PROLOGUE:

In War, Victory. In Peace, Vigilance. In Death, Sacrifice.

As soon as Duncan saw the crows, he knew.

From the ridge on which he stood, the carrion birds were barely visible, tiny black specks numbering well into the hundreds. They circled lazily, an enormous flock in the shape of a cyclone, narrowing to a singular point in the lush green forest. There was a village there, Duncan knew, nameless and unmapped, hidden from his view beneath the forest canopy. From the same village, heavy, black smoke rose in plumes, caught by the gentle wind and carried in dark streaks across a clear, midday sky. It was thick smoke, thick enough to tell Duncan that the fires still burned, and dark too, dark enough to tell him that the fires fed on more than wood.

He knew, but still he had to see for himself.

Journeying from the ridge to the village took little more than an hour. Duncan and his companions, Grey Wardens all, were accustomed to rugged terrain, but even here at its northern edge, the Korcari Wilds proved their reputation as unpassable. The terrain defied logic, seeming almost willfully hostile to travelers.

Deep ravines dropped from the forest floor into swamps warmed by sunlight only at high noon. Elsewhere, walls of rock jutted up from the ground, creating jagged stone barriers that could stretch for miles at a time. Whitewater rapids cut back and forth along the landscape's many contours, winding through ponds and bogs until they met larger rivers or fell away into the low, dark swamps. And where bogs and cliffs and valleys gave way, there was dense forest, thick with underbrush and shaded by trees that stretched up and up, until the trunks were lost in shadow.

That anyone could scratch out an existence in the Korcari Wilds struck Duncan as a minor miracle, and yet the notoriously hardy men and women of southern Ferelden not only lived in the Wilds but thrived, and had done so for centuries. They carved out settlements and even small townships, used the rivers for travel and trade, and clung with strident patriotism to their Ferelden customs and identity even as they lived well beyond their country's southern border.

Two days earlier, Duncan had sought provisions at a riverside village, where men and women asked eagerly for news from the north and refused payment from Duncan and his fellow Wardens.

"We don't go taking coin from heroes," a swarthy merchant had said, chuckling and shaking his head as though heroes often came through their village, and as though Duncan was one such hero, and as though he really ought to have known better.

Those villagers had guessed immediately that the Wardens were investigating rumors of darkspawn. No one in the village had seen any of the creatures, but of rumors there were plenty. The Chasind tribesmen who lived further south in the Wild had reported a skirmish with darkspawn raiders months earlier, an experience that left them so shaken they elected to move their tribe to new hunting grounds, far to the east. Not long after, tradesmen from nearby settlements had begun to report unearthly sounds in the night and hunters who never returned; more recently, settlements further south had simply gone silent, sending no traders for weeks.

The villagers brushed away these omens as the mundane perils of living in the Wilds, and noted with optimism that all the bad news came from deeper in the Wilds, where swamps stretched unbroken and fog covered everything, day and night, regardless of the season. Here at the northern edge of the Wilds, the fog hung close to the ground, usually no higher than a man's knees. At higher elevations, on the ridges and hills, it disappeared entirely on sunny days.

But the big merchant told Duncan that even here, in the north, sometimes the deeper fog would rise, and that was when they locked the village gates and bolted their home's doors. Creatures moved in that fog, the merchant said: witches or wildlings or werewolves, depending on who was telling the stories.

At dusk, after they left the village traveling south, that deep fog had risen, and Duncan had known something evil stirred within. Something worse than the monsters in the merchant's tales.

In the night, he felt the dark song swell in his chest: the horrid, haunting, beautiful calling that was the gift and the curse of all Grey Wardens. The music infected his dreams, and when he woke this morning he was drenched in sweat. As they broke camp in the dawn light, Duncan could tell from their grim faces that each of his five companions had felt the calling as well, though for the newer Wardens it would have been less intense, and their grasp on its meaning less clear.

To Duncan, however, the meaning was unmistakable. Something terrible had happened in the night, or was still happening perhaps. Something that had brought many of the darkspawn up from the caves and recesses beneath the earth, out of the deep roads, and sated the creature's bloodlust. What exactly, and where, he couldn't be sure, so they continued south, pushing on to the next village, following the merchant's directions.

They spotted the crows at mid-afternoon, and as soon as Duncan saw the crows, he knew.

