Heavy rainfall had spilled what seemed like half a mountain's worth of mud into a valley, making impassable any road that would lead them back to the main body of Riftwatch agents. In the early summer, nearby settlements would perhaps send scores of men to begin the work of reestablishment. That would be many months from now, and that's assuming the Free Marches become free of the current Imperial stranglehold.
The rain had let up. They'd resigned themselves to the long way, avoiding common rivers that would be flooded and dangerous.
They could less reliably avoid the Venatori. They have already survived one scuffle—clashing blades, the solid thump of a mage staff foregoing casting altogether and instead cracking across the skull of someone in mud-stained robes. And then a scar driven through the earth, a pressurised expulsion of summoned lava that flamed where it landed on skin and armor and trees. And that was the end of that.
More walking. Seeking higher ground, ignoring various injuries, aches, complaints, the sky slowly starting to darken above the constant gloom of grey cloud. Full dark, by the time they are able to rest.
A small lamp casts a conservative glow around the interior of the shared tent, hanging out of the way by the entrance. After eating ravenously of his share in rations, Marcus is going about the slow process of lazily doffing his armor. Layers of leather and fur, stiff woven cloth and metal chain. The sound of buckles and metal clinking together replaces the conversation he might be making, detaching breastplate and his breathing hitching at some new and undiscovered scrape twinging with the movement.
Occasionally, the wind drags through the trees nearby, throws the water gathered amongst the leaves against the canvas of their tent. Everything smells of earth and water, and increasingly, sweat and blood.
That particular wet and clinging southern cold of has come creeping in after the sun's set. Even inside the tent, he is as aware of it across the crown of his close cropped skull as he might be the chilled pant of some ice breathing lizard—that bizarre combination of bitter and humid that doesn't dare try to find a foothold in more northern latitudes. Or maybe that's just the sweat, and the close quarters, and the smell on both of them after a long day spent clawing through the backwoods to this point that's left him both sticky and only just not shivering under his clothes. It's possible he's been unfairly critical of the climate.
(No he isn't; fuck the south and its miserable wet, grey springs.)
Sitting on what is arguably his side of these close quarters (although the tent isn't really designed for two people to loiter inside so much as it is for two people to sleep in), Flint has a crinkled piece of parchment laid across the calf of his boot. The soft scratch of a pencil nub makes for a dulled, consistent rhythm under the sharper staccato of clinking buckles and leather fastenings coming unbuckled and unfastened. Near midday, he'd halted their progress to take some measurements of shadows cast by a copse of reedy trees. Now, a number of hours later, Flint is doing the math between those figures kept in his head and the snatches of constellations he'd been able to observe while pitching the tent in the dark. There is an image of a regional chart stored in his head, imprinted there by hours of meticulous study long before their little raiding party had ever left the Gallows—
"I suspect we'll have rain tomorrow," he says without looking up.
It's stupid, but Marcus is fond of this weather—for its horribleness, in particular. Its insistent misery, the lingering cold that gets its claws in without remorse, the creeping moisture. Colder, even, the hard-edged winters and Kirkwall's particular brand of bracing sleet. (The Circle had been comfortable. He had been ungrateful, continues to be so, even when it was and sometimes still is explained at length about the harder living of those less fortunate. It's hardly his fault that so few choose to be where they are.)
But Flint says that, about the rain, and he isn't looking forward to it. He grunts.
Slithers one last strip of leather through buckle and removes the breastplate. There is a fresh scrape across it that Marcus doesn't remember receiving, giving it quick inspection before he lays it aside atop the other pieces he's removed.
A hand curves around his side, under his other arm, blindly questing after that twinge while he looks down to the piece of paper that has Flint's attention. Curious, quiet, observing incomprehensible pencil scratches, before speaking up, "Do you know where we are?"
Summer in Kirkwall sticks under the collar. It is composed of salt, blown in off the sea and sweat out of the skin and battered off short tempers. There are fights in every dockyard public house. Any tavern with so much of a scrap of a balcony where a bit of mind might blow across it is stuffed to overflowing. And dingy taphouses like this one, inhabiting what might generously be called a basement in the considerable shadow of the steps leading to Hightown, find themselves suddenly in possession of valuable real estate.
Which means it is crowded. Indeed if not for the very pressing reason behind his visit to this particular tavern on this particular night, Flint might have given serious consideration to simply removing himself to the next shitty bar down the street. Things being what they are: he has made willing use of his elbows to acquire himself a bottle and a tankard, and has washed up here, at the edge of a narrow table crammed against the wall. It's accompanied by only one chair, and Marcus Rowntree is in it.
"Keep your eye on this," is an order, punctuated by the thump of the bottle being set definitively down before the man.
And then Flint is wading back into the press of the ground. When he returns a few moments later, it's heralded by a chair's legs floating above a few heads and shoulder before he appears carrying the thing overhead. Where, or whose corpse he picked it off of, may best be left undiscussed.
Having done as he's told, Flint can return to the table to bottle and tankard, and the man guarding them. Marcus has helped himself to topping up his own tankard with a decent splash, as tax for his services.
That, and it seems they're about to share a drink.
There's no window directly at his table, but there's one a few feet down that barely does anything to provide the muggy interior some relief, except that its absence would certainly make everything too sweltering to stand. Marcus is down a layer, with a coat folded over his chair, his shirt sleeves rolled and collar open, having spent some afternoon at the stables. Between his fingers, a half-smoked cigarette is still smoldering away, which he ashes on the floor and occasionally uses the edge of his boot to smother any persistent embers.
This is what he's occupied with when Flint arrives beneath his prize, sitting up a little and a hand moving to hover and protect the things on the table should the other man knock it on the way down. A little speculative already, when so much of their conduct has been all business. Very usual.
The large chamber they all congregate within has open stone archways that lead out towards the balcony that looks over the rest of Cumberland, and it is certainly warm enough that the occasional breeze that slithers through between pillars is welcome every time. The hour has gotten late but there are still plenty of people, still music playing by tireless musicians and a space on the floor for dancing, still servants swanning through with freshly charged glasses of wine and an endless stream of food, and conversation is still a high spirited murmur all around.
It isn't that Marcus would never be asked to attend a thing like this. It's only that if he is, it's to don the Riftwatch uniform and prowl around the very edges, inside or out, or to be stationed a block away alongside the white-winged griffon he's come to favour.
It's the case, instead, that along those figureheads of Riftwatch pressed into diplomatic service, so too have some mages and rifters, something of a curiousity, even in Nevarra. So he is among them instead, currently fidgeting with an empty crystal glass. Not quite wallflowered in his usual greys, he wears a jacket of deep jade, well-tailored stiff silk, embellished in silver. Black, otherwise, of various textures, including the silken necktie, and a hint of off-white cotton beneath waistcoat. And finding clothing and getting dressed for something had been more pleasurable than, so far, the something itself.
So discomfort prickles up his neck as he goes to find a place to either set down or refill his glass. His cigarette case is on hand in an inner pocket and he is thinking about it, and the possibility of safe harbour of company with someone known to him, or somewhere to be alone for a moment.
Here, a small table with a statue. The glass joins it. There.
