I. SEMI-CLOSED.

[letterandspirit]

WHO: Marcus Kane and people of personal interest.
WHAT: A slow appraisement of the Inquisition begins the subtle hunt for one mage in particular.
WHEN: The rest of the Emprise du Lion campaign.
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: This log is a catch all for specific starters for planned threads, and hence semi-closed, but entirely open for planning! Please let me know if you'd like to meet Kane and we can divine some kind of encounter.

Comments

high noon. martel.

[letterandspirit]

It's a fast battle, which is perhaps the nicest thing you can say about it.

Inquisition soldiers are already ransacking the little Red Templar holding that Kane had marked on the map for them, wedged in at the base of the hills. Men and women in uniform making efficient work of turning tents inside out and strewing belongings on the snow, seizing weapons and important documents, confiscating valuables before anyone gets any bright ideas. Kane only cleans his sword of blood using the edge of his cloak, and gets paid mostly no mind. Out of uniform and standing idle amongst the activity, he has the appearance of a sell-sword, joining in for commission.

When he'd fought, sword and shield, it had been with the kind of form and precision that comes from a life's work of training. When he cleans his blade, it's from a life's work of habit.

But he pauses, noting movement towards the edge of the clearing. The scuffling the injured, heavy armor, laboured breathing. Glancing around to see if anyone else has this first, Kane begins to pursue at an almost leisurely pace, his sword remaining in hand and only half clean of the crimson smearing iron.

[apostasia]

Martel had been efficient, in battle; occasional glimmers of foreign sorcery triggered in his sword or his armor but otherwise he fought like a warrior, because that's what he is. How he was trained, how he's been taught to see the world - and how he's seen it for a long time. He is slightly incongruous to his surroundings even with his local armor and weaponry, but not for lack of willingness to involve himself--

as he does now, meeting Kane's eyes briefly as he falls in step to intercept, weapon loose in his grip.

In a murmur, "After you," very drolly.

[letterandspirit]

As a rather strikingly tall shape looms into his periphery, Kane slows but doesn't stop, sending a glance his way that is an efficient look up and down as it is acknowledgement. Like almost everyone save for some dim names from a past that feels, indeed, very far away, Martel is an unknown quality, but Kane had noted some sort of enchantment business with his sword.

Enchantments don't connote a mage, so he nods acceptance of help (where he might have otherwise [kindly] turned him away), and leads on.

It's a pathetic sight. The Red Templar is critically injured, perhaps having hidden in the underbrush before attempting his escape, and now crawls on hands and knees, hindered by his armor, metal impacting on his chest and making his breaths come out as wet, whistling gasps. Blood and churned snow make a trail a blind man could follow, crushed underfoot as Kane follows, sword in hand. He doesn't need to pick up his pace to stride abreast.

Kane places a boot heel on the man's shoulder, and flips him over like a turtle. He's a terrible mess, that strange red glow sickly in his eyes, corruption inflaming skin where it isn't cadaverously pale. He looks like he might have been young.

Glancing at Martel, Kane goes to take a knee, setting his sword aside, and drawing instead an efficient looking knife.

[apostasia]

It's worse, somehow, that he's so young. Martel remembers the novices in the choir and he knows that he couldn't swear to how many of them survived their first five years of true knighthood. He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that Vanion could give him the names of all those as didn't. (He wouldn't, granted, but he could.)

Only so many kinds of mercy are available on battlefields like this. He's expressionless when Kane glances at him, but sheathes his sword and exhales harshly.

It's a quick death in the end, at least. And that isn't nothing.

He squints in the direction the Red Templar had been crawling, suspicious, and then--

"Shall we see if he was going towards anything, or just away?"

[letterandspirit]

It's a quick death, and the prayer that Kane utters is also quick -- draw your last breath, my friends, cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky, rest at the Maker's right hand, and be Forgiven -- and quietly uttered, even if midway he looks up after some unknown rustle or sharp sound from the finishing of the battle they left behind. He cleans his knife by wiping it against his thigh, and then he cleans his sword on the edge of his cloak, and looks over towards Martel.

"If you're willing," he agrees. He has what could be classed as an odd way of speaking, more like the Qunari and Vashoth and the dwarves than native human men. The Free Marches are a melting pot, what can be said.

Kane stands, movement unhindered by any injury. He was lucky, today. Sheathing his sword, he starts off, ice crunching quietly underfoot. "You fought well," he says, after a moment. "Quickly."

