. We will force these bas to fight where we can see them.”
Kithshok gave a salute and barked orders to his karataam and any others within earshot. He shouted loudly enough for the enemy to hear them. The Arishok did likewise, moving back through the throng of still-fighting bodies until he was well within the confines of the low buildings and ruined fencing. A shield wall was erected as a barrier. The arrows eventually stopped raining down. When Vashkata and the others returned, the besieged occupants of the village began to creep out from under cover, curious and hoping that the battle was over and that their captors would be merciful.
The officers gathered about the mud of the town square, quickly and crudely drawing out the current battle formations. The Fog Warriors were no longer a threat, their main force routed and any stragglers killed or captured. The Tevene were spread thin along their front line. The trees masked them in the cloak of night, but the ashaad had paid close attention.
“They still have saarebas,” Vashkata reported, marking places on their makeshift map by throwing blood-soaked stones to the sodden ground. “Here to the southwest. They hide in a grove chanting their vile nonsense.” He spat off to the side in contempt. “We kill them, we win the field.”
“They are protected by living rock,” Arvaraad added, holding out a control rod for the Arishok to inspect. “We felled one of the giants, but there are a handful more. Our cannons run low on ammunition, and swords and spears do little. Not unless we can overwhelm them.”
There was silence as they waited for the Arishok to respond, the elder kossith's great head and horns silhouetted against flame and smoke and deep, black sky. He turned the control rod over in his hands. It was a heavy metal plated in gold and laden with stones the basra considered precious. His brow lifted as he considered such a concept, the foolish decadence showing no sign of practicality. Yet this thing was known to bring stone to life and control it with minimal effort. Magic. Madness.
Kithshok cleared his throat. “Arishok? What do you propose?”
“Hissra, my son,” the Qunari war leader replied almost absently, passing the control rod back to Arvaraad. “They hope to deceive us with retreat and cloak themselves in the corruption of their saarebas. They hope we will fight these moving mountains, requiring so many of our number to fell that they would undoubtedly flank us. But the mind is superior to magic.” He looked from his officers and into the distance, eyes narrowing as if counting the hidden figures crouched beneath the trees. “Hissra. And have faith. For, I assure you, it is we that shall deceive them.”
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Vashkata sat at the edge of the pier, his feet dangling over the murky water of the harbor. It stank here, reeking of basra and old fish. There was a half-empty bottle of Antivan brandy in his hands. The other half already warmed his stomach and tingled numbly through every limb. It was a bad habit. But it kept him sane.
They had been two years in Kirkwall, confined to wretched quarters not fit for basra habitation let alone Qunari. Two years and they were no closer to finding the relic they were honor-bound to secure and return to Par Vollen. Well...the Arishok was honor-bound. The rest of them were here by proxy. That's how he'd come to understand it anyway.
He tilted back the bottle and practically gulped at the acrid liquid, hoping to eventually numb all his senses if for only a few minutes. Two years. No progress. The Arishok said to be patient. The Arishok said to wait.
"I don't suppose you have your wits about you."
Under normal circumstances, Vashkata would have sensed an approaching cat long before it could rub against his leg. As it was, he'd no idea there was even a kossith beside him until he spoke, and the surprise nearly dropped him into the water.
"Aqunan! Ah, brother, come and share a drink with me!" He held out the bottle, brandy sloshing hollowly inside.
"Kithshok," the other corrected firmly, taking the bottle and tossing it as far out into the harbor as he could. "Has the poison addled you so far you think us children again?"
"You were aptly named you know," Vashkata went on, his eyes almost sad. It was hard to know if it were a reaction to memory or the glittering bottle of wasted brandy bobbing on the tide. "As constant as the sea."
"In this particular moment, the same cannot be said for you." Kithshok leveled a look at his brother. "A quick-witted Tenethari, I do not see."
Vashkata snorted, a smile coming to his face at last. He reached up and clamped a hand to Kithshok's shoulder. "Too true, too true." But his tone immediately sobered. "It is this...place. The longer we remain, the duller my senses become."
"And you know why we stay."
