The Frozen Pint was a dreary, collapsing tavern erected on the Fereldan side of Gherlen's Pass a few months after the rebellion began and Orlesian troops began to flow through the area. Though there were no more passing soldiers thirsty for ale, most of its patrons were still travelers heading to or coming from Orlais, eager to escape the icy blasts that buffeted the rocky peaks and played with the building's loose boards. However, a haven from the driving winds or not, few remained by choice for more than a day or two. Every inch of the establishment was perpetually wet with snow melt and those inside were sporadically treated with gusts of bone-chilling air when the cold found a gap in the planks.

Accordingly, there was a collective shudder throughout the tavern as the door swung open to allow the elements in, prompting the travelers gathered inside to huddle deeper within their cloaks and edge closer to the hearth. A lone, young-looking man closed the door behind him as he entered and he paused to pull down his hood and survey the room.

He found a few suspicious stares from the other patrons but after a brief moment made for the bar, the slight rustle of armor coming from beneath his cloak as he walked. Using one gauntleted hand to scrub the frost from the patch of facial hair beneath his lip, he glanced to the bartender and mimed for a drink.

The portly man on the opposite side of the counter wiped his hands on his apron and disappeared in another direction, leaving Alistair alone with another patron who sat half-slumped over the bar.

The other man hadn't reacted to his presence in the slightest, even as the warden stood behind him at a distance he knew must be uncomfortably close. Alistair frowned—he hoped the man wasn't an inebriate, that would complicate things considerably. The stranger in question had ragged, dark-brown hair and wore a cloak that almost fell to the floor, though the former templar estimated him to stand a bit shorter than himself.

While Alistair mulled over his course of action, the man brought a tankard of ale to his lips and drained the pewter mug. Setting down the empty beverage, he gave a grunt.

"Are you just going to stand there, then?"

Alistair blinked. "You- uh, you know who I am?"

"No," the man stated without turning. "But you're looking for me, so that narrows it down."

The templar straightened and cleared his throat. "I am Alistair of the Grey Wardens. You met my commander several months ago."

He gave an affirmative nod. "Duncan."

A small smile creased the young warden's face. "You remember him, then?"

"I remember that he drank like a fish and that he didn't seem overly concerned about taking advantage of my father's hospitality."

"He's dead."

"A shame."

Alistair frowned deeply, but realized he couldn't tell if the man was being snide or sincere. With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I…Ferelden needs your help."

"No."

The templar sighed. The Fereldan warden could count on one hand the people who had been cooperative with his efforts to save them all from the Blight, and he supposed it wouldn't make sense for that to change now. "I could just conscript you, you know." He threatened irritably.

The seated man glanced over his shoulder, flashing a wolfish grin and piercing blue eyes. He gave Alistair a half-hearted shrug. "You could try."

The man shook his head slightly and turned to inspect his empty mug, apparently growing bored of the conversation. "Besides, isn't there a whole order of you people? You don't need someone like me."

There was a pause as the warden seemed to consider this for a moment before nodding. "You're right," Alistair conceded. "I don't need someone like you. I need someone with integrity, and courage, and skill." The warden leaned in alongside the man conspiratorially, searching the stranger's visage for some semblance of cognition. "I need someone like the Clyde Cousland that Duncan saw so much promise in."

The scion of the Couslands met the templar's eye suddenly, his stoic expression blemished with the lines that pain and exhaustion had drawn upon his face. "I am not that man," he spoke slowly, "and it would serve you well to forget me."

Alistair withdrew, the moment of fleeting hope replaced with apparent disappointment and frustration. He hadn't followed the man's trail across half of Ferelden on a whim—he'd been the youngest competitor to ever win the King's Tournament, and Duncan had done everything short of strong-arming the teyrn to make the boy a Grey Warden. The templar gave a heavy sigh and shook his head. "So this is how you're going to restore your family's honor, then? Drinking yourself into a stupor in some frozen backwater?"

"To the void with their honor," Clyde interjected, "My family's dead."

The warden furrowed his brow. "What of your brother Fergus?"

The seated Cousland gave a dismissive shake of the head. "He's either dead or he's allowed himself to be cowed by the men who murdered our parents in cold blood. The forces of Highever share his fate." He turned on his stool to give Alistair a grim smile. "It pleases me to believe the former is the case.

"I believe, however, that the Maker has a plan in mind for everyone in this wretched little hole we call Thedas. I simply hope the one he has for me ends with my hands wrapped around Howe's throat."

"And that's going to restore the Couslands?" Alistair queried, "Killing Arl Howe?"

"No," Clyde admitted with a frown, "but it's a start."

There was a pregnant pause, giving Alistair a moment to look around and irritably realize that the tavern keeper had never returned with his ale, and at the moment the warden felt himself to be badly in need of a drink.

That was to say that he had an idea—a decidedly bad one.

Taking a final deep breath, he turned once more to the haggard Cousland sitting at the bar. "If I help you kill Howe, will you help me defeat the Blight?"

There was a moment of silence as Clyde regarded him with suspicion. "You're going to help me kill Howe?" He questioned, sounding somewhat doubtful. Alistair supposed it was a good sign that the man hadn't immediately balked at what he had asked for in exchange.