There is no familiar face here at this little scrap of a margin on the edge of the— calling them festivities would be incorrect, but diplomatic assembly doesn't quite capture the spirit of the thing either. It's one of those occasions which is all a miserable confluence of pretense: rich men and women with carefully managed interests pretending like they aren't measuring the doling out of favors and exchanging requests while operating under the guise of a fine evening of music and dancing and gorging on the finest food one can import. However, not far removed from Marcus' small table and his discarded glass:
James Flint cuts an impressively unhappy figure where he appears to be hostage to a conversation between two men, both with ostentatious facial hair and too much brocade trim, and a Mortalitasi woman with features that might be shared with a carnivorous racehorse. His glass has run empty. Worse, the debate occurring between them is so unapologetically inane that it all but repels the attention. Stood there in his very black everything (save for the gold division pin at his collar and the glint of the ostensibly ceremonial sword scabbard at his hip), to the untrained eye he appears very serious and unimpressed. To the trained eye—
Well, that. But also like he might be on the verge of smashing the empty glass, turning his sleeve back, and simply opening his forearm with it. At least the Nevarran mage might be trusted to know what to do with his corpse once he's dropped dead on the marble floor of the hall. The effort to avoid a particularly pressing urge to roll his eyes sends his attention fleeting briefly off past the edge of this torture session. Catches at the green coloring of a coat against the richly patterned black and white marble of the arch column further beyond it. Flits briefly along the familiar squared line of the wearer's shoulder, and looks Marcus in the face before some remark ('Commander, the value in these warehouses is considerable; between your men and Lysandra's talents to assist with the management of the corpses, it seems rational that we might make a brief incursion past the city's walls to recover our property and—'), like something sharp driven under the fingernail by an experienced sadist, grudgingly recalls his attention back.
A small unit of griffons and their riders touch down in the Gallows late at night. Not much is said as they all split up, not for any reason beyond the length of the day and the length of the mission preceding it. Tired of each others' company as much as they are simply tired.
Last to leave the eyrie, Marcus takes his time. Begins and finishes a cigarette at the entryway, and so the scent of fresh smoke mingles and clings to the sweat in his hair and the wet dog aroma of sky-damp furs and wool. Tomorrow, he will claim an early morning hour in the baths, shave down the dark bristle along his jaw that comes in patchy around scars when he's been out in the field without a convenient razor and basin, dress himself in clothes of lighter weight than leather and metal and chain. Tonight—
Disposing the twisted end of cigarette into his cigarette case, which disappears into a pocket, he collects up his things, including the heavy bladed staff that likewise needs a polish, now, and makes down the stairs. The floor he emerges into is shadowy, quiet, not normally a place he finds himself at this hour, but has been to enough that muscle memory pivots him for the correct door.
There is no plan, there, in the lay of his hand against the wood, tipping his head to see if he can detect light coming in from the bottom. Fingers curl in, and he raps his knuckles against it, only feeling then some edge of transgression that he hadn't since touching James Flint's knee in a tent.
No, there is no light eking out from under the edge of the door. And why should there be? At this hour, it would be reasonable to expect the man who occupies these quarters to have retired to the adjacent apartments far removed from where the rap of knuckles might easily carry. Or maybe he is away; crossed over the harbor and engaged in some light night business in Kirkwall. As befitting any pirate captain, even ones playing at legitimacy as he presently is, he keeps strange hours. For what has been true these last weeks has been true more or less forever: James Flint makes a habit of being difficult to anticipate in any meaningful way.
And then a wandering glint of a light, and the heavy bolt on the other side of the door slides back.
Illuminated by the light given off by the small oil lamp in his left hand, Flint paints a broad shape in the gap that opens. Shirt sleeves turned back to the elbow, collar of his shirt laid open. Cheek drawn, the lick of the lamplight glancing off him. Something pinched in his expression that darkens a measure further at the sight of Marcus in the corridor. Beyond Flint's shoulder, some haze of light too distant to have carried all this way otherwise. Somewhere a second lamp or series of candles, maybe, by which work might yet be accomplished.
"Something wrong?"
The other riders will have returned alongside Marcus, and they all will brought news of their work with them. The visitation bere at his door in the waning hours of the evening suggests there must be something.
Somewhere high above them, the wind blows hot and dry off the Merdaine across this tangle of crevasses. But here, down in the shadowed depths of the stone cuts, the temperature is considerably softened and the harsh daylight reduced to muted blues and purples, striations of orange and white sandstone rendered nearly monochromatic save where the passing splash of lamplight (or something like it) plays over it.
The sound of fighting here is shockingly loud. It reverberates through the cut channels, rebounding. A burst of arcane ice turns to shrapnel and explodes across the worn smooth lip of a natural wall cut from the erosion. Behind it, Flint kicks his boot into the lever of his crossbow, and wrenches the bolt back with a murderous mechanical click.
There are six Venatori left in this open roofed chamber, and no telling how many others are crawling through Red Bride's Grave. Only that they must be here for the same reason that Riftwatch is—the rumor of a passage down into the ancient shrine, the Veil stretched sheer, and the promise of a way through to some old rock or stave or Maker knows what of power so long as one might determine how to navigate to reach it.
Presently, however, Flint is less concerned with ancient dark things and more with not catching an knife sharp icicle to the face when he rocks up out of cover to send the bolt spitting.
It snarls through the air. Punches through the breastplate of a Venatori assassin. And then, before the enemy can fall, the whole arrangement of bolt and gore and dying body reverses itself and clocks backwards. Some ripple in the Veil knitting and unknitting itself. The Venatori is stood upright again. Flint's foot reverses out of the crossbow lever. The splash of arcane winter magic unexplodes, sucking fragments of ice back into itself.
Across from Flint, across the narrow corridor of rock that they're both defending and invading, Marcus has his back pressed to stone, staff held in one hand, the other raised. Between his fingers, shining glyphs sparkle and extinguish. In that hard reverse of time, the feeling of that quasi-finite, internal energy he'd drawn on to cast reblooms somewhere under his skin.
And then their hearts beat back into rhythm, and Marcus turns, that measured spell discarded in favour of moving and pointing his staff, and in a direct line between the end of his blade and would-be dead assassin, the air twists, whorls with smoke and ember and a crackle of green energy firing through this whirlwind in an effort to redo what Flint had done faster than it takes to crank a crossbow.
But the assassin has learned his lesson too, escaping with raw magic grazing past his pauldron as he ducks out of the way.
Another firing of winter magic, this time hissing for where Marcus is stood. He moves but is still struck across the shoulder where, instead of sinking its fangs in him, winter magic disperses with a shimmer, felt by Flint as a sharp and sudden gust of icy splinters all around. Harmless, if stinging.
Frost laces across leather and fur, briefly, before immediately melting.
What might have been an early evening to conclude a peaceful day of watching the borders of the half-underground excavation site is twisted into something else at report of a dispatch of Venatori scouts that aren't headed for them, but away. Whether this dispatch has valuable information, or even one of the artifacts being squabbled over, or want little more but to make it back alive for the main enemy body already rooted into the Anderfels is of little consequence. Anyone who can ride a griffon is sent on their way, paired off and distributed into a long line to cover ground.
The light still has a grey, dusty quality to it. Pursuing people from the sky offers the benefit of speed and the disadvantage of being seen in the cloudless sky, even, and so they fly a little lower than the griffons themselves prefer, using rising landmasses, hillside and rocky quasi-mountains to disguise their advance. The dwindling light will offer advantage of going unseen, but the Venatori can say the same.
Monster is unhappy. Marcus has settled soot through her bright white feathers to diminish the chance of early sighting, and she'd endured it with unhappy clicking and sneaky attempts to nip at his hands, boots, tunic tails. Now, up in the air, the shine of a lake has her give a low and demanding squawk, although she knows better than to simply go in for a dive.
His focus is, however, on the ramshackle little wooden structure and its accompanying shed that looks potentially big enough to house the four dracolisks they believe the scouts to be riding.
Raises a hand, signals to Flint flying somewhere further back and up.
The wind cuts sharp even at this meager altitude, but there's some measure of warmth to be found in the thick bristle of feathers at the back of Buggie's neck where Flint has worked his spare hand close. It serves a sort of dual purpose—warming his fingertips; satisfying the overly dependent animal who might otherwise click and chirp and constantly flick her attention back to her rider. Were they flying an hour later, he might want for a glove. Were they flying an hour later, he might have trouble parsing that signal at a distance from out of the dusky end of daylight. Might not have picked the wooden outbuilding from the grey brown backdrop surrounding it.
