The Saltpool
by ErtheChilde
'Fear makes companions of all of us. Fear is with all of us, and always will be. Just like that other sensation that lives with it: Hope.'
AN: GO BACK AND READ FROM THE BEGINNING! I reformatted and lengthened the fic. I know…you guys hate it when I do this, but I'm very much a write-and-edit-as-I-go author…In an ideal world I could have everything written and edited before I even post it, but it was hard enough to find a beta reader willing to take the time to edit my completed works, let alone the WIP ones…And I'm still looking for a Brit-picker, so there :P Besides, if I did it the proper way, I would have significantly fewer stories to offer you. Probably would only have From This Day Forward and Kindred Spirits finished, never mind the ones you guys are actually waiting around to read *cough* Crossed Wires *cough*. So bear with me as I edit and go…and at least know that once something has been completed and edited, I'll never touch it again :)
TWO
The Doctor was momentarily torn between impulses – to hold his arm up to block any downward swing, to try to grab the axe once it came within range, to once more cover Rose to protect her from the blow, to examine the origin of the twinge of pain –
As it was, none of those seemed immediately necessary, as the dwarf took a step forward and positively snarled at them, 'Did it injure you?'
'What?' Rose gasped from beneath the Doctor's chest, at the same time he insisted, 'No. We managed to keep ahead of it.'
'Hmph,' the dwarf grunted and lowered his weapon a bit. 'Noticed that. You let the sodding bastard straight at us. Know what damage that could've done?'
'Sorry, didn't have much of a choice,' the Doctor replied, sincere but with an edge to his words as he eased his body away from Rose's so that she could sit up. 'Busy running for our lives and all.'
The dwarf spit on the ground at that and wandered over to where the rest of his comrades were quickly fetching wood; likely they wanted to burn the thing as soon as possible, and the Doctor didn't blame them. But he had something more important to focus on for the time being.
'Alright?' he addressed Rose.
'Yeah,' she mustered a trembling smile, but it faded almost instantly, her eyes resting on something below his waist. 'But you're not.'
The Doctor glance down and realized the reason for the burning sensation.
An arrow had punctured his thigh just above the knee joint.
There's a joke in here somewhere, I know it, he thought grimly.
'Not a problem,' he assured her. 'Once we remove the arrow, it'll be healed up in a day or two. Not even that once we get back to the TARDIS. Tissue regenerator'll fix that in minutes.'
'We?' Rose echoed, eyes flitting nervously to the bolt of wood protruding from the Doctor's leg.
They had both seen worse in the last month alone, but Rose was not a natural when it came to dealing with injuries and trauma. She'd acquitted herself well in the past when there was no alternative, but she was still ill-at-ease when confronted by such a situation.
That would change the longer she was with him, he knew, considering his adventures weren't always bloodless. A part of him was sad about that, knowing that this life would change her into someone she had never expected to be.
'Well, me and whoever's gonna get this out,' he nodded down at the arrow. 'Hasn't gone all the way through, or it'd just be a matter of breaking the head off and removing the shaft.' At her expression, he added, 'Don't worry, I'm not asking you.'
'But if you need me to –'
He shook his head. 'Need someone with a strong grip, either to do the deed or hold my leg in place.'
'But –'
'I can do that,' a sullen-faced man with black hair and ragged leather armour offered, sauntering away from the rest of the ragtag sentries. 'It was my arrow that hit you, so it's the least I can offer in recompense.'
'Don't worry about it – trust me when I say I've had worse,' the Doctor smirked painfully. 'Who're you then?'
'Henrik,' the man said, with no hint of welcome in his voice.
'Really? That's good – seem to have good luck when it comes to Henriks,' the Doctor said brightly, winking at Rose who offered him a wan smile in reply.
The man settled himself by the Doctor's knee and examined the wound, while Rose crept out of the way to hover anxiously at the Doctor's other side. 'You're lucky – or not, depending on how you see it. It's not very deep.'
'Meaning it's better to dig out than push through,' the Doctor sighed, feeling Rose wince rather than seeing it.
'Mm-hm,' Henrik nodded, already pulling a knife and an earthen-looking injury kit out of his satchel. A moment later, he also drew out a small hip flask, which he held out to the Doctor. 'For the pain.'