[apostasia]

He is both a bit tall for a dwarf and a bit bare-headed (so to speak) for a Vashoth; Martel is inclined not to question it, but he does take note. He takes note of most things, it's a besetting sin. To if you're willing he makes another ironic after you sort of gesture, but for all that walks abreast with him, hand at the hilt of his sword in a relaxed sort of way. Not concerned about his company, but entirely prepared to do his level best not to die (again) if 'toward' turns out to be what they're about to find.

The compliment, briskly delivered as it is, nets his attention back a moment in the shape of a glance.

"Years of training," he says, after a slight pause, a sort of verbal shrug. "I was a knight for many years. The knighthood and I did not see entirely eye to eye, in the end, but I daresay you never lose what they beat into you."

(His tone is affectionate, if anything. What bitterness lingers is something private, and Martel is better than anyone wants him to be at concealing himself when he makes the effort.)

[letterandspirit]

Kane can at least sense there is context he is missing from Martel's explanation, leaving him mentally grasping around, but it's not so outlandish as to gain his suspicion. He nods, while trudging on through the snowy woodlands as he's been doing for what feels like 'endlessly'. Being cold and tired is now a lifestyle.

"Not the parts that save your life, in the end," he agrees. "Where did you train?"

Conversation is kept low and quiet, his attention kept ahead of them and hunting around for movement, listening for sounds. Snow tumbles off a branch to the left, getting a sharp glance from him, assessment lasting only half a second.

[apostasia]

A gesture with the hand that bears the shard and he says, "Demos, which you'll not have heard of," a bit dryly. These rifts, they're a problem - but he keeps his voice low, having considered falling silent when that snow fell and deciding that if they'd been heard, then they'd been heard and pretending not to have noticed anything would serve as well if not better.

At first he thinks it isn't pretending, and then -

No, raising his hand; footsteps, the crunch of ice and underbrush. A tilt of his head.

His fingers flex around the hilt of his sword.

[letterandspirit]

Kane drops his attention attentively to the gesturing hand, the green glimmer that it bears, and his brows knit in a moment of consternation, cognitive dissonance. It's true, he hasn't heard of Demos, and all of that warrants further explanation.

But Martel's hand goes up, and Kane has better sense than to ignore it.

Wolves don't attack men. Kane has had enough run ins with the mangy, skinny things that lurk in certain patches of the Free Marches to know this is true. However, he's also been in Emprise du Lion for sometime, and knows that what he knows doesn't always apply. The rivers freeze, and his brothers try to kill him, each other, themselves, and the wolves are very brave.

When the first one comes scrabbling out of the forest brush, Kane is already drawing his blade, swiping one-handed in the same motion, catching the animal across its snout.

[apostasia]

It would be fucking wolves. At least isn't more of those diseased Templars, but - wolves, great, who doesn't want to spend his afternoon killing glorified dogs. Martel would like to spend no part of any afternoon around anything canine, live or otherwise, but the day soldiers get to decide where they go and how they spend their time is the day they've come up with some innovative new way to fight wars. (Most are solved over a table, with a lot of arguing, in the end; maybe, one day, people will start there instead. And then light it on fire and go back to doing things as God or your Maker intended, right in each other's fucking faces.)

--which is all a very long way of saying that Martel kicks a wolf in the teeth and swears at it like it personally shit on his good day, unfair as he was arguably not really having one to ruin. There is a great deal of force in an armored boot, but he follows it with his sword, magic rippling over steel and cutting through bone with more ease than it rightfully should.

They're close to the ice; the pushback sends Martel further than he'd braced for, and he slides without dignity a few feet before rolling, and narrowly coming the better off a wolf that launches itself at him while he's down.

[letterandspirit]

He manages to slay his first rather quickly, the swing of his blade cleaving it between its neck and shoulder, not enough to behead but enough that scarlet blood pumps in an arterial spray on the snow, and it's too busy dying to be of more of a nuisance.

The next gets a mouthful of coat, and drags him down.

Which is very graceful, but he abandons his sword -- something he doesn't do if faced with a foe with opposable thumbs -- to take out a thick-hilted blade. When it comes at him, teeth shining, Kane gives it his arm to worry, teeth tearing into leathers and metals, hard enough to bruise but not to puncture, unless he were to let it worry away.

It's reconsidering its options when he plunges the knife up through where furry neck meets jaw, pushing past dense fur, thick hide, and the vulnerabilities beneath.

He heaves it away from himself, getting to his knees and reaching for his sword, tense against the idea of a fourth sizing up his bent back.