throne?”
Her eyebrows shot up. Mother Bronach was not accustomed to contradiction, he surmised. “It is the Maker’s will,” she said with belabored patience.
“He is a tyrant!”
She paused, pursing her lips as she watched him. “How many innocent lives had your mother wasted in this hopeless struggle? How many will you? Do your people not deserve peace?”
Maric felt rage bubbling up from within him and threatening to explode. How dare she? He closed the distance between them, marching up to her chair and stopping directly in front of her, fists clenched at his sides. It was all he could do to stop himself from throttling her. She still deserved respect, despite her arrogance. He had to remind himself of that.
He breathed out slowly, forcing himself to calm. Mother Bronach watched him, seemingly undaunted by his proximity and his unspoken threat. He could tell that she was nervous, however. He could see the bead of sweat on her forehead, watch as her eyes flicked toward the nearby doors. “Is it true,” he asked icily, “that he put my mother’s head on a spear outside the Denerim palace? My mother, your rightful queen?”
A long minute passed as they locked gazes. Finally, Mother Bronach rose imperiously out of her chair. “I can see there is nothing for us to discuss,” she said with just the slightest quaver in her voice. “You are an impertinent boy. I suggest you take your men and leave while you can, and pray to the Maker that when your end comes you receive more mercy than your mother did.” With that, she turned and strode out of the room. Maric’s knees turned to jelly as she left.
Maric’s brief meeting with the First Enchanter that followed fared little better. The Circle of Magi were unwilling to abandon their neutrality. At best they were willing to tacitly overlook the fact that one of their own was helping the rebels. Maric supposed he couldn’t expect more than that. The entire trip to the tower had done little for the rebel cause.
Still, meeting the Grand Cleric face-to-face must have been worth something, he thought. Even if she thought him rude and unready, at least he had looked her in the eye, one of the closest advisors to the usurper, and not buckled. She had left Kinloch Hold in a hurry, no doubt headed at full speed back to the palace. Maric was gone from the shining tower long before she could send anyone back to capture him.
The reunion in the forests near Amaranthine was a glad one. Arl Rendorn greeted Maric as he returned, as well as Rowan and Loghain. All of them were exhausted but pleased the others had returned safely. Rowan ran forward to embrace Maric happily and tease him about the beard he had grown over the winter, and if Loghain looked on silently, neither of them noticed. Maric was eager to hear the stories of the months spent in the Bannorn, and that first evening back at the camp he stayed up until the small hours, drinking and extracting one reluctant tale after another out of Loghain.
It proved to be the only reprieve they would have for some time. Arl Rendorn had already been warned that the army’s position was becoming too well known; they had remained in one place far longer than they ever had previously. Small bands of recruits had been making their way to the forest over the months, and word had spread, and when a secret messenger arrived from the Arl of Amaranthine to tell them the usurper’s forces were on their way, they started packing up quickly.
Maric told Arl Rendorn that he had only one thing to do first. He took Loghain with him and paid a visit to Arl Byron. Loghain suggested that he was foolish to do so, but Maric didn’t care.
The young Arl came out of his estate at Amaranthine as they approached, flanked by his guards. He waved amiably to Maric. “Your Highness,” he greeted them, “I have to admit I am a bit surprised to still see you here. Did you not receive my message?”
Maric nodded. “I did, Your Grace. I wanted to thank you for sending it.”
The man nodded, his expression unreadable. “It was . . . the least I could do.”
“The very least,” Loghain growled emphatically.
Maric shot an angry look at Loghain, who scowled but otherwise remained unrepentant. “My point,” he stated, looking back at Arl Byron, “was that we are grateful for the months you have provided us safe harbor. I hope nothing ill comes to you as a result.” He bowed deeply to the Arl, who appeared nonplussed and did little beyond muttering polite niceties as Maric and Loghain withdrew.
Certainly Maric never expected much from it. If anything, the Arl’s confused response forced Maric to grudgingly agree with Loghain’s assessment that they might have simply been better off not making the attempt. So when the rebel army began its march the next morning, Maric was shocked to encounter a force of soldiers wearing Amaranthine heraldry just as they left the forest bounds.
The soldiers had not come to attack, however. Arl Byron rode to the front of his men and quietly, in front of them all, bent knee to Maric.
“The usurper can take my land,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ve sent my wife and children to the north, and brought with me what loyal men I have and all the supplies I could gather.” As he looked up at Maric, tears welled in his eyes. “If . . . if my lord Prince will have me, I would gladly offer my service to the rebellion, and I beg your forgiveness for not having the courage to offer it sooner.”
Maric was rendered speechless, and it wasn’t until both the Arl’s men and his own began cheering that he remembered to accept.
Battles followed, first as the rebel army sought to evade the usurper’s men as they headed back west into the hills, and then as Arl Rendorn decided that they needed to take the offensive. A series of small battles fought mostly in the spring rains sent the usurper’s unprepared forces into a hasty retreat. A larger force that the enraged Meghren had hastily assembled arrived weeks later, but by then the rebel army had already moved on.
In the lean two years that followed, that was how the rebel army stayed alive.
True battles were few and far between, however, and life with the rebels primarily consisted of waiting. Weeks were spent camping in the rain or snowed in during the winter, waiting for the enemy to find them or waiting for the opportunity to attack. When they weren’t waiting, they were marching, trudging through the most remote parts of Ferelden to flee a larger enemy force or to find a new place to hide and wait.
Only once did the usurper gain a serious advantage over them. A lightly armed caravan bringing supplies from Orlais in the early winter proved too tempting a target, and only too late did Arl Rendorn realize it was a trap. Before the rebels knew it, hundreds of Orlesian chevaliers rode out from the hills, hidden amid the rocks, their