'Wouldn't do me any good,' the Doctor told him. 'Just go ahead and get to it. Rose, might not want to look.'
'I'm fine.'
'Rose –'
'I've seen worse,' Rose said firmly, though she was pale and her hand snaked out to grab hold of his.
He offered her a quick squeeze, though whether that was in acknowledgement or reassurance or thanks, he wasn't sure because he was distracted by the sudden sharp jab of pain as Henrik cut the wooden shaft down as much as he dared.
'If you two were smart, you'd turn around and go back wherever you came from,' he said quietly, after a moment, his knife's blade now digging into the fleshy part of the Doctor's vastus lateralis. 'Take your chances with the Dalish instead of placing your bets on this place saving you. There's too many refugees as it is and not enough ships to carry us away. We're all sitting ducks, waiting for the darkspawn to pick us off.'
The Doctor winced as Henrik began to slice the skin around the arrowhead, and forced out a question, 'You lot shouldn't get many in these parts? If memory – ' He couldn't help a surprised Gallifreyan curse escaping as the knife edge a bit too close to his kneecap, ' – ah, if memory serves, we're in Gwaren. Only port on the outskirts of the Brecelian Forest I know of, anyhow, and its remote enough you shouldn't have to worry.'
'Of course you're in Gwaren,' Henrik shot him a funny look, taking a pause from butchering the Doctor's leg for a moment to press a blood-stained rag against the wound. 'And being remote helps no one during a Blight.'
The Doctor inhaled sharply, both at the revelation and because the man had abruptly twisted the arrowhead out of the wound. He then brought some greenish herbs and roots out of his injury kit and began to crush them into the Doctor's wound, stemming the blood flow.
Rose opened her mouth, but he cut her off before she could ask the question, giving her a quick shake of the head to indicate he would explain later. 'There's Blight here? The bear wasn't an isolated incident?'
Everyone on Thedas knew what a Blight was, and he wasn't keen on people who were already suspicious of strangers becoming more so. Not until he was far enough away from them that it couldn't affect Rose or himself. The safest bet was to simply pretend ignorance.
Still, Henrik narrowed his eyes. 'You been living under a rock the past few months?'
And there's the distrust, the Doctor mentally sighed. Out loud, he replied, 'We've been travelling a lot. And we haven't run into many people to give us news like that. It's really a Blight? Not just a large raid?'
Henrik snorted. 'That's what everyone thought, 'til Ostagar.'
'Ostagar?' the Doctor repeated, dread coalescing in his stomachs. If they truly had landed in a Blight, one during which Ostagar was a major battle, thing might just be worse than he had thought.
'Mm-hm,' Henrik answered, finishing his bandaging of the Doctor's leg. 'The damned Grey Wardens talked the King into facing the horde there – they likely told him some pretty lies about honor and glory and how the darkspawn force wasn't really that large. An easy battle, they were expecting. And in a single night the horde massacred 'em.'
The Doctor held his tongue, not wanting to correct the story. He knew what had actually happened in this timeline, but trying to explain that might end with a sword aimed at his throat while he tried to defend his views. Not a good idea in the best of times, let alone with a companion by his side and an injury to be healed.
'If our Teryn hadn't pulled his troops out at the last second, we wouldn't have anyone to defend us if the bloody Orlesians decide to invade again,' Henrik went on, putting his supplies away and standing up.
'I've got to help get rid of the rest of that carcass, and then it's back to sentry duty,' he told them morosely. 'Trust me, stranger – unless you know someone in the port who can get you out of this Maker-forsaken shithole, you'll take your wife and head back in the direction you came. If you're lucky, the horde won't have made it far enough east to block the road to Denerim.'
It was a mark of how uneasy Rose was with the situation that she didn't make a joke about them once again being mistaken for a married couple. Instead, as soon as Henrik had moved out of hearing distance, she whispered, 'What's going on? What's all this "blight" stuff mean, anyway?'
'It means we have to get back to the TARDIS and away from this place,' he replied, getting heavily to his feet and wincing as he was forced to put weight on his injured leg. 'As soon as possible.'
· ΘΣ ·
Tabris felt frozen, poised before the expectant and proud faces of the guardsmen as their directive hung in the air. The elven boy they still had a hold of, buckling under the meaty hand of the man who held him in place, was watching Tabris with an expression of horror and resignation.
