Chapter 2
"Do you think it's morning yet?" he asked. The pease porridge was a distant memory, as was the awkwardness of relieving himself in the far corner of his cell while he knew his mystery soldier could hear. The sounds in the courtyard had died down, too, and he fought to remember to stay alert, to stay anxious. The rain had stopped.
The floor was becoming rather comfortable.
"Probably. The door seems to have a bit more light coming in around it," the woman said.
"Care to wager on if we'll get fed?" he asked, and she snorted.
"Wager with a thief? No, thank you." Still, she laughed, even if it was a very tired sound and ended in a yawn.
He was rubbing at his ankles again, idly, and they seemed to be nearly mended. It was a decent distraction from the unnerving quiet. Do you think we'll ever eat againcould have been his next question, but he kept it to himself.
He was sure that they'd worry about it eventually.
"Do you think you'll sleep?" he asked.
"Not much else to do except worry," she said. "And I've had enough of that for a while. I just don't have the energy for panic like I used to."
"It's all the pease porridge," he said, lightly, though something in him twinged at her words. What had she been like before? Now she had a dry wit and an honesty that kept him fascinated, even when she called his skull thick. When she had been free, when she had been well-fed - had she been the same? More? Less?
"Probably the pease porridge," she agreed. "Though I'll admit, the excitement was almost nice. At least it was different."
"And the company?" She was a voice in the dark. He shouldn't mind one way or another if she liked him. He groped for his boots in the dark. Finding them, he tugged the first on experimentally. His ankle fit. It was a start. And it was a distraction.
"A very pleasant change," she said.
"Thank you," he said. "I can't say I found any of this very pleasant, since I was free just a few days ago- but-" He stumbled for words, doing the laces on his boots out of habit. He'd meant to take them off. At last he said, "But I have enjoyed our conversations."
"Are you planning on dying?" she asked, and his fingers stilled.
Nathaniel stilled. "Not particularly."
"Then are you planning on leaving?"
He looked over to the sound of her voice, frowning. "No," he said. "They took my lockpicks. Why are you-"
"Because you sound like a man preparing to leave, in some fashion or another. All questions that lead to ends."
"Do I? Are they?" He hadn't intended it. And yet a part of him knew that if the darkspawn had won the day, even if they were never found, the two of them would likely die of thirst or hunger. Perhaps the thought of her sleeping had made him uneasy. Perhaps the idea that she might never wake up-
There was a rattle of wood against stone, and he turned sharply towards the door.
He had to close his eyes against the sudden wash of daylight, and he could barely hear over his pulse hammering through him. There was only the rough step of footsteps on stone.
"Ugh, fucking lucky," somebody said, and it wasn't a darkspawn.
He opened his eyes, squinting against the glare, to see two guardsmen staring down at the burnt 'spawn on the floor. They looked alive enough, and real enough, and the one he assumed hadn't spoken yet grimaced.
"Of course these two get out without a scratch," he muttered.
Nathaniel took a deep breath and remained sitting. He said nothing. A part of him wanted to demand breakfast, but that part was deep below the self-preservation that said don't antagonize the angry guards.
He'd learned a little bit, after all, and had his ankles and the various bruises and scrapes across his body to remind him of it.
"Oy, woman! You alive?" the first guard said with a kick to the bars across the way, and Nathaniel stilled.
"Yes," the woman said, and at the sound of her voice he fought the sudden urge to look to her.
He had known her now for something like three days as just a voice, just words, and it felt strange and invasive to see her face. And yet he wanted to, needed to. He needed a face to put the voice to. He needed a face so that the next time they were left in darkness, he would be able to imagine her truly.
Nathaniel turned his head.
She had pushed herself up to sitting. There was straw in her hair (dark hair, like he'd glimpsed) and dark circles around her eyes. Her cheeks were hollow and her shoulders bowed, but beyond that she sat straight. She had a wide mouth and thin lips, high cheekbones and a long neck. She was looking up at the guard placidly, and she looked even more familiar than she sounded.
And yet he couldn't place who she was.
"What happened?" she asked as the guard stooped to pick up her empty porridge bowl and cup. "We heard the siege."
"Siege," the man said with a snort. "More like slaughter. The only reason anybody's alive at all is because the bloody Hero of Ferelden showed up. Late, of course."
