Title: An Invincible Summer
Author: Jewels
Fandom: Dragon Age
Disclaimer: Bioware's. !Mine.
Summary: Poor Halvdan. Kicked out of the Ostwick Circle for being too kind-hearted around mages, he gets banished to the smallest out of the way village that happens to have a Chantry. Then he's called upon to chase down an apostate. Too bad it's that girl he really took a shine to at the harvest festival last night.
Word Count: 2,499
Notes: Written for the Bioware writing contest and, obviously, didn't win. Ah well!

***

The Templar Order was full of stalwart warriors, holy soldiers who lived and breathed the Chant, who honed their skills against mages daily until they were as the keen edge of a blade. They were unswerving, unhesitating, and Halvdan was none of these things. He was faithful to the Chant, and he was competent with a blade, his skills as Templar good enough to admit him into the ranks, but it had become quickly apparent not long after taking his vows that Halvdan was not best suited for life at the Ostwick Circle.

"What are you going to do about the boy?" he heard the Knight-Captain say to her Commander, when they both thought they weren't audible to the anxious newly-minted Templar waiting outside the office. "He's... he's..."

"Too kind-hearted for his own good?" the Knight-Commander supplied, dryly.

"Exactly," the Knight-Captain grumbled. "He won't unleash his full power against the mages. He's scared of hurting them. And now they've figured out he's a soft touch and run riot when he's around."

The Knight-Commander sighed heavily. "I'll deal with him," he said, and called Halvdan in.

They hadn't ejected him from the Order. Instead, he'd been quietly assigned to the most remote little clutch of farmsteads that was large enough to justify having its own Chantry, though it was half the size of most, with a roof that leaked whenever it rained. The Reverend Mother was an ancient, wizened woman who was half blind and almost entirely deaf, and who was convinced that his name was Stewart.

It took two weeks for Halvdan to stop correcting her, realising that any such attempts were futile. By then, he'd gotten over his resentment at having been reassigned when he realised he much preferred life in the village to the Circle.

For instance, there they didn't have harvest festivals there, full of music and dancing, and a great bonfire in the square outside the Chantry that was surrounded by tables and logs for sitting, food and drink in plentiful supply. Farmers came in from the furthest reaches of the village's borders, faces unfamiliar to Halvdan that nonetheless lit up when they saw him, grinning at him and pounding him on the back, as if doing their very best to crack his armour.

Halvdan tried to abstain from the drink that was being passed around with abandon, feeling that it was his responsibility and duty to remain fully sober. But at some point someone pressed a tankard into his hands while he was speaking, and he'd taken a mouthful without thinking, and then suddenly the tankard was empty and someone else was offering to get refills and, well, it would have been rude to refuse.

"Come! Dance with me!"

Hands seized his. He had spent most of his time lingering at the edge of the gathering, wondering whether he should withdraw to his quarters before he did something he'd regret, and apparently he'd drawn the eye of one of the dancers, a girl—no, a woman—in blouse and breeches, who was none too sober herself if her flushed face and wide eyes were any indication. She tugged on his arms, trying to drag him into the circle of dancers. He found himself mesmerised by the way the light glinted off her bracelets.

"I can't really-" he said, awkwardly, his tongue tripping over itself as he stared at her. She was beautiful, with liquid dark eyes and hair that fell in tangled ringlets over her shoulders. The very sight of her stole his breath.

"Of course you can!" she cried, tugging harder. For some reason, he went with her unresistingly. "Everyone can dance! Even stuffy old Templars."

"Not old," he muttered, though apparently not quietly enough to go unheard, as she laughed brightly and pulled him amongst the dancers.

The girl—she had to be a farmer or farmhand from one of the outlying areas—spun, hair flying and bracelets jangling. He could have watched her all night as she danced, and he with her, but eventually, at some point, they sagged, breathing heavily, into each other's arms, laughing like they'd both gone mad and the air was suddenly very thick and very heavy.

She stared at him for a long moment, then gripped his hands again, her expression teasing, a sultry smile on her face, and she started to pull him out of the circle of dancers, away from the party, and her intent was obvious. Maybe it was the drink, or maybe he had temporarily taken leave of his senses, but he followed her.