It would be a simple thing, to move forward and liberate one of their swords. They wouldn't expect an elf to be capable of wielding one, and even if they did he knew he was fast. It would be the work of a minute or so to disarm them and wipe those arrogant smirks from their faces.
If they had been common cutpurses, he wouldn't even be hesitating.
But they were guards and, unless he was to kill them, they and their comrades would be after him before he could set foot outside the town. Antagonizing the law would be like signing his own death warrant. A human might be given a chance to explain his side of the story, to produce witnesses, but he was a foreign elf lurking outside an Alienage without even a job now.
His knowledge of what the fastest resolution to the situation warred with the pride he had literally had beaten into him.
If the Wardens could see me now, he thought bitterly. Just as well they're all dead…
Then again, he had spent enough time with the departed order to know that they didn't care about pride or honour so much as achieving their ends. They admitted criminals and traitors and apostates to their ranks without a care to social convention or law, all in the name of the greater good. Had he not witnessed with his own eyes how a Warden recruit had shown sympathy to a man who had been arrested for desertion?
Tabris' eyes flickered once more to the boy, who obviously expected him to refuse the guards' directive. The expression was one which Tabris had worn himself, long ago; in that situation, he had been abandoned to his fate for the sake of "elven pride" and subjected to abuses and indignities that sometimes woke him at night. His humiliation was a fair trade for a boy's innocence.
And so with a stiff back and burning cheeks, Tabris forced himself back to his knees and pressed his mouth to the guard's dirty boots.
Maker help you if you order me to do anything else, he silently vowed as he got back to his feet and began to put his shirts back on.
Perhaps his prayer was heard, because the guards simply guffawed at him and cuffed the boy roughly across the head.
'Get out of here, whelp!' the foremost ordered, and the kid had the sense to take off as fast as his legs could carry him. 'And watch where you're going next time! It's not every day that one of you disloyal gutter rats actually stands up for another.' He narrowed his eyes at Tabris. 'And it's not every day that'll work, stranger.'
'Ser,' Tabris acknowledged through gritted teeth.
'Get out of my town, knife-ear,' the guard ordered. 'Or next time I'll think of something more imaginative than kissing my footwear.'
'On my way out,' Tabris vowed.
The guard gave him one more sharp look of dislike, and then motioned for his fellows to leave with him.
Tabris was left standing for a long moment, fists clenched. Once their footsteps faded from his hearing, he finally relaxed.
At least no one else saw that –
'I can't believe what you just did!'
He whirled around, eyes flicking to the edge of the alley where a dark-haired young woman was staring at him, mouth agape and a basket tipped over at her feet, as though she had dropped it in shock.
Tabris shrugged in faked modest nonchalance. 'It was nothing –'
'Oh, it was something,' she argued crossly, and he noticed that her accent was noticeably Orlesian in its cadence. 'It was you debasing our kind in the most disgusting of ways!'
'Sorry, what?' He stared at her, caught up short. 'Did you miss the fact that I just saved someone?'
'By bending your neck like a coward?' she sneered. 'I wouldn't call that "saving".'
'Clearly you don't know what they were going to make him do, then,' he retorted, narrowing his eyes. 'Trust me, that little indignity on my part saved him a good deal of hurt. Possibly his innocence, too.'
She seemed caught off-guard by this, but swallowed and renewed her glaring efforts.
'You've done nothing but teach a young boy that the best way for an elf to live is to bow to the shems' every whim! To just give in!'
'If he wants to survive, he needs to know how to pick his battles,' Darrian replied stubbornly.
'Did your masters teach you that, in the big city?' she scorned, and when he looked surprised, she added, 'I can smell it all over you. You stink of subservience, like all you flat-ears.'
He felt the blood drain from his face and he took a step forward.
'Don't pretend you're better than me, as if you don't live in an Alienage as well,' he snapped. 'At least I'm not a traitor to my country, Orlesian.'
She recoiled as if he had slapped her.
'The city taught me many lessons,' he went on, 'but subservience wasn't one of them, I guarantee you that. I learned very early to pick my battles.'
'Turn tail, is more like,' she disdained.
'You want walk away now,' he told her quietly.
She seemed to consider challenging that, but maybe some of the fury in his eyes warned her not to test him on this. And so, instead, she hefted her basket and stalked toward the mouth of the alley.
