A Long Way to Go (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

Come and Get It

It wasn't too far down the path from the Orlesian party that they discovered the next positive sign of wyverns: a huge, steaming pile of scat.

"I guess we can see what the wyvern thinks of the hunt. There's real poetry in creating something that size," Varric said.

"You would know," Fenris remarked with a sardonic curl of his lip in the dwarf's direction. "That appears to bear a strong resemblance to your latest book."

Varric chuckled. "Swords & Shields? You're not wrong; but it sells, which is, after all, the point."

"I thought the point was to irritate the people you call 'friends' by caricaturing them in your abominable literature."

"Caricaturing?!" Varric squawked in outrage. "I'll have you know—"

"Boys," Hawke said quietly, her eyes on something in the bushes. As they followed her gaze, they could all see the gleam of a large eye watching them, and then hear the rustle of the bushes as the creature moved hastily off with a contemptuous flip of the tail.

"You see?" Fenris turned to Varric. "The wyvern doesn't enjoy your writing, either."

"And you're proud that your literary opinions are the same as those of a mindless lizard?"

"Do they do much of this kind of thing?" Tallis asked Hawke, who answered her with an eloquent roll of the eyes. "I see. Can we gag them?"

Hawke smiled briefly at the idea of someone trying to gag either of her two favorite men. "You're welcome to try," she suggested to Tallis, "but I think we'll have more luck finding this wyvern." She pushed past the elf, following the creature that had been in the bushes. If she hadn't known better, she might have thought the wyvern was sizing her up, judging whether she was a worthy foe. Well, she was; certainly if Hawke were a wyvern, she'd rather fight herself than any of these Orlesian fops.

Tallis took the lead, and Varric was hanging back, stopping to study the bottom of his boots, frowning.

"We'll never get him out of Kirkwall again," Hawke said to Fenris, who chuckled.

"I would be in favor of remaining at home, as well."

"You didn't have to come."

He raised his eyebrows at that patent falsehood. "That may be the most ridiculous statement you have ever made."

"Ooh, really?" She smiled at him. "I'll have to keep trying, see if I can top it."

Fenris returned the smile, but his eyes were on the foliage around them. "This wyvern could leap out at us at any moment."

"You don't seem to place a lot of faith in Tallis's scouting abilities."

He didn't bother to dignify that with an answer. He missed Isabela, who was not always serious, but always did her job well. You could count on her when she said she was going to do something. This Tallis, on the other hand ... "You are too willing to involve yourself in the affairs of others, Hawke," he said.

"That was out of the blue."

"I fear that one of these days it will lead you into trouble you cannot extricate yourself from."

"That's what I have you for." She sighed. "Besides, what else would you have me do?"

"Guard what you have," he said. "Keep your head low."