Vintage
"You know… you really remind me of my Ma'," Annie announced one day, eyeing the vermeil-haired dwarf – her wary look failing to convey whether this observation was meant as an offhand jab or a grudging compliment.
Predictably – and perhaps regretfully – Oghren took it as the former.
"And what is it, exactly, that you're trying to imply – eh?" he demanded, lizard-green irises struggling to hone in on Annie-Lynn as she went about setting up a haggard tent. As per his usual, both eyes were glazed over in a viscous film; a strange looking glass made up of liquor, delayed tears, and hay-fever allergens. The man was blooming drunk. There was no need to lean in for a close examination to verify this little fact, either. No, a working nose could smell their berserker compatriot staggering forth from miles off; identified by a hodgepodge aroma of potent dwarven brews. "Are you sayin' I look like a sodding woman, woman?"
Annie pushed a mildly irritated sigh past her front teeth – wondering why in the bleeding hells she hadn't expected this sort of reply from Branka's constantly plastered old lover. The girl stretched out one corner of tarp, pinned it down with her boot's toe, then neatly hammered it into the earth with a wooden stake. "Bah. Forget I said anything, ye' trundlin' boor. You ain't too damn likely to remember it past morning, anyway."
The dwarf's answer was a single, disdainful harrumph. "Brands," he muttered, as though such a mundane statement of fact might've come close to bothering Brosca. The mere thought was a jolly good laugh. Having been called every name in the book by this point in time (and The Book was mighty thick, mind you, scribed double-sided and in teensy font), there was little short of socking her one to the throat that ruffled Annie-Lynn's feathers. 'Even then, it'd have to be a mighty fine hit, too,' she added, nodding with the durable self-satisfaction that had seen her rise through Dust Town's carta – bleed its kingpin like a stuck, squealing hog – and survive. 'Heh. By now, the humans' flamin' Maker could drop outta' their sky an' I'd scarce wrinkle me dainty 'ickle nose.'
Besides, it wasn't as if her family's complete lack of honor or lineage hadn't already been burnt upon this woman's right cheekbone. Annie forgot all the childhood that was within her power to purge, but she remembered being eight – remembered creeping in on a teenage Rica, those perfumed hands slick with blood, weeping at the razor halfway hacked into her face. She remembered doubling over, hands-and-knees, to vomit on the floor; still saw the flayed mess of skin sagging limply from Sissy's jaw. And beyond that, Annie remembered the sting of her own cheek when she later woke in Big Sister's arms – young nails having scratched over the sickle-shaped brand a hundred times whilst Rica slept unwitting, raking down to open meat. She carved out an outline of that condemning mark until it became one hideous twirl of burnt tissue, scars, and pink baby flesh.
They never spoke of this incident. The following morning, Sissy had rinsed her sloppy wound with alcohol – bearing its quiet burn as punishment – before tidily bandaging the evidence of a botched removal effort. She tried endlessly to rub a homemade salve upon her sibling's trace-work, as well… but two steps out their rickety door, Annie-Lynn wiped it off.
So many years ago, Rica had made a desperate attempt to rip their city's casteless symbol from her hide. But that same reckless act had sent her little sister out, determined to carry the crude, ugly blight on her face with steel-bending pride. This was more than an unsightly cut. It was Orzammar claiming her. It was a badge; a coat-of-arms for the proletariat dwarven brigadier. It was cool, rough, and wonderfully familiar beneath her fingertips.
Annie loved the goddamn Brand, worshipped it – wore it like a war flag ripping on pikes in the Deep Roads. And had it been she who lost her mark instead, the youngest Brosca would've gladly knifed it right back into place.
The stake she was currently stomping down chose this interval to crack, a thick fracture splintering straight down its middle. Annie-Lynn cussed.
"Sober up for one minute and hand me that bleedin' mallet, would you?" the girl commanded, lips moving awkwardly around two long tent nails held between her teeth. After a few moments of Oghren simply staring, however, Brosca grew impatient. And impatient rogues were almost exclusively snappy rogues. "For cryin' out… well, come on! By the Ancestors' knobby knees," she exasperated, "can't you follow one measly order? I'm not going to soddin' bite you!" (This promise might've been true enough, on its own – but the mabari-like way Annie barked it out clearly caused some doubts.)
The dwarven berserker gingerly picked up a hammer, then tip-toed over like some child approaching their cane-wielding grandfather.
Annie's first blow against the iron tack sent it halfway down through rocky, metamorphic earth.