'You're a shame upon your ancestors,' she threw back at him, carefully not looking back at him before she disappeared.
Once the aggravating young woman was gone, however, Darrian felt some of the fight leave him.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe he should have fought, hang the consequences to himself. His sister would have fought – likely she would call him a traitor to their race as well, if she had been there to witness that.
What good was it to hold himself to the standards of an order that had been branded traitors to the crown?
He exhaled in frustration, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Now wasn't the time to question himself. If anything had compromised his morals lately, it was remaining in this Makerforsaken town. The sooner he got out of it, the better.
Resolving not to get involved in anyone else's business until Gwaren was far behind him, Tabris once more headed for the city's exit. He wasn't keen on attempting to brave the Brecelian Forest again – he'd been delirious and half-dead the last time he'd come through that way, though, so he should have a fighting chance.
And unlike the humans who ventured there, he was less likely to be killed on sight by one of the Dalish.
He rounded an alleyway that would provide a shortcut to the town centre, and froze when he found his way blocked by two or three rough and dirty looking men. A quick scan of their scabbards showed him they were armed, and judging from the assorted scars and tattoos adorning their hands and faces, he had either stumbled into a shakedown operation or a meeting of the Blackstone Irregulars.
And from the way they were sizing him up, eyes gleaming like they had just found an easy mark, he realized it probably wasn't the second option.
'Today is really, really not my day, is it?' he complained. 'What are the odds that you boys are a benevolent mercenary group looking to hire?'
'Pretty low, Knife-Ear,' the leader of the motley crew leered, showing off one gold tooth in the midst of several blackened and broken ones. He heard the approach of two other bodies behind him, other lackeys that were prepared to take him down if Tabris tried to back out of the alley.
'Sorry, lads – got to say, I'm used to a better class of villain,' he said lightly, raising his hands in what would appear to be conciliation. 'And you've got nothing on the darkspawn. Except possibly the smell.'
The bandit leader chuckled darkly at that, and then stalked over and backhanded Tabris across the face. The blow sent him buckling to his knees.
'You've got a mouth on you – that's good. We'll get some use out of that before we slit your throat,' he leered, and Tabris felt him looming over him. 'Now empty your pockets unless you want your death to take a lot longer than it needs to.'
'I would,' Tabris told them seriously, 'except you made one wrong decision here – well, two.'
'Oh yeah?' the leader chortled, clearly thinking this was just a bit of bluster from a corpse-to-be.
'Yes – see, first of all – ' In a quick movement, Tabris struck out with one hand, knocking the knife and the hand that held it away from his face. With his other hand, he slid the man's sword from its scabbard and sliced upward, ' – you left your weapon within easy reach.'
The man gurgled through a ruined throat and fell backwards. His two cronies swore in shock and pulled out their own weapons to attack.
The embarrassment and anger of all the events of Tabris' day had culminated in this moment, and he finally had an outlet to deal with them.
'Second of all,' he continued darkly, bracing himself to meet his opponents head-on, 'you didn't choose a spot with witnesses.'
· ΘΣ ·
'Explain,' Rose commanded.
She had put up with the Doctor's evasiveness before when there seemed to be a reason for it, but now that they were more or less out of earshot, she wasn't going to let him keep her in the dark. He was worried, and that usually came down to him blowing something massively out of proportion or some universe-ending danger that only he could stop.
In either case, she needed the whole story before she could decide the proper reaction.
'I thought I'd landed us on Thedas before any of the Blights,' he answered, apologetic and not really answering.
'And a Blight is…?' she prompted, not letting him get away with that.
'In this land, it's a period of time during which darkspawn –'
'Dark what?'
'Darkspawn. Sort of like a cross between a zombie and an orc from your fantasy films – only they're a lot faster and a lot less civilized,' the Doctor clarified. 'They live underground and usually pop up every few decades to raid the surface. But during a Blight, their numbers are so high that they can devastate entire countries with the disease they bring.'
'And that's what happened to that bear, then?' Rose asked, glancing over to where the corpse as being lit with torches. 'It got infected by these dark things?'
'Yes.'
'And they were worried we had gotten that infection.'
'Exactly.'
