Right wandered the camp for a while, finding much to see, and more then a few things to pocket. Stores of armour, weapons, and other gear were stashed in odd corners of the sprawling ruin, and it was easy enough to make off with a handful of arrows here, a pair of boots there, without removing so much that anyone would necessarily notice his petty pilferage. Somewhere in camp, he was sure, would be someone willing to profit off it all, and having some ready coin in his pockets couldn't hurt.
He gawked for a while at a tall tower on the eastern side, near where he and Duncan had encountered King Cailan. For all his dismissive words to Duncan earlier about his ability – or lack thereof – to judge stonework, even he could tell that is was an impressive, solidly-built structure, to have withstood so many years under the open sky.
The route to the tower was closed and guarded, and there wasn't much else to see on this side of the ravine, so he finally ventured out onto the bridge crossing over to the western side, where the main camp was. He eyed the damaged sections of stonework warily, but the roadway seemed solid enough underfoot, and crossing over the tree-filled ravine was no more worrisome then passing above the lava-filled pit that flowed under the bridge to the Proving Grounds. A longer drop, maybe, but just as lethal in the end.
The western side of the camp proved to be filled with a considerable bustle, people scurrying around everywhere on various errands, or standing around in groups talking together or listening to others talk. He watched some mages at work for a while, fascinated by the swirling energies that surrounded them. He'd never seen a mage before; heard of them, yes, but dwarfs couldn't be mages, so exposure to them in Orzammar was pretty much non-existent. Besides, even if one had come visiting, they'd doubtless be a guest in the Diamond Quarter, not left to wander around down to where the lowly casteless in Dust Town might glimpse them.
After awhile he became aware that a white-haired human woman was standing nearby, dividing her attention between the mages and him Her steady look made him feel uneasy. He turned away from the mages, and started to walk away – a route that brought him past the woman – only to have her step forward, raising one hand slightly to catch his attention.
"Greetings, young man. You are Duncan's newest recruit, are you not? He's not a man easily impressed. You should be proud," she said, then smiled at him with an unexpectedly welcoming smile. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Wynne, one of the mages summoned by the king."
"I am Right," he growled back.
A slight smile crossed her face. "Would that we could all say the same," she said dryly.
Right flushed. He'd always enjoyed the joke his name made, before... but something about her amusement made it seem less entertaining, somehow. "Can't win them all," he snapped back, feeling aggravated.
To his surprise, she laughed. Not just some delicate little giggle or titter either, but a full-bellied laugh, her smile stretching wide, deep laugh-lines appearing at the corners of her eyes. "Well met, and good luck to you on the battlefield. To us all, in fact," she said with warm approval.
Her approval made him even more uncomfortable. "I should get going," he said abruptly.
"Well, don't let this old mage distract you from your duties. I'm sure Duncan has much for you to do," she said, smiling still, and nodded farewell to him as he turned away.
Strange old bird, he thought, then dismissed her from his thoughts.
He wandered the camp for a while longer, quickly locating someone willing to relieve him of the weight of his acquisitions in exchange for coin. The Quartermaster, unsurprisingly; naturally anyone with an eye on profit would gravitate to such a potentially lucrative position as soon as they could arrange it, by any means necessary, fair or foul. Equally unsurprisingly, the man had a second, unofficial stock of off-the-record goods of questionable provenance or legality. Right was fascinated by some of the things he stocked, but had always preferred a straight-forward knife to the throat over fiddling around with poisons and traps.
"Tell you what, first one's free," the Quartermaster told him, handing him a small glass vial of an oily green-brown liquid. "Give it a try – I'm sure you'll like it. If you do, I can supply you with more, or even the recipes and ingredients to make it yourself; deathroot grows wilds all over the place. And if you don't, well, at least you'll have tried it, right?"
"Errr... right," Right agreed, pocketing the vial.
He turned away to find a skinny dark-haired human with a bow hung at his back giving him a once-over. "Well, you're not what I thought you'd be," the man said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Right asked suspiciously.
"Oh, me and ser knight were just betting on what the third recruit would be. Not a dwarf. Yet here you are. The name's Daveth. It's about bloody time you came along. I was beginning to think they cooked this ritual up just for our benefit."
Another recruit of Duncan's, it seemed. The two talked briefly, then Daveth wandered off in search of Duncan, while Right continued his explorations. Climbing a ramp near to the Quartermaster's area brought him to what was obviously an infirmary area. He kept well away from the sick and injured; he didn't like the reminder of his own mortality they provided.
He found himself near a set of hanging cages, one occupied by a scrawny man, naked but for his smalls. The man reached one hand out through the bars, giving him a beseeching look.