Things being what they are—
A press of the heel and a tug on the rein prompts an alteration from the naturally grey griffon's trajectory. She descends with a rapid layover of the wing (sends his stomach briefly jumping). With the happy satisfaction of an animal pleased to have been afforded a job, she moves at a clip—distance narrowing between the two griffons.
Flint doesn't bother with an answering signal. He simply allows the griffon to drop further out of the sky with the clear expectation that Marcus make some effort to convince his own ride to follow.
For all that their departure from the Anderfels is promptly done, the reality is that Riftwatch returns to the Gallows in parts and pieces. A majority of the griffons and their riders are first back to the island; the rest either splinter to various other pressing assignments on the route between having snuck across the northern border into Orlais, and they return by ship with one or two griffons kept with the latter contingent should there be any necessity for them.
Flint is not among the number of riders who beat everyone else back to the Gallows. Unsurprisingly perhaps given his appointment, Marcus is. Buggie, evidently generally spoiled thanks to her rider's occupations, apparently also gets to enjoy a leisurely route back home while sunning herself on the deck of some ship.
Late summer storming in the Waking Seas notwithstanding, of course.
Its late in the day when the Riftwatch ship at last claws its way back into the harbor. Not yet dark, it's a prime hour for its weather battered passengers to crawl to the island fortress, help themselves to warm baths, and then cross promptly over into Kirkwall proper to enjoy the first real instance of off hours they might have had for some weeks. Flint helps himself to the bath, but discards the prospect of crossing the harbor. There is, one must assume, a great stack of work in need of catching up on.
Ergo, there is a certain brusque and businesslike clip to the tenor of his voice over the blue sending crystal—
"Rowntree. If you're yet in the Gallows, I'd have you up to the division office to review the reinstitution of the ordinary rota now that the majority of us have returned."
Hope Marcus wasn't planning on seeking out some diversion across the water now that the fortress isn't being manned by its skeleton crew; sounds like it's going to be a working evening.
There's been no time spared for Kirkwall carousing on his return, but Marcus is not so committed to the workaholic tendencies of some of his colleagues that he can't slice out for himself some leisure. Not a lot of leisure. A popular pamphlet discovered circulating in the market place, to be read between shifts, or manipulating the rota so as to get a full night's sleep, here and there. At the promise of more warm bodies, his thoughts had strayed to the card tables and taverns on the other side of the water.
He might have asked if Flint had intentions of the same, but for the message he finds nested in his crystal which already answers him. The inevitable affirmative response does not sound disappointed or resigned. Or what he really feels, which is faint disbelief (without actual incredulity) that Flint would so soon wish to review his work that it can't wait for the morning.
But none of that is hidden in the aye, Commander sent through the crystal, and he is prompt to respond, ascending the staircase.
Dressed for a day of only light labour in nicely tailored clothing, plenty of opportunity to have groomed away the usual fieldwork scruffiness, let alone be rid of desert dirt he'd still been cleaning off of himself two baths later. A familiar leather book retrieved from the ground level guards offices with the drafted schedules already penned in, tucked under an arm.
With the other hand, fingers decorated in both his latest acquisition and another silver loop, he knocks as a matter of warning before letting himself in.
The next day, the carefully ordered guard roster is hastily overhauled, names crossed out over neat writing and shifts extended. A matter of Diplomacy would borrow from Forces to escort the passage of supply through the Free Marches, and signs of Marcus having been requested along, with two others, is the ledger left open in the guards room for everyone's reference and his horse missing out the stables—that, and official communication, a report on a desk.
There isn't really time to trade goodbyes, and it shouldn't take more than a week even if there had been. It would be a little absurd for more reasons than just timing, besides.
On the fourth day, the caravan and escort manage to find lodging in a riverside village. In the small room he didn't have to argue for (it is more expensive, and he was the only one willing to pay for it), Marcus had found some time before then to read the book he'd packed with him in errant scraps, a frankly more preferable activity than opening himself up to the two others here who might try to involve him in conversation, but being off the road and under a roof makes for more appropriate time spent reading. Reflects, as the night draws deeper, that this alternative over-spend of lamp oil is of a more mannerly kind than the usual.
Which has him ferret his crystal out of his things. Contemplatively turns it over in his hand. It is not his favourite medium of conversation outside of brisk reporting—easier to do when one can see the other person, can note the little tells in their expression, the way a crinkle around the eyes would soften sarcasm or the discomfort in the set of someone's shoulders. He can imagine that with Flint in particular, those things are very useful.
But he directs his crystal to activate the other man's anyway(, which necessitates him saying that full name—James Flint—out loud. Rare, that. Commander or Flint. He has yet to practice calling him 'James' in his head, and considers the worth of starting to) and absently brushes his thumb over the pages of the novel still balanced against his thigh.
The crystal glows, and so he says, "Commander," in the tone of a rote greeting.
The hour isn't so late as to render the message out of order— only that any message at all is somewhat irregular, and naturally suggests some less than optimistic turn for what is ostensibly meant to have been a less than demanding stretch of travel. But the Marches are occupied, and we're there not some opportunity for the thing to go wrong then there would be no reason to send an escort with the caravan to begin with.
(Somewhere, four days slow supply wagon march from here, James Flint checks the fidgeting prickle that scratches at the base of his skull and tends to arise with any unexpected message in an unexpected hour. It is normal to experience some nip of tension for these things.)
The Buckler's namesake is not, in fact, the small shield. Rather, jammed in some side lane off a street populated by an inordinate number of Lowtown cobblers, the peeling sign swinging over the door features a hammer, an awl, and the very rough approximation of a boot with a buckle on it. Given the lumpy and excessive box-like quality of the latter, the artist responsible must not have had much association with the trade themselves. Save for a handful of regulars who do hew relatively close to the bespectacled, patient stereotype, it doesn't seem as if many of the patrons do either. Instead the little public house has been crowded by a bizarre selection of rough cut tradesmen and Hightown tourists, a smattering of men and women come up from the livestock yards stinking of sheep and druffalo.
Presumably, the incredibly good looking young woman playing the lute and singing a ribald little tune while standing on a chair has more to do with both the diversity of the crowd and the air of hooliganism than any appreciation for a solid shoe does. Certainly the tenor of the floor has changed somewhat from a few moments ago, when the woman was singing a far more chaste folk song.
Sat up at one of the room's back tables, Flint makes to refill both his and Marcus' cups from the half bottle left between them. This will be his third, but they've a walk ahead of them between here and the boarding house he has in mind that should do to shake off whatever inclinations toward intoxication he might find at the bottom of the cup. If the appreciative hooting from the front of the house is any indication, they'll soon care to be on their way. And it would be criminal (though not the fun kind) to ditch the bottle. He's had worse.
It's the sort of mix of kinds of people that Marcus prefers a little more to the taverns near the water oft-times dominated by sailors and dockworkers, or the more proper establishments close to the markets that see a near regimented rotation of the artisans that share a street, neighbours all. If there are clans in this building, they are split into small little knots of people, he and the Commander included.
The eye is drawn, naturally, to the incredibly good looking young woman with her lute and saucy song. Becoming somewhat ruined by the small group of young men and women, here to spend today's coppers on cheap half-pints, that insist on whistling and trying to draw her attention to limited success.
"If you're short a few coins," Marcus is saying, focus returning to the refilling, "and manage to catch the other barkeep in a good mood, he'll refill your cup in return of listening to the latest agony about his dozens of relations."
As the precursor to an agreed upon destination, having discussed loudly fucking there, dressing up for the occasion is not entirely necessary. But given their pattern—blood soaked rain-drenched linens, egalitarian work clothes perfumed from the stables, sand-stained leather and dracolisk-venom fur trims, and through to the far opposite, jade green silk—maybe it counts, to be in a nice light coat, and a clean shirt, and polished boots, and tie about the neck, and having generally tidied himself up at some point later than only first thing at dawn.