'And all that bit about their king and stuff? What's all that about?' Rose hadn't missed the way the Doctor's expression had turned dark when Henrik had spoken of recent events, which meant he knew something about this time period that he didn't like.
'It's about us being in a time period I'd rather not be in,' he grumbled, trying to stand up. She hurried to help him to his feet, draping his arm around her shoulder and trying to take as much of his weight as she could. 'At this point in history it's been about a year since the first signs of Blight. It started in the southern reaches of the continent and the mountains, so no one really noticed at first. Not very populated. But a small force of Grey Wardens –'
'And who are they, then?' she interjected, knowing he would simply go on if she didn't stop him.
'They're a group of warriors that exist only to destroy darkspawn and protect the world from the threat of Blights,' the Doctor told her. 'When this one started, they approached the King of Ferelden in an attempt to get a jump on it. Stop it before it could start.'
'But that didn't happen?'
'No,' the Doctor said darkly. 'The darkspawn force that they encountered at Ostagar was larger than expected. Only a handful of people survived that.'
'What happened?'
He snorted. 'A good deal of underestimating the enemy, as Henrik said, but the rest of it was…well, let's just say human pettiness played its part.' At her confused look, he shook his head. 'Best not go into details where the wrong sort of people can hear. In fact –' He straightened up again, looking back up the hill they had run down and into the forest, ' – let's wait until we get back to the TARDIS for the end of that story.'
Rose followed his gaze, and despite the tiny spark of fear that had taken residence in her gut from their near mauling and the Doctor's uneasiness, she wasn't keen on returning to the foreboding forest just yet.
'And how exactly do you plan to do that?' Rose demanded. 'You're hurt.'
'Hurt, not crippled. If we leave now –'
'What if there are more infected animals out there in the woods?' she asked. 'You might not be so fast this time, and that's what saved us before.' She was under no illusions there. If the Doctor hadn't set such a punishing pace, she'd have her insides decorating the forest floor right now. 'We should at least stay here until your knee's healed up.'
'Which it will be in a few hours,' he argued. 'By then it'll be dark, and trust me, going through that forest at night is the last thing you want to do.'
'Then we stay the night and go in the morning,' Rose said reasonably.
The Doctor opened his mouth, brows drawn into a frown and obviously wanting to argue, but Rose cut him off. 'Doctor, I get it. This place puts you off. But we don't exactly have a lot of choice right now.'
His shoulders sagged the slightest bit, like he knew she was right, but the tension didn't go away.
'Accommodations aren't likely to be up to your usual standards,' he pointed out, like it was the last vestiges of an argument.
'Please, anything's got to be better than a Persian army barracks,' she said, trying to sound as if she was merely brushing off a mildly concerning issues.
He still looked like he was trying to come up with an argument against this idea, but was interrupted when the dwarf from earlier stalked toward them.
'She say you're a healer?' he demanded without preamble.
The Doctor hesitated for the barest hint of a second, before pasting his usual disarming grin on his face. 'Sort of, yeah.'
'Because we need one and the nughumpers in town are being damn thrifty with the ones they've got,' the dwarf went on. 'And they're not even the useful kind, if you know what I mean – the Teryn took the only mages the Chantry ever let out when he went to Ostagar.'
Mages? Like, wizards? Rose thought, eyes wide. She knew the Doctor had talked about magic before, but the idea of being in a place where magic actually existed was mindboggling.
'Been known to bandage a few hurts in my day,' the Doctor allowed, a bit guardedly.
'Then you're of use,' the man said bluntly. 'We can't take any more refugees with no talent, but a case could be made for a healer to stay here.' He eyed Rose. 'And your woman, I s'ppose.'
It was on her tongue to deny it, but she stopped herself. Considering the little white lie might be the difference between being allowed into the tent city and left to find somewhere to kip outside of it, she figured that was the wisest choice. At the Doctor's wry look, she knew he was thinking the same thing.
Better than prostitute, Rose thought, rolling her eyes at him pointedly.
If he had anything to add to that, it was lost when one of the refugee camp sentries approached him – Rose was surprised to see that this one was a large boned woman with a crossbow strapped to her back.
'You can't just let any outsider in who wants to set up shop, Vetek,' she declared. 'Especially not without talking it over with the rest of us.'
The bearded man snorted and shot her a look that was amused yet cold. 'And who d'you think you are to say who's allowed in my city and who ain't?'
