Sisters of Tevinter

The Dawn Will Come

     Jor gently disentangled the cleric's hand from her wrist. "Excuse me, Mother. Please. Let me go out there." Let me see my friends.

      Mother Giselle reluctantly released her arm. Jor stumbled from the tent, staggering in the thin, rocky soil to where her counsel bickered around the fire. She had carried the woolen blanket with her, keeping it wrapped around her shoulders like a cloak. She felt naked without her scarf, she prayed it hadn't been lost in the snow. Her belt and daggers were gone too. Someone else must have taken them. 

       Leliana looked up from the crate she'd been sitting on and her gaze softened as she saw Jor emerge. Cullen and Josephine stopped arguing for just long enough for Josephine to breathe; "Maker's Mercy." 

     "Herald. We are grateful you're unharmed." Cullen gave her a nod. 

     "Unharmed? Commander, she hardly seems unharmed. She looks awful-!" Josephine glanced at Jor. "No offense intended, Lady Trevelyan." 

     Jor smiled slightly, stretching the bruises that had blossomed up the side of her face. "None taken." 

     Cullen kicked aside a shelf of snow and shook his head. "I assume you'll want a full report." 

      "Yes. Now please." 

      Cullen nodded, resigned. His voice was low as he began, heavy with loss. "...The known casualty count in ninety seven."

       Jor winced, an icicle was driven through the sinews of her beating heart. Ninety seven men and women... They'd all been celebrating only a few hours earlier. She could only pray they'd died with weapons in their hands. 

        "Haven is unsalvageable. It's been claimed and occupied by the forces of the Templar Order." 

        Again, Jor grimaced, bitter anger stinging the lining of her throat. It was like the tonic her mother had force-fed her when she was ill. That ramshackle village had been her home. Her home for months. She'd drank there, returned wounded there, cried there and ate there. These people had made it their own, built it from nothing, and now it was gone. "What do we have?" she asked hoarsely. 

         Josephine dotted her clipboard absently with her quill. The feather was slightly singed. "We have ten days worth of rations to be shared throughout the whole of our remaining forces. Four barrels of pitch, six casks of fresh water, a small arsenal of weaponry and a few beasts of burden." 

           This was grim news. "Can we make it out of the Frostbacks with that?"

         Josephine wordlessly shook her head. The unwelcome image of soldiers and friends freezing, dropping dead in the snow, limbs blue with frostbite, wasting away of starvation brushed over Jor's mind's eye like the sadistic fingertips of some malicious god. The scholar glanced up at the stars to glower. "...We can make it work. Perhaps we can send scouts to bring aid, open trade along the pass and retrieve hired help." 

            Leliana chewed her lower lip, looking stricken. Apparently she didn't have the heart to voice her doubts. Cullen hung his head, running gauntleted fingers through his hair. It made Jor wish she had died in the snow. 

              The heavy air of hopelessness hung over the hastily constructed camp in the mountain clearing like a cloud to death. Soldiers mourned the loss of comrades and family, huddled close around weakly flickering fires. Their sad collection of salvaged supplies was piled in the snow, free of flakes, as if even the weather wouldn't bother using them. 

             A sudden voice rose over the unsteady silence, low and strong. 

            "Shadows fall...