Champing At The Bit [Closed]

[Hanamene Thornecroft]

(Very Early Drakonis, 9:41 - post-Teagan's ousting, but sometime pre-In Hushed Whispers resolution - w/ Varric Tethras)
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A single rider charged toward Haven, upon a well-lathered and pale buckskin horse, startling a train of caravans that seemed likewise bound for the village. It caused commotion and disorder amongst the caravans in question, with the rider weaving precipitously through as though they'd either a point to make or a death wish to fulfill. Overtaking the train somewhere after Haven's exterior gate but before it's inner one, the rider reared their horse before one of the Inquisition's more credulous archers. The young man stepped back while trying to ready his bow and tripped, falling backward. The rider abruptly dismounted, leaving their horse behind and made weighty steps toward the fallen archer. Though clearly armed, Haven's newest arrival made no gesture to draw her weapon just yet. When the young man looked up from where he lay, awkwardly splayed upon the ground, he would see a woman in mail and leather looming over him. Her expression was hard, if also exhausted. Her severe green gaze, piercing through a veil of windswept hair, all but ran him through. "Where are my men," she demanded coolly, if edged with impatience.

"Your... what?" the young man fumbled, in trying to both sort himself out as well as what the armoured woman wanted. His mind spun, trying to place her arms and regimentals but falling short of his recognition of them. They seemed familiar to the western regions of Ferelden, but also not. He righted himself, only to trip over his own foot once more and fall back a second time. The woman pressed toward him still further.

"My men," she repeated, temper rousing to near-murderous, "Where are they! Your sodding lot arrested them not two days past, on the edge of the Hinterlands." She only half stooped, so that she might pull the young man up forcibly to his feet, and only in order to draw him in close enough so that they stood nose to nose. By this point, a contingent of Inquisition soldiers—likely having been alerted to the exchange, or witnessing from afar the woman's reckless ride into Haven—arrived to support their comrade.

"Two horsemen," she stated, ignoring the fact that she was herself now surrounded. She refused to release the young man. Instead, she spoke louder though as severely as before, "Good men. Neither a crime committed between them. Where. Are. They."

"H-horsemen? I-I don't know," the young man stammered, "I-I just joined. I-I don't know. I-I haven't heard—"

One of the archer's armed comrades, concerned for his well-being, grew impatient in waiting for the tense exchange to resolve itself and lunged for the woman with his sword in hand. In a fluid gesture, she threw the young man to the ground, stepped aside, and drew her sword in turn. The clash of steel rung loud and a second standoff, threatening to be far more brief than the first, followed as both swordbearers held their ground. "Those are their horses!" she growled, jutting her chin to the direction of Haven's small paddock. Two horses certainly stood out amongst the others. Saddles alike to the livid woman's own. "Where are they?! I will take this whole damn lot down if I must, so help you—"

 

[Varric Tethras]

So much for a day of rest.

The Hinterlands sucked, and not in a so-bad-it’s-kind-of-good suckage. It just sucked. Templars, mages, bandits, wolves, one bigass dragon that they were going to have to deal with at some point, and bears. So. Many. Fucking. Bears.

And all that in between closing rifts and killing demons and chasing down wayward livestock and … shit, he was losing track. He wrote it all down each evening, but trying to think about it made Varric’s head spin. So when Lucky had decided they needed to take a day off before going back out again, he did not object in the slightest. Sati Adaar was making Joscelyn Hawke look like a lie-abed (though admittedly, Josc had taken several years to work up to the clusterfuck that Sati had stumbled into out of the gate).

But from the ruckus being raised at the gate, somebody had been fool enough to try a frontal assault, and no matter how hard Varric tried to tell himself that it couldn’t be, that the odds were beyond astronomical, the woman’s voice that was ringing out sounded like the one individual of his acquaintance brash enough to do it.

"Where are they?! I will take this whole damn lot down if I must, so help you—"

Shi-it. He’d been moving at a fast walk, but the clash of steel on steel, combined with the sight of Cassandra striding for the gates with a face like a thundercloud and a dozen archers atop the wall all drawing a bead at a single target prodded him into a run, hoping that it wasn’t her, or if it was her, she hadn’t done anything irrevocable. He didn’t want to have to go back to Kirkwall and tell Hal that she’d gotten herself killed.

“Hold your fire!” he roared, waving his arms and putting himself in said line of fire as he moved forward because damned if it wasn’t Scrappy, all the way out in the snow-packed asscrack of Ferelden and still earning her name. She seemed to be alone and hadn’t killed anyone, which meant that he had a chance to end this without bloodshed. “Everybody put away the sharp, shiny shit, and let’s try to sort this out like civilized people!”

“What is the meaning of this?” Cassandra demanded hotly as she arrived on his heels, one hand on her sword’s hilt and her eyes flashing in a manner that suggested that she was about to add her own sharp, shiny shit to the mix. That would not end well for Scrappy.