'It isn't your city, it's the Teryn's, and we don't even know if he's a healer – he could just be lying!'
'My ancestors were here when yours were still chucking spears at each other in their smallclothes,' the dwarf replied calmly. 'Meaning I've got more say than you do. And I say they stay.'
The woman shot him a hard look, then pursed her lips. 'Fine. But if they bring pestilence into this place, let it be on your head.'
She hefted her crossbow and stalked off.
Vetek grinned at her back and turned back to the Doctor and Rose. 'Don't mind her. She's always like that, to everyone.' His expression became hard again. 'But mark me, healer, just 'cause I got you in, don't think it's a boon. You want to stay, you make yourself useful. Otherwise, go back to wherever you came from. We've got enough problems here to last a lifetime – even if ours isn't going to be a very long one.'
'We don't aim to be here very long,' the Doctor said calmly, meeting the dwarf's gaze. 'This whole business was just a very, very wrong turn.'
'Heh – you're not the first to have said that to me,' the dwarf said, and spit again. He turned away from them and motioned for them to follow. 'Well, come on. There're camp beds set up closer to the city for the sick and wounded, bet you can find some space for yourselves there too. Just don't expect much privacy, it's hard to come by even in the best of times.'
The Doctor and Rose exchanged looks. Rose could tell he was still not happy with the way things had turned out, but at the moment there was very little they could do.
'S'just a night,' she told him, placating.
He made a noncommittal noise, and allowed her to help him limp into the refugee camp. He either wasn't convinced, or there was something else bothering him beyond the business with the Blight and the darkspawn.
She just wished he would tell her what it was.
· ΘΣ ·
Fifteen minutes after she left the dark-skinned stranger in the back alley, Lilian still couldn't fight down the frustrated anger. Her stomach churned at the act she had witnessed – the shameful display – and then the terse interaction after it.
There had been something in the stranger – Tabris was his name, wasn't it? – as he argued with her, something that had disturbed her more than his insults about her background. She was at least used to the latter.
People in Gwaren were used to her and no longer commented on it, and those who did were swiftly reminded of how her parents had been some of Teryn Loghain's most trusted allies. Her father had been one of the dreaded Night Elves that helped to win the uprising against the Orlesian invaders thirty years before. Her mother had been an Orlesian servant who turned on her previous master for a chance at a better life and in doing so saved Loghain's life.
All Lilian's life, people commented on hers and Erlina's way of speaking, and when they were younger they had both tried to rid themselves of any traces of their accent. Upon their mothers' death from the sweating sickness, the hated reminder Orlais became the only link that remained of their family. It was the only thing that put a smile on their father's face in the years before he drank himself to death.
Otherwise, his eyes were wells of pain and the hint of something else. A sword that had once been sharp and was simply waiting for the next battle.
Tabris had had the same look in his eyes. Like he had seen things she couldn't comprehend.
For a moment, she felt doubt.
What if he had been right? He had intimated a worse fate for the boy he had helped, and she heard horror stories of the behaviour that occurred in the Alienages of Denerim and Highever. Gwaren's was so small, and the Teryn had always ensured fair treatment of his elven citizens – and harsh punishments for anyone who didn't abide by that.
But in recent months, his influence was too far away to be effective and his regent utterly uncaring to the plights of the elves. What if conditions were becoming as bad as what the city elf was used to?
No. That won't happen here, she told herself. Gwaren's citizens would put a stop to it. It's only because of the war that things are so uneasy right now. Once people find their footing again, things will go back to the way they were.
She steadfastly ignored the doubting voice at the back of her mind, deciding that as she was still so upset about the day's events that she would try to find the boy Tabris had helped. She would track him down and offer him a place to stay if he didn't have one, and show him the proper way that their kind should behave in the face of shem idiocy.
That decided, Lilian headed for the edge of the city. There was no wall around Gwaren – never had been – but since the refugees had begun to arrive, an ineffectual barrier made up of carts and crates had been built up in a way that clearly delineated the town proper and the tent city.
'Greetings, Lilian,' one of the town guards declared when he saw her approach. 'Come to bring more hope to the hopeless?'
'I have no choice when no one else will, Tom,' she said heavily.
