10. The Face of the Foe

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"No man ever seen the face of his foe no

He ain't made of flesh and bone

He's the one who sits up close beside you

And when he's there you're all alone."

- 16 Horsepower, "Black Soul Choir

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Between Lothering and Redcliff

Leliana:

The darkspawn are more terrifying than Leliana has expected.

Four days out of Lothering, just short of noon, and Alistair goes stiff as a hunting hound. "Darkspawn," he says, quietly. "Not a small group."

"Close," Kallian Tabris agrees, and shrugs her shield down onto her forearm. Her dark glance takes in Leliana and Sten. Light, full of irony: "As we practiced, then. Don't let their appearance shake you. They die like men."

Like men. The Wardens lead the way over a crest in the road. Leliana tries to let that comfort her.

They look half-rotted, poisonous white-eyed things with stained blades and hollow grunts for voices. In the bright sunlight of the roadway, they seem more like a waking nightmare than something real.

But they are real, and the screaming from the covered wagon is real, and the dead child sprawled in the wheelrut is real, and the monstrous thing with yellow fangs and a bloody pike is also, undeniably, real.

Andraste and the Maker, help me now.

Leliana nocks an arrow with fingers that are too cold, too calm, too frightened to shake, sights along the draw. The Wardens advance in lockstep, silent, shields held steady: beside her Sten unlimbers his greatsword and the mabari Reaver crouches in preparation for a charge. Morrigan mutters low in her throat.

They die like beasts. Not like men. Men might flinch, men might die with something other than hate in their eyes -

But they die.

When it's over, Alistair takes one look inside the covered wagon and stumbles away retching. Tabris goes in, re-emerging with bloody hands and an iron face, and silently watches Alistair empty his guts on the roadside. Leliana steps carefully around the darkspawn corpses, touches the elf's shoulder lightly. Pretends not to notice the controlled flinch. "Is he all right?" she asks, softly.

Are you?

The slight Warden blows a sharp breath between her teeth. "I don't know, Leliana." An edge in her voice: "How often do you think he's seen disembowelled children?"

Leliana swallows. "They were dead?"

"They are now," Tabris says, very soft and tight. "You don't recover from that much damage. Not if you have the best healing mage in Thedas. Which Morrigan is not." Her fists clench and unclench. Her glance is flat, bitter: shadowed. For the first time Leliana realises how young the elf is, despite the hardness in her features. Hardly more than a child herself.

Almost, she wants to ask how someone so young can look on dead children without flinching. With nothing more than a tightened jaw and a tired gaze.

The moment where she might have asked passes. Tabris squares her shoulders, shrugs off Leliana's touch, starts towards Alistair with a resolute stride. Over her shoulder, once more grim and businesslike: "We'll salvage what we can. Tell Sten and Morrigan I want a pyre. Leave nothing for the scavengers, or they'll be tainted."

Grim, brooding Sten, Morrigan harsh and pointed as a carrion bird. Leliana begins to understand. They are none of them all right, here.

Sin unto heaven, she thinks. Doom unto the world.

Maker, guide me well.

8

8

Tabris surprised me here. So did Leliana, for that matter.