"I don't suppose you have a bit of kindness in you? All I want is food and water. They haven't fed me since I was locked up, and I'm starving," the man whined piteously.
"Why would I want to help you?" Right asked.
The prisoner glanced toward the guard lounging nearby, back turned to the pair of them, then lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. "Because you might want something I don't need. Them Circle wizards got a chest they keep things in, magical things... and I stole the key. That's why I'm here. I got one of them drunk, took his key, and tried to sneak to the chest. They assumed I was deserting. I can't use it from here, but I'd trade you for some food and water."
"They didn't find the key when you were arrested?"
"I swallowed it. But it's... uhhhh... come back into my possession since then, so to speak," the prisoner said. He glanced at the guard again, then spat a small key into his hand and held it up. "See?"
Right grinned. "I'll take that," he said, hand darting through the bars.
"What? But... you can't do that!" the prisoner gasped out, trying to prevent Right from wrestling the key away from his grasp. He turned his head, opened his mouth, clearly about to call for the guard. Right hissed a curse and cut his throat, quickly slipping the key into a pocket.
The guard hurried over, drawn by the commotion. "What! What in Andraste's name did you do that for?" he exclaimed, staring the the dying prisoner.
"He lunged at me. I had to defend myself," Right growled, cleaning his dagger and re-sheathing it.
"Mmm. I suppose you did, at that. Fair enough," the guard said, then shrugged. "Well, no skin off my teeth. When they ask me why he's dead, that's what I'll tell them."
He turned and left, probably to report to whomever had assigned him to guard the prisoner that the prisoner was no longer in need of guarding.
Right glanced around. No one else in the area seemed to have noticed what had happened; even the next-closest person, a large balding man in armour, listening attentively to some surfacer priestess intoning some sort of blessing, was oblivious to what had just happened. Still, best to get out of the area, Right decided; he didn't like the thought that people might remember his face in connection with a killing, even of someone as comparatively inconsequential as the prisoner.
He hurried over to a nearby open gate, only to be stopped by a guard. "Sorry, the main army camp is off limits for you right now," the guard said warningly.
Right frowned, then nodded and turned away. Though the open gate he'd glimpsed serried ranks of tents. Clearly that was where the main body of the army were encamped, and he'd stick out like a sore thumb among the humans there anyway. He headed down a nearby ramp, and started to work back east, finding himself in an area with pens of dogs. No, not just dogs, he reminded himself – the Mabari warhounds of legend, four-legged killing machines that were as much a part of the Ferelden armies as the humans were.
He wandered along the row of kennels, peering in at the dogs curiously. Most just sat calmly, gazing back at him, with the odd warning growl. They stood almost as tall as he did, with massive forequarters and heavily muscled heads, mouths opening to display sharp teeth. He shivered, imagining what it would be like to have one of those going for his throat.
Halfway along the row, he came across a human man standing by one pen, frowning in concern as he looked at the hound inside, and muttering to himself. He looked up as Right started to ease past him.
"Are you the new Warden? I could use some help," he said.
"I don't know anything about dogs," Right growled, trying to step around the man, only to have him block his path.
"It's not what you know so much as what you are, really," the man said, an edge of desperation in his voice. "This is a mabari. Smart breed, and strong. His owner died in the last battle, and the poor hound swallowed darkspawn blood. I have medicine that might help, but I need him muzzled first."
"Why do you think I could muzzle him?" Right asked, puzzled.
"You're a Grey Warden, or soon will be. All Wardens are immune to the darkspawn taint. The most you have to worry about is some tooth marks."
"No, I'm not interested. I should go," Right said.
The man looked disappointed. "Let me know if you change your mind. Otherwise, I'll have to put him down."
Right hesitated, and looked at the hound in the pen. As large as all the others he'd seen, but instead of resting quietly it was pacing in circles in its pen, head lowered, slaver trailing in strings and foamy gobs from its mouth. As if sensing his regard, it raised its massive head and turned to look at him quizzically, whining once, before resuming its pacing.
"I'll give it a shot," Right abruptly said.
The man looked relieved. "Go in the pen and let him smell you. We'll know right away if he'll respond. Let's hope this works. I would really hate to have to put him down."
Right nodded, accepted the muzzle the man proffered, and entered the pen. The dog whined, and backed a step or two away from him.
"Easy, boy," he said softly.
It whined a second time, then lowered its head, standing motionless, legs braced, as he cautiously approached it. He felt a surge of relief as he slipped the heavy leather muzzle on and quickly buckled it in place, restraining those massive jaws, and even more relief as he stepped from the pen and the gate closed behind him. Even muzzled, a dog that big could likely do him an injury. He must have been insane to voluntarily do this. He still wasn't sure why he had – it's not like there was even any profit in it for him.