Two cups is enough to loosen him a little, warm in the blood, the bones. "And do it again if you've any advice for him to disagree with," he adds, as he brings it up to sip from.
(He is not sure when he started finding it nearly easy to speak to Flint about whatever occurs to him, but it wasn't since the first time, or even the second.)
The one with the blue paint flaking off the door is better by night, as the nearby fish market from a sunny day makes its presence too strongly known through the gaps in the windows. The one found crooked off Solomon's Way had a vermin problem. The one on top of the Minstrel has a keeper with a conveniently faulty memory for her own pricing.
The knowledge has accumulated, even if it feels as though it's been a long stretch of time since Marcus has had to recollect it. The one he chooses is in the middle of Lowtown in a stretch of city that had gone unravaged by recent conflict, and Kirkwall on the whole has the sort of tenacity that an attempted invasion by the Venatori by way undead wyverns and blood magic mind control does not, for very long at all, cease the conduct of commerce. The busy sounds beyond are pleasantly distant enough that Marcus doesn't close the slatted windows, a broad amount of sunlight let into the attic room that he doesn't touch the candles or lantern.
A bed, a latchable door kept unlatched for now, a side table, a chair, a trunk, a tatty-edged rug, and some hooks on the wall that Marcus sets his coat onto. He has already told Flint which building, which room, but considers other messages. What do you want done to you? What will you do to me?
He had spent that one morning in Flint's bed in a half-doze, never quite entering fully into deep slumber, but it was good enough, slipping into shallow sleep only to remember his surroundings and feel pleased. The driving force finally seeing him out was knowing that to stay would be to start obsessing, gnawing on the past several moments shared as if he could crack them open for more, but along the same lines: whatever hunger there might be had felt, in a certain unique way, unusually sated. Like he'd gotten all he'd wanted in the moment instead of yearning for something else and feeling greed for it. No need to pick at the remains, really.
Of course, now, waiting for Flint to cross the way from his previous task and meet him, that's different. Ears pricking at each creak of floorboard or wooden step below, before occupying himself in at least removing his boots. That seems practical. Boots always get in the way. Focusing on the intricate task of unlacing and unbuckling, which requires undivided attention.
It has been some days since that morning. They have been full ones—work in Kirkwall becoming work in the Vinmarks (which, for all his desire to be rid of the city even if only under the pretense of bloodshed, had been better accomplished by the proxy of a handful of Riftwatch members and a dozen of the Kirkwall guard), becoming work with respect to some news off out of Ostwick and trouble at the mouth of the sea off Brandel's Reach, and so on. A series of metaphorical fires in need of dousing, each successive one somehow managing to spark before the one preceding it has been entirely smothered.
Today, he has already met with a contingent of merchant captains to discuss blockade running and arms. Tonight, there are the smugglers to be sorted. But in this hour—
The details can be laid aside, though he finds the restless energy remains itching there under the surface of the skin as he climbs the stairs to the attic room as directed. There is an imagined bitter taste between the teeth (or he has been grinding them), and the irritations of the work have been honed instead in the direction of a sharper, more intimate point. It is useless to be frustrated in the Office of the Viscount. It is very useful, however, to be a certain kind of pent up and frustrated in a let room. So he has held on to it throughout the morning, very tight and very close, and can feel now how the momentum gathered might drive him along.
A creak of footsteps on the stair. A scuff of boots on the landing. A moment later, with a jangling of the latch hardware, Flint let's himself into the sunlit room at the top of the narrow double backed stair.
He is dressed all in blacks and greys, so severe as to be just fractionally uncharacteristic to the type of eye who had seen his wardrobe in more intimate, close up detail and knows it contains other colors. But even in the daylight, he cuts an impressively grim looking figure and maybe that is the most advantageous shading when it comes to certain work.
He assesses the room and Marcus in it with brisk look. The undone laces, the removed boots.
Tevinter makes its last push for the season up the banks of the Minanter, and the March makes to rearrange its lines in answer. Antivan mercenaries, hired by the Princes of the Weyrs congregate at the southern border. And every day, there is news of pirates snatching up trade ships where the river meets the sea like hunters shooting pheasants startled from the brush by their beaters. Smugglers flourish even in Kirkwall, already quite replete with the trade.
It would seem to be a good year for men predisposed to gambling to make a future off war.
Now if only the weather would cooperate. Here, in a nowhere stretch of Ansburg above the Minanter, it has been raining for two weeks straight. Riftwatch's orders, such as they they are, has been to stymie Tevinter's tendrils from snaking any farther downriver than it has already. Today, that looks like traveling above the flooded riverside road, and waiting until dusk in the pissing rain until the Tevene guard changes over and the toll house which they have taken possession of becomes suspectible to assault.
It doesn't have the appearance of particularly glamorous or pressing work. But there are ten other things to be done east and north of here, and Riftwatch being perpetually shorthanded means it is inevitable that her Commander occasionally shows out for field work.
So: stood in the trees, camoflauged by the miserable weather as much as by the scrub, Flint collapses his spy glass with a series of soft clicks. The rain's coming down too hard to make out much at the toll house, but the hour is nearly correct. In the hazy offing, he can just make out the two other members of Forces—dull edged shapes low in the grey higher across the road and notable among the scraggly undergrowth only because he knows where to look for them. They're meant to flash light off a mirror when the way is clear, but so much for that.
Flint tucks the spyglass back into his belt, flicking closed the edge of his waxed rain tarpaulin back over it when he's finished.
"We may as well get a move on," he says to Marcus beside him.
Signal or no, they can't wait forever. Better to contend with the two guards on duty and the four or so soldiers in the toll house than to wait and risk alerting the Imperium skiff that races up and down the Minanter, rain or shine, with the expectation that the various captured outposts and camps along the shore signal all's well. She'll be along in an hour, give or take, and they will need to be finished here by then.
Back braced to the trunk of the tree offering something in the way of shelter and disguise, Marcus has keyed his focus back to the tollhouse for as long as Flint's view of it has narrowed through his spyglass. A broader kind of watchfulness, more attuned to the possibility of peripheral movement. To sounds behind or beside them, while driving rain makes for an incessant, masking hum all around.
Through the branches above and foliage that the season has only started to thin out, rain falls in uneven spatters. Ground that's enjoyed a dry summer is eager to absorb even two weeks of soaking, and so the dirt is still decently firm underfoot where boots have been braced since they arrived, the end of his staff staked into it beside him. Small blessings.
Times like these, war feels like a living creature, a singular monster. Yes, it is made of individual men and women, conflicting decisions, divided factions, a constellation of violences, but all united by the big, changing, invisible shape of the thing that contains them all. Here they are, himself and Flint, standing in this one patch of forest, staring at this one building, somehow consequential to the magisters whose money and ego has pushed the Imperial forces this far down the Minanter, somehow consequential to some Marcher market feasting on stolen silk and another strangled of anything at all, weighed against other costs such as blood and time. Maybe their standing here and whatever they do next will have no bearing on the continued tidal sweep of an invasion that threatens to flood through and resettle in its silt.
But they wouldn't be, if that were guaranteed. And so, Marcus doesn't turn to Flint when he senses that spyglass being put away, just listens for word and draws in a slightly impatient breath at what sounds like settling with the absence of a signal.
"Alright," he says, and picks his staff up from where he'd been leaning against it. Pushes the hood of his cloak back so it won't get in his way when they finally move, heedless of saturating rainfall. "Take the guards, smoke out the rest?"