They found the first bodies hanging from low branches just outside the village. Six small children, some missing limbs or showing other wounds, but all of them likely alive when the nooses were fitted.

"Maker..."

The whisper – a prayer or curse Duncan couldn't tell – came from the youngest of the Wardens. The youth, Desmond, was from Orlais, the son of a wealthy merchant no less, and was only a few years into his service with the Order. It was possible he never seen the aftermath of a darkspawn raid.

Duncan held his silverite blade ready in one hand, but put his other on the young man's shoulder. It was the only comfort he could offer.

"There will be worse ahead," Duncan told him.

And there was.

The men and the older boys, and some of the women too, had chosen to fight. They made their stand just inside a small gate in the stockade that surrounded most of the village. However valiant, the defense was hopeless from the start. Darkspawn had simply clambered over the stockades all around, and overwhelmed the desperate resistance. They had fought to the last, but even so it would been over in a matter of seconds.

The darkspawn left the defender's bodies where they fell, many still clutching weapons and tools. In the midst of the human carnage Duncan could see splashes of black blood along with red. Duncan knelt briefly, inspecting a longsword that lay beside the body of a large, well-muscled man, likely the last of the defenders to fall. The blade was darkened with ichor and chipped in several places.

At least a few of the darkspawn had been killed, probably by this sword. But where the beasts' bodies should have lain there were only blood stains on bent grass and gouges in the dirt. The darkspawn had dragged away their own fallen.

If this had been an ordinary raid, a random outburst of darkspawn violence, the creatures would have left their dead behind alongside the villagers. Removal of the bodies was to sophisticated, to purposeful. This alone was evidence the massacre had been orchestrated by a higher intelligence. It could be the work of an emissary, a demon wearing the twisted skin of a darkspawn. Or it could be a sign of something worse yet.

Duncan looked over to his nearest companion, a bald dwarf with a weathered face half-covered by blocky, dark tattoos. The dwarf's name was Korith, and besides Duncan, he was among the most senior of the Wardens stationed in Ferelden. He could read the signs as well as Duncan, and nodded grimly.

Behind them, Desmond began to weep quietly, staring slack-jawed into the village square. Duncan turned to see that tears streaked the young man's face, falling from his cheeks and running down his breastplate.

There had been about a dozen houses inside the stockade, all of them large and some with a second story. Half had burnt to the ground, the embers still smoldering. In the tradition of Ferelden peasantry, each house would have held several generations of extended family.

"How many, you think?" Korith asked quietly.

"At least a hundred and twenty, maybe as many as a hundred and fifty," Duncan replied.

"Twenty here, or about that," Korith said, and then pointed at the village square. "And at least forty there."

Bodies had been dragged and piled in the square, then drenched in oil and put to torch. The oily smoke still rose into blue sky. All were dead before the fire started, Duncan guessed, as they were stacked too neatly. A small mercy. Others lay where they had been struck down, and Duncan suspected some perished in the burnt houses. Still others had been hacked to pieces, their heads mounted on pikes in a loose circle around the fire, their limbs scattered garishly or left on the remaining fences and window mantles.

"Another forty scattered around, maybe?" Duncan suggested.

"There'll be others strung up outside the stockade, I'd wager. More than just the kids we found. Could account for all of them, maybe?"

"I don't think so," Duncan said reluctantly. "Even if twice that number are hanging out there, there still aren't any women here. There are grandmothers, girls," he said, gesturing at individual bodies, "but no women."

"I saw two or three back at the gate," Korith said, but he was nodding. "Not enough."

They stood quietly, studying the carnage with practiced eyes, until audible sobs began to rack Desmond's body. He was on his knees now, his sword laid on the ground in front of him, rocking forward and back. He knelt before a fencepost, to which a little girl had been tied. Her head hung forward limply, her torso pinned to the post by thick arrows. A homemade doll lay on the ground before her, soaked with blood.

Not content to leave anything unsullied, the darkspawn had slit open the belly of the doll as well.

Duncan sheathed his sword and knelt beside the young man, silent as Desmond wept, the sun beating down on the back of his neck, a gentle breeze carrying stench of burning flesh.

Once, Duncan had felt the same revulsion Desmond felt now. Cried the same tears. Asked the same pointless questions. And when Duncan had first encountered this monstrous handiwork, he was already a veteran of the Order, having fought the creatures in a dozen skirmishes; and before the Order, he had lived a harder life than Desmond, and was better acquainted with the world's callous disregard for life. Even still, it had rocked Duncan to his core, the nightmares following him for months. So he was not without sympathy.