"Might've told me you were a smith before I went and spent all that money on what's-his-face. In Denerim," Oghren groused at her, watching the girl lay into a second stake. Each draw of her arm was metronomic; muscles extending overhead with unconscious precision, swinging forth tempered clouts against the waiting metal. Suffice it to say – heavy bronze plates and all – he had returned to what seemed like a safe distance before lodging this complaint. "Gorrack or Gorrit… or something like that."
"Smith? I'm a thrice-damned dwarf, Oghren," Annie growled, brow furrowing viciously with her resentment of this so-called warrior's stupid observations. She tucked a ramshackle, blackbird tuft of hair back into its poorly-wound braid, loose tendrils adhering to sweat-dabbled temples. "Comes with the territory – which, blimey!" Bullet-like fists leapt to her hips in false enthusiasm, jaw dropped with mocking surprise at 'discovering' their shared heritage. "Maybe you'd realize, if ye' thought to spend one blinking second without a full pint sloshing about in yer' hand."
She made to sink another stake, drove crooked, and swore. Dirt pushed painfully underneath her beagle nails whilst Brosca wrenched it out.
"Scoot," the girl ordered. Her upper lip, now arid and cracked by exposure to these open winds, curled. "You're blockin' out me moonlight."
Oghren squinted. Annie-Lynn couldn't quite decide whether he was shooting her a strained look, or simply trying to puzzle out which of three woozy crow-haired girls was the genuine article. She would've bet silvers on the latter option, though.
The dwarf further supported her theory when, in an opaque-minded attempt to follow instructions, he lurched forward rather than back. Brosca scooped up her small pile of rusted nails on instinct – only later wishing she'd let that oaf trod straight over them. 'Teach 'im a valuable lesson in awareness…' provided this grizzled, liquored-up old dog was indeed capable of learning; what with his beard soaked in stale ale, breath reeking whiskey and failed war stories. Annie doubted it. Whatever the magma-haired husband of Orzammar's young Paragon might've once been had sunk to oblivion years ago – when his wife cast off her laurels, marriage-oaths, and any ratty old ties to humble origins for a crusade into the Deep.
Oghren was most certainly a ratty old tie.
"What're you mumblin' about, now?" she snorted, brows denting. Annie-Lynn shoved a flat-palmed hand against the red steel poleyn that was currently looming dangerously close to her face. "Back off, I said. Oi! Now that's just bloody rude. Don't go stumblin' your smashed, rotten hide away from me 'till I'm good and through with you, duster." Oghren no doubt felt confused; caught between these two commands, afraid to inch one way or the other. The girl was bearing her teeth again… and not in that pleasant, sultry, 'come hither' sort of way, either. He froze – like a dense, corn-fat rabbit caught under a hound.
"I heard that! You got a problem with me, barrel-house, you better up an' say it. What were you jus' grumbling?" Brosca was demanding, bum leaning back on her bent heels. Both the woman's ungloved hands were now covered in a clumpy mixture of Ferelden earth and old grease. Feral-white, they looked strangely unnerving beneath the naked, freckled void overhead. "What did you call me?"
"Didn't call you nothin'. Said 'kin to Branka', I did," Oghren garbled out, biting his muttering tongue. The dwarf's fingers were wringing together, arthritic with unspent energy and drunk-down, unfaced duress. "The way you whack on that hammer – like you're angry at somethin'," he added. "Reminds me of the old bronto, a bit."
Annie, claws and cuspids prepared to shred into the man, was mollified. She felt perhaps a bit guilty, as well, judging from the sudden uncomfortable clench in her solar plexus; a twinge Beraht's old bruiser stomached those late nights after she'd pinched a friend. Oghren was a self-made lout, indubitably… but somewhere beneath the extra belly-fat, spoiled ale, and crude comments, there had once been a respected warrior of House Kondrat. Perhaps she shouldn't have been such a harsh judge. No true dwarf could claim they hadn't sipped one wee tankard too many in their time – particularly the brawlers.
Halfway through this directionless search for justification, Annie tripped to a pause. Her fists clenched and unclenched. Agitation roiled. Round cheeks stiffened awkwardly against their jowls. 'By all the kings' whores…'
"Oghren" rumbled off the rogue's tongue. She gritted eye-teeth down upon his name, and utterly growled it out. "Are you coming onto me?"
The berserker didn't reply. This delay was probably because his mind remained too full of gin, possibly due to sheer speechless regret… but the most likely culprit was a long gander at the short, tightly-packed muscles of Annie-Lynn's thighs.
Good Warden Brosca gracefully stretched forth her arm, batted brush-bristle lashes, and – with an ever-so-feminine flair – flung the hammer square at him.
All in all, the girl was pleased to know her first judgment – "drunken old sot" – had said enough.