Focus pulls north-east, beyond the Free Marches and towards the barely lineated territories of south Antiva, forests and plains and rivers that flood with each passing storm. The air feels charged with atmospheric pressure and electricity—especially in the sky, when some of them may feel it worth the risk to send out riders to scout out the area. Abandoned homesteads, the occasional flickering rift, the remnants of battles, and some strategic military encampments, pitched tents and old forts.
Local militias and Antivan miliary together had, throughout the end of the summer, pushed back the creeping tendrils of Tevene presence, intent on nipping it in the bud rather than become as backfooted as their Marcher neighbours. Out of a neighbourly desire to assist in the renewal and fortification of these territories, enter Riftwatch, making a show of assistance.
Demon troubles. Sites of blood spilling, Venatori magic casting, has a way of thinning the divide between this world and the next. Those with anchors are kept busy. Those without—
Rumours to follow up on. Boots on the ground of the village of Jandi report ruptured earth, sundered buildings. One of the better maintained roads leading out and to Antiva proper has carried news of violent attack, a merchant caravan with no survivors, and though it'd been picked clean of valuables by the time patrolling militia had found it, the state of the bodies, the horses, the vehicles looked like they'd been had at by an animal rather than a group of bandits.
Flickering lightning just before sundown, sighted from the ground rather than the heavy skies. That's how Riftwatch found one of them, closing in on griffonback.
And it wasn't a demon. Something in between, man and monster, the remnants of humanity worn like rags as the twisted thing fought wildly, madly, heedless of a scout filling its back with arrows, baited by a woman with a tower shield and a mace trying to pull its focus. Marcus remembers landing among the last of the group, moments before the Templar among them had waded to the front of the pack and begun flinging about Silencing magic. He remembers the prickling numbness of getting caught by it when he'd gotten too near. Remembers snapping something sharp across at him after, while the Abomination (for that was what it was, everyone could see) lay oozing and still, and that the matter of who would report the incident to the leadership was resolved sometime after he'd extracted himself from the conversation while it was still a conversation.
The group splits. Marcus doesn't race back to Riftwatch's camp, instead insisting on scouting the area for sign of any further activity, alongside a couple of others.
So the Templar and the rest make it back first, and share their findings.
It's dark by the time Marcus and those who went with him return. It's raining, of course.
That first day, they'd done their best at setting up the camp to minimise the potential of mud and flooding, but there's still a slippery thoroughfare of puddling that splashes as Monster happily and gratefully lands for the evening, that Marcus' boots sink into when he heaves himself out of the saddle. Normally, he'd see to her himself—tonight, he takes her reins and leads her to where the griffon keeper is settling the flock, directs them to see to her without preamble, and leaves again.
Across the way, through the driving rain, he can make out the light illuminating Commander Flint's tent. He doesn't know, immediately, if it's empty, if Flint is alone, if a meeting is taking place—but Marcus will find out, one way or another, as he stalks a path towards it.
Field camps are loud even when they shouldn't be. There's the rap of the rain on canvas, and the splash of footsteps in potholed footpaths. Distant laughter. Distant booing. A constant in Riftwatch: someone, somewhere, is always telling a shit joke. Which is to say that it's impossible to parse the sound of conversation occurring in Flint's tent until the flap is peeled back and the talking cuts itself short.
The two men turn their attention to Marcus in the gap. The Commander, sitting on a low folding chair or stool, has one arm down the gullet of a boot. His other hand is mid-buff, horsehair brush poised across the boot's toe and the scent of wax polish thick in the damp air. The other man—Rennit—goes faintly drawn and narrow at Marcus' appearance, as is to be expected for the Nevarran spirit mage. Loyalists, particularly ones who have made a nasty habit of killing other mages in the aftermath of certain wars and on the eve of others, must be somewhat prone to bristling at the sight of him.
Rennit adjusts the glove on his right hand. Clears his throat, his eyeline set toward some allegedly neutral point between one man and the other. The peaceable gesture is somewhat undercut by the arching of a fine brow. "Shall I continue?" he asks.
Inside the boot, Flint's hand chokes further up into the toe. The horsehair brush resumes its work.
"Give us a moment if you would, Rowntree," he says. It is not a request.
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The rain had let up. They'd resigned themselves to the long way, avoiding common rivers that would be flooded and dangerous.
They could less reliably avoid the Venatori. They have already survived one scuffle—clashing blades, the solid thump of a mage staff foregoing casting altogether and instead cracking across the skull of someone in mud-stained robes. And then a scar driven through the earth, a pressurised expulsion of summoned lava that flamed where it landed on skin and armor and trees. And that was the end of that.
More walking. Seeking higher ground, ignoring various injuries, aches, complaints, the sky slowly starting to darken above the constant gloom of grey cloud. Full dark, by the time they are able to rest.
A small lamp casts a conservative glow around the interior of the shared tent, hanging out of the way by the entrance. After eating ravenously of his share in rations, Marcus is going about the slow process of lazily doffing his armor. Layers of leather and fur, stiff woven cloth and metal chain. The sound of buckles and metal clinking together replaces the conversation he might be making, detaching breastplate and his breathing hitching at some new and undiscovered scrape twinging with the movement.
Occasionally, the wind drags through the trees nearby, throws the water gathered amongst the leaves against the canvas of their tent. Everything smells of earth and water, and increasingly, sweat and blood.
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(No he isn't; fuck the south and its miserable wet, grey springs.)
Sitting on what is arguably his side of these close quarters (although the tent isn't really designed for two people to loiter inside so much as it is for two people to sleep in), Flint has a crinkled piece of parchment laid across the calf of his boot. The soft scratch of a pencil nub makes for a dulled, consistent rhythm under the sharper staccato of clinking buckles and leather fastenings coming unbuckled and unfastened. Near midday, he'd halted their progress to take some measurements of shadows cast by a copse of reedy trees. Now, a number of hours later, Flint is doing the math between those figures kept in his head and the snatches of constellations he'd been able to observe while pitching the tent in the dark. There is an image of a regional chart stored in his head, imprinted there by hours of meticulous study long before their little raiding party had ever left the Gallows—
"I suspect we'll have rain tomorrow," he says without looking up.
They've been lucky it's held out this long.
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But Flint says that, about the rain, and he isn't looking forward to it. He grunts.
Slithers one last strip of leather through buckle and removes the breastplate. There is a fresh scrape across it that Marcus doesn't remember receiving, giving it quick inspection before he lays it aside atop the other pieces he's removed.
A hand curves around his side, under his other arm, blindly questing after that twinge while he looks down to the piece of paper that has Flint's attention. Curious, quiet, observing incomprehensible pencil scratches, before speaking up, "Do you know where we are?"
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later;
Which means it is crowded. Indeed if not for the very pressing reason behind his visit to this particular tavern on this particular night, Flint might have given serious consideration to simply removing himself to the next shitty bar down the street. Things being what they are: he has made willing use of his elbows to acquire himself a bottle and a tankard, and has washed up here, at the edge of a narrow table crammed against the wall. It's accompanied by only one chair, and Marcus Rowntree is in it.
"Keep your eye on this," is an order, punctuated by the thump of the bottle being set definitively down before the man.
And then Flint is wading back into the press of the ground. When he returns a few moments later, it's heralded by a chair's legs floating above a few heads and shoulder before he appears carrying the thing overhead. Where, or whose corpse he picked it off of, may best be left undiscussed.
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That, and it seems they're about to share a drink.
There's no window directly at his table, but there's one a few feet down that barely does anything to provide the muggy interior some relief, except that its absence would certainly make everything too sweltering to stand. Marcus is down a layer, with a coat folded over his chair, his shirt sleeves rolled and collar open, having spent some afternoon at the stables. Between his fingers, a half-smoked cigarette is still smoldering away, which he ashes on the floor and occasionally uses the edge of his boot to smother any persistent embers.
This is what he's occupied with when Flint arrives beneath his prize, sitting up a little and a hand moving to hover and protect the things on the table should the other man knock it on the way down. A little speculative already, when so much of their conduct has been all business. Very usual.