"Why?" Desmond asked at last, eyes still wet as he looked to Duncan beseechingly. "I knew they killed, but...why like this?"

Duncan drew in a long, measured breath before answering. "I don't know what drives them to such cruelty," he said honestly. "Perhaps the call of the Old Gods demands it, or perhaps it's simply their nature. We don't know."

Grief and horror began to drain from the young man's eyes, clouded over with a dark emptiness that Duncan had seen before. He gripped Desmond's shoulder suddenly and roughly.

"All we know - all we need to know - is that it they are evil, and that all other evil pales beside them. Do you understand?"

There was no response, and Desmond did not look directly at Duncan now, his eyes wandering over Duncan's shoulder, his gaze unfocused. He was sinking into shock, letting the horror choke him. This was something Duncan could not permit.

He shook the young man again, harder this time. "Do you understand now? This is why we take our vows."

This horror must be turned to a purpose. Indeed, coming face to face with the darkspawn's depravity was a tool in the molding of any Grey Warden. The horror must be turned to anger, to steeled resolve, to a truer understanding of the Order's purpose. "Look around you," Duncan insisted. "This is why we serve. This is what we sacrifice to prevent. Look!"

Reluctantly, Desmond focused again, slowly turned his head, eyes slipping over the bloody masterpiece of unchecked, deliberate cruelty.

Quieter now, Duncan asked again: "Do you understand?"

Desmond's eyes found Duncan's, and they held the answer.

"You do," Duncan said softly, and Desmond nodded.

The Chantry teaches that it was the hubris of men brought darkspawn into the world: the first of the darkspawn were said to have been idolatrous mages, cursed by the Maker for trying to overthrow heaven itself.

Like most Wardens, Duncan was religious and counted himself among the Chantry's faithful, but he found this particular teaching difficult to accept. The darkspawn were a swarm, a living, breathing embodiment of primal evil, and Duncan could not fathom how such a scourge could truly be just punishment for the heresy of a few, no matter how grave the trespass. On the other hand, it was hardly Duncan's place to question the Maker, and if the darkspawn were truly a punishment for all mankind, then Duncan supposed he had seen enough of human depravity to recognize that the sins of man might cry out for divine retribution. Besides, if the Order itself had found an alternate explanation for the darkspawn, he had never heard it.

Not that their origins mattered. Whether cast out of heaven by a vengeful God, or spit up from the depths of the earth by some whim of uncaring nature, it changed nothing now, and it had changed nothing a millennia ago, when the first darkspawn swarmed across the land, a Blight, unstoppable and relentless.

That First Blight lasted more than two hundred years, until it must have seemed that all the nations of Thedas would be consumed by the darkspawn. The dwarven kingdoms were the first to fall, destroyed almost entirely, driving the dwarves themselves to the brink of extinction. The Tevinter Imperium was reduced to a shell of its former glory. Countless other cultures were swallowed in the Blights, and perhaps whole races as well, their names lost to history. Few records remained from that time, now more than a millennia past, and neither the Chant of Light nor the Chantry's historians could offer more than the barest of details.

The Order of the Grey Wardens emerged at some point during that time, when hope must have been all but lost, founded by men and women from every race and every nation, all of them veterans of the endless war against the darkspawn. The first Wardens sacrificed everything to stem the tide of darkness, and prevailed.

Twelve centuries had passed since the First Blight, and the darkspawn rose three more times, and three more times the Grey Wardens beat them back. And after every Blight, Thedas healed, and the devastation faded into the pages of history, and the darkspawn retreated to the deep roads and the fringes of civilization, but many who once called the Wardens heroes had forgotten.

The last Blight, the Fourth, was now four hundred years past, long faded from the memories of most men. And still Wardens like Duncan and Korith and Desmond kept the lonely vigil, hunting the few darkspawn that emerged from the shadows, watching for the signs of another Blight, warning that one must come, upholding the vows of those who had come before.

"In War, Victory," Desmond whispered the first of the vows, his voice tremulous.

"In Peace, Vigilance." Duncan and Korith spoke the vows with him, and Desmond's voice grew in confidence.

"In Death, Sacrifice."