Nathaniel bit back a curse. Now the Hero was here. Here, and with Nathaniel pinned behind bars. He'd meant to kill her, once. He doubted she would take kindly to that.
"She's here?" the woman asked, and the guard nodded, before turning from her cell to Nathaniel's, stooping to pick up his dishes.
"And she'll want to see this one, I imagine."
"I'm sure," Nathaniel said through clenched teeth.
"Best behavior, yeah? She took down thirty, forty darkspawn, all on her own, before she even found the bleeding apostate."
"Apostate?" the woman said.
"An apostate and a drunk dwarf, from what I've heard. And the King of Ferelden, come knocking in the rain. They could have all gotten here a little earlier."
"Come on," the other guard said. He was over at one of the walls, trying to light an old torch in the sconce with flint and steel. It wasn't working particularly well. "Don't talk to 'em. You get those dishes back and I'll drag ser crispy out of here."
"Right," the guard said. His farewell was a thin and unpleasant smile, and then he was gone. He at least left the door open behind him.
Nathaniel looked over to the woman again, and she gazed back. There was something about her - something very proud, confident, but not arrogant. She was calm. She was also older than he had expected, if he had expected anything at all. There were permanent creases in her brow and lines at the corners of her eyes and lips.
It was strange, seeing her. And stranger still, being seen by her.
The torch finally flared to life and the guard left the sconce to take the darkspawn by the feet, dragging him without words aside from bitter swears. He kicked the door shut behind him once he was out of the prison, leaving them once more alone with just each other.
Nathaniel canted his head.
"You don't look like a murderer," he said at last, when she made no move to speak or look away.
She snorted, and he saw for the first time how it quirked her lips, how she ducked her head slightly. "And you," she said, "didn't sound like a Howe."
He flushed and rubbed at his nose, as if to cover it. "And should I take that as acompliment?"
"If you like. Or an insult. It's meant as neither." She dragged a hand through her hair - long, well past her shoulders, and he wondered if that was because of half a year of imprisonment or because she liked it long. She leaned back against the wall behind her, legs bent at the knee and spread in ease. She leaned her elbows on her thighs and watched him. "Nathaniel, yes?"
He let his hand drop. "Yes."
"Haven't seen you since the Landsmeet before your father shipped you off."
Nathaniel bristled at the memory, and at the implication that they knew one another. That maddening familiarity was growing worse, and he shifted. "I would guess that not many people here have, given that my father wouldn't let me return home for so much as a Summerday celebration for eight years."
"True," the woman said. She shrugged.
"And who are you, anyway, that you would have seen me?" he pressed. "Palace guard?"
Her expression darkened and she at last looked away from him. "I told you, I prefer the anonymity."
"Well, mine has been stripped from me," he snapped. And then he sighed. "… Sorry."
She waved a hand. "Forgiven," she said. "I can only imagine that recognition isn't something you want these days. I'm sure I'd feel the same way if I was in any place that people could recognize me."
He frowned, squinting at her. "You're being unbelievably cryptic."
"I suppose I am," she said, shaking her head with an empty laugh. "Maker. I suppose it doesn't matter one bit, does it? I-"
There was a sharp knock on the door, and then it opened, one guard with tightly curling ginger hair leading the way before a dwarven woman with dusky skin and a wicked scar down the right side of her face, bisecting the dark brand on her cheek. Her hair curled at the level of her ears, and she looked downright grim as she stepped past the guard and came to stand in front of his cell.
Nathaniel didn't bother standing. He only looked with a disdainful twitch of upper lip at his father's murderer.
At least she looked the part.
Any good humor he had once had, courtesy of his waning companion, fell away. The anger was back, all of it that had come when he had heard his father's fate. And it all centered on her, small and heavily armored and looking at him like he was no more than a bug beneath her heel.
"I hear you broke into the keep," the dwarf said; her voice was rich and velvety, at odds with her harsh appearance. "I don't usually take kindly to people trying to steal my things, but given you didn't actually manage any of it, I'll listen. Talk."
He scowled at her.
She scowled back, and a part of him quailed at it. "Start with your name," she said.
He swallowed. "Nathaniel Howe. And I came because you murdered my father."