Tom was one of the few – in fact, the only – soldier guarding Gwaren that she actually trusted. He had been the only one to actually volunteer to keep the peace between townsfolk and refugees several months ago. The rest of his contingent did so with a great deal of reluctance and annoyance, as evidenced by the judgemental leer his comrade shot her way.
'Keep it short today,' he advised her. 'There's sickness among the refugees, and the regent's considering a quarantine. If the order comes while you're still out there, you won't get back inside.'
Lilian's stomach jumped unpleasantly. 'But how are they supposed to get help if no one's allowed in or out?'
'Does it matter?' Tom's fellow guard demanded. 'They're all dead anyhow. Least if there's a quarantine we can get back to our actual jobs.'
She shot him a hateful glance, and hefted her basket.
It was hard not to feel hopeless in the wake of such indifference. Her town had once been a fiercely proud, beautiful town to live in and it was becoming a cesspool of rot and despair. And it would only get worse the longer no one bothered to help.
The affluent members of Gwaren's townsfolk were so worried for themselves, they didn't think it was their look out to care about the poor souls that had fled here in the hopes of salvation.
Well, I'm here now, she decided. And I'll be here as long as I can.
She set to work seeking out those who obviously needed the help, seeking out first the elven families with children and then those who had drifted in on their own. If she was lucky there would be some warm clothing left over that she could leave with the human and dwarven refugees, but they weren't her priority. The Chantry cared for them, and she refused to feel guilty for prioritizing her own kind over others.
Maker knows the shem do that all the time, she thought angrily.
At the end of her rounds, she had found her way to the large tent where the refugees had set up a makeshift ward. Men, women and children lay upon crude cots, coughing from sickness in their lungs and fevers brought on by both the cold and lack of cleanliness. Several beds away, two new refugees were being led inside by Vetek, one of the dwarves that had volunteered. Unlike the humans, the Gwaren dwarves were a lot less choosy about who they protected.
Lilian considered the newcomers warily. A blond human woman about her age dressed in strange, colourful garb and an older human male, dressed completely in black.
Maybe she's a freeholder's daughter and he's her guard, Lilian thought, and scowled at the thought. If there were any more nobility around, they would demand their needs be met before everyone else's. Nobles were selfish like that.
By the fifth bed, she had no more clothing left to give out, and so set about trying to help the bedridden refugees as best she could. She was no healer, though, and could do very little but try to move people into more comfortable positions and fetch water to cool fevered foreheads.
As she was doing this for pockmarked older man she had never seen before while his wife knelt worriedly by his side, Vetek called her name. 'Lilian! Come over here, I want to introduce you to some new people.'
She set her jaw, wondering if he was about to ask her to wait on the newcomers, and forced a smile in his direction.
'Give me a moment, Vetek, I'm just finishing up here and then –'
She found her hands shoved away and looked down, the ill man she had been tending to staring at her in something like horror and revulsion.
'Get away from me, filth!' the man cried, pulling away from her.
'Ser, calm down,' she told him evenly, reaching for him again. 'It's just the fever, it's making you delirious. I'm just trying to –'
'Ain't no fever, you Orlesian wench!'
A lump formed in her throat and she fought back her instinctive response to that.
'Really, ser, I'm just trying to help –'
'Right off a cliff I'll expect! I knows what Orlesians are like,' the man snarled. 'I fought in them battles, and I'll die before I'm treated by an Orlesian Knife-Eared whore!'
She didn't even have a chance to get angry as he flailed and shoved her backward, watery eyes fixed on her with no little amount of hatred.
The other patients were waking now, looking to see what had caused the disturbance, and outside of the healer's tent people were trying to look inside.
'Your kind's the reason the King's dead!' his wife cried. 'The Teryn said so himself, didn't he? The Grey Wardens was working with the Orlesians in order to kill the king!'
'Somebody get this bit of filth out of here!' the man continued wildly. 'She'll set fire to this place while we sleep, lead the darkspawn to us in the night!
Her jaw dropped, too flabbergasted to even consider defending herself.
It was utter hysterical twaddle, but his fervour was upsetting the others in the vicinity. Even people she had been looking after for several weeks now were becoming agitated, while others refused to meet her eye. She knew how desperate people were to find someone to blame for their problems, why not her?
The sick man advanced on her, taking a wobbling step forward like he was about to kick her.
