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The Cage
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Fenris showed the woman how to make traps. First out of wire, then of tightly bound twine – so long as it was strong enough not to snap. You only needed a simple mechanism for it, and a post to string it to.
"I have never s-seen a knot like it," the woman stuttered.
It was how Fenris had been taught, in a jungle far away. He stared her down. She would not forego his payment, simply because she had never seen it before.
The woman shook badly, but relented. "S-So, um… It catches the foot, or the neck, and the more the animal struggles the more it um…"
"Suffocates," Fenris finished for her.
"It's prolonged. That's very… brutal," the woman said.
Fenris was not sure what to say. Did she think death pretty?
She winced under his gaze. Folded her hands over each other, and gazed down from where she was crouched next to him in the field. The tall grass criss-crossed over her like camouflage.
"I frighten you," Fenris stated. It was a miracle and a half that she had agreed to come into this field alone with him.
"All st-strangers do," the woman said.
That explained the miracle. Being afraid of everything and being afraid of nothing were really the same thing.
"I'm sorry," she continued. "I didn't mean to offend you… You seem nice."
Fenris crouched a moment longer. If he was to be nice-
"The darkspawn are not simply a rumour," Fenris said. "You'd do better to take what you can and head north, than try to barricade yourself and wait them out."
His words seemed to fall off her shoulders. The woman did not react. He was not getting through to her. She did not want to hear him.
The woman pulled a pouch of money out of her skirt, and opened it to count right in front of him. Sixty silver pieces. She brushed his hand, gently and purposefully, when she gave him the money. "Thank you for the traps."
Fenris sighed. He had other things to be doing.
He culled a lair of bandits out of a camp near the woods, dug through their packs for gold and the ransacked goods to return to the Chantry. He was a poor poacher, but inexpertly skinned a few wolves for pelts. They were proof of the job he'd done. He would have done the same with the bears, if they had not caught the blight sickness. To his understanding, only Grey Wardens were protected from it. If having already been infected with it could be considered a protection.
He walked back through the field to the town, with the pelts and packs, when he passed the cage.
The prisoner was speaking inside. And, for lack of horns, Fenris had mistaken him for a human, until he heard a language and prayer familiar to him. In many ways more familiar to him than the cutting edges of the trade tongue.
"Struggle is an illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, the sea is unchanged. There is nothing to war against. Victory may be found in the Qun."
Fenris felt himself falter and come to a halt. He had no faith that anything good would come from his curiosity, but found himself moved by it anyhow. He flipped the pelts from one shoulder to the other, and walked to the cage.
"Peace, friend. There is nothing to war against," he greeted in Qunlat.
The Qunari startled from his prayers. Eyed Fenris wearily. He was gaunt, with sallow circles about the eyes.
"I did not think to hear words in my own tongue again. Not before my death… Are you a demon?"
Fenris snorted. "You think me a demon? Your lips are not sewn. You think highly of yourself to assume a demon interested in you."
"Pashaara," the Qunari huffed. "And if a demon wished to sway me with the sight and sound of home, he would probably not appear an elf with a nose like a Seheron Nepenthes, and a tongue weighed heavy with the accent of Tevene. I suppose you can be none other than yourself."
Could he? Fenris wondered. "Why have you been imprisoned?"
"I've been placed here by the Chantry."
"What for?"
"I've been convicted of murder."
"And the convictions are-"
"True," the Qunari cut him off. "I have been waiting here twenty days. It will not be much longer, but I hope to see the darkspawn before I die."
Fenris looked about the cage. "They took your sword."
"They did not," the Qunari said.
"It would have been the first thing I would have done," Fenris laughed humourlessly. "We did it often with Qunari captives, to break their spirits."
This Qunari seemed to be made of tougher stuff than that, and observed him passively.
"Once the interrogations were done, the more malleable were taken in by slave masters," Fenris continued. "The rest executed. Tevinter is more wasteful of its capita than your Ben Hassrath."
"Frivolity," the Qunari said. "For that, the Qun will be victorious, and Tevinter will fall."
Fenris shrugged. That was not his problem any more. "At another time, we might have met on the battlefield. I would have slain you."
"You would have tried," the Qunari said, but Fenris caught the edge of amusement in his voice. "I am Sten of the Beresaad."
It was not a name, but perhaps that was fine. Fenris did not have a true name to offer him either.
"I am Fenris… of the Grey Wardens," he added, simply to have his own title.
"A Grey Warden?" Sten raised an eyebrow. "My people have heard legends of the Grey Wardens' strength and skill… Though I suppose not every legend is true. You intend to stop the Blight…" He seemed almost wistful.
Fenris considered. If this was a Sten with an active assignment from his Arishok, Fenris might have felt differently. But this man had lost his platoon. Without a sword, there was no way for him to report back. They might have once been enemies, but time and circumstances had weathered their differences. Veterans of the same war. Slaves to Tevinter, or the Will of the Qun. Both alone in this foreign place, with no hope of returning home.
"You spoke of frivolity," Fenris said. "Your talents are wasted here. I am in need of allies in the fight against the Blight, and you appear seasoned and disciplined as a platoon commander."
Sten hesitated. "My choices have been made. Whatever might have been, my life is forfeit now."
"You would die here at the behest of these people." Fenris snorted. "They do not even think you a person." They were knife-ears and ox-men and foreigners to the residents of this sleepy little town, less than dirt.
"It is not at their behest," Sten said. "I wished to be here."
"Why?"
Sten's lips twitched, and he spoke slowly and softly. "Either you have an enviable memory, or a pitiable life, to know nothing of regret."
Fenris flinched. For a long, long time he had, indeed, known nothing of regret.
"Who did you murder?"
"The people of a farmhold. Eight humans, including the children."
Fenris remembered the screams. He remembered cutting through their soft skin, fatty with youth, like butter.
"It is something monstrous," Fenris was saying. "Something only an animal, a wild beast, would do."
"I agree," Sten agreed. "Death will by my atonement."
Fenris set the wolf pelts on the ground. Removed the packs taken from the bandits. He drew his sword from its sheath.
"Stand back," he told Sten. And the man, after a moment's lingering consideration, dutifully pressed himself against the back of the cage.
"Find another atonement," Fenris commanded. And he jammed Lethendralis between the gaps, just above the lock at the gate, and pried at the bars with all his might.
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