My Warden (COMPLETED)

Sparring

The smell of sweat slicked off brows onto the grass below, the sound of metal bashing into metal or meat, the burst of energy riding the wind from combatants revealing each other's weak points. Lana forgot how much she missed sparring. As the warden commander, her job was to watch the warriors train the others. It wasn't as if a mage could offer up much by way of suggestion for how best to stick someone with a sword. Use the pointy end and try to not get stabbed. And, she was supposed to be the intellectual one, jotting down notes and paging through books, not neck deep in the blood and muck while rain pounded from the skies watching two of her own square off.

But, by the Maker, did her blood pump while she sat perched upon a stack of straw bales watching an Inquisition soldier try and pummel the hell out of Hawke. "Keep your arm up," Lana shouted.

Hawke spun around, dodging the man's shield and spraying the audience with mud from her extended sword. "Arm schmarm! I've got this!" her cousin shouted. She'd stripped off her armor for what ladies and gentlemen in imposing masks would probably call indecent, displaying her scarred and imposing muscles for the world to see. It wasn't that Hawke wasn't lady like, she merely followed her own definition of lady. One that involved hitting things often. Hawke snorted at the indignity of Lana's involvement and the cold of the mountain crystalized her breath giving her the impression of a bull about to charge. Her opponent, a well meaning kid who was honored to fight the Champion of Kirkwall, mightily wet himself.

Lana chuckled and shouted, "I wasn't talking to you!"

Laughing as if throwing open the void itself, Hawke lunged at the kid. He tried to twist away, but her blade whacked him in the back sending him skittering into the mud ass over end. His foot hung suspended above his head, the sword long lost in the pit that began as dirt. "That's mine!" Hawke cried while slotting her greatsword back where it belonged. With the match over, the terrifying hell beast slipped back onto its leash leaving behind only the friendly and overbearing woman. Hawke grabbed both arms around the bruised and battered man so she could haul him up. She tried to rub off the mud on his uniform, but only smudged it up more.

"Th..th...thanks?" he stuttered. Hawke still held him slightly suspended off the ground, his toes paddling against thin air, and Lana suspected she wasn't even aware.

"No problem, you did good. Not like defeat an invasion good, but you didn't trip and impale yourself on your sword. That's always a plus," Hawke tried to whisper to the kid but her voice echoed through the training ground. A dozen spectators huddled around. They'd begun the day with none, but as word of the Champion of Kirkwall spread, so did the attention.

Leaning on the bale beside Lana was Varric. The dwarf sighed from his friends eternal exuberance over hitting things. He agreed to play arbiter and probably had some coin riding on the outcome, always in Hawke's favor. Yanking up his dagger, Varric put another notch on the board. "That's Hawke 15, Inquisition 1."

"I still say it shouldn't count," Hawke shouted back. "Some damn bird flies past and drops a turtle on my head? That's not part of any fancy fighting routine you can practice."

Varric parted his hands, "I don't make the rules."

"Sure, sure," Hawke grinned at her old friend, then wiped at her face. Below the mud fresh bruises percolated waiting to bloom to their full glory, but the woman didn't care. Didn't seem to even feel the pain as she flexed her arms. "Who's up for the next round?"

"How about me." Hawke turned to the source of the voice and paled at the massive grey skinned man stepping towards her. Leaping over the log barrier of the muddied field, he wiped his fingers along his horns to remove any grease and unsheathed his own greatsword.