Dragon Age: Last Flight by Liane Merciel

for the half circle of Grey Wardens that stood between her and the templars, blocking her from their view.
    “… word from our brothers in the south?” Sulwe was saying.
    “No,” the lead templar replied. The baritone she’d heard earlier was his. Sweat-caked dust coated his mustache, making it impossible to discern its true color, and Valya could see little else of the man’s face. She didn’t think he was from Hossberg, though. She knew all the senior templars there, and she didn’t recognize this one. Besides, his accent was unfamiliar.
    “The first two holds we tried were empty,” he was saying. “Entirely abandoned. No one’s sure why. The locals told us that the Wardens had sold them their spare horses and livestock. At a pittance, too. They seemed to be in a hurry. But they didn’t leave any explanation for why they might have run off or where they might have gone. We heard no rumors of darkspawn in the area, nor did we encounter any ourselves.”
    “Deserters?” Sulwe asked doubtfully.
    The templar seemed to share her doubts. He shook his head, loosing a fine cloud of dust from his hair. It hung in the torchlight, making a dull red halo. “They didn’t try to keep it a secret that they were going. Anyway, one hold might have deserted, but both?”
    “Maybe one group convinced the other to go. It would still only be a handful of Wardens.” The scarred woman sounded none too convinced herself.
    “Maybe.” The templar shrugged with a clank of armor and another puff of red dust. “I couldn’t tell you. All I can say is that we didn’t see them. After the second hold, we took the Imperial Highway until Churneau, then broke off north to come here. Picked up some letters and correspondence from others along the way. I have them in my pack, but I will tell you now that what we have are letters from conscripts’ families and dispatches from nobles. We bring you no word from other Grey Wardens. As I said, we never saw any. If we had, we might not have bothered to come this far.”
    Sulwe nodded and motioned Caronel forward. “We’re grateful to you for bringing the letters. My colleague will show you to your quarters. Please rest and refresh yourselves. In the morning we can discuss your refuge.”
    They’re refugees too? The thought spun confusedly in Valya’s head. She had assumed the templars had come to track down the Hossberg mages. But it didn’t sound like that was their intention at all. It didn’t even sound like they knew the Hossberg mages existed .
    If they’d come from somewhere south of Churneau … That was halfway across the world. She’d spent the past two months staring at maps of Thedas; she knew exactly how long and difficult that journey would be. Even in summer, with the foraging relatively easy and the weather kind, that was no leisurely stroll.
    Had they, too, come to escape the mage-templar war?
    They had. She learned that, and more, over the next few weeks. The templars hailed from southern Orlais, not far from the shores of Lake Celestine. Their leader, Diguier, had been a Knight-Lieutenant in his order. He had heard of the slaughter at Kirkwall and the chaos of White Spire, and, along with a handful of like-minded comrades, had decided that they wanted no part of it.
    Originally there had been eight of them. Two had died along the way, and one had deserted. Valya had difficulty gleaning particulars, but she gathered that both the deaths and the desertion had been connected to the templars’ lyrium addiction. The supply they’d stolen when they absconded had not, evidently, been sufficient to sustain them to Weisshaupt.
    All of that she pieced together from the meager rumors others gave her. She never spoke to the templars directly. She crossed halls to avoid them, pulled back into doorways to keep from catching their eyes. It was stupid—they had no reason to suspect her of anything and no right to say a word if they did—but she couldn’t stop herself. Old