The dwarf huffed in surprise. "So you're here for revenge?" She crossed her arms over her stout chest. "Is that it?"
"I-" He glanced past her to his companion, who was tense and watching him. She mouthed tell her, and Nathaniel looked back to the Warden. "Originally, yes." His jaw tightened and he lifted his chin in defiance, then pushed himself up to standing, ignoring the dull ache in his ankles. She looked up at him, unimpressed.
"You know, I don't take kindly to people who try to kill me, either," she said, voice flat. "You should find yourself lucky that you never got within range of me with a weapon."
He said nothing.
"But you ended up a burglar instead? How does that happen?"
"You know, I thought you'd be more impressive," he snapped. "The Hero of Ferelden. And you're, what, four feet tall?"
He caught a glimpse of his companion over the Warden's shoulder. Her expression said, quite clearly, don't.
The Warden smirked, but it was without mirth. "And I thought a would-be assassin would have more conviction. But I suppose, given your father, I shouldn't have expected too much. His allegiances did tend to change with who had the coin."
Nathaniel's teeth ground together and he crossed his arms, looking away.
"… I came to kill you, it's true. Vengeance, yes." His gaze dropped to the floor. "But then, when I was here, I saw my mother's necklace." He swallowed. In a better time, in a more sensible time, he wouldn't have even considered touching it. And now it had him here. "So I decided to take my family's things, and go. But your men found me, first. So not only am I a pariah along with my remaining family, I'm at your mercy now." A muscle in his neck jumped and twitched. "Get on with it."
"Get on with it?" she asked, and he could have snapped her neck for all the light humor in it, as if it didn't matter.
"You're going to execute me, aren't you? For daring to tell you straight to your face that you're a murderer?"
"Many people have called me murderer, myself among them," the dwarf said, stepping closer. "It's not exactly a death sentence. But I killed the last man who came to kill me. He was on your father's coin. Tell me, how are you different?"
Nathaniel looked to her. "I- what?"
"How are you different? What happens if I let you walk out that door?"
"I- don't know." He flushed.
"Would you come back to kill me?"
"Maybe." He could imagine the other woman's wince at the words, but he pushed on. "And you might not catch me next time."
"Four Wardens to take you down…" the Hero mused.
"I spent the last eight years in training." He straightened his shoulders. "I might have been a knight now, if not for you."
She snorted. "You're not making the best case for yourself. Do you want to die, Howe?"
Maybe he did. He honestly wasn't sure.
"I could lie, if you prefer."
She stepped closer still, one short-fingered hand curling around the bars of his cage. "If I let you go, I don't want to see you again. You're a misguided, angry fool, Howe, and I've never had much love for nobility. But I do know a thing or two about family. You get one chance to disappear and live. I'll even make sure you have your mother's necklace. And in exchange, I never see your face again."
He stared down at her. He didn't want the blighted necklace, but she was offering him a chance at freedom? It was more than he expected, or maybe deserved. He could take it and run. But the last three days hung heavy in his mind, along with his companion's resigned bitterness.
"And what about her?" he asked, jerking his chin in her direction. "Your men have had her here for three months. Does she get the same opportunity?"
"Who?" the Warden asked, looking over her shoulder. "Ser Cauthrien? She made her choice when she dragged me bleeding from your father's house. No, she stays."
Ser Cauthrien.
He watched as the knight gazed placidly back at the dwarf, then nodded slowly in acceptance. "I understand, Warden."
"Though perhaps she should be fed more often," the Warden conceded. With a shrug, she turned to the guard that had accompanied her. "Send for the seneschal, if you would? And are the prisoner's effects in this chest here?" She kicked it with the metal-clad toe of her boot.
"They are. I'll return shortly, ser," the guard said, and then turned for the door.
The Warden brushed at her armor, then went to sit on top of the chest. "Your mother's necklace should be in here," she said, looking at Nathaniel once more. "That and your things will have to be enough."
"I'll just come back, you know," he said.
"I would advise against it," Cauthrien said.
"She's a smart woman," the Warden said. "Listen to her."
Nathaniel frowned, but looked over to where Cauthrien was still sitting. She looked back at him with her head canted slightly. Ser Cauthrien. He remembered her, vaguely, but he remembered far more stories about her than fact. The Orlesians in particular seemed to have a fondness for tall tales about Loghain's right hand.
