Redcliffe was everything Hilda hoped it would be, and not at all what she expected.
The Chantry sisters and brothers seemed kind enough, but if they had seen any blonde Anderfeln Templars in recent years, they were not sharing such knowledge; Hilda had not spent much time there, in any case, exploring the city and examining its iconic clay cliffs. The lake crowded one side of the city, the castle visible in the red foothills, made quite a picture - Hilda could only too easily imagine Albrecht at the edge of the water, smiling at that scarlet backdrop, pleased with the path that his wyrd had taken him.
How badly it had all ended, but how she hoped he had at least had a time of happiness, serving his beloved Andraste.
Night fell more quickly the further they traveled west, or so it seemed to Hilda; by the time she had seen the layout of Redcliffe and only made the most cursory of inquiries at the Chantry, darkness shrouded the city, and the skald retired to her room in the inn to sit near the window, a honey-roll in hand as she penned a letter to her family, the familiar words of her mother-tongue practically rolled off the page, begging to be said aloud. Rather than recite the letter as she wrote it, however, she hummed under her breath as she scratched and scribbled, at one point holding the roll in her teeth as she steadied the paper and inked the quill.
Then came the bells tolling, ringing all the way across the water, and that warning came in a language that all cultures spoke and understood. In record time, away the letter and its paraphernalia were put, the witch-bow plucked up and quiver slung over her shoulder; when she emerged on the street, a blonde-haired beacon in the night, the seas of running people parted around her as they made for safe haven at the Chantry. Hilda's pace was unhurried, her stride eating up long tracts of ground even without matching the frenetic dashes of those around her. Once she neared the central square, she broke free of the pack - not a difficult feat, for a woman who stood head and shoulders above much of the populace - and joined the company forming in the pools of dim light there. Ser Talfryn, Ashya, the young Templar Loïc. Surely the Wardens were out somewhere in the night as well, and Hilda, now free of the press of people, held her bow at loose readiness, an arrow nocked but not drawn.
"Trouble?" inquired the skald, level-headed and calm. "I heard der bells ring. Has ennyvun seen der Wardens, or vot ees causing der commotion?"