"We stay for the future of the antaam, for the future of all Qunari." His eyes narrowed a little. "We stay for a book...one that I'm certain has been copied in whole or in part dozens of times by thousands of imekari."
Kithshok stiffened. "You say that as if its purpose was not something--"
"Don't lecture me like an old tamassran." Vashkata went to reach for a brandy bottle that was no longer there. He sighed. "I merely worry that all this waiting is...dangerous. We should have cleansed this place when we arrived. The taint is palpable."
"You drank a good bit of it voluntarily just now." The tone was serious but eyes twinkled with no small bit of mirth. "Peace, brother." Kithshok got to his feet and dusted himself off. "I need to return to my post, but you should know that there is nothing to worry about. Victory is in the Qun."
Vashkata nodded shallowly and watched the other kossith's retreating form even long after he vanished into the crowd of dockhands. But for how much longer, brother, he wondered to himself. For how much longer?
He watched the vast swath of forest burn. The battle had been a fierce one, the Tevinter saarebas relentless in their push forward. They had thrown their magic. The Qunari had responded with gaatlok. The result was victory. The aftermath was a wasted resource.
The Arishok kept an eye on the men busily digging a trench between their front lines and the spreading fire. One battle. One day. But so long as there were Tevinter bas here, the fighting would be endless. He hoped the burning forest would smoke them out. In that way, at least, the loss of valuable hardwood would not have been completely senseless.
When he was certain adequate preparations had been made, he stepped away from his men and their trench and ducked into the tent that served as his sleeping quarters. It was not his alone. Three others shared it with him, Kithshok and two Sten, his most adept tacticians. They were already gathered about an open patch of sandy ground, scratching out strategies for the dawn when the flames died down and smoke mostly cleared. Even that they could use, the black plumes that only got thicker when things began to smoulder.
“We use the fire to our advantage,” Kithshok was saying, marking the front lines with the scrape of a dagger blade. “Keep it as a wall between our saarebas and the front, use the smoke to cloak the karashok and vashkata. We have the upper ground. They must come to us if they expect to succeed.”
“What of the river?” a Sten asked, tracing a curving line along the side of their crude map. “The have skiffs--”
“Had skiffs,” the Arishok put in, hanging Sataareth on a rack while he sat on the edge of his cot to shrug out of his armor for the night. “Saying that they were obliterated is putting it...lightly.”
“The river is still a liability,” Kithshok added with a nod. “It was made clear that the Fog Warriors are not with us in this fight. That does not mean they have abandoned Tevinter.” He etched out a few hash marks by the gentle curve. “We keep one karataam back to monitor the shoreline. The river is wide and runs deep. We cannot risk such an opening.”
“And the front? Once the stealth groups have made their move?”
The Arishok's smile was tight, but it was genuine. “They will signal with fire.” His silver eyes flashed around to meet each of theirs. “And we will show these bas what it means to face demons.”
They waited until that hour before dawn when the landscape and sky blurred together completely. All that let them know where the ground truly was were the glowing orange pools filtered through scorched branches and desiccated leaves. It was impossible to see the Tevinter front lines, but they didn't need to. The karashok and vashkata were already on the move, snaking through the smoking ruin of the forest in search of basra prey. Swift and silent, they did their part. It was not that long a wait before a small flare of light went shooting into the sky, only to explode into crackling, colored flame a moment later.
The Arishok raised his sword aloft, the tempered steel catching what light there was in an answering flash.
“Eva!” he shouted at the top of his voice, a chorus of deep voices answering a rhythmic chant as cannons sounded off, hurling their smoking bounty down the hillside and into the blackened forest below.
Fiery explosions were everywhere as thunder shook the earth below and heavens above. Those birds that had been foolish enough to roost nearby were startled into the air, shrieking and squawking as they fled. Another round was loosed. The valley was carpeted in flame. Qunari saarebas hurled their deadly magics into the fray before the signal was given for the warriors to finally charge. They whooped with excitement and bloodlust as they charged into hell.
The Arishok smiled. It would be another easy victory.