She pulled him far into the woods behind the Chantry that the revelry was nothing more than a distant chaotic sound, and only shards of firelight illuminated their surroundings. She kissed him, and he forgot how to think for a few moments. When she pulled away, she had a thoughtful expression on her face.

"I heard Templars were chaste," she said.

"Well, uh..." he scrambled to produce words rather than incoherent sounds, "It's, well, complicated, I mean, some Templars chose to marry, it varies and it's all sort of discretionary and, uh..."

"Good enough for me," she said, with a wicked grin, and shoved him against the nearest tree so firmly that his armour rattled.

**

The party was still going strong when they made it back to the square. They were giggling like children as they took a seat at one of the tables, and Halvdan was sure his face was a newly permanent shade of red. He just hoped that the Reverend Mother wasn't looking his way at that moment.

The woman leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

He would later find out exactly what had happened from a bystander: someone had drunkenly knocked a bottle of spirits into the bonfire, whereupon the bottle had abruptly burst into flame and exploded, sending glass and bits of burning wood flying everywhere. One of those caught the tablecloth near where Halvdan was sitting. All Halvdan knew was that one minute everything was fine, the next the woman had her hands thrust outwards and everyone was staring in horror at the ice-shrouded table and the woman who had just conjured half a blizzard to extinguish a relatively small fire.

"What-" he started, mind scrambling to catch up with what had just happened.

"Oops," she said, and didn't even glance at him before she was on her feet, running out of sight.

Confused and frightened shouting broke out. "An apostate! Did anyone see what she looked like?"

"Hair like flame! Like fire magic itself!"

"Drunken sot! She was clearly blonde!"

Halvdan was so shocked that he could only stand there and stare at the dark break in the trees through which she had disappeared. He was in a lot of trouble.

**

"An apostate mage! Here!"

Halvdan closed his eyes as the farmer's shrieking managed to hit exactly the right note to shift his headache into a new phase of agonising. Her voices echoed around the empty Chantry.

The Reverend Mother peered up at him and scowled. "Postlethwaite's here? I've not seen old Postlethwaite in years. Thought he was dead."

Farmer Adrana glared at him as if the Reverend Mother's burgeoning senility was his fault. "We can't have mages, dangerous mages, running around unchecked."

She wasn't dangerous, he wanted to protest. She'd just been enjoying the party, like the rest of them. Halvdan took a deep breath and tried to imagine how his old Knight-Captain would deal with the situation. For one, she wouldn't have had a drunken tryst with an apostate. Halvdan counted himself lucky that none of the villagers had been sober enough to remember him leaving with the woman and then returning much more dishevelled than he'd started the evening.

"You should have pursued her immediately," Adrana said, stabbing her finger at his breastplate in accusation.

The Reverend Mother harrumphed softly. "Your problem, Stewart, is a distinct lack of fish in your diet."

Halvdan closed his eyes and tried to will away the pounding in his skull. "I'll deal with it," he promised Adrana.

Adrana glared darkly. "You'd better."

**

Halvdan had never had to actively hunt down a mage before. He'd had the training, of course, but he'd never been called to put it into practice. It seemed that practice was something he needed. Her early trail, where she had crashed through the woods, was easy to pick up in the dawn light, but eventually she seemed to slow down, covering her tracks more carefully. Eventually, he lost all trace of her, and spent the morning fruitlessly trying to pick it up.

Despairing, he veered towards the small river than ran through the woodlands, aiming to refill his canteen and freshen himself a little before trying again. The last thing he was expecting to find was the mage, crouched at the edge of the water, in the middle of scooping the clear, icy liquid into her mouth to drink. They both froze as his steps alerted her, and then she was raising her hands, lips parting to cast magic. He reacted instinctively, in the way he'd been trained. He forced the very magic out of her, suppressing it, rendering her harmless. She lost her footing in surprise and fell onto her backside.

It was hard to tell who was more surprised: the mage for being taken down so quickly, or Halvdan for actually managing to accomplish something he'd struggled to do in a safe training environment. He nearly forgot to pull his sword on her. When he did, they stared at each other for a long moment before Halvdan spoke.

"What's your name, anyway?" he asked.

She stared up at him. "Marrita," she said, slowly.

"Just one of a few things you didn't mention last night," he said, impressed at how steady his voice sounded.

"Knew I was forgetting something." Her head dropped to nearly her chest as she sagged in defeat.

