Lath

Horsemaster Dennet, with the deliberate gait of an older man who feels his age in his knees, especially on spring days when the weather shifts as easily as a windblown leaf, walked beside the Inquisitor, Raven Finhariel, and spoke in the tones of a particular type of candor bred from years of dealing with Fereldan nobility on behalf of his horses.

“Master Tethras refuses any mount that I find for him, Inquisitor. I thought he might shoot me with that crossbow of his when I suggested a nuggalope.” Dennet’s weathered voice dropped into a growl of obdurate reflection, “He is a dwarf for Maker’s sake.”

Raven, who tried to stifle a laugh by stopping to study her boots for a moment but finally surrendered to the impulse, said, “He was born on the surface, Dennet. Varric just needs a mount that suits his stature.”

Pausing beside her, Dennet rubbed his knuckles over the white bristles on his face, considering, and said, “I know of a breeder with a very nice herd of hill ponies. Hardy, intelligent creatures.”

Raven continued walking toward Skyhold’s stable. Despite the chill breeze, the smell of sun warmed earth rose into the air. She said, “Can you find one around thirteen hands high?”

“Short enough to mount easily,” said the Horsemaster with a smile.

“And tall enough to avoid offending any sensibilities Varric might have,” finished Raven.

“I’ll send a man today,” Dennet said, then paused before continuing, “You’re more knowledgeable about horses than I would expect, pardon my saying, for someone who came from the kitchens of a chantry.”

“My father was a stable hand and horse trainer for an Amaranthine noble,” said Raven in an equitable voice. “He often brought me with him to help train the ponies meant for the noble children.”

“You took the spills for the lordlings, then?”

“You could say that, yes, but the ponies rarely threw me out of pure meanness. Usually it was just pony tricks that caught me by surprise,” admitted Raven. “I’ve been swept out of the saddle by a low hanging tree branch at the behest of a willful pony more than once.”

Dennet laughed. “You and my daughter should trade stories.”

“I’d like that,” Raven said with a smile. She noticed the older man’s expression of anticipation and peered at the empty stable yard, then gave a quizzical look to the Horsemaster, “Was there something else, Master Dennet?”

The older man grinned, his teeth flashing bright in the midst his dark skin, and said in carrying voice, “You can bring him out now, lad.”

To Raven’s surprise, the “lad” turned out to be Commander Cullen, the former Templar Knight Captain and current leader of the Inquisition’s soldiers, leading a gelding with her own saddle upon its back. The gelding was a beautiful dark dapple grey, nearly silver across his hips and withers, with black tipped ears that curved as delicately as the lip of a sea shell. His mane and tail, also black, were like breakers falling against a nighttime shore, flowing gently as the mountain’s breath stirred them.

Two days earlier Cullen had noticed her casting longing looks in the direction of the well turned out Orlesian knights and their equally well turned out horses, when Varric approached and said with a sidelong casualness that almost masked his amusement, but not entirely, “The horses, Curly. She’s staring at the horses.”

Cullen took a breath, as if to begin a denial, then smiled ruefully and said, “I had hoped I wasn’t that obvious.”

“You have a particular crease between your eyebrows that only appears when the Inquisitor smiles in the direction of Orlesian men.” As he said this, Varric drew a small imaginary line between his own brows with a broad, blunt fingertip.

Cullen leaned against the battlement, “I suspected as much.”

“You want her to stop staring at Orlesians and their horses,” Varric glanced down at the stable yard through a crenel then gave the battlement that the young Commander leaned against a light slap, as if for friendly emphasis, before saying over his shoulder as he walked away, “Get the Inquisitor her own fancy Orlesian horse.”

Raven squealed. Actually squealed. Dennet, though the old horsemaster himself had never squealed in his life, had witnessed his own daughter exhibit the same behavior at the sight of a new and exemplary piece of horseflesh and knew that this response meant that the Commander’s endeavor was a success. When the normally reserved Inquisitor turned to him with wide golden green eyes and asked, “Is he mine?”, Dennet, also experienced with the poleaxing effect love can have on a man and recognizing it in the former templar, said with a smile, “Aye, if you want him, he’s yours, Inquisitor.”

Raven, her hair as dark as the mane and tail of her new mount, ran across the stable yard to Cullen, a flush of happiness visible beneath the freckles that decorated her cheekbones. To Cullen’s surprise, she did not slow down, but ended her run with a leaping hug that gave him a brief wash of the scent of autumn flowers and spice as her hair bannered around the two of them for a moment before it fell to lay against her back. He found that his free arm had, in a reflex born of years of dealing with younger sisters who blithely counted on their older brother to catch them when they leapt at him like mountain goats, gone around the Inquisitor’s slim waist in a firm hold that kept her on her toes and pressed against him.