"Hello," he says.
Flint will find his cup already full.
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even later;
It isn't that Marcus would never be asked to attend a thing like this. It's only that if he is, it's to don the Riftwatch uniform and prowl around the very edges, inside or out, or to be stationed a block away alongside the white-winged griffon he's come to favour.
It's the case, instead, that along those figureheads of Riftwatch pressed into diplomatic service, so too have some mages and rifters, something of a curiousity, even in Nevarra. So he is among them instead, currently fidgeting with an empty crystal glass. Not quite wallflowered in his usual greys, he wears a jacket of deep jade, well-tailored stiff silk, embellished in silver. Black, otherwise, of various textures, including the silken necktie, and a hint of off-white cotton beneath waistcoat. And finding clothing and getting dressed for something had been more pleasurable than, so far, the something itself.
So discomfort prickles up his neck as he goes to find a place to either set down or refill his glass. His cigarette case is on hand in an inner pocket and he is thinking about it, and the possibility of safe harbour of company with someone known to him, or somewhere to be alone for a moment.
Here, a small table with a statue. The glass joins it. There.
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James Flint cuts an impressively unhappy figure where he appears to be hostage to a conversation between two men, both with ostentatious facial hair and too much brocade trim, and a Mortalitasi woman with features that might be shared with a carnivorous racehorse. His glass has run empty. Worse, the debate occurring between them is so unapologetically inane that it all but repels the attention. Stood there in his very black everything (save for the gold division pin at his collar and the glint of the ostensibly ceremonial sword scabbard at his hip), to the untrained eye he appears very serious and unimpressed. To the trained eye—
Well, that. But also like he might be on the verge of smashing the empty glass, turning his sleeve back, and simply opening his forearm with it. At least the Nevarran mage might be trusted to know what to do with his corpse once he's dropped dead on the marble floor of the hall. The effort to avoid a particularly pressing urge to roll his eyes sends his attention fleeting briefly off past the edge of this torture session. Catches at the green coloring of a coat against the richly patterned black and white marble of the arch column further beyond it. Flits briefly along the familiar squared line of the wearer's shoulder, and looks Marcus in the face before some remark ('Commander, the value in these warehouses is considerable; between your men and Lysandra's talents to assist with the management of the corpses, it seems rational that we might make a brief incursion past the city's walls to recover our property and—'), like something sharp driven under the fingernail by an experienced sadist, grudgingly recalls his attention back.
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Last to leave the eyrie, Marcus takes his time. Begins and finishes a cigarette at the entryway, and so the scent of fresh smoke mingles and clings to the sweat in his hair and the wet dog aroma of sky-damp furs and wool. Tomorrow, he will claim an early morning hour in the baths, shave down the dark bristle along his jaw that comes in patchy around scars when he's been out in the field without a convenient razor and basin, dress himself in clothes of lighter weight than leather and metal and chain. Tonight—
Disposing the twisted end of cigarette into his cigarette case, which disappears into a pocket, he collects up his things, including the heavy bladed staff that likewise needs a polish, now, and makes down the stairs. The floor he emerges into is shadowy, quiet, not normally a place he finds himself at this hour, but has been to enough that muscle memory pivots him for the correct door.
There is no plan, there, in the lay of his hand against the wood, tipping his head to see if he can detect light coming in from the bottom. Fingers curl in, and he raps his knuckles against it, only feeling then some edge of transgression that he hadn't since touching James Flint's knee in a tent.
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No, there is no light eking out from under the edge of the door. And why should there be? At this hour, it would be reasonable to expect the man who occupies these quarters to have retired to the adjacent apartments far removed from where the rap of knuckles might easily carry. Or maybe he is away; crossed over the harbor and engaged in some light night business in Kirkwall. As befitting any pirate captain, even ones playing at legitimacy as he presently is, he keeps strange hours. For what has been true these last weeks has been true more or less forever: James Flint makes a habit of being difficult to anticipate in any meaningful way.
And then a wandering glint of a light, and the heavy bolt on the other side of the door slides back.
Illuminated by the light given off by the small oil lamp in his left hand, Flint paints a broad shape in the gap that opens. Shirt sleeves turned back to the elbow, collar of his shirt laid open. Cheek drawn, the lick of the lamplight glancing off him. Something pinched in his expression that darkens a measure further at the sight of Marcus in the corridor. Beyond Flint's shoulder, some haze of light too distant to have carried all this way otherwise. Somewhere a second lamp or series of candles, maybe, by which work might yet be accomplished.
"Something wrong?"
The other riders will have returned alongside Marcus, and they all will brought news of their work with them. The visitation bere at his door in the waning hours of the evening suggests there must be something.
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The sound of fighting here is shockingly loud. It reverberates through the cut channels, rebounding. A burst of arcane ice turns to shrapnel and explodes across the worn smooth lip of a natural wall cut from the erosion. Behind it, Flint kicks his boot into the lever of his crossbow, and wrenches the bolt back with a murderous mechanical click.
There are six Venatori left in this open roofed chamber, and no telling how many others are crawling through Red Bride's Grave. Only that they must be here for the same reason that Riftwatch is—the rumor of a passage down into the ancient shrine, the Veil stretched sheer, and the promise of a way through to some old rock or stave or Maker knows what of power so long as one might determine how to navigate to reach it.
Presently, however, Flint is less concerned with ancient dark things and more with not catching an knife sharp icicle to the face when he rocks up out of cover to send the bolt spitting.
It snarls through the air. Punches through the breastplate of a Venatori assassin. And then, before the enemy can fall, the whole arrangement of bolt and gore and dying body reverses itself and clocks backwards. Some ripple in the Veil knitting and unknitting itself. The Venatori is stood upright again. Flint's foot reverses out of the crossbow lever. The splash of arcane winter magic unexplodes, sucking fragments of ice back into itself.
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And then their hearts beat back into rhythm, and Marcus turns, that measured spell discarded in favour of moving and pointing his staff, and in a direct line between the end of his blade and would-be dead assassin, the air twists, whorls with smoke and ember and a crackle of green energy firing through this whirlwind in an effort to redo what Flint had done faster than it takes to crank a crossbow.
But the assassin has learned his lesson too, escaping with raw magic grazing past his pauldron as he ducks out of the way.
Another firing of winter magic, this time hissing for where Marcus is stood. He moves but is still struck across the shoulder where, instead of sinking its fangs in him, winter magic disperses with a shimmer, felt by Flint as a sharp and sudden gust of icy splinters all around. Harmless, if stinging.
Frost laces across leather and fur, briefly, before immediately melting.
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What might have been an early evening to conclude a peaceful day of watching the borders of the half-underground excavation site is twisted into something else at report of a dispatch of Venatori scouts that aren't headed for them, but away. Whether this dispatch has valuable information, or even one of the artifacts being squabbled over, or want little more but to make it back alive for the main enemy body already rooted into the Anderfels is of little consequence. Anyone who can ride a griffon is sent on their way, paired off and distributed into a long line to cover ground.
The light still has a grey, dusty quality to it. Pursuing people from the sky offers the benefit of speed and the disadvantage of being seen in the cloudless sky, even, and so they fly a little lower than the griffons themselves prefer, using rising landmasses, hillside and rocky quasi-mountains to disguise their advance. The dwindling light will offer advantage of going unseen, but the Venatori can say the same.
Monster is unhappy. Marcus has settled soot through her bright white feathers to diminish the chance of early sighting, and she'd endured it with unhappy clicking and sneaky attempts to nip at his hands, boots, tunic tails. Now, up in the air, the shine of a lake has her give a low and demanding squawk, although she knows better than to simply go in for a dive.
His focus is, however, on the ramshackle little wooden structure and its accompanying shed that looks potentially big enough to house the four dracolisks they believe the scouts to be riding.