There were questions he wanted to ask, but only a couple that mattered. "Were you always an apostate?"

She shook her head and frowned. She was probably wondering why he was asking questions when any normal Templar would be hauling her off to the nearest Circle for detention. That was what he was supposed to be doing after all. Halvdan had never been very good at doing what he was supposed to, even when he tried.

"The Starkhaven Circle. It burnt down, my phylactery lost, and I thought it was a perfect chance to make a life for myself. Some of the others wanted to fight but I don't care. I was only at the festival to see if the people were nice, to see if it would be a good place to settle. Pointless now, I suppose."

"Did you know I was a Templar when we..." he trailed off and gestured vaguely.

Marrita looked as if her estimation of his intelligence was dropping by the second. "The armour was a bit of a giveaway, yes."

"No, I mean." Halvdan screwed up his courage, "Was that why you approached me? You saw a Templar and thought- thought it would be funny somehow to-"

"I-" Marrita stared fixedly at the ground. "I thought you were handsome. And you blushed so charmingly when we danced. I didn't think, not really. Too much to drink."

"Yes. Well." He could hardly fault her for the sin of drunkenness, considering his own state that night.

"I still think you're handsome, by the way," Marrita said, with a wry, if sad, smile. "And at least you're willing to look me in the eye."

She held out her hands to be bound up by rope, and looked up at him expectantly. Halvdan stared at her for a long moment and then, to Marrita's great confusion, put his sword away.

He remembered the sight of the mages in the tower cringing from him, how it made his stomach twist, and made him doubt in his faith, doubt the Chantry he had dedicated his life to. He tried to imagine how it must feel to be a mage, to feel fear at the very sight of Templar, and felt sick.

"I'm probably going to regret this," he sighed, "But I do have an idea."

**

"Marry her?" The Reverend Mother's dull, unfocussed eyes flicked from the apostate to Halvdan. "I never thought you of all people would want to marry, Stewart."

"Not 'marry her', Reverend Mother, this is Marrita. She's here to assist you. She's a lay preacher from Northolt."

Marrita looked horrifically uncomfortable in lay-preacher robes, her smile more rictus than genuine. Halvdan held out the letter of reference from Northolt that was, of course, completely fabricated. Fortunately, the Reverend Mother's eyesight was not up to the job of realising that. He would have felt guilty about lying, but the potential guilt of sending Marrita off to the Circle in chains outweighed that.

"Hmph. You better know your Chant already, girl. I'm not teaching you."

Marrita bowed, looked like she was in some degree of physical discomfort. "Yes, Reverend Mother."

Then the Reverend Mother abruptly sat up straight and looked straight at Halvdan. "What happened to that apostate you were hunting?" she said with unfamiliar lucidity.

"I-" It wasn't hard to fake the embarrassment that went with knowing that one was incompetent. Halvdan had experienced such feelings often enough back at the Circle to know the exact moment to break her gaze, to shift his weight and roll his shoulders uncomfortably. "She got away from me," he mumbled, as if reluctant to tell her.

"Not enough fish," the Reverend Mother pronounced darkly, and that apparently was the end to her coherence. She levered herself awkwardly to her feet and shuffled towards the back of the church, talking aloud to no one, and Halvdan guessed that she was lost in her own memories again. He waited until the doors shut behind her before looking at Marrita.

"This is ridiculous. It's not going to work." Marrita plucked at her rough sleeve with her thumb and forefinger.

"Yes it will," Halvdan said, trying to convince himself through sheer force of will that what he said was true. "You're a harrowed mage, being watched over by a Templar. It's just... not in a Circle."

Marrita frowned at him. "You know that's not an interpretation anyone will accept if they find out. You'll be lucky if they don't execute you for betraying your vows."

"I'm not betraying them," he said, hotly, "Just... reinterpreting them."

Marrita shook her head, but she wore a small smile. "Stupid, romantic Templar," she said, affectionately. "You just lied to a Reverend Mother for me. Twice."

"And I'll probably lie a fair few other times too." He glanced away from her for a moment. "If you tried to run, you'd know I'd have to stop you."

Marrita looked thoughtful. "Maybe there's time enough for running later. For now," she reached out and squeezed his fingers, "Let's just see how this goes."

* The End *