"When the time comes, I'm going to help you kill Arl Howe." The warden responded, mustering a stern voice. It wasn't a lie, but it was a promise that he feared time might prove to be hollow.

What Howe had done to the Couslands and so many others was monstrous of course, but it paled in comparison to what would happen if the Darkspawn were allowed to march north unopposed. The Blight had to be stopped, no matter how many deals that required be made or broken.

Clyde immediately rose to his feet, the whirling of his cloak revealing the hilt of a longsword sheathed deep within its furrows. Turning to the warden, he searched the man's face, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. Alistair shifted under his gaze but met his eye, getting his first good look at the man he'd been seeking for nearly three months.

The nobleman looked thoroughly disheveled; greasy bangs hung nearly to his eyebrows and what had looked to once be a small, neatly-groomed beard had been allowed to grow out of control. Yet, behind his unkempt appearance, his eyes still blazed with the flames of a heart burning for retribution.

The young Cousland offered a hand without breaking his flinty stare. "I have your word?"

Alistair was careful not to hesitate and firmly took the man's hand. "You have my word."

Clyde gave a grim nod as he released the warden's hand. Dropping a few coppers on the bar, he gestured for the door. "Head outside. I'll gather my effects and meet you there."

"Right," Alistair affirmed, "I'll—uh, be out there, then." Lingering a moment more to watch the other warrior disappear into one of the tavern's rented rooms, the warden tightened his cloak and stepped back into the blustering winds of the Frostback Mountains.

Walking to a spot where an alcove provided some protection from the wind, the templar found Sten waiting there. The qunari, apparently unbothered by the cold, wore his massive cloak loosely about his shoulders and regarded Alistair with his typical tone of mild annoyance.

"Where is the human we have wasted so much time seeking?"

Alistair glanced to the imposing warrior and gave a small shrug. "He's inside, getting his things. He said he'd meet us out here."

The news didn't seem to impress the qunari who scrutinized the warden. "You let him out of your sight that he might make good his escape or fetch a weapon?"

The Grey Warden fell silent for a moment. Clyde hadn't exactly seemed thrilled by his arrival, but he thought they'd reached an understanding with one another. He wouldn't run. Alistair was almost sure of it. "I hadn't put much thought into it, actually."

Sten gave a strained utterance, the noise somewhere between an angry growl and a frustrated sigh. "That much was apparent."

"No, I mean he wants to help—well, not really I suppose, but he will."

Alistair braced himself for the lumbering warrior's rebuttal, but was met only silence, the qunari having apparently spoken his piece.

Pulling his hood up to protect his ears from the nipping frost, Alistair folded his arms and waited, quietly humming a jaunty tune to distract himself from the cold. A minute or so more passed before he heard the sound of crunching snow draw near.

Clyde Cousland appeared wearing a pack strung across his shoulder and a large, iron-rimmed shield that battered against it as he walked. Through the gap in his cloak, Alistair saw that he now wore a battered steel breastplate bearing the heraldic device of Highever over a burnished shirt of chainmail.

Adjusting how the bag sat upon his back, the haggard warrior glanced at the qunari before looking to Alistair. "It's just the three of us, then?"

"No," the warden reported, "We've got a camp farther down the mountain, but it's a bit of a walk."

"Let's get moving, then."

The camp, half a dozen or so tents strewn throughout a stand of pine trees, was hardly anything to be awed about, but it boasted a blazing campfire and a cluster of boulders that ran along the camp's flank in the shape of a hook, making it a fairly defensible position. However a quick glance upward brought to Clyde's attention a considerable amount of deadfall hanging precariously from the canopy overhead, and the young warrior concluded it had either been overlooked or ignored.

Alistair had pointed him to a suitable spot to pitch his tent and informed him of a small stream nearby before hurrying in the direction of the large pot that hung over the fire. Similarly, Sten, the massive qunari he'd encountered outside the tavern, had walked away without a word, leaving the human warrior alone on the edge of camp looking in.

Near the firepit where Alistair was using a ladle to eagerly fill a wooden bowl with steaming broth, a woman sat within the depths of a heavy fur blanket, her short hair the same color as the flickering wisps of fire that she watched boredly as she lightly stroked the mabari that lay along her side.

At a glance the hound appeared to be dozing, but upon closer inspection Clyde found it to be watching him with a wary eye. The warrior gave an amused snort and unslung the pack from his shoulder. As fiercely loyal and friendly as they could be, mabari were exceedingly suspicious and standoffish toward strangers, which he supposed made them even more intelligent than most people gave them credit for.

The young Cousland gave a grunt as he stretched, relieved to be rid of the weight of his pack and shield. Finding Alistair having a meal with the woman near the fire, a frown wrinkled the Clyde's face. In earnest, he wasn't sure what to think as of yet—either the Grey Warden with broth presently running down his chin was going to somehow help him deal with Howe or the youngest Cousland would find his own way. Clyde had spent three long months stewing in impotent rage in that frozen tavern, but he now took satisfaction in knowing that he was at long last making progress once again. There would come a day when Howe met his reckoning at the end of a sword, but that day needn't be tomorrow.

Pawing at the scraggly growth upon his chin, the warrior reminded himself that there was still much to be done before nightfall. Lifting his pack from the snow, he looped one of the straps over his shoulder and set about pitching his tent.