Then Desmond stood. Tears still streaked his face, but his mouth was set firmly and when he lifted his sword from the ground, he did so with a firm hand.

"I understand, Commander," he said. He crossed his forearms, so that his clenched fists touched the opposite shoulder, and gave a short bow – a Ferelden gesture of respect – and when he rose, his eyes were hard. "Thank you, ser."

Duncan shook his head, pleased but also saddened by the change in Desmond. "You owe me no thanks. Now go and see to the bodies."

Desmond stepped away and began to move through the village with the other Wardens, closing eyes and whispering the Chantry's Blessing of the Last Rites. The bodies would be moved to the pyre in the center of the village, blessed again, and then set alight, denying the crows their feast. Wardens could not afford sentiment, and in other circumstances Duncan would have left the fallen untouched, but his own work in the village was not yet finished, and there was no harm in allowing Desmond and the others the comfort of ritual respect.

The village had been built on the slope of a hill that rose from the tree line to what looked like the edge of a cliff. The remains of a single windmill smoldered near the edge, and Duncan could see shapes strewn on the ground there, probably more of the dead. He beckoned for Korith to follow, and began to walk toward the mill.

The music of the calling had been quieter today, a slow buzzing compared to last night's crescendo, but since arriving at the village, a few isolated, discordant notes had begun to stand out. Not all of the darkspawn were gone from the village.

"Two or three nearby, I think," Duncan said to Korith as they passed the last of the houses and the climb became steeper.

"Your guess is as good as mine. A lot less than a raiding party, anyway. Why leave some behind, though?"

"A lookout, maybe," Duncan suggested. "Maybe they knew we were coming."

"Now there's a cheerful thought," Korith muttered.

Although Grey Wardens' connection to the darkspawn through the song flowed both directions, most of the beasts seemed incapable of correctly interpreting the music. If the band that slaughtered the village were led by an emissary, however, or if Duncan's most dire suspicions proved out, then anything was possible.

They reached the crest of the hill, which did indeed give way to a cliff. The windmill sat right at the cliff's edge, and a sturdy wooden deck had been built out over empty space. A winch on the porch connected to a system of pulleys and buckets, which dropped down about thirty yards through the scaffolding. A wide river that had been partially dammed at the base of the cliff, and a ladder had been built as well, accessible through a trapdoor in the porch.

The bodies Duncan had seen from below had fallen roughly in a line, leading from the hill up to the base of the mill, and then onto the porch. It stood to reason that some of the villagers would try to escape this way. Given the trapdoor to the ladder remained propped open, some might even have gotten away in time.

Not all the bodies there belonged to villagers, however. Four men had fallen defending the ladder, but unlike the villagers at the gate, these men were soldiers. They wore helmets, heavy marching boots, and leather breastplates over chain mail, and metal skirts hung over traditional, un-patterned Ferelden kilts. Round wooden shields, reinforced with hard steel, and bloodstained swords lay next to the bodies.

Duncan knelt beside the nearest soldier, whose upturned face had been ravaged by the crows, and rolled the body. The sigil of the Ferelden monarchy, a stylized Mabari hound, was emblazoned on the back of the armor.

"King's men," Korith said, resting his axe on the wooden slats beside the trapdoor. "Pretty far south, aren't they?"

Patrols were indeed rare so far south of the border.

Standing, Duncan walked to the edge of the porch and looked over. Near the bottom of the ladder, the burnt husks of two boats were still tied to a small dock. Two more of the king's men were dead on the dock, and the bodies of several villagers bobbed in the water. No one had escaped, then.

And escape might never have been the goal, Duncan thought. In an evacuation, a soldier's duty would have been to make their stand at the gate while families fled, and these men were no cowards: they had fought hard to hold the ladder, not died in a scramble to be the first down its rungs. If anything, Duncan guessed, the villagers at the gate had fought to buy time for the patrol to reach the river and carry a warning north.

Preoccupied as he was, Duncan might have missed the sound of metal boots approaching from behind. The discordant notes had grown sharper, however, and Duncan was on alert. Three darkspawn, moving slowly around the side of the mill, treading lightly on the grass.

He glanced sidelong at Korith, and saw the dwarf was aware too, his big hands tightening on the pommel of his axe.

When the darkspawn had closed to within a few yards, the creatures broke into a sprint, apparently believing they had surprised the Wardens.