“Master Dennet said this was your idea,” she smiled up at him. “Thank you.”

Then she planted a quick kiss on his stubbled cheek, wriggled from his grasp, and took the reins from his motionless hand. As Cullen watched, she slung one arm around the gelding’s withers, the other under his neck to embrace the horse in great hug, then put her nose to the gelding’s neck, where it met the dappled shoulder, her ribcage expanding as she took in the warm scent of horse. Then she stepped back, murmuring to the gelding while she scratched behind his seashell ear before drawing the reins over his head and vaulting herself onto the saddle. As she settled her stirrups and reins, she turned back to Cullen, looking like an elven goddess of horses as the mountain winds wound their fingers through the dark swathes of her hair and the gelding’s mane, and asked “What’s his name?”

“Maker,” Cullen exhaled.

“What?”

Cullen cleared his throat, “I mean, well, it’s Orlesian.”

Dennet, who had joined them, said, “The commander means that it’s long enough to hang from the battlements, and you can’t say it without twisting your tongue and forcing half of the sounds out of your nose.”

Raven laughed, “I’ll have to give him a name I can say, then.”

Then she kneed the gelding away from the men, leaning into the animal’s rolling canter as she took him in a wide circle around the stable yard before turning his head toward the gate, calling for the men at arms to open it up amidst the squawks of a few startled castle pedestrians who didn’t see the dark grey bearing their inquisitor until it flew past them.

Dennet patted Cullen’s shoulder then walked to the stable.

When she returned to Skyhold, Raven stabled her new gelding herself, taking off his saddle and bridle and brushing him with a curry comb in hard tight circles that made the horse lean into her with ecstasy when she reached especially itchy spots. Riding him had been wonderful. He was as fleet as a hart and as brave as a mabari, doing anything she asked of him without hesitation, his ears flicking back to listen to her as she encouraged him.

“My heart,” she said to him, once again inhaling the scent of him as she spoke into his smooth warm neck, “My great silver heart. I love you.”

“Are you smelling that horse?” Dorian gazed into the stall over the half door with a look of slightly aghast bemusement.

Raven straightened and shooed the Tevinter mage away from the stall door so she could step out and then latch it. “Yes. Horses smell wonderful. They smell like summer.”

“Hmm, yes, Ferelden summers probably do smell like sweat and animal hair.”

Grinning, Raven clapped two grooming brushes together upwind from the elegant mage, releasing a cloud of dust and horsehair, causing Dorian to dance away while flapping his arms in front of himself.

“Fereldens,” he said under his breath, brushing ineffectually at the horsehair now clinging to his clothing. “If it’s not dogs, it’s horses.”

Raven gave the mage a curious look, “You never come to the stables, Dorian. Is there some catastrophe I should know about?”

Dorian raised a brow at her, “The catastrophe is that you are covered in horsehair, with dirt under your nails, when you should be wondering why the commander of the Inquisition took time to find you your ‘great silver heart’.”

“I just thought—oh,” she stared at Dorian as a tenuous thread of wonder tripped up her words.

Dorian canted his head at her then motioned for her to hurry up to Cullen’s tower, “I’d tell you to try the brush the hair off your clothes before you go see him, but he’s as Ferelden as you.”

Raven knocked on Cullen’s door, pushing it open when he called out, with a tinge of an absent-minded vagueness in his tone, “Yes, come in.”

“I think I’ve decided on a name for him,” she tumbled into the conversation without a greeting, a blush rising on her face nearly as quickly as Cullen rose from behind his desk when he saw her in his doorway.

Cullen smiled, came around his desk, “What did you choose?”

“I love him,” she said, her words galloping away from her, “He’s wonderful. He’s fearless and steady, and, I don’t know many elven words, but I do know the word for love. Lath. So that’s what I’m going to call him. Lath. Because I love him.”

She ran her tongue across her lips and pressed her lips together, then looked down, because Cullen was coming closer to her with that half smile that gave the scar on his lip in a rogueish lift. When she told herself to stop acting like a goose and met his gaze again, he said, “I’m glad that you love him.”

She felt a fountain of babble pushing itself out of her, again, “Dorian seemed to think—“

Now Cullen looked confused, “Dorian?”

Silencing herself with a decisive breath, she stepped close to Cullen, ran her fingers along his jaw, enjoying the sensation of the not-yet-shaven roughness, and said quietly, “Thank you for Lath,” before leaving him standing alone, where, unknown to Raven, the commander went to sit behind his desk again and stare at his work. It took him a while to accomplish anything, though, because he would gaze at the door with his smile tilting his lips.