They'd made her far lovelier than the battle-hardened woman across from him.
His mind raced. She had been in Denerim with his father, hadn't she? She had at least been with Loghain, as had Rendon. And the Warden had said- dragged her bleeding from his father's house.
Cauthrien had been there?
The Warden's voice interrupted him. "How much," she asked, "do you actually know about your father?"
"Enough," he said.
"If you say so," she said with a low laugh, then stood and opened the chest lid, pulling out his things. They were neatly wrapped into a bundle, at least.
There was a knock on the door, and then a man who could only be the seneschal strode in. Nathaniel recognized him, distantly.
Varel, the name supplied itself.
The dwarf turned to him, jerking a thumb in Nathaniel's direction.
"Put him on the road. Make sure he keeps walking."
Whatever else he had to say about the Hero of Ferelden, she certainly had enough people willing to obey her orders.
If he'd had his way, he would have found a comfortable log to sit on as soon as he could. His ankles were still in no shape to carry him particularly far, and his head throbbed from too much sun and too much… everything else. The Hero of Ferelden, and Loghain's Ser Cauthrien across from him the whole while. Three days in the dark. Three days living on pease porridge and Maker damn it all the sun was bright.
But every time he slowed, there was a guard to shove him in the back (or try to; he got quite good at dancing forward out of their reach). His head felt fuzzy and light, and each step began to send shooting pain up his calves. Keep walking, indeed.
Really, he'd rather be back in that dungeon, even with the promise of death hanging over him. The company had been good. The company had been - well, more than good. For all of Cauthrien's bluntness and bitterness, there had been something in it that had comforted him. They had a lot in common.
Because she'd been right, about the desire for anonymity. Outside that dungeon, she would need it as much as he did.
And the prison had only one burnt darkspawn in it. Here, along the road, he could see burnt fields and what looked like bodies hidden in the grasses. He could see the empty husks of homes. He could see places churned to mud by the passage of so many feet.
The guards seemed to pay it no mind.
They prodded him on until the sun sank below the horizon. He expected them to push him further, but that seemed to be the limit of their patience, and they must have stumbled down at least four miles of road. It was swiftly growing cold, colder than it had ever felt in the dungeon. There was also the wind and the threat of rain, and memories of early winters at home made him feel far from optimistic at his chances for the night.
"A mile straight on there's a town," the guard closest to him said, tossing the bundle of his belongings at his feet. "I suggest you make for it."
"What, are you going to walk the whole way back?" His tone was sharp, and he didn't regret it until a booted heel slammed into the back of his calf and he dropped to his knees with a grunt.
"We're going to make sure you don't come crawling back."
He pushed himself to the side before another kick landed in the small of his back, instead glancing off his side. He grunted and wrapped his frigid fingers around the leather strap binding his effects and launched himself forward.
Forward, away from the fight, and towards some kind of bed.
He supposed he should have been grateful that they didn't give chase, but as he sat the next morning in a shoddy inn with a total of two rooms for rent, in a town that likely wasn't on any map, counting his coin and realizing that somebody, at some point, had taken enough to leave him with only two silvers-
He was less than pleased.
All he had in his pack, beyond those two silvers, was armor (but not all of it), a few bandages, a few crusts of bread, a knife, and his mother's necklace. He scowled at it. If he'd had a choice, and time, he would have picked something else. Something of Delilah's, maybe, or a book of his father's. A chess piece. One of Thomas's whetstones.
Something from the family he missed, as opposed to the idea of family that he missed. He sighed, stuffing it away again and leaning back, looking up at the ceiling.
The woman who ran the inn came by to take up his empty plates. At the very least, he'd had a good meal, and he hadn't frozen to death. The blessings were small, but there.
How far was it to Amaranthine City? He wondered if he had enough coin to stay at an inn there. How much would it be a night, and how long could he sustain himself? No, it was likely better to stay here, where it was cheap, and perhaps try and find supplies to let him weather the winter in some shed or another. No farmer would want him - but perhaps hunters?
The woman cleared her throat, and he tilted his head to look at her. She was standing, staring at him. His heart sank.