Raises a hand, signals to Flint flying somewhere further back and up.
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Things being what they are—
A press of the heel and a tug on the rein prompts an alteration from the naturally grey griffon's trajectory. She descends with a rapid layover of the wing (sends his stomach briefly jumping). With the happy satisfaction of an animal pleased to have been afforded a job, she moves at a clip—distance narrowing between the two griffons.
Flint doesn't bother with an answering signal. He simply allows the griffon to drop further out of the sky with the clear expectation that Marcus make some effort to convince his own ride to follow.
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Flint is not among the number of riders who beat everyone else back to the Gallows. Unsurprisingly perhaps given his appointment, Marcus is. Buggie, evidently generally spoiled thanks to her rider's occupations, apparently also gets to enjoy a leisurely route back home while sunning herself on the deck of some ship.
Late summer storming in the Waking Seas notwithstanding, of course.
Its late in the day when the Riftwatch ship at last claws its way back into the harbor. Not yet dark, it's a prime hour for its weather battered passengers to crawl to the island fortress, help themselves to warm baths, and then cross promptly over into Kirkwall proper to enjoy the first real instance of off hours they might have had for some weeks. Flint helps himself to the bath, but discards the prospect of crossing the harbor. There is, one must assume, a great stack of work in need of catching up on.
Ergo, there is a certain brusque and businesslike clip to the tenor of his voice over the blue sending crystal—
"Rowntree. If you're yet in the Gallows, I'd have you up to the division office to review the reinstitution of the ordinary rota now that the majority of us have returned."
Hope Marcus wasn't planning on seeking out some diversion across the water now that the fortress isn't being manned by its skeleton crew; sounds like it's going to be a working evening.
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He might have asked if Flint had intentions of the same, but for the message he finds nested in his crystal which already answers him. The inevitable affirmative response does not sound disappointed or resigned. Or what he really feels, which is faint disbelief (without actual incredulity) that Flint would so soon wish to review his work that it can't wait for the morning.
But none of that is hidden in the aye, Commander sent through the crystal, and he is prompt to respond, ascending the staircase.
Dressed for a day of only light labour in nicely tailored clothing, plenty of opportunity to have groomed away the usual fieldwork scruffiness, let alone be rid of desert dirt he'd still been cleaning off of himself two baths later. A familiar leather book retrieved from the ground level guards offices with the drafted schedules already penned in, tucked under an arm.
With the other hand, fingers decorated in both his latest acquisition and another silver loop, he knocks as a matter of warning before letting himself in.
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interlude.
There isn't really time to trade goodbyes, and it shouldn't take more than a week even if there had been. It would be a little absurd for more reasons than just timing, besides.
On the fourth day, the caravan and escort manage to find lodging in a riverside village. In the small room he didn't have to argue for (it is more expensive, and he was the only one willing to pay for it), Marcus had found some time before then to read the book he'd packed with him in errant scraps, a frankly more preferable activity than opening himself up to the two others here who might try to involve him in conversation, but being off the road and under a roof makes for more appropriate time spent reading. Reflects, as the night draws deeper, that this alternative over-spend of lamp oil is of a more mannerly kind than the usual.
Which has him ferret his crystal out of his things. Contemplatively turns it over in his hand. It is not his favourite medium of conversation outside of brisk reporting—easier to do when one can see the other person, can note the little tells in their expression, the way a crinkle around the eyes would soften sarcasm or the discomfort in the set of someone's shoulders. He can imagine that with Flint in particular, those things are very useful.
But he directs his crystal to activate the other man's anyway(, which necessitates him saying that full name—James Flint—out loud. Rare, that. Commander or Flint. He has yet to practice calling him 'James' in his head, and considers the worth of starting to) and absently brushes his thumb over the pages of the novel still balanced against his thigh.
The crystal glows, and so he says, "Commander," in the tone of a rote greeting.
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(Somewhere, four days slow supply wagon march from here, James Flint checks the fidgeting prickle that scratches at the base of his skull and tends to arise with any unexpected message in an unexpected hour. It is normal to experience some nip of tension for these things.)
Hence the crisp, immediate answer:
"Captain."
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Presumably, the incredibly good looking young woman playing the lute and singing a ribald little tune while standing on a chair has more to do with both the diversity of the crowd and the air of hooliganism than any appreciation for a solid shoe does. Certainly the tenor of the floor has changed somewhat from a few moments ago, when the woman was singing a far more chaste folk song.
Sat up at one of the room's back tables, Flint makes to refill both his and Marcus' cups from the half bottle left between them. This will be his third, but they've a walk ahead of them between here and the boarding house he has in mind that should do to shake off whatever inclinations toward intoxication he might find at the bottom of the cup. If the appreciative hooting from the front of the house is any indication, they'll soon care to be on their way. And it would be criminal (though not the fun kind) to ditch the bottle. He's had worse.
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The eye is drawn, naturally, to the incredibly good looking young woman with her lute and saucy song. Becoming somewhat ruined by the small group of young men and women, here to spend today's coppers on cheap half-pints, that insist on whistling and trying to draw her attention to limited success.
"If you're short a few coins," Marcus is saying, focus returning to the refilling, "and manage to catch the other barkeep in a good mood, he'll refill your cup in return of listening to the latest agony about his dozens of relations."
As the precursor to an agreed upon destination, having discussed loudly fucking there, dressing up for the occasion is not entirely necessary. But given their pattern—blood soaked rain-drenched linens, egalitarian work clothes perfumed from the stables, sand-stained leather and dracolisk-venom fur trims, and through to the far opposite, jade green silk—maybe it counts, to be in a nice light coat, and a clean shirt, and polished boots, and tie about the neck, and having generally tidied himself up at some point later than only first thing at dawn.
Two cups is enough to loosen him a little, warm in the blood, the bones. "And do it again if you've any advice for him to disagree with," he adds, as he brings it up to sip from.
(He is not sure when he started finding it nearly easy to speak to Flint about whatever occurs to him, but it wasn't since the first time, or even the second.)
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The knowledge has accumulated, even if it feels as though it's been a long stretch of time since Marcus has had to recollect it. The one he chooses is in the middle of Lowtown in a stretch of city that had gone unravaged by recent conflict, and Kirkwall on the whole has the sort of tenacity that an attempted invasion by the Venatori by way undead wyverns and blood magic mind control does not, for very long at all, cease the conduct of commerce. The busy sounds beyond are pleasantly distant enough that Marcus doesn't close the slatted windows, a broad amount of sunlight let into the attic room that he doesn't touch the candles or lantern.
A bed, a latchable door kept unlatched for now, a side table, a chair, a trunk, a tatty-edged rug, and some hooks on the wall that Marcus sets his coat onto. He has already told Flint which building, which room, but considers other messages. What do you want done to you? What will you do to me?
He had spent that one morning in Flint's bed in a half-doze, never quite entering fully into deep slumber, but it was good enough, slipping into shallow sleep only to remember his surroundings and feel pleased. The driving force finally seeing him out was knowing that to stay would be to start obsessing, gnawing on the past several moments shared as if he could crack them open for more, but along the same lines: whatever hunger there might be had felt, in a certain unique way, unusually sated. Like he'd gotten all he'd wanted in the moment instead of yearning for something else and feeling greed for it. No need to pick at the remains, really.
Of course, now, waiting for Flint to cross the way from his previous task and meet him, that's different. Ears pricking at each creak of floorboard or wooden step below, before occupying himself in at least removing his boots. That seems practical. Boots always get in the way. Focusing on the intricate task of unlacing and unbuckling, which requires undivided attention.