"Well done! Now I can treat the dog properly - poor fellow," the kennel master said. "Come to think of it, are you heading into the Wilds any time soon?"
Right remember Daveth saying something about a possible trip into the Wilds. "I might be. Why?" he asked guardedly.
He listened to the man's explanation, and nodded. If he did find himself out in the wilds, it couldn't hurt to keep an eye open for a flower. "I'll see if I can find one," he agreed.
He wandered the camp a while longer, picking up a few more gleanings to bring to the Quartermaster later. He stood a while, listening to a human soldier giving a lesson about darkspawn to a group of soldiers, then started to head back north through the camp, only to be nearly knocked off his feet as a young elven boy came hurtling around a tent and ran right into him.
"I'm sorry!" The boy exclaimed, before dropping to his knees to begin gathering up the scrolls and packages he'd been carrying, and dropped as a result of the impact. Right eyed the packages, wondering if any of them contained something valuable. The boy realized he was still standing there, and looked up apprehensively. "Is there something you needed?" he asked.
"Yes, I do," Right quickly lied, then paused, mind racing as he tried to think up some further lie that would get one or more of the packets into his own hands.
The boy bounced to his feet looking worried. "Then what is...? Oh, wait! Are you the one I'm supposed to give Ser Garlen's sword to? Because I think the smith's done with it," he exclaimed, proffering a lengthy bundle.
Ancestors, the boy was making this easy for him!. Right gave him a reassuring smile. "Yes, you're supposed to give the sword to me," he said.
"Oh, that's such a relief! You really saved me from the switch, for sure!" the boy exclaimed, handed over the sword, and pelted off again, clutching his remaining scrolls and packages to his narrow chest. Right watched him go, snorted, and quickly hid the still-wrapped sword away in his pack. He'd look it over later – some place where no one might question how he'd laid his hands on such a fine blade. For now, best to get away from this end of the camp; sooner or later someone was going to figure out that the messenger had given the sword to the wrong person. And, he belatedly realized, him being the only dwarf in the camp made him all too easy to identify. That possible trip into the Wilds was sounding better and better.
He was poking around in the northern end of the ruins when he finally stumbled across the Grey Warden that Duncan had told him to find, talking to a mage. He didn't know who it was, at first – not until after the mage had stalked off, an expression of disgust on his face, and the tall, blond-haired man strolled over to Right.
"You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together," the man drawled.
"You are a very strange human," Right responded, giving him a leery look.
"You're not the first to tell me that," he responded dryly, then frowned, looking puzzled. "Wait, we haven't met, have we? I don't suppose you happen to be another mage?"
Right gave him an incredulous look. He was a dwarf! Dwarfs couldn't be mages!
"Wait, I do know who you are. You're Duncan's new recruit, from Orzammar," the man exclaimed, his blue-green eyes lighting up as he gave Right a friendly smile. "Allow me to introduce myself: I'm Alistair, the new Grey Warden, though I guess you knew that. As the junior member of the order, I'll be accompanying you when you prepare for the Joining."
"I can't prepare on my own?" Right asked, not liking the thought of having to be accompanied anywhere by this cretin.
"I know. I felt the same way when I did this. Unfortunately, they don't give us much choice," Alistair said, then gave him a curious look. "Hmm. There haven't been any dwarven Grey Wardens in some time. You must know a lot about darkspawn."
Right scowled. Ancestors save him from clueless humans. "Not really. I spent more time fighting guardsmen, myself," he said bitterly. "No one trusts someone like me with anything that important."
"Someone like you? The recruit Duncan's been bragging endlessly about?" Alistair said, sounding genuinely surprised, then frowned. "I, uh, guess you've got a more colourful background than Duncan let on."
"But don't worry, you'll see plenty of darkspawn now, and probably sooner than you'd like," he continued. "Anyhow, whenever you're ready let's head back to Duncan. I imagine he's eager to get things started."
Right nodded, and turned away. He'd spotted Duncan earlier, standing near a large bonfire just south of the middle of the camp. He headed that way, stopping by the Quartermaster to sell off the last of his gleanings, doing his best to ignore the tall blond shadow he seemed to have acquired.
Duncan was pleased to see them. Daveth, whom he'd met earlier, was standing waiting as well, along with the balding man that Right remembered seeing up in the infirmary area earlier. He turned out to be a knight, one Ser Jory by name.
Duncan spent a few minutes scolding Alistair for having aggravated the mage that Right had seen him talking to earlier, before explaining that the three recuits needed to journey south into the Korcari Wilds together to obtain three vials of darkspawn blood – one for each of them – as well as searching for some documents in the ancient ruins that spotted the swamps. Alistair would accompany the three of them on their trip, which would likely take several days. They were to leave first thing the next morning.