"… Do I know you from somewhere, ser?" she asked.
Well. That answered that. He'd be leaving by lunch.
It had been a difficult choice, but he had gone away from the city and in the opposite direction of all the signs of darkspawn, until those had thinned to a rate that he found almost acceptable. In town, he had found canvas enough for a tent, heavy wool enough to keep warm, and he had lucked onto some mostly-dry wood to feed a fire with.
Now he tended it, eyes shuttered and shoulders hunched against the chill. It grew with cracks and pops, and he set a semblance of dinner on a nearby stone to cook. There would be no pease porridge for him that night.
But for Cauthrien-
His thoughts turned to her almost unbidden, but he found himself too tired to fight it. Or perhaps there was some familiarity to it, when everything else was damp and muddy. A room in the dark. A straw bed. And-
And she had been there when his father had died, if the Warden was right.
The stories he knew of her had made her out to be, alternately, a flame-belching dragoness and a lovelorn woman. But every story was the same when it came to whose heels she followed at. What he remembered of her was the same; she had been a soldier then, not yet knighted, and yet she had still been ever at Teyrn Loghain's side. He'd seen her from time to time practicing in the yard at the palace, he thought. And he had seen her close by when he, only fifteen, had gone before a man who had then seemed a hero and asked him what it would take to be a knight.
His father hadn't been close with the teyrn then, but maybe it had started that day. And a year later he had been sent off to squire in the Free Marches a few months early on the heels of some argument or another with his father. He could barely remember what it had been about.
Delilah, likely.
But arguments over his sister's fate were hardly enough to make his father a murderer, and it was that accusation that he came ever back to, even when he tried instead to imagine Cauthrien's voice, her dry quips, her quiet, friendly insults from just across the way. Maybe, he thought, there was too much light to conjure her by.
He closed his eyes a moment, and was rewarded with a small flash of hollow eyes and cheeks.
Was she still sitting in the dark, or had they at least left a torch burning for her? Was she warm enough? Was it colder now than it had been when he arrived, and was it reaching even the dungeon?
He found himself thinking of Vigil's Keep that night - and the night after. Not all his thoughts were of childhood games or his father's murderer. Some were about the Order that used its halls, the dangers that stalked the lands around it, and the soldier sitting in the dark beneath it all.
Two days later, he tried to simply admit to who he was. When he walked into another small town, bedragled and more than a little on edge from the screeching he had heard the night before, and the man sitting and smoking outside the general store said he looked familiar, Nathaniel drew himself up.
"I guess my father was known around these parts, then," he said.
"You aren't the kid of one of those damned bandits, are you?" the man said, and Nathaniel paled.
"I- no, ser," he said, half-mumbled, and rubbed at the back of his neck. No, he wasn't the son of a bandit. But if damned bandits earned the look the man was giving him now, then what would the son of the former arl earn? Suddenly he wasn't so eager to try his luck. "It's probably nobody, actually. Nobody that you know."
He left before sundown even though he craved the security of four walls and a roof. He didn't sleep that night; thoughts of darkspawn kept him drifting on the barest edge of oblivion. When the sun broke thin and grey through trees and clouds, he was up, and not half an hour later his meager camp was packed and bundled awkwardly once more.
He tried another town. There, he didn't give his name and he kept his head down. There, he heard more tales of his father- and of blight. Rumors of darkspawn were everywhere, more than complaints about his father.
And Nathaniel wondered which, when both were reduced to memory, would be worse.
The next night out, he couldn't ignore the howls that pierced the rustling of wind in the branches. He could no longer pass them off as wolves or as men, and he never made camp. He kept moving, his knife out. He longed for a bow, for true armor, for something more than he had. He longed for the mabari he would have had if he had returned home a knight.
But most of all he longed for Grey Wardens, the only defense against darkspawn the world had ever known.
Funny, that- longing for Grey Wardens, for the rhythm of their march (even if he had never seen more than three together at once). But the rumor was that they were all dead except for the dwarf who had set him free. There wasn't much to long for. He shifted his grip and pushed onward, winding back to the road. The road would take him, eventually, down to Denerim or South Reach. And from there, he'd find something.
He found darkspawn.