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Today, he has already met with a contingent of merchant captains to discuss blockade running and arms. Tonight, there are the smugglers to be sorted. But in this hour—
The details can be laid aside, though he finds the restless energy remains itching there under the surface of the skin as he climbs the stairs to the attic room as directed. There is an imagined bitter taste between the teeth (or he has been grinding them), and the irritations of the work have been honed instead in the direction of a sharper, more intimate point. It is useless to be frustrated in the Office of the Viscount. It is very useful, however, to be a certain kind of pent up and frustrated in a let room. So he has held on to it throughout the morning, very tight and very close, and can feel now how the momentum gathered might drive him along.
A creak of footsteps on the stair. A scuff of boots on the landing. A moment later, with a jangling of the latch hardware, Flint let's himself into the sunlit room at the top of the narrow double backed stair.
He is dressed all in blacks and greys, so severe as to be just fractionally uncharacteristic to the type of eye who had seen his wardrobe in more intimate, close up detail and knows it contains other colors. But even in the daylight, he cuts an impressively grim looking figure and maybe that is the most advantageous shading when it comes to certain work.
He assesses the room and Marcus in it with brisk look. The undone laces, the removed boots.
"You've started already."
Doesn't sound approving.
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Tevinter makes its last push for the season up the banks of the Minanter, and the March makes to rearrange its lines in answer. Antivan mercenaries, hired by the Princes of the Weyrs congregate at the southern border. And every day, there is news of pirates snatching up trade ships where the river meets the sea like hunters shooting pheasants startled from the brush by their beaters. Smugglers flourish even in Kirkwall, already quite replete with the trade.
It would seem to be a good year for men predisposed to gambling to make a future off war.
Now if only the weather would cooperate. Here, in a nowhere stretch of Ansburg above the Minanter, it has been raining for two weeks straight. Riftwatch's orders, such as they they are, has been to stymie Tevinter's tendrils from snaking any farther downriver than it has already. Today, that looks like traveling above the flooded riverside road, and waiting until dusk in the pissing rain until the Tevene guard changes over and the toll house which they have taken possession of becomes suspectible to assault.
It doesn't have the appearance of particularly glamorous or pressing work. But there are ten other things to be done east and north of here, and Riftwatch being perpetually shorthanded means it is inevitable that her Commander occasionally shows out for field work.
So: stood in the trees, camoflauged by the miserable weather as much as by the scrub, Flint collapses his spy glass with a series of soft clicks. The rain's coming down too hard to make out much at the toll house, but the hour is nearly correct. In the hazy offing, he can just make out the two other members of Forces—dull edged shapes low in the grey higher across the road and notable among the scraggly undergrowth only because he knows where to look for them. They're meant to flash light off a mirror when the way is clear, but so much for that.
Flint tucks the spyglass back into his belt, flicking closed the edge of his waxed rain tarpaulin back over it when he's finished.
"We may as well get a move on," he says to Marcus beside him.
Signal or no, they can't wait forever. Better to contend with the two guards on duty and the four or so soldiers in the toll house than to wait and risk alerting the Imperium skiff that races up and down the Minanter, rain or shine, with the expectation that the various captured outposts and camps along the shore signal all's well. She'll be along in an hour, give or take, and they will need to be finished here by then.
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Through the branches above and foliage that the season has only started to thin out, rain falls in uneven spatters. Ground that's enjoyed a dry summer is eager to absorb even two weeks of soaking, and so the dirt is still decently firm underfoot where boots have been braced since they arrived, the end of his staff staked into it beside him. Small blessings.
Times like these, war feels like a living creature, a singular monster. Yes, it is made of individual men and women, conflicting decisions, divided factions, a constellation of violences, but all united by the big, changing, invisible shape of the thing that contains them all. Here they are, himself and Flint, standing in this one patch of forest, staring at this one building, somehow consequential to the magisters whose money and ego has pushed the Imperial forces this far down the Minanter, somehow consequential to some Marcher market feasting on stolen silk and another strangled of anything at all, weighed against other costs such as blood and time. Maybe their standing here and whatever they do next will have no bearing on the continued tidal sweep of an invasion that threatens to flood through and resettle in its silt.
But they wouldn't be, if that were guaranteed. And so, Marcus doesn't turn to Flint when he senses that spyglass being put away, just listens for word and draws in a slightly impatient breath at what sounds like settling with the absence of a signal.
"Alright," he says, and picks his staff up from where he'd been leaning against it. Pushes the hood of his cloak back so it won't get in his way when they finally move, heedless of saturating rainfall. "Take the guards, smoke out the rest?"
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can't wait to find out what I was planning to do with this
honestly same
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Local militias and Antivan miliary together had, throughout the end of the summer, pushed back the creeping tendrils of Tevene presence, intent on nipping it in the bud rather than become as backfooted as their Marcher neighbours. Out of a neighbourly desire to assist in the renewal and fortification of these territories, enter Riftwatch, making a show of assistance.
Demon troubles. Sites of blood spilling, Venatori magic casting, has a way of thinning the divide between this world and the next. Those with anchors are kept busy. Those without—
Rumours to follow up on. Boots on the ground of the village of Jandi report ruptured earth, sundered buildings. One of the better maintained roads leading out and to Antiva proper has carried news of violent attack, a merchant caravan with no survivors, and though it'd been picked clean of valuables by the time patrolling militia had found it, the state of the bodies, the horses, the vehicles looked like they'd been had at by an animal rather than a group of bandits.
Flickering lightning just before sundown, sighted from the ground rather than the heavy skies. That's how Riftwatch found one of them, closing in on griffonback.
And it wasn't a demon. Something in between, man and monster, the remnants of humanity worn like rags as the twisted thing fought wildly, madly, heedless of a scout filling its back with arrows, baited by a woman with a tower shield and a mace trying to pull its focus. Marcus remembers landing among the last of the group, moments before the Templar among them had waded to the front of the pack and begun flinging about Silencing magic. He remembers the prickling numbness of getting caught by it when he'd gotten too near. Remembers snapping something sharp across at him after, while the Abomination (for that was what it was, everyone could see) lay oozing and still, and that the matter of who would report the incident to the leadership was resolved sometime after he'd extracted himself from the conversation while it was still a conversation.
The group splits. Marcus doesn't race back to Riftwatch's camp, instead insisting on scouting the area for sign of any further activity, alongside a couple of others.
So the Templar and the rest make it back first, and share their findings.
It's dark by the time Marcus and those who went with him return. It's raining, of course.
That first day, they'd done their best at setting up the camp to minimise the potential of mud and flooding, but there's still a slippery thoroughfare of puddling that splashes as Monster happily and gratefully lands for the evening, that Marcus' boots sink into when he heaves himself out of the saddle. Normally, he'd see to her himself—tonight, he takes her reins and leads her to where the griffon keeper is settling the flock, directs them to see to her without preamble, and leaves again.
Across the way, through the driving rain, he can make out the light illuminating Commander Flint's tent. He doesn't know, immediately, if it's empty, if Flint is alone, if a meeting is taking place—but Marcus will find out, one way or another, as he stalks a path towards it.
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The two men turn their attention to Marcus in the gap. The Commander, sitting on a low folding chair or stool, has one arm down the gullet of a boot. His other hand is mid-buff, horsehair brush poised across the boot's toe and the scent of wax polish thick in the damp air. The other man—Rennit—goes faintly drawn and narrow at Marcus' appearance, as is to be expected for the Nevarran spirit mage. Loyalists, particularly ones who have made a nasty habit of killing other mages in the aftermath of certain wars and on the eve of others, must be somewhat prone to bristling at the sight of him.
Rennit adjusts the glove on his right hand. Clears his throat, his eyeline set toward some allegedly neutral point between one man and the other. The peaceable gesture is somewhat undercut by the arching of a fine brow. "Shall I continue?" he asks.
Inside the boot, Flint's hand chokes further up into the toe. The horsehair brush resumes its work.
"Give us a moment if you would, Rowntree," he says. It is not a request.
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