Duncan rolled to his left, and as he came to his feet drew two blades: one a long silverite dagger carried in his left hand, the other his trusty blade. The dagger he raised to a high guard, and at the same moment, he lashed out at the nearest creature with his sword.

It was one of the taller breed of darkspawn, called hurlocks, and shared the height, build and posture of a tall man. Like the rest of its kind, the creature's skin was dark grey, dry, and looked as though it had been pulled tight across a leering skull. Where a nose should have been, there were only slits, and its lipless mouth kept sharp teeth always on display.

As Duncan's sword flew toward its throat, the beast's eyes registered something like surprise. It tried to late to slow its charge: the sword pierced its neck clean through, and Duncan ripped the blade sideways, arcing black blood across the grass as the hurlock tripped forward and then smashed to the ground dead.

Nearby, Korith had spun in place as Duncan rolled, his axe held out and spinning with him in a defensive arc that the second hurlock barely avoided. They squared off, the hurlock holding a crude mace in high guard, Korith with his axe in both hands now.

There was no time for Duncan to watch. The third hurlock bore down at a full sprint, a jagged blade held above its head, already beginning to bring it down for a strike.

Duncan sidestepped to the left and parried, using the force of the blow as it struck his sword to twist after the passing hurlock. He swung with the dagger in his left arm, hoping to find a gap in the armor behind the hurlock's knees.

The swing was too low, glancing harmlessly away, but the impact caused the hurlock to stumble when it should have turned. Duncan kicked out, landing a solid blow to the creature's hip and knocking it to the ground.

Duncan spared a glance at Korith, and saw the dwarf's axe take the head off the second darkspawn, and then ran at the hurlock he had kicked. The beast was trying to stand, but to slowly. Duncan kicked it again, catching it in the stomach this time and launching it off the edge of the cliff. It shrieked as it fell, before smashing onto the river rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

"So, turns out there were three," Korith remarked conversationally. He stepped up next to Duncan but was facing down the hill toward the other Wardens who were sprinting to their aid. "All done," Korith called out, waving them off. "We didn't leave any for you!"

Duncan barely heard. His focus was on the horizon.

He had not looked far enough when he first reached the crest of the hill. He had not seen the pale grey smoke rising in distance, or perhaps he had mistaken it for a cloud. It rose so thick that it did almost look like clouds, and there was so much that once he recognized it as smoke, for a heartbeat he thought there must be a forest fire.

"Korith," he said, and even to himself he sounded shaken.

The dwarf turned and then cursed.

The smoke was not from a forest fire, nor was there any forest.

On the other side of the river, a bog stretched for miles in every direction, broken only occasionally by a small rise or a stand of trees. Hills rose in the distance, and at the base of the hills many hundreds of campfires burned. At this distance, they were only pinpricks of light, but the pinpricks were not the warm orange of natural fire – instead they were bright and dark at once, glinting purple and green and even black, like lightening in the dead of night.

The wind rose, and as he breathed it in it seemed to him that the wind carried with it the calling, the song stronger than Duncan had ever felt, eclipsing last night's crescendo. He was nauseated, the music sinking deep into his chest and stomach, making his eyes water, and he could almost taste the corruption and rot at its heart.

Around the fires, darkspawn moved in great companies. Duncan could not make out individual forms, nor the emblems on the great banners that flew above them, but he didn't need to see details to know what lay on the horizon.

Beside him, the other Wardens had reached the cliff's edge. One by one, Duncan heard them gasp as if in pain as they to were assaulted by the calling.

"How many?" Desmond asked, his voice hoarse.

"Thousands" Korith said. "Maybe more."

For some time they stood in silence, transfixed by the sight and the song, a row of six Grey Wardens bearing witness to a horde, the likes of which had not been seen in four centuries.

A passage from the Chant of Light rose in Duncan's mind: You have brought sin to Heaven, and doom upon all the world.

Whether it was the holy words or a lull in the wind, Duncan was jerked from his trance.

"We need to go," he said, turning away. "Now."

His companions turned as well, and together they ran.

They ran down the hill and through the village, leaving the bodies where they lay, funeral rites unfinished.

They ran through the gate, skipping over the bodies of its defenders, and as he passed the men and women who gave their lives in a vain attempt to save those they loved, he was reminded of the vows he had repeated earlier with Desmond.

In death, sacrifice.