The howling had stopped for half an hour, maybe more, when it started up again, closer. There was screeching, and beyond that, screaming. Every instinct but one bristled and told him to turn and run. What remained must have been the little bit of knightly courage his squiring had left him with, and he tested the weight of his knife.
After, he would wonder if it wasn't some tragic longing for death that sent him hurtling into the scrapping mess of three darkspawn and two merchants who couldn't do more to defend themselves than hide and use what barely passed as clubs. There was already blood on the field, and barely enough light to see by. But he caught the first unawares, arm around its throat and knife not far behind. He grit his teeth and shoved the gurgling, clawing beast away in time to duck the next's blow, and the next.
He had taken down four Wardens once, he reminded himself in the space of a single breath, just before he took an opening and caught the next creature in the belly, cutting up below salvaged armor. He had no bow and no poisons and almost no armor. But he had done this before.
The third was felled by a lucky blow by one of the merchants.
He stood panting in the middle of the road, blood streaking his cheek and hand shaking as the battle-thrum in his veins began to wear off. He waited for the inevitable comment on his nose.
What he got instead was,
"You must be one of the Wardens."
It was a week later that he found the Warden - his Warden - on the road out of Amaranthine, heading south-east. She was accompanied by three others. One was a tall and slender elven woman, another a man in robes that could only mark a mage, and the third was another dwarf with flaming hair and beard. He did his best to ignore the audience, and he broke into a jog towards the band.
The Warden had said she never wanted to see his face again, and he had threatened to return only with a knife in hand. But now he came with palms towards her, fingers spread wide, and hoped she would not order his death before he could speak.
He had made his decision.
They stopped and watched as he came down the road towards them. The Warden tugged her helmet off, her hair wilder than he remembered it, and her look more dour. The scar across her cheek nearly made him falter, the way it caught the fading light.
And then she turned and motioned for the others to follow her.
He quickened his pace.
"Wait- Warden- I want to talk to you," he called out, and she paused. The others watched him as he slowed to a halt just a few feet away. When she didn't turn, he shook his head.
There was more to it than that, about darkspawn, about family, but he let the words hang. The other dwarf mumbled something and waved a hand before moving for the treeline, hands reaching to push his marching armor out of the way for a piss. The mage looked between Nathaniel and the Warden, and the elf simply averted her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest.
Slowly, the Warden turned around and looked up at him.
"I already told you," she said. "I know about family, even members you'd rather not tell anybody about. What you do now is your own responsibility."
His own responsibility. That was promising, then. He had walked back towards her territory, somehow found her in the middle of this country that was swiftly becoming Maker-forsaken once more. He could take responsibility. He straightened.
"I see. Then- take me with you." He took a deep breath. "Make me a Grey Warden."
She snorted. "Are you joking?"
"I have nowhere to go," he said, spine stiffening. He'd expected refusal, or disbelief, but it still left him defensive. "I fully expected to die in there- but you let me go. Make me a Grey Warden."
Because being a Grey Warden would mean something beyond exile. Being a Grey Warden would mean having a home again.
The Warden regarded him coolly. "… You think this will redeem your name, do you?" she asked at last.
He'd thought about it, of course. He had thought about it when he came to kill her. Take the family name that had been tarnished and avenge it. Redeem it - though now the thought that her death would have done that seemed laughable.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe- maybe if I face the darkspawn myself, I will be doing as my father should have done." She snorted again, and he colored. "Please," he said. "I am not without skills. You know that."
"Four Wardens to take you down," she said, considering. "And why should I trust you? Your father was clever, and I wouldn't for a moment risk thinking you don't take after him in at least that way. You threatened to come back and kill me. Is this it?"
"No." The thought hadn't crossed his mind since he found the first inn, since he made his first camp. It would still have been satisfying, on some level, to slide a knife beneath her ribs- but this was more important. "I won't tell you to trust me, but I've wandered for half a month now, and what have I seen? Ravaged fields, corpses rotting on the road… it's horrible."
"It was like this when you arrived."
"When I arrived, I was too blinded by revenge. And you're fooling yourself if you think it was this bad."
"Were you, now," she said, shaking her head. She took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. "Very well. We'll see how you do with the Joining. It's as good a test as any." She stuck out her gauntleted hand. "Vana Brosca. Welcome to the fold, such as it is."
